by Larry Niven
“Worth a try,” Twisted Cloud said. “But first I’d like my daughter to see this terror bird. She’s at Avalon.”
Egmatel flinched. “At the Folded Hands Conference?”
“That’s right. She travels with Morth of Atlantis.”
They’d seen his distress. Now they saw his anger. “I wasn’t invited to Folded Hands!”
“I wasn’t either,” Twisted Cloud said. “Sage, Morth is perhaps the last surviving Atlantis wizard, and Clever Squirrel is Coyote’s daughter. Unless there’s a god in your background, she will always have more power than you or me. It’s why we must show her this monster bird, and soon, before the cursed thing sickens and dies.”
Green Stone said, “Yes. I can’t go, but—Shaman? Will you fetch your daughter?”
Twisted Cloud looked at the serious faces about her. “If she’ll come. Folded Hands is supposed to be important.”
“The first Conference on Conserving Manna!” Egmatel snapped.
An antic whim took Burning Tower. She said, “You can’t travel alone, Shaman. It would be unfitting—and dangerous too. Sandry?”
“How long a trip is this?”
Lord Qirama said, “Twenty-six miles across the sea. Boats can be hired. A full-day trip, but you could come back the next day. We pay enough to keep the pirates suppressed around our harbor, and Avalon has its own defenses.” He grinned slightly. “I shouldn’t think wizards need to worry about the weather.”
“Tep’s Town can spare me for a day,” Sandry said. “Very well, Twisted Cloud, allow me to escort you.”
The shaman grinned. “Travel in the company of a handsome young man? Too tempting, Blazes. Unless…” She turned to Burning Tower. “Unless you’d come along?”
Tower struggled to keep the glee out of her voice. “Brother, would that be acceptable?”
Green Stone, smiling, shrugged.
“I’d be delighted,” Burning Tower said.
Chapter Ten
Sea Passage
It had been a splendid evening. Green Stone insisted on going back to Peacegiven Square in the night so that he would be there when the market opened. Lurk had vanished. Burning Tower and Twisted Cloud each had a room.
Sandry offered to show Green Stone the accommodations, but Stone hadn’t bothered. That seemed to puzzle Sandry, to Tower’s amusement. The Lords didn’t really understand about one-horns…. That would change, now that the kinless ponies were developing. Burning Tower wanted to explain, but her brother wouldn’t forgive her if she did. Lords were free with information that the Bison Tribe kept as trade goods.
But she was free to dream. Living in this house with Sandry—that made a fine dream, a bit rough at the edges. How would she relate to the other Lords? Would the servants like her?
Or traveling with Sandry on the Hemp Road, an ornate wagon—she could expect that as her dowry and with Sandry’s wealth, they could have horses, not just bison. Their own wagon train, with this house as their winter home…
Her room in Sandry’s house was large and airy, with a small washbasin and flowing water that vanished into a stone-lined pool on the floor. The walls had tapestries, and there were drapes to cover the windows, although Burning Tower had no need for them. Servants laid out fruit juices and snacks before she went to bed. When it was time to wake, a girl about Tower’s age came in with hot tea and fresh baked biscuits.
Tower grinned at her image in the large mirror. I could get used to this—Sandry as master of a wagon train. I’d manage it—he doesn’t understand those things—but… She was grinning as she went downstairs to breakfast.
A wagon and a chariot waited in the road in front of Sandry’s house, each pulled by a team of horses. Servants were already loading the baggage into the wagon. Chalker held the chariot reins.
Burning Tower was fascinated by the horses. They were more friendly than one-horns. Full-grown one-horns loved young girls, but that wasn’t friendship, it was some magical effect. And they hated married women, and most men. Tower watched as Sandry greeted the horses and gave each a small carrot as a treat. The horses clearly liked him.
“Ladies, chariot or wagon?” Sandry asked.
Twisted Cloud chuckled. “How long is this trip?”
“Half an hour, no more,” Sandry said.
“Thank you. With no place to sit in your chariot, I prefer the wagon.”
“Right,” Chalker said. “I’ll drive the wagon, then.”
