Broken Devices

by Karen Myers

She pointed at the lights on the walls. “The chains seem to be devices, like those lamps are. We can’t take them off. Some of us seem to have other devices that let us change part of our physical form. Some of us, at least, are stronger than ordinary wizards, once we’re trained—don’t know if that’s intrinsic to us or because of the chain, or both.”

  She looked at the rapt faces standing before here. “And lots of us are already dead, some from the disaster that followed the Imperial Security search decree, but many for other reasons. There’s a level in the prisons there, where I’ve spent the last two days, filled with empty chains and dead chained wizards, laid out on tables like so many broken devices.”

  Char Dami, Char Nojuk’s daughter spoke for the first time. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it.”

  “I’m here because I was summoned, we were summoned… But yes, I want to know who made us and threw us unprepared into chaos. And some of us have already gone bad and killed hundreds and had to be stopped. Those deaths are on the head of our maker, too. I want to know why. Yes, I do.”

  She stopped when Najud put a hand on her arm. “Sorry, I have a serious desire to meet my maker and have a few words with him.” A half-smile flickered across her face. “But that may never happen, and in the meantime I am also a wizard, like my husband, and we want to help fix this situation in Kigali, if we can.”

  “Will you help us with that, samkatju-chi?” Najud asked.

  Char Nojuk said, “I’ll need to consult with others. Don’t expect anything to happen right away.”

  Penrys laughed. “Whoever’s watching us is welcome to come out into the open to talk, or just to keep watching. If you can, you might warn the ones watching the chained wizard compound tomorrow morning. Things might get lively there.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “Well, no one’s killed us yet. That must be progress.”

  Najud’s sarcastic comment as they walked made it hard for Penrys to keep her countenance. Munraz failed altogether, and Najud frowned at his grin. They’d yielded to their apprentice’s pleading to come with them, though Penrys was already having second thoughts about it.

  Char Dazu had joined them at the gates of Talqatin’s compound when they left. “Someone from our family should be there as a witness.” When Najud asked if his uncle had agreed, he just shrugged.

  Another person to keep track of, to keep from getting hurt if something goes very wrong. Penrys wished she’d crept out with Najud at dawn and gone to the chained wizards’ compound directly without all this fuss.

  Zep Pangwit had looked sourly at Char Dazu, clearly suspecting what he was, but for a wonder he’d kept his mouth shut as he escorted them back to Tun Jeju. Maybe he’s feeling out of his depth, too.

  At the steps to the Imperial Security building, Penrys glanced down the street and spotted the same two watchers that she’d spoken to the day before. She lifted a finger to them to tell them to wait briefly, then followed Zep Pangwit inside—some sort of briefing from Tun Jeju before they continued, he’d told them. Najud and Munraz stayed outside with Char Dazu who very clearly had no intent of entering the building.

  The notju was waiting in an anteroom off the main entrance, a sparsely furnished room with a few chairs and a table near the entrance. Gen Jongto and the eight wizards from Rasesni, Ndant, and Ellech were there with him, to Penrys’s surprise—all of them standing as if they’d been waiting for the Zannib delegation. This can’t be good. Only Gen Jongto should be here.

  Tun Jeju greeted her, then walked over to the table and opened a wooden box there. He lifted out an artificial wood and silk imitation of a leafy branch, like the one he had himself carried in Neshilik when negotiating with the Rasesni.

  “If you’re going to represent us as a neutral party, you’ll need a leipum for parley. Everyone should recognize what it signifies.”

  He bowed slightly and handed it to her. She took it from him distractedly, her eye traveling to the others in the room.

  “Um, yes…” He coughed politely. “There was some discussion yesterday evening about the wisdom of sending just the Zannib wizards into a possibly unfriendly situation. In fact, there was some insistence on… spreading the risk. From the entire group of our foreign guests.”

  He looked at them all blandly, and Penrys blinked at the picture she conjured up of this meeting they’d missed while visiting the Char family compound.

