Wheel of the Infinite (20 page)

He kicked backward, connected with solid flesh, and was free. He hit the ground on the other side and heard shouting and a gate banging open. He ran for the other canal, away from the torchlit street and the more crowded avenue. Rian wondered how quickly the thief-takers would respond; considering this neighborhood was so close to the Palace, they would probably be here with dismaying speed.

There were large buildings fronting this canal, and in the dark they didn’t have the elegant lines of the houses behind him. He ran between two of them and saw there were barges pulled up on the dirt under the pilings of the one on the right. The place stunk of fish and tar.

As he reached the muddy edge of the bank he heard voices and ducked down behind a piling. He eased forward enough to see the front of the building. Balconies overhung the water and another barge was floating at a lamplit dock that extended out into the canal. There were three men onboard, but they hadn’t seen him. They were standing around a lamp mounted on the side of the barge, passing a jug and discussing the unreliability of other boatmen not present.

Rian glanced back up the alley toward Marada’s house and saw figures with lamps and torches gathering in front of it. Marada might not have many servants, but she hadn’t hesitated to rouse her neighbors in the emergency. He needed to get away from here, far away, fast. One of the men on the barge stepped off onto the dock and started to untie the mooring rope. The barge was about fifteen feet long, piled with baskets and bales.
It’s better than nothing
, he thought grimly.

He opened the shawl and scooped out the jewelry, shoving it down into the soft mud near the beached boats for the boatmen or some lucky beggar to find. He wrapped the shawl around the box more tightly, then tied it around his neck.

The boatmen were pushing the barge away from the dock with heavy poles, creating ripples and splashes. Rian crept through the straggly grass to the bank, slid over the stone embankment and into the water, the noise of the barge’s movement covering any sound he made.

He pushed away from the bank, toward the middle of the canal. The water was cool and at first he could touch the bottom, but it rapidly dropped off. The barge was drifting out from the dock and the lamp wasn’t throwing much light over the sides. One man was poling at the front and the second at the back. Rian took a deep breath and went under.

He came up slowly at the side of the barge, just his eyes and nose above the water, and caught hold of the slimy surface of one of the pontoon logs. On the bank men were searching under the pilings of the building next to the shipping business. The boatman who had remained behind was running toward them with a lamp.

“What’s all that?” a voice from the barge above his head asked.

“Who knows?” was the philosophical answer.

Rian relaxed a little. The barge had been caught by the slow current in the center of the canal and it would have taken forever to turn it and bring it back to the dock anyway. The box was bumping into his chin. He hoped the water didn’t hurt it. Or break it. If the ball was like that grey glass bubble the enspelled boy had carried into their camp outside the city . . .
Then I’ll be dead so fast I won’t know it
.

The search party on the bank was left behind as the barge drifted smoothly down the canal. Buildings rose on either side, tall like the shipping house, some with lamps glowing in windows or on balconies. The barge reached the point where this canal met one running north-south, and both boatmen came to this side to pole off the bank. Rian clutched the box and ducked under the surface. He stayed under as long as he could, grasping the slippery logs and waiting for the barge to turn into the other canal. It did, just before he ran out of air, and he came up again as the barge straightened out and was caught by the new current.

Just as he decided he had put enough distance between himself and the search, the houses lining the banks began to show more light and there were suddenly people everywhere. There were torches on the docks and water stairs, and pleasure craft with awnings and flowers tethered near the bank. Music and voices drifted out over the water and the light outlined the shapes of trees in lush gardens between the buildings. The barge passed one house with four levels of balconies, all crowded with people, and the lamplight sparked off bronze and gold and bright colored silks. Rian sunk down until only his eyes and nose were above the water. Fortunately all the light on the bank would only make the center of the canal that much darker and the reflections on the water were sure to confuse the eye.

Rian was thinking of the wild river and the large number of dangerous things that inhabited it when he felt something twine around his thigh. He gripped the wet log and fought the urge to throw himself out of the water and up onto the barge. Then a large white flower bumped him in the head and he realized they were passing through a small underwater forest of lotus. Telling himself not to be an idiot, he shook his leg free and sank down in the water again.

