Wheel of the Infinite (2 page)

The leader crossed the stained planks to step close to her captive. She grabbed a handful of his hair and jerked his head back. “So you don’t like my face?” she said softly.

I wager she didn‘t do that before he was more securely bound
. Maskelle tended to find male bullies merely amusing, but for some reason the female ones always stirred her to rage.
Careful, careful
, she reminded herself. The darkness in the river was so uncontrolled, so near, so willing to be tapped it was hard to resist the temptation.

Voice slightly constricted from the pressure the leader was putting on his neck, he still said, “Your face I could ignore; it’s your personality and your breath that turn my stomach.”

This time Maskelle placed the accent; he was from the Sintane. It was a province far on the outer rim, known for fine figured goldwork and weaving. He was a long way from home. The Sintane didn’t have deserters or mercenaries like the other provinces; they had outcasts. She looked at the sword the raider was holding. The hilt might be horn or bone, and the ring between the blade and the hilt seemed to be plain silver, all of which told her nothing. The Sitanese sometimes carved family totems into the hilts of siri, and the ring was often an elaborate piece of jeweler’s art. Maskelle said, “You must be terribly afraid of him.”

One of the raiders gave a short bark of laughter and the leader released her grip on the captive to face Maskelle. “What are you saying?”

“If you aren’t afraid, then cut him loose and let him fight your men. If you call them men.”

The leader came to the edge of the platform and pushed her face close to Maskelle’s. She growled, “I should feed you to the moray, Koshan bitch.”

Seen at close range her scar was an ugly puckered fissure across a face webbed with fine lines and darkened with ingrained dirt. The woman was bigger than Maskelle, much younger, all hard muscle, but Maskelle felt no fear; her blood was singing with the urge to kill. She rocked forward on the balls of her feet, looked into the other woman’s glaring eyes, and said with utter seriousness, “The moray would choke.” Even that was almost too much; if she said one more word, the dam would break and her rage would find an outlet whether she willed it or not. Physical threats always made her lose her temper; in all the years, that had never changed.

The raider blinked, suddenly uncertain, perhaps sensing the danger but not wise enough to realize just what the source was. She stepped back slowly, fingering the hilt of her knife. Maskelle waited, smiling, but the woman shook her head and laughed. “Do as she says. Let him fight.” She gestured to the men behind her.

Maskelle took a deep breath that the others probably read as relief. It was part disappointment, part attempt to hold on to her suddenly tenuous self-control.

One of the raiders stepped forward, drawing his long belt knife. The prisoner tensed and Maskelle held her breath; if they changed their minds now there was nothing she could do about it. But the raider slashed the man’s bonds and stepped quickly back. The prisoner freed himself from the rest of the ropes, looked around at the raiders, and with admirable self-possession, stretched and rubbed his neck. He caught Maskelle’s eye and she flicked a glance at the gallery railing behind her, wondering if he would pick up on the hint. She needed the raiders’ attention to be away from the cargo doors and the crane.

He didn’t nod, didn’t indicate that he had seen her signal, but he suddenly dropped to the platform and kicked the kneecap of the raider who held the captured siri. The man collapsed with a shriek, his leg giving way with a sharp crack. The prisoner came to his feet, taking the sword easily from the raider’s shaking hand, ducked a deadly swipe from a bori club as he passed Maskelle and vaulted over the gallery railing.

She leaned over it in time to see him catch an old net that hung over the side and swing down to drop into the water washing over the lower floor.

The gallery audience roared, the leader and her lieutenants shouting and cursing as they ran for the railing.

Down on the floor below, the waving mass of combatants broke into little whirling eddies. In the instant of stillness she saw several rivermen with knives or bori clubs surrounding the one man armed with a sword. The blade flashed and the rivermen scattered.

Perhaps it was the rivermen who were trapped now and not the traveller. Bemused, Maskelle watched the leaping, dodging figures. It was like a game, or an entertainment so primitive it looked like violence to eyes long accustomed to the sophistication of Ariaden or kiradi theater. The prisoner wasn’t wielding that blade with deadly intent yet; the plank floor below was awash in dirty water as the rising river encroached on the lower level of the outpost, but not high enough to conceal the dead bodies that would surely be sprawled there if he was. Maskelle knew if he killed some of them that would only fire the others to more fury; it was all or nothing. She was a little surprised he recognized that as well. The crowd pressed in again, trying to rush him, but their nerve failed and they splashed away.

