The Luck of Brin's Five (14 page)

“Diver,” said Narneen, “I know one thing . . . they spoke truth. They will do us no harm.”

The wind had risen, so we could use sail, but still the press of small boats bound for the fair was so heavy we could make no speed at all. When I put Tomar on my back and went on deck, the land had changed around us. We were sailing through tamed country, with fence ropes and bird farms and food gardens on either side of the river. I found Diver sitting astern beside the shaded spinner-basket, lifting the flap to give them sun, as Gwin had taught him to do. An ancient weaver, on the deck of a bird boat, cried out to him: “Two new hatched . . . for a whole keg of good sunner?”

“Forgive us!” said Diver. “These beauties are not for sale.”

“Too bad,” cackled the ancient, turning back to his braiding frame. “Ours died a'winter.”

I sat on the deck, with Tomar between my knees playing with a string of dried seed gourds. My sib was strong and brown, with his first-fur already lifting. There was no doubt that we had the best baby and the best Luck and the best barge and even the best spinners in the world. Far in the distance, between the bird farm nets and the no-fishing skeins, I could see one, two balloons tethered, riding above the walls of the city of Otolor. The Bird Clan was near.

VI

The Launcher wore a scarlet robe, kilted up with a cord under his belly, to show his fat, pasty legs and leather boots.

“Va-ban!” he shouted in a voice of thunder. The Bird Clan vassals heaved on the ropes; Diver, Mamor and the Harper steadied the framework.
Tomarvan
slid up the ramp to the level of the Bird Clan grounds. The vassals lifted it bodily onto the wheeled wicker cradle and trundled our precious bird into the enclosure. The Launcher surveyed it calmly, hands on his waist.

“Cullin!” he cried. “Where in blazes will they come from next! Every bush weaver is Antho, this time o' year. And why don't ye
fly
it in . . . eh? eh? Because the flaming thing won't fly, do you suppose?”

“It will fly,” said Diver.

He loomed up at the Launcher's side, and the fellow flinched at his height. Diver looked as impressive as we could make him; it was a time for dressing-up, not for hiding away. He wore his own blue suit and, as a cloak, a magnificent silk hanging, one of Gwin's treasures, ordered and not paid for, long ago, by Elbin Tsatroy, a mad old grandee, one of the last of her clan. The fire clan emblem blazed forth, flame on ochre; suns and stars whirled over the silk. I wondered, each time I saw it, how Gwin and her first-family, Tarr's Five, could weave and embroider such a fiery piece of work. Diver's hair was a sandy red; his hood was pale blue, over a basket helm, worn by fliers, and he had his own goggles.

“Peace, sir!” said the Launcher. “I believe you. Now, the matter of your fee and escort.”

We were perfectly prepared; old Gwin had even rehearsed us in the proper responses, but in fact the ceremony was not formal. At least two persons must escort a flier into the enclosure, and it is traditional that females are lucky . . . because they partake of the nature of the North Wind, our Great Mother. So Brin was First Escort, and my prayers were answered, I was the second. Mamor was needed to berth the Ulgan's barge and the Harper to earn credits with his playing. They had withdrawn to the barge while I stood shivering next to Brin at the top of the slope, beside the booth where a pair of scribes entered the records. The Launcher bowed, as if we were all grandees, and I was pleased that Brin, at any rate, was a splendid person, straight and tall. I stepped forward and presented the fee.

“On the bench, my friend,” said the Launcher. “What have we here?”

He examined the bolts of cloth—fine, plain work of three weights and an embroidered robe for good measure—then counted the silver credits. It was correct for him to chaffer a little; he must either demand more or hand a little back. The scribes were feeling the robe and twitching their eyebrows.

“Fly or not, you can certainly weave,” the Launcher muttered. He counted three credits back into my hand; I bowed and uttered the correct response. Brin signed our names and knotted them into the skeins. The elder scribe, a sharp-eyed ancient with a Wentroy pectoral, handed out our tokens: wood and metal on elegant braids of blue silk. Still tight-browed, we had only time to wave to the others on the barge; Narneen waved a green branch, Old Gwin held up Tomar. They all chorused, “Good Luck” to Diver; Mamor shouted something encouraging to me. The barrier was lifted again, and we strode into the Bird Clan.

