Tai-sharm, a fish does not forget,
not a wrong and not a debt.
I am very old and very wise,
and I saw this palace rise.
You are ’prisoned, as was I—
call, and I will heed your cry.
“Well, in that case,” Tai-sharm said, raising her voice so the fish could hear her, “I’d be most grateful if you could help me escape this place. I must go home, fish, please.”
But the ugly fish called back to her, “It is not yet time.” And then it was gone, down into the deeps of the little pool, leaving Tai-sharm to wander sadly back to the palace with a silly song wandering in her head. But there, at least she’d seen a fish, whatever may come of it. And that night Tai-sharm slept as sweetly on the floor of her grand and smothering bedchamber as though she were once again warm against her mother’s snoring rishu.
Yes, of course she went back to the pool—not the next day, nor the next, not for a week or even ten days. Why be disappointed any sooner than you have to be? But when she chanced to notice a potboy from the King’s kitchens trotting down toward the targary maze with a fishing-line in his grubby hands, she followed him without even thinking yes or no. And well that she did, for she found the ugly Singing Fish already on his hook and out of the water, flapping and gasping as the potboy yanked it triumphantly high over his head. Tai-sharm was on that boy like a snowhawk on a starik, sending him back to the palace much faster than he came, ears boxed, fishing-line wrapped around his neck and his rump smoking behind him. She had the hook out of the Singing Fish’s mouth and it safe back in the pool before the potboy’s yowling had died away.
“Well,” she said, and not quite as shy this time, “that’s twice I’ve done you a service, sir. Do you think you could help me now, as you said you might?”
But no, that old thing was off without so much as a thank-you, singing these words:
Tai-sharm, a fish does not forget,
not a wrong and not a debt.
Many’s the king sought my advice,
and I told them once what I tell you twice,
bide your time and wish your wish—
be as patient as a fish.
Tai-sharm did not go back to the pool again.
And the King himself, all this while? Tai-sharm most often went all the day without seeing him, busy and solitary as he was; but she had her breakfast with him each morning before dawn (for the King was as early a riser as old Sharm herself), and she dined with him most nights, unless he was occupied with ministers or foreign ambassadors—he did not dance or hunt—or alone on the roof of the palace, watching the stars. That was his great pleasure, and though he often invited Tai-sharm to share it with him, she refused each time, though she could not have said why, for she also loved the night sky and she did like the King. You will remember that she had small experience of men, and of those never a one had treated her as thoughtfully as he. She was always polite to him, and respectful, and she enjoyed trying out her new manners and courtesies on him, but she kept back her true kindness and she could not say why. The King knew, and she knew he knew, and there that was.
Well, and so. When she had been at the court for a bit more than half a year—and yes, much of that time dragged on her like chains, but not all of it, not all—the King asked her one day, “Tai-sharm, how is it with you, then? Is it so terrible for you—this court life, this old man—or does it begin to feel even a bit like home?”
“Never like home,” said Tai-sharm, honest as ever. “Not ever.” She touched the King’s arm very lightly. “But not terrible either, not really.”
“Ah,” said the King, and nothing after that. This was late of a spring afternoon, and he’d come upon her walking, not in the grand flower gardens where the Chief Minister brings other kings’ ministers to stroll and murmur, but in the kitchen garden near the royal stables. The ardeet melons, the little early jashimus, and the red zizo squashes, they were already three times as big and fragrant as any vegetables Tai-sharm had ever seen back home. Hand-polished, they looked; not a speck of dust on any of them. She said at last, “It would be nice if you were younger, and not a king.”
The King laughed that sudden bitter bark of his. “If that were so, you wouldn’t glance at me twice. Nor would you have to, being a free woman in the muddy streets of your village, and not a captive promenading my gardens.” He took hold of her arm now, tucked it firmly through his own as they moved on. There was a slight limp he has: you’d likely never have noticed it, but Tai-sharm could feel the tiny tug with each step. He was not wearing his crown.
