Unfettered III

by Shawn Speakman (ed)

  “Want to tell your dad why?”

  “I don’t know,” Steve replied. “You want anything to fuck up how good things are going lately.” He paused. “I’m sorry. It’s just you deserve your share of happiness too, that’s all.”

  “That’s not how families work, son,” his father said quietly. “I’m on your side of things. Always. You can tell me anything.”

  “I’ll get over it,” Steve said, feeling the acidic soap he’d poured into the water bite at his paper cuts.

  “Okay, pal. But day or night, I’m here. I love you.”

  “I know, Dad. Me too.”

  Steve lay awake all evening. After the dishes, he’d just come into his room, closed the door, got undressed, laid down, and stayed awake. He kept thinking: How far? How much? He understood his unhappiness before. It was like another life, just like the paper man had said. The not-writing, it makes you know you’re unhappy, and it eats at you. The not-writing eats you. And Steve understood that. But now there was another dark irony. What price was enough? You had to pay dues. But that searing, slicing, razor-edged paper. How much? How far?

  The sun set, taking all the light out of Steve’s room. There was only the faint indirect glow from the crack under the door, and his bedroom window. But when the paper started to ripple and crackle, he saw it.

  The paper began to do waves, from one end to the other. It bumped, jerked, heaved, and then it rolled into a tube. The legs divided, the arms pulled away. The paper man stood up.

  “Hiya, friend,” the paper man said.

  “Hello,” Steve said deferentially.

  “Hey, you don’t sound too good.” The paper man jumped to the desktop and shuffled up to the edge.

  There was quiet for a space.

  Then Steve finally said, “How much?”

  “Ah, that’s a bogus question, Steve,” the paper man said knowingly. “You don’t ask a price on something you got to have. Now, shall we begin?” The paper man seemed in good spirits. Why not? He was getting his dues, Steve thought resentfully.

  “That dark irony. It’s there whether you write or not, isn’t it?” Steve looked with hatred at the paper man. Partly for the irony, and the cuts on his fingers. Partly because he did want to pay his dues. He wanted to write, needed to write. And at last, would write. But he wanted this much clear, if it was possible: How far?

  “My boy, there’s always something that’s left behind. How much? Or what? Those aren’t the right questions. It’s where those things take you that’s important. The stories themselves, that’s the question. What about the story? You don’t want to spare the tale at the expense of the teller? Do you?” The paper man seemed to expect an answer.

  Steve thought this out. There was a lot to consider. And then nothing to consider, because in the final analysis, as Professor Brentley would say, it’s pretty much academic.

  “No,” he said.

  “That’s what I thought,” the paper man replied with even good nature, and flipped the computer switch. Shallow blue light dropped slowly onto everything, giving it a pale and solemn cast.

  Steve picked up a piece of college-ruled and pulled its thin, measureless edge heedlessly across the middle of his first finger.

  CAT RAMBO

  “MERCHANTS HAVE MAXIMS” IS SET IN THE WORLD OF TABAT, WHERE I’ve written several dozen stories and a few novels. One feature of the world is the belief of the Merchant caste in the Trade Gods, a series of economic forces that keep the world in order. What happens when that set of beliefs becomes insufficient—or when it’s misused to justify injustices?

  Chronologically, this is set several months before the beginning of Beasts of Tabat.

  Cat Rambo

  Merchants Have Maxims

  Cat Rambo

  Though she’d been on land for two days now, the ship’s sway still made Essa stumble, phantom waves rocking her back and forth, the horizon dipping and lurching as she walked. She concentrated on putting one bare foot down after another on the dirt path, watching out for the angry red ants that seemed to swarm everywhere.

  The jungle was noxiously hot and sticky; unpleasant sweat crawled down her back. But complaining would do no good, and so she, along with the rest of the ship’s survivors, trudged after the people they hoped were rescuers rather than opportunists.

