Amberlight

by Sylvia Kelso

  Tellurith opens her mouth and shuts it again. Locking away the image of gold-brocaded cuff and beggars’ rags, the contrast’s rev­elation she can take no further, even to herself. Only to the inar­ticulate uncertainty that this, this is not right.

  As for saying, They are too poor, we are too rich. We are at the top of the city, and we are strangling Amberlight?

  Just as Amberlight is strangling the River beyond.

  Ask Maeran to give up her Heartland ivory collection, and Falla her six hundred heirloom tapestries, ask any of them to renounce their mere wardrobes, their jewels, their furniture, a House-head’s accustomed luxury, a House’s ordinary wealth?

  To divide it with a River Quarter whore?

  Tellurith bites her lower lip, hard. Lifts her nose and looks down it, Telluir signal of negotiation’s end.

  “Whatever it means to the city, we know what abuses go on beyond.” Astonishing, how calm she actually sounds. When she is taking a stance that may mean the end, in one way or another, of her life. “Let the Thirteen vote as they wish. But Telluir House will not send Verrain a statuette.”

  The Thirteen erupt. Sevitha hurls her arms up, bereft of words.

  Understanding the unspoken very well: that for the sake of the Thirteen’s tacit equilibrium, to revoke Telluir’s contract demands canceling the Cataract order to Vannish House.

  So Tellurith can smile quite genially, if with teeth bared, at the ensuing fracas. Until Sevitha takes the only possible action, and the special meeting is adjourned.

  * * * *

  Sunset on Amberlight, crimson ribbons of wind-cloud dappled on a cerulean sky. In the garden, the first golden splashes of crocus star the needle-mats under the pines. In Tellurith’s apartment, Iatha leans against the dining table and stares.

  “’Rith—just tell me why?”

  The hurt, the exhaustion, stab Tellurith in turn. She gives her troublecrew the signal that means, Privacy.

  To them all.

  “Yath . . . You know what I told them. We can prove it’s true.”

  Iatha’s hump-necked stare retorts, So?

  “Yath, I—”

  But what use to struggle through that impossible vision here? Easier to take the other, the bald, insane, yet to a House-woman, more comprehensible truth.

  “I felt—the qherrique said, Yes.”

  Iatha rubs two fingers between her brows. Produces a look she cannot read. Then a sign she reads all too well. And then, softly, “I always wondered. ’Rith—is that how House-heads know?”

  Over the honor-sign. As if she were, herself, a god. But she cannot shirk the answer. “I don’t know about the rest. But for me . . . I think, yes.”

  Iatha stares a while at the huge, incarnadined sky. Then slowly straightens. Exhaustion metamorphosing to purpose, determination, strength. “Well, then, ’Rith—if that’s what it is—whatever the Thirteen think, we know we’re right.”

  * * * *

  “You said, assassinations, if they disapproved of me. So they’ll try over this.”

  To deduce rather than question is the way of those redoubtable wits. Which have already convinced Azo and Verrith and Zuri herself.

  “Blight and blast it, I can pee without taking a scout!”

  He stares. Too quiet, the black eyes alarmingly still in a killer’s face. ‘Use’, she has said. The old man, disconcertingly evident, avows that he will uphold his trust.

  “And we don’t need throwing-knives under the pillow!”

  “I talked to Zuri.”

  And the knives, says the expression, stay.

  But it is Kuro who dies.

  * * * *

  “She was old, yes. Failing for years. Heart-stoppage, is the physicians’ report.”

  Tellurith wraps arms about herself, in good wool coat and in-House warmth bitterly, bone-deep cold. Across the desk Iatha says it for her, the presence of troublecrew, a very outlander, all ignored.

  “Heart-stoppage can cover anything. From aspnor root to a pillow over the head.”

  And of course there will be no proof. Impossible to query the official version of a Head’s death. Not from another House.

  Impossible to misread the message. Which is aimed at theirs.

