J Simon
I
Axiom: Nothing ever goes right. Corollary: Things can always get worse. Take the Market at Kairay. Quaint, right? Merchants lead heavily-laden donkeys around the edge of the Market, setting up their stalls, braving dust and sun and wind to sell spices and fruit, worked bronze and shaped wood. Surely nothing could go wrong there? Allow yourself the generous privilege of being enlightened, by me. Some time ago, I rented a space in the Market. The rental papers somehow got filed wrong and ended up proving—conclusively—that I was dead. The soldiers agreed that it was probably a mistake even as they arrested me for commandeering a dead woman’s space. I tried to prove that I wasn’t a corpse by doing a fun little dance, which corpses—excepting cases of extreme post-mortem flatulence—are rarely known to do. It didn’t work. The city still charges me nice and regular, even though I haven’t bothered showing up in months. Now they just arrest whoever’s closest and send me the bill.
“Going into business together! Wow! This is going to be great!” Vindi announced, rubbing her hands together. I glanced sidelong at her. Manic grin, disordered hair, twin ceramic horns that—despite being installed by a mad wizard when she was six—didn’t seem to do anything. In other words, the usual.
“Delusional,” I decided. “I love you like a sister, Vindi, but are you even paying attention? Nothing goes right. Ever. Remember when we were kids, and we set up that fruit stand? I’m still not sure how I cut myself so badly on a grape.”
“Try to remember the good times,” she said encouragingly.
“That’s assuming there are good times to remember.”
Vindi led me on a winding path across the dry, hot Market. Nehra the wine merchant made the sign against evil as I passed. I stuck my tongue out at her—just in time for the wind to whip up and coat it with dust. Of course.
“When I think of the Grape Incident,” Vindi said, “I think of the medics that eventually arrived. I’m sure they didn’t mean to drive their donkeys through a wedding parade, but my, that was a delicious cake that fell out of the sky and into my lap.”
I sighed, shading my eyes against the sun. “Oh, I remember them, too. Keep in mind that I was actually fine until they came galloping up—lost control of their donkeys—and trampled right over me. Upon which they panicked, backed up, and ran me over again. You want to know the best part? Emergency calls aren’t free. I got to pay for my concussion, along with a laceration shaped like a pooping rabbit that’s visible to this day.”
“WHAT?!” Vindi yelped. “How did I not know about this??”
“I’m very careful about how I dress when I go swimming.”
“Well, you still have to remember the good times,” Vindi said, ducking under a rope studded with the dully clanking bells of Nahssa the Tinker. “Like how generous I felt when I decided to do something nice for you, and settle ownership of the cake on a coin flip—heads you win, tails I lose.”
“Whereupon the coin promptly shot up my nose and lodged there,” I agreed. “Yes. I remember. Take my word for it—nothing ever goes right.”
Vindi smiled. “I love you like a sister, Saraya, but aren’t you being just a little arrogant? When things go wrong, we ordinary folks keep our mouths shut and deal with it. You’d have to think you were a pretty big deal to imagine the universe itself had a vital, panting interest in thwarting you at every turn.”
“My bad luck is real,” I said simply. “Your father says so, and he’s… well, the wizard Avashti says so, too.”
“Sure, it’s real. But don’t let that be your excuse. Don’t let it stop you from having fun with the people who love you.” Vindi shimmied as if she was bursting with so much joy and wonderment that she just couldn’t contain it all. “Going into business together! This is going to be great!”
“Delusional. It’s now my mission in life to travel the world quacking like a duck and pointing at a picture of you until your face has become the clinical definition of ‘insanity’ in every culture in the land.”
“A duck?” she said, distracted.
“Ducks are famous for being insane!” I insisted. “Admittedly, my copy of our children’s primer did get kind of messed up when I dropped it in that puddle, but I’m pretty sure the part about ducks was solid.” I paused. “I’m less certain that the proper etiquette for greeting returning soldiers involves mooning them, ever since I got stabbed in the—”
“I dropped my primer, too,” Vindi said thoughtfully. “But all that happened was it clobbered one of the Leaf Riders on the head. Poor thing was so concussed, it kept granting me wish after wish, thinking each one was the first.” She noted my scowl and flushed. “Well, they were small wishes,” she said defensively. “On the plus side, I accumulated nearly enough seeds to make a pomegranate!”
“Delusional,” I repeated, shaking my head.
A wind kicked up as we crossed the Market, threatening rain as it tossed the branches of the great trees back and forth. We only get one or two real storms a year, and this looked like it could be one of them. The city of Kairay winds across the desert like a deranged and wriggling serpent, following as it does the course of the river that gives it its name. Here, life is possible—even easy, depending on the generosity of the annual floods. The Kairay river is bracketed by twin rinds of forest that are inhabited by bright colorful birds, butterflies of ridiculous size, and keen-eyed little Leaf Riders who leer at passers-by and giggle in a disturbing fashion. The heart of the city is its Market, and the heart of the Market is a soaring artifact of ancient and powerful wizardry—the Grand Emporium. In a city where buildings of mud, brick, and stone rarely top three stories, the Grand Emporium rises like a hornet’s nest made of rock, its interconnecting chambers and senseless winding staircases rising at least forty stories above the dusty streets below. No one knows who left it there or why, but over the centuries, all of its lower-level rooms have been claimed by merchants. The Grand Emporium has become a noisy and colorful place—in many ways, the beating heart of Kairay itself. Vindi led me right up to this towering monolith, the heat falling to an almost bearable level in the depths of its shadow. I glanced at Vindi. The spaces here were tremendously sought-after, the rents almost beyond belief. Only the wealthiest of merchants could afford to have shops here.
“Oh! I almost forgot,” Vindi said, taking something from her pocket. “I got you something to commemorate the world-altering day we became business partners. Do you like it?”
She handed me a bracelet. I studied it. It was a silver-colored metal, but not silver. It was about as fat across as my spread hand, and inscribed with a few simple but elegant symbols.
“A portable lightning rod?” I said, trying it on my left wrist. “I like it! I have to say, spitting in the face of the gods right when we’re about to have a storm really appeals to me. Bring it on, universe!”
Vindi rolled her eyes. “Do you have to be so dramatic? You haven’t been struck by lightning in almost four months.”
“Two,” I corrected her.
