by Martha Wells
Sagai was capable of infinite patience. It was one of the reasons he and Khat got along together so well. Finally, Khat met his friend's skeptical eyes and said, "He wants to go there for a reason. Maybe he knows something I don't."
"Betrayal," the beggar woman whispered, startling them both. She was holding her hands in the wisps of smoke rising from the coals, the burning bones. "Betrayal of you, betrayal by you."
In the death-shadowed room the coals have already cooled, and the bones are ash.
***
Sagai was still registering disapproval when they reached their own court down on the Sixth Tier. It was ramshackle and poor, and its fountain was only a small basin up against one wall, but the day-coated tin shutters on all the second- and third-story windows glowed with Sagai's colorfully painted designs, and some of the neighbors lounging around the court greeted them cheerfully.
Their house, consisting of three rooms set one atop the other and a fair share of rooftop, had been owned for a time only by the widow Netta and her two children. Netta was well able to take care of her own affairs, but a large family of cap makers from the next court had taken a fancy to the house, as well as to Netta's daughter, and had continually tried to force the widow out. She had taken in a pair of young street entertainers to help her hold on to her property, but the struggle to keep the cap makers out went on so long they had little time to practice their own livelihoods. It was not until Khat and Sagai, and Sagai's wife Miram, had moved in that the cap makers had chosen discretion as the better part of valor. Netta had boasted that all the two relic dealers had had to do was sit out on the front stoop and all enemies had fled. Khat and Sagai hadn't told her that they had also gone to the cap makers' house late one night and beaten the libido out of the three eldest brothers.
The other neighbors in the court were mostly street entertainers or peddlers who worked the fringes of the Garden Market, and it was a good arrangement, with no other relic dealers nearby to generate competition or theft.
"He could still be a Trade Inspector trying to trap you somehow," Sagai argued as they crossed the court. "That Seul fellow did offer you coin."
"Then I'll be honest," Khat answered, reaching into the door hole to pop the latch. "I'm always honest."
Sagai snorted. "No, you think you're always honest, and that is not the same thing at all."
This side of the court had been in shadow as the sun moved behind the bulk of the city, and the room would have been almost cool except for the press of bodies. The floor was covered with children of various ages: Netta's youngest, barely able to walk, Sagai and Miram's three small daughters, and the baby boy whom Sagai had vowed would be the last child born to them in Charisat. Libra and Senace, two young men who did a juggling act in the market, were sprawled on the faded matting, counting the copper bits they had been tossed that day. Copper could be weighed and exchanged for trade tokens, another way noncitizens could get around the Coin Laws.
The widow Netta sat on the narrow bench carved out of the wall, fanning herself and Miram, who was at the low table separating a tray of colored beads into individual glass bottles. The two youngest children were helping her in this task by struggling for possession of her lap. When Miram and Netta could afford to buy the metal thread they needed, they made jewelry from the supply of beads Miram had managed to bring with her from Kenniliar, and sold the product to one of their neighbors who kept a market stall.
Miram looked tired and frazzled from the children, but still smiled up at them as they came in. "Well, are we wealthy yet?" Though Miram hadn't made a serious study of the Ancients, she had picked up an interest in the subject from Sagai. Her education hadn't been nearly so extensive, but her ability to read and write Trade-tongue occasionally let her do a lucrative business in reading legal documents and writing letters for their neighbors.
"No, but we're comfortable, at least for today," Sagai said, and put the result of their day's trading on the table for the others to look at. There was a small box etched with floral designs and made of mythenin, a hard, silvery Ancient metal that made up most of the relics found intact. There were also some pieces of smooth stone of a rich blue-green color in round settings of the same metal, that might have been anything from jewelry to pieces in some forgotten game.
Charisat's metalworkers and gemstone cutters were acknowledged as the best across the Fringe and down to the cities of the Last Sea, but even they couldn't manipulate liquid metal like the Ancients.