  * * * *

  A House-head goes to death through water and fire, by the same road as the least pauper of Amberlight. But for a House-head it is no simple Gate Quay pyre and committal of ashes to the river; for a House-head it is a five day mourning dark, laid in state in the House’s central court for all Uphill to honor with their parting gifts, their shorn locks, their ritual grief. And then the procession, all Uphill, even the men, with musicians and bells and burning incense, winding outward to Dead Dyke. Where amid final ceremonies the body is laid in its opulent death-clothes, with its gifts about it, on the Traveler’s Ship. And when the pyre’s ardent cennaphar wood is kindled, the Dead Dyke gates open, the River draws the ship to itself, and somewhere in the downRiver dusk, the great star of the conflagration takes a House-head’s memory with it as it dies.

  Impossible to shirk the funeral. House honor compels Tellurith’s presence as much as an ally’s respect. Or as enemies defied. “If we shirk, it says they’ve frightened us. They’ve won!”

  “Then for the gods’ love, Tel, take some care!”

  Not Iatha this time, as sure of sanctity as all Zuri’s crew. Murder a House-head in private, yes, but violence at an Uphill funeral? Tellurith’s panicking outlander argues and curses and pleads in vain. The troublecrew will honor Kuro with their presence, yes. Alert for danger in the procession, yes. Crowding a House-head who should pace in proud and fearless isolation before her people, no. “I’m not Dinda, Alkhes!”

  So she strides solemnly in the space behind Telluir House’s banner, leaving a suitable hiatus after the scullions of Hafas: the Houses follow the bier in traditional founding order. The bitter-keen spring air swirls with fitful sparkling sun, with the patrol of distant showers, smoky over the threadbare green of sprouting rice, over the river’s glittering back. Over the streets of Amberlight, business suspended, while stevedores, even whores silently line Hill-foot road above the River Quarter’s sun-groomed shacks. To watch the passage of that tinkling, chanting stream of funeral splendor, from the black head-wrap of a garden-boy to the gold-brocaded, boot-length, silk-lined midnight swirl of a House-head’s coat.

  And amid the House-folk, the blacker cluster of troublecrew, whence she can feel the blackest stare arrow over Crafts and Craft-heads and even the shielded men’s file, the smallest boy somberly demure behind his veil of jet-black silk. Aimed, with fury and fear to power its defiance, at her unprotected back.

  Assembling at noon at the citadel gate, by mid-afternoon the procession has reached Dead Dyke. The Houses file to their traditional places for the eulogies, delivered by each Head from a rostrum beside the bier. Orchestrated to close by the turn of evening for the embarkation of the body and its gifts.

  And finally, as the electrum arc of the new moon emerges above a splendidly purple sunset, the canal gates are opened. The Ship cast off. The torches fired.

  By tradition, only family mourners watch the pyre’s end. Also by tradition, House and Craft-heads offer the bereaved a last, personal condolence. And with it comes the afternoon’s release into informality, House-folk mingling, House-heads too resuming their ballet of acknowledgement, support and threat.

  Maeran is just leaving as Tellurith approaches the mourners: Kuro’s daughter, her partner, her younger husband; the women frozen-faced, heads bare. The partner red-eyed, the husband little more than a tall black inclining shape that with House-man’s skill manages to convey devastated grief. Tellu­rith bows to him, nods to her; clasps Ti’e’s hands, offers ritual words. Turns away.

  To a plunge and convulsion in the crowd-swirl, then a strangled yell as a thunderbolt knocks her flat on
her back.

  Cold. Dusk. A paralyzed hush. Tellurith is too winded to gasp. Cold stone mashes her shoulder-blades, weight pins her empty chest. Warm muscled human weight. Spread over her like living armor, straddled to shield her every inch.

  Then her lungs wheeze as white blobs of overhead faces yell and shove and rush. A black spearhead slings them aside, drive of a body and grab at the mantling weight, Zuri’s familiar whip-crack shout.

  “Alkhes, don’t move!”

  A hand pins Tellurith’s arm. Zuri rears up bellowing, “Caitha! Get over here!”

  Tellurith gets her chin up. Surging masses of black cohere, Telluir troublecrew pinning back an appalled, babbling crowd. Cloud-inlaid purple sky, horizon lit with a wide golden ellipse from the pyre. Caitha coming at flat run, a frightful face. A body on top of her, black troublecrew jacket, familiar weight. Black head buried, familiarly, so familiarly, in her shoulder crook.

  And the fletches of a blow-dart, a miniature six-inch mast, upright above the curvature of his back.

