• • •
The body of a woman was found the next morning by a caravan of spice traders moving autowains toward Sterka and the Port. The night animals had gotten to the carcass—a not particularly pleasant sight—but the traders, a stoic guild, threw the body across the back of a wain. After all, if she were of kin, her guild would wish to give final rites, and might pay for the body. The cinnamon odor of the spice cloaked the smell of blood.
They found that the woman was well-known to denizens of the Port, and that she was lassari—a minor criminal record had made her face (what remained of it) familiar to the constabulary. They shrugged their collective shoulders, complimenting the traders on their generosity in bringing the body back and shaking their heads sorrowfully at the wasted effort.
Irritated that they had spent their time on a lassari, they left the body with the policing guild, who had the hospital nearby remove any useful parts and then dispose of what remained.
No one particularly mourned her death—and since murder is not always a crime in Neweden, no one bothered to look any further into the matter.
Hag Death was mollified.
• • •
The Thane lay on his bed. He pillowed his head with his hands, lying on his back, and stared at the reflections of a dim hoverlamp skittering across the bare rock of the ceiling. The top of his uniform lay discarded on the floor; glancing down, he could see the torso of a man still in fair shape, but the edges of the once sharply-defined musculature were being slowly eroded. A general blurring of tone, an indefinable sag—he sometimes wondered if it wasn’t more emotional than physical. The Thane would find himself, now and then, staring into a mirror at the reflection of his profile, seeking assurance that the stomach was still relatively flat and the posture erect, trying to find in that shadow Thane the echo of his younger reality, that earlier Thane. Where was age, how did one see it? Was it a function of the hands, the face, the mind? Could it be captured and removed, could he rekindle the intensity?
It was distressing to him that only he of all Hoorka-kin could remember his father—his biological father—telling him tales of the long fall of Huard and how his father had been trained to kill Huard, part of a group of revolutionaries. Huard’s suicide had destroyed that group’s meaning and drive; his father’s among them. He had wandered through the wreckage of a reeling empire, finally ending on Neweden to find himself a pariah, a social outcast without kin—and, as suddenly, as trade between worlds ended, with no way of leaving. The Thane could remember his father, who had been old when he was born, but it was a wavery face dimmed and filtered by distance. He had a holocube of the man somewhere, but it had been years since he’d looked at it, and kin do not honor their biological parents.
The chime of the doorward interrupted his thoughts. He considered rising to dress, then shrugged mentally, not caring to move.
“Come,” he said. He sat up on an elbow and watched the doorshield waver and dilate. Valdisa stepped through, her eyes wide as she tried to adjust to the dimness. The Thane could see her clearly against the corridor lamps. Hers was a full, almost stocky figure that—while feminine and graceful—still carried a raw power. Auburn hair was glossed by the backlighting, a frothy, soft nimbus. Her legs were trim and muscular, her hands at her side. The stubby fingers opened and closed. She moved into the room hesitantly, glancing at the hoverlamp on the ceiling, and then to the bed. She stepped fully into the room and the doorshield irised shut behind her.
“Damned dark in here. You think this is a cave?”
“Cute.”
“An old joke, neh?” Valdisa smiled.
“Yah. I can see you, anyway.”
“So? What color are my palms? I’ll bet you can’t see that well.” She held them out toward him. He saw a pair of dark islands, each with five peninsulas.
“Blue,” he said. It seemed likely.
“Flesh. I washed the tint from them this evening—and the dye was orange, in any event. Have you ceased to notice my appearance at dinner, or are your eyes failing you? Either way, I’m not flattered.”
The Thane hmmed a reply deep in his throat. He glanced down the length of his body and saw the roll of flesh at his waist. He stretched himself and finally lay back down so that the stomach was again smooth. His own vanity amused him, but he made no move to ignore it. “Did you come in here simply to be flattered?”
“I need reasons to see you?” she asked, lightly.
“I suppose not.”
With that, the talk faltered. There was a moment of mutual embarrassment as Valdisa glanced nervously from the Thane to the hoverlamp. Then, hesitantly: “You haven’t been much in evidence the last few days. Problems?” She waited, a beat. “As a friend, Thane.” Her eyes pleaded with his.