Khat settled on the seat next to Netta. Water jugs filled most of the cubbies, and pegs pounded into the clay-smoothed walls held the few copper cooking implements Netta owned and the oil mill and grain grinder every household needed. The position of honor on the only shelf was taken by her grandmother's copper tea decanter.
Sagai was telling the others about their adventure.
"That's worrisome," Miram said, with a critical glance at Khat. "To go into the Waste when you don't know what this person wants." She was younger than Sagai, and had come from a well-to-do family in Kenniliar who had not entirely approved her choice of a learned but poor husband. When Sagai had decided to come to Charisat, he had tried to convince her to stay behind until he returned with his fortune, or at least enough coin to buy himself a place in the Kenniliar Scholars' Guild. She hadn't taken the suggestion well at all. She didn't like Charisat, but she preferred it to living with her disapproving family in Kenniliar and wondering every day if her husband was alive or dead.
"In the Waste, that Patrician will be helpless," Khat pointed out. Miram didn't entirely approve of Sagai working the relic trade because she thought it was dangerous. Khat couldn't argue that point with her; she was perfectly right, it was dangerous. She didn't entirely approve of Khat sometimes, either, and he had to agree with her on that score, too. "I can walk out of it alive, and he can't, guards or no guards."
"His guards could shoot you," Netta pointed out helpfully. "They don't carry a gun for their own amusement."
Khat didn't answer. He knew that drawing the attention of an upper-tier citizen was not particularly good, but the last thing he wanted to do was tell them his real reason for accepting the commission.
The door flew open suddenly, and their neighbor Ris stood there, panting. The painfully thin, dark-haired boy had obviously been running. After a moment he managed to say, "Lushan's looking for you, Khat."
"Since when?"
Ris collapsed on the floor and pulled the crawling baby into his lap to tickle. "Not long after noon. I heard it from one-of the fire-eaters outside the Odeon."
Netta got up to rescue the squealing child from him. "Outside the theater? I should tell your aunt."
"She knows," the boy retorted. Ris and his family lived in the next house over, and his father was a street entertainer who performed in the Garden Market. Last year a pair of drunken slummers had smashed his harmonium and therefore his livelihood. After some time, Khat had been able to repair the instrument, replacing all the fiddly bits of metal and wire by trial and error, and Sagai had polished off the job by painting the case with delicate scrollwork. Since then, Ris had carried messages and run errands for them.
"Lushan again?" Sagai said, frowning. "What can that misbegotten creature want?"
Khat leaned back against the wall and managed to look unconcerned by the news. "I'll go see him later. He could have some deals to throw our way."
"And why should he favor us?" Sagai objected, but the baby was hauling itself up on the hem of his robe, distracting him. Pulling it into his lap, he still added, "I don't trust him. But then, you can't trust anyone in our business."
Khat wished his partner hadn't phrased it quite that way.
***
Khat strolled down the theater street on the Fourth Tier, enjoying the retreat of the day's heat and the long twilight. Colonnades paved with colored tile sheltered peddlers and gave entrance to the shops, and the street was crowded with folk in search of an evening's entertainment. It was growing dark, and la
mps enclosed in perforated bronze pots were being lit above the doors of the wealthier establishments of the goldsmiths, lapidaries, bakers, ironsmiths, and wineshops. Many of the lamps were inset with red-tinted glass, making the available light murky indeed, but hostile ghosts and air spirits were supposed to avoid red light. Gamblers hawking for games and especially fortune-tellers squatted outside the doors haloed by the muddy bloodlights, for security as much as for a way to see what they were doing.
Knowing he still had some time to waste, Khat bought a flower-shaped dumpling from a stall and sat on the steps of the Odeon, near the prostitutes who were working the theater crowd. The ebb and flow of the mass of people in the street held endless fascination.
There were robed and veiled Patrician men, Patrician women with their faces unveiled but their hair hidden under flowing silk scarves or close-fitting cloisonne caps, all with servants trailing them. Litters draped with silks and lighter gauzes carried Patricians too exalted to even walk among the throng.
