Thief Mage, Beggar Mage, page 18
‘Was.’ Tet was tempted to roll up one trouser leg and show her the mess of scars on his knee, but she’d already seen him limping up the stairs. She’d seen Tet’s bruised face, his bandaged left hand, the little finger taped neatly to the next.
‘Hmmm.’ Her eyes narrowed. ‘You may take the room, but I want no wastrels under my roof. No seven-petal, and no girls. Do you understand?’
Tet nodded gravely. ‘I assure you, you will not be disturbed by anything I do, gracious lady.’
‘Good. Good.’ She fidgeted with her sleeves, fiddled with the combs in her bound hair. She wasn’t ready to leave the room, and Tet began to sweat from a nameless fear. Was she about to turn him in – had she seen something in his face that screamed traitor? Tet tried to stand straighter, to present himself as a soldier returned from the front. Noble and destroyed.
‘I am just a woman alone,’ she began, and Tet gritted his teeth. He wondered if she was going to try to seduce him in the hopes that he’d bring her some respectability. She surprised him. ‘And I have no coin to pay a boy to tend the gardens. I can drop your rent by a five-and-one a week if you will rake and trim for me. The garden is small, and you won’t need to tend it often.’
It was a pittance, but it meant Tet would be able to eat. His hand ached at the thought of the labour, but he nodded. He was no stranger to garden-work. ‘That will suit,’ Tet told her. ‘Thank you for your generosity.’
Her mouth pinched small as Tet handed her the coin. She did not help him bring his small chest up the stairs.
*
There was a new fiction to be built from the ashes of Ohtet Maynim. But first Tet spent the next few days sleeping like the dead. Proper sleep, not the cold, nightmare-ridden misery of his cell. His body knocked out his brain, desperate for healing. Tet woke knowing that he had dreamed, his brow slick with sweat, night clothes stuck to his back and chest. His memory was fuzzy. A good thing. On his chest the marks from the soul beetle ached deeper, harder. A cold emptiness that spread right into his flesh.
When Tet was well enough, he ventured back out into the autumn sunshine of Pal-em-Rasha, feeling half-real, not himself. He needed something physical to cement him back into the world.
He started with the garden.
Widow Peniki’s back garden turned out to be a small wasteland of neglected vines and rhododendrons. Grass grew in wiry clumps from the dry soil and thorny seeds stuck to Tet’s shirt. Despite the growing cold, he’d taken off his outer robe, and sweat dampened his shirt as he hoed at the cracked soil, breaking the clumps of hard red ground apart. His left hand had gone through pain and into a kind of dead numbness.
Tet told Peniki she needed some good mulch to bring the soil back from its state of neglect and she merely stared at him before saying, ‘It’s a good thing you’re here to help me, Sai Am,’ and went back to her seemingly endless sweeping. She bought long stiff leaves from the markets every morning and plaited them into brooms that she sold to a broom salesman for next to nothing. Her hands were scratched and calloused from the sharp edges of the leaves. When she wasn’t making brooms, she was using them to drive the dust from her stoop.
The autumn sun was relentless, beating down against Tet’s back, and he paused to drink some water and to sit against a shady patch near one wall so he could stretch out his legs. He massaged the knotted muscle with his good hand, grinding the pads of fingers and thumb deep into the flesh. The pain retreated a little, but Tet couldn’t help thinking of the relief he could get from a few petals, or from a whispered word or two.
He was feeling the lack.
Even when he’d barely used his magic, it had always been there. Though he’d told himself that he used his power only infrequently, he’d used it more often than he had realised. Little magics that Tet had done as unthinkingly as blinking. Not all magic was flash and glamour.
Even this gardening would have been made effortless with some power still at his command. How easy it would have been to whisper softness into the ground, to charm the burrs and thorns from his clothes, to turn away scratches and pain with a suggestion.
