by Lynn Abbey
He glanced down the alley and up, expecting competition at any moment for this prize, saw nothing, and began searching the very fresh corpse.
The clothing, such as it was, sifted, rotting, between his fingers. He shuddered and shook his hands free of the moldering stuff.
A sigh. A whisper with the sound, at least, of a plea for help, though he caught no real words. Not dead yet, then, but soon to be, if he was left here.
Cursing himself for a fool, he patted that wet, stubbled cheek. “Wake up, curse you,” he muttered, and shook the man by the shoulders. “Wake up, fool, I damn sure can’t carry you.”
Suddenly, the not-corpse gasped. Once, twice, and the death-limp disappeared, muscle tensed beneath Kadithe’s hands, taking some of the body’s weight. Kadithe dropped his hold and backed off, tripped over his bag and scrambled back to his feet, gathering the bag to his chest, ready to run, and he would have then and there if only the rousing corpse wasn’t between him and by far the shortest way home.
The corpse pulled itself upright, gasping, head cradled between those fine hands.
Something dark and liquid trickled slowly down the left hand.
He backed away, wrapping the bag’s drawstring around his wrist, the only possible weapon he had, trying to think of the best alternate route home, cursing himself for a fool for rousing this stranger before extracting his cloak, knowing even as he cursed that he’d have returned it anyway. He wasn’t, and never would be, a thief.
A whisper of sound reached him, more words that made no sense, and the man’s head lifted, his hand reaching toward him. Asking for help, that much was obvious to the most stupid of fools.
And fool that he was, Kadithe answered.
“Kadithe? Is that you?” Grandfather’s voice, filled with worry.
Kadithe’s fingers went numb, his hold on the man’s wrist gave, and the stranger slipped, bonelessly, to the wooden floor. Kadithe followed, at least as far as his knees, and he knelt there, eyes closed, fighting for breath. The last few steps had been the longest of his life, the stranger a dead weight against him.
He heard the tap of Grandfather’s cane, felt its light touch first, and Grandfather’s sure, knowing hand second, searching him for wounds. He tipped his head into that touch, silent signal that he was unharmed, and Grandfather’s lips brushed his forehead. A moment later, the soft folds of his new blanket surrounded him, and from the glow beyond his eyelids, Grandfather had brought their new oil lamp as well. He huddled in the unfamiliar warmth and light, soaked to the skin, chilled to the bone, following his grandfather by sound as the old man closed and barred (such as they could) the door.
“What’s this you’ve brought home? Has fortune struck twice in one week? I send you out after cheese and you bring home an entire cow?”
Grandfather’s voice rippled with the gentle humor that had kept them both sane for fourteen years. His own breath caught on a chuckle and he forced his eyes open, found Grandfather kneeling beside the stranger, straightening his limbs, easing the ties on the cloak that threatened to choke him, his hands telling him more than most eyes saw.
“Is he dead?” he asked, singularly indifferent to the answer.
“Not yet. Come here, child. Be my eyes.”
He pulled himself to his feet, froze as he got his first good look at the stranger, at the hair spilling across their floor, pooling around his head. “That’s not—” His voice failed him.
“Kadithe? Not what?”
It had to be the same man.
“His hair. It was dark—” But that meant nothing to Grandfather. Grandfather couldn’t see …
“Was?”
“It’s silver now.” He knelt beside the stranger, and unable to stop himself, lifted those strands, so like the bright metal in color, despite the warm light from the lamp, but liquid soft to the touch. Damp, but not soaked and dripping, like his own. And clean, not a knot or hint of dirt marred the perfection.
Wizardry. He let the strands drop. Or sorcery—that devious, bastard craft no mage or priest would pursue. Kadithe tucked his hands around his ribs. Whatever it was, beautiful as it was, it was unnatural.
Grandfather’s own hands, more finely attuned than his, examined that hair, but, “Curious,” was his only comment. Suddenly, his nose twitched. He fingered the cloak, lifted the frayed edge to his face, then dropped it, frowning.
“The Broken Mast,” he said, without a hint of doubt, and with a voice suddenly hard. “Who is this person, Kadithe? Where did you find him? Why bring him here?”
