Jo Clayton - Blue Magic

Kheren bowed with heavy dignity. “Your Graciousness.” He shooed the Dreeps out of the room and locked the door after them.

With a wavery sigh Braun set the knife back on the bedtable, ran shaking fingers through the duckfeather curls fluffing about her head. She grinned at Jaril as he shifted back to boy and sat cross-legged on the bed. “Give them a minute more, then see what they’re doing.”

Jaril nodded. He slid off the bed, blurred into a gold shimmersphere and oozed out through the door. The young thief sat up, raised his brows. “Nice trick, wish I could do it.”

“He’ll warn us if the Dreeps start this way. What got you in this mess?”

“Bad luck and stupidity.”

She laughed. “That’s a broad streak of honesty there, better watch it, um… I’ll call you Tua after your grandfather. Tua, my friend, it’ll be an hour or two before you can move on, pass a little of it telling me your troubles. I might be some help. I’m inclined to be, for your grandfather’s sake. Or out of boredom. Or from general dislike of Dreeps. ‘Fake your pick and tell your tale.”

He rubbed his hands together, slowly, his light eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“Why not.”

“Hmm. I expect there’s not much point in shamming it. Here’s how it was. About a week ago an hour or two before dawn, I was… mmm… drifting along Way-gang street, do you know Halinun, ah!-he slapped his cheek, clicked his tongue, “I forgot who you are, you’ve been walking the ways here since before my mother was even born, where was I, yes, Waygang Street on the Hill end where the highclass Assignation Houses are, I’d been tickling a maid in one of those Houses,” he shrugged, “you get the idea. I was seeing if I could fox the patrols and get inside without being nailed. I thought old Tungjii was perching on my shoulder when I made it as easy as breathing. Ten, eleven patrons were sleeping over, I went through their gear and teased open the locks on the abdits, you know, the lockholes in the walls where they generally put their purses and the best jewelry. What with one thing and another, it was a good haul for an hour’s work. What I didn’t know was one of those patrons was a sorceror. He had this bad dream-smoke habit, he’d stopped over in Jade Halimm to indulge it and was using the House as a safe bed for his binge. The room had that sour stink you don’t forget once you’ve smelled it so I knew the man wasn’t going to wake on me, the House could’ve burned down and he wouldn’t wake. I got his purse, shuh, it was heavy. I almost didn’t bother with the abdit, but I was stupid and I got greedy and I found this crystal egg in a jeweled case ,and I took it. Wasn’t anything else in the abdit. Another thing, that stinking smoke made my nose itch and clog up, so I blew it. I used my fingers and wiped them on one of the sheets. Baaad mistake. Well, I didn’t know it then. I finished up and slid out and it was easy as breathing again. I cached the gold, you don’t want to walk in on… um… I think I won’t say the name… someone with gold in your boot, he’d have it out before you opened your mouth to say what. I sold the rings and that egg to someone, got about what I expected, maybe a quarter what the stuff was worth. He passed the egg on less than three hours after he got it. I found that out later. Me, soon as I was rid of the dangerous stuff, I went… um… someplace and crawled into bed, I was tired. Everything was fine, far as I knew. Stayed fine all the time I was sleeping. I woke hungry and went to get something to eat. I was in the middle of a bowl of noodles when my insides started twitching. Didn’t hurt, not then, just felt peculiar. I stopped eating. The twitches stopped. It was that cookshop down by Sailor’s Gamehouse. I decided Shem who ran it got into some bad oil, so I went into Sailor’s figuring I could afford his cook for once. I got about halfway through some plum chicken when the twitches started again. This time I ignored them and finished the chicken, it cost too much to waste. The twitching went away. I though, Oh. I went out. It was getting dark. There was a girl I knew. She’s a dancer mostly, she has her courtesan’s license so she doesn’t have to go with anyone she doesn’t like. I thought about going to see her. I even started walking toward the piers, she worked on a boat, I got a couple steps on the way when the worst pain I ever felt hit me. It was like redhot pincers stabbing into my liver and twisting. And a word exploded in my head. It was a minute before I could sort myself out enough to know what the word was. Come. I heard it again. Come. I didn’t know what was happening to me. Come. Everyone thought I was having fits. Come. The pain went away a little. The voice got quieter. Come. I came. That’s when I found out the man I stole the egg from was a sorceror. He wanted the egg back. He wanted it back so bad, he told me what he did to me to get me there was a catlick to what would happen to me if I didn’t bring it to him. I told him I’d already got rid of it, sold it to a fence and I didn’t have any way of knowing what he did with it. He thought about that, then he asked me who the fence was. I didn’t want to tell him but a couple twinges later I decided that… um… someone wasn’t a man I felt like dying for. I told him who the fence was and where to find him. He made me come kneel at his feet, then he did something I don’t know what and there was this tiger-man in the middle of the room. He talked to the tiger-man, I don’t know what he said, it was some sort of magic gabble I suppose. The tigerman disappeared pop like he was a candleflame blown out. He came back the same way but this time he had the fence with him. The fence didn’t want to say what he did with the egg. The tigerman played with him a little. So he dug in his memory, didn’t have to dig far but he made a long dance out of it, and came up with the name of the highmerchant Jizo Gozit. The sorceror told him if he said a word about this to anyone he’d start rotting slowly, his parts would fall off and his fingers and his toes and his tongue would rot in his mouth and his eyes would rot in his head and to show he meant it he rotted off the fence’s little finger, we could see the flesh melt and fall away from the bones. Then the sorceror told him to go home and he went. The tigerman went away. There was just me left. I don’t know why he didn’t send the tigerman after the egg, I’ve got an idea, though, something I came up with later. Maybe it’s like this, he was going to start on his binge, but he didn’t want anyone getting at him when he wasn’t up to protecting himself so he put his two souls into that egg and locked it up and here I come along and go off with it. And he didn’t send the tiger-man for it or do any fishing about for it because he didn’t want to give away where his souls were and he for sure wasn’t about to let any demon get that close to them. He gave me five days to get it back, or I’d start hurting a lot. That was four days ago. So you know what I was doing. Those highmerchants, most thieves don’t even try their houses, I mean even the best we got in Jade Halimm don’t bother with that quarter. I was lucky to stay loose enough to reach the wall ahead of the Dreeps and their hounds.” He slid off the bed and went to the window, lifted the bar and eased the righthand shutter open about an inch so he could see the sky. “Looks to me like I’ve got a couple hours of dark left. Maybe if I went right back, they wouldn’t be expecting me and might’ve let down their guard some. My hood, it’s in the bed somewhere, ask the changer if she’ll fish it out, then I’m for the wall and Jizo’s House and you’re rid of me.”

“Mmm, give me a minute to think.” She passed her hand over her head, smoothing down the fine white halfcurls. “Sorceror… there are a lot of idiots who fool around with magic of one kind or another… uhhhm, how sure are you that man really is a sorceror?”