by Holly Lisle
The old man wanted the tablet—but instead of trading Fat Girl food for it and sending her on her way, he brought her to his house and insisted on feeding her and her tagnu. His mate gave them clothes and good drums and made terrible trades. Fat Girl thought the peknu woman would have starved long ago if she’d had to live by her trading skills.
Fat Girl munched on some bread—a peknu food the people of the house kept giving her. She liked it. It filled her stomach, and she looked around, trying to figure out what kind of plant bread grew on. She wanted to get some of those plants in trade.
While she munched, she wondered how long it would take to teach the peknu woman drum-talk. She wondered if she could drag it out until the end of the rainy season, so that when she and her tagnu crossed back into the jungle, they could do so without having to fight the swollen, deadly river and the horrible flash-floods.
She decided she could probably count on free food and a place to sleep for at least that long. Anyone stupid enough to trade a perfectly good drum for nothing would take a good long time to learn her nothing.
* * *
One cycle of the Tide Mother later, Seven-Fingered Fat Girl was forced to revise her estimate. While the worst of the rains were over, they would still come and go for at least another cycle—but Medwind Song and Faia Rissedote and Nokar Feldosonne were drumming their way intelligibly through simple messages. And they spoke Sropt, the True Language. Not well, but better than Fat Girl had learned their tongue in the same length of time. She could barely understand the demands of little Kirtha, while she suspected the three peknu followed the better part of her conversations with Dog Nose and Runs Slow.
The peknu made her uneasy. She liked them, and this worried her. She sat in Medwind’s b’dabba, drumming the odd rhythms the peknu woman favored, trying to understand the peknu, and what it was they wanted from her.
Dog Nose peeked into the b’dabba. “I want to talk.”
Fat Girl nodded toward the cushion not already occupied by Hrogner, the compound’s thieving, fire-starting cat.
The boy leaned over on his way past and kissed her, a peknu thing he had learned watching Medwind and Nokar.
She grinned at him and stopped drumming.
“I think we need to trade our beck and get away from here,” Dog Nose said.
Fat Girl closed her eyes. Her grin died. The journey that lay ahead of them, back through the jungle, through the domain of the Keyu, unrolled in her imagination. She was afraid to go back into that green-roofed hell—more afraid with every day that passed. And the reward at the end of the trail became less tempting as well. The cold, sere city perched atop the mountains waited in her mind’s eye. It would be lonely without Spotted Face and Three Scars. There would be no Toes Point In to dance from house to house, telling stories about the pictures on the walls. Laughs Like A Roshi’s wild laughter would never fill one of those empty rooms again.
“What if we didn’t go back?” she said.
Dog Nose sat back on the pillow and stared at her. “What?”
“I’ve been thinking.” Fat Girl rolled the ends of the drum’s hide wrappings through her fingers and stared down at her feet. “We could stay here.”
Dog Nose made a disgusted noise. “I knew you were starting to think that. You’re getting soft, Fat Girl. You’re acting like these peknu will let you stay.” He leaned forward, palms pressed flat on the b’dabba floor, and stared into Fat Girl’s eyes. “The Keyu didn’t want you. Your own parents didn’t want you. And when these peknu decide they don’t want you anymore, either, they will make you go away. You will have forgotten how to live in the jungle, and the Keyu will kill you.”
He averted his eyes and whispered, “And then I will be alone.”
Seven-Fingered Fat Girl looked down at the drum nestled in her lap. That’s what has been bothering me about the peknu, she realized. Something inside me knows they will make me leave—but I didn’t want to believe it. She listened to the noises emanating from the big house. Faia was laughing, telling some story to a man who’d come to buy the things she made. Kirtha yelled, “Medwind! Medwind! Look’a me! I’m tagnu,” in her shrill, piping voice, while Medwind said, “Hush, monster. I’m working. And put your shirt back on.” Nokar whistled, busy in his workroom.
All the peknu would gather in that same workroom later to trade drum riffs and tall tales with the tagnu. Kirtha would climb on Fat Girl’s lap and play with her hair. They both had the same color hair, a coincidence that delighted the peknu child.
