A Dirge for Sabis Page 6

  "But you still have the working model of that steam engine, don't you?" Omis noted. "That's an advantage—a pretty enough toy to impress the superficial sort, useful enough to impress the practical. You can win a patron with that alone. What do I have?"

  "Oh come, now, you or Vari must have grabbed some of your pretty knives and cookware, at least. The masters of the house will be impressed by the one, and his wife or housekeeper by the other. Don't worry." Sulun clapped him on the shoulder. "You're a good craftsman, and it shows plainly."

  "I hate patron-hunting. How long before we can get back to the Bombard Project?"

  "I suppose that depends on what else our patron will want us to do."

  "If he's an ill-tempered sort, we'll never have the time to work on our experiments." Omis pounded one fist on his thigh. "Gods, how wretchedly our business is arranged. There must be a better way than this!"

  "There must be," Sulun agreed, lured off into a daydream of some fanciful kingdom where enlightened patrons provided their philosophers and craftsmen with necessities and otherwise left them alone, left them to experiment and study to their heart's content, without interruptions or demands for frivolous work. The gods knew what might be invented then!

  The sound of the main door opening interrupted his speculations. Zeren stepped over the threshold, glittering in his parade armor, and halted in something like dismay as the smaller children descended on him with squeals of delight. Tamiri and Mido danced around him like moths, grabbing playfully at his hands, swordbelt, and armor skirt, until Vari came to shoo them away. Sulun choked back a whoop of laughter at the sight of a captain of the City Guard of Sabis brought to a standstill, and very nearly routed, by a small gaggle of children.

  Zeren shook his head and took another few steps, recovering his balance. "I'd forgotten what it was like," he muttered, then bellowed, "Buna! Get in here and start supper, with wine. No, bring the wine first." He tugged off his helmet and turned to Sulun. "Gods, I've got to get the taste of parchment dust out of my mouth. Go collect the others; we may as well discuss this over a good comfortable supper."

  The housekeeper scurried in, threw Zeren a reproachful look, and hustled off to the kitchen. Sulun collared Doshi and sent him out to find Yanados and Arizun. The others went to help marshal the children and set up for supper.

  Zeren dropped into the nearest chair and began removing his formal armor, marveling to himself at how different the house looked, sounded, and felt when it was full of friends and -children.

  Dinner consisted of wine, sweet and sour breads, boiled white beans with cheese, a large salad, a modest baked fish, and a large roast duck—the duck provided by Arizun, who didn't mention how he'd got it, and Yanados wasn't telling. The pair also brought in a respectable purse of mixed coins and a bigger bag of gossip.

  "The old house has been stripped to the walls," Arizun reported around a mouthful of sweet bread. "I even saw charred timbers from the roof being sold for firewood."

  Sulun, noticing how Teigi/Ziya winced at that, thought to ask, "Has anyone performed the proper rites for Shibari and his family?"

  "Oh, yes. The burial society of the Temple of Inota took care of that. The old master certainly paid them enough in his lifetime to cover the cost of the urns and the prayer service and maintaining the tomb. Nobody had to pay for the cremation, of course, but—Ow!" Arizun rubbed his ankle where Yanados had diplomatically kicked it.

  "Yes, we should go to the tomb and pay our respects as soon as we can," Vari said, keeping an eye on Teigi/Ziya's set face.

  "We heard that at least two of the creditors are fighting over the house and grounds," Yanados put in. "Some of the house servants have been caught, and the guards are supposed to be searching for the rest."

  "Not too hard, I'll wager," Zeren commented over his winecup.

  "Without the family records, the law clerks can't tell the slaves from the free servants. It's a wretched mess." Yanados sighed. "We'd best not be seen too much outside, not until we get another patron."

  "Or we could all be enslaved," Doshi added.

  Teigi/Ziya shivered, but otherwise kept very still.

  "Speaking of patrons, Zeren . . ." Sulun hinted.

  The burly soldier pushed his plate aside, pulled out a sheet of parchment, and spread it on the table. "The good news," he said, "is that I've tracked down all of Shibari's creditors, even learned which one took the lion's share. He has your forge and tools, and yes, he's rich. Very rich."

