The Burning City

by Larry Niven

  He bought half a dozen ripe tangerines in the Orangetown market. Mother's Mother had liked those when she could get them. He took them to Ruby Fishhawk's wagon. She didn't hesitate before inviting him into the wagon box tent for tea. It was automatic to take off his boots before going in. He'd learned that much.

  Ruby fussed with tea things, poured a cup, and sat on a cushion across from Whandall. "Now. What is this about?"

  "I need help," Whandall said. "I don't know anything about girls."

  "A boy your age? I don't believe it," Ruby said. She grinned to make it clear what she thought.

  "Girls here," Whandall said. "And Willow."

  "Willow. Oh. Yes, of course. I keep forgetting that you're Lordkin."

  "Forgetting?" Whandall leered out of a rainbow-colored snake.

  "Well, it's more I forget what Lordkin are," Ruby said. "And you're not like the ones I remember. Well, usually you aren't. The way you went after that terror bird, now that's how I remember Lordkin. Fearless. Strong. When I was a girl I used to wonder about Lordkin men, what it would be like to have a protector like you." She grinned. "That was a long time ago. You like Willow, do you?"

  "Yes." Whandall found it hard to speak about Willow. What could he say? "She's the most beautiful woman I ever saw."

  "My. Have you told her that?"

  "No."

  "Why don't you?"

  "I don't know how."

  "You just told me," Ruby said. She chuckled. "Whandall, are you asking me how to court her?"

  "What does court mean? Like flirt?"

  "Well, courting is serious flirting," Ruby said. "If a boy only wants a girl's attention, he flirts. If he's thinking of marriage, he goes courting."

  Whandall digested that. "Is that what girls do too? Flirting isn't serious? Courting is?"

  "Well, yes. It's a little more complicated than that, but yes."

  "Then I want to know how to court her."

  "You can't," Ruby said. "No, wait, you're the only one who could, and she knows that, and girls like to think they have a choice. They usually don't, but they like to think they do."

  Whandall repeated what he almost understood. "Why am I the only one who can court her?"

  "She doesn't have a dowry." Ruby reached over and poured more tea. "That won't matter to you, but it will to all the other boys."

  "Yes! What's a dowry?"

  Ruby grinned mysteriously. "A dowry is a fortune. Money. A wagon. Rugs. Things girls bring to a marriage, Whandall."

  "You mean boys court girls for what they own?" Whandall was being shown a whole new evil. "Lordkin would never do that!"

  "They wouldn't, would they?" Ruby said, "I'd forgotten that too. The boys here don't think that way. Think on it, Whandall. A dowry belongs to the woman! If her husband mistreats her or throws her out, she takes it back with her. Ideally it will be enough to live on, to support any children she might have. And a husband thinks hard about getting rid of his wife if it means he has to hire out as a laborer." She laughed. "I had to have it explained to me, you know. Kinless don't think that way either. A girl's dowry in Tep's Town, some Lordkin buck would gather it:"

  "Oh-"

  "Not you, dear. We don't have kinless and Lordkin here."

  "That's what Carter says." Whandall mused. "What does Willow need to make a dowry?"

  "A wagon and team, if she's going to live on the road. Money. Clothes. Rugs. The more the better, Whandall."

  "The wagon is hers," Whandall said. "It always was, but I guess she doesn't know that. If she has a dowry, anyone can court her?"

  "Well," Ruby said, looking at Whandall's thick arms and bulging muscles, "they can, but some will be afraid to as long as they think you're involved. But that's all right, Whandall. Willow will understand that." She chuckled. "Of course any boy might find his courage. And Willow is a lovely girl."

  "What do I do after she has her dowry?"

  "Give her presents-"

  "I did. A dress, and a necklace. She thanked me, but she never wore them."

  "Did you ask her to wear them for you?"

  "No-"

  "Lund's sake, boy!"

  "But-"

  "You want her to wear them for someone else?"

  "No!"

  "Well, then, you have to ask her," Ruby said. "Whandall, Willow grew up kinless. Kinless never show anyone what they have. It took me a year before I wore my nicest clothes outside the wagon tent! It's not something you think about; it's just the way kinless live."

