Page 138 of The Liveship Traders Trilogy

She walked almost to the end of the drive, past Davad’s coach and then the Rain Wilds one.

She’d left her ratty old cloak inside and was starting to feel the chill of the evening.

She held her arms close to her chest, resolving not to spill wine down her front, and strolled on.

She stopped to examine the crest on a coach door.

It was a silly one, a rooster wearing a crown.

‘Khuprus,’ she said to herself, and lightly traced it with a finger, committing it to memory.

The metal glowed briefly in her finger’s wake, and she realized the crest was made of jidzin.

It was not as popular now as it once was.

Some of the older street performers still made their cymbals and finger-chimes from jidzin.

The metal shimmered whenever it was struck.

It was a wonderful treat to the eyes, but in reality brass sounded better.

Still, it was one more thing to tell Delo.

She strolled idly on, and imagined how she would phrase it.

‘Odd, to think how a human touch sets off both jidzin and flame-jewels,’ she ventured aloud.

No, that wasn’t quite it. She needed a more dramatic statement than that.

Almost beside her, a blue eye winked into existence.

She stepped back hastily, then peered again.

Someone was standing there, leaning against the Khuprus coach.

The blue glow was a jewel fastened at his throat.

He was a slight figure, heavily cloaked in the Rain Wild style.

His neck was swathed in a scarf, his face veiled like a woman’s.

He was probably their coachman. ‘Good evening,’ she said boldly, to cover up her momentary surprise, and started to walk past him.

‘Actually,’ he said in a quiet voice, ‘it needn’t be a human touch.

Any motion can set them flaring, once they’ve been wakened.

See?’ He extended a gloved hand towards her, then gave his wrist a shake.

Two small blue gems popped into evidence on his cuff.

Malta had to stop and stare. It was not a pale blue, but a deep sapphire blue that danced alone in the darkness.

‘I thought the blues and greens were the rarest and most valuable,’ she observed. She took a sip of the wine she still carried. That seemed more polite than asking how a coachman came to have such things.

‘They are,’ he admitted easily. ‘But these are very small ones. And slightly flawed, I am afraid. They were chipped in the recovery process.’ He shrugged.

She saw the movement in the rise and fall of the gem at his throat.

‘They probably won’t burn long. No more than a year or two.

But I couldn’t bear to see them thrown away. ’

‘Of course not!’ Malta exclaimed, scandalized. Flame-jewels thrown away? Shocking. ‘You say they burn? Are they hot, then?’

He laughed, a soft chuckle. ‘Oh, not in the ordinary way. Here. Touch one.’ Again he extended his arm toward her.

She unwrapped her arms from around herself to extend a timid finger.

She tapped one cautiously. No. It did not burn.

Emboldened, she touched it again. It was smooth and cool like glass, although she could feel a tiny nick in one place.

She touched the other one, then wrapped her arms around herself again.

‘They’re beautiful,’ she said, and shivered.

‘It’s freezing out here. I’d better go back inside. ’

‘No, don’t… I mean… Are you cold?’

‘A little. I left my cloak inside.’ She turned to go.

‘Here. Take mine.’ He had stood up straight and was unfastening his cloak.

‘Oh, thank you, but I’m fine. I couldn’t take your cloak from you. I just need to get back inside.’ The very thought of his cloak from his warty back touching her flesh made her chill deepen. She hurried away, but he followed her.

‘Here. Try just my scarf then. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s amazingly warm. Here. Do try it.’ He had it off, flame-gem and all, and when she turned, he draped it over her arm. It was amazingly warm, but what stopped her from flinging it back at him was the blue flame-jewel winking up at her.

‘Oh,’ she said. To wear one, even for just a few moments…

that was too great of an opportunity to pass by.

She could always take a bath when she got home.

‘Would you hold this, please?’ she asked him, and held out the wine glass.

He took it from her and she wasted no time in draping the scarf around her neck and shoulders.

He had been wearing it like a muffler, but its airy knit could be shaken out until it was nearly a shawl.

And it was warm, very warm. She arranged it so that the blue jewel rested between her breasts.

She looked down at it. ‘It’s so beautiful.

It’s like… I don’t know what it’s like.’

‘Some things are only like themselves. Some beauty is incomparable,’ he said quietly.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, staring into the stone’s depth.

After a moment, he reminded her, ‘Your wine?’

‘Oh.’ She frowned to herself. ‘I don’t want it any more. You may have it, if you wish.’

‘I may?’ There was a tone of both amusement and surprise in his voice. As if some delicate balance between them had just shifted in his favour.

She was momentarily flustered by it. ‘I mean, if you want it…’

‘Oh, I do,’ he assured her. The veil that covered his face was split.

He was deft at slipping the glass through, and he drained the wine off with a practised toss.

He held the emptied glass up to the starlight and gazed at it for a moment.

She felt that he glanced at her before he slipped the glass up his sleeve.

‘A keepsake,’ he suggested. For the first time, Malta realized that he was older than she and perhaps their conversation was not quite proper, that all of these casual exchanges might be taken to mean something deeper.

Nice girls did not stand about in the dark chatting with strange coachmen.

‘I had best go inside. My mother will be wondering where I am,’ she excused herself.

‘No doubt,’ he murmured his assent, and again that amusement was there.

She began to feel just a tiny bit afraid of him.

No. Not afraid. Wary. He seemed to sense it, for when she tried to walk away, he followed her.

He actually walked beside her, as if he were escorting her.

She was halfway afraid he would follow her right into the Concourse, but he stopped at the door.

