by Jo Clayton
There being no other bids, the Caller hammered the boy to Maksim and the Hina girl led him off. He’d be held in the back until Maksim brought the coin to pay the bid and the tag-fee.
Another boy was brought out, older this time, a stocky freckled youth with a long torso and short legs. “Journeyman gardener,” the Caller announced and the bidding started again.
Maksim was annoyed at his loss of control, annoyed at circumstances, Fate, whatever, forcing his hand. What do I do with him? Send him home? Chances are it was his own family sold him to some traveling slaver. Complicating my life. I certainly don’t need complications, it’s bad enough now, what with Jastouk and his needs and Bramble with those devilkids she dotes on and Kari coming out of school; I’ve got to leave for Silili soon if I want to be in time to catch her before she starts home. And now there’s old Todich, gods know how much he’s going to cost me. Signs. All these signs. A closure coming. An era pinched off. Turn of the Wheel. I damn well better get myself in order or that Wheel will roll right over me. Offering to the Juggernaut, smashed meat.
As the bidding continued around him and Jastouk grew restless and unhappy at being ignored, Maksim brooded over the Signs. Sad, sad, sad. Melancholy like the dead leaves eddying around their feet when they came down from the Inn. The boy, what did he mean? Was he setting free his baby self so he could move to true maturity? What was maturity to someone like him who could extend his life as long as he was interested in living? Was it the willingness to let go, to die? He thought about death with a curious lack of emotion. To this point he’d fought death with everything he had in him, fought death and won-with Brann’s help. Brann was gone. He thought about that. Odd feeling. Like an arm hacked off. Todich. A thread dangling from his past. Tie it off. Send him home. I owe Todich passage home or I’m no better than BlackHouse or old king Noshios I kicked out of Silagamatys. It was a debt he had to pay, a payment he’d put off far too long. It was going to cost. No more BinYAHtii to carry the load. Cost doesn’t matter. Ah well…
Todichi Yahzi was brought on at the tail of the lot.
“Here we have an exotic item, looks like a cross between a macaque and some sort of giant bug. It can talk a little and understand what you tell it. Our readers have checked it over and it’s no demon, so you don’t have to worry about waking up turned into a toad…” The Caller chattered on, trying to stir up some interest as the handlers prodded the kwitur up the ramp and got him to crouch on the Block facing the audience. They poked at him, cursed him in angry hisses, but gave over their efforts at a sign from the Caller who didn’t want his lack of spirit to become too apparent.
Maksim waited a moment. No other bids, bless Tungjii Luck. He thought it over, then he lifted a fist, opened up four fingers. Forty coppers. There was some stir in the others on the floor, but no more offers, no matter how cleverly the Caller wheedled them. Finally he gave up and hammered the kwitur to Maksim.
Maksim smoothed his fingers along the nape of Jastouk’s neck. “Let’s go,” he said.
“That’s it? It’s that thing you came for?”
“Are you coming?”
“No. I think not.”
“I’ll see you tonight, then.”
“Perhaps.”
Maksim thought about coaxing him into a better humor. After a minute he decided better not. If it was ending, let it end.
3
Jastouk was gone when Maksim got back from provisioning the boat.
He couldn’t send Todich home from Kukurul; if he had unfriends elsewhere, he had spitesons on his back in Kukurul who would sacrifice a firstborn to catch him when he was too whipped to defend himself. Spite and envy aside, the Managers who ran Kukurul would like nothing better than setting their claws into a sorceror of his rank; he couldn’t call his breath his own if they got hold of him. Without BinYAHtii to give him support and control, he’d have to drain himself to a dishrag simply reaching the reality where he’d found the kwitur; sliding Todich there along the capillary he was holding open with will and bodyforce would drop him into coma for hours, maybe even a full day, it wasn’t one of the easy reaches like the salamandri source or the tigermen’s world. He’d be vulnerable to anyone who stumbled across him. A yearling bunny could make a meal of him. Better to sail deep into the Tukery and find himself a deserted rock where he could sleep off the throwjag and have a chance of waking with his souls still in his body.