Since the day Nokar brought the tagnu to his home from the market, nothing had hunted them. No strange men had chased after them. They had not needed to watch for the traps the jungle set to catch them. They had enough to eat. They could wash themselves in a huge tub of hot water—a privilege Fat Girl found so delightful she’d taken to bathing twice a day. They kept no night watch.
And the peknu were kind to her. Medwind Song, struggling to master the Sropt tongue, told stories of her days as a Hoos warrior and scary tales about the places of the dead. Faia, only a little older than Fat Girl, reminisced about her long-gone village and boys she used to know. Faia understood about Dog Nose and told Fat Girl the secret of not having babies. Fat Girl—thinking of the hardship a baby would be in the mountain city—paid close attention. Nokar gave them sweets and read to them from his books. And Kirtha followed them around with a worshipful expression on her face and tried to act just like them.
Dog Nose was right. She was getting soft, and the jungle would eat her if she didn’t get out of the peknu place soon.
She sighed and put the drum down. “I’ll give the peknu three-four more days to learn drum-talk. Then we’ll make our trade and go.”
* * *
He was naked, and that was even better than she’d imagined it would be the first time she saw him. He stood in front of her mirror working his hair into the banded braids of a saje—still silver-banded, until he earned his graduate degree and his professional robes. Red hair—she liked that red hair—and a scruffy red beard that was still too short and too thin to braid. His beard frustrated Kirgen, and that made Roba laugh.
A million things about their relationship made her laugh—the laughter was warm and tingling, and it bubbled up inside. The month since he’d become her assistant had been a wonder. Roba woke with him at her side every morning, and fell asleep, usually exhausted and sated, with him in her bed at night. Between waking and sleeping, they worked, roved Ariss together—and laughed. In all her life, she’d never had so much fun.
She sat for a long time and watched him dress, liking the freckles on his back and the way his muscles slid over each other when he moved.
“What a shame you have to wear clothes,” she said.
His reflection grinned at her from the mirror. He adjusted his robe over the loose shirt and breeches he wore underneath. “I don’t think Thirk would forgive me for showing up naked at his big day, even if I did it to please you.” He pulled a plain black tabard over his best blue robe—the tabard indicated that he was a graduate of sajery, but black indicated that he was still a graduate student. He’d end up with some terribly gaudy and frightfully meaningful bit of cloth to wear when he was accepted into the Society of Sajes—and like Thirk, he’d probably keep tacking on new ornaments and awards for the rest of his life, until he looked like a whore’s junk sale.
Roba shook her head ruefully at the thought and changed the subject “I’m still surprised how well his paper went over at the Delmuirie Society meeting.” Roba got off the bed and went over to fix the back of the tabard, which had gotten twisted when he belted it into place.
“It was supposed to go over well. If you tell a bunch of fanatics the man they adore was secretly the hero who saved the world, of course they’re going to believe it. I just can’t believe the Delmuirie Society voted to have Thirk present the paper at the Saje Scholars’ Conference. The scholars are going to slaughter him.”
Roba checked her own reflection in the
mirror. The plain blue leather of her fitted tunic and pants looked nice enough, and the silver bracelets at her wrists and over her baggy blue boots added an elegant touch—but Kirgen was definitely the fancier of the two of them.
She brushed a few fly-away curls into place with annoyance and sighed. “That’s as good as it gets, I suppose.”
Kirgen laughed. “Don’t even start. You look fabulous.”
“Do you really think the scholars will tear Thirk apart?”
Kirgen rolled his eyes. “There are two possible reactions. The first is that they’ll publicly shred him. The second is that they’ll laugh him out of the building.”
“No chance they’ll just quietly ignore him?”
“You haven’t been to a Saje Scholars’ Conference before, have you? If any of those guys can get ahead by ripping somebody else to pieces, they’ll do it. And with the crackpot theory we cooked up—it will be a bloodbath.”
Roba played absently with her bracelets, so that they clinked softly. “I feel guilty about putting that paper together.”
