by Martha Wells
Time passed quickly, and no one tried to sell Elen anything, much to her disappointment, though several people of disreputable appearance came by and eyed her warily. She had just begun to settle down for a long dull wait when she saw Sagai returning along the walkway.
"You haven't been gone very long. No good news?" she asked him as he sat down across from her.
"He wouldn't see me. The servant I spoke to said he occasionally sells relics, but he 'does not deal with intermediaries,' and by that I suppose he means the fortune-teller only sells to his Patrician clients." Sagai regarded Elen thoughtfully. "I have an idea how we might get around that. We'll discuss it when Khat returns."
Elen nodded, willing to wait. Sagai seemed lost in thought, but whatever those thoughts were, she wasn't able to sense them. Sometimes Sagai was almost as hard to read as another Warder. She hadn't forgotten Riathen's order to find out more about Khat, and this seemed a good opportunity. Though she didn't think she would ever discover anything that would be of any importance to the Master Warder. But Khat had been oddly unwilling to talk about the kris embassy; that bore looking into.
She knew Sagai wasn't the sort to be fooled by any attempt at approaching the subject obliquely, and Elen suspected it would ruin any chance she had to speak freely with him. She asked, "Where did Khat live before he came to Charisat? Was it at the krismen Enclave?"
Sagai eyed her for what began to seem a long moment, then said, "Is this Elen the Warder who asks the question, or is it Elen the young woman?"
"I'm not so young. I have friends younger than I who have had their third child." Elen smiled, knowing he was trying to lead her off the subject.
"Yes, that's the way of it in Charisat. In Kenniliar early marriage is considered improper. But Kenniliar doesn't have Patricians, and doesn't force out its beggars, and has too many people as it is. But I wouldn't like my own daughters to marry so young anyway. They have no sense now, and I don't expect that to change for some years." He shrugged. "Or perhaps I don't want them to marry in Charisat."
Elen had heard that food and water were much cheaper in Kenniliar Free City, which had its own trade route directly to the coast. "But if you don't like it here, why did you leave Kenniliar?"
"My uncle is an artisan there, one among many. When the Fringe Cities closed the trade routes to crafted goods coming from Kenniliar, he found himself hard-put to support all of us. There was no work for me, and though I had been educated in the Scholars' Guild, I could not afford the fee to buy a position there. The only other trade I was fit for was the relic trade, and Kenniliar has few relics in the market, and they are far more expensive to buy. Charisat seemed the best opportunity, especially as the relic trade is one of the few I could engage in without buying citizenship."
So Sagai would discuss his past as much as she liked, but he wouldn't talk about Khat's. Elen tried to come at the problem from a different direction. "And did you meet Khat here in Charisat?"
Sagai's gaze could be as penetrating as Sonet Riathen's, but it was still kinder. "No," he said finally, and for a moment she thought that was all he meant to say. "We met on the trade road, when I was bringing my family here.
"This was seven years ago. The trade roads we had to travel were more dangerous then, and the wagons we had in the caravan were powered only by our own sweat and labor. Steamwagons were still too expensive for ordinary folk. It was slow going, and some miles outside the Fringe Cities boundary we were attacked by pirates. They were a small band, though of course we didn't know that at the time. They knew they were too few to take the caravan, which was seventeen wagons strong, but they meant to take some of the defenders.
"I was one of those sent to flush the pirates out of the loose rock at the edges of the road, after we had turned back the first attack. I carried a borrowed rifle, and I thought I had hit one of them. I made my way through the rocks, ignorant enough to think I was stalking him, when something struck me from behind and I was unconscious.
"I woke with a bloody scalp and the feeling that my head had been split open. When I saw where I was I wished that it had been.
"The pirates had made camp in a narrow gorge with a rocky floor. I was tied securely out of the sun on a ledge in the wall of it, and the ropes were attached to an iron stake driven into the rock. I counted twenty of the creatures, as if knowing their number did me any good in my present situation. They were filthy and stunk like beggars, and I thought two were women, though that was difficult to tell. They spoke such a guttural pidgin of Tradetongue that I could hardly understand them, as if the Waste had worn away at their minds the way it had worn away at their bodies.