He came back to the Inn weary and depressed, looking forward to a little cuddling and comforting, though Jastouk had turned cool and unforthcoming since the slave-auction. He walked into Jastouk’s Minder.
Vechakek came from the SunParlor off the main lobby of the Inn; he stepped in front of Maksim, put his hand flat against Maksim’s chest. “He’s off,” the Minder said. “He doesn’t like being ignored, he won’t put up with it. The association is terminated.” he held up a sheet of paper folded once across the middle. “The account for services rendered. Pay now.” He was a massive Henerman from Hraney, a half-mythical country supposed to be somewhere in the far west. His skin was pale mahogany, hard and hairless, polished to a high gleam; he wore his coarse black hair in twin plaits that hung beside his highnosed face; he had a taste for sarcasm and sudden violence that made folk walk tip-a-toe around him. Would-be clients tolerated his insolence; they had to if they wanted to arrange a liaison with Jastouk.
Maksim stared at him until he backed off a few steps. “Don’t touch me again,” he said quietly.
Vechakek’s face went rigid and darkened across the cheekbones, but the Henerman couldn’t quite work up the nerve to come at a man who was rumored to have few equals in power and none above him but the gods themselves. Then the anger washed out of his face and Vechakek was smiling, his pale blue eyes swimming with malice; he knew something. Something was going to happen, something which Maksim wouldn’t like, no, not at all, which Vechakek planned to sit back and enjoy.
Maksim read that and wondered; the Henerman seemed very sure of what he knew; it was a thing to puzzle over but not just now. He held out his hand. “Give me the bill.” He unfolded the paper, examined the list of charges; there were things he might have challenged, but in spite of the unhappy ending of this interlude, Jastouk was a dear and a delight; besides, he didn’t feel like wasting energy on petty cheating. “Wait here,” he said.
Todich and the boy were in the sitting room of his suite. The kwitur was curled up in one of the armchairs, either asleep or making an effective pretense of sleeping. The boy was standing by an open window, staring out into the foggy dank afternoon.
Maksim crossed to the fireplace and took down the battered leather box sitting on the mantle. As soon as he touched it, he knew the boy had been fooling with it, trying to get it open. A thief and incompetent at it. No doubt that was the reason his people sold him. Young idiot not to realize a sorceror would have wards on anything he wanted left alone. Maksim put the box on a table beside Todichi’s chair. He grinned down at the little creature. “Ah! Todich, you should have told him it was futile fooling around with this.” No answer. The boy’s shoulders twitched, but he didn’t turn around.
Maksim opened the box and counted out the coins he needed from his rapidly diminishing store of expense money.
He was going to have to tap one of his caches before he started to Silili; what with the auction and Brann’s call on his purse, he had barely enough coin left to pay his bill at the Inn. Other years he’d have added a handsome tip when he paid Jastouk off; not this time, he couldn’t afford it and the hetairo hadn’t earned it. He divided the fifty Kukral aureats Vechakek demanded into four piles, wrapped them first in the bill, then in a clean sheet of writing paper. He sealed the ends with red wax from his private store, stamped his mark into the wax and spun a small bind about the packet, keying it to Jastouk’s touch. If Vechakek intended to take his percentage before he handed over the coin, he was out of luck. It was a small favor, perhaps meaningless, all Maksim could do for his temporary lover-let the hetairo
get full measure for once, not just what his Minder decided to hand over.
He tugged at the cord and gave the packet to the maidservant who came to answer the bell. “Take this to the man in the SunParlor,” he said. He gave her a five cupra piece for her pains, watched, amused, as she pushed the broad coin into her sleeve, flirted her lashes at him, then bounced from the room.
He brushed his hands together, brushing away Jastouk and Vechakek with the nonexistent dust. For a moment he stood gazing at the door, then he sighed and crossed to the largest of the armchairs. When he was settled, his feet comfortable on the hassock, he laced his fingers together across the hard mound of his stomach and contemplated the narrow back of the M’darjin boy. Occupied with Jastouk’s sulks and making the boat ready for a trip into the Tukery, he’d ignored his new acquisition, noticed the boy only as a minor irritation to be brushed aside when he got underfoot. With Jastouk gone and the trip imminent, it was time to find out what he’d got. “Come here, boy.”
