Martha Wells - Wheel of the Infinite

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“A fascinating, lush fantasy world...a very rich stand-alone novel...that marvelously blends character and

place.”

Denver Post

Every year, the Wheel of the Infinite must be painstakingly remade to ensure peace and harmony. And

every hundred years, the Wheel and the world become one. But now a black storm ravages the beautiful

mandala, and a woman with a shadowy past—an exile, murderer, and traitor—has been summoned

back to put the world right. For if Maskelle and the swordsman Rian cannot stop the Wheel’s

accelerating disintegration—then all that is, was, and will be... will end.

“Full of mysticism and unforgettable characters.... WHEEL OF THE INFINITE will only enhance

[Wells’s] reputation.”

Dallas Morning News

Praise for

MARTHA WELLS and WHEEL OF THE INFINITE

“WHEEL OF THE INFINITE is a book readers will remember and Wells is an author who leaves us

eager for more.”

Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Fast-paced, witty, and inventive . . . The vividly imagined Celestial Empire’s peril is made all the more

dramatic by the characters’ sarcastic, reasonable conversations, and by their very human responses to

inhuman dangers; there is real reading pleasure here.”

Publishers Weekly

“What Jack Vance is to science fiction, Martha Wells is rapidly becoming to fantasy . .. Wells creates a

fantasy city so well-crafted and rich, it becomes almost a living character. Better even than her previous

Nebula-nominated novel, The Death of the Necromancer, WHEEL OF THE INFINITE shines with

sparkling prose and interesting characters ...Wells is the brightest new light in the fantasy field in some

years, and WHEEL OF THE INFINITE is an excellent novel that aptly demonstrates her powerful

wattage.”

Portland Oregonian

“Superior fantasy work from one of the best... In a field teeming with clones, retreads, and solipsistic

doorstoppers, Wells dares—and gloriously succeeds—to be different. What more do you need?”

Kirkus Reviews (* Starred Review *)

“Wells never fails to intrigue, amuse, and fascinate ... I highly recommend anything by Martha

Wells—and I wish she wrote faster!”

Jennifer Roberson

Also by Martha Wells

The Death of the Necromancer

City of Bones

The Element of Fire

MARTHA WELLS

WHEEL OF THE INFINITE

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

Copyright notice

Contents

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

To Kimberley Rector, for being there

WHEEL OF THE INFINITE

Chapter 1

contents - next

Maskelle had been asking the Ancestors to stop the rain three days running now and, as usual, they

weren’t listening.

She stood on a little hill, surrounded by the heavy jungle that lined either side of the river of mud that

had once been the road, and watched the wagons crawl painfully by. They were wooden and brightly

painted, but the roofs hadn’t been tarred in too long and she knew it was hardly any drier inside them

than out. One of the oxen, straining to keep the wheels moving forward against the tide of mud, moaned

loudly. I sympathize, Maskelle thought.

Rastim, leader of the little troupe, stumbled up the hill toward her, his boots squelching and his clothes

a sodden mess. He paused a short distance from her and said, “O Great Protectress, why is it we’re

going to Duvalpore?”

Maskelle leaned on her staff. “Because I said so.”

“Oh.” Rastim contemplated the wagons thoughtfully, then looked down at his shirt where the

downpour was making the cheap dyes of the embroidery run, and sighed heavily.

Maskelle would have promised him better, if she made promises.

He glanced at her, brows lifted. “So, there’s no chance of just stopping and drowning here, say?”

“No, I think we’ll keep moving for now and drown a little further up the road.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Then can you come and take another look at Killia’s poppet? She thinks she’s

worse.”

Maskelle rolled her eyes to the Ancestors. Rastim was an Ariaden, and they never believed in giving

bad news without a lot of preamble, no matter how urgent it was. She started down the hill and plunged

back into the mud river.

Killia’s wagon was painted with geometric designs in bright red and yellow, now splattered with dirt

from the long journey. Maskelle caught the handhold at the back and stepped up onto the running board,

which barely cleared the soupy mud. She knocked on the shutter and it was immediately cranked

upward. Killia extended a hand to help her in, and Maskelle discovered she needed it; her light cotton

robes were so drenched that they added an unexpected amount to her weight. She sat on the bench just

inside the entrance so she could wring them out a bit and wait for her eyes to adjust to the dark interior.

