Yama sat in a corner of the taproom, and presently a pot boy brought him a plate of shrimp boiled in their shells and stir-fried okra and peppers, with chili and peanut sauce and flat discs of unleavened bread and a beaker of thin rice beer.
Yama ate hungrily. He had walked until the sun had fallen below the roofs of the city, and although he had passed numerous stalls and street vendors he had not been able to buy any food or drink—he had not realized that there were men whose business was to change coins like his into smaller denominations. The landlord would change the coin tomorrow and Yama would begin to search for his bloodline. But now he was content to sit with a full stomach, his head pleasantly lightened by the beer, and watch the inn’s customers.
They seemed to fall into two distinct groups. There were ordinary working men of several bloodlines, dressed in homespun and clogs, who stood at the counter drinking quietly, and there was a party of men and a single red-haired woman eating at a long table under the stained-glass window which displayed the inn’s sign of two crossed axes. They made a lot of noise, playing elaborate toasting games and calling from one end of the table to the other. Yama thought that they must be soldiers, caterans or some other kind of irregulars, for they all wore bits of armor, mostly metal or resin chestplates painted with various devices, and wrist guards and greaves. Many were scarred, or had missing fingers. One big, bare-chested man had a silver patch over one eye; another had only one arm, although he ate as quickly and as dexterously as his companions. The red-haired woman seemed to be one of them, rather than a concubine they had picked up; she wore a sleeveless leather tunic and a short leather skirt that left her legs mostly bare.
The landlord seemed to know the caterans, and when he was not busy he sat with them, laughing at their jokes and pouring wine or beer for those nearest him. He whispered something in the one-eyed man’s ear and they both laughed, and when the landlord went off to serve one of the other customers, the one-eyed man grinned across the room at Yama.
Presently, the pot boy told Yama that his room was ready and led him around the counter and through a small hot kitchen into a courtyard lit by electric floodlights hung from a central pole. There were whitewashed stables on two sides and a wide square gate shaded by an avocado tree in which green parrots squawked and rustled. The room was in the eaves above one of the stable blocks. It was long and low and dark, with a single window at its end looking out over the street and a tumble of roofs falling toward the Great River. The pot boy lit a fish-oil lantern and uncovered a pitcher of hot water, turned down the blanket and fussed with the bolster on the bed, and then hesitated, clearly reluctant to leave.
“I do not have any small coins,” Yama said, “but tomorrow I will give you something for your trouble.”
The boy went to the door and looked outside, then closed it and turned to Yama. “I don’t know you, master,” he said, “but I think I should tell you this, or it’ll be on my conscience. You shouldn’t stay here tonight.”
“I paid for the room with honest money left on account,” Yama said.
The boy nodded. He wore a clean, much-darned shirt and a pair of breeches. He was half Yama’s height and slightly built, with black hair slicked back from a sharp, narrow face. His eyes were large, with golden irises that gleamed in the candlelight. He said, “I saw the coin you left on trust. I won’t ask where you got it, but I reckon it could buy this whole place. My master is not a bad man, but he’s not a good man either, if you take my meaning, and there’s plenty better that would be tempted by something like that.”
“I will be careful,” Yama said. The truth was that he was tired, and a little dizzy from the beer.
“If there’s trouble, you can climb out the window onto the roof,” the boy said. “On the far side there’s a vine that’s grown up to the top of the wall. It’s an easy climb down. I’ve done it many times.”
After the boy left Yama bolted the door and came at the open window and gazed out at the vista of roofs and river under the darkening sky, listening to the evening sounds of the city. There was a continual distant roar, the blended noise of millions of people going about their business, and closer at hand the sounds of the neighborhood: a hawker’s cry; a pop ballad playing on a tape recorder; someone hammering metal with quick sure strokes; a woman calling to her children. Yama felt an immense peacefulness and an intense awareness that he was there, alone in that particular place and time with his whole life spread before him, a sheaf of wonderful possibilities.
He took off his shirt and washed his face and arms, then pulled off his boots and washed his feet. The bed had a lumpy mattress stuffed with straw, but the sheets were freshly laundered and the wool blanket was clean. This was probably the potboy’s room, he thought, which was why the boy wanted him to leave.
He intended to rest for a few minutes before getting up to close the shutters, but when he woke it was much later. The cold light of the Galaxy lay on the floor; something made a scratching sound in the rafters above the bed. A mouse or a gecko, Yama thought sleepily, but then he felt a feathery touch in his mind and knew that a machine had flown into the room through the window he had carelessly left open.
Yama wondered sleepily if the machine had woken him, but then there was a metallic clatter outside the door. He sat up, groping for the lantern. Someone pushed at the door and Yama, still stupid with sleep, called out.
The door flew open with a tremendous crash, sending the broken bolt flying across the room. A man stood silhouetted in the doorway. Yama rolled onto the floor, reaching for his satchel, and something hit the bed. Wood splintered and straw flew into the air. Yama rolled again, dragging his satchel with him. He cut his hand getting his knife out but hardly noticed. The curved blade shone with a fierce blue light and spat fat blue sparks from its point.
The man turned from the bed, a shadow in the blue half-light. He had broken the frame and slashed the mattress to ribbons with the long, broad blade of his sword. Yama threw the pitcher of water at him and he ducked and said, “Give it up, boy, and maybe you’ll live.”
Yama hesitated, and the man struck at him with a sudden fury. Yama ducked and heard the air part above his head, and slashed at the man’s legs with the knife, so that he had to step back. The knife howled and Yama felt a sudden coldness in the muscles of his arm.
“You fight like a woman,” the man said. Knife-light flashed on something on his intent face.
Then he drove forward again, and Yama stopped thinking.
Reflexes, inculcated in the long hours in the gymnasium under Sergeant Rhodean’s stern instruction, took over.
Yama’s knife was better suited to close fighting than the man’s long blade, but the man had the advantage of reach and weight. Yama managed to parry a series of savage, hacking strokes—fountains of sparks spurted at each blow—but the force of the blows numbed his wrist, and then the man’s longer blade slid past the guard of Yama’s knife and nicked his forearm. The wound was not painful, but it bled copiously and weakened Yama’s grip on his knife.
Yama knocked the chair over and, in the moment it took the man to kick it out of the way, managed to get out of the corner into which he had been forced. But the man was still between Yama and the door. In a moment he pressed his attack again, and Yama was driven back against the wall.
The knife’s blue light blazed and something white and bone-thin stood between Yama and the man, but the man laughed and said, “I know that trick,” and kicked out, catching Yama’s elbow with the toe of his boot. The blow numbed Yama’s arm and he dropped the knife. The phantom vanished with a sharp snap.