Tet sipped warm water from the bowl Widow Peniki had left him, and brushed a large blue and scarlet fly away from his face. It buzzed off, indignant. The heat of the wall and the lethargy were driving away any small desire Tet had to get back up and work on the widow’s garden. Instead, his thoughts slipped to his escape from the White Prince’s palace. A dragon had spoken to him. And not any dragon – Sinastrillia. A dragon who styled herself as a god. Tet wondered how he could find out more about this secret god of thieves and murderers. He could probably find his way back to the leather-working area, go underground and walk the dark mazes until he came back to her river.
Probably. But he did not want to go underground any time soon. And what would he find out, anyway – what she did with Nyangist’s former sacrifices? Did she eat them? Use them as slaves? Tet had no reason to go to her, yet. And more than that, he really did not like what she’d said. She knew him. Knew more about him than he cared for. Lord of Time, she’d called him. Tet shivered despite the sweat and the wall’s warmth at his back.
Lord of Time, indeed. It was easy to see how that would snare the attention of a powerful dragon; those creatures that lived in and outside time as they wished, that played their games against the gods, while pretending they did not. Sinastrillia’s interest in him was far from comforting.
*
The next weeks were spent cementing his new identity into place. With the remnants of his army uniform worn almost to rags and his hair bound up military style, with his limp and his wasted features, it was not hard for people to look past Tet as if he wasn’t there.
On one of the last warm days before the season changed, Tet visited Hast in Ymat Shoom’s fields. Ymat had sent him no word, but his state-granted holdings were public knowledge and no one would begrudge an old soldier the chance to rest his elbows on a split fence and watch the hill-ponies in their thickening coats as they grazed.
His magic was gone, and Tet could no longer speak to Hast in the language of beasts, but the roan mare recognised him and ambled over. Or perhaps she was simply taking a chance that he’d have something for her. Which Tet did. A few withered carrots stolen from Peniki’s kitchen. They were so shrivelled and brown the widow surely wouldn’t miss them, but Hast crunched happily, spittle dripping from her bristled velvet lips. The grass in the fields was thin and browning. Summer’s rainy season had long since passed.
‘Hast.’ Tet scratched her head as she crunched and slobbered the meagre treat from his open palm. ‘Oh, old girl. Do not hate me for this. I will come and get you, queen of horses.’
She flicked an ear and nipped his sleeve. Tet liked to think that even though he had no magic left, she understood a little. Hast pressed her soft nose against his chest and huffed, pushing at the circle of scars the soul-beetle had left on him. She was insistent, as if she knew something beyond Tet’s simple human understanding, and his chest ached. A thin pain arched all down his ribs and faded. ‘There now.’ Tet pushed her head away and showed her his empty hands.
She rolled her eyes in answer and sidled back to the small herd of ponies that bunched together under the shade of a large tree. The ravens jeered at him from its branches as Tet turned away.
He wandered far from Ymat’s fields and back home. Along the way, Tet saw the signs of the prince’s war. He’d turned himself blind to it over the years – begun to accept the unacceptable – but now he was looking for a young man, and when one looks, one sees.
There were no young men. Well, there were, but none were healthy. Most were crippled, and the few that seemed hale had the pocks of disease or addiction or madness. Men young and in their prime had lost limbs to the war, to the borderland frost. Their once beautiful faces had blackened and rotted. They sat on the pavements, their legs curled under them, begging bowls seeded with a few ones, sometimes the heavy red shine of a five.
The orphaned children ran wild in the streets in robber-gangs. The women ran the shops, the women lent money, rented out their houses, their oxen, their arms and skins. The women walked together, and here and there Tet saw a pretty young thing with an older woman who had dressed in short robes and trousers and wore her hair tied like a man’s. And there were others, neither man nor woman, who walked freely; an idea unthinkable a decade before.
The White Prince had decimated his city and those around it. The only strong, healthy men left were in his palace, or at his borders. His armies were stretched thin, and yet, somehow, he prevailed.
The cantons fell before his tired and ragged army, and he wore his protection always. While no common man had ever seen this mythical breastplate, it was said he’d had the finest clockwork magicians work on it. It was imbued with charms and power, and no arrows could pierce him, no sword cut his flesh, no magic control him.
