Liavek 7

by Emma Bull

  Such was the authority of her voice that Ovar came and knelt before her and whispered, "Yes, Eminence," in a voice that seemed to spring out of his left pinkie, the one that is called the swear finger in Ka Zhir though he meant no disrespect by it at all.

  "You are a player?" the redoubtable Zadir asked.

  "A player, Eminence?" the finger asked.

  "An actor, a mountebank."

  "A puppeteer," the swear finger replied. It thought it impolitic to mention that Ovar also grew dates.

  "Can you throw your voice anywhere?" asked the redoubtable Zadir.

  "Anywhere," said the candle sconce.

  "Anywhere," said the Tichenese carpet.

  "Anywhere," said the three dead monkeys one right after another.

  Zadir turned to the advisors. "Do you agree that we must negotiate with Ka Zhir?"

  Half of the advisors nodded yes, the other half no. Only one remained mute on the point. Zadir, who longed to collect those exotic Zhir beasts, cast the deciding vote.

  "And it is the law that unless the royal doctor proclaims my husband dead, he is still alive?" Zadir asked.

  On this point they all agreed.

  "Then," said the redoubtable Zadir, "I can certainly help, though I must first extract from you a promise."

  "Anything," said the advisors and Ovar's left pinkie.

  "In writing," Zadir demanded.

  They found paper in Zzzozza's bathroom and proceeded to write down Zadir's request.

  After that the redoubtable Zadir dismissed them all, all but my uncle many times removed Ovar, and set to work. She slipped the filleting knife into Zzzozza's belly with an expertness the royal doctor would have envied had he been there to watch. She filled the cavity with sweet-smelling herbs: pandonum, cardenix, reedwort, and the hazy, odorous fresh trefeelium which was, by the greatest of luck, strewn alongside the Levar's bed, suggesting a phobia that even Zadir did not understand. Then she sewed him up again with large, ungainly black stitches, crossed with green when the black thread ran out. Needlework had never been one of her finer skills, as she was quick to remark to Ovar. She had been brought up along the borders of the Great Waste, with a boy's knowledge in her hands. Besides, she had women to do such stitchery for her now, though, as usual, they were nowhere to be found when needed.

  And while Ovar was quietly but quite efficiently sick behind the bathroom door, she eviscerated and stuffed the monkeys as well.

  •

  It was then, my Benevolencies, but a long hour past the time the advisors had removed the Levar from his throne. They returned to find Zadir patting the still-rigid Zzzozza on the head.

  "Welcome," said Zzzozza out of a mouth that never moved. But as he had never been much for articulation before, the advisors were not unduly disturbed. "I would go back and negotiate with Ka Zhir."

  The advisors picked up the unbending Levar and carried him back to the throne, followed in swift succession by my uncle many times removed Ovar and the redoubtable Zadir.

  "You may rise. I find your position—suitable," said the Levar, never altering for a moment his terrified expression, though no one commented upon it. Beside him Ovar smiled a strange stiff smile.

  The ambassador from Ka Zhir arose. He seemed quite pleased with himself, though he now walked with a peculiar shuffle, his limbs having sustained the Position of Broken Twigs longer than any living soul. Bowing low, till his bald, blue-washed head touched the floor, the ambassador said something in his own language to the floor, a customary greeting. Then he unbent slowly and stared into Zzzozza's unblinking eyes, translating.

  "I come from the court of the great king of Ka Zhir with greetings and hope of a satisfactory treaty."

  At that very moment, the royal doctor returned from Dashforth's side, entered the throne room, and swore. He took one look at the Levar's blanched face and staring white eyes and began to pronounce the ritual words of a Levar's death, being well practiced as he had spoken them twenty-five times already that year.

  At that very same moment, the wizard of the water spells reappeared, munching on both sides of his mustache at once, and enthusiastically chanting a spell he had found in one of his old study books.

  However, what none of them knew was that that very day was my uncle many times removed Ovar's luck day. He had chosen that time to present a plate of his best dates to the Levar hoping the free-hold gift might change his bad luck. His mother had had a short but agonizing labor, dying at the moment she had given birth. Ovar had planned to leave the dates and scamper home. He had not counted on the Levar's death. He had not counted on the doctor and the wizard. He had not counted on the Zhir ambassador. He had not counted on the redoubtable Zadir.

