Saber and Shadow

by S. M. Stirling

  “I’ll stay.” Shkai’ra hung her sword on the bedstead. “We have to start somewhere, and all we have now is the Glitch-taken Adder’s word. Not that I mind a fight, but even I’m not lucky enough to kill every hired sword in the city.” She watched Megan with more curiosity than alarm.

  The Zak took the paper from the pouch, and concentration settled like a wall between them. Nothing seemed to happen for a long moment, then Megan’s hands began to tremble, slowly at first, then with increasing violence as she struggled to contain the Power hiding the message and bend it to her will; and was not successful. There was an almost audible snap as she sagged, the tension in the room gone as if swept away by a brisk wind, defeat on her face. “Whoever did this was a master. I cannot break it.”

  Shkai’ra leaned back against the pillow a moment, then reached over to tap Megan’s hand just above the parchment, still careful not to come in contact with it. “No matter, for now. I have a thought of what we could do with that.” Megan was still staring absently at the wavering, creeping letters, her brow furrowed. “Kh’eeredo, cease. I doubt that we would be attacked twice in one night, so we have at least a day in which to think on it. Tomorrow night we deal with the message, not now.” She chuckled. “And you look as if you could sleep again. This magic seems to be more tiring than swordplay.”

  Megan thought for a moment. “I haven’t much to boast of with my magic tonight,” she admitted ruefully. “However good my knife work was.” She looked down at the leather pouch, her face hardening. “I will break this. I don’t care how long it takes; I will do it.” She hurled the pouch across the room; it made an unsatisfying small put against the brick and fell to the floor.

  Shkai’ra yawned. An overwhelming weariness was on her, and a feeling of cold. She controlled the shuddering. Violent death was no stranger to her, but this was getting to be nearly as baa as a campaign. As bad as the trail barricades in the Forest War, and that was one of her less pleasant memories. Sighing, she forced the taut nerves to relax and allow fatigue through.

  “Dark One, take it,” Megan said softly as she collapsed to the bed, head in her hands.

  “Perhaps he, she, or it will,” Shkai’ra muttered.

  “He,” Megan clarified absently, then shook her head. “Ach, you’re right. Last one up has to scrub the other’s back, agreed? Shkai’ra?”

  The tall woman turned over, murmuring, and curled into an unconscious ball. “We’ll settle that in the morning.”

  Night was soft and deep.

  Chapter XII

  Megan had had to spend considerable time getting the brown crust out from under her fingernails; going back to sleep after a fight that messy was, she told herself sternly, nothing less than slovenly. After so long in the steamy heat of the baths, the tepid water of the plunge-pool was shockingly cold, then comforting. She forged through the thin scattering of morning bathers with a doggedly competent breaststroke and hauled herself out on the central fountain, lying back on the smooth marble and enjoying the sensation of water drying on her skin as she wrung out her long hair.

  One of the few ways not to sweat in this swamp of a city, she thought luxuriously.

  A figure, one of the kinfast, waved at her from the edge of the pool. She ignored his waving at first, thinking it was directed at someone else, then slid into the water with a sigh at a strangled, embarrassed shout. For a moment, she clung to the stone at his feet and watched his lips move silently before the water released its tension grip on her ears and ran down her neck in warm trickles.

  “... rry to disturb your cleansing, Brightness,” he said nervously. “But one of the Shining Servants of the Glorious Light wishes to speak with you.” He paused. “A prominent Servant.” Devoutly, he circled his chest; perhaps the stupid outlander would take the hint. In any case, it would be his back that would feel the cane if the Weary Wayfarer attracted another temple fine.

  Megan watched with cool detachment as the nervousness increased. Jumpy people said things that otherwise would stay behind their lips; it was a great advantage to be one of those undisturbed by silence.

  This one is almost as afraid of offending me as he is of angering the priest, she thought. Last night’s affray had improved their reputations considerably. She began drying herself, and took pity on the youth as he shifted from Toot to foot and made unconscious patting motions to hurry her. It was unlikely that clerical doings were included on the inn servants’ grapevine, after all

  “This priest,” she said. “A nigh one? Rank?”