“Don’t. He asked for it, he put his name on it, and he’s going to walk up in front of all those people today and claim he wrote it. He’s had plenty of time to go over our sources and see that we only quoted old dead guys and crackpots.” Kirgen picked up his staff and wrapped an arm around Roba’s waist. “Hells, maybe he’ll come to his senses and back out before he presents the paper.”
Roba favored him with a derisive snort. “Thirk?!”
“Yeah, well. Not much chance of that, I suppose.”
“Not much.”
“Maybe he’ll be lucky. Maybe there will be somebody there with a paper stupider than his.”
Roba raised one eyebrow, but said nothing. She couldn’t imagine a stupider presentation than the one she and Kirgen put together.
The Basin was only about half full when Kirgen transported them in. They arrived in a cloud of green smoke, and Kirgen immediately grabbed Roba’s hand and dragged her at a run away from the center of the arena. The two of them climbed the stone risers, found a comfortable seat about midway to the top, and sat down. “The Basin won’t be full today, so we might as well get close enough to see the presenters,” Kirgen said. “It won’t be anything like it was during the Conclave before the Mage/Saje War.”
“You were here then?”
“I was a student,” Kirgen said. “I was much more involved in that mess that I would have liked to have been.”
“Really?” Roba was fascinated. Kirgen had never mentioned having any part in that very short-lived war. “What did you do?”
But Kirgen didn’t answer. Instead, he pointed to a big, brawny, blond man in the most hideous saje attire Roba had ever seen. The robes were an unfortunate mixture of purple, orange, yellow and black. “That’s Ruenif Burchardsonne, Speaker of the Assembled Sajes. He’s a pretty nice guy, really.”
“I’m sure he can’t help being color-blind,” Roba remarked.
Kirgen laughed. “That robe has the blessing of more than four hundred years of tradition.”
“Mmm-hmmm. And it needs all the blessings it can get.”
Burchardsonne raised his arms, and the assembled sajes and interested onlookers quieted.
“Welcome to the last day of the annual presentation of papers by members of the Saje Scholars’ Conference. Our four scheduled speakers today are Tamridn Dakurst, Otwoch independent scholar, who will present ‘Practical Applications of Nude Spellcasting;’ Elin Praniksonne, Tethjan Sajerie, who will present ‘First Folk Artifacts and the Unveiling of the Current Whereabouts of Their Makers;’ Thirk Huddsonne, Prembullin Sajerie, who will present ‘The Delmuirie Disappearance—A New Hypothesis;’ and finally Srokley Outell, Ralledine independent scholar, presenting ‘Seven New Uses for Fifth-Level Smoke Demons.’”
Kirgen groaned.
“What’s the matter,” Roba asked.
“It’s going to be worse than I thought. I didn’t realize they’d scheduled him for crackpot day.”
“Crackpot day?”
“Oh, yes. Every year, there are a few sajes—usually independent scholars, but sometimes not—whose papers are just too weird to believe. And the scholarship committee has to let them present their papers—that’s in the rules. But they schedule them all together, so that the serious scholars don’t waste their time. The audience for this is always the worst one you could imagine. There will be a couple of guys here who are serious scholars. They’ll stick around so that if there’s anything important in a paper, they can transport out and get the rest of the saje academics. But the rest of the sajes here today came for laughs.”
“Oh, no.”
“Well, it will at least limit serious debate—which in Thirk’s case is a good thing. About the worst thing that will happen to him is that he’ll get a few vegetables thrown at him.”
“The sajes wouldn’t do that.”
“The sajes would do much worse than that. They dragged one fellow off the dais and transported him out and threw him in the Polvene River. He washed halfway to the swamp before anybody fished him out.”
A dumpy Otwoch saje in full provincial ceremonial garb had taken the stand and was reading his paper in a high, droning voice. Roba tuned him out. She had little interest in nude magic—except, of course, the brand of magic she and Kirgen cooked up.
“So why did they throw the saje in the river?” she asked.
