Anderson, Poul - Novel 18 Read online

  Josserek gave her a look which lingered. Was she coming out of her armor at last?

  They had left the house this morning, attired to avoid drawing close attention. Conquest had brought many Rahldian civilians here as well as their military. In a robe girded up from his buskins to allow free stride, a kerchief falling from his cap to conceal haircut and earrings, Josserek could be an entrepreneur or functionary from some Imperial town. Her features and fairness made Donya impossible to disguise. But, grinning, she showed (the exact right word) in filmy tunic, jangling bangles of glass and brass, insolently reddened lips. “Certain of our girls who know they will never wed work the Arvannethan posts upriver,” she explained. “A few find their way to the city, though they stay not long.” She hesitated. “We reckon this an honest trade too, among those a spouseless female can ply. And Southrons can’t imagine her, alone, doing anything else.”

  Apart from that hint of defensiveness, she had given little of herself. Arrogantly she insisted they walk, not south toward the Grand Arena and the better districts, but deasil around the center. Nor had she said many words while they wove through the slime and shrillness of streets, the poor of the Lairs, the Knife Brothers and petty felons who battened off these and recruited from among them, amidst blind brick hulks.

  The quarter ended abruptly at the Avenue of Dragons, a thoroughfare between the Old Bastion and the Council House which militia patrols kept safe. Secor and Aranno had come along, precaution against attack. Here she sent the men back, in a manner she might have used at home toward her hounds.

  But almost immediately after she and Josserek were in the Hollow Houses area, she began talking readily, even eagerly. She asked him about his wanderings, and then—

  “Aye,” she said, “I’ve thrice crossed the Mooncastles. Not of late. Four living husbands, five living children, a big wintergarth ... oh, property does catch us by the ankles, no? And the Fellowship, younger members especially, ask advice or help from me. And there are others to visit, and our share of the metal trade to manage, and larger seasonal gatherings of our people, and hunting— But I was sixteen that first time, one year married to Yven, with nothing I must guard. We were all young in our band. We decided we would not spend the summer running traplines, we would fare on west to find whatever we found. Travelers before us had told the country beyond the high glaciers had ample game and friendly natives. We carried gifts to thank for hospitality— always carry gifts, going outside the last kith territory— knives and steel needles of our own make, beads and medallions and cheap pearls from the Arvannethans, a few ... magnifying? ... lenses from Rahfd. So we took our bearing on the sunset, and set forth.”

  She tugged his elbow. He felt warmth and slight calluses. “See, a good place for resting,” she suggested.

  Rain had made heaven glitter. A few cloud-fluffs drifted. Light spilled across buildings which breathed its glow back over the street they enclosed. They were ruinous: roofless walls, wall-less chimneys, porticos, colonnades. The ivy had them; poplars, brambles, primroses overran the rubble heaps at their feet; grass was patiently levering pavement blocks apart; lichen had all but devoured a monument to an unremembered hero. But the stone showed mellow through greenery, the air held a scent of jasmine, and somewhere in the stillness a mockingbird trilled.

  Donya settled herself on a mossy slab, chin on knees, arms around shins. A mile off, through an archway, they could see the black bulk of Dream Abbey, one of the few steads hereabouts where life—of a sort—remained. Closer by hung an oriole’s nest.

  Josserek joined her, careful not to touch, no matter how the bare, faintly sun-tinged limbs drew at him. “You went as far as the ocean, then,” he ventured. “Did you make a profit?”

  “Oh, yes.” She smiled straight ahead. “I saw surf break in white and green thunder. I swam in it—cold, bitter, but what an embrace! Gulls, sea lions, sea otters. Clams we digged, like funny, burrowing nuts. Out in a boat, dawn hushed and silver, some killer whales swam by. One raised his head over our rail. Maybe he said good morning.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Josserek remarked. “They’ve found in Killimaraich, the cetaceans—whales, dolphins, do you know?—think and feel about as well as humans.”

  “Truly?” she exclaimed, delighted.

  “Well, so the scientists claim. Could be they’re, uh, prejudiced. You see, in the main religion of our country, the whale tribe is 'sacred. Dolphin’s an, uh, incarnation of the life gods, same as Shark is of the death gods— Never mind. I suppose our myth helped get our protection laws passed.”