  “Don’t move, Ruand.”

  Don’t shift his body. Don’t disturb the dart. Don’t distribute the poison. Well and truly seated, says that vicious haft, usually all of ten inches long. Barbed. Its three tines smeared with hatura, nerve poison. Inches from his spine.

  Tellurith’s belly dissolves. Somewhere inside her, beyond the body trying desperately not to twitch, not to breathe, someone is screaming, No, oh no, oh sweet Mother, no, no, no—

  Another thud. Frantic gasps. Zuri again. “Got anything here?”—“Katsein, but I don’t—”—“Give it to him. Never mind the dose—get it in him!”—“No cup—!”—“Use my hand . . . shick it, woman, move!”

  Zuri, abusing Caitha. Zuri, using obscenity, who is never known to curse. Zuri’s hand, gripping his shoulder, solid as rock, as Caitha pants and babbles by Tellurith’s head. Zuri’s galvanizing crisis voice.

  “Alkhes. Lift your head. Very slowly. I’ll keep your balance. Drink what Caitha gives you. Now.”

  The tone, and only the tone’s ice, to urge what Tellurith’s distant soul is screaming: Now, hurry, before the paralysis reaches your throat, for the Mother’s love, quick!

  She feels rather than hears his indrawn breath. Zuri’s other hand steadying his head. Does feel the katsein drops, wet on skin through her shirt-sleeve, inside the opened coat. And close as in her own throat, the movement of chest and belly as he gulps.

  “Not too fast.” She has heard Zuri speak to troublecrew like that. After greatest, most perilous effort, for a triumph at most fearful price. Stern, without expression. The utmost tenderness.

  “Got any more?”

  “Not with me, there’s tetsal in the infirmary—”

  “Send someone—quick!”

  Zuri’s hand remains. Adding her own small best, to lie utterly still despite small tortures of crumpled coat, trapped muscles, bitterly chill, uneven stones, Tellurith is abjectly glad. Especially when his head shifts and she hears through her own lungs and bones’ core the first checked, laboring breath.

  “It’s hatura.” Zuri is all ice. “Don’t tell me if you know. Don’t fight it if you don’t. It paraly­zes. You probably can’t feel along your back. Don’t tell me! It will get your chest muscles. That’s why you’re out of breath. Caitha’s given you katsein, but it has to come through your gut. It will work.” Mother help us, Tellurith’s brain screams, Zuri, do you know! “You have to give it time. Just don’t panic. Don’t fight.”

  All too familiar, such counsel in extreme injury. When she feels his mouth move against her shoulder, the image of the wry, agreeing smile fills her eyes with tears.

  * * * *

  Tetsal is administered straight into the blood. By the time Caitha slices shirt and jacket for an incision at a respectful six inches circle round the haft, his breathing is appreciably worse. By the time the tetsal is administered, Tellu­rith has waited what seems eternal hours; hearing Iatha brusquely disperse all comers, shattering decorum and Diaman’s funeral without a thought. And Zuri, still kneeling by her prostrate Head and outland troublecrew. Declaring war, clearer than Iatha’s brusquerie, as she coolly, blankly declines every offer of tetsal from nearer infirmaries. Say­ing, You are all enemies, with every, “I prefer it from Telluir House.”

  When Caitha decrees he is within risk to move, it is long past dark. Iatha brings the Head’s vehicle right to them. And when he has been lifted on a slab-litter and deposited inside like veritable qherrique by a multitude of troublecrew hands, Tellurith is finally free to breathe. To rise. To cosset tottery limbs among multitudinous other hands. To shove her wobbly way to the vehicle door and grunt, “Let me up!”

  So she rides with him to the House, his head on her lap, her ribs strained by every wheezing breath. In the infirmary her flesh feels every deep, insufferably deep scalpel stroke as Caitha dredges for the dart. She experiences rather than watches the extrication of the triple layered barbs. And then literally sits with him, propped on the same pillows, helping the medical team who use tetsal, and more katsein, and at the worst shove his chest to work his lungs, even give him heart massage. Before his eyes open, and she hears him draw a clear breath, as the infirmary qherrique brightens to announce the end of that endless night.

