Aftermath- - Thieves World 10 (30 page)

wished all manner of minor disasters upon the workman who had not recognized her as a happily married matron and implied propositions never suggested to a S'danzo seeress.

She ate the creamy cheese without tasting it. The fire of her shame burned inwardly now, illuminating the misunderstanding with which the world treated her. It wasn't as if she asked for so much, Illyra reminded

herself. It was pure selfishness and stubbornness that kept those who claimed to love her from understanding that her world—her promise of happiness—had ended when Lillis died. If they really loved her they would commiserate with her and cease their meaningless efforts to jolly her out of mourning.

Her life was a tragedy: a slow dirge relentlessly playing between Lillis's

death and her own. She'd become a martyr—and was comfortable with that identity.

"You should not scowl so."

Illyra sent the basket flying and stared into the sun, unable to recognize the man who spoke so familiarly to her.

"And you should be more careful where and how you make your personal storms."

Not about to be scolded by a stranger—or anyone else, for that matter

—Illyra was tempted to break her private vows and launch a full-fledged S'danzo curse in his direction. But something she did not understand restrained her. She clambered down from her perch and gathered her scattered meal instead.

From this angle, away from the sun, he was easier to see but no more recognizable. Not that there weren't a dozen incomprehensible languages spoken these days along the walls—but this one wasn't a stoneworker. Even Tempus, silhouetted by a bloody setting sun, was not so timeless and out of place as this man seemed to be. Moreover, she could not See him or his shadow which boded ill when Sanctuary itself was remarkably free of magic.

"I'm a free woman,'* she said petulantly, climbing onto a different stone where the light was better and she could look straight into his eyes.

"Not here you're not."

He was calm, not threatening; speaking simple facts as if there were something obvious she had overlooked. But what could be overlooked sitting on forgotten rubble with her back to the main path?

"Look down," he suggested in a bemused and paternal manner. Down. The dirt was red where years of storms had had their way with the sandstone. Nothing grew there. Nothing was buried there. She couldn't See anything.

"Where you're sitting. Where you've been sitting this past hour." Well, that. It was rubble, after all. These stones had been dressed and shaped into a building once, a long time ago. Not as if these were the only

rocks around with little chips and bumps of some forgotten language on their sides. Lords and frogs, it could be Rankene for all she would know,

wind-blasted as it was and illiterate as she was.

She took a mean-tempered bite out of her fruit and jawed it pointedly.

"So?"

"Are you blind, child?"

This stranger with his beaten, bronze-colored armor and his probing, dark eyes deserved nothing less than a S'danzo curse; Illyra decided. His

stare was worse than a Beysib's and his high-and-mighty attitude worse than that. He'd be less arrogant when the S'danzo were through with him. She wrapped her thoughts in the ancient forms, then dug deep in her memory to find the ritual words that would merge her desire with the Sight.

He sprang at her, though she prepared her curse in silence, and wrestled her from the stone with his hand locked firmly over her mouth.

"You fool," he exclaimed, dropping her to the ground. "You blind, hopeless fool. How many times has Sanctuary been damned by petty curses uttered in ignorance by petty fools who don't recognize sanctity when they see it?"

Illyra swept the dust from her skirt as she stood. He was too sincere in his protests, too secure to challenge directly. "Who are you to scold me?"

she muttered, watching the ground-"Who made you the guardian of Sanctuary? You're just another stranger come to work on the walls. It's my home and I'll send it to hell and back if I want to."

"You're more the fool than I thought, Illyra the Seeress."

"All right, I don't want to damn it to hell. I'd love to see a Sanctuary where flowers bloomed along the streets and honest people didn't have to hide after sundown. I'd love to see a Sanctuary where men loved their wives, wives loved their children, and children had a chance to grow up with food in their bellies.

"Who wouldn't want Sanctuary like that? But Sanctuary's Sanctuary and it never changes."

