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3

NaRee

 

THERE’S NOTHING QUITE like breakfast with the Troupe of Gray Khuzud. There are things more restful, but there’s nothing quite like it.

I sighed. There was no use in putting it off any longer. “Could you pass the fundleberry preserves, please?” I asked.

“In a moment, Kami Khuzud.” My father’s lips pursed in familiar annoyance. “Egda hasn’t had any yet.” He looked over at the big man.

“Could you do it for me, Gray Khuzud?” Large Egda asked. His broad face was smooth, childlike, and gentle as always. I guess if you’re as strong as Large Egda, you have to be gentle.

“Of course,” Gray Khuzud said patiently, as he had a thousand times before. He smiled as he balanced the fist-sized stone crock of preserves on his wrist for a scant second before flipping it over, catching it neatly in his other palm. “Sala: the bread, if you please.”

Sala of the Rings quickly dropped her own spoon, picked up the breadknife, and took to slicing frantically at the remaining quarter-loaf, while, with a tired smile, Evrem picked up a spreading-knife and the theme. Morning seemed to agree with Evrem—his constant frown was a few degrees less intense, and his freshly shaved face seemed somehow less lined.

Evrem twirled the knife through his fingers, spun it on his fingertips, then flipped it, caught it, and presented it to Enki Duzun, who snatched it, dug the end into the crock, and flipped a dollop across the table at Sala’s face.

“Aha!” Sala slapped two thick slices of bread around the blob, rubbed them quickly together to spread the preserves, and slapped the bread down on Large Egda’s plate.

She raised a finger. “Not this time, Enki Duzun, not this time.” Even at breakfast, her body mostly wrapped in a bulky gray robe that concealed her curves, her almond eyes lazy with sleep, Sala was oppressively beautiful. Her hair was bound up in her sleeping knot, stray golden tendrils playing with her cheekbones and the corners of her smile.

“What’s hurt can be fixed,” Sala said, “but sometimes it’s a lot of trouble.” That didn’t have anything to do with anything, but it was typical Sala. It’s not that she wasn’t clever, or smart, but somehow irrelevant aphorisms always dropped from her mouth like apples from an orange tree.

“Good,” Large Egda said from around a huge bite of bread and preserves. “Very good.” Large Egda’s table manners, on the other hand, were never particularly good, not even by the somewhat eccentric standards of our troupe.

Fhilt and the two Eresthai brothers were showering soft-boiled eggs across the table, looping them high into the air, each of the three eating with one hand while he juggled with the other. Bite and throw and catch, bite and throw and catch.

Fhilt, by far the best juggler of the three, added a flourish by using his juggling hand for other things—scratching at an unlikely itch on his cheek, moving his glass nearer his eating hand, taking a pinch from the saltwell—letting it arrive at just the right time and place for a catch-and-throw, as though by accident.

“Would you like an egg, Kami Khuzud?” the nearest of the Eresthais asked.

“No,” I started to say, automatically, then stopped myself. I was hungry for eggs this morning. “Come to think of it, I would.”

“I think I’ve got this one down.” Fhilt bounced one of the intact eggs off his biceps, then caught it and set it down on an old, yellowed porcelain eggholder, putting a touch of robbed time into his juggling just long enough to pick up a spoon and tap the egg. He cracked the shell neatly, then added his spoon to the three-sided, one-handed shower.

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it.” The nearest Eresthai picked the spoon out of the air, and took another tap at the egg, not missing a beat as he threw the spoon to his brother.

“My turn.” The other Eresthai thumb-flicked the top off, then snaked out his juggling hand quickly enough to snare a pinch of salt from the saltwell, drop the salt on top of the egg (actually, he spilled just a little), and return quickly enough to catch the next egg.

A huge wooden serving bowl of boiled oats stood congealing in the middle of the table, largely ignored. Gray Khuzud has never been fond of boiled oats, although they are a staple in Den Oroshtai, and Madame Rupon could be counted on to produce a bowl at every breakfast and supper.

Actually, with a bit of butter and a sprinkling of salt, or perhaps some honey and savorfruit, I like boiled oats—but I wasn’t good enough to do anything interesting with something so ... gloppy.

