Saber and Shadow

by S. M. Stirling

  Megan nodded at Shkai’ra’s long saber. “Not the weapon for someone of my height,” she said.

  “Ia. Nor the Fehinnan tools, either. But over the mountains, in the cities along the Ah’yia River, they use”—her hands shaped the air—“a long slim blade, with a bell guard. For the lunging thrust, and just stiff enough to slide-parry a cut—nearly got one through my lungs, once. That might be useful for you.”

  “I suppose it might be useful. To learn a new weapon, though ... Show me one in the market and well see.” She cleaned the other knife slowly, considering. “I wonder what was so important to the merchant that his servant strove to deliver it, dying.” She looked up into the Kommanza’s impassive face. “An interesting morning, wouldn’t you say?”

  “And we are doomed to live in interesting times,” Shkai’ra said, “A smallsword; perhaps Kermibo would know.”

  Shkai’ra kicked the door of their rooms at the inn closed and dropped the bar home. With a sigh of contentment, she racked her saber and shotpistol, peeled off her sandals, and kicked her tunic into a corner.

  “Summertime in Fehinna, I always feel about to sprout mushrooms from my skin,” she said, stretching and yawning. Tapping a cup from the clay jug of fruit juice in a corner, she stretched out on the bed and fortified it with a small dollop of cane spirit from a bottle of twisted black glass, “want some?”

  “Yes,” Megan said, following her example and setting the cup down on the floor while she pulled off her short boots. “You take a look at the pouch. How much for passage from here to the Mid-Lannic Islands?”

  “That would depend,” Shkai’ra said, teasing at the tightly wound, intricate knots that Fehinnans used to foil pickpockets. “I know some captains who’d sell you passage cheap. Then sell you at their next port of call; who cares if a wanderer without kin or lord disappears? The ones you can trust don’t come cheap. Why hurry?”

  She rolled over onto her stomach and frowned with concentration; one foot reached out absently to stroke lightly down the back of Megan’s leg, who didn’t move away. “Faster just to cut tuk t’hait whulzhaits zteafa-kaz ... Hau!”

  Megan looked up at the exclamation of delight. Two whole coils of stamped silver tradewire had rolled out onto the coverlet: two hundred silvers, the yearly wage of a six-master’s captain or the price of six fine horses. Ten gold in loose bits were underneath, half as much again.

  The tall woman swung her head back and wolf-howled at the ceiling, softly. “Megan, comrade’s delight, take a look at this.”

  The Zak narrowed her eyes and scraped the money together. “Ahh, precious metals buy more there. Quite a haul for a servant. And the next captain who tries to sell me off is going to dine on his own tripes.”

  Shkai’ra grunted and fished in the bottom of the pouch. “Something else in here.” She pulled out a folded sheet of heavy paper and spread it on the yellow fabric of the sheet.

  “Sheepshit!” she yelled, flinging it away and bolting upright. The caressing toes bit suddenly into the inner surface of Megan’s thigh.

  Shkai’ra could read Fehinnan, a little, but it was not the content of the message that made her recoil, feeling cold sweat rank on forehead and armpits. The letters ... could not be read. Not that they were in foreign script, but they moved. At the edge of vision they seemed clear, but wherever the eyes tried to rest, outlines shifted into images not-quite-seen. For a moment she thought they formed a face that looked at her—and winked.

  “What the rokatzk is wrong with you?” Megan snapped, rubbing at the red mark on her leg and glaring. Then her eyes fell on the paper. The seal on the pouch had been sufficient symbol to shield it, but now the smell of Power drifted like unseen smoke on the still air.

  “Fishgutted fool that you are, Megan,” she muttered to herself as she reached cautiously for it. “I should have warded the room, even if it disturbed you. Probably too late, but—” She picked up the paper between finger and thumb, slid it neatly back into the pouch.

  Then she walked to each of the doors and windows in turn, setting a hand to each and concentrating for a moment. She moved to the center of the room, or as nearly as possible with the bed in the way, and spoke a single word that rebounded against the walls, showering the air with silver that shrank to a red line around the openings and then faded altogether. Somewhere there was a shifting, as if the foundations of the room had twisted marginally out of alignment with the world. “There,” the Zak said with satisfaction. “Now most people won’t be able to think about this room, much less disturb us here. Of course, those with the power will see the ‘hole,’ and know—but only if they look very carefully.”