  Kinless were drab; he'd thought it was their nature. Now he began to understand. "And if I ask her to wear the things I bought her, and she says no?"

  "You'll know you need to do some more courting," Ruby said. She winked. "Give her a little time, Whandall."

  "I will," Whandall said, but as he walked back to his-Willow's- wagon, he saw Orange Blossom smiling at him, and two other girls sat with their legs showing, and he wondered just how long he could wait. It had been hard, learning to be a Lordkin, but at least he'd understood what he wanted to be.

  Supper was ready when he got to the wagon, and then Hickamore wanted a story. There was no chance to talk to the Ropewalkers and Millers.

  Chapter 44

  Orangetown wasn't truly a pass, but more a level spot on the way up to the high country beyond. The next two days led steeply up, with no good place to make camp. Everyone had to help ease the wagons through stony fields. The hills rose steeply to each side and ahead, and all were covered with brilliant orange flowers. Whandall had never seen anything like them.

  "Beautiful," he said.

  Kettle Belly grunted and put his shoulder to the other wheel of the Fish-hawk wagon. "Ready! Heave!" Together they lifted the wagon wheel out of the hole. "The flowers are pretty enough, but there's another thing I like about them," Kettle Belly said. "They're too low to hide anyone sneaking up on us. Out here we don't have to worry too much about bandits, and tonight we can be in a safe campsite. I think we'll stop there to rest up." He waved his arm to indicate the trail ahead. "After that, though, we'll be back in scrub oak and chaparral, and rocks. There's bandits out there-I can smell them."

  "You can smell bandits?" Whandall could have used that talent in Tep's Town!

  "Well, maybe not. But Hickamore can. A good wizard can give warning, and Hickamore's good. Blast! Now Ironfoot's wagon is stuck-"

  "Kettle Belly!"

  The caravan chief looked around at Whandall's horrified shout. He said, "Ah."

  Moving among the mountains, grayed by distance, was a vastness built to their mountains' own scale. Its legs were as tail as redwoods, but so wide that they looked stumpy. Its torso was another mountain. A forest of hair, piebald brown and white, hung down all around it. Ears bigger than any sail. An arm ... a boneless arm where a nose might have been, lifted and fell as the ... god turned to study them.

  "It's Behemoth," Kettle Belly said. "It won't come any closer. Nobody's ever seen Behemoth close. Give me a shoulder here, Whandall."

  Whandall set back to work. From time to time he looked up at Behemoth moving among the mountains, until the moment when he looked up and the beast god was gone.

  The road became steeper, then leveled off. Whandall was glad of it. He and the blacksmith and Kettle Belly were the strongest men in the wagon train, and sometimes it took all three of them to get a heavy wagon over a bad place. "I'll be glad when this day is over," Whandall told Kettle Belly.

  Kettle Belly glanced up at the sun. "Two hours and a little more. Only one place to camp tonight," he said. "Four! Run ahead and tell the scouts we'll camp at Coyote's Den. Not that they won't know it."

  "All right, Dad!"

  "Coyote's Den?" Whandall asked.

  "The road forks just up ahead. The right-hand branch goes uphill. We'll take that one." Kettle Belly grinned as Whandall groaned. "Not too steep, and it's a good road. The Spotted Coyotes see to that. They've made a good place to camp, too. Of course they had to."

  Whandall frowned the quest
ion Kettle Belly had expected.

  "They had to because there aren't enough of them to be tax collectors without giving some service," Kettle Belly said. "Look around you. Nothing here but some pasturage, and not a lot of that. Over there, beyond that ridge, there's some better land, but no one ever goes that far off the Hemp Road. For some reason the Spotted Coyote tribe has to live here, something about instructions from their god."

  "He told them to live here but he didn't give them anything to live on?" Whandall asked. "What does he do for them?"

  "Beats me," Kettle Belly said. "Coyote's a strange one. Nobody really knows what he wants. Anyway, the Spotted Coyotes made the best of it. They found a big ring of boulders, and over the years they've made it into a rest stop. Here we go; that's the fork."

  Kettle Belly's number three son ran out with a long curved cow horn. "Can I do it?" he asked excitedly.

  "Sure."

  Number Three blew six long blasts on the horn.