  The apprentices couldn't keep from cheering, and the children joined in.

  "The bad news is, he's Entori of Funay."

  Instant silence fell. Omis broke it with a faint groan of, "No, not Entori the Miser!"

  "Entori the slave-maker, you mean." Arizun shuddered. "The last debtors who couldn't pay him lost everything but the clothes they stood up in—and then they were sold at slave auction."

  "How desperate could our master have been," Vari asked softly, "to risk falling into the hands of Entori the Infamous?"

  "The gods know," Sulun murmured. But now he knew why Shibari had fallen on his sword, why his wife had killed herself and their children and burned the house.

  Doshi said it for all of them. "Gods, must we put ourselves into the hands of our master's worst enemy? The man Shibari died to escape?"

  Zeren leaned back and looked around at the doleful little company. "There are a few other rich men on that list," he said, "but none so rich as Entori. Any of them might be willing to take on either a blacksmith or an engineer, complete with dependents, but none of the others would be inclined to take you both. Entori already has your forge, your lathe, all your large tools and supplies. He may be a wretched man to work for, but he's your best hope. I'm sorry."

  There was a longer silence as the others thought that over. It ended in sighs of resignation.

  "Ah, well," Sulun made it formal, "I suppose we'd best plan how to persuade him. Any suggestions?"

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Entori's house was almost invisible from the street, hidden behind its high wall and skirts of wall-front shops. The front door crouched at the end of a shallow alley between a potter's and a rug merchant's. Small spy-windows flanked the plain doorway, one of them opening when Zeren pounded on the blank, bronze-sheathed door. Omis and Sulun traded worried glances while Zeren bawled out his name and business at the barely visible doorman. What manner of house was this, they wondered, that hid itself from all sight and disguised itself in a screen of the houses and bodies of the poor?

  The spy-window snapped shut and the door creaked grudgingly half-open. Zeren, Omis, and Sulun stepped from shade to shadow, into a dim bare corridor scarcely wider than the door, smelling faintly of dust and mold. The doorman, a palsied ancient in a threadbare tunic worn as grey as the rest of him, hurried to close the door behind them. In the deepened gloom, the pale sunlight at the far end of the corridor beckoned like mirage.

  Sulun and Omis traded looks again. They hadn't known what to expect of the house of Entori the Infamous: perhaps furnishings of boastful, overwhelming, barbaric splendor; perhaps manacles and whips mounted on the walls, or portraits of all the victims Entori had brought low in his long career. The last thing they could have imagined was this vast, quiet, dusty barrenness.

  "Stay here," Zeren barked at the servant. "I know the way." He led the others boldly toward the dim light.

  All the way down the corridor they heard no sound but their own footsteps, saw no decorations or lamps or god-shrines of any kind, met no other living thing but a single wayward moth. Sulun felt oddly grateful for the presence of that moth; without it, he might have imagined that he was walking into a tomb.

  The room led out into a small courtyard with a square rain-pool in its center. The surrounding walkway, its walls interrupted by closed doors and curtained windows, was covered with slanting tile roofs that aimed toward the pool.

  Entori the Miser wasted not even rainwater.

  "Is the whole place a silent wareho
use?' Omis muttered, under his breath. "How can people live like that?"

  At the far side of the rainwater pool, in a narrow bar of sunlight, sat a woman in a plain dark dress, reading a book-sized scroll. She glanced up, frowning slightly, as the trio approached.

  Zeren, having no idea who she was, but noting that she didn't strike the usual posture and attitude of a servant, gave her a polite, half-formal salute and repeated the party's names, titles, and business. Omis noticed that she had a most intriguing face: the straight dark hair, almost black eyes, delicate bones, and pointed chin usually associated with the old Sukkti blood; not a young or conventionally pretty woman, certainly, but interesting. Sulun peeked at the book in her hands, and saw that it was a treatise on ancient history by a respectably honest author; it was the most encouraging item he'd seen so far in Entori's house.

  "My brother is in his study," the woman said, waving a languid hand toward the mouth of another corridor behind her. "Second door on the right." Her eyes were already straying back to her book.