  Shkai’ra stared, shivered, then shook herself like a hound climbing out of cold water. The gooseflesh that had mottled the pale flesh of her body faded, and she unclenched fingers knotted about the hilt of a nonexistent sword and made her warding off gesture.

  “Ahkomman mitch’mi,” she muttered. Then: “Well enough. If we’re to have spookers after us, better that we know somewhat of their tricks.” She considered for a moment.

  “That message,” she said. “That message will be wanted, and badly. Protection like that doesn’t come cheap.” She pulled at her lip. “We might just throw it in the jakes and make a run for it ... No, the gates and docks will be watched, and if we were caught, nobody would believe we’d thrown it away.”

  She looked up at Megan. “No one will notice this room? As if it had never been?”

  The small woman nodded, and Shkai’ra grinned. “Then they’re going to have a problem down in the kitchens. Best we move back into my room and use this as a refuge.”

  Their gear was light and easily moved. “Remind me to cancel the delivered meals,” Megan said. Shkai’ra nodded, laid herself out on the cool sheets, and watched the slit where furnace-hot sunlight poured through the rattan blinds.

  “Glitch, godlet of Fuckups was with me this day. Not thirty hours back in the city: three fights, a pitched battle, a spook pusher—” she looked sideways at Megan “—two spook pushers and a cursed letter.”

  As she dropped to the round divan, Megan chuckled. Shkai’ra reached out and touched the red mark on her thigh.

  “Sorry about that,” she said. “I was startled.” She hesitated, then slowly took her hand away from the rising bruise.

  “That’s all right,” Megan said. And it was. She didn’t want the other woman to take her hand away. Gentle fingers wakened the old feelings with a vengeance. She wanted ... No.

  After a while, Shkai’ra got up and impersonally began tracing along the muscles of the Zak’s neck and back, massaging gently at the edges of the long sheaths and straps of well-defined sinew with her fingertips.

  “Beautifully developed,” she said softly, with her mouth next to Megan’s ear. “Like metal under velvet. It’s like massaging a woods-lynx.” She chuckled. “Complete with claws!” She continued the slow, expert caressing with infinite patience and unfeigned quiet delight.

  A black shape leaped onto the bed and swatted at Shkai’ra’s bare foot with a peremptory paw. She laughed gently and pushed him away, where he settled at a far edge of the circular mattress and folded his paws under himself with an air of offended dignity.

  She transferred her fingers to the area under her companion’s ribs. Continuing, she looked down into Megan’s half-shut eyes.

  “You’ve not been close with anyone very often, have you?” she said. Her hair had come unbraided and hung springy and rippling, silk-fine. She let the ends touch across the Zak’s face and throat and breasts, as lightly as the brush of hummingbird feathers. “Not for pleasure, I mean.”

  Megan sighed, and her eyes crinkled first in a somber mien that lightened rapidly. “No, and being forced is not a way to cultivate a taste for sex.” One corner of her mouth quirked into a half grin. “Though, if you keep doing that, I might get to like it,” she said facetiously, relaxed, leaning on one arm. “Muscle degenerated to rat is disgusting. I m glad that you are in no w
ay soft.”

  She paused a minute. “That word wasn’t quite right ... it implies no sensitivity as well.” There was the droning buzz of a summer beetle on the damp air, and haze was thickening outside. “You know, I ought to go back to the market and get something to coat my claws. Something unhealthy to anyone I scratch, that is.” Megan sat up and moved Ten-Knife, who had crept up to squeeze himself between them.

  “Ia. Lots of places to buy that sort of thing in this city.” Megan looked down at the tall one’s sleepy smile and said, “You’re as lazy as a steppe-tiger and twice as nasty. I think that’s what I like best about you.”

  “Toss a dice to see who sleeps on the floor?” Shkai’ra said with a laugh. Funny, I usually hate waiting for it, she thought. Her skin was tight and tingling. This time I don’t.

  Puzzled, the servant looked down at the afternoon tray. “Why am I carrying this tray?” he asked of no one in particular. “Only four rooms on this floor.”

  Shrugging, he turned and trotted back to the stairwell, through, the guest levels of the inn to the subterranean kitchens.

