The Death of Nnanji (2 page)

One of the first reforms Wallie had imposed on the People had been a complete ban on torture, on the grounds that the information it produced was useless. Sevolno certainly knew that, but a swordsman, and especially one feeling that he had failed in his duty, could easily become overzealous.

“So I want you to go and
look
, to find out how she got in. And if you’ve gone off duty…” Wallie glanced thoughtfully at young Vixi. He was not a member of the palace night watch and normally wild oxen were needed to get him out of bed in the morning. How had he managed to respond to the disturbance sooner than anyone else? One would get you ten that he had just come home and hadn’t been to bed yet. Not his own bed, anyway. He might have taken up wenching, certainly, but more likely he had just been carousing with other low-ranks. “Take Apprentice Vixini around with you and show him what you find. If you’ve gone off duty before I come down, he can pass on your report. Meanwhile, I’m going to finish my night’s sleep. Dismissed.”

Wallie strode out to the balcony again, chuckling in silence at the dismayed expression he had seen come over his stepson’s face. As one of Wallie’s protégés, Vixi must stay in constant attendance on his mentor, and Nnanji’s return was certain to keep Wallie on the run every minute until, very likely, past midnight. By then Apprentice Vixini would be regretting his late night.

Jja was under the covers again, but wide-awake. She watched as he retrieved his sword and laid it beside the bed. He dropped his kilt and lay down beside her. The sky was the indefinable, colorless shade it turns just before sunrise.

“It’s not worth going to sleep again,” she said. She was a big, powerful woman, who had borne four children already and showed no signs of wanting to stop. An invitation like that saved him from making the suggestion. He slid an arm under her and cuddled close.
Ouch!

Annoyed at the distraction, he felt around and located the sharp object that had wakened him when he had rolled on it earlier, a jagged pebble. He held it up between finger and thumb and whistled in astonishment.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“This, my darling, is what saved my life, and probably yours too. It woke me.”

“But where did it come from?”

That question had no rational answer.

“Don’t ask ‘where’, ask ‘who’.”

“What?”

“No, ‘who’. Our little friend, remember? You met him once.”

Wallie had met him four times. Each time he had appeared as a small, undernourished boy with a gap in his teeth and a big smile, but he was a demigod, a messenger from the maternal deity of the World, known simply as ‘the Goddess’. When Wallie had invented the treaty to end the age-old feud between the swordsmen and the sorcerers, the demigod had promised no more miracles. In his own right the demigod was god of jewels, though, and if the appearance of an uncut diamond as big as a thumb joint in a man’s bed was not a miracle, then what was it? And if it was, did that mean that events had taken a turn that not even the gods had foreseen?

Chapter 2

The sun had been up for some time when Liege Lord Shonsu, swordsman of the Seventh, came trotting downstairs to breakfast. He came alone, Jja having been called away to comfort little Budol, who had fallen and banged her head. Wallie felt no guilt at today’s tardiness; the World had no time clocks to punch, and he had put in some overtime during the night. He looked forward to a quiet snack by himself on his private terrace, hoping to plan as much as he could of his day. Nnanji was sure to throw a million jobs at him the moment he slid off his horse, or even sooner.

The wonderful summer weather must break soon, but meanwhile the terrace was a shady haven, overhung by trees bearing wonderful fruits: plums the size of grapefruit, blue cherries that tasted like Benedictine liqueur, and something he thought of as chocolate pine cones. Very earthlike pigeons strutted around the paving, muttering and scavenging crumbs.

Today was Masons’ Day, which happened to be Nnanji’s birthday, meaning that there was little more than two weeks until Healers’ Day, celebrated each year to mark his accession as senior liege lord of the Tryst. The previous leaders—Wallie himself, Boariyi, and the late Tivanixi—were conveniently forgotten. This year, although Wallie might be the only one keeping track, would be the fifteenth anniversary.

Two bites into a juicy mango, Wallie’s reverie was interrupted. He had forgotten that he had given Vixini a job, and that young man, as both his stepson and protégé, had access to him at any hour of the day or night. He marched out to the terrace carrying a fishing rod, which he laid carefully on the flagstones before whipping out his sword and launching into the formal greeting to a superior:

“I am Vixini, swordsman of the second rank, and it is my deepest and most humble wish that the Goddess Herself will see fit to grant you long life and happiness and induce you to accept my modest and willing service in any way in which I may advance any of your noble purposes.”

