by Larry Niven
But a year ago Father had screamed at the gardeners, looked surprised at something, and fallen over. The Lordshills wizard hadn’t been able to revive him. Shortly after that, Sandry’s mother began her rapid decline.
Sandry’s rooms led directly out to the back courtyard and the fountains. He stripped and plunged into the pool. He swam ten laps with rapid strokes, then climbed out to do stretches and exercises. The new Lord’s wizard Tasquatamee had a young wife, Hela, who delighted in torturing people with new ways to sit and stand and twist, but he always felt better for it when he was done.
He heard giggles. “You’re good at that!”
He looked up to see his cousin Roni looking over the wall. Roni was fifteen—no, sixteen—years old. Her father was Mother’s brother. The thoughts came automatically to Sandry and always had. Lords thought about families.
When he was first assigned to build the Fire Brigade, it had shocked Sandry to find that the Lordkin often didn’t know who their fathers were and never talked about family relationships. Sandry knew the exact degree of relationship of everyone in Lordshills.
Roni and he were closely enough related that they could not marry without the consent of the Lord Chief Witness—and that permission would be granted in an instant if requested—and Roni knew that too. They’d talked about it when they were younger.
“Mother says you’re to come to tea this afternoon,” Roni said.
It wasn’t surprising that her mother knew he was at home this morning. Aunt Shanda knew everything. Of course as titular First Lady of Lordshills she was supposed to know everything. And she’d always taken a special interest in Sandry.
Sandry waved and climbed onto the small tower he’d had built by the pool so that he could see over the Lordshills wall. From there he had a good view of Tep’s Town. No smoke other than a few smudges from yesterday’s fires. There was no Devil Wind today, and fog covered the western part of what used to be called the Valley of Smokes before it became Tep’s Town.
“No fires,” Sandry said. “No big wind, so Wanshig can handle anything. Tell Aunt Shanda I’ll be pleased to join her for tea.” He hated to think what might have happened if the Devil Wind had still been blowing. Aunt Shanda didn’t like disobedience.
Tea was in the garden, so it was easy to be on time. When Roni was much younger, the gate between the two courtyards had been locked, but it hadn’t been for nearly two years. That thought had excited Sandry up until a year ago. It was a clear invitation. Sleep with Roni (when she’s of age, of course), marry quickly, and be heir to all of Aunt Shanda’s considerable holdings….
“You might say a few words before you wolf down everything in sight,” Aunt Shanda said.
“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t eat much yesterday, and I got home too late for a real dinner, and—”
“They’re saying in the guardhall that you were a real hero,” Roni said. She had the usual banter in her voice. Sandry didn’t think she was in love with him—he was sure she was not in love with him—but she still acted possessively, teased him as a young wife might. Practicing, Sandry thought.
That had never bothered him until a year ago, when he had met Burning Tower.
“So what happened at Congregation that they got the Lord Chief Witness out of bed to read it?” Shanda asked.
Aha. Aunt Shanda never missed an opportunity to get him together with Cousin Roni, but she usually had other purposes in mind when she invited him to tea. So here was one thing she didn’t know. Yet. Quintana would tell her in due time. And Aunt Shanda would be pleased if she already knew….
“Regapisk mucked up bad,” Sandry said bluntly.
“You sound irked.”
“Yes, ma’am, irked I am,” Sandry said. “Three dead. Twenty houses burned. My reputation that I don’t quite have yet. Irked.”
“What did he do?”
And now he had to explain firebreaks and backfires, and Aunt Shanda would look at Roni, and Roni would ask questions, until both women understood as much as he did about the subject. Thorough, that’s Aunt Shanda. Thorough. And she’s damned well raised her daughter to be just like her.
Marriage to a girl like that could be frightening, but then all of the girls Sandry might marry seemed a bit intimidating. Burning Tower frightened him too, but she was different….
“And now you know about backfires, because you asked all the right questions,” Sandry said. “You don’t even notice yourselves doing it, do you? But Reggy can’t ever admit he doesn’t know something—” Worse than that, Sandry thought. “Reggy always knows more about it than you do, even if he never heard of it before.”
