Planeswalker (39 page)

"He'll change his mind about you, Xantcha. He's never
going to send you away," Ratepe insisted, but he dropped
the chain over his head and tucked it discreetly beneath
his tunic.

Xantcha hauled out coins as well and a serviceable
knife with a hidden compartment in its sheath.

"It's the Festival of Fruits," Ratepe protested,
refusing to accept the weapon.

"There's going to be chaos for sure and who-knows-what
for us afterward." She took his hand and lightly slapped
the knife into it.

"What about a sword, then?" he asked, eyeing her
rafter-hung collection.

"I was wrong to have a sword in Medran. Efuan Pincar
doesn't have a warrior cult, and your nobility averted its
eyes about ten years ago. We'll try to be part of the
crowd. Knives are a common man's weapon."

"You're nervous?" Ratepe asked with evident disbelief.

"Cautious. You and Urza, you're acting as if this is
going to be some victory celebration. We don't know what's
going to happen, not in a whole lot of ways."

"You don't want to go?"

"No. I want to see what happens, and Urza's made up his
mind. I haven't survived all this time by being careless,
that's all."

"You're nervous about being with me? About taking care
of me, 'cause you think I can't take care of myself?"

Xantcha pulled up her pant leg and buckled an emergency
stash of gold around her calf. She didn't answer Ratepe's
question.

"I know Pincar City," he said petulantly. "It's my
home, and I can keep my own nose clean, if I need to.
Avohir's mercy, it's the damned Festival of Fruits-seven
days of berries! All music and bright colors. Parents bring
their children!"

Unimpressed, Xantcha handed him a smaller knife to tuck
inside his boot, then closed the chest on her treasures
wondering if she'd ever look at Kayla's picture again.

Urza 'walked them to the royal city shortly before
sundown. Knowing that Pincar was crowded with revelers and
that the journey would leave Ratepe incapacitated, Urza
strode out of the between-worlds near the orchard where
Xantcha had battled the Phyrexian priest. Other than birds
and insects, there were no witnesses to the trio's arrival.
Few signs of the previous year's skirmish remained. Trees
still sported scorched and unproductive branches, and there
was a gap in the geometric rows where a broken tree had

been removed.

Ratepe was stunned and shivering. Urza knelt beside
him, heal' ing him with warm, radiant hands and saying
nothing about the small fortune in gold hung around his
neck.

"You'll be careful getting over the walls," Urza said
to Xantcha while Ratepe finished his recovery.

"Of course," she replied, irritable because she was
suddenly anxious about entering the city.

Neither of them had asked her if she wanted to watch
the spiders scream from the plaza of Avohir's great temple,
not far from the catacomb where she'd encountered Gix.
Xantcha knew she would have lied even if they had. She'd
never told Urza about the demon before, and events had
moved too swiftly since Narjabul to tell him now. Besides,
she hadn't expected to be anxious. If the demon had wanted
to find her, he could have found her. Phyrexian demons were
many terrible things, but they weren't shapechangers the
way Urza was. If Gix hadn't pursued Xantcha to any of the
out-of-way places she'd been since their encounter, she
didn't expect him to simply appear in the middle of Pincar
City's crowded plaza.

"You'll need these," Urza offered her two lumps of
milk-white wax.

She hesitated before taking them and asked the
question, Why? with her eyes.

"You're vulnerable, and the armor might not be enough
protection. Plug your ears first. You'll know when, and
you'll have time. Don't fret about it."

He must think the spiders themselves were what made her
jumpy, and he might have been right, if it weren't for Gix.
"I won't worry," she lied and tucked the wax in the hem of
her sleeve. Then she asked the question she'd been
avoiding. "Afterward? Should I break the crystal?" She
still had the one he'd given her for Narjabul.

"I'll find you."

Xantcha dipped her chin. After three thousand years, it
would end without even a good-bye. She could see Kayla
frowning in her mind's eye. The Antiquity Wars should have
prepared her for this.

Urza 'walked away. She and Ratepe waited silently for
sundown. Their lives were unraveling, pulled apart between
the past and future. Xantcha wanted to hold the present
tight. This past year with Ratepe was as close as she had
ever come to forgetting that she hadn't been born. She
sensed that once the present became the past, regardless of
whatever lay in the future, these moments wouldn't be
recaptured.

But when Xantcha looked at Ratepe, staring northwest,
toward the city of his past and future, she had nothing to
say to him until the sky darkened and the first stars had
appeared.

"It's time," she said.

They sat together as Xantcha recited her mnemonic and
the sphere formed around them.

