by Larry Niven
“I would think so,” Clever Squirrel said.
“Why?” Burning Tower asked. “Do you—did you do something to him after he lost?”
It was too dark to see Morth’s expression. “No. I didn’t, and neither did the guildmasters. They didn’t sell Sorel to the minemasters; they found him a position there. He was happy to have it, a place where he had others to back him up if he miscast a spell.”
“Then what happened to him?” Tower asked.
“Think about it, Blazes,” Clever Squirrel said. “Suppose you had your doubts about ropewalking. Could you do it if you didn’t think you could?”
“Oh.”
It was thoroughly dark now. “I suppose we ought to turn in,” Morth said. “Squirrel, may I walk you to your boardinghouse?”
“Thank you,” Clever Squirrel said. “Good night. I’ll be down at the docks in the morning.” A porter appeared from nowhere. He carried a small lantern, which he offered to Morth. Twisted Cloud chuckled as she watched them go down the stairs to the streets. “That’s a sight you would see only on Avalon, Coyote’s daughter and an Atlantean wizard using a lantern in a land alive with magic…. I guess it’s time for me to turn in too. Blazes?”
“I guess. Good night, Lord Sandry.” She didn’t move from the table, and they sighed at the same time.
He thought of his gaudily decorated room and blushed slightly, glad that she couldn’t see him. He stood. “Good night, Burning Tower.”
It was a bright and glorious morning. When Sandry came out to the patio, Burning Tower was already at breakfast.
He sat next to her. After a moment, their hands touched. “Good morning.”
“It’s a wonderful morning!”
“But you’re alone. Not that I’m sorry.”
Burning Tower grinned. “Aunt Cloudy said they have breakfast at the conference, but I think mostly she couldn’t wait to show off her new sigil.”
There was a long silence. He looked at her, to see her quickly look away. I need to say it, he thought. But not now. It was awkward eating breakfast with one hand, but neither wanted to let go.
Maybe nothing needs to be said, he thought. Not now.
Clever Squirrel, a porter, and an astonishing quantity of luggage were waiting on the docks. Everything was stowed away on the Angie Queen, and Sandry paid off the porter. Captain Saziff welcomed them aboard, and if he had any questions about one passenger being replaced by another with mounds of luggage, he kept them to himself.
Oarsmen rowed the ferry out of the bay. There a wind met them, blowing straight toward the mainland. Sails went up, and the oarsmen were allowed to put up their oars.
“There’s something I need to do,” Sandry told Tower. “Do you see any stairs down into the oar pit?”
She looked at him oddly. “No. No, I don’t.”
“They must be inside.”
“They don’t let passengers in there.”
“I know. Excuse me.”
Sandry approached the nearest sailor and offered him wine.
The man refused. “That’s okay for you passengers. We get caught with that on our breath—”
“Sorry.”
“That’s all right, sir.”
“I’d like to talk to someone about buying one of the oarsmen free,” Sandry said.
The crewmen looked him over. “Tastes differ. Hey, you’re from the Burning City, are you?”
“From Tep’s Town, yes.”
“Uh-huh.” The man looked down into the pit, to pick out who might be this looker’s brother or uncle. “Well. I don’t sell oarsmen mysel’. You wait for shore, then you wait for tomorrow because the office is closed by the time we get in. Then you talk to someone there.”
Sandry nodded. “I’d like to talk to the oarsman first.”
“Why?”
Sandry kept his temper. “He might like it better here.”
The sailor was amused. “Yeah. Right. Come with me.” He turned away, turned back, and said, “Try not to be noticed.” He went to a low door marked with a rune: CREW ONLY.
A ladder let them out behind the Oarmaster’s podium. The man jumped, dropped a loaf of bread, and reached for his whip.
Sandry held up his hands, peace, with a refined gold coin in the fingers. “I have the urge to talk to one of your slaves, sir.” He gave the coin to the man who had brought him here. To the Oarmaster he offered two.
The man didn’t take them. He asked, “Now why would you want to do that? They’re not a talkative bunch. Any particular oarsman?”
