Exiled: Keeper of the City Read online

  There were the initial few moments of embarrassment.

  Lorin was sure that no matter how hard you studied, and how often you did the technique, for the first few breaths you felt incredibly silly. He had tried other visualizations, on and off, but none of them had ever been any better: flowers, eggs cracking open, all the rest of them, they all just seemed silly. There was simply nothing to do but keep at it, and so he did, concentrating on melting the top of his skull off and letting that small fierce bright light out to run free about the world. The pressure built and built, and he got more and more nervous as he became certain (as always) that it wasn’t going to work. He became even more nervous when he thought that he hadn’t set up any wards—there was no protection for his body while his soul was out of it, and if someone should come in—say, another wizard—

  Ridiculous, he thought—except that suddenly it seemed bizarrely likely. Why would a wizard have been looking at him in the first place?

  —If it even was a wizard—

  If you keep dithering like this, his conscience scolded him, the trail will get cold. .

  But I should at least set up wards—

  And by the time they’re set, the trail will be even colder. Stop making excuses!

  And then of course Lorin’s concentration was ruined, and he had to start all over again.

  It took several minutes for Lorin to get all the chatter in his head to simply be quiet, so that he could sink back into the relaxation that started the process. Then he was back trying to burn a hole in the top of his head, and feeling embarrassed and foolish....

  The embarrassment fell away. The sense of having a body at all fell away. He concentrated on having his whole self be something small and white and fiercely hot, like a spark flown out of the forge onto a blacksmith’s floor—

  With a silent explosion of pain, his head fell to pieces and he blasted upwards out of it. And there was no more pain, and the usual odd calm of the overworld settled down over Lorin. He looked down at himself, lying there on the wretched straw pallet. Mange, was his first thought; the tone was more sorrowful than embarrassed, for once. His skin had always been delicate, and even when he was young and healthy, he had always been one of those mrem who seem to spend most of their time scratching themselves. And now the poor diet and damp accommodations of his present state had reduced his coat to a sorry condition. He had never been particularly handsome, though his markings were clearly enough defined; now the various bare patches made anything but pity out of the question. But perhaps it was a blessing in disguise. A handsome mrem might attract attention. Lorin wanted nothing of that.

  He sighed and turned away from himself, looking around. No two wizards ever perceived the overworld the same way—that was what he had been told. His own perception always struck him as rather pedestrian, for what he saw was the normal world, but made pallid and ephemeral—ghostlike buildings, houses that were wraiths of themselves. There were peculiar departures from the real world, though. Sometimes, it seemed, a house was sufficiently lived-in to come alive, and then it would appear subtly different in the overworld from whatever actually occupied that spot in the city. He knew of one hovel, several twisting streets away, which insisted on manifesting itself as a fine mansion of a style that had been popular at least a hundred years before. Whether that mansion had stood there and was now demolished, or whether the house had gone mad and was suffering from delusions of grandeur, or whether someone in the house was, Lorin had never been able to understand.

  For the moment, though, he put the question aside, since none of the houses in his own street was usually so afflicted, and none of them was showing any changes just now. He lifted his head and scented the air. The sky above him was silvery; there was no sun. A slight breeze blew, as it always did.

  And on it, he caught the reek. It was not the smell of the local streets—that he was so familiar with that he probably wouldn’t have noticed it at all. What he smelled was something dry and faintly metallic. But mostly dry, and the smell had a sound about it as well, in the way that senses in the overworld often combined and confused themselves in ways impossible under normal circumstances. He smelled dryness, and a rustling: something soft in places but also bizarrely chitinous, like some kind of insect. But big. Bigger than any insect.

  And what in the gods’ good name makes a smell like that?