Country folk who didn't want to pay for a room within
the city had pitched tents in the fields and fairgrounds
beyond the walls. Between the smoke from their cookfires
and a scattering of clouds overhead, Xantcha had no trouble
getting the them over the walls and above the southeast

quarter of the city. Ratepe said he knew the area and
provided directions to a quiet street and the long-
abandoned courtyard of a burnt-out house.

"You lived here?" Xantcha asked when the sphere had
collapsed.

He pointed at a gaping second-story window. "Last I
saw, it was burning. My mother was yelling at my father,
telling him to carry me and forget about his precious
books."

"Did he?"

"Yes." Ratepe put his arm on a charred door. It opened
partway, then struck a fallen roof beam. "We weren't poor.
I'd've thought that by now someone would've taken advantage
of our misfortune."

Xantcha took his hand, tugging him toward the alley
that led back to the street. "Remember how you said
everything was smaller since Urza's war? Everything's even
smaller in Pincar City."

She and Urza weren't the only ones letting go of their
pasts. Xantcha could almost hear Ratepe's disillusionment
as they made their way to the wide plaza between the royal
palace and Avohir's temple. There were as many empty houses
as occupied ones, and those that were inhabited had
shuttered windows, despite the summer humidity. Their doors
were strapped with iron.

Ratepe didn't see anyone he might have recognized
because they didn't see anyone at all. The sounds of the
festival came filtered over the rooftops, along with the
faint scent of sleepers, but the neighborhoods were locked
tight.

When they got to the great plaza between Tabama's
palace and Avohir's temple, they understood why, and saw
why so many festival-goers had chosen to pitch tents
outside the city walls. The crowd was sullen and mean-
spirited, looking for fights and, by the sounds of it,
finding them with each other. Most of them were men dressed
as Ratepe and Xantcha were dressed in the nondescript
garments of the countryside. The few women whom Xantcha
could see didn't appear to be anyone's wife, mother,
daughter, or sister-not quite the family gathering Ratepe
had promised.

He didn't said a word when the crowd surged and parted,
giving them a glimpse of eight grim-faced men coming
through a palace gate, headed for Avohir's temple. The men
were uniformed in black-dyed leather and chain mail, except
for their sleeveless surcoats, which bore a broad red
stripe above the hem. Two of them carried torches that
could double as polearms, the other six carried short
halberds-wicked weapons with a crescent ax facing one
direction and a sharpened gut-hook going the other way.
Xantcha knew the kind of damage such weapons could do
against a mostly unarmored mob; she hoped she wasn't going
to witness it again.

The crowd reformed in the Red-Stripe wake, watchful and
not quite silent. Someone muttered fighting words, but not
loud enough for Red-Stripe ears. That would come later.
Xantcha figured her hopes were futile. Both sides wouldn't
be satisfied with anything less than bloodshed.

"I-I don't know what's happened," Ratepe stammered.
"Sleepers?"

He wanted an affirmative answer, which Xantcha couldn't
give. There was oil in the air, the smell faint and mostly
coming from the temple or the palace, both still secure
within their separate walls. "We happened," Xantcha
replied, as grim as the Red-Stripe faces. "We made sure the
truth got out, didn't we? These are all your folk, Ratepe,
ordinary Efuands, the ones who got caught up with the Red-
Stripes and the ones who didn't. Now everybody's got a
grudge."

Screaming spiders and Phyrexians would just get in the
way.

"I was afraid of what would happen if we just took out
the Red-Stripes and the Phyrexians, but this is worse than
I imagined it could ever be," Ratepe said. His hand rested
momentarily on her shoulder, then fell away.

Closer to the temple, the plaza erupted in shouts and
screams. Ratepe succumbed to gawking curiosity as he eased
past Xantcha for a better look at the skirmish. She grabbed
his arm and rocked him back on his heels.

"Unless you know a better place with food and beds,"
she snapped, "I say we go to ground in your family's old
courtyard." They were traveling light on everything but
gold. "This will be calmer come daylight, or the whole city
could be in flames," she added.

Without much confidence, Ratepe said that the better
inns were on the western side of the plaza. Xantcha, who
hadn't eaten since the previous night in Narjabul, was
game, though she had to grab Ratepe's arm again to keep him
from striking off through the middle of the plaza.

"Forget you ever knew this place, all right? Pay
attention to what you see, not what you remember," she
advised as they headed north, toward the sea and the
palace.

They were on the cobblestones near the Red-Stripe
barracks, doing their best not to attract attention, when
the temple gongs rang out. This time Xantcha expected the
worst and would have bolted for any shadow large enough to
contain the sphere if Ratepe hadn't held her back.

"There's a procession every night," he said. "That's
what everyone's here for, what they're supposed to be here
for. The high priests march the Book around and put it on
the dais until midnight."

