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6

Descent

 

I WASN’T USED to being a substitute Eresthai, and it didn’t sit well with me, not even in practice.

I busied myself in the small room on the third floor of the donjon, the one we were using as an entrance and exit for the highwire act, checking the gear inside, and perhaps making an occasional mild comment about how I wasn’t completely happy with the situation.

Father, on the other hand, was supervising, and being every bit as flexible as usual.

“—you will be of help, and since you can not go on, you will be of help setting up, and work backstage along with the Eresthais. We will not announce that you are not playing tonight; we shall treat it as though that were part of the act.”

It’s shameful not to pull your own cart, and I was having none of it.

“I can go on,” I said, giving another tightening twist to the turnbuckle that kept the highwire straight, then rapped on it with the rubber hammer. “I can play.”

Not enough treble. You can keep them singing-taut at all times, but it’s a bad idea; the song tires the cable strands.

It’s not a good idea to loosen them all the way, either, not between shows—that wears out the joints. The best way to preserve the life of the equipment is to treat it gently, tentatively: keep it reasonably taut after you set it up, tune it up for practice, then back down after, and then tighten it back up before the performance.

It’s a compromise, and compromise is closely related to balance.

“No, you can’t, for two reasons. For one, you are badly bruised—”

“Not that badly.”

“—and for another, you cannot go on because I say you cannot go on.”

I was hurting, but I could perform. He was having none of it, though, and that was that.

“Gray Khuzud?” Fhilt was outside; he had been going over the trap rigging. “I don’t like this hawser—I think we’d best replace it.”

“I’ll be along in a moment,” Gray Khuzud called out. “There is no need for discussion,” he said to me, already heading for the door. “I will see you at showtime. Finish here.”

I did.

The room was cooling as the evening came on; I walked over to the trunk and pulled back the straps so I could open it and get at an overshirt.

I looked down at my chest, wishing for once that it had a mat of hair covering its blank slickness—purple isn’t my color.

But the bones weren’t broken, not anymore. I ached, but I could function.

Across the quadrangle, just barely within the walls of the inner bailey, the old donjon stood in the dusk, its walls a weakening gold in the fading light.

Long ago, it had been the main building, perhaps the only building within the walls, possibly built under the direction of Oroshtai himself when he originally founded the town as his winter retreat from his duties to the Scion.

But some time after the fall of the Oroshtai Tenancy, or perhaps during the fall of the Tenancy, Den Oroshtai had become the lord’s seat, and the old donjon had become too cramped for his full array of staff. These days, it was the residence of retainers—everyone who Lord Toshtai didn’t particularly want near him—and had a third-floor guesting residence for visiting nobility.

Narantir had the basement all to himself. Nobody likes to bother a wizard while he’s at work, and few like to be near one when he’s at play. In the big cities—Patrice, Der Field, Thurrock—it’s different: the wizards’ schools can’t be solo affairs, for obvious reasons.

The second floor held both the secondary barracks and the main armory of Den Oroshtai—including Refle’s workshop. It was easy to tell where the forge was; anybody could have seen where the ashpile stood against the wall below, beneath what had once been a garderobe. The armorer’s forge was clearly a later addition: its chimney, built against the outside of the wall, was of a lighter stone than the rest of the old donjon.

And if that hadn’t been enough of a clue, I could see the top of a rack of swords through a partly open window.

It would be difficult to get in, but not impossible. Anybody who could get to the third floor or the roof could tie a rope and climb, letting themselves in through the window.

If they could get past the guards and to the roof, which they couldn’t.

An old oak tree stood near the building, and a long branch reached out toward it, missing by a man-length. It wouldn’t have been allowed to stand there, not in the old days—it wouldn’t have made a good road for an assassin, but it might have made a credible one, back before the kazuh of assassins was declared profane and anathema, and extinguished.

The branch ran along the morningwise wall of the old donjon, the wall facing the curtain wall of the inner bailey—not quite concealed, but not out in the open. Only an assassin could have kept his balance as he ran along the branch, building up enough speed to make the leap to the windowsill, catching himself carefully with toes and fingers, then releasing the hooks and swinging the windows open.

Only an assassin, or an acrobat. And a good acrobat, at that. There would be no way to practice it. I would have to be a good acrobat.

I’ve been a good one, for a few moments, now and then.

