by Sharon Lee
“I see…” His mother sighed. “Let us place Mr. Shaper’s barn to one side for the moment. This other proposition—that you attend school here in town. Do your tutors bore you, my son?”
Syl Vor shook his head—bit his lip and slanted a glance to his mother, who was merely watching him as one awaiting an answer to a question.
“If I am bored, Mother, it would be wrong in me to blame my teachers.” He paused. This had to be treated with care. He did not wish to cost either of his tutors their positions, though he thought that Ms. ker’Eklis would not be sorry to leave Surebleak.
“I had not thought of the school—I did not know there was a school here, until Mike Golden told me about it. He said that some of the Bosses are…concerned for the safety of their heirs. If I attended, he said, then it would make your work easier, because—”
He stopped, because his mother had risen and gone over to her desk, where she pressed what must have been a key on a comm unit.
“Mr. Golden?” Her voice was perfectly level.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I wonder if you might join me and my son in my office.”
“Is there a problem, ma’am?”
“Why no, Mr. Golden—why would you think there was a problem? Merely, I wish that you will explain the process of your thought.”
There was a small sound that might, Syl Vor thought, have been a chuckle, then came Mike Golden’s voice once more.
“I’ll be right in, ma’am.”
* * *
“If the gadje is in a hurry,” Vylet said, the cards twinkling between her dark fingers like stars, “then offer the one-draw. Like this.” The deck vanished into one palm and appeared again in a wide fan between both hands.
“One card, to know what the rest of the day will bring?” She asked the pretend gadje they practiced upon. When she spoke to the gadje, her voice came husky and low, not at all like her normal voice. That was part of the fleez—the voice, the cards, the hat or scarf half over the face, like so, to make it harder to judge an age; the way to stand—shoulders round, head cocked to a side, like an old, wise bird.
“Pull one—just one—the card that speaks to you,” Vylet continued, pushing the fan toward the pretended gadje. “Draw it, show it. I will tell you what it means.”
The pretend gadje drew a card, as instructed. Vylet let her eyes widen, and dropped her voice, so that the gadje would need to draw close, to hear.
“You draw the double moons!” Vylet whispered huskily, and then, in her normal voice, asked, “What do the two moons mean, Kezzi?”
“Good dinner and a dry place to sleep,” Kezzi recited impatiently, and sighed. “Why do we care what the cards mean,” she asked, “when it is only for the gadje?”
Vylet stood up straight and closed the deck with a snap.
“It matters because it is the art,” she said sternly. “The art must be true.”
“Even the art we make for the gadje?” Kezzi asked.
“Art must always be true,” Droi said from her place by the lamp, where she was mending a torn finger on her glove. She looked up and gave Vylet the particular stare that meant she should listen, too.
“Our smallest sister asks well. We lie to the gadje in everything else, why say the true meaning of the cards they draw? It is wasted—the memorizing, and the art. Isn’t it?”
She looked from one to the other. Vylet made no answer, but Kezzi crossed the room and knelt a little behind Droi, so as not to block her light.
“I know the cards don’t see,” she said, carefully, because Droi was what the Bedel call vey—not blind, as the gadje were blind; not sighted as the luthia—or even Udari. Droi—Droi saw something, and sometimes the things she saw made her angry. She had shared a promise with Vanzin, until she saw something in the shadows, which had made her draw her knife to cut him.
“The cards don’t see,” Vylet agreed, dropping to her knees a prudent distance from Droi’s needle. “There is no power in the cards. The cards are therefore not for the Bedel, who have no need.”
This was all True Saying, and Droi rocked as she stitched, in agreement.
“Chief among those things that the Bedel do not need,” she said, “is to be caught. The gadje do not like to be tricked. Tell me this, little sister: Suppose you had the reading of the cards in the City Above tomorrow. One came and took the single—the twin moons, as Vylet’s gadje did just now. And you say to them, ‘Oh, the double moons! You must watch behind, and count what money you are given three times!’”
“I suppose this,” Kezzi said. “And, then?”
