David Drake - The Gods Return

The townsfolk were well enough dressed, so Ilna supposed that was true. She shouldn't let her dislike of a place color the facts. "Rice farming and trade on the river," Brincisa said, apparently unconcerned by the question. "There was a special tax to pay for digging a canal after the river shifted its course during the Change." She smiled with a kind of humor. "The town elders didn't assess us," she went on, "but my husband and I chose to make a payment without being asked. The money was of no significance, and we prefer to be on good terms with our neighbors-so long as they remain respectful." "Is your husband expecting our arrival?" Ilna said. She was knotting patterns as she walked, but out of courtesy she didn't look at them. She too preferred to be on good-well, neutral, in her case-terms with those she had to deal with. "My husband Hutton died three days ago, mistress," Brincisa said with a smile of cool amusement. "That's part of why I need your help. But our discussion can wait till we're at leisure in my workroom." She paused and gestured to the house on her right. A servant in the familiar dark livery held open one panel of an ornate double door. It occurred to Ilna that she'd never heard Brincisa's servants speak, though they were perfectly ordinary to look at.

Perhaps they were just well trained. She entered and started up the stairs of dark wood. The staircase beside this one led down from the door's other panel toward a basement. Behind her Ingens said,

"Mistress Brincisa? This house-how were you able to build it?" Ilna looked over her shoulder. Brincisa, also looking back, was following Ilna up the stairs, but Ingens was still in the street staring at the building's front. "All the other houses are stone," he said, shifting his eyes to Brincisa on the staircase. "But yours is brick." "My husband and I preferred brick," Brincisa said. "And not that it's any of your business, we didn't have it built here: we moved it from another place." She paused. If her voice had been cool before, it was as stark as a winter storm when she continued, "Now-you may either come in or stay where you are, Master Ingens. What you maynot do is trouble me again with your questions. Do you understand?" "Mistress,"

Ingens murmured, lowering his head and keeping it down as he entered the house. Brincisa turned to meet Ilna's gaze. In the same cold tone she said, "Do you have anything to add, mistress?" Ilna smiled faintly. "I prefer brick also," she said. "Not that that's anyone else's business." Brincisa waited for a heartbeat, then chuckled.

"Yes, mistress," she said. "We can help one another. My workroom is on the top level, so go on there if you will." Ilna counted the floors absently with quick knots in her fabric, one and one and one and finally one more; the fingers of one hand, four. Not only was Brincisa's house made of different material from the rest of Gaur, it was taller. The molded plaques set into the brickwork over windows were too ornate for Ilna's taste, but she had to admit that theywere tasteful. Each floor had a central hall with doors set around it.

There was only one door on the uppermost hallway, closed like the others. Ilna stopped beside it and waited for the others to join her.

Brincisa touched the panel; an unseen latch clicked and the door swung open. "Enter, mistress," she said. "And you may enter as well, Master Ingens; but remember your place." The secretary nodded. His face was tight, but he successfully hid whichever emotions were affecting him.

Save for the hall and staircase, the upper floor was a single high room lighted through a ceiling covered with slats of mica; it cast a faintly bluish shimmer over everything. The walls were frescoed with a base color of fresh cream. Roundels of green and gold framed the doorway and alcoves-there were no windows-and sea creatures swam in the upper registers. Ilna stopped just inside the door when she felt sand scrunch under the soles of her bare feet. She looked down. What she'd thought was a gray pavement was instead a thin layer of ground pumice, brushed over tightly fitting slabs of pale marble. She looked at Brincisa. "For my art, mistress," Brincisa said. "So that the incantations don't leave residues to interfere with later work. Don't worry-the grit won't follow you out of the room." Ilna sniffed.

"You're wrong that they don't leave traces," she said. "But it's no matter to me." Ingens followed the women inside; the door closed behind him, though it hadn't been touched by anything Ilna saw. The secretary clasped his hands before him; he turned his head slowly to look around, but his body was as stiff and straight as if he'd been tied to a stake. Brincisa's earlier spellsdid leave signs despite the care with which the sand had been raked, but the fact Ilna could see a pattern remaining didn't mean it was of significance even to the powers on which the universe turned. She'd really been slapping back at Brincisa for her assumption that Ilna was afraid to get her feet dirty. Brincisa obviously insulated herself from the realities of life even in this considerable town; she couldn't possibly imagine the muck of a farming hamlet. Which raised another question… "Mistress?"

Ilna said. "You came here from another place, did you not?" "I will not discuss the place we came from!" Brincisa said. She was noticeably angry, but Ilna thought she also heard fear. "That has nothing to do with anyone but me and Hutton, and now with me alone!" "Yes," said Ilna, silently pleased to have gotten through the other woman's reserve. "But the reason you came here concerns me, since I'm here as well. And-" She smiled faintly to keep the next words from being a direct accusation. "-I came here in a way that concerns me a great deal." Brincisa made a sour face and nodded in apology. "Yes, of course," she said. "As I'm sure you've guessed, Ortran is a nexus of great power now, but the island of fisherman that existed in your former universe was just the reverse. It repelled the use of the arts.

At the Change that, thatvacuum so to speak, drew Gaur and its immediate surroundings into this present." Ilna thought over what she'd just been told. She hadn't noticed any difficulty in seeing off the troublesome fishermen, but she hadn't knotted a very complicated pattern either. Regardless, Brincisa had answered her question in a direct, perfectly believable fashion. "All right," she said. "What is it that you want from me?" For the first time since she'd entered the room, Ilna took the time to look at its furnishings. A stuffed sea wolf hung from the ceiling, a young female no longer than an outstretched arm. Some of the beasts stretched as much as three double-paces from jaws filled with conical teeth to the tip of the flat, oar-like tail. Not far from the lizard was a series of silver rings around a common center, each with a gold bead somewhere on the circle. Ilna must've frowned in question, for Brincisa said, "An orrery. You can adjust it to show the relative positions of all the bodies in the firmament." Ilna didn't know what "the firmament" was, let alone what "the bodies" were. She supposed it didn't matter. Brick pillars projecting into the room to support the roof. On the lower floors the alcoves were probably pierced for windows, but in this workroom the walls were solid; the spaces were filled with bookshelves and racks for scrolls. On one end of the long room was an earthenware sarcophagus molded in the shape of a plump woman who smiled in painted idiocy. On the other was a skeleton upright in a wooden cabinet-Ilna couldn't tell how it was fastened; it seemed to be standing normally-and a soapstone tub holding a corpse whose flesh lay brown and waxy over the bones. The items were more impressive examples of the trappings of the charlatans who came through the borough periodically, their paraphernalia carried on the backs of wasted mules. Brincisa, whatever else she might be, was not a charlatan. "My husband Hutton and I came to Gaur seventeen years ago," Brincisa said.