  Sulun glanced back at her as the three resumed march. He hadn't known that Entori had a sister, much less that she was of a scholarly turn of mind. He just might have a possible ally in this place.

  * * *

  The next corridor led into the formal dining hall, a vast and shadowy room filled with enough banners, tapestries, lamps, cabinets of ancestral busts and bits of statuary to have furnished all the rest of the house they'd yet seen. Zeren rolled his eyes at the clutter, searched his way to an ornate door on the right, rapped on it, and announced the party for the third time.

  "Enter, enter," snapped a dry, gravelly voice.

  Zeren pushed open the door, which did not creak, and led the others into Entori's lair. Sulun and Omis stifled a gasp of surprise at the sheer amount of parchment: countless sheets and scrolls of it, filling and jamming the cubbyhole cabinets that climbed the walls, cluttering the massive table that commanded the center of the room, intermixed with clay tablets, wax tablet-books, weighing scales and weights of assorted sizes, stylus shafts, pens, inkwells, and an abacus or two—enough for the records room of a small tax-office. A large strongbox behind the table completed the illusion, though Sulun guessed that the bulk of Entori's ready money was concealed elsewhere.

  The room was lit by thin sunlight through the window behind the table, and by a single bronze oil-lamp set like a wave-washed rock in that parchment sea. The flickering yellow light picked out a circle of account records, a pair of thin hands resting on them, a heavy carved chair, a thick fur robe, the bald head and blinking dark eyes of an indeterminably-aged man who could only be Entori the Miser. The thick white ruff of the fur robe, much too heavy for this weather, gave his thin bald head and narrow hands the unflattering suggestion of a vulture.

  "Yes?" His voice added to the impression.

  This, Sulun thought, is he who destroyed our master and all his house.

  Zeren pulled out his own bit of parchment and opened it with a flourish. "You are Entori, Yeshinan's-son, creditor of the late Shibari to the amount of 27,382 silvers?"

  Entori blinked. "Yes . . ." He quickly added, "And I did not recover the full amount of the debt."

  "But you did recover—" Zeren pretended to check his sheet of parchment again, "one blacksmith's forge and anvil, with sundry related tools, one mechanics lathe, with sundry related tools, plus several mechanical devices in various stages of completion. Not so?"

  "Er, yes . . ." Entori rattled his fingers on the tabletop, clearly dying to see what else was on that list. "But that doesn't begin to cover the debt! Those things are of no use to me, and where can I sell them? And when? And for how much? A pittance, five hundred silvers at best—no, no, they don't begin to cover the amount of the debt."

  Omis squirmed, biting back considerable words. Sulun elbowed him still.

  Zeren tucked the parchment back in his belt and leaned forward, smiling. "Still, I think there may be a way to give you some satisfaction," he purred. "You know, we're trying to settle this business as thoroughly as possible for all concerned."

  "Satisfaction?" Entori asked, edging further into the lamplight.

  "Shibari did leave so many debts unsettled, especially with the house burned and its contents largely destroyed. We're trying to give the creditors as much value as possible, you know—"

  "Satisfaction?" Entori nudged.

  Spring the trap, Sulun thought, biting his lip.

  "As you said, the tools are useless to you." Zeren straightened, snapping out the words like numbers in an account list. "Likewise, Shibari's displaced craftsmen are useless without their tools—like farmers without land, or land without farmers to tend it."

  Entori blinked again, registering the truth of the analogy.

  "Now, put the craftsman and his tools together, and one might see some profit out of this lamentable business." Zeren leaned closer. "I have it on good authority that these particular craftsmen were working on some most valuable devices when Shibari made his ill-advised sea trade venture. Some of them—" He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, "—were of . . . interest to the military. They might still be so, if properly developed. Do you take my meaning, good sir?"

  Entori took the hint, at least. One hand slid upward to rattle thoughtful fingers on his chin. "And of course," he murmured, "the officer who presented these . . . profitable devices . . . to the right eyes could expect some expression of gratitude from them?"

  Zeren smiled like a tradesman closing a deal. "I see that we understand each other."

