“No it isn’t!” Even sitting on the deck, Nnanji could look down on him like a wading heron eyeing a fish. “As a First you can own nothing. And even if you were a Second, this wouldn’t be yours. If I told you to look after my cow, and she calved, then the calf would still be mine. That’s the law.” He glanced at the priest and got an amused nod.
He scowled in thought for a while, the others waited for his decision, and the ship glided through the morning sunlight.
“I think it’s tainted,” Nnanji said. “It ought to go to the Goddess at the next temple we reach.”
Katanji and Brota exchanged looks of disgust.
“Just a minute,” said Brota from her throne, a crimson Buddha about to impart enlightenment. “Shonsu, you’ve seen Katanji fence. What sort of a swordsman is he going to make?”
“A dead one.”
She nodded. “Nnanji, you know this, too. The kid has no future in your business, but he’s a natural trader, like my oldest, Tomiyarro, was, maybe even better. He will do very well on the River, even if he never does get more marks.”
“He’s not quite as bad as he makes out,” Wallie said. “He fakes it.”
Nnanji looked suspiciously at Katanji, whose face now wore a studied absence of expression.
“But,” Wallie added, “he’s never going to be a Third if he lives to a thousand. Nnanji,” he said gently, “the lady has a good point.”
“Let him swear to me,” Brota suggested, “and be a water rat. It’s his natural calling. One day he can marry a trader, and they can own their own ship. That’s better than being dead, isn’t it?” She gave Katanji a motherly smile and probably meant it.
Nnanji colored. “A swordsman engaging in trade?”
“Kindly explain what is wrong with that?” Thana asked in a voice dripping poisoned honey. “Mother and I need to know.”
A silence grew, while Nnanji studied the jewels intently, and the sides of his neck turned as red as his cheeks. He had just dug his grave with his tongue, Wallie decided, and waited with interest to see if he could extricate himself.
“Is that what you want, protégé? To be a water rat? A
trader
?”
Katanji hesitated. “I think I would be a better trader than a swordsman, Nanj,” he said quietly. “But I want to stay with you—for a few years, anyway.”
“Well, if you do become a water rat, then I suppose you could use this,” Nnanji said reluctantly.
“But my honor, mentor?” Katanji’s eyes were very big and very innocent.
Nnanji glared. Then, choosing his words with great care, he said, “It is wrong for a garrison swordsman or a free sword to engage in trade, because it distracts him from his duty. But a water rat has obligations to his ship, so trade is permissible for him. Is that clear?”
Katanji sighed. “It’s clever!” Then he looked up again at his brother. “But what would Aunt Gruza say?”
More silence . . . a sound like escaping steam . . . then Nnanji exploded into laughter at last, and Katanji joined him, and they howled in unison at some family in-joke that the others could not share. The onlookers watched in amused and puzzled silence.
Nnanji could not speak. He beat his fists on the deck. He wiped tears away a couple of times and tried . . . then he would catch his brother’s eye again, and again the two of them would collapse into hysterical giggles. Whoever Aunt Gruza was, her name was a word of power.
To Wallie it was a touching reminder that these two had shared childhood together—and not very long ago, either. He was trying to fight a war with very young assistants. And, in spite of their extreme differences, these brothers were actually very fond of each other.
At long last, the fit passed, and Nnanji regained control.
“All right, nipper,” he said. “You can keep it . . . except for these.” He reached into the hoard and lifted out the string of pearls, which writhed in his fingers like a captured sunbeam. “Mistress Brota, will you seal the rest of this in a bag and put it in a safe place for us? If anything happens to me, then it belongs to Katanji.”
“Of course, adept,” Brota said.
Nnanji studied the pearls for a moment. “And these . . . these are the most beautiful, and they are honest—they brought out the story. So I shall keep them in view, to remind us to be honest. But I shall hide their beauty by putting them against a greater beauty.”
He rose, hung the pearls around Thana’s neck, and walked quickly away.
Thana gasped and raised her hand to them:
two hundred golds
? She looked at her mother, then at Wallie. Then she jumped up and ran after Nnanji,
Katanji quietly muttered, “Oh, puke!” in unbounded disgust.
