Part 26 (2/2)

”They are rotten clothes,” she agreed smoothly. ”Though looking at skin as hairy as yours won't be much of an improvement. Don't you ever shave your shoulders?”

”No. Do you?”

I turned away. Again, I could have told her that Roble didn't care for girls much, but she was a big enough girl to find that out for herself.

Reijka examined Roble and Bann first while I hovered nervously nearby and Glemmurn looked over our books with Fasra. Presently I heard Fasra's voice rising, and I reluctantly abandoned my post to see what was happening.

Fasra was not actually upset. She was explaining with some enthusiasm the biggest source of income showing in our books, the Mystery Zone. Glemmurn was looking more skeptical by the second.

”I don't understand,” he was saying as I came up to them. ”How can anyone stand on a wall? And how can that result in money coming into your cashbox? I'm afraid-”

”The money's easy,” I interrupted. ”People give it to us. For the rest, I'd better show you. Fasra, we'd better tell Glemmurn all we know about this.”

I was telling her it was time to baffle him with brilliance. Fasra smiled gently and nodded. We left the books and the cash box in Thend's care and together we led Glemmurn to the Mystery Zone part of the house.

”What we tell the rubes,” Fasra explained, ”is that an uncontrolled outburst of Morlock's magic shattered the laws of gravity locally.”

”Name of a nameless name!” Glemmurn gasped in shock.

”Oh, that's just nonsense,” I rea.s.sured the pasty little man. ”Really, Morlock and Bann built the thing. We don't know how it works, but no laws were broken-'natural or local,' as Morlock says.”

We led Glemmurn through the Gate of Shadows (a dimly lit anteroom) and into the Mystery Zone (a sort of hallway that ran around one corner of the crooked house). He watched solemnly as Fasra walked up a wall and poured herself a cup of water, and the water flowed uphill from where he was standing. She went through the elaborate patter we give the rubes, and then explained the actual situation as best we understood it. She really was dazzling: that girl could talk a landfish into a kettle of boiling water. And then, because he still wasn't saying anything, she did the same thing again.

He still hadn't said anything when we led him back out of the Mystery Zone, but he was shaking his head slowly. Reijka, Roble, and the boys were sitting around the counter where we kept the cashbox and the books, deep in conversation about something, but they broke off and looked up as we approached. At that point, Glemmurn realized it was his turn to say something.

”I am deeply concerned,” he said.

That was when I knew we were screwed.

”Not only are you earning money through magical means,” he con tinued, ”but you are also engaging in deliberate deception. When you tell visitors- ”Oh, that's just for entertainment purposes,” Reijka interrupted. ”No one really believes it. They just started giving tours in the Mystery Zone because everyone was sneaking up to the back door and trying to bribe their way into Morlock's workshop.”

I felt I could grow to love this woman.

”Nevertheless,” Glemmurn said doggedly, ”I find that these noncitizen residents have been conducting business in a magical structure nonapproved by city regulating authorities. I appreciate the fact that Morlock Ambrosius may be reluctant to reveal the, er, sorcerous secrets of this, er, 'Mystery Zone,' but I must insist-”

”It's a four-dimensional polytope,” Morlock's voice said.

We all jumped a little. For a guy with a bad leg, he moves pretty sneakily: no one heard him come in.

”A what?” Glemmurn asked.

”It's a four-dimensional polytope-a structure which exists in four dimensions. There's a fifth-dimensional sheath, also. Gravity is more malleable in the fifth dimension.”

”I don't wish to be party to your, er, sorcerous knowledge-”

”Eh. I never know what people mean by 'sorcerous.”' Morlock seemed miffed, possibly because he had been tempted into saying more than three words in a row, and looking around the room afterward, he realized he might as well have kept his mouth shut for all the good it had done. Bann might have understood him; the rest of us didn't. He added gruffly, ”Consult the mathematicians in your Lyceum. There used to be a pretty good geometer on the faculty.”

”But still, the deception involved-”

Of course it was hopeless. When somebody says ”but still” they mean, You may he right but I'll never change my mind no matter what you say.

He didn't, either. When Reijka threatened him with her semipartner the professional litigator, he agreed to take the case to his superiors, but in the meantime we were embargoed from spending any money in the city of Narkunden.

”If that's all you can say,” Reijka concluded, ”you might as well get out of here and spread your peculiar brand of joy in someone else's life. And I hope Zaria takes up exclusive full-partners.h.i.+p with Vestavion. He may be a bit of an oily fledge, but at least he isn't a dusty old droop with his cranny full of queck-bugs.”

It takes a person with a certain amount of character to stand up in the face of unanimous disapproval from a roomful of people, and Glemmurn wasn't made that way. He babbled something about ”just doing the job,” then fled before any of us could give him our opinion of his job.

”Well,” Reijka said, breaking the dismal silence that Glemmurn left behind him, ”if his bosses don't reverse him, I'll take the matter up with the borough syndic. But for the time being you'll have to shop across the river in Aflraun, I guess.”

”Why didn't we settle in Aflraun in the first place?” Fasra wondered. ”It's a lot more wide open there.”

