The D’neeran Factor (113 page)

After which, a little later, one put his head through the curtain and nodded at Kia, and we filed through the opening and the music began.

It was good that I had little to play; I was full of looking that night, though what I saw did not live up to my expectations, those having become so great, and the greater for having no clear notion of what I was to see. Did I think the masters would have two heads apiece? That all their garments would be made of gold? When they entered they were different indeed, magnificent to my eyes. They seated themselves at a long table some distance from the dais where the musicians were staioned, and there were jewels and fine fabrics all new to me, and gold, yes, more gold than I had imagined being in the whole world. And I told myself that under all this splendor there were men and women neither larger nor more fair than any others I had seen, and maybe no more wise—yet they were different all the same, and it seemed to me that the difference was this: they had no eyes. Oh, eyes they had, and in the proper places, but their use was reserved for each other, for their jewels and gowns and the delicacies before them. They did not see the musicians, no, we were invisible, and even when those eyes strayed in our direction they looked through us as if to the wall, and it was the same with the men and women who served at table. And there were more who served than who ate, so that if the musicians also were counted, and the cooks in the great kitchen, and the Postmen who guarded the entrance through which we had come, there might be three or four persons who lived, on this night, only to make an hour or two pleasant for each of these folk; and I looked at them with attention, trying to understand why this was.

There was one at the end of the table who would be the host, for those who served at table deferred to him, and to the woman at its other end; and both of these were old, the man with white hair and a great white beard, the woman with hair gray as the winter's cloud, and wrinkled skin beneath the collar of jewels at her throat. There were also several others, among them a man who drew my eyes because of his coloring, like none I had ever seen: pale, with eyes so light I wondered (at that distance) if they had any color or were transparent as clear ice, and on his head a stiff brush of hair that shifted color in the candlelight and sometimes showed the hue of flame. And this man was different
from the others, because he saw us; or at least he saw me, when the time for my part in the music came. Though I played well, first the two songs I had learned for unaccompanied flute, and the other with Kia's voice, there was nothing to set off this part of the music to make it special; but at the end I looked up to see that this man looked at me closely. And Kia beside me set her hand on my back, and I knew that she also had seen that he looked at me; but why that should move her to touch me, I did not know.

I was done and my reason for being there fulfilled, and I continued to listen to the players, but more to the talk at table, and especially, now, to the man who had looked at me. He spoke softly, so that it was hard to hear what he said; but soon it was evident that he was a traveler, would leave this place at some time and go on, though I did not know where there was to go.

“And how many years will pass before you come again?” asked the wife of the host, and he answered, “I cannot say. It's not that I would not come more often, as you know.”

“I know,” she answered, sighing. “We know what you bring is not given you as gift. But what can we do, how pay?—the mines are empty, all the workers have had to turn to the fields. A nostrum for the blight—that's what you should bring!”

“And maybe I will next time,” he said. “But the difficulty lies in obtaining it without stirring the curiosity you must avoid. I'll take the samples with me, the grain, the seeds and leaves, the spoiled fruit; those are all imports, and at first look no one will see anything to surprise. And if the blight should also be imported, something lain dormant these many years, then the remedy might be easy to find. But more likely it is not. More likely it is native, something never seen there before, and the business will be harder. All you've paid me may not be enough for the bribes and the mouths to be closed.”

“Yet all we have may depend on you,” said another man.

“A heavy responsibility,” the traveler said. “But there is another thing I might do for you: carry word.”

There was silence, but I saw them shake their heads; and the youngest of the women said, “Then we would lose all we have.”

“A hard choice,” the traveler said. “You know what
Oversight's meddling would do; but it may be that only hunger lies at the end of the path you walk now.”

All this puzzled me, and I thought I would ask Kia later what it meant, and that the time would come soon because the meal was ending—and I had wondered for some time if it ever would—there were such processions of platters, changes of plate, so many flagons of drink! And I was hungry from watching all those others eat, and also tired of sitting still, so that Kia already had whispered to me that I must not fidget. But finally it did end, and those at the table rose to go out; only the traveler did not go out right away, but turned aside to the dais where we were.

And Kia stiffened at my side when she saw that his attention was for me, though I did not know why, for there was nothing out of the way in what he said to me. He wanted to know my name and age, and how long I had been among the players, and why he had not seen me before; and also, when he learned that I had only this season come to the town, he asked whether I liked it there. Then he gave me a coin and went out (so it was true what Georg had said, I could get gold here); but when I looked at Kia she was breathing hard and quick, and I saw that she was angry.

Now the servants of the house began to clear away the remains of the feast, and I understood from some words that passed that we were to return to the kitchens, and find a place in our bellies for whatever good things might be left. But Kia's anger burst forth, so that as we walked to the kitchens I saw nothing, but only listened to Kia; and she talked of the traveler, warning me against him.

“I will speak to the Mistress Ehr,” she said. “I will not have it happen, what might happen!”

But one of the players said, “They all have their toys, Kia. You said nothing to Coro when the Saddhi lad attached her to his house, nor to Yav when the Mistress Conneril's husband lost his powers and she looked about and Yav took her eyes.”

“Coro was not a child, and Yav was a full-grown man,” Kia answered. “Such things happen; how would they not, when we live by favor of men like the Saddhi lad, and women like the Mistress Conneril? But this man Tistou is another thing. Well, maybe he will bring a remedy for the
blight and maybe not—and maybe when he comes again, he will not find what he expects.”