“So his men got caught in the fire,” Shanda said. “But what were they doing down there in the ravine with a fire coming?”
“Darkman’s Cup, Aunt Shanda,” but she still didn’t understand. “Last year, when Whandall Feathersnake and Morth of Atlantis made myth of Yangin-Atep,” Sandry said, “they had to lure the water sprite up to the Black Pit. It was chasing Morth, to drown him, but it wasn’t strong enough to get there, so they threw raw gold along its path to give it strength. It came up Darkman’s Cup. The gold dust will still be down in there. Reggy’s men burned off the brush so they could look for gold.”
Roni frowned. “Why would gold still be in there?”
“Disputed territory,” Sandry said. “Snakefeet think it’s their turf; the Bull Pizzles claim it too. Going in there to hunt would start a war. Maybe that’s what brought the Pizzle raiders this time, I don’t know. But Reggy’s men would know there might be gold down there, and here was their chance.”
“So it’s not Reggy’s fault?”
Sandry was just too tired to watch his mouth. “It’s every bit his fault. He’s a Lord. If he can’t control four Lordkin, he’s no business pretending he can. If he doesn’t understand a firebreak or a backfire, he can ask me! I was right there! He faked it, and I was harried…. I’m sorry, Aunt. I should have caught it. I know the fool.”
Aunt Shanda was looking grim. “We had to get him away from the docks,” she said.
“Yeah, he spends a lot of time with the mers,” Sandry said. He was bone tired, now that his hunger was abated. Reggy wasn’t any of his favorite people; he only knew what he heard in casual conversation. “I thought he liked it there, but Reggy said he wanted to join the Firemen.”
Shanda nodded, jaw set, eyes distant. Presently she said, “He’s been going to the docks since he was ten, but now he’s a Lord, he acts like he’s in charge, anywhere he goes. He gives orders to the longshoremen and the Water Rats and even the crews in port. Well, he’s a Lord! Sometimes they obey! Then the overseers and captains complain to us. The Lord Harbor Master had a word with Lord Quintana, you know.” Aunt Shanda’s voice deepened, and the consonants were a little sharper: “ ‘If I catch him down here again, I won’t care if he is Lady Shanda’s cousin. I weary of untangling lines he’s fouled. Get him away from me, Quintana, or I swear I’ll feed him to the crabs myself.’ Quintana’s a good mimic. Quintana talking to me, as if it were my fault. He wanted Reggy as far from the harbor as he could get. I said—” Shanda broke off.
“You sent him to Peacegiven Square,” Sandry guessed. “You wished him off on me. Three dead, twenty houses, and when they pay off Serpent’s Walk, we’ll be a thousand shells in the hole.”
Roni was looking at him in something like fear. Aunt Shanda’s jaw was set like a boulder. It began to dawn on Sandry that he’d said too much. But he was so damned tired, and there was still a lot to do. He poured more tea, and then gulped it.
Aunt Shanda looked up with a smile. Change of subject coming, Sandry thought, and he could guess what it was.
“Now that you’re out of the Younglords and have your own command and everything…” Shanda said.
She didn’t need to finish the sentence. It was time for him to think of marriage. He already had a house, now that his father was dead. And no one to manage it but a kinless overseer who had been his nurse.
�
�I’ve been busy setting up the Fire Brigade,” Sandry protested.
“Yes, dear, but it’s not as if you have to look far,” Shanda said. “Or go to great pains at courtship.”
That’s for damn sure, Sandry thought. Roni was busy watching the cat watching the fishpond, that little half-smile almost hidden. And in a minute Aunt Shanda would send Roni on an errand, and—“I know, Aunt Shanda. But this really is a difficult assignment, and—” Too late.
“And I’ve heard tales,” Aunt Shanda said. “Roni, please go get me a fresh lemon.”
“Yes, Mother.” Roni was gone in an instant.
“Now,” Shanda said. “What’s all this talk I hear of you pining after that half-Lordkin girl?”
For a moment he remembered. Long brown hair streaming behind her as she danced on a high wire. The flashing smile, her cheers during the battle with the Toronexti…. He caught himself. “I’m not pining.”