  “Extra tray!” he called cheerfully across the smoky chaos of the great brick-lined chamber.

  The Head cook, Glaaghi, was working over one of the ceramic stoves that lined one massive wall. She was huge, inches taller than most Fehinnans and almost square, with muscle under enormous pads of fat. Dressed only in a loincloth and leather apron, she was a formidable figure as she turned in wrath from the vat of smoking peanut oil in front of her.

  One ham-like fist rose to point at the chalkboard, and a bellow roared out. “ROOMFIVESECOND-FLOORWEST NOW!”

  The servant would have turned pale if his natural complexion had allowed; as it was, he had to settle on grey. Backing out, he fled up the stairs to the second level. Of course, there were five rooms on all the levels in the west wing!

  He stood at the door of room four, second level. “Why am I carrying this tray?” he murmured. “Better get back to the kitchens; the Sea-Cow is likely to drop me into an oil vat if I’m late about my rounds.” Cheerfully, he trotted back to the stairwell.

  As he pushed through the swinging doors of the kitchen, a curious expression crossed his face, very like that of a man who, when deep in thought, realizes that a hyena is licking one of his feet.

  “Why are you carrying that tray?” the cook yelled. Then, smiling gently, she crossed the room, weaving between porters carrying whole pig carcasses and sides of beef. Quietly, she laid one hand on the bondservant’s shoulder.

  “Himo,” she said in a sweet tone. With an effort, he controlled his bladder. “You like to run; I should have remembered. We need”—she picked him up by the front of his tunic—“another two hundredweight of cornmeal ground, and the treadmill waits!”

  In an aside, she called to another of the kitchen slaves as she carried the blubbering man toward the grain store. “You, girl! Get a fresh tray and take it to second-five west, smartly now!”

  As Megan and Shkai’ra sauntered down to the exercise ground, Megan saying, “... you only use four knives, but...” they passed one of the ubiquitous inn servants as she scurries in the opposite direction. They did not see her halt by the fourth door in the corridor.

  Puzzled, she looked down at the tray in her hands. “Why am I carrying this tray?” she murmured. Well, it could not be of any great importance. Best to get back to the kitchens; it wouldn’t do to be caught idling. Glaaghi was not as bad as she would have been if the owners’ kinfast let her, but still bad enough.

  Chapter XI

  Megan woke in the dead time of early morning, the time when old people die. It was quiet, quiet enough to hear the sounds that day tide drowned; a single set of hooves falling hollow in the distance, clap-clack against pavement; the sigh of a slow-heavy sea wind over the fluted tile roofs. Even the insistent chorus practicing their High Festival songs had stopped, perhaps because they were too drunk to remember the words. The air in the room was thick, pressing on her like hot wet towels; it smelled of sweat, wine, fruit rinds. Her bladder was full to bursting, and the heat suddenly made her skin itch. For a moment she lay still, listening to Shkai’ra’s slow, even breathing, then got up off the pallet on the floor.

  She relieved^ herself and pushed the chamberpot back under the bed, pacing restlessly. Goddess, she thought, even the floor isn’t any cooler on the feet under all these rugs. She padded to the window; behind her Shkai’ra muttered for a moment and rolled over.

  The window opened noiselessly, but the air outside held no hint of the breeze she sought. There was little light, and the stars were huge and bright in the cloudless sky. She sat on the deep ledge and looked out over the city, brushing back sweaty strands of hair clinging to her forehead.

  The silence, she thought. It feels as if I were the only thing in the world still living.

  Across the way a curtain twitched in its window frame—someone else sleepless? Ten-Knife landed beside her on the sill, and she petted him absently.

  “You know, beast,” she whispered in one ear that jerked as her lips tickled the long hairs, “I really don’t need you here shedding heat on me.”

  The cat purred loudly, then moved its head up with a quick inquiring movement, both ears pointed forward.

  It was odd, Megan thought: he seemed to be staring up the wall. Could he be hearing something from the floor above? And there was a sound from above, the sound of leather-wrapped metal on brick ...

  She pitched the cat into the darkness behind her and flicked up to crouch on the sill. Even so, she was barely ready when the dark figure dropped from above.

