Jo Clayton: A Gathering Of Stones

She went out, walked through rooms filled with morning light, swept and garnished by one of the sprites that took care of the island, the one they called Housewraith. The kitchen was a large bright room at the back. She pulled open one of the drawers and took out a paring knife. She set the blade on her wrist. It was so sharp its weight was enough to push the edge a short way through her flesh; when she lifted the knife, she saw a fine red line drawn across the porcelain pallor of her skin. She put the knife down. It wasn’t time yet. She wasn’t tired enough of living to endure the pain of dying. Boredom… no, that wasn’t enough, not yet.

She set the knife on the work table and drew her thumb along the shallow cut, wiping away the blood. The cut stung and oozed more blood. Rubbing her wrist absently against the side of her breast, she wandered outside, shivering as the frosty morning breeze hit her skin. For a moment she thought of going inside and putting on a robe, but she wasn’t bothered enough to make the effort. She looked at her wrist; the cut was clotted over; the blood seepage had stopped.

Ignoring the bite of dew that felt like snowmelt on her bare feet, she walked down the long grassy slope to the water and stood at the edge of the small beach listening to the saltwater lap lazily at the sand and gazing across the narrow strait to a nearby island, a high rocky thing sculpted by wind and water into an abstract pillar, barren except for a few gray and orange lichens. All the islands around Jal Virri were like that; it was as if the lovely green isle had drawn the life out of them and spent it on itself. Arms huddled across her breasts, hands shaking though they were closed tight about her biceps, her feet blocks of ice with smears of black soil and scraps of grass pasted on them, she watched the dark water come and go until she couldn’t stand the cold any longer. It’s time we went to Kukurul again, Maks and me, or me alone, if he won’t come. She stood quite still for a breath or two. I don’t think I’m coming back. I don’t know what it is I’m going to do, but I can’t vegetate here any longer. She turned and walked back toward the house. I’ve been sleeping and now I’m awake. I never could stay in bed once I woke up.

“Hoist it, Maksi.” She jerked the covers off him, slapped him on a meaty buttock. “Wake up, you bonelazy magicman, I need you.”

He grunted and cracked an eye. “Go ‘way.”

“Uh-uh, baby. You’ve slept long enough for ten your size. Pop me to Kukurul, luv. I woke up wanting.” He closed the eye. “Take the boat.”

She took his earlobe instead and pinched hard.

“Ow! Stop that.” He grabbed for her arm, but she jumped out of reach. “Witch!”

“If I were, I wouldn’t need you.”

He groaned and sat up. “You don’t need ine.”

“Come on, Maksi. Housewraith decided to make breakfast this morning. It’s spelled to wait, but I’m hungry. I’ll take the boat all right, but I want you with me.”

He shoved tangled hair off his face and looked shrewdly at her. “What is it, Bramble? Something’s eating at you.”

“No soulsearching before breakfast, if you please. I’ve run your bath for you, I’ve had mine already. I’ll wait twenty minutes no more, so it’s your fault if your eggs are cold.”

The fire crackled briskly behind the screen; the heavy silk drapes were pulled back to let in the morning sun. Brann paced back and forth, her body cutting through the beams, her shadow jerking erratically over the furniture. She swung round, scowled at Maksim. “Well?”

“Of course I’ll go with you. Matter of fact, I’ve been thinking for several days now it’s time for another visit.” He rubbed his hand across his chin. “What’s itching at you, Bramble-all-thorns?”

“The usual thing. What else could there be?” She turned her back on him and stared out the window.

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh you.”

“Me.”

She moved her right arm in a shapeless, meaningless gesture; she started to speak, stopped, tried again, had even less luck finding words for what she wanted to say; the trouble was, she didn’t know what she wanted to say. “I’m useless. There’s nothing to do here.” She turned round, hitched a hip on the windowsill. “Nothing real.” She lifted her hands, let them fall. “I don’t know, Maksi. There’s no point to anything. Nothing I try… works. I tried potting, you know that, you shaped my kiln for me. It was horrible. Everything I did… mediocre… bleah! At Shaynamoshu I was content a hundred years. Happy. Here…? I paint a pretty flower, don’t I. Dew on the petals, pollen on the stamens, you can see every grain. Lovely, right? Horrible. A dead slug has more soul. Useless, Maksi. Out to pasture like a broke-down mare. Even the damn gods don’t need me anymore. Maybe I should go to Silili with you and give Old Tungjii a boot in the behind. Maybe something would come of that.”

“It probably would. I doubt you’d be pleased with whatever it was.”

“Pleased? That doesn’t matter. It’d be something to do. Some reason to get out of bed in the morning. To keep on living. You know what I’m talking about; you’re restless too, magicman.”

“Brann, I…”

“No. You don’t need to say it. I know what’s going to happen. You’ll go to Silili to see your protege through her Passage Rite and you won’t come back. Why should you?”

“Thornlet, come with me.” He lay back in his chair and laughed at her and let his voice boom out, dark velvet rubbing her bones. “Come wandering with me and see the world. Sure somewhere there’s a prince who needs his bottom whacked, a lord to be taught his manners, a bully who needs his pride punctured. Let us go out and do good, no matter how much chaos we leave behind us.”

“Ah Maksi m’luv, you’re such a fraud, you evil old sorceror, you bleed at a touch and put yourself to endless inconvenience. I don’t know. Maybe we just need some hard living for a while so we can appreciate peace again.

Anyway, let’s scratch our ordinary itches and see what comes of that.”

Kukurul. The place where seapaths cross. The pivot of the four winds. If you sit long enough at one of the plaza tables of the cafй Sidday Lir, it’s said you’ll see the whole world file past you. Kukurul. Expensive, gaudy, secretive and corrupt. Its housefronts are full of windows with screens behind them like the eyes of Kukrulese. Along the Ihman Katt are brothels for every taste, ranks of houses where assassin guilds advertise men of the knife, women of the poison cup; halfway up the Katt there’s a narrow black building where deathrites are practiced for the titillation of the connoisseurs, open to participation or solitary enjoyment. At the end of the Ihman Katt is the true heart of Kukurul, the Great Market, a paved square two miles on a side where everything is on sale but heat, sweat, and stench. Those last are free.

Brann patted at her face with a square of fine linen, removing some of the dust and sweat that clung to her skin. It was one of those fine hot airless days that early autumn sometimes threw up and the Market was a hellhole, though few of the shoppers or the shopkeepers seemed to notice it. She pushed the kerchief up her sleeve and lifted a graceful vase. Eggshell porcelain with an unusual glaze. She frowned and ran her fingertips repeatedly over the smooth sides. Unless she was losing her mind, she knew that glaze. Her father’s secret mix and Slya’s Breath, never one without the other. At Shaynamoshu she’d tried again and again to get that underglow, but it was impossible without the Breath. She examined the lines and the underpainting. It wasn’t her father’s work or that of any of his apprentices, but there was something there… the illusive similarity of cousins perhaps. Biting at her lower lip, she upended the vase and inspected the maker’s mark. A triangle above an oval, Arth Slya’s sigil. The glyph Tayn. The glyph Nor. These were the potter’s seal. Tannor of Arth Slya. She carried the vase to the Counting Table. “Arth Slya is producing again?”