“Look at this, taste this,” he said to her, lifting a leaf to point out an almost-ripe dolmiri, or pushing a handful of sweet climbing ice-berries against her lips. Almost, he might be a common high-country farmer like herself, except that none of her folk would ever show off their tired, sun-wizened crops in that way. Now he stopped again, turned swiftly to take her by the shoulders. His face was like old stone, the same as always, and his hands the same, but his eyes… oh, Choushi-wai tells you that if eyes could tremble, those would be the ones.
“Tai-sharm, Tai-sharm,” he said, “why delay longer? You’ll not change, neither will I, and neither will the snare that has us both by the leg. What help or harm is there if we wed now that will be any different in six months’ time? Let us be done with what must be done—today, even.” And he tightened his hands on her, not knowing.
Tai-sharm never flinched, never even felt the hurt. She shook her head over and over without taking her eyes from him, until the King cried out, “Why not, you stubborn peasant, why not? What can you be waiting for?” He let go of her shoulders so suddenly that she stumbled forward, and he walked away fast, stumbling himself once on a ridgy row of the jashimus. He did not look back. Kings never do.
Yes, yes, any of us would surely recognize that a king was in love with us, who here doubts it? But for Tai-sharm love was a stranger place even than Baraquil, and besides she had other matters on her mind. Because she was indeed waiting—the King was quite right about that much. She was waiting for Sharm.
Never think that because old Sharm was an unlettered countrywoman, she was the sort to let her only child be stolen and nothing done about it. A bit short of teeth she may have been; short of wit and resource, never. Once having tracked the Chief Minister’s horses beyond the village, she nodded grimly to herself and returned home to pack a wallet with some dried meat and ask a neighbor to see to her field and her rishu for a few days. Then she set forth on foot for the town of Fulicha.
No, Choushi-wai said this was all long before the mountains fell. There’s no Fulicha at all now, nor has there been a Fulicha for years beyond our counting. But then there was, and it was as sleepy-seeming a place as anyone ever saw, and not a law-abiding soul to be found from one end to the other, if you searched for days. Not bandits, as in Cheth na’Deka—smugglers they were, most of them, moving this and that back and forth across here and there without paying a solitary coin in fees or taxes. And there were falsemoneyers, certainly, and no lack of cutpurses, and it might be the odd high-toby or two, if you insist. The headman himself in those days was a highly respected poisonmonger; and the best inn by far was run by a retired fireraiser. A remarkable place altogether, Fulicha.
But what old Sharm was looking for was a thief.
Not just any thief either, but one so well-regarded in his trade as to be called by no name but “the Thief,” as though there were never another. Sharm knew only that he lived in Fulicha, when he lived anywhere; but she was as patient as her life could make her, and a good asker of questions, and by dawn on her fifth day out, she was squatting by the door of a hut no larger than her own, waiting silently for it to open in its good time.
By and by came a dark, slight man to stand on the stone threshold, yawning in the sunlight. He had bright, bright eyes, silver-gray in color, and the prettiest hands old Sharm had ever seen on a man. Almost too long for his slender wrists they looked, and graceful
as clouds as he opened and closed them.
Listen now to Sharm’s bones crackling like a forest fire as she rose stiffly to her feet and asked straight out, “Are you the Thief?” The dark man never turned his head.
“In the words of that immortal poet, Dhaj’mul,” he asked the sunrise, “who wants to know?”
“I’m Sharm,” said she, “and a king has stolen my daughter away, and I need you to get her back for me.” The Thief showed no surprise, but now Sharm could feel the southwest corner of his left eye taking her in.
“And if I do this, you will naturally give me any amount of money, and your girl’s hand into the bargain?” He had a soft voice, with a pleasing lowland accent in it. She cackled at the notion, and her dry old laughter makes the Thief look straight at her, smiling just a bit himself. Sharm says, “Boy, one look at me and you knew I’d nothing but starving fleas to offer you, and yet you haven’t slammed your door in my face. Something I’ve said pleases you—what can it be, do you suppose?” She approached the Thief, grinning her shameless stumpy grin, her head canted so to one side.
