Settsimaksimin sat in his sanctuary watching as Ahzurdan rambled through the streets of Kukurul with the woman or sometimes the children; there was a tooth-edged trace between those odd preteens and Ahzurdan that made him smile because it was so much like the hostility he’d faced now and again when he’d taken lovers from among the double-gaited, the hostility of children who refuse to share their parent; in a way it was puzzling, from what he knew of Baby Dan there wouldn’t be much between the woman and him, nothing to make the children so jealous, but jealous they were and suspicious of him. They watched him and they burned.
And they protected him, presumably because the woman told him to. On the fifth night in Kukurul, late, long after the woman had gone to sleep. Ahzurdan slipped out of the Inn and went foraging among the alleys of the waterfront. Watching him sidle through the darkness, Maksim nodded to himself. Hunting a trader in dreamdust, he thought. You don’t change, Danny Blue. Miserable little rat. He thrust his hand into his robe and under the Stone, massaged his chest. Still running away from anything that makes you look at yourself. Wonder where the children are? Did you finally manage to slip them? He continued to watch and after several more twists he noticed a gray mastiff following Ahzurdan, a purposeful shadow in shadows. Now what does that mean? He examined the beast. Ah! crystal eyes, no irids, only a swirl of half-guessed vapor. One of the children, the boy, yes, I’ve never seen demons or anything else with eyes like theirs. So. Shapeshifters. He looked around for the girl and found a nighthawk drifting above the street, swinging in slow loops that centered over Ahzurdan. A large nighthawk with glimmering crystal eyes. Clever children. Strong muscles and a good set of tearing teeth down there on the ground, a watcher overhead. You can talk to each other, can’t you. Interesting. Mmm. Ambush ahead. You up there, you have to see them. What are you going to do about it? Nothing? Ah. The mastiff edged closer until he was almost breathing on Ahzurdan’s heels and the hawk dropped lower. I see. Let Baby Dan handle it, but be ready to jump if he needs you.
The muggers attacked and were dispatched neatly by a jolt from Ahzurdan; he smoothed his tunic down and went on, ignoring the dead men. Unaware of his escort, he found a dealer, got the dust and went slipping back to the Inn. He sat holding the packet and staring unhappily at it. Then he laid it away among his robes, undressed and crawled into bed. Sooo sooo, baby Dan, I wouldn’t ‘ve believed it without seeing it. Mmrn. That worries me. I don’t want you cleaned out and feeling pert, Danny Boy, I want you coming at me scared. He rubbed long limber fingers together, yellow eyes fixed on the sleeping man. You were the best I had, little Blue, yes, and the most dangerous. I smelled it on you the minute I saw you, standing there no one daring to get close. Your face is twisting, little Blue, remembering me in your dreams? I swore I’d tame you or kill you. Came close to doing both, didn’t I. But you ran, Danny Blue. You ran so fast and so far it didn’t seem worth coming after you. Got your nerve back? Or is it the woman? Demidemon with finicky tastes, or so I hear. No respecter of man or god. Goes her own way and be damned to those who try and stop her. Amortis, Haa-Unh, she turned purple when I told her Drinker was heading this way. Drinker of Souls. God of gods, I like her, I do. You haven’t a ship yet, lady, but any day now, and I’m not much good round water, did he tell you that, the toad? Mmm. Shapeshifters. I can deal with that. The eyes are enough to pin them. Wonder what they are when they’re home? Hah hah hah, I don’t really want to know. Sooo, what have I got for you, lady… mmm, what have I got… come the dawn, what do I throw at you?
6. Waiting At Kukurul, The Inn Of Pearly Dawn.
SCENE: Early morning. That lull time, when the night life has diminished to a few weary thieves, whores and drunks wandering through dingy gray streets, when the day life that will turn those streets noisy and busy and fill them with color is confined still to bedrooms (or whatever shelters the sleepers managed to find) and kitchens and stables.
Kukurul. The world’s navel. The pivot of the four winds. The pearl of five seas. It is said that if you sit long enough at one of the outside tables of the Sidday Lir, you’ll see the whole world file past you going up the finnan Katt. Kukurul. Expensive, gaudy, secretive and corrupt. Along the Ihman Katt, brothels for every taste (in some of them children mimicking the seductive pos-tures of street whores hang from upper windows solic-iting custom); ranks of houses where assassin guilds advertise men of the knife, men of the garotte, women of the poison trade. If your tastes run to the macabre, halfway long there is a narrow black building where death rites are practiced and offered for the titillation of connoisseurs. At the end of the Ihman Katt is the heart of Kukurul, the Great Market. A paved square two miles on a side where everything is on sale but heat, sweat and stench. Where noise is so pervasive and so intense that signing is a high art. No greens or flesh or food fish, but anything else you might desire. Trained dog packs for nervous merchants or lordlings who don’t enjoy personal popularity with family or folk; rare ornamental beasts and birds; honeycomb tanks of bright colored fighting fish, other tanks of ancient carp, chameleon seahorses, snails of marvelous color and convolution. Fine cloth and rare leathers. Blown glass of every shape, color, and use, including the finest mirrors in the world (according to the claims of their vendors). Gold, silver, coppersmiths sitting among their wares. Cuttlers and swordsmiths. Jewelers with fantastic wealth displayed about them. Spice merchants. Sellers of rare orchids. Importers of just about everything the world offered. And winding through the cluttered ways, water sellers, pancake women, piemen, meatroll vendors, their shops on their backs or rolling before them. That is Kukurul on the island of Vara Smykkal.
Vara Smykkal. The outermost island of the Myk’tat Tukery. A large verdant island. Little is known of the land and people beyond the ring of mountains about the deep sheltered harbor and most visitors don’t bother asking; they spend their time in the Great Market or the cool dim trade rooms of the many Inns that sit on the hills around the Market Flat.
Myk’tat Tukery. Generally thought of as the Thousand Islands, though no one has ever counted them. The Ulterior islands are mysterious, shut away from just about everyone, rumored to be fabulously wealthy and filled with women of superlative beauty and passion, with magical creatures like unicorns and manticores and spiders with nacreous eyes weaving wedding, silks so fine they’d pass through a needle’s eye, with trees that grow rubies and emeralds and sapphires, with fountains of gold and silver and liquid diamond. But the narrow crooked waterways between the islands were infested with bandits and pirates; there were deceptive shoals and rocks that moved, there were shifting mists and freaky winds and lightning walked most nights and one green rocky island looked much like the next. Even the cleverest and greediest men seldom got far into the maze and few of these got out again. And the ones that made it back seldom had much to say about what they’d seen.
During her wandering years after the ravaging of Arth Slya, Brann took a sailing canoe deep into the Myk’tat Tukery and out again, emerging with mind and body intact and memories of some lovely places, especially an island called Jal Virri, but like the less fortunate she didn’t talk about the experience. She’d intended to go back one day; events intervened and she went in another direction. As she told Ahzurdan, she settled into clay and contentment at the Pottery beside the Wansheeri. Coming back to Kukurul roused those memories and she thought about retreating into the maze and letting the world rock on without her, but once again she was too tangled in that world to do more than daydream of peace.