by Emerson, Ru
"You don't need to be sorry,” Aletto said quietly. “You heard what I said—all that arguing, earlier. Of all of us, I should have best known my uncle, what he might do. I'd spent enough time thinking of little else, those last months in Duke's Fort—when I wasn't drinking,” he added. Enardi glanced at him and looked uncomfortable; Aletto waved a hand when the boy would have spoken. “Never mind, that isn't important. If I'd known—if any of us had known what to expect ahead of time, perhaps none of us would be here. If anyone had told me I'd be able to stand on my feet and face armed men, be able to fight them, I'd have laughed. That kind of nerve—in my case, it simply happened when I needed it. Because I haven't really had the opportunity to think about it, maybe. I doubt anyone has it simply for wanting it. Maybe in my case it was there because it's my need, my Dukedom.” He paused to consider this, shrugged. “Not having it doesn't make you less of a person, or a man, than I am, though. What I've done since leaving Sikkre isn't a talent, or anything to envy, it's merely the ability to stop thinking and try to kill before you're killed. If you think otherwise, consider those who fight us, the Sikkreni who came after us, the men who attacked this inn. Men paid to fight and kill: armsmen who should be trained to keep order or defend Rhadaz against outside attack, men who instead tried to kill the Thukar's true heir, to murder all of us. And the others—common dock thugs. Enardi, anyone with no imagination or sense of right can kill another. Anyone who has no honor for human life can utilize magic to kill, the way my uncle has."
"I still—” Enardi began hesitantly. He fell silent when Aletto waved his hand again.
"No. Listen, please. When you asked to come with us, I agreed—not because I thought there was danger and we'd need another fighter; not as part of a personal guard for me or my sister. Believe me, if I'd properly thought matters out, I'd never have agreed to your presence, I'd have suggested you return to Bez—but only so you could take a ship and safely meet us in Podhru. Because I do have a purpose for your presence here."
He was quiet until Enardi looked up. “Sir?"
"Your father and men like him have no personal interests outside Bezjeriad, I know that; I accept that they will give me only financial aid. Just as your sister Biyallan and people like her haven't money of their own yet, but are willing to give me themselves, their talents, their skills in Sehfi, once Zelharri is mine.
"I need more, though: I need someone who knows these people, who can tell me whom to trust. Which of those who come now to join me will work hard, which of them is only along for a chance at quick profit. Someone who can help sort through the welter of possibilities for the Zelharri marketplace, who can deal with the paperwork and politics here in Podhru, who understands money, people—” Aletto spread his hands wide. “I know less about these things than I do about—about the Emperor's latest religion, or about women's fashion."
Enardi was staring at him, open-mouthed. He pulled himself together with a visible effort. “And you think I—? Sir, you scarcely know me! You don't know—I've never—!"
"I listened to you in Fedthyr's house, don't you remember? When you and Chris brought friends to that party the first night? And I remember a long conversation between you, your sister and your father during the gathering later, when he and several of those who knew my father met to agree upon financial backing. You possibly haven't had much opportunity in Bez to utilize your knowledge, since your father is still very much in control of his trading house. All the same, I believe you have that talent.” Silence. He looked up to find Enardi still staring at him, and now looking nervous. “Understand this: I'm not simply trying to let you down. I have a very real need for someone I can trust in Podhru, someone who isn't simply looking for profit to be channeled back from Zelharri to another duchy. I know the Sehfi market is in terrible condition, but I don't know what to do about it. You do.” He smiled—his politician's smile, Jennifer thought; but Enardi was caught now, and he smiled back. “And I hope you won't refuse me. I need you, Enardi."
"I—well, then.” Enardi spread his hands wide and sighed. “I won't refuse you, sir. I hope I won't fail you."
"You won't,” Aletto said.
