Shallows of Night - 02 (12 page)

They passed many soldiers, of differing types and obviously bound to various rikkagin. They seemed to be the only people in these noisome streets not in a hurry. Ronin was pleased to be able to walk; it gave him a chance to test his body. His back had ceased to pain him days ago and the wound in his shoulder was almost healed but he knew his ribs needed more time to mend. His chest was stiff and sore but most of the sharp pain had left him and this exercise was invigorating, not tiring.

On Iron Street, two men threw a set of five dice against the side of a wall, talking softly to each other, intent on the faces of the cubes. A woman in filthy clothes sat in the dust of the street, a bawling baby in the crook of one arm. She held a grimy hand, nails torn and black with dirt, palm upward.

“Please,” she called in a pitifully weak voice. “Please.”

Her sad eyes caught Ronin’s and they were filled with pain.

“Ignore her,” Tuolin said, noting the direction of Ronin’s gaze.

“But surely you can spare something for her.”

Tuolin shook his head.

“Please,” the woman called.

“The baby is crying,” said Ronin. “It is hungry.”

Swiftly Tuolin crossed the crowded street and, thrusting aside the folds of the woman’s robe, grasped the hidden wrist and Ronin saw that she held a dirk which she had been digging into the baby to make it cry. Her almond eyes flashed angrily and she wrenched her wrist from his grip, lunging at him with the blade’s point. Tuolin stepped back out of harm’s way and they resumed their walk along Iron Street.

“A lesson of Sha’angh’sei,” he said.

Ronin glanced back through the crowds of people. The woman sat, palm outstretched, the other hand hidden. Her lips moved; her eyes searched the passing faces. The baby cried.

“War is the reason Sha’angh’sei was built and it was built in a day.”

“Surely you are not serious.”

“Perhaps I exaggerate just a bit.”

“How long?”

“To build the city?”

“No. How long has the war been on?”

“It is endless. I do not remember. No one can.”

“Who is fighting whom?”

“Everyone against everybody.”

“That is not an answer.”

“Yet it is the truth.”

They were sitting in a low-ceilinged tavern, at a plank table located along the back wall which ran almost the entire width of the establishment. A wide wooden stairway to the second story took up the remainder of the wall.

The air was thick with smoke and grease and burning tallow. Before them lay platters of broiled meat and steamed fish, raw vegetables and the inevitable rice. Cups of a clear rice wine, hot and potent, were constantly refilled as they ate using the long sticks. The men aboard ship had taught Ronin how to use these peculiar eating utensils.

“All the races of man are here, I think,” said Tuolin between mouthfuls, “in differing strengths. And they have never gotten along.”

“Borros, the man I traveled with over the ice sea, believed that the sorcerous wars had ended all conflict.”

Tuolin smiled as he swallowed but his eyes showed that he was not amused; they were as coldly blue as ice. “Man will never learn, Ronin. He is eternally at war with himself.” He shrugged. “There is no help for it, I am afraid.”

Six soldiers in dusty uniforms came into the tavern, pulling up chairs around a table near the door. They ordered wine and began to drink, laughing loudly and pounding on the table. Their long swords scraped against the floor boards.

“This city is composed of factions,” said Tuolin, “all of them mistrusting the others because the war allows you to make much money if you are shrewd.”

In the far corner two cloaked men, tall and light-haired, sat with arms around a pair of sloe-eyed women, slight with high-cheekboned, flat-nosed faces, long black hair falling sleekly to the middle of their backs.

“The city is filled with many, many hongs—merchants—who are rich and fat from the war.”

“They live here?”

One of the couples was kissing now, a long and passionate embrace.

“Hardly,” Tuolin snorted. He gulped at his wine. “They live on the upper reaches.” He refilled his cup. “In the walled city.”

“Another city?”

“Yes and no.” He took more meat with his sticks. “It is still Sha’angh’sei.”

Along the opposite wall a woman with long eyes and a curiously simian face whispered to three men in dark cloaks. She wore her shiny hair piled upon her narrow head and long earrings of a green stone spun as she moved her head.

“What about the war?”