  On either side, the shorter vegetation pressed inward, leafy walls smelling sharp green where the leading guide had hacked away plants blocking the path. Insects buzzed in shrill chorus. Probably more of those grasshoppers whose bodies were as long as Essa’s hand, sometimes longer, as big as the wagon maestra’s long, spiky fingers. That tall woman hunched inward as much as the rest of the party, stumbling after their guides, who were so clean and calm in contrast to the bloody, dirty, stinking-in-the-way-only-someone-who’s-been-sleeping-in-their-own-clothes-for-three-days-stinks party of Merchants, who were still not entirely sure how they had managed to stay alive after their ship foundered and left them in the middle of what was, to them, mostly uncharted territory.

  Surely they would stop soon. She needed to pee badly, and had for at least a league or two.

  She tried to occupy her mind, with things other than worries about their situation. Every Merchant, even a minor scribe, kept a journal in which they developed their personal maxims. They recorded every time they made a decision—in theory every decision, big or small, but most people recorded only what they considered to be the big ones—and which of the Trade Gods oversaw all the factors that had gone into making that decision. And what they thought the outcome would be. And they would later go back to that journal to develop the personal principles that would guide them throughout their future trade, and beyond that into retirement.

  A Merchant had a journal since first learning to write. A Merchant without one felt that lack like a missing limb, something Essa kept reaching for and not finding. She already missed being able to flip through it at night, to figure out the results of different actions and what part each God had played, from small ones like Kepterto, who handled tailors, or Rilriliworhaomu, Trade God of Hypothetical Marital Alliances, to the larger ones like Enba and Anbo, Want and Supply.

  She thought back yet again on what she’d learned so far. At some point, surely, she’d be able to start a new journal.

  So far this journey had yielded several new maxims for Essa—who had analyzed the most recent big decision she’d made at the great, repeated length afforded by a sea voyage.

  Do not make hasty decisions was a major trade maxim. It invoked a whole group of Trade Gods, with particular attention to Planning, Forethought, and Experience. Essa had refined this with subclauses of her own, which she intended to apply going forward and never, ever, ever deviate from again.

  They were as follows: (A) Never make decisions while drunk. (B) Never make decisions while wanting to impress someone (like that mathematician one wanted to study with). And (C) Give oneself at least a day to think about any trip that involves a lengthy voyage, particularly a sea voyage to the Southern Isles.

  Since that very early morning when, purple and red moons visible just above the horizon, she had stumbled, still drunk, aboard The Subsequent Minnow—a sailor’s necessary bag in one hand and a satchel containing three blank notebooks and all of the mathematician’s works, including a new manuscript to be proofed, along with an assortment of pens and ink blocks in the other—she had ended up (after that first week of total and abject seasickness) with plenty of time to write down several thorough analyses of the situation. Enough to fill the first notebook and start a second.

  All of that had, of course, been lost in the experience that led to another new personal maxim, one she suspected more than one Merchant before her might have personally adopted: Do not get on ships going into dangerous territory in any season, let alone storm-prone ones.

  “Come along, idiot!” A hand jerked Essa’s elbow, making her outright stumble on the path. Then the twin who had pulled at her spoke to the other in Ligurian:
“Why couldn’t any of the useful ones survive? All she can do is write numbers on pages.” The twins often used Ligurian, thinking that no one else spoke it, when the truth was most of the sailors knew it and two had taught Essa all she needed to know.

  One moment she anticipated with glee, a little gift waiting for her sometime in the coming days and weeks, guarded by Diahmo, God of the Balanced Ledger, was the moment she let the twins know that she spoke Ligurian. Actually, their use of it had honed her skill significantly. She’d rehearsed the revelation in her mind multiple times, usually on occasions like this when she might have quoted the ancient Ligurian poet who had said All life is numbers. But the truth was, the farther off that day, the more moments like this the twins would have to think back to.

  In addition, it was downright useful knowing what they thought they needed to keep secret from the rest.

  The twins were translators and proud of how many languages they knew, though many of these were, in Essa’s opinion, not particularly useful, since the cultures that had spoken them were dead and only texts remained. (The twins’ names were Felip and Felim, but no one could tell them apart, and Essa always thought of them in the plural.)