Fear filled him. Anonymity. He’d broken their most sacred house rule. Again. Worse, he’d broken it with a denizen of the Broken Mast, the drain-hole of the cesspool of Sanctuary’s scum, source of ships’ crew (willing and not), boy whores (willing and not), and any drug known to man.
Grandfather’s hand caught his arm, demanded his attention. “You didn’t go near there, did you, boy?”
Go there? He shook his head, slowly at first, then so hard it made his brain rattle between his ears. “No! I wouldn’t, Grandfather. Never. I came Red Clay and Shadow, like always. I don’t know who he is. I—I was almost home, ‘tween here and the ’Unicorn, he just … fell out of the shadows.”
“Fell.”
He couldn’t lie, not about something this important. “Well, I thought at first he jumped. He grabbed me. Held my leg. His touch burned, but he didn’t fight, didn’t do anything but hold on. Then he went limp. I thought he was dead. I—” His face went hot, and he mumbled the next words. “I wanted his cloak.”
Grandfather squeezed his hand, and his voice, when he answered, had lost the harsh edge. “Only sensible, child. If not you, someone else. Did he say anything?”
He shook his head, remembering those strange sounds, wondering now if they’d been some spell he was casting. “Nothing so you’d understand.”
“Well, done is done. You can tell me the whole later. He has no weapons, not much left to his clothes, for that matter. I wonder they stayed together long enough for him to pull them on. If he survives the night, he’ll have to kill us with his bare hands, for all the good it might do him. Now tell me: What do you see?”
“Cuts. Bruises. Nothing obvious.”
“He’s had a bad blow to the head, washed clean; one, maybe even two days healed. Look more closely, boy.”
Shamed, he did and found the wound in question beneath its mask of silver hair, and felt the great lump. His hand, when he pulled it away, shone with fresh blood. Holding the lamp over the body, he began a more detailed inspection. Bruises, yes, but nothing compared to the’ discoloration at his throat. Deep bruises there that spread up the lean jaw and around the ears.
“Strangled,” Grandfather said in a voice that said what he saw, confirmed what his fingers had suspected. “Someone tried to kill him with nothing more than bare hands for a weapon.”
Strangled. Unusual way to settle an argument in Sanctuary. He wondered whose hands had made those bruises and whether the silver-haired stranger’s long-fingered hands, strong and burning, had been more, or less, effective.
“Help me get him over to the fire.”
The stranger weighed more than his slight frame would suggest, as Kadithe knew only too well, for all he’d swear they shed a quarter of his weight when they freed him of the water-soaked cloak. He was taller than Grandfather had ever been, and the body increasingly evident beneath the shredding clothing was lean, but well-muscled and well-fed.
They had worn straw pallets for sleeping, and the fire in the brazier, but little else to offer in the way of comfort. He set his new pillow beneath that silver head, and reluctantly sacrificed his blanket as well.
“Keep your blanket,” Grandfather advised.
“But—”
“Get the cloak. It’s good wool and will only be the warmer for the soaking.”
How Grandfather knew these things, he never said, but he’d also learned never to question that tone. He fetched the cloak, which had, at least,
ceased dripping and was surprisingly dry on the underside, and spread it across the stranger.
Grandfather had the new skillet heating on the brazier, waiting for him to get home, and not two but three perfect rounds of dough ready for it. Sometimes Kadithe believed Grandfather must have eyes in his fingers.
“Three, Grandfather?”
“I had a feeling you might come home hungry.”
A second pan simmered aromatically. If the stranger woke, there’d be mint tea (another gift from Bezul’s good wife), flat bread, and cheese. If he didn’t waken … well, he and Grandfather would just split that third portion.
He moved the skillet over, catching the best of the rising heat and waited, his stomach unfrozen at last and beginning to protest loudly. He licked his finger, touched the skillet, and got a good hiss. Better, so much better than the rock they’d been using this last half-year and more.
He tossed the first round into the pan and retrieved his bag of cheese and the somewhat-worse-for-wear vegetables. He carefully peeled the paraffin from the end of the cheese, salvaging every sliver for his growing collection. Someday, maybe someday soon, he’d have a use for it. Coal. Coal and clay. Wouldn’t he give Bezul something to trade then?
