Jo Clayton - Blue Magic

“Go to bed, Todich, you’ve done more than enough for tonight. I’ve got to think.” Todichi Yahzi looked disapproving, pressed his lips tight as if he were holding back the scarifying scold he wanted to give. Maksim chuckled, a deep burring that seemed to rise from his heels and roll out of his throat. He stretched mightily, yawned. “But not tonight, old friend, tonight I sleep. Go go. Tomorrow I’ll be working you so hard you won’t have time to breathe. Go.”

Unable to sleep though he knew he should, Maksim pulled a cloak about his shoulders, looked down at the naked legs protruding dark and stately from his nightshirt, laughed and shook his head. “Be damned to dignity.” He snapped to the high ramparts and stood looking down over his city.

Clouds were blowing up out of the west and the moon was longgone, it was very dark. Silagamatys was a nubbly black rug spread out across the hills, decorated here and there with splotches and pimples of lamplight and torchfire except near the waterfront where the tavern torches lit the thready fog into a muted sunset glow. The Godalau floated in the bay’s black water, moving in and out of the fog, her translucent body lit from within, Tungjii riding black and solid on her massive flank. She drifted past Deadfire Island, a barren heap of stone out near the harbor’s mouth; her internal illumination brushed a ghostly gray glimmer over its basalt slopes. She passed on, taking her glimmer with her and Deadfire was once more a shadow lost in shadows. Maksim leaned on the parapet, looking thoughtfully at the black absence. I let them leave my city and I lost them. Mmm. Might have lost them anyway and half the city with them. Deadfire, Deadfire… yes, I think so. He laughed softly, savoring the words. Live and die on Deadfire, I live you die, Drinker of Souls and you, Danny Blue. Let the Godalau swim and Tungjii gibber, they can’t reach me there, and your Chained God, hah! Brann oh Brann, sweet vampire lass, don’t count on him to help. The stone reeks of me, it’s mine, step on it and it will swallow you. He reached through the neckslit of the nightshirt and smoothed his hand across BinYAHtii. You too, eh? Old stone, that’s your stone too, you’ve fed it blood and bones. There’s nothing they’ve got that can match us… mmm… except those changers, I’ll have to put my mind to them. Send them home? Send them somewhere, yesss, that’s it, if they’re not here, they’re no problem. He stroked BinYAHtii. It might take Amortis to throw them out, Forty Mortal Hells, the Fates forfend, I’d have to figure a way to implant a spine in her. He gazed down at the city with an unsentimental fiercely protective almost maternal love. Blood of his blood, bone of his bone, his unknown M’darjin father had no part in him beyond the superficial gifts of height and color, his mother and Silagamatys had the making of him. Amortis! may her souls if she’s got them rot in Gehannum’s deepest hell for what she’s done to you my city. To you and to me. If I did not still need her… He shivered and pulled his cloak closer about his body. The rising waterheavy wind bit to the bone. Out in the bay the Godalau once more drifted past Deadfire. Maksim pushed away the long coarse hair that was whipping into his mouth and eyes. That’s it, then. We meet on Deadfire, Drinker of Souls, Danny Blue. Four more days. That’s it. He shivered. So I’d better get some sleep, I’ve underestimated the three now two of you before, I won’t do it again.

They reached the Plain by midmorning, emerging from a last wave of brushy, arid foothills into a land lushly green, intensely cultivated, webbed between its several rivers by a network of canals that provided irrigation water for the fields and most of the transport for produce and people. Braun and Danny Blue rode side by side, neither acknowledging the presence of the other, an unbroken tension between them as threatening as the unbroken storm hanging overhead. The changers flew in circles under the lowering clouds, probing with their telescopic raptor’s eyes for signs that Settsimaksimin was attacking, signs that held off like the storm was holding off.

The day ground on.The hilltrack had turned into a narrow dirt road that hugged the riverbank, a dusty rutted weed-grown road little used by anything but straying livestock. Out in the river’s main channel flatboats moved past them, square sails bellied taut, filled with the heavy wind that pushed them faster than the current would. Little dark men on those boats (hostility thick on dark skin, glistening like a coat of grease on a kisso wrestler’s arms and torso) glared at them out of hate-filled dark eyes. In the fields beside the road and the fields across the river landfolk worked at the harvest, men, women, children. Like the boatmen they stopped what they were doing, even those far across the river, and turned to glower at the riders.

The hangfire storm continued to hover, the storm smell was strong in the air. Whether it was that or the hate rolling at them from every side, by nightfall the mules were as skittish as highbred horses and considerably more balky. Yaril and Jaril vanished for a while, came back jittery as the mules; they flitted about overhead long after Brann and Danny Blue stopped for the night, camping in a grove of Xuthro redleaves that whispered around them and sprayed them with pungent medicinal odors as the heat of the campfire lifted into the lower branches.

Danny Blue rested his teamug on his knee and cleared his throat. Brann gave him no encouragement. A catface came into the light, crystal eyes flashing a brilliant red, the cat stared at him for an uncomfortably long time, then withdrew into the darkness; he couldn’t forget it was out there not one minute and while that was comforting in one way, in another it turned his throat dry thinking about the changers pacing and pacing in their sentry rounds, feral fearsome beasts angry at the world in general and at him in particular. He gazed across the fire at Brann who was in her way quite as lethal. “I’m sorry about last night,” he said.

She nodded, accepting his apology without commenting on it.

“I do fine,” he said, “as long as it’s the rational side of me called up. Or the technical side. Doesn’t matter who’s running the show, Akamarino or Ahzurdan or me.

It’s emotions that screw me up, ah, confuse me. Ah, this isn’t easy to talk about…”

She looked coolly at him as if to say why bother then, looked down at her hands without saying anything.

Anger flared in him, but he shoved it down and kept control, him, Danny Blue the New, not either of his clamoring progenitors. “When it’s strong emotions, well, Daniel avoided them most of his life, couldn’t handle them, which gives Ahzurdan an edge because he played with them all since he was born, anger, you know, lust, frustration, resentment, he’s loved a maid or two, a man or two, been wildly happy and filled with cold despair, too much passion, his skin was too thin, he had to numb himself, dreamsmoke washed out the pain of living, you know all that, you heard all that on the trip here. He has ambivalences about you, Brann, growing all over him like a fungus, I suppose I should say all over me. That’s the problem, I can’t control him when there’s emotion involved. Think about it a minute. How old is Danny Blue? Three weeks, almost four, Bramble-all-thorns…”

Her head came up when she heard the name the changers sometimes gave her. “Don’t call me that.”

“Why not, it suits you.”

“Maybe it does, maybe not. My name is Brann and I’ll tell you when you can call me out of it.” She twisted up onto her knees, touched the side of the teapot, refilled her cup and settled back to her blankets. She sipped briefly at the hot liquid, then sat with her legs drawn up, her arms resting on them, both hands wrapped around the cup as if she needed the warmth from it more than the taste of tea in her mouth. “Do me a favor,” she said, “experiment on someone else.” She gazed at the fire, the animation gone out of her face, her eyes shadowed and dull. After several moments of unhappy silence, she shivered, fetched a smile from somewhere. “You still think you want me when you’ve combed the knots out, I expect I’d be fool enough to try again. At least you already know what I am. What a relief not having to explain things.” She gulped at the tea, shivered again. “Looks like everyone about knows where we’re going and why.”