The Bird of the River (30 page)

"DO YOU WISH TO FILE a claim of vendetta?" intoned the officer. Krelan, grunting as Mr. Riveter bound up his side, shook his head.

"Was this killing the result or continuation of a vendetta?"

"I suppose it might be. He was a professional. Carried no identification."

"All right. Under Krolerett Civic Ordinance Number 302, Subsection 5, you have the legal right to claim trophies including but not limited to the assailant's weapon, clothing, footgear, ears, head, organs of generation, fingers and or hand, or hands. Do you wish to petition for any or all of the above?"

"I do not."

"Under Subsection 6, you then have the right to make recommendations with respect to the disposition of the assailant's corpse."

"I waive that right."

"Very good. We're all through here, then, sir, except for you just signing this tablet releasing the Krolerett Civic Body from any responsibility in regard to the matter of your assault." Flipping open a tablet, the officer held it out to Krelan while retrieving a stylus from his belt and offering it with the other hand. Krelan took them both, signed, and gave them back. Smoothly the pair of temple deacons moved in with their stretcher and removed the huddled body of the assassin, covering his face with his hat. He had been an ordinary-looking man. Eliss, staring at the broken pastry cone and candies on the pavement, thought:
he never got to finish them.

Her sympathy evaporated, however, as Krelan got effortfully to his feet and went pale. He nearly fell. Eliss and Mr. Riveter both grabbed for him.

"I think I'd like to go lie down for a while," said Krelan in a faint voice.

"Come on." Mr. Riveter crouched and got his arm around Krelan's legs, and swung him up in his arms like a bundle of twigs.

"Seven hells! You can't weigh any more than Wolkin. I'll just carry you.

"Well, this is embarrassing," observed Krelan as they proceeded down the street.

"You can't walk. You'll have to come back to my room," said Eliss. "I can sleep on the floor. Krelan, that's the second time someone has tried to kill you!"

"You aren't going ashore again without a whole false beard on," said Mr. Riveter. "Told you that mustache wouldn't disguise a damn thing! Next town we're at, you write to your father and ask him how much longer this vendetta is likely to drag on, eh?"

"Yes, sir," said Krelan.

"But--" said Eliss. He caught her eye and, almost imperceptibly, shook his head.

THEY WEREN'T ABLE TO SPEAK privately until Krelan was stretched out on Eliss's bed in the cabin and had been visited by Mr. Pitspike, who insulted Krelan extensively before forcing him to swallow a pint of chicken broth laced with bull's blood and treacle and departing with a sarcastic remark concerning Krelan's new boots.

"This is a comfortable bed," said Krelan thoughtfully, when they were alone.

"Why would somebody try to kill you?" said Eliss. "For no reason at all!"

"Oh, there's always a reason," said Krelan. His voice was light and careless, but he was still pale, and seemed shrunken somehow. Eliss suddenly saw what he would look like as an elderly man.
If he lives that long.
It wrung her heart.

"But what reason? Who knew you were going to be in Krolerett, besides me?"

"Ah. That's the question, isn't it?" Krelan shifted on the pillow. "Nobody on the
Bird
knew we were going ashore until we decided to go. It's no one on the
Bird,
I'm fairly certain."

"But who would want you dead in the first place?"

"My brother, for one."

Eliss looked at him, astounded. "Why?"

"Business," said Krelan. "Family business, I mean. I inherited a lot of money, considering I'm a younger son who doesn't amount to much. My brother got to be head of the family, but his inheritance doesn't quite meet his needs. If I die, he gets it all."

"That's horrible!"

"Well, I can see his point. He has two children. He's always assumed I could never find anyone to marry me, so the implication there is that I'll fritter my fortune away on jolly pastimes. Also I'm smarter than he is, and he's never trusted me ... and he has two little boys to protect."

"You mean he thinks you'd kill them?"

Krelan shrugged. "It's happened before, in our family. Among the Diamondcuts too. There's a reason we're called their shadows. And there's an awful lot of inheritance involved, you see."

"But ..." Eliss sagged into a sitting position on Pentra's bunk. "You'd never do such a thing."

