by Jo Clayton
He stopped talking as she stopped the probing and pummeling and began passing her hands over him. Warmth that was both pleasure and pain (the two twisting inextricably in the flow) passed into his feet and churned up through him until it flooded into his brain and turned into pure agony; he dissolved into white fire, then darkness.
He sat sipping at hot tea, dawn red in the window. Pale blond preteens in green-gray trousers and tunics, the changechildren were sitting on the floor, leaning against Brann’s knees, watching him. Brann held a bowl of tea cradled in her hands. “The physical part of it is gone,” she said. “That’s all. You could have done that yourself. No doubt you have.”
“After the third relapse, trying it again didn’t seem worth the cost.”
“I still don’t understand what more you think I can do.”
“Nor I.” He smiled wearily. “In the depths of self-disgust after one too many binges, I returned to the ways of my ancestors and cast the lots. And found you there as my answer. Being with you. Staying with you.” An aborted shapeless gesture with the hand holding the teabowl. “A parasite on your strength.”
“Hmm.” She finished the tea and set the bowl beside her on the bed. “I don’t know the Captains these days. Any ship in port going south that made good time and won’t sink at a sneeze, whose master is a bit more than a lamprey on the hunt?”
“Ju’t Chandro told me you had a fondness for sailing men. Was he casting a net for air?”
“Hmf. Do you love every son of Phras you meet? Come with me to the wharves and tell me who’s who.”
“I may travel with you?”
“For whatever good it does. Besides, all you’ve told me so far is that Maksim has apprentices around to do the scut work and a taste for the occasional orgy. Not much help there.”
“You’ll get everything I know, Brann.”
“Ah well.” A tight half smile. “When I’m not sleeping with the Captain, life on shipboard tends to get tedious.” She examined him, speculation in her eyes.
Ahzurdan felt a quiver in his loins and a shiver of fear along his spine, one of his grandfather’s more lurid tales flowing in full colors through his head. He gulped the rest of his tea; it was cold, but he didn’t notice. That white fluff, it looked like she’d shaved her hair off not too long ago, though why she’d, do that… She wasn’t beautiful, not in any ordinary sense, handsome perhaps, but there was something he couldn’t put into words, a vitality, a sense that she knew who and what she was and rather liked that person. A disturbing woman. A challenge to everything he’d been taught about women. His mother would have hated and feared her. There were knots in his gut as he snatched brief glances at her; what she seemed to be expecting from him was more often than not something he couldn’t provide, he didn’t want to think about that, she made him think, she made him want the smoke again, anything to fill the emptiness inside him. Discipline, don’t forget discipline, ignore what you don’t want to see, you’re a man with a skill that few have the gifts or intelligence or tenacity to acquire, that’s where your worth lies, you’re not a stud hired to service the woman. Ah gods, it’s a good thing you aren’t, you couldn’t earn your pay, no, don’t think about that. I owe you, Maksim, you played in my head and in my body and threw both away when you were tired of them. Maksim, Malcsimin, you don’t know what’s coming at you… He rose. “Time we were starting. I still have to ransom my gear from the House and the tide turns shortly after noon.”
4. ON THE MERCHANTER JIVA MAHRISH (captain and owner Hudah Iffat, quartermaster and steward, his wife Hamla), THREE HOURS OUT OF JADE HALIMM, COAST HOPPING SOUTH AND WEST TO KUKURAL, HER LAST PORT BEFORE SHE TURNED NORTH AGAIN.
SCENE: Brann below, settling into her cabin. Ahzurdan on deck driving off stray ariels, setting wards against another attack on her. Yaril and Jaril watching him, wondering what he’s up to.
Ignoring the noisy confusion at his back where the deck passengers were still getting settled into the eighteen square feet apiece they bought with their fares, Ahzur-dan stood at the stern watching the flags on the Rogan-zhu Fort flutter and sink toward the horizon, frowning at the ariels thick in the wind that agitated those flags and filled the sails. Born of wind, shaped from wind, elongated asexual angel shapes with huge glimmering eyes, the ariels whirled round the ship, dipping toward it, darting away when they came close enough to sense what he was. Tapping nervously at the rail, he consid-ered what to do; as long as Brann stayed below, the ariels were an irritation, no more. He swung around. The changechildren were squatting beside the rail, their strange soulless crystal eyes fixed on him. No matter what Brann said, they didn’t trust him. “One of you,” he said, “go below and tell her to stay where she is for a while.” Neither moved. He sighed. “There are spies in the wind.”
