Chapter 3 - Widow Vabdas

The woman’s thumb and index squeezed around the lever arm of the metal probe. Thin white fingers blanched to near translucence, so that the blood flushed pinkly under the skin. She twisted harder, but the probe would not turn. The wrist of her other hand shifted in fractions, up, then down, then up again. The other tiny metal implement bowed slightly, like the strings of a player at each pluck. Both of the thin metal probes were made of scuffless steel, and shiny under the daylight from the sweat trickling down the woman’s palms.

“Hateful old contrivance,” the woman muttered under her breath. Her purple eyes, dark with eyeshadow but bright in their whites, glared at the door lock. A few strands of black hair had fallen from her bun. They hung loose and shiny over her ivory forehead. She pursed her lips and blew at them, both her hands occupied with the metal probes. She blew again, long and slow, raising the straight probe a fraction, twisting the lever arm with gradually increasing pressure.

A deep, enormous tone rolled across Aster-Szem over the rooftops, reverberating down the alley. The woman’s fingers slipped and went slack. The woman sighed. Another tone followed, then four in descending notes. A sad evening melody, the woman recognized. An elegy for the late Srik Tillich, playing from the chime tower of Aster’s grand Wind Temple. The woman left her two probes hanging in the lock. She wiped sweat from her forehead and plastered the loose black hairs back into place.

The woman looked to her right as the chimes rang on. This street of Aster lay blissfully empty. Midnoon had not yet carried forth the sunset, so that most of Aster’s citizens would not finish their daily toils for another span of the clock. The road dust stirred emptily in the hot summer air. It seemed almost hollow to the woman. There were a few pigeons cooing from the tiled eaves of a house a few places down. But the street itself lay bare to the red sun - no cats, no dogs. Not for over a decade, the muira woman reflected; not since The Dog Crusade.

“What are you doing.”

The high voice caught the muira woman at the door by surprise. She twisted to her left. She saw, approaching down the street, a group of four human women. They marched quickly towards her, and the woman could see outrage written on their faces. She rose and turned towards them. With a glance at the lock she said, “At present, quite little.”

“Very likely,” another of the women scoffed. The four marched right to the base of the small stoop where the woman stood. She could see that they must be stackworkers, farmers at the Aster siltstack. They had grimy wool shirts and coarse pants, covered in the greenish dust of silt pollen.

“Someone fetch the vigil,” another of the women bellowed into her hands, her voice echoing in the empty street. “There’s a whiteskin housebreaker here!”

“Technically accurate,” said the muira woman. She folded her arms over her black dress. “Not particularly courteous.”

“Oh isn’t she clever.” One of the stackworker women spread pollen across her cheeks with a sleeve, dirtying an otherwise pretty face. “Clever won’t impress the vigil though.”

“Listen mells, you may go along.”

“Not for all the gold in the cylinder.”

“I’m employed. This is my career, you understand.”

“As if that justifies her.”

The muira woman rolled her purple eyes. “Stay then. The owner will return shortly.”

She wiped her sweaty hands upon her dress and knelt to the door. But the young woman with the pretty face raised another cry. “Someone, hurry and get the vigil.” The woman mounted the two stone stairs of the stoop and grabbed the muira woman’s short sleeve. The woman tried to tug away, but another of the ladies marched up and grabbed her wrist, while the other two took up the call of alarm.

Their calls found the ears of the quiet residents of the houses. The grandfathers and grandmothers of daily laborers, and their children, all began to emerge from the homes. They soon apprehended the situation, at least as it was presented by the four workers from the siltstack. A crowd gathered. The muira woman struggled meanwhile against the two who held her. She jerked her arms and scratched their hands. She soon found others joining in to restrain, and realized resistance only brought her more discomfort. With a kind of resignation she situated herself over her bag and the lock of the door while they held her, so as to try and prevent anyone from stealing her picks and lockbreaking tools at least.

Very shortly a member of the city vigil did arrive. The muira woman heard his voice at the back of the crowd. “Spread out. Break apart. Vigil coming in; fear not and grieve not. She saw the burgundy colors of Teiron part the gathered people.

The vigil soldier was a human man, too young for a full beard but with a strong jawline. He had freckles under both blue eyes. He stepped up to look down on the muira woman. He waved the stackworkers and other pedestrians back with his truncheon before tucking it under a shoulder. “Your name, mell?” he asked.