“I doubt he has stored it in there,” Enki Duzun said, touching me on the elbow. I hadn’t heard her walk up. Not listening to what was going on was getting to be a habit with me, and not a good one.

“So do I, but do you have any better ideas?”

“Yes,” she said. “Give up the girl; forget about the beating. On with the show, and then when the show is finished here, onwards to Minnae, where there’s another girl, and then on to Bergeenen, Wei, and Patrice. Before you know it we’ll be high in Helgramyth, headed for Otland, and I know how you like Helish and Ots.”

I didn’t answer.

Enki Duzun sighed. She knew what my silence meant.

Fhilt leaned in through the window; I’d forgotten he was just outside, on the platform.

“You’re being more stupid than Large Egda, you know.” He raised a hand. “Not that I’ve always thought that possible, mind, but it’s clear that it is. Egda wouldn’t be able to come up with a reason for doing anything this dim.”

I glared at him. “You leave Large Egda alone. You’re always picking on him.”

“Hey, hey,” Fhilt said. “That’s all in fun. He knows that, and you ought to.”

“You’re trying to change the subject,” I said. “And—”

“And not doing a very good job,” Enki Duzun muttered.

“—and I won’t have it.” I tried to explain. “I can’t help it—I’ve always been stubborn.” It’s how I’ve mastered, or at least learned, what skills I have learned: it’s always been sheer, pure, unadulterated stubbornness.

“There is that.” Enki Duzun frowned, as though she didn’t like the taste of her words.

“There is also growing out of it,” Fhilt said.

Enki Duzun was silent for a long moment. “It isn’t impossible,” she went on. “You’ll be exposed as you go in.”

“Not terribly exposed,” I said. “If I were to be challenged, I’m merely working on a new entrance for the act tonight.”

Fhilt nodded judiciously. “Once you get in, then you should be safe. As safe as you could be, in the armory. Which is not very, Kami Khuzud.”

“We have the run of the castle, save—”

“Save where guards or locks block our way,” Enki Duzun said. “Technically, you couldn’t be faulted for going in that way. But, technically, brother mine, Lord Toshtai can take your head for any reason, or no reason at all, even if you do find what you’re looking for.”

Fhilt stepped in through the window. “This is a silly idea. Haven’t you ever heard the old saying, ‘Don’t carry your footprints with you’? Leave it all be, Kami Khuzud.”

“He won’t be expecting it.” Refle was an arrogant man; he might not even have gotten rid of the cloak and gloves, and perhaps kept the truncheon. Armorers, like the warriors they are in legal theory if not in frequent fact, have a reverence for the tools that they create.

It was worth a try.

“I should ask if she’s worth it, but it doesn’t matter at this point, does it?” Enki Duzun asked.

“Eh?”

“Even if NaRee were to dust you off now, you’d still want to expose Refle, for beating you. I know you, Kami Khuzud; you’ve never learned to leave your footprints behind you.” She sighed.

Fhilt stripped off his jerkin and worked his shoulders. “Very well, then. I’ll do it.” His mouth tightened, making him look vaguely toadfaced.

“Eh?”

“This is not a job for clumsy Kami Khuzud.” Fhilt spread his hands. “It’s going to take a better acrobat than you are to get in through the window. I’m a better acrobat than you are. So I do it.”

Sometimes, I just don’t understand Fhilt. When I’d been hurt he was more concerned about his loss of sleep than my broken bones and spilled blood, and here he was offering to risk his life on the small chance that he could find some evidence against Refle.

I was about to agree, when he looked over across the courtyard. “Now, which room do you think is the armory?”

No. I couldn’t let him. Fhilt was a better acrobat than I was, but if he couldn’t see something as obvious as which room was the armory, he didn’t have the right kind of mind to figure out what was evidence.

“No,” I said. “I’m good enough, and I’d better do it.”

There was a long silence, and then Enki Duzun nodded. “I’ll go and get Large Egda. You’re going to need him.”

“Now?” Fhilt asked.

“Now,” she said. “We don’t have much more than an hour until the show, and Large Egda has to be back for it.”

I had finished checking the gear. It was fine. “Let’s go.”

 

Less than an hour left to showtime, and the show must go on.

“Again, Egda, again.”

I guess I must have let a trace of my frustration show in my voice, because he dropped the rope and sighed.