They exchanged a long glance, then the girl got to her feet and drifted away.
Ahzurdan turned to the sea again. For a moment he continued to watch the ariels swirl overhead, then he reached out, caught a handful of air and sunlight and twisted it into a ward that he locked to the ship’s side. He began moving along the rail; every seventh step he fashioned another knot and placed it. He reached the bow, started back along the port rail, careful to keep out of the way of the working sailors.
Halfway along, Jadl stepped in front of him. “What are you doing?”
“Warding.”
“Against what?”
“Against what happened before. This isn’t the place to talk about it. Let me finish.”
The boy stared at him for a long breath, then he stepped aside and let him pass.
Ahzurdan finished setting the wards, then stood leaning on the rail watching the sun glitter off the waves, thinking about the changechildren. He knew what they were and their connection to Brann. His grandfather had been fond of them, in a way, also a little frightened of them. That fear was easy to understand. Earlier, before coming on board he’d tried a minor spell on Jul! and nothing had happened. More disturbing than that, the boy in his mastiff form had whipped through his force shield without even a whimper to show he noticed it. The children must have been fetched from a reality so distant from this and so strange that the powers here (at least those below the level of the highgods) couldn’t touch them. Not directly. Very interesting. Very dangerous. He collected his wandering thoughts, twitched the wards to test them, then went below satisfied he’d done what he could to neutralize anything Settsimaksimin might try.
Port to port they went. Lindu Zohee. Merr Ono. Halonetts. Sunny days, warm nights. A chancy wind but one that kept the ship scudding along the coast. Brann stayed onboard in each of the ports, safe from attack behind the wards but restless. Ahzurdan watched her whenever he could, curious about her, perplexed by nearly everything she did. She liked sailors and made friends with the crew when she could have been talking to the cabin passengers. There was an envoy from the Jade King aboard; he was a fine amateur poet and musician and showed more than a little interest in her. There was a courtesan of the first rank and her retinue. There was a highmerchant who dealt in jades, calligraphy and elegant conversation. Brann produced an embroidered robe for the dinners in the captain’s cabin, a multitude of delicately scribed gold bracelets (Rukha Nagg he thought when she let him examine them, part of a daughter’s dowry), and a heavy gold ear ornament from the Panday Islands (he was intensely curious about where she got that, only a Panday with his own ship could wear such an ornament, there was a three day feast involved, a solemn rite of recognition and presentation; most Panday shipmasters were buried with theirs; a lover perhaps?). Her hair was growing with supernatural speed, but it was still a cloud of feathery white curls that made her eyes huge and intensely green. She looked vital, barbaric and fine; he had difficulty keeping his eyes off her. She played poetry with the Envoy, composing verse couplets in answer to his, she spoke of jade carvers with the merchant, though mostly about ancient Arth Slyan pieces and the techniques of those legendary artisans, she questioned the courtesan Huazo
about the dance styles currently popular, brought up the name of a long dead Hina player named Taguiloa and grew excited when Huazo told some charming but obviously apocryphal tales about the man (another lover?) and went into what Ahzurdan considered tedious detail about his influence on her own dancing. The dinners were pleasant and Brann seemed to enjoy them, but she went running to the crew when she had a moment free. He didn’t understand what she saw in them, crude vulgar men with crude vulgar thoughts, and at the same time was jealous of their ease with her. The first few days he had fevered images of belowdecks orgies, but his training did not allow him to distort or reject what was there before his eyes no matter how powerfully theory and emotion acted on his head. Misperceptions weren’t problems of logic or aesthetics to a sorceror, they could kill him and anyone near him. She traded stories with the crew, showed off her skills with rope, needle and palm; her hands were quick and graceful, he watched their dance and deplored what she was doing with them. She was almost a demigod, not some miserable peasant or artisan grubbing for a living.
