S. M. Stirling - Fifth Millennium 03 - The Cage.pdf

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Prologue
Habiku, you son of two brothers, I’m coming home. It’s taken me two damned years. Three
shipwrecks, outrunning pirates… You sold me off so far away you never thought I’d escape or make it
back. I hope you’re alive so I can kill you. Habiku Smoothtongue. Your flowery speeches arent going to
save you this time.
Nothing will.
Chapter One
THE SLAF HIKARME COUNTING HOUSE BRAHVNIKI:
DELTA OF THE BREZHAN RIVER SVARTZEE, NORTH SHORE TENTH IRON CYCLE,
THIRD DAY, YEAR OF THE STEEL MOUSE Late autumn, 4973 A.D.)
The clerk looked up from scattering sand on the page and ostentatiously returned his attention to the
ledger, trimming his pen with a deft scrit-scrit against the razor fastened in the mouth of the inkwell. One
had to show this sort of poor trash that the Slaf Hikarme was a respectable House. He looked down his
nose at the two women.
”I’m sorry, Teik,” he said. ”The Head Clerk is a very busy man. Do you have an appointment?” There
was a vast difference between his side of the oak counter and theirs; a mercantile house in a trading city
dealt with many questionable types, of necessity. Still, he was the guardian of the inner rooms, of
respectability, property, order, especially against unseemliness like this—this ragamuffin.
The clientele were watching with interest, nine in a hall meant for twenty. A pity the House had fallen into
such financial difficulty. The other two clerks kept their heads industriously bent over their ledgers, but he
could feel their attention as well. He cleared his throat.
Oddly, the Zak woman who stood across the long wooden divider that split the outer chamber seemed
neither daunted nor angry. Purebreed, he estimated, with a covert glance up from under his lids.
Disturbingly familiar, though he couldn’t think where he would have met such riffraff. Scarcely four feet
tall, skin pale under its weathered tan, eyes and hair raven-black; none of the swagger you saw in a
tavern bravo, but there were well-used knives in her belt, two more in her boots and a stiletto hilt peeking
out from one sleeve. Plain dark grey tunic and trousers and cloak, stained with salt spray.
Off a ship in from the Mitvald, then, even if her accent was F’talezonian and that mother city of her race
was far upriver. Nothing unusual in Brahvniki. The Zak sighed and crooked a finger. ”The pen you’ve
just sharpened will do nicely.” The clerk found himself handing it to her. She snagged a scrap of paper
out of the stack by his elbow, ignoring his yip of, ”That’s expensive!”, and wrote. She turned the page
around and pushed it across the desk so he could read the words ”Megan Whitlock, F’talezon, Owner
Slaf Hikarme.” The collar of his mercantile robe seemed a bit tight, the room too warm, even though he
hadn’t put a fresh scoopful of blackrock on the stove in an hour. He took a deep breath. ”Teik,” he said,
drawing strength from his position. ”You must understand that anyone could fake a signature. I’m sorry,
Head Clerk Vhsant is busy. I’m just doing my job.” There hadn’t been someone claiming to be Whitlock
for more than a year. The owner was presumed, though not officially declared, dead.
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The Zak looked back at her companion. ”Even after he’s seen my signature, this officious person is
telling me I can’t walk into my own office, Shkai’ra.” Now the one leaning against the lacquered inner
door, that one was unusual. Tall and fair-haired; well, a Thane or Aenir might be so… but no folk he
knew had quite that cast of feature, slanted grey eyes over high cheeks, scimitar blade of nose with a tiny
gold ring through one nostril, pointed chin and wide, thin-lipped mouth; and she was smiling at him.
Teeth and eyes pale against dark-tanned skin; not much more than the mid-twenties of her Zak
companion. Worn horse-hide jacket and chamois pants, worn bone plaques on the long hilt of her saber.
One hand rested on the brass eagle-head pommel of the sword, the other hooked a thumb through her
belt; thick-wristed hands, long fingers, thin white scars on the backs. She was smiling and resting
completely relaxed, ignoring the two guards with their weighted staffs.
The blonde woman spoke. ”You do him, Megan, or I?” Guttural accent, staccato. Brahvniki was not a
well-policed city, and the Watch might be a while in arriving.
