102 – His eye changed expression

It’s ten-sided die they cast, to decide whether to inspect or not. Thus we’d come in with a chance of one in two-hundred, that there’d be a Mahid and the die would roll bad. Now that was suddenly one in ten.

Still, even those are not bad odds. Nine-in-ten we’d be sent right through while the Mahid stood unblinking. I patted Mana’s shoulder, as if by comforting him I could comfort myself as well; he patted my knee, proving I could. “Here, funerary fessas,” a voice said, one-down; we moved again, and by where the guards were placed, I knew we were being drawn to the side. Saint Mother, no… did they cast bad?

My admiration for Erilas grew to awe. He kept absolutely casual, chatting cheerfully with the guards as if an inspection were simply an everyday inconvenience, while the carriage rose on its springs, lightened by the lifting off of each casket. I could imagine his eye, behind its spectacles, unchanged; now, imagining it was not unsettling, but reassuring.

“Fessas, what” something, one of the guards asked, with a certain satisfaction in his voice.

“Aigh…” Something, caught out, this miserable, he means himself, ‘this something one,’ that’s upping. “Aigh…” By the movement of his dagger, I knew he was casting a nervous glance at the Mahid. He dropped his voice. “If he” … weren’t here? I strained to understand the unequal Arkan. The smaller contraband had been discovered, I guessed.

“Yes, but…” Funerary fessas—that’s how they’re addressing him. Yes, but he is here, that’s what the guard said. “A bolt of”—some kind of—“silk,” he said. The rest sounded like a scolding of Erilas for doing this; I heard the word for “casket” and “corpses” and “profession.”

“Of course, of course,” Erilas guiltily demurred, with a further string of contritely buttery, disconsolate words. I knew him well enough now to tell by his voice that his eye was not changing.

“Twenty-five gold chains… cost… funerary fessas,” the guard said; the fine, I guessed. “Plus the silk is”—confiscate, I gathered the word meant. Erilas made a bit of a whine in his throat, as if to express that this was the worst imaginable thing that could happen to him, so terrible that he could not help but fail to stifle it entirely in the presence of his betters. Something “name in town,” he said, despondently. “Sikrias…” will fire, “worm-like”—that was the self-deprecation, “this worm-like one,” then something that had the same root as “deserve”—I deserve it, I guessed. He was playing it brilliantly.

“You deserve it, indeed,” the guard sniffed, or something like that. Then something, “what else” something “hidden”?

“Inspect! Inspect away, inspect down to the last splinter!” Erilas said, without hesitation. I know; I remembered the words, and looked them up later. I am in the presence of a master, I calmed myself by telling myself again. Time passed, the carriage untouched; they were examining the caskets, perhaps undoing every shroud, by the time it took. The katzerik-urge came bitterly strong; I had the feeling again as if I were in chains, ready to give up everything just to be able to stretch my arms, and seize my sword-hilt. The pain in neck and ankles was worse now, but I felt it at a distance.

A guard came to the carriage, and climbed onto it, his boot-sole a fingerwidth from my cheek. I heard his breathing, as he turned this way and that, looking; then his gauntleted fist was thumping here and there, his ears, no doubt, listening for hollowness. Mana clenched my knee; I gripped his shoulder gently.

Erilas followed the guard in, moaning, “Name in Arko… Sikrias… fired…” They were both in, when the guard froze, facing Erilas, who kept up the woeful litany, even as his body did something that did not match it. I heard both their weights shift. Now they’re both where the Mahid can’t see them, Erilas just showed him something, and then gave it to him, I thought. A fistful of gold chains, or I’m a Lakan’s uncle. “Sikrias, who gave me everything I have, I am so sorry…” That was equal-to-equal. Thump, thump, the guard’s fist went on, but there wasn’t such earnestness in it as before. He’d decided to discover nothing.

As he climbed off the carriage, I heard a rattle of armour, plate on plate. He was trembling, head to foot. Because there was a Mahid there, of course. As a rule, Arkans are nervous, if not terrified, of them. All this time, the Mahid had not moved. Oh, lad—I got the impression the guard was young—keep your calm, and pocket your earnings; the rest of us are, and will. He stepped away, and I thought, all is well.

Erilas stayed on the carriage, his litany easing, pretending to make peace with his catastrophe and regain calm, while someone crawled under it, nose a finger-width from our backs, examining it. I thanked Erilas in my mind for anointing us with this flowery ponk; I couldn’t imagine our sweat wouldn’t otherwise smell like something far too alive.

How long will this take? Of course, they have to be thorough. Especially with the Mahid watching. I wanted to move, stretch, straighten my head, turn my feet, sling on my sword, feel the wind in my hair and a fast horse rippling under me. I wanted to scratch one of my ankles where it had been itching for at least a bead, instead of making myself not think about it. Now I wanted a katzerik.

