Beneath an Opal Moon (2 page)

“Yes,” stammers the boy, “sir. I have one.”

“Close the door.”

The boy complies.

“Have you a name?” The scarred man has gone to the night table. He lifts a bit of fowl between the long nails of his middle finger and thumb. The forefinger, in between, juts out oddly. The scarred man swirls the meat in the thick brown gravy, ignoring the long wooden eating sticks lying at the side of the plate, pops it into his mouth. “Excellent,” he says to no one in particular as he licks the tips of his fingers. “Just the right amount of fresh black pepper.” He turns. “Now—”

“Kuo.” Softly.

“Ah.” The scarred man studies him with an awesomely intense gaze, but even though he feels fear, Kuo knows that he must not show it. He stands ramrod straight, concentrating on controlling his breathing. He tries to ignore the sound of the hammering of his heart, which feels as if it has lodged itself in his windpipe.

“This is for you, Kuo. If you do as I say.” A silver coin has magically appeared between the scarred man's fingers.

The boy nods, hypnotized by the shining coin. It represents more wealth than he has had in his entire life.

“Now listen to me carefully, Kuo. My horse is in the stable down Green Dolphin Street. At the first stroke of the hour of the boar you must bring it to the alley at the side of this place. This one.” He points one long forefinger toward the curtained window. “No one must see you do this, Kuo. And once here, stay within the shadows. Wait for me. When I come, there will be another silver coin for you. Is this clear?”

Kuo nods. “Yes, sir. Quite clear.” The secretiveness of his mission has excited him. How his friends will envy him.

“No one must know of this, Kuo.” The scarred man takes a quick step toward him. “Not your friends, not your brothers or sisters, not even your father. No one.”

“There is nothing for me to tell,” Kuo says, delighted with himself. “Who would be interested in my delivering another meal upstairs?”

“Not even that!” And the boy jumps at the force of those terse words, then nods. “No, sir.”

The scarred man flicks his thumb and, shot from the arbalest of his nail, the coin arcs into the air, shining. Kuo's fingers enclose it and he is gone, swiftly and silently.

The scarred man listens at the door. Then, as the sounds of Kuo's descent fade, he turns his attention to the food and for a time he is totally consumed in the act of eating.

Sounds drift up to him, given an eerie etherealness by the closed curtains. The cries of the night vendors, drunken laughter, the heavy creak of wooden-wheeled carts laden with tomorrow's produce and dry goods, the snort of horses, hoofs clip-clopping on the cobbles; a soft wind rustles the leaves of the plane trees lining nearby Yellow Tooth Street. Night.

Soft footfalls on the stairs and the scarred man is up, wiping his greasy hands. He bends, extinguishes the flame of the oil lamp. Silently, he skirts the bed, opens the curtains. Dim, fitful light from the thin corridor to the street seeps into the room as slowly as blood drips from a corpse.

The footfalls cease.

The scarred man has positioned himself well within the deepest shadows of the room with a good line of sight to the door. He stands immobile, one hand gripping the hilt of his sword as the door opens inward to reveal an ebon silhouette.

“Mistral,” comes a whispered voice.

“Who is the messenger?” says the scarred man.

“The wind.”

“Enter, Omojiru,” says the scarred man and the silhouette disappears as the door is closed. There comes the sound of a lock being secured.

“Cascaras,” says Omojiru, “have you found it?”

The scarred man hears the tremor in the voice, barely held in check as he watches the other in the inconstant light. He notes the high forehead, the flat cheekbones, the narrow thin-lipped mouth, the intelligent almond eyes and thinks, It was those eyes which took me in. But now I know that he would be nowhere without his father's influence. I regret his involvement. Not because he is ruthless and unprincipled. He would be useless to me without those traits. But because he lacks the guile he believes he has. That can be dangerous. He sees Omojiru's lips compress into the narrow line of intransigence preparatory to violent action and he recalls this man's volatile nature. How different you are from your kin, Omojiru, the scarred man thought. If your father but knew what you planned with me—

“Tell me!” Omojiru hisses, the words forced out of him as if they are under pressure and the scarred man looks away for just a moment, embarrassed for the other.

“I have found it.”

