Liavek 2

by Will Shetterly

  "Is it on my way?" Kaloo knew she was being maneuvered.

  "Well, perhaps it would be; or at most a block or two off your path. Oh, but I couldn't ask it of you!"

  "You could, but you won't. You'd rather wait until I volunteered."

  "Oh, you are such a good child! Don't lose that sweet temper as you grow! It warms my old heart, it does, to see that some young folk still help their elders! Be sure that Daril will hear of your courtesy, from me!" Lexi tucked the parcel into her basket, and added a topping of two handsful of small sweet yellow plums. "To put a little flesh on your bones."

  Kaloo nearly repented of her courtesy,

  "It's to go to L'Fertti, the wizard," Lexi rattled on. "He has a little place right on the canal. If you turn left at the corner before the Tiger's Eye and go straight, you can't miss it. A little run-down to look at, but I always say, you can't judge a wizard by his dwelling."

  Kaloo's cars had pricked up at the word "wizard," and she nearly missed the rest of his directions. When she had asked Lexi to repeat them, she wandered from his shop, her eyes vacant and dreamy. A wizard. Her luck time must be near, for this to have transpired. Daril was always saying that a person's luck time brought quirks of fate, perhaps good, perhaps bad. Once Daril had fallen down the cellar steps on her luck day, cracking ribs. Another time, a new helper had spilled most of the pot-boil into the fire, nearly wiping out a heritage of cookery one hundred and fifty years old. And once, Kaloo thought wryly, a sailor had handed her a half-starved squalling baby, not only on her luck day but at her luck hour.

  Kaloo hurried on, nibbling plums and shaking the sticky pits from her fingers into the street dust. Daril let her have no contact with folk who trained their magic. "It isn't for the likes of us," she had told Kaloo stoutly. "Let them dabble and take their chances with what isn't natural. Not us, my girl. We've a good life here, you and I. We've an inn to run, the best potboil in town, and a prime location. What need have we of magic? Let it do its mischief elsewhere."

  Kaloo had always nodded dutifully, but felt that her heart beat to a different rhythm from the thump of mugs upon a table. There was a place inside her where power huddled and grew, longing for light and will to guide it.

  Outside L'Fertti's door, she hesitated. She tightened the drawstring of her blouse again and shook out her skirts. She pushed her dark curls back from her face. No matter that the house was little more than a tumbledown shack on the edge of the canal. No matter that she had no idea what to say to him. Her luck had brought her this far; she'd trust it the rest of the way. She knocked smartly at the splintering door.

  "Come in, already. You're late enough as it is!"

  Kaloo pushed open the door. It sagged on its hinges, scraping across a worn stone floor. The small chamber revealed to her was neat and very sparsely furnished. Bare would also describe it. A little wooden table and two rickety chairs, a narrow couch with a straw mattress and three blankets folded at the foot of it, and, in fine contrast to the rest of the room's furnishings, a tall carved cabinet of some silky black wood. That was all. No one was there.

  Kaloo ventured in hesitantly, and peered shyly into the next room. It was even smaller, but boasted a tiny hearth where the coals of a small fire glowed. L'Fertti swung his steaming kettle away from it and rose to scowl down at her.

  L'Fertti was everything currently fashionable among wizards. He was tall, slightly stooped, grey-haired and bearded, and irascible. (He flattered himself that it all became him the better for being completely natural. He wasted none of his luck tampering with his appearance.) He knit his shaggy brows and peered down at Kaloo as he gruffly barked, "You're not Lexi's apprentice!"

  "No, sir," Kaloo agreed readily. "Roen forgot your parcel and had already left upon his deliveries. Lexi knew I had to pass this way on my own way home, so he asked me to drop it off for him." She drew the parcel from her basket and offered it to him.

  L'Fertti accepted it, ripping it open at once. "Well, you've done your good little deed, then. So go along. If you expected a half-copper from me for your trouble, forget it. And you can tell Roen for me that he wouldn't have had the piss scared out of him if he'd bothered to knock a little louder before he waltzed in here. Well, don't stand there like a stick! I've told you I don't have a half-copper to spare."