  “You forbid slaying?”

  “Right. The flesh, oil, baleen are valuable enough that our navy has to keep out quite a patrol. I—” No. It’s too soon to admit how Mulwen Roa found me as a shully, and got me pardoned at home and talked me into the service, first on whale police, then later when I’d learned the organization ropes— ‘Twice I’ve happened to see battles between a cutter and a crew of hunters or smugglers.”

  “I am glad,” she said, turning grave. “You feel you belong in life. I did not know.”

  Sardonicism touched him: If we’re kind to the whales, my dear, our consciences pester us less about our fellow men. Besides, there’s always a demand for convict labor. However, if you want to consider me an idealist, fine.

  “We Rogaviki will not kill game for the market,” Donya added. “It would be wrong.”

  Then, practically: “It would be foolish, too. We live well because we are few and the herds are great. Change that, and we must become farmers.” She spat. “Yeow! I’ve traveled through farmlands of Rahid. In their way, they are worse than a city.”

  Hm, Josserek thought. You may not be impressed by idealism after all. I don’t know. You’re not like any woman I’ve ever met before, anywhere in this jumble of a world. “How?” he asked. “I’ve heard your people hate being crowded. I guessed that’s why you grew chipper after we came into this deserted section. But farms, grazing ranges, plantations?”

  “There the whole country is caged,” she said.

  After a little she went on: “Cities are bad too, but less bad. We can stand having strangers close around us for a while, till their stinks make eating too hard. We cannot—we will not have many strange minds pressing in on us that long. Fanners always do. Here, in town, nearly everybody is only meat on two legs, they to me, I to them. Tol—tolerable.” She stretched, tossed her head till the locks flew, and rejoiced. “In these Hollow Houses lives peace.”

  “My lady,” Josserek said, “if I annoy you, please warn me.”

  “I will. You are good to say it.” Calmly: “I might like lying with you.”

  “Hoy?” he choked, then grabbed. His pulse brawled. She laughed and fended him off. “Not yet. I am no joy girl handling customers, quick come, quick gone. Casiru and his henchmen crowd me; they question, they try telling me what to do, they want I dine at his table each meal. My loins lose appetite before my belly.” Maybe later, out on your own open plains, Donya? Control returned. Meanwhile I’ve got Oni. It chilled. Why do you suppose I, a runaway sailor, ever will join you yonder? Or do you?

  “Well ... I’m flattered nevertheless,” he achieved saying.

  “We will see, Josserek. Barely have I met you, and know naught real about your kind.” Half a minute went by. “Casiru says they care just for money gain.' I am not sure, if they protect whales.”

  That gave a chance to become as jmpersonal as she seemed to have been right along ... and, incidentally, show both his nation and himself in a light she should find favorable. “We aren’t pure greed,” he said, picking his words. “Most of us, I mean. Mainly—in Killima- raich, anyhow—we’ve cut the individual free. Let him make his own life, sink or swim, inside a pretty loose law. Which is hard on those who can’t, I know. But what do you Northfolk do about your losers?”

  Donya shrugged. “Most die.”

  Presently she asked: “Is Casiru right? He says the Seafolk are angry at the Empire over nothing but
the— the tar—what do you say?”

  “The tariff? Well, yes, in part. Arvanneth never taxed imports much. Now, naturally our companies don’t like paying the stiff rates the Empire charges. Plus stronger competition south of the Gulf. But it’s their loss. No cause for the rest of us to fight.”

  “Then why are you—” She broke off.

  He counterattacked: “Why are you here?”

  She sat still, looking away from him. Sunlight flooded. The mockingbird was happy.

  “I promised I wouldn’t probe,” he said. “Yet I can’t help wondering.”

  “No secret,” she answered, flat-voiced. “I told you already yesterday. Talk goes about, how the Imperials will invade Rogaviki land out of Arvanneth. Casiru has spies in many places. He warned me it is true. I came to see for myself, so I could tell it at home. Not so much whether they come, but what they fight like, under these new leaders. Their last invasion, they bumbled north from the Khadrahad, mostly infantry. We destroyed them as always we did before. Their Barommian cavalry gave us hard trouble; but it had too little water and forage on the loess plains. We would strike during a dust storm or—The Jugular Valley is different. This army is different too.” She sighed. “I have learned scarcely anything. Arvannethans breed no more real soldiers. They do not understand, they cannot describe the thing that rolled over them. Rahfdians I met, by myself or when they came to earn a bribe from Casiru, they are witless, ox-obedient rankers. And how can I get near any Barommians?”