  The servant searched for words. A priest was, after all, a priest. It was warm in here to be fully clothed, and he felt sweat trickling down his flanks. O Sun, he prayed. Get me out of this, Divine Effulgence, and I’ll never complain about swab-out detail or guests with strange pillow habits again. Just for safety’s sake, he added an invocation to Ribbidib, gull-headed godlet of Illizbuah the City, and to Haaichedew, the Provider of Maailun.

  Megan frowned and considered her words. Her Fehinnan had improved rapidly, but somehow she doubted her mastery of the social inflections was equal to dealing with the shavepate.

  “I will not see him alone,” she said. “Tell him to wait until Shkai’ra, my friend with the blond hair, gets back.” The servant turned grey under the natural olive brown of his skin. “My apologies, of course. Just tell him that the stupid foreigner doesn’t understand a civilized language and would be a waste of his time. Use the high forms, tell him what you like,” she ended with a small mocking grin, imagining the scene. “Just see that he waits until we’re ready for him.”

  She wrung the last drops of water out of her hair and thought over the book she had found that afternoon. There were fascinating similarities to some very old inscriptions she had seen across the Lannic; even to her native Zakos. It would bear more careful examination, and her hair did need a trim at the ends.... She turned to go, followed by a small, hollow moan from the servant.

  Shkai’ra opened the door of their room and paused for a moment. Megan lay on the bed, her chin propped on her hands, staring at the crumbling remains of a book lying open beneath her on the floor. Her hair was unbound, still slightly damp; the ends pooled beside the yellowed pages and fanned out across the linen of the coverlet, neatly trimmed. Lumpy bundles were scattered about, sagging open to show the marks of various guilds: the clothiers’, the leatherworkers’. Two boxes snowed the ridged ends of bound volumes through coarse brown wrapping paper. A rapier leaned against the bed, needle-pointed and double-edged, with a scrolled cup guard and long quillions. Beside it lay a severely plain leather sheath and tooled baldric.

  Ten-Knife-Foot pulled an inquiring nose from a bundle and sprawled across the fragile book, twisting to present an imperious chest for scratching. The warm afternoon light slanted in through shafts of dust-flecked brightness, bringing out the deep highlights of his pelt, matched with the shining black of Megan’s hair. Shkai’ra closed her eyes and sighed slightly, content.

  The Zak looked up and ceased tapping her teeth with the writing quill in her hand. She smiled: it was visibly the result of conscious choice, but the expression was growing more natural.

  “Did your knowledge-hunt find quarry?” she said.

  “Nia—no none dares even whisper the hint of a trace of a rumor. Not a word on what the sheep-raping message might be, except that it’s valuable.” She shoved parcels aside to clear a spot on the bed, sat down, and began unlacing her sandals, until she could work hot and dusty feet into the pile of the carpet with a slight groan of pleasure. “Almost better in boots; the sweat keeps your toenails from splitting.... I see you spent every tenth-bit of our loot on the merchanters’ rows.”

  Megan plucked at the hem of her tunic. “The tailor says that I’ll have breeches again tomorrow; I shocked him with the outlandish design I wanted.”

  Shkai’ra slapped dust out of her own trousers, light Fehinnan cotton done to a pattern that three thousand kilometers north and west made in wool and horse-hide. “Clink th
e metal, and even an outlander’s whims are law. What’s that moldy thing?”

  “A book, ignorant one,” Megan said dryly. “It seems to be an old tale, of a hero named Nixo; one who rose to high estate, then was cast down, but rose again to be a demigod of wisdom in the afterlife of Sainclem, in the Uttermost West. I’m not familiar enough with the language to be really sure; and it’s been transcribed so often. The words ... some of them sound familiar, which is strange; languages usually don’t spread that far.”

  Shkai’ra shook her head. “I can read enough for a trade-tally,” she said. “Four hundred bales of wool and thirty sacks of grain. Or The village of Zh’airzfurd owes service of thirty lances twice each season. But the gods never intended me for a shaman.”

