The Death of Nnanji: The Seventh Sword Book Four Read online

  His normal greeting when there were no outsiders present was a cheeky, “Go, Bear!” which was the local equivalent of “Hi, Dad.” This morning, clearly, he had come on business and was enjoying his own importance.

  Wallie had risen from his stool and must now draw his own sword to give the formal response before he could resume his meal. Then Vixini took up the fishing rod, except that it wasn’t a fishing rod. It was made of spliced canes, like a fishing rod, but the hook dangling at the thin end would have choked a whale.

  “We found this. This is how she got in, see?” Rising on tiptoe, Vixini reached up to a window aperture about twenty feet above the ground, and caught the sill with the hook. “It’s much stronger than you’d expect,” he said cheerfully, lifting himself one-handed, to show that he was, too.

  Of course most materials were stronger in tension than compression, but that was not the sort of thought that translated easily into the language of the People. Wallie was more impressed by the assassin’s ingenuity and motivation than his son’s muscles. “I admire her courage. When she reached the top floor, she must have had to haul herself up with her arms and walk up the wall between the spikes.”

  “Suppose so.” His stepson sat down uninvited and reached for the cheese basket with one hand and a slice of ham with the other.

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Hanging on the wall of your balcony, o’course.”

  Wallie regarded him with the joy and fond envy that parents bestow on dearly loved offspring. Yet Vixi was Jja’s son, not Shonsu’s. He had been a babe in arms when the late Wallie Smith of Earth became Shonsu, swordsman of the Goddess, so he must be sixteen now. It was a peculiarity of the People that they never counted their ages. They remembered and honored their birthdays, but not the years—and their 343-day year was an inaccurate count anyway, based on religion, not astronomy. The stars ignored it, just as the People did. You were as old as you looked and acted; seniority depended entirely on rank.

  The strangest thing about Vixini was that he had grown up to look so like Shonsu, which was undoubtedly another miracle from the demigod. He was already taller than at least ninety-nine percent of the People, dark-haired and brawny, and yet incredibly nimble for his size. Everyone just assumed that they were father and son, and that Vixini would become a swordsman of the seventh rank in due course. Wallie doubted that, because Vixini was so amiable and easygoing. He tried to model himself on the man he believed to be his father, but that man was Wallie Smith. Shonsu, the original Shonsu, had been a vicious psychopathic killer. Vixini had the necessary agility and certainly the strength, but it was very hard to see him clawing his way to the top of the swordsmen’s craft. He lacked the arrogance and ambition.

  Mouth-full mumble: “Dad… Can I ask a favor?”

  “Of course. That doesn’t mean I’ll grant it.”

  “Not for me.” Vixi swallowed with an effort. “For Addis. He’s terrified his dad’s going to insist he swear to the craft. He’s not cut out to be a swordsman. He’s got three feet.”

  That exaggeration was swordsman slang for a stumblebum. Addis had the normal number of feet. He might not be the superb natural athlete Vixini was, but Wallie had never thought of him as clumsy. It would be in character for Nnanji to insist that his eldest son swear to his father’s craft, for that was the People’s tradition. He might not care much whether the Tryst became a hereditary kingdom, but Thana, Addis’s mother, was the prototype social climber—Lady Macbeth on steroids.

  Until fifteen years ago, the two most prestigious crafts had been the swordsmen and the priesthood, but now, with the Tryst ruling half the World and accepting female recruits, all parents’ cherished dreams of their children becoming swordsmen. Since the Tryst could have its choice of any adolescent it wanted, its standards were high, but no swordsman examiner would reject a son of Nnanji if his father wanted him admitted.

  He must be fourteen now, Wallie decided. “Is he ready?”

  Chewing again, Vixi just grinned and nodded. Children ran around naked. At the first visible signs of puberty they were decently clad and inducted into a craft, and it didn’t matter how old they were in years. Initiation was irrevocable. Once a night-soil collector, always a night-soil collector.

  “What does he want to be?”