"I wouldn't, no. I like my nephews. I'd cheerfully leave my inheritance to them, if I could do it on my deathbed at a respectable age. But my brother can't be expected to take my word for that." Krelan gave a wan smile. "It all makes sense. That's why I was nearly killed in Prayna, even though I'd given all the right passwords. He must have arranged for someone in the business to be watching for me. In fact, that must be why he saw to it that I was stuck with this job in the first place. Send me off to the back of beyond on a miserably difficult quest. Get me out of the way so I can be killed on the quiet. And here I thought he was just testing my skills."

Eliss thought bleakly of her own family.
Maybe we weren't so terrible after all. At least we loved one another.
"You wrote to your brother at Latacari," she said. "So he knew you were still alive there."

Krelan nodded. "I wonder if Mr. Sugared Almonds has been following me on the way, waiting?"

"Can't you go to the Diamondcuts for protection?"

"Oh, gods, no. Something like this is far beneath their notice. All the Family wants to hear from me is whether I've done the job I was sent out to do. Hmmm ... and they'll want to know about that poor waitress. If she's carrying Encilian's bastard, they'll make provision for it."

"Who
cares?"
Eliss cried. "Krelan, your brother's trying to have you murdered! What are you going to do?"

"My job, if I can," said Krelan wearily. "What else can I do? That's the only part I don't understand. He could have had me poisoned at home, if he wanted to get rid of me. Waiting until I'm on a job for the Family to murder me puts the job itself at risk. That's disloyal. My grandfather would have disowned him for it. I can't tell you how many times we had it drummed into our heads, that the Family came first ... we're nothing without them."

"That's stupid," said Eliss vehemently. "They're nothing but a lot of rich people who quarrel all the time."

But Krelan shook his head. "I remember when I was ... oh, I can't have been more than three or four. My grandfather took me by the hand and led me up from where we lived into the Family compound. We went into this dark hall, and he had to light a lantern and carry it as we went. It was the Family's portrait gallery. Paintings of all the lords and not a few of the ladies, going right back to the Four Wars. He held up the lantern and there was this high noble face above me in the circle of light. 'That's Harrik Diamondcut, first of the Family,' said my grandfather, and proceeded to tell me all about how Lord Harrik escaped the ambush that did for his father and lived to found his own great house, and amassed a mighty army. Lord Harrik went after the man who'd given the order for the ambush, though it was twenty years after and the man was living rich and quiet in Ansilatra. Lord Harrik hunted him down and burned his house, and ... did other things. 'That's vengeance for you,' my grandfather said.

"He led me down the gallery, stopping in front of each of them. I thought they were the gods. He told me all their stories. Lord Sarprit, who won the Battle of Conen Feii. Lord Rask, who killed his own brother over an insult to his lady wife. Lady Jarethna, who married a lord of the Quickfires, and when she learned her husband was plotting to implicate her father in treason against the Duke, she killed him and her three children by him too, and went home to her father's house. Lord Karthen, who burned the granaries at Troon and all the harvest fields for fifty leagues around.

"There's greatness, there's power, there's honor for you,' said my grandfather. 'And one of
your
ancestors, boy, was always there at hand. One of
us
found Lord Harrik's enemy for him. One of
us
set fire to the enemy's tents at Conen Feii. One of
us
managed the poison for Lord Rask, and then killed himself after, because Lord Rask's brother was a Diamondcut after all, and that was
right,
you see. One of
us
arranged to get Lady Jarethna out of her husband's family's compound and safe home. One of
us
took the torch from Lord Karthen and did his will with it. You've got proud history in your blood and bones, boy,' he told me.

"I remember all their faces. They haunted my dreams for years afterward. When I was eight I was taken to the Family's chapel and sworn into their service. I was scared and proud and ... you don't understand, do you? I can see it in your face."

"No, I don't understand," said Eliss. "They sound like horrible people, all of them."

"And, do you know, I agree with you?" Krelan closed his eyes. "Gods, I'm tired. I need to sleep... . You learn history as your grandfather tells it to you, and on some level that's always going to be the true history that stays in your heart and makes you do things ... but then when you get older you read books, and you get out in the world and hear other versions of the stories, and you learn how the rest of the world sees your noble family. You learn the things Grandfather didn't tell you. And you begin to wonder ... and you begin to feel a little bit like a traitor inside. And some of the glory goes away, and never quite comes back for you."