  No sooner had the ambassador mentioned the word "treaty" than the doctor spoke the syllable "dead." No sooner had the doctor said the expletive "dead" than the wizard spat out the sound "live."

  And the time of my uncle many times removed Ovar's mother's expiration coincided with them all.

  Luck magic was indeed loosed in that hall.

  With a flicker of surprise, the eyes of all three dead monkeys popped open and they scrambled stiffly onto Zzzozza's lap. Zzzozza himself woke as if from a deep sleep to find the grinning apes peering up at him. They all screamed.

  The screams shut up ambassador, doctor, and wizard at once, just at the anniversary of my uncle many times removed Ovar's actual birth.

  The monkeys keeled over, dead once more.

  So did Zzzozza.

  But it was an hour before anyone but the redoubtable Zadir noticed. In that hour, she had guided the Levar's hand to sign a shaky name on the treaty. Then at his own request, Zzzozza was taken off to his room feeling—as he said through clenched teeth—somewhat unwell.

  As for the redoubtable Zadir, she had what she wanted in writing. For the rest of her life she was in charge of the Levar's zoological park, with trapping rights in all of the treaty lands. Her cousin Andrazzi, because of one of her many Shift Dreams, also saw fit to gift Zadir with the ownership of six small rivers. The redoubtable Zadir used to meet the wizard and Ovar at one river or another on all the official holidays when the zoological park was closed. The bait they used on their lines were dates from Ovar's farm. But they never felt inclined to eat any of them. Of that, my Tremendousies, you can be sure.

  "An Act of Love" by Steven Brust, Gregory Frost, and Megan Lindholm

  1 THE PLAYERS

  ONCE THERE WAS a man called Imman Toriff Curihan Denbar ola Vedneigh, Vavasor of Heartstone and Bluesprings, Count of Dashif.

  He was born in the main house of the Dashif estate. The household consisted of: A cheery-eyed wet nurse who was his first playmate, although he hardly remembered her later; a pretty dark-haired cook and maid who spoke only in whispers; a butler with huge sideburns, who wasn't fast enough to keep the child Tori out of things he ought not to have been in; a bald-headed dark-skinned gardener who taught him hundreds of interesting things about weeds and willows; a mother who spoke less than the maid, but hummed a lot; and a father who sang him to sleep at night.

  Some three hundred and fifty years earlier, the land had been given to the first Count Dashforth for services rendered to the Levar. For generations before that, the ola Vedneigh family had been sorcerers. Tori's father continued in the tradition—devoting most of his energies to the sorts of small magics that would make his farmlands more productive. That is, he wouldn't destroy the locusts, but he would make his lands less attractive to them. He wouldn't force defective seeds to germinate, but he would discover which seeds were defective. He wouldn't control the weather, but he would determine the best time to plant.

  When Tori was fifteen, he invested his luck into a sterling silver belt buckle. When he was seventeen, he joined the Levar's Navy, where he learned something of the destructive ends of magic, and where he spent a brief stint in Tichen making reports on the size and composition of the Tichenese fleets.

  When he was nineteen, stationed at Minnow Island,
he fell in love with a local girl named Erina. His father didn't approve of the match, so they made plans to leave for Gold Harbor together. The Count of Dashif died then, so the plans were changed from elopement to a public wedding, with the announcement to occur as soon as a decent interval had passed.

  Before the announcement could take place, the new Count of Dashif's heart—or at any rate his eye—was stolen by Neelya, daughter of the Margrave of Foxhead. Dashif left Erina and married Neelya. Dashif didn't understand the blood of the ancient S'Rian race that ran almost pure in Erina's veins. He also didn't know that Erina had stopped chewing Worrynot. Erina never told Dashif that she was with child, or, later, that she had borne him a daughter, whom she was unable to support.

  Dashif and Neelya had two children. It was several months after the birth of the second, a boy, that Erina succeeded in stealing Dashif's silver belt buckle and destroying it exactly six months from his luck time.

