The Sable City (The Norothian Cycle) (35 page)

As the party drew closer to Red Galdeez and even as Phin felt as physically good as he ever had, the fact that he had still hardly had a look at Nesha-tari began to trouble him. He hoped she was not in some way scarred or misshapen, for that would just be tragic, but he did not think that could be the case. Though she went about covered there was nothing retiring or timid about the way she walked, with a stride that was at once graceful and with great purpose. After Galdeez when they traveled on Shugak roads through the Red Hills on the Vod Wild side of the river, surely then the whole group would have to march closer together. And as there were not going to be any inns in the Wilds they would all be camping in the evenings. Phin started to daydream about it even before Galdeez was in sight.

Phin rose early in the mornings to meditate on his spells, which he could then cast with a word and a gesture at any time during the day. Since leaving Souterm he had taken to preparing only the one bit of magic that seemed likely to have any utility if there was some trouble on the road, the spell of Sleep. Phin’s meditation was deep as he was away in a part of his own mind that was a realm of symbol and signs, but it was generally quite brief as Sleep was not a complicated spell. Each morning it began to take longer however, and Phin was alarmed to find that even in the mental place that allowed him to wield magic the idea of Nesha-tari was somehow still present. Nothing quite like that had ever happened to Phin before, and it made him think something very strange was going on in his head.

If Phin had lived a different life he might have thought he was falling in love for the first time. But Phin had lived his own life, and he knew magic when he smelled it.

The last night before they were to reach Galdeez, Phin waited until Zebulon was asleep and then slowly slipped out of the tent. Amatesu’s cooking fire in the pit had gone to ash, and the night was chilly. Phin stirred the embers until little yellow glimmers winked from the blackened wood, wrapped his bedding blanket around his shoulders and sat cross-legged before the pit staring into the embers until his eyes lost focus and his breathing stilled. In half an hour he blinked, and could see that the last sparks had faded out. He had memorized one Sleep spell, and a stronger than usual version of the divination spell referred to in the verbal shorthand of Abverwar as
Know History
.

Phin crept away from the camp before putting on his soft boots and walking across the Post Road for the nearby King’s Inn. He wondered absently why the places were called that for there were no Kings in the Codian Empire, and resolved to ask Zebulon tomorrow if he thought of it. That was the trivial sort of information Zeb seemed to have in abundance.

It was late and the inn kitchen was closed, the common room empty. A man appeared behind a desk from a curtained doorway as Phin’s entry jingled a chime above the front door. The clerk was a young Doonish local in a clean tunic of light blue cloth, the breast embroidered with a simplified version of the Codian Book-from-the-Water design as an upright rectangle in a circle. Phin told the fellow he was a member of the Madame Nesha-tari’s party, and needed her room number. The desk clerk did not know the name but recognized Phin’s description of the woman’s hooded ensemble. He was still loathe to give Phin a room number though he did offer to summon her. Phin said it would keep until morning, and turned to go. He turned around again as the man was passing back through the curtained doorway, muttered a few words and raised his hand to his mouth to blow a bit of fine powder from his fingers.

The man stopped in the doorway and swayed. Phin stepped around the desk and caught the fellow under the armpits as he began to crumple to the floor, totally limp. Phin dragged him through the curtain into a small office, and hoisted the fellow onto a cot at the far wall. He blew out the lamp on a table.

Phin returned to the desk, flipped open a ledger by an inkwell to the last marked page and ran his finger down the column of signatures. Madame Nesha-tari’s was there without her title, as was the room number.

Phin turned to a corkboard on the wall behind the desk on which was drawn a diagram of the one-story inn, two wings lined with rooms running off the central kitchen and commons, with the stables in an outbuilding. Each room on the diagram was numbered and a key hung from a peg in each one that was not presently occupied. The peg for Nesha-tari’s key was empty, and the board told Phin that she had taken the corner room at the north end of the inn, round the back. He looked down the hall toward that wing but walked out the front door and around the building.