“Preserves coming, Kami Khuzud,” Gray Khuzud said.

“I have an egg now; I don’t—”

Gray Khuzud rolled the preserves crock down his arm, perhaps trusting to his balance and to the thickness of the preserves to keep it from spilling out.

And then he dropped it.

“Got it! Not this time, old man, not this time do you make a fool of your daughter.” Enki Duzun’s bare foot had already risen; she caught it neatly on the side of her foot, then foot-tossed it in a high arc that even I couldn’t miss.

“Have some respect for your father,” Gray Khuzud said, smiling.

“I do. Which is why I don’t trust you at all.” Enki Duzun giggled. “Go ahead, Kami Khuzud,” she said, turning to me. “Your turn.”

They all looked at me expectantly, waiting to see what I would do with the crock.

“Please, Kami Khuzud,” she said. “You have to do it right.”

Sala tilted her head to one side. “Please, Kami Khuzud. Just this once.”

I just sat there. I hate mornings, and I hate juggling at breakfast.

Gray Khuzud arched an eyebrow. “Kami Khuzud?”

I sighed. I picked up the knife, spread some of the preserves on my bread, then carefully set the crock and knife down on the table.

A cold silence settled over the table.

Fhilt and the Eresthais interrupted their juggle, Evrem set down his spoon, and even Sala and Enki Duzun stopped eating.

I took a bite. I like fundleberry preserves, and these were nice and sweet, with a hint of tartness that I couldn’t quite place.

Gray Khuzud glowered at me. “You call that eating?”

I swallowed. “Yes, I call this eating.” I glowered back at him. “I really don’t like—”

“Surely you can do better than this.” It was a command, not an observation.

“Very well.” With both hands, I tossed the bread a handsbreadth into the air, and let it fall back into my hands. I took another bite. “Happy?”

“Delighted.” Enki Duzun splattered my tunic with a dollop of butter.

“Thank you, little sister.”

“You were supposed to catch it. With the egg.”

Daubing at his mouth, Gray Khuzud stood. “Finish quickly. Morning practice starts at the hour of the hare, as usual.”

“All depends on how you look at it,” I muttered.

“What did you say, Kami Khuzud?

“I said, ‘And a fine day for practice it is, Father.’ I’d best go get ready.”

 

We were quartered in town, of course, although this time not in Ironway—I saw the hand of NaRee’s father in that—but down toward the river, in the part of town called the Bankstreets; Crosta Natthan, Lord Toshtai’s chief servitor, had managed to get the whole troupe quartered on a quiet corner.

It was a neighborhood of whitewashed wooden houses, none built more than ten years before, since the last time that the waves of war had washed through Den Oroshtai, leaving a river of burned buildings and shattered lives in their wake. Sometimes stone survives; what is wood always burned.

The residents of the Bankstreets were all middle class, rather than the true hereditary bourgeois. Pewtersmiths, stablemen, quarrymasters, daubers, and ranchers; not silversmiths, hostlers, masons, carpenters and orchardmen. Half a lifetime of good work and decent matchmaking, and they would visit their daughters in Ironway, or with hard work, superb matchmaking—and luck—perhaps even Up the Hill.

Quartering can be either a lot of fun for both the locals and the troupe or very unpleasant, and it’s impossible to tell which it’s going to be ahead of time. I’ve been treated as a treasured new friend about as often as an imposing relative; I’ve had the gristle end of the joint more often than the tenderloin, but not much more.

Part of the problem comes from the very nature of the arrangement: while the local lord usually pays well for the quartering of traveling troupes, what he’s paying for is room and board, not breakage of crockery or the disorder that flows from having guests. The master of the house can either swallow those kinds of complaints and pretend that they don’t give him gas, or complain to the lord.

Which is to say that the master of the house can swallow those kinds of losses and pretend that they don’t give him gas.

While all of us sat table at Madame Rupon’s, we slept separately. Father and Sala were across the street at Clink the pewtersmith’s; Enki Du-zun had a room there, too. The Eresthais were on a second corner, at the house of Vernel the stableman. Fhilt and I split a fairly large room at Madame Rupon’s with Large Egda, unfortunately for Fhilt and me. Egda snores.

