Child of the River

Chapter Sixteen The Cateran

At first the landlord of the inn did not want to rent a room to Yama. The inn was full, he said, on account of the Water Market. But when Yama showed him the two gold rials, the man chuckled and said that he might be able to make a special arrangement. Perhaps twice the usual tariff, to take account of the inconvenience, and if Yama would like to eat while waiting for the room to be made up…? The landlord was a fat young man with smooth brown skin and short, spiky white hair, and a brisk, direct manner. He took one of the coins and said that he’d bring change in the morning, seeing as the money changers were closed up for the day.

Yama sat in a corner of the taproom, and presently a pot boy brought him a plate of shrimp boiled in their shells and stir-fried okra and peppers, with chili and peanut sauce and flat discs of unleavened bread and a beaker of thin rice beer.

Yama ate hungrily. He had walked until the sun had fallen below the roofs of the city, and although he had passed numerous stalls and street vendors he had not been able to buy any food or drink—he had not realized that there were men whose business was to change coins like his into smaller denominations. The landlord would change the coin tomorrow and Yama would begin to search for his bloodline. But now he was content to sit with a full stomach, his head pleasantly lightened by the beer, and watch the inn’s customers.

They seemed to fall into two distinct groups. There were ordinary working men of several bloodlines, dressed in homespun and clogs, who stood at the counter drinking quietly, and there was a party of men and a single red-haired woman eating at a long table under the stained-glass window which displayed the inn’s sign of two crossed axes. They made a lot of noise, playing elaborate toasting games and calling from one end of the table to the other. Yama thought that they must be soldiers, caterans or some other kind of irregulars, for they all wore bits of armor, mostly metal or resin chestplates painted with various devices, and wrist guards and greaves. Many were scarred, or had missing fingers. One big, bare-chested man had a silver patch over one eye; another had only one arm, although he ate as quickly and as dexterously as his companions. The red-haired woman seemed to be one of them, rather than a concubine they had picked up; she wore a sleeveless leather tunic and a short leather skirt that left her legs mostly bare.

The landlord seemed to know the caterans, and when he was not busy he sat with them, laughing at their jokes and pouring wine or beer for those nearest him. He whispered something in the one-eyed man’s ear and they both laughed, and when the landlord went off to serve one of the other customers, the one-eyed man grinned across the room at Yama.

Presently, the pot boy told Yama that his room was ready and led him around the counter and through a small hot kitchen into a courtyard lit by electric floodlights hung from a central pole. There were whitewashed stables on two sides and a wide square gate shaded by an avocado tree in which green parrots squawked and rustled. The room was in the eaves above one of the stable blocks. It was long and low and dark, with a single window at its end looking out over the street and a tumble of roofs falling toward the Great River. The pot boy lit a fish-oil lantern and uncovered a pitcher of hot water, turned down the blanket and fussed with the bolster on the bed, and then hesitated, clearly reluctant to leave.

“I do not have any small coins,” Yama said, “but tomorrow I will give you something for your trouble.”

The boy went to the door and looked outside, then closed it and turned to Yama. “I don’t know you, master,” he said, “but I think I should tell you this, or it’ll be on my conscience. You shouldn’t stay here tonight.”

“I paid for the room with honest money left on account,” Yama said.

The boy nodded. He wore a clean, much-darned shirt and a pair of breeches. He was half Yama’s height and slightly built, with black hair slicked back from a sharp, narrow face. His eyes were large, with golden irises that gleamed in the candlelight. He said, “I saw the coin you left on trust. I won’t ask where you got it, but I reckon it could buy this whole place. My master is not a bad man, but he’s not a good man either, if you take my meaning, and there’s plenty better that would be tempted by something like that.”

“I will be careful,” Yama said. The truth was that he was tired, and a little dizzy from the beer.

“If there’s trouble, you can climb out the window onto the roof,” the boy said. “On the far side there’s a vine that’s grown up to the top of the wall. It’s an easy climb down. I’ve done it many times.”

After the boy left Yama bolted the door and came at the open window and gazed out at the vista of roofs and river under the darkening sky, listening to the evening sounds of the city. There was a continual distant roar, the blended noise of millions of people going about their business, and closer at hand the sounds of the neighborhood: a hawker’s cry; a pop ballad playing on a tape recorder; someone hammering metal with quick sure strokes; a woman calling to her children. Yama felt an immense peacefulness and an intense awareness that he was there, alone in that particular place and time with his whole life spread before him, a sheaf of wonderful possibilities.

He took off his shirt and washed his face and arms, then pulled off his boots and washed his feet. The bed had a lumpy mattress stuffed with straw, but the sheets were freshly laundered and the wool blanket was clean. This was probably the potboy’s room, he thought, which was why the boy wanted him to leave.