  “I see. Am I to understand that everyone is planning to come along today?” Penrys tried to keep the dismay out of her voice. Aside from Munraz, Najud and she were the youngest wizards there. Would they follow her orders?

  Tun Jeju fixed his eye on each of the wizards in the room as he answered. “I have made it very clear that I have designated you as my representative in these initial contacts. Only you. That is the condition to which they have agreed in order to participate.”

  Penrys said, “Those wizards out there are pretty shy, notju-chi, both groups—and with reason. If I saw all of us coming, I might go hide, too.”

  There were smiles from Chosmod and Mrigasba at her attempt to give in gracefully. She knew she had little choice in the matter. No smiles from the Ndant woman, though, or her two attendants.

  Tun Jeju spoke without raising his voice, but his authority held the attention of everyone in the room. “Gen Jongto is my witness, as all of you are witnesses for your countries. We value your advice, but Kigali policy is ours to set, and Penrys here is our initial representative for this.”

  She cleared her throat. “Um, now would probably be a good time to mention that we’ve brought along a witness for the Kigali wizard community, too. It would be nice if he weren’t frightened away, either.”

  Gen Jongto raised an eyebrow, but Tun Jeju had no visible reaction at all. “All the better. I will speak with you when you return.”

  He nodded his head and walked out, leaving Penrys staring at her augmented party, each of them in characteristic national clothing. No chance of something inconspicuous now.

  “The five prisoners have been released, Penrys-chi,” Gen Jongto said, “and will be coming with us. They’ll bring them to us outside.”

  He waved her forward and she preceded him through the door in Tun Jeju’s wake. She forged a light link to the wizards behind her to keep track of them, but refused to look backward to see if they were following.

  Carrying the leipum in one hand, she opened the outer door of building with the other and pushed her way back out into the early morning sunlight. She was relieved to find the prisoners from yesterday waiting for them there, in the custody of half a dozen guards and held apart from Najud, Munraz, and Char Dazu. They were clean and dressed, but their chains were visible and hands raised to throats made it clear how uncomfortable that was to them. They stood in a widely spaced group, their chains preventing them from bunching up.

  Penrys pivoted on her heel and spoke to Gen Jongto. “It’s one thing for me to expose my chain, but not them—they’ve been hiding theirs for years. Haven’t you got something we can use to cover them before we march them through the city?”

  He ducked back into the building, and then the rest of the wizards came down the steps to join her.

  Najud raised both eyebrows, and she shrugged helplessly at him. A quick glance down the street confirmed that their two guides were still waiting.

  Gen Jongto came back out with a small pile of brown fabric which he handed to Penrys.

  She unfolded the top piece—a square of plain material, large enough to fold diagonally like a scarf. “These will do fine, thanks.”

  She walked through the screen of guards and presented each of yesterday’s students with a cloth, at arm’s length. “Wrap it around your chain, if you want to,” she told them.

  Gen Jongto had followed her and she took a breath—she knew the next request would meet resistance. “We can let the guards go, Gen-chi.”

  “And if they run?”

  “If they run, they run. But we’re taking them to the one place th
at’s trying to take care of them, so I expect they’ll stay at least long enough to look that over.” She spoke loudly enough that all of the erstwhile prisoners could hear her. “Besides, there’s no shortage of other chained wizards in the area—can’t lock them all up.”

  Gen Jongto hesitated.

  “We don’t need the guards. They’re not prisoners.” Penrys waved her leipum lightly and the silk flowers rustled. “Isn’t this within my authority?”

  He agreed, reluctantly, and spoke to the commander of the guard party. He had to do it twice before he was believed, and the guards withdrew into the building.

  “All right, everyone,” Penrys called. “Let me just confer with our guide, and we’ll get started.”

  She walked away, expanding her link to keep tabs on all of them. What a mess.

  Approaching the older woman, she stopped when she felt the beginning of the pressure from the chain that would become pain if she got closer. The leipum which she’d forgotten she was carrying attracted their attention. It was clear that they recognized its significance.

