“I am his squire,” Pandaras insisted. “My master is of noble birth. He deserves a train of servants, but I’m so good he needs no other.”
Yama laughed.
Tamora squinted at Pandaras. “You people are all the same to me, like fucking rats running around underfoot, but I could swear you’re the pot boy of the crutty inn where I stayed the night.” She told Yama, “If I was more suspicious, I might suspect a plot.”
“If there was a plot, it was between your friend and the landlord of the inn.”
“Grah. I suspected as much. If I survive my present job, and there’s no reason why I shouldn’t, then I’ll have words with that rogue. More than words, in fact.”
Tamora’s usual expression was a sullen, suspicious pout, but when she smiled her face came to life, as if a mask had suddenly dropped, or the sun had come out from behind a cloud. She smiled now, as if at the thought of her revenge.
Her upper incisors were long and stout and sharply pointed.
Yama said, “He did not profit from his treachery.”
Pandaras kicked him under the table and frowned.
Tamora said, “I’m not after your fucking money, or else I would have taken it already. I have just now taken on a new job, so be quick in making up your mind on how you’ll dispose of what is due to you by right of arms. As I said before, you can throw it in the river or leave it for the scavengers if you want, but it’s good gear.”
Yama picked up the sword. Its broad blade was iron and had seen a lot of use. Its nicked edge was razor-sharp. The hilt was wound with bronze wire; the pommel an unornamented plastic ball, chipped and dented. He held the blade up before his face, then essayed a few passes. The cut on his forearm stickily parted under the crude bandage he had tied and he put the sword down. No one sitting at the tables around the stall had looked at the display, although he had hoped that they would.
He said, “I have a knife that serves me well enough, and the sword is made for a strong unsubtle man more used to hewing wood than fighting properly. Find a woodsman and give it to him although I suspect he would rather keep his axe. But I will take the armor. As you say, old armor is the best.”
“Well, at least you know something about weapons,” Tamora said grudgingly. “Are you here looking for hire? If so, I’ll give some advice for free. Come back tomorrow, early. That’s when the best jobs are available. Condottieri like a soldier who can rise early.”
“I had thought to watch a duel or two,” Yama said.
“Grah. Exhibition matches between oiled corn-fed oafs who wouldn’t last a minute in real battle. Do you think we fight with swords against the fucking heretics? The matches draw people who would otherwise not come, that’s all. They get drunk with recruiting sergeants and the next day find themselves indentured in the army, with a hangover and the taste of the oath like a copper penny in their mouth.”
“I am not here to join the army. Perhaps I will become a cateran eventually, but not yet.”
“He’s looking for his people,” Pandaras said.
It was Yama’s turn to kick under the table. It was green-painted tin, with a bamboo and paper umbrella. He said, “I am looking for certain records in one of the departmental libraries.”
Tamora swallowed the last oyster and belched. “Then sign up with the department. Better still, join the fucking archivists. After ten years’ apprenticeship you might just be sent to the Palace of the Memory of the People; more likely you’ll be sent to listen to the stories of unchanged toads squatting in some mudhole. But that’s a better chance than trying to bribe your way into their confidence. They’re a frugal lot, and besides, if any one of them was caught betraying his duty he’d be executed on the spot. The same penalty applies to any who try to bribe them. Those records are all that remains of the dead, kept until they’re resurrected at the end of time. It’s serious shit to even look at them the wrong way.”
“The Puranas say that the Preservers need no records, for at the end of time an infinite amount of energy becomes available. In the last instant as the Universe falls into itself all is possible, and everyone who ever lived or ever could have lived will live again forever, in that eternal now. Besides, the records I am looking for are not in the Palace of the Memory of the People, but in the archives of the Department of Apothecaries and Chirurgeons.”
“That’s more or less the same place. On the roof rather than inside, that’s all.”
“Just as I told you, master,” Pandaras said. “You don’t need her to show you what I already know.”
Tamora ignored him. “Their records are maintained by archivists, too. Unless you’re a sawbones or a sawbones’ runner, you can forget about it. It’s the same in all the departments. The truth is expensive and difficult to keep pure, and so getting at it without proper authority is dangerous.” Tamora smiled. “But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways of getting at it.”
Pandaras said, “She is baiting a hook. Be careful.”
Yama said to Tamora, “Tell me this. You have fought against the heretics—that is what the tattoo on your arm implies, anyway. In all your travels, have you ever seen any other men and women like me?”
“I fought in two campaigns, and in the last I was so badly wounded that I took a year recovering. When I’m fit I’ll go again. It’s better pay than bodyguard or pickup work and more honorable, although honor has little to do with it when you’re there. No, I haven’t seen anyone like you, but it doesn’t signify. There are ten thousand bloodlines on Confluence, not counting all those hill tribes of indigens, who are little more than animals.”
“Then you see how hard I must search,” Yama said.
Tamora smiled. It seemed to split her face in half. “How much will you pay?”
“Master—”
“All I have. I changed two gold rials for smaller coins this morning. It is yours, if you help me.”
Pandaras whistled and looked up at the blue sky.
“Grah. Against death, that is not so much.”
Yama said, “Do they guard the records with men, or with machines?”
“Why, mostly machines of course. As I said, the records of any department are important. Even the poorest departments guard their archives carefully—often their archives are all they have left.”
“Well, it might be easier than you suppose.”
Tamora stared at Yama. He met her luminous green gaze and for a long moment the rest of the world melted away.
Her pupils were vertical slits edged with closely crowded dots of golden pigment that faded to copper at the periphery.
Yama imagined drowning in that green-gold gaze, as a luckless fisherman might drown in the Great River’s flood. It was the heart-stopping gaze that a predator turns upon its prey.
Tamora’s voice said from far away, “Before I help you, if I do help you, you must prove yourself.”
Yama said faintly, “How?”
“Don’t trust her,” Pandaras said. “If she really wanted the job, she’d have asked for all your money. There are plenty like her. If we threw a stone in any direction, we’d hit at least two.”
Tamora said, “In a way, you owe it to me.”
Yama was still looking into Tamora’s gaze. He said, “Cyg was going to partner you, I think. Now I know why you came here. You were not looking for me, but for a replacement. Well, what would you have me do?”
Tamora pointed over his shoulder. He turned, and saw the black, silver-capped dome of the voidship lighter rising beyond the flame trees of the island of the Black Temple. The cateran said, “We have to bring back a star-sailor who jumped ship.”
They sold the sword to an armorer for rather more than Yama expected, and left the corselet and the greaves with the same man to be cut down. Tamora insisted that Yama get his wounds treated by one of the leeches who had set up their stalls near the dueling arena, and Yama sat and watched two men fence with chainsaws (“Showboat juggling,” Tamora sneered) while the cut on his forearm was stitched, painted with blue gel and neatly bandaged. The shallow cut on Yama’s palm should be left to heal on its own, the leech said, but Tamora made him bandage it anyway, saying that the bandage would help Yama grip his knife. She bought Pandaras a knife with a long thin round blade and a finger-guard chased with a chrysanthemum flower; it was called a kidney puncher.