Liavek 8

by Will Shetterly

  His mother sighed and touched his cheek. "You should be resting."

  "I can help Sessi as much on duty as off. 'Sides, the Guard needs everyone during Hell Week. Sessi's kidnapping isn't our only case."

  "Sessi will never forgive herself if The Magician dies for her."

  "We're looking for him, too. Bastian's agreed to tell the Zhir that we followed Marik to their embassy, but she's not hopeful. Any search that the Zhir allow us will be a joke. They'll move their captives from room to room ahead of us like a damned shell game. If we really press them, they'll kill Sessi and Marik and bury them in the cellar. So we wait."

  His mother nodded. "Don't sneak in by yourself."

  "Mom! You don't think—"

  She smiled and shook her head. "You're in the Levar's pay. It'd be an act of war. It was enough to stand by while The Magician sacrificed himself. Don't expect me to let my son throw away himself and his city."

  Rusty bit his upper lip, then said, "What do you expect of me?"

  "What you expect of me." She hugged him. "We wait."

  •

  Ceramic dolphins swam from chandeliers and wall lamps in every room of the Zhir embassy except for the basement and the south guest room. Rangzha Fon stood in the doorway of the south room and wondered why he had always thought it so beautiful. He would repaint it when his visitor left. He said carefully, "It's dangerous to keep The Magician alive."

  "Would you kill him? You're welcome to try." Djanhiz adjusted the front of her bright yellow Festival gown. "You could chop him into tiny bits. Would each bit continue to live, do you think, no matter how small you cut it? You could fill a tub with lye and lower him into it. Would that amuse you?"

  Rangzha Fon shuddered.

  "We are safe," said Djanhiz. "If your tour did not convince the Guard that only Zhir are in these walls, it did convince them they could not find the girl or The Magician without occupying the building. We've nothing to fear from The Magician so long as he's drugged. Liavek's remaining wizards are celebrating Festival Night in their various ways. By the time anyone learns of your prince's plans, it will be too late. Now we only wait to see if his plans show genius or madness."

  "Why do you drug The Magician? The Guard won't return until Festival Week's over and Jeng has … acted."

  Djanhiz turned to him and grinned. He flinched when she extended a long-fingered hand toward him. Smoothing the front of his Liavekan evening jacket, she said, "You're off to hear speeches, see fireworks, light a Festival lantern or two, and celebrate like any of the Levar's most honored guests. Do you really enjoy worrying?"

  Rangzha Fon nodded again.

  Djanhiz laughed. "Then let me tell you a bit of esoteric lore. If a master magician—and The Magician is certainly that—does not invest his luck or has his luck freed—and we have done that for Master Marik—he still has access to his power during the nine minutes or so of each day that correspond to the moments of his birth."

  "May Thung feign mercy!"

  Djanhiz shrugged. "So we keep Trav Marik unconscious. Tomorrow we will convince him to reveal the precise time he was born, and then ensure he never has a chance to use his birth-moment magic." Djanhiz glanced out the window at the dying light of the day. "He should be coming to, soon. Can you feed him his dinner without me?"

  •

  Sessi sneezed into her hand, wiped it against the wall, and wrapped her wool blanket more tightly around her. The Magician remained unconscious on the other cot, where the fat Zhir and the old Titch had thrown him the night before.

  She knew her windowless cell very well after two days. Two walls were cool, damp stone, telling her this room was probably in a basement. Two walls were made of thick wooden planks. Iron rings hung from the ceiling beams; Sessi did not want to know their purpose. The only light came through the narrow bars set into the door. When she stood on tiptoe and peeked through the bars, she could see an iron lamp close to their door, and a shadowy hallway lined with more sturdy doors like theirs. She hoped those rooms were normally used for storage. A guard always waited at the end of the hall, but the only people who ever entered the cell were the fat Zhir and the tall Titch.

  Something blocked the light, and the door rattled open. The fat Zhir, wearing evening clothes, entered with a tray holding two bowls of soup and two mugs of water. Placing the tray by The Magician's cot, the Zhir locked the door with a key that hung around his neck and said, "He hasn't stirred since lunch?" The Magician, semiconscious, had been spoon-fed by the Zhir and the Titch, and then had gone back to sleep.