There was no light in Nesha-tari’s two corner windows, high on the walls so that even with his height Phin would have to get on tiptoes just to raise his eyes level with their bottom edges. All the windows of the inn were on hinged casements of dark wood enclosing a diamond-shaped metal mesh around tiny panes of glass. Nesha-tari’s side window was shut tight, but that in the back wall was open just a crack so that a lace curtain behind it shifted whitely in the moonlight. Phin stood underneath the window and gathered his thoughts, though he could feel his heart hammering in his chest.

He would have to touch her to cast
Know History
, and actually Phin had little reason to think the spell would work. It was generally used for inanimate objects that could be handled, and by concentrating hard a wizard could come to know something of their origins, their age, and in the case of something like a weapon, just to what use it had been put. Phin had never cast the spell on a person before, and was unsure if it could tell him what he suspected: That the Madame Nesha-tari was some sort of witch, and that she had put an enchantment on him.

But he wanted to touch her. Really, really bad. The thought of setting a hand gently upon her, perhaps on a creamy shoulder, was making Phin’s heart beat so hard he began to fear it would wake her as he boosted himself into her room.

Phin’s palms were moist and he wiped them on his shirt before reaching up and pulling the back casement out just a bit further into the night air, wincing as the hinges whined ever so softly. He put his fingers on the window ledge and stood with his nose almost touching the white-washed timber wall, rising slowly on his toes until he could peek between his fingers.

It was pitch black in the room but as he squinted Phin thought he could just see two dim spots of blue light, almost like eyes looking back at him.

Then the flat end of a Far Western weapon called a
tonfa
cracked across the back of Phin’s skull, and he saw no more.

*

Uriako Shikashe’s voice awoke Zeb while the canvas sides of his tent were still dark. Zeb was splayed on his back more comfortably than was usual in the tent he shared with Phin Phoarty, and after a moment he realized it was because he was alone. Amatesu was talking to Shikashe now, outside. Zeb rolled over and started to snuggle deeper under his blanket, but had the thought that Nesha-tari might have woken the others up early. She might actually be standing outside right now. Zeb slithered out of his bedding and the tent, stumbled up to his feet and looked around.

Still dark night, and no Nesha-tari. Shikashe stood nearby and frowned at Zeb with his arms crossed and his long black topknot all unbound so that his hair fell around his shoulders. As the samurai slept only in a long shirt of embroidered silk he had at moment a slightly womanly appearance, apart from the mustache. Not that Zeb was going to tell him so.

Amatesu had rekindled the fire and was kneeling on the far side. Zeb stepped over to see what she was about, and blinked in surprise for Phin was lying on the ground before her as though dead. Amatesu had turned his limp head sideways by the chin, and was gently probing his brown hair with her fingers. When she pulled them back they were red and wet in the firelight.

“
What the hells happened?” Zeb shouted, snapping fully awake and scampering over to kneel next to Amatesu.

“
I struck him in the head,” the woman said with a frown. “Too hard, I think.”

Zeb stared at her. “You did what?”

Amatesu did not answer but worked her fingers into Phin’s hair at the back of his skull. She closed her eyes and lifted her chin, then released a long, soft breath. She looked just like she had when Zeb had first met her, when the shukenja had jammed her fingers into the ruins of his elbow and withdrawn them with the joint repaired.

Phin stirred, then jerked and blinked his eyes. Amatesu stood up and wiped her bloody fingers together, looking around the campsite for the water bucket.

“
What…” Phin looked up at Zeb and stammered. “Where am I…what?”

“
Amatesu hit you in the head.” Zeb turned to the shukenja as she crossed to the bucket. “Amatesu, why did you hit Phin in the head?” The fellow wasn’t a bad sort really, Zeb had come to think. Phoarty had a nose-in-the-air snootiness about him that Zeb supposed was typical for a mage, but he had been loosening up for the last week or so.

“
He was trying to break into the Madame Nesha-tari’s bed chamber,” Amatesu said, dunking a cloth in the bucket.

