There was another Andurya Durat tucked away behind massive walls, the Strangers’ Quarter, a vigorous vulgar swarm of non-Ternuengs. Shipmasters and merchants from the wind’s four quarters, drawn to the wealth of the ancient kingdom. Players of many sorts, hoping for an Imperial summons and the right to display the Imperial sigil. Artisans of all persuasions, many of them working under contract to build and maintain the gilded glory of the vast city outside the walls. Inn and tavern keepers, farmers (mostly Bina) in from the local farms with meat and produce, scribes, poets, painters, mages and priests, beggars, thieves, whores. And children, herds and hordes of children filling every crack and corner. Winding streets, crowded multi-storied tenements with shops on the ground floor and a maze of rooms above, taverns, godons, the market strip, all these existing in barely contained confusion and non-stop noise, shouts, quarrels, music clashing with music, raucous songs, barrowmen and women shouting their wares, yammer of gulls, bubbling coos from pigeons, twitters and snatches of song from sparrins and chevinks, harsh caws from assorted scavenger-birds, screams from falcons soaring high like headsmen’s double-bitted axes, sharp-edged and cleanly in their flight.
Taguiloa inserted himself and his company into this noisy multicolor polyglot community, just one more bit of brightness in a harlequinade as subtle and as blatant as frost-dyed leaves in a whirlwind, taking his troupe to the Inn where he and Gerontai stayed the time they came seeking to perform for the Emperor.
Papa Jao sat outside his inn on a throne of sorts raised higher than a Temueng’s head, his platform built of broken brick, rubble arranged at random, set in a mortar of his own making that hardened and darkened with the years so the stages of the throne’s rise were as clearly evident as the rings on a clamshell. On top of the pillar he’d built himself a chair with arms and a back and covered it with ancient leather pillows. It was his boast that he never forgot a face, something likely true because he wrapped his hands around the chair arms, leaned out and cried. “Taga. Come to make your fortune?”
“You know it, Papa Jao. How’s it going?”
“Sour and slim, Taga, sour and slim.” Bright black eyes moved with a never-dying curiosity over the wagon and the rest of the troupe. “Ah ah,” he chortled, “it’s you been tickling gold out of Jamar purses.” The chortle fruited into a wheezy laughter that shook every loose flap of flesh inside and outside his clothing. He was a pear-shaped little man with a pear-shaped head, heavy jowls, a fringe of, spiky white hair he drew back and tied in a tail as wild as a mountain pony’s brush after it’d been chased through a stand of stoneburrs. “How many rooms you want? Four? Yah, we got ‘em, second floor, good rooms, a silver a week each, right with you? Well, well, rumor say truth for once.” He leaned round, yelled, “Jassi! Jass-ssii, get your tail out here,” swung back. “You want stable room for the horses and a bit of the back court for your wagon? Silver a week for the horses, we provide the grain, three coppers for the wagon, oh all right, I throw in the court space.” Leaned round once more. “Angait! Anga-ait! Get over here and show saii Taguiloa where to go.”
THE NEXT DAY Taguiloa busied himself burrowing into the complicated and frustrating process of getting the troupe certified for performing in Durat, working his way up the world of clerks and functionaries, parting as frugally as possible with Brann’s coin, returning to the inn that night, exhausted, angry and triumphant, the permit, a square of stamped paper, waving from a fist sweeping in circles over his head. Harra laughing. Brann clapping. Negomas slapping a rhythm on a tabletop. Linjijan wandering in with the practice flute he was almost never without.
Taguiloa’s return metamorphosed into an impromptu performance for the patrons of Jao’s Inn, Taguiloa dancing counterpoint to Brann, Han-a whistling, Linjijan producing a breathy laughing sound from his flute, Negomas playing the tabletop and a pair of spoons-the whole ending in laughter and wine and weariness. Taguiloa went up the stairs relaxed, mind drifting, frustration dissipated; rubbing against his own kind he had rubbed away the stink of Temuengs and their stupid arrogance.
WHILE TAGUILOA was swimming against the stream of Temueng indifference and stupidity, while Negomas and Harm were out exploring the market, watching street conjurers and assessing the competition, Brann set out to do some exploring of her own, hunting without too much urgency for a niche where she could make changes without interested observers; she wanted no connection between Sammang-if he had come to Durat-and Taguiloa’s black-haired seer. The Strangers’ Quarter swarmed with people. Not a corner, a doorway, a rubble heap, a roof nook empty of children, beggars, women and men watching the ebb and flow in the street. She worked her way to the wharves, finding more space among the godons as long as she avoided the guards the merchants hired to keep the light-fingers of the Quarter away from their goods. Yaril found a broken plank in one of the scruffier godons, flowed inside and kicked it loose while Jaril-hawk flew in circles overhead watching for guards.
Brann crept inside, stripped off the skirt and coins, stripped the black from her hair, altered her face to the one Sammang knew. She straightened, smiling, feeling more herself than she had in weeks, as if somehow she’d taken off a cramping shell. A sound. She wheeled, hands reaching, straightened again. Jaril stood looking up at her.
stay.” he said.
“Why?”
“I’m tired.”
“I should hunt tonight?”
“Uh-huh.” He looked around at the dusty darkness. “Who knows what’s hived in here. You’ll want the skirt and things when you’re ready to go back to the inn. Be nice if they were still here.”
She frowned at him. “You sure you’re all right?”
“Don’t fuss, Bramble, I gave Yaril a bit extra, that’s all. In case something goes bad round you.” He blurred into a black malouch and curled up on the skirt, his chin on the pile of linked coins, his eyes closed, running away as he always did when she tried to probe his thoughts and feelings. As Yaril always did. She shook her head impatiently, ran her hands through her hair, dropped to her knees and crawled out into the street.
Yaril walking beside her, a frail fair girlchild again, Brann began searching along the wharves for Sammang or one of his crew. Ebullient Tik-rat who’d be whistling and jigging about, center of a noisy crowd. Hairy Jimm who’d tower over everyone by a head at least, a wild woolly head. Staro the Stub, wide as he was tall with big brown cow eyes that got even milder when he was pounding on someone who’d commented on his lack of inches. Turrope, lean and brown and silent, Tik-rat’s shadow. Leymas. Dereech. Rudar. Gaoez. Uasuf. Small brown men like a thousand others off a hundred ships, but she’d know them all the moment she saw them. And Sammang. There was a flutter at the base of her stomach when she thought of meeting Sammang again. She wove in and out of the godons, went up and down the piers jutting into the river, looking and looking, her face a mask, never stopping, fending off hands that groped at her, sucking enough life out of men who refused to back off to send them wandering away in a daze. From the west wall to the east she went, searching and finding none of those she searched for, stood with her hand on the east wall, tears prickling behind her eyes, a lump in her throat-until she convinced herself that Sammang would keep his men out of trouble while he waited for her and the best way to do that would be to keep them off the wharves. She rubbed at her forehead, trying to think. Where would he be? If he was here. How could he make himself visible but not conspicuous? Hunh. Phrased like that the answer was obvious. If he was here, he’d be sitting in a wharfside tavern waiting for her to walk in.