“Problems,” he conceded.
“The fight with Aldhelm?”
“Partially.” He knew the curt replies were hurting her, but somehow couldn’t bring himself to elaborate. He watched her standing in the center of the room, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, and he knew he could end her discomfiture with a word. He couldn’t say it.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked finally.
“No.”
“Talk sometimes helps.”
“You really think it necessary? Talking won’t make anything clearer, won’t change situations.”
“Maybe not, but it won’t cloud things, either.”
“Then talk.” The Thane waved a hand and closed his eyes. Through the self-imposed darkness, he could hear her soft breathing, the rustling of cloth as she moved.
“You’re letting everything that happens become some”—Valdisa hesitated, searching for words—“some magical symbol of vague doom. I don’t even know what’s most disturbing, your twisting of small events into auguries of great import, or the events themselves. The Hoorka are facing a real crisis. We need a real solution. And you seem content to let Dame Fate twist the threads into whatever pattern She desires.”
“As She always will do. Hoorka has faced crises before, and come through them.” He spoke with his eyes clamped shut. He didn’t want to see the concern in her face.
“And it has always been your guidance that led us.”
Valdisa came over to the bed and sat beside him. He felt the supporting field bounce slightly as it compensated for the increased weight. She touched his hand tentatively; then, when he didn’t pull away, she let her hand rest there, covering his. All of the Thane’s consciousness seemed concentrated there—he could feel the satiny texture of her palm and the roughness of the calluses gathered at the tip of each finger. Her hand was warm, with a trace of sweat, and his own hand seemed chill against hers: autumn and high summer. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to look at her, though his eyes opened. He stared at the nether regions beyond the hoverlamp.
“Why these sudden hesitations?” she asked. “You can see what it’s doing to the others.” Her voice was gritty sand and fluffed cotton. “
You
made the fight with Aldhelm take on an importance beyond its true proportions. No Hoorka would expect you to defeat him in a fight at any other time—he’s simply bigger, stronger, and more agile than you, and if that pricks your damned pride, I’m sorry. You insisted on turning it into a power play. If it
was
a symbol, you made it that way.”
“It seemed necessary.”
The Thane’s voice rasped through his throat, rough and husky. But his eyes, finding her face, discovered it to be vulnerable and open with genuine empathy. His hand moved, a spasm, beneath hers.
“A reprimand . . .”
“Wouldn’t have been enough,” he finished for her. Then: “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right.” Irritated, he moved his hand from under hers and gesticulated violently. The hoverlamp bobbed with the moving air as Valdisa moved back in surprise.
“I don’t know any more,” he shouted. “I find myself wondering about the morality of what I’ve built here, wondering whether I care to have my name forever linked with that of Hoorka . . . Valdisa, I’m tired. I find myself caring more about myself than for my kin.”
“You’ve always masked yourself. I don’t even know your family name.”
“Does it matter on Neweden?” His eyes were pained. “They were lassari.”
“I’d like to know.”
“Hermond. Gyll Hermond.” His voice dared her to comment.
Valdisa shrugged. “It’s a name. What does it matter that Hermond isn’t among the lists of the guilded?”
“It mattered. You’ve never been lassari—your family had kin. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Perhaps not, but I can still feel your pain, kin-brother.”
The Thane shook his head. “I sit here and make excuses for all my problems. I’m getting very tired—and I’m not senile, not in my dotage, not even particularly old. I don’t think I’ve lost any mental agility I once had. And making you feel guilty about my background is just another ploy on my part. I surround myself with sophistry and easy motivations.” A pause. He ran his hand through graying hair. “I’m sorry, Valdisa. I truly am.”
The Thane sat back against the rough stones of the wall, staring at the hoverlamp in the center of the room. Valdisa reached out to stroke his cheek with her hand. The undepilated stubble dragged at her skin, and she let the hand wander from cheek to shoulder. She moved close to him, the bed jiggling as it took her full weight. Shadows merged on rock. She forced him to look at her, her hands moving in mute comfort.
He didn’t encourage her. He didn’t resist.