* * * *
They left the inn two mornings later, Jennifer bundled into an old dress of Caro Ellaway's and her brown scarf, her left arm resting in a physically unnecessary but visually useful dark sling, Chris's hair plastered to her forehead under a new piece of tape. The tape itched; her shoulder still itched, and she was cross because of the early hour, too nervous to have eaten anything before they left. Robyn had promised to search out the bag with her coffee supplies and had forgotten about it until too late; Jennifer had to stay completely away from her sister until the irritation wore off.
If Jennifer was unrecognizable, Robyn was nearly so: She wore the dress Aletto had bought for her in Bez, mauve like the one Enardi's sister had lent her but of a heavier fabric, more suitable for public wear. It was wider in the skirts, too, making it easier for Robyn to ride in it without the material rucking up around her legs. She wore a pair of lightweight slippers, not very suitable for horseback, but Chris wouldn't let her keep her sneakers on even partway to the city gates, and he'd packed them in the bottom of the Nike bag, which in turn had been wound in two silkcloth blankets and buried under a pile of things beneath the wagon seat. Robyn's long, straight, center-parted hair, normally one of her most visible features, had been pulled back off her forehead to the top of her head and worked into three looped braids. It looked darker and it changed the line of her face with her full brow and her ears visible.
Aletto had a shirt and overshirt purchased for him in Bez, which he wore under Enardi's short cloak—a garment visibly, expensively Bezanti. The britches were very plain and ordinary, the tattered hems hidden inside his boots. The cloak covered the difference in his shoulders, though that was far less noticeable than it had been when Jennifer had first met the nera-Duke weeks before.
Chris's high-tops and jeans were buried in the bottom of the Nike bag; he wore instead the things they'd bought for him in Sikkre—and Enardi's boots, since he had no shoes but the high-tops, and Enardi was settled into the driver's seat, bare feet tucked under a pile of blankets. Like Robyn, Chris had changed his hair: He'd rinsed it in cold sage tea at Caro Ellaway's suggestion, and that had darkened it from blond to a dull, ashy brown; he'd then used some of Jennifer's dwindling supply of hand lotion to plaster the top of it flat, side-parting it and tying the long nape stuff back the way Colin did his. A borrowed band tied below his left ear completed the change. His beard was coming in light and uneven but it was enough to alter the line of his jaw. Jennifer hadn't recognized him at all when she first saw him, until he came close. The walk was unmistakable, even though the too-small boots pinched his feet and took some of the swing out of his step. Horseback—no one would know him.
Dahven dressed again as he had when the guard came out to the inn, and he sat on the wagon seat next to Jennifer. Edrith, who like Enardi hadn't needed to do anything about his appearance, sat just behind her on a stack of bags and rugs.
Lialla, after considerable argument, had taken Chris's suggestion; she'd shed the Wielder Blacks and, dressed in a bright blouse and the wide breeches, her hair pulled back in a ribbon-trimmed plait, rode at his side. She really did look like she might be his sister—certainly no more than a year or so older than Chris, if not his twin—and as they rode along the broad, well-paved and tree-lined road toward the city gates, Chris had her laughing and kidding him right back.
Colin had come with them, a pile of his mother's bags and baskets in the back of the wagon—partly, as he said, because he needed to replenish certain things anyway; partly to help with the overall innocent appearance of their party, if necessary. And so he could reclaim his clothing and his mother's, once they all reached Lord Evany's and were off the streets.
Jennifer tried to put everything else—including a still near-overwhelming desire for a cup of hot, strong coffee—out of her mind as they neared P
odhru. Remember who you are, what you are, she told herself for what was surely the twentieth time. Who he is. Dahven—my farmer husband, she reminded herself—had an arm around her shoulders; he squeezed briefly as he felt her tense up. She gave him a smile, leaned into his arm and let her eyes close for a moment.
They stopped a ways on, several miles from the inn but still short of the now visible city wall and its east gate. Aletto and Robyn drew off to one side, Robyn dismounting so she could take the bundle Enardi put in her hands. Colin jumped down from the wagon and indicated a knoll just north of the road. “It's a good place to picnic; people often do. Particularly when it's not overly warm like this morning."