“Oh, come on! You can’t count what happened when I persuaded you to fly kites with me. That one didn’t even blow your eyebrows off!”
“I love it,” I said, holding my arm over my head and recklessly brandishing the quasi-silver bracelet at the impotent clouds. “Not the most efficient suicide device, but it’ll do.”
Vindi looked at me strangely. “Suicide device?”
“I’m starting a collection. Look!” I rummaged around in my pocket, proudly showing her a silk cord barbed with sharp little knots of metal. “Anteyvan strangling cord. Took all the money I had—and a few forged documents claiming I was a fellow museum—to get it out of their collection, but I managed.”
“Why do you even have something like that?” Vindi asked, making a face. “I mean, isn’t it illegal to even own it?”
“No. Well, yes, but that’s all right. I mean to keep a bunch of fun and interesting suicide devices on my person at all times, specifically so I can refuse to use them and show the universe what’s what. YOU HEAR THAT?” I shouted, shaking my fist at the sky and attracting puzzled looks from passers-by. “I’M SMARTER THAN YOU, I’M STRONGER THAN YOU, AND I’M BETTER THAN YOU!”
“It’s all right,” Vindi said soothingly. “The bad, mean cloud is gone now. And, ah, how many suicide devices have you collected so far?”
“One,” I said, tucking the cord back into my pocket, “but you’ve got to start somewhere.”
“Whatever you say.” Vindi adjusted my position with little tugs and pushes, then gestured grandly at the space in front of us. “Anyway, here we are… the future location of our shop! What do you think?”
I shot a dubious look at Vindi. The Grand Emporium towered over us like a cliff, and every one of its bottom-level rooms was taken. A little to the left was the shop of Sabah the Jeweler. Her shop occupied a nice clean chamber which was bordered on the right by a dizzying spiral staircase at least twenty stories high. Sabah herself wore simple but flattering garments of blue and white, set off by a single ostentatious display of wealth—the shimmering, iridescent ring of a crystal rim pinned over her heart.
“It’s a wonderful location,” I admitted, “but I’m not clear on how you mean to get rid of Sabah. Are we going to murder her or seduce her?”
“What?” Sabah asked, alarmed.
“Not there,” Vindi said, grabbing my shoulders and physically turning me. “There. The space under the stairs! All we have to do is dig it out and it’s ours!”
I looked. There was, indeed, a slight gap under the stairs. It might have been tall enough for a worm, if that worm was especially depressed and slouched a lot.
“Right. Dig a nice deep pit and drop all of our possessions down it just before the floods arrive,” I said laconically. “Seems sound to me.”
“You worry too much,” Vindi said. “If you drown, I’ll charge customers to poke your bloated corpse with a stick. We can’t lose!”
“You’ve really thought of everything,” I admitted dryly. “Fine. I’ll admit, for the sake of argument, that floods are fun and the world is made of love. We’re setting up here, and no amount of bad luck can change that.” I started counting on my fingers. “One. Two. Three.”
“Quit it! Nothing’s going to go wrong. When have I ever led you astray? Well, other than the time I literally led you astray and accidentally dropped you down a thirty-foot sinkhole. But that doesn’t count. I mean, I spent the rest of the day tossing all kinds of supplies down to you! Which, admittedly, hit you on the head and knocked you unconscious, but you have to look on the bright side. The rescuers I summoned may have been bad at tying knots, but they could really sing!”
“Five. Six—”
“You can’t set up there,” Sabah the Jeweler said regretfully. “That space—the staircase and everything under it—belongs to me. It’s in my rental agreement.”
“What? Really?” Vindi said, startled.
“Really.”
“Well, what of it? It wouldn’t hurt to let us stay, would it? I know! We’ll pay rent! Do you accept dancing as currency?”
“Vindi—”
“What if I made Saraya dance?” she said cunningly.
Sabah the Jeweler sighed. “The thing is, letting you stay would hurt me. Part of what I sell is the experience. When people buy jewelry, they want a shop that’s spacious, quiet, and a little private. Having another shop crammed into the grounds? Not so good.”
“Oh, come on! It’ll be fun!” Vindi wheedled. Sabah just shook her head. Now that I saw her up close, her clothes were even finer than I’d realized, while her crystal rim—a pearlescent gemlike ring about a thumbnail across—shattered the dim light into a hundred sparkling rainbows. I idly placed a hand across one of the many stains on my oft-washed tunic.
“You’ll love having us as neighbors,” Vindi pleaded. “We’ll pay our rent on time, I promise—”
“—assuming that your definition of ‘time’ is neither linear nor circular but bird-shaped,” I said helpfully.
“—we smell great, and also, we’re quiet and meek and well-behaved!”
“By which she means that we tell only the most elegant dirty jokes,” I said, “call each other the most elevated and inspiring of obscene names, and engage in highly cultured slap-fights while making extremely graceful fart sounds with our armpits.”
“Plus, I’ll cut you in for half of the ‘poking-Saraya’s-bloated-corpse-with-a-stick’ concession,” Vindi said encouragingly. “You can’t lose!”
Sabah the Jeweler shook her head. “I like you. I really do. But it wouldn’t be right for my business.”
“You’ll change your mind. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon enough.” Vindi glanced at me. “This is a temporary setback, that’ll all. Please don’t blame it on some supernatural boogedy-boogedy that’s out to get you.”
“What, this?” I snorted derisively. “This hardly counts as bad luck at all. Being turned away at the start, it just seems so obvious. The universe is really losing its touch if it can’t torment me worse than that. Here’s what could have happened: Sabah was out when we visited, so we never found out we couldn’t set up here. We labored for days digging a huge pit, then spent further days meticulously arranging all of our junk—”
“‘Pre-loved goods’,” Vindi corrected me.
“—and when she finally spotted us, Sabah called the guards to drag us away. In a single moment, day upon day of emotional investment and back-breaking labor was turned into so much trash.” I paused, cocking my head thoughtfully. “And also, one of the guards turned out to be allergic to Sabah’s perfume and started spasming wildly, horrified to see himself beating me with his cudgel but helpless to stop. That’s how it could have happened.”
“Is she always like this?” Sabah the Jeweler asked mildly.
“You have no idea.”
“Or—hear me out!—it could have happened like this,” I said, inflamed with a dubious sort of macabre enthusiasm. “We got our shop set up just fine, but a roc with digestive problems flew past and took a super-colossal dump on our store, leaving behind two things: A huge, stinking crater and the world’s most disgusting mystery.”
