Neveryóna: Or, the Tale of Signs and Cities Page 10

  ‘I admit it!

  ‘I’m proud of it!

  ‘To be a bandit is better than to be a slave!

  ‘Ah, master, my memory muddies much of this. But what I recall clearly through it all is you! You, master! You were the one who carried me up and down from the pit when I was too sick to walk. You were the one who sent me out of the slave pen with the noblewoman’s eunuch the night the others would have set upon me and killed me with their lusts.’ The little man looked down at the corpse; Pryn could see a sheepish grin pulling through the hard muscles of his face. ‘Treachery? Betrayal? The things this dog accused you of, even if you had done them, are nothing so special. Believe me, I’ve done my share of both! If all of us who’d done so had to die for it this day, there’d be few left in Nevèrÿon, either at the High Court or at the pit.’

  One woman and several of the men chose to laugh at that, which made the little man look up, grinning.

  ‘I remember you in the mines, Noyeed,’ Gorgik said. ‘I remember holding your head while you drank, and carrying your small, hot body against me down into the hole. No doubt I shooed a few miners away who thought to put the rations of a dying boy to better use than you might. Such was my nature then; it’s much the same now. Tell me, Noyeed, do you remember the seven men who came to your straw that night and covered your body with theirs; and who—yes—whispered of coming to you again? There were seven—four common pit-slaves, a foreman, and two guards among them. Do you recall?’

  The little man’s face twisted; he shook his head. ‘I’ve cursed my memory a thousand times—remember them? Remember their faces? Oh, no, it was too dark! Their voices? It was all grunts and whispers, while my ears rang with fever. If you could name me one, I’d kill him as quickly as I killed this dog!’

  Gorgik snorted. ‘To be sure.’

  Noyeed laughed again. ‘Master, you gave me life! You sent me from the mines to have that taste of freedom that returned to me the possibility of life in the midst of death! That’s why you must live!’ Turning, he spat on the corpse. ‘That’s why this barbarian dog had to die!’

  ‘Don’t dishonor his body.’ Gorgik came down the last step and put his hand on Noyeed’s shoulder, much as he had done with Pryn when they’d first entered the hall. ‘I remember you, Noyeed; and I remember all you tell of. Perhaps I remember it better than you. You’ve proved yourself a friend. But that man, dead on the tile, was also a friend—once. Had his friendship not been so great, his hatred might have been much less.’

  From the back of the crowd a man cried: ‘What’s up there? What’s that up there on the—’

  People about Pryn turned.

  On another balcony, a man stood with a short spear in his hand. His spear arm drew back—

  Noyeed grabbed the Liberator’s wrist. ‘Master, it’s the dead dog’s allies! He told me he might have more with him! But I didn’t believe him, especially once he attacked you without any—’

  The spear sailed through the air.

  Again Pryn flung herself away, rolled over down shallow steps, came up on her knees, and pushed to her feet amidst confusion. Weapons were out all about her. She looked up to see a dozen strangers running down the far steps, weapons waving, on the other side of the water—to meet another dozen, from among those gathered in the hall, who were running up.

  Someone staggered against her; Pryn looked to see the Red Badger. He was opening and closing his mouth, reaching behind his back for—she saw it as he turned—a spear haft that jutted off center between his shoulders. He staggered three steps forward and fell across the dead barbarian, beard striking the tile, to twist his head at a preposterous angle while blood rolled out over his lower lip.

  Pryn ran past.

  Two men struggling at the culvert edge fell in and splattered her—though she was not near them. Three others swung down on ropes, two on one, one on another. Some of the invaders, surging up on the lower balconies, just jumped. Pryn saw one near her grab a fleeing woman, who turned, shrieking in his arms, to beat against his face, still shrieking, and, while she was beating, did something with her knee, hard, between his legs, so that he gasped, let her go, and doubled forward, staggered backwards—till he hit the brazier! He stood up, screaming. It cut through the shouts and calls. He toppled forward, shoulder and buttock raw. The flesh still seared to the metal smoked and bubbled and blackened.