“Second on the port side.”
“Reggy? Lord Regapisk. He’s talkative. You’d better talk fast, sir. That one’ll be gone when next you look.” He took the coins.
“How so?”
“I don’t like the way he talks. He doesn’t think he’s getting his due. He’s disrupting the oarsmen. I’ll tell the pursers, come next chance we get, he’ll be off across the wide world on another ship. Relative?”
“Not quite,” Sandry said.
“My sympathies. Climb on down, but don’t get too close to anyone. These are bad men.”
Sandry climbed a ladder down into the belly of the ship.
Some of the slaves were sleeping. Some were eating bread and dried fish. Sandry moved quietly between the two rows. Legs and arms didn’t withdraw to let Sandry past, but no man threatened him.
He shook Lord Regapisk’s shoulder. “Reggy,” he whispered. When Regapisk didn’t stir, he tried, “Your Lordship.”
“Too early. Lemme sleep.”
“Too cursed late,” Sandry said.
“Sandry?” Reggy snatched at Sandry’s wrist and sat up, then yelped, “Owoo,” on a rising note.
“What?”
“My back. Sandry, you’ve got to get me out of here.”
Sandry saw pink ridges crisscrossing Reggy’s back.
“Sandry? You testified against me. I saw you.” Regapisk’s whisper broke into a whine, then a whisper again. “What did I ever do to you?”
You cost me kinless houses, Lordkin lives, Lords’ tribute, and my own broken word, Sandry thought. But eyes had opened in the dark, and he just didn’t feel like arguing in front of an audience of slaves. You couldn’t win an argument with Reggy anyway.
“I’ll buy you loose,” he said.
“Good,” said Regapisk. “Thank you. I’ll pay you back when I can.”
“Sure.” Sandry was mentally adding up his funds. On his person: enough for bribes, enough to be taken seriously. What could he sell to actually raise the price of a man?
“As soon as I get home,” said Lord Regapisk. “They barred me from my own home, Sandry. How could they do this to a Lord?” He was still clutching Sandry’s wrist, as if it were his only hope of safety. “Why? It was those cursed Lordkin who let the fire get past. I think I even figured out why.”
Had he really? “Morth’s gold?”
“What? No. They’re practicing, Sandry. They’re planning to burn down Lordshills, and they need to know how to handle fire. Nobody in Tep’s Town is used to fire. Somebody has to tell Lord Witness Qirama. The old man should have seen it himself!”
“Reggy, what were you told, before they put you here?”
“Told?”
“Were you told, ‘Don’t come back’?”
“Curse it, Sandry, they didn’t know! They hadn’t thought it through!”
“There’s a lot of that going around. When I buy you loose, what will you do, Reggy?”
Regapisk hadn’t thought quite that far. Sandry watched him mull it. “I could hide at my father’s house, but that wouldn’t get anything done. I have to see Qirama! Qirama’s men might not let me in if I try to see him at home. At the office, they’d just arrest me. Sandry, if I could stay with you? and you invite him to your home…?”
“Good-bye, Reggy.” Sandry pulled his arm loose.
“I want to think about this. I’ll see you tomorrow?”
The Oarmaster was asleep on his perch. Sandry
knocked, and watched to see the man jerk awake, before he climbed the ladder. He gave the man another gold piece and returned to the passenger spaces.
To release Regapisk now…he’d be crabmeat within days. Sandry sighed. Another broken promise.
Chapter Fourteen
A Natural Host
for Gods
Chalker was waiting with the chariot and a wagon. “Good to have you back, My Lord.” He gave a warm smile to Burning Tower. “My Lady. And you’ll be the new wizard?” he asked Clever Squirrel. He didn’t say that she looked too young, but it wasn’t hard to guess what he was thinking.
“Yes, but I’m not a wizard,” she said. “Just a caravan shaman.”
Chalker’s fixed grin relaxed a bit. “Good to see you, Lady Shaman. You’d best come quick, though.”
“Why?” Sandry asked.
“Bird’s doing poorly,” Chalker said. “Won’t eat. Getting droopy. Maybe the cold iron cage, but we’ve been a bit nervouslike about letting it out of there!”