His normal greeting when there were no outsiders present was a cheeky, “Go, Bear!” which was the local equivalent of “Hi, Dad.” This morning, clearly, he had come on business and was enjoying his own importance.

Wallie had risen from his stool and must now draw his own sword to give the formal response before he could resume his meal. Then Vixini took up the fishing rod, except that it wasn’t a fishing rod. It was made of spliced canes, like a fishing rod, but the hook dangling at the thin end would have choked a whale.

“We found this. This is how she got in, see?” Rising on tiptoe, Vixini reached up to a window aperture about twenty feet above the ground, and caught the sill with the hook. “It’s much stronger than you’d expect,” he said cheerfully, lifting himself one-handed, to show that he was, too.

Of course most materials were stronger in tension than compression, but that was not the sort of thought that translated easily into the language of the People. Wallie was more impressed by the assassin’s ingenuity and motivation than his son’s muscles. “I admire her courage. When she reached the top floor, she must have had to haul herself up with her arms and walk up the wall between the spikes.”

“Suppose so.” His stepson sat down uninvited and reached for the cheese basket with one hand and a slice of ham with the other.

“Where did you find it?”

“Hanging on the wall of your balcony, o’course.”

Wallie regarded him with the joy and fond envy that parents bestow on dearly loved offspring. Yet Vixi was Jja’s son, not Shonsu’s. He had been a babe in arms when the late Wallie Smith of Earth became Shonsu, swordsman of the Goddess, so he must be sixteen now. It was a peculiarity of the People that they never counted their ages. They remembered and honored their birthdays, but not the years—and their 343-day year was an inaccurate count anyway, based on religion, not astronomy. The stars ignored it, just as the People did. You were as old as you looked and acted; seniority depended entirely on rank.

The strangest thing about Vixini was that he had grown up to look so like Shonsu, which was undoubtedly another miracle from the demigod. He was already taller than at least ninety-nine percent of the People, dark-haired and brawny, and yet incredibly nimble for his size. Everyone just assumed that they were father and son, and that Vixini would become a swordsman of the seventh rank in due course. Wallie doubted that, because Vixini was so amiable and easygoing. He tried to model himself on the man he believed to be his father, but that man was Wallie Smith. Shonsu, the original Shonsu, had been a vicious psychopathic killer. Vixini had the necessary agility and certainly the strength, but it was very hard to see him clawing his way to the top of the swordsmen’s craft. He lacked the arrogance and ambition.

Mouth-full mumble: “Dad… Can I ask a favor?”

“Of course. That doesn’t mean I’ll grant it.”

“Not for me.” Vixi swallowed with an effort. “For Addis. He’s terrified his dad’s going to insist he swear to the craft. He’s not cut out to be a swordsman. He’s got three feet.”

That exaggeration was swordsman slang for a stumblebum. Addis had the normal number of feet. He might not be the superb natural athlete Vixini was, but Wallie had never thought of him as clumsy. It would be in character for Nnanji to insist that his eldest son swear to his father’s craft, for that was the People’s tradition. He might not care much whether the Tryst became a hereditary kingdom, but Thana, Addis’s mother, was the prototype social climber—Lady Macbeth on steroids.

Until fifteen years ago, the two most prestigious crafts had been the swordsmen and the priesthood, but now, with the Tryst ruling half the World and accepting female recruits, all parents’ cherished dreams of their children becoming swordsmen. Since the Tryst could have its choice of any adolescent it wanted, its standards were high, but no swordsman examiner would reject a son of Nnanji if his father wanted him admitted.

He must be fourteen now, Wallie decided. “Is he ready?”

Chewing again, Vixi just grinned and nodded. Children ran around naked. At the first visible signs of puberty they were decently clad and inducted into a craft, and it didn’t matter how old they were in years. Initiation was irrevocable. Once a night-soil collector, always a night-soil collector.

“What does he want to be?”

“A sorcerer!” Vixi wrinkled his nose in disgust. To a true swordsman, anyone other than a swordsman was trash, but sorcerers were the lowest of the low. Although the Treaty of Casr had formally ended the age-old feud between the two crafts, neither side trusted the other a hair’s-breadth. Wallie could not imagine Nnanji tolerating his firstborn becoming a sorcerer.