  Essa had signed on as a minor accountant, tracking the voyage’s costs and bills of lading and such. She was indeed currently useless, the more so because they had nothing to trade, since all of their goods had gone down with the ship. Worse yet, the majority of those actually trained in trade matters had drowned, leaving the maestra—whose specialty was transportation of goods and whose original role had been not that much larger than Essa’s—as the most senior Merchant of the six of them and in charge of somehow gaining some profit from this journey, or else leaving all of them in the red and prone to being sold as slaves back home in order to recuperate the debt.

  Now Essa was sandwiched between the twins, who had of course managed to survive as a unit, and who had attached themselves to the maestra’s heels. Every once in a while a lanky elbow would get in her way. She didn’t think they were doing it deliberately. Just that they weren’t quite as quick to stop it as they might have been when they noticed she was the target. They weren’t happy about the overall state of things, and, despite being translators, they didn’t speak their guides’ language, So everyone was reduced to Trade tongue.

  The twins didn’t really care what they took their frustration out on as long as that thing had little chance of fighting back. Like the trees one of them kept swatting with their staff or the bushes the other was prodding. Or Essa.

  Or Skiff the dog girl, behind them with the hound, Yadi, at her heels. The child had chattered plenty to Essa at first, about all sorts of things, like what sort of oil she used when combing out the dogs’ fur, or flea preventatives, or how the dogs’ diet must be maintained scrupulously, for something harmless to a human might prove deadly for a dog, even something simple like garlic or onions. But as the day had worn on, she’d grown quieter and quieter, perhaps for lack of energy but also perhaps due to Essa’s lack of reply, her breath stolen away by the day’s heat.

  Essa huffed in damp, hot air and hoped again that they’d stop soon. She flicked away an ant exploring her bare leg, its path like fire against the sunburn.

  Above her head, one twin said something snide to the other.

  Essa added one to a number in her head and permitted herself a flicker of a smile.

  They did stop, just a little farther in. What’s more, they did it in the shadow of a waterfall that filled its rocky basin before roiling on through hillocks bearded with green ferns and full of niches edged with whispering reeds and pleasured with the flicker of minnows.

  The three guides rested, sitting cross-legged on the rocks. They were an older woman with her white hair pulled back in a shaggy braid, a young man impressive with muscle and self-conscious down to the roots of his well-oiled dark hair, and a bored young woman, skinny but nimble, her head shaved and her protuberant ears set with bone hoops piled atop each other. All three had plenty of bare skin, sometimes with things inlaid in it: the young woman had strips of what seemed to be green and brown snakeskin sewn from shoulder to wrist, and the older one the same in scarlet and silver.

  The man had two great beetles, one on each hand. The centers of the shiny carapaces had been fused to the backs of his hands, so the legs waved in the air while the mandibles roved back and forth as the heads turned. From time to time he raised a hand to his neck and let a beetle strike, shuddering at whatever substance the bite pumped into the vein there.

  The older woman waved at the water.

  “Bathe now,” she said shortly. “Safe.”

  Everyone else waded into the pool, shedding clothing with rapidity. Except for the twins, Essa noted. She made for the nearby bushes herself and finally satisfied her urgent need while Yadi and Skiff splashed each other, barking and giggling. Then Essa dropped the reeking, salty bundle of her clothing on the shore and swayed her way past the scowling twins and into the water, feeling cold, hard rock underfoot, the give of gravel where it had clustered in ridges and pockets while the water continued on into its green-fringed escape.

  She ignored everything and plunged directly under, the cold smacking her in the face with delicious chill, washing away the fevered heat the sun had enforced on her skin.

  When she came up for air, pulling sodden hair away from her face and licking water drops from her lips, the twins were arguing with the guides and the dripping maestra, who stood submerged to the middle of her thighs, arms folded and adamant.

  “We’re supposed first to follow them without question and now get naked in a pool?” one twin exclaimed.