Enardi leaned over the side of the wagon. “I'll come back as quickly as I can. Don't any of you go from this place, will you?"
"Unless we have to,” Aletto said. He looked uncertain, all at once. Robyn glanced up at him anxiously, at Enardi. Over at Chris. She managed a smile.
"It's cool, folks, we'll be fine. Ernie, just don't forget where this place is, that's all.” She turned away to lead her horse off the road and the two men followed; Enardi got the mule moving. Jennifer turned away as the wagon jolted forward once again. Chris looked rather grim as he kneed his horse forward; with an almost visible effort, then, he turned to Lialla, grinned and tugged at the thick braid that lay between her shoulder blades. Whatever he said brought an outraged gasp from her; then she giggled and smacked his hand.
A much too short while later, they passed through the east gates and into the crowded streets of Podhru.
12
The streets were what Jennifer would have expected and had not previously seen anywhere in Rhadaz: Very medieval-looking, they were narrow, surrounded by the high, stone walls of buildings and ramparts, and extremely crowded. Her eyes were assaulted by a bewildering array of goods, pack and riding animals of a variety of colors and types, pulled, pushed or ridden by an equally wide variety of people—everything from nomadic types swathed to the eyes in unrelieved black to brightly clad caravaners recognizeable by the family crests borne prominently on shoulders or wide-brimmed hats, every possible type and size between. Except, she corrected herself, that she still had yet to see anyone Oriental, black—American Indian. Even in her small Wyoming hometown, twenty-plus years earlier, there had been a Korean family, and of course Indians. Especially after so many years in Los Angeles, it felt damned odd.
Unlike Bezjeriad, where the market was a well-ordered system of shops and a gridwork of streets, or Sikkre, where the market was large and sprawling but centralized, in Podhru there were sellers everywhere—shops side by side with inns or eating houses, with temples, homes and stables. There were also makeshift stands selling everything from costly-looking jewelry to food and drink, jutting into the already too narrow streets. It was nearly impossible to make sense of, and the wild variety of scents—human, animal, edibles—left her reeling, while the tightness of remaining traveling space and the number of people all around her would have choked her with claustrophobia, if she'd allowed herself to think about that.
In an effort to avoid thinking about how many obstacles were now between her and the relatively open roadway, she turned to Edrith, who was kneeling just behind her. “Tell me things,” she said. “Like, why the people with the real shops allow anyone to set up business in front of them like that?"
"They don't,” Edrith said. “But as I understand it, so long as the portable stands remain portable—they have to be gone by sundown and can't return until after sunrise—and so long as they leave a proper width for customers to reach the shops, so long as the owners of those shops can't prove they're being blocked or their custom is being diverted, they can't stop people from setting up in the street—isn't that right, Ernie?"
"About,” Enardi replied tersely. He had his hands full at the moment with the wagon and a rather balky mule.
"This is fairly recent,” Dahven said. It was the first thing he'd said all morning, and it occurred to Jennifer that he sounded nervous. “There used to be only shops, none of this additional—and there wasn't half the custom in the streets the last time I was here, I don't think."
"This is partly the upcoming Festival,” Edrith reminded him. “But so much business is a recent thing, since the current Emperor reopened trade with the outside. They say it made an astonishing change in the markets everywhere; that was well before I was born, of course, but one of my mother's men used to work aboard a merchanter between Dro Pent and Podhru, and he said he could remember when there was a winter palace here, several temples on the great island, and of course a clerks’ building. Little else in the new part of the city, and the old he said was a smelly collection of mud huts that made him glad to return to Sikkre, where the dirt is at least dry."
"He'd never know it now,” Enardi said. He edged the mule into a side street and breathed a faint sigh of relief when this proved to be much less crowded than the one they'd just left. “There are new temples every year, most of the mud huts are long since gone. And the clerks’ building—my father says he can recall when it was the size of my sister Marseli's shop. Now it covers a space twice as great as our entire house and grounds, and there are four floors."
