The Coming Of Wisdom by Dave Duncan Page B

the young maidens. Jja was being monosyllabic. Cowie was not communicating with anyone. Nnanji was describing the best ways to push a sword into a man and how it felt to do so, making Nona breathe deeply over his courage and the nobility of his motives.
    Then Wallie noticed, and Katanji followed a moment later—Quili and the other women were as jumpy as a pondful of frogs.
    Somebody had said something. Perhaps it had been only Nnanji’s gruesome attempts at shop talk, but something was wrong.
    So more than Nnanji’s advances had been disturbing the young priestess earlier. Even the older women were nervous, and they were obviously deferring to her, in spite of her youth. Of course in Earthly terms they were peasants entertaining a general or a duke, and some tension was inevitable. Their menfolk were not there to support them, having been called away by Adept Motipodi for a land-clearing project, or so Wallie had been informed. But the guests had not raped or murdered anyone, they had praised the food and hospitality, and the tension was not decreasing. It seemed to be getting worse.
    Wallie tried to establish a little local geography. East lay the River, and there were no significant settlements on the far bank. Westward the mountains of RegiVul were normally visible, he was told, but they were hidden today by the rain clouds. To the north lay the hamlet of Pol and then the city of Ov. Perhaps he was expected to head for Ov, but he decided to put off any decisions until he had met with Lady Thondi.
    Southward there seemed to be nothing. The Black Lands, Quili said vaguely . . . no people. And even the Black Lands were inaccessible, the older women explained, because there were cliffs. So this place was a curiously isolated dead end? Wallie did not need sutras to warn him that dead ends could be traps. Common prudence would suggest that a move to Ov might be very wise—except that he had no one but Nnanji to guard his back from the alley thieves the demigod had warned about. Stymied!
    “You keep no boats here, apprentice?”
    Quili shook her head. “Not at the moment, my lord. His honor has one, of course, but he is in Ov.” She mentioned a couple of fishing boats that were usually present, and a cattle boat, and one or two others, but for this reason or that reason . . . 
    Wallie’s scalp prickled—too much coincidence. There was a test coming. The Goddess had boxed Shonsu in for some purpose.
    And it was then that he remembered the rain and guessed what was happening. He glanced at his companions. Honakura had felt the unease, but seemed more puzzled than worried. Honakura did not know about the climate. He had not heard Quill’s comments about it, and his skill was people—he would not have been able to read the appearance of the semiarid landscape as Wallie had done when he arrived at the tenancy, or even to appreciate that irrigation for vegetables meant poor rainfall.
    Katanji was suspicious, but a city boy did not have the botanical knowledge, either. He likely did not even know enough about the swordsmen’s sutras. Of course old Honakura would not know the actual words of the sutra in question, but he would know what must result from it. Quili obviously did—she was masterminding the deception.
    Nnanji naturally suspected nothing and would have to be kept that way . . . and then Wallie remembered the oath he had just sworn.
My secrets are your secrets
. He could keep nothing from Nnanji now.
    The gods had tricked him again.
    No! He was not going to commit a massacre. It was not fair. He had killed six—no, seven—men the previous day. He had proved that he could be bloody if he had to be. How much slaughter did She want from Her champion?
    He was not going to start killing innocent people.
    Goddess be damned!
    Then he realized that the room had fallen into a horrified silence. He had been glaring at Nnanji, and even Nnanji was wilting under that glare.
    “You don’t want me to tell about