  “I thought we could do this more discretely and with fewer people, but apparently I was naive in my hope. Those are the foreign wizards—come as witnesses—as well as the prisoners, my husband and our apprentice, and a local wizard, also a witness. Oh, and a witness for Imperial Security.”

  The woman swallowed. “He told me to bring you, but he didn’t expect…” She turned to the young man. “Better warn him, Am Limzu. About twenty folk, all kinds. Under the leipum, tell him.”

  He looked at her reluctantly. “Go along, run off now,” she confirmed. “I’ll be fine.”

  “How about some names?” Penrys prodded.

  “I’m Kit Hachi, and our leader is Rin Tsugo.” She eyed the motley crowd up the street. “We’re going to walk all the way with that… flock of exotics?”

  Penrys commented, “All we need is a dancing bear and a couple of jugglers, don’t you think? A drummer or two?”

  A snort from Kit Hachi confirmed her observation.

  “Come with me,” Penrys said. “Hope you can remember all the names. And find us a route that’s a little less public.”

  They avoided the largest avenues but there were still busy crowds along the streets Kit Hachi selected. The chained ones couldn’t walk close to each other, so they were spread out among the others, and the foreign wizards stuck together by country.

  They almost lost Najud in a book district, until Penrys sent Munraz back with a message that they wouldn’t wait for him. She didn’t want to just bespeak him—ever since they left the government district of Mentsek Tep she’d felt an ill-defined pressure building up around them.

  At first she’d thought it was the tail they were collecting, the odds and ends of people that trailed behind them, wondering what to make of all these foreigners and the woman with a leipum in front headed east to the industrial district. They were polite—Penrys suspected the presence of Gen Jongto in his brown robe had something to do with that.

  Then she realized what it reminded her of—the temple school of mages that the Rasesni had set up in Neshilik, when she was teaching the wizards there how to attack a more powerful wizard, like herself. Cautiously she lifted her shield and extended her reach out a few blocks to see what was there.

  Ah. That was the problem. Several dozen wizards, and three chained ones, all keeping pace on the streets to either side. As she watched, a few more joined them. Each mind was busy trying to look at her party and make sense of them.

  It was like the roaring of a disturbed ocean against a rocky shore, and just as irritating. Finally she raised her hand and halted them all, right in the middle of the street.

  She dropped her shield altogether and bespoke every wizard in several blocks. *Back off, please. You’re welcome to follow, if you wish. We’re headed to Chankau Tep and, after we conclude our business there, perhaps there would be someplace we could speak to each other nearby?* She included a mental image of the leipum in her hand and the brown-robed Gen Jongto.

  There was a sense of a shocked silence, and she resumed her shield. She nodded in satisfaction. “There, that ought to hold them for a while.”

  Behind her she could hear Najud explaining to Gen Jongto in an undertone. Everyone else with her had heard the mind-speech directly.

  After that, the remainder of the walk passed uneventfully except for the stares of the ordinary citizens of the city.

  That Tun Jeju is a sly one—he could have arranged something discrete, but he set this theatrical display up deliberately. Pushing the local wizards before they can plan something, rubbing their noses in the reality that they can’t hide any more. Dangerous, and we’re bait.

  What happens if his foreign guests are attacked? So sorry, we lost your emissary, send another? On the other hand, if not us, then who? Someone’s got to winkle out the locals so he can talk to them, get him a foothold in that community. He can’t afford to lose the dignity of his office fumbling with that. I guess I can.

  The buildings changed character gradually until manufacturing and wholesale merchants outnumbered the remaining retail businesses. The residential compounds that she could see on the cross streets looked dingy, and many were not in good repair. Strange stenches began to appear—scorched iron, nose-wrinkling sulfurous stinks, and something that dried the mouth when you tried to avoid breathing through your nose.

  The crowds of following wizards, which included a few chained ones, numbered more than a hundred by the time Kit Hachi paused on one corner and held up her hand.