"They had taken two others from the caravan with me. One was dead, and they had built a fire down in the gorge and begun to butcher his body. I had known what pirates did to captives, of course, but seeing it... My other companion was trussed up as I was on the same ledge, but he was badly wounded, stabbed in the belly, and he was dying. Later in the day they took him down to the floor of the gorge and amused themselves with him, then killed him and did as they had with the first man.
"I knew I had been left to last because I was the least wounded, and I cursed myself for condemning Miram to care for our small children alone in a city completely strange to her, all by my stupidity in allowing myself to be caught.
"But nightfall came, and I still lived. There was a gap in the wall of the gorge above my ledge, but the stake prevented me from trying to reach it. And I had worked all day to loosen my bonds, without success. The pirates slept on the floor of the gorge, and I saw they had posted at least one sentry on the top level. I was sure it was hopeless.
"Then suddenly I did not see the sentry anymore. I thought perhaps I had dozed off, but I watched and he did not reappear.
"Then I heard the faint sound of shifting rock from the tunnel behind me, and something tugged at my bonds. I held still, afraid to alert the pirates. The ropes fell away, and I looked. I saw a crouching figure in desert robe wrapped around dusty clothes. I wondered if he was sent by the caravan-perhaps someone had seen us taken and followed-but I was too grateful to ask questions.
"I followed him down the tunnel away into the midlevel, saw the body there of the sentry I had missed.
"Then something alerted the pirates, and they shot at us from the top of the gorge when a gap in the Waste rock revealed us. The bullet struck Khat, and he fell. I dragged him along, not knowing if he was dying or not, but the last thing I wanted was to leave anyone to the pirates. I went in the direction he had followed, and I was lucky I didn't manage to tumble both of us down a sinkhole into the bottom level.
"The pirates didn't try to track us. Later I learned that Khat had been following them for some days, picking them off one at a time by night. They didn't know how many kris were following them, and they didn't want to find out.
"When we reached the shelter of rock overhead again, I could see that he had been shot in the thigh, or at least that's where the blood was. I was surprised to see he was younger than I. I had to wait until he passed out before I could look at his wound, and see that the pellet had passed through without damaging the bone, and bind it up with torn strips of my shirt. Before that he had fought me off as if I was after his virtue."
Sagai shook his head, smiling faintly at the memory. "We did not have an easy time together. It was two days before Khat stopped pretending he couldn't speak any recognizable language. He was willing to risk his life to free me simply because I was a prisoner of the pirate band he had chosen to harry, but he wanted nothing to do with me once I was liberated, and he wanted my help least of all. I think almost that he would have been perfectly happy to bleed to death in the Waste if only he could have done it in private, without an ignorant city dweller pestering him.
"I knew enough about the Waste to stay in the midlevel. At first all he would do was point me in the direction of the trade road. I quickly discovered the way to make him show me which midlevel plants held pulp water was by choosing t
he one that I felt was least likely to contain it and hacking away at it. Then exasperation would overcome his reluctance to have anything to do with me, and he would show me the correct one."
"That was clever," Elen said. "I can just see that. Why did he pretend not to speak Tradetongue?"
"To annoy me, to make me think him nothing more than a kris-men savage, to make me abandon him. It was impossible for him to trust me then, for him to seriously consider the notion that I might really want to return kindness for kindness, and not treachery.
"It took me until the second day to realize what he was doing. I started to talk to him, and he was only able to hold out for one more day before he had to reply." Sagai smiled again. "By coincidence, I spoke to him of the subject I had spent much of my life studying."
Elen understood suddenly. "Relics, and the Ancients," she said.
