Jo Clayton: Wild Magic

“You don’t know what happened, Rey. Don’t judge until you do.”

Too twitchy to stay still, he went striding about the roof, fidgeting with this and that. He stroked the leaves of the white cadenthas growing as tall as he in their huge ceramic pots, shifting the mafui-flowers in their altar vases, nipping off crimson trumpets that were beginning to wilt as the morning faded.

Faan wriggled off the longchair and trotted after him, like a puppy who couldn’t bear to leave her master. She patted the dark, heart-shaped leaves on the lower branches, squatted, collected the discarded flowers, piled them neatly beside one of altar table’s legs.

He checked the water in the bee dish before the altar hive, walked away and began following the fence around the edge of the roof, peering through the peepholes carved into the poles.

“Subarin hasn’t taken her sheets in yet; she’s been sick, think we ought to give her a call? Or is her man still saying he won’t see us or an abasoa kasso either? Potzhead.” He didn’t wait for an answer but shifted to the next hole. “Sailors snoring outside Emaur’s Mule-house. Two, three, five of them. Somebody better go boot them up or… ah, there’s the Shinda guard, they’ll haul the mutts back where they belong, at least they’re good for that.”

Faan stood back, hands on hips watching the bees fly, then scurried along a step or two behind him, shying away from the looming tank of the cistern, and stood close beside him when he made his brittle nervous comments.

When Reyna reached the door, he swung round, set his shoulders against the panels; Faan swung round and set her back against the brick of the parapet.

“Chez wants coin and a bottle of the red for his woman. To forget what he saw. You mind watching the baby, or should I take her down to Pan?”

“Leave her here. She won’t be a bother.” Tai’s smile faded. “Rey…”

Reyna drummed his fingers on the door. “It’s what I told you, Kassian.”

Faan tried to drum hers on the brick, but her hands weren’t coordinated enough yet to manage it.

“This time.”

“We’ve had this before. I need to relax, Kassian. I can quit any time I want, but I don’t want to, not now. Sometimes it’s… I need to forget for a while.”

“Rey, you know you don’t have to…”

“So? Who’d hire a Salagaum? We need the bribe money to keep the House, we have to have water from the Shinda Cisterns-you want to chance the River?” He moved his shoulders impatiently.

Hearing the anger in his voice, Faan crept closer, clutched at his robe, and pressed herself against his leg.

“Or charge for your services? How much do we squeeze from a woman with a flux or a baby who can’t breathe?” He dropped into street speech as he flew back to the bad days after his father drove him out; impatiently he shook off Faan, went striding back and forth, his soles slapping loudly on the tiles, his hands jerking through broad, angular gestures. “Starvin, tsah! I KNOW it. You took me off streets, bones out m’ skin and so poxy I coon’t potz straight. Owe y’, diyo I KNOW it. Owe y’, zazi Ma.” He stopped his lope, swung to face her, arms flung wide. “I LIKE living good. I LIKE loving. Most the time. Bhagg-jag-I NEED it for the other times.” He sighed, dropped his arms. “Anyway, I’m not going to the gatt for a buy, just a bribe to keep that sleaze from selling news of Faan.”

Tai pressed her lips together, scowled unhappily at the tiles, but when she spoke, she’d set the old quarrel aside. “Did he get a good look at her?”

Reyna’s shoulders sagged, his anger burnt to ash. “Good enough, I’m afraid.”

‘Ibo bad she’s such a pretty thing. hmm. We’ve got to have papers if we’re going to keep her, even if it’s only for a short while. Juvaigrim could do that for you, couldn’t he?”

“Diyo. But that’s touchy.” Reyna rubbed at his eyes, lifted the hair off his neck so a breath of air could reach the sweaty skin. “If the Maulapam were forced to take notice of us…” He let the braids fall, moved back to the door and Faan. “The laws and the times being what they are,” he said wearily, “it’d be difficult for him to refuse if I started asking him favors. And dangerous for me, because he’s not a man to stand for blackmail.”

“Then you make sure he knows it’s not.” Thi sat up, pulled her hair over her shoulders; she closed her book, laid it aside and began rubbing strands of hair between her palms, squeezing the wet out. When she looked round again, Reyna was bending down, touching Faan’s black hair with his fingertips, his face gone peaceful. Tai grimaced. “If the Manassoa find out about her, you’ll lose her fast; you know how rabid all of them are against the Salagaum and us heretics. Giza Kutakich…” she wrinkled her long nose, “he’s the worst of a bad lot. Nearly had me burned for a witch.”

Reyna straightened. “What? I didn’t know that.”

“Before you were born. Just after I came here.” She laughed, a soft burring at the back of her throat. “He got his nose singed in that one. Forgot who my brother is. That little slip in tact keeps him stuck in Bairroa; he can’t get to Corasso no matter how he yearns for it.” She got to her feet, crossed to the fence and dropped on her knees beside Faan, held out her hand and smiled when Faan reached over timidly to touch it. “Diyo, honeylove, it’s dark dark. I’m night and you’re only twilight.” She looked up, clicked her tongue. “Go, go. You know how fast rumor runs through the Edge.”

Reyna washed off eye paint and lip rouge, changed into the clothes he wore when discretion was demanded, a loose shirt, tight trousers, a long sleeveless jacket to further -conceal the breasts he usually carried with pride but bound down now. He kicked off his sandals, pulled on a pair of hightop boots, tugged the braids harshly back from his face, locked them at the base of his neck into a wooden clasp carved with the sigil of the Fundarim caste. It was his by birthright, though his family had disowned him and denied him when his breasts started growing.

He inspected himself in the full length mirror that was his most expensive possession, sighed, and went out.

Inconspicuous in his trousers and drab jacket, he walked up the Sokajarua, threading through the throng of buyers and sellers, then made his way through the maze of booths and tables in the Sok Circle, the heaps of goods piled on grass mats. He went past the Joyhouses he knew so well, the shops and manufacturies, until he reached the kariam he sought, one of the spokes that ra “atEd from the Sok through the outer city, across the Lesser Ring Road that marked the boundary between the, Biasharam, and Cheoshim districts, to the Greater Ring Road that connected the city estates of the Maulapam.

He turned into Kariam Moranga, walked along in the shadow of the Biashar towers, concrete monsters ten stories high, raised from the ground on iron pillars and iron arches, with iron lattices filling the window openings.

There were shadowy gardens under the arches, some of them with bee altars hidden away in bowers, women’s gardens with fountains at their centers where the sun could touch them each nooning, slipping down through the hollow towers, fountains hidden away from those who walked the kariams by kichidawa hedges with thick clusters of dark green leaves and shining silvery thorns the length of a man’s middle finger; the whisper of the unseen water was cool and sweetly seductive.

He crossed the Lesser Ring Road, continued along the Kariam Moranga. Outer Moranga now. On both sides of him rose the great red towers of the Cheoshim. Like the merchant’s dwellings, these apartments built in a rising spiral rested on iron arches and iron pillars, but there were no gardens here. The red stone facades had iron lace set into them, endless repetitions of the warrior sigil wrought and riveted by Fundarim ironmasters. On the beaten earth of the Tbwer grounds Cheoshim youths were marching and training, riding in formation, shooting their bows on command. Cheoshim warriors protected the Armrapake, his household, the Maulapam and themselves, but mostly they raided neighboring lands for slaves. At least a third of the slaves in Bairroa Pili came from these raids and they collected a hefty suborrush (half the head-price) on all the rest. This was the chief source of their wealth.