  Dashif sickened, but did not die. When he recovered, no longer a sorcerer, Neelya had taken their children and left him. He made no effort to find them. Instead, he procured a pair of double-barreled flintlock pistols and used them to shoot Erina in broad daylight in a small market on Minnow Island.

  He never understood the change that took place in him then. He knew he'd been hurt, but he didn't understand why he felt no pain. He knew he should be angry, but he felt no more than a cold rationality.

  When he was arrested, a friend sent him a note wishing him luck. This struck Dashif as odd, and, thinking about it, he realized that he had no luck—Erina had taken it. His only hope, then, was to attach himself to someone who had a great deal of luck and could protect him. Who had more luck than the Regent for the Levar? With a brazenness that would become characteristic, Dashif showed those who arrested him his naval commission and discharge, and explained that he'd been working in secret for the Levar. The matter was referred to the Navy, where he had enough connections to achieve an interview with His Scarlet Eminence, the Regent, Resh. No one knows what took place during the interview, but at its end he was pardoned. He put his lands under the care of the gardener and moved into the Levar's Palace.

  For the next several years, he worked as the secret left hand of His Scarlet Eminence. His activities involved such things as extorting cooperation from a Tichenese emissary, engineering the massacre of several priests of a defunct faith, and stealing documents from a very dedicated Zhir agent named Brajii.

  And so things remained until a certain Jolesha came across his path, and Dashif found himself briefly communing with the spirit of the departed Erina, and, shortly thereafter, found Kaloo, and knew her to be his daughter.

  The Dashif who lived alone and cold, hiding from his pain, could no longer exist. There could have been some question as to what sort of Dashif would replace him, but Dashif was never one to ask such questions.

  •

  Kaloo put the finishing touches on cleaning her room, just in case.

  Dashif—she still couldn't, wouldn't think of him as her father—was expected to call soon. He had never actually been in her room, but she had learned lately to plan for all possibilities. And so she cleaned her room and kept it picked up. Daril, her foster mother, misunderstood the reasoning behind it, and so approved of it. Kaloo was beginning to think that Daril misunderstood most of her reasons, and probably had all her life.

  Usually, Dashif saw her in his chambers in the Levar's Palace. He would summon her, and she would go, up to the chambers that were as sterile and empty as Dashif's soul. The only objects there would be the few items he had set out for her magic instructions, and a small portrait of herself. The portrait embarrassed her and made her nervous. It was, she had decided, intended to have that effect upon her. Look about his chamber as she might, she could learn no more of her father or his past than this: that he knew she was his daughter and was determined to rule her as he ruled everything else that fell under his authority. And so he summoned her when he would, and taught her, not only magic, but the cultural things she had missed growing up as the daughter of an innkeeper: dance, music, drama, and the arts. As if she wasn't good enough for him the way she was.

  She slammed her hairbrush down, looked once more about the room. A bed, made up with a clean spread. A small dresser, a square of mirror. A woven rug. A chest to hold her garments. Nothing else. No ornaments, no vase of flowers, no stuffed dancer or toucan doll, none of the silly pictures she had drawn for T'Nar that had so pleased him, back in the days when she had sat upon his knee and thought of him as her father. If Dashif ever did chance to view her room, he would see that she had already learned one thing from him. He would find no clue to her here, no inkling of what she was. All he would ever know of her was the careful Kaloo she presented to him. Just as all she would ever know of him was Count Dashif.

  She heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Daril's. She knew that step, hitch, step, hitch stride of hers. Her children had been adults when T'Nar had brought Kaloo into her life. More of an age to be my grandmother than my mother, Kaloo thought. For an instant she wondered if it had been very hard for Daril to take on a squalling, sickly infant at that time of her life. But the thought made her feel indebted to Daril, so she stifled it. Daril had only done what she wanted to, taken in a girlchild to raise up to stir kettles and wait tables. No, Kaloo owed nothing to anyone.