  Lorin shook—even there, out of his body. But he moved with the smell. One didn’t have to physically move with it, in the overworld. Walking was unnecessary—you could drift, so drift he did, past houses and through them, through the marketplace—And why is it deserted this time of day?—out the far side; among more stately houses, under trees that seemed half transparent and waved in that slight breeze, trunks and all, like weed in water; down stone streets that Lorin more than once sank ankle deep into, becoming mired in stone as if in mud, when he forgot to watch where he was going. But the smell was getting stronger and stronger. There was more of a sense of intention about it—some whiff of the cast of the mind of whatever had left the trail. Lorin shook worse than ever, for it was malevolent, as wicked as he had initially sensed on awakening from sleep—and it enjoyed its wickedness. Why am I following this person? he asked himself, in increasing terror. Why aren’t I heading for home as fast as I can get there, and hiding under the floorboards?

  But there was no answer for that either. Lorin drifted on down the streets, among houses finer far than he ever usually saw. One of them in particular, a fine, wide-gated place, drew his attention; the smell was thick about it. Lorin paused outside those gates, unwilling to go any further. Something made him feel that, if he once entered that busy courtyard, the attention of whatever had left the scent would be unfailingly drawn to him.

  He hung there, drifting just above the clean-swept cobbles, for what seemed like a long while, looking in. The mrem bustling about, seeing to beasts and carrying hampers to and fro, all ignored him, as was to be expected. Idly Lorin watched them. There were several large boxes, carrying crates of some kind, with beast harnesses still fastened to them. Servingmrem came and went, about them, taking the contents—bolts of cloth, furniture, caged animals of strange kinds—into the great house at the far side of the courtyard. Several of the little beasts in the cages, as they were carried in, looking pitifully at Lorin, plainly seeing him, and called or mewed unhappily. He looked away. He had no idea what they were, but he felt sorry for them. It was not that long since he had been looking down at his own poor mangy body, and he knew what it was like to be in a cage.

  And then he looked up, and saw the mrem staring toward him.

  The mrem was standing by one of the boxes. He did not see Lorin, not clearly. But he clearly felt that something was where Lorin was, and his eyes searched the air, roved, uneasy. Lorin shook, more than ever. The mrem was no more physically distinctive, in Lorin’s perception of the overworld, than any of the others. He was a ghost, a fat ghost in gaudy belled robes, a priest’s robes, his fur patched in orange and white and mud-color. But the reek, the taste of insects, the smell of chitin, of hard scratching things, the metal smell, the burning smell, hung close about him, and wafted closer as he took a leisurely few steps in Lorin’s direction, away from the big boxes, and then several more steps, more quickly. He was not the being that had been watching Lorin. But he was that being’s servant, and he knew that that being had been trailed here by someone, and he was suspicious.

  Lorin did not bother drifting anywhere this time. He seized the stuff of the overworld in his claws and laid his will upon it, swarming up and away through the fabric of it like a kit scrambling up a tree, then came out with terrified suddenness in his own miserable house again, and exploded back into his body three times as hard as he had tried to leave it. He had not cared much for the look of it before, but now he was as glad of his wrapping of poor mangy flesh as he had been of anything for a long time. One might look better out of the body, but in
flesh, you could hide.

  Gasping, he came back to himself. His head ached like pounding hammers where he had escaped it, and he shook all over like a kit just dragged out of icy water. The effort had come to nothing. He had not found what he was looking for. And in retrospect, perhaps it was just as well.

  The smell of something scorching, of chitin, of ripping sounds, was still in his nose. He sat up on his pallet, sneezing, rubbed his watering eyes, and tried to think what to do....

  Stay far away from that priest, was the beginning of it.

  What the end of it would be, he had no idea.

  He got up to tend to the bets.

  •

  Reswen decided to take his time going back to the office. This morning, at least, with all the excitement, other people would be sufficiently distracted by the news to grant him a moment’s peace away from his desk. The sun was still low enough that it did not strike directly down into the streets, so he strolled along at an easy pace, in the shade of trees (or at least on the shady sides of the streets). If anyone needed an excuse, he could easily say that he was about his business as master of police, seeing that there was order in the city. If anyone accused him of enjoying it, well ... he could always deny it.