Various wooden bowls caught the leaks from the roof, but there were still puddles on the lacquered

floor. Overhead, cooking pots banged into empty cage lamps and the bags that held costumes and

drapes for the scenery, bundled up to keep them out of the water. Killia’s daughter was huddled in one

of the two narrow bunks under a mound of damp blankets. Maskelle leaned over and burrowed in the

blankets until she touched warm skin. Too warm. She swore under her breath.

“Bad?” Killia asked. She was a tiny woman with the pale skin of the Ariaden and long dark hair

caught back by a number of clips and ribbons. Her face had the perfection of a porcelain doll’s and to

Maskelle she looked hardly more than a child herself, but her eyes were old.

Maskelle shook her head. The priesthood took oaths to the truth, but she had broken all her oaths

long ago and Killia had enough to worry about. “I’ll have to go down to the river for some more

ivibrae—the real river, not the one under the wagon.”

Killia smiled briefly at the feeble joke. “Ivibrae for lung rot?”

“Ivibrae is good for any fever, not just lung rot. The girl doesn’t have lung rot,” Maskelle told her, and

thought, Not yet, anyway.

Killia didn’t look reassured. Maskelle gathered her sodden robes and jumped down off the

wagonbed.

Rastim had been walking behind it and the spray of mud as she landed splattered both of them. They

eyed each other in mutual understanding; it had been one of those days. She said, “Camp in the Sare if

you can make it before dark. If you’re not there, I’ll look for you along the road.”

He swept her a theatrical bow. “Yes, O Great Protectress.”

“You’re welcome, Rastim,” Maskelle said, and splashed toward the heavy dark wall of the jungle.

Two hours later Maskelle wasn’t so sanguine herself. The thick clouds made the night fall faster under

the jungle canopy, and though the broad-leaf palms protected her from heavy rain, the going was still

laboriously slow. She reached the river while the jungle was still a deep green cave, dripping and quiet,

and stood on the bank to watch the swollen waters. The river was running high and drunk on its own

power, gray with mud and crested with foam. It was the source of wild magic, especially as bloated with

rain and powerful as it was now; it would be a channel for any dark influence that cared to use it.

It was none of her business. Maskelle shook her head. Keep telling yourself that. The ivibrae

proved annoyingly elusive; usually it grew at the very edge of the treeline above the river, but there were

no patches to be found in the usual spots, and she found herself having to slide dangerously down the

muddy bank. By the time she had picked a quantity and scrambled back up to more solid ground, the

green cavern had become a pitch-black hole.

She decided to make her way along the river until she was at the right point to strike out for the road

again. She stumbled along, barefoot because no pair of sandals would have lasted half a day in this mess,

her patched robes tied up to keep her from tripping, a bundle of stinking ivibrae crammed under her belt,

and covered with mud from feet to nose. Her braids kept falling into her eyes and some were fraying

apart, revealing how much grey was mixed in with the dark strands. Smiling, she wondered what the

court of Kushor-An at Duvalpore would have thought of her now. Not much, not much, she chuckled

to herself. Rastim was right: their luck was so bad it was beginning to be funny. Perhaps it was the

Ancestors, tired of her importunities at last, willing to drown the whole of the Great Road just to

inconvenience her poor self. Maskelle smiled at the thought. Add hubris to the list of crimes, if it

wasn’t there already.

The twilight had deepened into night now and the river was a menacing roar to her right; she saw a

flicker of light ahead along the bank. Staggering toward it, sodden and chilled, she hoped that it was a

river traders’ outpost and that there might be such a thing as a cup of warm tea before she had to walk

back through the jungle to the road. Or maybe a half-bottle of rice wine. I’m getting old, she thought

sourly. But that was nothing new. As she drew closer to the light she could hear raucous voices, a great

many raucous voices.

