Magic in Ithkar (6 page)

Fool,
Khussan said.

And it was the friar’s face. Tiggynu’s enameled grin. His knees were moving, driving him up on his hands. The earth met his face; he pushed up again and vision came back in a muddle of dark and light.

Lords, no time to be sick. He numbed himself and held his gut and ran a few off-course steps, fell, and heaved up, one spasm after the other—got to his feet again and drove his legs to movement.

“Murder!” he yelled down the aisle of tents.
“Wake up! Murder in weavers’ row!”

He kept going, barefoot. Panic rose in the tents, no word that he could hear. It was a fool would come out to mix in trouble: it was for the watch he cried.

Fire blossomed orange in the dark ahead, Lords,
fire
in the tents, a spark at first. “Fire! Fire! Fire!” voices yelled ahead; shrill and deeper screams.

“Father!” he yelled. The light blurred on dark figures. He sucked wind, drove pain away, and ran.

Folk came pouring out of the tents. “Fire, fire, fire!” the shout went out across the fair. Shadows struggled in the light, one tall man laying about him with a stick at a ring of three that darted at him. Tongues of fire went up the tent-side. “Buckets! Water!” the cry went up. “Wet down the tents!”

“Olf!” Sphix cried. It was the tall weaver so beset: Tiggynu, too—she laid about her with a pole, braids flying, shrieked something foreign and defended Olf’s back, but not her own.
“Tok!”
Sphix screamed, and hit the knifeman full on. They both went into the dirt, Tok squirming beneath him. He found the knifehand, pinned it with both hands, used knee and elbow at groin and throat ’til Tok stopped struggling. There was a great hiss: another: “More buckets!” the cry went up.

He staggered for his feet. “Here’s one!” someone yelled, and he was grabbed on either side. A brass-hat moved in, gathered Tok up.

He blinked, saw one fire dying, another waving—torches of the Watch, the gleam of light on brass helmets, brass-bound staves. He twisted his neck: two such had his arms and dragged him over to stand with Tok and Coss and One-Eared Fix.

He kicked, never mind his ribs. He wanted free, not to hang. Pain exploded across his ear. He went half to his knees. “Hang on to that one,” someone said; and Coss broke away, went pelting through the night. Sphix lurched up, tried to run, but they had him fast. Faces showed in torchlight, figures in the swirling smoke—Olf and young Stynnit reunited; Tiggynu unharmed—

“Father,”
he cried. The fair-ward pulled at him to take him away.
“Father
—” For he saw the friar nowhere, and he twisted in the brass-hat’s grip, trying to look behind him, in the crowd that rallied there.
“Father!”

The crowd came between. They hastened him through the gathering mob that shouted for rope and hangings.

“Wait,” a great voice cried. “Wait!” A huge arm snatched him and crushed him in a grip like iron. “That’s my son you’ve got.”

Sphix gaped up at him, at great black-bearded Olf. “That’s the weaver,” someone told the brass. And Sphix hung there in Olf’s embrace. His knees went.

Lords, his
father!
But his father was a lord. To such inanities his mind went. Then, Sphix-like, they went to practicalities. The weaver lied—for some crazed reason the weaver lied, but the neighbor-merchants would raise an outcry.

“That’s Sphix,” they would say, “Sphix the thief.”

But no one did.

“We’ve been looking,” the brass-hat said, “for a boy of his description—”

“Couldn’t be my son,” Olf the weaver said.

“Shame,” someone aged cried, “shame, they burn our tent, the watch takes up our son—”

The crowd muttered.

“You swear to him,” said the fair-ward; and hands that still held his collar let go. “Mind, if he’s in trouble again—”

“Come on, lad,” Olf said.

Sphix tried. His legs went; and Olf simply dragged him by a hand within his belt through all the commotion. There was light; there was the stench of burned wool; truth, there was nothing savory in himself, with moisture bubbling from his nose and running in his eyes, his knees failing at every other step.

Then they braced up, for there was the friar sitting on the ground in front of the tent with a cloth pressed to his brow.

“Con artist,” Sphix said when Olf had dragged him up to the friar and dropped him there.
“Fake.
You’re not dead—”

He fell on his face and wept.

They patched the tent up—Lords, Olf even found his boots. The water-carts made the rounds off hours, replenishing water-jugs, enabling a little scrubbing-up; but Grandma Nosca’s remedy was wine and herbs, both on the cuts and in upset stomachs. “I can’t,” Sphix protested on the third round, getting up. “I’ve got to go—” There was precious little dark left for one with so far to walk.