Xantcha noticed the hulking white-draped platform in
the middle of the plaza for the first time. "Every night?"
she asked, thinking of tomorrow night when the spiders
would scream.

Ratepe nodded.

She nodded, too, seeing to the heart of his requests.
"You've been thinking about this from the moment Urza
started talking about exposing the sleepers with the
Glimmer Moon! So, why, exactly, put shatter spiders on the
altar?"

"Because the Book won't be there when the altar's
destroyed. I figured it would shame the Shratta, whatever's
left of them and I wanted the Shratta shamed at the same
time the Red-Stripes were exposed. I didn't expect Red-
Stripes to be leading the procession."

He cocked his head toward the temple where what he'd
described was happening: the same eight armed men they'd
seen earlier marched at the head of a short parade whose

focal point was an ornately shrouded litter bearing
Avohir's holy book. The tome's container was borne on the
shoulders of four priests, at least one of whom reeked oil.
Xantcha glanced up at the sky.

The Glimmer Moon had risen, but though she knew the
habits of the larger moon and its phases, she'd always
regarded the smaller moon as a nuisance, sometimes there,
sometimes not, never welcome. She didn't know if it rose
earlier or later each day and wasn't completely clear on
the whole "striking its zenith" moment that Urza was
counting on.

"They just carry the Book out to the dais and then
carry it back at midnight? A couple thousand paces. You're
not hoping for something to happen while they're carrying
it, are you?" If Ratepe had wanted to shame the Shratta,
she couldn't imagine anything more effective than having a
sleeper collapse while the holy book's litter was sitting
on his shoulder.

"No," Ratepe replied, but before he could specify which
question he'd answered, the nearest palace gate swung open.
More armed and armored Red-Stripes emerged.

A sleeper marched in the second octet. He passed so
close that Xantcha was sure she knew which of the eight it
was: a cleanshaven young man, not apparently much older
than Ratepe and not handsome either. His mouth and nose
were too big for his face, his eyes too small. When he
turned and stared, Xantcha's blood cooled. She forced her
head to remain still and her eyes to lose focus. He might
not be able to tell she'd been watching him. Xantcha held
her breath, too, though that surely was too late. When the
octet had passed, she started walking again.

The dais was still unburdened when they reached the
western plaza where the guild inns, each a little fortress,
stood behind their closed-gate walls. Ratepe handled the
negotiations with the guild guards while Xantcha watched
the procession go round and round the plaza. The joint
guild of barbers and surgeons had a room behind the kitchen
for which they wanted an exorbitant amount of copper and
silver but not in any of the forms Xantcha or Ratepe
carried it. Fortunately-but not, she suspected,
coincidentally- there was a money changers' booth butted up
against the barber's watchtower.

"Festival robbery," Ratepe said dramatically as he
collected the devalued worth of a golden ring. "Tabarna
shall hear of this!"

"Avohir, he knows," the money changer replied, pointing
to the lead seals dangling from a silk ribbon overhead.

The room behind the kitchen had been let to another
traveler. They wound up in a dust-choked garret that
Xantcha was sure had been home to a flock of pigeons
earlier in the day.

"The food will be good," Ratepe promised once they'd
claimed their quarters.

"Don't say another word. You've been wrong about
everything else. If you keep quiet now, the meal may at
least be edible!" She was jesting, resorting to the rough
humor that worked well on the Ohran Ridge and floundered
here in the city.

But the food was good. They devoured roast lamb with
sweet herbs, a thick grainy paste that tasted of nuts and

saffron, honey-glazed bread, and an overflowing jug of the
berry wine served only for the Festival of Fruits. It
wasn't worth the silver they'd paid for it, but it was good
nonetheless, and they hauled the remaining wine up to the
top of the stairs when they were finished.

The garret overhung a blind alley, but a bit of
acrobatics put them on the roof and gave them one of the
better views of the plaza that Pincar had to offer. A
breeze stirred the humid air, making it pleasant. In the
plaza, Avohir's book remained open on the dais. Red-Stripes
stood guard while priests took turns reciting Shratta
verses from memory-or so Ratepe said. Their voices didn't
reach the top of the guild inn.

The crowd had thinned, and what remained had settled in
around ten or fifteen campfires scattered across the
cobblestones. Red-Stripes stood guard outside the palace
and the temple. Xantcha wondered who held the allegiance of
the men who guarded the inns. Not that it mattered
overmuch. The sky was open to her sphere if they had to get
away in a hurry.

"This is a good place," she decided. "We can see
everything that's important, and there's nothing to block
the sphere if we need it. We'll watch tomorrow night from
here."