The day the ship sailed from Merr Ono, he was in her cabin telling her about his earliest days with Settsimaksimin but broke off and asked her why she avoided the cabin passengers when she was so much more suited to their society than those… ah… no doubt goodhearted men in the crew; he got a cool gaze that looked into his souls and stripped his pretension bare, or so he thought.
After several moments of silence, she sighed. “I don’t like him. No, that’s not right. He turns my stomach. I’ll be polite to him at supper, but I won’t stay around him any longer than I have to.”
“Why?” He’s a cultivated intelligent man. His poems are praised from Andurya Durat to Kukurul for their power and innovation.”
“Have you read any of them?”
“Yes!”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree. I’ll grant you a certain technical facility, but there’s nothing in them.”
“You can’t have read Winter Rising.”
“Ah! Dan, I’ve spent the better part of a hundred winters doing little else but reading.” She pushed her fingers through her duckfeather curls. “I read Winter Rising and came closer to burning a book than I thought I ever would. Especially the part when he mourns the death of a servant’s child. His family chern lies half a day’s journey downriver from the Pottery. I have swept up too many leavings from his justice,” the word ended in an angry hiss, “to swallow his mouthings about suffering he himself is responsible for. I don’t care how splendid the poem is,” she shook her head, put her hand on his arm, “I’ll admit the skill, but I can’t stand the man. And I can’t forget the man in the poet.” She moved away from him. “Play with him all you want, Dan, but keep a grip on your skin and don’t take any commissions from him. The Jade King doesn’t send openfisted fools to negotiate trade rights.” She dropped into a chair and sat with her hands clasped loosely in her lap. “If you’re going to keep traveling with me, you might as well understand something. I despise him and all his kind. If the world wagged another way and it would make any real difference to his landfolk, I’d be the first to boot him out of his silky nest and set him to digging potatoes, where he might be useful and certainly less destructive.”
“Brann, do you really think your cherished sailors would be any better, put in his place? It would be chaos, far worse than anything the Envoy had done. I’ve seen what happens when the beasts try to drive the cart. He has tradition and culture to restrain him, they’ve nothing but instinct.”
“Beasts, Dan?”
“By their acts shall you know them.”
“By their acts shall you know their masters.”
“Aren’t they to be held responsible for what they do?”
“Give them responsibility before you demand it from them. Ahhh, this is stupid, Dan. We’re arguing abstracts and that’s bound to be an exercise in futility.” She laughed. “No more, not now. I wish you could have seen my home. Arth Slya isn’t what it was, even so… I was born a free woman of free folk. We managed our own lives and bowed our heads to no man, not even the King of Croaldhu. If I had the power, I’d make the whole world live that way.”
“You sound like Maksim.”
“That’s interesting. Do you know what he’s doing in Cheonea? Tell me about it.”
He shrugged. “It’s foolishness. Rabble is rabble. Changing the name doesn’t change the smell.”
Brann snorted. “Shuh! Dan, I know you sons of Phras, you and your honor, it’s a fine honor that scorns to touch a loom or a chisel but makes an art of killing. I loved your grandfather, Ahzurdan; Chandro was a splendid man as long as he was away from Phras, one who knew how to laugh at the world and how to laugh at himself, but not in Bandrabahr. When he went home, he turned Phrasi from his toes to his buckteeth. You might think that’s a proper thing to do, but me…
hunh! I went with him once, the last trip we made together. I remember I said something about a pompous old fool strutting down the street, a joke, he’d laughed at things like that a hundred times before. He hit me. You know, it was funny. I just stood there gaping at him. He started calling me names. Vicious names. Then he tried to hit me again. That’s not a thing I tolerate, no indeed. Well, there was a bit of a brawl with Yaril and Jaril rallying round. Last I saw of him, Chandro was laid out yelling, some meat gone from one buttock and a thigh, a broken shoulder bone and a bruised belly where I missed my kick or he might have been your uncle not your grandfather. There was a ship lifting anchor right then, I made it onboard a jump and a half ahead of the kashiks. Never saw him again. Sad. After that I came back to Jade Halimm, apprenticed myself to a potter and settled into clay and contentment.”
