Joel Rosenberg - [D'Shai 01] - D'Shai Read online

  Some brought more of themselves to the role than others. Off in the corner of the room near both a potted pine and a tray of rolled rouxed eels, Fhilt talked intently with a pinch-faced woman, the traditional cut and bear-and-snake needlepoint on her robe proclaiming her either old enough or stubborn enough—or both—to defy modern fashion.

  Typical for Fhilt to be cornered by some old dowager. I flattered myself that I cut a better figure in my formal tunic and leggings. Fhilt always looked a bit off; his hair was that awkward color between brown and blond that always looks unwashed, and his arms were ever-so-slightly too long in proportion to the rest of his body.

  Across the hall, Lord Felkoi, the brother to Refle, intently grilled Large Egda on what it was like to catch somebody coming out of a triple.

  “—he unrolls, and I catch him,” Large Egda said, his flat face betraying no pleasure, no pain, not much of anything. “Then when the trap swings back, I throw him back, just right. Not hard. If I throw him too hard, he doesn’t catch the trap, and he falls.”

  “Yes, yes, man, but how does it feel?” Felkoi took a step closer, gesturing to urge Large Egda on. I didn’t know why he was so interested, and didn’t much care.

  Neither did Large Egda. “It feels good, I guess.”

  Felkoi was a compact dark man, his short black beard shot with premature streaks of gray, his precise way of gesturing softened by an easy smile. He was also persistent.

  Large Egda could never quite manage doing two things at once, and while he was talking, he wasn’t eating. I’ve always felt protective toward Large Egda, something I don’t understand—a man as large and strong as Large Egda should be able to take care of himself. But what is, is: I walked over to where he and Felkoi were standing next to a waist-high table holding a platter of crispy partridge breasts stuffed with saffron and wild rice.

  “A good evening, Lord Felkoi,” I said. I gestured at Large Egda to take something from the platter, but he missed the motion. Typical.

  I picked one up and placed it in his hands. He bit into it gratefully.

  “And a good evening to you, Kami Khuzud,” Felkoi said. “I was just asking Egda about trapeze work, about the feel of it, the sense of catching a triple tumble.” He took a cloth from his tunic and daubed at the corner of his mouth.

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I’ve never caught one.”

  “Yes, but you’ve done one.”

  “I stick with doubles. You’ll have to ask Gray Khuzud about triples.” I smiled. “A triple is ... interesting.”

  I could have told him about how it’s more than that, about how you have to pump the trapeze so hard that your grip on the bar threatens to tear your shoulder off; about the release, hoping that you’ve done it right because if you haven’t—safety harness or no, net or no—you’re going to hurt yourself because you’ve spun your center away into the dark; about the catch that hurts even more than the release, but is a reassuring, comforting kind of hurt, because you know that once Large Egda’s hands have closed on your upper arms, that’s the end of it.

  But I didn’t. I didn’t really have any grievance against Felkoi—it was his brother, Refle, who was courting NaRee—but I don’t do favors for members of our beloved ruling class. I’ve never liked being around our beloved ruling class, and it’s not just that you have to watch how you behave around them. A part of it, of course, is they’re allowed to kill commoners without reason.

  A large part.

  But that’s largely overstated. While in theory any member of our beloved ruling class, no matter how minor, can kill any member of any lower class with absolute impunity, other members of our beloved ruling class are known to get irritated when that happens at the wrong time.

  Everybody—including members of our beloved ruling class—remembers that one of the things that triggered the Long War was Lord Dilpa, a minor noble of Lasge, killing a nameless peasant in the Ven. As it turned out, Lord Dun Logehaira decided to take that as an insult, and sent his warships across the North Channel of the Inner Sea, and sacked Firth.

  Even that probably wouldn’t dissuade a member of our beloved ruling class—they like wars, or D’Shai wouldn’t have been at war with itself for almost all of the past two hundred years, and at war with the Foulsmelling Ones the rest of the time. What keeps them in line is the memory of ancient Lord Erist, Dilpa’s fealty-lord, who later found Lord Dilpa’s table manners irritating, and then made Dilpa’s children eat sausages cased in their father’s intestines.

