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8

Stormy Night

 

MY FATHER SAT alone in the dungeon. The barred rooms were empty; few remain long in Lord Toshtai’s dungeon. A dungeon isn’t where our beloved ruling class stores living people, not like the Foulsmelling Ones of Bhorlani do. No; our dungeons are for dead people, for those who know that they’re about to die, and for those who don’t know that they’re dead yet.

Enki Duzun lay under a shroud, only her face visible. She looked more asleep than dead, if you didn’t look too closely.

I didn’t look too closely.

Gray Khuzud gripped my arm. “How could it happen, Kami Khuzud?” he said, more statement than question.

Equipment fails, but not our equipment. Not if it’s properly checked.

“Are you asking me if I checked the rigging?” I asked.

He looked at me for a long, long moment. It was all clear. He was supposed to say something like:

Of course I am not asking that of you, Kami Khuzud. Of course I trust you, Kami Khuzud.

Of course I know that you checked it, that you would not have been careless with the lives of us all.

Of course I know that you are not your sister’s murderer, Kami Khuzud.

But he licked his lips and swallowed hard.

“Yes,” he said. “I am not accusing, Kami Khuzud,” he said, grasping my shoulder. “Truthfully, I am not accusing. I am just asking.”

I didn’t answer; I just turned and left, leaving the old man alone.

The truth was out in the rain; it only took me a few moments to find it.

 

The threatening clouds had rolled in, the storm was dumping rain down on the empty courtyard, and Enki Duzun was dead. Rain washes away dirt and blood; sometimes, if it rains hard enough, if it just slams down hard against you, it can wash away feeling.

I stood in the cold rain, a bag of tools at my feet, the end of the highwire in my hand, and the storm raging overhead, skeins of lightning sometimes so bright they left the patterns behind in my eyes. The water mixed with tears as I stood out in the cold rain, the twin columns of the granaries looming darkly above me, just within the walls of the keep.

The walls may have been high enough to repel an invader, but they provided me no cover from the rain; I was chilled to the bone. But perhaps a distant fury warmed me, if only a little, as I stood there, the evidence of my sister’s murder in my hands.

The light flickered in the armory window, but it might as well not have. There was nothing I could do—even if I could make my way into the room, something I’d been barely able to do under favorable conditions, what was I to do? Challenge Refle to a duel?

Assume for the moment that he wouldn’t summon the guards to have me hauled away before Lord Toshtai, postulate that he didn’t simply run me through, pretend he chose to turn his face from the fact that I was a peasant, what good would that do? I wasn’t a swordsman; he could simply toss me a sword and then hack me into little, bloody chunks. The members of our beloved ruling class didn’t turn their faces from a peasant’s impudence, not when they didn’t have to. It had been one thing to face Refle down in NaRee’s garden, but this was another.

Lord Toshtai would hardly complain about him hacking a burglar to death. Or killing an attempted murderer.

The lamps at the periphery of the courtyard still flickered in the dark and the rain. Even in that light, it was easy to tell that the wire either had been worn down by rubbing against the bracket or cut, and cut smoothly, by hard steel.

I knew for a fact that it had not been worn down against the bracket. That would have taken weeks and months, and I had checked the gear just that afternoon. The Eresthais had checked it the day before; the troupe of Gray Khuzud does not go into a performance without its tack in order.

So, strands had been cut. It was all clear.

Refle had not been satisfied with simply beating me, simply breaking my bones and bruising my flesh; when he had heard that I had been put back together, he had decided to take the next step, beyond hurting me. Most people who don’t use mahrir, wizard’s magic, assume that it can do anything; Refle didn’t know that Narantir had put only my bones together, leaving the muscles broken.

The first use of the highwire in our show was when Large Egda lifted me up to the wire; he had just seen that yesterday. Clumsy Kami Khuzud was always first on the wire, because that made everybody else seem even more graceful.

The wire was supposed to snap, sending clumsy Kami Khuzud dropping to the ground, removing Refle’s competition for NaRee’s affections with a dull, sodden thud.

I wished it had happened just that way. I wished, as hard as I could wish, that I was a warrior.

But wishing only makes wishes come true for wizards, and then only sometimes. I was just a clumsy acrobat, standing out in the rain, doing nothing of any value or importance.

I threw the bag of tools over my shoulder as I went to the rigging and climbed up, into the night, into the storm. My bruises protested against the strain, but I didn’t care. It didn’t matter.