  "But I do." The words leaped from Kaloo's mouth, and she stood gawking at her own boldness. But L'Fertti was not surprised.

  "Need a potion, do you? Well, why didn't you say so? Just let me put these to simmer before their essence is lost completely."

  He turned his back on her as he unwrapped the fresh herbs, pinched them into bits with his thick thumb nail, and stirred them into his kettle. He swung it back to the edge of the coals where it would simmer. He shot a look at Kaloo, who had drawn closer for a better look. "Stand back," he warned her. She retreated to watch in awe as his knuckly hands wove mystically over the brew. He rose with a sigh and a crackling of knee joints. Turning, he stumped past Kaloo to seat himself at the wobbly table. He waved curtly at the other chair and she joined him. He looked her over critically.

  "I can guess why you've come. I'll be honest with you. I can do what you want, but it'd be better for you if you waited a few years and let your body catch up with you. Eat a little more and remember that the rose that blooms latest may have the sweetest scent. Knowing girls, I doubt if that changes your mind. Let's have your half-copper. I'll start you on a potion to be taken a spoonful a day. Come back when you run out. May give you a few cramps, and don't expect it to taste good…."

  "It's not that!" Kaloo burst out indignantly. L'Fertti halted in surprise. "I want to know my luck time," Kaloo blurted into the silence. "Can you tell me that for a half-copper?"

  L'Fertti was suspicious. "Why don't you ask your mother?" he snapped.

  "I never knew her." Kaloo blushed as she explained her shame. "She abandoned me when I was a few months old. No one knows who she was or when I was born."

  "I see," the wizard muttered to himself. "Let me see your hands."

  •

  The girl trustingly stretched her slender brown hands across the table to L'Fertti. He took them in both of his and closed his eyes to mere slits. Breathing stentoriously, he let his eyelids quiver and twitch. The girl sat breathless. But after L'Fertti had run his fingers across her palms and found the small scars and calluses of a working child, and skillfully appraised the sturdy cloth of her homemade skirt and.noticed that the strap of her sandal needed mending, he pursed his lips sourly. If there was money to be made off this gull, it didn't show. He had no idea how to discover her luck time; no matter what he told her, she'd probably demand proof. Merchant stock. She'd know how to bargain; a hard one to con. But this was what he was reduced to. He took a deep breath and groaned softly in his throat. Satisfaction rose in him at the tremble it sent through her. He opened his eyes and leaned back in his chair panting.

  "What is it?" the girl demanded breathlessly.

  "It's not easy to explain," he said, stalling. "You must realize that your time of luck is not the simple thing that most people believe it to be. I am sure you know the basics of it: At the hours of your birth time each year, your luck is available to you. I am sure you know that exactly six months later, a wizard is vulnerable to the unlucky side of his magic. You may even know that a master wizard is able to tap into his luck for the few moments each day that correspond to his birth time." He took a breath and leaped into embroidery. "What you may not know is that each person's luck time is like a tide. It may be highest or lowest at certain months, but it ebbs and flows year around. From the coursing of your blood, I can tell that your luck time has not yet passed this year. But we are close to it." Her rapt nod showed him he had guessed well. "But what we must do is a ticklish undertaking, and will demand far more of my time than a half-copper can buy. If you could bring me, say, a half-copper a week, and let me check your blood coursing, I dare say we shall find your luck within a month or two."

  " A...a h
alf-copper is a dear thing to me," the child replied, embarrassed. "Is magic always so costly?"

  He let her question go begging. "Have you nothing else of value you might wish to trade?"

  "I...nothing." Her eyes dropped to her lap, then darted off to a bare corner of the room.

  "I see. Well, a half-copper pays for this time, and be sure to come and see me again when you've another one."

  "But I may not get one again until after my time is past! Please, isn't there some deal we can make? I mean, well, I can cook and clean. I can run errands...."

  L'Fertti had been shaking his head as he pocketed her coin. Abruptly he stopped. He stared at her shrewdly. Was he perhaps discarding the one good card his luck had dealt him lately? She was small enough to fit through a window. He studied her face. Thin, but good bones, and a flash of command in those eyes. Now, who did she remind him of? He dismissed it carelessly. "If I find a task for you, to pay for my magic, where would I find you?"

