The Complete Ivory

by Doris Egan

  WONDERS OF ALL KINDS, PLEASE INQUIRE

  That certainly seemed to nail down his professional identity. I guess we could have skipped the ring after all.

  I said, "I think I'd rather rest someplace else," and Ran extended a hand to help me up.

  I turned to Irsa. "What about the protective association? Will they report this to anybody, will they want to question us?"

  "I don't see why, sweet. It's nobody's business. This fellow probably paid his dues like everybody else, but I'll tell them you two had nothing to do with it, and who cares about the rest?"

  Ran said, "Thank you."

  "Ah, it's nothing. The cops like to stick their noses into every silly thing, like they'll find a payoff somewhere if they keep looking—but we'll just roll the gentleman up in one of Ton's old rugs and carry him away tonight, when the market breaks up."

  Ran understood at once. He said, "Theodora, do you still have your moneypouch?"

  My hands went under my robe, to my belt. "Yes." I opened it and counted out tabals until Ran waved me to stop. He collected the coins and gave them to Irsa.

  He said, "Please thank them for their kindness."

  She smiled, displaying that lovely, half-toothless mouth again. " 'The gratitude of a virtuous man is worth more than gold.' "

  "True, but 'the excellence of friendship is a coin no emperor can mint.' "

  They might have exchanged a few more anti-money aphorisms just for the heck of it, but Irsa was busy dropping the coins into a bag inside her outerrobe, counting them as she went. We waited courteously for her to finish, then we all three left that tent forever, stepping out into the brightness of a normal market day in high summer.

  Irsa's first victim had been dragged away, perhaps in the name of neatness; I saw his legs protruding from behind a cart of sugar ices. Belatedly, I said, "There was a third man."

  Her face creased. "Was there, child? I didn't see him. He must've dropped out before the other two went for the kill."

  I nodded reasonably. I was functional, but behind it my mind was still playing back the last ten minutes over and over. The aim of today's excitement became clear. There would have been three bodies found in the tent, throats cut. I gagged involuntarily.

  A skinny young man in a brown robe walked up to Irsa. He wiped sweat from his forehead. "No luck, Mother. We tracked him as far as Brindle Road, but he must have climbed atop a carriage or some such thing. He vanished."

  I don't think this was one of Irsa's surfeit of children; I think he just called her mother out of respect and familiarity; but in the two years of our market association I'd never laid eyes on any of her family. Though she complained about them enough.

  The young man's glance passed on to Ran and me. "I'm very sorry," he said, sketching a bow.

  Ran bowed himself, then shrugged. "It happens. We appreciate your effort."

  It must have been a wild chase; Brindle Road was well over a kilometer away. Whatever were we going to do now?

  Around the three of us, Trade Square bustled with its usual enthusiasm. Nobody could say these people didn't have energy. "Six tabals?" I heard someone cry nearby. "5a tabals? Are you out of your mind? Don't our children play together like brothers and sisters? Six?"

  Whoever slashed our sorcerer had gone into that tent recently. Probably it was the same knife-wielder I'd been introduced to so abruptly; he and his friends could have waited with their draining corpse till Ran and I came in sight. We could question the nearby vendors, offer a reward…

  Why bother? I knew the system here as well as anyone.

  Five hundred people in Trade Square, and I'll bet none of them had seen a thing.

  Chapter 11

  As Irsa had said, the car was coming straight at us. It's hard not to take a thing like that personally. Meanwhile, tired and wrung-out as I was (and no doubt as Ran was, though he never admits to such), self-preservation gets the wheels of the mind to turning. In order to wait for someone, you have to know that they're coming; that much seemed obvious even in my state of rapidly descending IQ. Who knew we were tracking the sorcerer?

  Well, practically everybody who had anything to do with the Poraths knew that we were looking into the matter. And the Poraths knew an amazing lot of people. Assuming for a moment that Loden was the real target here, why pick the boating party to aim for him? Maybe that public display was no accident. Maybe they wanted it to be seen, and a scandal to start?

