The Sea of Time (2 page)

CHAPTER I

Kothifir

Summer 55

I

HALFWAY TO THE TOP, the lift cage shuddered to a stop and hung, swaying, on its ropes. Leather-winged birds flitted around it, jeering through sharp teeth. The morning sun poured between its bars like molten gold, bright and hot, and wood creaked.

The cage’s sole occupant swore.

Through the slatted floor under her feet, Jame could see the garrison of the Southern Host spread out like a toy city at the foot of the cliff. There was the inner ward, there the quadrilateral, red-roofed barracks of each Kencyr house. Antlike dots moved through the streets with deceptive slowness. How high up was she? One thousand feet? Two? Kendar had warned her, with a shudder, that it was nearly three thousand to the top of the Escarpment at this point, not counting Kothifir’s towering spires above that. At least she didn’t suffer from the Kendars’ inbred fear of heights—not that dangling here on a few strands of hemp was exactly reassuring.

Commandant Harn’s headquarters were somewhere within the office block north of the inner ward. Jame remembered her reception there ten days ago, how the burly man had fidgeted around the room, bumping into furniture, avoiding her eyes.

“Ah, Jameth . . . er, Jame. So you’ve come at last, all the way from the Riverland. Have a nice trip?”

Such a stiff, wary greeting, as if they hadn’t spent most of a year under the same roof at Tentir.

And speaking of cool receptions, what was she to make of Ran Onyx-eyed?

“Do you wish to take command of the barracks?” the woman had asked. “Such, after all, is your prerogative as the Knorth Lordan.”

Did the Kendar want to shift responsibility to her, or did she resent a newcomer’s claim, or was she truly as indifferent as she seemed? That smooth, bland face had given Jame no clue.

“Uh,” she had said, “please continue to run the barracks for the time being.”

The last thing Jame wanted was a raft of new administrative chores. Was she shirking her duty? Perhaps, as at Tentir when she had left her five-commander Brier Iron-thorn in charge of the barracks there. If so, she was worse than Timmon at sliding out of duties. There had always seemed to be more important things for her to do, though, and as the Knorth Lordan she had been allowed more freedom than most cadets.

But
“This is Kothifir, not Tentir,”
Harn had warned her.
“Watch yourself.”

Her gaze shifted to the training fields beyond the camp walls and the encircling arms of the Amar where her own ten-command was currently practicing with javelins, as she would have been too, without special permission to visit the city.

Dar, Mint, Killy, Erim, Rue, Quill, Niall, Damson, Brier . . .

Jame knew the names of the other second-year cadets as well, of course, and now would have to learn those of the third-years. Their leader, she gathered, was that sullen boy named Char. There were the Knorth randon officers as well. Tori knew all of them, and a thousand more besides.

Beyond the training fields was the Betwixt Valley, laced fresh green with irrigation ditches branching off from the Amar south of where its east and west branches rejoined. Beyond that rose the dusky, terraced slopes of the Apollyne mountain range. Jame wasn’t high enough to see over the latter to the Wastes beyond, where the rain stopped and the true desert began. However, a glittering veil of golden dust seemed to be drawn across the southern sky behind the peaks’ dark silhouettes. What lay in those desolate, wide-flung expanses? Would she be able someday to see for herself?

The cage jolted down a foot, making her stagger. Its ropes groaned.

A fine thing,
Jame thought crossly, gripping the bars for balance,
to have come all this way only to be dropped on my head.

Perhaps she should have taken one of the stairs that snaked up the limestone cliff face, carved out of it. So many steps, though, in her new dress grays with a crisp linen
cheche
wrapped about her tightly braided hair . . .
 
To arrive breathless, exhausted, and sweat-soaked on her first visit Overcliff—no, thank you.

Another lift cage, this one enclosed such as the Kendar preferred, ascended smoothly beside her. Should she have taken it instead? It cost more, however, and Jame wasn’t yet comfortable with having money to spend. A small portion of her new allowance hung in a pouch at her side, tapping her hip as the cage swayed. How was she to know what each coin was worth in trade? They weren’t mere toys anymore for her blind hunting ounce Jorin to chase.

Ah. The cage rose again, by fits and starts.

Here caves breached the sheer cliff-face and exhaled cool air in her face through swaying vines. Faces were carved in high relief around many openings—past god-kings, perhaps, or portraits of the engineers who had designed Kothifir. Some looked proud, others merely bored. Through their yawning lips she glimpsed the jagged honeycomb of the Undercliff. Plumes of water fell from some cave mouths, also thicker jets from either end of the three-mile-wide semicircular moat that surrounded the city, bracketing it with rainbows. All were fed by the Amar, which approached Kothifir from the north. One couldn’t see it from here, of course, but it was said to be the biggest river short of the Silver to feed into the southern lands.

At last here was the lip of the Escarpment. The crane swung her cage over the balustrade and it bounced to rest on Kothifir’s limestone-paved forecourt. A squat, sun-darkened Kothifiran opened the gate.

“So,” he said in Rendish, with a flash of crooked white teeth. “Did missy enjoy her ride? Not that such a featherweight as you is any chore, but next time, maybe the heavier lift for comfort? Yes?”

Jame glanced at the grinning winch-men. So that had been their game, angling for a higher fee. She had already paid at the cliff’s foot. Fishing a small coin out of her pouch as a tip, she flipped it to the proprietor.

“For your courtesy. Have you considered installing a trap door?”

“Oh, we already have that, for those who try to shortchange us.”

