you want something to do in the meantime. You seem the responsible, productive sort I so admire. I suggest you find an unused bench and work at whatever you like. Any of the apprentices will fetch whatever you need. Karry has nine hundred of them, I think he said once. I'm sure someone as clever as you can think of lots to do.'
Candlemas found himself grinning like an idiot. He hadn't felt clever lately, actually the opposite, since he knew less magic than most of the apprentices. But her words made him feel clever, against all logic.
'That's kind of you, Lady Aquesita. I was wondering-'
'Please, call me Sita,' she interrupted. Her smile seemed brighter than the sun. Her cheeks rounded nicely, he thought, and were dimpled at the corners enticingly. Funny he'd never noticed that on a woman before.
As they strolled along a blue slate path, Candlemas suddenly wasn't concerned about Karsus at all, only walking and talking with Sita. Perhaps the outside air had infected his brain, sucking out the nourishment. His feet felt lighter too, and the grass and flowers smelled heavenly.
'Oh, I can keep busy,' he assured her. 'But what did you want to show me? I'd love to see anything you find interesting. What were you directing so competently back there?'
Strangely, she blushed, and tightened her grip on his arm, tugging his elbow to brush her round bosom. When Candlemas jerked away, she deftly drew him back and said, 'Speaking of work, that's more of mine. As I mentioned before, my lifelong project has become the gathering of the cream of the empire. Inside, I've tried to collect the most beautiful artifacts our people can fabricate. Out here, I collect their natural works.'
She stopped at a long raised bed of small flowers, all the colors of the rainbow jumbled in soft petals.
'These, for instance,' she continued, 'are every variety of pansy I've been able to locate. I correspond with a great many people, you see, and humbly ask that they send me cuttings. They do, of course, from all over the empire. When I started this bed, there were only the white and the purple. But see how many others the Netherese have bred? I try to cultivate every useful and beautiful plant for the betterment of our empire. Really, in my own small way, I emulate my famous cousin.'
'Admirable. Wonderful.' Candlemas fingered the pansy petals as he spoke. They had a fine fuzz that softened their brightness. 'And this is no small effort. Anyone would admire your taste and good sense. You must be the talk of the empire.'
'Oh, no.' Aquesita rubbed her nose to hide a flush. 'No, I spend more time alone that anything else. There are sometimes whole series of balls held and I'm not even invited, just forgotten…' Her voice trailed off, sounding infinitely sad to Candlemas. He wanted to do something to assuage her loneliness, but for the life of him, he couldn't think what to do.
Aquesita sniffed and wiped her eyes while Candlemas looked elsewhere. Here, raised beds surrounded a croquet green with a babbling fountain in the center. Bushes with huge white flowers screened more gardens. The mage started when a pair of white-spotted deer no more than knee-high padded from under the bush to crop foliage.
The lady went on, 'It's good to have a cause and busywork. Between corresponding, managing the rest of Karry's estates, and encouraging artists at the guild, I'm never very lonely. And of course, I see Karry when I can. He can be difficult-not ornery, you understand, just preoccupied-but I try to steer him toward creative, helpful magic projects, not frivolous and destructive ones. But he loves to pursue everything, and… well, you must know how it is.'
Candlemas nodded, not smiling now. He thought of the ragged prisoner suffocated in the testing of an imprisonment spell, the random conjuring of strange beasts from who-knew-where, and how one had killed three apprentices with its unearthly screech.
But Aquesita was talking. '… Karry will be hailed as the empire's savior in time. With his abilities and the guidance of wise rulers, the Netherese Empire will stretch beyond the horizons, expanding ever outward to the far seas. We'll bring peace and justice, and-but silly me, I'm rambling. Perhaps, when things settle down, there'll be a need for all these plants, and new beds faraway where they can prosper.'