Then the buildings abruptly dropped away and the barge passed a short canal that seemed to lead into a vast area of empty water. Rian realized it had to be the western baray, the large square reservoir that was half water supply and half holy symbol of something or other. He let go of the barge and let himself drift toward the bank.

When the barge had passed on, he untied the shawl and set the box up on the stone embankment, then hauled himself up after it, the water weighting his clothes, making it an unwieldy process. Finally he was able to sit on the edge. The night breeze was cool and he pulled his shirt off and wrung it out, then drew the Holder Lord’s siri to check the coating of oil on it.

There were stands of trees and several temple complexes around the baray, great dark mountains of stone in the night, only a few lamps or torches to mark doorways. Another
temple stood on a stone island in the center, a round one with little towers topped by elaborate cupolas. It wasn’t lit and looked tantalizing and mysterious in the night, the water reflecting back the moon-shaped portal of its doorway. Rian made plans to come back some quiet night and explore. It occurred to him that dark magic, demons that crossed ancient protective barriers, and the chance of being taken as a thief all notwithstanding, he was glad he had come to this city with Maskelle. Especially with Maskelle.

He eyed the little wooden box, sitting innocuously in the sodden shawl. He just hoped they hadn’t come to it too late.

Much later Rian was trudging down the street that paralleled the moat on the Marai’s east side, almost home. It was still an hour or so until dawn. He had avoided the whole area around the Baran Dir and the main gate into Kushor-An out of caution, in case one of Marada’s servants had seen him running across the court. Consequently he had gotten lost. The lesser gate he had chosen led out into one of the suburbs where craftsmen and laborers lived, where the houses were much smaller and closer together, though most of them still had room for garden plots and breadfruit or banana trees. The streets didn’t follow the even plan of the other areas, and the north-south canal he was using as a landmark was further out than he had thought. By climbing a tree he had seen the torches that burned high in the tops of the Marai’s five towers and gotten pointed back in the right direction.

As he rounded the large house at the top of their street, he stopped abruptly and sank back into the bushes next to the palisade. Three men in breastplates and helmets stood under the gate lamps of the house across the way. They were talking to a sleepy porter, who was shrugging and pointing to another house down the street.
Our house
, Rian thought. Constabulary he might have expected, but not this. The crests on their helmets resembled those of the men who had come to the post compound after the Celestial One’s entourage had arrived.
Something else going on here
.

On impulse, Rian ducked back between the houses, toward the canal. Near the stone bank was a small shrine dedicated to some odd little spirit with several arms and more heads. He had seen it in the daylight yesterday. It would have looked like a demon except that the faces on all the heads were smiling in far too friendly a way. Fumbling in the dark, Rian dug at the mud next to its base, making a hole. He worked the box into it, still wrapped in the damp shawl, and scooped dead leaves and grass over it.

Dusting his hands off on his pants, he started back to the street. He could have worked his way back along the canal and gone in through their back gate, but he didn’t know if Maskelle was still at the Marai, and if they really were after him, he didn’t want to lead them right down on top of her. He also knew from Markand that if they were after you, avoiding them temporarily never did you any good. The only way to dodge trouble permanently was to ran for the outer city gates and not come back, and there were too many reasons he didn’t want to do that.

Rian went down the street without trying to conceal himself, stepping around the mud puddles left by the last rain. The night air was heavy with damp and the scent of wet greenery. The guards were gone from the gate of the house across the way, but a prickling on the back of his neck told him they hadn’t left entirely. Morning life was starting to stir behind the palisades, and through the occasional open gate he could see sleepy cooks stoking the domed bread ovens.

He was almost home, crossing in front of a dark house with a closed gate, when a man stepped out from behind the corner of the wall in front of him, flicking up the shield on a lantern. Rian stopped, reached for his sword hilt, but then hooked his thumb on his belt instead, pretending to just now realize that this wasn’t a footpad confronting him. He could hear two more coming up behind him.

