The Death of Nnanji (13 page)

Wallie rose and saluted with a fist to the heart, while his companions remained on their stools. As a greeting to a visiting Seventh, this was outright insult. A swordsman would have challenged over it. The old sorcerer merely nodded and sat on the stool at the far end of the table. His companions remained standing at his back.

For a moment there was silence, broken only by a few coughs from the swordsmen at the far end of the hall. Wallie had asked for some audible respiratory irritation so that his visitors would know the guards were present.

He dispensed with polite preliminaries. “My lord Wizard, about a season and a half ago, twenty-six swordsmen were ambushed and slain by thunder weapons near the city of Nolar. The Treaty of Casr required that all such weapons be destroyed.”

The old man’s pouched eyes stared at him for a while, as if waiting to hear if there was more. Then, “I am not familiar with Nolar.”

“Near Plo.”

“Ah, that would be in the Kra Sector. The Treaty of Casr binds the Tryst and the coven of Vul. We have no control over other covens.”

“I understand that. But heralds have been murdered, swordsmen have been drugged and burned alive, couriers have disappeared. In all about three score of my craft brethren have been slain.”

“Any of them in Vul’s sector?” The wizard’s voice was painfully husky. That, combined with his candle-wax pallor, suggested that he was chronically sick, possibly dying. His wits still seemed sharp enough to be dangerous.

“Could be,” Wallis said. “We are still tracing the couriers’ movements. But you know about the attempted assassinations two nights ago in Casr and Quo. Those were certainly in your sector.”

“But nothing to do with my coven. I suggest you question the woman you captured. Disabled or not, she can be forced to provide information.” He was well informed, but sorcerers could pick up gossip as well as anyone.

“She is literate? You know this?”

“I am not omnipotent. Literacy was once the most jealously guarded secret of my craft. You—you personally, Lord Shonsu—scattered it everywhere, like rain. Any beggar may turn up learned these days.”

“And if she is unable to write her responses, sorcerers can communicate with signs, can they not?”

“So can swordsmen.”

This had all been preliminary warm-up. Now Wallie cut to the chase.

“Wizard Woggan, the Tryst has been attacked with thunder weapons in an act of war. We shall retaliate against Kra and any cities allied with it. To do this effectively, we need equivalent weapons. I demand that you supply us with them.”

Woggan’s doughy face writhed into what might have been intended as a smile. “Impossible. We have none. The Treaty of Casr required that all thunder weapons be destroyed and no more made.”

Wallie glanced at the greens and reds behind the Seventh. They were all males, all younger than Woggan. The faces within their hoods, so far as they could be seen at all, were outcrops of granite.

“I have fifty swordsmen behind you, my lord. If I order them to come forward and start strip-searching your retinue, one by one, will I find no thunder weapons in their pockets?”

“You will break the treaty, my lord.”

“No, it is you who will break the treaty, by refusing to cooperate. The swordsmen have been attacked. Are you with us or against us?”

“Whatever other covens or secular cities may have done does not concern Vul.”

“Yes, it does.” Wallie rose and beckoned. With a muffled pad of swordsmen boots, the guard marched forward and surrounded the sorcerers. “Lord Woggan, I asked you if you are with us or against us. You have no other option. Decide now.”

“I cannot make that decision. I must refer it to my coven in Vul.”

“No time. Decide.”

The sorcerer sighed faintly, like an adult dealing with stupid children. “Your terms are too vague. What do you really want?”

“That Vul and other friendly covens force Kra and any allies it has, to sign the Treaty of Casr and abide by it. You will supply us with whatever thunder weapons you have and more as may be agreed later. You will aid us in the war and not aid our enemies.”

“Or?”

“Or you and your companions will be held here while my men take over your tower. I have four hundred standing by, waiting for the order. All of you will then be hostage for Vul’s cooperation. I have also ordered planning to begin for a full-scale assault on Vul itself.” Wallie was bluffing. There were no such attacks pending, and he knew he was violating the treaty he had sworn fifteen years ago. But he was also certain that he would find firearms if he had these men searched.

“You would make war on the whole sorcerers’ craft? Just how many swordsman will that take?”