  The eyes are as ever, a single, drowning black. Their expression is vaguer than when he came round first. But when she puts a hand to that black-stubbled cheek, recognition comes.

  And then remembrance. A quiet knowledge of success. A smile that makes her heart jump. When she puts both arms around him, she feels it widen to that wicked grin against her neck.

  Before he whispers, “I told you so.”

  They have just finished making peace when Zuri arrives.

  With a face that ignores love’s frivolity along with patient’s frailty or intruder’s embarrassment. Just the question, and the hand full of triple-tined, blood-stained barbs.

  “Seen one of these before?”

  And he answers as dourly, “Cataract.”

  “Ah?” Zuri lifts her brows. At his recognition, not the news. “Heartland hunter-dart? The pipe’s thick as your thumb, three feet long. Use it like a walking stick if you want. Any time inside twenty feet, stick the dart in, point and blow. What’d you see?”

  He rubs his brows. Not absence, but re-creation. Head and troublecrew, after-action report.

  “It was the first good chance. People moving, bad light. And leaving the mourners, they all turned toward the bier. It was cover. It was damn close. I followed—Tellurith. When she turned, I saw the pipe come round the bier. The Vannish mourners blocked me. It was too far to stop him. So I went for her.”

  Zuri measures him, a long, enigmatic stare. Then grunts and leans on the bed end. “If you dodged Vannish in time to reach her, s’hure, you must have flown.”

  S’hure. Fellow Crafter. The male version sounds more than strange. It may be the title, or the tone, but Tellurith sees the blood rise, a slow flush behind the stubble, before the wry little smile.

  “I think I did. The last five feet, anyhow.”

  Literally throwing himself in the dart’s path. Knowing what it was. That he might, literally, be shielding her with his life.

  Tellurith’s throat shuts, robbing words. She lays an arm across him as substitute. He leans his head against hers. Then raises a mock scowl for Zuri. “Now do you say I was right?”

  Zuri grins.

  A sight only less remarkable than the visiting moon. Before she stomps the bed’s length and cuffs his shoulder. “Next time, dangle-wit, I’ll give you an ear-spark,” diamond ear-stud, Crafter’s honor. “But only if you salute first!”

  * * * *

  The extraction wound needs ten stitches, but the hatura’s effects wane fast. So fast that irate threats delay things till he can be up for next day’s only slightly postponed council of war.

 
“It was rotted silly to do it at the funeral. When even the physicians would be there. Sounds like Cataract.”

  Iatha, supplying a Riverslength perspective. Belied by Zuri’s glower.

  “It would have been cursed clever to do it at the funeral if it worked. It would have told every-one: We can get you. Even here.”

  “Amberlight, then?” Tellurith demands.

  Zuri shrugs.

  “Ruand, the pipe and the assassin may have come from Cataract. Or only the pipe. One or both could have been sent by Dinda. It could as easily have been cooked up here.”

  Iatha thumps the table. “There’s no way to tell!”

  “Then what matters now,” Alkhes cuts straight through her, “is that it doesn’t happen again.”

  Zuri adds flatly, “Yes.”

  Three pairs of eyes swivel. Confronting a narrower vista of confined living, cumbered move­ment, scanted privacy, Tellurith mentally groans.

  “No more goddamn ceremonials.” He is in deadly earnest now. “No more public access. Double checks, in here as well.”

  “No more dockyard trips,” Iatha weighs in vengefully. “River Quarter’s full of bullies for hire. One blocked street—one gang with picks—”

  “No more House meets.” Zuri sounds flatter than before. “Whether it came from Cataract or Amberlight, offering chances to another House is too much risk.”

  At which Tellurith regains her House-head’s wits.

  “No! Call a House-meet! Iatha, get Hanni to pass the summons the minute we’re done. Take as much troublecrew as you want, but I’m going to see them. I want to see them all!”

  Iatha yelps. Zuri stares. Alkhes’ mouth opens. And shuts.

  Tellurith feels the grin come, wild as a lunatic’s. “It doesn’t matter who did it. We have the witness, we have the proof. Cataract is implicated in an assassination attempt on a House-head of Amberlight. Telluir House will invoke the Thirteen. And the Thirteen will have to cancel Dinda’s contract. They’ll have no choice!”