  "Send a message to Kaloo at the Mug and Anchor," she replied eagerly. "But be subtle about it. My foster mother does not approve of my search."

  "Subtlety is my specialty," he assured her. "Now hurry off before your own goods wilt in the heat. I've a potion to tend." He listened to her thanks a dozen times before he could shoo her out the door. He went back to his kettle, stirring it slowly and thinking. It was no more than an herbal cure for the flux. His magical passes had been for Kaloo's benefit. Besides, folk paid more to buy the remedy from him, a wizard, than from a simple herbalist. So let them get what they paid for. He strained it into stoppered flasks and set them away on the shelves of the tall cabinet, frowning as he did so. That a wizard of his skills should be reduced to curing liver spots and diarrhea. Oh, how it rankled! He crossed hastily to his couch and stretched out upon it. His time of luck for the day, that small bit of magic left to him, was nearly here. He could feel it coming to a simmer. He closed his eyes and sent his luck questing.

  Still there. The green-stoned earrings were shut up in a tiny box lined with velvet, locked securely in a wooden chest in Snake's shop. Damn and damn and damn. He would have a better chance of recovering them almost anywhere else. To burgle the Tiger's Eye was out of the question. He considered going in and asking Snake if she had any jade earrings; then, when he had them on the palm of his hand, he could tap into his magic invested in the green stone and...what? He tried to think of a magic that would get himself and the earring out of Snake's shop before that whip of hers could pop. But he knew his luck well. It was not a quick kind. His sorceries were limited to the slow and careful sort, the spells that, once wrought, were seldom undone.

  His luck time passed and he sat up with a sigh. At least he still knew where the earring was. And he knew who to blame for it all, too. That sneaking Galida. He should have known her for a thief. But no, he had taken her in, spent all his coins on her soft sweet body, and awakened one morning to find himself worse than impoverished. Anything valuable and portable was gone. That included the earrings he had been wearing when he fell asleep beside her. Those clever, gentle hands of hers. The right earring he did not mind, for all that the green stone had cost him a nice bit of gold. But the left one: his magic. Only two months ago, he had spent all his birthday luck time investing his magic into that stone, to keep it safe and always close enough to tap. But then (and he wondered at his own foolishness), a brilliant idea came to him. He had worked a slow spell of ill-luck into the setting and the hoop of the earring, to vanquish any who might try to steal his magic. He must have been careless. For the spell had turned on its creator, bringing him a sticky-fingered lover to fleece him of his power. The only good luck he had had was that no one knew of it yet. If anyone found that it held his luck, they could destroy it on his midyear day, bankrupting his magic forever. He felt queasy at the thought. Spend his life mixing cures for gout and colic? It was more than he could bear.

  Six anxious days were to pass before his luck time vigil was rewarded. On that day he found his earring lying in the palm of Snake's hand. Was she selling them to someone? No, that was Thyan, her assistant, leaning on the counter to peer over Snake's shoulder.

  •

  Snake turned the earrings over in her hand, examining them both closely. But when Thyan reached for them, she snapped, "Don't touch! You've enough bad luck already!" Thyan gave a snort of disgust as Snake slapped them back in their box.

  "I told you so!" she observed, not meekly.

  Snake gave her a look that set her to polishing the counter. "Galida always did hide the truth in her lies. 'My mother's last gift to me, which bad luck forces me to sell.' I should have guessed it sooner," Snake observed regretfully.

  "You should have," Thyan assented. Snake raised an eyebrow at her, then glared at the earrings. A sudden smile of wicked inspiration lit her face.

  "What is it?" Thyan demanded.

  "It's too bad the stones are valuable. I know just who deserves such a gift as this. Even if I'm wrong about the bad luck, the brass would turn his earlobes green."

  (L'Fertti winced. Was the gold plating wearing off them so soon?)

  Thyan's eyes widened; then she grinned. "I dare you," she challenged.

  "He'd guess who sent them in a minute. He'd suspect a trap."

  "Not if you did it right."