Valdisa kissed his mouth, but his lips were unpliant; she could feel his muscles stiffen. Then, as suddenly, he relaxed, the tension sloughing from his body. His arms came around her, and he sigh-groaned as she clasped him. Her fingers searched for the fastener to her tunic, found it, and tugged.
Cloth fell away with a whisper.
His hands cupped her breasts, circled one nipple with a forefinger, and then felt the smoothness of her back. The Thane sighed. “I’ve missed you,” he said in a harsh whisper. “I wouldn’t let myself admit it, but I knew it inside.”
“I would have come. Any time.” Her voice was soft in his ear, and her hands roamed his body.
“I know. I don’t know why—”
Valdisa stopped his voice with her mouth.
Chapter 9
T
RI-GUILD CHURCH threw sharp-spiked shadows across the pavement of Market Square. The palpable darkness shivered as the crowds moved through it and lifted its borders onto their shoulders. Its keen edges and protrusions should have caught and impaled those walking below, but the best the shadows could do was impart a temporary chill, a premonition of unguessed doom.
McWilms entered the shade and immediately missed the sunstar—it was a chilly morning prescient with impending winter and snow. Though the sunstar lent a psychic warmth to the air, it seemed unable to warm the earth with its distant fires. Even the Hoorka uniform (with the red sleeve that signified his apprentice status: that would be gone soon, McWilms hoped) could only blunt the cutting edge of the cool wind. McWilms glanced at the spires of the church and shivered unreligiously. It was a massive building, ornate with flowering spires and graceless arches—he would be in its shadow for some minutes before entering the realm of the sunstar again. He cursed the builders for having chosen such an inconvenient site for their place of worship, then as abruptly asked She of the Five to protect him from his blasphemy.
McWilms did not mind hedging his skepticisms.
He moved through a welter of people, accepting the open area that seemed to move with him as part of the deference due him as a Hoorka. He had to admit that such things were aspects of being a Hoorka that thrilled him: the sense of grudging respect that other kin gave him, even as an apprentice. A young man with kin, such as himself, would under normal circumstances have far less status in Neweden society. But he was Hoorka, however lowly in that guild, and the fear of the Hoorka extended even to him. He had, now and again, deliberately sought out the more crowded streets of Sterka just to feel the aura of power that surrounded him; he would watch the people step—grudgingly—from his path. Fear laced with loathing would congeal their faces. It was . . . pleasant.
Today was the height of autumn’s Market Days, when the outlying farming guilds brought in their harvested bounty. The streams of people that normally used the square each day was doubled and trebled, swelled into rivers, joined into seas. The noise grew as the Days went on and buyers attempted to wheedle prices from impassive and unsympathetic growers. Modified chaos: Neweden locals found the Days to be pleasant diversions in their lives, offworlders shook their heads and mumbled—inaudibly—comments concerning backward societies and their engaging oddities.
McWilms, after broaching church-shadow and entering the morning sun once more, found the truth to be somewhere between the two poles. He had been sent on an errand by the Hoorka in charge of the kitchens, and could not tarry overlong to enjoy the sights for fear of that master’s justifiably-famous wrath. McWilms found a fishmonger’s stall and watched the haggling. He pretended not to notice that he stood in an anomaly: a small open space all his own.
Behind a counter stocked with frozen sea creatures, the monger was arguing vehemently with a woman concerning the quality of a spiny puffindle that, admittedly, appeared undernourished. The monger quoted a price; the woman, in a greenish pearl wrap, snorted derision. She offered the man half that price, prodding the puffindle’s side with a forefinger to make her point. Vapor from the cooling circuits in the counter swirled between them.
McWilms stepped closer, shouldering through the crowd with less courtesy than the guild etiquette required and watching as anger turned to carefully-masked irritation on their faces. People moved away with controlled distaste; the monger looked up from behind his stall. His features revolved through an interesting gamut of emotions: anger at being interrupted during a sale, quick shock at seeing the young man was a Hoorka, and finally a gelid shielding of all facial contortions that left his face blandly amiable. He stepped back and to one side, wiping his hands nervously on his stained pants; he ignored the woman, who glanced at the Hoorka apprentice, shut her mouth sullenly, then went back to prodding the cold scales of the puffindle as if trying to awaken the fish from liquid dreams.