“It is everywhere. It is why we returned to Sha’angh’sei. An army of bandits have massed to the north and west.” Three children ran in from the street, thin and filthy and hollow-eyed. The tavernmaster called to them as they clattered up the stairs. He shouted and the tallest one returned and laid a number of dull coins in the man’s hand. The tavernmaster slapped the boy so hard that his frame shook. The boy dug a dirty hand into a pocket and extracted several more coins, then he ran up the stairs after the others. “The hongs are paying us to protect their interests before the bandits become a nuisance by descending on the city itself.”

Even to Ronin, so short a time with these people, it seemed an implausible story; however, he could not guess why Tuolin should lie to him.

“Then you will be leaving Sha’angh’sei?” he asked.

The simian-faced woman was gesturing now with narrow bony hands. Her long nails were lacquered green and, Ronin saw with some surprise, her teeth were black.

“Yes. The day after tomorrow. It is a three-day march to Kamado, the fortress in the north.”

One of the men got up and walked out. The remaining two resumed talking to the simian-faced woman with increased animation. Her teeth gleamed darkly.

Ronin was about to say something but Tuolin’s hand on his arm stopped him. He followed the blond man’s gaze.

Two men stood in the doorway. They wore dark baggy pants and black cloaks over silk shirts. They were almond-eyed with flat wide faces. Their long hair was waxed and bound in queues. An errant gust of wind plucked at their cloaks and Ronin caught a glimpse of short-hafted axes thrust into their sashes.

“Keep still,” whispered Tuolin, his eyes drifting slowly away from the tall figures. His voice carried a peculiar note, of fear perhaps? He looked at Ronin and said in a more normal tone, “The rikkagin will require you at a specific hour tomorrow. Until that time, he requested me to be your guide around the city.” Ronin stared at him. “Sha’angh’sei is a most complex and at times bewildering city. The rikkagin does not wish for you to get lost.”

The men were still in the doorway, their black eyes sweeping the room. The tavernmaster glanced up from serving a table and, wiping his hands on his apron, hurried across the room. He drew from some inner pocket a small leather sack which he handed to one of the men. The other said something to him and laughed. The tavernmaster bowed. Then the two were gone without a sound.

“Who were they?” said Ronin.

“The Greens,” said Tuolin as if that were all the answer needed. He drained the last of his wine. “I have had my fill of this place. What say you, Ronin, shall we move on?”

Tuolin paid for their meal. The green stone earrings of the simian-faced woman danced as she spoke.

Outside in the fragrant air, there seemed less people about than earlier in the evening. Tuolin looked both ways along the street, then he seemed to relax, stretching.

“Now,” he said, “the evening begins.”

The gold plaque said “Tenchō.” It was fixed with golden spikes to the brown brickwork to the left of the high yellow double doors at the head of a curving iron stairway on Okan Street.

Twice he had caught Tuolin glancing behind them as if he thought they were being followed. However, it seemed quite impossible to tell among all the bodies darting in every direction.

Tuolin knocked on the yellow doors and after a moment they opened inward.

“Matsu,” he breathed, smiling.

She stood between the two armed men, her slender frame appearing smaller for their presence. She had an oval face with long almond eyes and thick black hair which she wore straight and loose so that one eye was continually blanketed by its cascade. She wore a silver robe with a high neck and flaring sleeves, embroidered with gray doves. Her skin was very white; her lips were unpainted. The oval lapis pin at her throat was the only relief from the black, gray, and white.

She smiled at Tuolin, then gazed for a long moment at Ronin. Then she murmured to the guards, who relaxed somewhat.

She led them wordlessly through a narrow foyer. Strips of thin carpeting covered the wooden floors; a tall gold-framed mirror briefly disclosed the small procession. They went through open doors on the left from which yellow light wavered and danced.

They were in a wide, deep room with blond wood paneling along the walls to a height of an average man’s waist. Above this, the walls were painted a muted yellow. The high ceiling was bone white. From its center hung an immense oval lamp constructed of faceted topaz; perhaps five hundred crystals had been cunningly mounted so that the lamp’s myriad small flames, set in its center, shone through the facets. It was this singular light which gave the room its tawny aspect.