174 AFTERMATH

She raised her eyes to glower at him and to make him think better of whatever he had meant to say next

"If you could bring yourself to take care of it, it might change into something better Maybe even something you could love "

"That'd be the day Who are you, anyway9"

"Call me a shepherd "

Illyra cocked her head at him Whatever he was, the only sheep he saw were dead, cooked, and served to him on a platter Some errant warrior, more likely She noticed he'd left a horse drop-tied back on the path, and

noticed that no one was coming or going on the path, either It was not really a good idea to argue with one whose saddle and weapon belt bristled with a dozen modes of death

"All right, I give Sanctuary my blessing—"

"From the rock "

She seated herself on the first stone and made a show of clearing her throat "I give Sanctuary my blessing," she repeated A gust of wind carried dust into her eyes, that, and the back-lighting sun made it impossible to see him clearly "Let its people live m peace Let its governors rule wisely Let its walls be strong and its stewpots full.

"There, is that more like it7" she demanded, squinting into the sun

"You forgot love "

"Right, husbands love wives, wives love children, children . . oh, children love whoever they want "

"It's a start," the unlikely shepherd confirmed "Mighty trees and the like. Are you thirsty9"

He unslung a wineskin and offered it to her Thinking he meant to embarrass her, Illyra took it Not that many townswomen could aim the bladder and catch the stream without covering themselves with wine She could She'd learned to drink from a skin—and not from a borrowed vision, either It was one of the very few things her father had taught her

The wine wasn't half bad a bit tamnc, perhaps, but not local She caught a last drop and handed the skin back to him, smiling like a well-fed cat

"Thank you," she said and noted with some satisfaction that she'd surprised him with her skill

He tipped the wineskin up and maneuvered himself beneath it so his back was almost touching her and he, too, faced the sun Illyra couldn't imagine why he twisted around that way, when it was apt to make him miss his aim Wine spurted past his ear, landing on the red stone

"Watch what you're doing," she snapped, hastily lifting her skirt out of the way as she spoke

But he squeezed the skin again and left a goodly stain across the worn inscription before adjusting his arms and getting a decent mouthful of

wine Odd that a warrior, or a shepherd for that matter, would be so clumsy with the wine Hard, even, to believe it had been an accident—

especially when she caught him looking back at her and grinning

"Out of practice," he said, and she did not believe him at all

"I'd best be leaving It's getting late I live

Illyra hesitated and thought better of telling him where she lived, not that her heart believed it would help her if this stranger took it into his

head to pay her and Dubro a visit. She slid carefully from the stone, avoiding him as much as the wine, and put the substantial remains of her lunch in the shawl-sling It seemed prudent to back away from the stone. He was still gnnmng when her heel touched the path, then he laughed and she shot through the gate.

In truth it wasn't that late, barely past midaftemoon, and she hadn't intended to return to the Bazaar before sundown The day was still pleasantly warm, and there wouldn't be many more like this until the next spring She might still wander along the General's Road and headed that way—back through the forecourt and along the Governor's Walk Haakon the vendor was prowling his afternoon route, singing a song of nutmeats and pastry. Despite the food she'd eaten and the food she earned, they made her mouth water.

"Copper bit," the vendor said when she started to approach him, then, when he finally recognized her, added in a much softer voice, "for two " Ulyra smiled and gave him the battered coin she'd received in the morning. Because she'd bought two, he wrapped the second one m a scrap of translucent parchment and tucked it into the folds of her shawl

"Delicious," she confirmed, biting into the sweet and savory confection

"Best to share "

He meant to share with Dubro but the face that came into her mind was Suyan She wondered if the wet nurse had ever even tasted one of these uptown luxuries Not likely Suyan claimed she had grown up Downwind, though Walegnn had found her in a Shambles house Illyra imagined the look on Suyan's face when she bit through the still-warm pastry shell to the nutmeats within She changed direction and hurried along the street to the Bazaar

The forge was empty but before Illyra could become concerned she heard Trevya crying and ran the last little way

"I brought you a pastry," she announced as she pushed through the curtain

Suyan smiled but it was almost lost amid her unsuccessful efforts to quiet the infant

"Here, I'll hold her They really taste best when they're warm " 176

She picked the child up and found, not surprisingly, that she fit snugly into the crook of her arm and that she remembered how to rock her arms a bit and wiggle a finger or two as a distraction. And as Illyra's fingers

were shiny with butter and nutmeats, Trevya found them fascinating. She pulled them into her mouth and sucked contentedly. Illyra felt the sharp ridge of the tooth that had caused this latest round of wailing.

