Shallows of night, p.10
Shallows of Night, page 10
Twice he had caught Tuolin glancing behind them as if he thought they were being followed. However, it seemed quite impossible to tell among all the bodies darting in every direction.
Tuolin knocked on the yellow doors and after a moment they opened inward.
“Matsu,” he breathed, smiling.
She stood between the two armed men, her slender frame appearing smaller for their presence. She had an oval face with long almond eyes and thick black hair which she wore straight and loose so that one eye was continually blanketed by its cascade. She wore a silver robe with a high neck and flaring sleeves, embroidered with gray doves. Her skin was very white; her lips were unpainted. The oval lapis pin at her throat was the only relief from the black, gray, and white.
She smiled at Tuolin, then gazed for a long moment at Ronin. Then she murmured to the guards, who relaxed somewhat.
She led them wordlessly through a narrow foyer. Strips of thin carpeting covered the wooden floors; a tall gold-framed mirror briefly disclosed the small procession. They went through open doors on the left from which yellow light wavered and danced.
They were in a wide, deep room with blond wood paneling along the walls to a height of an average man’s waist. Above this, the walls were painted a muted yellow. The high ceiling was bone white. From its center hung an immense oval lamp constructed of faceted topaz; perhaps five hundred crystals had been cunningly mounted so that the lamp’s myriad small flames, set in its center, shone through the facets. It was this singular light which gave the room its tawny aspect.
Scattered about the lacquered wooden floor were small intimate couches and groups of plush chairs upon which sat the most diverse assortment of women that Ronin had ever seen. Some were with men, drinking and smoking, others were in small groups talking languidly among themselves, turning their exquisite faces to the prowling men like petals of a flower following the path of the sun. Young girls in quilted jackets and wide silk pants of pastel colors moved between these groups, ships in the indeterminate voids separating these trembling constellations.
Matsu left them, crossing the room to a group of two men and a woman. After several moments the woman detached herself and approached them. She wore a floor-length saffron silk dress, slit up one side so that with every step she took Ronin could see the length of one naked leg. The dress was embroidered in patterns of fantastic flowers in the palest green. Like Matsu’s, the dress was wide-sleeved and high-necked and this style managed somehow to highlight her figure.
But it was her face that was most extraordinary. She had long dark eyes, the upper lids dusky and sensual without seeming to be painted. Her face was narrow at the chin, accentuating her high cheekbones. Her lips were painted deep scarlet; glossy, half opened. Her hair was so violently dark that it appeared blue-black; she wore it very long and brushed to fall delicately across her left shoulder and breast.
She smiled with small white teeth and lifted her hands, pressing them together.
“Ah, Tuolin,” she said. “How good it is to see you again.” Her voice had the tonality of a bell, far away, lilting. She dropped her hands. They were small and white with delicate fingers and long nails lacquered yellow. She wore topaz earrings in the shape of a flower.
Her head turned slowly and she gazed at Ronin and at that precise moment he had the peculiar sensation of seeing double.
“Kiri, this is Ronin,” said Tuolin. “He is a warrior from a land far to the north. This is his first night in Sha’angh’sei.”
“And you brought him here,” she said with a musical laugh. “How very flattering.”
A young girl in a light blue quilted jacket and pants came up to them.
“Liy will take you to bathe. And when you return, you shall decide.” The dark eyes regarded him.
The girl led them across the room of topaz light, through a wide teakwood door into a short passageway of rough-hewn stone. The contrast was absolute.
They went down a narrow stairway lit by smoky braziers set high up along the walls. The stone steps were damp and somewhere, not far off, Ronin could discern the soft slap of water. The stairs gave out into a wide room with rock walls and a low wooden ceiling, lamplit, warm. Into one wall had been hewn an immense fireplace within which hung an equally enormous cauldron steaming as the fire boiled its contents.
