Wild Magic

› › ‹ ‹

The Kassian Tai Wanameh was a tall woman, almost as tall as Reyna, and dark, a dusty inside-of-the-oven black with bluish highlights.

She was reading a leather-bound book as she lay stretched out on a longchair, her hair spread behind her on the slatted drying rack they used for the sacred linens on laundry days. She hadn’t cut that hair for more than thirty years; it was a yellow-white mass thick and coarse as a horse’s tail.

She looked up, lay the book face down on her stomach as Ailiki came lalumping through the door, circled round her, and stopped to sniff at her feet. Reyna was close behind, Faan clinging to his robe.

“I found everything you wanted, Tai.” He set the basket on the roof tiles. “Even the ganda root.”

“And a bit more, seems like.”

“Faan. She was on the landing when I came from the Grove. No one else in sight, no boats upRiver or down. Reason I’m late, I’ve scoured the Koo and just about walked every inch of the Riverbank looking for her people.”

“She can’t talk?”

“She’s being shy _.right now. And it’s not much help when she does talk. She doesn’t speak the Fadogur nor any tradetalk I’ve ever heard.”

“And this little creature who’s so interested in my feet?”

“Her name’s Ailiki and she’s a mahsar. More than that, who knows.”

“Mm. Bring the child over here.”

Reyna stroked Faan’s small grubby hands, coaxed her into letting go of his robe and led her to Tai, pointing to Ailiki curled up in a lump next to Tai’s ankles, purring loudly. Faan relaxed, curtseyed, and made a polite and formal little speech. “Aspa, tim’ tethie, biosh primey’ksh.”

Tai nodded. “Ah. I see what you mean. How old do you think she is?”

“Young is as close as I get. What I know about children you could paint with a whiting brush on a pinhead.”

Tai tugged at an earlobe and considered Faan. “Do you mean to keep her?”

Reyna touched his face, felt the sweat beading there, his chest was tight, it was hard to breathe. He glanced at Faan, looked down at his feet. A small bit of his mind wondered why the feeling was so strong, the rest of him merely surrendered to it. “It’s your house, zazi Tai. You say who stays.” He hesitated, then added, “I will keep her. I must.”

“Ah Rey, Rey, you’re my daughter-in-Abeyhamal; that hasn’t changed.”

“I’m no one’s daughter, Tai.”

Tai spread her hands. “What’s a little thing like a nuh’m matter? Truth lies in the spirit.”

He pulled a clown face, his mobile mouth curving down, his eyes opening wide. “It’s not so small a thing as all that.”

“Boasting, Biba?”

Reyna flung his arms wide, winked at her. “Speaking the truth as you taught me, Zazi Kassian.”

“Tch, it’s a good thing this baby doesn’t understand the Fadogur.” She sobered, lay back, gazing into the cloudless sky. “Do you realize what this involves, Rey? A child’s not a pet.”

“I know.”

“And you could lose her any moment.”

“Diyo. I know.”

“And you have to keep looking for her people, Rey. She’s got a mother somewhere,”

“A mother who didn’t bother to look for her. One like mine, maybe, who’d deny her own flesh,” he said bitterly. “Who’d turn away when she saw him on the • street, his bones coming through his skin.”

“You don’t know what happened, Rey. Don’t judge until you do.”

Too twitchy to stay still, he went striding about the roof, fidgeting with this and that. He stroked the leaves of the white cadenthas growing as tall as he in their huge ceramic pots, shifting the mafui-flowers in their altar vases, nipping off crimson trumpets that were beginning to wilt as the morning faded.

Faan wriggled off the longchair and trotted after him, like a puppy who couldn’t bear to leave her master. She patted the dark, heart-shaped leaves on the lower branches, squatted, collected the discarded flowers, piled them neatly beside one of altar table’s legs.

He checked the water in the bee dish before the altar hive, walked away and began following the fence around the edge of the roof, peering through the peepholes carved into the poles.

“Subarin hasn’t taken her sheets in yet; she’s been sick, think we ought to give her a call? Or is her man still saying he won’t see us or an abasoa kasso either? Potzhead.” He didn’t wait for an answer but shifted to the next hole. “Sailors snoring outside Emaur’s Mule-house. Two, three, five of them. Somebody better go boot them up or… ah, there’s the Shinda guard, they’ll haul the mutts back where they belong, at least they’re good for that.”