Closer to Widow Peniki’s house there were white scratches gouged on an alley wall, and Tet recognised thief sign. He followed the markings, but they lead him only to a dead end. When he left the narrow mouth of the street, a group of hard-faced boys watched him, and one called out in an unfamiliar language.
Tet took a chance as the boys slipped away into the crowd. ‘Dozha!’ he yelled.
The oldest boy – he looked no more than twelve – stopped, and walked back to him. He spoke in a rush of gibberish, and Tet shook his head.
‘Dozha,’ he repeated. ‘I’m looking for him, If you could just—’
The boy snorted and walked away. In a moment, he was lost to the heaving, grubby crowd.
*
The days passed. Tet grew colder, emptier, poorer. At the end of his second week with Peniki he took a final look at his remaining coin and picked up his lute again. The carved dragon headstock had dust gathered in the crevices and he wiped this out as best he could. The paint was old and faded. He unwrapped the bandages from his hand and wriggled his fingers experimentally. The little one was still black with bruises and crooked now despite Ymat’s ministrations. It couldn’t bend, but its companions were almost usable. He tuned the strings, easing the pegs fractionally until the lute sang again.
With his tea bowl and lute, Tet went to the poor market of the eastern quarter and found a spot for himself among the other beggars. With his empty tea bowl at his crossed feet, Tet tried to play his lute for the passers-by. He played until his joints ached and his fingers had deep marks cut into their tips. At first, he played the old war songs he’d learned in the army, but no one paid for those. A woman spat on him, and another kicked his begging bowl over.
‘You shouldn’t play such here,’ said the old beggar next to him. He was blind, his eyes sewn shut, and his hands were gnarled as the trunks of the oldest trees.
‘The city is at war. The White Prince himself commissioned these songs.’ But Tet fumbled on the notes.
The man chuckled, then coughed up phlegm. ‘We are far from the Demon Prince here.’
Tet looked up. It was true. From this dead and dry little market, the Pistil of Pal-em-Rasha could not be seen. There was no wide avenue for the Prince and his royal guard to march down, pennants flapping, trumpets calling.
It had been so long since he’d played anything but what he’d been told to play. He’d forgotten so much, but after some fumbled starts, the old songs began to thread through Tet’s fingers, remembering themselves.
When he switched to the poignant love songs of the south, Tet was rewarded, however slightly. He sang in his cracked voice, and when he ran out of love songs, Tet tried his hand at the mountain dragon’s old ballads. These earned him curious looks.
The common people didn’t care what he was playing as long as it wasn’t the war songs of Pal-em-Rasha, but now and again a woman or boy stopped and watched him sing the dragon’s songs, and when he was done, they gifted him a brass one. Always a one.
At the end of the day Tet had made barely any coin and he was hoarse and his fingers shook as he packed up his lute and meagre spoils. Of the handful of ones, five were ruined and useless; a deep gash ran through them, with another diagonal gash through that.
It was a thief sign of some kind, but what it meant Tet did not know.
TIK-TOK-TIK-TOK
The week was a long one. Full of strange love songs, and half-sightings. The blind man who had become Tet’s neighbour against the market wall liked sitting near him. At least when there was no rattle of coin against wood, he could listen to the old songs.
Tet had started trying to use the little finger as best he could, and though it ached by the end of each day and the notes buzzed, it gave him a small feeling of accomplishment. I can do this. I can rebuild.
The blind man, Sovhar, asked him to play songs Tet didn’t know, and when he told the man he had never heard them, Sovhar sang to him in his wavery old-man voice until Tet got the tune right. The market was meagre for the most part, and the people buying the thin, limp produce and the rough cloth were thin and rough themselves. They didn’t have coin to spare for another broken man home from the border but they left what they could, even if it was nothing more than a gourd or a tuber. Still, Tet couldn’t risk going to the more affluent areas – not if the palace guards might still be on the lookout for him, or at least for Ohtet Maynim. Tet didn’t want to take the chance that someone might recognise him.
