Jaril stirred. His claws scratched at the floor, his teeth closed closed on Daniel’s leg not quite hard enough to break the skin. Daniel blinked, looked down. Jaril got to his feet and started for the door.
Daniel knocked on the table. When Lio Laux looked up, he said, “Got to go, my patron’s not the kind you want to keep waiting. See you sunset.”
Lio grunted, lifted a hand, let it thump down, Tungjii’s wine was wheeling round his head and he was lost in old days and old dreams.
Ruby shimmers slid off the opaline scales of an undulant fishtail and bloodied long white fingers combing through the waves; the Godalau swam before the Skia Hetaira as the ketch slipped swift and silent from the bay. A scruffy little figure in ragged black sat on a giant haunch and waved to Daniel Akamarino. He waved back, jumped when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Brann. -I haven’t got used to it yet,” he said.
“What? Oh yes, you come from a place where you have to imagine your gods and they keep going abstract and distant on you.” She leaned on the rail beside him. “Sounds like paradise to me. No gods to tie strings to your ankles and jerk you about. Hmm. Maybe one day I’ll jump high enough to break the strings and land in a reality like that.”
Daniel shaded his eyes, picked out the translucent tail that flickered across the sky some distance ahead of them, more guessed at than seen. “It has its drawbacks. At least here there’s somebody to notice you’re alive, might be all round bad vibes, but that’s better than being ignored. Where I come from, live or die, the universe won’t notice. I’ll wait a while before I decide which sort I prefer.” He laughed. “Not that I have much choice. Tell me about Tungjii.”
“Tell you what?”
“A story, Bramble, tell me a tale of of ‘Tungjii. It’s a lovely night, there’s nothing much to do, get drunk, sleep, watch the wind blow. I’d rather hear you talk.”
She laughed. “Such a compliment. Your tact is overwhelming, Danny Blue. Why not. A warning tale, my friend. Heesh is an amiable sort, but you don’t want to underestimate that little god. So. There’s a land a long way east of here, a land that was old when Popokanjo walked the earth, before he shot the moon. In that long long long ago, in the reign of the emperor Rumanai, a maretuse whose maret was a broad domain at the edge of the rice plains came to consider himself the cleverest man in the world, yet he had to keep proving his cleverness to himself. Every month or so he sent out mercenary bands to roam the silk road and snatch travelers from it to play games with him, games he always won because he set the rules and because he really was very clever in his twisted way. Each of his conscripted guests played game after game with him until the miserable creature lost, his nerve or, was killed or began to bore the maretuse. His landfolk did their best to keep him entertained with strangers because that meant he wouldn’t turn his mind to testing them. And they were loyally discreet when Rumanai’s soldiers came prying about, hunting the bandits interfering with the Emperor’s road and the taxes it brought to his treasury.
The land prospered. In their silence and because they took the spoils he passed out among them, the horses, the dogs, the tradegoods, even some of the gold, the landfolk also shared his guilt. But the peasants on the land and the merchants in the small market towns told themselves that their hands were clean, they shed no blood, they did not lift a finger to aid their master in his games. That they profited from these was neither here nor there. What could they do? It was done and would be done. Should they starve by having too queasy a stomach? Should their children starve? Besides, the travelers on the silk road knew the dangers they faced. And no doubt they were little better than the maretuse if you looked into their lives. Thieves, cheats, murderers, worst of all foreigners. If they were proper men, they would stay home where they belonged. It was their own fault if they came to a bad end. So the Ambijaks of maret Ambijan talked themselves into silence and complicity.
The day came when the mighty Perran-a-Perran, the highest of the high, lord and emperor of all gods, took a hand in the matter of the clever maretuse.
Old Tungjii was sitting on a hillside munching grapes when a messenger from the high court of the gods came mincing along a sunbeam, having a snit at the common red mountain dirt that was blowing into every crevice and fold of his golden robe. Old Tungjii was more than half drunk from all the grapes heesh had been eating because heesh had been turning them to wine before they hit hisser stomach. Heesh was wearing common black trousers like any old peasant, the cloth worn thin at the seat and knees and a loose shirt heesh didn’t bother to tie shut, letting the wind and grape juice get at fat sagging breasts with hard purple nipples. Heesh was liking the warm sun and the dusty wind that sucked up the sweat on hisser broad bald head. Heesh was liking the smell of the dust, of the crushed grass and leaves underneath him, the sounds of the grape pickers laughing a little way off and the shepherd’s pipe someone was playing almost too far away to hear. Heesh certainly didn’t want to be bothered by some sour-faced godlet from the Courts of Gold. But old Fishface (which is how Tungjii privately thought of the god-emperor Perran-a-Perran, how heesh muttered about him when rather too drunk to be discreet) was nasty when one of his undergods irritated him, especially one of the more disreputable sorts like the double-natured Tungjii. So heesh spat out a mouthful of grapeskins and lumbered to hisser broad bare feet.
“‘Tungjii,” the messenger said.
Tungjii smiled, winning the bet heesh made with hisserself that the godlet’s voice would whine like a whipped puppy. Heesh nodded, content with the perfection of pettiness old Fishface had presented him mer with.
“The maretuse of maret Ambijan is getting above himself,” the messenger said, his lip curled in a permanent sneer that did odd things to his enunciation even while he spoke with a glasscutting clarity. “The foolish man is thinking about plotting against dearest Rumanai, the beloved of the gods, the true emperor of Hinasilisan. He has convinced himself he deserves the throne for his own silly bottom.” The messenger made a jerky little gesture with his left hand meant to convey overpowering rage and martial determination. Tungjii reminded hisserself sternly that old Fishface didn’t like his subgods to giggle at his official messengers. “Perran-a-Perran, Lord of All, Lord of sky, sea and earth, Emperor of emperors, Orderer of Chaos, Maker of man and beast, Father of all…”
Tungjii stopped listening to the roll of epithets, let hisser senses drift, squeezing the last drops of pleasure from the day. Even old Fishface’s eyes glazed over during one of these interminable listings of his attributes and honors, finishing with the list of his many consorts, the only one of them of any interest to Tungjii being the Godalau with her moonpale fingers and her saucy fishtail. The two of them had played interesting games with hisser dual parts. Horny old Tungjii was a busy old Tungjii in spite of hisser unprepossessing outer envelope and found hisserself in a lot of lofty beds (the messenger would have been shocked to a squib to know one of those beds belonged to Perran-a-Perran). A girl’s laughter came up the hill to himmer and heesh blew a minor blessing down to her for the lift of pleasure she’d given himmer.