This Crooked Way Part 26

"Street-killings, even in self-defense, are an implicit violation of your residency contract," a scandalized voice remarked.

I groaned. Of course! The city government sent this weedy pale fellow, Glemmurn, once a month to inspect our books and make sure that we weren't spending more money than we actually earned in the city. And today, of all days, was the date for our inspection.

"We didn't kill him," Roble observed. "All we did was defend ourselves when he attacked us. And in fact-this body's been dead for some time: give it a niff."

Glemmurn, his pale face greenish with horror, stepped toward the corpse with the broken eye, took one whiff of the air surrounding it, and staggered backward. "Savage Triumphator!" he groaned. "An unregistered zombie!"

"Don't worry," I said. (The poor thrept seemed really horrified.) "It's dead, or dezombied, or whatever you call it."

"You don't understand!" he wailed. "That just creates more paperwork: unauthorized deactivization of an unregistered zombie is itself a code violation-there will be incident reports and witness affidavits and second-death certificates and tax a.s.sessments on the labor of the zombie and tax-penalty a.s.sessments on the unpaid labor taxes.... I'll be in the office all night long. And I promised to take my non.o.bligated semipartner Zaria to the election rally this evening out at Remer Fields."

"Well, there'll be other election rallies," I said.

He looked at me as if he suspected I might be an unregistered zombie myself. "Of course there will," he said sadly, "but she won't need to wait for one. My meta-cousin Vestavion will be all too willing to escort her tonight. That serial monogamist, that man-of-many-contented-partners, that winsome glib glad-footer! After all: you know the effect election rallies have on women. The speeches! The chanting! The policy presentations! It makes them crazy. I might as well start saving up now for their wedding morsel: they're as good as preengaged."

"Look-" I said, hoping to stop him before he confided in me again.

"I've warned her about him," he said confidingly. "But he's an accountant with a private banking firm, and I think she's swept up in the glamour of all that-"

"This was not a zombie," Morlock observed.

"I could have been a banker, but I like to work in the open-What did you say?"

Morlock said it again.

"What is it then? Or what was it, rather?"

"A harthrang," Morlock said, and stopped. As if, you know, that explained everything.

"Don't keep us waiting, Morlock," Roble said after a second or two. "What's a harthrang?"

"A demon possessing a corpse," said Morlock, as if he were saying, We've run out of onions.

"Impossible," quacked Glemmurn. "The munic.i.p.al demon-shields are-"

"-flawed," Morlock interrupted, and gestured at the corpse with the smashed eye.

"Ur. Well. I'll still need a certificate of second death from a physician. And I suppose I'll have to write up a brief incident report and a crematorium deposit-slip. But," he added, brightening up as he went on, "I won't need any witness affidavits, and there won't be any tax forms at all to file. If I postpone a couple of visits until tomorrow, I could be out of the office before sunset, and rally here we come. Hm. Yes. Yes indeed. Oh, Zaria, Zaria, grant me the blessings of your sweet franchise-That is. Yes. I think I'll make an official determination that this was a harthrang, not an unregistered zombie. If, of course, you'll submit a letter of support addressed to my board of advisors, describing the harthrang phenomenon and the steps you took to neutralize the demon-How did you neutralize it, by the way?"

"He scared it away," said Roble.

Poor pasty-faced Glemmurn looked at my brother (what a study in contrasts!), looked at the corpse with the smashed eye, looked at grim crooked Morlock and said, "Yes, the board will accept that, I think."

I went back into the crooked house and sent Thend to fetch the physician next door, a red-haired bundle of self-regard who went by the modest moniker of Reijka Kingheart.

"I'll go!" hollered Fasra, when she heard me talking to Thend.

"You won't," I said. "Glemmurn is out there, and he'll be in here in a minute to look at the books. You're the only one who understands them-"

"Oh, come on!"

11 -and you're going to explain them to him. Thend: go." Thend looked at me, not angry, almost sad. Of all of us who survived, I think Thend was the one who'd been changed the most by our trip through the mountains. He was only fifteen, but he was getting the poise and the patience of a grown man, and his deep brown eyes seemed to see deeply into everything they looked at. I often had the uncomfortable sense that he was humoring me, going along with this farce of a parent-child relationship because it was important to me. But he went and did as I told him; that was the main thing.

"Stupid old Glemmurn," Fasra grumbled, approximately. "I wish he were in a sewer somewhere. I like Reijka, Mama."

I sort of hated Reijka's guts, but I didn't say so. "She'll be over here in a minute," I said, "and she'll probably want to have a look at our wounds before she goes. She always does."