Looking back at the cage, Jame saw that he spoke the truth. No wonder the floor had seemed so unsteady. She extracted another coin. “On account,” she said, tossing it to the winch-men, and walked off to their crack of laughter.

The city opened out to her at the foot of a broad, curving avenue. Here on the ground level, shops with brightly hued awnings lined the way, offering all kinds of food stuffs from purple eggplants to white radishes, from ruby tomatoes to sacks of golden wheat. Albino crickets sang in shaded cages. River fish gaped in tubs. Hung sheep carcasses seemed to move under a pelt of flies. Spices laced the hot morning air, their fragrance mingling with that of fresh baked bread and spilt blood. Jame breathed the mixture with delight. She had neither seen nor smelled such a wealth of Rathillien’s riches since her days in Tai-tastigon.

Just as enchanting in their own way were the bustling throng of shoppers. The average Kothifiran clearly liked bright colors and wore them with abandon, in pleasing contrast to their copper skins and black hair. The natives tended to be short and squat verging on fat, but brisk and lively in their movements with sparkling dark eyes. Some were taller and fairer, though, with auburn hair, and there were even a few rare blonds. Among them passed the occasional minor noble, borne shoulder-high in a litter whose fluttering pastel curtains gave a glimpse of an unnaturally pale face peering out disdainfully.

Such arrogance was matched by the silent visages of desert dwellers come to town to tend their shabby stalls. Only their eyes showed. The rest was wreathed by the voluminous folds of indigo blue
cheches
at least twice the length of the one that Jame wore.

We know a secret,
their withdrawn faces seemed to say.

Jame wondered what it was.

For all the avenue’s dash and glitter, however, the eye was drawn upward toward Kothifir’s famous “Painted Towers,” half obscured by lines of fluttering, bright flags and, higher up, by no less colorful laundry. Jame saw now that most of these towers were actually faced with travertine, limestone, and marble ranging in color from white to tan to moss green to rose to black. Some featured solid blocks in geometric patterns. Others were faced with mosaic tiles depicting faces, animal masks, crests, and other obscure symbols. It made one’s head spin to take in their lively variety even lit as they were by filtered sunshine, for wispy clouds cut off many towers some ten stories up. Rents in the cover let through shafts of light and gave filmy glimpses of the heights above, gold, bronze and verdigris copper, laced together by catwalks, bridges, and buttresses.

Odd, thought Jame, craning to look up. She had observed no such cloud cover from below; but then one couldn’t see the city proper from the foot of the Escarpment.

She felt a fumbling at her side and, reaching down, grabbed the hand that was trying to loosen the strings of her purse. A small face crowned with a mop of curly chestnut hair gazed up at her reproachfully, pouting.

“You weren’t supposed to catch me.”

“I can see that.”

“We saw it too.”

The last speaker sauntered toward Jame, backed by two followers, and the shoppers parted before them, murmuring. All three wore livery composed of gilded hauberks over russet linen tunics and carried truncheons swinging from their belts. Their eyes were fixed on the boy.

“Do you know what we do to unlicensed thieves, brat? See those drain caps set in the pavement? They lift up, and underneath are dank holes in the earth, full of nasty things, all the way down to the Amar. Just last week we dropped a boy little older than you down one for stealing fruit. Shall we see if you snag on the way or if the river spits you out into the valley?”

A stout, middle-aged man bustled out of the crowd and seized the child’s other hand. “Here now, Byrne, haven’t I warned you not to play with strangers? Your pardon, lady. Today my grandson wants to be a pickpocket. Tomorrow it will be something else.”

The leader of the men drew himself up, an ominous glitter in his eyes. “We caught him red-handed, Master Iron Gauntlet. You know the punishment.”

“Now, boys, I know you too. Has service to Lord Artifice—may the Change preserve him—altered you so much that you would make sport of an infant and an old man?”

The two subordinates shifted uneasily, not meeting his reproachful gaze. In their place, Jame couldn’t have either; with a few words, the elder man had reduced the younger to guilty children. Not so their leader.

“My Lord Artifice”—and here he defiantly touched thumb to forehead in salute—“is not sentimental, like some. He believes in the honor of his craft, and in his men.”

“As well he might, to be sure, and so do I, but since when has he taken over the judicial duties of Master Cut-Purse?”

“I wasn’t robbed, you know,” Jame put in mildly.

The three ignored her.

The boy, also ignored, craned to look up at her. “May I kick them in the shins?” he asked.

“Unnatural child, no. Besides, my boots are bigger than yours.”

The boy’s grandfather gave them both an amused glance. “Hush. Now, do you really want to seize this baby? What would all of these good people think of you if you did?”

The three looked around, suddenly aware that they were at the center of an attentive, not very friendly crowd. The leader turned on his heel and bulled his way out of the circle. The other two followed him, looking rather sheepish. With that, the spectators broke up, either to discuss what they had just seen or, for the minority, to return to their own business.

The older man turned to smile at Jame. “We haven’t been introduced. I’m Gaudaric, Iron Gauntlet of the Armorers’ Guild.”

As his broad, calloused hand gripped her own slim, gloved one, Jame thought that despite his age he looked quite capable of such a demanding profession. If need be, those muscular arms should serve him well in any fight.

“Jame, a second-year randon cadet.”

“By that white
cheche
, I judge that you’re rather more than that.”

“I suppose so.” Jame eased the unfamiliar headgear where its tight folds pinched across her brow. He too wore white, she noted, in the form of a silk sash tied over richly dyed but practical leathers. “The Highlord of the Kencyrath is my brother. I’m his lordan. Who is this Lord Artifice and why does he hate you so much?”