A girl came one night. For her bridal vigil. She smiled shyly at Nilis, then went into the room, still bare except for a maiden face and the mats on the floor, lit a candle she’d brought with her and settled herself comfortably crosslegged on the mats. Much later, when Nilis came to bring her a cup of cha, the girl had a happy dreamy look on her face. Nilis left, wrestled a little with envy, then went to sleep, content with herself and what was happening.
On the last day of the Decadra Passage the Decsel marched into the Maiden Chamber, his belongings in a shoulder roll, a large sack of food under one arm. He set the sack down, drew his sword and laid it at Nilis’s feet. “I wish to serve Her,” he said.
He took the schoolroom as his quarters, rehung the door, cleared out the old furniture, cobbled a bed for himself and turned the bare room into a comfortable place, being experienced at doing for himself, neat-handed, and skillful at all sorts of work. He took over the work in the Court of Columns, scraping the paint from the columns and Maiden faces, digging the snow and debris from the choked fountain, clearing the paint from that. He worried over what he could do with the painted pavement until Nilis told him she could paint it again once he’d got the smears off.
They worked alone, saw each other seldom, sometimes shared meals, sometimes a day or two would pass before they met again, settled into a peace with each other that never completely left them.
Shimar began. The Cymbankers grew bolder. Girls and maids came for vigils, young men trickled in for meditation and for their own vigils. A furtive group came into the Maiden Chamber for a minor rite, the Ciderblessing, defying the Agli and the new Decsel. Villagers, ties and even tarfamilies came more openly as each day passed. There were more floggings, more folk dragged to the House of Repentance, more muttering against Floarin because of this, more folk coming to the Shrine. And Nilis began preparing for the Turnfest, her first major fкte as Keeper.
The Magic Child
Rane, on Sel-ma-Carth: Nearly fifty years back the governing elders of Sel-ma-Carth hired a stone-working norit to punch new drains through the granite not far below the soil the city was built on; the old drains had been adequate for the old city, but they’d just finished a new wall enclosing a much greater area. (A chuckle and a quick aside to Tuli: You’ve never lived in a city, Moth. Drains may make dull conversation but they’re more important than bread for health and comfort. And this does have a point to it besides general information, so get that look off your face and listen.) The city sits at the meeting of two rivers. The intake of the sewer is upstream and just enough uphill to ensure a strong flow to carry away the refuse and sewage. By the way, you don’t want to drink out of the river for some distance below the city. The old drains were abandoned and more or less forgotten. Even the cuts in the wall are forgotten. That’s how we’re going to get into the city. Don’t make faces, Moth, the stink’s dried by now. Maiden bless the Followers with boils on their butts. Tuli, Sel-ma-Carth never closed its gates, you could ride in and out as you pleased whenever you pleased and no one cared or was afraid you’d do him something. That’s all changed now. If we showed up at the gates, they’d shove us into the nearest House of Repentance. Maybe I ought to leave you outside. I have to see someone, find out the state of things inside the walls, no need for you to walk into that mess. Oh, all right, come if you want. Be glad of your company.
At sundown on the sixth day of riding they topped a slight rise and saw Sel-ma-Carth, its gate towers losing their caps in the low clouds, a walled city nestling in the foothills where the Vachhorns met the Bones (a barren stony range of mountains rich in iron, gold, silver, opal, jade, a thousand other gemstones), at the border between the mijloc and the pehiiri uplands. The mines made the city rich, but were only one of its assets. It also sat on the main caravan route joining the east coast with the west.
Carthise were contentious and untrustworthy, automatically joining to cheat outsiders though they were scrupulously honest with their own. It was said of them you could leave a pile of gold in a street, come back a year later and find it where you left it. It was said of them that they took more pleasure in putting over a sharp deal for a copper uncset than they would in an honest deal that netted them thousands. It was said of them a man could come and live among them for fifty years and die a stranger and an outsider and his son after him, but his grandson would be Carthise.
They were the finest stonemasons and sculptors known, hired away from their city for years at a time, they were famous artisans and metalsmiths, gem cutters and polishers. One family had a secret of making a very fine steel, tough and springy, taking an edge that could split a hair lengthwise. The family made few swords but those were always named blades and famous-and exorbitantly expensive. The Biserica bought knives from them, as did the Sleykynin, until a daughter of the House eloped to the Biserica before she was married to a cousin she despised, bringing the family secret with her. Carthise were leather-workers, weavers, dyers, merchants, thieves and smugglers. But no woodworkers. The hills close by were brown and barren and wood brought premium prices. A well-shaped wooden bowl could fetch a higher price than a silver goblet.
“Hern always had a twisty struggle collecting the city-tithe,” Rane said. “Once he even had to threaten to close the Mouth and turn the trade caravans north to the Kuzepo Pass before they discovered they had the money after all.”
“Then they’re not going to take very well to Floarin’s ordering them about or to the Aglis.”
“That’s the trouble, Moth. No one’s got in or out recently enough to say what it’s like in there. Even Hal didn’t know much. However…” She started away from the road into the low hills. When they were hidden from the watchtowers, she went on. “However, I think you’re probably right.”
When the shifting colors of the dying day touched the low rolling hillocks of snow on snow, they rode across a rising wind that blew short streamers of snow from the tops of the hillocks, snow that sang against them, stinging faces and hands and crawling into any crevice available. Tuli glanced back and was pleased to see the greater part of their trace blown over. By morning the broken trail would be built back into a uniform blanket. That was one problem about spying after a snowstorm, a blind idiot could follow where you’d been. She stared thoughtfully at the bobbing head of her macai. Three days, no wind at all. But the moment wind was needed to kick snow into their backtrail-she laughed at herself for imagining things.
Rane wound through the hillocks moving gradually behind the city, then left the city behind and started up into the hills toward the pehiiri uplands.
A smallish hut stood backed into the steep slope of a hillside, its stone beautifully dressed, the posts and lintel of the doorway delicately carved with vine and leaf. To one side was a stone corral with the eaves of a stable also dug into the slope visible over the top. The whole neat little steading was hidden in a thick stand of stunted trees, canthas still heavy with nuts, spikulim and a solitary zubyadin, its thorns glittering like glass.
Rane stopped her macai in the center of the small cleared space before the door. She waited without dismounting or saying anything until the door opened and a large chini stood there, broad-shouldered, blunt-muzzled, ears like triangles of jet above a russet head, a black mask about dark amber eyes, alert but not yet ready to attack.
Tuli dipped into a pocket, found a stone and settled it into the pouch of her sling. She might not have time at the chini’s first charge to whirl the sling, but she trusted Rane to hold the beast off long enough to let her get set.