The Death of Nnanji (16 page)

Safely bolted in again, Katanji led the way up to the main floor. “Not just your mother, but mossy old Shamoza too? You’re a catch, lad! What craft do you think will dare accept you if the high priest’s after you?”

“Swordsmen, ’course. I promised Dad I would track down the people who sent the assassins. You think they’re sorcerers?”

“Who told you about the back door into my house?”

“I overheard Dad telling Shonsu about it one night. They were laughing because you thought nobody knew about it. Mm, something smells good.” Addis turned aside and strode uninvited into the dining room. “
Devilspit!
Ritorn? Fancy meeting you here!”

Katanji was at his heels. “You two are acquainted?” She couldn’t know his nephew professionally. Addis was growing up, but he hadn’t reached that stage yet. And Ritorn was blushing scarlet, which no one in her profession should ever do; also looking as if she would burst into tears any minute, a more conventional tactic.

“We used to play in the park together,” Addis said, helping himself to a pickled ptarmigan egg. “And go swimming in the pond. She’s younger than me, aren’t you, Ritorn? I remember how you’d turn to jelly every time Vixi smiled at you.” He glanced at his uncle sadly. “But now I suppose you have to go where the money is?”

The night was no longer young when Wallie got home. He dismissed his guard, accepted salutes from Sevolno and the night watch, and straightaway trudged wearily upstairs towards bed. To his surprise, Jja was still awake, sitting under a blaze of candlelight in the corner, embroidering.

“You’ll ruin your eyes,” he said, bending to kiss her.

“No, I won’t.” She laid her work aside and reached for the candle snuffer. “Do you need food? Wine?”

“Just sleep,” he said. “It’s been quite a day, but it worked out well in the end. We caught them where Selina said we would.”

“She’s a pleasant girl. Not very intelligent, but well-mannered.”

“I don’t remember her asking politely if she could stab me.”

“Are you going to release her, or send her to jail?”

“Release her. She kept her side of the bargain. Can you help her?”

Jja’s smile said that she already had. “She wants to stay here in Casr, and she’ll need a mentor. I’ve arranged for her to meet a couple of Fifths tomorrow.”

“Clever girl.” He kissed her.

Admitting at last that summer was passé, the weather gods had turned down the outside temperature. The shutters were closed and the bed had been made up inside. As Wallie lay down with a sigh of pleasure, he decided he could probably sleep standing up in a cupboard, if he had to. The last candle flame died. Jja slid in beside him.

“How was your day otherwise?” he asked, cuddling.

“Much as usual. Thana arrived in a rage. Addis has disappeared again. I had to swear to her that he wasn’t here.”

Wallie chuckled sleepily. “He isn’t very much younger than Nnanji was when we first met. And even old Honakura said that Nanj had a head like a coconut. Thana has never been indecisive either, never easily swayed.”

“So what is Baby Coconut up to?” Kiss.

“He’s going to turn up at the assembly and demand to be sworn in as a swordsman.”

“And will you allow that?” Another kiss.

Of course. That was what the gods wanted, obviously.

And obviously Shonsu was what Jja wanted. Sleep could wait.

Chapter 7

Overnight the weather went from poor to horrible, and Bronze Casters’ Day brought a steady downpour. That did not bother Apprentice Vixini, who spent it sitting on his butt indoors, listening to and memorizing sutras. As Dad had suggested, he concentrated on the real brutes, like Number 311,
On Exercise
, or 212,
On the Treatment of Wounds
, although the Thirds tutoring him insisted that those were very rarely called for in examinations, simply because they were unfairly difficult and the examiners themselves would have to bone up on them. But they did warn him not to forget the first eighty-nine, the sutras he had needed for promotion to second rank. By the end of the day he was convinced that he was going to make a total idiot of himself in the exam. He didn’t care much, because he was far too young to be a Third anyway; all his childhood playmates were still Firsts, in a wide assortment of crafts.

But he would also shame Dad, and he would much rather die than do that.

Sailors’ Day dawned cloudy and cold, but not actually raining. By the time the sky was turning from dark to light, Apprentice Vixini had been dragged out of bed, forced fed breakfast like a penned goose—or so it felt—and hauled away to the amphitheater at the lodge.

