The Client in Brown
The old woman made the letter disappear into the dun folds of her rough robe with a speed and economy of misdirection to make her the envy of every showman’s shill. Like an actor, too, she recognized his admiration, even though he would have said that his expression had not changed from the blank he affected while listening to his client’s words. For the first time since she strode to his corner, long gliding steps parting the market crowd as smoothly as if a wind before her blew them gently from her path, she smiled. Gold-toothed and savage as a pirate’s, her silent laugh erased all trace of the subservient ancient from the backwoods.
In a voice pitched to be unheard by anyone beyond their radius, she spoke to him in fluent and unaccented __________ known also as the Secret Tongue. “You make a good citizen for this shadow place, boy of (cap city). The hand that put you here with that small curse I do not recognize, but my sister did you a favor of sorts to put you here, though that might not seem so to you. Such a clever and subtle work would not have been some reflex spiteful move, but intention. She used bits of your essence in the ties that hold that spell, or I’d have repaid your courtesy and let you slip its bonds. But she is good that one, and I hate to admit, better than I am.”
She leaned closer, and he caught from the folds of her robe or the deep dry crevasses of her skin the sharp smell of cracked green _____seed. Looking into his eyes, she reached forward as if to give a tired grandmother’s caress to his cheek. And stabbed into the joint of ear and jaw with a cats claw blade thin as a thorn.
The instant ice and numb paralysis that stole the right side of his face staggered him like a like the glance of a loose boom. He stumbled.
A thin hand on his shoulder caught him, and pressed him to sit before he fell. The woman knelt along with him, still holding him in upright.
He tried to ask. Something. It did not matter that his mind was too muddled to form a thought because his mouth would not form a word, would not open or entirely close, and his leaden tongue seemed to fill the entire cavity.
The old woman whispered, a cupped hand’s worth of brief syllables. She settled back on her heels. When she spoke again, she might have been any concerned and aged customer. “Are you all right now?” she asked. “You northerners forget that heat here is not like other heat. You should be sure to drink in the afternoon when the winds are born in deserts and cross the islands in search of human blood to dry. So my old husband’s people would say. I say you should sit until the dizziness goes away. You should rest in the shade until you are steady and then go to your home and sleep. A little nap. A wineskin of water. You will be fine.”
Cayfall’s eyes were functioning no better than his mouth. They refused to focus on the near, and those things blurred into transparence, becoming shadows of distortion between himself and the too sharp objects in the distance. The old woman was so close he could hear her breathing, smell the seed scent, but she was invisible. In the Secret Tongue she said, “My unknown sister may be better with a curse than I am, but not by much. Not by much. I have eased some of her knots. And made another change or two. You will approve. Do not doubt it, you will approve.”
The air stirred where she had been. Cayfall tried to nod. To agree. To thank her for leaving. His head moved slightly, and that cheered him. In fact, he was beginning to feel fine. Light. Very clear. He spent some time on that thought, and concluded that he might, indeed be growing clear to the eye. He gazed down at his hand, browned from those long months sailing, and not soft, pale and groomed for having left the sea. He stared at the blood inside it flowing, amber brown.
The closing marked seemed unusually bright and at the same time, difficult to see. The contradiction amused him, and he found that thought so fascinating that he grew lost in all it’s ramifications. He was sitting on the side of his own bed when he realized that he was no longer in the dusty market. He had a great thirst, and thought that perhaps a little rest would be worthwhile. He had no plans for the evening. A little water, a little sleep. It seemed like an excellent idea.T