"Long live the civil service,” Jennifer said dryly. She swallowed as the sun vanished; the street that was less crowded was also narrower, the buildings closer together and taller. “Um. We know where we are, right?"
"Of course,” Edrith replied at once.
"Ah. And we know where we're going, is that right?"
"Of course. Street of the Blind Muse."
"And we know right where that is, do we?"
Edrith sighed. “This line of questioning has a purpose?"
"Pay no attention, buddy,” Chris said from not far behind them. “Jen, chill out, okay?"
Jennifer slewed around to glare at him. “Watch your language,” she said crisply. “Slang isn't permitted just now, remember? And I know all about the gas-station syndrome—"
"Who,” Chris demanded in a low, aggrieved voice, “is using funny words now?"
"I'm an outlander, remember? I've been with certain to-be-unnamed males, whose initials are Chris Cray, who ran me all over East L.A. in my nice new Honda because he wouldn't pull into a gas station and get directions for downtown Azusa. That happens here, I'm not going to be a happy camper, got it?” Silence. Chris made a face at her. “Excuse,” Jennifer added sweetly, “the outlander words; I know a nice, quiet local boy like you doesn't understand them. You gentlemen keep in mind I'm a wounded woman who doesn't want to be lost in an unfamiliar city if asking directions from a local will get her where she's supposed to be."
"God,” Chris muttered feelingly. Lialla touched his arm, shook her head, and he subsided but Jennifer could feel his eyes on her back for some time after she turned around on the seat again. Tough, she thought. I don't care how bad I bruised his teenage American macho bump of so-called direction. I know what he's like, and the way the rest of these guys are acting, I don't think it's a cultural thing. She tried not to look nervous as Enardi turned right, left, left again, and let the mule walk along a dark street that smelled faintly of salt water. If push came to shove, she'd get down off the damned wagon and find someone to ask herself.
* * * *
They got their first check a few minutes later, as the street opened out to a long, high, unfeatured wall on their left (the north side, Jennifer thought, but found it difficult with the sun almost directly overhead to be certain of that) and the bay on their right. There were men in pale yellow spread across the pavement, redirecting traffic around a small, dark stone building, an enormous crowd of silent, head-scarved onlookers and water everywhere. “Oh, god of small coppers,” Enardi swore mildly, “it's a temple washing. They won't let us through while that's in progress."
There was room for foot traffic and horses to turn, not for the wagon; Edrith jumped down and spoke to one of the yellow-robed priests, who finally was persuaded to help clear a little room a
mong the watchers so the wagon could be moved back and forth until Enardi could edge it into an alleyway at the end of the wall. It was just barely wide enough for the wagon. One of the wheels scraped wall as they entered the narrow passageway; Jennifer clenched her teeth and closed her eyes. She opened them a few moments later; the wagon had taken several turns and suddenly everything was different: There were a series of low stair-stepping walls on their right, strong-scented hedges on the left, no other people in sight. Enardi drew the mule to a halt as they came around another bend to confront a radiating network of streets, at least five different possibilities, none marked as far as she could see. Enardi came partway off the seat, looked around, glanced at the sky, nodded and headed the wagon down one narrow way that looked no more likely than any of the rest of them. Jennifer opened her mouth, closed it again without saying anything. Dahven turned to look at her.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm fine,” she said rather shortly.
"You're certain?"
"Of course."
"Everything's all right, isn't it?” Lialla asked. Apparently she'd seen the brief conversation but hadn't heard any of it. Jennifer glanced over her shoulder.
"Why ask me?” she demanded. “I'm only along for the ride."
"You can see outer walls from here, if you raise up a little,” Edrith said huffily. “We aren't lost."
"Of course not."
"How could we possibly get lost in Podhru?” Edrith asked. Jennifer sighed heavily; the Sikkreni scowled at her but let the matter drop.