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

  “Or both, Kami Khuzud. I’ve been wondering that for years.”

  The three elder members of the troupe and the two Eresthais had gone to sleep; Fhilt, Enki Duzun, Large Egda and I were the last to bed, as usual. The while before bedtime was our time, a quiet time as we sat on Madame Rupon’s porch, looking out at the town, and at the flickering lights in the castle above the town and at the watching stars. Our time, although we often spent much of it squabbling. I’m persuaded that much of Fhilt’s and my arguments were for the sake of arguing.

  The single lamp hanging over the steps occasionally sent a burning vastamoth slowly flapping away into the night, the insect too stupid to know it was dying.

  Night in D’Shaian towns and cities is quiet, although tonight the quiet was broken by a distant troupe of musicians. It was easy to pick out the deep rasp and thrum of the bassskin, the distant ringing of the chimes, but it was hard to tell if there were one or two drummers and zivvers, two silverhorns or three.

  “Any idea which troupe that is?” Fhilt asked.

  Except for a few court bands, musicians, like acrobats—and storysavers, lisburns, farriers, and deilists, for that matter—travel the length and breadth of D’Shai, each on their own route.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve sometimes thought that it would be pleasant if we could travel with one of the better musician’s troupes, and perhaps have them learn set pieces of music to play, to better set off our performance.”

  “I like the variety,” Enki Duzun said.

  Fhilt snorted. “Perhaps you can find an earnest young musician who would like you to learn to juggle your balls in time to one of his jigs.”

  “Shh, Fhilt,” Enki Duzun said. “Listen. I like that.” She leaned farther back in the wooden porch chair, and relaxed. There’s nothing so comfortable as an acrobat at ease.

  “Very pretty,” Large Egda said, hunched on the porch steps. Ever since a wicker chair in Tiree’s Lair had shattered underneath him during an intermission, Large Egda had been nervous about wooden furniture.

  “Mmmm ... maybe,” Fhilt said. “But I think the zivver player’s leaning too heavily on the scratchbox. Don’t you?”

  “Leave him alone, Fhilt,” I said. It’s not right to expect Large Egda to pick up on something subtle, like a ziwer player’s thumb. “The zivver’s just fine.”

  It was part of the ritual, more of a dance than a reality: Fhilt and I would argue, and sometimes almost come to blows, and then Enki Duzun would stop us before it became serious.

  Suddenly the music stopped.

  I chuckled. “I guess they don’t like your criticism, Fhilt,” I said, as though they could have heard us.

  “Or your ignorant defense, Kami Khuzud,” he said, rising to his feet.

  I squared off opposite him. “Ignorant, did you say? From a man who can’t tell a ziwer from a cow?”

  He snorted. “I’m sorry. Make that ‘woefully ignorant.’ ”

  A silverhorn purred out a complex phrase quickly, then, note by note, slowly.

  “It sounds to me,” Enki Duzun said, “like the second silverhorn missed a phrase, like the first silverhorn player is reviewing it for him, and like neither of you two music appreciators knows as much as he claims to.” She looked up at the two of us and smiled. “If you’re going to beat somebody for speaking the truth, try me.”

  I looked at my fists, and dropped my hands. Fhilt shrugged and did the same.

  “Some day, the two of you will really fight,” Enki Duzun said.

  “Entirely possible,” Fhilt said.

  “Very likely.” I nodded.

  Large Egda shook his head. “Even I know better than that.”

  * * *

  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 fanc
iest, 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.