Fat, friendly Madame Rupon had two daughters, and was keen to show them both as marriageable. Not many of the middle class were eager to arrange a marriage with itinerants, but I could see her predicament: FamNa had a large temper problem and a small mustache; Eliss had a small temper problem and a large mustache.

“It is time for practice, Kami Khuzud,” Gray Khuzud said.

 

We practiced in Vernel’s corral, as we had the last time we were in Den Oroshtai: a corral is the ideal kind of place to do almost everything except trapeze and long-rope work.

The first job, of course, was to rake out the horse turds; the life of an acrobat is one thrill after another.

Then we set ourselves up on the dirt, the Eresthais improvising a couple of platforms and then running a tightwire between posts set on two adjacent sides, dividing the corral diagonally. While Enki Duzun and Gray Khuzud worked out on the low wire, Fhilt and I limbered up with a bit of juggling. A half dozen of the local children, all dirt and smiles, stopped across the street to watch, although they’d soon get bored and drift away.

Sala, stripped to canvas shorts and halter, bound her hair behind her head and began her stretches.

“Keep yourself limber, young ones,” she said. “It gets harder every year.”

I was skeptical, myself. As she said it, she was carefully fitting her left ankle behind the back of her neck, and I couldn’t see flesh split or hear bones break—Sala wasn’t even breathing hard as she looked at nothing in particular and said, “No matter which way you turn, most everything is behind you.”

Fhilt glared at her. Sala’s irrelevant idle musings were a perpetual annoyance to him, although I never understood why.

“Here,” I said, tossing him a juggling stick.

He tossed it back, as though he didn’t want it, and within moments we were in our usual warm-up juggle. I tended to spend as much time juggling as possible. If you’re good at something, getting even better at it is a way toward kazuh, no matter what that something is.

So wands twisted and turned through the air, while the children across the street giggled and pointed. Juggling looks like magic to children. Truth to tell, it often looks like magic to me.

Large Egda threw himself into an interminable series of squatting exercises, while Enki Duzun and Gray Khuzud took the first turn on the wire, practicing quick and slow crossings.

Evrem just played with his snakes. I never liked his snakes. Or him.

“Spend less time with those juggling wands, Kami Khuzud, and more time on balancing,” Gray Khuzud said. “The Way of the Acrobat—”

“Yes, Father, yes,” I said, reluctantly catching the last of the juggling wands and setting them down.

Practice was always about the same, except when we were working out a new routine, which we didn’t do in Den Oroshtai. Den Oroshtai was not the most important stop for all troupes—some of the larger ones played at the Seat, the very fanciest in front of the Scion—but it was the most important for ours. For one thing, as long as we pleased Lord Toshtai, lords of smaller holdings would be unlikely to treat us too ill—Lord Toshtai was known to be fond of acrobats, and fondest of all of the best troupe.

Not the fanciest, not the largest, but the Troupe of Gray Khuzud was always the best.

The only way one gets to be the best, or to stay the best, is by practice, practice, and practice. The world isn’t a just one; kazuh, the doing of something naturally with added grace and power, only comes to those who don’t really need the added grace and power.

My father was a fine acrobat even without raising kazuh; kazuh made him the greatest that there ever was.

“... and I became what I am by practice, Kami Khuzud. Practice.”

I set myself up with the board, ball and roller. Three simple pieces of apparatus: a board, two shoulderswidths wide; the roller, a wooden cylinder, as long as the board is wide; and a wooden ball, about the size of my head.

First: lay the board on the roller, and stand on the board, your feet widely spaced. Then roll the cylinder toward the middle, and keep it there.

It just takes a bit of balance; you don’t even need to be an acrobat to do it, although the better you are, the less the roller has to be moved.

Under me, it yawed and rolled like a ship at sea.

“Far too much shaking, Kami Khuzud,” Fhilt said. Picking up the ball, he took my place on the board and gave the wooden ball a quick one-handed twist, spinning it on his finger, then moving it to his nose. His form was perfect: his head tilted back, his back arched, force flowing straight up and down. The board and roller underneath his feet couldn’t have been more steady if they had been nailed into place. That didn’t impress our audience across the street.