Vindi winced. “Why do you always have to be so gross? Rocs are amazing. We saw one once, remember? Its wings almost blotted out the sky! The world is full of wonderment and mystery.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Therefore, we disrespect the world itself if we merely stare at its amazements in dumb surrender. These things are real, and the greatest way to honor them is to really think about them, to know them, to ponder their secrets in all their dirty, filthy, disgusting glory. Rocs are gigantic, and they’re real. Real animals poop. Therefore…”
“Fine! I surrender! Now stop making me think about it!”
Looking resigned to her fate, Sabah the Jeweler finally managed to get a word in edgewise. “I’ll say this one more time: You can’t stay here. The issue is closed, over, and done. So you’ll leave, right?”
Vindi smiled. “You actually think getting rid of us is going to be that easy?” she asked. “You really don’t know Saraya, do you? Failure doesn’t make her give up. If anything, it makes her try twice as hard.”
“You have to show Reality who’s boss,” I explained. “So the world knocks me down. So what? Reality only wins if I don’t get up again. Or, on the occasions when my tendons snap for no reason, if I fail to roll over and flop around all angry-like.” I smiled at Sabah the Jeweler. “But then, I’m not the only one around here who’s admirably persistent. Vindi’s too deluded to quit. Ever.”
“What’s deluded about it?” Vindi asked. “My luck is as good as yours is bad, pretty much by definition. And a person who always wins literally has nothing to lose. Why not keep fighting?”
“So you see, Sabah, you might as well—” I paused, looking back at Vindi. “Wait. Are you admitting that I’m better than you, since I risk more?”
“Hmm. Well, if you think about it, a person who always loses also has nothing to lose, since she didn’t have anything in the first place,” Vindi mused. “She doesn’t risk anything by taking a stand. When you do it, it’s a shrug the size of the universe. When I do it, it’s an act of heroism spanning all of time and space. You’re welcome.”
“Could I make you go away if I gave you money?” Sabah asked desperately.
“YES!”
“NO!” Vindi glared at me. “We’re going to keep coming back, keep pleading, keep wearing you down until you let us put our shop here.”
“Was it a lot of money?” I plaintively asked Sabah.
“If you invested it, in time, yes,” Sabah said evasively. “So long as you agree that time is shaped like a bird.”
“Well, we’ll go… for now… but you’re missing out,” I told her. “It would be a lot of fun, letting us put our shop here. You could watch us slowly go crazy as we spent all our time trapped in a sunless pit, growing mushrooms on our faces.” I paused. “Our faces if we’re lucky.”
Vindi glared at me. “Plus, given that we’ll be down in a pit, Saraya will be looking up your skirt all day long,” she said. “If you’re a pervert, you’ll enjoy it. If not, you’ll enjoy calling the guards to come beat her up. Talk about a win-win!”
Sabah looked like she was trying not to smile. “Fare well, then. Ah… not that it has anything to do with anything, but what exactly are you going to sell?”
“Junk,” I said. “We’re junkmen. We can’t afford better.”
Vindi punched my arm. “What we sell is solutions. Pure ingenuity. If we can improvise a cheap answer out of junk, well, wouldn’t that be better than paying ten times more for something purpose-built?”
“Not if your ‘solution’ smells awful and breaks right away,” Sabah noted.
“She’s good,” I said, impressed.
“Go. I think I see a customer.”
“We’ll be back,” Vindi promised. “We’ll change your mind or die trying!”
“We could die trying?” I asked, distracted. “From just talking to her? How?”
“Tongues get stuck places. It happens. Ask anyone!”
“GO!” Sabah the Jeweler shouted.
“Tomorrow!” Vindi cried, waving. Shaking my head, I followed her across the Market.
* * *
There are no bridges across the Kairay river. By tradition, children ferry people across, braving that muddy expanse on whatever loosely hammered-together collection of planks seems least likely to sink. We didn’t actually need to cross, but Vindi gave a coin to a little girl anyway, paying her to take us downriver the lazy way. Trees soared overhead, blotting out the sky with vast interlacing canopies of green, while their great beards of moss and epiphytes dangled almost all the way to the river. A bright yellow bird darted low across the Kairay, trailing smoke. As we watched, it burst into flames, plummeted, and hit the water with a loud ‘plunk’.
“That was… a very small phoenix?” Vindi said hopefully.
“Nope,” said the taciturn little girl, one arm draped across the tiller. “Regular bird. Ate a salamander. It happens.”
“The world is full of wonders,” I said maliciously. “Speaking of which. Was it really a good idea to pay for a boat ride? The last time I saw more than two coins in one place, it was such a shock that I started flopping around on the ground and speaking in tongues.”
“I love you and treasure your safety,” Vindi decided. “Therefore, to protect you, I’ll do my absolute best to ensure you remain dirt-poor.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
“Anyway, money is easy,” Vindi said dismissively. “Remember when we were girls, and you got mad at me for some reason, and you threw a beehive at me when my back was turned?”
“I still don’t know why they all swarmed after me,” I muttered.
“What about my suffering? I had wax on my ass for half a month. Every time I sat down, it took forever to pick off all the coins I’d sat on. Money is easy.”
“I like money,” I said. “It’s a physical reminder of how the world works for other people. Other people go to the races and bet on donkeys. So do I.” I smiled nostalgically. “Did I ever tell you about my first bet?”
“You lost?” Vindi commiserated.
“Actually, no. I won. Right up until I jumped up and down with joy and accidentally punched the winning rider in the face. It made him so groggy, the judges assumed he was on something illegal and disqualified him. I lost everything on a winning ticket. True story.”
“Money is possibility, crystallized into material form,” Vindi said. “As long as it’s a physical object, coins and gems and such, it’s meaningless. It’s important to remember that. When you find your world getting all tiny and dull, always seeing the same things, always doing the same things, you can precipitate those useless chunks of alloy into experiences that will make your world big again.”
“Easy for you to say,” I said sourly. “When you own as few coins as I do, you have time to learn their individual names, hobbies, and secret aspirations. What can I say? I get attached to the sparkly little bastards after a while. Haven’t you wondered why I hold a quick funeral every time you make me buy something?”