“I don’t mind standing in the chariot,” Tower said.
“But you have to stay inside it.” Sandry was laughing. “No more climbing out on the wagon tongue!”
“Oh, all right.” Of course you were supposed to remember I’d done that, Tower thought. Hah! Most men don’t remember things they’re supposed to.
“No showing off,” she said. “I’ve seen you drive, and I know you’re good. And we don’t want Cloud telling Mother it’s not safe.”
“Sure,” Sandry said. He helped her board, although they both knew she didn’t need help. His hand lingered on her forearm after he helped her up.
“It’s beautiful in your town,” Tower said. “Waterfall and flower beds—it must take a lot of work to keep up.”
“Yes, but what else would the gardeners do?”
They passed through the gates with a wave to the Lordsmen guards, and Sandry shook the reins. The horses broke into a trot. The wagon lurched, and she used that as an excuse to grip Sandry’s arm. He didn’t look at her, but she could see his grin.
The road down to the harbor was broad, gently curved, and lined with houses far less splendid than the palaces inside the walls, but considerably nicer than in Tep’s Town proper. At intervals were squares, with shops and pleasant places to sit, and shopkeepers and shoppers sitting in the shade. Not buying much, Tower thought. Maybe the customers with money have gone to our market fair.
Most of the squares had fountains that worked better than the one in Peacegiven Square. We were in Lordshills, and this is Lord’s Town. Now I’ve seen both…. “This is nice,” Tower said.
Sandry nodded.
“Much nicer than Tep’s Town. Why?”
Sandry seemed disturbed by the question. He looked away. Finally he said, “Well, there aren’t any Lordkin gathering here. Just kinless.”
“No Lordkin here at all?”
“Well, we let a few live here. A very few. And there are descendants of Lordkin, but they’re raised by kinless. Mostly these are kinless. Some lookers, a few foreign merchants, but mostly kinless.”
“There are kinless in Tep’s Town.”
“Sure. But they work for the Lordkin. Why work hard for yourself when some Lordkin can gather everything? In these parts, the kinless belong to the Lords.”
“Like slaves?”
Sandry looked uncomfortable. “No, not really. But—actually, I suppose so, at least technically. A long time ago, the Lords and the Lordkin together defeated the kinless and took this land. The kinless surrendered, but they weren’t sold into slavery. They were allowed to go on living here, but they have to support the Lordkin.”
“And the Lords?”
“Yes, of course, but we pay for what we gather. Lordkin don’t.” He looked uncomfortable. “There’s a charter. Most of the kinless live in the Lordkin areas, and the Lordkin gather when they want to, but the charter lets us have this area where only the Lords can gather. Lordkin have to agree to that or they can’t come in here. I guess technically you could call the kinless here slaves to the Lords’ Council, but look at them—they don’t act like slaves! Everyone in Tep’s Town wants to live here! The problem is to keep them out.”
Tower nodded. Her Lordkin father and her kinless mother had wildly different ideas of what life in Tep’s Town had been like. Neither one made it sound like much fun growing up there, and both had nice things to say about Lord’s Town.
“Oh!” she shouted. “That’s the ocean!”
“Yep.”
“It’s big!”
S
andry smiled. “I’d forgotten you never got down to the shore last year.”
“Everything happened so fast. Sandry, it’s beautiful!” Sandry gave the horses their head, and the beach came up fast. Sand and palm trees, big waves crashing onto the sand. Blue skies, blue water. Big white birds soaring along the shore. Dark heads in the water. A family of eight stripped down and ran for the water in a mob. An enormous bird seemed to just fold its wings and fall into the water, to come out with a fish in its huge bill. A big fish rode an enormous wave to the shore. As the wave crashed, the fish leaped up and became a man, a young man with long blond hair and no clothes.
“Did I just see that?” Tower asked.
“Got to me first time I saw it happen,” Sandry said. “Before last year, before Morth and your father drove Yangin-Atep mythical, we’d only see the mer people in fish form. They never came here as humans. Now—”
The young man stretched. The change caught him in the middle of a yawn: he was a great fish balanced on its tail, now toppling, now fallen in a spray of sand.
