Liavek 1 (2 page)

"Well, yes," said Badu.

"And, since you told Thyan she could come back at midday, you must be expecting the worst either this afternoon or tonight."

"Both, in fact."

"So you've brought the whole poisonous mess to my doorstep, with the assumption that I will help you deal with it."

Badu nodded.

Snake grinned and pressed both palms to her forehead in salute. "I'm honored."

"I thought you would be," said Badu.

They sat at the little brass table and Snake poured kaf for both of them. "Aren't you even a little worried about me knowing your luck time?"

Badu shrugged. "Who else do I trust so?"

Snake looked at her cup. "I am honored."

"We've saved each other's lives a few times. We're neither of us so wasteful that we'd want the other dead now."

"It's a killing matter, then?" Snake asked, alarmed.

"It may be. If they're wise, they would see me dead, and some other blamed. Their last best chance is tonight, for I meet with the Council representative tomorrow."

"Would you mind terribly starting from the beginning?"

Badu did not mind. "Among the Matriarchs of Ombaya, there is a faction alarmed at Ka Zhir's growing strength and recklessness. Zhir pirates have crossed the Sea of Luck to plunder the little coastal towns to the south of Ombaya. These I speak of, among the Matriarchs, know that only fear of Liavek and her navy keeps the Zhir from striking for control of the whole of the northern seacoast.

'These Matriarchs seek to forge a military alliance between Ombaya and Liavek. The Zhir would hesitate to harry our settlements if they knew that Liavek helped defend them."

Snake poured herself more kaf. "What does all this have to do with reinvesting your luck?"

"Patience, patience, dear friend. You did ask for the beginning, after all. I have many times served as go-between for traders in various lands who needed a fair negotiator in business matters. My skill in such things brought the Matriarchs of the alliance faction to me. They wish me to establish contact with the speaker for a like faction in the Levar's Council. It seems that certain Council members have independently reached the same conclusions and would seek a military agreement with Ombaya. Liavek, they reason, needs Ombaya's exported grain, livestock, and lumber—and more particularly, would suffer if Ka Zhir controlled them in Ombaya's stead. Such an alliance could also better protect the farmsteads, both Liavekan and Ombayan, on the western plains."

"You sound convinced," said Snake.

"Only, perhaps, convincing. I cannot in honor choose a side until my role in this is done." Badu frowned down at her long fingers. "And there is, indeed, another side. In the Levar's Council, there are those who say that Liavek has enough to do, keeping the Zhir shark from her own coast and shipping—there is no strength left to offer Ombaya. In the Matriarchy, many hold that if the Liavekan military is free to move in Ombaya, it will overrun her, in however peaceful a fashion, and Ombaya will end as nothing but a chick to Liavek's hen, like Saltigos and Hrothvek." Badu shook her head at Snake's look of mild outrage. "Can you say, my friend, and believe it, that Liavek would never do such a thing? She is a fair city, as moral and honest as any that ever was—but she is a living city as well, and like all that lives, her first concern is to keep it so. To annex Ombaya...will you not eat a trout, though the trout may have thought itself your equal while it lived?"

"Hmph. Thank you, at least, for not calling the cursed fish 'she.'"

"When I speak Liavekan, I find my thoughts seduced to Liavekan ways," Badu laughed.

"So, you suspect that one opposing side or another is trying to stop you from making your contact?"

"It could be that. It could also be the Zhir themselves, who would fear a Liavekan-Ombayan union, did they know of it. It might be the pro-alliance factions, one or both, who fear that I am not so neutral after all. It would be a clever ploy, could the alliance's opponents trick those I serve into thinking that I secretly work against them. It might even be that Tichen is alarmed by the possibility of Ombaya and Liavek united and strong to the south of her. In short, I have the spectres of countless enemies, and the substance of none."

''Then how do you know you have any?" Snake asked.

"Ah, forgive me. I do have a substantial foe, but still a faceless one."

"Now we're getting to it."

"It was you who asked for the—"

"—beginning, I know," sighed Snake. "Go on, before I foam at the mouth."