“Go where, pray?”

“Oh, down the road.” He kept his voice light. He ached, not alone in his bones, but in his heart. It seemed unfair, in one night to find he loved an old man and lose him and the fair forever. “They’ll be hunting for me, every thief in Ithkar; Lords, I know their faces, don’t I?”

“Would they come here?” Olf asked.

“No, not likely. That Coss, he’s crazy. But he’ll be out that gate and down the road. Folk’ll love that one like the plague, the brass knowing his face now like they do. No. Thieves is thieves. Takes care of our own. And I’m for the road myself.”

“I think he should fix the tent,” Tiggynu said.

“He’d have to learn weaving,” said Olf, “to do that.”

He stared at them.

“Is he staying?” asked Stynnit.

He sat down again, wincing with bruised ribs.

“I guess he is,” said Nosca, and puffed at her pipe. “Mind,” she said, motioning with it, “you keep a sharp eye out to the merchandise. No one ought to light-finger us. We got our own thief. Afraid of work, boy?” She tapped the ash out. “To bed. We’ll sell double tomorrow. Crowds’ll come to see our burned spot, won’t they?”

He blinked, because it was true, and the old woman no fool at all. Like Khussan, she was.

And in the morning, in the grayest early dawn, full of fresh bread and salted butter:

“Lorssakes,
Father—” Sphix caught the old man up halfway down the aisle, limping nigh as bad as he was. “Where you going?”

“Oh, a little turn about the rows. Not far today.”

“I’ll walk with you.”

“Haven’t you got a tent to patch?”

“Haven’t you forgot something?” He fished in his collar for the stone. “How would things come to you, else?” He hung it about the friar’s neck. “So’s the pennies come, old man.”

“It’s just a river-rock.”

“Old fake.”

The friar grinned, a boy’s grin. “Worked this time, though.”

He walked off. Sphix stared after him, then walked back up the row with a swagger in his limp.

He was scared, that was what. He had never left Ithkar Fair, bright disappearing summer and gray, drab winter, when the fairgrounds shrank to a huddled village of permanent buildings beneath the walls.

He had never been beyond sight of the temple, the taverns, the docks.

Nosca talked of downriver; of dealing clear to the sea in winter.

Son,
she’d called him, too, this morning, giving him an extra bit of bread and naming his duties.

He was caught, fairly snared and tangled.

And he found a tune of Khussan’s and whistled it up the street.

“Ow!”

Her mother ignored Jezeri’s squirming and used the end tooth of the ivory comb to tease loose a stubborn tangle in the mop of hair that sun and wind had dried to the color and consistency of straw. “If you did this yourself a bit more ...” she said.

“Oh, Mama.”

“Oh, yes.” She stepped back and stood tapping the comb against her smooth brown cheek. “I suppose you’ll be safe enough on your own.”

Jezeri wiped her nose on her forearm, scuffed her boots across the brittle dirt, quivering with anxiety lest her mother change her mind about letting her go.

“Ah, well, soon enough you’ll be going into skirts. Let me see your hands.”

“Oh, Mama.”

“Hands.”

Jezeri rubbed her palms down the sides of her sleeveless undershirt, held out her hands.

Her mother turned them over, inspected the backs and fingernails, reversed them, and sniffed at the palms. “I thought so. Reeking of horse. Wash. Now.”

“They aren’t dirty.”

“Soap and water. Now. I’ll have your tunic ready when you finish.”

Jezeri slouched around to the back of the wagon where the tailgate was lowered to make a washstand. She dipped lukewarm water into a basin, added a dollop of soft soap, sniffed at the soap clinging to her fingers. Scented with oil of coolblue, it reminded her of her mother, of the garden at home with its herb beds and disciplined riot of flowers, of crisp cool sheets on a summer evening. She didn’t really mind washing, what she minded was the waste of time, her time, the first night of her first fair.

Interfering relatives (more often than not Uncle Herveh; he went through life looking for things to complain about) came and chided Miles Kunisca for letting his daughter run wild.

Her father said: What’s the harm? Let her be.

He said: Jezi is a better hunter and horse-trainer than her brothers. I’d be a fool to change her. And she’s a good girl.

He said: My mother was just such a flyabout. Tell me to my face she turned out bad, hunh! Time enough for harness when Jezi’s under Moon’s Rule.