“Ah,” says the Thief, “I was just thinking—I don’t believe anyone has ever hired me to steal from a king before.”
“Nay, I’m not hiring you,” Sharm protested quickly. “I’m asking you. It’s not the same thing.”
“No? A pity.” The Thief was studying her entirely now, and his eyes were so quick and friendly and amused that Sharm realized she could not read them the least bit. She said, “But there’s more to steal in a palace than just my daughter, surely. And she is very pretty, and well brought-up, too.”
The Thief regarded her a few moments longer, saying nothing. Then, quick as a fly goes down a frog, he popped back into his house, returning just as swiftly with a platter of black bread and spiced cheese for them to share. They sat companionably on the Thief’s doorstep, feeling the sun warming as it climbed, watching the sly folk who’ve been out all night doing the gods know what come sidling home. And presently, the Thief asked old Sharm, “Which king is this, by the way?”
“Now how should I be bothered remembering such things as a king’s name?” she answered. “The one who rules in Baraquil it is, whatever he calls himself.” She recited everything for him—the Chief Minister’s visit, the tale of the King’s wish for an intelligent bride, Tai-sharm’s tearful flight from the kitchen, and lastly her vanishment out of the barn in the night. The Thief listened and nodded and munched his bread and cheese silently until Sharm was done.
“So,” he said then. “It won’t be easy; it may well cost me my head, and you have nothing to pay me with. Have I left anything out?”
“Not a thing,” Sharm answered him mournfully. “Except about her being pretty. You wouldn’t have a little ale to go with this?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” said the Thief. “I don’t usually steal people, you know. It’s mostly things—money, jewels, horses, secret papers—I even stole a whole treasure ship once, right out of the harbor at Leishai. Now if your girl had been robbed of something valuable, something rare, I could probably get that back for her.”
“Her freedom?” old Sharm suggests.
The Thief sighed. He rose and looked down at her gray head, his thumbs hooked into his belt. Choushi-wai thinks that his eyes were probably a little more reflective, his face maybe a bit more stern. But maybe not.
Said he finally, “You wicked, artful woman. You gamble that I was as well brought-up as your miserable daughter, and leave me precious little choice in the matter. Oh, I tell you, old woman, that child had better be at least as pretty as you.” And he ruffled Sharm’s matted hair and stalked back into his house. Sharm slapped her hands together once, grinned at a couple of passing graverobbers, and trotted after him.
Well, and so. It took the Thief some while to find Tai-sharm. Not that he didn’t know where she was, or how to get there, but it was not in him to journey anywhere by the straight road. By the time he’d amassed all the lore of Baraquil that he thought might come in useful, and by the time he had angled out of Fulicha one misty dawn and then circled and doubled and tripled on his tracks to shake off those envious followers who always sought to hunt where he hunted—well, what with one thing and another, it took some little while, that’s all. But then the Thief never was in a hurry.
Indeed, even when he loped into Baraquil aboard a shaggy, scabby mountain pony so small that children laughed to see his heels almost scraping the ground, he did no more than stable his beast at a respectable inn and spend the afternoon wandering aimlessly in the town. Oh, he might have drunk a bit of the local yaru in one or two of the lesser taprooms, and perhaps he bought a few gifts for relatives he said he had in Bitava, and he did ask a few questions in a flat Fors na’Shachim sort of voice. And when he was told of their King’s coming wedding, and of the young foreign princess said to be even now hidden away up at the palace—there, man! See it? That glitter just beyond the hill?—he only nodded, feigning interest out of courtesy. Folk lost interest in him soon enough. They always did.
Come twilight, he sauntered through the streets, nodding to this one and that one, plain as you please, and so went whistling up toward the first outwall, which ran along a bare ridge above the town slaughterhouse. And that evening, and each evening or earliest dawn thereafter for the next fortnight, he passed pleasantly in compassing the palace right round, meaning forest and park, meadow and mere and pastureland, stony hillock and sudden spluttering waterfall. Where the walls went, there went the Thief, never hurrying; and though there were sentinels everywhere sentinels should have been, he did not bother to be seen. And at the end of that time, he knew as much about the glittering palace beyond as anyone ever could have learned from the far side of those walls.
