by Sam Hawke
“I don’t know. Is there a reason for blowing strangers up that wouldn’t sound stupid?” He looked at me seriously. “There was something I was thinking about today too, actually. Just when we were in the meeting, and Jov was gone, and Karista made another comment about her family’s state, and I just … I know my family has the Chancellery, and yours is publicly associated with mine and you and Jov were the reason the last mess didn’t kill us all. Plus you’ve basically dedicated the last two years to trying to root them out. But why did they target the Lekas so hard?”
I frowned. “Well, that was part of discrediting us, right? And just rousing up animosity with rival families?”
“Maybe.” He scratched his head, looking almost sheepish. “But what if it’s more than that? There were people from every family at the hospital that night. It was the Lekas he targeted. No one else was poisoned but them. What if causing discord was only a side benefit? What if actually we were targets for a different reason? What do the Oromani, Iliri, and Leka have in common? Could the three of our families have done something particularly to provoke a reaction?”
He’d surprised me again. I hadn’t thought of it in those terms at all.
“Anyway, it was just what you said then that made me think of it.” Tain shrugged. “I remember Jov said we were looking for a scandal or something that could have caused some sort of intense grudge. What if it’s not just your family or mine, but something that involved our three families more than others? We’re not close now, but we have been in the past, plenty of times. In recent years they’ve been the three most powerful, most honored families.…” He trailed off. “It’s probably nothing. The whole Council would have been blown up if we hadn’t stopped that device.”
“We shouldn’t ignore any ideas. I’ll get someone to expand the search to include things involving the Lekas. Dee’s been checking our family records, too, in case there’s anything in there.”
Tain glanced at the window and frowned. “That reminds me. Any sign of our unwelcome northern visitor? Has she been seen?”
“No.” I shot a look at Dee, who was flipping through the textbook still, and a little lurch of fear clenched my throat. I had been too afraid to let her return to school since I’d seen Mosecca, now that I knew the latter was willing to strike even at a child to get revenge on our family. I couldn’t put Dee at risk, and I couldn’t keep her safe if she was at school during the afternoons as usual. Perhaps I couldn’t keep her safe at all.
The houseguards had all been shown a likeness of Mosecca and knew to look out for her. A pale northern noblewoman, on her own in a strange city whose language she did not speak, should easily stand out, but if she had come near me or anyone in my family again, it had been without being spotted. Two nights ago I had returned home from the Manor to find one of our houseguards being chastised by his colleagues for falling asleep at his post, and I had found a footprint in the back garden, but nothing unusual inside. I hadn’t slept well that night.
“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do, short of catching her near us and having her arrested. How do you fight back against witches if you don’t understand how they work? Our office doesn’t know anything about it other than vague mentions from kids’ stories. And the way Ectar was talking, it seemed like the Church over there suppresses even mention of it.” The very first instance of unusual behavior I’d seen had not been an attack on my family but two separate attempts on Brother Lu’s life or health. Perhaps Mosecca had been trying to reduce the Church’s influence on the Emperor through particularly direct means? “Do you think they know they have practitioners in the royal household?”
“What about your friend?” When I stared at him blankly, Tain nudged the other slim volume within my reach. “The one who gave you that poetry you’re always reading? Did you try asking her?”
“Abae? She’s part of the Perest-Avani delegation,” I said, stung. “She’s a suspect in all this!”
“But she’s not a witch, surely,” he pointed out. “You’re the one who told me you’re sure the Mosecca attacks don’t have anything to do with the other ones. What’s the harm in seeing if you can get some information about Talafar out of her? If she’s working with our enemies she might still be happy to ingratiate herself with you by helping with something that doesn’t implicate them. Make her think you suspect the Empire of being behind it all. Worst case is that she doesn’t tell you anything, then you’re no worse off.”
“And the best case?” To my intense irritation, I felt heat in my cheeks, and busied myself turning the book of poetry over and over in my hands.
Tain, to his credit, did not smirk or grin or so much as raise an eyebrow. “Best case, she’s innocent of all this and might be able to help.” He sighed and cracked his neck. “Fortunes know we need all the friends we can find.”
* * *
The Perest-Avani delegation had not left the city with the Talafan or Doranites. Apparently the High Priestess led prayers for westerners at dawn and dusk every day at a little church in the lower city near their accommodation. It was there I headed now, Lara and Dom trailing from a short distance behind as I walked along the canal.
The church barely deserved that name; there was nothing to distinguish it from the surrounding buildings but for some western-style bells on strings on either side of the door.
I stopped outside the entrance, hesitant. What was the protocol; did one knock on the door of a church, or simply enter? The sound of music and voices raised in song drifted out, muffled but pleasant, and before I had to contemplate my dilemma much longer, a small woman with short hair and a reddish tint to her skin joined me at the door and, giving me a slightly confused nod in greeting, pushed it open and went inside. I slipped in after her before the door could shut.
The inside of the building was as modest as the outside in structure, but the furnishings were more what I expected from a formal church setting. Darfri religious practices were always outdoors, focused on communion and connection with the land and its natural forces. From the little I knew of western religion, it was far more focused on the mind, and the private contemplation of gods and the nature of humanity, and prayer was undertaken indoors, in what often appeared (from the illustrations in texts, at least) to be lavishly decorated spaces.