“Don’t blame you. We’ll go directly there, then.” Sandry leaped into the chariot and invited Clever Squirrel up beside him.
Burning Tower climbed into the wagon beside Chalker, looking disappointed.
Sandry clucked the horses into motion. Dusk was falling, and he had to pay attention to the road. When he glanced over at his passenger, he could see that Squirrel was studying the houses of Lordstown and missing nothing.
“We’re here,” Sandy said. He waved to the guards at the Lordshills gate and the chariot clattered inside to the guardhouse where they kept the bird. “Still alive?” he asked when the door was opened.
“Yes, My Lord. It won’t eat. Don’t think it will drink anything either. We even tried a live rat, but it wouldn’t touch it.”
The room smelled like a chickenhouse. No one had cleaned up the bird’s droppings, but Sandry couldn’t blame them for that.
Clever Squirrel nodded to the guards, and went over to the cage. She squinted, then, as her mother had, she sat in front of the cage with half-closed eyes. Finally she stood. “You’ll have to let it out,” she said.
“Ma’am?” the guard was incredulous. “Ma’am, you know how much trouble we had getting that thing in there?”
“I can appreciate that,” she paused, “Henry son of Eric.” The guard looked startled. “But it’s important that I examine it without the cold iron around it, and before it is dead.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Henry said. “Taric. Lief. We got work to do.”
Whenever one of the guards got close to the cage, the bird would shake itself out of its lethargy and snap at him. Eventually, by working in pairs on opposite sides of the cage, they managed to get a rope around the bird’s feet. They tied it off to hobble the bird, then they passed more ropes in until they had a pair of them over its neck. “Want us to take this show outside?” Henry asked.
Sandry considered it. “If it gets loose, better it just kills us than runs around in the town,” he said.
“Well, yes, sir, but there’s not a lot of room to work here,” Henry protested, but he ran over and took out the toggle holding the cage door shut. The door swung open, and the guards tightened the ropes. The bird looked outside at freedom, stood still for a moment, then darted out. Its jaws snapped on air a foot from Henry’s nose.
“Perks up something wonderful,” Henry said, “My Lord.”
Clever Squirrel gestured. Nothing happened. Sandry looked the question at her. “Calming spell Morth taught me,” she said. “Didn’t work. Let me think.” She gestured again.
That really set it off. The bird pulled, hard, so that Sandry took the rope alongside one of the guards. They held it as it tried to get at Clever Squirrel.
“It hates Coyote,” she said. “It really wants to do something to hurt Coyote.” She gestured again. “And it hates you.”
After a while she nodded. “You can cage it again. Or kill it. There’s nothing else to learn.” She looked puzzled. “There’s just nothing there. Blazes? It reminds me of your father. Most human beings have a natural trace of magic, but Whandall never had anything. Just a blank ready to be filled.”
The Congregation was held in the Registry Office at Peacegiven Square. Lord Quintana himself presided over a dozen Lords Witness in their dark robes and tight caps, with more clerks and servants than Sandry had ever seen outside the main courthouse in Lordstown. Five squads of Lordsmen stood guard outside with a dozen chariot-class Lords and Younglords with horses harnessed and ready, spears and spearmen standing next to the chariots.
“Putting on a show to impress my brother?” Tower asked.
Sandry shrugged. “Could be, but we don’t usually do things that way.” And more likely to impress the Lordkin with how seriously we take all this, he thought.
Green Stone spoke first, telling the Lords all he knew of the birds. “They have never been common,” he concluded. “Until this year I had never seen more than one at a time, and never more than one in a year.”
Burning Tower was next. Sandry was proud of her. She was respectful but firm. Her deference could as easily be because of her youth as because of her station. “When Twisted Cloud examined the bird, she found nothing,” Tower concluded.
Lord Quintana nodded. “Thank you, young lady. And we have heard the testimony of the Sage Egmatel to the same end.” He nodded to the clerk.
“Thank you, lady,” the clerk intoned. “We now call the learned sage Clever Squirrel.”