The wind picked up, snatching at me, its cold fingers clawing at my face, but I climbed up to the highwire platform. The other end of the wire was still bolted there, and the bolt properly wired tightly in place, then glued into place.

You don’t want the inner end of the highwire to loosen. Somebody might die.

The adjustments are always done from the far side, whether that’s attached to a local surface or to our own outer platform, carried with our gear.

I took out a chisel and hammer, and knelt on the platform in the wind and the rain, and hammered the glue into shards that were picked up and taken away in the wind and the rain, until I revealed the nut wired into place beneath.

My fingers clawed at the wire, blindly. Tears in your eyes can blind you, if only for a while.

Or perhaps they can make you see more clearly, if only for a while.

I finally worked the wire loose, coiled it and stuck it in my pack.

 

“You want to what?” The servitor on duty at the entrance to the residence wing of the donjon couldn’t have looked more surprised if I had told her I wanted to have her youngest child for dinner.

“I would like to see Lord Toshtai, please,” I repeated as I stood there, dripping on the carpet.

Anger plus judgment equals a constant, and there was a black fury inside me. I know that I was supposed to phrase my request for an audience formally, indirectly, euphemistically, making it impossible for somebody who wasn’t already determined to take offense to do so. But my sister was dead, cold, stretched out on a stone slab in the dungeon below, waiting for her funeral, and the light still flickered in Refle’s window.

Across the tiled floor, the two warriors on duty eyed me expressionlessly, as though I was just a piece of furniture. I didn’t suppose that benign neglect would last if I were to barge through, past the slim woman in the rose tunic.

Her fingers reached toward a bell rope, then stopped. I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to be relieved or angered. I couldn’t have been much more angered.

“No,” she said, as though to herself, then faced me directly. “Return to your quarters, Kami Khuzud; bathe yourself, and dress in your finest. I will have word sent to Lord Arefai and Lord Toshtai’s secretary that you, with all proper humility and formality, respectfully request an audience, should that at some point amuse him.”

She reached out and touched my arm. “I am so very sorry about your sister, Eldest Son Acrobat.” Her eyes were wet.

I turned and walked away.

 

“You did what?” Evrem’s head spun to the side so fast that he startled the snake he was holding; it almost bit him. “Have you no consideration at all? For your father, for the rest of us, for me?”

“Stick a cobra up your back passage, Evrem,” I said, tightening the drawstring of my trousers, then tying the knot with a quick, angry flourish. I’m good at flourishes.

He looked at me for a long moment, then kissed the snake on top of its flat head with a gentleness that made me shiver, and put it back in its basket.

Large Egda’s face was grave. “I could have caught her. If I had been there. Stop her with my body.”

Fhilt looked pityingly at Large Egda. “The fall still would have hurt her, probably killed her.” He turned to me. “You don’t have enough to persuade Toshtai. I’m not even sure you’re right.”

“I have to try.”

Can’t you understand, Fhilt? Trying is all I have.

Naked from the waist up, barefoot, I padded across the carpet and went through the mess that was my trunk until I found a clean silk tunic, and pulled it out. I checked it over for loose threads, finding one and trimming it with a candle flame.

I slipped into the tunic and belted it tightly around my hips, ignoring the way the belt cut into my bruises. I picked up my shoes.

No. A peasant is always properly dressed with or without shoes, with or without dung squishing up between his toes; and an acrobat spends most of his time barefoot.

I will go before Lord Toshtai as I am, not as I wish I was. I am just an acrobat, not even a kazuh acrobat, and an acrobat is only a peasant.

“You really think it was Refle.” Fhilt tilted his head to one side, as though something had occured to him. He shook his head as though to dismiss the subject.

“Say it,” I said.

“What?”

“You’re thinking something—say it.”

Fhilt raised a palm. “No, it’s not fair.”

“Say it.”

“Very well, then.” He pursed his lips for a long moment. “It won’t do any harm; you’ve thought the same thing. If it wasn’t an accident, if you’re right that Refle boobytrapped our gear, then if you’d only have left NaRee alone, your sister would still be alive.”

Large Egda loomed over him. “You take that back. You don’t say that to him.”

“Egda, you idiot, it doesn’t matter whether or not I say it: it’s true.”

“You take that back.”

Large Egda’s hands reached out for Fhilt, but the big man was slow, always slow. Fhilt ducked beneath Large Egda’s arm and swung his elbow, hard, into Egda’s side.