“No, certainly not,” Shanda said. “Do you think I didn’t see the two of you together when the caravan was here?”
“She’s Whandall Feathersnake’s daughter, and you tell everyone you’re an old friend of Whandall’s,” Sandry protested.
“Yes, she is Whandall’s daughter, and yes, he is an old friend, and you know I have no prejudices, none at all. But her mother is kinless! And her father is Lordkin! And you know as well as I do what that means here in Tep’s Town! How could you command the loyalty of Lordkin in the Fire Brigade if you married a girl with a kinless mother?”
At least, Sandry thought, at least she’s not hinting I ought to just keep her as a mistress. Not that I could. Whandall Feathersnake’s daughter? There wouldn’t be enough money to protect me from her brothers if I did that. I’d never be able to leave Lordshills. “Aunt Shanda, her father is Whandall Feathersnake! Even Wanshig boasts that Whandall’s his brother! Brother, right out loud, and him Lordkin! If I could—if I were fortunate enough to marry Burning Tower, I’d have more power than ever.”
“In Serpent’s Walk, dear. They’d still laugh at you everywhere else. And what of Roni?”
“Well,” he said, too reasonably, “let’s ask Roni.”
She backed off from that. “Well, we’ll see. And there are other girls if you don’t like Roni. It would be a good match for both of you, but I know she can be formidable. We can talk about other girls here in Lordshills. But I’m afraid you’ll have to forget that Feathersnake girl, Sandry. Just stop thinking about her. I remember when I was a little girl, I used to think Whandall might come back for me, but I got over that. You will too.”
Mercifully, Roni came back with lemons before Shanda could say anything else.
Chapter Four
Fear and Foes
The inn at Peacegiven Square was beginning to seem like home. Sandry spent enough time there that he took a permanent room for himself and another for Chalker.
Chalker was something between a valet and a tutor. He had been a retired Peacevoice of the Lordsmen as long as Sandry could remember. After he retired he worked as valet to Sandry’s father, but as he got older, he became Sandry’s bodyguard, not that the children of Lords much needed bodyguards. That was an honorable position for a retired soldier.
Chalker had been born in Condigeo, or Blackmouth Bay, or Big Rock, depending on which version of his life story you believed. Certainly he had come to the harbor as a young man, married a local kinless girl, and joined the Lordsmen as a recruit while Sandry’s father was a Younglord. Chalker’s wife was long dead, and his own children were grown, gone to sea and never returned, and it seemed a kindness to let him continue in Sandry’s service. What else would the old man do? Not that he seemed old, except late in the evenings, and not always then.
Breakfast at the Firesale Inn ran to the elaborate. It started as a tearoom the year before when Whandall Feathersnake’s caravan set up market in the square, and then quickly grew to a full-size inn and restaurant, mostly inside but with three tables under a canopy facing on the square itself. Sandry sat at a table there when weather permitted.
The Feathersnake market had been out in the square. Just over to his right, they’d set up the poles for the tightwire, and Burning Tower had climbed up there to dance in a revealing green-and-orange costume made mostly of feathers. Her feet and ankles had been bare.
His reverie was interrupted by breakfast. There was a pretty kinless girl as breakfast waitress, but Chalker insisted on bringing Sandry’s eggs on a toasted muffin, and a cup of dark tea he’d made himself.
Sandry sipped hot tea and smiled. “Thank you, Chalker.”
“Welcome, sir. It’s a good morning.”
Which in fact it was. The sun had been up about two hours, and there was activity on the square. Kinless sweepers. A kinless artisan and his son were tinkering with the central fountain and muttering either curses or invocations when the flow didn’t increase. A clothing shop next door was opening under the protection of a Lordkin guard.
“The Lordkin don’t gather here now,” Chalker said. “Like the old days. Maybe better, some ways.”
Sandry automatically translated gather into steal. “Tell me about the old days.”
“Well, there’s old days and really old days,” Chalker said. “Old days is before that year when they had two Burnings and the whole square and a lot more burned down.”