“And then, two days later, or three, a gadje draws the one card, and shows the twin moons. This time, you cry out, ‘You are two times fortunate! Today you will eat well and have a dry place to sleep!’”
“I suppose this also,” said Kezzi.
“Hah. And then the gadje says to you, ‘But, two days ago, when I drew this same card, you foretold a day of danger!’”
“And then,” said Vylet, “the gadje grabs you, or dashes the cards down—”
“Or beats you and cuts off your hair, as happened to Riva, who never could keep her cards straight.”
Kezzi’s stomach clenched. “I don’t know this story.”
“It happened long ago,” Vylet said.
“She died of shame,” Droi said; “before any of us was born.”
An old tale, then; Kezzi would ask Silain for the whole of it.
“So you see, little sister.” Droi looked over her shoulder and caught Kezzi’s eye, her own darkly glittering. “We memorize the cards and their meanings for our own protection from the gadje, the same as we learn three different routes to each of our doors; and how to throw a knife.”
“I understand,” Kezzi said, making a promise to herself that she would never be careless with her cards. “Thank you, elder sister.”
“The question was well-asked,” Droi said, and quoted, “Who is old enough to ask, is old enough to know.”
* * *
Michael Golden arrived, trailing Anthora.
“I think it a excellent notion,” that lady announced, not entirely to Nova’s surprise. “If Syl Vor likes it.” She slanted a mischievous glance in that young gentleman’s direction. “Of course, you will still need to have your tutors, so that you do not fall behind, Nephew.”
That was rather more sense than Nova was used to having from her youngest sister—truly, her lifemating had steadied her marvelously.
Syl Vor nodded in his solemn way—too solemn for a boy of his years—and looked over to Michael Golden, the rogue.
“I wonder what I would be set to learn, at the school,” he said. “If I am only to be a—an example, then that might make trouble, instead of ease.”
Nova stared. What in the name of the gods had Kareen been teaching the children under her care at Runig’s Rock?
“That’s a good analysis,” Michael Golden said, as serious as she had ever heard him. “Being as there’s not anybody on exactly the same level at the school, everybody winds up pitching in to help everybody else. So, one thing you would prolly do is help others who might be older’n you, but ain’t so good at, say, reading. ’Nother thing is local history and such, which you might not’ve had any of. Street geography. ’Rithmetic. Cookin’. There’s some. Ms. Taylor was telling me t’other day that she was starting up a Recent Events class, to follow the new rules and committees and such that the Council of Bosses makes. Make sense to you?”
“Yes.” Syl Vor was more animated now, leaning forward. “I can be of use.”
“Right you are, an’ in more ways than one.”
“And security?” Nova asked. “Mr. Golden, can staff accommodate an extra prime?”
“Got no reason to doubt it,” he said, turning to her. “I’ll talk to ’em, and if there’s any concern, I’ll take care of it. Only thing I would need from you, Silver, is—”
“One moment,” Nova interrupted. “Mr. Golden, my son’s name—”
/> “It’s his joke,” that same son said, astonishingly. “It isn’t very good, but I don’t mind it.”
Well. She inclined her head. “Certainly, you may decide what names are acceptable to you,” she said. “Continue, Mr. Golden.”
“Yes, ma’am. What I need from you, Silver, in order to make this work, and without puttin’ too much strain on your ma, or on staff, or on me, is a promise that you’ll be no more trouble than you absolutely gotta be. What’s that you call it—necessary?”
“Necessity,” Anthora murmured, and glanced to Nova. “I approve of Mr. Golden,” she said.
“Perhaps you should tell him so,” Nova answered cordially, and had the satisfaction of seeing that gentleman’s cheeks darken somewhat.
“I promise to be very little trouble,” Syl Vor said, which as promises went was, Nova admitted, very handsome, though it lacked context.
“I would say, ‘as Korval recognizes trouble,’ my son, else you will lead Mr. Golden to believe something far other than you—or I—may guarantee.”