The Zak leaned forward and tapped on the wood with a clawed finger. ”You probably don’t remember
working for me, Teik—Yareslav? You were only an underclerk then, but you might recognize me if you
think very hard. Don’t make stupid decisions on your own. I suggest that you call Vhsant Cormarenc. ”
She was using the Head Clerks old use-name, before the owner’s proxy, Habiku, had elevated him to
the position. She knew names. Maybe… Great Bear, the Zak does look uncannily like… No. The
owner was dead. The two guards, Bhodan and Anjevitch, watched with bovine patience from their
bench. Otherwise the stone chamber was as it always was, bare, growing slightly seedy over these last
two years of fading prosperity. The others waiting their turn… Two glanced at each other, stood, left in a
casual stroll that grew hurried at the door. Yareslav hoped they were going for the Watch. Svorbodin the
slaver glanced up from his laptop abacus, away, snapped his glance back. A hurried whisper to his
second, and they left, sidling along the wall. The other five sought corners and leaned back to watch.
His eyes fell. The Zak woman was digging her claws impatiently into the hard oak of the counter, beside
the lectern that held his accountbook. Steel nails, not strapped on but growing from the flesh: razor
edged, hard steel, on small strong hands with shackle-scars around the wrists. That was an expensive
operation; you needed an expert such as could only be found in F’talezon, the Zak capital, and it had its
drawbacks; the iron was drawn from your blood, somehow. It took a certain type of mind to want that
sort of operation.
Very expensive, very rare. The nails went shriiink into the wood, along his nerves, the hard wood
splintering and fraying… My counter, he thought. Megan Whit lock had bought that peculiar sorcery. She
had been dead these past two years, he repeated to himself, Habiku had said so. This woman couldn’t
be… Trembling, his hand went under the counter, tugged at a hidden string. She was close enough,
across the counter, close enough for him to scent the woodsmoke and salt in the cloak, like any poor
client of the House bringing their smells in among books and ink and counting-beads.
”Teik—” he stammered.
The door behind him opened with a gust of warm stale air. A voice boomed. Vhsant, the office
supervisor. Oh, Sacred Bear, Honey-Giving One, thank you, thank you, Yareslav thought.
The Zak was looking beyond him. ”Well, Vhsant, you petit larceny piss-ant, are you going to recognize
me?” The junior clerk eased himself thankfully off the stool and moved carefully aside.
The Head Clerk sat down, almost smoothly. He was a heavy man but not fat, bearded. He waited a
moment, meeting the Zak’s eyes before speaking; his voice was soft, the pale scribe’s face calm, but
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Yareslav knew he had recognized the founder of the House. Whitlock. It is. Yareslav started edging
away. When she found out what had happened while she was gone… Under the edge of the counter,
where she couldn’t see it, Vhsant’s hand slowly clenched. Yareslav saw a slight sheen of sweat at his
hairline.
He’s shaken, the underclerk thought. I’ve never seen him this, ah, flustered before.
”Woman,” the Head Clerk told the Zak, without waiting for her to say any more. ”You have some
superficial resemblance to the unfortunately deceased owner of the House of the Sleeping Dragon. If you
think you can take advantage of a slight resemblance to Megan Whitlock, and take over a thriving
business, you are mistaken. Guards, expel them.”
Bhodan and Anjevitch rose and stepped forward; they were brother and sister, peasants expelled from
the Benai—the Abbey’s—lands for brawling. They were as tall as the blonde foreigner who stood
between them and Megan Whitlock, more massive, with arms and shoulders that had rolled logs,
wrestled young bulls, cleared rocks from fields. They had the instincts of professionals; they spread,
wasting no time on words, coming in on the foreigner from either side with staffs swinging, ready for their
opponent to break the peace-bond seal on her saber. Yareslav watched, fascinated.
Clack. The sister’s staff struck the scabbarded blade the blonde stranger had drawn, sheath and all,
from her belt-loops. Tack, the foreign woman touched down again from the leap that had taken her over
the metal-shod ashwood Bhodan swung at her knees. She turned, pivoted on the balls of her feet toward
the brother, moving with a smooth leopard grace that made the siblings look heavy, slow. The brass
pommel of the saber snaked out behind her, struck the top of Anjevitch’s kneecap with the sound of a
butcher’s mallet breaking bone. She wailed, doubled, her face coming down to meet a booted heel
striking backward and up. There was a crackling like small twigs thrown on a hot fire and the peasant
sank to her knees, one hand pressed to her face. She reached a trembling hand to the floor, slid down
and lay still, moaning.