Faan stood back, hands on hips watching the bees fly, then scurried along a step or two behind him, shying away from the looming tank of the cistern, and stood close beside him when he made his brittle nervous comments.

When Reyna reached the door, he swung round, set his shoulders against the panels; Faan swung round and set her back against the brick of the parapet.

“Chez wants coin and a bottle of the red for his woman. To forget what he saw. You mind watching the baby, or should I take her down to Pan?”

“Leave her here. She won’t be a bother.” Tai’s smile faded. “Rey…”

Reyna drummed his fingers on the door. “It’s what I told you, Kassian.”

Faan tried to drum hers on the brick, but her hands weren’t coordinated enough yet to manage it.

“This time.”

“We’ve had this before. I need to relax, Kassian. I can quit any time I want, but I don’t want to, not now. Sometimes it’s… I need to forget for a while.”

“Rey, you know you don’t have to…”

“So? Who’d hire a Salagaum? We need the bribe money to keep the House, we have to have water from the Shinda Cisterns-you want to chance the River?” He moved his shoulders impatiently.

Hearing the anger in his voice, Faan crept closer, clutched at his robe, and pressed herself against his leg.

“Or charge for your services? How much do we squeeze from a woman with a flux or a baby who can’t breathe?” He dropped into street speech as he flew back to the bad days after his father drove him out; impatiently he shook off Faan, went striding back and forth, his soles slapping loudly on the tiles, his hands jerking through broad, angular gestures. “Starvin, tsah! I KNOW it. You took me off streets, bones out m’ skin and so poxy I coon’t potz straight. Owe y’, diyo I KNOW it. Owe y’, zazi Ma.” He stopped his lope, swung to face her, arms flung wide. “I LIKE living good. I LIKE loving. Most the time. Bhagg-jag-I NEED it for the other times.” He sighed, dropped his arms. “Anyway, I’m not going to the gatt for a buy, just a bribe to keep that sleaze from selling news of Faan.”

Tai pressed her lips together, scowled unhappily at the tiles, but when she spoke, she’d set the old quarrel aside. “Did he get a good look at her?”

Reyna’s shoulders sagged, his anger burnt to ash. “Good enough, I’m afraid.”

‘Ibo bad she’s such a pretty thing. hmm. We’ve got to have papers if we’re going to keep her, even if it’s only for a short while. Juvaigrim could do that for you, couldn’t he?”

“Diyo. But that’s touchy.” Reyna rubbed at his eyes, lifted the hair off his neck so a breath of air could reach the sweaty skin. “If the Maulapam were forced to take notice of us…” He let the braids fall, moved back to the door and Faan. “The laws and the times being what they are,” he said wearily, “it’d be difficult for him to refuse if I started asking him favors. And dangerous for me, because he’s not a man to stand for blackmail.”

“Then you make sure he knows it’s not.” Thi sat up, pulled her hair over her shoulders; she closed her book, laid it aside and began rubbing strands of hair between her palms, squeezing the wet out. When she looked round again, Reyna was bending down, touching Faan’s black hair with his fingertips, his face gone peaceful. Tai grimaced. “If the Manassoa find out about her, you’ll lose her fast; you know how rabid all of them are against the Salagaum and us heretics. Giza Kutakich…” she wrinkled her long nose, “he’s the worst of a bad lot. Nearly had me burned for a witch.”

Reyna straightened. “What? I didn’t know that.”

“Before you were born. Just after I came here.” She laughed, a soft burring at the back of her throat. “He got his nose singed in that one. Forgot who my brother is. That little slip in tact keeps him stuck in Bairroa; he can’t get to Corasso no matter how he yearns for it.” She got to her feet, crossed to the fence and dropped on her knees beside Faan, held out her hand and smiled when Faan reached over timidly to touch it. “Diyo, honeylove, it’s dark dark. I’m night and you’re only twilight.” She looked up, clicked her tongue. “Go, go. You know how fast rumor runs through the Edge.”