“I am not that clumsy,” he said, “except with things that I haven’t practiced. I haven’t practiced this, Kami Khuzud.” Slowly—deliberately slowly—he tried again, throwing the end of the rope in a long arc.

Nobody was watching us; the security within Lord Toshtai’s walls lies in the walls themselves, and in the watchers on the walls, and in the warriors surrounding Lord Toshtai.

This time, the rope snaked over a branch better than the best-trained of Evrem’s pets.

But it wasn’t the branch I was going to walk over on; it was the branch just above it.

“Egda, you put it on the wrong—oh.”

Oh. Of course; that was precisely the right branch to be looping it over.

He smiled, tolerantly. Large Egda is usually patient with the rest of us, even when we’re not patient with him. He let me get a good grip on the rope and then hauled away, just like it was part of the act. I sailed up and into the air, and dropped down onto the limb.

For a moment, I teetered, and almost lunged for the trunk.

But an acrobat keeps his balance, and I had to be an acrobat, so I reached down into me, and found balance, if not kazuh. Balance alone would have to do.

Waving Large Egda away, I pulled the rope up, and coiled it.

Time to reconnoiter, if I could do it. I was a bit low; I couldn’t quite see into the armory, so I climbed to the limb Large Egda had used as a fulcrum, skinning my shins in the process.

It looked good—there was a clear space on the marble floor inside the armory, lit by the lamps overhead. The only trouble was that I couldn’t tell whether or not there was anybody inside the armory; the fact that the lamps were lit was a suggestion that, whether or not there was anybody inside, the armory wasn’t shut for the night.

Then again, armorers are renowned for working late, and for having to keep long hours, for the same reason that smiths have to.

What could I say if he caught me?

“Well, good evening to you, Lord Refle, and how is Your Lordship this evening? Theft? No, no, Lord Refle, my entry here is just a new routine in the ever-expanding attempts of the Troupe of Gray Khuzud to give new entertainments to our beloved ruling class.”

No. I could probably come up with better last words than that.

It was time either to commit myself or to give up.

I took the coiled rope and pitched it into the armory, through the open window. Now I would have to go get it. It would be good to raise kazuh, but I wasn’t a kazuh acrobat.

But perhaps, even if I couldn’t raise kazuh, I could make everything real.

It’s important to visualize, I remembered Gray Khuzud saying, to make a routine concrete in your mind before you do it.

You have to—

—see the world spinning around you as you tumble through the air,

—hear the roar in the rush of blood to your head as you pull yourself into a tuck, spinning the world around you twice,

—taste the dryness of your mouth as the catcher pulls you out of the sky,

—feel the unyielding smoothness of the trapeze beneath your hands and the resilience and vigor of the wire beneath your feet,

—take the stuff of dreams and fantasy and spin it around your mind, twisting it into reality, making it happen.

I lowered myself to the branch and visualized the routine, just as though I was planning a tumbling run.

Two little steps, and then one big bound, and then a push and dive—if it all worked right, I’d catch myself on the windowsill, and complete the tumble, rolling gracefully to my feet, sorry that there was no appreciative crowd to give me my well-earned applause.

I visualized it, tried to spin reality out of my wanting: the first step, my shod foot slipping on the rough bark—

No, that wouldn’t do.

I slipped my shoes off and set them in a branch crotch, trusting to my bare feet to grip the bark tightly.

So: I would—

—take the first step, rough bark hard beneath my bare foot, my body’s inertia resisting the motion as I pushed hard with calf and thigh, to

—move myself into the second step, arms out to my side for balance, my speed increasing, the second step fading into a

—bound, giving momentarily at the knees, while I took in a last breath of air, and then

—spring, putting neck, back, buttocks, thighs, calves, ankles and toes into a leap that would

—push me outwards in a flat arc, somersault me over the windowsill into a roll in the room, coming up to my feet solidly, my only regret that there was no audience.

I would bow, though. Just for the practice.

I smiled. No use waiting any longer.

I took the first step, the rough bark painful beneath my feet, thighs straining, and pushed hard with calf and thigh, moving myself into the second step. My arms fluttered for balance and found it as my speed increased, the second step becoming a two-footed bound as I bent at the knees, then put my whole body, from neck to toes, into a push that sent me into a flat arc toward the window, the world rushing by.

I caught the edge of the windowsill and pulled myself over into a tuck, but I over-rotated and my hands slipped from the sill.

I slammed down on the marble floor.

Hard.