“Irenna Vabdas,” said the muira woman dryly.

“Why are you breaking into a good Aster home, Irenna Vabdas?”

Irenna glanced behind, at her tools still stuck in the door. “I am a professional.”

“Sure.”

”…Usually.”

“First time we’ve ever seen her,” said the pretty young woman from the siltstack. The crowd murmured.

The vigil soldier eyed Irenna once up and down. Irenna folded her arms and said, “The owner of this home hired me because he lost his key.”

This produced a few jeers, but the vigil soldier quieted them with a hand. He smiled with his mouth and asked, “Where is this owner?”

“At a wine shop, retracing his steps.”

“Not at home in other words.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. Perhaps he likes his wine more than his spouse.”

“And where’s this spouse?”

“You should ask the owner, setter.” Irenna glanced at the door. “I’d like to get this open before he returns.”

The member of the Aster-Szem vigil caught Irenna by the wrist as she turned. Yanking her back around he held her up by the arm. “You will not,” said the soldier.

Irenna’s first instinct was to try and tug away. She held her reaction in check, though her eyes widened. She said, “I’m not a thief, setter of the vigil.”

“Stars take my oath that she is,” someone from the crowd shouted.

“Enough,” the soldier said over his shoulder. Still holding Irenna with one hand, with the other he reached down and grabbed the ring purse that hung on her hip. “Spoils?”

“Payment,” said Irenna. She tried to pull her hip back from the soldier’s hand, but he caught the lip of her ring purse in a knuckle and pulled it open. Several rings, copper and silver, spilled out from the top. They clinked as they tumbled down the steps into the throng.

“Those are evidence,” said the soldier over his shoulder. He pulled Irenna’s arm higher, forcing her upright.

“Please,” Irenna gasped. “I swear on all my household gods, I’m a professional lockbreaker.”

“Where are your registration papers?”

“They’re at my house. Listen setter, if you wait until the owner-”

The soldier cut her off by asking, “Are you a waxhead?” Before she could answer he reached up to her face, grabbed her chin with his thumb, and with a finger pulled down her eyelid. Her white shone, not bloodshot, but fearful.

Irenna jerked her head back. Strands of shiny black hair came loose around her ears. “Stop,” she said, voice high and breathy.

The soldier relaxed a little but held her by the wrist. “Clear off everyone else,” he said behind him. “Fear not, grieve not. This one’s for the guardhouse.”

“Do you need help, vigil?” asked one of the stackworkers.

“Clear off I said.” There were disappointed faces, but the crowd began to split.

Irenna fought as the soldier began to drag her from the steps. Her tools were still by the door, for one thing. For another, she had no wish to go to the Aster guardhouse, where a muira citizen might lie for a very long time on only an accusation. For a third, she was not entirely sure that the soldier meant to take her to the guardhouse. Perhaps he did, but the man had an abusive face that Irenna did not like the look of. She ground her heels. She tugged at her wrist. She let out a wordless yell. Nothing helped. The guard pulled her down onto the roadside.

Irenna was spared whatever destination the soldier of the city vigil intended. At that moment the door of the house burst open. A curly haired human man, with thick sideburns and the shoulder-cape of a city tocsin caller, stepped onto the landing. He was saying, “-remembered the cellar key under the back-” when the sight before him cut him short.

“You are?” asked the vigil soldier.

“Me?” the man replied, stunned. “I mean, my name is…”

In short order the man explained that he was the owner of the house; that he had indeed lost the key to his front door; that he had contacted Irenna Vabdas, legal and professional lockbreaker, to help him get back inside before his spouse returned; that he had begun the task of retracing his steps, returned halfway back to the winehouse on The Boulevard of the Albuma, and suddenly recalled that there was a spare key to the cellar entrance behind the house, under the stone bust of General Hillas beside the cellar door.

They went through several repetitions of this story from both Irenna’s and the homeowner’s points of view. At length, however, the vigil soldier accepted the account. He released Irenna’s wrist, not without a look of guilt. He said, “Be sure to bring your permits next time, mell Vabdas. I would surely not have mistaken you for a thief had you kept them on your person.”

“Surely,” said Irenna in a cold voice. She flexed the fingers of her left hand, making sure to display the small bruising now spreading on her pale muira skin.

“Mmm.”