The boy came slowly away from the window. When he reached the hassock, he fell on his face, elbows out, hands clasped behind his head.
“Get off your belly, buuk.” Maksim looked at the cringing figure with distaste; he understood why the boy was that way, but he didn’t have to like it-and it woke painful memories he’d tried hard to erase. “What’s your name?”
The boy scrambled to his feet. “Davindolillah.” He looked sideways at Maksim, added, “Sabr.”
“So you’re a thief.”
Davindo opened his eyes wide. “No.”
“And a liar.” Some of his sourness washed away; the boy amused him. “A bad liar,” he said, cutting off Davindo’s parade of indignation before he could get it going. “By which I mean an incompetent liar. Unconvincing. Where did the slavers get you, Davindolillah? By which I mean: what is your homeland?”
“Majimtopayum,” the boy said, pride thrumming in his voice. “The Country of the River Which is Wide as the Sea. My father is Falama Paramount, he has five hundred wives and his wives each have five hundred cows and five hundred boats and five hundred acres each of beans and maize and taties,” he boasted, piling improbability on improbability, head back, eyes flashing, strutting where he stood. He shook himself and mimed a becoming humility. “I am not the eldest son…”
Maksim suppressed a smile. The boy could prove amusing enough to earn the coppers he cost.
“And I am not the youngest son.” Davindo slapped at his skinny chest. “Only the favorite. There was weeping and wailing and tearing of hair when the slavers stole me from my father’s house. When I was born, the Wamanachi prophesied over me, the Great Wamanachi said of me, I shall be Puissant and Terrible to the Enemies of the Land, inside and out. I shall be Sung down the Ages, Father to many sons, Warchief to my people, Paramount among Paramounts. That is what he said.”
“Most interesting. No. Be silent, Davindolillah.” He inspected the boy more closely than he’d done before. Davindo’s small size and round face had fooled him as they had the slavers. The Caller had rated him about six. Maksim measured him against his memories of himself at six and rejected the number; he was at least double that though still on the child’s side of puberty, a tough, clever little streetrat, defending pride and person with everything in him. Maksim saw the desperation behind the boasting, knew it intimately because it was his own when he was five, six, ten; it made him sick and turned him crueler than he’d meant to be.
“If I sent you back, would your people simply sell you again?”
The boy pressed his lips together. Anger flashed in his black eyes. His first impulse was to attack with the slashing invective he’d acquired in his home streets, but he’d learned enough about being a slave to keep a tight rein on his temper. “I was stole,” he muttered.
“As you say. I am going to give you your papers. No. Be quiet. I don’t intend to discuss my reasons with you. If you wish to go home, I will pay your passage and put you on a ship with a master I trust to make sure you get there. If you prefer to stay in Kukurul, I will arrange schooling for you or an apprenticeship. Well?”
Davindo’s eyes shifted from the door to the window. His pale pink tongue flicked over his lips. “What do you want me to say?”
“I know what you think you want, but I’m not going to cut you loose; I’ve got enough guilt spotting my souls, I don’t need more. Do you have a talent or an inclination that you’d like to pursue?”
Davindo looked sly. “You teach me.”
“Do you know what I am?”
“The beast told me. Sorceror.”
“Yes. You have no Talent.”
“How do you know? You haven’t even looked at me.”
“Talent shouts. You don’t have to look for it. I can hear it across a city, young Davindo. There’s nothing I can teach you. Don’t take that as an insult; you wouldn’t blame a singing coach for not training you if you couldn’t hold a tune. Do I send you home?”
“No.” Davindo swallowed, kicking at the rug. After a minute he squared his narrow shoulders, stared defiantly at Maksim. “As long as I’m here, I might as well take a look round the place.”
“Wise of you. Who would neglect the opportunities that come his way is a clothhead not worth the name of man. Can you read?”
