Lost Era 06_ Catalyst of Sorrows - Margaret Wander Bonanno [27]
“Which you will acquire how, exactly?”
“You probably don’t want to know that, either.”
Aemetha sighed. “Very well. Let us assume Metrios does deliver the other half-shipment of roof tiles…”
“No need to wait for that,” Zetha assured her. “Blevas has agreed to start working on the roof as soon as the first shipment arrives. With luck, the roof will be finished before the winter rains.”
The roof in question was the roof of Aemetha’s ancestral villa, a great drafty shell of a building which was the only thing her family had left her before having the bad taste to back the wrong side in an old senatorial election and disappear in the small hours of one morning. That Aemetha had been allowed to keep the villa was indicative of how little she or it meant to the Powers That Were.
Aemetha kept to the old religions, and repaid the gods for their beneficence to an old woman without offspring by using her ancestral home as a not quite licit hostel for Ki Baratan’s street urchins. Barter, outright theft, and the odd anonymous donation by the occasional aristocrat with a conscience kept the walls standing and, usually, the children fed. The roof had been another matter, until now.
Aemetha’s eyes were moist, from more than just the gift of kalia jellies. “You do more than you should for me, child!” she said now.
“It’s not for you, it’s for all of us,” Zetha said practically, repacking the jellies to keep them moist. Sentimentality made her nervous. “I have to deliver these.”
“Take something with you,” Aemetha fussed. “I set aside a tunic and some trousers for you. They may be a little large, but they’re almost new…”
She pulled herself to her feet and went searching.
“Here you are. The trousers are decidedly too wide, but that can be amended. And they’ll need washing.”
Zetha examined the tunic thoughtfully, making no mention of a split seam she could mend when the old woman wasn’t looking, and held the trousers up to her waist.
“They’d fit two of you!” the old woman clucked.
“I’ll tie them with the sash you gave me,” Zetha said. “They’re fine. Thank you, Godmother.”
“Grateful even for that trash!” Aemetha sniffed, her nose running more from emotion than the morning’s chill. “You’re too grateful, child. That’s your problem.”
“Grateful to be alive, and no longer beholden to a House, thanks to you,” Zetha said, bundling the clothing under one arm and leaning down to kiss the old one’s furrowed brow. “I have to go now.”
“Be careful!” Aemetha whispered.
“Always,” Zetha said, slipping through the door curtain and away with no more motion than a breeze.
Life is a game, she thought, threading her way through back alleys, avoiding the sunlight (mindful of the Scroungers’ First Law: Never run when you’ve stolen something), a game whose stakes are nothing more than the game, which is life itself. She lived in shadow, blending herself with the crazed stone walls, slipping from light to shadow and back again.
There was so much to do. Stop at an unmarked door, slip a broken datachip under it. The person on the other side would have the matching piece; spliced together they said: You can trust me, and another transaction would be begun.
Or slip a calling card that said “The poet Krinas holds a recitation in the Square today. All are welcome.” It meant “The uhlan on the third watch at the North Gate is a friend.” A different card, “Music canceled on account of rain,” meant “They’ve posted extra guards. Avoid.”
Those who are born between worlds live in the between world. They are as comfortable in this neither/nor as in their own skins, and sometimes even more so. They learn to slip between the cracks of time and space, to be where they are not and not be where they are.
But those who live this way of necessity, who learn by doing, cannot always anticipate the wiles of those who live this way by choice.
Even as she watched, Zetha was being watched. Koval saw her shadow slipping between the