that repulsed him. “What if I said I could wither your heart as easily as I could spit on the floor at your feet?” She glared at him, intending to convey a delicate instability. “The Deep Power is more primal than your bureaucracies.” The man cleared his throat, pushing his chair away from her.
“You dare threaten me?” he said shakily.
“Of course not. As you yourself pointed out, it’s forbidden.” Remis sat back. “But I won’t sell myself to you either. There’s no law says I have to. Having commercial power over me doesn’t make you right.”
Suddenly the little man rose. His scornful superiority had returned. “Sooner or later we all must choose to whom we will sell ourselves. Look around you. Learn the lesson of this place. Would you be slave to such a life, or would you be its master?” He bowed minutely. “I take my leave. If you change your mind, send a message to me. I’ll understand.” His smile was sour. “Out of charity, I’ll assume your insolence is merely the folly of youth.”
He bowed again and left. Remis watched him push through the crowds as though they were not there, every movement a denial of the tavern and its common inhabitants. She rubbed at her forehead, feeling the tension growing into a headache. Damn it!—she felt as though the ground had shifted uneasily under her feet.
Roars of drunken abuse from across the room gave her no chance to recover her equilibrium. At a nearby table, even the publican stopped scrubbing with his greasy rag. A dark-complexioned, exotically dressed man was engaged in a scrap with a rather weedy crewman from one of the commercial ships, the pair of them threatening, shoving at each other like adolescents. It ended when the sailor lost his balance and crashed into a table. Spilt beer did nothing to dampen the roar of conversation in the place, but it did inspire a chorus of shouts from several onlookers.
“Watch your tongue, fancy-boy,” the sailor’s attacker slurred, staggering slightly as movement raised the alcohol in his head, “or you won’t keep it long.”
“I’m of the Shippers Confederacy,” sneered the crewman from his pained crouch among the ruins of a table, “and of honest parents. I won’t apologize to a slaver’s bastard.” The dark man went for him, but the sailor was away before he could be caught. He pushed a path to the door, turned and spat. “Have that as a favor, horseshit!” The door swung shut. The dark man bellowed something incoherent.
Enough is enough, thought Remis, it’s time I went home. Meeting with Lanaris House had been a mistake, more damaging to her than she could have imagined—at the very least it signaled an end to any complacent acceptance she might have had as to where her future was headed. Certainly there was no reason to endure the tavern’s acrid smells and coarse violence further. She shoved past the table and headed toward the landlord and his cronies. They watched as she approached, as though they suspected her of some sinister intent. “You forgot my replacement wine,” she said petulantly, when she reached the landlord.
He shrugged.
“I know you’re busy,” she continued, her tone flattening. “Perhaps too busy. I’ll mention it to my uncle. Perhaps he could help.”
“Your uncle?”
“Councilor Nabalen. He’s a sympathetic man…at heart.” Nabalen was Head of the Waidenar Family, which owned most of the taverns in this part of the City, and was a leading member of the Ole’eth-Aluk Ruling Council—the State’s elite political body. He was no relative of Remis’s, of course, though he’d once instigated bankruptcy procedures against her father, when failing wheat crops had spoilt some minor entrepreneurial endeavor of the Waidenar’s. But Remis’s clothes and superior manner would add credence to her claim, enough to unsettle him perhaps. “I’m sure he’ll be fascinated by your plight,” she added for effect, mustering as much sarcastic self-confidence as she could manage.
The landlord scoffed, though uncertainly. “Nabalen wouldn’t piss on the likes of you,” he ventured.
Probably true, thought Remis. But she mimicked a sort of mock surprise. “You think so, do you?” She smiled nastily. “Well, we’ll see.” And turned away, feeling that if she evoked momentary doubt it would be sufficient. A petty revenge, yes, but the afternoon had made her feel petty. He called to her before she reached the door. She ignored him and swung out into the night. Street air was cool. A strong wind blew in off the unseen harbor and carried ocean tangs and other stenches from the docks. Only the windows of The Night Binge showed any light. The tall stone warehouses and surrounding shops were dark and few people walked the streets.
A cacophony broke through the night as the door of the tavern opened. The publican staggered out, trailing shadow and smoke. “You don’t frighten me, lady!” he yelled, his face betraying his anxiety.
Remis waved dismissively and strode off down the main Dehum-Rewi thoroughfare before he could say more, her boots clicking dully on the paving stones and sloshing in the frequent patches of mud. Wide and long, the road disappeared into darkness around the edge of a black-stone edifice. There were no oil-lamps there. But she didn’t intend to be frightened of the night and she didn’t look back either.
A voice shouted from beyond the buildings, one of the workers on the main dock. It was bleak and forlorn. That pompous Lanaris fool was right in one thing, Remis thought, I need friends, or nothing will thrive. But I’ll pick them myself, no matter how unlikely the choice may seem.
The ground about her flickered under the pale movement of residual day in the clear, but always starless, night-sky.
ii.
Sevthen Ulart-Tashnark made it home—or rather, made it back to his mother’s home—without much trouble. Sure, his head hurt, his memory was fuzzy and he had no real awareness of his surroundings, but none of that could be considered unusual. For many years, he’d been able to negotiate the short walk—or, more accurately, stagger—along the port district’s muddy streets without the help of conscious thought at all. It was like a groove he was in and the most that ever happened to him was a bruised elbow or two acquired from bumping into the sides of the rut.
His mother, ever trustful, had left the back door unlatched so there was no need for him to deal with the impossible task of locating keys and then manipulating them into the lock. Instead Tashnark pushed on the plain wooden paneling and let the door swing open by itself. He staggered into the kitchen, tripped over a chair and admonished himself rather loudly to keep quiet. Somehow he found his bedroom at the end of a dark corridor that should have defied navigation.
“Tashnark? Is that you?” came his mother’s voice, echoing dimly through the night like an overfamiliar memory.
“No,” he shouted grumpily, “it’s just a burglar!”
As he fell face down onto his bed, he allowed himself a moment of regret. There wasn’t time to define the nature of the regret, however, before his abused body and mind withdrew into darkness.
This had become a familiar pattern. Nearly every night, it seemed, Tashnark would drink enough cheap beer to deaden the most intense depression. Its effect would sit on him like a fog, blurring the edges of memory and dulling his fears. Sometimes it made him aggressive, as it had earlier tonight.
But it never kept the night and its darkness away. And the darkness scared him. Lately it had been offering up strange and vivid dreams—dreams that took him to another place, another time.…
And on this night, too, as he slept, reality shifted—and he became someone else.
He was Bellarroth and