‘I need something from you, before you go,’ he suddenly requested.

‘Of course.’ She lifted her hands to the scarf.

‘Your name.’

She stood very still. Had he forgotten she was wearing his scarf with the flame-jewel on it? If he had, she wasn’t going to remind him. Oh, she wouldn’t keep it. Not for ever, just long enough to show Delo.

‘Malta,’ she told him. Enough of a name that he could find out who had his scarf when he recalled it. Not so much that he could recover it too quickly.

‘Malta…’ he let it hang, prompting her. She pretended not to understand. ‘I see,’ he said after a moment. ‘Malta. Good evening, then, Malta.’

‘Good evening.’ She turned and hurried through the great doors of the hall.

Once within, she hastily removed the scarf and jewel.

Whatever the scarf was woven of, it was fine as gossamer.

When she bunched it in her hands, it was small enough to fit completely inside the pocket sewn into her cloak.

She stowed it there. Then, with a small smile of satisfaction, she returned to the hall.

People in there were still taking turns at speeches.

Covenants, compromises, rebellions, slavery, war, embargoes.

She was sick of it all. She just wished they would give up and be quiet so her mother would take her home, where she could admire the flame-jewel in the privacy of her own room.

The rest of the tangle did not seem to sense that anything was amiss.

Sessurea, perhaps, was a bit uneasy, but the others were content.

Food was plentiful and easily obtained, the atmosphere of this Plenty was warm, and the new salts woke exciting colours in the fresh skins that their shedding revealed.

They shed frequently, for the feeding was rich and growth was easy.

Perhaps, Shreever thought discontentedly, that was all the others had ever sought.

Perhaps they thought this indolent life of feeding and shedding was rebirth. She did not.

She knew Maulkin sought far more than this.

The rest of the tangle was short-sighted not to perceive Maulkin’s anxiety and distress.

North he had led them, following the shadow of the provider.

Several times he had halted at warm flows of unbriny water, tasting and tasting yet again the strange atmospheres.

The others had always wanted to hasten after the provider.

Once Sessurea had shocked them by extending his ruff and challenging their passage to halt them in their foolish following.

But moments later, Maulkin had closed his jaws in bafflement, and left the warm flow, to once more take his place in the provider’s shadow.

Shreever had not been overly distressed when the provider had halted and Maulkin had been content to stay near it.

Who was she to question one who had the memories of the ancients?

But when the provider had reversed its path to go south, and Maulkin had bid them follow it yet again, she had become anxious.

Something, she felt, was not right. Sessurea seemed to share her unease.

They glimpsed other tangles, following other providers.

All seemed content and well-fed. At such times, Shreever wondered if the fault were in her.

Perhaps she had dreamed of too much, perhaps she had taken the holy lore too literally.

But then she would mark how distracted Maulkin was, even in the midst of feeding.

While the others snapped and gorged, he would abruptly cease feeding and hang motionless, jaws wide, gills pumping as he quested for some elusive scent.

And often, when the provider had halted for a time and the others of the tangle were resting, Maulkin would rise, nearly to the Lack, to begin a twining dance with lidded eyes.

At such times, Sessurea watched him almost as closely as she did.

Over and over again their leader knotted his body and then flowed through the knot, sensitizing the entire length of his skin to all the atmosphere could tell him.

He would trumpet lightly and fitfully to himself, snatches of nonsense interspersed with holy lore.

Sometimes he would lift his head above the Plenty and into the Lack, and then let himself sink again, muttering of the lights, the lights.

Shreever could endure it no longer. She let him dance until exhaustion began to dim his false-eyes.

In a slow wavering of weariness, he began to drift towards the bottom.

Ruff slack and unchallenging, she approached his descent and matched it.

‘Maulkin,’ she bugled quietly. ‘Has your vision failed? Are we lost?’

He unlidded his eyes to stare at her. Almost lazily he looped a loose coil around her, drawing her down to tangle with him in the soft muck.

‘Not merely a place,’ he told her almost dreamily.

‘It is a time as well. And not just a time and a place, but a tangle. A tangle such as has not been gathered since ancient times. I can almost scent a One Who Remembers.’

Shreever shivered her coils, trying to read his memory. ‘Maulkin. Are not you One Who Remembers?’

‘I?’ His eyes were lidding again. ‘No. Not completely. I can almost remember. I know there is a place, and a time, and a tangle. When I experience them, I will know them without question. We are close, very close, Shreever. We must persevere and not doubt. So often the time has come and gone, and we have missed it. I fear that if we miss it yet again, all our memories of the ancient times will fade, and we will never be as we were.’

‘And what were we?’ she asked, simply to hear him confirm it.

‘We were the Masters, moving freely through both the Lack and the Plenty. All that one knew, everyone knew, and all shared the memories of all time, from the beginning. We were powerful and wise, respected and revered by all the lesser creatures of mind.’

‘And then what happened?’ Shreever asked the rote question.

‘The time came to be reshaped. To mingle the essences of our very bodies, and thus to create new beings, partaking of new vitality and new strengths. It was time to perform the ancient cycling of joining and sundering, and growing yet again. It was time to renew our bodies.’

‘And what will happen next?’ she completed her part of the ritual.

‘All will come together at the time and the place of the gathering. All memory shall be shared again, all that was held safe by one shall be given back to all. The journey to rebirth shall be completed, and we shall rise in triumph once more.’

‘So it shall be,’ Sessurea confirmed from nearby in the tangle. ‘So it shall be.’