Roble looked at Morlock and, when it was clear the crooked man was not going to say anything, said, ”We needed a place to heal up, after the mountains. And it's safer here.”

”Except for harthrangs,” Morlock added thoughtfully. ”There might be a few more around town: bodies have been disappearing from the graveyards. That's what they were saying at the body dump. I'll place a demon-sconce around the house.”

”You'll want Bann and Thend to help with that, I guess,” I said. (He always did: Thend for Seeing, Bann for Making.) ”I'll go across the river and buy us a couple days' worth of food. Roble, why don't you and Fasra hold the fort here?”

”Holding the fort is boring,” Fasra grumbled. ”I'll never get any interesting scars that way.”

When I realized she was referring to our nightmare among the Khroi, I was speechless for a moment. I had been on the verge of suggesting that Stador come along with me and do the heavy lifting, and suddenly I remembered that Stador was dead and rotting in a hole in the mountains. And here she was making a joke about it. On the other hand, Fasra's jokes were rare and fragile things these days. I wanted to cloud up and storm at her, but in the end I just said lightly, ”You could get a scar. Sooner than you think.”

”I think she means it, kid,” Reijka said, grinning at me. ”Never mind. I'll stick around and we'll write an angry letter to the syndic and a friendly one to my litigator.”

”Why not the other way around?”

”The litigators are the ones who run this town. The syndics and bureaucrats just think they do ...”

I grabbed a bag of money off the counter and walked out the door. It was a little brusque, but I wanted to get out of hearing range before I started snuffling. In fact, I made it almost all the way to the Aresion Bridge over the River Nar when suddenly for some reason I remembered how Stador had looked in the green-and-gold s.h.i.+rt he had worn to his first Castleday when he was six years old. It wasn't like I was trying to remember it; the image forced its way into my mind. It was followed by a wave of others and I had to stand there in the middle of the street, clutching my bag of coins and weeping, until the tide of memories receded and I could think about something else again. That's how grief works for me. It's always there, but you can almost forget about it for a while; you think you might be over it. Then it drags you down and drowns you in itself.

What can I say? I don't know if you have kids. If you do, I suggest you die before they do. It'll save you a lot of trouble.

Eventually, I made it to the bridge. The Narkundenside guards gave me kind of a funny look; maybe they'd been watching me weep. But they didn't say anything about it: they just asked to see my proof-of-residence. By the time I'd crossed the bridge to Aflraunside, my eyes were dry (if somewhat sore) and the guards there didn't even glance at my card; they just wanted their bridge toll.

Aflraun is a lot livelier than Narkunden. If you want a banker, a bookkeeper, an academic, you go to Narkunden. If you want to buy or sell something, if you want to fight with somebody, if you want to become famous (or at least notorious), you go to Aflraun.

For one thing, the towns are run very differently. Narkunden has a democratic charter where the syndics go to the people for reelection every year, and any important law has to be pa.s.sed by a citizen a.s.sembly, and all citizens get the same vote. Aflraun, on the other hand, is a democratic timocracy. All citizens get a vote, but your vote counts more depending on how important you are. You can acquire importance (the technical term is ”gradient”) through money, or other achievements, but one of the most common ways to achieve it is through dueling, as the victor in a duel automatically inherits the timocratic gradient of the person he kills.

Noncitizens aren't exempt from the constant duelling, but noncombatants are: duellists actually lose gradient if they are seen challenging or provoking someone not carrying unconcealed weapons.

More people prefer to live in Narkunden: it's safe, quiet, law abiding. But they swarm over the bridges to spend money and time in Aflraun. Commercial magic is not illegal there; neither is prost.i.tution (another way to gain gradient, but apparently only if you do it right) nor public brawling nor most other things.

Then there is Whisper Street. I find it hard to explain Whisper Street; you'll have to bear with me for a moment. It is a place where, for a fee, you can become invisible and say anything you want. Physical contact is forbidden (not that it doesn't happen sometimes), but no speech of any sort is regulated. You can be anyone or anything that you want, as long as you can convince someone else of it. Apparently it is the city's great moneymaker, greater than people coming to watch the duels or engage in the gray-market activities banned in Narkunden and elsewhere. Whisper Street gets a little longer every year, to accommodate all the people who want to partic.i.p.ate. Morlock said to me once that someday the whole city will be inside Whisper Street, and I'm not sure he was joking.

I'm not a fan of Whisper Street. If you'd ever been a widowed mother in Four Castles, you would have had your fill of being invisible. That's one thing. Then, after that, I was a Bargainer, kidnapping people on the Road, robbing them and carrying them away to the G.o.d in the Ground. I did it because I had to do it to save my daughter. I'll tell you the whole story sometime if you're in the mood to listen. But the point was that I was always doing things I hated. ”This isn't me,” I had to keep saying. ”This isn't me.”

But you are what you do. It was me, doing all those terrible things. I escaped when I could. But while I was there, that's what I did and that's what I was. What was I, now that I had escaped? I still wasn't sure. But, in any case, I didn't want to take my face off and pretend to be somebody else. I wasn't that sure I could ever find myself again. Maybe this doesn't make any sense: it was how I felt.

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