So many, so many good things happening, now this. He’d wanted to talk to Grandfather about Bec, had wanted to bring Bec to meet Grandfather, to write down his stories. Everything had seemed so … right. Now … he scowled at the still figure beneath the sodden cloak.
“Time to flip, my dear.” Grandfather’s voice cut through his daydreams, and indeed it was. He turned the bread, and slid the fine taut wire of Grandfather’s one-time block cutter through the cheese round making precise thin slices.
They had plates, bowls, and mugs, of sorts. Salvage, mostly, carved wood and hammered tin, but they functioned well enough. He slid the flat bread with its melted cheese topping onto the plate, folding it over just before it turned crisp, and handed the plate to Grandfather before returning the skillet to the fire. Quiet. Normal. Like every other night. Almost, he could forget about the stranger lying silent beneath his …
Silent, but no longer insensible. Eyes, pale, silver-blue beneath strangely dark brows, followed Kadithe’s every move.
“Grandfather …” Kadithe said, and Grandfather answered: “I know. Since you cut the cheese.”
Grandfather heard things, things a normal man didn’t consider. He knew when Kadithe tried to fake sleep, had said his breathing changed, and try though he would to control it, nothing had ever fooled him.
He put the next round in the skillet, watching the stranger out of the corner of his eye. A tongue appeared briefly between his swollen lips, and his throat worked in a swallow that must go hard past the bruises.
Those pale eyes left his hands and the skillet, lifted to his … except … they weren’t as pale as before. Now, they were a light hazel, darkening with each passing heartbeat.
Kadithe fell back, caught himself, and pushed to his feet, back to the wall, staring as the pale stranger with the silver hair changed before his eyes—darkening—skin, hair, eyes, until his eyes were hazel—like Kadithe Mur’s; his hair dirty brown, like Kadithe Mur’s; and his skin, were he to put his hand on the stranger’s, would blend, one into the other.
“Kadithe?” Grandfather’s voice, and another, the stranger’s echoed, “Kadithe?”
“Kadithe, tell me what’s wrong.” Grandfather again, calm, commanding.
“Chameleon,” he whispered.
“Explain, Kadithe,” Grandfather said.
“He … he’s changed again, Grandfather. Skin, eyes … hair. All brown now. Like mine. Exactly like mine.”
Startlement in those newly hazeled eyes. A hand, slowly freed from the cloak’s folds, lifted for self-examination. Could he possibly not know?
Smoke rose from the pan. With a cry, Kadithe darted to the brazier, flipped the bread, and scowled at blackened spots. Not ruined, but damn, he hated that taste. Damn if he wouldn’t give this one to the chameleon, who should be thankful for anything …
He thought of those eyes, wide and shocked one moment, twisted with pain the next, as one fine-boned hand lifted to that bump on his skull, and thought, maybe, he’d keep that burned one after all.
As it turned out, his sacrifice made little difference. The stranger sat up and accepted the plate, but seemed far more interested in the tea than his food. Kadithe scowled at his own, picking off the burned bits and tossing them into the fire, thinking generally unpleasant thoughts at their silent, unasked-for guest. Grandfather was no help at all, sitting there in the one chair, sipping and nibbling slowly, thoughtfully. Listening. Waiting, damn him, for his grandson to take the lead with this stranger he’d brought into their home.
“Kha-deet?”
That whisper, painfully produced past the bruised throat, shook Kadithe free of his dark thoughts, and when he looked up, he saw the stranger extending his plate with one hand, pointing toward his with the other.
Offering to trade.
Shamed, he shook his head. “No. Thank you. I’m fine.” And he forced himself to eat a charred bit, washed it down with a large mouthful of tea.
A silent chuckle, and the man leaned forward, very carefully, to set the plate on the floor between them, pushing it toward him. Then, simply, held out his hand for the other plate.
“I’d suggest you complete the transaction, Kadithe,” Grandfather said, and he was smiling.