Badu steepled her fingers under her chin. "The first was at an inn, a day's ride from Ombaya. I had stayed the night, and was preparing to ride out, well before dawn; my camel was brought from his stall, and I had strapped my pack to the saddle-frame and mounted. Then one of the strap buckles broke off and rolled across the stable floor and into a crack. My annoyance distracted me—I had to make the beast kneel again, so that I could dismount and fetch the buckle. Then I would have to wait for the stable master to mend or replace the strap. I could foresee hours of delay. What I failed to see was the ready way in which an irregularly-shaped buckle had made its way across the rough floor, and how securely it had been stitched to the strap only minutes before, when I had fastened it.

"So I dismounted and thrust my right hand into the crack where the buckle had gone. Immediately, my fingers were seized in a grip so fierce I thought the bones would break. Then I forgot my pain, for the ring that holds my luck was being drawn from my finger."

Badu raised her right hand. Three of the fingers were ringed, but she tapped one, a gold band set with black stones. "I called fire to my fingertips. I heard a gasp, and my hand was freed. I ran from the stable and around the side, but quick as I went, I was not in time to catch my attacker, and with the dark and the distance, all I saw was a figure in many robes, the muffling garb of the desert folk."

Snake took advantage of Badu's pause to weigh the details of the story. She knew Badu well; she did not need to question her observations. If a strong grip and loose clothing were all she described, then they were all the identification that could be had. "You said the first. There was another attack?"

Badu nodded. "Last night, on the Farmers' Road. The first attempt had made me wary, and I spent little time in posting-houses and inns. Last night I camped in the lee of a hill, off the road, and lit no fire. Perhaps it was the same person. If it was another, then he knew of his partner's failure, though I traveled as fast as ever I have. I had set guarding spells and placed a few warnings of more humble nature. He avoided the magic and all but one of my other warnings."

"A good one, then."

"Very good," Badu agreed. "And clever, or well-instructed. Instead of falling on me immediately, he began to work a spell to stop my breathing from within. I would have seemed to die in my sleep, unmarked, and no one would connect my death with the alliance proposal. Had I still been asleep, he would have succeeded. But I countered his magic. At that, he switched to a physical attack, and we wrestled. I seized the eventual opportunity to throw him over my hip, and he fled into the night."

Snake frowned. "You say 'he' this time. Are you sure of that, or are you only thinking in Liavekan?"

"Language may seduce my thinking, but not so much as that! I have wrestled with men and with women, and though it's true that I might have been fighting a well-muscled woman with very little fat, I suspect still that my attacker was male. And there were other indications. I have rarely met a woman so big-boned in the wrists, and when I threw him, he threw like a man, as if the center of his weight was high on his body."

"Was he armed?"

Badu rose and went to her pack. From it she drew a felt bundle which she unwrapped. The contents gleamed softly on Snake's counter: a long knife, slightly curved, its hilt wrapped with many bright colors of leather. The weapon was particular, though not exclusive, to the nomadic tribes of the Great Waste.

"This one also wore desert gear," Badu said. "And his face was covered, so that I could be sure only that he had two good eyes of uncertain color."

"Unfortunately, there are a great many men with two good eyes. When are your birth hours?"

"From four-and-a-half hours after midday, until a quarter-hour into tomorrow."

"And you think someone will try to strike at you here, tonight."

Badu smiled wolfishly. "He would be a fool not to, and I would hate to think I am hunted by fools."

Snake rubbed her forehead. "So my job is to keep you safe while you invest your luck?"

"That's more succinct than I would be, but yes."

"The entire Society of Merchants is more succinct than you'd be. Any hope of some help from you, or is it to be my strong right arm and nothing else?"

"Until I have invested my luck, I cannot help you. As I told Thyan, investiture requires complete concentration. Nor can I supply you with magical defenses, for when my birth-hours begin all my luck will return to me, and any spells that I have made will disappear."

Snake looked down at her right arm. "Just you and me against the hordes of evil," she said. Then she turned again to Badu. "You can use the living quarters upstairs, anyplace you're comfortable. I'm going out, but I'll be back before you have to begin. Set a warding spell or something around the place until then."

Badu smiled, gathered up her pack, and made her way upstairs.