The room itself was dominated by two large square wooden tubs set upon raised wooden slats; one of the tubs was half filled with water. Four women, dark-haired, almond-eyed, naked to the waist, stood as if waiting for their arrival. Water steamed and gurgled.
“Come on,” Tuolin called happily, stripping off his dirty sea clothes and hanging his weapons on one of a line of wooden pegs set into one wall. Ronin followed suit and the women directed them to the empty tub. As they climbed in, the women drew up buckets of hot water, filling the tub. Then they climbed in and, taking soft brushes and fragrant soap, began to wash each man thoroughly.
Tuolin snorted and blew water from his mouth.
“Well, Ronin, what do you think of this? Was home ever so pleasant?”
The hands were soft and gentle and the hot soapy water against his skin felt delicious. The women murmured to each other when they saw his back, the scars long and livid and newly healed, and they took great care in cleansing this part of him so that he felt no discomfort, only pleasure. They stroked his chest, gently massaging his muscles almost as if they knew of his recently broken ribs. They murmured to him and he and Tuolin moved, creators now of their own waves, commanders of tides and currents, to the second tub to which clean hot water was added. Two of the women began to clean the first tub while the other two gathered up the pair’s dirty clothes and went out.
Ronin lay back, stretching out his legs, letting the heat slowly soak into his body. Gradually, his muscles loosened and much of the tension drained out of him. He closed his eyes.
How unexpected this all was. How utterly different were the circumstances than what Borros had pictured. How— Abruptly the realization came that he had had no idea of where he might be headed or even if he could survive when he had ascended onto the surface from the Freehold’s forbidden access hatch. He had followed Borros blindly, not caring, wanting to escape from the Freehold as much as he had wanted to solve the mystery of the scroll of dor-Sefrith. The heat climbed into him like the presence of a naked woman close beside him.
And with that the barriers which he had so painstakingly erected folded in upon themselves and he thought of her. Oh, K’reen, how you must have been tortured. He destroyed you day by day with the poison he fed you. The lies!
The water rippled and Ronin looked up, into the present. One of the women had climbed in beside Tuolin.
“Do you want the other one? It is perfectly all right but you must ask.”
Ronin smiled wanly. “Not just now. The water is enough.”
The blond man shrugged and splashed the woman, using his cupped hand. She giggled.
Strange. The Freehold seems like so long ago; as distant as another lifetime. But she does not. She is still with me and there is nothing, Chill take him, that the Salamander can do about that.
He glanced at his great sword, swinging a small arc, brushed by one of the women as she slipped out of the room. Within it was the scroll and perhaps, if Borros was right about this, the key to man’s survival. And he could no longer doubt the Magic Man. He had already grappled with the Makkon; felt its awesome power. And instinctively he had known that such a creature was not of this world; it held its own kind of monsters.
Of this he was certain: at least one Makkon was already here. If the scroll has not been deciphered by the time the four converge, they will summon The Dolman and mankind will surely be doomed.
“Ready?” asked Tuolin.
They both stood up, dripping.
“Let me look at you.”
The scarlet lips opened. The tiny pink tongue brushed the even white teeth.
She laughed. “She is always so clever about these things.”
He wore a silk robe of color that could have been light green or brown or blue or any one of a dozen colors. Yet it was none of these but perhaps a subtle blend to cause the finished cloth to appear colorless. Along the body and arms were fierce dragons, rampant, eyes seething, taloned limbs seeking, embroidered in gilt thread so that their hides seemed molten. Tuolin was clothed in a robe of deep blue with white herons on front and back.
“Ah, Tuolin, you must have brought me a remarkable man.” Kiri directed her eyes to Ronin’s. “You know, I will not say this to all who come to Tenchō, but Matsu chooses the robes to fit each person who enters here. She is rarely wrong in her matching.”
“And what does this mean, then?” asked Ronin, glancing down at the glittering dragons.
“Why, I am sure I do not know yet,” she said with a small smile. “I have never seen that particular pattern before.”