Zeb’s eyes widened and he stood up. Phin had rolled to all fours and was starting to rise groggily, but Zeb put a foot on his ribs and knocked him back to his side.

“
You were doing
what
?” Zeb hissed down at him.

“
Zebulon!” Amatesu snapped, in the exact tone of voice that the matrons had used at him when he was a boy in the Baj Nif Drom. But he didn’t hear her. Zeb’s hands were balled in fists at his sides and they were shaking.

“
Get up!” he barked at Phoarty and Phin did so rapidly, lunging at Zeb from his knees until Amatesu snagged the mage’s collar and dragged him back. Zeb took a step forward raising a fist, but Shikashe snaked an arm that felt like a tree limb with muscles around Zeb’s neck and squeezed. Zeb actually felt his eyeballs bugging out as he grabbed Shikashe’s arm.

“
Both of you, stop it!” Amatesu ordered, still holding Phin’s collar while the red-faced mage clawed in the air toward Zeb.

“
I will blast you to Hades!” he sputtered furiously, and Zeb answered with an equally enraged though less comprehensible gasp and wheeze.

Amatesu met Shikashe’s eyes and nodded, then she jerked Phin back to put her own arm around his neck. Zeb could not really see it as his vision was starting to swim. The Far Westerners throttled the Wizard and the Minauan until both were going limp, their faces almost purple, then each let their patient go. Zeb and Phin collapsed to all fours and almost knocked their heads together, gasping for breath. The fury had drained out of both of them.

“
Enough?” Amatesu asked. Phin nodded and Zeb tapped the ground like he was surrendering a wrestling match. When the two men were breathing more normally they looked up at each other from inches away.

“
She’s a witch,” Phin croaked.

“
Who…who is a witch?” Zeb panted.

“
Nesh…Nesha-tari.”

“
Nesha-tari is not a witch.” Amatesu said calmly.

She still stood behind Phin, so he flopped to his back while gulping air to look the shukenja in the eye.

“
She is. She has put a spell on me.” He raised a trembling hand and pointed at Zeb. “On him, too.”

Zeb groaned and thumped to his side. His throat felt as though it was the diameter of a straw of wheat. Shikashe had ambled back to his tent and was pulling on trousers, paying no particular attention to the others as though this was a typical morning.

“
It is not a spell, as such,” Amatesu said. Her brow furrowed and lips pursed as she thought. “It is something we think is…part of what Madame Nesha-tari is. Zebulon, how do you say, when an aspect is just a part of a thing? As flight to a bird or a bite to a snake?”

“
Natural?” Zeb wheezed, and Amatesu nodded.

“
Yes. The manner in which men are attracted to Nesha-tari Hrilamae may be a form of magic, but it is not a spell she has cast. It is natural to her.”

Zeb managed to push himself up to his elbows. “Look…if you’re saying she is…hot as a just-fired pistol…then I agree.”

Amatesu turned to Phin, who almost had his breathing back to normal though he was rubbing his neck.

“
Phinneas?”

“
Uh-huh?”

“
Please describe the Madame Nesha-tari.”

Phin looked at her, then over to Zeb. He shrugged.

“
I haven’t seen much of her, truth be told. She is tiny, I mean small built. Alabaster skin. Long blonde hair, like a princess of Exland. In a story.”

Zeb stared at him, then turned to Amatesu.

“
I think you broke his brain.”

“
Zebulon?” Amatesu asked.

“
Nesha-tari is tall,” Zeb said. “Almost my height. She’s not pale, her complexion is more like a coffee with a lot of milk. She has blue eyes, bluest you ever saw, and a gorgeous, magnificent…” Zeb sat up and raised his hands beside his head. “Mane of rich, red hair, with a curl. Like a native of Phohnassa.”

Phin got to his elbows and looked at Zeb. “Strawberry blonde?”

“
No. Wine-dark. Kind of hair you want to bury your nose in. For a week.”

The two men looked at each other, profoundly confused. They turned back to Amatesu who held up a hand with a thumb and finger slightly apart.