  "That tells the Spotted Coyotes how many of us to fix dinner for," Kettle Belly said. "Thai's how it works. You tell them you're coming, and they cook up stew to be ready when we get up to the top. They teed us and watch out for us." Kettle Belly's lips pursed into a small tight grin. "And they don't charge any more than they ask for just to pass through their territory."

  "Are there a lot?" Whandall asked.

  "No, not really, but enough you wouldn't want to fight them, and you really wouldn't want them making the road worse than the winter rains do."

  "Toronexti," Whandall said. When Kettle Belly gave him a blank look, Whandall tried to explain. "Tax collectors. Toll takers. But they never give you anything for what they take."

  "So you organize a lot of people and go kill them," Kettle Belly said. "That's what we do. If a town gets mean enough, we get all the wagoneers together and go burn them out."

  Whandall thought about trying to organize enough Lordkin to destroy the Toronexti. Nobody knew how many they were, where they lived, nor even who they were behind those masks. They were backed by the Lords, it was said. Nobody could fight the Lordsmen.

  The top of the hill was a natural fortress. A spring bubbled up in the center of a ring of boulders that formed a natural castle large enough to enclose a wagon train and all the livestock. Over the years the Spotted Coyote clan had smoothed out the area inside the boulder circle and built corrals and pens and shelters, and big cook fire rings. The smells of bison stew wafted to the wagon train.

  Kettle Belly and a small dark man about his age shouted and gesticulated at each other. Whandall thought they were pretending at passion as they went through a ritual. Kettle Belly would throw up his hands in disgust, and the Spotted Coyote leader would gesture outside the circle, grinning as he pointed out a small column of smoke a couple of miles away. Kettle Belly looked worried, then shouted again.... Eventually they came to some agreement, and money changed hands. By then dusk was falling and the stew was done.

  They ate dinner around a big campfire. Logs had been arranged in a circle to form seats and backrests. It was pleasant to sit back and relax with the prospect of a night's sleep without need for guard duty.

  Whandall pleaded exhaustion when Hickamore wanted to talk about Morth of Atlantis, and soon the wizard was deep in conversation with a man twice his age who wore a mantle of wolf skin. A Spotted Coyote boy came around to fill everyone's cup from a goatskin of wine. Whandall sipped appreciatively. It was not as good as the wine Kettle Belly kept in his wagon, but it was smoother and more pleasant than anything that made its way to Tep's Town.

  A pleasant evening. Willow sat next to him, tired because the girls had

  been hopping on and oft the wagon all day us I he hills became steeper and they had to get out and push.

  Flirting. Courtship is serious flirting. Flirting meant being amusing and funny, and Whandall didn't know how. He looked around to see how others were doing it.

  Not far away Carver sat with Starfall, the blacksmith's dark-haired daughter. They sat very close together. Whandall couldn't hear what they were saying, but Starfall seemed to be doing all the talking as Carver sat listening attentively. That seemed like something Whandall could do, but Willow wasn't saying anything!

  "Did you like the dress I bought you?" Whandall asked.

  "Yes, very much. Thank you."

  "You don't ever wear it."

  "Well, I wouldn't want to wear it here, with all these strangers," Willow said.

  "Kettle Belly says they're safe," Whandall said. "They're not-" He cut himself off.

  "Thieves?"

  "I was going to say 'gatherers.' "

  "Oh." She looked at him with wide eyes. "I keep forgetting," she said.

  "That's good."

  She smiled softly. "Be right back."

  Carver was still listening to Starfall. She moved closer to him. Whandall had no trouble imagining her warmth against his side. The boy said something, and Starfall laughed appreciatively. Other couples were talking softly, boys smiling, girls laughing. If only he could hear what they were saying!

  Willow returned. She was wearing the blue dress Whandall had bought, and the gold-and-black onyx necklace.

  "That's-wonderful," he said, settling for that, although he wanted better words. "I knew it would look good on you."

  "And it does?"

  "Better than I thought," Whandall said.

  Her smile was haunting. She sat next to him, not as close as Carver was sitting to Starfall, but she had never been so close. He could feel her warmth radiating against his side, warmer than the fire. They didn't talk for a long time. Whandall kept trying to think of something clever to say, but nothing came to mind, and it was enough just to be close to her.