Her mother snapped the tunic through the air, then tugged it over Jezeri’s head, stood back as Jezeri wriggled her arms into the sleeves with an explosion of elbows and some hard breathing. She settled the tunic on her daughter’s shoulders with a few brushing pats, smoothed the hood into a neat fold. “Your brothers.” There was amused exasperation in her voice. “They took care to go off before I could tell them to look after you.” She shook her head, the braided coils over her ears shimmering like gold shields, brushed a few wisps of hair out of Jezeri’s eyes. “Don’t talk to anyone but the venders in the stalls and that only if you’re buying something, you hear? This isn’t the Vale and these aren’t homefolk who’ve known you all your life. Any trouble—any, mind you—you yell loud for a fair-ward. Bronze-shod staves and brass helmets, remember?”

“Aieea bless, Mama, all I’m going to do is look around.”

“Hah. I know you, little-fall-in-the-mud-when-it-hasn’t-rained-for-a-triple-moon.” She ran her thumb across the band of embroidery that outlined the tunic’s unfastened neck opening. “That beast of yours, he’s been chewing on this.” She looked around. “Where is he? Don’t tell me you’re going without him.”

“ ’Course not, Mama. Old ’Un’s watching him for me.”

“So . . . you be careful, hear?”

Jezeri sighed, smoothed her hands down her front. “I hear.”

Her mother laughed, a soft rippling sound. “Oh, I know, Jezi. Right now it’s all pains and fuss and no pleasure being a woman. Just you wait, though.”

Dark amber eyes smiled into dark amber, mother’s eyes and daughter’s eyes creased into laugh slits, crescent-shaped under thick blond brows. Then her mother turned away. The moon was low in the east, swimming in the violet afterglow of sunset. She pointed. “You’ve got till the moon’s in the paws of the Pard, then I want you back here. Not a minute more, you hear?”

“Oh, Mama.”

“Oh, get along with you.”

With a chuckle and a shapeless wave of her hand, Jezeri sauntered away from the wagon, coating her bubbling excitement with transparent nonchalance.

Under the thatched roof of the open-sided horse shed a dark figure sat cross-legged by a fire of dried dung, bent over a chunk of wood, working at it with a small knife whose blade was little longer than his palm. As Jezeri came up, he gathered a handful of shavings and tossed them into the fire, sat watching the dance of blue and green among the red flames. His scarred hands were turned to ancient roots by the play of firelight and shadow, his face to a gargoyle’s mask. He looked up as she ducked under the edge of the thatching, his mouth twisting into the lopsided smile he saved for her. “Your mum finally let you loose?”

“Uh-huh.” She squatted across the fire from him, watched him ease a long curl from the wood. “Where’s Tanu?”

“Picking fleas off Jet’s back.” He turned the chunk over and began working on the other side. “Last time I looked.”

“Ah.” She rubbed at her nose. “Wagon-draw’s tomorrow midday.”

“Ah,” he said.

“Been looking ’round?”

“Some.” He detached a long curl from the chunk, played with it a moment, tossed it into the fire, where it gave a sharp resiny smell to the acrid bite of the burning manure. “Pair of bays three barns down. That way.” A nod of his head. “Only ones that look like giving your father a hard time.”

“No pair’s as good as Jet and Nightlord.”

“Mmm,” he said. “The draw’s the decider.”

“Mmm.” She sniffed at the smoke blowing past her face. “That’s a good smell; what’s that wood?”

“Got it off a sailor down to the wharves. Load of aromatics in.” His mouth twisted into a bitter downturn, his eyes half-shut, he tapped the wood on his palm. “From the forests of Estarin-Over-the-Water.” With a quick flick of his hand, he tossed the wood to her. “Highland cedar.”

She stroked the smoothed places, sniffed at it, tossed it back. “Mama’s linen chest. You going fairing?”

“No.” He sat staring down at the wood he was turning over and over in his hands. “You taking Tanu?”

“ ’Course. Why?”

He set the wood aside, clasped his hands over his knee. “Folk here from all over. Some might know what he is. Get nervous.” He hesitated, stared over her head at nothing or at memories that brought him no pleasure. “There are those, Little ’Un, who’d pay ten times Tanu’s weight in gold. Hassle you. Try to take him away from you. Temple priests apt to know. You keep away from them. Why not just leave him here?”

She scowled. “Someone would pay, you said. Who? Why?”

He stroked a knobby thumb along his jawline. “You don’t want to know that, Little ’Un.”

“I wouldn’t ask, didn’t I want to know.”