The Burning City (13 page)

“Well, an illusion, of course, but the privateers turned about and ran. What made it work wasn't just Acrimegus's light effects, but the details, the way he acted, the way
we
were acting.”

“Were you frightened?”

“I pissed in my kilt. But what a story! I'd travel again with Acrimegus any day. Now you tell me something.”

“I've seen a Lord.”

“So have I. Where was your Lord?”

“At home, in Lordshills. He had a fountain. And a room inside where they can cook. A room to piss in, with running water. And a room where kinless wrote things on paper and put them in jars, but I couldn't go in there.” Whandall decided not to speak Samorty's name. He would hold that in reserve.

“Can you read?”

“No. I don't know anyone who can read.” Except the Lords could read. And Shanda.

“You do now. What did your Lord do?”

Whandall was still trying to understand what he'd seen on two visits. “He had other Lords to dinner, and a magician. People who weren't Lords brought the food and took it away, and all the Lords did was talk and ask each other questions. At the end they acted like they'd fixed something broken, only… only it was the next Burning. They think if they can make people talk to each other, they can miss the next Burning. And at the end he put on armor and went out with some other armed men.”

“Did they… do
you
think they put off the next Burning?”

No grown man or woman could answer that question. Whandall didn't think even Lord Samorty knew that. Whandall said, “No.”

“Then when will it happen?”

“Nobody knows,” Whandall said. “There was another Lord who made cups move in a circle. Like this—”

“Yes, that's called juggling.”

“How do you do it?”

“Years of practice. It isn't magic, Whandall.”

“It isn't?”

“No.”

“There was a…” Whandall couldn't remember the word. “People pretending to be other people. Telling each other a story like they don't know they're being watched.
Jispomnos
, they called it.”

“I've seen
Jispomnos
. It's too long for after dinner. It runs on forever! You saw just pieces, I bet. Was there a part where the wife's parents want blood money?”

They talked through the morning and deep into afternoon. Whandall practiced his scanty Condigeano from time to time, but usually they were each speaking their own language.

Tras spoke of his own affairs without hesitation. Still, it was hard for even a teller to tell how he lived… to see it from inside… to see what a stranger must miss. They had to walk circles around their lives, to sneak up on the truth.

“Do you know who your father was?”

Whandall said, “Yes. Do you?”

“Yes, of course,” Tras said.

“What you did with your face. It looked like you wanted to fight.”

Tras shrugged uncomfortably. “Maybe for just a moment. Sorry. Whandall, it's an insult to ask if anyone but my father is my father.” Tras changed to local speech. “This not Condigeo.
You
feel I still respect you?”

“Yes, but we don't say
father
. Resalet—” Tras lofted one eyebrow. Whandall explained, “Resalet is father to my brothers Wanshig and Shastern and two of my sisters. He tells us, ‘I know who
my
father is. So do you. But maybe I'm talking to one who isn't so lucky. I don't throw it in his teeth. You don't either. You say
Pothefit
. You and I and he know who I mean. Even if we're wrong.'”

“Pothefit. Your father. Have other name?”

“Not to tell.”

“Live with you?”

“Pothefit was killed by a wizard.”

Tras's face twisted. The man's face was so alien, it was hard to tell just what he was showing. He said, “When was that?”

“My second Burning. I was seven. Five years ago.”
Almost five
, Whandall thought.

“I missed it. My ship left late. Now nobody seems to know when the next Burning will start,” Tras said.

“Nobody knows,” Whandall agreed.

Tras Preetror sighed. “But someone has to know. Someone has to set a fire.”

An odd viewpoint, Whandall thought. “Yangin-Atep sets fire.”

“They used to know, here in Tep's Town. In late spring, every spring, you'd burn the city. Now it's been… three years? What do you remember of the Burning?”

Whandall tried to tell him. Tras listened for a bit, then asked in Condigeano, “A wizard killed this Pothefit?”

“It was said.”

“Odd.
I'd
know if there was a powerful wizard in Tep's Town.”

“He's here. I've seen him. Someday I'll see him again. I don't know enough about magic yet. I don't even have my knife.”

Tras said, “I've seen those knives. Half a pace long, plain handles, maybe a little crude?”

“Crude?”

“A Condigeano merchant would spend more effort. Inca smiths get
very
fancy. Here, someone would just take it away from him.”

Whandall frowned, remembering something. “Why did you laugh?”

Tras looked guilty. “You caught that? I'm sorry.”

“Yes, but why?”

“Magic wears out. It wears out faster in cities because there are more people. Everybody knows a
little
magic. You ever try to work a spell near a courthouse? It's bad enough in Condigeo.

“But here! There's something about Tep's Town that eats the magic right out of spells and potions and prayers. Here, it's hard to imagine what a wizard could do that would hurt a careful man. He must have taken your f—taken Pothefit by surprise.”

How? A man so old that he might die before Whandall had his knife! A gatherer must be wary, ready to run or fight. What could Morth of Atlantis have done to surprise Pothefit?

But Whandall only asked, “Have you been where magic is strong?”

“They're dangerous places. Deserts, the ocean, mountain peaks. Anywhere magicians have a hard time getting to, that's where magic can still leap out and bite you. But I like to go look,” Tras said. “I'm a teller. I have to go to where I can find stories to tell.”

“What will happen when all the magic is gone?”

Tras looked grave. “I don't know. I don't think anyone knows, but some magicians say they have visions of a time when there is no magic, and everyone lives like animals. Others say that after a long time there'll be a new age that doesn't need magic.”