"Exactly. It took us four days to reach the caravan, and when we came within sight of it, he didn't like the idea of it at all. I suppose he had grown used to me, but the thought of being trapped, wounded and helpless, among so many of us, was too much. Fortunately by that time he was very weak-I was no good at hunting the Waste predators, and we had had little to eat-and I was able to carry him without being too badly hurt." Sagai chuckled. "It was another month before he told me his name."
"What was he afraid of?" Elen asked, frowning.
"City people. If kris are caught as children, especially in the cities further east, they're sold to brothels. Their bones are a commodity on the Silent Market. In many places they're confused with pirates and killed on sight. He takes a risk whenever he deals with the Silent Market, but he takes a risk living here, and you can't deal relics in Charisat without dealing with the Silent Market."
Elen drew a meaningless pattern on the dusty stone. Khat had told her something of this before, and it had certainly put their commerce with Caster in a new light. "And when the caravan reached the city you went into the relic trade together?" she asked finally.
"No," Sagai corrected. "It was more than a year after reaching Charisat that we began to work together, though I saw him off and on during that time."
"So when he came to Charisat with your caravan it was the first time he had been to one of the Fringe Cities."
"I didn't say that. In fact, he is far better traveled than I. But about that you'll have to ask him." His gaze was thoughtful. "Now I've told you my tale, and you owe me yours. When you're willing to tell it."
"All right." She found herself smiling. "When I'm willing to tell it."
***
Once Khat returned, they decided that the best course would be for Elen to go to Radu's house, not as a Warder but just as a Patrician woman, and ask to buy from the fortune-teller's relic collection.
"Tell him you want his relics because they've been in his home, the home of a powerful mystic," Khat instructed her. "You know that this increases their spiritual power."
Elen was shocked. "I can't say that. He'll think I'm mad."
"Believe us," Sagai said grimly. "It is not nearly as odd as some things we hear from buyers."
Khat went early to the Court of Painted Glass so he could meet Elen outside Radu's house and not seem too closely allied with her. He sat in the shade to one side of the octagonal court, which was bordered by houses that were either empty or whose inhabitants were mad for privacy; all the shutters were tightly closed, and there were no signs of life in the tiny courtyards visible through the locked gates. The painted glass for which the court was named was colored fragments set into the walls of the houses, glittering in the late afternoon sunlight.
We should've waited until morning, Khat told himself, then shrugged off his misgivings. The quarter where the ghostcallers lived and worked was an exclusive neighborhood, but for all the wrong reasons. The fortune-teller had probably chosen this spot for his residence with care, picking a place that would give Patrician clients all the thrills of venturing into the dangerous squalor of the lower tiers without ever having to leave the vigil-patrolled safety of the Fourth. On his way down here along the narrow alleys, Khat had seen many doorsteps where shallow copper bowls stained with the grimy residue of blood had been set out, put there to attract wandering ghosts. Balconies and ledges overhung the passage badly, blotting out much of the harsh afternoon light and making it a perfect spot for ambush. If we ever make enough tokens to afford Fourth Tier water payments, we can always move up here, he had thought grimly. There would be plenty of room, especially after the ghosts carried off a few of the children. This was the only place in all of Charisat where otherwise sound houses stood empty.
Now there was not much sign of activity at Radu's house either, though its gates and outer door stood open, and only a curtain and a dusty door servant squatting motionless in the courtyard guarded the entrance.
Khat looked up as Elen's litter appeared at the head of the alley. It was a modest litter, with bronze rings for the yards of billowy gauze curtains instead of gold and translucent silk. Elen's appearance was modeled after that of a Third Tier Patrician daughter. Her kaftan and mantle of blue silk, the gold jewelry weighting her ears and neck, and the application of rouge and malachite eye powder helped her look the part.
The two bearers adjusted their holds on the padded handgrips of the ornate metal poles and looked bleak, knowing that if she dawdled too long they would be forced to make the trip back through the ghostcallers' courts in the gathering darkness. Conscripted by Elen as an attendant, Gandin walked beside the litter, wearing the plain robe of a family guard and carrying an air rifle. He was veilless, so the expression of distaste he was also wearing was clearly visible. Nonetheless, Khat didn't think there was anything about him or Elen to make Radu instantly leap to the conclusion that they were Warders in disguise, unless the man was a better fortune-teller than everyone seemed to think.