“I’ll take that,” said her henchman. “Details to be worked out as they come up. In the meantime, ma’am, I’d recommend the back left for Silver’s room—’s’got that little extra jig where he can set up a desk and work with his tutors.”
Nova considered that. The room in question had what she thought of as a quarter-room extra—the result of bad design, or an artifact of a previous owner’s attempt at renovation. Whichever, it would do very well for a classroom.
She nodded. “There does, however, remain one more thing to be done before Syl Vor moves out of the nursery and takes up employment as Mr. Golden’s agent in place.”
There was a small silence, even Anthora sitting with head cocked, as if she had no faintest idea of what Nova could be speaking.
“The delm,” Syl Vor said, then. “We need to ask Korval’s permission.”
“Just so.” Nova rose and looked to her sister. “Let me get my coat,” she said, “and we can drive…home…together.”
Chapter Twelve
“Well, now, Riva. That’s a tale, so it is.” Silain held out her mug and Kezzi filled it with tea before filling her own.
“By the starry garters of the night…Riva.” Silain looked into the depths of her mug, like the tea was a window and beyond it she watched the story unfold.
In fact, Kezzi thought, talking out a thing that had been dreamed did feel like someone else was using your voice, your breath, while you sat near the fire, mug in hand, and listened with the rest of those gathered. The stories she had dreamed were small stories, and the retelling was enough to separate her from her everyday self. The luthia knew stories unimaginably old, though the oldest were rarely told. Kezzi thought that telling such a tale might well consume all of a luthia’s energy, so that at the end, she would be nothing but a powdery husk—like a moth that had prayed too close to the light.
“Riva,” murmured Silain. “Now, there was a woman of the Bedel. Her hair as black as the black places between the stars; her eyelids heavy with lashes so thick that all you would see of her eyes, had you been there to look, would be the reflection of your own face. She had a sweet voice, too, that was often raised in song, and the carriage of a queen.”
Kezzi wondered what a queen was, but she did not ask the luthia. It wasn’t done, to interrupt a story once it had been begun. Even a familiar and often-heard story still had the power to teach.
“O! She was a beauty, our Riva. You may ask, How beautiful was she? And I would answer, ‘She was so beautiful that her sisters of the Bedel loved her as dearly as her brothers.’”
“It was this love that made her brothers and sisters wish to protect her. And that is both the danger of love—and Riva’s doom.”
Silain leaned toward Kezzi, her voice dropping slightly.
“You see, our Riva, as beautiful and as kind as the wandering is long; with her sweet voice raised up in song—our Riva—”
She raised her mug and looked wisely at Kezzi over the rim.
“Our Riva was not clever.”
Kezzi choked slightly on her tea. Not clever? But—
“It could be,” Silain said, after a moment, “that I state the case badly. What I mean to say is—Riva’s mind did not function as it ought. There was a fault in her memory, and another, in her understanding. It is said that the Bedel can fix anything, and that the luthia can fix the Bedel. But Riva—there was no fixing Riva.”
“And yet—she was beautiful, she was kind, her nature was winsome, she tried so hard, and was so sad when she failed…It was one of her sisters who erred first. What harm could it do, she thought, to merely allow the wrong answer to pass? So, she did not correct Riva when she muddled a small cooking tale, and the food was still edible, and Riva’s smile more than made up for the odd taste.
“Others followed. Her sisters who were to teach her card-lore. Her brothers who were to teach her knife-play. They watched her close and kept her near. Riva never went into the marketplace by herself; she did not take so much as a single fruit from a high-piled table. She did sing, and when she sang, she danced. So beautiful was she that even the gadje loved her, and threw money, which was well. Otherwise, she could not have kept a place in the kompani, and none could bear to turn her out.”
Silain paused and drank deeply of her tea.
“She ought to have been married to a wise man, and granted him many children, but the kompani stood at chafurma, and the numbers were fixed. Had matters fallen otherwise, she surely would have gone happy to a husband when the kompani was taken up again. As it was…well.
“She began to meet a man from the town—a gadje, yes, I will say it. They would sit under striped awnings and drink coffee together. The man gave her presents—jewelry and electronics. Coins and rare fabrics. All of these things Riva brought back to the kompani, for she knew her duty.