She was close enough now for the lamps lit along the balconies to show her the outline of the place. It

perched on the edge of the bank, wooden and ramshackle, half of it hanging out over the rushing river

and supported by heavy log pilings. Several small boats were tied up under it, and splintered wood, rope,

torn sail and the wreckage of fishtraps were caught among them and the pilings. The windows glowed

with light and many people moved about inside. It’s a traders’ outpost true enough, she thought, but it

doesn’t belong to river traders, not any longer. Raiders and river pirates must be using it for the night,

though they couldn’t have been here long—Imperial patrols would periodically sweep the riverbanks to

clear them out. She hadn’t seen any boat traffic on the river, but had put that down to the rain and rough

water. She let out her breath in resignation.

Raiders were as vicious as the moray, the small lizards that hunted the river in packs. Not only

drunken laughter came from the inhabitants of the outpost—there were shrieks, thumps, crashes, even

roars, like a menagerie. Common sense told her to head into the jungle so she could get back to make

the posset for Killia’s girl and retire to her own cold supper and damp bed. But this kind of thing had

been her business, in one way or another, for many long years, and old habits died hard. There was a

crash as a body came flying through the latticework of one of the windows over the dock. That decided

her; this she had to see.

She walked up the rickety steps to the nearest doorway and elbowed her way inside. The place was

full of river trash, as filthy and muddy as Maskelle herself, except river trash were usually filthy and

muddy by choice. Their clothes were tattered rags or pillaged finery, like the torn silk trousers and vest of

the one lying unconscious on the floor. They stunk of uncured leather, unwashed person, and rice liquor,

and the bad light reflected off sweat-slickened skin and wild dirty hair. They packed the rickety wooden

gallery that ran along this floor and even staggered around in drunken battle on the lower level, which was

awash in dirty water as the rising river encroached on it. Every one of them was yelling like the mad. The

resemblance to the Court at Duvalpore is striking, Maskelle thought, watching them ironically. She

winced from the din and considered leaving; the place was so smoky from the badly tended lamps that

she couldn’t see what was happening anyway.

Swearing under her breath, she looked toward the far end of the gallery where there was a raised

platform for the upper level loading deck. The giant pulleys and tangled ropes of the old cargo crane hung

heavily over it, the arm suspended out over the lower floor, designed to raise bales through the wide

doors that opened over the river in the wall behind the deck, swing them inside the building and lower

them down to the large area below. Several people seemed to be standing and talking there in almost a

sane manner. She started toward them, trying to peer through the smoke and shadow. Frustration made

her will it a little too hard, for her view abruptly cleared. Ah, so they ‘ve caught someone.

The prisoner’s arms were stretched up over his head, his wrists bound to one of the supports for the

crane. One of the raiders came toward him and he jerked up his legs and kicked his captor in the

stomach, sending him flying backward. Not quite helpless, she thought, amused. Two other rivermen

dived at him, grabbing his legs and lashing him to the lower part of the frame.

He was probably a traveller trapped and caught somewhere along the river. That was why the

Ancestors had guided her steps here.

So I’m not too disobedient to make use of, she grumbled to herself, making her way down the

crowded gallery and clearing a path with occasional sharp pokes from her staff. The raiders were

beginning to point and nudge each other, her presence finally penetrating the haze of liquor and bloodlust.

Because of the tattered state of her clothes and her staff, they would think her a travelling nun. Unless

they could read the Koshan symbols in the silver embedded in the wood, and she doubted that was a

possibility. Maskelle looked around thoughtfully. She didn’t think she could kill all of them, and she had

taken an oath not to do that sort of thing anymore, but she thought she could manage a distraction.

One of the rivermen standing on the platform was holding a sword, a real one, not one of the long

knives the other raiders were armed with. The greasy light reflected off the dark etching on the wavy

blade and Maskelle frowned a little. That was a siri. The brightwork on the hilt wasn’t much tarnished yet

so it must have come from the prisoner. It meant he wasn’t native to the river country; several of the

southern provinces used the siri and it wasn’t common here in the heart of the lowlands.

