by Andre Norton
There wasn’t much of it, but a few of the leaves were broken. Surely one little piece wouldn’t be missed. One little piece wouldn’t be too much to trade for a chance to achieve his heart’s desire in a life of toil, frustration, servitude, and endless humiliation.
There was only one person in all the fair that Jorn knew well enough to approach. At the sign of the Snug Bung he gripped his threadbare cloak around his bony shoulders and walked in as though he were one of the habitués. It wasn’t hard to recognize Wazzan in the back, lecturing to a tavern wench as if she cared for anything other than the copper that was always forthcoming.
“An’ that’s why the reeves won’t give your boss a hard time, even if he holds out on them. They need the trade more than they’ need chump change from him, see? Hey!” He pushed the girl aside. “Whaddayou want, boy?” The girl, undaunted, sat up and flowed around Wazzan’s shoulders. “Speak up. If you haven’t got anything to say, beat it! I’ve got important business, to transact.”
“Me too, Wazzan. Something you might be interested in.” Jorn tried to look cagey.
You never know. The reprobate reached under the wench, who stifled a squeak as she jumped in the air. Wazzan turned on his most charming smile. “Come back in ten minutes, all right?”
She rubbed her tail and calculated what the drunk was worth compared to her dignity, and decided it was all right. She kissed him on the cheek, sneered at Jorn, and slid away into the noisy darkness.
“This better be good,” Wazzan said, settling himself into the wooden booth. His one brown-spotted, useable hand reached for the mug of ale and tremulously enmeshed the handle.
“I have something you might want to buy,” said Jorn. “A rare herb from my father’s coffers.”
“You stole it.”
“Better a wizard like you should have it than the priests who bleed us dry, whatever they pay.”
The hand jerked, and the warm bitter ale splashed into Jorn’s face. “Don’t ever call me that!” the old man wheezed. “My days of magic are over, and good riddance! It never brought me anything but misery, and besides”—he reached forward—“this place is crawling with those staff-toting thugs. Now tell quietly what it is you’ve got, or I’ll throw you out of here with my good hand myself!”
Sweat appeared on Jorn’s forehead. “Maybe this isn’t the place—”
Wazzan fixed him with his stare, one of his few remaining specialties. The priests could not snatch him for merely having eyes in his head. Jorn sat still and reached for the little pouch. The elderly mage grabbed it and, turning to the wall, pulled the leather string. At once the faint radiance lit his face. Subdued, he studied the tidbit of foreign plant for a moment. His eyes went to the boy’s eager face.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked.
Jorn nodded, his ignorance plain.
“Do you know that merely possessing this, you would be hanged with no questions asked?”
Jorn swallowed and nodded again.
Wazzan pulled the drawstring with his teeth and glanced around the tavern. No one had seen. He cupped the precious pouch with his good right hand and the festering lump of scar that remained of his left and appraised the boy.
“All right. What do you want?”
“For the herb?”
Wazzan put on his professional face, which was stiff from unaccustomed use. “No, you idiot. What do you want from me, what manner of spell is it? Surely you wouldn’t have come to me if it weren’t for my . . . special skills.”
It was hard to say, an admission of failure. “I want a girl. I want Salisa. You know. The three daggers.”
Wazzan’s smile began as professional indulgence, but he couldn’t keep it from turning into a loud guffaw. “Ho, ho, my boy! You don’t aim too high, do you? Salisa! By the Three, you want to have that saucy, tasty lioness love you? This is too rich!” Putrid wine-breath chortles sprayed Jorn.
Faces turned to see what had ignited the old drunk, but all they saw was a young boy burning with shame, shrinking into himself. Jorn stood up and snatched the pouch from Wazzan’s grip.
“You crave her for yourself, don’t you? As if she’d have anything to do with a burned-out shell of a man like you—”
“She wouldn’t. And why should I care when the girls here take care of me as pleases me just fine? But Jorn”—he quieted and leaned forward again—“what would she want with a boy? Especially a clumsy amateur thief who’d be found out in an hour? Especially considering the offers she’s turned down?”
