Reyna sucked in a breath and let it out in a long slow exhalation. “Vema. Whatever I can do…”
“Thanks, luv. I knew you’d agree. Ah! The Bull’s horns are showing. It’s time.” He.jumped to his feet. “Up, up, Rey. Stand in the middle of the star. That one over there. When the silver starts shining, don’t touch the lines with flesh or leather. Got it? Good.”
Reyna hugged his arms across his breasts and watched as a huge insubstantial sphere formed at one of the penta’s points, floated there while images drifted through it, nauseating, terrifying images. Juvalgrim labored on, growling and shrieking sounds that Reyna found obscene and embarrassing.
Juvalgrim’s voice changed, grew harsher, louder.
Blue-green grain poured suddenly from the sphere, spread in a dimpled pile outside the penta, flowed around the penta without entering it.
His voice changed again. Fruit like apples rolled out on the grain.
Another change and coins fell in a golden rain atop the apple’ and the grain.
Another change. Reyna swallowed in sympathy, feeling in his own throat the rasping, tearing syllables.
The sphere went opaque, bulged and warped, shivered in midair, distorted, swirled, suddenly vanished with an absurdly tiny pop.
Juvalgrim opened his throat in a blast of ugly sound that hovered in the stone bubble for an instant, then was gone. He coughed, swallowed. Trembling he lowered himself to the stone and knelt with his shoulders bent, his head hanging. After another moment’s silence, he said hoarsely, “It’s done.”
“Ju…”
“Do you think you could find your way here?”
“From outside?”
“Diyo. Diyo, Rey. You’ll have to. I can’t have this connected to me. It’s too dangerous. Do you understand?”
“Diyo.’’
“Ah luv, I’m too tired to thank you the way I’d like.” Reyna smiled. “Save it up for another night. It won’t go bad for waiting.”
› › ‹ ‹
Faan was a small dark shadow huddled on the top step. Reyna sucked in a breath when he saw her, fear turning him cold. Anything could have happened to her out here; the Edge was dangerous after dark, more so than ever these days. He opened his mouth to scold her, then swallowed the words. She lmew everything he meant to say. What was the point of quarrelling one more time?
He sat on the step beside her. “Couldn’t sleep?” In the uncertain starlight, he saw the lines in her face soften, her. mouth curve in a smile that vanished between one breath and the next.
“Nayo,” she said. “Things…” She moved a hand in a shapeless gesture, let it drop.
It was only a few hours till dawn, but the night was hot, the air scarcely stirring. A cat yowled behind them somewhere. Someone screamed, the sound cut off quickly. Music, mostly the heavy throb of drums, drifted to them from the Jang.
“Not going to get better,” Reyna said. He touched Faan’s shoulder; she moved closer, leaning into him as she used to when she was a child. “Drought’s worse out on the farms.”
“That’s what he said?”
“Mm. He’s going to open the temple cisterns for the Edgers so they don’t have to pay Mal prices.”
“They’ll let him do that?”
Reyna chuckled. “He’s not going to ask.”
A lone dog came trotting down the Lane. His head turned as he passed them, but he didn’t stop and vanished round the bend a moment later. They heard some men start yelling and fighting down by the gatts; the guard horn sounded, the noise stopped a few moments later.
Faan stirred. “Sibyl’s been teaching me minors,” she said. She cupped her hands, muttered under her breath. “Look,” she said.
In the dark shimmer between her hands he could see a dozen guards marching four men along the Gatt Road, then the scene vanished.
“I can’t hold it long,” she said. “Not yet.”
“I suppose it takes practice like everything worth do-
ing.”
“Mm. I went up on the roof tonight, tried to find my mother.”
Reyna stiffened; fear and jealousy made him sick. After all these years…
Faan caught hold of his hand. “Nayo, Rey. Not that. It’s just… I need to know who I am. I NEED to know.”
He let out the breath he’d been holding, hugged her. “Don’t mind me, Fa. I get stupid sometimes. It’s just. •. you haven’t said anything about her for a long time. I thought you’d forgot.”
“Nayo.” She sighed. “Unless you’ve bone for a brain, you can bang your head against a wall only so many times before you say forget it, it isn’t worth the aggravation.”
“What happened this time?”
“Nothing. There was a picture of a lock and the mirror went away. I was afraid I couldn’t do it again, I didn’t try till just now.”
He got to his feet, reached down, and pulled her up. “It’s time we were both in bed.”
Faan put her hand on the door; after a few muted clicks from the lock and the bar, it swung silently open.
WILD MAGIC
Reyna’s lips twitched. “Let me tell you, girl, there’s been a lot of times I wished you couldn’t do that.”
She giggled. “I know. But it is handy, isn’t it?”
“Point of view, daughter, it’s all in your point of view.”
“Veils, veils. No slaves. Veils, veils. MOD DES TY. No slaves. Veils, veils. PURE I TY. No slaves. Veils, veils.” The Cheoshim youths marching along Verakay Lane howled the words as if they were curses, stamped their boot heels to the beat of their chant; they called themselves STRIKERS because they were striking sparks for the Forge Fire and what they burned was sin. They came surging at Faan the minute they saw her walking alone. What they meant to do with her, she wasn’t sure, but she wasn’t about to wait and find out.
She leapt into a wynd between two tenements, ran around another corner and another (the howls followed her, louder and louder), then chased Ailiki up the side of a mudbrick house. When she reached the top of the wall, she jumped, swung over the shaky splitwood fence onto the flat roof. Ignoring the startled, indignant woman tending a tiny patch of herbs, she ran across the roof, went over the fence on the far side and half-fell, half-climbed to the dry dusty ground below. She scooted around behind the house next door, turned into another wynd and ran along behind a warehouse fronting on the River. Behind her the chant of the STRIKERS died away as they nosed about trying to find her again, then moved off in the wrong direction.
She reached the end of the warehouse and walked down the wynd, stepped over the legs of a sleeping mulehead, grimaced at the avid circle of denge beetles gorging at the pool of vomit beside him, trying to suck it up before the sun drew all the moisture from it. She pulled her hand across her sweaty brow, wiped it on her skirt, sighed. Running in this heat was an idiotic idea.
She stopped when she reached the Gatt Road, stood in the wynd mouth and frowned at the trickle of traffic moving along it toward the Sokajarua. The sun throbbed in a heat-whitened sky, the River was down another five spans, and the gatts were nearly deserted; she could count three ships where five years ago there’d been thirty. She wiped at her face again; her mouth was dry, her throat sore.
› › ‹ ‹
Faan slipped under the wharf and settled herself on the dead grass, scowled at the River. Out in the center the water had a fugitive blue glint; in close though, it was thick and brown, more like a gel than a liquid. And it smelled bad.
She wiped her sleeve across her face, rubbed her hands on her skirt, pulled her legs up, rested her arms on her knees. As she moved, thin lines of hot gold shifted across her face and arms; the planks overhead had dried out and pulled away from each other.
Riverman came plodding up from the water, shaking himself and stepping delicately across the cracks in the mud; he crouched, jumped, and landed with a grunt on the bow of the boat, caught the bit of honeycomb she’d fetched for him and licked eagerly at it.