“Another night,” the Lydian said. Then, as she had told him to, he asked, “The Amanackire woman. She lodges on this street?”
The man’s arms fell, and his face. He looked uncertain, but he said, “By the lacemakers. The tiled house with the high wall.”
The house stood back in the alley that curled behind the lacemakers. In the wall, a gate of ornamental iron gave at a thrust. A garden lay there, with trees, and overgrown by dry grass. Flushed starlight fingered a choked pool.
The lower floor of the house seemed in disrepair and unoccupied. In the second story a cluster of windows showed light within their grills.
Rehger, having tethered his animal, went in by the unlocked entry and ascended to the upper story.
A lit lamp hung over the door, and a bell, in the Alisaarian manner.
A minute went by, during which he thought of nothing, did nothing. Then, as he reached toward the bell again, the door was opened. A servant, a tawny mix girl with those eyes one came to see sometimes in three or four generation mixes, clear brown as ale. She said nothing, but stood aside to let him enter, then led him through the outer chamber into a salon.
This also was lamplit, the flames under painted glass, that set the room awash with pale rainbow colors. The furnishings were simple, not comfortless but with none of the luxurious clutter Rehger associated with wealth and women. He scarcely saw any of it. On a table, a crystal jug and beakers. The servant girl went there and poured him a drink unrequested. It was yellow
Lowland wine, he had never seen it before, and stared into the cup before motioning her to take it away.
The girl did not argue with him. She replaced the cup upon the table, and went softly from the room.
Rehger stood, waiting, not thinking, clothed in his elegant garments for dining, his fighter’s meticulous grace. The Corhlan was not here. He knew that. Only she.
There was a perfume on the air. Not of the usual sort, bottled essences and burning gums.
A curtain drifted. She entered the salon, the Amanackire.
“Be welcome,” she said, and bowed to him. lowland courtesy, meaningless. Or a jibe.
Thank you. Am I welcome also to lay hands on and kill you?”
“You have done your killing,” she said, “in the stadium.”
“Yes, and been cheated of it, I heard. Is it a lie? The Corhl stays dead.”
“He lives.”
“I’ve only your word for that.”
“And the word of the whole city, which brought you here.”
“No, madam,” he said, “I meant to call on you anyway. You played a game with me today. I didn’t care for it.”
She watched him across the length of the room, the wavering rainbows of light.
“Why?” he said. His voice had nothing in it, except perplexity. He could not strike her or rage against her. With no woman on earth would he ever do that. So what was left to him? She was not tall for her sex, and slender, a breakable thing that did not even look human. He went toward her because that was all he could do, as if proximity might invite reason.
“Ice in the sun,” she said. “You, and all men. This city.”
“If you invade my mind,” he said, “you’ll find nothing of use to you.”
“You are too modest.”
“Do it then. I can’t stop you. But why bother with it, or with the sword? Or to save the boy’s life?”
“It was owed to him. It was my fault that you harmed him as you did.”
The perfume came from her. It was not perfume. It was the scent of her skin, and hair.
The crown of her head hardly reached his shoulder. And her face was a girl’s, she could be no older than the boy she had raised from the dead.
“This is so,” she replied, to his thoughts. “Yet I have a power in me and upon me. You never met a man in your arena of blood and steel who had such power. Lydian, I could end your life in moments, by will alone. Do you believe me?”
“Perhaps,” he said.
“Look,” she said. She raised her hand, and her hand began to blaze. He saw its bones, he saw white fire where flesh should be. Then the blaze went out. Her hand was only white, and the arm, white as lilies, ringed by a bracelet of white enamel darker than her skin. The bracelet was a snake, with tintless zircons for eyes.
“Temple sorcery,” he said. “But what’s your quarrel with me?”
There were pink pearls in her hair, and a drop of rosy amber, the Lowlanders’ sacred resin, depended above and between her brows.
She was beautiful, but not as something born; too beautiful, as something fashioned, sculpted. Yet she was alive, he saw her breathing, and felt the warmth of her, so close now in the heat of night.
There was in fact a depth to her eyes. This near to her, he could not help but see it. A depth without a floor, bottomless.
“Why?” he said to her again. He leaned forward as he spoke, so the word itself should brush her lips. “I seldom fought a man whose name I knew. It’s a Swordsman’s superstition, you may have heard of it. Are you afraid then, to give me your name?”
“My name is Aztira,” she said. “Shall I say yours?”
“Say it.”
“Amrek,” she said. Her voice was a wire of hatred.
“Amrek, the Enemy, branded by the bane of Anackire. Genocide, and monster.”
He stood back from her, startled despite everything. He did not know the name, or if he did, it was nothing to him—some king out of history, dead a century or more.
“Your wrist,” she said. “What is that?
He said, calmly, his heart thundering, “This? A birthmark. I’ve had it since childhood.”
“Yes, birth-marked for sure. Her mark. Her curse on him, on you, son to daughter to son.”
Rehger took his eyes with difficulty away from her. He looked at the thin silvery ring around his left wrist, familiar to him, forgotten.
Then he looked again at her.
But all at once she turned from him. As he had done, and with the same recognizable muted violence, she wept.
In his experience, which was limited in such things, women did not weep for any cause. They wept when there was none. Moods of amorous passion or jealousy, to conceal, over little things—the loss of a lover or an earring. In his limited world, no woman had ever shed tears at misery or pain—slave-girls beaten, an old beggar-crone huddled in Iscaian snow. ... his mother kicked across the dirt floor of the hoveclass="underline" Dry eyed.
Yet, some inner sense, recognizing her real anguish, for he had been shown something of her strength, moved him to pity.
Almost unremembering their prelude, he took hold of her carefully, quietly, to soothe her. And as against the white silk of her hair and skin he saw the metallic darkness of his hands, bronze on marble, his body, waiting all this while in Zastis cunning, astonished him with a sudden bolt of hungry lust. What he had disliked before, it was this very thing which ravened now through his veins.
He was not amazed that she slid instantly from him. They were cold as they looked, her kind, so it was said.
She had not let him see her tears, only hear them, and now she moved before a window, her face to the garden shadows, hiding herself still.
“I’ve been greatly mistaken,” she said. “In everything. A blind, meddling child. Go away. Swordsman. Go to your own, of whom you have no fear. For I fear you, and I fear them, your Alisaarians, your peoples of black Vis. And my own kind also, I am afraid of them.” She gripped the iron of the grill in both her hands. Oh, Rehger!” she cried out. “Warn this city! Warn them—tell them—”
She was on her knees beneath the grill, still gripping the iron in her hands as he had seen prisoners do, or men dying in agony. Her weeping now was terrible to hear. Death’s music, grief that was triumphant.
To question her, to think that she might be questioned, was impossible. Since he might otherwise only console her in the Zastian mode she would abhor and resist, he did as she said. He went away.
The merchant was cheated of his dinner guest that night. But it was Zastis. Heroes, immune to cutthroats, might yet be waylaid at every corner. . .