Tamora Pierce - Street Magic

Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if he and some other Vipers hadn’t mistaken her for an overpriced prostitute wandering the Grand Bazaar one night. They’d grabbed her and dragged her into a nook between closed stalls, meaning to strip her of her jewels and her silks. Instead they had discovered her shadows, the armsmaster and the mute, and the lady’s own tiny dagger, which she laid against the big vein under Ikrum’s jaw. He had thought he was dead. Then he had told her, “Cut hard and fast and get it over with,” and she began to laugh.

She liked his courage, she had said. She took him to a shop that sold coffee, buying him pastries and cups of that bitter, expensive drink. Her armsmaster and the mute sat Ikrum’s friends on the carpets in front of the shop and kept them from running away.

Terror-sweat poured from his body when he had learned that she was the amir’s aunt, a lady from one of the great noble houses. He saw his headless corpse and those of his friends dangling from Justice Rock. Instead of calling the Watch, she asked about him and the Vipers.

She asked and listened so well that Ikrum found himself telling her his troubles. He even talked of the slight he had been dealt by the city’s richest and most powerful gang, the Gate Lords, who held all the territory between the Grand Bazaar, Golden House, and the Hajra Gate. Ikrum had foolishly fallen in love with the sister of the Gate Lords’ tesku, or leader. The tesku had told Gate Lords and Vipers alike that he would never allow his sister to go with the tesku of a pack of glorified errand boys.

“I like you, Ikrum,” the lady had said on that vital night. “You are no dirt-person. You have ambition, courage, pride. I will help you.” She had left with orders for him to report to her house the next day around sunset.

He had gone, because no one could refuse her. He had expected that she had lied about her address, or that she had been drunk and had forgotten all about him. Neither was true. The mute had taken him to the garden after checking him for weapons. The lady waited for him there, with plans to make the Vipers great.

“I’m bored,” she told Ikrum. “My children are grown, my husbands dead. I wish no other husbands or lovers. My grandchildren are tedious. It suits me to help the Vipers to greatness, if they can make the journey. If they can accept discipline. If you cannot—” The lady shrugged. “I will find another way to amuse myself. We begin by giving your people a better sign of fellowship than that rag.” She pointed to Ikrum’s gray armband. “And we shall make the new token one it requires courage to get.”

“Stand still,” the lady had remarked sharply. “Will you disappoint me already?”

Ikrum obeyed. The lady’s healer moved in to pierce his left nostril and thread the brass ring with its garnet pendant into the opening. Only Ikrum got his piercing and nose ring from a healer. The other Vipers got theirs from Ikrum, who added the ring supplied by the lady and a dab of ointment that both cleaned the hole and stopped its ache.

The lady did not end her interest in the Vipers with presents of jewelry. Time after time the mute came to their den with her gifts: tunics, clean and in good condition, trousers or leggings, skirts, slippers, knives, food, coins for the hammam. Clean, wearing better clothes, the Vipers could enter the Grand Bazaar and Golden House in ones and twos, spying out targets for theft and taking them as they left the souks at night. Looking more prosperous, they were hired to deliver more messages and packages, which let them scout homes and shops to rob once the residents had forgotten the messenger boy or girl with the nose ring.

He’d thought for weeks she would tire of them eventually, until he realized the opposite was happening. The more reports he brought to her of successful thefts and robberies, of the small enlargements to their territory just south of Golden House, of fights they’d won, the greater her fascination. Her reactions to their setbacks grew more heated, as if disrespect of the Vipers was disrespect of her.

Ikrum sighed now, and scuffed the courtyard tiles with his foot. He was never sure if he was glad the lady had taken them up. The sister of the Gate Lords’ tesku was still forbidden to him. Viper life was more dangerous. Sometimes the lady frightened him.

And weren’t the tiles blue yesterday? Today they were red. Uneasy, he spat on his hand to rid himself of unpleasant ideas, then carefully wiped his palm inside his trouser pockets. The lady did not like it when Vipers spat.

“Ikrum, you are early,” she said, walking out into the sun. “I hope you have no disasters to report.” She sat on her couch gracefully, veils floating cloudlike around her. Her skirts, sari, and head veil were dull gold today, her short blouse a pale orange. Ikrum went to his knees, then lowered his forehead until he was a hair above the red tiles. For some reason he didn’t want them touching his face.

From here he could see that gilt designs were pressed into the leather of her slippers. A heavy gold ring cupped one of her ankles. She wore bracelets, too, heavy earrings, and a chain hung with canary diamonds between her nose and left ear. Why did she care about their thefts, when she wore more jewels than they might ever steal?

She reminded him of a goddess’s golden statue—not Lailan of the Rivers and Rain, who was draped in blue and green and whose kindness shone form her face, but some eknub goddess, some distant queen of the skies. How could he worship and hate her at the same time? Ikrum wondered feverishly. Was it possible to feel two different emotions for someone? Fear and hate he knew, or he’d thought he’d known them before meeting her. But worship, admiration … Orlana accused him of being in love with the lady, but the thought made his skin creep. He wondered if her husbands—she’d had two—had died of natural causes. His private nightmare was that she had bitten their heads off while embracing them.

She left him with his forehead to the ground, waiting for her maid to arrange the cushions at her back and to pour her a cup of wine. Once the maid had crossed the garden to a point where she could see if her mistress wanted her but could not hear, the lady ordered, “Report.”

“The Camelguts have accepted our offer to join us,” Ikrum said without looking up. “There are twenty-four of them altogether.”

“You told me they had twenty-six.” The lady put a slippered toe against his chin as a signal for him to look up.

“One died last night and one this morning, lady,” Ikrum replied, meeting her gaze. Thick lines of kohl accented her eyes, making them deeper and more mysterious than ever. Through her sheer veil he saw her mouth curl with derision.

“Would you agree to join a gang that had killed one of your people?” she asked, after a sip of wine.

Ikrum knew what he would do, but he also knew what she wanted to hear. She would not be pleased if he told her he would run hard and fast. “I would never join such a gang, Lady,” he lied.

“Yours is a warrior’s heart, Ikrum Fazhal,” she told him, setting her cup down. “We will accept these people, of course. We did make the offer. But they must earn our respect.” She raised her hand. The mute walked out of the shadows by the house with a small leather pouch. He placed it before the lady and backed away again.

Ikrum’s heart raced the moment the mute’s huge body entered his vision. He had not even known the huge man was there until he saw him: he was that soundless in his movements. If the mute ever intended to hurt him, in all likelihood Ikrum would not even know until he was dead.