The Kushorit, the main stock of the Celestial Empire, also tended to be small, dark and compactly

built, and the prisoner was tall, rangy lean, and sharp-featured. Maskelle was an aberration herself,

having outer reaches blood in her family and being tall and long-limbed because of it. He was about ten

or fifteen years younger than Maskelle, which, she was uncomfortably aware, still made him a man

grown. He wore a sleeveless shirt and leather leggings, torn and dirty from what had obviously been a

hard battle, and the blue and red designs stamped into his leather swordbelt and buskins had faded from

long exposure to the sun. His hair was shaggy brown with streaks of blond and one long tightly braided

lock hung past his shoulder.

The river raiders wore assorted scraps of leather or lacquered armor and tattered silk finery. The

woman who seemed to be the leader had a battered helmet with a crest shaped into the head of a killing

bird, obviously taken off some wealthy victim. She was big and muscular, an old knife scar slashing

across already harsh features. She strode to the edge of the platform and glared down at Maskelle.

“What do you want here, Sister?”

Yes, you’re so terribly dangerous, Maskelle thought, smiling indulgently. I tremble, really I do.

Dangling over the platform, the ropes to control the crane were worn and tangled, and it looked like the

counterweight, a leather sack of iron ingots, was the only thing that was keeping the massive wooden arm

from collapsing. That will do nicely. She leaned on her staff. “I come to offer blessing, my child.”

The woman stared, then grinned back at her companions. “We’re unbelievers here, Sister; we’d

curdle your blessing.”

“Not this blessing. It’s just what your sort deserve.” Maskelle felt a dark surge of power under her

feet as she spoke. The river was restless with more than floodwater tonight; it called to her, sensing a

kinship. “But I want something in exchange for it.”

“What’s that?”

“Release that man.” The prisoner was watching her warily, without any show of hope, almost as if he

didn’t recognize her as a Koshan. He didn’t look badly hurt, however, just bruised and beaten.

“Oh, so you want him for yourself, Sister?” the leader said. The others laughed and grinned at each

other.

If you don’t consider the source, it’s not a bad idea, Maskelle thought. He was handsome, in an

exotic way, which was probably why the raiders had saved him to amuse themselves with rather than

killing him immediately. The Koshans only demanded abstinence from initiates during the first three years

of instruction, but it was a common misconception that all members of the Order were celibate.

Before Maskelle could answer, the prisoner said, “She doesn’t need a club to get company. Some

women don’t.” He spoke in Kushorit, the common language of the Empire, but lightly accented Maskelle

frowned; she should be able to tell what province he was from by that accent, but she couldn’t place it.

She had been too long from her native land, perhaps, too long among the soft voices of Ariad. The fact

that he knew Kushorit was no real clue; it was a common language throughout the provinces too, spoken

by traders, scholars, diplomats.

The leader crossed the stained planks to step close to her captive. She grabbed a handful of his hair

and jerked his head back. “So you don’t like my face?” she said softly.

I wager she didn‘t do that before he was more securely bound. Maskelle tended to find male

bullies merely amusing, but for some reason the female ones always stirred her to rage. Careful, careful,

she reminded herself. The darkness in the river was so uncontrolled, so near, so willing to be tapped it

was hard to resist the temptation.

Voice slightly constricted from the pressure the leader was putting on his neck, he still said, “Your

face I could ignore; it’s your personality and your breath that turn my stomach.”

This time Maskelle placed the accent; he was from the Sintane. It was a province far on the outer rim,

known for fine figured goldwork and weaving. He was a long way from home. The Sintane didn’t have

deserters or mercenaries like the other provinces; they had outcasts. She looked at the sword the raider

was holding. The hilt might be horn or bone, and the ring between the blade and the hilt seemed to be

plain silver, all of which told her nothing. The Sitanese sometimes carved family totems into the hilts of

siri, and the ring was often an elaborate piece of jeweler’s art. Maskelle said, “You must be terribly

afraid of him.”

One of the raiders gave a short bark of laughter and the leader released her grip on the captive to

face Maskelle. “What are you saying?”

“If you aren’t afraid, then cut him loose and let him fight your men. If you call them men.”

The leader came to the edge of the platform and pushed her face close to Maskelle’s. She growled,

“I should feed you to the moray, Koshan bitch.”