The soldier began to quickly step away when Irenna added, “Excuse me, setter?” He turned back. “I don’t believe you gave me your name. Should I wish to recommend you for your fair conduct.”

”…Certainly.” The man paused, then said, “Vigil Opos of Aster, serving you.”

The soldier departed. The other crowd had scattered long before, as soon as they recognized the owner. “That’s a fake name I’d wager,” said the owner. His face was flushed with heat.

“Undoubtedly.” Irenna sighed and gathered her tools.

“Mell Vabdas, I’m so sorry for all this trouble.”

“My fault. Should have remembered my license in Aster.”

“Your hands are shaking.”

“It will pass.” Irenna took a deep breath. Then she drew the last of her probes from the door lock with two steady hands.

The home owner said, “Do you want a cup of tea, mell? Or to sit?”

“Thank you, setter. No. Today has been enough, I’m going home to my son.”

---

Dusk’s retreating slant tossed a long rectangle of apple-colored light across the boards of Irenna Vabdas’s home as she pushed the heavy pine door open. “Suly, my dear boy, it does not look as if you’ve spread the ginger. I asked-”

Irenna choked her words as a shape - too large for her son - detached itself from a wall of the dark living space. Irenna dropped the key she had been setting on the table beside the door. The key dropped with a tinkle to the floor as she muffled a cry. “Sky’s spots Hearn,” she said, tapping a fist against the inner wall.

The shape stepped into the rectangle of door light, revealing the thinly muscled, plainclothed, clean-shaven person of the same name. Hearn of Teiron reached and laid a hand on Irenna’s shoulder. “I didn’t mean to scare you, dear widow.”

“Silence and shadows do not make a relaxed ‘hello’.”

“Long day?”

“Several long days.”

Irenna reached up and kissed the corner of Hearn’s mouth - where the starling had left a scratch - as he picked her key up and set it on the table. She took his arm in her hands. She let Hearn lead her across the chamber to a shelf with a long, thin, tall box. Several tubes lay stacked on their side within, along with a canister of oil.

“Did you just get in?” Irenna asked.

“Two spans of the clock ago. But I saved the multicandles. I thought we could light them together, around your gods.”

“Light candles around my aunt and uncle, and my cousins? Why?”

“I heard it’s tradition at the rural hearths in Ahn; light the night’s candles beside the bones of ancestors.”

Irenna smiled. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

Hearn lifted the box and walked behind Irenna into a second chamber of the small city hearth. This one was furnished as a sitting room, with two upholstered armchairs and a padded bench, arranged around a rug that Irenna’s grandmother had woven. The rug depicted a mountain scene of The Mantes, with bristling evergreens rising on either side of a yellow-glowing township. An enormous half-moon stone basin built into the floor took up the other side of the chamber. Ashes filled its bowl. Around the brick lip were arranged half-a-dozen lumpy dolls of sackcloth, with faded painted faces, and hair made from the shaggy beards of elk.

The room was dark, but not entirely so. A lone circular window, covered over with a thin tint of soot that no amount of scrubbing could entirely wash away, let in grey dusk light.

“Where is Suly?” Irenna asked on seeing the vacant room. Hearn pointed to a near door, one of two on the left wall of the chamber. Irenna called, “Suly? Let your mother see your face.”

Two thumps sounded from behind the door, followed by heavy foot patter. There was a bang of wood hitting wood, then the door opened.

A muira boy stepped into the room. He was curiously equipped. Over his head he wore a flat kind of helmet, with a leather strap around his chin, and a candle burning in the basin at the top. In one hand he carried a windpipe, with his fingers stretched awkwardly over certain holes along its length in an effort to keep his place. The place he was keeping must evidently have been on the sheet of paper that was the focus of his attention. He carried it not in his other hand, but by way of a kind of personal harness-scaffold that was attached to his boyish, skinny torso. The harness went around his waist and shoulders, with a short pole of wood that extended out from his sternum. A little music-stand-like frame of wood was at the end of this pole; the piece of parchment he had been reading from was stuck to this stand by way of tree-gum.

“Suly,” his mother repeated.

The boy looked up from the paper. “I’m teaching a new song,” he said.

“Learning, Suly.”

“Oh.”