Egda’s breath left him in a whoosh. Fhilt brought back his elbow for another strike, but I slipped between them, shoving Fhilt aside, and turning toward Large Egda.

“Stop it, the both of you.”

Large Egda, ignoring the pain, was still reaching out for Fhilt.

I put my hand on his chest as he moved forward. It was like trying to stop a falling tree: my feet slid back on the floor.

“Stop it, Egda,” I said.

The words did what force couldn’t. Large Egda didn’t stop looking at Fhilt, but he did stop walking forward.

Fhilt stood apart, a thin smile creasing his face. “I don’t need your help, Kami Khuzud.”

I didn’t much care whether or not he did. A bit of innocent roughhousing is part of troupe life; fighting among troupe members is wrong, it’s not part of the Way.

Egda rubbed at his side, his dark eyes never leaving Fhilt. His face was flat and gray, clay molded by a careless sculptor. “You don’t say things like that about Kami Khuzud,” he said.

“Just leave it be, Egda.”

Egda’s forehead creased. “I know I’m stupid, Kami Khuzud,” he said, his voice plaintive. “Can’t help it. I will never get any better. You are smart. You tell me where I’m wrong. What could you do to make it fair for Refle to hurt Enki Duzun?”

I shook my head. “It’s not a matter of fair.”

“Should be.” He turned to Fhilt. “You think you are smart. You tell me, you tell me how Kami Khuzud being with NaRee makes it right for Refle to hurt Enki Duzun.”

“It’s not that simple. It’s not a matter of right, it’s a matter of—oh, I can’t explain anything to you.” Fhilt threw his hands in the air and stalked out of the room, just as Sala bustled in, her eyes red and puffy.

“Oh, Kami Khuzud, he didn’t mean it. Your father is sorry, really he is.” Always watching after me, after us, as usual.

“Sala.” I swallowed, but couldn’t go on.

“It’s so hard being accused of something you didn’t do, I know, Kami Khuzud, but you have to live with it, sometimes.”

“Why, Sala,” I said, forcing a smile, “that almost made sense.”

“What? Don’t try to confuse me.” She pressed me to her ample bosom. “Kami Khuzud, I am so sorry. I didn’t have a chance to tell you, to tell her, to ...”

One of the many things I don’t understand is why we all talk only in halting, stilted voices to people in grief, saying only that which has been said a hundred thousand times before, a pliant procession of moving mouths going back through time, to the beginning, when the First God made man out of dung, water, and straw.

I held her tightly. Sala was the closest thing to a mother I’d had for more years than I cared to think about; she was the only thing that Enki Duzun had ever had as a mother.

Those that we love sometimes soften us. My anger, at least for the moment, was gone, and with that, my resolution.

Of course, that was the moment that two of Lord Toshtai’s warriors, each wearing light bone armor, a sword, and a grim expression, stopped in front of the door.

“Our Lord Toshtai will see you now,” the senior said, each word carefully paced. I had once watched a woodcutter chop down a tur tree with just that even rhythm.

 

The guard at the door held out his hand for my pack; I handed it over without protest. He dumped it out on the table and examined it, silently handing back the pack itself, then dumping my various tools in it, as well as the cable coil.

He opened a wooden box. “What might these be?”

“Practice knives,” I said, reaching for one. “They’re for juggling when you don’t—”

“No.” One of the warriors at my side grabbed my wrist, neither gently nor roughly. Firmly, as though he had strength to spare.

The guard extracted one and tested the edge against the side of my arm. It was cool and smooth. Unsurprisingly, it left only a white mark on my skin that vanished momentarily—it was a practice knife, after all; surprisingly, he tested each of the other five knives against my arm before closing the box and slipping it back in my pack.

The search concluded, the door opened, and two guards led me down a long hall, the white stone smooth and cold beneath my feet, past screened-off rooms, some of them dark and silent, others with flickering shadows playing enigmatically on the surface of the translucent paper screens. Lord Toshtai’s compartment was marked only by the twin swordsmen standing outside.

The door slid aside and again I was in Toshtai’s presence. He wasn’t alone, of course. I wonder if even his wives ever saw him alone. I didn’t ask; it never came up.

Two blades slid from their sheaths; the two guards had drawn their swords and had stepped forward into a ready position, not quite eying me, standing like statues, waiting. To Toshtai’s left, Arefai raised a finger as though in warning, echoed by Felkoi.