Snake took her caravan driver's whip from behind the counter and hung its coils over her left shoulder. Then she set out the "momentarily closed" sign and headed for Silvertop's.

Silvertop lived on Street of the Dreamers, which Snake had always taken as proof that the universe was well-ordered. She met the caretaker on the stairs, and they each touched their foreheads in greeting.

"Ah, Madame Snake," the little man beamed. "You visit your Farlander friend?"

Snake nodded. "Is he well?"

"I think he is never not well. And all else is much better, for there is not anymore the smell."

"Ah," said Snake faintly. "I'm glad to hear it."

"Have the good visit," he said, and trotted down the stairs. Snake knocked on Silvertop's door and received, as usual, no answer. She went in cautiously.

The room had been intended by the builder as a parlor or sitting room. Its present function would not have been completely described by any word that Snake knew in any of several languages. One wall supported shelves untidily filled with bound books, papers, and scrolls. A badly-stuffed peacock was hung from a beam by one brittle foot. The center of the room was crowded by a long table, its scarred top cluttered with objects: feathers, broken pen nibs, a goblet on its side (indications were that it had tipped over and spilled its contents some time ago and the fact had yet to be discovered), a ball of string the size of a small dog, and other things less easily recognized or coped with.

Silvertop sat hunched over this intricate chaos, on an upholstered stool from which stuffing leaked intermittently. He was small and slight and bleached-looking, with his pale Farlander skin and silvery-blond hair. When Snake cleared her throat he glanced up from a random-seeming construction of brass wire, bits of wood, and strips of fabric.

"Oh, it's you," he said cheerfully, and returned his concentration to the table. "Come hold this, will you?"

"Not for the Levar's own treasury," Snake replied. She spotted the back of a chair, resolved to excavate its seat, and moved parchment, boxes, and sheets of copper until it was unearthed. She sat down.

"Have a seat," said Silvertop.

Snake didn't bother to respond.

Silvertop frowned at the ill-assorted mess before him. "Up," he said to it, and the whole thing rose, trembling, to a handspan above the table. From out of an empty space in the middle of the object, a curl of smoke rose. Suddenly every knot and weld and wrapping seemed to give way, and wood and brass wire and fabric strips showered the tabletop.

"Beautiful!" said Silvertop, and turned grinning to Snake. "Did you see that? Beautiful!"

"I'm, ah, glad to find you in such good spirits," Snake said weakly.

"Yep, the best. What can I do for you, Snake?"

All of this made Snake not a little dizzy. Silvertop coherent and accommodating? There was not a moment to lose. "I need a guardian spell, for the Tiger's Eye."

He blinked. "I thought you only bought housekeeping spells and things that kept sparks from getting out of the fireplace."

"Special occasion."

He turned and began to scoop through the mess on the table with both hands. "D'you want to keep out everything?"

"No," Snake said, trying not to notice the mummified orange that rolled mournfully off the table in front of her. "I want a spell that will keep anyone from entering the shop by magical means."

He looked disappointed. ''That's been done before."

"Yes," Snake sighed, "but not for me."

"Wouldn't you rather have—"

"No."

"Oh, all right. Ah, perfect!" Silvertop held up an old grey glove with all the fingertips worn through. "How long do you want it to last?"

"Make it ten hours," Snake said.

Silvertop held the glove under his nose and began to mumble at it, scowling fiercely. He traced the seams of the glove with a fingernail as he chanted; when he came to the glove's missing finger-ends, his tracing continued, as if to fill in the missing lines of stitching. He groped among the table's contents for a moment without raising his eyes from the glove, bumped into a little stoneware dish and pinched something out of it. (Snake wondered if he had any idea what it was he'd grabbed.) He dropped the powder into the palm of the glove, folded it over, and scrubbed the surfaces together. Suddenly he flung the glove into the air. It glowed blinding blue for an instant, then dropped back into his hands, as grey and gnawed-looking as before.

''There you go," he said, and held it out to her. "Tack it up over the front door, inside."

"And hope no one looks up," Snake muttered. She took it by the cuff, gingerly. It was stiff with age and dirt. "Well, thank you. How much do I owe you?"