Hearn set the box of multicandles down by the hearth. Irenna strode up to her son, took him by the shoulders, and bent around his harness to kiss his forehead, just below the helmet. Then she leaned back and blessed his features with a smile mixing joy and sorrow. Her son had a body that had been in development for ten years, but which seemed to have outpaced his face, which was only that of a five- or six-year child. He had an innocent, slack mouth, and too-large eyes. He would have those features forever, even if he should live to be a hundred and forty.

“Set your music aside, Suly,” said his mother. “Come light candles to the gods with us.”

“I want to play the song I’m teaching.” Sully raised the windpipe to his lips. Glaring down at the sheet of parchment, he commenced a tune that - while halting - sounded with a certain soft melodiousness.

“Let him play,” said Hearn from the basin. “His ancestors may enjoy it.”

Irenna stepped over to Hearn. She sank to her knees beside one of the sackcloth dolls, while Hearn laid out the multicandle pipes in a row, just outside the lip of the stone basin.

“Any peace at the Agency?” Irenna asked.

Behind them Suly blew one pitchy, squealing note before quickly correcting his fingers. “Everyone’s breathless,” Hearn answered with a frown. “Every tourist with too many rings and too little sense is asking for a border agent.”

“You’re hot property, my dear.”

“Since the murder, they want more than someone to translate muiric. More than someone to tell them the best price for Teironian bullfish scrimshaw. A bodyguard’s what they’re after.”

“Anybody intrigue-worthy?” The multicandle in Irenna’s fingers cast soft yellow polka dots on the sooty hearthroom window as the long wick in its tube took flame under her quickstriker.

“Let’s put the Agency aside. I’m only guiding tourists.”

“Tourists who are the masters of guilds, the leaders of warriors.”

Hearn tilted Irenna’s chin toward him. “Let’s have the lockpick’s tale. What have you broken into today? What treasures have you found?”

Irenna set her multicandle on the stone lip of the ash basin. She did not answer at once, but instead took up one of the sack cloth dolls instead. The smallbones within clucked like a chicken in her fingers.

“Has something happened?” Hearn asked.

Irenna shook her head and smiled a little. She held up the bag. “Listening to my uncle Arpid.”

“Oh. Does he… have any stories?”

“Hearn.”

“Well! I don’t know how this ‘talking to the ancestors’ works.”

“Just talk. ‘Share both your joys and sorrows.’ The household gods will hear. Say what your coming days bring.”

Hearn pressed his palms onto his knees, pushed himself up, and walked over to the sill of the rounded window. Atop it was a slate, in which thirty square blocks in three columns of ten marked out the days of middle summer. Hearn and Irenna’s labors for each day filled out the blocks. Thirteen of them had been crossed over; Hearn crossed over a fourteenth. “My afternoons are free of toil for tomorrow and the day after at least.” Hearn erased some of the script in the next two boxes with the side of his hand. “I’ve been offered an assignment for at least the next two days. I won’t take it.”

“Why?” Irenna asked as she lit another candle.

Suly’s windpipe sang out its stuttering song as Hearn paused before answering. “Not worth the trouble it would bring me.”

“Political trouble?”

“Widow Vabdas, it’s not worth your picking.”

“My uncle here would say: a muira woman must never let a human tell her what the worth of a thing is. How can I agree with your opinion when I don’t know what it’s about?”

“I’m telling you this job is-”

Suly cut in with a loud, “Tainted bones!”

Hearn smiled, but Irenna shot her son a furious look. “Suly. Do not speak so.”

“Why?”

“Because it is a hearth law: ‘Speak no ill of the gods.’”

“Why?”

Irenna huffed, but Hearn cut in. “Listen to what your mother tells you, Suly. She speaks with your best interest at heart.”

“But I like those words.”

“Saying vulgar things is like making little cuts in your heart. It may recover, but too many will leave it scarred, and constant attacks will make it shriveled and black.”

Suly seemed to think about this for a moment. At length he said, “Okay.” He returned to his windpipe song from where he had left it, having once more kept his fingers’ place.

“You were going to tell me what worthless assignment you had turned down,” Irenna resumed.

Hearn dropped his chin to his chest. “I’ll not keep it locked from you, will I?”

“No.”

“The Barthan and Villgoranian embassies have jointly requested for a Border Agent to accompany a bountyman in Aster-Szem. Some fellow they’re bringing in from Ahn, doesn’t know the town.”

“For the assassination?”

“To find the scapegoat.” Hearn nodded. “Or whichever people plotted the whole thing.”