By the time they sailed from Halonetts, beginning the last leg of the journey to Kukurul, Ahzurdan was sweating and nightmare-ridden, trying to fight his desire for dreamsmoke. He wallowed in despair; he’d thought having the demonic Brann around would somehow cure him of this need, but she grated on his nerves so much she was driving him to the dreams to escape her. In spite of this, he couldn’t stay away from her.
She listened with such totality it made a kind of magic. He was uneasy under this intense scrutiny, he rebelled against it now and then, but it was also extraordinarily seductive. He began to need her ear worse than his drug; they broke for meals and sleep, but he came drifting back as soon as he could, and, after a few hesitations, was lost once more in his memories. Bit by bit he began telling her things he’d made himself forget, things about growing up torn between a father who wanted him to join his older half brothers in the business and a mother whose scorn of business was profound, who’d been sold into marriage to pay the debts of her family (a minor branch of the ancient and noble Amara Sept). Tadar Chandro’s son bought her to gain greater prestige among the powers of Bandrabahr, got a son on her, then proceeded to ignore her. She hated him for taking her, she loathed his touch, she hated him almost as much for leaving her alone, for his insulting lack of interest in her person or her sex. But she knew better than to release any of her venom beyond the walls of her husband’s compound, he wouldn’t need much excuse to repudiate her, since he’d already got all the good out of her he was going to get, no, she saved her diatribes for her son’s ears.
“I was the sixth son,” Ahzurdan said, “ten years younger than Shuj who was youngest before me. He took pleasure in tormenting me, I don’t know why. On my twelfth birthday my father gave me a sailboat as he had all his other sons on their twelves. A few days later I was going to take it out on the river when I met Shuj coming from the boathouse. When I went inside. I saw he’d slashed my sail and beat a hole in the side of the boat. I went pelting after him, I don’t think I’d ever been so angry. I was going to, I don’t know what I was going to do, I was too hot to think. I caught up with him near the stables, I yelled at him I don’t know what and I called up fire and nearly incinerated him. What saved him was fear. Mine. There was this ball of flame licking around my hands; it didn’t hurt me, but it scared th
e fury out of me. I jerked my arms up and threw it into the clouds where it fried a few unfortunate birds before it faded away. After that Shuj and all the others stayed as far away from me as they could…”
Tadar was frightened and disgusted; a practical man, he wanted nothing to do with such things. For years he’d been crushed beneath the weight of a vital charismatic father who had a good-natured contempt for him, but after Chandro’s death, he set about consolidating the business, then he cautiously increased it; he hated the sea, was desperately seasick even on river packets, but was shrewd enough to pick capable shipmasters, pay them well and give them an interest in each cargo. As the years passed, he prospered enormously until he was close to being the richest Phras in Bandrabahr. He spent a month ignoring his youngest son’s pecularities and snarling at his other sons when they tried to complain (they had uneasy memories of tormenting a spoiled delicate boy and didn’t want Ahzurdan in the same room with them), but two things forced him to act. The servants were talking and his customers were nervous. And Zuhra Ahzurdan’s mother had sent to her family for advice (which infuriated Tadar, principally because they acted without consulting him and he saw that as another of the many snubs he’d endured from them); they located a master sorceror who was willing to take on another apprentice and informed Tadar they were sending him around three days hence, he should be prepared to receive him and pay the bonding fee.
For Ahzurdan, during those last months at home, it was as if he had a skin full of writhing, struggling eels that threatened to burst through, destroying him and everything around him. Before the day he nearly barbequed his brother, he’d had nightmares, day terrors and surges of heat through his body; he shifted unpredictably from gloom to elation, he fought to control a rage that could be triggered by a careless word, dust on his books, a dog nosing him, any small thing. After that day, his mood swings grew wilder and fire came to him without warning; he would be reaching for something and fingerlength flames would race up his arms. The night before the sorceror was due, his bed curtains caught fire while he was asleep, nearly burnt the house down; one of the dogs smelled smoke and howled the family awake; they put the fire out. It didn’t hurt him, but it terrified everyone else.