Sandry grinned without showing it as Burning Tower came down to sit next to him. Young lady sounded enough like the proper title for a Lord’s daughter of Tower’s age, and learned sage was impressive. Sandry could hear the absence of capital letters in the clerk’s voice, but none of the kinless and Lordkin present could. They were treating the Bison Tribe leaders as visiting Lords, near enough, and making a show of it at that.
“Welcome, learned one,” Quintana said. “And the thanks of the Lords Witness for your help in this matter. You examined the bird closely?”
“I did, Lord,” Squirrel said.
Tower nudged Sandry. “Never heard her be that respectful before,” she whispered.
Her breath was sweet. He wondered about his own, and grinned slightly at his own concern. “Not much choice,” he whispered. What else could Squirrel do? Which was the point of all this, he supposed. The Lordkin and kinless were watching….
“…and after it was removed from the cold iron cage, I could feel its rage,” Squirrel was saying. “Rage against my father Coyote, rage against the wagon trains, and rage against you, My Lords. That last was harder to determine, but it was there. The birds hate you no less than they hate me.”
“Or that one did,” Lord Quintana observed. He said it carefully—a conclusion, not a contradiction. Clerks wrote furiously.
“I think all of them,” Clever Squirrel said. “I can’t be sure.”
“And their origin?”
She frowned. “Desert. Meat that hides.”
“Surely they are creatures of magic?”
“A fair guess, but again I do not know,” she said. “There is no trace of their origin, no trace of magic about them. Only the hatreds.”
“All gods welcome at the Feathersnake Inn,” Burning Tower whispered. They were sitting close enough to the witness stand that Squirrel heard her.
Clever Squirrel nodded. “My kinswoman repeats a phrase our father sometimes uses. I believe it came originally from Morth of Atlantis.”
The Lords Witnesses looked at each other, then back at Clever Squirrel.
“ ‘All gods welcome,’” Squirrel said. “There’s no natural wizardry in the birds. It makes them a natural host for gods. That is the way of our father, whom you knew as Whandall Placehold.”
There was a stir among the Lordkin in the back of the room. Someone muttered something obscene. “Quiet,” Wanshig said sharply.
“As Lordkin were often possessed of Yangin-Atep,” Squirrel continued, “although they are not them
selves magical. I believe these birds are possessed of the will of—someone, god or great wizard—but if there is any magic to the birds themselves, no trace of it remains for me to find.” She drew herself up to stand straight and proud. “And my Lords, I tell you, if anyone could find such, it would be me.”
Chapter Fifteen
Girl Talk
The hearings were continued to the next day, to the great delight of Green Stone and the Bison Tribe merchants. A full Congregation of Lords Witness and their entourage guaranteed shoppers.
Quintana was thorough. Everyone who had anything to say about the birds either testified to the main hearing or was taken to a smaller room to speak with the clerks. By afternoon, everything anyone knew about the birds had been heard and written down. Then the Lords adjourned. A clerk announced formally that the Lords Witness would take this matter under consideration. The entourage packed up, and in solemn procession the Lords, their clerks, and their soldiers rode back to Lordshills.
Burning Tower watched them go with amazement. “That’s it?” she asked her brother. “All that, and—and nothing?”
Green Stone shrugged. “You’ve heard Father say that the Lords are strange.”
“Strange, yes. Idiots, no,” Burning Tower said. “And where’s Sandry?”
“In his chariot,” Clever Squirrel said. “Leading his soldiers.” She pointed to a figure vanishing in the distance.
“Yes, but—”
Clever Squirrel chuckled. “You don’t know much about men, do you?”
“Not as much as you. But I can ride one-horns without yelling at them!”
“Tsk. No need to be angry,” Squirrel said. “What I should have said is that you’ll hear from him soon enough. He’s got some man game to play, and men always take those things seriously, but he hasn’t forgotten you.”
“I don’t care if he does forget me!”
“Sure. Now stop giving Stones false hopes. Not that I blame you much. Very handsome lad, and a lot nicer than any of the boys we know.”