Between them, his beefy face a mirror of his guilt, was Refle.

A warrior would have shouted a battle cry and leaped for him, but even a warrior wouldn’t have gotten within ren, cut in half by the guards, or by Arefai. A peasant wouldn’t have gotten that far.

Toshtai sat on a low cushion at a knee-table, bent over a puzzle, trying to fit some square bone tiles into a rectangular stone frame, his flipper-like hands surprisingly graceful as he toyed with one of the tiles, ticking it against another, his attention focused on the puzzle, not on the rest of the room.

He was fresh out of a bath, too, apparently; his hair seemed wet, not merely slicked back.

Toshtai finally deigned to notice me and my guard; we dropped to our knees.

“Puzzles,” he said, quietly, possibly to himself; then his eyes caught mine. “Do you like puzzles, Kami Khuzud?” He spotted a move, and set a tile down; it clicked into place, bones rattling on stone.

I’ve never given it much thought, I thought. That wouldn’t do as an answer, but I couldn’t lie to Toshtai, not with him looking at me.

“I haven’t ever given it any thought, Lord Toshtai,” I heard myself say. My anger had faded to fear, and hopelessness, and desperation; I trembled.

Arefai glared, but Lord Toshtai smiled.

“Ah. Come here, young peasant acrobat, and give it some thought.” He spread his hands. “Now, we have two dozen square tiles, from this one,” he said, picking up a tile the size of a fingernail, with a single hatch mark on it, “of one fren square, to this one,” he said, picking up another much larger one, marked with the symbol for two dozen, “which measures precisely twenty-four fren across. The box measures seventy fren across. The problem, and a pretty one it is, is can the tiles be laid into the box?”

I’ve never had a mind for figures, but I tried to calculate it out. One plus two is three. No, it is two tiles across, so it is four tiles ...

“Pretend your worthless life depends on it, shitfooted fool,” Arefai said, his hand on the hilt of his sword. Arefai may have been friendly for a member of our beloved ruling class, but he was a noble and I was a peasant, after all.

Toshtai silenced him with a quick frown. “No, no, Kami Khuzud, don’t calculate it—solve it.” Toshtai placed the smallest tile in my hands. “I’ve always had a fondness for puzzles. My son says that you have a puzzle for me. You will try to solve my puzzle, and I shall look at yours.”

The trouble with dealing with members of our beloved ruling class is that they make the rules, and I didn’t have any idea as to what the rules were. Except that I had better try hard to figure out the problem Lord Toshtai had set me.

Actually, I’ve always liked games and such, and a game is a puzzle. My sister did, too—but Enki Duzun had never been able to beat me at inverting draughts.

There didn’t seem to be any obvious way to do it, so I picked up the largest tile and set it in—wait. The box was seventy ren on a side, and the largest tile was twenty-four ren on a side. So the others running down the side had to add up to no more than seventy fren.

It was a strange thing; a pattern snapped into my mind, and I laid the tiles in the box quickly.

Lord Toshtai raised an eyebrow. “Amazing. I thought it unlikely,” he said, turning to the writing desk at his elbow. The fat lord picked up a brush and inkpot, quickly sketching a diagram of the tiles’ arrangements, before unceremoniously dumping the tiles back on the table. “The tiles were a present from Lord Ronoda,” he said, “and I thought intended to frustrate me.” He popped a sweetmeat into his mouth, and then rubbed his hands together, whether to clean them of crumbs or in pleasure I couldn’t tell. His fat face was passionless, as always. I couldn’t even tell if he was just idly toying with me or if he really was up to something.

“Now, I understand that you have another puzzle for me, another puzzle of life and death, Kami Khuzud,” he said. “Is it in there?” He quirked his fingers. I didn’t understand what he meant by it, but Arefai did—he slapped my hands aside and took my pack, and dumped it on the floor.

“Well, boy, what is the puzzle?”

I didn’t understand, but I at least had a way to proceed. “This cable is the puzzle, Lord Toshtai. It was the highwire. It snapped while supporting my sister.”

I couldn’t go on. My voice caught in my throat.

I tried to say something, but Arefai shook his head and held up a hand, silencing me. Wait, he mouthed.

“I told you, Lord Toshtai, I told you,” Refle said. “The peasant—”

“Acrobat,” Toshtai said, correcting him.

