“Yes, dearest one. And you never thought of it till now.”
“Leave him alone,” said Yennef.
Galutiyh sauntered away down Marble Street.
As ever, perforce, Yennef would have to go after him.
The studio shop was vacant, and the cabinets secured. In the offices beyond two clerks were furtively eating a pie at a desk.
The studio, a huge room lit by braziers hanging from the rafters and vanes of glass above, had a dim glaze on it of various smokes and dusts. Only a little darker than milk, a naked girl model lay on a couch before the unlit hearth, conversing with some unmoved students. The farther wall gave on a courtyard where a large oven was fuming. Slabs of stone stood about there, but activity had ceased.
Galutiyh mused on the girl who, indifferent by now, ignored him.
“Rehger,” said Galutiyh. “Here?”
One of the students looked around and pointed to a stair.
Galutiyh, followed by Yennef, ascended. Some doors ranked along a narrow landing, through one of which came the soft rasp of pumice.
The Dortharian opened this door and put his head around it.
“Ah,” said Galutiyh, and jumped in.
Rehger looked up, and saw a man had come through the door. He was Vis, there was no mistaking it, yet he had temple leaves in his belt. He leaned on the table, looking at Rehger.
“Tell me, where did you learn to do such marvelous work?”
Rehger remained where he was, beside the small block of whitest marble he had been polishing. From the door it appeared formless, a slender oblong, only breast-high.
“Fm apprenticed to this studio, which is Master Vanek’s.”
“The Plains?” The visitor was surprised. “A long way surely from home? You’re from Dorthar, are you not?”
Rehger had seen the second man, in the doorway.
Rehger said, “I’ve some Dortharian blood.”
“Yes, by all means be quick to claim the High Race of Vis. Where else, then?”
“Alisaar. Anyone who knows me will tell you.”
“Saardsinmey.”
Rehger said nothing.
“Killing men,” said Galutiyh, “it was good commerce? And now you’ve found your father, too. What exciting days you’re having. Would you care to cap the adventure and go journeying?”
“Why?”
“Why indeed. Because I say you must. That’s how I earn my fame. My unerring sense of the quarry.”
There was a bellow of thunder directly overhead. It shook the partitions of the room, and past the window rain broke like a thousand necklaces from a cloudless sky.
In the moment of inattention, Yennef came across the cluttered space, picking up one of the razor-edged tools left lying there. He took Galutiyh around the body from behind, squeezing him close, and laid the flat of the chisel against his throat.
“Unfortunately,” said Yennef, to Rehger, “this one means what he says. But if you’re swift and stop for nothing, you should be away before his rat-pack dig up the body.”
Galutiyh had relaxed against Yennef.
“My body, eh?”
Yennef sensed the slight shift of tendons and said, kindly, “Don’t. After all, if you don’t force me to do it now, I might relent and spare you, later.”
“But he,” said Galutiyh, “isn’t running like you told him to.”
“Now,” said Yennef. “Rehger. Go. Get on a ship, or get out of Moih at least.”
“Shall I explain?” said Galutiyh. “You see,” he said to Rehger, “the white Lowlanders, the Shadowless, the pure Amanackire—the allied lands believe they are hoping to war with us again. And your special white lady has some part in it, being one of that kind.”
Something in Rehger altered.
Yennef said, “Don’t listen to his crazy spewings. There’s a story out of Shansarian Alisaar that a white Amanackire was killed in Saardsinmey—and rose from the dead. Her lover was a Vis Swordsman. She saved his life by sheltering him in her tomb above the city. To this mathematical cobbler here, if you’re a Saardsin Sword and have survived, then you must be a lover of the Amanackire woman. He’ll gather his pack and hound you to Dorthar or some Shansar or Vardish holding, and put you to the question. The Shansars call this process the Ordeals. Make your own decision on what that means. Go on, get out. I’ll kill this leech. I’ll take care of it.”
“Your father loves you,” said Galutiyh. “He knows our masters will punish him in due course if he does any of that.”
Rehger came around the table. He said, to Galutiyh, “I’ll take the chisel from him.” And with a movement like flight, almost invisible, sheered the chisel from Yennef s grip and undid the Dortharian from his arm.
Yennef stood amazed and cursing. Galutiyh, spun aside, sneered at them both.
“I won’t forget your charity, Rehger Am Ly Dis. Nor yours, Yennef, you cat-sput.” He flung lightly through the door and away down the stair.
“You deserve all he can do then, you bloody fool.”
“Perhaps, Yennef. It’s not a story, the tomb I sheltered in. Go and ask Chacor, if you like. He was there.”
“And no story dead women come back to life?”
“She could heal the dead. No, it may be nothing more than a fact. But Td like to hear what they say in Shansar Alisaar, for myself.”
“You will. On the rack. Over the fires. The yellow Shansarians—Vardath, Vathcri—are as frightened as the Vis, now, of what Lowlanders can do. We’ve been trying to weed out the opinions of the south, these merchants, because the Storm Lord, who has the peerless blood of the goddess himself, wets his drawers whenever you say Anackire, They don’t fight with weapons and men, the Lowland magicians. But with earthquakes and storms and tidal waves and cracking volcanoes. They can fly in chariots up to the stars, and murder with a flame from the eye or the fingers. And you played thread-the-needle with one of these. Anack help you. You should have let me kill him.”
“He didn’t owe his death to me, or to you,” said Rehger, absently.
“Lowlander talk. Repayments for past lives? Debts for future ones?”
“Yennef, in the arena sometimes, I’ve recognized the men who came to me for death.”
“She taught you the philosophy in bed?”
“Or it was blood-lust then. Whatever, I’ve killed sufficiently. You’d better be on your way before your Dortharian returns.”
“Yes, he won’t forget, as he said.”
“I regret that. Don’t think I don’t thank you, Yennef. You shouldn’t have risked yourself.”
“You’re my son,” said Yennef. He grew calm and said again, slowly, “My son. My first-born, so far as I know.”
17
The Dark. The Light
“We’re looking for an Alisaarian.”
“I have a message here, which he entrusted to me.”
Vanek, standing composed and alone in the studio, offered the five mix cutthroats a square of reed paper. “To Galutiyh Am Dorthar, or his captains: I shall await you at the fourth hour of afternoon, in the square before the Artisans Guild Hall. No other will be with me. I am, in readiness to accompany you, Rehger Am Ly Dis.”
Could they read? One, apparently. He repeated the sentences to the others. Then, “He’s a trained fighter, what about that?”
The most unsightly of his friends remarked coarsely, “There’ll be ten or so of us. Let’s see him try.”
Another objected, “Who’s to say he’ll do what he says?”
“We’ll get him sooner or later.”
Nevertheless they wished to search the studio and Vanek allowed it, having earlier sent every additional person off the premises. Subtly controlled by the aura of helpful aloof uninterest which Vanek exuded, Galutiyh’s search party did not make much mess, and soon went off again, into the city, whose streets steamed still from their slake of rain.
Rehger’s slightly longer letter to Vanek had rendered apology, and enclosed a sum of money (which annoyed, it was the full compensation for terminated apprenticeship.) “If I can ever redeem this, I will do it.” But he had seemed to imagine the imperative summons which now called him away might not allow of return. He thanked Vanek, and declared thanks, as apology, were inadequate. “If I might stay, I believe you know I would do so. It’s impossible.”