  Entori nodded thoughtfully, and rolled expressionless eyes toward Sulun and Omis. "I assume these are the craftsmen in question?"

  "The two masters," Zeren corrected. "There are also their assistants."

  Omis crossed fingers for luck behind his back. Technically, the apprentices all belonged to Sulun. Only a long stretch of the imagination could label Vari as a blacksmith's assistant, to say nothing of the children.

  Entori's eyes narrowed. "Just how many extra mouths will I be taking into my household?" he asked.

  "'Will be taking' . . . ? Sulun dared to hope.

  "Hardly extra," Zeren snorted. "A grand total of ten—"

  "Ten!"

  "And a bargain, at the price of their keep." Zeren shrugged with elaborate unconcern. "Of course, if you'd rather not gather the harvest for the price of the seed, I'm sure Shibari's other creditors—"

  "Not so fast, not so fast." Entori raised a birdlike hand. "I didn't say I wasn't interested. . . ." He cocked a cold eye at Sulun and Omis. "But of course, I wish to know what value I can expect to receive for taking on this . . . seed money expense."

  "But of course." Zeren waved theatrically toward Sulun and Omis, and stepped aside.

  At the cue, the two bowed formally. They straightened, whipped two large baskets out from under their cloaks, and opened them together. Sulun pulled out the little bronze steam engine model and placed it on the clearest section of the table. Omis produced a small brass firecup filled with treated charcoal, and slid it under the globe of the engine.

  "My design," Sulun intoned, pointing at the assemblage.

  "My workmanship," Omis echoed.

  The words sounded natural and unforced, as well they should after yesterday's hours of practice. Omis even managed a suitably impressive flourish as he whipped out his flint and steel striker and lit the charcoal.

  The distilled wine fumes caught at the first strike, shooting up impressive yellow and blue flames. Omis tossed a really unnecessary cue-glance at Sulun, and stepped back. Now for the distracting patter while waiting for the water to boil. If only he could manage this without fumbling his lines. Gods, why should I have to play an actor, too? Sulun complained to himself as he struck an orator's pose and began.

  "Know, oh most wise and honored host, that this is but a small version of that which might be." Pray it so, or ten desperate people might soon be out in the street again. "As you see this little globe rests, like a wheel, up
on an axle whereby it might spin." And hope the water boils soon! "Within it lies a small quantity of water, easily replaced."

  But how would one replace the water at a steady rate in order to keep the globe spinning? Design problem: deal with it later.

  "The fire heats the water, making it boil unto vapor." Boil soon, dammit! "This vapor, being closer to that divine state of the spirit than is mere fluid or gross earthly matter, seeks to rise toward heaven."

  Seeks to expand, actually, and spirit has nothing to do with it, but this is not time to argue with common misconceptions.

  "Yet it must escape this imprisoning globe, and what escape may it find save through these three identically curved little pipes?" Nudge one of them, encourage the fool toy to spin. "Thus, escape it does, so fiercely seeking its freedom that in leaping outward toward the free air it doth thrust backward against the door of its former prison."

  There, is that a faint wisp of escaping steam? Please? "Even as a sailor, stepping from a small boat to the dock, doth thrust the boat away from him with his lattermost foot . . ."

  Yes! Steam at last!

  "So this backward thrust presses the pipes away from the direction of the escaping steam, er, vapor . . ." Move, dammit! "And as the pipes are firmly affixed to the globe, which in turn rests upon its axle, the globe hath no choice save to . . ."

  There it goes!

  " . . . spin."

  Sure enough, the little globe spun: slowly at first, then faster, whirling merrily in its soft halo of escaping steam.

  Entori peered closer, fascinated, his dark eyes very wide and round. Quick now, before the water ran out or the man's normal suspicion reasserted itself.

  "Consider, milord, a much larger globe spinning thus. Picture it standing upon the deck of a ship. Picture the axle extended over the sides of the vessel, and wheels attached. Picture the wheels rimmed with oars reaching into the water. Consider, oh most wise and far-seeing, how fast and steadily such a ship could go—regardless of the vagaries of winds or fatigue of rowers."