Jorn whirled to leave, but the wizard’s good right hand sprang out to clamp his wrist. Unexpected strength forced the boy into his seat.
Wazzan leaned so close their noses almost touched. “There’s no way that woman will ever consider you short of magic. It’s plain to see. And here you’ve been, talking to me in sight of half the brass-hats of Ithkar Fair. So after you waltz off with the most desired woman in this quarter, and that gobbet of phlegm who sired her wakes up and realizes that his only child is under a spell, and runs to the temple to complain, who do you think those stinking priests will come for?”
Wazzan held up his left hand—a mangled thumb, the rest of the digits burned off at the base; the result, a smelly, dripping, red, festering scar. “I’m lucky to be alive. This is what they left me after- my last attempt to help some needy soul. Take my advice, Jorn. Put that—thing back where you found it. Do it now. Life is short, unless they want to give you a little souvenir to remember them by. I never forget them. They won. I’m not going to face pain or death or both because some pretty fluff’s gotten your blood up. Save your coppers and buy a girl who looks like her, and scream Salisa’s name in her ear and give her everything just once, to finish it off. And then go find someone else to love, who can love you.”
Jorn held up the pouch. “Isn’t this worth anything?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Hey, Clannia! Come back over here! The kid’s leaving!”
There was still too much light in the sky for roisterers to begin gathering at gamesters’ row when Jorn went to collect his precious, private moment with Salisa. The smells of a score of different cooking pots drifted in the strange emptiness between the painted signs and raucous challenges. Nothing could distract Jorn.
At the sign of the three knives, Jorn hesitated, afraid to face his love. Within he heard a paroxysm of hard, moist coughing and a muttered curse. Salissa’s father.
“I can’t take much more of this,” he said. “I can barely lift a full mug to my lips anymore.”
“Oh, Father,” came a voice, softer than Jorn had ever imagined. “You get this every year.”
“Look at me, I’m so thin, so thin. . . .”
Jorn rapped on the heavy post by the tent-flap. In a moment she was there. Salisa’s face was a mask to spite all Jorn’s hoping. She motioned him in.
“My father, Tuberc,” she said. The gray-faced man held up a bony hand.
“Forgive me for not getting up,” he said. “I’m not well.”
Jorn nodded. “So I’ve heard, sir. I’m the herb-master’s apprentice. I’ve brought something for you.” He reached into his shirt for a small packet. “It’s mountain lungwort. It’ll make the coughing briefly worse, and then it will be over.”
“Couldn’t get much worse than it is. Thank you, son, and thank your master, too. Generosity’s a rare, sweet thing at Ithkar Fair.”
Jorn turned to Salisa. “You make a tea with it. Not too strong, though.”
“You are too kind. Come with me.” Jorn followed her to the little open plot behind the tent, where she did her cooking.
She wore only a simple tunic of homespun, belted with rope, washerwomen’s clothes, but even so she was magnificent. He watched in silence as she filled a small pot with water and hung it from an iron hook over the embers. The red glow lit her cheeks and made Jorn wish he were a poet instead of a tongue-tied fool.
“You don’t have to be afraid of me. I don’t bite.”
<
br /> “I . . . I wish I could . . .” He blushed, ashamed. “Your father is very ill,” he said.
“He’s dying and he knows it. He wanted to see me married, but it’s impossible. Who’d take care of him if I went to be a wife?” She went to Jorn and put her arms around him, and his knees almost failed. She felt it and said nothing. “I know you like me. I would have met you even if you didn’t bring your gift. It was very thoughtful. You can’t know how he suffers.”
She met his eyes and then, hers fluttering closed, leaned forward and gave Jorn a kiss. He felt her breasts press against his chest, and his hands found her waist. Salisa gently pulled away when she felt it was time.