She turned to Tuolin then and took his arm. Her perfume came to Ronin, rich and subtle, musky and light. The three of them strolled across the room of topaz light, stopping momentarily as one of the girls offered them tea and rice wine, and Kiri introduced them one by one to the women who were not already engaged with men. All were beautiful; all were different. They smiled and stroked the air with their ornamental paper fans. At length, Tuolin made his choice, a tall slender woman with light eyes and hair and a generous mouth.
Kiri nodded and turned to Ronin.
“And you,” she said softly. “Whom do you wish?”
Ronin looked again at all the women, the jutting landscape of femaleness, and he came back to her black dusky eyes.
“It is you,” he said slowly, “that I wish.”
When the organism does not comprehend, sight and sound become meaningless. The light-haired woman therefore looked strange to him as she opened her mouth wide and emitted a sound.
She gasped, then half giggled, stifling it with a swallow as the three others stood quite still watching her. Around them the movements continued, the languid flutters of a fan, the flashes of naked legs, the sweet smell of smoke curling, the steaming of hot tea and spiced rice wine, like the slow immense wheel of the stars.
There came then the chink of a cup being set down on a lacquered tray, as separate and distinct a sound as a crack of thunder of a rain-washed night.
Tuolin said: “But that is im—”
Kiri’s delicately upraised hand halted him in mid-sentence.
“He is,” she said, “from another land. That is what you told me, Tuolin, yes?” The yellow nails were like slender torches in the light. “I asked and he replied as he wished.” Now she was gazing into Ronin’s eyes but she spoke to the blond man. “You have selected Sa, as you wished. Take her then.”
“But—”
“Think no more upon it, lest your harmony be broken and this house become worthless. I take no offense.” The yellow nails moved fractionally, spilling light. “I shall take care of Ronin. And he shall take care of me.”
“What happened?” asked Ronin after Tuolin and Sa had departed.
She took his arm and laughed softly. They began to walk in the room of topaz light. “Death,” she said lightly and without any trace of coyness. “It is death to ask for me, foreigner.”
A tiny girl in a pink quilted jacket came up to them to offer rice wine.
“Please,” Kiri said and he handed her a cup, took one for himself. He sipped at the wine; it was quite different from the rice wine of the tavern. The spices added a tang and sweetness that he appreciated.
“I will choose another then.”
There was muted laughter and the sinuous rustle of fabric against scented skin. The sweet smoke was heavier now.
“Is that what you wish?”
“No.”
“You told me what you desired.”
He stopped and looked at her. “Yes, but—”
“Hmmm?” The scarlet lips opened and curled in a smile.
“I wish also to abide by the rules of your people.”
She urged him to begin walking again.
“The one thing you must remember about Sha’angh’sei, the only thing worth remembering is that there are no laws here.”
“But you just told me—”
“That it is death to ask for me, yes.”
The yellow nails traced the gilt dragons of his robe, over flaring nostrils, open mouth, and snake tongue, down the serpentine body, across the rampant claws, following the sinuous tail.
“But everything is yours for the taking. The factions of this city bind themselves in codes and unwritten rules.” Her eyes were huge and mysterious; he felt the pressure of her nails through the cloth. Her voice was a whisper now: “Who dwells in Sha’angh’sei but the dominators and the dominated?” He drew toward her. “Yet law is unknown here.”
It was less dense in the room of topaz light as the couples began to disperse. The girls were cleaning up in perfect silence and soon its tawny splendor was left to them alone.
“No,” she said, and when she shook her head her hair was like a forest in the night, “you are not from Sha’angh’sei or anywhere close. You are totally untouched by the city.”
“Is that so important?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh yes.”
“Tell me again why you have come to Sha’angh’sei.”
“You have heard it before.”
“Yes, but this time I wish Tuolin to hear it.”
“I had never heard of the city until you told me of it.”
“Of course,” he said, not unkindly.