  Megan closed the book. “I believe someone who knows the answers to our little problem waits. Someone with a shaved head. I don’t know Fehinnan well enough to talk to him—at least that’s what I had the bondboy say, so the priestling is cooling his heels somewhere in the inn, if he hasn’t stalked off in a huff. I told them to bring him when you arrived.”

  Shkai’ra stared at her for a moment, then fell back on the bed with a shout of laughter. “You told a priest to await my arrival? Glitch, I wish I could have seen his face when they brought that news; almost enough to be worth going under the Lens for.”

  Megan curled to her feet and rummaged through one of the bags. A pair of soft boots appeared. “These I found also, she said. “A good grip on the soles, perfect for my line of work. When I don’t have a ship. And more of this.” She produced a small flask, a tiny brush, and began very carefully to paint over the hard, metallic, knife-sharp edges of her nails.

  A timid knock sounded at the door. “You deal with him,” she said, waving the brush. “I won’t say a thing, unless to help you keep your teeth from your kneecaps. Or unless you want him killed.”

  She repaired to the window ledge to complete the brushwork, taking exquisite care not to touch the clear liquid to her skin.

  Shkai’ra shrugged and lay back on one elbow, facing the door. It opened to reveal the pained gaze of an inn servant and the imperturbable face of a temple priest. A third degree Spark, Shkai’ra thought, from the leaf-sign above his brow. His face was completely expressionless, but somehow conveyed an impression of bad drains and sacrificial devotion to duty.

  The Kommanza scratched under her short ribs. “Will the Spark of the Shining Light, Effulgent with Truth and Justice, deign to enter?” she said. That was precisely what the codes demanded; of course, she should nave delivered it on one knee, not nearly prone and tickling a cat beneath the jaw with the toes of one foot.

  The priest stepped in, smiling gently. “Of course, One Lost in Darkness,” he said. “A Servant need fear no pollution.” He sank slowly on the cushions near the desk, his eyes scanning automatically across the room. Not that he expected to see it in plain view, but the urgency ...

  He matched discourtesy with insult and came directly to his business. “Yet the Reflection of the Divine Light is merciful with his priests and exposes them to heresy as little as he may. Ignoring the snigger from the window ledge, he continued, “You have what is ours. We want it.”

  Shkai’ra began picking her teeth with a thumbnail, regarding him sidelong. “Ours, yours, someone else’s ... these are merely words. Even if we should have this item, would I say so? Indeed, I know of nothing in our possession that could interest you or your master.” She paused, looking at the dirt under her nails, starting to clean under the one index finger. “We are only poor mercenaries in the Sun-on-Earth’s, ah, occasional service. I hear, Shining Splinter of the Divine Light, that what the temple has is its forever, while what is ours is negotiable.” She grinned at the priest, who looked as thrilled as a guest discovering rat bones in his soup. “The God’s call on our services has been slim of late.” And there she left it.

  There was silence for a moment; the cry of a street vendor floated through the window as the Servant of the Effulgent Light forced an expression of indifference as carefully crafted as a temple mosaic, and as false.

  “I—,” he said, and coughed before forcing himself to complete the sentence. “—am directed to offer a certain sum for our item’s return.”

  Shkai’ra looked at him coolly, curled one leg over the other knee, and began to strop a knife on the hard leathery callus on the sole of her foot. “I like hearing about money,” she said genially. “But take pity on an ignorant barbarian, O Lightener of Shadows: be more concrete.”

  The priest smiled. “Ah, admission of ignorance is the first step to wisdom. One thousand.”

  Shkai’ra’s knife continued its smooth, even movement. A great deal of money had flowed through her hands these last ten years of exile; very little of it had stuck. But this! For a thousand, you could buy a good farm, fully stocked and with half a dozen slaves to work it. Or a horse stud; or fit out three cavalry fighters; or buy a half-share in a middling merchant vessel. Creed warred with wariness; her own people did not use coined money, and her caste had little to do with trade, but she had learned never to accept the first offer.