Scattered about the lacquered wooden floor were small intimate couches and groups of plush chairs upon which sat the most diverse assortment of women that Ronin had ever seen. Some were with men, drinking and smoking, others were in small groups talking languidly among themselves, turning their exquisite faces to the prowling men like petals of a flower following the path of the sun. Young girls in quilted jackets and wide silk pants of pastel colors moved between these groups, ships in the indeterminate voids separating these trembling constellations.

Matsu left them, crossing the room to a group of two men and a woman. After several moments the woman detached herself and approached them. She wore a floor-length saffron silk dress, slit up one side so that with every step she took Ronin could see the length of one naked leg. The dress was embroidered in patterns of fantastic flowers in the palest green. Like Matsu’s, the dress was wide-sleeved and high-necked and this style managed somehow to highlight her figure.

But it was her face that was most extraordinary. She had long dark eyes, the upper lids dusky and sensual without seeming to be painted. Her face was narrow at the chin, accentuating her high cheekbones. Her lips were painted deep scarlet; glossy, half opened. Her hair was so violently dark that it appeared blue-black; she wore it very long and brushed to fall delicately across her left shoulder and breast.

She smiled with small white teeth and lifted her hands, pressing them together.

“Ah, Tuolin,” she said. “How good it is to see you again.” Her voice had the tonality of a bell, far away, lilting. She dropped her hands. They were small and white with delicate fingers and long nails lacquered yellow. She wore topaz earrings in the shape of a flower.

Her head turned slowly and she gazed at Ronin and at that precise moment he had the peculiar sensation of seeing double.

“Kiri, this is Ronin,” said Tuolin. “He is a warrior from a land far to the north. This is his first night in Sha’angh’sei.”

“And you brought him here,” she said with a musical laugh. “How very flattering.”

A young girl in a light blue quilted jacket and pants came up to them.

“Liy will take you to bathe. And when you return, you shall decide.” The dark eyes regarded him.

The girl led them across the room of topaz light, through a wide teakwood door into a short passageway of rough-hewn stone. The contrast was absolute.

They went down a narrow stairway lit by smoky braziers set high up along the walls. The stone steps were damp and somewhere, not far off, Ronin could discern the soft slap of water. The stairs gave out into a wide room with rock walls and a low wooden ceiling, lamplit, warm. Into one wall had been hewn an immense fireplace within which hung an equally enormous cauldron steaming as the fire boiled its contents.

The room itself was dominated by two large square wooden tubs set upon raised wooden slats; one of the tubs was half filled with water. Four women, dark-haired, almond-eyed, naked to the waist, stood as if waiting for their arrival. Water steamed and gurgled.

“Come on,” Tuolin called happily, stripping off his dirty sea clothes and hanging his weapons on one of a line of wooden pegs set into one wall. Ronin followed suit and the women directed them to the empty tub. As they climbed in, the women drew up buckets of hot water, filling the tub. Then they climbed in and, taking soft brushes and fragrant soap, began to wash each man thoroughly.

Tuolin snorted and blew water from his mouth.

“Well, Ronin, what do you think of this? Was home ever so pleasant?”

The hands were soft and gentle and the hot soapy water against his skin felt delicious. The women murmured to each other when they saw his back, the scars long and livid and newly healed, and they took great care in cleansing this part of him so that he felt no discomfort, only pleasure. They stroked his chest, gently massaging his muscles almost as if they knew of his recently broken ribs. They murmured to him and he and Tuolin moved, creators now of their own waves, commanders of tides and currents, to the second tub to which clean hot water was added. Two of the women began to clean the first tub while the other two gathered up the pair’s dirty clothes and went out.

Ronin lay back, stretching out his legs, letting the heat slowly soak into his body. Gradually, his muscles loosened and much of the tension drained out of him. He closed his eyes.

How unexpected this all was. How utterly different were the circumstances than what Borros had pictured. How— Abruptly the realization came that he had had no idea of where he might be headed or even if he could survive when he had ascended onto the surface from the Freehold’s forbidden access hatch. He had followed Borros blindly, not caring, wanting to escape from the Freehold as much as he had wanted to solve the mystery of the scroll of dor-Sefrith. The heat climbed into him like the presence of a naked woman close beside him.