  Lord Erist, so it’s said, liked war, but perhaps he wasn’t ready to fight it then. A fealty-lord is allowed to kill any of his subjects for any reason, and in this case the reason wasn’t that Dilpa was clumsy with spoon and trencher, or because ancient Erist was a secret kazuh cook, eager to try a new experiment.

  At least, that’s what Gray Khuzud said, and I tended to go along with my father on things like that.

  I also tended to go along with him to things like the audience with Lord Toshtai, although I didn’t like it. Gray Khuzud did; he was behind the screen, in private conversation with Lord Toshtai. Toshtai was awfully fond of acrobats, which did much for my practical status in Den Oroshtai, if not for my official one. One would almost think the fat one wished he were an acrobat, although I didn’t believe it. The Tale of the Lord and the Peasant does end with the lord going back to his castle, and the peasant back to his plow, after all.

  Idiot peasant.

  “You think deep thoughts, Kami Khuzud,” Fel-koi said, with a smile that could have been friendly or condescending, although I knew which way I was betting.

  “Always,” I said. “It’s part of the Way of the Acrobat.”

  Felkoi looked from Large Egda to me and back again, then walked off after a perhaps overpunctilious quarter-demi-bow.

  “Thank you, Kami Khuzud,” Large Egda said, from around another bite. “He kept asking me about catching and throwing, and you know I don’t know how to talk about it. I just do it.”

  I patted his arm. “Don’t worry, Egda. Just eat, while you’ve got the chance.”

  The ballroom was filled with people who I knew only casually, and people who I didn’t know at all. There were a few who I wouldn’t have minded knowing.

  Over by a knee-table, one of the ladies of the court knelt on a red silken cushion. Her robes, sewn of that ripple-woven scarlet silk that only the nobility can afford, were quite unfashionably pulled tight together, promising rather than showing a slim waist and full bosom, but I was drawn to the high cheekbones and the wide, dark eyes that examined me frankly for a long moment, then moved away.

  Which was just as well. The heavy man near her, his scabbard lying flat on his lap, had started to follow her gaze.

  The bit of byplay hadn’t gone completely unnoticed: a pinch-faced old woman standing next to Lord Arefai hid a smile behind her fan, then considered me carefully with her cold blue eyes.

  I turned and picked up another duckroll.

  It’s not comfortable to be stared at by women of our beloved ruling class, at least not in public, not when their husbands and brothers and fathers and sometimes—Powers spare us!—their mothers can see them do that.

  I admit I am handsome, except for my hands, of course, but that is a function of being an acrobat. A well-proportioned physique is something that you have to develop, and you do it without working in the hot sun, developing a peasant’s tan.

  Not that that would stop a lot of the noble women, or the bourgeois ones. While liaisons between them and peasants are absolutely forbidden, some husbands, brothers and fathers will turn their faces from that. The danger of not knowing can add some spice to it. I speak from experience.

  Each of the two Eresthai brothers had picked out his quarry: Josei had chosen a lovely, delicate redheaded kazuh courtesan with whom he had no chance; Eno was working on Hebrid, the wife of a bourgeois meatpacker, under the muffled glare of her husband.

  By a dyed-grass tapestry of two gazelles in a glen, old Dun
Lidjun was holding forth on some fine point of swordsmanship, holding out an eating-stick as though it were a sword. While the lecture was clearly aimed at the younger swordsmen who watched his every move with careful eyes, nodding in unison when he paused for breath, Evrem the snake-handler pretended to be paying rapt attention, although he absently kept spinning his own pair of eating sticks through his fingers.

  I didn’t like Evrem, and sort of hoped that Dun Lidjun would take notice and frighten him a little, the way Evrem used to scare me with his snakes.

  “I hope Dun Lidjun doesn’t take notice,” Enki Duzun said.

  “Just what I was thinking.” Well, it was what I should have been thinking, as a loyal member of the troupe. Sometimes you have to substitute.

  Enki Duzun knelt by the serving board and picked up a lambroll, wrapping it in a chumpa leaf, then ladling bitter brown horseradish sauce over it all, so thickly I didn’t know how she expected to eat it without splattering herself. Rising, she twirled it faster than the sauce could drift off before she took it in three bites, like a wolf downing a gopher.