“Well, Sister, where’s our blessing?” the leader demanded, trying to recover her control of the situation.

Maskelle tried to decide just which invocation would annoy the Ancestors the most. The Great Opening, the signal part of the Year Rite, would get their immediate attention and hearing the words of it on her lips should elicit the quickest response. She turned away from the railing and stepped up onto the platform, clearing her mind.

As Maskelle faced the room and lifted her staff above her head, the raiders’ leader called out, “Attend to the nun, you bastards!” She grinned derisively around at her companions. “She’s going to give us a blessing!”

Some of the raiders turned toward this new diversion, but most were too occupied by the fighting to listen. A man almost too drunk to stand on his feet staggered up on the platform muttering, “Kill the Koshan bitch—”

Maskelle swung her staff down and around, slamming him in the chest and sending him crashing backward off the platform. That got their attention.

The shouts and drunken roaring died away. Into the relative quiet Maskelle said, “I am the Voice of the Adversary.”

She hadn’t spoken loudly, but her words carried across the room. There were gasps and outcries, proving that some of the raiders at least were among the devout. One quick thinker turned and dived out the nearest window. The leader stared around, baffled and angry.

Maskelle spoke the first words of the Great Opening. This was too much presumption for the myriad forces of the Infinite to ignore. All the lamps in this half of the chamber flickered and died.

In the sudden darkness Maskelle swung around to the cargo doors and with the end of her staff threw the latch up.

The doors flew open and wind-driven rain rushed in. There were shrieks and shouts as the rivermen began to panic, shoving and pushing. Maskelle stepped quickly to the crane’s counterweight, drawing the little knife she used for cutting fruit. It was too small for the job, but she slashed at the half-rotted ropes until suddenly the counterweight dropped.

The reaction was more violent than she had anticipated. The counterweight smashed right through the floorboards, knocking her backwards. The arm swung and toppled, taking the railing, part of the gallery, and a dozen yelling river-men with it.

“I meant to do that,” Maskelle muttered to herself, stumbling to her feet. The raiders must think the post was under attack by hostile river spirits. They were pouring out the door Maskelle had entered by, blocking it, fighting and snarling like rats. Then a figure tore away from the other panicked, shoving bodies and charged toward her, bori club upraised.

It was the leader. Maskelle met her with the end of her staff, catching the woman a hard blow in the stomach and pushing her away. She staggered back but didn’t fall; she must have some sort of leather or lacquered wood chest armor under her silk vest. Maskelle couldn’t see much in the half-light, but she assumed the razor-edge of the heavy wooden club was aimed toward her. She kept the staff pointed at the leader, braced to move. The other woman shuffled to the side, trying to get past Maskelle’s guard.

Then Maskelle saw that the ropes still attached to the broken crane arm and hanging over the gallery were jerking and twitching; it had to be the rivermen who had gone over the rail with the crane, still trapped in them. Then a head popped up over the edge.

She knew who it was. The trapped traveller had had hair cropped at his shoulders while the river raiders either shaved their heads to avoid lice or grew wild waist-length manes. Grinning, Maskelle angled sideways, making poking motions with the staff, as if she meant to try to break for the door across the gallery. Her opponent, thinking to catch her between herself and the packed door, obligingly stepped backward, closer to the edge.

The traveller hauled himself further up, and when the raider stepped back into reach, he swung his sheathed sword around and struck the back of her knees. The woman toppled backwards with a choked-off cry.

Maskelle turned immediately for the cargo doors, using her staff to trip a flailing, foul-smelling shadow that tried to stop her. Rain and wind poured in, drenching the boards under her feet. She found the ropes for the winch, but they didn’t move when she tugged on them.
The other counterweight must be broken, damn it
, she thought, and tossed her staff out, hoping it struck the dock, not the river. She grabbed the heavy rope and swung out after it, getting a confused view of the river below with what little light there was from the cloud-covered moon reflecting off the angry surface. She hoped the traveller had the sense to follow her.