“Of course I can, I had teachers since I could walk. Um, but not this jabber they speak up here.’
“Right.” Maksim swallowed a smile, his need to deflate the boy’s air castles dissipated by his appreciation of Davo’s deft footwork. “The more languages you can read and write, the more control you have over your circumstances.” He moved his feet, freeing a part of the hassock. “Sit down. School or tutor?”
Davindo hesitated, then dropped warily beside Maksi’s ankles. “Tutor.”
“I hear. You didn’t answer me. Do you have a talent or an inclination you’d like to pursue?”
“I will be Warleader in my time.”
“So you said. I take it that means you have no scholarly interests?”
Davindo twisted his face into a scornful grimace, but said nothing.
“So. Apprenticeship not scholarship. I’d best find you a place in one of the guilds. Merchant, military, seaman, priest, artisan, player, singer, musician, thief, beggar, which? There are others, but those are the chief.”
“Thieves have a guild?”
“They don’t put it about, but they do take apprentices and they have teaching masters who’ll work your tail off. That amuses you. Hmm. I suppose it is funny to see the darkside aping the bright, but it’s useful. If you go that route, you’ll learn something and they’ll house and feed you, which is more than you can expect outside. And there’s this, if you don’t have Family here to back you, you’d better have a Guild or you’re fair game for the Pressgangs supplying meat to the pleasure Houses and the Whips who run the childgangs and anyone else with a taste for boys and the power to gratify his whims. And there’s BlackHouse. Let me warn you, keep clear of BlackHouse,
Davindo shivered. “They told me at the Pens.”
“Yes.” Maksim closed his eyes. He was tired, but taking care of the boy-finding a tutor, arranging the apprenticeship, setting up a trust account to support Davo while he was being taught, all that meant it would be hours before he could rest. He knew why he was doing it; he was using Davindo to cancel a portion of his guilt for abandoning Todich, using the boy as a parlor wipe to polish up his amour-propre. “Choose,” he said, impatience sharpening his voice.
“Thief.” Davindo looked defiant, as if he expected Maksim to try talking him into something more respectable. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“So be it.” Maksim got wearily to his feet, crossed to the door. “You should be set by tomorrow evening. I’ll pass over your papers and after that you’re on your own.”
Davindo bit at his lip. “Why?” he burst out. “Why are you doing this?”
Maksim pulled the door open, looked over his shoulder at Davindo. There was no way
he could answer that question, the boy was too young, too limited to understand the things that drove a man. “Call it a whim,” he said and left.
4
Late that night Maksim went up the path behind the Inn to the flat where he’d sent Brann and Jaril on their way. Using a broom he’d borrowed from a tweeny at the Inn, he swept the stone as clean as he could, then he drew a circle with a length of soft chalk. Working quickly, he finished the sketchy pentacle; precision wasn’t important for what he planned, there was little danger in casting mantaliths. What he wanted, what he needed was privacy.
The chalk had a tar base so the damp from the fog didn’t wash it away; he stripped off the cotton gloves he’d used to keep it from clinging to his hands and knelt at the heart of the pentacle. He drew out a soft leather pouch and twitched the knot loose that held the drawstrings tight. Muttering the manta chanta under his breath, he poured the rhombstones into the palm of his left hand. He closed his eyes, visualized the reality he needed to reach, then spoke the word: WHEN? And spoke other words: WHAT DAY? With a snap of thumb against finger on his free hand, he shouted the Trigger, his deep voice booming through the fog, echoing back at him, the overtones lovely in their murmurs and their silences. When the echoes died, he threw the mantaliths and read their answer.
Two days hence. Third hour past noon.
At that time Todichi Yahzi’s home reality would in some inexplicable way be closer to this one, easier to reach, the membranes between the two softer, thinner, the number of realities between them lessened somehow. He passed his hands over the stones, murmured the releasing manta chanta, the blessing on the mantaliths, the delivery of his gratitude for the answer he’d received.
He gathered up the stones and the broom and went away, leaving the rain to wash away his traces.