Fasra quietly slammed open the cash drawer and demurely yanked out the bound volume where we kept track of our accounts and gently smashed it down on the counter.

"Don't tear any pages," I said as she flipped open the account book.

"I have my emotions well under control, thank you," she said, with a searing glance from her bright black eyes. "Now, let's see: when was that stupid, greasy, dough faced bucket of dumbness last here?"

I told her and stepped back out into the street.

Reijka Kingheart was there, examining the twice-dead corpse and somehow simultaneously giving Roble the eye. I could have told her it was a waste of time-Roble isn't much for the ladies-but why do her any favors? For one thing, she was a Coranian. I'm not a bigot; I just hate all those pastyfaced shifty b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

If you can stand to look at someone whose skin is the color of spilled milk, I guess she wasn't bad. And whatever charms she had, the whole street knew about them. Personally, I don't care whether a woman shows her arms and legs on the street, if they can bear the examination, but I think that the design she tattoos on her sagging middle-aged nipples should be a secret shared with a range of acquaintance narrow enough to exclude me. But the sheer fabric Reijka used for her body-wrap made the whole world her close personal friend.

Glemmurn was obviously impressed, and as she rose from where she had been crouching beside the dead body I thought he was going to ask for the bounty of her franchise, and to h.e.l.l with non.o.bligated semipartner Zaria. But then she told him she wasn't going to fill out his stupid paperwork and his face turned to stone.

"This body has been dead for several days; decomposition is well established. I found several symbols carved into the flesh that appear to be the anchors for some sort of reanimating spell. I attest it to you in the presence of these gentlemen-and this lady," she said, nodding companionably toward me. I'd have corrected her about my status (and theirs) except that in Narkunden everyone is a gentleperson, even noncitizens like us. "But I'm not going to go to your office and swear out a statement in front of a justiciar. Not unless you're going to pay me for my time."

"Citizen Kingheart, my department's budget-"

"Listen, I have the same budget as you: thirty hours a day, no more or less. If you want a significant amount of my time, compensate me. You know as well as I do that you can put all our names and statements in your report and that will be as good as an affidavit, since agents have field-justiciar status for the purpose of taking testimony."

"Yes, but I don't like to use it unless it's necessary."

"Great weeping walnuts: be a man. Don't do any paperwork for him, gentlemen. He only wants it to bulk up his files. They weigh it all at the end of the year, and the bureaucrat with the heaviest stack gets some sort of promotion. That's what my ex-obligated full-partner used to say, anyway."

"Citizen Kingheart, I must caution you not to encourage resident con- tractees to shirk-"

"I am a citizen, and I know my rights and theirs. Anyway, don't you have a date tonight? Zaria was telling me about it. You want to stand here all day talking?"

Glemmurn jumped like he'd been stung by a queck-bug and looked anxiously up at the sun. "All right," he said. "I'd better check the books inside before I leave. Just pin your second-death certificate to the corpse."

"Done."

"Er. Someone should-"

"I'll take it to the body dump," Morlock said.

"Hurry back, Ambrosius," Reijka said. "I've got a proposition for you. Not the one you've been dreaming of either."

"Eh," said Morlock, but I didn't like the way he said it-a little more cordial than his usual grunt. I was worried that he too might be susceptible to her autumnal charms. (The woman was seven years older than me at least. Not that it's any big deal; I'm just saying.) He stuffed a rag in the body's broken eye and tossed it over his shoulder as he walked away up the street.

"I like a man who's not afraid to get his hands dirty," Reijka said, which was so much like what I was thinking that it made me mad. "I'd better go inside, too-see how you all are healing up," she added.

"Any excuse to get my clothes off, is that it?" Roble bantered at her.

"They are rotten clothes," she agreed smoothly. "Though looking at skin as hairy as yours won't be much of an improvement. Don't you ever shave your shoulders?"

"No. Do you?"

I turned away. Again, I could have told her that Roble didn't care for girls much, but she was a big enough girl to find that out for herself.

Reijka examined Roble and Bann first while I hovered nervously nearby and Glemmurn looked over our books with Fasra. Presently I heard Fasra's voice rising, and I reluctantly abandoned my post to see what was happening.

Fasra was not actually upset. She was explaining with some enthusiasm the biggest source of income showing in our books, the Mystery Zone. Glemmurn was looking more skeptical by the second.

"I don't understand," he was saying as I came up to them. "How can anyone stand on a wall? And how can that result in money coming into your cashbox? I'm afraid-"

"The money's easy," I interrupted. "People give it to us. For the rest, I'd better show you. Fasra, we'd better tell Glemmurn all we know about this."