Seen at close range her scar was an ugly puckered fissure across a face webbed with fine lines and

darkened with ingrained dirt. The woman was bigger than Maskelle, much younger, all hard muscle, but

Maskelle felt no fear; her blood was singing with the urge to kill. She rocked forward on the balls of her

feet, looked into the other woman’s glaring eyes, and said with utter seriousness, “The moray would

choke.” Even that was almost too much; if she said one more word, the dam would break and her rage

would find an outlet whether she willed it or not. Physical threats always made her lose her temper; in all

the years, that had never changed.

The raider blinked, suddenly uncertain, perhaps sensing the danger but not wise enough to realize just

what the source was. She stepped back slowly, fingering the hilt of her knife. Maskelle waited, smiling,

but the woman shook her head and laughed. “Do as she says. Let him fight.” She gestured to the men

behind her.

Maskelle took a deep breath that the others probably read as relief. It was part disappointment, part

attempt to hold on to her suddenly tenuous self-control.

One of the raiders stepped forward, drawing his long belt knife. The prisoner tensed and Maskelle

held her breath; if they changed their minds now there was nothing she could do about it. But the raider

slashed the man’s bonds and stepped quickly back. The prisoner freed himself from the rest of the ropes,

looked around at the raiders, and with admirable self-possession, stretched and rubbed his neck. He

caught Maskelle’s eye and she flicked a glance at the gallery railing behind her, wondering if he would

pick up on the hint. She needed the raiders’ attention to be away from the cargo doors and the crane.

He didn’t nod, didn’t indicate that he had seen her signal, but he suddenly dropped to the platform

and kicked the kneecap of the raider who held the captured siri. The man collapsed with a shriek, his leg

giving way with a sharp crack. The prisoner came to his feet, taking the sword easily from the raider’s

shaking hand, ducked a deadly swipe from a bori club as he passed Maskelle and vaulted over the

gallery railing.

She leaned over it in time to see him catch an old net that hung over the side and swing down to drop

into the water washing over the lower floor.

The gallery audience roared, the leader and her lieutenants shouting and cursing as they ran for the

railing.

Down on the floor below, the waving mass of combatants broke into little whirling eddies. In the

instant of stillness she saw several rivermen with knives or bori clubs surrounding the one man armed with

a sword. The blade flashed and the rivermen scattered.

Perhaps it was the rivermen who were trapped now and not the traveller. Bemused, Maskelle

watched the leaping, dodging figures. It was like a game, or an entertainment so primitive it looked like

violence to eyes long accustomed to the sophistication of Ariaden or kiradi theater. The prisoner wasn’t

wielding that blade with deadly intent yet; the plank floor below was awash in dirty water as the rising

river encroached on the lower level of the outpost, but not high enough to conceal the dead bodies that

would surely be sprawled there if he was. Maskelle knew if he killed some of them that would only fire

the others to more fury; it was all or nothing. She was a little surprised he recognized that as well. The

crowd pressed in again, trying to rush him, but their nerve failed and they splashed away.

“Well, Sister, where’s our blessing?” the leader demanded, trying to recover her control of the

situation.

Maskelle tried to decide just which invocation would annoy the Ancestors the most. The Great

Opening, the signal part of the Year Rite, would get their immediate attention and hearing the words of it

on her lips should elicit the quickest response. She turned away from the railing and stepped up onto the

platform, clearing her mind.

As Maskelle faced the room and lifted her staff above her head, the raiders’ leader called out,

“Attend to the nun, you bastards!” She grinned derisively around at her companions. “She’s going to give

us a blessing!”

Some of the raiders turned toward this new diversion, but most were too occupied by the fighting to

listen. A man almost too drunk to stand on his feet staggered up on the platform muttering, “Kill the

Koshan bitch—”

Maskelle swung her staff down and around, slamming him in the chest and sending him crashing

backward off the platform. That got their attention.

The shouts and drunken roaring died away. Into the relative quiet Maskelle said, “I am the Voice of

the Adversary.”

She hadn’t spoken loudly, but her words carried across the room. There were gasps and outcries,

proving that some of the raiders at least were among the devout. One quick thinker turned and dived out

the nearest window. The leader stared around, baffled and angry.