  Gorgik, with his wide knife in one hand and a sword in the other, turned to hack before him, hacked again behind.

  Pryn dashed across the wooden bridge as another man swung down on a rope. As he came off, she nearly collided with the Wolf, who, with his sword, was fighting off an assailant who kept making feints with a vicious-bladed pike.

  Was it because she saw the third man coming? She grabbed the pike’s end and yanked. (The man wielding it had not even seen her.) The Western Wolf leapt forward and thrust. The pike came loose in Pryn’s hands. She turned with it to see fragments: a raging face shouting at her, a raised sword falling toward her, a sandaled foot stamping dirt below her, a fire-lit buckle holding a scabbard to a hairy thigh. Hard as she could, Pryn thrust the pike’s blunt end low into the belly she thought, rather than saw, was someplace among them all. Jarred to the shoulders, she watched the details become a single man, gasping, reeling along the water’s edge, dropping his sword, falling back—she heard the man’s head crack rock. (One man? She’d been sure it was at least five!) He rolled over the edge. Water sheeted away on both sides, then clapped over him.

  The Wolf still stood, blinking in surprise.

  Pryn turned to strike another intruder, who staggered up, unseeing. She hit hard, and then was off the bridge and bringing the pike down on the head of a man who had another man down, while another tried to tug him off—

  Something smacked Pryn’s flank. Burning, stinging, it sent her falling, made her lose vision—though she didn’t drop the pike. When she could see, what she saw was a man, blind with blood from a gash across the eyes, swinging his wide blade, now left, now right, with shoulder-wrenching fury. She was on the ground, trying to get up on one knee. For a moment she wondered if the man had simply severed her—but she felt her side (while the knuckles of her fist, still grasping the pike, rubbed rock); there was no blood, no cut. The raging man swung above her, stepped over her leg—which she jerked back. He was holding the sword so that the blade had connected with the flat, rather than the edge. Until it had struck her nearly senseless, she hadn’t even seen him…! Pryn was up again, running. She dodged one man who hadn’t seen her, then another who had. As she neared the wall, she saw, on the balcony, practically above her, two men climbing to leap—now they were falling with drawn swords.

  It wasn’t fear that made her do it. Rather it was a vague, glittering anger. It all happened with astonishing clarity and rapidity, within the generalized pain that she felt not as a sensation in her side, but rather as a prickling enclosing her entire body. She swung her pike up against the short sword of the falling man so that it swung back into his face—not flat-sided, either.

  As he landed, she brought the pike up over his head and down against the back of his neck. He pitched forward onto the blade that had already gotten caught under his chin. (The other shouted as he landed, because he’d twisted his ankle.) The first man bubbled red from ear and nose, the blade-tip up under his jaw, somewhere in his brain. With the pike ahead of her, Pryn rushed up the stairs and pushed through the hangings. Only when she was in the anteroom with the benches did she realize she had been holding the pike with its metal point toward her own stomach. At any stumble or fall she could have gutted herself as surely as she had…murdered the invader at the stairs’ foot with the sword in his head.

  Slowing only to right the pike, she dashed into the dark. Clambering around the piled sacks, she hurried into the high-roofed tunnel. Had there been this many turnings? The pike’s point scraped the corridor’s wet walls. Three times the pole jammed at a too-narrow bend. She tripped on rising steps. With darkness and
the word ‘murder’ filling her mind, anger threatened to spill over into terror.

  Then, between one breath and the next—pain!

  For a moment she thought it was new. But it was the one in her side. It had been there, yes. But now it was not all about her. It was in one place the size of a hand and clutched her flank incredibly. The end of each breath was a dull horror to get through. She lay the awkward pole down and stumbled through darkness, hurting too much really to fear. Had a rib cracked? One hand on wet stone, with the other she felt her side—too sore, really, to touch. Suppose, she thought, there are branches and turn-offs here in which I shall be lost forever? Mercifully the pain made it impossible for her to dwell on labyrinthine possibilities. She walked, wondering if she might have to lie down. I have ridden a dragon, she thought. She whispered, ‘I have murdered a man…’ She corrected herself: ‘Maybe murdered several.’ Distressingly little to it when you were on the murdering side—though this pain was a mortal reminder how chancy it was, in such business, that one didn’t end up on the other.