  “A sorcerer!” Vixi wrinkled his nose in disgust. To a true swordsman, anyone other than a swordsman was trash, but sorcerers were the lowest of the low. Although the Treaty of Casr had formally ended the age-old feud between the two crafts, neither side trusted the other a hair’s-breadth. Wallie could not imagine Nnanji tolerating his firstborn becoming a sorcerer.

  Although Vixini and Addis were very different types, they were also lifelong pals. In effect, Nnanji was emperor of the World and Shonsu vice-emperor. They were very different types, too, but the loneliness of power had thrown them and their families together. They had no peers. Anyone else they befriended always wanted something: if not a job, then favors, justice, or revenge. It was rare for both of them to be in town at the same time, so they acted as father substitutes for each other’s children. Those children had played together and grown up together. Vixini and Addis were bonded for life.

  “What does his mother say?” Nnanji could be as stubborn as a mountain. Only Thana might budge him when he had made up his mind about something.

  Vixini pouted. “She says he has to be a priest.”

  What Thana wanted, Thana usually got.

  “Why do you have to ask me for miracles at breakfast?”

  His stepson grinned, suddenly looking more like a heavyweight cheeky kid than a potential man-killer. “To give you the rest of the day to deliver.”

  “You faith is so touching I feel quite weepy.” Wallie glanced up at the sun. Nnanji had been at Quo last night. Never one to waste a moment, he was probably halfway to Casr already. He was quite capable of taking one glance at his adolescent son and blurting out that he must be sworn in by nightfall. Or he might just accept Thana’s suggestion without argument. Once he had made a decision, he would have no way to back down without loss of face, and face mattered to him much more than it did to Wallie. The most important thing now was to keep father and son apart for a couple of days, so Wallie would have time to play peacemaker.

  “Go and find Addis and tell him to… No, bring him to me, at the lodge. I’ll find a way to keep him out of sight for a while.”

  “Yes, my lord!” Vixi grabbed a couple of bread rolls and shot away, leaving the assassin’s pole hanging forgotten against the wall.

  Wallie regretfully gobbled the rest of his meal and summoned his bodyguard. Traditionally the swordsmen’s guild had been exclusively male, the only exceptions being the “water rat” swordsmen of the trading ships, of which Thana had been one. Almost the only thing on which she and Wallie agreed was that they disagreed with that policy. In a sense her thinking came from a different world, just as his did, because on the trading ships even the civilian sailors knew how to wield swords. Between them they had persuaded Nnanji, so the swordsmen’s craft was no longer segregated and a fair number of the younger swordsmen were female. The same word served for both sexes in the language of the People, although when Wallie thought in English, as he still did sometimes, he had to remember that a swordsman could be a woman. As he walked out the gates of his palace that morning two of the six at his back were. Their leader, Filurz of the Fourth, marching at his side, was male.

  The ancient city of Casr had never spread upstream farther than the temple, because the water there was too shallow for ships. When the original lodge building in the town, already in sad disrepair, had proved inadequate to house the Tryst, expansion beyond the temple had been the obvious move, so Wallie had not been surprised to discover that all that land had recently been acquired by Swordsman Katanji, Nnanji’s plutocratic brother. The Tryst had been forced to pay a premium price for it, but had done so without argument because Katanji was also its treasurer. Nnanji, blissfully unaware of economics
and caring less, had failed to notice any conflict of interest.

  Thana ran Katanji a close second in avarice, though, and the next block of land beyond the new lodge grounds had turned out to be in her name, and there she had built the liege’s palace, a cross between Versailles and the Taj Mahal. Nnanji never cared where he slept; he was happiest on campaign, in a tent or under a hedge. Wallie himself had built another palace beyond that, a much more modest one, but still a palace. He needed too many servants and guards to get by with a more modest home… had to keep up his status as vice-emperor… entertained a lot…. All true, but he still felt guilty, knowing that the Tryst’s enormous wealth came from taxes paid mainly by the poor of the World, as taxes always were in agricultural societies.