He intended to rest for a few minutes before getting up to close the shutters, but when he woke it was much later. The cold light of the Galaxy lay on the floor; something made a scratching sound in the rafters above the bed. A mouse or a gecko, Yama thought sleepily, but then he felt a feathery touch in his mind and knew that a machine had flown into the room through the window he had carelessly left open.

Yama wondered sleepily if the machine had woken him, but then there was a metallic clatter outside the door. He sat up, groping for the lantern. Someone pushed at the door and Yama, still stupid with sleep, called out.

The door flew open with a tremendous crash, sending the broken bolt flying across the room. A man stood silhouetted in the doorway. Yama rolled onto the floor, reaching for his satchel, and something hit the bed. Wood splintered and straw flew into the air. Yama rolled again, dragging his satchel with him. He cut his hand getting his knife out but hardly noticed. The curved blade shone with a fierce blue light and spat fat blue sparks from its point.

The man turned from the bed, a shadow in the blue half-light. He had broken the frame and slashed the mattress to ribbons with the long, broad blade of his sword. Yama threw the pitcher of water at him and he ducked and said, “Give it up, boy, and maybe you’ll live.”

Yama hesitated, and the man struck at him with a sudden fury. Yama ducked and heard the air part above his head, and slashed at the man’s legs with the knife, so that he had to step back. The knife howled and Yama felt a sudden coldness in the muscles of his arm.

“You fight like a woman,” the man said. Knife-light flashed on something on his intent face.

Then he drove forward again, and Yama stopped thinking.

Reflexes, inculcated in the long hours in the gymnasium under Sergeant Rhodean’s stern instruction, took over.

Yama’s knife was better suited to close fighting than the man’s long blade, but the man had the advantage of reach and weight. Yama managed to parry a series of savage, hacking strokes—fountains of sparks spurted at each blow—but the force of the blows numbed his wrist, and then the man’s longer blade slid past the guard of Yama’s knife and nicked his forearm. The wound was not painful, but it bled copiously and weakened Yama’s grip on his knife.

Yama knocked the chair over and, in the moment it took the man to kick it out of the way, managed to get out of the corner into which he had been forced. But the man was still between Yama and the door. In a moment he pressed his attack again, and Yama was driven back against the wall.

The knife’s blue light blazed and something white and bone-thin stood between Yama and the man, but the man laughed and said, “I know that trick,” and kicked out, catching Yama’s elbow with the toe of his boot. The blow numbed Yama’s arm and he dropped the knife. The phantom vanished with a sharp snap.

The man raised his sword for the killing blow. For a moment it was as if he and Yama stood in a tableau pose. Then the man grunted and let out a long sighing breath that stank of onions and wine fumes, and fell to his knees. He dropped his sword and pawed at his ear, then fell on his face at Yama’s feet.

Yama’s right arm was numb from elbow to wrist; his left hand was shaking so much that it took him a whole minute to find the lantern and light it with his flint and steel. By its yellow glow he tore strips from the bedsheet and bound the shallow but bloody wound on his forearm and the smaller, self-inflicted gash on his palm. He sat still then, but heard only horses stepping about in the stables below. If anyone had heard the door crash open or the subsequent struggle, which was unlikely given that the other guests would be sleeping on the far side of the courtyard, they were not coming to investigate.

The dead man was the one-eyed cateran who had looked at Yama across the taproom of the inn. Apart from a trickle of dark, venous blood from his right ear he did not appear to be hurt. For a moment, Yama did not understand what had happened. Then the dead man’s lips parted and a machine slid out of his mouth and dropped to the floor.

The machine’s teardrop shape, was covered in blood, and it vibrated with a brisk buzz until it shone silver and clean.

Yama held out his left hand and the machine slid up the air and landed lightly on his palm. “I do not remember asking you for help,” Yama told it, “but I am grateful.”

The machine had been looking for him; there were many of its kind combing this part of Ys. Yama told it that it should look elsewhere, and that it should broadcast that idea to its fellows, then stepped to the window and held up his hand. The machine rose, circled his head once, and flew straight out into the night.

Yama pulled on his shirt and fastened his boots and set to the distasteful task of searching the dead cateran. The man had no money on him and carried only a dirk with a thin blade and a bone hilt, and a loop of wire with wooden pegs for handles. He supposed that the man would have been paid after he had done his job. The pot boy had been right after all. The landlord wanted both coins.

Yama sheathed his knife and tied the sheath to his belt, then picked up his satchel. He found it suddenly hard to turn his back on the dead man, who seemed to be watching him across the room, so he climbed out of the window sideways.

A stout beam jutted above the window frame; it might once have been a support for a hoist used to lift supplies from the street. Yama grasped the beam with both hands and swung himself once, twice, and on the third swing got his leg over the beam and pulled himself up so that he sat astride it. The wound on his forearm had parted a little, and he retied the bandage. Then it was easy enough to stand on the beam’s broad top and pull himself on to the ridge of the roof.