They began loading the caskets back on, with faint thumps and scrapes. We’ve passed. We’ll be moving in a moment. Mana said the same to me with a pat of his hand. Erilas moved around the horses, fussing, perhaps adjusting harness that had been unadjusted in the inspection; then he climbed back onto the driver’s seat. There were some words, and guards stepped back, and the carriage lurched forward, in its ponderous way, wheels creaking. Finally. I let out the breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding.

“Aigh!” It came from a little distance. A string of frantic words, “this one,” it was one of the guards, solas, who’d he be one-upping? Only one—Mahid are Aitzas—it was confirmed when I heard “Mahid.” Something “he gave,” he gave this one, he gave this one that’s what he said kyash kyash kyash kyash kyash...

All Erilas said was “Shen,” and it was under his breath, but I am certain his eye changed expression.

†

Now the Mahid moved, coming closer to the carriage. They began unloading the caskets again. Only one reason they’d do that. The guard had owned up that he had not tapped, or listened, properly. Mana’s hand clenched my knee and didn’t let go. I made the one-finger sign of the sword against his shoulder. We fight. He signed chalk against my knee.

As they began taking out the screws that held down the board over us, Erilas did the one thing that remained to him. Hopeless though it was, what did he have to lose by trying? With luck, he might get what he had to gain: a quick death. He whipped out his dagger and broke upslope in the tunnel.

Wait! Wait! I wanted to cry to him; wait a bit longer and there are three of us! All pain was gone; bloodfire was burning through my veins. I took hold of the scabbard of Chirel, which was against my shield-side thigh, with my shield-hand, ready to sit up and draw the moment the board came up off me and I could snatch my sword-hand out from under Mana. I felt him ready himself as well.

But of course they stopped unscrewing as Erilas made his move, and from ahead I weapon-sensed the fight. He made a good account of himself, for wielding a single dagger against spears, taking one guard down and driving another back with a wound, before they took him down. I didn’t hear him cry out, which gave me hope; I didn’t yet understand that a death-cry would have meant that he’d got what was best and thus was what he wanted.

The Mahid gave a command in his dead-impassive voice; I caught the word for “spears.” It had occurred to him that there might be a person or two in the false floor, and they might come out fighting. Credit him for forethought. He set himself where he’d be point-blank, drew out his dart-tube, aimed it dead-centre at us and gave another order.

How far would we have to fight to get out, if we made it past this? Unfortunately, more guards had gathered, a good thirty of them positioned near; still, that didn’t make it impossible, so long as the first moves succeeded in countering that dart; then we’d have to see how it went. “Yell to wake the dead when we go,” I whispered to Mana, as they unscrewed the last screw, and fingers reached to grip the edge. “So to speak,” he whispered back. They began lifting it off sideways to his side, which would give me a clear view of the Mahid, and him of me.

In the blaze of light and the roar of our joined voices, time slowed. I saw the Mahid, black-clad, mid-thirties, dead-eyed, the black hole of the tube aimed between us, and the shining points of spears I had weapon-sensed ringed all around us. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mana’s arm reach up to push the board, speeding its motion off us; then it darted for his sword. An instant, I had, to sit up, draw Chirel and parry the dart out of the air with either scabbard or sword if I were fast and precise enough.

The instant stretched out long and languid, the motion of everyone as through syrup, except those who stood motionless, startled to freezing by our cry. I saw the black hole of the dart-tube turn, creeping slow, toward me as I lifted Chirel scabbarded in one hand and reached for its hilt with the other; then it leisurely stopped, aimed at my chest, making a triangle with the two death-blue eyes that met mine. The glacial explosion of his breath came as my fingers were a finger-width away from the grip, so I moved to turn the dart with the scabbard.

I think about it sometimes, when I am stripped in front of the mirror and see the marks of Arko on my body, or think something that makes me feel the marks of Arko on my soul. How my life, and the world, might have been different, had the dart or my hand taken a path, or moved at a time, slightly off from what it was. Life comes down, so often, to moments and fingerwidths. And yet there were spearpoints ringing us, thirty guards and who knew what locks and bars to get by even if I had succeeded, and Jinai had seen what he’d seen.

Like a tiny brown tooth, but slow as a feather on a breath of wind, the dart came, bending higher in its path somehow so that the scabbard was too low. As through glass, which I learned in Arko is not actually solid, but liquid so slow it is almost solid, so that very old windows get thick at the bottom and thin at the top, too slow too slow too slow I lifted the scabbard, saw the dart glance off the edge of it with a ping and grow slowly huger in air, a tooth then a slingstone then a springald-bolt then a battering ram, before I clenched my eyes shut, and it minutely stabbed my shield-side eyebrow like a biting fly.

I drew anyway, and had just got the point clear of the scabbard when all strength left me. Chirel flew out of my fingers and clanged against the wall of the carriage behind me, I felt wood hard against my head and arm again, having fallen back, and all perception faded. The last of my senses to fail was weapon-sense; I felt Mana jam his half-drawn sword back fully into the scabbard, and set it aside, surrendering in a language everyone understands.

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