Black Unicorn

by Tanith Lee

  "Bite!" cried the peeve, chomping on the sash. "Wup!"

  "Yes, that's really terrific!"

  The peeve swore, and the soldiers almost had a fit. They uncrossed their spears and clapped Tanaquil much too heartily on the back as she dragged the squalling peeve into the city. "Good luck, boy. That's a marvelous turn you've got there. We'll tell all the lads."

  6

  Every exaggerated fantasy Tanaquil had ever had of the city was outstripped by the facts. Even Jaive had never demonstrated, in the magic mirror, anything like this. It was like being inside an enormous clock of countless parts and pieces. It seemed at once jumbled and precise, random and ordained. Just like the sound it made, which was a mix of a thousand sounds, so its shape was formed out of all shapes imaginable—lines, angles, bumps, cones, rounds—and its basic colors of brown, yellow and white, were also fired by the noon sun into blooms of paint, fierce blinks of metal, and cracked indigo shadows.

  Tanaquil did not try to take it in, she simply marched in to it, staring about her wildly, overwhelmed. While the peeve accompanied her in noisy bewilderment—the million scents of the city had entirely taken up its attention, it growled and whined, snuffled, grunted, and sometimes squeaked. Now and then it ran sideways after something or other, and Tanaquil, her concentration scattered, was tugged against the brickwork or into the mouths of lean alleyways. She thought of undoing the leash and allowing the peeve to rush off on its own. Perhaps she would never see it again—something dreadful might happen to it. It knew the desert and was as surprised here as she was.

  At first, near the gate, there had been few people, only the small groups you might come on in a village, women in doorways or at a well, or some men going by with spades over their shoulders. Then the streets, winding into and around each other between the walls and under the arches, opened on a broad white avenue. Palm trees of great height grew along the avenue, and there were marble troughs of water, to one of which three polished-looking horses had been led to drink. The sides of the avenue swarmed with people of every description, and at the windows and doorways and on the balconies of the buildings along the road, were crowds thick as grapes on a bunch. Flights of steps went up too high to see, from the avenue, what was at the top, and up and down them strode and ran the citizens, sometimes colliding. Tree branches curled against the sky from gardens on rooftops. Stained-glass windows flashed as they were constantly pushed wide or closed. The road boomed with voices, and with the vehicles that went both ways along it, chariots and carts, silken boxes carried on the shoulders of trotting men, and one stately camel under a burden of green bananas.

  Tanaquil stalked up the road, pushing through the human swarm as she had noted everybody else was doing. The peeve, on a very short leash, kept close to her now, its muttering lost in the general uproar.

  Soon wonderful shops began to open in the buildings. She saw shelves of cakes like jewels and trays of jewels like flowers and sheaves of flowers like lances and, in an armorer's, lances like nothing but themselves.

  She wanted to look at everything, to laugh and to shout. She felt taller than anyone in the crowd. Also she was dizzy. There was too much, and she was drunk on it, as the peeve had got sozzled on smells.

  The end of the avenue was an even further astonishment. It expanded into a marketplace, a bazaar, where every single public activity known to the world seemed to go on.

  Two pink marble lions guarded the entrance, and Tanaquil and the peeve rested against the plinth of one of these while porters, carts, and the banana camel trundled by.

  Tanaquil attempted to view the things of the market individually, but it was impossible. Her eyes slid from the baskets of peaches to the bales of wool to the pen of curly sheep, to the juggler with his fire-work knives and the fortune-teller's tent with the wrong sorcerous signs embroidered over it, and on.

  The market went downhill and was terraced to prevent everything tipping over. But Tanaquil's gaze tipped all the way down, and there below, in a rainbow frill of objects and actions, bluer than the sky, bluer than anything, was the sea. Contrasted to the flurry of the shore, slender ships glided slowly across the water, on russet and melon triangles of sail. The fishy, salty scent sparkled like glass in the air, stronger than perfume, sheep, and peaches.

  "Oh, Mother," said Tanaquil, "we salute the fish!"

  "Now then, move along for God's sake," said a beefy man in an apron. He shouldered past.