Lavish was not quite the word to describe the inside of the church here, but someone had clearly devoted significant effort to creating a worship space. The second story seemed to consist only of a walkway around the perimeter of the room, and the ceiling high above was painted in a single scene of a crowd of worshipers before a deity, nude and sexless, its smile benevolent but its eyes unforgiving. Tapestries and bells hung from every wall and smaller hangings from the underside of the upper balcony level, and every item of furniture had been painted in a coordinated theme. I wondered how much of this had been done since the High Priestess arrived.
The woman who had entered ahead of me joined perhaps a dozen worshipers who were kneeling, heads bowed, as they sang. Before a statue of the same deity as depicted on the ceiling sat the High Priestess herself, cross-legged and motionless behind her long, dark veil. I sidled awkwardly to the edge of the room, looking for Abae. She was not among the worshipers; all had bare heads and none her distinctive shaved patterns, nor her long, graceful neck.
I had just thought to leave and try to return later when a small door to the side of the room opened and a bearded man in a tall hat came out, saw me, and approached. He smiled politely, but uncertainly, as if surprised and a little concerned to have a stranger visit.
“May I assist, Credola?” Ah, perhaps not a stranger, then. He’d recognized me. “I trust there is no … er … difficulty?”
There had been enough rumor and rhetoric around the city to make certain segments of the population fear persecution, evidently. My face arranged into its most non-threatening expression, I said, struggling to remember the correct form of address, “No, of course not, Superior…?”
“Yes, Cr
edola.” He relaxed fractionally. “Yes, Superior Kamok. This is my church. Well, it is ordinarily my church. We are fortunate indeed to have our most Exalted One in our fair city, offering us comfort in our time of great and urgent need.” With a little bow of his head he indicated the High Priestess. “Have you come to, er…” His hands fluttered nervously, as he searched for a possible reason for my visit.
“I don’t mean to be any trouble. I was just hoping to—ah!” Behind him, Abae had emerged from the same doorway. Her smile was day to night compared to his expression. I nodded in her direction. “I was hoping to talk to Abaezalla?”
The Superior’s gaze swept over Abae in a manner both hungry and, it seemed, angry. It was not dissimilar to the look Prince Hiukipi had worn after being thwarted in his desires at the masquerade. “Actually, Credola, the lady is quite busy at the moment,” he said, making as if to step between us. I bypassed him neatly and let my tone cool considerably as I said, over my shoulder, “A pleasure to meet you,” then turned my attention deliberately to the diplomat.
“Could we talk outside?” I asked her, returning her smile, and making it clear I was no longer inviting the Superior’s views on the matter.
“Of course,” she said. She ducked her head deferentially to the Superior as she passed, but did not wait for his permission or approval.
“It is good to see you again,” she said as the church door closed behind us, shutting out most of the sound of the song.
“I hope I was not interrupting anything. I should really have sent a messenger first, I’m sorry.”
“You were not interrupting,” she said. “The High Priestess was conducting the service, and had no need of me.”
There was something in her tone that emboldened me to say, “The Superior seemed to think you had some business?”
She pressed her lips together, her eyes downcast, but there was the faintest trace of stubbornness in her voice. “I do not work for Superior Kamok.”
“Is he a good priest?” I prodded.
“I do not know,” Abae confessed. “I am no judge. He seems to me to be very like many priests I have known.”
“That,” I said with a smile, nudging her companionably as we walked, “sounded suspiciously like an insult.”
Her face dimpled suddenly with mischief, and she giggled. “I would never insult a priest of the Exalted Order, Kalina. To do so would be to insult the gods themselves. I would simply say that a priest is required to deprive himself of many human wants in the name of the gods. Such a lifestyle is very difficult, and many struggle to reach the peace and enlightenment that comes from truly surrendering those desires.”
A long way of describing exactly what I had seen in the way he had looked at her. Covetous, but self-loathing, too. “It must be doubly difficult to maintain such a lifestyle here in Silasta,” I said mildly. “Many people struggle to adjust from one culture to another. I imagine it’s much harder for a priest who worships in the same way as his homeland, but lives among a majority who live differently.”
She nodded. “He finds much about Silasta scandalous. He is like many priests. The things he covets the most, he hates.” A shadow passed over her face. She was no stranger to being both wanted and hated, I was suddenly sure. “Superior Kamok considers it inappropriate that I be here, working, when my husband remains in Perest-Avana.”
“Your … husband?” A sudden unpleasant sourness unfurled in my stomach, quickly chased by embarrassment at my own reaction. A woman of her age, her intelligence, her outrageously perfect looks, in a society that placed political status on romantic pairings? Of course she would not remain unmarried. It was hardly my business.
“Oh, I am sorry. It is a word that means a man that—”
“I know the word,” I said quickly. “I was just surprised. You hadn’t mentioned him, that was all.” That was all.