Maskelle spoke the first words of the Great Opening. This was too much presumption for the myriad

forces of the Infinite to ignore. All the lamps in this half of the chamber flickered and died.

In the sudden darkness Maskelle swung around to the cargo doors and with the end of her staff threw

the latch up.

The doors flew open and wind-driven rain rushed in. There were shrieks and shouts as the rivermen

began to panic, shoving and pushing. Maskelle stepped quickly to the crane’s counterweight, drawing the

little knife she used for cutting fruit. It was too small for the job, but she slashed at the half-rotted ropes

until suddenly the counterweight dropped.

The reaction was more violent than she had anticipated. The counterweight smashed right through the

floorboards, knocking her backwards. The arm swung and toppled, taking the railing, part of the gallery,

and a dozen yelling river-men with it.

“I meant to do that,” Maskelle muttered to herself, stumbling to her feet. The raiders must think the

post was under attack by hostile river spirits. They were pouring out the door Maskelle had entered by,

blocking it, fighting and snarling like rats. Then a figure tore away from the other panicked, shoving

bodies and charged toward her, bori club upraised.

It was the leader. Maskelle met her with the end of her staff, catching the woman a hard blow in the

stomach and pushing her away. She staggered back but didn’t fall; she must have some sort of leather or

lacquered wood chest armor under her silk vest. Maskelle couldn’t see much in the half-light, but she

assumed the razor-edge of the heavy wooden club was aimed toward her. She kept the staff pointed at

the leader, braced to move. The other woman shuffled to the side, trying to get past Maskelle’s guard.

Then Maskelle saw that the ropes still attached to the broken crane arm and hanging over the gallery

were jerking and twitching; it had to be the rivermen who had gone over the rail with the crane, still

trapped in them. Then a head popped up over the edge.

She knew who it was. The trapped traveller had had hair cropped at his shoulders while the river

raiders either shaved their heads to avoid lice or grew wild waist-length manes. Grinning, Maskelle

angled sideways, making poking motions with the staff, as if she meant to try to break for the door across

the gallery. Her opponent, thinking to catch her between herself and the packed door, obligingly stepped

backward, closer to the edge.

The traveller hauled himself further up, and when the raider stepped back into reach, he swung his

sheathed sword around and struck the back of her knees. The woman toppled backwards with a

choked-off cry.

Maskelle turned immediately for the cargo doors, using her staff to trip a flailing, foul-smelling shadow

that tried to stop her. Rain and wind poured in, drenching the boards under her feet. She found the ropes

for the winch, but they didn’t move when she tugged on them. The other counterweight must be

broken, damn it, she thought, and tossed her staff out, hoping it struck the dock, not the river. She

grabbed the heavy rope and swung out after it, getting a confused view of the river below with what little

light there was from the cloud-covered moon reflecting off the angry surface. She hoped the traveller had

the sense to follow her.

She scrambled down the rope, not quite as agile as a monkey, wishing she was ten years younger.

The raiders must have had the outpost longer than she had initially thought, or it had been abandoned

before they had ever found it; the rope was beginning to rot, so soft in most places her grasping fingers

went right through the strands. But her feet thumped down on the dock before she knew it.

Cursing, she felt around on the scarred wood, feeling holes and splinters, but not her staff. There were

shouts from above and the lamps were flaring back to life inside the outpost. She stood, the wet wind

tearing at her hair, took two steps toward the bank, and fell flat on her face. She had tripped over her

staff.

“Thank you for nothing, Ancient Lineage,” she muttered, her own abbreviated version of the proper

Thanksgiving. She grabbed up the staff, staggered back to her feet, and ran for the bank.

Once in the bush she slowed, knowing a fall would only make more noise, though the rain covered

most of the sound of her passing. When she had gone some distance, she stopped and crouched in the

dark shelter of a dripping tana bush. She heard the thrashing of several people fighting their way through

the foliage near her. The raiders wouldn’t stay long in the jungle; it was a different realm than the river and

they would fear it. Superstitious idiots, she thought, squatting in the mud. It was the river that would

harbor the evil spirits tonight.