Which was the near side of nothing, and sourly well the Thief knew it. Close as the walls came to the palace in a few places, he’d not had more than one or two glimpses of the woman he was supposed to be stealing for her mother, and each time she was in company with a big gray man, and seemed perfectly content so. Never a chance for him to catch her attention, not once, nor any means of getting a message to her. There was plainly going to be nothing for it but finding a way into the palace.
Now you are to understand that the Thief was not a brave man. “When one does what I do,” he often told his odd ragbag of friends, “courage is your worst enemy. Wit is what’s needed if you’re going to steal—wit and more wit, and a decent pair of hands. As for daring”—and here he’d shrug crookedly—“daring is well enough, in its place. Which is afterward, when you’re telling the story.” Among those like old Sharm who took an interest in such things, his thefts were legendary, but it was his cowardice that he paraded like a great golden prize. Choushi-wai tells you this so that you will see how seriously annoyed he was to find himself scrambling over the palace wall.
He chose the hour before sunrise for his visit, and for a starting place a windwillow grove on a hillside above the palace. The climb itself was uneventful: no smallest harroo from a guard, no harm done to his best working clothes. The Thief dropped to the dew-soft ground like a falling leaf, rolled into the shelter of the trees—for there were guards prowling within the walls as well as without—and came up staring into the sweet idiot eyes of a great blue jalduk, of all things. Yes, we know them as greedy, garden-ravaging nuisances, but the King made pets of them and let them roam freely about the palace grounds. The Thief shooed this one way, and moved very cautiously down the hill.
That day he remained a little time, no more, never coming even within the shadow of the palace. He saw Tai-sharm not at all, neither did he learn anything to aid him in coming to her. One curiosity only: as he began the climb a second time, it seemed to him that he heard someone singing not far away. For a moment he thought it might be her, but the voice was not a woman’s voice—no, nor exactly a man’s either, come to that. The Thief hesitated, poised on the outwall, trying hard to grasp the words. But the singing ended as suddenly as it had begun, and th
e Thief finally shrugged and slipped back to safety, unseen, untaken, and no whit the wiser for his early rising. And if he drank too much that night, being vexed, yet he was back slipping over the wall before daybreak the very next foreday, ringing head or no. He was as patient in his way as old Sharm, that Thief.
Very well, this time he heard the singing while he was still climbing, clear and close as his own heartbeat, for all that he’s lighted down in a completely different place from yesterday’s dawn. Here the slope was almost bare of trees, far too exposed to any sharp eyes looking out from the palace. The Thief spied the targary hedge and made for it, caring nothing for its shape or nature. He was interested in nothing but a bit of swift shelter, and in the singing, so near now. But we know that song already:
Round and round and up and under—
who will hear my song, I wonder?
This way, that way, high and low—
who comes seeking what I know?
“My,” said the Thief very softly. He eased forward, not even considering calling out. The song went on:
Mazes are for lovers’ pleasure—
who comes seeking loves but treasure.
Who comes seeking loves not me—
who can this aging scoundrel be?
“Well,” said the Thief, “well,” and he strode indignantly forward into the depths of the ruined maze, head whipping left and right to spy out who was casting rhymes on him so mockingly. But there was naught to be seen—only more half-dead targary hedges, brittle as breadcrust. This way, that way he blundered, till he was as bewildered as a maze could wish, and still not a mortal body to house that annoying singing. And then there came the sun already, and the voices of the new shift of sentinels as they came bawling their all’s-wells along to each other. Nothing for the Thief to do but crawl toward the yelling, find the outwall once more, and be wearily gone from there with his shirt stuck all full of crumbly yellow targary leaves and his head full of jingly riddles. He slept all that day, and woke in darkness, swearing furiously to be bound for home by moonset. But no, by moonset he was over the King’s outwall once more in search of Sharm’s daughter. Because he was the Thief.