I was telling her it was time to baffle him with brilliance. Fasra smiled gently and nodded. We left the books and the cash box in Thend's care and together we led Glemmurn to the Mystery Zone part of the house.

"What we tell the rubes," Fasra explained, "is that an uncontrolled outburst of Morlock's magic shattered the laws of gravity locally."

"Name of a nameless name!" Glemmurn gasped in shock.

"Oh, that's just nonsense," I rea.s.sured the pasty little man. "Really, Morlock and Bann built the thing. We don't know how it works, but no laws were broken-'natural or local,' as Morlock says."

We led Glemmurn through the Gate of Shadows (a dimly lit anteroom) and into the Mystery Zone (a sort of hallway that ran around one corner of the crooked house). He watched solemnly as Fasra walked up a wall and poured herself a cup of water, and the water flowed uphill from where he was standing. She went through the elaborate patter we give the rubes, and then explained the actual situation as best we understood it. She really was dazzling: that girl could talk a landfish into a kettle of boiling water. And then, because he still wasn't saying anything, she did the same thing again.

He still hadn't said anything when we led him back out of the Mystery Zone, but he was shaking his head slowly. Reijka, Roble, and the boys were sitting around the counter where we kept the cashbox and the books, deep in conversation about something, but they broke off and looked up as we approached. At that point, Glemmurn realized it was his turn to say something.

"I am deeply concerned," he said.

That was when I knew we were screwed.

"Not only are you earning money through magical means," he con tinued, "but you are also engaging in deliberate deception. When you tell visitors- "Oh, that's just for entertainment purposes," Reijka interrupted. "No one really believes it. They just started giving tours in the Mystery Zone because everyone was sneaking up to the back door and trying to bribe their way into Morlock's workshop."

I felt I could grow to love this woman.

"Nevertheless," Glemmurn said doggedly, "I find that these noncitizen residents have been conducting business in a magical structure nonapproved by city regulating authorities. I appreciate the fact that Morlock Ambrosius may be reluctant to reveal the, er, sorcerous secrets of this, er, 'Mystery Zone,' but I must insist-"

"It's a four-dimensional polytope," Morlock's voice said.

We all jumped a little. For a guy with a bad leg, he moves pretty sneakily: no one heard him come in.

"A what?" Glemmurn asked.

"It's a four-dimensional polytope-a structure which exists in four dimensions. There's a fifth-dimensional sheath, also. Gravity is more malleable in the fifth dimension."

"I don't wish to be party to your, er, sorcerous knowledge-"

"Eh. I never know what people mean by 'sorcerous."' Morlock seemed miffed, possibly because he had been tempted into saying more than three words in a row, and looking around the room afterward, he realized he might as well have kept his mouth shut for all the good it had done. Bann might have understood him; the rest of us didn't. He added gruffly, "Consult the mathematicians in your Lyceum. There used to be a pretty good geometer on the faculty."

"But still, the deception involved-"

Of course it was hopeless. When somebody says "but still" they mean, You may he right but I'll never change my mind no matter what you say.

He didn't, either. When Reijka threatened him with her semipartner the professional litigator, he agreed to take the case to his superiors, but in the meantime we were embargoed from spending any money in the city of Narkunden.

"If that's all you can say," Reijka concluded, "you might as well get out of here and spread your peculiar brand of joy in someone else's life. And I hope Zaria takes up exclusive full-partnership with Vestavion. He may be a bit of an oily fledge, but at least he isn't a dusty old droop with his cranny full of queck-bugs."

It takes a person with a certain amount of character to stand up in the face of unanimous disapproval from a roomful of people, and Glemmurn wasn't made that way. He babbled something about "just doing the job," then fled before any of us could give him our opinion of his job.

"Well," Reijka said, breaking the dismal silence that Glemmurn left behind him, "if his bosses don't reverse him, I'll take the matter up with the borough syndic. But for the time being you'll have to shop across the river in Aflraun, I guess."

"Why didn't we settle in Aflraun in the first place?" Fasra wondered. "It's a lot more wide open there."

Roble looked at Morlock and, when it was clear the crooked man was not going to say anything, said, "We needed a place to heal up, after the mountains. And it's safer here."

"Except for harthrangs," Morlock added thoughtfully. "There might be a few more around town: bodies have been disappearing from the graveyards. That's what they were saying at the body dump. I'll place a demon-sconce around the house."

"You'll want Bann and Thend to help with that, I guess," I said. (He always did: Thend for Seeing, Bann for Making.) "I'll go across the river and buy us a couple days' worth of food. Roble, why don't you and Fasra hold the fort here?"