The one facing him took a couple of steps forward, slowly, eyes narrowed suspiciously. He was no ordinary guardsman. He wore the wrapped silk trousers and open brocaded jacket that Rian had seen on the wealthier passers-by in the streets, but over it he had a heavy leather swordbelt studded with figured gold. The lamplight struck glints off the gems in his rings and the archer’s wristbrace he wore. Rian read the combination of finery and utilitarian weapons and knew this man was of the warrior-noble class, who formed the officer corps of the Empire’s armies. The man said, “You are the Sitanese who came here with the Voice of the Adversary?” He spoke the Kushorit words slowly and carefully, obviously expecting the barbarian not to understand.

“Yeah. What’s it to you?” Rian folded his arms, not wanting to be stabbed from behind by some overeager recruit.

The noble said, “You will come with us.”

Rian sensed one of the guards behind him reach for his swordarm and he sidestepped, making the man stumble and curse. “Why?” Rian said, sounding startled. “What did I do?” Too many poor fools had given their guilt away to him simply by acting like trapped conspirators the first time they were confronted. He was startled, a little. He couldn’t believe he had been recognized at Lady Marada’s house.
You carried evidence out of there that she was a sorceress, idiot. You should have expected this
.

They stepped toward him again and Rian backed away. The odds were terrible. At the other end of the street he saw two more guards on horseback coming this way, moving at a slow walk until they were sure which direction their quarry meant to bolt. The noble lifted the lantern and said, “Cooperate and you won’t be harmed.” Something about the way he said it told Rian that he didn’t quite believe it, either.

Then one of the guards slipped the bow off his shoulder and notched an arrow.

That made the odds even worse. Rian calculated the man could get off three bolts by the time he ran to either end of the street, and maybe two if he tried to go over the wall behind him. Deliberately, he pulled the sheathed siri off his belt. One of the guards shifted warily and the bowman took a step back. Rian watched them derisively, then tossed the weapon to the noble.

The man caught it one-handed, and nodded. “Good decision,” he said.

We’ll see about that
, Rian thought, submitting mostly graciously as a guard came forward to search him. He knew there were enough of them to beat him unconscious and throw him over the back of one of the horses if they had to, and he didn’t intend to limit his already few options just to show them a good fight.

The court of the Marai was empty when Maskelle came out of the tower of the Rite again. She was bone-weary and her shoulders and back ached from leaning over. The searches of the other temples had so far turned up nothing. No suspicious activities, and certainly nothing so unusual as another Wheel. After much deliberation Vigar and the other Voices had decided to remove the unknown symbols from the Rite once again and continue. Maskelle still thought it was exactly the wrong course of action, but couldn’t muster any argument good enough to convince the others.
And it isn‘t as if I’ve given them any good reason to listen to my advice lately
, she thought, sighing wearily. Standing in the dark, looking up at the lamps flickering in the gallery windows, she considered lying to them and saying that the Adversary had told her it was a terrible idea.
It wouldn’t work
. The Celestial One would know if the Adversary started to speak to her again, and she couldn’t rely on him not to expose the lie.

What if the lie were true?

She walked out of the Marai, down the long flights of steps to the causeway and across the outer court, then the silent stretch of black water with only the moon’s reflection and the stone lions for company. When the causeway reached the plaza, she turned away from the streets that led to their guesthouse and instead went toward the Avenue of the Moon Rising. It led to the Illsat Sidar, the Temple of the Adversary.

There were still people on the plaza, some carrying lamps, some scurrying furtively in the dark. She supposed Disara might have sent someone to follow her again, if it was Disara who had sent the other one, but her mood was too fey to bother with that. And it was night, and the moon was on the wane, and the Adversary was strong. She could feel the city around her like a living thing, the beat of its heart in the stone under her thin sandals, its breath in the breeze over the water, its warm blood flowing through the canals.