  And what of all the great reforms he had planned to make? Some had worked, yes. Slaves’ babies were born free now, no longer disfigured at birth with slave mark tattoos. Children were not pressured quite so hard into following their fathers’ trades. Vacancies among city elders must be filled by election, although the results often verged on chaos. Trial by jury was being brought in. Other good ideas had failed miserably. Medicine, like every other craft, was frozen by hundreds of sutras handed down from the Goddess a thousand years ago. No sutra mentioned bacteria or asepsis. As for sewage… Almost every city in the World stood on the banks of the River. Where else could you run sewers? The basic creed of the world religion was, The River is the Goddess and the Goddess is the River. No sewers.

  He had done some good, though, and the People mostly approved when Nnanji or other Sevenths arrived in their town with the Tryst’s impeccably honest legions. Swordsmen, being both police and military, had far too often been bullies and crooks as well. Honest kings or elders tyrannized by corrupt swordsmen had welcomed the rescue, and honest garrisons were glad to be relieved of the duty of upholding bad laws. As the Tryst’s borders kept expanding, the only serious resistance had come from tyrants and corrupt garrisons in combination, and there the citizens themselves often provided the necessary support.

  Crowds parted for the liege, people bowing, saluting, smiling: naked children, scantily clad adolescents, decorous adults, all the way to the ancients robed from head to toe. The colors were common to all crafts, for all had exactly seven ranks: white, yellow, brown, orange, red, green, blue.

  Everywhere there were swordsmen. For sixths and sevenths—greens and blues—Shonsu had to stop and accept formal salutes. Salutes from lesser folk he just acknowledged by thumping his chest with his fist.

  So he came at last to the lodge, being saluted as he marched through the high gate. The din in the great central quadrangle was deafening. On the well-trampled grass under the shade trees at least two hundred swordsmen were fencing, leaping around, bellowing instruction, banging steel. Their ponytails flapped like banners, they streamed sweat, and they made him feel old. He was old, for a swordsman. Whenever Shonsu had been born, he had seemed about in his mid-twenties when he died and the Goddess gave his body and skills to Wallie Smith. Physically he must be around forty now, and mentally even older. Once he had been the greatest swordsman in the World, but Nnanji had overtaken him, and he knew there were younger men who could beat him now. So far none had been brash enough to do so.

  Most days he liked to linger for a while to watch the training, mentally noting newcomers moving up the promotion ladder. Today he had too much on his mind. He carried on around the perimeter to the grandiose edifice that he thought of as the Executive Block. Nnanji called it the Tivanixi Building. To the rank and file it was the Lions’ Den. It flaunted pillars, gargoyles, balconies, and turrets in the currently fashionable wedding-cake style. Marble and gilt shone everywhere, for this was a state building, expected to last for centuries.

  Just inside the doorway, stood a skinny First, who moved forward to intercept without looking nearly as awed as he should at having to accost the great Lord Shonsu. He was a page on the liege’s staff, named… named…

  “My lord?”

  “Yes, Novice—” Got it! “—Gwiddle?”

  Gwiddle glowed with pleasure at being remembered. “Master Horkoda sent me to wa— to inform you, my lord, that Lady Thana and Chancellor Katanji are both waiting to see you.”

  “Great Goddess! They’re not together, I hope?”

  “No, my lord. Master Horkoda is attending her ladyship in your office.”

  Wallie muttered thanks and turned to the much larger lad hovering in the background. It was Vixini, with a very smug expression on his not-so-innocent young face.

  “Where is he?” Wallie demanded.

  “In the kitchen, my lord.”

  “Good man. Keep him there until I send for you. Um, wait…”

  Vixi reversed his turn. “My lord?”

  Wallie had been thinking about the killer in the night. Had he not wakened in time, he would have died. What would have happened then to Jja and the children? Jja was a highly intelligent and competent woman, but this was still a male-dominated world, and it had no pensions or entitlements. Nnanji might support her, if he thought of it, but chances were that the load would fall on this yellow-kilted kid with the sword on his back. A Second was not paid a living wage and had almost no legal standing, whereas a Third in any craft was an adult citizen, regardless of age.

  “I am calling an assembly for Sailors’ Day. I am going to put you up for promotion. You are still fifteen sutras short of the requirement for third rank.”