“Perhaps you would witness the sealing, old man?” Wallie asked. Honakura took the hint and led Katanji and his fortune away. Tomiyano followed, leaving only Wallie sitting on the deck, looking up at Brota.
“That should do the trick,” Wallie said.
And Brota studied him in silence for a white. “You are a man of great honor, my lord. Very few men, of any rank, would have refused what has been offered.”
“I think there were conditions attached,” Wallie said. “But what of Nnanji? You know, sometimes I think of him as an egg, a great big egg that I found on a beach. Every now and again another piece of shell falls off, and I get another glimpse of what is going to hatch. Whatever it is, it will be remarkable. Who would have thought that he was capable of that gracious little speech just now?”
“What are you implying, my lord?”
“That Thana has been missing a very good bet.”
Brota nodded thoughtfully. “A mother should not say this, Lord Shonsu . . . but I doubt that she is worthy of him.”
†††
“Someone’s coming now!” Nnanji said, and slapped at a mosquito, bringing his score up to a hundred or so.
The undulant profile of mountains along the western skyline was sharp and black like obsidian, below a colorless, limpid sky. The sun had gone, but true darkness was slow in coming, here in the deep shadow of RegiVul. The cliffs and the River were gloomy, drab, and sad. A cool wind ruffled the water, but failed to discourage legions of the nastiest biting insects Wallie had ever met.
At noon,
Sapphire
had slipped by the sorcerer city of Ov, feeling her way cautiously southward amid shallows and sandbanks. Now she lay in mid-River off the Garathondi estate.
Her dinghy was tied at the end of the jetty. It had been there for what seemed like a dozen hours, and must be at least two. A couple of ramshackle fishing boats were tethered nearby. The River was much higher than it had been when Wallie had first come to this place—and how long ago that felt!
Peering along the surface of the ancient, scruffy planks, he heard what Nnanji’s ears had discerned over the slap of the ripples: hooves, and a creaking axle, and wheels on gravel. The dinghy rocked gently.
“About time!” said Tomiyano.
There were five of them—three swordsmen, counting Thana, plus one sailor and one slave—or six if you also counted the sleeping Vixini. Holiyi had been sent inland to find Quili.
Holiyi had been gone too long, so something had not gone as expected. With Holiyi the delay was certainly not due to idle gossiping, and Tomiyano had begun muttering dark threats of vengeance if anything had happened to his cousin.
The circle had been turned. This was where the mission had begun, here at the end of this jetty, waiting for Nnanji to scout and return. By coming back, Wallie had followed his orders. He had met the problem here, crossed the mountains, sailed around—turned the circle. Now the lesson might be learned. Maybe. He wished he had more confidence in his own ability to learn it. He was depressed by a nagging conviction that he had overlooked something, somewhere.
Damn horseflies! He slapped at the back of his neck.
A wagon came into sight at the bottom of the canyon, drawn by two horses. Two people dismounted and began walking. A third remained and commenced a long, painful effort to turn the vehicle. Horses would not step into the waters of the River, and there was little room with the River so high.
One of the pedestrians was Holiyi. The other was a woman, but not Quili.
“The rest of you stay here!” Wallie stepped up on the deck and strode forward to meet the visitors, his boots making hollow thudding sounds in the evening stillness.
Holiyi, when he came near enough to be clearly seen, was sporting his usual sardonic grin, which was reassuring. His companion was middle-aged, almost elderly. She wore the orange gown of a Fourth, and Wallie registered vaguely that it was of much too fine a velvet to be sweeping its lace-trimmed hem over this dirty, scabby jetty. Her hair was silver and well tended, her fingers jeweled. She was a priestess, and obviously a prosperous one.
“Adept Valia, Lord Shonsu,” Holiyi muttered.
Salute and response.
“You had trouble?” Wallie demanded.
Holiyi shook his head with a relaxed and noncommittal shrug.
“Priestess Quili is well, my lord,” Valia said, “but unable to come and see you at the moment. She is entertaining sorcerers.” She smiled, being graciously amused at his reaction. Valia’s manner was friendly enough, but she obviously fancied herself as a grand lady.
“That’s not trouble?”
“Not as long as they do not know you are here, my lord! And I am sure that they will not find out.”
Wallie turned and waved for his companions to join him. He could ask Holiyi for details, but it might take an hour to drag them out of him.