  It was dressed from crown to cork-soled sandal in form-fitting black, eyes a slit-hole in the tight hood. One hand still held the clench-claw that had held him on the brick wall; the other clutched a glass vial that glowed dully, rotting-green. The stranger’s motions were swift and very quiet, a barely audible scraping on the oak of the windowsill as he crouched for balance. But he had been expecting to be alone on it, with only the shutter between him and his sleeping prey.

  Megan stayed in her crouch, pivoting on the ball of one foot. The other lashed out, the heel catching him on the side of the knee. There was a muffled sound as the cartilage gave way, and the man toppled off the window sill to fall two stories to the concrete pavement below.

  She had been reacting on reflex, her mind oddly distant from the brief explosion of violence, hearing with one corner of her mind the cat’s yowled complaint at her treatment of him and the sound of the breaking joint. There had been no other noise; even then, it struck her that the man should scream. And he did, just before he hit the ground. But it seemed to Megan that it was not the ground he was staring at, but the vial in his hand. That broke, with a pop lost under the melon-on-stone impact of a human body falling thirty feet. Green vapor burst from the shattered glass, then seemed to sink into the broken form.

  The corpse writhed with life, twitching and shuddering in ways that Megan knew were impossible. Suddenly, thread-like tendrils of white erupted from wounds, nose, mouth, ears, and eyes, wriggling out and puffing into dead-white pseudopods even as she watched. The black-clad body began to sag and shrink as the fungus spread.

  Swallowing bile, Megan retreated from the sight of the obscene puffball mass that lay on the roadway, already no longer even vaguely human in shape.

  The curtain across the way twitched again, and a small dart slammed into the wood just above her hand; the darkness and flickering lantern light having thrown the aim off. She tumbled off the ledge and felt the shutter jerk with another blowgun missile as she wrenched it home.

  Shkai’ra had rolled up on her knees at the sound of Ten-Knife-Foot’s yowl, the saber flowing into her hand at the sound of the assassin’s breaking knee; by the time his brief scream ended on the road below, she was beginning to wake.

  The corridor door burst open, the bar almost shooting back. Two figures in black came through at a run and slammed it Behind them.

  “Nevo!” one
hissed. “Did—”

  They had one glimpse of the two women, alive and hale, before Megan plunged the room into darkness. It was an absolute blackness, the color behind closed eyes under forest on a moonless night. Patterns of false light drifted before retinas deprived of all stimulation.

  The assassins were well trained. To make noise would be instant death; so would staying in the same spot they had been seen in. Quiet as malice, they separated and began drifting along the walls on either side.

  Megan froze as she landed and tried to control her panting. This is what I get for relaxing my guard, she thought. Not a weapon in my hands and someone trying to kill us in the dark. She rose silently and moved toward the low table by the wall, where her knives were. She heard the rope springs creak on the bed and thought, Shkai’ra’s moved. And then: Fishguts—now that she’s moved, I won’t be able to tell her from the others till it’s too late. She seized her daggers and froze again, every nerve straining to hear where their enemies were. All she could hear was the thunder of her pulse in her ears.

  Shkai’ra froze as her feet touched the floor, toes splaying out like fingers to grip. Tiny puffs of air slid over her bare sweat-slick skin, illusions of coolness in the still, hot blackness of the room. Her mind calculated chances; she was taller and heavier than most Fehinnans, and so more likely to squeeze a betraying groan out of the floorboards, no matter how carefully she moved. While she was confident that no Illizbuan blackcoat was faster, reflex had sent her hand to her saber rather than the knife, which was better for this work.

  Now, where had Megan been? Hmmm, best to move before Megan came out into the room and gave her that to worry about as well.

  With an earsplitting screech, she jumped straight up, bounced flat-footed on the floor, and then cartwheeled silently to the left, toward the entrance. The Adderfangs would have cleared the door area: it was the last place they’d been visible.

  Shkai’ra came smoothly to her feet, whirled, and lunged through the spot where she’d just stood, right foot and hand forward, left leg reclined in a tremendous line that took full advantage of her greater length of limb. Her point touched cloth, just as it reached full extension. An expert could calculate her position from that: she pivoted on the ball of her right foot, left shin sweeping around at knee height in the second half of a pirouette that would take her halfway back to the bed.