The Emperor of Everything

“Anyway,” Ruiz continued. “If we see a northbound barge, I’ll try to drop a tree across the first channel, which we must all scramble over before the barge reaches the landing. Then we must distribute ourselves along the bank, for reasons that will be obvious. I’ll jump on first, so I can help catch you. Then Nisa, followed by Dolmaero, then Flomel, then Molnekh. This is the technique you must use: Before the barge reaches you, you must run as fast as you can in the direction the barge is moving. When it reaches you, run a little faster and jump aboard. With any luck, none of us will break an ankle.”

“There’s that word again,” said Dolmaero — but he was smiling.

“I’m afraid so,” said Ruiz.

The Pharaohan men settled in the shadow of the gate to wait. Dolmaero and Molnekh made an effort to restore their stubbly heads to a decently shaven state, using the dagger Ruiz had given Dolmaero. They took turns scraping at each other’s scalp, the scraper working industriously, the scrapee making terrible faces as the not-very-sharp knife did its damage.

After a while, they reluctantly agreed to shave Flomel, and Ruiz thought to detect a certain pleasure in Molnekh’s homely face as he inflicted pain on the senior mage.

But finally all were restored to a socially acceptable condition, their scalp tattoos glowing in the sunlight.

Ruiz had decided to let his hair grow out, since his disguise as a Pharaohan snake oil peddler was thoroughly compromised — and already there was a fine black nap obscuring his fading tattoos.

A silence fell over the clearing. The only sound Ruiz could hear was the slight click and rattle that came from Molnekh and Flomel, who were doing dexterity exercises, passing small stones and twigs through their agile fingers. Ruiz found this an oddly touching exhibition of faith. It wasn’t terribly likely that the mages would ever practice their art again, even if they succeeded in escaping Sook — yet they remained devoted to their craft.

After a time even these sounds ceased, and the breeze went as light as a sigh. In this deeper silence, Ruiz heard the faint splash of dripping water.

He turned his head. It seemed to him that the sound originated from the north edge of the clearing, where a faint path led into the forest.

“Wait here,” he said to Nisa. “Call out if you hear or see anything — especially if a barge comes.”

He went into the forest, following the path. Less than fifty meters beyond the edge of the clearing, he came to a bower.

A fountain dripped a slow trickle of cool water over a bronze statue of some graceful browsing creature. It had a head much like an Old Earth deer, delicate and fey, but it had six long, powerful legs. The fountain fed a clear shallow pool surrounded by a low coping of pink granite. At the back of the pool the overflow slid glistening over a Watergate into a tiny stream that meandered off toward the canal.

Ruiz sat for a moment on the coping, trailing his fingers through the water. He shut his eyes. For the minute he sat there, his mind was blessedly empty.

He went back to the others and told them about the fountain. He turned to Nisa and said, “Would you like to bathe? You must be ready to abandon your bath instantly, should a barge come — even if it means boarding naked and dripping.”

Nisa smiled delightedly. “Oh yes. I’ll be ready to leap out, I promise… but it would be so good to be clean.”

“All right. The Noble Person will bathe first, then the rest can take a turn.”

She was undressing as the two of them walked down the path, handing her garments to him as fast as she could pull them off. By the time they reached the pool, she was running ahead, naked and lovely. She splashed into the pool and sank down into the cool water with a sigh of contentment.

“Oh, this is so wonderful,” she said. “I stink of the pens, of Ayam, of the potions the philterers filled me with before we boarded the boat.” She scooped up handfuls of silvery sand from the pool’s bottom and began to scrub vigorously.

Ruiz watched for a while, filling his eyes with her, which she didn’t seem to mind — in fact, her movements took on something of that flirtatious languor that he had found so compelling when she had bathed for the first time in the slave pen, the day they had become lovers. But now the circumstances were different, and while her body delighted his eyes as much as it had on that other day, he was too taut with anxiety to respond as he had then.

After a bit, he knelt by the outlet and scrubbed her clothes clean in the flow, as best he could, and then wrung them out and spread them on low-growing bushes to dry.

She smiled as though he had committed an entertaining eccentricity. “Thank you, Ruiz.”

He shrugged. “You’re welcome. Perhaps you’d do the same for me when I bathe.”