Vindi eyed me speculatively. “So… if I forced you to spend a coin, you’d weep uncontrollably as you mourned its loss, whereupon I could collect your tears and distill out the salt, which I could then sell to get back the original coin!”
“That seems unnecessarily complicated,” I noted. “Not to mention capricious and cruel. I’ll admit it… I’m impressed.”
“I charge more for ferrying crazy people,” the little girl said flatly. Vindi shut up, settling for making faces at me for the rest of the trip. I tried to get back at her by miming the act of a small bird bursting into flames, but it’s a hard thing to convey through gestures alone. The little girl spotted me, upon which I pretended I was just brushing my hair. Not sure I pulled it off.
We finally landed at a spot well east of the Grand Emporium and made our way homeward. The farther we got from the river, the drier it became. The trees got smaller and sparser, the ground dusty and cracked. There were far more buildings jammed together far more densely. The people… well, they weren’t exactly poor, but they weren’t any better off than we were. We finally came to a crumbling three-story spire built from mud brick. That’s the problem with baking your building materials out of straw and mud: Freak rainstorms tend to melt it—and this building obviously hadn’t been repaired in years.
“I guess Dad isn’t back yet,” Vindi mused, studying the shuttered windows.
“Delirious! The child is delirious!” cried a large man with a wild beard as he hurried through the crowd, earning numerous odd looks as he elbowed his way toward us. “We all know wizards aren’t allowed to have families. She’s an unrelated urchin whom I allow to live in my house solely because her blood is useful for so many things.”
“What about me?” I asked, amused. “Why do I get to live in your house?”
“I wouldn’t say that you do. You infest the place, and my efforts to exterminate you have yet to be crowned with success.”
“It’s good to see you, too, Avashti,” I told the wizard. He dug through a weird detritus of glowing metal and rune-inscribed stones in his pockets, finally pulling out a perfectly normal key. “Good trip to the Temple of Souls?” I asked. “Say, settle a bet for us. Assuming that zombies can’t die, if you really wanted to make one go away, I figure you’d have to eat it. My question is what sort of unspeakable horrors might rise from the latrine a couple of days later.”
Avashti ushered us inside. He was careful to shut the door before sweeping Vindi into a crushing hug.
“You want to be more careful,” he told her. “If anyone found out I have a daughter…”
“I’m not sure I can keep it quiet much longer,” Vindi said, glancing sidelong at him. “I make mistakes. Things slip out. You want to make sure I look realistically deranged when they do, so that no one pays attention to the things I’m saying. Keeping me drunk all the time would probably be easiest. How much beer can you afford?”
“I’m not going to do that. Well. I may not do that. Just how loose-lipped would you say you are?”
“How much beer do I get?” I asked brightly.
“None,” Avashti said. “No one believes what you say sober. Why mess with what works?”
“I know there’s a flaw in your reasoning somewhere,” I said, disgruntled.
Avashti led us through a lower level crammed with weird and inexplicable things: Metal tortoises that unfolded their shells into wings made of gold and took off buzzing around the room; gearwork golems that sorted rice grains by size and color in a frenzy of pointless industry; maps made of stone on which dragon figurines spun aimlessly until they fell over sideways. Wizards almost never get what they want on the first try, but they always get something. If may be wrong, demented, broken, or useless, but you’ve got to keep it somewhere. Avashti tiredly climbed the stairs to the second level, Vindi and I right behind him. It was a lot quieter up there—almost sane. Avashti led us to the dining area, which was little more than an alcove with a big rectangular table and a bench on either side. In the wall next to the table was a large square window. It was little more than a gaping, empty hole—no glass. You’d think a wizard could afford a few luxuries, but I guess you look a lot more Mysterious when you have bats stuck in your beard and bugs in your teeth.
“Here,” Avashti said to Vindi. He dug some curved metal plates from his pocket, each about big enough to cover the tip of his thumb. “Try these.”
Vindi took off a set of identical-looking earrings and replaced them with the new set. Nothing happened. Nothing changed.
“Do you feel different?” she asked me.
I shrugged. “Not really.”
“I don’t think it’s working,” Vindi said judiciously. “If part of my soul were being reflected into you, you’d be dancing by now.”
“For the last time,” Avashti said irritably, “that’s not what it does. I committed some terrible deeds when I was younger…”
“I know,” I said. “You’ve told us before. Lots of times. Could I pay you to not tell us again? On an unrelated note, do you have any money I could borrow?”
“I like it,” Vindi chimed in. “I mean, not the story, obviously. But the fact that he trusts us with the burden of his regret and pain? That’s a mark of true love.”
“Torture equals love?” I said, impressed. “You know, there’s an off chance you’re even more messed up than I am.”
“I committed some terrible deeds when I was younger,” Avashti repeated. “I was arrogant, overconfident, reckless in my power…”
“Here it comes,” I said, resigned to my fate.
“It’s all right, Dad. I’m making a trust circle with my arms,” Vindi said. “If you feel the need to unburden yourself, literally, by throwing up…” She held her arms up right next to my head. “Here will do. Try not to miss.”
Avashti sat heavily on one of the benches. “My beloved daughter Vindi, my precious little girl… of course I wanted her to live a charmed life, an exceptional life. Is that so wrong? My first attempt involved installing those ceramic horns. They didn’t work.”
“Stylish, though,” Vindi said, flicking one to elicit a ringing chime.
“The second thing I tried… also didn’t work, though it does explain why I have a limp to this day. But my third attempt?” Avashti gazed at his hands. “Amazingly, I succeeded… but at a devastating cost. Vindi’s good luck came by sucking all the fortune out of her closest friend, dooming that poor little girl to a life of miserable bad luck.”
I shrugged. “It isn’t a bad thing, having a wizard feel guilty about what he did to you. I still remember how you used to buy me honey any time I asked! I generally managed to choke on it, sure, causing me to flail wildly and accidentally throw the rest of it into Vindi’s mouth, but what a way to die!” I paused, eyes widening as I realized that I could swiftly and flavorfully expand my collection of suicide devices. “For, uh, no particular reason, are there any jars of honey in the pantry?”
“Nine years I’ve been trying to undo what I did,” Avashti said heavily. “Your luck, Saraya, is still being transferred to Vindi. I haven’t been able to stop that. The earrings, though, reflect your stolen luck back to you, returning you to normal. Well, close to normal. With each new set of artifacts, I get it a little more right. I’d say you’re now getting three-quarters of your luck back. Maybe four-fifths. But I need to do better. I need to be perfect… and perfection requires years of precision, care, and attention to detail.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “By the way, Vindi has decided to murder-seduce Sabah into giving us her space at Market. I’m not sure which will come first, but it’s going to be hilarious either way.”