  "Be good," said Tanaquil to the peeve, "and I'll—" she hesitated. She had been going to promise to get the peeve some cooked meat from one of the stalls. But of course, she had no money. Indeed, she had never seen money except in Jaive's coffer, and more recently at the dice games of the caravan. "Er, we'll see," said Tanaquil. They would not starve. She had, did she not, her fabulous magic "trick"? Instead of gawping at the bazaar, she should find a pitch and thrill the unsuspecting populace with the talking peeve.

  They went into the market, and walked down the terraces through flares of blood-red silk and garlands of woven baskets.

  The juggler was encouragingly earning a large pile of coins, tossed by the crowd. In another place a girl danced with bells on her wrists and ankles, and elsewhere boys made a living pyramid, and fire was eaten.

  Tanaquil and the peeve came against a side of ox in which the peeve was rather interested. As she tried to separate them, Tanaquil beheld another marble lion ahead. Seated between its feet was a man playing a pipe. As he played, he swayed, and out of the wooden bowl before him rose a swaying snake, itself with a skin like a plait of bright money.

  "Just look," said Tanaquil to the peeve, prizing it off the ox carcass. The peeve looked, for once obliging. Tanaquil realized she had made a mistake. "No—"

  The leash burned through her fingers and was gone.

  Like a flung brown snowball, the peeve demolished the distance between itself and the marble lion. The crowd about the statue's base parted with cries. The peeve skirled through. It rose steeply. It landed.

  There was a kind of explosion of tails, paws, bowl, pipe, snake. Fur and scales sprayed up in the air.

  The piper stood baying and waving his arms, obviously afraid to intervene in this cyclone. The unsympathetic crowd laughed and jeered.

  An awful clattering rebounded on the marble. The snake was gone, instead, a heap of scales and wobbling springs lay on the lion's feet. The peeve, with a silver spine and head in its mouth, galloped at Tanaquil.

  She caught it. "Bad," said Tanaquil, inadequately. "You fool, it's not even real—"

  The peeve crouched at her feet, worrying the silver backbone of the mechanical snake and growling. It seemed slightly embarrassed.

  "I'm so sorry—" Tanaquil hurried to the statue and looked up at the snake charmer, who was picking over the shattered bits of his act.

  "Seventy-five weights of copper and three pence this cost me," he moaned. "Made by the finest craftsmen in the city. Now see."

  The peeve had followed Tanaquil, trailing its leash. "Give me that." She got the spine and head from its teeth, and it seemed glad to forget them in a thorough wash. The head had faceted green glass eyes, and hinged jaws of ivory fangs. Tanaquil began to try the springs back against their slots. "I think I can mend this."

  "No, no, just my rotten luck. Ruined."

  "Really, I think I can. I can mend things."

  The snake-charmer glared at her with tearful eyes.

  "You're an artisan?"

  "Well—I suppose so."

  "All right. Do it then."

  "I'll need some tools—"

  "An artisan and no tools," scoffed the embittered snake-charmer. He sat on the lion and refused to glance at Tanaquil, the peeve, the crowd, or the snake.

  "Over there, Bindat's stall—he'll lend you a few artisan things," said a man who had come across from the meat rack. "Meanwhile, you can pay me for the bite your dog's taken out of my ox."

  "I haven't a penny," said Tanaquil.

  The man surprisingly answe
red, "Have it free then. It was worth it for the laugh."

  All afternoon, Tanaquil sat under the marble lion and repaired the mechanical snake.

  It was quite a difficult job, but the further she went with it the more she got the hang of what needed doing. The scales, which she had feared might be the worst task, merely linked into one another with tiny hooks.

  As she worked, people stopped to watch. Ignoring the peeve tied to a post and the snake charmer lurking on the lion, a few inquired what Tanaquil would charge for mending a toy, a clock, a small watering device. Tanaquil said, "I charge half the going rate."

  This meant that by the time the sun westered, various items had been left in her care. The bazaar did not shut up shop with sunset; already lamps and torches were being lit.

  "Here you are," said Tanaquil raising the renewed snake in the reddening light. "See if it will go."

  "Of course it won't. Hair-fine mechanisms—"

  "Just see."

  The snake charmer snatched the snake and cast it in the bowl as if he loathed it. But he blew a trill on the pipe. The snake stirred. To swaying melody, the snake flowed upward from the bowl and danced at the sunset.