She scrambled down the rope, not quite as agile as a monkey, wishing she was ten years younger. The raiders must have had the outpost longer than she had initially thought, or it had been abandoned before they had ever found it; the rope was beginning to rot, so soft in most places her grasping fingers went right through the strands. But her feet thumped down on the dock before she knew it.

Cursing, she felt around on the scarred wood, feeling holes and splinters, but not her staff. There were shouts from above and the lamps were flaring back to life inside the outpost. She stood, the wet wind tearing at her hair, took two steps toward the bank, and fell flat on her face. She had tripped over her staff.

“Thank you for nothing, Ancient Lineage,” she muttered, her own abbreviated version of the proper Thanksgiving. She grabbed up the staff, staggered back to her feet, and ran for the bank.

Once in the bush she slowed, knowing a fall would only make more noise, though the rain covered most of the sound of her passing. When she had gone some distance, she stopped and crouched in the dark shelter of a dripping tana bush. She heard the thrashing of several people fighting their way through the foliage near her. The raiders wouldn’t stay long in the jungle; it was a different realm than the river and they would fear it.
Superstitious idiots
, she thought, squatting in the mud. It was the river that would harbor the evil spirits tonight.

The raiders following her thrashed away and she started to stand. Someone touched her shoulder lightly, a caution not to move; she froze where she was and an instant later heard one more passage through the bush. There was nothing but the rain after that and the tingle of shock through Maskelle’s skin and the hackles rising on the back of her neck. Someone crouched in the mud next to her; the air was alive with the warmth and breath of a living body. How she could have missed it before, she couldn’t think.
No thanks for the warning
, she thought sourly to the Ancestors. In the thirty years of her apprenticeship and mastery as Their Servant, They had seldom been around when she wanted them. She wished she could say that was the reason she had turned on them in the end, but that was a lie she wouldn’t tell herself. Experimentally, she whispered, “Are they gone?”

There was the briefest pause, then he said, “They are now.”

Maskelle didn’t move and for a moment neither did he. Then a great glop of water from the tana bush struck the back of her neck and she twitched. He flinched, stood suddenly and was gone, though this time she heard him brush against the leaves as he passed.

She shook her head and got to her feet, her knees protesting the movement. He must have climbed out the cargo hatch behind her and followed her into the jungle. He had returned her favor with the warning, anyway. She slogged further into the bush, wondering why a Sitanese swordsman had travelled this far into the Celestial Empire. The problem tickled her brain all the long way back to the road.

She came out of the jungle just where the road broadened out into the Sare. The Ancestors, perverse as usual, had now seen fit to grant her prayers about the rain and it had slackened to a bare drizzle. It was too dark to see much of the Sare now, but morning light would reveal a broad green plain, cut from the jungle in a perfect square, the grasses as clipped and civilized as any park in Duvalpore.

In the center of the plain was a massive rectangular baray, a reservoir of water bordered by broad stone walks. In the center of the baray stood a temple of the Koshan Order, reached by a stone bridge, its conical towers meant to resemble the Mountain of the Infinite, a symbolic meaning in every element of its design, every portal, every inch of carving. Lamps glowed from its many windows and lined the galleries and bridges. To the west of the baray there were three groups of less orderly lights: the campfires and torches of travellers camping here in the safety of the shadow of the temple and the patrols of its guards. In the glow of one campfire she recognized Rastim’s wagon and felt her heart unclench a little. She hated to leave the troupe, even though she knew they had been caring for themselves long before she had ever met them.
I’ve failed others before. Perhaps that’s why
.

She found most of them huddled damply in the wagons, with Rastim trying to keep the fire lit and Old Mali grumbling while she stirred the supper. Voices called greetings from the wagons and Rastim watched her with ill-disguised relief as Maskelle walked up to sniff suspiciously at the cooking pot. Old Mali grumbled something inaudible. From the lumps bobbing in the stew, they had arrived in time to buy some pork from the priests’ servants to add to the rice and there was taro root baking in the coals. “Boiling water?” she asked.