A few hardy spectators remained, backing out of the blonde woman’s way as Bhodan roared,
advancing with blow after blow that would have splintered oak. Somehow the staff never quite seemed
to reach the figure that backed before him. She spun, holding the sheathed sword in both hands. It
snaked out in deflection-parries against the wood staff that would have snapped it with a square blow. A
moment, and the remaining guard thrust his weapon in a move that should have pinned her against the
wall behind. Instead, it pinned him, as the steel tip clanked immovably against the wall for a single crucial
instant. The saber hilt punched up two-handed, struck his nose; he felt something crumble in the forepart
of his head, and the room blurred. A looping foot coming at him, impossible angle, impact like an
explosion on the side of his head. He sagged, as the world slipped sideways. He fell to lie next to his
sister. Yareslav, backed against one of the locked cabinets, heard a choked-off sound from his superior.
Vhsant was still sitting at the stool, but Megan was sitting as well. On the counter, with her fingertips
resting on the middle-aged clerk’s bull throat, fingers and thumb along the line of the arteries and dimpling
the soft flesh without quite cutting it. Or… As he watched, a slow red trickle started out from beneath the
little finger.
Megan looked at it in annoyance. ”Nicked. Have to file it out.” She glanced over her shoulder. Bhodan
was still conscious, after a fashion; the blonde woman stood over him, saber in one hand, a boot on his
neck below the Adam’s apple; she was still wearing the same slight smile, and gradually increasing the
pressure.
”Shkai’ra!”
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She glanced up.
”That is, in a manner of speaking, my employee.” Megan’s face was an angry mask, her tone dry, and
her hand flexed slightly, harmlessly, bringing a sudden explosive gasp from Vhsant as he felt the outer
layer of skin nick and part under the razor edges.
”Killjoy, ” Shkai’ra replied, with a disappointed shrug. She lifted the boot. The Zak woman slid forward.
Vhsant gagged and somehow got off the stool; Megan eased forward just enough and her hand never
moved from his throat. The other two clerks had backed against the wall, and one made a small sound of
protest. Megan ignored him and stared into the Head Clerk’s eyes. ”You,” she said. ”As I understand it
from rumors I heard on board ship and in the city, and the evidence of my own eyes, have been dealing
with slavers. ” Vhsant tried to shake his head, and stopped, very quickly. ”You have been using my name
and seals to do some—shall we say, less than moral things. It might be that this was all Habiku’s idea, so
I might give you the benefit of the doubt. My doorkeeper dead? Two hired strong-arms needed inside?
Barely enough business to support three clerks instead of a half-dozen? Vhsant, I won’t fire you yet, not
until I know more about what’s going on, but I think I should have a very good look at what you’ve been
doing.” He tried to speak, stopped again as she tsked and shook her head. ”Slavers, Vhsant.You know
that I hated slavers before. That hatred’s gone a bit deeper. Maybe you should see what it is to be a
slave?” She raised her free hand in front of his face. A red glow built around her fingers, reflected in his
eyes.
”You’ve never been on a tight-pack slave ship, have you, Vhsant?” Megan’s voice was as pale as her
face. ”You don’t know what you’ve been selling people into. I think you should.” He paled, started to
sweat, made a convulsive movement. ”I spent three days in a middle rank, before we were exercised,”
Megan said conversationally, though she was breathing hard, white lines of tension around her eyes. ”I
had a corpse on one side, a child with dysentery above…” He was swallowing, his skin turning a pale
greyish-green, his eyes locked on something only he could see reflected in the glow of her hand. Then he
crumpled, closing his eyes, flinging a hand up to block what he saw, crying, ”No, make it go away!
Please, Teik Megan, Zar Whitlock—” ”Yareslav!”
Her voice cracked out, and the underclerk felt her attention shift for a moment. ”Fetch my seals.
NOW!” The clerk scrabbled at the officer-supervisor’s belt, grabbed the key and scurried into the office.
From the open door Megan could hear the rattle and creak as the strongbox was unlocked, the hurried
scuffle as he searched for the seals, the slam as the lid came down again. He almost ran across the room
and put the House seal and her personal seal on the counter beside her.