  “Are you afraid they may succeed against you?”

  “Never.” She rose in haughtiness. “Come, let us walk on---- But we could lose more lives than need be.”

  He fell in step beside her. Sherds crunched and rattled, brush crackled, down what had been an avenue. “How did you join Casiru?” he inquired. “If I may ask.”

  “We met several years ago when I came here. Not whoring,” she interjected. “There were things to talk over. The Metallists’ Guild wanted bigger trade with us. That meant meeting with other Guilds too, because they supply goods we trade for. Of course, none can speak for the whole Northfolk. But some of us thought we might well find out what the merchants wanted, and explain at home. We fared together. Afterward we often saw the Guildsmen separately. In those days they all had ties to the Lairs. Through ... Ponsario en-Ostral, he was ... I met Casiru. I found nothing to talk to Ponsario about; He wanted us to sell him meat and hides, or at least supply him more furs; and we would never do that to the earth. But Casiru and I, we found things in common.”

  Both of you predators? Josserek wondered. Ashamed; No, not you, Donya. You don't hunt human prey. From what I can learn, your Rogaviki never raid anybody else, never fight unless attacked and then only as long as the enemy is on your soil.... Can that be true? Is that much innocence possible?

  “He is—he can be—” She searched for words. “Interesting. Amusing.”

  “He lives off the city,” Josserek said, less to moralize than to explore her. “He takes, never gives.”

  Donya shrugged again. “That is for the city to worry about.” Then her lucid glance shook him. “If you care, why did you seek his kind?”

  “I’d no choice, had I?” To cover himself, he continued fast: “Actually, I overstated. The Brotherhoods have had a place in city life. They’ve controlled crime, kept it within bounds.”

  “They drained off less, I think, than any government does; and as you say, they were of some use.” He suspected she spoke in dead earnest, though her tone was calm, like a naturalist’s commenting on the social arrangements of ants.

  “Well, anyhow,” he persisted, “the way I heard it, they were also undercover allies of the Guilds. The Wise and the Lords tried to hold the Guilds down. The Brotherhoods could supply at need strong-arm men, snoops, burglars, rabblerousers. Their illegal enterprises were handy places for venture capital in a frozen society, while a lawful business could welcome investment from them. That kind of thing. Lately this has changed. The Barommian-Rahfdian Empire has a boot on the necks of Wise and Lords, while it attacks crime. And it encourages the merchants. They don’t need the Brotherhoods any more. So the Brotherhoods, too, look for new allies.”

  “Like the Seafolk?” Donya wondered low. When Josserek made no reply: “I’ll not chase that question further this day.”

  She understands as well as I dared hope, sang in him. Better than Casiru, maybe. Should a barbarian?

  His position spread itself before his mind, more focused and detailed than his map of her Northlands. The man from the Lairs had—reasonably from his own viewpoint, maddeningly from Josserek’s—been furtive in speech as well as advent, when last year he sought out a Killimaraichan captain whose ship lay at New-keep. How could he know that what he said would be transmitted, or whom it would be transmitted to? No consulate for any Oceanian nation existed here, nor permanent residents. The skipper might well hope to gain from blabbing to the Imperials. Quite possibly several commanders had been similarly approached through a period of months, and this just happened to be the one who was in the naval reserve and started a radio message on its way to Intelligence headquarters.

