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Novel Chapter:
Bryte’s Ascent
(Book 4 in the
Arucadi Series)
Archived Chapters of
Bryte's Ascent
Chapter 2: THIRD TIER
Lina claimed the whole wide bed for herself and ordered a cot sent in for Bryte. Bryte didn’t mind; the cot was more comfortable than the bed of branches and blankets she usually slept on.
In the morning, Lina opened her trunk and selected a pretty green dress. While Bryte obeyed Lina’s order to shower and wash her hair, Lina altered the dress to fit Bryte. It was finer by far than anything Bryte had ever owned; wearing it made her feel every bit as grand as her privileged sister.
“Sit down,” Lina said after helping Bryte dress. “Let me fix your hair.”
Bryte sat on the edge of the bed, and Lina grabbed her head and turned it this way and that, examining her critically. “However did your hair get into such a mess?” she asked. “You cut it yourself?”
“Yes,” Bryte admitted, thinking guiltily of how she’d chopped it off with a knife and without benefit of a mirror. “It’s too hot to let it grow long.”
“So you butchered it,” Lina said. “Well, I’ll do what I can.” She worked over it for some time, brushing, cutting, and shaping, before she let Bryte stand and go to the dresser to see the results in the mirror.
She might have been gazing at a stranger. Her brown hair, neatly combed and parted in the middle, fell into soft waves around her face. Lina had cut it to just above her shoulders, and curled its ends upward. Bryte laughed and her mirror image’s brown eyes sparkled.
Until Lina stepped up beside her. Lina’s short black hair gleamed and was perfectly shaped to frame her oval face. Bryte was deeply tanned from days spent out in the hot sun, while Lina, with her emerald eyes and soft, fair skin, reminded Bryte of the delicate porcelain figurines sold in the bazaar for outrageous sums. Bryte had once slipped one into her pocket, only to have it fall from the makeshift stand she’d placed it on and shatter into pieces too small to glue together. However delicate Lina might look, Bryte decided she would not easily shatter.
Lina called Oryon into the room. He still wore only black, but Lina had dressed in a dark green pleated skirt and white silk middy blouse. Bryte still puzzled over the mysteriously appearing trunk, but the clothes it held were clearly Lina’s, so it hadn’t been stolen from another guest as Bryte had first theorized.
After a short discussion, they decided to order breakfast sent to their room so that they could plan the day’s activities while they ate. Oryon went out to use the phone in the hall by the elevator to place the order. While Lina primped before the mirror, Bryte listened to Oryon’s footsteps down the long hall, his low-voiced conversation, and his returning steps.
“Hope you’re hungry,” he announced on reentering the room. “I put in a big order.”
After the late feast of the previous night Bryte was not terribly hungry, but if these two chose to feed her she would not refuse.
Hearing the distant clang of the elevator door followed by the squeak of the wheels as a cart was pushed down the hall to their room, Bryte ran to open the door.
The uniformed attendant wheeled in the cart, received his payment and tip, and was gone. Eager to see what filled the plates, Bryte removed the metal lids that covered the dishes, setting free the marvelous aroma of spiced buns, fresh fruit, and slices of ham.
“That’s not all for you, you know,” Oryon said, but laughter hid behind the stern tone he affected.
“’Course I know that,” Bryte said. “There’s enough here for me and ten friends.”
“Then I’m glad your friends aren’t here with you,” Lina said. “Sit down now, and mind your manners.”
Bryte had never seen the need to be greatly concerned with manners. But she sat as ordered and waited until her benefactors were seated before spearing a slice of ham and several pieces of fruit.
Lina frowned and said, “You should not serve yourself before your elders have been served.”
“Elders!” Bryte snorted. “You aren’t so old. I’ll bet you aren’t more than nineteen or twenty.”
“Nineteen,” Lina admitted. “So we’re still six years older than you, and furthermore, we’re your employers.”
With an exaggerated sigh, Bryte passed Lina the platter of meat and sat back in her chair, arms folded across her chest. As Lina concentrated on stabbing slices of ham, Oryon winked. He likes it when I stand up to her, Bryte thought.
Lina took more than her share of the ham, leaving only a single slice for Oryon, but he didn’t complain, and she made up for it by eating only one of the spiced rolls and almost none of the fruit.
“So, our little bright one,” he said, “what sights do you have in mind to show us today?”
She scowled at the nickname but decided not to challenge him. “Tourists usually want to visit the bazaars on the first tier. We could do that this morning. Then we could go to the third tier and visit some of the shrines.”
“The bazaars don’t sound like a bad idea,” Lina said thoughtfully. “We might get some information there, and I could find some decent clothes for Bryte.”
“Clothes for Bryte!” Oryon’s brows shot up. “We’re hiring her, not adopting her.”