Gandin eyed the court in evident dissatisfaction, greeted Khat with a wary nod, then went back and held a brief whispered colloquy with Elen. Khat got to his feet unhurriedly, dusted off the back of his pants, and ambled over to join them.
Elen's mouth was set in a firm line. A wild guess says Gandin's been making objections, Khat thought. Low-voiced, he said, "Let's not wait too long and give anything away." Elen had told him the bearers would come from Riathen's household and were professionally deaf, but there was no point in taking chances.
"Yes," she whispered to the other Warder. "Go on."
"I hope you know what you're doing," Gandin told her, turning to go up to the gate to Radu's house.
"That's the last time I ask for your help," Elen muttered to herself as soon as he was out of earshot.
Khat asked her, "Do you get this much trouble all the time, or is it just lately?" He was wondering if it was his presence that bothered Gandin or if the other Warders just put roadblocks in Elen's path out of habit.
Still fuming, but keeping her voice low, she said, "Yes. I know my power isn't reliable, but I have a great deal of experience at this sort of thing. I caught a spy from Rowanly in the Elector's court only two months ago. I don't know why they... Oh, never mind."
Gandin reached the stone-flagged courtyard and asked the grimy door servant for entrance with a peremptory gesture. The servant leaned around him to eye the litter, then vanished through the curtained doorway.
Gandin waited, air rifle slung back on his shoulder, but scanning the front of the house alertly. Khat developed an itch between his shoulder blades, as if someone was taking a bead on him. He didn't know why he should feel so alert for ambush; all this trickery was so Radu wouldn't realize it was Sonet Riathen who wanted one of his relics, not because they suspected attack from a jumped-up fortuneteller who catered to crazy Patricians.
The curtain was swept aside by a grander servant in a brown mantle and copper skullcap. He held the curtain open in welcome. Elen slipped out of the litter, the bearers hardly adjusting it at all to compensate for the shift of her light weight. She caught up the train of her mantle over one arm
and crossed the courtyard. Following her, Khat marveled at her performance.
Her normal walk was a determined stride, as if she meant to go through anything in her way. Now she didn't quite mince, but managed to give the impression that she didn't do much of her own walking and didn't quite know how to go about it. Khat wondered how he could ever have been fooled into thinking that Elen would be a poor liar.
The short entrance hall was lit only by stubs of candles floating in shallow silver bowls of scented oil, one on either side of a round still pool set in the center of the room. This would be to reassure the Patrician clients, who would expect some display of ornamental water as a sign of the fortune-teller's wealth and status. The dim light revealed little, only smoke-stained walls with mosaics depicting passable imitations of Ancient designs. Khat found himself holding his breath against the suffocating cloud of incense that was wafting into the entrance hall from the interior of the house. It wasn't the light, expensive scent of sandalwood that had hung in the air of Riathen's home, but a sweet, sickening stench with some sour odor beneath it.
The impressive servant bowed profoundly to Elen, straightened, and noticed Khat with a slight tightening of a face well schooled to blandness. But Elen's face was well schooled to impervious Patrician reserve, and the servant didn't quite dare to ask any questions.
They went up a short flight of stairs past a door curtain of dust-heavy cotton and into a large, high-ceilinged room. Khat stopped just inside the threshold. Something hidden was moving and breathing somewhere, something that made the short hair on the back of his neck prickle.
The place seemed empty. A wall of high arches suggested an interior court lay just beyond, but the openings were screened off from air and light by rolls of matting and dark curtains, and the room was lit by hundreds of small candles set in niches, pot lamps, and bowls everywhere. Their flames flickered in the breeze from half a dozen clockwork fans moving slowly back and forth overhead, sluggishly stirring the hot, scented air. There was another mosaic on the floor, but only glimpses of bright colors were visible through the covering of matting and cushions.