Jo Clayton: A Gathering Of Stones

“Ah. I shall have to see them. Tonight, Jasti?”

“It would have to be, this is their last performance here. I bespoke tickets, Maksi, do you mind? They’re very popular, you know. I had to pull all sorts of strings to get these seats. They’re a gold apiece, is that too much? They’re really worth it.”

“No doubt they are.” Maksim cleared his throat; he regretted the sarcastic tone of the words; he knew Jastouk wouldn’t like it. “I’m looking forward to seeing them perform.”

They turned into the Ihman Katt and strolled toward the harbor. The broad street was crowded with porters and merchants coming up from the wharves, with other strollers, visitors who meant to sample the pleasures of Kukurul before getting down to serious buying and selling; a few like Maksim and Jastouk were heading for the cafй Sidday Lir and noon tea or a light lunch and lighter gossip.

A line of slaves on a neck coffle came shuffling along the Katt. Maksim’s eyes grazed over them. He started to look away as soon as he realized what they were, then he saw the being at the tail of the line, separate from the others, tugged along on a lease like some bad-tempered dog. It was Todichi Yahzi, his once-amanuensis.

Maksim felt a jolt to his belly. Guilt flooded through him, choked him. He’d dismissed the little creature from his mind so completely he hadn’t thought of him once during the past ten years. Gods of time and fate, he thought, not an instant’s thought. Nothing! He’d snatched the kwitur from his home reality, used him and discarded him with as little consideration as any of the kings he so despised. He couldn’t even comfort himself with the notion that he’d assumed Yahzi had got home; the trigger he’d left with the kwitur only worked if he, Maksim, died. He hadn’t assumed anything because he hadn’t bothered to remember the being who’d spent almost every waking hour with him for nearly twenty years. He saw the collar on Todichi Yahzi’s neck, the chain that tethered him to the whipmaster’s belt. He saw the lumps and weals that clubs and whips had laid on his almost-friend’s hide; he saw the hunched, cringing shuffle, the sudden blaze of rage in the deep set dull eyes as they met his. Todichi’s body read like a book of shame, but despite the abuse he’d suffered, he was as alert, intelligent and intransigent as he’d been when he lived in the Citadel.

After that brief involuntary lurch, Maksim walked on. He knew Jastouk had noted his reaction and would be wondering why such a commonplace sight as a string of slaves would bother him so much. That couldn’t be helped. He looked around. They were passing a tiny temple dedicated to Pindatung the god of thieves and pickpockets, a scruffy gray-mouse sort of god with a closet-sized niche for a temple. He stopped. “Jasti, go ahead and get us a table. I’ll want tea, berries, and cream. I’ll be along in a minute.”

Jastouk touched Maksim’s shoulder. For a moment he seemed about to offer what help he could give, but in the end opted for tact. “Don’t be long, hmm?”

“I won’t. It’s something I’d forgotten that I’ve got to take care of. Only be a few minutes. Don’t fuss, luv.”

Jastouk pressed his lips together; he didn’t like it when Maksim either deliberately or unconsciously echoed Brann’s manner of speech, but he said nothing.

Ruefully aware of offending, quite aware of where the offense lay, Maksim watched the hetairo saunter off. Shaking his head, he slipped into the templet and settled onto the tattered cushions scattered across a wallbench. He slid his hand into his robe and took out his farseeing mirror. He’d made it to keep watch on Brann so he could help her if she needed him, but he had a more urgent use for it now. It was an oval of polished obsidian in a plaited ring of Brann’s hair, white as a spider’s web and as delicate. The cable it hung from he’d twisted from a strand of his own hair. He breathed on it, rubbed his cuff over it, sat holding it for several moments. What he was going to do was a very minor magic; there was even a good chance that the Guardians hired by the Managers wouldn’t notice it. If they did, he might be booted out of Kukurul and forbidden to return. He scrubbed his hand across his face. He was sweating and angry at himself, angry at Todichi Yahzi for showing up and making him feel a lout, angry at Fate in all her presentations including Tungjii Luck.

Impatiently he pushed such considerations aside and bent over the mirror, his lips moving in a subvocal chant. He set the slave coffle into the image field, along with the agent and his whipmaster, followed the shuffling string to the Auction House on the edge of the Great Market and into the slavepens behind it. He pointed the mirror at the agent and followed him into the office of his employer, watched and listened as the agent made his report, the slaver made his arrangements for the sale of the string. Three days on. Maksim let the mirror drop, canceling the spell on it, and spent a moment longer wondering if he should bid for himself or employ an agent. Shaking his head, he stood and slipped the mirror back beneath his robes. He thrust two fingers into his belt purse, fished out a coin and tossed it in the bowl beneath the crude statue of the little gray god. “In thanksfor the use of your premises,” he murmured and went out.

He stood a moment looking down the Ihman Katt toward the cafd Sidday Lir where Jastouk waited for him. I am sadly diminished, he thought. From tyrant and demiurge I have descended to merely lover and bought-love at that. Poor old Todich. There’s nothing grand in hating a little man. He started walking, chuckling to himself at the image the words evoked.

Maksim dressed with great care, choosing a good gray robe meant to present the image of a man moderately in coin and moderate in most other things, a third rank sorceror who could defend himself but wasn’t much of a threat. He dressed his long hair in a high knot, had Jastouk paint it with holding gel until it gleamed like black-streaked pewter, then he thrust plain silver skewers through the knot. He loaded his fingers with rings. Quiet, moderate rings. He was a man it was safe to gull a little, but dangerous to irritate too much.

He finished buffing his nails, inspected them closely, dropped his hands into his lap. “Slave auction,” he said. “Jasti, don’t come. You don’t want to see that place. Or smell it.”

Jastouk smiled and took his buffer back, replaced it in his dressing kit. “The sun shines all the brighter for a cloud or two.”

Snorting his irritation, Maksim got to his feet. He didn’t want Jastouk along, but the hetairo had evaded him all morning, refusing to hear what he didn’t mean to hear. He could order him to stay away, but he didn’t dare go that far. Should he demand obedience, Jastouk would obey-and when Maksim got back to his rooms, he’d find Vechakek waiting with a graceful note of farewell and a bill for the hetairo’s services. He wasn’t ready for that, not yet. He knew he could easily find other company, but he wanted Jastouk. The hetairo excited him. Jastouk carried an aura of free-floating promise undefined but exquisitely seductive. Maksim didn’t fool himself, it was part of a hetairo’s portfolio, that promise never fulfilled, never denied so that hope lingered even after the sundering: Someday someway 1 will find what I want, someday someway 1 will KNOW what I want. It wasn’t Jastouk and it was, it wasn’t Brann and it was, he didn’t know what it was.

The slavepens were a vast complex growing like mold over the hills south of the Great Market, apart from it, yet part of it, deplored by the genteel of Kukurul but patronized by them along with others who didn’t bother about the moral issues involved. The shyer visitors rented thin lacquer halfmasks from the dispensary just inside the portal, beast mask, bird, fantasy or abstraction, a face to show instead of the faces they wore in more respectable circumstances; the bold put on masks for the whimsy of the act or played to their vanity by separating themselves from the nameless troglodytes who bought drudges for kitchens and stables or selected more delicate fruit for the pleasure Houses. Despite a compulsive overdecoration in all the more public areas, the pens were a meld of stench and ugliness. That didn’t matter, those who came to buy didn’t notice the ugliness and ignored the wisps of stink that cut through the incense drifting about the private views and the auction room.