  When Carver and Starfall left the firelight circle and went off into darkness, Whandall thought Willow was about to say something, but she didn't. He imagined standing up, taking her hand and leading her to privacy and secret places, hut he did nothing, and he wondered if his legs had forgotten how to obey him.

  Suddenly she smiled at him and touched his lace. Her touch was light and smooth, as she ran her fingers along his tattoo, down his arm, still smiling. Then she sat close to him, and they stared at the fire.

  Carver had a sappy grin at breakfast. It faded when he went to hitch up the mare. The pony reared and tried to trample him. Whandall watched, frowning, as Carver shouted at the pony. Someone in the next wagon party laughed loudly.

  A few minutes later, Greathand the blacksmith came to Whandall's wagon. He wasn't unfriendly, but he seemed preoccupied. "Need a favor," he said. "Like to have Willow bring one of your ponies over to my wagon."

  "Sure. Why?"

  "Rather not say until I know," Greathand said. "If you don't mind." The blacksmith seldom asked favors. Whandall was pretty sure no one ever refused him when he did ask. And there was no reason not to do it. Was there?

  Willow had heard. She led the smaller of the horned ponies over to them. Whandall had to look twice: it was as large as the larger one had been the day before, and without the black star marking on its forehead Whandall would not have known which one it was.

  The ponies changed size sometimes. Whandall had asked Hickamore about it. "Magic changes along the road," the wizard had told him, then asked how Morth cured skin diseases.

  Willow followed Greathand toward his wagon. Whandall watched her lead the pony for a moment and remembered her smiles last night. But there was work to do loading the wagon.

  When Willow came back, Greathand and Kettle Belly were behind her. They waited until she led the pony back to join the others. Greathand stood back and let Kettle Belly talk for him. "These aren't your kin, but it's your wagon," he said.

  "Willow's wagon," Whandall said.

  "You're in charge," Greathand said. "That boy Carver doesn't have a father, and he's in your wagon!"

  "Yes," Whandall said. It sounded like an admission but Whandall didn't know why.

  "So we can talk to you about him," Kettle Belly sai
d. "What's his situation? Profession?"

  "He knows how to make rope, and sell it," Whandall said. "Why?"

  Greathand frowned. "Why are you-?"

  Kettle Belly held up a hand. "Ropewalking. Expensive to set up, but a ropewalk makes good money," he said. "Have to have a place to do it, though. No! on a wagon train." He turned to Greathand. "Starfall doesn't have a wagon yet. Want to think about a different dowry?"

  "She can't take back a ropewalk!" Greathand said. "But she didn't want a wagon anyway. She's always talked about living in a town year-round."

  "Well, we can work that out, then," Kettle Belly said. "How old is the boy?"

  "Sixteen, I think," Whandall said.

  "Little young," Kettle Belly said.

  "Starfall's only fifteen," Greathand growled. "If the damn fool hadn't made such a big thing about not being able to harness that mare, maybe- anyway, Starfall's all excited, so I guess it's got to be. Whandall, we'll talk when we're over the pass, discuss arrangements, where the kids want to live, what it takes to set up a ropewalk. You tell Carver he's a damn lucky boy." The blacksmith went away, still muttering under his breath.

  Whandall frowned at Kettle Belly. "I saw Carver and Starfall go off together, but they weren't the only ones last night!"

  "They're the only ones that all of a sudden can't harness one-horns," Kettle Belly said. He grinned. "I always thought you were putting me on, but you really don't know!" He laughed at his enormous joke. "Whandall, everyone knows it! Nobody but a virgin can harness a one-horn. Yesterday Carver could harness the mare and Starfall didn't have any trouble with the stallions. This morning-"

  "I've been stupid." Many cryptic things were becoming plain.

  "Doesn't work that way in the Valley of Smokes, then?"

  "No." Whandall thought about it. "Ponies are smaller, don't have real horns. It surprised us when ours grew those big horns. Magic! Kettle Belly, what happens now?"

  "Well, you heard. Greathand will have to come up with another kind of dowry. I don't know if he can afford a ropewalk-he's got Fawn to marry off too-but he'll do what he can. Carver have any shares in your stock?"