Swimmers pointed. Sandry stopped the chariot to watch. Children and adults emerged from the waves and began to roll the wriggling fish across the wet sand toward the water. When a wave hit him, he was a man again, just long enough for his legs to carry him out to sea.
Sandry drove away. He said, “Seawater carries manna. So Egmatel tells us, but there’s not enough yet in Tep’s Town. The mers catch fish for us. And here’s the harbor.”
The harbor was small, a patch of water walled off from the sea by big rocks and logs. Waves crashed against the sea walls.
“It’s smaller than I thought,” Tower said. “Condigeo—I’ve seen sand paintings, and the harbor there looks huge.”
Sandry said, “But they have a big enclosed bay. Our harbor is artificial, and the sea wants to tear down the walls. It takes a lot of work to keep even this much protected.”
There was a barge in the harbor. Men stood chest deep in muddy water. They used buckets to scoop out sand and dirt from the bottom, then they emptied the buckets into the barge.
“Like that,” Sandry said. “The harbor fills up if they don’t dredge it out. We keep hoping the wizards will figure out some way to make it less work, but they never do.”
“That looks like hard work for strong men,” Tower said. “Lordkin?”
Sandry laughed, then looked embarrassed again. “Tower, nothing against your father, but Lordkin don’t work! A few of those are experts we hire from Condigeo and Black Rock, but mostly those are kinless from Lord’s Town. They’re well paid too.”
“Is that our ship?” She pointed at a boat drawn up alongside a wooden dock. It was hard to tell how large it was, but it was bigger than any wagon, longer than several wagons put together. The front and back parts of the ship were decked over, and there was a cabin built over the deck on the front end. The middle part was open, with what looked like benches. The mast was tall, many times taller than she was, with ropes from the top down to the decks. Other ropes hung in orderly disarray.
“Angie Queen. That’s her,” Sandry said. “Got in two days ago. They were supposed to sail to Condigeo tomorrow, but the council arranged to hire it for a couple of days to take us over and get Clever Squirrel.”
It didn’t look quite safe, but Tower wasn’t going to say that. She eyed the ship more carefully. At least four times longer than a big cargo wagon, and maybe a wagon length across at its widest point. People were moving about, on the ship and on the docks. Like setting up a market, Tower thought. Everyone knows what to do, so there’s no need for orders and instructions. They just do it.
They watched from Sandry’s chariot. No one paid them any attention at all. Finally the wagon pulled up behind them. Chalker jumped off, bowed in the general direction of Twisted Cloud, and boarded the ship over a long, narrow plank. Twisted Cloud studied the ship without expression, but from time to time she glanced up at the blue skies and wispy clouds. We should have good weather, Tower thought.
Chalker came back down. “All’s ready, My Lord, Ladies. You can go aboard now. I’ll see to the baggage.”
“Thank you, Chalker,” Tower said. “Will you be coming with us?”
“No, more’s the pity,” Chalker said. “Never seen Avalon. Not many in Tep’s Town have.” He grinned. “You’ll take good care of my young master. I’m sure he’d rather have you than me for company!”
“I hope so.”
Chalker grinned.
Sandry was too far away to hear what Tower and Chalker were saying to each other, but when they glanced toward him it was pretty certain what the subject was.
And the more I see of her, the more I like her, he thought. Smart. She can be silly, and serious, and she gets along with everyone. And Mother liked her. He smiled softly to himself as he remembered her touch. Her hand was warm when she gripped his arm….
A sailor came up and made a gesture, putting his knuckles to his forehead. Sandry had noticed sailors did that when talking to their superiors. An odd custom. “Welcome aboard.”
Sandry eyed the narrow plank over the sea. No more unstable than a chariot platform, and only water to fall into, so why am I nervous? Tower grinned and skipped across, and he followed, Twisted Cloud behind him.
The sailor led them up to the front end of the ship. “This is called the foredeck,” he said. “That end is the bow, and you go forward when you go in that direction. The other end is the stern, and you go aft when you go that way. Might be useful to remember that.” He paused. “Sir. My Lord. Ladies.” Not used to dealing with passengers. A young man, certainly not older than Sandry, and proud of his abilities.