  “That’s our gewengep,” she said, looking diagonally across both streets, “the whole block. It was empty before Rin Tsugo took it over for the brotherhood.”

  It looked like any compound to Penrys, its gate shut and anonymous—no symbol engraved on the wall by the gate. When she scanned inside, however, it blazed. There must be thirty or more powerful wizards there. And several outside the perimeter, she was amused to see, just in case something happened.

  “How do you want this to work?” Penrys asked.

  “Maybe I better go find out,” Kit Hachi said. “Will you wait here a few minutes, likatchok-chi?”

  The ambassadorial title was given half-jokingly, but half in earnest, too, and the woman made a little bow before crossing the street kitty-corner to the compound and its gate.

  “We’re here” Penrys announced. “They’ll let us know how they want to handle it. They weren’t expecting so many.”

  Chosmod tilted his head to the unseen wizards in the next streets. “What do they want?”

  “I’m sure they’re going to tell us,” Penrys said, “but one problem at a time.”

  Char Dazu walked up to her. “Will they let all of us in?”

  “Don’t know, but I think they’d be fools not to. If they look, they can see that mob of wizards out there. By comparison, we’re not nearly as threatening.”

  He hesitated, then said. “Could you send them another message, Penrys-chi? Tell them I’m here for the Char family as a witness. Rightly it should be my uncle, but it should still help.”

  She glanced at him. “And don’t you wish you’d told him what you were going to do this morning, eh?” She grinned at his expression.

  *We look forward to speaking with you after we’re done here. We have Char Dazu serving as a witness for the Char family, and he will share his observations with you, too.* Once again, she included the image of the leipum and Gen Jongto in his official brown robes. *We’re eager to meet some of the wizards of Kigali. Thank you for your patience.*

  Movement at the gate of the compound caught her eye. Kit Hachi stood in the gap of the open gateway and beckoned her in.

  CHAPTER 13

  Rin Tsugo stood at the back of the inner courtyard of the compound, on the steps of the central building where most of the group activities took place. The compound had once housed a clothing manufactory, and its large workrooms were well-suited to gatherings of people who needed a certa
in amount of space between them.

  His vision of the street beyond the open gateway was restricted, but Am Limzu and then Kit Hachi had told him what to expect. Behind him, through the open doorway to the hall, he could hear the hasty preparations for receiving so many guests. He wished they had better clothing, but that hadn’t been high on the list for survival, and it was too late now.

  Dar Datsu was with the visitors, and Goi Ofa, which relieved some of his concerns, but there were three others to be taken in, new ones, and he’d summoned his chirmurno to join him to look after them.

  Sek Seto left his guard post at the gate to stand with Kit Hachi, and their bow, directed to someone on the street outside, alerted him. A quick scan around the walls confirmed that the gewengep was surrounded by wizards, but they’d stopped moving in—only the official visitors entered his gates.

  He’d noted the chained wizards in the waiting crowd, too—everyone trying to hide from everyone else, like his first weeks hiding in Yenit Ping while he’d tried to come to terms with what he was, if not the who. The who was gone entirely, from the day he’d stolen a name to use in place of his lost one. Maybe now there’d be some answers for him and those in his charge. If they survived this visit.

  The first one in was the chained woman with the leipum. She was in Zannib clothing, right enough, but no Zan. She looked a bit like Dar Datsu—not very tall, brown-haired, somewhat round of face. Friendly and confidant—well, she must be, walking all over Yenit Ping with that chain exposed. Confidant, or foolhardy.

  The Zannib man beside her must be this husband he’d heard about. I bet there’s a story there. A younger Zan trailed them. She paused to let a shaibo join her so that they entered the courtyard together.

  A show of power, or a gesture of neutrality? What can Imperial Security want from us that’s anything but a threat?

  They continued forward into the middle of the courtyard to let the rest of them in. The woman caught his eye and smiled at him. He nodded to her cautiously.