Enki Duzun, over on the wire, clapped her hands twice. Large Egda interrupted his exercises to move between her and Fhilt.

She stopped herself in the middle of the wire, and then pushed off to a handstand on Large Egda’s shoulders.

Fhilt, his head still tilted back to balance the ball spinning on his nose, was beginning to wobble.

“Better hurry, Egda,” he said, as Egda walked over gingerly, careful not to disturb Enki Duzun’s balance.

She handwalked from Large Egda’s shoulders up to Fhilt’s palms—a tricky move, harder than she made it look—and then she balanced there for a moment, her hands on his outstretched palms, Fhilt solidly atop the board and roller, the wooden ball spinning on Fhilt’s nose.

Then came the hard move: she and Fhilt flowed from her balancing with both her palms on both of his until she was balanced on one of his outstretched hands, leaving Fhilt’s other hand free to give the wooden ball another spin. He gingerly reached down—

I couldn’t see what gave first, but then it all fell apart: Enki Duzun and the ball fell off in different directions, while Fhilt staggered from the board and fell to the sand, too.

Our childish audience laughed at that, more than a little derisively.

“A bit more attention to what we are doing, if you please,” Gray Khuzud said, as the two of them got to their feet, brushing themselves off. “We already know how to fall. Less attention to the informal audience, if you please.” He beckoned to me. “Take a turn on the wire, Kami Khuzud.”

I’ve never liked wirewalking, I decided yet again as I pulled myself up to the low platform.

It can get boring fast. Still, there is something special, something wonderful about the most ordinary practice, about wirewalking just at the limits of your abilities, pushing the edge outwards, knowing that if you fall—when you fall—it’s only a span to the ground.

“Very nice, Kami Khuzud. Again. Faster.”

I left the platform slowly—the hardest part is when you transfer your weight to the wire—and slipped off. Again.

“No, no, no. Don’t just stand there, Kami Khuzud. You have to really balance yourself, not just plant your feet on the ground and trust to their flatness. Balance, after all—not trickery, not showmanship, not flair—is the Way of the Acrobat.

“Again.”

 

An acrobat has some free time in the afternoon, unless you’re doing a matinee. There were no matinee performances at Den Oroshtai: Lord Toshtai napped after his noon meal, generally waking late in the hour of the horse. That was only one of his whole complex of eccentricities—although it’s not particularly safe to notice a lord’s eccentricities, and particularly not safe to comment upon them as such.

Still, I appreciated Toshtai’s tendency to do things his own way. Den Oroshtai isn’t one of the larger domains in D’Shai, but Toshtai’s line has never been fealty-bound to any of the other lords; he was responsible in strict theory only to the Scion, in loose theory sort of responsible to the Steward, and in practice responsible only to himself.

Doing things your own way was something I understood; while the rest of the troupe was resting up for the evening performance, I bathed myself quickly in the icy water of Madame Rupon’s pumphouse, then sneaked off into the heart of town, and Ironway.

 

Ezren Smith’s house wasn’t quite the largest in Ironway, but it was among the best kept: the roof had a new course of whitewashed slate laid on; the grasses were scythed to a fine green ripple; the marble slabs of the walk were freshly washed and highly polished.

As I walked up toward the front door, I broke into a staggered jig—skip a walk stone with the left foot, then quickly hit the next three before skipping one with the right.

A peasant gardner was weeding the high hedge on the side of the house. I raised my hand in polite greeting, but he ignored me. The trouble with being of the peasant class without actually being a peasant, without actually working fields and paddies, is that everybody hates you, even before they get to know you. The upper classes—particularly the middle class, for some reason—look down on you for really being a peasant, although they can’t always treat you like it; the peasants scorn you for not working the fields.

You can’t win. I’d long ago given up trying.

I thought I saw a viewport in the front door open and shut as I ran up the short flight of steps, and then pulled the bell rope.

Far away, a gong sounded, its brassy twang hanging in the air for a long time.

Nothing.

I pulled again, twice, peremptorily. I wasn’t going to believe that NaRee wasn’t home, not on my second day in Den Oroshtai. Nor was I going to believe that nobody was home.