  “Not enough,” she said, and smiled broadly. The priest, who had not flinched at the knife, swallowed and forced his spine to stiffen.

  “It is wealth beyond your dreams,” he said.

  “Priest, little priest,” she said, rising to her feet. The man in the orange robe was of average height for a Fehinnan; Shkai’ra topped him by four inches. “I dream more grandly than you imagine, and I am not a coastlands peasant, or a merchant, to pleasure myself with haggling. Tell me what you will give, or go.”

  The priest flushed. Peace through contemplation of the Light, he chanted silently. Peace through contemplation of the Light. Peace ... Presently, he won back enough self-control to speak.

  “I am a Servant of the Effulgent light,” he hissed.

  “And I am Mek Kermak, godkin, descended from the Ztrateke ahkomman,” she said. “How much, priest?”

  “Two thousand; and passage money to anywhere, so it be four hundred kaahlicks from Fehinna’s boundaries. Death if you return.”

  “Nice place,” Megan said. “They pay you to leave. Shows their bad taste in people.”

  “Disobedience to the God’s will can lead to—”

  “Sunburn?” Megan said.

  Astonishingly, the priest smiled. “Oh, yes,” he said. “A very severe case. Think on it.”

  He swept from the room; Ten-Knife followed, sniffed suspiciously after him, then turned and made a burying motion with his forepaws.

  “He looked as if he was sitting on a caltrop,” Megan said, “when he didn’t look as if he was imagining us less our skins. But was it necessary to offend him? A certain barbarian of my acquaintance said that was dangerous.”

  Shkai’ra looked past the closed door, teeth showing between slightly parted lips. “You’d already offended him, kh’eeredo,” she said. “I wanted him so angry he couldn’t think straight. As the Warmasters said, the only time it’s safe to lose your temper with an enemy is when they’re tied and under your knife. But I think in the end our existence angered that one; the priests of the Sun don’t like outlanders.”

  “Two thousand,” she continued. “They must want it very badly. With that much, I could ... But that offer of passage money! I’d risk Baiwun’s hammer if that doesn’t mean a rope around the ankles, and a rock tied to it over the side.”

  She sighed happily. “What would you wager that isn’t the last offer? Troubles follow each other like packhorses today.”

  The sun moved its slitted bars across the floor, through the blinds. Megan returned to the crumbling pages, puzzling slowly over the ancient words. Shkai’ra lay, her hands laced behind her head, happily running over uses for that much silver, and ways of staying alive with it. Less than a tenth-day passed before the next knock.

  The tall woman turned to her companion. “Do you want to insult this one while I watch?”

  “No, no,” Megan
said graciously. “Merely offending through ignorance cannot hope to equal the effects of deliberate provocation.”

  The door opened. This man came unescorted; a tall, lean figure in a green undress tunic that had as much embroidery at neck and hem as the regulations allowed, or rather more; he wore a fox-faced festival mask that left only his mouth visible, curled in a smile that matched that of the animal above it.

  Bowing slightly, he swept off the mask and tucked it under one arm. His dark-brown hair was foppishly curled and waved, with a slightly tousled air that owed nothing to chance; jewels glinted on fingers and the hilt of his shortsword, and in one ear—some of them were genuine. He smiled engagingly out of a face paler man most lowland Fehinnans’, and in a pleasant way remarkably ugly.

  “Shkai’ra!” he said, rolling the glottal stop off his tongue with an ease few of his countrymen could have matched. “Won’t you invite an old friend in? Surely you’re not still sulking because of the dice god’s partiality to me?”

  Shkai’ra glanced at him sidelong. “Odd, how Ribbidib always smiled on you when you used your own dice.” She grinned, and the man relaxed fractionally. “Come in, Sammibo, and consider it payment for that little ... accident, when I taught you to play bannock.”

  Curled on the bed, the Zak saw him flush; his sword-hand twitched, and she noticed that the little finger was missing a joint.