Then she said she would not bring me behind the wall again until the traveler Tistou was gone, so that he should not see me and be reminded of me. But it came upon me that I had understood nothing that night, nothing but the music which my very bones understood; and my ignorance made me sad and weary, and it took all the good tidbits the cooks could give me to cheer me again.

*   *   *

Now I ceased to go to the greater town, for the nights were even colder than before, and it was more pleasant to do my roaming in the streets by the wall, where I knew many and had only to rap on a door at the need to get warm. In this way, too, I met Kia's neighbors, and soon I saw that these neighbors were of two sorts, and divided by the way in which Kia talked with them, or before them. With most all her talk was small gossip of the neighborhood, of the scarcity of food in the marketplace, and other matters such as these. But with some she talked with passion of the greater town, and there were conferences from which I was excluded, and sent to stand outside the door shivering and warn Kia if anyone approached; and when this happened, then like masks the faces of those inside would change, and when the newcomer entered the talk again would be unimportant. I begged Kia to tell me the reason for these strange proceedings, but she would not tell me. So I was left to guess, and my guesses brought me no comfort; and often at night after one of these conferences, I would dream of Pavah again, and not as if he visited me with smiles; no, I would see him run, hear the guns, see him fall, and wake with a cold fist clutching the heart in my chest.

Now, what Kia would not tell me, I thought to find out in another way, and for this purpose attached myself to one of those who shared her secrets, a man called Leren who lived some distance away, but still in the closer ring. But there was more than purpose in the companionship that sprang up between us, for Leren took to me and I to him, and all the more because he reminded me of Otto in his plain blunt ways, though in stature and face they were nothing like.

This Leren was a single man, black-bearded and young, and was a handyman for the upkeep of that beyond the
wall, all parts of which he knew well, though to me it was a mystery. He had a tale to tell of a summer's day when he pointed the stones of that city's highest tower, where only a scarce skyfowl might come once a year, it was so high above the waters where the seabirds found their meals; and on that day he looked out to the edge of the sea where it curved to the world's other side, the wind tearing his beard, dizzy with the sun and alone above the Post, and saw it spread small at his feet. He had a tale also of a maiden who did not acknowledge his presence at her window, where he had come to mend a casement, and whom he watched as she removed her garments, supple as a fish and white as the silver band of the Ring on a cloudless night in spring—this tale he told with humor, swearing that he had seen her eyes shift at the start toward where he stood, and wondering how she would have greeted him, had he come in. He had many stories like these and I listened to them all, and listened also to the men who came to drink ale by his fire, for the speech here was less guarded. They said that each day there were more deaths in the town, and the masters heeded them not and were sleek and fat and did no rationing for themselves, but only ordered it for others. There was anger among these men, who talked of the guardhouses over the gates like men who had studied them well. And though they said no word of plans before me, still it was plain there was a plan; for they spoke of the traveler as well, and there was something they wished to do, but would not do until he was gone, and it worried them that he tarried.

“If the sickness takes us first, there will be no hope,” they said.

“It is the old for the most part so far,” Leren said, and though he was a noisy man full of loud laughter, his voice was soft and sad.

“And babes,” said another man, “and those already sick from some other cause: the weak. But the strong will begin dying soon.”

“The masters will sicken of it, too,” said still another, a man named Willem.

“They will not,” said a fourth man. “He brings them medicines, the man Tistou.”

“The undying,” Willem said, and spat into the fire.

“No one is undying,” Leren said.

“He came in my grandfather's time,” Willem said. “And I have grown from child to man, and seen him at the start and end of that time, and he has not changed one jot. Where he comes from, things are different. Who knows what is possible there?”

The others said, “We have heard that he comes from the other side of the world. It might be worth seeking that side.”

Leren laughed and said, “So you believe that story? They want us to believe it; they do not want us to think far. Other places! The one that spawned him is farther away than you can imagine. The sons of the masters admit it, when the time is right. There are things they will say in secret to one of their own age, swearing him to silence, which they are not supposed to tell. But some say also that this is not the man who came when our grandfathers were young. This Tistou had a grandfather, too.”

“I would not care what he had,” Willem said, “if he would take the flying machine and go away. We cannot fight that. But when he comes again, I will see him dead.”

“Some father will kill him someday,” Leren said, “or a mother holding onto her child with one hand and a knife with the other.”

Here Willem looked at me with thoughtful eyes and said, “Animals can be trapped. Maybe we have the bait to trap that one, if we are willing to use it.”

But Leren laughed out loud and said, “Only if you wish to die, too, by Kia's hand!” And they spoke of it no more.

*   *   *

Now for a time I ceased to go to Leren's house, because something happened that drove everything else from my mind. Kia, and the captain of the Postmen who went to the camp, did a great kindness for me; and one day when a light snow fell, a wagon of the Postmen stopped at our door, and from it came Mirrah, Carmina clinging to her. I did not know how Kia had done it, what promises or payments she had made, or what might have passed between her and the captain then or another time. She would not say, she would not tell me when the excess of my joy was spent and I could ask questions. But I did not spend a long time asking them. How this thing had come about was nothing next to Mirrah's presence, though she was not the Mirrah of all my years before, but a woman who did not smile, not even at
my teasing. Yet I saw in her tears at our meeting that being with me lifted a great care from her soul, and in her way of looking at me, that in me she had all of Pavah she would ever have again. She did not speak of him, though a time had come when I wanted to talk of him, but I saw that I must wait. And so I let words go, and instead made music for her, sitting at her feet for hours at a time with no sound to be heard except the crackle of the fire, and the wind moaning outside, and the melodies I made with my flute.