He moved the skillet over, catching the best of the rising heat and waited, his stomach unfrozen at last and beginning to protest loudly. He licked his finger, touched the skillet, and got a good hiss. Better, so much better than the rock they’d been using this last half-year and more.
He tossed the first round into the pan and retrieved his bag of cheese and the somewhat-worse-for-wear vegetables. He carefully peeled the paraffin from the end of the cheese, salvaging every sliver for his growing collection. Someday, maybe someday soon, he’d have a use for it. Coal. Coal and clay. Wouldn’t he give Bezul something to trade then?
So many, so many good things happening, now this. He’d wanted to talk to Grandfather about Bec, had wanted to bring Bec to meet Grandfather, to write down his stories. Everything had seemed so … right. Now … he scowled at the still figure beneath the sodden cloak.
“Time to flip, my dear.” Grandfather’s voice cut through his daydreams, and indeed it was. He turned the bread, and slid the fine taut wire of Grandfather’s one-time block cutter through the cheese round making precise thin slices.
They had plates, bowls, and mugs, of sorts. Salvage, mostly, carved wood and hammered tin, but they functioned well enough. He slid the flat bread with its melted cheese topping onto the plate, folding it over just before it turned crisp, and handed the plate to Grandfather before returning the skillet to the fire. Quiet. Normal. Like every other night. Almost, he could forget about the stranger lying silent beneath his …
Silent, but no longer insensible. Eyes, pale, silver-blue beneath strangely dark brows, followed Kadithe’s every move.
“Grandfather …” Kadithe said, and Grandfather answered: “I know. Since you cut the cheese.”
Grandfather heard things, things a normal man didn’t consider. He knew when Kadithe tried to fake sleep, had said his breathing changed, and try though he would to control it, nothing had ever fooled him.
He put the next round in the skillet, watching the stranger out of the corner of his eye. A tongue appeared briefly between his swollen lips, and his throat worked in a swallow that must go hard past the bruises.
Those pale eyes left his hands and the skillet, lifted to his … except … they weren’t as pale as before. Now, they were a light hazel, darkening with each passing heartbeat.
Kadithe fell back, caught himself, and pushed to his feet, back to the wall, staring as the pale stranger with the silver hair changed before his eyes—darkening—skin, hair, eyes, until his eyes were hazel—like Kadithe Mur’s; his hair dirty brown, like Kadithe Mur’s; and his skin, were he to put his hand on the stranger’s, would blend, one into the other.
“Kadithe?” Grandfather’s voice, and another, the stranger’s echoed, “Kadithe?”
“Kadithe, tell me what’s wrong.” Grandfather again, calm, commanding.
“Chameleon,” he whispered.
“Explain, Kadithe,” Grandfather said.
“He … he’s changed again, Grandfather. Skin, eyes … hair. All brown now. Like mine. Exactly like mine.”
Startlement in those newly hazeled eyes. A hand, slowly freed from the cloak’s folds, lifted for self-examination. Could he possibly not know?
Smoke rose from the pan. With a cry, Kadithe darted to the brazier, flipped the bread, and scowled at blackened spots. Not ruined, but damn, he hated that taste. Damn if he wouldn’t give this one to the chameleon, who should be thankful for anything …
He thought of those eyes, wide and shocked one moment, twisted with pain the next, as one fine-boned hand lifted to that bump on his skull, and thought, maybe, he’d keep that burned one after all.
As it turned out, his sacrifice made little difference. The stranger sat up and accepted the plate, but seemed far more interested in the tea than his food. Kadithe scowled at his own, picking off the burned bits and tossing them into the fire, thinking generally unpleasant thoughts at their silent, unasked-for guest. Grandfather was no help at all, sitting there in the one chair, sipping and nibbling slowly, thoughtfully. Listening. Waiting, damn him, for his grandson to take the lead with this stranger he’d brought into their home.
“Kha-deet?”
That whisper, painfully produced past the bruised throat, shook Kadithe free of his dark thoughts, and when he looked up, he saw the stranger extending his plate with one hand, pointing toward his with the other.
Offering to trade.
Shamed, he shook his head. “No. Thank you. I’m fine.” And he forced himself to eat a charred bit, washed it down with a large mouthful of tea.
A silent chuckle, and the man leaned forward, very carefully, to set the plate on the floor between them, pushing it toward him. Then, simply, held out his hand for the other plate.
“I’d suggest you complete the transaction, Kadithe,” Grandfather said, and he was smiling.
Kadithe sighed, handed the older man the plate, and fell to eating with less enthusiasm than he might have had, as the guest proceeded to eat the charred piece with all the enthusiasm he lacked, chewing carefully, as if, maybe, some teeth had been damaged along with his face, and sipping tea before swallowing. When he’d finished, even to licking the crumbs from his fingers, he handed the plate back to Kadithe with a soft, slow, “Thank you.”
“So, you can talk,” he said sourly. “How ’bout a name?”
Which only earned him a confused blink.
“Who are you?” he asked. “Where did you come from? What are you doing here?”
More confusion.
“Try Rankene,” Grandfather suggested and Kadithe repeated the questions in that language of his ancestors, but the response was the same.
“Khadeet,” the stranger said, dipping his head toward Kadithe, then pointing with his chin to Grandfather: “Who?”
Ilsigi, then, if broken.
“Grandfather.”
Eyes narrowed, confused. “Grandfather? Name?”
“Yes,” Kadithe said firmly. And echoing the man, he gestured with his chin and asked, “Who?”
Confusion lit those hazel-but-not eyes, then fear, before they dropped to study hands turned palm up. Fear turned to intent concentration, as he turned those bands slowly, examining them from all angles. “N-n-nai … jen,” he said at last and still hesitantly, and slowly the color drained from those hands, leaving them with the pale, slightly blue cast they’d held when he was asleep, and his eyes, when he looked up, were silver-blue. “My name is Naijen Mal.”
Firmly. In Ilsigi. Without a hint of hesitation or what Grandfather called Sanctuary’s peculiar slant on the language.
“Where are you from?” he asked, slowly and in his best Ilsigi. “Who tried to kill you?”
No question of understanding this time. Mal’s pale eyes dropped, avoiding his. A shaking hand lifted to finger that knot on his head, the bruises at this throat. He swallowed, hard and painfully. Finally, “I don’t know.”
“Don’t know. You mean you didn’t recognize him?” Fear, panic, finally, resignation. “I mean I don’t remember. Anything.”
Malediction
Jeff Grubb
Here’s what Little Minx did right before she went to helclass="underline"
She picked up four heavy ceramic mugs, two in each hand, and with a minimum of sloshing delivered the watered ale intact to one of the booths in the back. She dropped the ale and retired quickly as one of the drunks made a half-hearted lunge for her. She managed a false smile in recognition of the attention but would rather have had a few padpols by way of a tip instead.
Crossing the main floor, Little Minx nodded as a barrel-maker tried to flag her down to order the same rot-gut ale he always ordered these days. She dodged out of the way of another groper along the back aisle and pulled a meat pie of dubious provenance from the cook’s counter, delivering it to the third table on the right, where a group of dark-haired men stopped talking the moment she arrived.