Sandry nodded. He’d been about ten when that happened, and he’d heard the story often. The Lords had bought dragon bones in a cold iron box. Manna to power rain spells, Aunt Shanda said. And when they opened the box here in Peacegiven Square, the Lordkin went mad. A dozen were possessed of Yangin-Atep, and a dozen more thought they were or pretended to be. Fire and madness everywhere, and when it was done, Peacegiven Square and everything around it was ashes and soot, wooden aqueducts burned, nothing left. It wasn’t safe around here after that. Guardsmen patrolled in threes, foursomes even.
“’Fore that, there was stores here, and the Registry Office was twice the size of the new one,” Chalker said. “Heard you were going to expand that?”
Sandry nodded. “You hear more than I do.” Which was true. Peacevoice Hall rang with rumors, and the senior troop leaders always knew what was going on, more than the Lords and Younglords who were their officers. Everyone knew that.
“Maybe,” Chalker admitted. “Hear tell they’ll start just after the caravan comes. If it comes.”
“If it comes?”
“Late, isn’t it, sir? I believe that Feathersnake Wagonmaster said they’d be back before the Devil Winds came.”
True enough, Sandry thought. But they’ll come! She said they would. “How is it better now?”
“Less fighting,” Chalker said. “’Fore we had that Two Burnings year, there was more disputes over who controlled what. Nothing really settled. After everything burned down, nobody cared, of course, but before that, this was valuable territory, and every Lordkin wanted to gather here. Took a lot of guarding to make it safe.” Chalker looked around the Square. “Now, that Wanshig chap has things under control. Nobody gathers here, and the kinless can get on with their work.”
A wagon came across the square. A kinless trash collector. But the two kinless ponies pulling it were larger than Sandry remembered. “Are those things growing?” he asked.
Chalker nodded. “Yes, sir. They tell me it’s the magic coming back.”
“You say that with a straight face.”
“Well, sir, we both know magic works,” Chalker said. “Sometimes.”
“Dangerous, though,” Sandry mused. Dangerous enough that for a long time, there wasn’t any magic in Lordshills. The Lords had paid wizards to cast some kind of spell that used it up, or so Aunt Shanda said. But they hadn’t done that for years.
Magic never came back. It was a basic truth known to wizards and common folk alike: when magic is used up, it’s gone. But magic was coming back to Lordshills. The pond fish were showing wild colors, and Lord Quintana’s big table map now updated itself: it showed tiny changes to match
the tides and the water in the rivers, smudges of soot to mark the smoke of fires.
Where was it coming from? Dust blown from other lands? Rain? Certain objects could be made to carry manna; there was a growing trade in such talismans. Maybe new manna rode the fumes that bubbled up from the Black Pit. Anyone who saw the tar pits would know they held magic, evil magic. The pits held a god turned myth.
“And the old, old days?” Sandry asked.
Chalker smiled in a way that older people often did when they remembered times long past. “This place was alive then,” Chalker said. “Big bonfires to Yangin-Atep, and they’d play at a Burning, but about half the time it was a setup, a block of houses used as junkyards for a year or two. Made good stories for the tellers! Matter of fact, that’s what brought me here, the tellers talking about the Burnings. Sounded like fun. Only I couldn’t get in on any of that—only Lordkin allowed. So I joined up with the Lordsmen.”
And you’ve been one ever since, Sandry thought. “Did you like that?”
“Not at first,” Chalker said cheerfully.
“Sit down; have some tea.” Sandry said.
“Thank you, Lord, but I think not.” He grinned faintly. “Wouldn’t do for me to get too friendly. Way it is, them Lordkin see somebody like me takes orders from you, it makes it easier for them to work for you. With you,” Chalker corrected himself. “No, I didn’t like it at first, but the job grows on you. Did on me, anyway. I was Samorty’s batman his last year as a Younglord, and I liked him. Mostly I worked with good officers. Like your father. He didn’t turn out in armor every time it was his watch like Samorty did, and he had a temper, he did, but he was a good man, worried about his men. If he made a mistake when he was mad at you, he’d admit it later, and make amends. I’d have followed him anywhere.” Chalker filled Sandry’s cup with fresh tea. It smelled of sage, with only a tiny hint of hemp. “And you stop worrying about that Lord Regapisk. Nothing you could do, and he didn’t get nothing he didn’t deserve.”