Rikkagin Tien sat cross-legged behind a green lacquered table on which stood a fired clay teapot, a cup showing me dregs of many fillings in its bottom, an inkwell, and a quill pen. He put aside the sheaf of rice papers upon which he had been writing a vertical list of figures.
“Begin, please.”
Ronin told the story of the scroll of dor-Sefrith, the gathering of the Makkon, the coming of The Dolman.
There was silence in the room when he had finished. Yellow light streamed obliquely through the leaded glass panes beyond which, one story below, lay Double Bass Street where the rikkagin and his men were quartered and from which they would depart at dawn tomorrow for the long march to Kamado.
He saw T’ien glancing at Tuolin, who stood, hands clasped behind him, facing away from the windows. With the light at his back, his face was in deep shadow. It occurred to him then that they did not believe him; that, despite Rikkagin T’ien’s words to the contrary, they perhaps thought him still an enemy. Nevertheless, I must ask.
“Perhaps you could help.”
“What?” T’ien had been pulled from some deep thought. “Help in what way?”
“By deciphering the scroll.”
The rikkagin smiled somewhat sadly. “I am afraid that is quite impossible.”
“Perhaps the Council could aid him,” said Tuolin.
Rikkagin T’ien looked bewildered for a moment and he stared at the blond man as if he were a statue which had just spoken. Then he said, “Yes, now that you have brought it up, that might be the answer.” He seemed lost in thought again.
“You see,” said Tuolin, “the city is governed by a Municipal Council: nine members with the major factions represented and the minor ones currying favors through taels of silver and other commodities. If any in this city possess the knowledge you seek, they would.”
“Where does the Council meet?”
“In the walled city, on the mountain above us. But you will have to wait until tomorrow; I do not believe there is a Council session today. Is that not correct, Rikkagin?” Tuolin smiled.
“Hmmm? Oh yes, quite so,” T’ien said, but his mind still seemed preoccupied with other matters.
In the small silence, the soft clatter of the rikkagin’s men attending to their preparations drifted lazily through the open windows.
There came a knock on the door and Tuolin crossed the room before T’ien had a chance to say anything. A soldier bowed his way in, handing Tuolin a slip of folded rice paper. The blond man opened it and read its contents, his brows furrowing in concentration or anxiety. He shook his head at the soldier, who immediately departed. Then Tuolin crossed the room and laid the paper open in front of the rikkagin. While T’ien read it, he said, “I am afraid that a number of last-minute administrative problems have arisen and they will require the attention of the rikkagin and myself for the remainder of the day. Please feel free to see the city but we should like it if you would return here and take the evening meal with us.” The smile came again.
T’ien looked up. “Ask one of the men downstairs for directions. They have been instructed to give you a bag of coins. You cannot get anything in Sha’angh’sei without paying for it.”
Outside, he turned left and then right, walking down a street of some incline. The day was overcast and a yellow mist was still rising. He caught himself thinking of T’ien and Tuolin. Again he had the feeling that he had missed something vital in their exchange, yet the answer remained elusive. He shrugged and put the problem out of his mind.
He came to a broad avenue after several minutes and the noise of the city welled up at him. Rows of stalls lined the crowded street. One sold fowl. They were hung by their necks, cooked and varnished with a shiny vermilion sauce so that they looked wooden and unreal. As he watched, people stopped, putting down a few coins. The stall’s owner brought out bowls of rice and sticks and commenced to cut up pieces of the cooked bird into the rice. The people ate standing up. For another coin they received a small cup of green tea to wash down the meal.
Elsewhere, a tailor of leather worked, making boots and cloaks. And at a busy intersection a fat man with a thin drooping mustache sat within a square metal cage, lending money at the day’s going rate, which, Ronin surmised, was somewhat higher than yesterday’s.
He heard the cadence of boots and a group of soldiers tramped by, moving disdainfully through the clouds of people.
He walked the city’s twisting fluid streets, caught up in the rapid pulse, repeating and changing, flashes of color, a riot of sound, aromatic spices drifting across his meandering path.