“I am NOT!” Vindi said, glaring at me. “But just so you know, I’d seduce her first. Don’t be gross.”
Avashti managed a faint smile. “Girls… don’t be like me. Be careful, prudent, and above all, pragmatic. There are… consequences… to being otherwise.”
“You do magic for a living,” Vindi said disbelievingly, “and you’re lecturing us about being more grounded?”
Avashti tapped his fingers on the table. “The more powerful and unpredictable something is, the more wrong it can go,” he said. “I used to think I was a special talent, greater and more amazing than anyone who’d ever lived. I thought that wild, flamboyant, risk-taking magic was the only kind worth having.” A far-away look came into Avashti’s eyes. “Why take forever to do things right… when you could just do something, and fix what was horribly broken about it afterward?” The gleam faded from his eyes. “Take it from me. Do things right. You’ll be less miserable in the long run.”
“I think he’s incredibly convincing, telling us to be all pragmatic and grounded,” I said wryly. “And this from the man who likes to jam wizardly artifacts up his nose and pretend to sneeze out fireworks.”
Avashti’s eyes narrowed. “The Work of Ages is greater than any man. If the ineffable power of wizardry requires me to blow glowing, sparkling snot at you for its own unknowable reasons, who I am to refuse? I am but a vessel for forces greater than myself, which for some reason demand the enthusiastic deployment of incendiary boogers.”
“Speaking of which. Musical flaming nose-lizards. Will you do them for us tonight? Please?”
“Bah. A wizard obeys no commands,” Avashti declaimed. “Don’t tell the bird how to fly, and don’t tell me how to set you on fire.”
We didn’t have to wait long for dinner. Avashti mixed rice, vegetables and spices into a curry that was, yes, magical in its near overwhelming flavor. I sat by the window, watching people go by, while Vindi made plans for our shop.
“We’re keeping an awful lot of junk… I mean, pre-loved goods… out in the shed,” she said suddenly. “Do you think we should sleep out there tonight? You know, to protect the merchandise?”
“Vindi, it’s junk,” I said flatly. “The biggest risk isn’t people stealing it. It’s people breaking in so they can leave more.”
“We’ll be famous before you know it,” she said airily. “Our reputation will spread.”
“For better or for worse.”
“Hush! We’ve already had our first paying job, haven’t we?”
“A job which we failed at,” I agreed. “Neither of us could figure out how to fix Rivi’s wizard-lamp.”
“But we got paid,” Vindi argued. “Plus, now Rivi has a pocket wine press the exact size and shape of a broken lamp! Way better!”
I smirked. “I think she paid us to go away, mostly because you wouldn’t stop apologizing for our failure. What the weeping and wailing didn’t accomplish, the copious snot-bubbles finished.”
“And I think she paid us to go away because you wouldn’t stop demonstrating her new wine press on every fruit in the house.”
“Dates taste better when they’re crushed,” I explained. “Eating them, you know you’ve beaten them in a fight.”
“Girls!” Avashti said tiredly. “Will you shut up if I promise you fireworks?”
“Yay!” Vindi cried.
“That depends,” I said cautiously. “Remember the time you had a sneezing fit and couldn’t stop setting my eyebrows on fire?”
Avashti tried to keep the smile off his face. “Ah, yes. A regrettable accident. Too bad you keep reminding me of it. One of my most shameful memories.”
“Then why are you laughing?”
“I have a weird reaction to shame. It’s part of the Great Work. Inadequate mortal minds such as yours could never understand.”
“Yup. He’s as grounded as they come,” I said to Vindi.
“Hush,” Avashti said. As Vindi and I avidly watched, he turned and started stuffing something up his nose.
* * *
Ask most people to imagine what bad luck really means, and they’ll go on about poverty and infirmity and abandonment and all of the splashy, big-ticket stuff you’ve heard so much about. Then there are the little things. The simple things. The things that are so basic, you don’t even notice them until they’re gone. Take sleep. A couple of years ago, I got a mosquito stuck in my ear. For six days. Not long afterward, my ear provided the nesting site for a family of extremely tiny, extremely untalented trolls that loved to sing. Then I started sweating a savory, meaty oil which attracted flies, which in turn attracted bats, which streaked past my face at wildly exciting if unpredictable intervals. Then, for one memorable year, I suffered from sporadic but explosive diarrhea due to the world’s first confirmed allergy to moonlight. Sleep seems like such a simple little thing, but try losing it for good. That way lies madness, and evil puppets. Anyway, my luck may be better than it was, but I’m still nervous about going to bed, and I still put it off for as long as I can.
By the flickering light of a lantern I ran my finger down the bookshelf in my room, trying to decide what to read. Perhaps a travelogue, packed with colorful stories about yawping barbarians who had heads for feet and olives for eyes. Delightful stuff. Not the stories, mind you… the physical proof of how much money you can make by lying just as hard and fast as you can.
As I sat there pondering my options, Vindi poked her head through the door. I’m not sure how I could tell, but I think she was trying to be sneaky.
“Saraya!” she hissed.
“Vindi,” I said wryly. “Do you really need to whisper? Your father’s up on the third floor blowing stuff up in his laboratory, and you’re too lucky to get caught anyway.”
“Which means that I have it worse than you.”
“This I have to hear.”
Vindi came in and sat on my bed. “What’s life without risk? What’s the fun in sneaking around if you know you can’t be caught? I wish my life were as packed with incident as yours.”
“You can have it.”
“I can have your life?” Vindi said sweetly. “Wow, thanks! No fighting back, now. I haven’t stabbed anyone in ages and I’m all out of practice.”
“I love you, too,” I said wryly, “but no way do you have it worse than me. What’s life without risk? If I sneak around, I WILL be caught. Absolute guarantee. No risk at all. I might as well stomp around beating drums with both hands while shouting ‘I’M BREAKING THE RULES!!!’“
“It doesn’t always work that way,” Vindi said, smiling. “Remember those two months we spent at boarding school, before we got expelled?”
“Technically, I got expelled. You were graduated eight years early and declared a living god on account of a clerical error.”