  Vixini stiffened in astonishment. “But, mentor—“

  “I won’t have time to coach you myself, I’m afraid. You have my permission to get help from other swordsmen.” He turned to Filurz. “Adept, will you see my protégé is fluent in the first 314 sutras by Sailors’ Day?”

  Filurz looked skeptical but saluted, fist on heart. “My pleasure, my lord.”

  Vixini looked aghast at the prospect. “But…”

  “That’s an order, protégé.”

  “Mentor!” Vixini thumped his chest.

  Chuckling to himself, Wallie headed for the guardroom, which offered a private route into his office, bypassing the antechamber where Katanji would be waiting.

  “Keep them all here for now,” he told Filurz, meaning that he might have to leave the lodge again very shortly. Since he did not need guarding otherwise, Wallie’s escort could often spend their days training for their next promotion, which made theirs a very coveted posting.

  He crossed the guardroom and stepped through the door into his office. Horkoda of the Fifth looked up with obvious relief, but did not stand up. Horkoda had been a rising star until he was pushed overboard during a fight on a ship. Although he had managed to catch hold of the rail and escape total emersion, by the time he had hauled himself completely out of the water, the piranha had taken all of his left foot and the toes of his right. He spent his days now in a wheelchair—designed by Lord Shonsu, of course—and now much copied in the World.

  As Wallie’s chief of staff, Horkoda ran the office and kept Wallie sane. Whether Horkoda himself was totally sane was open to question. He had reacted to his personal tragedy by rationalizing that he had been chosen by the Goddess to serve his liege in this way. He had turned into a workaholic, capable of working all night or forgetting to eat.

  The office itself was roomy but simple. It was furnished with a table and stools, not chairs, because most visitors wore swords on their backs. A single chest under the window provided adequate filing space, for the World was still very largely illiterate, and the window itself offered a fine view of the riverbank and the mountains of the RegiVul range in the distance.

  Lady Thana rose to greet the deputy liege.

  Chapter 3

  Thana was always a problem. In the early days of the Tryst she had tried sending for Shonsu when she had something to discuss. As a Seventh, he had declined to answer her summons, but that meant that she would not answer his either, so they had reached a tacit understanding that whoever wanted a meeting went to call on the other. In fifteen yea
rs Nnanji had never noticed any friction between his wife and his oath brother. She was still a strikingly beautiful woman, if no longer the svelte young goddess whom Nnanji had wooed and won fifteen years ago. Childbearing had thickened her, and in a few years she might be as bulgy as a feather mattress, like her mother, Brota. Nevertheless, Lady Thana was empress of the World, at least in her own eyes, and possessor of unbounded wealth. Nnanji was as honest as an angel; his wife and brother made up for it.

  She gestured to make the salute to a superior. “I am Thana, swordsman of the third rank…”

  Wallie drew his sword to give the response. Then, “I am glad to see Master Horkoda has been plying you with wine and pastries. I deeply regret keeping you waiting, my lady. I had a disturbed night, and—”

  “So I hear. I congratulate you on a very narrow escape.”

  Just for a moment Wallie wondered if Thana might have sent the mysterious assassin after him, but saw at once that the idea was absurd. Their feud did not run as deep as that. In fact they needed each other, for they were both vital cogs in Nnanji’s empire-building machine.

  Wallie sat down on the nearest stool. Horkoda reached for his wheels, an offer to leave the two of them alone. Wallie gestured for him to stay.

  “So what can I do for you today, my lady?”

  “I received your message, of course, that my husband will return. I thought we might drive out together to meet him. I brought my carriage.”

  They had done that before, so it was not an unreasonable request. Indeed, when she did not invite him along, it was because she had been up to something and wanted to be sure she spoke to Nnanji before Wallie did. He was not aware of anything underhand overhanging at the moment, and Horkoda wasn’t sending him signals to warn of something he ought to know and didn’t. But Katanji was out in the waiting room, which certainly was unusual. Curious!

  And why come in person instead of sending a servant with the invitation?