  Snake didn't appear to hear her. Her eyes were roving the shop. "There!" she exclaimed suddenly. "Just the touch to let him have a turn at playing the fool." She strode across the shop to snip a lock of fair hair from an exotic doll, purported to be modeled on the national dress and features of the Farland folk. "So well do you plot; let's see you figure this out." She tucked the golden curl between the earrings in their box. Her grin became demonic. Thyan could not contain herself when Snake took up a bit of plain paper.

  "Let me write the note!" she begged.

  Snake leveled the pen at her. "You. Scoot! If this comes home to roost, I want it to land on me, not you. Did you finish that inventory of beads yet?"

  "Snake!"

  "'Now."

  But Thyan did not scoot. She dragged herself from the room with many a backward pout. Snake stared at the earrings for inspiration, then wrote with her left hand, "To the one who has magicked my heart with his dark eyes." Signing no name, she rolled the note and tucked it into the box.

  The lid was snapped shut, and L'Fertti's vision went with it. He heard dimly the rustling of paper, then the sound of Snake hailing a street child. She spoke firmly.

  "Count Dashif is expecting this parcel. Here, I will pay you for its delivery now. But before you think of running off with both coin and merchandise, I remind you that he is expecting it, and soon. Now listen. He wishes it most discreetly delivered. You are to pass it silently to the guard outside the Levar's palace. If he tries to detain you, say this: 'I will sully no lady's honor!' Only that, then run away. No, I don't know why. That is how the Count wishes it done, and I am not so stupid as to ask him questions. Are you? I didn't think so. Be off!"

  •

  Her voice faded. L'Fertti lay in a sweat, straining his magic after her, but his birth-time luck was gone. So she had passed the earrings on to Count Dashif. He wondered why. A remembrance of the Count's narrow black eyes and intense face assailed L'Fertti. The man had a most nasty reputation. No one knew exactly what he did for His Scarlet Eminence; smart people didn't ask, as long as Dashif didn't do it to them. Dashif was a walking arsenal, with the temper of an adder. L'Fertti's bad-luck spell was still working.

  His mind swung into despair. Dashif would hate the earrings and never wear them. Then they would be locked up somewhere in the Levar's palace, hopelessly out of L'Fertti's reach, leaving him powerless for a year. A worse thought struck him. Dashif's own powers were rumored to be considerable. He would smell a trick in the gift. He would use his own luck to track the earrings back to L'Fertti, or he would sense the power invested in the stone, and destroy it!

  L'Fertti rolled from his cot with a groan and headed for the small kitchen h
earth and a cup of kaf to restore himself. But enroute, a mixture of inspiration and stubborn hope assailed him. He might have a chance, if Count Dashif harbored an ounce of human vanity in him. True, he was basing all his hopes on the chance of a coincidence, but what was magic but the manipulation of coincidence? Or so he had been taught at the Za-Drin Academy of Wizardry. True, it had been a cut-rate school and had barely existed long enough to teach him the basics of investiture. But it had been all his parents could afford, and high honor for a fishmonger's son to be accepted at all. He thought fondly of his parents and the sacrifices they had made so he could attend the school. Briefly he wondered where they were and how they were doing now. Very briefly.

  •

  Kaloo could have wished for a more subtle summoning. Roen's face was white with awe. She took the little basket of sweet plums from his shaking hands as he whispered, "Remember the delivery you made for me? The one who received it sends these plums and says he would have your company again today, at just past midday."

  The boy was visibly trembling as he backed away from the kitchen door. Kaloo bit into one of the plums thoughtfully as she stared after him. So she was summoned. But for what? She swallowed, the fruit suddenly sour in her mouth. Setting the basket down, she turned to Daril. The big innkeeper looked up from stirring the pot-boil.

  "May I have an hour or two to myself today? The serving room is nearly empty."

  Daril pursed her lips, as if tasting something both sweet and bitter. "I suppose you may," she sighed. Then, more gently, "You haven't forgotten the Worrynot?" At Kaloo's surprised look, Daril choked back a laugh. "Don't act so innocent. I don't need eyes in the back of my head to hear Roen whispering at the kitchen door, or see the flush on your cheeks. Now, don't get piqued. Go on, have your hour. I haven't forgotten when I was your age. But...be sure he's clean. And take your time about it. And if you do change your mind, tell him so. Don't..."