"Holding the fort is boring," Fasra grumbled. "I'll never get any interesting scars that way."

When I realized she was referring to our nightmare among the Khroi, I was speechless for a moment. I had been on the verge of suggesting that Stador come along with me and do the heavy lifting, and suddenly I remembered that Stador was dead and rotting in a hole in the mountains. And here she was making a joke about it. On the other hand, Fasra's jokes were rare and fragile things these days. I wanted to cloud up and storm at her, but in the end I just said lightly, "You could get a scar. Sooner than you think."

"I think she means it, kid," Reijka said, grinning at me. "Never mind. I'll stick around and we'll write an angry letter to the syndic and a friendly one to my litigator."

"Why not the other way around?"

"The litigators are the ones who run this town. The syndics and bureaucrats just think they do ..."

I grabbed a bag of money off the counter and walked out the door. It was a little brusque, but I wanted to get out of hearing range before I started snuffling. In fact, I made it almost all the way to the Aresion Bridge over the River Nar when suddenly for some reason I remembered how Stador had looked in the green-and-gold shirt he had worn to his first Castleday when he was six years old. It wasn't like I was trying to remember it; the image forced its way into my mind. It was followed by a wave of others and I had to stand there in the middle of the street, clutching my bag of coins and weeping, until the tide of memories receded and I could think about something else again. That's how grief works for me. It's always there, but you can almost forget about it for a while; you think you might be over it. Then it drags you down and drowns you in itself.

What can I say? I don't know if you have kids. If you do, I suggest you die before they do. It'll save you a lot of trouble.

Eventually, I made it to the bridge. The Narkundenside guards gave me kind of a funny look; maybe they'd been watching me weep. But they didn't say anything about it: they just asked to see my proof-of-residence. By the time I'd crossed the bridge to Aflraunside, my eyes were dry (if somewhat sore) and the guards there didn't even glance at my card; they just wanted their bridge toll.

Aflraun is a lot livelier than Narkunden. If you want a banker, a bookkeeper, an academic, you go to Narkunden. If you want to buy or sell something, if you want to fight with somebody, if you want to become famous (or at least notorious), you go to Aflraun.

For one thing, the towns are run very differently. Narkunden has a democratic charter where the syndics go to the people for reelection every year, and any important law has to be pa.s.sed by a citizen a.s.sembly, and all citizens get the same vote. Aflraun, on the other hand, is a democratic timocracy. All citizens get a vote, but your vote counts more depending on how important you are. You can acquire importance (the technical term is "gradient") through money, or other achievements, but one of the most common ways to achieve it is through dueling, as the victor in a duel automatically inherits the timocratic gradient of the person he kills.

Noncitizens aren't exempt from the constant duelling, but noncombatants are: duellists actually lose gradient if they are seen challenging or provoking someone not carrying unconcealed weapons.

More people prefer to live in Narkunden: it's safe, quiet, law abiding. But they swarm over the bridges to spend money and time in Aflraun. Commercial magic is not illegal there; neither is prost.i.tution (another way to gain gradient, but apparently only if you do it right) nor public brawling nor most other things.

Then there is Whisper Street. I find it hard to explain Whisper Street; you'll have to bear with me for a moment. It is a place where, for a fee, you can become invisible and say anything you want. Physical contact is forbidden (not that it doesn't happen sometimes), but no speech of any sort is regulated. You can be anyone or anything that you want, as long as you can convince someone else of it. Apparently it is the city's great moneymaker, greater than people coming to watch the duels or engage in the gray-market activities banned in Narkunden and elsewhere. Whisper Street gets a little longer every year, to accommodate all the people who want to partic.i.p.ate. Morlock said to me once that someday the whole city will be inside Whisper Street, and I'm not sure he was joking.

I'm not a fan of Whisper Street. If you'd ever been a widowed mother in Four Castles, you would have had your fill of being invisible. That's one thing. Then, after that, I was a Bargainer, kidnapping people on the Road, robbing them and carrying them away to the G.o.d in the Ground. I did it because I had to do it to save my daughter. I'll tell you the whole story sometime if you're in the mood to listen. But the point was that I was always doing things I hated. "This isn't me," I had to keep saying. "This isn't me."

But you are what you do. It was me, doing all those terrible things. I escaped when I could. But while I was there, that's what I did and that's what I was. What was I, now that I had escaped? I still wasn't sure. But, in any case, I didn't want to take my face off and pretend to be somebody else. I wasn't that sure I could ever find myself again. Maybe this doesn't make any sense: it was how I felt.