  Really? said that annoying schizoid voice in my head. How much of a scandal starts from drowning a journeyman guard? Who of any importance would ever care?

  All right, but the point is that the Poraths and their hangers-on are not definitely out of the picture, regardless of who the intended victim was. Now, Ran pulled the ring off Kade's finger yesterday. Any number of people could have heard about it by now, and if they assumed the logical next step, that we could somehow trace the sorcerer by it… apparently a hired sorcerer, who might be willing to drop his ethics and name names—

  A hired sorcerer, just doing his job. The same way Ran does his job.

  —Shut up. Anyway, the point is that… is that… we don't seem to really be any closer, do we? Almost ended up on the floor of that ratty tent, soaking the rest of that

  fellow's pillows, and we still don't have the faintest idea of who's responsible.

  Perhaps a holiday and a good book would be in order.

  Ran agreed that any further action could wait till tomorrow. We both went home and I sat in the downstairs study with its specially imported chair—a desk chair, but a marvel of soft upholstery—and I tilted it back and put my feet on the desktop, while Ran went out to the cookshop for our dinner.

  I noticed that we had messages waiting on the Net, and I exerted myself so far as to reach over and push a button.

  One of them was the House secretary's notice of the revised agenda for the yearly meeting of the Cormallon council. It was marked with a family seal, and the notation PRIVATE. The meeting was scheduled for later in the week, so Ran would probably want to get a look at this when he came in. I hadn't seen the last agenda list, so I used my privilege code to open it.

  It read:

  2nd of Kace

  6th Hour

  Breakfast/Welcome

  7th

  Financial Review

  9th

  Branch Reporting

  10th

  Midday Meal Served at Central Pond

  12th

  Particulars and Problems:

  • Mira-Stoden

  • Theodora

  • Andulsine alliance

  15th

  Recess

  lst/eve

  Supper, Wine, Entertainment

  Does my name leap out at you there from the middle? It leapt out at me.

  Notice there's no explanation listed for Mira-Stoden; everyone knows our branch in that city has been having problems. No explanation necessary for the Andulsine alliance either—people have been talking about it, off and on, for years.

  And no explanation necessary for Theodora.

  Damn, I didn't need an explanation either. When I asked Ran a while back about how our House would handle my not producing any heirs, I had the Cormallon council meeting in the back of my mind. It might seem, to non-Ivorans, a little early in the marriage for anybody to be concerned on that topic, but the unfortunate tendency of males of the great families to get themselves knocked off has made the Houses prudent about succession rights. They like to have it all clear as soon as possible. I'd already seen what happened from one disagreement over succession, and I could understand wanting to avoid anything similar.

  I did want children, but left to my own devices I'd probably have waited a couple of years. When the hints I'd picked up led me to conclude that I didn't have a couple of years, I'd made that check-in with the Selian Free Clinic. The big news was that my implant had indeed dissolved, months ago, and there was nothing standing between me and kids but random chance. And the unknown factors o
f our separate genetic heritage.

  Not that I'd considered this anybody's business. But if you think the Cormallons won't jump right in and inquire about all kinds of personal particulars in regard to child-production, you don't know them. I noticed they'd left a lot of time for it, too; the whole long afternoon was reserved for their "particulars and problems."

  Did they have the potential junior wives lined up already? I'd bet my House share that somebody, somewhere, had a written list. A nice neat one, like this agenda here.

  Maybe with ratings next to each name. Gee, maybe when the branch reps showed up for the meeting they'd each get a copy.

  I had only just reached that thought when the door opened, and Ran came in carrying a large bag. He put down the issue of that day's Capital News, and walked over to set the bag on the desk. "Be careful, it's hot," he said. He pulled the bag open so I could get to the bowls of food more easily, then he turned and went back toward the door to get the News again.