It gave him courage. “How I’ve wanted just that—a pure kiss from you. Oh, Salisa, for years I’ve—”
She pulled away with a gentle laugh that had none of her hardness in it. “Jorn, my little friend for so long. Did you know that on the first day a captain of cavalry was here, waiting for the game to open, who had waited a year to try to change my mind again? Just because these are big”—she cupped her breasts in her hands—“he’d spoil his chances by courting a gamester’s daughter. I know how to wiggle for the crowd, and now I’ve caught you, too!”
“What about your chances? Is this what you want to do for the rest of your life?”
“No. But when that captain becomes a general, will he want a gamester’s daughter who’s no longer young and pretty to be at his side? When he goes to court?”
“What about a life as an herb-master’s lady? Travel, respect, more than a comfortable living—”
Salisa shook her head and stirred the tea. “Your master’s learned how to live a fine life without a woman in it, and anyway he’s too old for—” Suddenly she dropped the spoon and turned to the young man. She watched his earnest eyes search her face. “Jorn, oh, Jorn. Don’t even think it. Please. I would never hurt you, you know that—”
His heart cramped as though it were glass and her words were flying rocks. “Is it so impossible, so ridiculous?” “You’re the little boy I’ve met here every year since—”
“Yes, and I can remember when your chest was flat, too! So what?”
“I’ll know the man when I meet him, but you’ll always be the herb-master’s boy to me.”
“Please!” He hated himself for pleading. “Don’t make me give up all hope!”
She went to him and touched him again, and he shivered. “Jorn, I’m really fond of you, and I really am grateful for your help with Father, but you have as much chance of becoming my lover as you have of winning the knife game.”
It jarred him. “What did you say?”
“You can’t win the knife game. It’s the way they’re weighted. They always fall out.” She looked at him wonder-ingly. “After all the money you’ve lost, didn’t you figure it out?”
“But you do it all the time!”
“It’s a trick. You’ll never get to use the daggers I throw.” Jorn shut his mouth. It had never occurred to him that she was capable of cheating.
“Now that you know,” she said, “I won’t let you play anymore. And tell everyone; they’ll still line up for a chance to beat me at my own game and watch me bend over to pick up their coins.”
So she was a fraud. It didn’t make any difference. “Salisa, I love you. You must give me at least a chance!”
She sighed, the beginning of the end of patience. “I love you, too, in my way. So you can have all the chances you want—at the game. And you’ve paid for them. I’ll slip you coin to bet with; it’ll build up the clientele—”
“And if I win, will you be the wager?”
Salisa laughed, her old hard laugh. “Why, sure, Jorn. And if you lose?”
“That’s certainly no more than you’ve always expected.”
“It’s a deal.” He couldn’t make his feet move to take him from her presence. Laughing, she gave him one of the flimsy, painted weapons carven of scrap wood to take and practice with; more mockery.
His mind was open to her as if he spoke aloud. “If I give you one more kiss,” she asked, “will that make it easier?”
She knew the answer. Well, after all, he had brought the herb to still her father’s disease. Salisa stepped back and, with a rough motion, pulled off the tunic and stood there in a thin muslin shift. Sweat and work had molded it to her body. It cost her nothing in pride, honor, or virtue to share an embrace with him. She smiled and held open her arms. As he clung to the treasure of his affections, Salisa comforted herself with knowing that even though his sleepless nights might stretch out for months, at least for this one moment, she had completely satisfied his desire.
Jorn waited on his foster father in the bored way he always did before going out for the night. The herb-master was again invited to the temple; he was to be escorted to the upper precincts, a distinct honor, and he was in a jovial mood. He tossed a freshly minted silver coin at his boy and sauntered out to meet his guides.
Silver! It wouldn’t be enough tonight. Jorn knew where the strongbox was hidden, all of oak and steel. He had long since been trusted with the key. The old fool left layers of jumbled coins lying loose in there. A single gold coin, just like that terrifying bit of magic greenery, that’s all; not enough to be hanged for. . . . Joni sweated with each squeak of the twisted hempen ropes that held the awning, and the rattle of rodent feet that scurried through the darkness with their stolen crumbs. At last it was done, the casual disarray rearranged just so, even the dust smeared back where trembling fingers had clawed it off.