  Sessi shook her head. Wanting to test a suspicion, she reached for the bowl and cup that were closest to The Magician.

  The Zhir slapped her hand. "No! The Magician's has a special medicine. It's only for magicians. It helps him rest."

  The Zhir lifted The Magician's head, and he groaned. "Wha—Where?"

  "Shush," the Zhir said kindly. "Drink." He held the cup to The Magician's lips. "You'll feel better."

  Sessi tried not to watch the Zhir feed The Magician. She made herself finish her own bland dinner, thinking that food was strength and she would need hers if a chance came to escape. The Zhir helped The Magician with the nightpan, then set it and their dishes in the hall. Sliding a clean pan back in the cell, he said, "Rest well," and fled.

  Sessi counted to fifty to be sure the Zhir had gone. She reached across The Magician's bed to grab his far shoulder, then turned him onto his side. His eyes flicked open once, and he said, "Uh?"

  As his eyes closed, Sessi whispered, "Please don't bite," and stuck her fingers down The Magician's throat.

  •

  Trav woke on his back in a dark room to the sensation of something damp and scratchy moving across his face. He reached for it, and a child said, "Oh, thank the Twin Forces! I thought you'd never wake up!"

  He rolled over, tangling himself in a rough blanket. Someone had taken his clothes. Feeling for the edge of the bed, he remembered that someone had taken his hand, too.

  "I saved some of my drinking water," the child said. "Go on. They didn't need to drug me."

  He could not see her face clearly, but she was small and short-haired, wearing a flowered tunic and a braided necklace. She had been holding a blanket which she dropped.

  "Sessi?" He sipped from her wooden cup. There was only a taste of warm water, enough to tell him how very thirsty he was. His head ached and his chest felt hollow. "Drugged?" The room smelled of vomit. The taste in his mouth told him whose.

  "Yes. I don't know what, but it kept you unconscious. I made you throw up. It was really disgusting."

  "Sorry."

  "And it still took hours for you to wake up. We've got to get out of here!"

  "They destroyed my luck piece." Trav knew he should care, but he could not.

  Sessi whispered, "They didn't destroy mine." She touched the pendant of her necklace, a blue stone chipmunk. "Didn't think a little kid could've invested her luck. But the only magic I know is wind and orange smoke and an illusion that looks like a kitten if you turn your head sideways and squint."

  "Not terribly helpful."

  "No," Sessi agreed.

  Trav let himself fall back on the cot and draped his arm over his forehead. He might have a fever; he could not tell. "Then we stay here."

  "We have to try something! The Zhir are attacking Liavek tonight!"

  He squinted at her. "That's ridiculous."

  "It's true! That's why they want you out of the way. When I woke up after they captured me, they were talking about airships and the Levar and Festival Night and marines and holding the palace and like that." She nodded to herself. "We have to do something, Master Trav."

  "Yes." Trav closed his eyes. "Let me rest." All of Liavek would be celebrating Festival Night. Gogo would be celebrating too, in her new home, with her new friends. Would she miss him? He might have been celebrating, too. He tried to remember what had become of his friends and his life. He knew a city's worth of dead people.

  She
shook him. "You're The Magician! The Levar depends on you."

  He laughed. "Hardly. There's the Guard for worldly troubles, and half the inhabitants of Wizard's Row for magical ones." But the inhabitants of Wizard's Row vacationed like other Liavekans. How many of Liavek's greatest magicians were in the city? How many of those looked for danger during Festival Week? They all knew—

  They all knew the Levar's Regents had paid The Magician very well for a web of spells that would detect any magical threat that came to Liavek, or any mortal threat that came by land or sea.

  He thought of the smoking ruin of his right hand. Every spell that he had formed had dissipated as it burned in Djanhiz's brazier.

  His loss did not matter to Liavek. The city's officials were not fools. Other magicians had been hired to set magical defenses around Liavek, too; the city's fate could not depend on one person's well-being. More magicians had added their own spells out of love of Liavek and the Levar. Sessi's fears were ludicrous.

  "Master Trav?" Sessi said hesitantly.