  “The arts can have minor applications, as well as major ones,” she said, brushing at her hair.

  “Just what I was thinking.”

  Narantir the magician was glaring at me from across the room. I gave him a false-friendly wave, as though noticing an old friend.

  “Taunting magicians is stupid and irresponsible,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “Only irresponsible.” I half-filled a crystal goblet with rich purple winterwine and headed toward him.

  “Good evening, Narantir Ta-Mahrir,” I said, respectfully, if informally.

  He was an overweight man who had been destined to be immensely fat, but had partly thwarted his obvious destiny, at least for the time being. While he was probably half again my own weight, his face was lined and wrinkled, as though he were underinflated. He was probably carrying an extra half stone as sweat and dirt in his clothes, and as crumbs of food in his beard.

  I wonder if it’s true that mahrir, wizard’s-magic, comes in part from filth. All I can say is that in my travels I’ve met both wizards and witches, and never want to be downwind of either on a hot day.

  “May your evening be one of rain and sleep, Eldest Son Acrobat,” he said, too formally for the occasion. Dirty fingers played in his rat’s-nest of a beard.

  I didn’t have a good response. Technically, acrobats are of the peasant class, but we’re not all that fond of rain. I didn’t even like to practice when it was wet; I tended to slip and fall a lot. Besides, I didn’t know how to make small talk with magicians; I hadn’t had much practice. So I just smiled in answer, and let the silence hang over him.

  “You performed quite well, this evening, Eldest Son Acrobat,” he said, finally. “Yes, you did, didn’t you?”

  I liked the pause between “well” and “this,” and the slight emphasis on the latter word. It was clear that Narantir and I were still not going to be friends. Some people just don’t get along.

  I can be just as excessively formal as anybody else. “You, Nailed Weasel User of Magic, are far too kind.”

  Magicians learn levels of self-control, but not the same kind as the rest of us; for a moment, I thought he was going to rear back and shout at me, but then his features softened.

  “No, no, don’t be that way, young acrobat. I meant no offense by formality, Kami Khuzud.”

  “I certainly didn’t intend to give any where none is deserved, Narantir.”

  He didn’t know quite how to take that, so I turned to leave.

  “One moment.”

  “Yes?”

  “I would like your winterwine,” he said. “Really, I would.”

  “I’ll fetch you a goblet, Narantir.”

  “I wish I could express myself better.” The wizard shook his head. “You don’t understand.” He muttered a phrase and passed his hand over my goblet. “I want your winterwine.”

  The golden surface of the winterwine slowly sank, as though it was being drawn out by an invisible straw.

  “Do you take my point?” he asked.

  “Perhaps.” Well, no, actually.

  “Perhaps it’s too simple. Try this: when you annoy a wizard, you end up with less than that with which you started.” He smiled at me with teeth that were neither even nor white.

  I thought of responding with a pleasantry like “Please stick the goblet up your back passage,” but decided that that would be neither politic nor safe, so I just watched my goblet drain into nothingness.

  I sort of expected a sucking sound when the level dropped to the bottom of the goblet, but I didn’t get one.

  Typical.

  I never do get what I expect.

  “Lord Toshtai is here; our Lord receives subjects and guests,” two guards, a baritone and a tenor, sang out; a bass and another tenor picked up the song and turned it into a round as two maids slid the screen aside.

  Like a field of wheat bending in the wind, everyone in the courtyard knelt, warriors dropping only to one knee, all the rest of us to both.

  Toshtai sat on his throne, a robed attendant to either side, two of his sons, Edelfaule and Arefai, kneeling warrior-fashion beyond them.

  Now, while Narantir was an overweight man who had avoided being fat, Toshtai was massively corpulent, but there was something majestic in his bulk. His hair was oiled and combed back over a head large enough for a man of his size; his flipper-like hands were comfortably folded over his belly.

  The kazuh of the rulers is, according to legend, history and law, an offshoot of that of the warrior, and a warrior is never without his sword. It would have been hard for Toshtai to sit comfortably in his leather chair and deal with a sword and scabbard, so Toshtai’s dress sword was a miniature, barely larger than an eating knife, stuck into his sash as though in afterthought.