The crowd from the lower tiers was less colorful but more active, some turning to climb the steps to the pillared entrance of the vast theater at Khat's back, or continuing down the street to the wineshops and food stalls, and the ghostcallers, fakirs, and clowns performing in the open-air forums. There were wide-eyed visitors from other Fringe Cities and the ports of the Last Sea, babbling to each other in the different dialects of Menian and to everyone else in pidgin Tradetongue.
There was a shout, and one of the foreigners fought his way out of the crowd, dragging a struggling boy. Caught a thief, Khat thought. Then a group of men dressed in the dull red robes of Trade Inspectors poured out of a nearby shop and surrounded the pair. One of them held up what looked like a piece of scrap mythenin, and the boy began to yell denials. No, caught an idiot trying to bypass the dealers and sell a relic for coins. Khat sighed and looked away. From the boy's threadbare robe and bare feet he doubted he was a citizen. Soon to be a dead idiot.
The boy was a fool to be caught by such a common trick. Everyone knew that Trade Inspectors disguised themselves as foreigners and tried to buy illegal relics or offered Imperial-minted coins to dealers who did not possess the right licenses. Sagai's notion that the Patrician who had approached them was a disguised Trade Inspector wasn't just an idle suspicion.
As the others hauled their captive off, one of the Trade Inspectors stayed to scan the crowd on the steps, searching for possible accomplices or just anyone foolish enough to look guilty. Khat didn't betray any reaction besides idle curiosity, and the man turned to follow his colleagues. You couldn't be too careful, even though at the moment Khat hadn't anything as incriminating as a pottery fragment on him. The Trade Inspectors took special notice of merchants or relic dealers who were not citizens, and Khat didn't have the option of becoming one, even if he could raise the fee.
Tradition said the Ancients had made the kris to live in the Waste because they feared it would spread to the end of the world. Khat's people were born with immunities to desert poisons, with the ability to sense the direction of true north on a landscape where it was death to lose your way, and with pouches to carry babies, when humans were forced to give birth live, in mess and inconvenience. But the Ancients were dead, and their plans hadn't come to fruition. The Waste had taken much of the world, but it had stopped before the Last Sea and left the coast untouched. The kris were forced into the deep Waste, and the people of the Fringe Cities, especially the Imperial seat Charisat, plainly did not want them inside their walls.
More lamps were lit above the Odeon's doors as the natural light died, and one of the male prostitutes gently suggested that if Khat wasn't going to buy anybody he should get the hell out of there. Khat left without argument; it was dark enough now.
The great hall of the theater was huge and round, the dome ceiling high overhead a vast mosaic of some past Elector ascending to the throne. The stage was circular and in the center of the hall, with the audience a noisy flowing mob around it. Wicker couches and chairs were scattered about, and the tile floor was littered with rotting food and broken glass. The air was stifling, despite the long narrow windows just below the dome that were supposed to vent the heat. The farce being performed was an old familiar one, which was just as well because most of the audience were here to talk and throw things at the stage.
As an added distraction a fakir was performing in the crowd. He was young for the trade, but had managed to extend a rope nearly twenty feet straight up before beginning his climb.
Khat fought his way around the edge of the crowd, then was hailed by a loud group of rival relic dealers. "We heard about that little trinket you and Sagai sold Arnot today. Any more where it came from?" Danil asked. She was a lean, predatory woman who sold relics on the Fourth Tier. Her narrow eyes were artificially widened with powders of malachite and galena.
Khat leaned on the back of her chair and said, "Traded, traded to Arnot. It wouldn't be legal for me to participate in a sale."
Some of the men wore upper-tier veils, but of much cheaper gauze than real Patricians wore. Most were already drunk, and one laughed so hard at this that he rolled off his couch.
Danil's seductive smile became strained. She didn't like the others interrupting her probing. "Why are you here tonight?" she asked, a little too sharply. "Another buyer?"