Whandall's mind's eye showed him Tep's Town spreading to cover the world… just for a moment, before he blinked the image away.

What Whandall remembered best of that afternoon was how little he understood of what he'd seen of his world. But he'd learned just by talking, and the teller didn't seem disappointed.

Of course Whandall asked Tras Preetror about Lords.

Strangely, Tras wanted
him
to find out more.

“Tras, we saw you with them on the wagon. You spoke to them,” Whandall said.

“We see them when they want to be seen,” Tras said. “A show for tellers. But you've seen Lords when they didn't know. Whandall, everyone is curious about your Lords. Who are they? Where do they come from? How do they get their power?”

“Don't other people have Lords?”

“Lords, Kings, and a hundred other ways to keep chaos imprisoned,” Tras said. “But Tep's Town is different. You burn down your city, the kinless rebuild, and everyone thinks it won't happen without the Lords. Maybe everyone's right. I want to
know
. Whandall, don't you want to go back?”

Whandall was learning how to survive in the streets of Serpent's Walk. In the “benighted sections” he had enemies but also friends and guides. He was actually getting good at it. In the Lordshills were dangers he didn't understand. No, he didn't really want to go back; not now. Not until he understood better what he might do there.

He had no place in Lordshills. Or in Lord's Town nearby, where kinless and Lordkin lived together and hung clothes out to dry. But he might learn, in time. The kinless in the pony cart had spoken of moving his relatives to Lord's Town. And there were gardeners, and Lordsmen living inside the walls of Lordshills. They had to come from somewhere. He had
to learn these things. But where? Going to Lordshills without knowing more could be dangerous.

There was his promise to Shanda. But he'd
told
her it might take time.

He tried avoiding the teller. It made life less interesting, and Tras sought him out anyway. Whandall began to wonder: what would the teller
do
to persuade him?

Whandall hadn't looked at the clothes Shanda had given him in a third of a year. When he saw their condition, he put a kilt and shirt on under his Serpent's Walk gear and took them to show the teller.

They were torn. They stank. “It's all like this,” he told Tras.

“Dry rot. And how did they get ripped?”

“Bull Pizzles caught me. And afterward I couldn't hang them up to dry without somebody gathering them.”

Tras offered to get him some soap.

Whandall explained that soap was unheard-of treasure. His family would gather it from him, if he could get it
that
far. Unless…

Tras grumbled at the price, but he paid.

Whandall went home by hidden ways, concealing a whole bag of soap. Guile and a brisk breeze hid him through Dirty Bird to Serpent's Walk, and from there a cake of soap bought him an escort back to the Placehold.

He could think of only one way to hide so much soap. He started giving it away.

His mother praised him extravagantly. Brothers took a few cakes to give to their women. He spoke to Wess, a girl two years older than Whandall, the daughter of his aunt's new lover. For the luck that was in his words or because she liked him or for the soap she knew he had, she lay with him and took his virginity.

Now Placehold reeked of soap, and Whandall could safely use the rest. He cleaned the clothes Shanda had given him. Pants and two shirts had rotted too badly; they came apart. He found he could still assemble a full outfit.

He went back to Wess and begged her to sew up the rips. They didn't have to hold long, or to stand up to more than a second glance. When Wess agreed, he gave her another cake of soap.

It would not do to trade with a Lordkin, man or woman. But a gift would persuade Wess not to forget her promise or keep it badly. He could see himself in the Lordshills, trying to get into pants that had been sewn shut at the cuffs!

His clothes must have been good enough, because the guards paid no attention to him at all. This time he knew the way to Samorty's house.

Dinner in Serana's kitchen was as good as he remembered. There was always more than enough food in a Lord's house. Whandall thought that must be the best thing about living here. You could never be hungry.

Shanda had new clothes for him.

“When did you get these?” Whandall asked.

“Just after the carnival,” she said. “When you didn't come back, I thought about giving them to the gardeners, but you said it might be a long time.”

Whandall was impressed: not that she had saved them for him, though that was nice, but that she could keep things a long time. No one gathered from her room. He'd seen clothes hung to dry, unguarded.

The Lords had gone to someone else's house, so there was nothing to do. Whandall slept in the empty room next to Shanda's.

In the morning they went over the wall with a lunch Serana had packed. Whandall inspected Shanda in her leathers before he let her go further. He was no less careful with his own.

The hills near the Lords' wall were ablaze with flowers. It was glorious, but Whandall had never seen the chaparral like this. All the patterns and paths he remembered were gone.

The chaparral seemed well behaved this near the Lords' wall. Whandall tried to urge caution, but Shanda was entranced by the beauty. The farther they went, the more vicious it all became. Yet the hills still flared in every conceivable color! Every bouquet of swords had a great scarlet flower at the tip. Touch-me displayed tiny white berries and pale green flowers with red streaks. Hemp plants grew taller than Whandall. They looked inviting, but Whandall wouldn't touch them.

“I've never seen the woods like this,” he confessed. “Don't pick anything, okay? Please?”

There were few paths, and animals had made those. At least Shanda seemed to be taking the plants seriously. The whips and morningstars were visibly dangerous, and she'd seen what touch-me did to her stepmother. He watched her weave her way through a patch of creepy-julia, very cautious, very graceful, very pretty among the black-edged lavender flowers. But she kept stopping to look.

He wove a path through touch-me and bouquets of swords to an apple tree. She followed carefully in his footsteps. They ate a dozen tiny apples and, in a field of high yellow grass, threw the cores at each other.