“Explain, please, adept?”
But boots were drumming, and bare feet. The others came running, and then Valia had to be presented to Nnanji, and the others to her.
“What a beautiful baby!” she exclaimed.
Vixini, grumpy from being awakened, did not feel like a beautiful baby. He buried his face in his mother and declined conversation.
Wallie said a silent prayer for patience. “We cannot offer you a comfortable chair, adept, and the air swarms with vampire bats, so perhaps we should get the story quickly?”
Valia inclined her head in regal assent. “I have the honor to minister here now, my lord. Priestess Quili is my protégé. She is also my secular superior, but that is no problem. We work well together.”
“I don’t think I quite understand,” Wallie said. “I am delighted to hear that Quili has achieved promotion to Third. What of Lady Thondi?”
“She is with the Goddess.”
“I would be hypocritical if I expressed regrets.”
He received a slight frown of priestly reproof, then the smiling condescension due a Seventh. “Perhaps understandable. I believe that you yourself consigned her to the justice of the gods. Your prayer was heard, my lord, and her passing was not easy.”
“Explain!”
Adept Valia glanced around the group, relishing an attentive audience for a good story. “She came down to this jetty to embark on the family boat, meaning to travel to Ov on business—not long after your departure, Lord Shonsu. A rotted plank failed beneath her, and she fell through.”
“Goddess!” Wallie muttered. His skin crawled. Why did he feel guilty?
“Undoubtedly! Several large men had preceded her, and she was not a weighty person, as I understand.”
“So the piranha got her?”
He had been expected to ask. “No. They rejected her. That does happen, of course. The current swept her out of reach, underneath. She was trapped, and she drowned. No one was able to reach her in time.” The priestess was savoring her audience’s reaction.
Jja slipped a comforting arm around her master. Nnanji and Tomiyano were looking impressed.
“I can show you the exact spot, if you wish,” Valia offered.
“Thank you, no! And her son?”
“The Honorable Garathondi is in poor health, my lord. A few days after his mother’s death, he suffered a seizure. He has been paralyzed and speechless ever since. The healers hold out no hope of recovery and do not expect him to live much longer.”
“That’s horrible!”
The priestess looked surprised. “You question the justice of the gods, my lord, when you yourself invoked it?”
“I didn’t mean . . . Tell me about Quili, then. I trust her news is better?”
“Excellent. I have never seen a happier couple.”
Wallie restrained a strong temptation to stun a holy personage. “She married Garadooi?”
“Of course! And they are so well suited! True lovebirds.”
Feeling Jja’s arm squeeze him, Wallie looked down at her smile. Some things did not need to be said.
“Please give them our congratulations.”
“I certainly shall. And you, my lord? You have recovered from your injury?”
“How the . . . how do you know of that?”
Valia again displayed ladylike amusement. She was much less exposed to the wind and the bugs than the others were. “Some weeks ago, the sorcerers informed the builder that you had died. You had been seen in Aus, and then in Ki San, but very ill, from the effects of a sword cut. The healers had despaired of your life. Naturally, Quili was overjoyed when she heard that you were here this evening, and that the stories were all lies.”
Not all; Wallie did not look at Nnanji. His mind was swirling with the implications. The sorcerers’ powers were terrifying. They had agents in Ki San, then, at the very least, even if the healer himself had not been a sorcerer. But the healer had been wrong. That might be why
Sapphire
had not been more closely examined in Wal, when the sorcerer came aboard. The sorcerers had given him up for dead. Again that sense of power wasted by human fallibility . . .
“Not all their tales were false,” he admitted. “But what is their business here tonight?”
The priestess chuckled. “Work on the sorcerers’ tower is proceeding very slowly since Builder Garadooi shortened his slaves’ work hours. He has also banned all physical punishment without his personal approval, my lord.”
“That could be deleterious, I suppose.”
“But output from the estate itself is markedly improved recently, I am told.”
It sounded like Garadooi. He would be giving his slaves meat next. Maybe he already had. Beds, even.
“And the sorcerers?”
“Honorable Rathazaxo came to call today,” Valia said, with a cynical smile. “He wanted Builder Garadooi to return with him to the city and take over supervision in person, as his father did. There was some loud discussion. Even through closed doors, it was loud.”