“If this child is to be passed off as my cousin, I won’t have her looking like she pulls her clothes out of rag bins. I’ve given her one dress, but she’ll need more. And she can’t wear those straw sandals.”
“Hey!” Bryte shouted. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here. You can send me back home if you don’t like the way I look.”
“You’re probably right about getting information in the bazaars. And it’s your money, so if you want to spend it on our guide, I can’t object. But I don’t want to waste a lot of time on the lower tiers.”
Bryte decided they were going to continue to ignore her presence, but Oryon turned to her and said, “As for the shrines, they wouldn’t interest us unless there’s one to the Power-Giver, or maybe to Lady Kyla.”
Bryte wondered whether Oryon was teasing her. She still couldn’t figure him out. “I’ve never heard of them,” she said with a sniff. “The shrines are to the patron gods of the provinces. And everybody wants to see the shrine to the great gods, Dor and Dora. It’s the only one in the whole country, and it’s spectacular.”
“We aren’t here as tourists,” Oryon said. “We’ll go to the bazaar, but then I want to see the government buildings. Is there a Ministry of Magic, do you know?”
“Ministry of Magic!” Now she was certain he was teasing her. “Sure, and there’s a Ministry of Music, and a Ministry of Mountains, and a Ministry of Mice, and—”
“Enough!” Oryon thundered. “When I ask a serious question, I expect a serious answer. If there’s no Ministry of Magic, is there another ministry or government department that oversees the use of special powers?”
“Oryon, how do you expect this child to know such a thing?” Lina asked.
“It’s something a guide should know.”
“I know all the places visitors like to go,” Bryte insisted. “I never got asked questions like yours.”
“All right,” Oryon said, “tell us about the government buildings you do know. What and where are they?”
“Well, the Palace of the Triumvirate is on the seventh tier. On the sixth tier are the Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Provincial Oversight, the Guardians of the Peace . . .” She ticked them off on her fingers, trying to remember. “The Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance, and . . . and I can’t think of any more.”
“But you can take us to all those?” Oryon asked.
“Well, I don’t go up to the sixth tier much,” she said, trying to evade the question.
“But you know where all the various ministries are?”
“Not all, no. I said I don’t go up there much.”
“Have you ever been up there?” Lina probed.
“Well . . .” She paused, decided against lying. “I went up there once or twice, but you can’t just wander around like you can on the lower tiers.”
“So you really don’t know where anything is on that tier,” Oryon accused.
They’ll send me home now, for sure, Bryte thought miserably, but she said, “I know where the Ministry of Justice is, and the headquarters of the Guardians of the Peace. They’re right by the main entrance to the tier. But I guess that’s all I know about the sixth tier.”
“Well, so much for that, then,” Lina said. “We’ll find our way on our own. Now let’s go visit the bazaar.”
Oryon and Lina seemed content to poke around the bazaar, examining all sorts of goods and to Bryte’s relief they said no more about the sixth tier.
The two of them wandered off in different directions, Lina drawn to displays of jewelry and Oryon to a table of old books. It would be easy to slip away. After all, Oryon and Lina were not paying her; the third tier hotel room and the bountiful meals added nothing to her savings in Master Onigon’s shop.
But the fact of being on the third tier, three tiers nearer her goal, kept her from leaving—that and her curiosity about her clients. She didn’t need pay from them; she had other ways of earning coins. She eased up to a booth selling cheap necklaces, waited until the vendor was busy with another customer, and was ready to slide two of the neck chains into her pocket when she remembered that the dress Lina had altered for her had no pockets.
She dropped the necklaces back onto the table and looked around to find Oryon and Lina.
They had come together at a stall offering leather goods on the opposite side of the aisle and several booths down. They were conversing with the vendor, probably negotiating a sale. At almost every booth buyers and vendors bargained, while along the aisles browsers carried on animated conversations with companions or chatted with acquaintances they chanced to meet. Through it all, children shouted, babies squalled, and dogs barked. Only because Bryte knew the sound of Oryon’s and Lina’s voices was she able to pick them out from among the cacophony. She didn’t know the vendor’s voice, but when she heard Oryon say, “Then who makes these goods?” she listened for a statement that might answer the question.
The words “artisans in the flats” sounded like what she wanted, and she concentrated on characteristics by which she could identify the speaker again.
“I’ll take the box.” That was Oryon. After that, Bryte lost the conversation; a large and boisterous family with several rowdy children, all shouting back and forth to one another, created too much interference. Frustrated, she pushed through the crowd, dodging several of the younger children, who seemed intent on tripping each other and any hapless shoppers who blundered into their path.
Once past the family, Bryte picked up Oryon’s and Lina’s conversation again though they were moving away from her, strolling toward the pottery section.
“I tell you, it’s powerful.” Lina’s words made Bryte regret having missed so much of the exchange.