  I let fly with the top bowl. It hit the wall just over his head, as he bent down to pick up the News. Chunks of red groundhermit slid down the wall and most of the rice fell in a lump on his sandals. He jumped.

  "What the—" I sent the vegetables after them. He dove out the door.

  "Theodora?" came his voice, tentatively, from the hallway.

  I sat there, bubbling like a pot on a stove. You should understand that I am not, by nature, a thrower. That was more Kylla's speed. Perhaps nearly getting killed this afternoon had had an effect on my personality.

  "Theodora?" he said again.

  I said—good heavens, it was amazing how steady and cold my voice sounded—"Go upstairs and ask the Net for a copy of the council agenda."

  There was a pause.

  "Are you going?" I asked.

  "Uh, Theodora…"

  "You've seen it, haven't you?"

  "Sweetheart, there's no need to take this personall—"

  "How long has my name been on the list?"

  "Listen to me," he said, still from around the corner of the hall. "I knew you'd be upset—"

  "How long?"

  "Um, it was on the first draft, but I had it taken off. But then so many people brought it up, I had to let them put it on again. It's not as though it means anything, Theodora."

  I tested the pot again; it was still bubbling.

  "Theodora?" came the voice from the hall, when I didn't answer. The left half of his face appeared in the doorway. "Are you going to throw any more bowls?"

  I checked, but there was no immediate impulse. "Not at the moment."

  He slipped into the room. "It's just a meaningless agenda item, you know. Nobody can make us take any action on it."

  I said, "You don't want to talk about children with me, but you'll spend an hour on it in a full council meeting?"

  "That's not fair. I don't want to talk about it with them, either. And if I can get the discussion of Mira-Stoden spun out long enough, I may not have to talk about it at all. They'll all have their minds on the wine and the gold-coin girls, they won't want to let the meeting run over. It's the only time a lot of them have in the capital all year."

  Not forgetting the written schedule, I said, "You won't be able to cover the Andulsine alliance question then, either."

  "What of it? It'll keep for another ten years. It's not like anything really gets done at these meetings, anyway; I've already seen all the branch reports, and so have you. If there were a real problem, we'd fly out to the people involved and go over it with them. Which we'll have to do in Mira-Stoden anyway, pretty soon. You can't settle anything in an hour, one day of the year."

  I said, "But the others care enough about this to have it put on the agenda."

  He sighed and pulled over a stool. He sank onto it, and I realized I'd managed to get hold of the real problem, right there; the simple fact that they'd gotten it on the agenda was a message to Ran.

  And of course to me. What got said at the discussion was superfluous.

  Ran was the First of the House. No doubt my body was a topic of discussion in Cormallon homes around the planet. "There is no privacy inside the House," the old saying has it, and it isn't said cheerfully. But for the first time it occurred to me that Ran's capabilities were probably debated just as freely. Did they check up on whether there were any bastards left around? Or would they simply insist on handing him another wife, like a sports player handed a new ball and told not to mess up on this round?

  I looked at my husband sitting on the stool and said, "I begin to see why you never give any information to anybody. It's the only way you can keep any privacy."

  He seemed reassured by this remark, and we sat there glumly. Red sauce dripped on the wall, which I would have to clean later. No wonder I'd never gotten into the habit of throwing things.

  I said, "Ran, face it, our… mating… is an unknown quantity. Maybe Ivoran and barbarian have had children before, but I've never heard of it. There's no record of it. I can't get a straight answer from anybody on whether we're still one species. And what about sorcerers? Magic runs in families, you've got to believe there's something physical in that. Are you different even from the run-of-the-mill Ivoran? How different? Do you know? The gods know I don't."

  He was silent.

  "We might try for the next twenty years and not get pregnant. Or it might happen next week… and then what? What kind of a child would we produce? Don't you see that I need some kind of answer to that, some hint, some clue?"

  He said, finally, "I'm not as worried as you—"

  "Thanks, you won't be bearing it!" I said, unable to stop myself from giving the age-old answer.