  He twitched his head for silence. Something more than his headache and his weakness nagged at him.

  "If any worldly threat came by land or sea," he said, remembering the Luck of Liavek, bulky and slow and capable of carrying no more than a passenger or two as it floated quietly over the Levar's Park. A thousand of those would fill the sky. What wizard would think to set spells to watch the air for dangers that did not come by magic? How many experienced soldiers would be needed to seize the palace and the Levar if they could arrive without warning in the middle of the chaos that was Festival Night?

  "The Zhir and the Titch didn't say anything about land or sea," Sessi whispered. "They said airships."

  "The entire idea's ridiculous," Trav answered. Then, wrapping the blanket tightly around himself, he stood and began studying their prison.

  •

  Fek Zhang dreamed of being a boy in his mountain village near the city of Ka Zhir. When he woke, his first thought was relief that he would not have to explain to his mother how the goat's milk had spilled. His apprehension returned when he realized he had fallen asleep at his post in the basement of the embassy in Liavek, and smoke and screams came from the prisoners' room.

  Something must have knocked over the hall lamp, for surely no wind could have blown in this closed place. Fek Zhang grabbed a fire bucket and ran to scatter sand over the flames. He looked all around the narrow hall, wondering how a cat or a dog could have crept past him while he slept.

  "In here!" the girl prisoner called. "It's burning in here!"

  Fek Zhang could not see anything in the cell; smoke and darkness hid the room from him. Drawing his pistol from his sash and bringing its hammer to full-cock, he unlocked the door. "Come out! There're buckets—"

  Orange fumes billowed from the open door as if driven by wind. Fek Zhang coughed and blinked, and something leaped for his face. Through his watery, half-blinded vision, it seemed a demonic caricature of a kitten.

  He screamed and fired his pistol. The kitten disappeared with the sound of his shot. Fek Zhang gasped deeply and watched for the thing's return.

  The Magician of Liavek, naked and filthy, stepped from within the smoky cell. Fek Zhang lifted the pistol, and The Magician smiled. "Hello. Don't you wish you had time to reload?"

  Fek Zhang tried to club the man with his flintlock's barrel, but The Magician blocked the blow with his right forearm and drove his left fist into Fek Zhang's stomach. In less than a minute, the fight ended. For the rest of his life, Fek Zhang maintained that he would have beaten the one-handed man easily, if only the misshapen kitten had not returned in the form of a girl demon that leaped on his back and clawed at his eyes.

  •

  Though Rusty's shift was over and he should be somewhere asleep, he waited in the alley across from the Zhir embassy. A dark woman had left early in the evening, and the ambassador had departed soon after. He did not know how many servants remained, and wondered whether he should ignore his mother's warning and enter. Near midnight, he saw a slim man in ill-fitting Zhir trousers and tunic leave by a side door. Rusty nodded to Stone, and they both walked toward him. When Sessi stepped into the street behind the man, Rusty and Stone began to run.

  Rusty caught Sessi in a hug and, laughing, whirled her around. Only then did he notice that her one-handed companion was The Magician, and The Magician was walking quickly away.

  "Master Marik—" Rusty called. "Thank you! What happened—"

  "Alert the guard," The Magician answered. "The Zhir may invade this evening. Protect the Levar."

  "You're sure?"

  "Not at all. Do it anyway. Look for Djanhiz ola Vikili. Sessi can describe her. A Tichenese woman who was once a wizard. You'll want the Zhir ambassador as well, I think." One of the new pedicabs wheeled by and The Magician called, "Taxi!"

  "Wait!" Rusty yelled after him. "Where're you going?"

  "For a ride on an airship. Beautiful night for one, don't you think?"

  •

  "Faster!" Trap called from the padded bench of the pedicab, though they took a corner on two of the cab's three wheels and he had to grab the side of the seat to keep from falling. He wished he knew the time. He wished he had calculated the exact minute when his birth-moment magic would return. He feared his luck would come too soon to be of any use to Liavek, if there was any substance in Sessi's mad suggestion.

  "That's a joke, right?" the wiry driver answered without looking back. "You want to pump the oak 'til it's broke or you want to let me?"

  His strength was half of hers after his stay in the Zhir embassy. "Sorry. It's important."