She was too far off the mark for Khat to worry. He grinned down at her. "Just came to see the show, love."
He left them laughing at one another's jokes and made his way to the back wall, where an alcove hid a spiral stair used to reach the private balconies. At the top there was a service passage inside the wall, which gave the private servants and those the theater employed access to the balconies without venturing out on the open gallery reserved for wealthy patrons.
The passage was cramped and lit by oil lamps, which stunk and made it hot. Khat passed a variety of people on various errands, none of whom paid him any attention. This corridor was used by many who wanted their business kept inconspicuous. He found Lushan's balcony without difficulty, since there were two private vigils armed with iron-tipped staves standing outside the servants' door. They let him in without a word.
The round balcony was protected by a high copper-mesh screen, and the noise of the crowd rose up around it. The floor was covered by woven matting dyed brilliant colors, and a clockwork-driven fan moved back and forth on an ornate metal rack overhead, stirring the sluggish air and the incense that was thick enough to drown in. Lushan lay on a low couch, a servant girl wearing a plain undyed kaftan in kneeling attendance on him. He had thin light hair, and was dressed in a gold-embroidered mantle of dark blue that didn't hide his impressive corpulence. One of his eyes was small, alert, and greedy; the other was unfocused, staring at nothing in particular. He never wore a veil around his servants, and he never wore it in meetings with Khat. It was not a good sign.
Watching Khat thoughtfully, Lushan took a cup of delicately painted translucent ceramic from the wine set on a low alabaster table and said, "You came promptly for once, my boy. I hadn't thought you had much sense of the passage of time."
"I didn't come for your job. You know I don't do that anymore." Khat leaned back against the wall beside the door, because Lushan would go gormless if he touched anything anyway, and though he liked heights, the place gave him the unpleasant sensation of hanging in a cage over a great unfriendly mass of people. "I've got the coin you think I owe you."
Lushan's mouth set in a thin line. He put the delicate cup down on the table with an audible click. Khat winced for its sake. People who had no concern for beautiful things had no right to have-them. "And how did you manage that?"
"That's not your business, is it?"
The servant refilled the wine carafe and replaced it on the table, carefully wiping it with a cloth to prevent any sweat from her fingers being transferred to Lushan. The upper-tier Patricians of Charisat were insane about touching anyone in public, as insane as they were about wearing veils or covering their hair o
r looking at theater through a metal screen to prevent the lower-tier crowd from accidentally seeing them. This was particularly alien to Khat, who had been a child in the kris Enclave on the Waste, where there was even less privacy than in the lower-tier courts, and you could get a thick ear for refusing to kiss the most wrinkled granny-matriarch. As if anyone in their right mind wanted to get within touching distance of Lushan. Khat had long known that while the wealthy broker might have as much minted gold as a Patrician, he hadn't been born one, and was only mimicking their manners. After all was said and done, Lushan was only a thief with clean hands, whose special talent was getting other people to dirty theirs for him.
"You are my business," Lushan said, his good eye cold and contemptuous. "While I found the buyers for the relics you ... liberated from their current owners, it is you the Trade Inspectors would be most interested in. You've been very profitable to me in the past, and if you think I'll let you go so easily..."
"You're good with threats and promises. Don't think I haven't noticed." Khat let his eyes wander over the dome's mosaic, the view much better here than on the floor with the plebs. The border pieces were old, far older than the center with its not-terribly-inspired rendition of an Elector's ascension, and were probably scavenged from whatever structure had occupied this site before the theater. Charisat and the other Fringe Cities were depicted as islands in shallow freshwater seas, the way they had been over a thousand years ago before the Conquest of the Waste over the Land. The artist had peopled the seas with strange and colorful swimming creatures and dotted the mild blue skies with large bladderlike air bags that carried passengers in baskets slung beneath them. This section of the mosaic was undoubtedly valuable. The discoloration around the cracks told him it couldn't be removed from the wall without destroying it, which was a pity.