We found ourselves on the lower edge of an enormous tilted field, larger by far than the whole fairground at Cullin, and turfed with tough brown grass. Oval tents, for quartering the machines, blossomed all around, and beside them, to show what exalted company we kept, were the little field tents of the grandees, panelled in silk and decorated with banners. A vassal in the familiar blue-green of the Bird Clan ran up and bowed.

“Garl Brinroyan? Ablo, your humble servant and mechanic. This way, gentles . . .” He led us to
Tomarvan
, outside its tent. Five or six of his fellow vassals, all younger and nimbler than Ablo himself, were standing or crouching or lying on the grass, examining the machine most minutely.

“Away!” shouted Ablo. “Flaming spies! Get to your own broken-winged flitterboxes!”

He seized Diver by the arm. “Send them away, excellence . . . they must not know its capacities!” Diver laughed, drawing off his own strange five-fingered gloves, and the vassals drew up short at the sound of his voice.

“Peace,” he said. “The capacities of the
Tomarvan
are no secret.”

“Excellence,” begged Ablo, “noble escorts . . . the vassals carry tales and make bets.” He lowered his voice and moved closer. “They often have a Witness or an apprentice diviner who can guess the place this Machine will fly and the round that it will reach.”

“If you say so,” said Brin, smiling. She reached down and dragged a small vassal from beneath the wing. “Begone friends!” she ordered.

The “spies” all scrambled up and drew back a little, then scattered suddenly, on an impulse from elsewhere. Another pilot was approaching; I stared, taking in a grandee. Spare, short, businesslike, magnificently dressed in dark red overalls and cloak, a flowing black wig, and with a basket helm of white, dangling from one long hand, marked with a crest. I bent sideways to read it. Two blue flax flowers. Luntroy, one of the oldest of the five clans.

“Jebbal!” said the newcomer in a bright, harsh voice. Diver bowed and gestured towards the
Tomarvan
as if to say: “Look well” or “Be my guest.”

Jebbal circled warily, twirling the spin-toys with a fingertip; Diver was on hand, with the respectfully chattering Ablo to point out various refinements.

Brin touched my arm, and we moved quickly to raise our own field tent. I saw the townee vassals struggling with the grandees' beautiful butterfly houses, but our plain green, with a banner for Cullin, went up in record time. Brin looked around at the hangars and field tents and stalls; some fliers and their escorts were eating and drinking at legged tables of wood and carpet-cloth, set upon the grass. She whistled for a little greasy-headed vassal, the same she had dragged from under the wing, and sent me off with him, clutching two silver credits. Presently after a discreet scrimmage with some others of about our size outside two of the stalls, we had a table and a tray of refreshments. When Jebbal and Diver came up for air, Brin bowed and bade them sit down.

Jebbal looked us up and down. “Bush weavers, eh? Is this your Officer, Garl Brinroyan?”

“Not so, Highness,” said Brin easily, “I have the honor to be the head of Garl's family. Brinroyan, of Gwin's blood and Tarr's Five and the distant mothering of Abirin, Felm, Felrin and Narbreen. We have lived and woven upon Hingstull for more than a great five of years, on land now owned by the Great Elder.”

“Good luck to you!” Jebbal sat down and sampled the fruit wine. “Whose is that stripling?” she asked. “Come on, young Hazel, who is your pouch-mother?”

“I am Dorn Brinroyan,” I stammered, “and Brin is my mother.”

“Wind save us!” cried Jebbal, rude as ever. “I respect mothering above all things! You may not guess it, Friend Brin, but I pouched four sucklings before I took up flying. You must send Dorn to my tent to play with my younger clan-brats. Not all Luntroy—which is a mild clan, as you will find—but infused with Galtroy wildness.”

“We know a Highness of Galtroy,” I babbled.

“Indeed?” she grinned. “Well I guess that it is my cross-cousin Rilpo. He hunts in the mountains. Yes? I thought so.”

She took up a handful of crystal fruits from the table and began to play Hold Stone, a game for two players. We had played three or four hands together—Jebbal was winning—when I looked up and saw Brin and Diver laughing aloud at the pair of us. Jebbal was like the taste of the crystal fruits: tart, sweet, surprising. She had only two loves in the world: flying and children; everything else, we found, bored her “utterly to death.”

Jebbal, having checked out the
Tomarvan
and declared that it would probably fly but hadn't a chance against the favorites, led Diver and me to marvel at her machine. It was certainly very beautiful: a double improved pedal fan with an enormous wingspan and lighter than a feather. It was called
Peer-lo-vagoba
, which means, more or less, “Forever Soaring in the Blue.”