The front door creaked open, and NaRee’s mother Haenno stood there, a patently false smile creasing her fishbelly-white face. If I were the superstitious sort, I might have believed she had been left with child by Spennymore ... but I’m not superstitious. Thankfully, the Powers leave us alone, and we them.

The smile looked uncomfortable on her; it wasn’t the sort of garment she usually had to put on for the likes of me.

“Oh, Kami Khuzud,” she said, false pleasure dripping from her mouth, threatening to run down her taupe housecoat and drip onto the floor. “How nice to see you once again.” Her smile broadened, but she didn’t waddle her bulk out of the doorway. “I am so very disappointed that NaRee will have to miss your visit.” The door started to close, slightly. “I must beg of you to—”

“The sun,” I said, loudly, raising my hand as though to shield my eyes. “The sun now rises in front of me,” I said. “And I am dazzled, Lady.”

I bowed. Well, she had asked for it. I’m not so constituted as to always return honesty for honesty, but I will return lie for lie without hestitation or guilt.

“I pray of you, lovely Haenno: leave your husband this day, and walk with me to Lord Toshtai, so that I might ask that he divorce you from your husband, and splice our lives together.”

It’s an old D’Shaian principle: when you don’t know what to do, get over-formal, and let the other party worry about it.

Alternately, it’s an old juggler’s trick: when you know you’re about to drop a club, let your whole body and soul decide that, by the Powers, you are Going to Drop A Club.

Proposing marriage to NaRee’s mother wasn’t part of any plan, but it wasn’t a bad improvisation. I hoped.

I smiled broadly and bowed again. “May I wait in your garden for your answer?”—and I was off and around the house before she could answer.

The fence around the garden was of the usual sort: a weathered wooden palisade, perhaps two decades old—it must have been missed in the last burning—treated with chimney-water and protected at the top by a row of rusty iron spikes. The gate was closed, although the damaged grasses growing up around it suggested it was often used, which was unusual; the usual access to a bourgeois garden was through the house itself.

The gate, though, was locked, and the garden would be secure from most.

On the other hand, few trying to enter the garden would be trained acrobats, part of the Troupe of Gray Khuzud.

It’s important to do these things right: I bowed to a nonexistent audience, I took three running steps, leaped, and caught the edge of the wood with my fingertips, pulling myself up to the top of the fence in one smooth motion, just avoiding the spikes. I hesitated at the top for a moment, balanced precariously on fingers and a single toe, then vaulted the rest of the way.

I landed at the edge of the grass, one foot on the grass, the other sinking into the dirt of the flower beds, missing a bramblebush by a fingers-breadth.

I should have had faith in myself; straining to push against unhelpful air and miss the bush pushed me off-balance. Instead of landing square on my feet, I fell, breaking my fall with a sloppy forward roll that strained my shoulder slightly and would have earned me a disappointed sigh from Gray Khuzud, had he seen it.

But I recovered, and rose, and he hadn’t seen it, because he wasn’t there.

NaRee was.

“Bravo, Kami Khuzud, bravo. Do it again.” I couldn’t tell whether or not she was making fun of me.

“Which part?”

She tilted her head ever so slightly to one side, wisps of black hair playing with her strong cheekbones and blood-red lips. I wished I was a wisp of hair.

She had whitened her already pale face a few shades, particularly around the eyes, which made them look larger, although I couldn’t see the need. I could already have drowned in her eyes. NaRee was, as always, lovely, even though her robes were barely open at the neck, only a glimpse of a starkly white shift and soft white bosom peeking out beneath the thin, rough muslin robe.

The tips of her sandals peeked out beneath the bottom of the robe, her toes tiny and even, the nails silvered and polished.

“The part,” she said, her sweet voice echoing of distant bells, “where you almost popped your arm out of the socket. I liked that so very much.”

“It takes great artistry to make it look that clumsy,” I said. “You should see my father’s drunk act.”

“Tonight,” she said, taking my hand, looking up into my eyes. She pressed herself gently against me. “Tonight. I will meet you after the performance. For now?”

“For now, we only have a few moments. I think I have your mother confused, but that will wear off.”