Although Vixini and Addis were very different types, they were also lifelong pals. In effect, Nnanji was emperor of the World and Shonsu vice-emperor. They were very different types, too, but the loneliness of power had thrown them and their families together. They had no peers. Anyone else they befriended always wanted something: if not a job, then favors, justice, or revenge. It was rare for both of them to be in town at the same time, so they acted as father substitutes for each other’s children. Those children had played together and grown up together. Vixini and Addis were bonded for life.

“What does his mother say?” Nnanji could be as stubborn as a mountain. Only Thana might budge him when he had made up his mind about something.

Vixini pouted. “She says he has to be a priest.”

What Thana wanted, Thana usually got.

“Why do you have to ask me for miracles at breakfast?”

His stepson grinned, suddenly looking more like a heavyweight cheeky kid than a potential man-killer. “To give you the rest of the day to deliver.”

“You faith is so touching I feel quite weepy.” Wallie glanced up at the sun. Nnanji had been at Quo last night. Never one to waste a moment, he was probably halfway to Casr already. He was quite capable of taking one glance at his adolescent son and blurting out that he must be sworn in by nightfall. Or he might just accept Thana’s suggestion without argument. Once he had made a decision, he would have no way to back down without loss of face, and face mattered to him much more than it did to Wallie. The most important thing now was to keep father and son apart for a couple of days, so Wallie would have time to play peacemaker.

“Go and find Addis and tell him to… No,
bring
him to me, at the lodge. I’ll find a way to keep him out of sight for a while.”

“Yes, my lord!” Vixi grabbed a couple of bread rolls and shot away, leaving the assassin’s pole hanging forgotten against the wall.

Wallie regretfully gobbled the rest of his meal and summoned his bodyguard. Traditionally the swordsmen’s guild had been exclusively male, the only exceptions being the “water rat” swordsmen of the trading ships, of which Thana had been one. Almost the only thing on which she and Wallie agreed was that they disagreed with that policy. In a sense her thinking came from a different world, just as his did, because on the trading ships even the civilian sailors knew how to wield swords. Between them they had persuaded Nnanji, so the swordsmen’s craft was no longer segregated and a fair number of the younger swordsmen were female. The same word served for both sexes in the language of the People, although when Wallie thought in English, as he still did sometimes, he had to remember that a swordsman could be a woman. As he walked out the gates of his palace that morning two of the six at his back were. Their leader, Filurz of the Fourth, marching at his side, was male.

The ancient city of Casr had never spread upstream farther than the temple, because the water there was too shallow for ships. When the original lodge building in the town, already in sad disrepair, had proved inadequate to house the Tryst, expansion beyond the temple had been the obvious move, so Wallie had not been surprised to discover that all that land had recently been acquired by Swordsman Katanji, Nnanji’s plutocratic brother. The Tryst had been forced to pay a premium price for it, but had done so without argument because Katanji was also its treasurer. Nnanji, blissfully unaware of economics and caring less, had failed to notice any conflict of interest.

Thana ran Katanji a close second in avarice, though, and the next block of land beyond the new lodge grounds had turned out to be in her name, and there she had built the liege’s palace, a cross between Versailles and the Taj Mahal. Nnanji never cared where he slept; he was happiest on campaign, in a tent or under a hedge. Wallie himself had built another palace beyond that, a much more modest one, but still a palace. He needed too many servants and guards to get by with a more modest home… had to keep up his status as vice-emperor… entertained a lot…. All true, but he still felt guilty, knowing that the Tryst’s enormous wealth came from taxes paid mainly by the poor of the World, as taxes always were in agricultural societies.

And what of all the great reforms he had planned to make? Some had worked, yes. Slaves’ babies were born free now, no longer disfigured at birth with slave mark tattoos. Children were not pressured quite so hard into following their fathers’ trades. Vacancies among city elders must be filled by election, although the results often verged on chaos. Trial by jury was being brought in. Other good ideas had failed miserably. Medicine, like every other craft, was frozen by hundreds of sutras handed down from the Goddess a thousand years ago. No sutra mentioned bacteria or asepsis. As for sewage… Almost every city in the World stood on the banks of the River. Where else could you run sewers? The basic creed of the world religion was,
The River is the Goddess and the Goddess is the River.
No sewers.