"Stop talking about them. Just sleep," said Eliss, drawing her blanket over him. He smiled at her. He said nothing more and in a few minutes she could tell from his breathing that he was asleep.

She sat on Pentra's bed with her knees drawn up, staring at him.
There are worse lives than mine,
she thought.
How could anyone live like that?

PENTRA OBLIGINGLY SPENT THE NIGHT in a tent on deck, saying that Eliss couldn't possibly sleep on the floor. Next day Salpin and the other musicians rigged up a sort of hammock-bunk for Krelan between two bulkhead panels where the sacks of beans were kept. He slept well there by night and dozed peacefully by day, except when Wolkin and the other children came down and stared at him and asked him whether it was really true he had killed four demons and an assassin from Mount Flame all by himself. Eliss found herself getting up in the night and going out to check on him.

At the end of a week his wound had closed over, and with his side bound up tight Krelan was able to resume some of his galley duties. Captain Glass called him up to the aft deck and spoke to him for an hour or so, too quietly for Eliss up on the mast platform to hear what was said. Krelan was rather pale afterward and did not bring up the matter over dinner. Eliss didn't ask, either.

She had a dream one night that she was back in the earliest place she could remember living with Falena, some seaside town without a name, but there had been wide crumbling stone steps with pink flowers growing in the cracks, and lizards sunning themselves. Off one landing of the steps a trail had led to a little stone house with a weedy yard and one tree. Fishing nets were sometimes spread out there to dry. Someone had made an outdoor table by stacking stone blocks and laying an old hatch cover over them.

In the dream, Falena was sitting at the table with her. There was a pitcher of something on the table, and three cups. Falena was balancing a cup on her head and making funny faces to make Eliss laugh. Someone else was sitting at the table too. He was laughing with Eliss.

IN ALL THE EXCITEMENT and its aftermath they had almost forgotten about the bank box, stashed away safely in a locker under Eliss's bunk. When Krelan felt well enough she fetched it out for him. They ate their dinner together in the bows, on a hot still evening when mackerel-shoal pink clouds glowed and lingered long after sunset, radiating light on the quiet face of the river. When they had set their bowls aside, Krelan reached into his pouch and drew out the key.

"That poor bank officer," he said, peering down at the key as he turned it in his fingers. "The last thing he did in his life was present me with this key. He did it with a little ceremonial flourish, you know. Everything correct and just so. A minute later he was lying dead on his polished floor and Shellback was pulling off his chain."

"There's a picture like that in Salesh," said Eliss. "A big mosaic wall. 'Fortune's Dance,' or something like that. Rich people and beggars going round and round, changing places, and Death sitting there playing a concertina."

"Shouldn't it be Fortune playing the concertina? If it's Fortune's dance?"

Eliss shrugged. "Same thing, isn't it? Everybody dies."

"How very bleak, my dear." With a certain reluctance, Krelan put the key in the lock and turned it. "Here goes ..."

The lock clicked. Krelan lifted the iron lid of the box.

"Jewelry," observed Eliss.

"But..." Krelan leaned forward to stare. "But these were
his."

"Well, whose else's would they be?"

"I mean, this is his Family gold," explained Krelan, still unwilling to reach into the box and touch any of it. Eliss looked closely. There was a gold chain with its links worked in the serpent pattern of the Diamondcuts, as well as a heavy gold signet ring with the same device. There was another ring set with a heavy amethyst, and the coiled serpent was also carved into its top facet. Finally, there was a little serpent armlet, like a miniature of the one that had been on Encilian's body when it was found. Tied to it with a silk thread was a little signet ring, a miniature of the other one in the box.

"That was his baby gold," whispered Krelan, pointing at them. "Those were given to him when he was born. There's his name, engraved inside. Once he grew into them he wore them every day of his life, until he outgrew them, and the old lord had new ones made. That's the signet ring of the set." He touched the larger ring. "What are these doing
here?"