“Good times,” Vindi said nostalgically. “The point is, while we were there, I got caught constantly.” She paused. “It’s not my fault they kept accidentally writing your name on the punishment orders.”
I shook my head ruefully. “So you say. I’d still like to know exactly what you told them… but… that’s neither here nor there. What do you want?”
Vindi looked embarrassed. “It’s stupid, I know, but I wanted to go back to the Grand Emporium and look at the space where our shop is going to be. Imagine… in just a little while, we’re going to be shopkeepers! You and me! We’re real adults now, with jobs and everything!”
“That’s assuming that Sabah will come around.”
Vindi shrugged. “Why wouldn’t she? People are nice. Things work out. And if we don’t get to put our shop there, it’ll be somewhere else. I’m going to go and take another look. Want to come?”
I glanced at my bed, which was lurking in the corner pretending to be all soft and innocent. “I suppose you could hire me to come with,” I said, “for a really-quite-reasonable-if-you-think-about-it fee.”
Vindi smirked. “Fine. I’ll just go without you, then,” she said, though she didn’t budge. She stood there, lantern-light glinting from her horns and eyes, waiting.
“This isn’t a game, Vindi,” I said patiently. “I know I’ve tried to explain this to you before, but it’s dangerous out there at night. Your luck isn’t what it used to be. There are muggers hiding in the alleys. Murderers. Clowns. All sorts of things.”
She shrugged. “I’m going. Which means that whatever happens to me will be all your fault since you had a choice, and cruelly forced me to go alone.”
My shoulders slumped. “Fine. I’ll come with, if only so I can have a plaque inscribed ‘I TOLD YOU SO!’ nailed to my chest at our funeral.” I picked up my favorite (well, only) walking-stick, one that was capped with the snarling bronze head of a jackal. “I guess you’re right. People are nice. Even muggers amuse me when they’re running away with jackal-shaped bruises all up and down their collective asses.”
“That’s the spirit!”
It wasn’t nearly so dark once we got outside. The sky was clear and the moon and stars were out. Luminous spiders hung in the bushes, and lantern-light poured from the windows of most houses. Also, Vindi had a cheap brass necklace that she claimed was one of her father’s failed experiments.
“It glows with a nice, even light! Well, I mean, it isn’t now, obviously, but it could. In theory. Though sometimes it just bursts into flames for no reason.”
“Uh… sure. Whatever you say.”
Vindi and I headed toward the looming black mass of the Grand Emporium, visible even at this distance. Vindi more or less skipped and danced her way down the road, humming and daydreaming, tossing her lantern from hand to hand with each step. I clutched my jackal-headed walking stick, eyes sweeping the blackness in search of threats.
It wasn’t long before we reached the base of the Grand Emporium. There was Sabah’s shop, boarded up and shackled with rusty chains and a bucket-shaped lock. There was the spiral staircase, and the dark dusty crevice beneath it.
“Looks the same as it did this afternoon,” I said.
“But now it’s dark out!” Vindi said, gently punching my arm. “Everything is new, everything is different! There has to be some romance in your soul. Look again at the place our shop will be. Tell me what you feel in your heart.”
“Seriously? I feel an infectious new rhythm, forcing me to dance to the pulse of the night.”
“Yay!”
“Literally. Thanks to an undiagnosed infection, I feel a mad whir of heartbeats that’ll dance me around like a broken puppet until I die, alone and unloved, under the unblinking eyes of the mocking stars.”
“Shows what you know,” Vindi said, satisfied. “You think you’re being all morbid and off-putting, but let me tell you something: Nothing, and I mean nothing, is more romantic than dying well. You’re about to dance yourself to death in a frenzy of uncontrollable passion. I envy you, I really do.”
“Dying well appeals to you, does it?” I asked, fishing around in my pocket. “How much would you pay me to strangle you while I recite love poems?”
“You’re hopeless,” Vindi said affectionately. “Tell you what. Now that we’ve done what we came for, anything else you want to do, I’m in. Oh! I know! We could go for a swim in the river!”
“Pass. I still haven’t found my clothes from the last six times.”
“We’ve got to do something. We came all this way!”
I found my eyes drawn to the soaring bulk of the Grand Emporium, which from this angle seemed to blot out half the sky.
“Well…” I hesitated. “There’s this thing about scary high places. They tend to have ants.”
“I like ants,” Vindi said. “They always bring up such interesting things when they’re making an anthill over a buried cache of ancient secrets just waiting for me to discover it. But do go on.”
“When I’m high up, and I trip—because you know I’m going to trip—and I start to fall, screaming, over the edge, and I just barely catch myself… well, that’s when the ants start walking over my fingers, tickling me until I can’t stop laughing and screaming and screaming and laughing and slipping and screaming and—”
“You’re immortal,” Vindi said suddenly.
“Excuse me?”
“Dying wouldn’t be bad luck, not if it freed you from an unrelenting cavalcade of fresh new horrors. If your luck really is perfectly bad, you can’t ever die. You’re immortal!”
“Please don’t test that,” I begged her. “Please.”
“It was just a thought.”
“But now,” I hurriedly said, gesturing at her new earrings, “with two-thirds of my luck back, or three-quarters or whatever, I’d be willing to go all the way to the top of the Grand Emporium. I mean, seeing Kairay from that high up? That would be something new.”
“For me, too,” Vindi said thoughtfully. “Huh. You know what? You’re on. Let’s go!”
We started by climbing the spiral staircase next to Sabah’s shop. Half of it was fully exposed to the air, which made half of our trip simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. I stayed as close to the center as I could. Then, about halfway up, the stairs just… stopped. Ran right into a flat stone ceiling and ended. By the light of Vindi’s lantern we wound our way through that maze-like warren, working our way up and down and around and back until we found another spiral staircase and finally emerged on the very top of the Emporium.
“Wow,” Vindi said quietly.
The view from the top was something special. I chose a place sort of near the edge and sat down. Vindi made a point of sitting a full pace closer to the dropoff than me: She looked extremely uncomfortable, then furtively scooched back until we were even.
The city of Kairay spread out below us. Houselights sparkled like a skein of tiny bright gems strewn across the night. The river was a winding ribbon of reflected starlight within the deeper black of the forest. Stars shone above us, and a teasing wind added just the slightest spice of worry that it might pick me up and send me plummeting to my spinning death. The moon looked much closer than normal. I don’t know. Maybe it was. I stared at it and imagined I could see bizarre and senseless fairytale palaces.