  "Listen to me. You remember Grandmother left a message for me—"

  I sat up straight, startled. Ran's grandmother had been a woman of surprises, formidable, a little scary, and impossible not to respect. For some reason she'd taken a liking to me, and I'd walked carefully the few times I'd met her. As everyone else did, I suspect.

  He went on, "She was a great sorcerer. But I think we both know there were things she had in mind she wasn't telling us."

  "I know." Grandmother was one who wrote her own agendas, which she didn't always share.

  "I spent time in the library with her bluestone after she died. The psychic impressions were still strong… knowing Grandmother, they'd probably be readable if I picked it up today. When she wanted to leave a message, she made it crystal clear. She was fond of you, Theodora."

  "I kind of liked her, myself."

  "She told me—well, I guess you can imagine, she told me to stop fooling around and get married to you. She said you might take ship for home, but a good hunter doesn't quit when the sun goes down."

  "Gods! You never told me this."

  "I told you she'd said for me to stop being a fool."

  "But not in these exact words. And how did she know I'd decided on shipping out? Her message to me didn't…"

  Ran looked thoughtful. "What was her message to you, anyway?"

  "Hmm, she told me to stop being a fool, too."

  Ran waited for more, then said, "Well. Anyway, she said I was an idiot if I didn't follow through, since you were just the sort of woman I ne— The point is, she said you were good for the family. She said relations among the Four Planets would be shifting, and you'd bring new blood and better awareness of barbarian thinking. I mention the new blood because she seemed to have great hopes for our offspring."

  That made me drop the question I'd been hanging onto and pick up another one. "What did she say about these offspring?"

  "Nothing specific, but she was always an extraordinary card-reader. She would never have worked so hard to get you safely into Cormallon if she hadn't thought you'd be valuable. That you, and me, together, would be valuable."

  I sat there for a minute taking this in. The vague suggestions of an elderly relative, now deceased, would not generally have an effect for me on such a personal issue—except that if you'd known Ran's grandmother, you'd take her
very seriously, too.

  "You never mentioned any of this," I said again.

  "Well, it was a personal message. Didn't anyone ever tell you it's not nice to look into other people's private correspondence? Like council agendas with PRIVATE stamped on them?"

  I waved that away. "You toss the House business mail at me to open half the time anyway. Besides, my privilege codes exceed yours." This was true. I handled family expenses, like most wives, and had access to the House financial records. "They should have stamped EYES ONLY if they didn't want me to see it. Or BORING."

  He shrugged. I said, "About your grandmother, though, I'm glad you told me. It's very reassuring." If also rather alarming in its suggestion that I had a mission.

  "Good."

  "But I'd still like to have us both looked over by a genalycist."

  Now he looked disgusted. "First of all, I'm familiar with some outplanet history, and there haven't been any real, trained genalycists around for over a hundred and fifty years. Just cooks following recipes."

  "Tellys claims to be making strides."

  "Where did you hear that?"

  "Around."

  "Well, it makes no difference to us, anyway. We don't know any Tellysian genalycists."

  Jack Lykon, I thought. Just call the embassy. All we have to do is do them a favor.

  I was silent.

  He said, "So we may as well consider the issue closed. Trust Grandmother, Theodora; she's a lot more reliable than some barbarian with a good line of talk."

  I stood up. "I'd better get a rag and clean off the wall before it stains."

  "I'd better get us some more food," he said, joining me.

  "What are you going to say at the meeting, if the discussion comes around to me?"

  "I'll think of something."

  I considered that as we walked down the hallway. "Tell them that I had an implant when I was on Athena last, and it's only just wearing off. They need to give us another year."

  He stopped, surprised. "Is that true?"

  "Ran, I'm telling you what to tell them I said. Do you really need to know whether it's true?"

  "No," he said thoughtfully. "Perhaps I don't. Would you like me to pick up groundhermit again?"