  The snake charmer took the pipe from his mouth, and the snake hovered upright, gleaming.

  "I won't thank you. Your dog broke it in the first place."

  "No, please don't thank me," said Tanaquil. "After all, it might become a nasty habit."

  She flexed her fingers, swallowed her hunger and thirst, and, taking up the two halves of a doll soldier, began again to work.

  Four hours later all the left items had been collected, and a pocketful of coins sat gleaming like the snake under the torches.

  Somewhere a bell sounded. It was midnight. Looking up, Tanaquil found a ragged man in front of her. An iron cap was over his head and covered his eyes. He probed an invisible void with his stick. A blind beggar.

  "Clink, clink," he said. "I heard the coins fall. Spare me a coin."

  Tanaquil put a coin into his thin searching hand.

  She remembered the unicorn with a shock of the heart. This imperfect world—

  Bindat's wife, Cuckoo, suggested that for the payment of three pennies, Tanaquil might spend the night in their outhouse. Tanaquil was exhausted and accepted. They had a long walk, however, to Bindat's house, which lay behind the great market and far from the beautiful avenue, in an area of slums. Here the dwellings leaned on each other to stay up, and rickety wooden bridges went over the streets, and washing-lines, from which, even as they passed, thieves were stealing the washing. Bindat and Cuckoo even greeted one of these thieves warmly. They crunched through open drains, frozen by night, and came to Bindat's house. The outhouse was a hut with holes, white with frost. Wood was stacked there, and it was busy with beetles. The peeve, leash off, spent all night chasing and eating these beetles, despite the bowl of thin soup it had shared with Tanaquil. In the morning, very early, Tanaquil learned that, in addition to the three pennies, she must pay for her lovely night by sweeping the yard and milking the goat. As a child, for a treat, she had sometimes milked the goats at her mother's fortress. This was harder, as the goat and the peeve had declared war on each other.

  After a breakfast of burnt crusts, Tanaquil and the peeve returned with Bindat and Cuckoo through the hot and reeking drains, and lamenting owners of stolen washing, to the bazaar. Tanaquil was delighted to find a queue of people waiting for her under the marble lion: Word had got around.

  At noon, Bindat came over to Tanaquil and told her in a friendly way that he would have half her earnings, as he and Cuckoo had personally sent all her customers to her. As he spoke, Cuckoo might be seen cleaning a large knife at their stall.

  Tanaquil did not argue. She gave Bindat half her coins. When he was gone, she told her next customer she would be moving to the tents of the spice-sellers, whose smell had already attracted her.

  Once she had returned all the previously mended things to their guardians, she slipped away, and descended the terraces out of Bindat's sight. Among the spice jars, at an obelisk with a stone fish on it, she sat down again with the peeve, and as she resumed her work, she watched the fish market below, and the blue sea that was greener against the harbor.

  Once or twice during the night in the outhouse she had dozed. Then she had believed the unicorn poised outside the door, clean as black snow in the slum. But waking as the peeve scampered over her in its hunting, she knew the unicorn could not be there.

  Now she felt she was working in a set of condiments—the pepper and ginger, cinnamon and hyssop and anise, with the fishy salt of the sea.

  The peeve sneezed and ate the baked joint she had bought it. Then it slept on her foot after its hard night, and her foot also went to sleep.

  A shadow fell across Tanaquil as she was fastening the frame of a mechanical board game involving a lot of small porcelain animals. She glanced up. Her new customers were three large men. The central figure wore black and red clothing, and the buckle of his belt was a gilded hammer crossed by a brass chisel.

  He said ringingly, "I am Vush."

  "Well done," said Tanaquil.

  Around her, the chatter and frisk of the spicery had gone quiet. Everyone was staring at Vush and his two burly companions.

  "You don't know me?" asked Vush. He had a terrible beard, which lurched at her as he spoke.

  "I'm very sorry."

  "I am the Master of the Artisans' Guild of Sea City."

  Tanaquil received an inkling of alarm. She grabbed the peeve's leash at the neck. It was already practicing a snarl.

  "How nice to meet you," said Tanaquil.