“I wonder what would happen if you jumped over the edge holding a bedsheet by the corners?” Vindi mused.
“Depends. If I did it, I’d jump too high, get my head stuck in the moon, and humiliatingly lose my clothes and dangle there naked for a full three weeks before plummeting to my shameful death. On the other hand, if you did it, I sincerely hope a handsome prince happened to be passing by so as to break your fall when you landed on him and squashed him flat.”
Vindi snickered. “Why a handsome prince? I’d be a lot more likely to survive if I landed on a profoundly fat pillow merchant who happened to be hauling sacks of his merchandise and wearing the world’s puffiest shirt.”
“I like my stories to be happy,” I explained. “If someone’s going to get squashed, let it be someone who deserves it. In stories, princes are always going around demanding to marry girls after seeing them just once. Talk about superficial! And creepy.”
“Creepy?”
“Image the exact same story, but with a veiny old man in the starring role. Doesn’t seem so romantic now, does it?”
Vindi put her hand to her heart. “I promise, the next time I plummet to my death from atop a mysterious wizardly artifact more than forty stories high, to scream ‘I’M A BEAUTIFUL SEXY MYSTERIOUS WOMAN DEEP IN ENCHANTED SLEEP WHO CAN’T CONSENT TO WHATEVER YOU CHOOSE TO DO TO ME!’ Whoever comes running, I’ll land on them.”
“You’re too good to me,” I said, amused.
“I know.”
We stayed there, talking as the stars wheeled by, eventually lapsing into a companionable silence. When Vindi’s lantern ran low, we reluctantly made our way back down. We got lost immediately, of course, and the weird, twisting, winding path we took was completely different from the way we’d gone up. We finally—finally!—reached the ground, descending a sweeping, curved staircase on the opposite side from where we’d started. I was surprised to see dozens of people waiting for us, carrying so many lanterns that it hurt my eyes just trying to look at them. It didn’t make any sense. Burning enough oil to provide that much light would be crazy expensive. Literally. You’d have to be hooting, growling, bonking-your-own-head-with-a-gourd insane to spend that much on oil.
“As I have said, so must it be,” intoned a tall, gaunt man with an enormous white mustache. He stepped forward, gesturing to the two of us. “I told you they would be here, and here they are.”
“Who the hell are you?” I demanded.
“Mind your manners, child.”
My eyes narrowed. “Tell us who you are and why you’re here, and as an extra-special reward, I’ll let you choose which orifice I impale with my walking stick. Here’s a hint: Choose your nose. Every alternative is worse.”
“Technically, you said he could choose any orifice,” Vindi noted. “What if he chose one of yours? Attack him if you want, sure, but I think you’d be honor-bound to aim for your own butt.”
“Thank you so much for your contribution,” I snapped.
The tall man gazed at me, unimpressed. “I am Darshik, wizard. I know, at a close approximation, everything. All knowledge in the universe belongs to him who understands the secret language of Eternity and the sly deceptions of Forever. I am that man. I know you as you don’t even know yourselves. I know your transgressions. I know your sins. I know your passions, your regrets, and your secret shames.”
“My father says—” Vindi paused. “—that he knows the great wizard Avashti, who says you created a book of prophecies by accident and have been coasting on it ever since. He says you haven’t done anything for thirty years. He says a flatulent frog would be as much of a wizard as you are now.”
Darshik scowled. “If you require a demonstration—”
“Oh, do be quiet, Darshik,” a woman said, not unkindly. “You’re scaring them.”
My eyes were starting to get used to all that light. I now saw that the animals around us weren’t donkeys, but something I’d never seen before… real, actual horses. Horses are too rare and expensive for even the wealthiest merchants, and here were dozens of them. They were weird-looking creatures, with stupid elongated faces and big bulging eyes. Their harnesses bore a circular seal depicting an elegant wading bird—the insignia of the royal family. In the lead chariot stood the woman who’d spoken, plain and cheerful-looking and simply dressed. Seated next to her, a lovely young woman gazed at us with uncomfortable directness. Her clothes were encrusted with pearls, gems, crystal rims, and animal figurines of solid gold. At a casual guess, her clothes were worth more than the Grand Emporium… and the lives of everyone who worked there.
“Come here,” the lovely young woman said, making a face as if speaking to us was something distasteful. I looked at Vindi. Vindi looked at me. Slowly, reluctantly, we obeyed. “I am Princess Gamal,” she said coolly. “My husband is the second child of Her Lordship, the most esteemed Shavala II, making him second in line to the throne of Kairay.”
“And I am Princess Shivaka,” the other woman said, a hint of merriment in her eyes, “the eldest child of Her Lordship, which… let me see, math can be so confusing… would make me first in line, wouldn’t it?”
Princess Gamal gazed expressionlessly at her. “Pray do wear warmer clothes when you go out at night,” she said softly. “What a tragedy it would be if you took sick and died.”
“You poor girls. You’re probably scared to death,” Princess Shivaka said warmly. “Well, let me set your minds at ease. We’re not going to arrest you, imprison you, or call for your heads. There’s absolutely nothing you can do or say that would endanger your fate or that of anyone you love. Relax.”
“Should we be so quick to relinquish the protections of polite society?” Princess Gamal wondered. “Is it really a kindness, letting them misbehave without consequence? How are they to learn?”
“One of us is my mother’s heir,” Princess Shivaka said merrily, “and one of us is not. I’ll let them decide for themselves whose word they will heed.” She glanced at the wizard. “Thank you, Darshik. You may go.”
The gaunt wizard faced Princess Shivaka, unimpressed. “And my payment?” he asked. “You will declare the Crescent Way to be cursed, give the Annubial your blessing, and fund a new amphitheater where the Estin meets the Kairay?”
“You may go, Darshik.”
He gazed at her for a moment longer, bowed, and walked away. Princess Shivaka got out of the chariot and sat down on the ground, beckoning the two of us to come join her. Princess Gamal stayed where she was, holding a colorful silk cloth to her nose. I looked at Vindi. Vindi looked at me. Slowly, cautiously, we edged closer. As soon as we reasonably could, we sat down across from Princess Shivaka.
“Do you want more bowing and scraping, or can we cut the crap and get down to business?” I demanded.