“It sounds noble to me.”

Hearn tapped the slate with the chalk. “It sounds like politics. Best stepped around, not in. What do you have tomorrow evening and the next?”

Irenna set her uncle’s bones back beside the hearth. She picked up a multicandle. “Hearn, come light one of these.”

Hearn did as requested. There was a worn-away line along the board of the windowsill; the previous keeper of this small city hearth had owned a housecat decades ago, before that species had been exterminated in the crusade, and the animal had left a smoothed track of bare wood amidst the flaking paint of the window. Hearn set their scheduling slate and chalk back in its place in this line of bare wood. Then he came over and knelt beside Irenna. He took one of the long multicandle tubes and began to thread a wick through its hollow center.

Irenna went on, “This murder unsettles me.”

“What?” Hearn tried to look surprised. “It’s no news to make us fear for ourselves. Nothing suggests that this is a warning to the muira of Aster-Szem, if that’s what you mean.”

“Not precisely.”

“Then what?”

Irenna looked to her son. He stood behind the long padded bench, with his fingers pressed white against the instrument, and his huge eyes furrowing over the parchment on his wearable music-stand. One of the yellow circles of light cast by a multicandle fell full upon his puffed, pinkly-tinted cheeks as he blew into the mouth of his pipe.

“Widow?” Hearn pressed.

“I think-” Irenna began slowly, while twining the pale fingers of her left hand through Hearn’s calloused ones, “I think it would be better for us if those who murdered Srik Tillich met justice. Swiftly. The city feels tense; an old house beam bucking and splinting under age, under pressure. And it’s as if the ground is trembling under that beam in the prelude to a quake.”

Hearn squeezed her hand. “Whatever has scared you-”

“I’m not scared.”

“-has scared you,” Hearn continued unperturbed, “wash it from your mind. This is our own mountaintown. We’re comfortable in Aster-Szem, in a way that couldn’t happen in any other settlement of either Ahn or the volon counties. One slain man, muira or human, won’t sunder the town’s goodwill.”

“It’s not for my sake or yours that I worry, but for the sake of the son who carries the Vabdas hearth name.” Irenna wrapped her other hand around the outside of Hearn’s, and pulled it to her lips. “Call it weakness in a mother’s heart. But I’ve seen a change in the eyes as I walk down the street. Not only since yesterday. I see a gradual coming-on of suspicion, three years coming-on.”

“Three years,” Hearn mused. “3378, 12th of Late Winter: the Bruna Treaty is not renewed.”

“Hearn, I’m afraid this peace - peace that we have lived in since the last war - will not endure for my son to live in it.”

Hearn glanced over his shoulder at the boy Suly. He looked awkward. “What would you have your border agent do?”

“Take the assignment. Accompany Ahn’s bountyman.”

“Widow Vabdas, it’s politics. It will do no good.”

“It will. People know you in Aster-Szem.”

“And besides that, they’re asking full day commitment to the job. Indefinitely, until this bountyman has expended my usefulness. From fullmorn to the-close, I’ll be out. We’ll not see each other more than a span of each-”

“Don’t retreat into schedules with me.”

Hearn could not stop a smile. “I cannot help it. Punctuality’s a vice.”

“Please, Hearn. It would be right.”

“Right to leave you and your son alone the whole day? Is that just, when you say that you’re afraid for him?”

“Right to show a respected human - former Teironian soldier - working with a respected muira bountyman.”

Hearn said, “We are small, you and I. We won’t change the minds of royalty or tyrants.”

Irenna shrugged. “If some laboring stackworker or city guard saw you, their minds might change. Small people must be satisfied with small success.”

Hearn groaned. Suly paused, stared at the pair, then went on playing. Hearn said, “Five spans a day, two days at least.”

“I have stitched a new tunic; in the box under the bedstead.” Irenna smiled. She picked up one of the lit multicandles and rose. “You’ll need a new shirt.”

Hearn rose as well. He set a hand on Irenna’s cheek and rubbed a thumb along her cheekbones. He left a grittier, paler streak against her skin as he did. “Sky’s spots,” he swore. Pulling his hand away and looking at his palms. “Chalk.”

Irenna laughed - a light sound, but not high of pitch - full and musical and joining to the faltering notes of her son’s song. She said, “Keep timekeeping - you’ll make yourself pale as a muira before long.”