  The driver laughed. "I'm getting you to her as fast as I can."

  Festival lanterns hung at every pole and window, transforming the City of Luck into a city of light. Each major intersection was blocked with revelers who danced to bands playing music from every culture of the known world. Liavek's avenues were impassable, so they raced through alleys and back streets until the cab rolled into the Levar's Park.

  Trav found a coin purse in the Zhir guard's trousers and tossed it to the pedicab driver. "Thanks, Master!" she yelled as he leaped from the bench and ran toward the Luck of Liavek.

  The airship shifted at its mooring in the middle of the meadow like a lazy tethered elephant. Trav saw no one near it. The fireworks had begun across Lake Levar, attracting most of the people who passed Festival Night in the Levar's Park. A rope ladder hung from the netting around the pilot's platform, so Trav scrambled up, snatching at its wooden rungs with his one hand.

  Midway up, he heard the bald woman call, "Who comes? I'm armed!"

  "A passenger! I'm not!"

  "It's the middle of the night!"

  "Do tell?" He gained the platform, wondering if she would kick him off.

  "Oh, luck of a chipmunk. We need the money." She took his elbow with a firm grip and helped him over the low wall of netting. She wore wool trousers and a leather jacket. A blanket had been spread near the pilot's chair, which was built into the front of the wood and wicker platform. "When and where do you want to go?"

  "Up. Now." A wave of dizziness rolled over him, surely the effect of his haste.

  "Right." Her gaze inventoried his cheap, ill-fitting clothes, and perhaps his desperation, too. "Come back tomorrow when you're sober. If you're just stupid, don't come back at all."

  "Now. I'll pay—" He patted empty pockets and wondered how much money he had given the taxi driver. Fireworks exploded above the lake. He told himself the glow before his eyes was only their reflected light.

  The woman shook her bald head. "No crew to launch us, no crew to bring us in. The field isn't lit for landing. Come back tomorrow."

  "I'm The Magician. Going's vital for Liavek's safety."

  ''I'm the captain. Staying's vital for my safety."

  "Oh, gods." He doubled over, feeling the world grow bright as though the sun shone for him alone. His nose filled with the scent of cinnamon.

  The captain
set her hand on his shoulder. "Puke over the rail if—"

  Trav straightened up, as strong and as clear-headed as if he had never been captured by Djanhiz and the Zhir. "Take the controls."

  "Don't speak—"

  A fireball appeared at each of his fingertips. ''I'm The Ma—"

  She hit his hand, destroying his concentration. "Damn it, man! Water-gas is inflammable."

  "Sorry." The flames imploded silently. "Take us up."

  "No."

  Trav imagined the mooring cords untying themselves like restless snakes. "Take the controls."

  The captain dropped a hand to the long knife at her hip. "Never."

  ''I'd rethink that." He pointed. The brilliant lights of Festival Night sank slowly beyond the platform rail. The Luck of Liavek drifted toward Lake Levar and the fireworks beyond.

  "How'd—" She ran to the engine at the rear of the platform and began to crank it. "Grab my bedding!" she called. On the fourth turn, the engine's explosive protests became a rough roar. "Stuff the blankets in that locker!" As she took her seat, she pointed at a chest built onto the platform. "And haul up the ladder!" The ship's wooden propeller turned faster and faster behind them. "You damned fool!" she shouted. "You endanger my ship!"

  "Sorry!" Trav shouted back. "I'm The Magician."

  "I know you're a magician! Didn't I say you're a fool?" The Luck of Liavek turned lazily toward the south. "Ive spent my life building this ship, and you toy with it like it was a bauble conjured out of dreamstuff—"

  "I'm sorry."

  "As though the rest of us had no—" She glanced back at him. "What?"

  "I'm sorry. And I'm a fool. Please, don't land."

  "Land?" The captain laughed without humor. "Not 'til dawn. Not even then if we can't find a landing crew."

  "You'll be paid well, whatever happens. This is the Levar's business. Please. Take us higher. Over the sea."

  She studied him, and he thought he had failed. Then she nodded. "All right."

  At least two minutes of his magic were lost. "Can we go faster?"