“I cannot tell you how big the Tryst is, because I do not know. The total must change by the hour. Judging by the number of Sevenths we have listed, and excluding the too old and too young, I must command well over 100,000 fighting personnel.”

“And how many of those can you assemble in one place and keep fed?”

“Enough. Enough for anything. Your decision, please.”

Pause for staring match…

“I will go this far,” the wizard said. “We may have a few of the weapons you want in storage in Vul, but the black powder they require to function will certainly have rotted away by now. It will need at least a year to retool to produce more weapons and even longer to supply adequate powder. I will also admit, Lord Shonsu, that I personally agree with your argument that the peace cannot endure unless it applies everywhere, and I am disgusted by what was done the night before last. It had nothing to do with me or Vul coven.

“But it is nothing compared to what will happen if you try any of the mass brutality you are threatening. Go and bluster at Kra. I confirm that Kra is the source of your problems. Further than that I cannot go.”

He stood up and turned as if to leave. Fifty swords hissed from their scabbards.

Wallie shouted, “Let them go!”

Fifty swords were sheathed. The sorcerers pushed through the cordon and headed for the door; the swordsmen trailed them out.

Only after the door closed did Wallie utter a quiet, “Holy shit!”

“You gave up far too easily!” Zoariyi said. “Sutra Twenty-seven,
On Credibility
.”

None of the others was willing to say so, but they were nodding.

“I disagree,” Wallie snapped. “Pass it along here, please Katanji.”

“Pass what? Where did
that
come from?”

At the far end of the table, where the sorcerers had been, lay a small roll of paper, no larger than a man’s index finger.

“Out of Woggan’s sleeve,” Wallie said. “He dropped it when he stood up and all the swords came out. Everyone else was distracted. He didn’t want his companions to see it.”

“Be careful how you open it,” Katanji said, reaching for the scroll and passing it along. “It probably contains poison spiders.”

“Very likely.” Wallie untied the thread. Paper was precious in the World, and the outermost sheet was smaller than a postcard. It contained four even smaller scraps, none bigger than a large postage stamp. He began with the big one.

“This appears to be a letter, but the absence of a seal at the bottom shows that it is a copy made for our benefit. Or a total fake, I suppose. ‘From the Voice of Zan… ’ Anyone know who or what the Voice of Zan is?”

After a moment, Joraskinta said, “I would take it to mean that it is an official edict from the Zan coven’s ruling council of thirteen, my lord.”

Wallie nodded agreement. “From the Voice of Zan to the cryptic Wizard Woggan of Casr… A date that I do not understand.” He drew a deep breath as his eyes ran ahead of his voice. “Oh, listen to this! ‘… introducing Honorable Yarrix from Kra, who journeys to your domain with a covey of four specialists who, er, have cause to hate swordsman. You are required to, um, foster his purpose and eschew hindrance, as mandated by Precept 205 of our conformation.’ What say you to that, gentlemen?”

“I’d say you still have two assassins after you,” Zoariyi growled.

Certainly. But the language of the People did not always translate exactly into the English of Wallie’s thinking.
Have cause
wasn’t quite right. An equally valid meaning would be
have been given cause
.

“So much,” Katanji said, “for all the crap about the covens being independent. Here you have a sorcerer lord of the Vul coven being ordered by the Zan coven to assist a killer squad from Kra!”

“But Woggan’s tipping us off,” Joraskinta said. “The sorcerers are split, my lords. We must try to use that.”

Cooperation from sorcerers? A sorcerer with
principles
? Truly the World was changing! Wallie unfolded the second sheet. The brevity of the message suggested that the original had been written on a scrap of bird skin and delivered by pigeon. He read it out.

“It begins, ‘Warning.’ A number that looks like a date, and then, ‘Thoy, Arra, 1, 2, 2, 3. Black-white-cat.” He glanced around the puzzled faces and explained. “Thoy and Arra are cities on the River. The numbers are written in colored inks. It actually says, ‘One blue, two orange, two brown, three yellow.’ Either they had no novices with them, or sorcerers don’t bother to count those. Black-white-cat must be a coded signature. So what we have here,” he added for the benefit of Boariyi and Dorinkulu, who were still lost, “is the obituary of Lord Mibullim. Master Endrasti told us that he was sent off with two Fourths and two Thirds? And three apprentices, I assume, unless those yellows were locals escorting the visitors. The enemy murders boys, too.”