“Whatever pleases Lord Toshtai. The acrobat, then, sniffs after my intended, and seeks to blame me for the clumsiness of his sister.”

“Interesting,” Arefai said. “I didn’t note Enki Duzun’s clumsiness. I thought the peasant girl quite nimble.” His voice was deceptively smooth, like the edge of a knife, but his lips where white. “Tell me how grace is supposed to balance someone in midair. Tell me now, armorer.”

“Arefai.” Toshtai hissed once. “Be still, Lord Arefai. I am displeased, my son,” the Lord said, gently. “You bring fire and anger to a pleasant discussion of puzzles. Is there a reason?”

“I am very angry, Lord Toshtai,” Arefai said. “Somebody beat this boy—and secretly, hidden in a hood. Now his sister has died in a suspicious accident—this is not permitted in Den Oroshtai. It’s an attack on your rule, Lord.”

“A great friend of the peasants is Lord Arefai,” Toshtai mused. “I hadn’t observed this. Nor have half the peasant girls on the outlying farms, I’ll wager.”

“No, Father. Not the peasants. I am your man, always. If any person or even a bourgeois wants to chastise or slice up a peasant, let him do so. Look.” Arefai stalked over to me and slapped me twice on the face, hard. My face stung. It wasn’t the first time I’d wanted to kill a member of our beloved ruling class, and if I kept still, it likely wouldn’t be the last.

I kept still.

“But there are standards to be kept,” he went on, “obligations to be met. If Refle wants this acrobat dead, let him kill him openly, in daylight. Let him do it cleanly, not try to steal a life in the dark.”

“You would shame me unfairly, Lord Arefai,” Refle said, “if you say that I would skulk and run.”

“Please, Lord,” Felkoi said. “My brother didn’t kill the girl. He wouldn’t do such a thing.”

“Or beat the boy?” Arefai asked. “I saw Kami Khuzud’s bruises—they’re still there, under his tunic.”

Refle almost started at that, but he kept his composure.

“Narantir,” Arefai went on, “will speak of his broken bones. Were these self-inflicted?”

“A footpad, perhaps. It may not be permitted, but it happens, even in Den Oroshtai,” Felkoi said.

“And the death of his sister?”

“An accident, manifestly,” Refle said. “Or his own clumsiness in not taking care of his tools.”

“Ah.”

Lord Toshtai smiled, although at what I wasn’t sure. “I commend you on your vision.” He returned his attention to the coil of cable. “It is a pretty puzzle, indeed. You see, Refle, most of the wire strands appear to have been cut, perhaps, or long rubbed against something else smooth. Did it long rub against something smooth, parting the strands, Kami Khuzud?”

“No, Lord.”

“Perhaps then the strands were cut?” He looked to Refle, then back to me. “An interesting puzzle, Kami Khuzud. You seem to be good at puzzles. Solve this one for me, Kami Khuzud.” For a moment, a glimmer of anger crossed his face. “It would be a shame if my evening were ruined deliberately, would it not?”

His evening ruined ...

My sister lay motionless in death on a stone slab, all that she had been, all that she was to be gone forever, and the fat lord of Den Oroshtai thought that less than his ruined evening.

Sometimes I wonder if our beloved ruling class is really of the same species as the rest of us.

“Yes, Lord,” I said, the words cold, salty ashes in my mouth. “It would be a terrible shame for your evening to be deliberately ruined.”

I thought I’d kept the sarcasm out of my voice, but Refle started to rise, stopping only at a glare from Arefai.

“Such sulking,” Toshtai said, ignoring the byplay. “One would think that an indignity has been visited upon your person just now, Kami Khuzud,” he went on, “if I did not turn my face away from it, for it never happened. Go, acrobat—I will think on the puzzle, and you will look into it for me. You will need to bury your sister tomorrow—begin the day after. See if you can find the solution.”

“Lord?”

A shadow of irritation crossed his face. “Find out how this wire came to be cut, how your sister came to die. Examine things. Talk to those in the castle; see if they saw someone cutting the wire during the time in which it must have been cut. Then tell me how your sister came to die, show me how your sister came to die.” His lips thinned fractionally. “I want to know.

“You may leave now.”

As I rose, Toshtai turned to Refle. “You have the honor of pouring, Lord Refle. It would please me to drink some of the Crimson Bud Essence; yes, yes, sprinkle the peppers heavily on the surface.”