”Very prompt,” she said and dropped her hands. ”I’m glad you recognized me, Vhsant. I’m also glad
you’ve kept my persona] seal. Green jade is expensive. ” He raised his head out of shaking hands. She
slid down from the counter. ”Until I know more, you’re on leave from any work in my House. Get this
mess cleaned up, then get out, until I call you back, if I call you back. Yareslav, I saw the healer’s sign
still up on the corner; I think the two Shkai’ra downed will need him.”
The junior clerk bowed. Megan looked up, one corner of her mouth quirked into a smile; Shkai’ra had
transferred her foot to Bhodan’s chest. ”You can let him up now, Shkai’ra. He’s finally realizing that he
really does work for me!” The Kommanza grinned back at her.
The blonde hung her sheathed sword back on her belt and rose, giving her wrists and arms a brief,
businesslike shake. ”If this is the quality of the opposition, it’ll be easier than you thought,” she said.
”I wouldn’t judge by this and get too superior,” the Zak said. ”It won’t all be this easy.” Megan strode
toward the office at the back, then stopped. ”I’m closing this office for the rest of the day,” she said,
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looking at the two remaining clients in the outer office, who were still watching as Shkai’ra walked away
from the moaning guard. ”Accept my apologies, teikas. All transactions are suspended until I clean
House.”
Megan and Shkai’ra paused under the carved blackwood sign outside, after the Zak locked the door
and stuck the keys in her belt, waiting for the street to be cleared. In front of the Slaf Hikarme’s counting
house the drivers of two oxcarts, one piled high with round cheeses, the other bulging with bales of wool,
stood and waved their goads and yelled insults over which of them had right of way. Around them the
street bustled; wool-capped sailors jostled on the narrow, split-log way that kept everyone up out of the
delta mud; buildings of timber and rubble and brick leaned out to almost meet overhead. A juggler in
bright robes balanced improbable things thrown him by his audience at one corner, of the
ex-whorehouse. A squad of the Watch trailed by, bored shopkeepers and artisans in rusty kettle-helmets
and leather corselets, their polearms canted every which way; one carelessly snagged the backhook of
her halberd in a line of washing and yanked, dumping the laundry in the mud. Curses and a flung
chamberpot followed.
Shkai’ra noticed the Rand first for his robe; it was ankle-length, of blue silk and embroidered with
dragons in thread of gold and silver, with garnets and lapis for eyes and scales. Wouldn’t mind having
that myself, she mused. Too short for her, the man’s head only came to her eye-level, but it could be
made over into a nice coat. Quick thump on the head and . . . No, not here. The man wasn’t bad-looking
either, supple saffron-skinned handsomeness, with a cat on his shoulder… Not a cat. Cat looking, with
Siamese points, but the tail… the tail was like a monkey’s, loosely curled around the man’s throat. At
first she thought it was wrapped in a toast-brown fur; then it unfurled one three-foot wing and fanned the
air, knocking off a sailor’s hat and receiving a resentful glare. Bat-style wing, with a claw on the leading
edge and the skin webbing between elongated finger bones. The Rand reached up and tickled it under
the chin; the eyes slitted and it purred for a moment, then crouched with its wings stretched back. The
man let his hand fall, and the cat-thing sprang into the air, dropped, caught itself with a thunderclap
wingbeat, thrashed its way aloft through the narrow ways of the rooftops and soared with late afternoon
sunlight on its wings, a plaintive meeorrow trailing behind.
”What is that thing?”
”Hmm? What? Oh, that. It’s a flitter or wingcat.” Megan shrugged. ”Expensive this far south. You can
pay a hunter a month’s wage for a flitterkitten. Luxury item.”
Shkai’ra stood looking up at the soaring feline musingly. ”Hell on pigeons.”
THE KCHNOTET VURM, BRAHVNIKI EVENING
Megan leaned on the window of their room and looked out at Brahvniki, down at the grey slate and
brown thatched roofs fading into shadow patterns in the long shadows of autumn twilight. The towers of
The Kreml on the highest point were like teeth against the cloudy sky, onion domes, patterned tile and
gilding. The street beneath, bustling with Bravnikians hurrying home, was cobbled with worn round
stones from the river. Faintly she could hear the wooden flute of a street musician over the rumble of
hooves and boots and the shrill groaning of an oxcart’s ungreased wheels. A working port, full of smells
of sea and the silty odors of the great river. She craned her neck to see the white dome of the outermost
spire of the Benai across the river.
Behind her, Shkai’ra Mek Kermak’s-kin put hands to hips and pivoted a slow circle on one heel. ”Best
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