Lynn Abbey - Thieves' World - Turning Points

The corpse began to crumble from within, shrinking and losing form. Bezul watched, transfixed, for one or two heartbeats, then forced himself to turn away. He steadied himself by breathing in through his nostrils and out between his lips—the way he'd learned years ago when the Bloody Hand of Dyareela summoned the city to public executions.

Not since the Troubles. Not since the Troubles. The notion tumbled in Bezul's mind along with Who? and Why? and What manner of darkness has Perrez stumbled into? He concentrated on the mask: a shallow bronze disk, polished smooth, without holes for sight, breath, or speech; but touched with gold and ringed with stylized flames. A sun god, Bezul told himself, not one he recognized, but not the Bloody Mother, Dyareela, either; and for that he was relieved.

Bezul's relief was interrupted when the corpse of Nareel's companion collapsed with a sigh, like air released from a bladder—a foul, rotting bladder. He recoiled from the sight and the stench; the swordsman did the same. But Cauvin leapt across the hole, seized a shovel the diggers had abandoned, and went to work with more effort than effect until the remains of both corpses were either in the hole, covered with a layer of dirt, or floating in the city breezes.

"Shite for sure," the young man swore as he leaned, sweating and gasping, on the shovel, "I didn't froggin' ask for thisl"

"Froggin' shite, we were already here, waiting for Yorl to show up. You never know what he's going to look like, so I thought, maybe, he was you—until nearly too late. Lucky we weren't all froggin' killed."

Confused by the explanation, Bezul asked, "You were waiting for Nareel?"

"Yorl, Enas Yorl?" Cauvin paused, clearly expecting a reaction to the name, which Bezul didn't provide. "You saw him. He's the one who claimed the chest." Cauvin shook his head. "He's under some froggin' curse that changes him every day, but his eyes give him away… most times. Sometimes, you froggin' just don't know."

Bezul hadn't heard the name, Enas Yorl, since before the Troubles started. Gedozia and the other gossips said the mage's mansion had vanished one long-ago night with him in it—Come to think of it, the mansion had been up on Pyrtanis Street, same as the stoneyard where Cauvin worked with his father. Maybe that was the connection—

"You work for him?" Bezul asked and realized, before he'd finished asking the question, that he shouldn't have.

"What's the one true thing about Sanctuary?" Cauvin asked. He didn't wait for an answer. "We've had our froggin' fill of miracles and magic. A froggin' priest comes to Sanctuary, he better talk about what his god does for us, not the other way around and a magician better keep to himself, if he knows what's good for him. We like our froggin' gods quiet and our froggin' sorcerers even quieter. If they're not, we'll froggin' run them out. And if we can't, then there's froggin' Enas Yorl."

The swordsman offered his opinion: "Better one man you can't quite trust than a score of them?"

They glared at each other a moment before Cauvin insisted, "I froggin' trust froggin' Yorl."

"But you knew about Nareel?" Bezul asked quickly, hoping to distract both men. ''You know about that shop he has—had—off the Processional?"

"Anyone asks that many questions is bound to attract attention. He was wasting his time and his shaboozh until he got lucky—" Cauvin looked down at the red glass teardrop. He'd come close to breaking it with the shovel, but—luckily?—he'd missed every time. "Crabs? Frog all."

"That's what the Nighter said. They've been using it for years. Your Enas Yorl left it behind—"

"He said an attractor was just a tool," the swordsman said, then added: "Don't let it fall into the wrong hands."

Bezul couldn't tell if the man was speaking for himself or the absent magician, to him or to Cauvin.

Cauvin picked the red glass up, pulled it free of the triangle, and gave it to Bezul. "Yorl didn't know there was an attractor loose in Sanctuary until it left the swamp. See that it gets back to the swamp and stays there. Tell your brother to forget he saw it."

Bezul slid the glass carefully into his scrip. "See to it," Cauvin warned. "Remember: You owe your life."

Bezul found Dace in Chersey's kitchen, watching the children while she stirred the kettle. He took the red lucky from Bezul's hands with a joy that bordered on reverence and, though the sun had set, the Nighter left at once for the ferry and home. By contrast, Perrez hadn't returned to the changing house. He had missed supper which, Bezul admitted, was unusual and cause for concern, especially as Bezul had decided against telling his mother the unburnished truth about his adventures in the uptown ruins.

Dace returned the next day, his worldly wealth knotted into square of plaid cloth. The red lucky was back where it belonged, he swore, luring crabs to the trap, same as ever. But, after a day on dry, solid ground, the youth was determined to put the swamp behind him. And Chersey's stew was the best-tasting food he'd ever eaten.

Chersey thanked Dace for the compliment… and for helping her with the children. Bezul sensed the inevitable coming his way. He gave the Nighter a place in the changing house and enough padpols for a long soak in the quarter's bath house.

It was a long afternoon and an unnerving one. The sky darkened at midafternoon. The geese got restless and, as a black disk cut across the sun, big Ammen dropped to his knees in the dirt outside the changing house, bawling like a terrified child. Coming so soon after a similar disk had eaten the moon, it was enough to make a man brave the crowds at the fanes outside the walls.

Bezul got home from Ils's temple as the beleaguered sun was retreating to the western horizon. Perrez had returned while he was gone, reeking of wine he swore he hadn't drunk. He hadn't forgotten his promises. He truly did intend to devote himself to the changing house, but the aromacist had left behind a thriving business in the best part of Sanctuary. Perrez had already found three partners— men who'd won their bets at the tournament—to help him run it, if Bezul would put up enough money to appease the landlord…

Heliz Yunz, linguist of Lirt, moved between the documents scattered across his work desk with the furtive passion of a gambler closing in on a straight flush. He moved hunch-shouldered back and forth beneath the front window of his tiny garret, comparing notes and referencing texts. Three separate primers were propped open along the back of the bench, and another trio of heavy grimoires fortified one end of the desk. The subject of his attentions, a pair of weathered, dissimilar documents, were sprawled out, surrounded by foolscap notes in Heliz's own hand. The lean young scholar had a predatory grin, and his eyes were nearly white in the light of the tallow candles. He was oblivious to the world around him. He was on the hunt.

The precise nature and purpose of the two documents were im-material to the linguist's quest. One was a stained legal transcript written in the scratchy alphabet of the Rankan court language, rescued from an excavated midden. The other was an erotic poem on perfumed parchment, transcribed in a florid hand in Beysib script, originating far to the south and later imported to, then abandoned in, Sanctuary. What was important, as far as Heliz was concerned, was the words. Most importantly, a grouping of verbs about halfway down the Ranke document, and a similar group in the closing stanzas of the overheated Beysib sonnet. Heliz checked a primer, then returned to the two documents. Then he was off again to a Beysib dictionary, really little more than a phrase book, then back again. Then back to his shelves to pull one of the Crimson Tomes down to double check, then pulling some detail from one of the grimoires.