'Well, please then,' he said, 'show me more.' Her bright smile rewarded him. Candlemas covered her cool hand with his own as they walked the gardens, she pointing out this and that plant, he murmuring appreciatively. But he felt a shiver as from a cloud. From hints and glimpses he'd seen of the empire, it was neither prospering nor bettering the world. Food riots, obsessions with gambling and assassination, the casual destruction of the poor, insensitivity to growing problems… if the empire were to grow to new heights, its 'wise rulers' had better see to shoring up the foundation first.
And may the gods have pity if mad Karsus really did rule the empire.
'Push this up. But quietly.'
Shifting Harvester's scabbard and bracing his feet, the barbarian put his back against the stone grate and heaved upward. Instantly one of the twins, Zykta by the scar on her cheek, stuck her head past him like a topknotted gopher. 'Clear!'
'Slide it over,' said Knucklebones in her low, dulcet voice.
Sunbright obliged, grunting, and stood up in the hole. Zykta had already climbed through. She hunkered on her skinny hams in the dark cellar, peering at oblong shells on the floor. Sunbright sniffed and asked her, 'What are those? Dead cockroaches?'
Knucklebones elbowed him aside, deftly slapped her hands on the rim and vaulted through the hole like a wildcat. The barbarian felt the caress of her warm leathers. Her lean muscled neatness reminded him of Greenwillow. She squatted in bare feet and inspected the round carapaces. 'We catch them and kill them,' she explained, 'then spread their shells on the floor near our exits. If they're crushed, we know someone's been sniffing around.'
'Hmm. Smart.'
Sunbright levered himself through the hole. Although lean for a big man, he had trouble wriggling through. That was why the giant Ox hadn't come this time. Normally, Knucklebones had explained, he lifted the heavy grates that were the gang's best protection against assault.
Sunbright shuffled aside while the rest of the gang hopped up. Aba, the other twin; Mother; Rolon toting Lothar's thin, weighted chain; a sunken-chested man named Hute who coughed whenever he talked. And Sunbright, clubfooted and clumsy compared to these silent thieves. When he accidently trod on a cockroach, making the tiniest crunch, they all froze, then turned to stare. Their eyes were ghostly in the phosphorescent light cast by Knucklebones's hands.
'Make noise in the wrong place and our heads will be spiked around the archwizard's park!' Knucklebones whispered harshly.
'Sorry.'
The party crept up broken stairs to a floor littered with trash. The old building reeked of cold fires and urine. Sunbright peeked past Knucklebone's slim shoulder and asked her, 'What was this place?'
'Bookbinders,' the thief answered, 'A woman named Roni and her family. Friends. Guards confiscated her goods and tools for taxes. She couldn't work, so she took her children to the edge and jumped.'
'Edge of what?'
'The edge of the city,' she snapped. 'What did you think, the archwizard's wading pool?'
Sunbright shook his head absently. In two days amidst these thieves, Knucklebones hadn't once mentioned his having killed her lover, Martel, nor their fight, nor offered thanks for his rescuing them from the city guards.
Lacking anywhere else to go, Sunbright stayed in the homestead. Talking to Mother, he learned more all the time. He was tolerated, but doubted he was considered a member of the gang. He didn't know what he was, except a barbarian out of time, too far from the tundra, stranded under a city suspended too damn high in the air. The thought of someone jumping into that mile high void turned his bowels to water.
Squinting in the dim light, Mother waggled her fingers as she crept to the door and broken crockery and splinters were brushed aside as if by an invisible broom. Another thief's cantra, Sunbright realized. They had over a dozen between them. What did he know? Minor healing.
Knucklebones crouched by the door, lithe as a seal. She put her slanted eyes to a crack through the door, eased it open and shooed out a twin. Others waited, then there came the squeak of a rat trapped under a cat's paw. Sunbright found that amusing: a city wildlife call. Silently, one by one, with Knucklebones watching everywhere at once, the party slipped outside. Sunbright was last, and scuffed as he stepped. Knucklebone's hissed order to, 'Pick up your feet!' cut the night.