“At last!” Omojiru moves involuntarily closer and now the quavering of his voice is unstoppable.

Greed, Cascaras thinks. And power. How many would he kill to get them? “I do not have it yet.”

“What?” The enormous disappointment shows across the young man's face, unmistakable even in the dimness.

“But I know where it is.”

“Ah. Then we will go to it.”

“Yes,” says the scarred man. “That is the way of our bargain.” And he wonders at what point Omojiru will try to kill him.

“Where,” Omojiru whispers hoarsely, “is it?”

The scarred man laughs silently. How transparent he is. He will do it now and take no chances. “We will go there together, Omojiru,” he says with great patience, as if explaining a difficult and complex concept to a child.

“Yes. Yes, of course we will. I, uh, I only wished to know what to take on the journey and it would, it would depend on where we are going.”

Now the scarred man laughs out loud. “I will tell you what to take, Omojiru.”

The door flies open, lock and hinges splintering and in that brief instant of shock, as his head turns in the direction of the violent motion and sound, the scarred man wonders why he heard nothing. Nothing at all.

The lights are gone from the hall and it is as if he looks out upon a starless night, dense with a damp and clinging fog. His hand withdraws his blade but already he hears the fearful sounds of struggle, a strangled cry torn from the lips of Omojiru, conveying as much terror as pain. The sound of a whirlwind in the room and across from him a great viscous bubbling, a hideous animal grunting connoting coupling or death, and with a shudder he realizes it is coming from Omojiru. Something has him and is killing him.

The scarred man's great curving blade is out, naked in the night, lifted high over his head, but something is careening at him from out of the darkness. It is as if the night itself has abruptly come alive, filled with vengeance and a cold implacable hatred.

His sword whispers in the air as it descends but encounters nothing. Fingers like bars of steel enwrap his right wrist, twisting. He fights, jabbing with his left fist, his feet, his legs. His knee lifts for a blow and something heavy smashes into it, splintering the kneecap. The scarred man grunts as the breath shoots out of him. Pain flares. His left wrist snaps and he cries out. His blade clatters to the floor.

He is borne as if weightless onto the bed. A tightness against his chest and then more pain, lancing through him, turning his vitals to water. He soils himself and is ashamed as the stench rises about him.

Skin and flesh part. His pulse pounds like surf against his inner ear and sounds become distorted. His heart feels as if it is being squeezed in a vise; pressure in his brain. He cannot breathe. And at the brink of unconsciousness, the questions begin and repeat over and over until he must answer, the meaning behind them gone from him. The dark blood running out of his slack mouth, his heart constricted beyond all limits and his brain screaming for release, caring only about itself now. “Yes,” hisses a voice from very near above him. “Yes, yes, yes.” Sounding to him as if it was coming from the other side of the world. A balloon bursting against the fragile membranes of his eyes. His mind screams, filling his entire universe. Then his blood, like water from a ruptured dam, begins to fill the room, soaking the bed, wetting the floor, coursing across the room, rushing out into the black hall.

ONE:

City of Wonders

Rubylegs

MOICHI ANNAI-NIN AWOKE to the sound of the sea.

For what seemed quite a long time he lay with his eyes open, listening with all his senses to the sluggish crash of the waves against the ancient wood. He heard the clear sharp cries of the hungry gulls and thought for an instant that he was aboard ship. Then he heard the hoarse shouts of the stevedores and the singsong litany of the kubaru and knew he was in the port of Sha'angh'sei. This both saddened and uplifted him. He loved this city, perhaps more than any other on earth, felt a peculiar and powerful affinity toward it though it was far from his home. Yet he longed most dearly for a ship under the soles of his boots.

In one fluid motion he was on his feet and, crossing the wooden floor of the large room, threw open the accordion jalousie window-doors which ranged along the wall opening out onto the sea. The sun, barely above the horizon, turned the water to chopped gold.

He lifted one huge hand, grasping the upper lintel of the doorway leading out to the expansive veranda which ran the entire length of the building. He breathed deeply of the damp salt air, his nostrils dilated with the fecund scents, while he rubbed distractedly at his heavily muscled chest. You eternal, he thought. The sea.