“One thing, she took away, at the man’s request.
“A deck of cards.”
Silain held out her mug and Kezzi hurried to refill it, spilling a few drops. Her own mug was barely touched; she poured a little tea into it, to warm what was there.
“A deck of cards,” Silain repeated. “He asked if she could read them—she said that she could, for that is what she believed. Sitting there under the striped awning, sipping coffee, he asked her to find from the cards the number of the horse that would win the afternoon race.”
“Laughing, she fanned the deck, invited him to take one, which he did, and showed her the headman card. ‘Seven,’ she said. ‘The horse who will win wears the number seven.’”
“The man went away and put money on that horse. It won, just as Riva said that it would.
“This happened once, twice, three times more, and the man saw his fortune glowing golden before him. He borrowed a large sum of money from another gadje, promising that it would be trebled by the end of the day. Then, he went to Riva and asked her for the winning number.”
“She fanned the cards; he drew—the headman’s card.”
“‘Twelve,’” said Riva. “‘The winning horse.’”
The gadje might have hesitated, having a memory that was not faulty. But, he reasoned, the other horses had won.
“He went to the races, and placed all that money on the nose of the horse who wore the number twelve.”
“And that horse, believe me or do not—that horse lost more thoroughly than ever a horse has lost a race, before or since. This left the gadje in a very bad place, because he could not repay the money he had borrowed. He went back to the little table beneath the striped awning, and he snatched the cards from Riva’s belt, smearing them face-up among the coffee cups.”
“This card! he cried. “What number?”
“Six,” said Riva, who did not remember what she had said even that morning.
“You told me twelve!” the gadje cried, “and before that, seven!”
“Did I?” asked Riva, laughing. “Well, and so I might have.”
“Tha
t is when the gadje’s anger broke, and he slapped her. She cried out, for she had been used to soft treatment. He slapped her again, and she pulled her knife—her knife that she did not know how to use. The gadje saw that his life was in danger, and pummeled her—and no one else sitting under that awning moved to stop him. He took her knife away and cut her hair off, then he kicked her. He might have killed her then, but one of her brothers was passing that place and leapt the little fence, knocked the gadje down down so brought Riva back to the kompani.”
Silain sipped tea, and looked to Kezzi, her eyes bright with tears.
“Where she died, despite all the luthia knew how to do.”
* * *
“You’re looking well, Nova,” Aunt Miri said to Mother. “Surebleak agrees with you; just like it does all of us.”
That was a joke, Syl Vor thought, but his mother didn’t smile. Instead she inclined her head, as if acknowledging the truth of what had been said.
Aunt Miri looked to him. “Good-day, Syl Vor. Had you a pleasant excursion into town?”
“Yes, thank you, Aunt,” Syl Vor said politely.
“It pleases me to hear you say so. Do you find that Surebleak suits you, as well?”
Syl Vor blinked and looked searchingly at Aunt Miri’s eyes and face. Apparently, she did seriously want to know.
“I have scarcely seen anything of Surebleak,” he said, slowly, so that he not be seeming to find fault. This was his aunt’s homeworld, after all. “What I have seen today makes me think that I would…like to see more.”
She grinned. “I think that might be what I’ve heard termed a careful boldness. Should you like to be a trader?”
Syl Vor blinked. What sort of a question—but wait. His tutors sometimes did the same—asked a question at odds with the lesson, to see how quickly he could change thoughts. So, then.
“I expect that I will be a trader,” he said; “unless Uncle Shan finds me buffleheaded.”
Aunt Miri laughed. “I will inch out onto a limb and predict that Uncle Shan will not find you buffleheaded.”
“Though he may,” Mother said sternly, “find a want of manner.”
“Nothing wrong with his manners,” Aunt Miri said in her Terran that sounded—yes! Like Mike Golden’s Terran! “The question, now, that might’ve been just a thought impertinent.” She nodded to Syl Vor. “Good answer.”