  The pain passed some rib-crunching peak and at last began to subside. Once she leaned against the wall, taking very small breaths. Murder and labyrinthine possibilities became confused in her thought. What was it the tale-teller had said about the girl who’d killed so many people she’d begun to act oddly? Once more Pryn walked, thinking: I’m looking for something in all this darkness. What am I looking for? Again an image came: The tale-teller’s masked friend with her twin blades. Am I this frightened? she wondered. Why I am telling such tales? Well, perhaps tales were better than the hacked, drowned, and skewered carnage behind her—which is when Pryn was suddenly seized with the conviction that she was being followed.

  Her own breath roared in the darkness—she couldn’t hold it more than three steps before it came squeaking and wheezing out. Her feet sent loose stones clicking, and in the echo she was sure she heard steps behind her, stumbling as she stumbled, stepping as she stepped. On the rock there was a beating—one of her pursuers pounded his sword hilt against the wall as he came on…

  Staggering from the low entrance onto the cistern’s floor, she nearly fell. Gray light dropped between the overhead logs.

  My heart! she thought as she turned to grasp the iron staple. It’s my own heart! And the pursuers were only her echo…She climbed—and wouldn’t think about the dullness pulsing in her side. When she was half a dozen rungs up, she paused. The pounding continued. But she could feel, in the flesh between her thumb and forefinger gripping the tarry bar—she could feel her heart; and it was beating far faster than the pounding, which she realized now was a real noise, echoing.

  Someone was chanting, too, only she couldn’t make out the words. She climbed again. Her head came up between birch logs. She took another painful breath and turned to look about.

  Across the cistern, just beyond the wall, Pryn saw a barbarian girl bouncing a ball; other children watched. Now that Pryn’s head was above the wall, the sound was stripped of echo. The pounding was the ball’s rhythmic thack, thack, thack…and the chant, the girl’s shrill rhyme:

  ‘…and all the soldiers fought a bit

  and neither general cared a whit

  if any man of his was hit

  and blood filled up the cavern’s pit

  and every firebrand was lit;

  the hound took flight, the horse took bit,

  the child took blood at mother’s tit…

  Another girl—maybe nine, maybe ten—glanced at Pryn, but seemed to find nothing special in a plump, bushy-headed youngster climbing out of a cistern. She turned back:

  ‘…and the eagle sighed and the serpent cried,

  for all my Lady’s warning!’

  On warning the ball slammed into the corner of the cistern wall to go soaring. Children went prancing and jumping below it, straining to catch. One small boy kept calling, ‘It’s my turn now! My turn! No, it’s my turn!’

  Sun down, summer evening lingered in the tangled streets. Stopping now and again to flex her arm or touch her ribs. Pryn wandered through one, then another alley; minutes later she walked out onto the empty, red brick square. In the center was a human-high stone, from which a water jet fell to a natural basin.

  She’d almost reached the fountain when she realized this was the Old Market. Stalls and awnings had come down for the day; the vendors had carried off their trays, rolled away their barrows. Portable counters had been moved out, the refuse swept up, and the square cleared for night. The sky above the western roofs, coppery pink, was streaked with silver clouds. Some became near-black when they reached the eastern blue. Pryn stopped at the rock. Bending over the foaming basin, she had to hold the edge, realizing how sore her ribs still were. So were her shoulders—the strength to batter about her with the pike was more than you used to rein a lizard. As her face fell to the water, the sky’s reflection broke up and darkened with her own.

  Where am I going? she thought. What am I looking for?

  She splashed her cheeks, drank from her cupped palms, rubbed wet thumbs on her eyes, then walked on across the square toward the bridge.

  There, at any rate, activity seemed almost as great as it had earlier. The loiterers’ faces were mostly new, but their colorful, ragged clothes, their curious painted eyes were the same. Walking, she tried not to show nervousness or hurt, to find the effort moved her along more quickly when she wanted to look leisurely, made her look away when a painted eye glanced.