“My husband is an important man,” she said. She smiled, but it was the carefully neutral smile I had seen her use on others, the one that did not show the charm of her crooked teeth. Pretty, and bland, and empty. “It is by his status that I was permitted to this role. But the priest believes a woman should remain by her husband’s side at all times.” She slowed her pace. It was falling dark now, and I could not read her face so clearly in the shadows at this angle. “It would not do to explain to him that my husband prefers me as far from his side as is possible.” Then she stopped altogether, shook her head, and her smile gleamed white in the dimming light. “I talk too much, you see, and here I have been doing so again. You came to see me, was there something you needed?”
“Yes, actually,” I said.
Was that a flicker of disappointment in her eyes? “Anything! How may I assist?” I must have imagined it, for she was perfectly gracious in her eagerness now.
“You have studied Talafan culture,” I said carefully. “And there is an aspect I am interested in. Something that our diplomatic office could not help me with. I could have asked my tutor, but he left the country a few months ago. And when I asked Lord Ectar when he was here, he had such a peculiar reaction.”
“What aspect of the culture do you mean?” We started walking again, but Abae looked genuinely curious, the light of pleasure across her face that of a scholar truly enthusiastic about her subject.
“I had read a story about witches in a children’s book, and had not realized it was a forbidden topic.”
“Oh!” Abae drew in her breath and lowered her voice, though we were quite alone by the canal. “Yes, a lord would not want to be seen to be talking about such things. Did the rumors not reach you here? That witches have cursed the Emperor and are the source of his ill health?”
“What? No, I didn’t know anything of the sort. Ectar looked terrified that I’d even mentioned it.”
Abaezalla looked up and down the waterway, then drew me by the elbow to whisper close. “It was the Emperor’s chief priest who started it, I think. Father Cam. He had been with the Emperor many years. For some reason he became sure there was a bird following him, watching with human eyes, and he was convinced it was a witch trying to stop his spiritual guidance of the Emperor. Everyone laughed it off at first, I think—there are hundreds of similar birds around the Palace grounds, so how could he even think it was the same one he kept seeing? But he grew more and more insistent, claiming they were trying to murder him, and then…”
“Then?”
“He managed to catch the bird he said had been following him, and he cooked it up and ate it in a pie. I think he must have been quite mad by then.” She pressed her lips together as if torn between a laugh and a frown. “He was dead within the week.”
Birds as spies and mysterious deaths? The awful fear that had gripped me as I pulled Dee back off the road seized me again. Perhaps that priest had been mad, and perhaps not. “How did he die?”
“It was terrible, they say,” Abaezalla whispered. “He could not … er … expel waste? He grew bloated and nothing the physics gave him could clear his bowels. In the end, when they found his body, they say…” She looked desperately reluctant to continue, but as I stared avidly she finished. “They say the waste came out his nose and mouth.”
I winced. “That is not a nice way to die.” I had a sudden disturbing image of a doll being stuffed fuller and fuller until the stuffing burst from the cracks, and shuddered.
“After that, the Church took up the cry against witches.” She hesitated. “We have a similar word in Perest-Avana, to mean … uh … women who can use blood and other natural things to cast spells on others. I am not sure how things are here, but in my homeland it is a grievous charge to lay against a woman. Sometimes it feels like it is something leveled at a woman who has grown inconvenient to someone.” She shook her head, looking troubled. She squeezed my arm suddenly. “So it is best not to ask these questions to Talafan men!”
“No, I can see that. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“Why do you ask about this?” She sounded curious, not accusa
tory. “There are many rumors in the city, even for a foreigner like me to hear. Some say there was a magical attack at the arena. Do you suspect witchcraft? I should say that I do not know if such things are real, Kalina, not even in Talafar. Father Cam’s story is frightening, but birds are often diseased animals, and he would not be the first person to die from eating something he should not have.”
“Quite,” I muttered, shooting her a sidelong look. How benign a comment was that, really? Her eyes were wide and innocent. Damnit, I didn’t know what to think about her. I hedged, using the shadows to hide my face this time. “There have been a lot of strange things happening, and I know there to be things in the world that don’t obey our understanding of it. We need to be prepared for anything.”
“Well, I can tell you what I know from stories, if you like, though they are that. Stories.”
“Anything you know would be helpful,” I said. There was a stone bench near the canal just up ahead. We sat together, and Lara and Dom took up positions within a respectful distance, their backs to us, scanning the area with easy confidence. I felt strangely conscious of where my arms and legs were; was I sitting naturally? I felt awkward and off balance, and annoyed at myself for it. What kind of student of Etan’s was I, to be so flustered by a charming smile and long lashes?
She bit her lip, thoughtful. “All of the stories are about women. There do not seem to be any men who are witches. There is always a witchmother, who teaches a young girl how to use her powers.” She smiled. “I suspect many of these stories are meant to be enjoyed by such young girls, who dream of exciting futures and daring escapes. Witches worship a Moon Goddess, and they call her Mother, and they are strongest when the moon is full and clear.”
Involuntarily, I glanced up at the sky. The moon was close to full, probably a few days away at most. But all the attacks so far had occurred in daylight, and Lara and Dom were only a few treads away. There were no animals, not pets nor strays nor wild birds, in sight. I forced myself to relax, to breathe easily, to listen.