Wazzan had taught the boy well. He crept through the lanes of the craftsmen’s quarter, occasionally hearing the hammer blows of some sturdy worker eager to finish a commission. It was common enough to hear the sounds of work in the quarter all through the night.
He barely knew the smith Klovik, who came from some distance downriver. His work was sturdy but no match for the artisans who came to earn their year’s wages in a month; yet he seemed always busy and had plenty to do. Jorn found him still at work, alone. The boy had kept his face muffled and looked a proper beggar with his tent-flap pulled around him for a cloak. The fair-wards had had no call to stop him, and he was sure he had been unobserved.
Klovik cocked a curious eye at his young acquaintance. “Up to no good. Never any good if a disguise is needed.” “You know I’ve never hurt anybody.”
“Wish it, maybe, but not doing it. Not stupid, this one.” His hammer rang on the anvil as a piece of horse harness took shape. “Not a social call.”
“I need you to make something.”
Klovik kept heating, hammering, waiting.
“Three things.”
“Costs three times as much. No discounts. So? You tell or I guess?”
Jorn reached into the folds of his clothes and brought out two pieces of painted wood, tacked and glued together to resemble a dagger and painted with gaudy colors.
“You want weapons? You madman. We hang by the same rope. If this no joke, get out and I do you a favor and forget I ever saw you.”
“Klovik, no one saw me come here. You didn’t even recognize me yourself! I’ve got to have them!”
The smith was a big man; the wooden thing was a child’s toy in his hand. “What is this you have to have? Who for? Whose ribs?”
“Not so loud, not so loud! Please!” Again, the whining note he hated. “You don’t recognize it?”
He turned it in the forge light and studied the ragged jags of faded red and blue and green. “No.”
“It’s from a stall in gamesters’ row. The woman who owns the knife toss—you know, put your money down, hit the target, and collect double—told me herself that it’s a cheat, you can’t win, these things always fall out of the target even if they manage for a moment to stay in—”
Klovik stared hard at him. “She robs people, the wards don’t care?”
“She is very beautiful, and, and . . . and I’m in love with her. That’s why I’ve got to win! I have to! It’s the only way I’
ll ever have her!”
“You love a liar? Better to marry the gibbet.”
“Please, Klovik! Will you help me?”
“You mad, and a fool. And after?”
“I’ll throw them in the Ith.” They stared at each other, each trying to believe what they heard. “I promise you.” Slowly the big man asked, “What you pay?”
His heart pounding for the certainty and danger of it, Jorn handed him the gold piece. Klovik saw that it was real. He tossed it back.
“Where you steal it from?” Jorn stammered, looked away. “Take it back tonight where you got it. Fool. I help you fix the cheat for nothing.” He turned back to his work. “Klovik, if there’s anything I—”
“Do nothing for me. Fix the cheat, that’s all. And if you get caught with weapons, forget you ever heard of me. Now get out. Back tomorrow, bring paints with you and we match this one. Go!”
The day was particularly balmy, with the faintest of hay-scented breezes to freshen the airs of Ithkar Fair. The heralds went about the lanes and great boulevards of tents and booths to tell of the processional, when genuine relics of the Three Lordly Ones were to be shown to all who cared to see. The taverns made ready to broach their sweetest ales, their strongest meads, their strangest liquors and liqueurs. The jewelers unlocked their most fabulous treasures, and the wealthy decked themselves in their richest raiment. All day the crowds flowed and jostled this way and that, the loud jollity tinged with the faintest haze of hysteria. At terce the priests began their circumambulations, the low resonance of the temple bells shuddering the afternoon, the sweet incense from their scores of censers intoxicating the very air itself. The mixture of reverence and giddy energy pulsed through the fair and gave it a life of its own, as if it were a living, breathing creature, and all the people there felt it so.