Sandry nodded. “Thanks. I’ll try to remember.”
There was a small cabin with the door on the back—aft, Sandry remembered—side of the foredeck cabin. Inside were seats for perhaps a dozen at a small table with benches on each side. Other passengers came aboard and were led to a cabin under the stern deck. Sandry frowned. “I thought we chartered this boat,” he said.
Twisted Cloud shrugged. “Doesn’t do us any harm to have other passengers. And we get the little cabin with the seats.”
Sandry nodded agreement. It seemed much too confined inside the cabin, so they stood on the foredeck making conversation while the crew set about making the ship seaworthy. This involved moving an infinity of rope and a lot of shouting. After a while, a group of men came aboard and took seats in the belly of the ship on the benches Sandry had noticed before. Oars were put in place. He couldn’t see what else was happening down there, but there were the sounds of hammering and clinking metal. Everywhere else men moved purposefully. One climbed the mast and did something with the ropes up there.
“They’re very particular about getting things exactly right,” Burning Tower observed. “You’re like that, Sandry.”
Absently, Sandry said, “Well, maybe I am.” Had he forgotten anything? This trip made him nervous. He’d met few magicians in his life. Morth had been a maniac. Egmatel was something of a fraud. What would scores of wizards be like?
Burning Tower said, “The sailors, they’re keeping lists in their heads, aren’t they? Do this, do that, or the boat doesn’t go. It’s like that in the caravan too. Everything has to be just so, or the beasts misbehave, things fall off, a wagon rolls down a hill. What I noticed about the people who serve you in Lordshills…” Burning Tower’s hands moved, reaching for words, concepts. “They’re not following a list. They follow orders. They do what it takes to make you—us—comfortable.
“Sandry, the people who do the work at Road’s End…they don’t travel. Sometimes they resent it, that they don’t have a wagon or a piece of one. Why are your servants so…?”
“A good servant gets to thinking that he runs a household, and that’s what drives him. Her. Aunt Shanda’s chef. Chalker. The others…well, they want us happy,” Sandry said.
“Right! Why?”
Sandry wasn’t used to thinking in these terms. He said, “I guess th
ey don’t want to go back where they came from.”
“And?”
What was she getting at? “I’m tasked with finding a place for a kinless woman who got taken pregnant by a Lordkin lover who cared enough to ask for a favor. Maybe I can…anyway, a lot who serve us are like that. Something drove them away. They don’t always tell us. The rest…if they lose their place in Lordshills…they’re either kinless or Lordkin. If they’re kinless, they’ll be back in the hands of the Lordkin. If they’re Lordkin, that can be bad too. Lordkin women do all the work they can’t lay off on kinless. Lordkin men maim and kill each other. Didn’t your father tell you—”
“Well, I know he left, and he rescued Mother. They don’t talk about it much.”
“And,” Sandry said diffidently, “I don’t really know how they think. We have to guess. Tower, tell me about your half sister.”
Burning Tower laughed. “I’ll let her mother speak for me.”
The Bison Tribe shaman was watching sailors swarm over the decks, but she’d heard. She said, “Clever Squirrel was Bison Tribe’s shaman a year ago, when I couldn’t travel. Early this year, she traveled west with the Pumas to visit Morth. She wants the spell that unravels failed spells. Had to follow him to Avalon to get it.” She looked around. “Squirrely’s powerful. More than me. Much more than me. Why not? She’s Coyote’s daughter.”
“How does that work?”
Reluctantly at first, Twisted Cloud told of the wild night her father Hickamore, the Bison Tribe shaman, led his fifteen-year-old daughter and a twenty-year-old Lordkin into a hillside thick with raw gold. Hickamore died when wild magic renewed long-forgotten spells. Coyote possessed Whandall Placehold. The god dazzled and seduced Hickamore’s daughter. The next morning, Willow claimed Whandall as her man before Bison Tribe.
“She might have thought I was going to claim him,” Twisted Cloud said. “We conceived Squirrely that night. She and Blazes are half sisters because Coyote was riding Whandall.”