When he trudged home each evening with his meagre take, he kept to the alleyways and shadows. It was not just because he hoped to avoid any guard who might be prowling the eastern areas, but in case he caught a glimpse of a one-armed thief flitting through the dark. That day, like all the others, Tet saw nothing but the long moving shadows of the buildings, clawing the streets like black fingers as the sky washed red over the city. Always disappointment. Tet had collected nine more of the ruined one-pieces by playing the love songs of dragons, but after a few days had passed, no one added more. He must have missed some vital thing – a word he was meant to say in answer, or a sign to give them – to let them know he was to be trusted.
Tet’s head was heavy and slow, and his wrists and hands ached from playing so much; he planned to take to his bed early. The homeward-bound crowds had thinned, most people were already at their cooking fires, or boiling water for tea. He walked head down, half-asleep on his feet, and didn’t notice the dog until it was right before him.
He jerked to a halt. The dog was red-furred, the tail curling over its back like the coil of a new vine. A free-dog. A strange sight in this city where all the hounds were kept as slaves on iron-link chains. It growled, yellow-white teeth curving to points.
Tet’s heart hammered slow and painful, fear making his limbs numb. Have I already been found? This was an animal sacred to his people, and to Epsi, Vitash, and Nanak.
The dog walked up to him, stiff-legged, growling, its ears pressed back against the skull.
‘You are far from your caravan,’ Tet said softly, pushing his fear down and away. I will not let myself be mastered again. ‘Run back to your people, before one of the prince’s men puts a slave’s collar about your neck.’
The dog paused, the growling stopped. It sniffed once, then, as though Tet was worth no more of its interest than a pissed-on rock, turned about and left him standing alone in the alley.
A coincidence, Tet told himself. A lost animal. Nothing more. He closed his eyes in silent gratitude before shuffling homewards. But it was a sign. He’d need to make other plans to hide. With his oresh gone, the gods might not be able to see him, but they had other means of finding a wayward priest. This was just a free-dog from the caravans, the next time he might come face to face with one of the larger hunting hounds, bred to bring down tigers and leopards.
Tet could change his face, his name, he was hidden by his lack of magic. But he couldn’t change his scent. How long would it take for someone to find some article of Ohtet Maynim’s clothing, of Tet-Nanak’s, and set a hound to his trail?
Not that long at all. He shuddered and pulled his threadbare cloak tighter around his shoulders. No fear, he told himself. Fear was the master that would break him, and he was not prepared to walk that road again. I will make plans, I always do.
He told Widow Peniki that he would be retiring early after a thin supper of boiled millet and rice cooked over her kitchen fire. She allowed him this meal with grim indulgence.
‘I could include your meals,’ she said, as she watched him stirring at the little cast iron pot.
‘Thank you. I think I have spent too many years eating my own slop to have the palate to appreciate anyone else’s cooking.’ Tet didn’t want to tell her that he had barely enough coin to feed himself, let alone pay someone else to cook for him.
She frowned. ‘You should at least put some vegetables in that.’
When all Tet did was hum in gentle agreement, and the only sound left between them was the slow scrape of his spoon against the edges of the pot and the occasional slapping plop of cooking millet porridge, she stood and wrung her dry hands in her apron. ‘So be it, Sai Am. And don’t forget to clean any mess you make, or you’ll be out on your ear,’ she paused, ‘be sure to take a duck egg for yourself after you’ve done the gardening.’
It was his plan to move, now that the free-dog had seen him near this place. But where was he to go? Tet had spent almost all his remaining coin on the deposit. And more than that; Peniki’s house and garden had become a refuge for him. He wondered that she had no other tenants. Her house was draughty, but she had room to spare. She must have been lonely here in Pal-em-Rasha with only the ghost of her husband for company. All she ever seemed to do was sweep and make brooms.
The millet looked cooked, and the damp mush smell of it was making Tet’s mouth water. He’d taken to eating only when he truly had to, and then as little as possible. A duck egg would be a good addition to his breakfast tomorrow.
He was restless. No word from Ymat, a dwindling pile of money, a chance and probably meaningless encounter with a dog. Add to that a slow ache in his chest that grew deeper and colder with every day. There might be no curses working against him and twisting his legs useless, but the loss of his soul was wearing him thin and at night he dreamed of the dark, of the cold, of nothingness.