Kirgen leaned close to her and whispered, “He presented a paper on turning women into these historical oddities he called—’seamaids’… ‘fishmaids’… no, I remember now. ‘Mermaids.’ He said there was a historical precedent, that the ancient ecology of Arhel actually supported women who were half-woman/half-fish. He thought we ought to be turning women back into these sea-creatures and restocking the oceans with them.”
Roba glanced down at the portly man in the center of the Basin, then back at Kirgen. “Good gods, why?”
“Both the Prembullin sajes and the Tethjan sajes were celibate before the Second Mage/Saje War. The Tethjan sajes still isolate themselves from women—that’s one of the reasons you don’t have any Tethjan students in your classes. Anyway, I take it women were starting to get on his nerves. He figured if they were all out in the ocean, they couldn’t tempt him.”
“Thoughtful of him,” Roba remarked.
“Not enough sex will do that to a man.” Kirgen gave her a cheerful leer. “Brain damage.”
Hoots from the audience distracted both of them. The plump saje on the dais was shedding his clothes, evidently preparatory to some sort of demonstration. Immediately, a few ripe redfruits and rotten squashes arced through the Basin. Two landed on target, and the audience laughed and yelled. The saje began redressing in haste.
“That’s bad,” Kirgen said. “They’re hard to get calmed down once they get started. I feel bad for the next reader.”
The pro-nudist saje cleared out of the Basin in a puff of sulfurous yellow smoke, and Burchardsonne retook center stage. He waved his arms and waited, and the audience finally gave him attention. “Fellow sajes, honored guests, I ask that you refrain from any such displays of contempt unnecessarily. Please give each speaker a good hearing. Saje Elin Praniksonne will now present his paper. I ask that you give him all due respect.”
“That should help,” Roba said.
“Not really. Burchardsonne only asked for all due respect. If this reader is as hopeless as the last, the audience will figure a redfruit bath is all the respect he’s due.”
Roba folded her hands in her lap and looked around at the sajes, many of whom, she now noted, carried bags of produce. “I wish I hadn’t dressed up to come to this.”
Kirgen nodded. “I know what you mean.”
A lean, scowling, dark-visaged saje took center stage and immediately held up a glossy white tablet. The audience started out loud and mocking, still wound up from the last presenter—but they quieted as each person tried to get a good look at the tablet. Then the saje muttered a
few words, and the air around the tablet seemed to bend. Each member of the audience was granted the equivalent of a close-up look at the thing he held.
Roba realized that she could suddenly see the details of the tablet perfectly. “Hey,” she whispered. “That looks like First Folk script.”
“Yes, it does. But I thought First Folk script was only used for inscribing monuments. What’s the tablet made of—stone?”
“No—you can see a bit of light through it, but it doesn’t look grainy—and the indentations have been pressed, not carved.” Roba found the white material of the tablet fascinating. “Pottery of some sort?”
“Maybe,” Kirgen agreed, “but I’ve never seen pottery come close to that degree of whiteness.”
The murmurs of the audience told Roba that the rest of the crowd were impressed with the tablet, as well. Perhaps it was a genuine First Folk artifact, she thought. It looked real—although it certainly wasn’t like anything scholars had found before.
Multicolored puffs of smoke from around the Basin caught Roba’s attention, and she pointed them out to Kirgen.
He nodded. “I told you if anything interesting happened, they’d go get the other saje scholars. This is certainly interesting.”
Elin Praniksonne, holding up his artifact down in the center of the Basin, had spotted the smoke, too. He moved aside—prudently, Roba realized. An instant later, the center of the Basin was alive with bearded men in gaudy robes who appeared out of the air in the center of the dais, then ran like the very hells to get out of the way of the next wave of latecomers.
“Sit close,” Kirgen said. “It’s going to get tight in here.”
He was right. Within moments, the Basin was packed. Praniksonne waited for the smoke to clear from the dais, then stepped out in front of the audience again. “Thank you,” he said, “for your kind attendance. I apologize for keeping my artifact to myself until this unveiling—I realize I might have gotten a better spot on the program if I had—”