  When the ringed hand grabbed her shoulder, Pryn caught her breath, turning, tried to push away—

  ‘Well, you’re back!’ With their bright freight, the dirty fingers held. The other hand—as dirty, but ringless—grappled Pryn’s hair. ‘So you found he didn’t want you after all. Anyone here could have told you that! Don’t fight me, girl, or I’ll break your teeth with one smack and your eardrum with another—and still make you work the bridge for me!’ Over his naked chest, she saw for the first time many little cuts, small scars, scratches…

  She hit at him, because she was angry again—and did not hit as hard as she might, because she was surprised and sore and, yes, exhausted. He jerked her hair. Handsome features slid about on one another with the effort. She blinked to see his hand falling to slap her. Over his shoulder, onlookers moved away as others stepped up.

  Then something happened.

  Sliding features locked.

  The hand halted, inches from Pryn’s flinching jaw.

  A muscle quivered in his cheek. An eyelid twitched, lowered…His mouth, half open, began a creaking noise like an old hinge, or maybe someone trying to suck air through a constricted throat.

  Fingers in her hair loosened.

  Pryn jerked her head away.

  Nynx began to sag; and Pryn saw, behind him, gray eyes below a thatch of cream-yellow.

  Nynx fell, his hand pulling from Pryn’s other shoulder, where it had momentarily and limply caught, to flop on the bridge, soiled fingers opening as if stone and metal were too heavy to hold in a fist.

  Pryn looked at the blade the pale-haired woman gripped.

  ‘Stupid…’ the young woman said, a little hoarsely.

  Pryn blinked.

  ‘…dead,’ the woman added. ‘Yes.’ She grimaced. ‘All right. Come with me.’

  Pryn was about to protest. But the woman barked at the onlookers, ‘Why are you gawking? It’s only a corpse! There’re six more like it, rotting in the river. Just throw this one on top!’ She gave a high, breathy laugh and took Pryn’s upper arm in her very strong fingers. ‘Let’s go, I said.’ Pryn went, because—well, she was frightened and also because she had gone rather numb. If my rescuer had been a black-haired woman with a rag mask and a double-bladed sword, Pryn thought as they left the bridge and crossed to an alley’s narrow entrance, I wouldn’t protest…The gaunt, pale-haired murderess—but hadn’t Pryn also murdered less than an hour back?—was not more than three years older than Pryn, for all her sunken eyes and tightly muscled frame. As one murde
ress led the other around another cistern, Pryn managed to ask, ‘What…what do you want?’

  ‘To take you to my mistress.’ The fingers stayed painfully tight. ‘I waited for you three hours—though I thought I’d get to you before you got yourself in trouble with someone like that!’

  Waited for me…?’ Pryn tried to work her arm free; the grip hurt, and her side was still sore. ‘There? But why there…?’

  ‘Same reason as that bridge louse.’ The high, hoarse laugh. ‘I knew you’d be along the same way he did. You’re an ignorant mountain girl in this strange and terrible city—where else could you have come?’

  Pryn started to say that she did know writing—a good bit of it, too. But the blond-white murderess released her arm and gave her a little push ahead to hurry her. ‘Please,’ Pryn said. ‘Please, can’t you tell me where you’re taking me?’

  ‘I told you. To my mistress. She has taken an interest in you. She wants to further your career.’

  The little woman was ahead of Pryn again, loping off down an even darker alley. There was nothing for Pryn to do but follow. ‘Who is your mistress?’ Pryn asked. ‘What does she do? What does she want me for?’ She tried to remember the people who had been with this strange creature when the Fox’s horse had almost run into them on the street that morning.

  ‘My mistress is a merchant woman—very clever. Very powerful. She likes to amass wealth and influence events—does a lot of both.’ The young woman put the point of her knife, which she had not re-sheathed, into her mouth to pick at something between her teeth. That she had not wiped the blade since the stabbing was, suddenly for Pryn amidst all the day’s violence, the most coldly perverse thing she’d seen.