Jo Clayton: Wild Magic

It pleased Reyna to walk free past these bloodred, phallic towers and mock them secretly with everything he was. He strode along, arms swinging, wanting to whistle his defiance-but that wasn’t prudent. Cheoshim cadets were squatting at the edge of the Grounds, playing dados and jiwa-bufa. They got slowly to their feet as he passed, stood watching him until he left the kariam and stepped onto the Greater Ring Road.

He turned north, walked along beside the thirty-foot stone wall that kept strays away from the Grand Sirmalas of the Maulapam families, the lords in Bairroa Pili who owned every grain of dust and sucked coin in the name of order from everyone, even the scruffiest of drugged-out beggars. Unlike the Biashar merchants and the Cheoshim warriors, who paraded their wealth and power, who liked to strut and intimidate, the Maulapam owned everything but concealed themselves behind walls-walls of stone, walls of secrecy. They were almost never seen. Slaves and servants and resident kassos did their shopping and if they wanted something special, merchants were invited into their gatehouses, though never beyond. The Kassian Tai Wanameh was Maulapam. She didn’t talk much about her early life except once when she said it was boredom to the point of ossification that made her walk away from her House.

The Jiko Sagrada or Holy Way was paved with double-curved tiles of black iron, each of them the length of a man’s palm, nesting curve into curve with plug-bits at the edge to straighten the line. The Jiko went up the mountainside in a leisurely arc, broke into stairs at several points and ended at the Blessing Gate.

Reyna stepped onto the iron tiles and started the long walk up the side of Fogomalin, joining the stream of other suppliants heading for the afternoon presentation of pleas and prayers to the High Kasso Juvalgrim and the council of administrators who served him and Chumavayal in him There were mothers with sick children and well children, shopkeepers with petitions, dockworkers, players, strangers, all of them walking the Iron Way, the Blessed Way, to the Camuctarr, the Temple of Chumavayal, to get papers stamped, judgments made, petitions read, prayers purchased, every need conceivable and probably some beyond conception.

At the first flight of stairs, Reyna passed an old woman who was struggling to carry a baby and use her cane at the same time. He turned back, took the baby from her, tucked it in the curve of his left arm, and gave her his right to cling to. She labored up the seven steps and stood panting and smiling at him, reaching for the baby. “Ahsan, Senho.”

“Nayo, nayo, Zazouivo. I’ll carry the baby for you, if you don’t mind my nose in your business.”

“Oh nayo, friend of the gods, don’t trouble yourself. Your legs are too long for me.”

“I’m in no hurry, Zazou.” He uncovered the baby’s face. A pale face the color of old cream. A slave child with dark straight hair like spines. The old woman was taking a bastard to the foundling wards, part •Cheoshim from the look of the hair. “Is it a girl or a boy?”

“Girlchild, poor thing.”

He nodded. There was nothing he could say to that, it was the hard truth. If the baby were male, he could study for one of the priest orders. An unclaimed girl would be fostered with some Naostam family already overburdened with mouths to feed, where she’d be worked to death or sent to earn her bread on the streets as soon as she was old enough.

He stroked the baby’s soft cheek and felt like weep-ink; that was Faan’s life unless he could protect her. “Does she have a name?”

“No. It’s better not.”

He asked no more questions but bore the weight of the old woman and the baby the rest of the way up the Jiko.

At the Blessing Gate, the old woman took the child back. “Watch over the River’s Gift, good Senho. And receive a grandmother’s blessing…” She took his hand, wrote with her finger in his palm, then went off with the baby up the Mercy Walk.

He stared after her, and wasn’t all that surprised when she melted into the air like fog on a sunny morning. It was Ttmgjii’s sign in the palm of his hand. Tungjii Luck. He passed through the gate, his heart and step suddenly light. Magic child and Tungjii’s blessing. It was a wonder, that’s what it was.

Reyna bent over the cot. Faan was fiercely asleep, her soft mouth working, her hands closed into fists. With his fingertips he gently, carefully, brushed a tangle of black hair out of her eyes and away from her nose, tucked the strands behind her ear. You’re mine, my honey. By law and by love, you’re mine.

He closed his eyes. The past month he’d walked among the traders, asking them about a child with bicolored eyes, getting headshakes and raised brows, but no word of where Faan might have come from; he’d repeated words and phrases she’d spoken, but none of them recognized the language-or admitted to having heard it bdore. With each negative he relaxed a little, though the fear was still there, churning in him, giving him nightmares. If he had to give her up…

He watched her a moment longer, then eased from the dressing room, holding his breath as he pushed past the blanket he’d tacked up to make door for her so he wouldn’t wake her when he came to bed himself and had to light the lamp.

Thank-offering and Evensong. Time to get ready. He pulled a hand across his face, grimaced at the sandpapery sound and feel, sniffed at his armpit and grimaced again. All that running around he’d done, he was ripe. He stripped and shaved, gave himself a sponge bath from the water in the ewer, chanting over and over the Dedication to the Honey Mother until he slid into the calm and muted joy he felt appropriate for Evensong and a Thank rite.

The sun was slipping away without much fuss and evening was settling in, clear and brilliant. The cadenthas were waxy, luminous, white cups glowing against dark stiff leaves. A few late workers from the altar hive hummed about, moving from bloom to bloom; their wings glittered like shards of mica in the light from Areia One-eye’s working candle, their small black bodies shimmered with gold guard hairs.

When Reyna came off the stairs, Areia One-eye was spiking the altar candles onto the kinaries. One was already in place in front of the hive; two others lay beside the squat holders, waiting for her to get to them.

Like the others in the Verakay Beehouse, Areia Moha was one of the Kassian Tai’s rescues. She was about thirteen-that was Tai’s guess, Areia had no idea when she was born, her ex-family didn’t celebrate girl-birthswith the burnt amber skin of a Naostam and tight curl-ing chestnut hair Coming home late one night from tending a new mother with milk fever, Tai blundered into a gang of wild boys who were tormenting Areia; she took her stick to them, chased them off and brought the girl to the Verakay Beehouse for a few nights’ sanctuary. In the end, Areia stayed as her novice and acolyte. She looked around when she heard the door open. “Faan?”

“Sleeping.” He set the cones on the altar beside the candles. “Want me to do the poles?”

“If you will.” Areia One-eye lifted another candle and began pushing it down on a spike. “I didn’t think to look out the incense tray. Perhaps the Kassian will have it when she brings the honey water.”

Reyna twisted the candle into the cup at the top of the pole, made sure it was steady, then set the kinari in the stand. “Your nursing rounds this morning. Any talk about Faan?”

Areia One-eye began trimming the wicks so she could light the candles. “Some.”

“Bad?”

“Some grumbling, but you know Edgers. Most people mind their own business.”

“Any threats to try taking her away?”