  The whisperer from Arvanneth had not even identified the Brotherhood he represented. He had hinted at much but promised nothing. A potential link to the Northfolk—who possessed the principal source of metal in Andalin, and who could not be mere wild plains-runners, not altogether, since they had century after century chewed up host after host which sought to grab their hunting grounds from them—the Northfolk, being threatened themselves, might conceivably prove helpful to Seafolk who were having their own problems with this troublesomely reinvigorated Empire—a certain Brotherhood or two would be glad to discuss the arranging of a liaison, not with chance-met barbarians in their home country, who probably knew nothing, but with picked leaders right in the city—for a consideration to be agreed upon, of course—

  “We can’t go ahead quite like that,” Mulwen Roa decided. “Those underworlders are thinking like any other Arvannethans, or most Rahidians, in terms of lifetimes. Ten years of negotiations are a fingerflick to them. Well, the Barommians won’t wait a lifetime, or ten years, before their next big strike. We ’ll have to move faster, in the dark, or lose whatever chance we’ve got here. ” His grin gibed at himself. “We’ll send in an expendable.”

  The arrangement with Rigdel Gairloch was straightforward, as things went in Naval Intelligence. Josserek had not hurt him badly. He alone aboard Skonnamor knew the truth—unless Mulwen Roa had had some talk with those three sailors from Iki, his own home island— The fewer who knew, the less likelihood of betrayal: say, by a man who got to smoking dream weed in a joy house.

  But then Josserek was likewise ignorant. He dared not blurt forth his mission to the first gang lord he met. Nor would such a person quickly confide in him. It became a matter of mutual feeling out. For instance, the more he saw of Casiru, and especially of Donya, the more he revealed a better vocabulary than a common salt ought to have. And they in their turn, if they were what he hoped, studied him and gave him signs....

  No hurry. He’d allowed a month or two for finding his way to whomever it was he wanted. Seemingly he’d need days. He could therefore ease off and enjoy this ramble.

  As if she had winded his mood, Donya said, “Let us take pleasure in the now that we have.”

  They did.

  Among the Hollow Houses they found many fragments, odd, charming, pitiful. They even came upon a small farm in what had been a stadium, and would have chatted, but the squatters were too timid. Beyond the northern arm of the Royal Canal, they were back in well-populated territory. However, this was mostly ecclesiastical, abbeys, temples, tombs, slow-paced monks and nuns, not the raucous life of hucksters and beggars which bothered Donya. Further on they reached Palace Row, and strolled along it until they wearied of architecture and turned to intricately connected paths, enigmatic topiaries, and symbolic flowerbeds in the Gardens of Elzia. On Lake Narmu they rented a canoe. The price
was exorbitant, but that kept the water from being beswarmed. Under the arches of the Patrician Bridge they ate a very late luncheon, steamed catfish and baked yams bought off pushcarts, and in a drinkery snuggled into a doorway of the Grand Arena (where no spectacle had happened for more than a hundred years) they found cold beer.

  It took Josserek an hour to appreciate how companionable Donya’s returned silence was. A woman in Killimaraich would have chattered, a woman elsewhere might never have spent a whole day at his side, or might have imagined a courtship if she did. Donya just didn’t say much about herself, inquire of him, or make devious comments on the scenes around, Nor, despite her halfinvitation earlier, did he think she was in any way wooing his attentions. She had wanted to judge him, free of the confinement and distraction in Casiru’s place. Later she merely wanted an afternoon off.

  Toward its end they must hurry a bit. The sun was low, shadows filled streets, the Lairs outdoors were unhealthy for an attractive woman and unarmed man who doubtless carried money. Set on by daylight, they could probably rescue themselves by showing tokens Casiru had lent them, to prove they were under thevprotection of the Rattlebone Brotherhood. That wouldn’t work after dark, when no witnesses could identify their assailants for the sake of reward.

  Fountain Street was the district boundary: on the south side, shops and homes whose owners were barricading for the night, on the north side the brick jungle. Josserek and Donya came down Pelican Lane, which gave on Fountain Circus, reached its mouth—and recoiled. The open space was full of horsemen.

  “Barommians,” she muttered.

  Josserek jerked a nod. The mounts were tall, the riders short and sturdy, copper-skinned, their black hair cropped in the Rahfdian manner but their scanty beards shaven in highlander wise. They wore boots, spurs, leather trousers, bullhide corselets and armguards over rough blue shirts, conical steel helmets. At their saddles hung small round shields emblazoned with regimental totems, and some had axes while some had bows and arrows. Every man bore saber and dirk and held a lance at rest. A breeze brought the sweet odor of their beasts, the ring of hoofs shifting about on pavement. Their troop numbered a score.