The morning light, spilling obliquely across the horizon, played over his enormous frame. His skin was the color of rich cinnamon and when his wide, thick-lipped mouth split in a grin, which was often, his white teeth flashed. His eyes, large and set far apart on his face, were the color of smoky topaz, though in certain low lights it was often said—quite naturally in hesitant whispers reserved for the darkest of secrets—that deep within them one could see an odd crimson spark as of a reflection from some flickering flame. His long hooked nose was further highlighted by a tiny perfect diamond set into the dusky flesh of his right nostril. His thick hair and full beard were glossily black and curling. Overall, it was a face filled with converging influences, an intriguing admixture formed from facing adversity, man-made and natural. It was a foreign face according to those in Sha'angh'sei who knew, because, above all else, it held a riveting power alien to the people of this region of the continent of man.

Moichi Annai-Nin stretched and his muscles rippled. He sighed deeply, feeling the inexorable pull of the sea just as if he were a compass drawn unerringly northward. He was the finest navigator in the known world; thus his present predicament was ironic indeed. Still, he did not find it in the least amusing.

He turned back into the room, moving in long lithe strides to a carved wooden table upon which sat a huge pitcher and a bowl of sea-green stone. It was the hour of the cormorant, the time had he been on a ship when he would return to the high poop deck to see all the sea before him, feeling the tides and currents and breezes, to take the first sighting of the day. He bent, pouring cold water over his head and into the bowl, scooping it up in double handfuls, splashing his face and shoulders.

He was drying himself with a thick brown towel when he heard the movement behind him and swung around. Llowan had come up the stairs from the harttin's huge working area on the ground floor. This tall, spare man with the mane of silver hair like a giant cat was bundsman of Sha'angh'sei's waterfront, in charge of all loading and unloading of cargo transported over the sea, overseer of the city's myriad harttin.

Llowan smiled. “Hola, Moichi,” he said, deliberately using the traditional sailors' greeting. “Glad you are awake. A messenger awaits you downstairs. He comes from the Regent Aerent.”

Moichi folded the towel and began to dress. “What news of a ship, Llowan?”

“Are you not even the least bit curious why your friend should send for you at this early hour?”

Moichi paused, said, “Look here, Llowan, I am a navigator and though I love your city dearly, I have had the solidity of land under my feet for too long. Even though this be Sha'angh'sei, still I long for a good ship's deck to stand upon.” He drew on copper-colored leggings over which he strapped leather sheaths covering only the outside of his legs. He shrugged himself into a brilliant white silk shirt with wide sleeves and no collar. About his waist he wrapped a forest-green cotton sash into which he inserted the twin copper-handled dirks which were his trademark. Lastly, he fastened a thin leather thong about his waist from which a silver-handled sword hung in a worn tattooed leather scabbard. The diamond in his nostril flashed in the gathering light.

“Patience, my friend,” Llowan said. “Since the defeat of the dark forces of The Dolman in the Kai-feng more than six seasons ago, the sea lanes to Sha'angh'sei have been clogged with merchant ships.” He shrugged, running a hand through his long hair. “Unfortunately, one of the by-products of peace is a surfeit of people. All the navigators, called to the last battle, have returned home now. It is only just that they get first preference for the ships of native registry. You can understand that.” He turned sideways, into the oblique light, and Moichi saw sharply delineated the cruel semicircular scar at the left corner of the bundsman's mouth, arcing up to the base of the nose, which had no nostril on that side. “Why not be satisfied by the work I give you here, my friend? What awaits you out there”—his long arm extended, sweeping outward toward the lapping yellow sea beyond the harttin's wide veranda—“that could be so compelling? Here you have all the silver, all the women, all the companionship you could ever wish for.”

Moichi turned from the deep voice, stood in the doorway to the veranda, staring out at the thick forest of black masts, slashes of crosstrees, the intricate spiderweb of the rigging of the armada of ships temporarily at rest in the harbor or off-loading baled goods from far-off exotic shores. Too, soon they would be setting sail again, leaving Sha'angh'sei's clutter behind in their wakes. Only dimly he heard Llowan saying, “I will send up the tea. Come downstairs when you are ready; the messenger can wait, I daresay.”