  His eyes always bothered me. Sunken and porcine, they held no trace of humanity, of kindness or cruelty, just of intelligence. Momentarily, they rested on mine, but then they passed me by.

  It felt like an executioner had read out another name.

  “I am pleased to wish a good evening to all,” Toshtai said. “I am further pleased to see all of you on this evening, in particular the Troupe of Gray Khuzud. I would be pleased if you were each to rise.” He inclined his head fractionally, and the guards took up the refrain again.

  Old Dun Lidjun’s joints groaned as he rose to his feet, his left hand on the hilt of his sword, as though that steadied him. His hair was white and thin, and his skin thin and ashen with age, his tunic loose on his bony frame; but he threw back his shoulders and stood straight. Perhaps he could not control his joints, but they would not master him, either.

  “I seem to recall telling you not to kneel before me, old friend,” Toshtai whispered. I’m not sure if he thought he was talking privately, or not. “Your bones are too old for that.”

  “If you please.” The old general bowed. “I have greeted the Lord of Den Oroshtai properly for more than five decades, Lord; if it please you, Lord, perhaps I’m too old to learn new habits.”

  “Ah.” Toshtai’s face was blank. “Perhaps you are not too old to bring me the ears of your favorite granddaughter. Do so. Now.”

  Dun Lidjun’s face went a shade whiter; his shoulders slumped. “Yes, Lord.” He drew himself up as straight as he could. “Immediately.” He spun on the balls of his feet and stalked toward the door.

  “You will have to get past the guards. Ver Hortun, Bek De Bran—kill him if you can,” Toshtai called out.

  Two guards lowered their pikes, taking up ready stances. Dun Lidjun drew his sword in one smooth motion, his face calm, growing supremely impassive.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as his kazuh flared. Enki Duzun had felt it, too.

  “I’ve never seen that done faster,” she whispered.

  Me, neither. I had seen the look on Dun Lidjun’s face before—I had see it that evening, on my father’s face—but never brou
ght on so casually. Dun Lidjun had raised kazuh in a heartbeat, like drawing on a glove. Or drawing a sword.

  The three of them stood motionless, frozen in time for a moment, until the larger of the guards lunged for Dun Lidjun, his pike stabbing out.

  “Don’t cut either of them,” Toshtai commanded.

  The guards moved forward.

  Dun Lidjun blurred into motion, seemingly brushed past one attacking guard, toward the other. But the first guard staggered and stumbled in the old warrior’s wake, and the other brought up the butt of his pike—

  “All of you, stop.”

  The second of the pikemen stumbled, but Dun Lidjun froze in place, like one of the friezes on the wall, his sword reversed, his hand in midsweep; he had almost clubbed the second pikeman with his sword butt.

  “Bek De Bran, lower your pike. Do not kill him.”

  The other, the one who had first attacked Dun Lidjun, had dropped to his knees; there was blood at the corner of his mouth. His eyes were vague and dreamy. They rolled up; he fell on his face, his pike clattering on marble.

  “Dun Lidjun,” Toshtai said, “I revoke the orders to hurt your granddaughter.”

  “Yes, Lord.” The old warrior let his arm drop, and suddenly he was just an old man again, wearing a tunic that he had grown too small for. Ancient fingers trembled as he tried to slip his sword back in its scabbard, failing twice before he succeeded.

  Toshtai gestured twice to his maids; the unconscious guard was hauled away, another from the hall outside taking his place as the screen was pulled back in front of Lord Toshtai. Whispers might not have made it around the curtain, but Toshtai didn’t lower his voice.

  “It seems, old friend, that you do remember how to obey orders; my orders stand.”

  “Yes, Lord.”

  Gray Khuzud patted me on the shoulder. “So? What has this taught you, Kami Khuzud?”

  “That if Lord Toshtai tells me to stand up, I’ll stand up.”

  He frowned. “And is that all?”

  I shrugged. “Lord Toshtai is either very blunt, or very subtle.” Alienating the marshal of his forces—if that’s what he had done; I wouldn’t have bet a shard on how Dun Lidjun had really taken their little drama—was probably stupid. Reminding everyone in the room that he had the power of life and death over them was a bit obvious, and painfully real to all.