The raiders following her thrashed away and she started to stand. Someone touched her shoulder

lightly, a caution not to move; she froze where she was and an instant later heard one more passage

through the bush. There was nothing but the rain after that and the tingle of shock through Maskelle’s skin

and the hackles rising on the back of her neck. Someone crouched in the mud next to her; the air was

alive with the warmth and breath of a living body. How she could have missed it before, she couldn’t

think. No thanks for the warning, she thought sourly to the Ancestors. In the thirty years of her

apprenticeship and mastery as Their Servant, They had seldom been around when she wanted them. She

wished she could say that was the reason she had turned on them in the end, but that was a lie she

wouldn’t tell herself. Experimentally, she whispered, “Are they gone?”

There was the briefest pause, then he said, “They are now.”

Maskelle didn’t move and for a moment neither did he. Then a great glop of water from the tana bush

struck the back of her neck and she twitched. He flinched, stood suddenly and was gone, though this

time she heard him brush against the leaves as he passed.

She shook her head and got to her feet, her knees protesting the movement. He must have climbed

out the cargo hatch behind her and followed her into the jungle. He had returned her favor with the

warning, anyway. She slogged further into the bush, wondering why a Sitanese swordsman had travelled

this far into the Celestial Empire. The problem tickled her brain all the long way back to the road.

She came out of the jungle just where the road broadened out into the Sare. The Ancestors, perverse

as usual, had now seen fit to grant her prayers about the rain and it had slackened to a bare drizzle. It

was too dark to see much of the Sare now, but morning light would reveal a broad green plain, cut from

the jungle in a perfect square, the grasses as clipped and civilized as any park in Duvalpore.

In the center of the plain was a massive rectangular baray, a reservoir of water bordered by broad

stone walks. In the center of the baray stood a temple of the Koshan Order, reached by a stone bridge,

its conical towers meant to resemble the Mountain of the Infinite, a symbolic meaning in every element of

its design, every portal, every inch of carving. Lamps glowed from its many windows and lined the

galleries and bridges. To the west of the baray there were three groups of less orderly lights: the

campfires and torches of travellers camping here in the safety of the shadow of the temple and the patrols

of its guards. In the glow of one campfire she recognized Rastim’s wagon and felt her heart unclench a

little. She hated to leave the troupe, even though she knew they had been caring for themselves long

before she had ever met them. I’ve failed others before. Perhaps that’s why.

She found most of them huddled damply in the wagons, with Rastim trying to keep the fire lit and Old

Mali grumbling while she stirred the supper. Voices called greetings from the wagons and Rastim

watched her with ill-disguised relief as Maskelle walked up to sniff suspiciously at the cooking pot. Old

Mali grumbled something inaudible. From the lumps bobbing in the stew, they had arrived in time to buy

some pork from the priests’ servants to add to the rice and there was taro root baking in the coals.

“Boiling water?” she asked.

Old Mali wrapped a rag around one calloused hand and fetched a steaming kettle out of the coals.

“Knew you’d be back,” she muttered.

“There was doubt?” Maskelle asked, taking a seat on one of the woven straw mats laid out on the

mud. It squished unpleasantly under her.

“Just Gardick again,” Rastim said, and gestured disparagingly. “Nothing.”

“Hmph.” Maskelle took the ivibrae and ground it up with the mortar and pestle used for cooking.

Together, and muttering curses at each other, she and Old Mali got the stuff strained into a pottery cup.

Old Mali carried it off to Killia’s wagon, leaving Maskelle and Rastim to stare at each other tiredly.

“So we’ll be there in two days, will we?” he asked.

“Yes.” She flexed her hands in the firelight. Her back hurt from the damp and she felt old. More than

a half decade over twice twenty years wasn’t that old for the Ariaden or the Kushorit. But it was old for

a Court Lady, and her hands were almost as calloused as Old Mali’s.

“And there’ll be good crowds to perform for?” Rastim was uneasy.

“Oh, yes.” Though “good” was a matter of perspective. “The best of the best. And generous, too.”

“Ah.” Rastim nodded, looking out over the dark wet plain beyond the boundary of firelight and

Martha Wells - Wheel of the Infinite

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