Kadithe sighed, handed the older man the plate, and fell to eating with less enthusiasm than he might have had, as the guest proceeded to eat the charred piece with all the enthusiasm he lacked, chewing carefully, as if, maybe, some teeth had been damaged along with his face, and sipping tea before swallowing. When he’d finished, even to licking the crumbs from his fingers, he handed the plate back to Kadithe with a soft, slow, “Thank you.”
“So, you can talk,” he said sourly. “How ’bout a name?”
Which only earned him a confused blink.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Where did you come from? What are you doing here?”
More confusion.
“Try Rankene,” Grandfather suggested and Kadithe repeated the questions in that language of his ancestors, but the response was the same.
“Khadeet,” the stranger said, dipping his head toward Kadithe, then pointing with his chin to Grandfather: “Who?”
Ilsigi, then, if broken.
“Grandfather.”
Eyes narrowed, confused. “Grandfather? Name?”
“Yes,” Kadithe said firmly. And echoing the man, he gestured with his chin and asked, “Who?”
Confusion lit those hazel-but-not eyes, then fear, before they dropped to study hands turned palm up. Fear turned to intent concentration, as he turned those bands slowly, examining them from all angles. “N-n-nai … jen,” he said at last and still hesitantly, and slowly the color drained from those hands, leaving them with the pale, slightly blue cast they’d held when he was asleep, and his eyes, when he looked up, were silver-blue. “My name is Naijen Mal.”
Firmly. In Ilsigi. Without a hint of hesitation or what Grandfather called Sanctuary’s peculiar slant on the language.
“Where are you from?” he asked, slowly and in his best Ilsigi. “Who tried to kill you?”
No question of understanding this time. Mal’s pale eyes dropped, avoiding his. A shaking hand lifted to finger that knot on his head, the bruises at this throat. He swallowed, hard and painfully. Finally, “I don’t know.”
“Don’t know. You mean you didn’t recognize him?” Fear, panic, finally, resignation. “I mean I don’t remember. Anything.”
Malediction
Jeff Grubb
Here’s what Little Minx did right before she went to hell:
She picked up four heavy ceramic mugs, two in each hand, and with a minimum of sloshing delivered the watered ale intact to one of the booths in the back. She dropped the ale and retired quickly as one of the drunks made a half-hear
ted lunge for her. She managed a false smile in recognition of the attention but would rather have had a few padpols by way of a tip instead.
Crossing the main floor, Little Minx nodded as a barrel-maker tried to flag her down to order the same rot-gut ale he always ordered these days. She dodged out of the way of another groper along the back aisle and pulled a meat pie of dubious provenance from the cook’s counter, delivering it to the third table on the right, where a group of dark-haired men stopped talking the moment she arrived.
Dropping the meat pie, she retreated, hearing the conversation kick in again in sharp whispers behind her. She orbited out of the range of a ham-handed swat at her backside and pointed to a bleary red-haired drinker two tables up who had clearly had enough. She announced his bar tab, padding it for a tip, and left him to sort through his change as she wound her way back to the bar. She stepped neatly out of the way of Big Minx, who was herself loaded with a heavy tray for the Ilsig party in the back room.
A firm hand grabbed a good section of her posterior, squeezing a full cheek. She wheeled, smacking the offending paw away, the worn smile on her face turning suddenly feral. She let out a string of curses sufficient to blister the tattered wallpaper and spun back out into the main aisle, heading for the bar, still snarling a blue streak.
Two steps later the floor opened up beneath her feet in a wide hole, perfectly circular. The pit within glowed with the light of burning embers, and smoke billowed upward in an acrid puff. Everyone in the Vulgar Unicorn who could look up did.
Little Minx had enough time to hurl one more epithet, then plunged straight into hell.
I’m in hell, thought Heliz Yunz.
The Linguist of Lirt blinked and tried to force himself awake as the merchant continued to elaborate on the wide variety of stock that had been broken, lost, or obviously stolen from his most recent caravan. Heliz bridled against the fact that he should be researching but instead was parked in the marketplace writing letters for padpols and the cost of paper. Across the way, a street conjurer cadged for loose change by presenting wilted flowers out of thin air and appearing to drive nails through her hands—simple tricks that would fool no child over five. Yet the street conjurer was doing better business than Heliz.