  The man with beetles on the backs of his hands kissed one beetle, then the other. He raised his head to mumble through venom-puffed lips, “You smell bad and will offend people.”

  Essa swept her arms back and pulled herself deeper into the water, still facing the shore and the argument.

  “Get in and wash the stink off,” the maestra said wearily. “I’ll watch.” When the other twin started to say something, she held up a hand, using Merchant handspeak despite the watching guides. Essa froze, her thoughts more chilling than the water could ever be. The maestra considered the rude behavior of the twins that dangerous—so dangerous it warranted giving up secrets. The maestra didn’t know what sort of people they might be meeting. What they might do if they took offense. The maestra, the twins, Skiff, even Essa were all totally dependent on the guides’ village’s goodwill. Shivering, Essa raked her hands through her hair and waded out to keep the maestra company.

  By the time the twins exited the water, two other people had appeared, both of them younger than Essa, wide-eyed and alert but utterly silent. They carried baskets, three stacked one atop the other, which they put on the bank, removing the wicker lids so the traders could see the fabric inside.

  “A change of clothes,” the maestra guessed, and a glance at the oldest guide—who had identified herself as Tria, the man as Sfeo, and the other woman as Hana—confirmed this.

  The outfits were a soft cloth, gauzy and loosewoven, of a kind Essa had never seen before, covered with lacy patterns that the maestra said were made with wax and dye, her tone light but pedantic, as though in the face of everything she was determined to maintain the Merchantly values of teaching things to the juniors in her care.

  Essa tried to take everything in, despite the sensation that the boat still swayed underfoot—would it ever leave her? It was accompanied by the feeling that sleep was creeping up on her, was lurking in the corners of her eyes.

  She yawned, shrugging on the blue and green flowery fabric, and looked at Skiff, who stood staring down at herself, expression bemused. It was probably the nicest thing the girl had ever worn—she was one of the duke’s dog handlers, supposed to be taking three culls from his kennels down to Sugarport to trade with a breeder there. Yadi had been the only dog to survive. It nuzzled the girl’s palm, and she glanced up, startled, to meet Essa’s stare, then looked dow
n at her hands.

  Another girl brought a green ointment, its smell citrus and mint, and motioned at Essa to apply it. As she rubbed it into her skin, the omnipresent gnats and mosquitoes relented. She wrung water again out of her hair and followed, much cooler, behind the maestra and the twins as they trailed the guides. Given how quickly the robes had appeared, the village had to be close.

  The narrow path zigzagged up a hill, or rather a mountain, she decided as they continued. Then it gave way to a flat plateau, and buildings among the towering jungle trees.

  The buildings were unlike Tabat’s brick and tile. These looked as though they had been grown in place, and in many spots walls of vines sequestered porches or led in various directions. The smell of the leaves and flowers shifted every time paths intersected or approached one of the tiny bridges, most no more than a few feet wide, although there were several larger ones crossing the river that divided the village. As their footsteps echoed across one of the latter’s planks, the scent shifted from cinnamon’s warmth to a crisper floral and mint, and Essa realized these must be the equivalent of street signs.

  There had been plenty of birds on the walk earlier, but here there were hundreds, brightly colored as trade beads, from dozens of species, most eating from small suspended platforms or from the hanging baskets of blooming flowers beside each doorway and landmark. The composition of each basket varied, as individual as signs back home.

  Many plants bore enormous drooping flowers, the smell of the bell-shaped blossoms feathery light, faintly citron and sweet, and popular with the many hummingbirds. The tiny birds flitted between baskets like miniature rainbows gone rogue, pausing to sip and pose, watching the visitors with eyes like jet and amber and, once, bright turquoise.

  The group stopped in front of a building that, while it seemed just as organic as the rest, was grander in its dimensions. The trunk of an ancient dead tree that extended far up into the canopy hosted it, and formed a good third of the space inside. They were led down halls carved into the wood; painted vines and flowers flickered in the light of the candle their guide held.