  The city was becoming active. It was one of the six market days that took place every eightday, and the square at the heart of the city made a low murmur already; even here, blocks away, he would hear it. Reswen strolled along out of the high-rent districts, all marble and trees, into areas less shady but more interesting. Between the center of town and the market, there were shops catering to the wealthier clientele of this neighborhood ... mercers and butchers, lamp-makers, merchants dealing in leather and metal wear, knife makers....

  Reswen paused outside the cutler’s shop, leaning against the carved wood of the folded-back shutters to admire the sharp little metal fangs lying on velvet and brushed leather in the window. He was something of a connoisseur of fine weapons. The interest had sprung up in him over years of taking crude ones away from various mrem, so that when a fine one crossed his path, he had come to appreciate it. One of them was something the likes of which he had never seen before, a curved edge-and-a-half knife made in a metal that seemed somehow to have been stained matte gold and deep rose. Reswen gazed at it in pleasant perplexity, wondering how it had been made; the color was not a plating, but seemed part of the metal itself. The blade was gold, inlaid in swirls and flower patterns with the rose-colored metal, and the hilt seemed carved of two pieces of the same metals welded together, the division between them flowing down the hilt in a long graceful double curve recalling the swirls in the blade. The thing drew Reswen’s eye more than all the plainer knives there, for all their gleam of silver and steel. The problem was that there was no price on it, and he knew what that meant.

  “A lovely knife,” said the merchant, who had not wasted a moment and was out beside him in the doorway, leaning over to peer in the window and enjoy the sight of the knife herself. She was a stocky, dark orange, golden-eyed tabby with one ear missing about a third of its shell, and she had scars in other interesting places. “Do pick it up, master. Feel it in the paw, that lovely carved hilt.”

  “Not I,” Reswen said. “Not on my salary, though I thank you, madam. But having said so, I will ask how much.

  “For you, Reswen-vassheh, eight claws’-weight in gold, and we’ll forget the change.”

  He laughed at her outright. “That’s more than I make in half a year, but thank you anyway. And how do you know me by sight, anyway?”

  The knife seller smiled at him indulgently. “Hard not to, when you come down here so often in your different outfits to check up on your foot patrols,” she said. “The beat officers may not see you often enough to catch on, but all the shopmrem down here know you.”

  Reswen resisted a sudden urge to wash. He had thought he was fairly inconspicuous when he went out in townsmrem’s dress, or servant’s harness, to see whether his people were doing their jobs, and to make sure none of them were on the take in neighborhoods they were supposed to be protecting. But maybe this is for the better.... “Well,” he said, “as long as you don’t mention it to my people....”

  The cutler laughed outright. “After what you did to that lot over on the sunside when you caught them claws out? No chance, vassheh. Half the west of the city had been paying protection to those policemrem—you stopped it. You can sleep in our doorways any time.”

  Reswen’s whiskers went forward, remembering the wretched food and cold nights he had endured that month, wrapped in stinking rags, pretending to be a beggar. But the pretense had paid off, and the ring of policemrem caught extorting money from the small shopkeepers on the west side had shortly thereafter been spiked up on the city walls. “Well,” Reswen said, “I’ll bear that in mind. A good morning to you, madam.”

  The shopkeeper bowed slightly to him and retreated into the dark and cool of the shop. Reswen walked on, thinking about the knife. And about blue eyes—

  He stopped at the next corner and held his breath while a night-sand cart drawn by phlegmatic uxen lurched by, the drover whacking the creatures equably with a length of spring-stick and shouting unlikely obscenities at them. Holding his breath didn’t entirely defend Reswen from the smell, and the smell didn’t entirely distract him from thoughts of that female at Haven. He stalked across the road, beginning to feel vaguely annoyed with himself. He didn’t usually lose his head over the shes, no matter how pretty they were. Oh, he enjoyed his nights out on the tiles: a dalliance every couple of days, if the urge took him—nothing wrong with that. But not an obsessive sort of thing like this—

  He hissed softly to himself as he came to the stairs leading up to Constables’ House, and his men came to the salute. Maybe that’s what I need, he thought as he stalked up the stairs. I’ve been working too hard, that’s all. A little helling around—

  He was almost knocked over by the liveried runner who came dashing down the stairs at him. The mrem grabbed him, possibly as much to keep his own balance as to keep Reswen from falling down, and then brushed hastily at Reswen as he realized whom he’d run into. “Oh, sir, I’ve been looking everywhere for you—”

  “You found me, more’s the pity,” Reswen growled.