“Then let us not waste time.” She came into my arms, her lips warm on mine.

Too soon, there was a call from the house. “NaRee, Refle is here to speak with you.”

She pushed away from me and made a moue. “You’d better leave, and quickly. Over the fence, please.”

I could have scrambled for safety most of the time, but not in front of NaRee. “I think that I’m good enough to walk through your front door. In or out, NaRee.”

“Yes, yes, my Kami Khuzud, you’re always so brave and strong, but now is not the time to prove it, not in front of Refle. He has been ... pressing me, and this will not—”

She shook her head infinitesimally, and took a step back, away from me.

“NaRee—”

I took a step forward.

“Take your shitty hands off her, peasant.”

The hairs at the base of my neck stiffened at the click of clumsy boots on the gravel path.

Refle.

When you’re under stress, it’s important to move slowly, deliberately; I turned quickly.

I had underestimated Haenno, which surprised me. Normally, people are just complicated puzzles, and I’ve always been fairly good at puzzles. It was clear what had happened: she hadn’t known how to deal with me herself, but she had known enough to send for help, although judging from the amount of time it had taken, Refle had already been somewhere in Ironway.

That wasn’t surprising. Toshtai’s armorer would, of necessity, spend much time among the ironmongers and ironworkers; he would, by choice, spend even more time there if it allowed him to pay court to NaRee.

He stalked across the stones, his brother Felkoi trailing behind him. Refle’s face was flat and emotionless as he approached, his riding crop in one hand, the other resting on the hilt of his sword.

The two of them looked like brothers, but only barely, only around the mouth and eyes. Felkoi was half a head taller, and stood much straighter than Refle, who almost hunched over, one thumb hooked inside the front of his swordbelt, the other hand still tapping the riding crop against his thigh as he glared at me. Where Felkoi was compact, Refle was puffed up, and out; where Felkoi’s gestures were precise and understated, Refle sawed at the air with his crop.

I was in trouble.

“Good day, Lord Refle.” I bowed correctly, no more.

“Kami Khuzud,” he said, pronouncing my name like a curse. “It seems you disturb my intended. Go back to your tossing of little sticks in the air, acrobat.” He slapped his riding crop against his leg.

I would have offered to help him hit himself, but I was afraid that he might have taken the suggestion in the spirit in which it was intended, so I didn’t.

NaRee stepped between the two of us. “Kami Khuzud was just leaving, Lord Refle.”

“He is.” His expression softened fractionally. “At your request?”

She hesitated for a moment. “Yes.” Well, that was true enough.

“Perhaps a beating will then hurry him on his way.” He slapped his riding crop against his thigh, again, harder.

Felkoi grabbed his arm. “No, Refle, leave him be.”

It wasn’t a contest of strengths, but of status, and of wills. Refle was the older brother, but he was only a hereditary armorer—a noble trade, but still “reeking of trade,” as the saying goes, while Felkoi was a blooded warrior, and outranked his older brother. I had the feeling that Felkoi would have gestured an apology to me, but his self-discipline was restraining him better than he was restraining his brother.

My mouth sometimes lives a life all its own. “Please, Lord Felkoi,” I said. “Leave your brother be. Let him beat me so badly that I can’t perform tonight for Lord Toshtai. It would seem a fair trade.”

Refle glared at me with a look of unalloyed hatred as he shrugged off his brother’s hand and took a step forward.

It’s said that the Foulsmelling Ones of Bhorlani have a whole range of punishments for miscreants, sometimes locking them in small rooms for years—I presume they feed them—but D’Shaian justice, such as it is, tends to be somewhat simpler.

“Lord Toshtai likes to see acrobats, as I recall,” I said, standing my ground. “He enjoys them rather a lot. I doubt our act would be as good with a featured player hobbling about in pain.”

Refle’s jaw clenched so tightly I thought his teeth were going to pop out.

From behind him, Felkoi smiled momentarily. “Let him go, Refle.”

Tension hung in the air between Refle and me for a long moment, and I thought that I’d pushed him too far, until his shoulders sagged, and he shrugged.

“Then be gone,” Refle said, his feet planted firmly in the middle of the path.

I walked around him—slowly, careful of the audience—and left.