While Diver was examining this wonder, I looked for the wild clan-brats; I was anxious—perhaps they would eat me alive. When I peered into the dark red silken tent, I sighed with relief and a touch of disappointment. The two sprigs were nothing like their fierce mother: the male, Valdin, was taller than me and older, the female, Thanar, a little younger. They were beautiful, I admitted, and richly dressed, but timid and engrossed in strange games. They had been at the Bird Clan every year for four years and were still afraid of the young townee vassals who bullied them when the escort was not looking. I sat in the stuffy tent and tried to learn their bead placing; there was no doubt they were grandees—they squabbled in sharp voices and their moods changed. Finally I took out a credit and suggested we buy honeycups at the stalls.

“Those flaming vassals will catch and beat us,” whispered Valdin.

“Not while I'm around!” I said firmly.

“It's dishonorable to go about without an escort,” said Thanar, “for us, I mean.”

“Oh come on, I'll be your officer!”

So we slipped under the back flap and marched boldly to the nearest stall. A few of the young vassals did attempt to jostle us, but I made a feint and sent the largest one into a mud puddle.

“Hands off all cubs of Highness Jebbal!” I said. “For I am their Officer!” The townees murmured about Mountain Beasts. “Yes . . . and I will fall on you like a mountain wolf!” I said.

We went back to the tent and ate our honeycups. The “cubs” were thrilled with their adventure. They talked confidingly of the place they liked best, a villa on the salt marsh to the east owned by their Galtroy kin, where they had a little sailboat.

The difference between grandees and mountain folk was suddenly illustrated.

“In ten days then,” said Thanar, “we will go to the villa at Salthaven to be with our father.” I blushed, and Valdin looked at me sideways.

“It is no shame,” he said. “Jebbal has a pair-marriage with Faldo Galtroy. He is our father.”

“We follow the old threads. . . .” I muttered. There was a mirror of silvered glass on their tent wall, and I had not seen my own face for some time. I looked now, and the two Galtroys smiled.

“Oh come, Dorn,” cried Thanar, sweetly. “What do you see? Does it help you to find a father?”

I looked in the mirror and saw what I had always seen, in mountain pools, perhaps, or the Ulgan's metal cooking pots or a glassed window in a fixed house. “Yes,” I mumbled. “I see which is my father.”

I had hazel eyes, a strong, squarish face; everyone who saw me in our family or out of it must have known at once; I looked exactly like Mamor.

Before I left, with Diver, I saw Jebbal with the two children, absorbed in their games, chivying them a little, like a mother and a child at the same time. I trailed on the way back to our tent—the bright days never seemed to end, and there was never time to sleep—trying to piece together all I had learned about grandees. They were something like a honeycup, a treat now and then; or perhaps they were like a visit to the fair, an excitement once a year. There was too much Jebbal did not know about her children: they feared and hated the Bird Clan and were all for sailing at Salthaven. But I still found the Bird Clan a marvellous place, except that our Five could not be together.

“Enough!” said Brin, standing over me. “Sleeping bag for this noble escort.”

I staggered into our green tent. “Wake me . . . wake me if anything else happens!”

There were fifteen entries in the Bird Clan rounds that spring, the highest for twenty years. Most flew in and were signalled down. A few came to the river gate as we had done and were wheeled into the enclosure. A red and white Antho, with a dirigible rudder and two small balloons called wind-catchers flew in from the west as the Great Sun rose. It made a few daring and illegal passes over the vast complex of fairgrounds across the river and hovered over the citadel of Otolor on its island where the stream divided. Then it flew in steadily to land, but the wind-catchers worked too well. It was twisted up into a spiral of warm air, the balloons became interlocked, then one deflated over the pilot's chair. The machine blundered down, bounced, with a scattering of marshals and vassals, then splayed its runners and broke a wing. The pilot, a young Dohtroy, climbed out cursing.

It was not the first elimination. Three of the earlier arrivals had elected to do their first exercises on the first day, while I slept. Two were traditional gliders, the third, a strange patched-up craft called
Tildee
, entered by a merchant from Rintoul. One of the gliders snapped in half at the starting blocks, the other, a silver gray, piloted by another sprig of the peaceable Dohtroy clan, caught its air currents well and soared normally. The
Tildee
took off and flew doggedly with a thrusting motion, which Brin described to me.