“Can you pinpoint the source?” Oryon asked.
“I’m trying. Stop a minute.”
Bryte halted when they did. She had neared the display of leather goods by that time, so while she waited and continued to listen, she pretended interest in the belts, purses, wallets, pouches, and boxes spread out on the table, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary and couldn’t imagine what had so caught Oryon’s interest.
“I think I have it,” Lina declared triumphantly.
Bryte was assailed by a wave of weakness and not only lost her employers’ voices, but all the sounds of the bazaar faded, blending into an indistinguishable dull roar.
She had to brace herself against the table to keep from falling. Her whole body trembled; her knees threatened to give way. She clutched the edge of the table and concentrated on keeping her balance.
With a rush the sounds came back, catching her unprepared for the onslaught of noise. She would have fallen had Oryon and Lina not reached her side at that moment and grasped her arms.
The weakness had gone but not the fear. Especially not when Lina spoke into her ear. “So! It was you. What were you doing?”
Totally bewildered, Bryte could only stammer, “N‑nothing. I w-wasn’t doing anything. I just felt funny all of a sudden.”
Lina glanced at Oryon, who said, “Is it possible she doesn’t realize?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bryte said.
“You were doing something just before we came back to you,” Lina insisted. “What was it?”
“I was just standing here, looking at this stuff.” She swept her hand above the leather goods. “I knew you’d bought something here, and I hoped you got a fair deal.”
“You were doing more than just standing here,” Lina insisted. “And how did you know that we bought something? You weren’t with us. You’d wandered off on your own.”
“Only ’cause you each went off in different directions. I was trying to keep track of you both, and I saw you come together here, so I was trying to catch up to you, but the aisle was too crowded. But I got close enough to see you buy something.”
“I bought this box,” Oryon said, unwrapping the paper from the package he carried and thrusting a leather-covered box toward her. “Can you tell me anything about it?”
It was not large; probably designed to hold jewelry, or maybe writing paper.
Bryte shook her head. “It’s a nice box. Well-made, it looks like.”
“What about the design?” Oryon persisted. “Do the symbols mean anything to you?”
Engraved lines braided like a rope formed the borders of the cover. Between those braided lines were spirals on either side of a circle of knots. On the box’s sides were stars with flaming points.
Bryte shrugged, seeing no point to this interrogation.
“Look at the other goods. See anything like it?”
She swept her gaze across the array of items. All were decorated, mostly with flowers or animals. A few bigger items had scenes of hills and trees and rivers. Nothing like the box Oryon showed her.
She frowned. “Guess maybe whoever made this couldn’t draw as well as most of the leatherworkers.”
“Or maybe he had a talent they didn’t,” Oryon offered.
“I still want to know what you were doing while you were standing here,” Lina returned to her question.
“I told you—I was looking at the stuff here in the booth, that’s all.”
“No, it wasn’t. I don’t believe you were interested in these goods at all.”
As if that remark was the last straw, the vendor said, “Look, unless you intend to buy something more, move on. You’re blocking the way for other customers.”
“Sorry,” Oryon said, and, holding her elbow, steered Bryte away from the booth while Lina walked beside them. Bryte was glad for the interruption because it had dawned on her that what she had been doing was listening—specifically, listening to Lina’s and Oryon’s conversation. And she had no intention of admitting that.
Oryon guided them to a side aisle leading to a display of caged birds. The vendor was engaged in serious bargaining with a young couple whose child had his gaze fixed on a particular bird and was determined not to depart without it. There were no other customers.
“Now,” Lina said again, “I know you were using power, and I want to know how and for what.”
“Power?” Bryte was genuinely puzzled. “I don’t know what you mean. I was doing something I shouldn’t. I was trying to slip one of those little coin purses off the table. I gotta live, and I take stuff to sell in the flats so I have enough to buy food with between guide jobs.”
Oryon laughed. “Like you tried to steal my wallet yesterday evening, eh?”
Bryte nodded, hanging her head as though ashamed. She’d convinced him, at least.
Not Lina, though. “You’re lying,” she said flatly. “You were doing something else.”
“Well, what?” Bryte cried, exasperated. “What do you think I was doing?”
“If I knew I wouldn’t have to ask, now would I?”
“Maybe she was using power to keep the vendor from seeing her steal,” Oryon suggested.
There it was again—power. The word captivated her. She had to know what they were talking about.
She didn’t see how her acute hearing could be described as “power.”
Lina caught her gaze, held it, and asked, “Have you stolen anything here today?”
When Bryte told her she had not, Lina laughed and turned to Oryon. “If she’d used the power I felt for stealing, she’d have something to show for it.”
“Well, it seems our Bryte has a mystery, and until we solve it I think we’ll keep her with us.”