  “The Arpekh summon you, sir. Right now.”

  “Twice in one day,” Reswen muttered; “All right, off with you and tell them I’m coming.” And he pushed the oversolicitous runner away from him and kept on heading up the stairs; he needed a bit of sand, and not even the Arpekh were going to hurry him as regarded that. Anything else, of course ... he thought sourly....

  Ten minutes later he was out of his plain harness into something more appropriate: a touch of gilding about his kit, a flow of day-blue silk down from the shoulders to remind them whom they were dealing with, as they sometimes needed reminding. Then—off to the council rooms, and this time he banged on their doors with his staff of office as they had banged on his this morning.

  He was admitted without delay, and this time was shocked and rather alarmed to find them in session, all talking at once—some of them rather loudly and angrily—and all awake for a change. He bowed and made his duty to them in a purposely leisurely fashion, giving them a moment to settle, and then said, “Lords, it is a busy morning for me. What is it this time?”

  Councillor Mraal looked down the table at him and simply waited for the uproar to die down a little. It took a few moments, Aratel being the last to quiet down. “It’s not decent!” his voice said, alone, into the sudden silence, and then he looked around guiltily and hushed up, embarrassed by this own loudness.

  Mraal flicked one ear back in mild annoyance. “We have here,” he said, “the preliminary note of intent from our just-arrived guests.” He pushed the piece of parchment a little across the table, away from him, as if he disliked the feel of it. Even from where Reswen stood, he could see that the thing was a gaudy fa
rrago of rubrication, seals, and gold; it looked the way the Easterners’ herald had sounded. “It involves the initiation of trade agreements and so forth between ourselves and a consortium of the major Eastern cities....”

  “You hardly need have called me, Lord Arpakh,” Reswen said. “I’m no merchant to advise you on such things.”

  “Not about the business of buying and selling, perhaps. But I want you to take a look at the schedule they’re proposing.”

  Reswen reached down the table to take the parchment as it was passed down toward him. He scanned the crabbed brushstrokes, squinting slightly at the tininess of them. “Hm. Fourteen caravans a year—each to stay half a moon and several of these overlap.” He thought about that for a moment. “In both spring and autumn there would be three parties here at any one time—”

  He looked up. Mraal was watching him. “I would wonder,” Reswen said, “how many mrem they were planning to bring in these parties.”

  “So would I,” said Mraal.

  “It could be anything from a few innocent groups such as we have here—”

  “Innocent!” Aratel said, and his creaky old voice cracked with anger. “They’re nothing like innocent! Spies and devils, these Easterners. It’s folly holding out a paw to them that doesn’t have a whip in it! We fought the Eastern cities when all you here were nothing but kits feeling for your mothers’ milk, and I remember how we—”

  “Aratel.” Mraal sounded quite annoyed. “We have had this discussion twice this morning already. The fathers of these mrem have gone to war with our fathers in the past, and some of us may even have fought in those wars. But there is no indication that these mrem are going to do anything of the sort now. They would be biting their own ears off.”

  “And just because their ways are different from ours, and we were taught to hate them,” said Chezjin, next to Aratel, “is no reason for us to keep blinding ourselves with our sires’ old hatreds—” He laid a friendly paw on Aratel’s arm. Aratel subsided somewhat, but he still glared at Mraal, and from where Reswen stood, he could see the Arpakh’s tail swishing.