  If Daril was coming up, then Dashif must be waiting below. Kaloo tried to sigh out her tension, but it didn't work. Her belly was knotted as it always was before one of their evenings together. Instead, she looked at herself in the glass. It was a small mirror, but still enough to see the difference Dashif had already wrought in her life. Her garments were no longer the loose, practical, long-wearing ones that Daril had once sewn for her. No, the silky flowered fabric had come from the Farlands and been sewn by one of Liavek's better tailors. Styled and sewn to Dashif's specifications, while Kaloo stood and was turned and pinned and measured as if she were a doll. Chosen by Dashif were the emerald clips that secured her dark hair, and the emerald at her throat had been in his family for many generations.

  He was probably standing below right now just as he had stood in the tailor's chambers. Red cloak flung back over one shoulder, white ruffles foaming down his chest, ignoring the nervous patrons of the Mug and Anchor as he waited for Kaloo. Reeking of danger, commanding respect even from the shaven-headed captains drinking below. The respect was something she approved of—grudgingly.

  "Kaloo, your—your guest is here."

  Kaloo contrived to be busy with her hem. "Thank you, Daril." She tried to sound like an adult speaking to a servant, and knew that the effort was plain in her voice. She sighed again, and turned to find Daril standing in the door with her worried-mother-hen look on her face. It irritated Kaloo that Daril thought she still had a right to wear it, but she kept all feelings from her face.

  Daril looked her up and down, plainly disapproving of the clinging fabric over her young body. "How can he dress you like that?" she muttered.

  "He's my father. He can dress me any way he wants," Kaloo said.

  "Then let him dress you like his daughter, not some high-born …" Daril swallowed whatever sneer she had intended to make about nobility in general. "Or let him tell people you're his daughter. Or you tell people. You know what they think below, what the sailors think when he comes in a carriage to take you off like this. How can he let people think that of his daughter?"

  "I doubt that he's heard the rumors. Or would care if he had. Legally, I'm an adult, Daril. I could take any lover I wished. Besides, I know what truly scandalizes you. It isn't when the sailors say, 'Count Dashif has taken up with a girl a fraction of his age, some little tavern wench from the waterfront.' It's not what I might be doing at all, it's who folks say I'm doing it with, that bothers you."

  Daril was silent. Kaloo smoothed her hair, stared back into the cold eyes in the mirror. "Where's T'Nar?" she demanded suddenly. "I've warned you, I won't have another scene with him." Easier, so
metimes, to speak to Daril as if she and T'Nar were servants, as if they had never had any hold on her heart.

  Daril reddened slightly. "Gone down to the docks with T'Fregan. Something about a boat T'Fregan wants to buy, and wants to know if she's as sound as she looks. T'Nar's been raving about that boat for days. I hope someone buys it soon. He should know better than to dream about—"

  "Good." Kaloo dismissed T'Nar and the boat he longed for.

  "Where—where are you going tonight?" Daril's question was cautious.

  "An Acrivannish play. He thinks I should receive some cultural as well as magical education." There. Let her chew on that. Think of what else she kept from me besides my magic. Kaloo knew that the inn would be busy tonight and the tables full. Once Daril would have forbidden Kaloo to leave, would have told her plainly that there was work to be done this evening. Now she didn't dare to. Or didn't care to. Whatever. It all came out to the same thing, Kaloo told herself. They had ceded her to Dashif as easily as they'd sell a leaky rowboat.

  So. She would be Dashif's daughter then. Daril stepped aside as Kaloo brushed past her and went tripping down the stairs to the common room where one of the most feared men in Liavek would be taking her to the theater. She put her head up and a little smile on her face. He would be so charmed with her, this daughter he had found and re-made for himself. She would put her hand lightly on his arm as she stepped up into his carriage, she would smile and chatter with him about the play afterwards. And all the time she would keep him from knowing even one more thing about her. His game was to make her his daughter; hers was to keep from him the only thing she knew he wanted. She smiled as he turned his eyes to watch her come down the stairs, exulted in the indulgent smile that suddenly lit his scarred face.

  She expected to have a lovely evening.

  •

  Brajii walked the hunter's path.

  Justice the load, vengeance the road

  She's taken.

  Memory of failure fueled her wrath.