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

  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.

  * * *

  4

  Highwire

  OF ALL THINGS acrobatic, I hate high wire the most. I’d much rather juggle knives, and somebody as clumsy as me has no business juggling knives.

  It’s not just that it’s not forgiving. Flying is every bit as merciless—even more so—and I’ve never disliked flying as much as highwire. If you come out of a flying double roll wrongly and miss, you have to grab control of your center in order to be able to hit the net right. When you fall from the wire, you’re usually not rolling. It’s hard to hurt yourself, but it’s dreadfully easy to embarrass yourself.

  Part of it, of course, is that when you’re on the wire, you’re always at the bottom of the pyramid. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, if you do it wrong, you fall—and if you’re doing it with somebody else, they fall, too.

  I hate that. In this world of Nythrea, in this country of D’Shai, it’s always been more than hard enough for me to keep my own balance; I don’t want to be responsible for somebody else’s.

  We were going to be doing our standard first-night show. It’s important that each of the nights of our appearance builds on the previous evening, but it’s also important that those who only attend the first night, or even the preview we do upon arrival, understand that they have been honored by the presence of the Troupe of Gray Khuzud. So we hold back, but only a little, and whittle away at that holding back until our final show.

  The troupe had been given access to two rooms: one below, a small room that opened on the courtyard, and a suite above, on the top floor of the donjon. Large Egda, Sala and Evrem were preparing themselves in the dressing room downstairs; the rest of us were readying our entrances on the wire, anchored in the far wall, that stretched out to the trap-platform outside.

  The Eresthais had set up the anchor, and Gray Khuzud had checked it, but checking the anchor was my job, and while I wasn’t a particularly good acrobat, I wanted to be reliable.

  It was typical Eresthai work: they had selected a huge mounting staple that was just a little too large, then worked it thoroughly over the edge of the
doorframe, and pulled open the legs far enough to slip some ingawood slabs down inside. Then they had clamped the whole thing down tightly, so that it was supported by seven of the massive stones of the wall, before they had tightened up the turnbuckles tightly enough to make the taut wire sing at the tap of a fingernail.

  Good, solid work. It’s not my favorite anchor—I much prefer the security you get from proper redundant staking—but it was typical of the Eresthais: reliable, competent, unimaginative. My only complaint is that they’d set everything, including the platform out in the courtyard, fractionally too high; I’d be forced to duck as I walked out through the open window.

  “Good enough for you?” The older Eresthai smiled as he gave his muscles a practice flex. Naked from the waist up, his torso oiled, his rippling muscles made his skin look almost transparent. Women like all that, so I’m told.

  “It’s acceptable,” I said.

  Enki Duzun giggled. “Don’t mind him, Eno. He’s just being himself.” Arms extended gracefully to the sides, she balanced for a moment on the ball of one foot, then dove forward to a handstand.

  “My brother,” she said, walking back and forth on her hands, “thinks that the trick to being as good as Father is being every bit as unstinting in praise as Father is.”

  “Really,” Gray Khuzud said, from behind.

  I started; I hadn’t seen Gray Khuzud come in, either.

  Folding his arms across his bare chest, he leaned against the doorframe. “Am I really so uncharitable, Enki Duzun?”

  She tucked into a forward roll and then came to her feet a fingersbreadth from the wall. It’s not a flashy move, but it’s a tricky one.

  “Well, yes, you are,” she said.

  Gray Khuzud thought it over for a moment, and then laughed. “I suppose I am. And I suppose you would prefer it if I were to feed you a sweetmeat every time you remembered to hold on to the trapeze with both hands?”

  My sister was fearless. “It would be a change, at least,” she said.

  “It would be a change, at that.”