The killers had sent a warning to their victims’ destination, Casr, to warn the wizard of that city that the Tryst might be asking questions.

“They are efficient,” Wallie muttered. “Oh, so efficient!” His hand shook with rage as he picked up the next two sheets. As he expected, they were similar warnings, recording the deaths of the other two missing courier parties, led by Honorable Hazenhik and Adept Rudere respectively. The Black-white-cat signature was the same in each case. It might be a file name.

“I am impressed,” Joraskinta said. “These are confessions of murder, my lord. I cannot see why the wizard would forge such documents, and the tally of the dead is apparently genuine. He is trying to win your confidence, whether honestly or falsely.”

“And he did not want his subordinates to know what he was doing,” Wallie said. He peered at the fifth scrap of paper, whose writing was so crabbed that it was hard to read in the dim light. He expected it to tell him of more swordsmen murdered, disappearances that he had not yet heard about. But it didn’t. With a mighty roar, he leaped up so fast that his stool tipped over. He was halfway along the hall before it hit the floor.

The others stared after him in astonishment. It was Joraskinta who picked up the fifth message and read it out: “Men in high places should avoid sweet wine.”

Chapter 5

Visitors were bringing in edible food and other comforts for some of the prisoners. Slime escorted them in and examined everything to make sure there were no knives in the soup or files in the blankets. The slime were probably paid almost nothing for doing their horrible job, but they would live comfortably off what they stole and the bribes they collected. Addis had never been so hungry and cold and scared in his life. The weather had turned. Fall was coming.

“I don’t think you were raped by swordsmen,” he said. “I think they were sorcerers, or men hired by sorcerers.” The girl was sitting with her back to him, but neither of them could leave, and he had nothing better to do than keep trying. He was not going to give up yet. “And I suppose the sorcerers promised you they could cure your tongue?”

No reaction.

“Well, I’m sure they can’t do things like that. If they could, they would set up shop and make money at it. They’re tricksters.”

Still none.

“You’re very lucky you got caught by Shonsu and not his guards. They would have roughed you up real bad. And if it weren't for Shonsu, you’d be in some awful torture dungeon. He’s the one who stopped torture. You can make anyone say anything, he says, so it’s useless.”

A little later he tried again. “Shonsu’s sort of my uncle. He and my dad swore the fourth oath together, making them oath brothers, so he’s like an ‘oath uncle’. I used to call him Uncle, when I was a kid, with Dad being away so much. I’m real glad you didn’t manage to kill him.”

Nothing.

“And you should be, too. I suppose he’ll have to hang you; but that’s better than what would have happened to you if you’d succeeded and he weren't around to defend you.” What now? “I see I’m wasting my time with you. I never was any good at lying and you don’t believe me when I speak the truth, do you? I can get out of here anytime I want, you know. All I have to do is say the password and the men in the next cell will unlock the gate and let me out. Now you know I was put here to spy on you, you’re certainly not going to let anything slip.”

Stupid, stupid slut, she was!

“What I’d like to know more than anything is whether there are more of you snakes lurking around, and if they’re going to try to kill Shonsu again, and maybe finish off my dad if he doesn’t die anyway.”

She wasn’t going to tell him that, not after all she’d done. He had nothing to bribe her with, no authority to try. Didn’t mean he couldn’t try.

“I can’t promise this, because Shonsu didn’t say I could, but if you were to promise me that you would answer all his questions truthfully, then I think—this is just my guess, but I know him very well—I think he would agree to spare your life. He’s that sort of person.”

The girl turned around and looked at him. Then she heaved herself closer without getting up. She started stroking her left palm with her right index finger.

Addis felt a thrill of excitement. She could write! She was probably a sorcerer with her facemark removed. He’d discovered something and his ordeal hadn’t been wasted. He spelled out the signs she made:
Addis
!

“Yes, Addis. That’s me. What’s your name?”