"She's getting her milk teeth."

Suyan gulped a mouthful of pastry. "Not milk teeth, I'll warrant?" Another of her lilting questions, but this one came with a furtive smile,

"Not milk teeth then. She'll soon be ready for gruel and a bit of porridge in the morning, I used to like to make porridge—especially in winter."

The happiness in Suyan's face wavered. Illyra could almost see her thinking of where she'd been before they'd brought her to the forge.

"We'll still need someone to take care of her. I'm S'danzo, not . . .'*

Illyra hesitated, wondering why she'd been about to say she wasn't Trevya's mother. Neither was Suyan, for that matter. And other S'danzo women had children underfoot all the time. "Well, Trevya should have someone watching her all the time," she decided after a puzzling mo-ment. "It's dangerous here, with the forge. Not like some other places where the worst that could happen is a bumped knee." The tension left Suyan in a great sigh. She ate the rest other pastry but

left the baby in Illyra's arms-They talked then, in the afternoon light, as

they had never talked before, though not about anything of importance. They talked about the foods Dubro liked, and the ones he didn't; and the bolts of brightly colored cloth that had just arrived in a caravan from Croy; and whether the journeyman had a wife in his future. Illyra stole a look at the future, then shook her head. "I can't See a thing," she murmured and remembered what she had said out on the rock. For a heartbeat her blood went cold. He had tricked her. That strange man who was not a shepherd had tricked her into casting an unprecedented curse over Sanctuary: a S'danzo blessing. Not that there was such a thing as a S'danzo blessing. "Everyone's a child, one way or another—"

"I didn't hear you?"

Suyan leaned closer but Illyra did not repeat herself. She was, after all,

only one S'danzo and Sanctuary was Sanctuary and not likely to change very much no matter what she did. But she would have to, if she ever saw him again, thank the shepherd for setting her free, at least.

Andrew Offutt

Someone is always awake in Sanctuary

especially when others are sleeping.

—Universal absolute

When she saw that he had wakened, she returned to the bed, mostly dressed but not quite. She bent down, exotically pale hair streaming long,

to brush the top of his nose with her lips.

"We fell asleep," she told him. "I've got to go! It's terribly late." Lazily, muzzily, he lifted a hand to try to capture a dangling lobe of her chest as she bent. She straightened swiftly with a little chuckle and

finished closing her latch-front tunic.

"Awww . . ." he began, lazy-muzzy, and the sound slid off into a yawn.

She started for the door. He saw her pause, lift a hand to her temple, up under the newly silvered hair she had combed partially free of the tangles the two of them had put in it. She turned back. Moonlight admitted by the open window let him see that she was frowning.

"My earrings," she murmured, hurrying back to the little table beside the bed.

A moment later: "Darling? Didn't I put my earrings right here?

They're—they're gone!"

"Muss've dropped 'em on th' floor," he said without concern, and yawned again.

Watching her, smiling a little, remembering. Watching her go to her 178 AFTERMATH

knees beside the bed in her search was fun, and he entertained a little fantasy about that.

"They're not here, Cusher! Please get up and help me. Could you light the lamp? Those are good eardrops!"

Eight or nine minutes later the bedclothes were on the floor and they had even searched his abandoned clothing, lest her missing dangles of gold and jade and topaz had somehow gotten entangled in the attire he had hurriedly dropped to the floor, hours ago. By then she was sobbing and babbling about how the baubles had been gifts from her grandmother, years and years ago. At last Imaya—the lady Imaya Rennsdaughter, if truth must be told—