It was a busy place already. Promotions could be attempted at any time, but assembly promotions were popular because they were so public, and swordsmen, like most athletes, liked to display their prowess before their friends. The downside risk, of course, was that failures were jeered by a thousand throats or more. This time, with rumors of war boiling through the Tryst, scores of men had begged their mentors for the chance to try for higher rank.

“Here they come,” Dad said softly, looking over the throng of heads. “Mean as rat shit, both of them. I blotted one down a rank a couple of years ago, and refused the other one a posting he wanted. Just what you need.”

“Thanks, Dad!”

As Vixini’s mentor, Dad just stood on the sidelines to witness the sutra test. Vixini himself and the two mingy Thirds sat cross-legged on the damnably cold paving of the stage with their swords in front of them, and the examination began.

“Number 212,
On the Treatment of Wound
s,” said Meany Number One.

Vixini got through it, and hoped they could not see how he was sweating by the end. He suspected he’d got pressure bandages and bladder wounds in the wrong order, but they didn’t call him on it. He wasn’t too surprised then when Meany Number Two asked him for
On Exercise
. He managed that one also, thanks to Dad’s backward strategy.

Scowling, Number One tried again. “Number 99.”

Vixini hadn’t known that he might not be given the title as well as the number, but it must be within the rules, because Dad didn’t object. He thought for a moment. “Number 99,
On Diet
.” He was right and the recital felt easy after the two previous horrors.

He thought he had proved himself then, but the Gruesome Twosome were clearly going to try him on the full seven sutras they were allowed. And they’d realized that he’d concentrated on the hard ones.

“Number 95,
The Sanctity of the Sword
.”

Vixini opened his mouth, shut in, racked what few brains he had, and, without daring to look up at Dad, said, “
The Sanctity of the Sword
is Number 15, and Number 95 is
The Sanctity of the Fencing Foil
. I believe your error credits me with both sutras, Examiner.” Except he was sure it hadn’t been an error, it had been a trap.

Dad laughed. “He’s got you! I have never known an examination continue after an examiner blundered like that.”

He was liege lord. No one argued with the liege. The two Thirds rose sour-faced and congratulated Vixini, then stalked away. They would be judging his fencing later, another chance to fail him, but he was looking forward to that.

Dad hugged him. “You’ve done it, Son! I don’t care what Thirds they put up against you in foils, you’ll send them back in pieces. Now listen carefully. I’ve arranged for your match to be in the first round of the fencing. Once you have put your opponents out of their misery, the examiners will go with you to the facemarker, and after that you have to get your new kilt. But then I want you to go straight over to Katanji’s house. He has something for you, something very important.”

The amphitheater could hold thousands. Wallie had seen it fuller, but never full. Nor had he ever viewed an assembly from anywhere except the Sevenths’ box at the back of the stage, which had a cover. On rainy days the Sevenths were dry, but nobody else was. Despite today’s ominous sky, so far the rain god was withholding his blessings.

The air crackled with excitement. Many assemblies had been held before expeditions were led out, when men were lambasting the Goddess with prayers that She would cause them to be included, but this was different. Word of the attack on Nnanji and a full-scale war against sorcerers made this the chance of lifetime: fame, promotion, and mention in the epics! How many would Lord Shonsu take?
Goddess, Goddess, make me one of them and I will father a hundred daughters to Your glory!

It began conventionally enough. The chief herald called for all to rise. The Sevenths entered. The band played. Everyone sang
The Swordsmen in the Morning
, twelve hundred throats in unison. Everyone sat down. Promotions had priority, and the first item was the heralds calling out the names of those who had failed in sutras, so they could be soundly booed. Then the winners came up for their fencing tests. Wallie had been forewarned that there would have to be fifty or sixty matches, which could take all day. The audience might be able to afford the time, and fencing was their sport as well as their profession, so they could never get enough of it; but he couldn’t. Once or twice Nnanji had doubled up the fencing. Wallie had decided to make a three-ring circus of it.