“Saraya!” Vindi said, shocked. “They’re royalty!”
“So what? Being all polite and submissive never helped me any. When the powers-that-be decide to hurt me, no amount of groveling and scraping is going to stop them. It’ll just make me feel worse about myself when I die.” I stared defiantly at Princess Shivaka. “So how about it? What could you possibly want from the likes of us? What’s so important that you had to rouse an ostensible wizard out of bed to find us?”
“Oh, I like her!” Shivaka said, clapping her hands together.
“So do I,” Princess Gamal admitted. “It’s so much more satisfying to order the torture of one who’s richly and thoroughly earned it. Tell me more about how great you are, child.”
Vindi’s nostrils flared. “I don’t care how big you think you are. Leave Saraya alone.”
I glanced at her, puzzled. “Uh… you want to maybe let me fight my own battles? You have a lot more to lose if things go wrong.”
“I have more to lose? Really?” Vindi gave me a lopsided smile. “Saraya, the fact that I always win… it means that I’m free. Free to be my deepest, truest self, because there aren’t any consequences to anything I do. At least, that’s how it used to be. Now? Well, maybe I do have something to lose. But I don’t think I’d like myself very much if I clung to my personal safety instead of standing by you.”
“So you’re just as brave as I am? I’m not special at all? Not different, not unique, not better-than?” I shook my head. “Congratulations, life, on figuring out yet another way to kick me in the balls I don’t even have.”
“Very touching,” Princess Gamal said impatiently, still holding that colorful silk cloth to her nose. “Can we get on with it? I never knew there could be such smells in the world.”
“I think they’re fascinating,” Princess Shivaka said.
“The smells?”
“The girls,” Shivaka clarified. “Vindi, Saraya… when I promised you safety—I meant it. Speak freely in my presence. Always.”
“Fine. What the hell do you want with the likes of us?” I said bluntly.
“I’ll get to the point,” Princess Shivaka said. “I have all the people I’ll ever need to tell me how wonderful I am, or sell me bejeweled trinkets, or prance around for my amusement…”
“Which, should they fail to prance high enough, calls for the judicious application of heated spikes,” Gamal said helpfully.
“What?”
“Wishful thinking.”
Princess Shivaka gave her head a little shake. “What I don’t have are some good junkmen… people inventive enough to solve problems in a cleverer, more roundabout way than would occur to a dedicated craftsman. Well. I had junkmen, but they retired. I would like you to take their place.”
“You’re lying,” I said flatly.
Gamal gazed at me through hooded eyes. “Just a reminder. Speaking thus, in public, in front of me, rates a death sentence.”
“I will protect them,” Shivaka said carelessly.
“Yes. For now. But accidents happen. People die. Will you still be here in a year? Death warrants don’t expire. Essentially, they’re flipping a coin to decide whether their heads will stay on their shoulders or not. Do you really want to offend me, girl?” she asked, toying with the gilded table knife at her belt.
“But Shivaka is lying,” I protested.
“So what? It’s the accusation that matters, and the fact that you had the temerity to say it to her face. Truth is irrelevant.”
“Fine,” I said, disgruntled. “You don’t want me saying it to her face? I’ll wait until she turns around and say it to her ass.” I cupped my hands to my mouth: “YOU’RE LYING!”
“Please explain,” Princess Shivaka said calmly.
“You say you want junkmen. You could have hired anyone in the city, anyone at all… and yet you ask two girls so callow, so inexperienced, they don’t even have a shop yet? Why us? Why now? Why would you use a wizard to find us, and how did you even hear about us in the first place?”
Princess Shivaka smiled disarmingly. “I know you’ll think I’m silly, but I didn’t ask Darshik only to find me some new junkmen. I asked him to find someone… well, someone I’d like. Someone, were they of my own social class, I could call a friend. He found you.”
“Senseless,” Princess Gamal muttered. “Half the money I spend when I buy something is expressly to make the seller go away, afterward. It’s called the social contract, and it rescues us from having to socialize with our inferiors.”
I shook my head. “It’s a trap. It has to be. Of course, I’ve immediately stepped on every mousetrap I’ve ever set, so maybe I should jump up and down on this one so it’ll go off as quickly as possible…”
“Will you come back to the palace with me?” Shivaka pleaded. “I have a special contract ready and waiting. All you have to do is sign it, and you’ll find yourself richly paid indeed—just to be on retainer! Any actual jobs will pay even more.”
Vindi looked at me. I looked at Vindi.
“I… think I want to prove that I can make my own life, forge my own career, without help from above,” Vindi said, sounding surprised at herself.
“Me, I’d rather stay away from people who could have my head off at a whim—” I glanced at Gamal. “—especially those who’ve stated their intention to do so at the earliest possible opportunity.”
“I understand,” Princess Shivaka said, standing up. “I can wait, for a time. If you change your mind…”
She pulled a medallion from her pocket, one bearing the same graceful wading bird that adorned her chariot. She handed it to Vindi. “Know that you can come to me for any reason, at any time. Show that to the guards and you’ll be brought straight inside.”
“You’re giving them a real one?” Princess Gamal asked, her brow furrowing. “I don’t know why I even bothered ordering all those joke medallions that mean—’execute immediately’. Sometimes, you aren’t any fun at all.”
Princess Shivaka waved merrily, stepping onto the lead chariot. The horses, obeying some impulse I couldn’t see… to get away from Gamal, maybe?… broke into a thundering run. With a great deal of noise and clatter, the whole procession swirled around us in a minor cataclysm of thunder and dust and was gone.
“That was… different,” I mused.
“I wonder how many handsome princes they have back at the palace?” Vindi said speculatively.
“Bah. Who cares? Pay a blacksmith to eat roses until he pukes and he’ll literally explode with beauty. It’s exactly the same thing as a Handsome Prince, plus, you’re saved the trouble of having to marry it.”
Vindi looked amused. “How much would I have to pay you to eat roses until you barfed?”
“Less than you think, but more than you have.”
“That’s fair,” Vindi said thoughtfully. As we walked away from the Grand Emporium, I playfully snatched her brass necklace. Vindi tried to grab it back, but tripped and came up short.
“Ha!” I cried, settling it around my own neck. “It looks like luck is favoring me for once!”
And that, of course—with a predictability bordering on the inevitable—was the exact moment the necklace chose to burst into flames.