  "It's a girl," said the companion to the left of Vush. He shifted, and Tanaquil saw his guild apron, and that he too had the hammer and chisel device, and a brass-bound cudgel.

  "Then," said Vush, "she should be at home, not here causing trouble."

  "Oh dear, have I?" Tanaquil groveled.

  Of course it was apparent what had happened. She did not need Vush's right-hand companion to announce: "Bindat reported you to the guild. He says you charge half the going rate for your work. All prices are fixed by us."

  "And you're not a member of the guild," said Vush. "Which means you're not allowed to work in the city at all."

  "I didn't know," said Tanaquil. "You see, I come from this backward village—Um—and nobody ever said—"

  "Give me that," said Vush, pointing at the game.

  Tanaquil thought, He's going to smash it. Perhaps over my head.

  Before she could make up her mind to let loose the peeve, Vush's left-hand crony leaned down and skimmed the game away.

  Instead of hitting her with it, all three ponderously examined its mechanism.

  "Not a bad bit of work," said Vush at last.

  Tanaquil simpered. "Thank you."

  "We have no women in the guild," said Vush. "You'll have to join as a boy."

  "But you'll have to join," added the right-hand crony. "Or it's the harbor for you."

  "You mean you'll put me in a boat?"

  "We mean we'll drop you in the sea with lead sandals."

  "I'll join," said Tanaquil. "An honor."

  "The fee is forty weights of silver."

  "Oh."

  "You'll have to get someone to sponsor you, pay it for you. One of the guild members may do so."

  "Then you'll be in his debt."

  "You'll have to work extra hard to pay it off."

  "You'll need the guild, then."

  "Yes."

  The peeve reached out and aimed its claws at Vush's expensive boot. They missed.

  "Come to the Guild Hall at sunset," said Vush. "Anyone will direct you."

  "If you don't come," said the left-hand man, "we'll come looking for you."

  "Too kind," said Tanaquil.

  She longed for one of Jaive's spells, which, according to Jaive, would have transformed Vush and Company into frogs.

  It was true that everyone seemed to know where to find the
Guild Hall of the Artisans, or at least the people Tanaquil asked directed her without hesitation. The building stood on another fine street, bathed in the sunset, and its gilded pillars shone, and the symbol of the hammer and chisel shone above the door. The door, though, was firmly shut. Tanaquil, with the peeve on a new strong leash bought that afternoon, knocked politely, and next violently, but without response. Perhaps the artisans' baleful invitation had been only a dare, or a joke to make her look foolish. This hope was destroyed when, from a round aperture above, a fat, frowning male face stuck out.

  "Who is there?"

  "I was summoned here by Vush the artisan."

  "You're the woman from the market. Control that animal." The peeve was scratching at the gilt on the pillars.

  As Tanaquil tried to control the peeve, a smaller door in the great door suddenly slid open. Tanaquil stepped through, pulling the peeve with her. The small door, a thing of clockwork, snapped shut again behind them.

  They were in a long corridor lighted by hanging lamps. At the corridor's far end was a second massive door. The only option was to go forward, and this Tanaquil did. No sooner had she begun to walk toward the second door than mechanical oddities activated all around her, perhaps triggered by her footfalls on the floor. Bells chimed, tiny windows flapped open, and wooden birds whizzed out—the peeve leapt at them—plaster heads turned menacingly, poking out red plaster tongues. Tanaquil thought it all rather crude.

  When she reached the door, the peeve struggling beside her, trying to make plain its needs—"Bird! Bird!"—Tanaquil knocked once more, and this door flew wide.

  The Artisans' Hall—it was labelled in gold lettering on the wall facing the door, above another gold hammer and chisel, some gold saws, braces, measures, and other stuff—was exactly square, washed with black, and lit by torches. On black chairs around it sat thirty men whom Tanaquil took for officers or superiors of the guild. And facing the door, beneath the lettering, was a man who must be Vush, for his chair was the largest, and a fearsome beard escaped beneath the mask he wore. Every man in the room was masked. The masks were all the same, bronze visors with panes of black glass at the eyes. Meant to create a sinister impression of uninvolved ruthlessness, the masks had succeeded. Tanaquil wavered between scorn and extreme uneasiness. And catching her mood, the peeve crouched, speechless and bristling, at her feet.