There was some surreptitious booing when the herald announced this decision, but soon the fencers were hard at it, leaping back and forth, foils clanging and ponytails flailing. Since every duel required the necessary second examiner, two judges, and a mentor, the stage was packed with dancing competitors and dodging witnesses. Men cannoned off the Sevenths’ Box and a couple backed right off the stage and thus out of the competition. Whooping, cheering, and booing became almost continuous. Most of the contestants won both their bouts and were accepted by the judges. Vixini had no trouble.

The final bouts were for promotion to high rank. Each of those had to be allowed the stage to itself, but even a Seventh could enjoy watching fencing at that level, and at the end of it the Tryst had gained two new Sixths and three new Fifths.

But when it was all over and the last sweaty arm had been raised—or not raised—then the liege lord had to walk out from the Sevenths’ box and greet each winner. Every name was cheered, and Wallie was relieved to note that Vixini won a cheer as loud as any, because they had all seen that the wunderkind had fenced like a true Third, years older. He wasn’t just his daddy’s spoiled brat.

Swordsman Vixini strode proudly across the lodge grounds to where his oath-uncle Katanji stored his loot. He wondered what in the World the old rogue had for him that Dad had been so mysterious about. A fancy sword might be one possibility, or a hairclip. There was nothing much else that he would have any use for at the moment. In ten years or so, perhaps a wife and a house, but if he rose to high rank in the Trystand his success today suggested that he couldthen he would qualify for a place in the married quarters. Right now he was an adult and heading off to fight in the first real war in centuries. Life was looking very good!

He was still wondering whom he should ask to be his mentor if Dad didn’t want to do that any more when he arrived at the Treasure Chest, as Mom called the place. He trotted up the steps and hauled on the bell. Although Katanji owned at least a dozen slaves, he opened the door himself, which was surprising. Vixini whipped out his sword and took great pleasure in giving him the salute to an equal.

The treasurer responded, then said, “Well done, well done. You’ll be as great a swordsman as your dad one day. Come on in here.”

He led the way to his living room, past some life-size jade statues, a silver horse, brilliant tapestries, exotic furniture, and four pillars of multi-colored stone. There, sprawled back in a padded chair and scoffing dried dates, was the missing Addis. He had a black eye that was more a rainbow eye, and was wearing a smug, contented expression, but Vixini knew him very well and suspected that he was hiding excitement about something.

“So there you are! Two days ago your mother tracked me down and made me swear on my sword that I didn’t know where you were.”

“Well? You didn’t, did you? I suppose I have to salute you now, do I,
Swordsman
Vixini?”

“You bet your sweet little ass, boy, because if you don’t it’s going to get well booted.”

Addis grinned and jumped up. They exchanged salute and response while Katanji watched with a smirk. Vixini noticed again how very alike uncle and nephew were, but he knew that Aunt Thana hated Katanji so much she could barely stand to be in the same room with him. Addis had no need to worry that his father wasn’t who he had been told he was.

Vixini folded his arms. “Well, I have to go back and hear Dad’s speech. He promises it’ll be a scorcher. He said you had something for me, Uncle.”

“Yes. That.”

Vixini looked in dismay at all the teeth his young friend was showing. “Oh, no!”

Addis’s face fell. He said, “Your…” and stopped.

Oh, shit!
“I didn’t mean it that way! I would love to have you as a protégé, tadpole, truly I would, but Dad promised me if I got my promotion I could go to the war with him. Firsts are never taken into danger! If I were your mentor, I couldn’t go. I couldn’t leave you.”

But surely Dad would never play a filthy trick like that on either of them?

“Boys, boys!” Katanji said. “I’ve known Shonsu a long time, and when he talks, wise men listen. He told Addis right here in this room that he could be a swordsman and have you for a mentor. He didn’t say Thana could go swim in the River and eat all the piranha, but that’s what he meant. He has always been able to guess what the gods want better than anyone I’ve ever met. If he told you he was going to take you to the war, then he must mean that he’s going to take Addis as well.”

Vixini looked at Addis. “
Devilspit!
That’ll scare the sorcerers shitless, that will! This what you want, maggot?”