“Clearly that someone failed, and nothing more needs to be said concerning it.”
I could not help but glance at her navel; previously an indentation, it now thrust outward. She scratched at her new stretch marks.
The sun would have to set before I could contact Tethiel through the Feaster Physis, and I passed the time sleeping. Although I considered drawing a replica of the assassin’s face, to be dispersed across the city to find his associates, that might frighten the Soultrapper into unwanted action. He might prepare to defend himself by attempting to harvest the Bone Orbs before they fully solidified.
Better, I decided, to surprise the Soultrapper. Of course, sending a follower to kill me showed desperation on his part; he might already be preparing for my arrival, and each hour I delayed benefited him.
Soultrappers could control minds, I reminded myself, and the assassin perhaps did not attack me out of free will. He might not even have had an obvious connection to the Soultrapper, who might thus still feel secure. I might still have time.
A flashing amethyst beckoned me to wake, and I found Mister Obenji leaning over me. He still wore the turban that Sri the Once Flawless had embroidered with the symbol of the gods divine: the Weaver’s octagon, enclosed by a solar eclipse.
“Is it night yet?” Yet, even as I asked, I saw that daylight shone in from the window.
“Elder Enchantress Hiresha, the Ambassador Tethiel awaits you in the pink parlor.”
Pink topazes were rare, and I had given one of the more distinguished parlors a theme of corresponding color, envisioning pleasant hours would elapse there with other mothers as our children played under the tables draped with lace and clambered up pink ottomans to wallow in pink pillows on pink couches.
As I strode into the parlor, I realized the bright color complimented Tethiel’s satin jacket and the doilies were reminiscent of his lacey cuffs; however, both his foppish attire and the feminine atmosphere of the parlor jarred with his profession. I chided myself for rushing here instead of meeting him in a more somber room.
“You,” I said, “always claim to leave the city with the dawn. Yet you always return.”
“Then I am dependable in my inconsistency.”
He had risen as I entered the room, and he resumed his seat only after Maid Janny situated me on an ottoman. She laid out a tea tray and poured two cups, flinching as she set Tethiel’s in front of him on a doily.
She muttered, “Oh my! Oh my!” then scurried from the parlor. Decency demanded the door be left open, although she retreated out of earshot down the hall, to stand beside Deepmand.
Tethiel regarded me, and I wondered if he searched for the red diamond among my gowns. The jewel nestled hidden against my left breast, its glassy edges sharp against my skin but reassuring.
I asked, “How did you learn of my interest in red diamonds? I only mentioned them at the ball, and you had one already.”
“Consider it an unfortunate guess.”
“A fortunate one, you mean.”
“I mean what I say, Enchantress Hiresha.”
The tea in my cup scarcely trembled as I lifted it to my lips. Tethiel made no motion toward his saucer, and I realized he would not; with his fingers bent as if by torture and hands thrust downward to hold in his magic, he could not feed himself. In sipping the tea, I had blundered and flaunted my advantages like someone dancing in front of a one-legged veteran.
Tethiel was even more dependent on others than I.
“My maid could be called back,” I said, realizing as I did that Janny would quail from the task, “to help you with...to assist you—”
“I am content to savor its fragrance.” Steam wafted from the cup toward his face.
In the strong light, I noted his features followed the golden ratio: Everything pleasing to the eye in nature adhered to this proportion, from the branching of veins in aspen leaves to the spiral of seashells. It was the first rule of gem crafting. The perfect proportion governed each facet of his face, his chin exactly the correct amount larger than the space between his brows, his lips just more than half again as wide as his nose.
At the ball, the women would not have understood why they thought Tethiel attractive. I found comfort in knowing that beauty could be quantified by numbers. Of course, his alluring proportions had no effect on me, certainly not with his face powdered.
He said, “I am pleased to find you so composed, hours after your attempted murder.”
“And how would you have learned of that?”
“Your servants are most trustworthy. The one who sold the news spoke nothing but truth.”
I chuckled for a moment then caught myself, following the indiscretion with a remonstrative scowl. He of all people should not go around hoodwinking people into laughter.
Tethiel sat on the edge of a couch, his hands dangling off the front of the pink cushion. “The Soultrapper must fear you will find him, to have played out his hand like this.”
“I agree. The acolyte wore the symbol of Priest Salkant.”
“That you were attacked by an acolyte confirms the Soultrapper is not a priest.”
I asked, “How does that make any manner of sense?”
“The Soultrapper meant to distract you, and to test your magic. He could not be wise to your full ability.”
“The Soultrapper meant to kill me, and we should not dismiss the priest. He has influence and the greatest means.”
“For those reasons, we must rule him out. Soultrappers seek power and devotion, and the priests already have both.”
“Historically, those with power are the hungriest for more.”
“The price of magic puts most men off their appetite. Enchantress Hiresha, yours is a beautiful and gentle power, and thus an exception.” The late-afternoon sun broke through the clouds and shone through the window behind Tethiel, brightening the lace around his neck and granting his wig a luster similar to jet. “Most magics demand sacrifices that repel all but the desperate. Soultrappers must listen to the screams of imprisoned spirits, for as long as they live, which is only as long as they escape the notice of someone stronger. The priests have hundreds of servants, can eat five meals a day, and bed anyone they wish. They have too much to lose.”
“The priests would not be ‘bedding’ just anyone. One of them is married.”
“You would sooner accuse them of Soultrapping than dalliance?”
“I....” The priests represented gods, and the thought of them engaging in any wrongdoing was beyond disturbing; Tethiel’s refusal to accept them as Soultrappers felt as relieving as a steam bath on a cold day. “I will defer to your expertise in the depraved.”
“At last, you give me my due credit.”
Tethiel had clenched his hands on the couch when he had mentioned magics and their sacrifices. I recalled him speaking of his nightmares, and his death grip on the pink cushion struck me as tragic.
“I still wish to know,” I said, “why you became a Feaster.”
For a quarter-second, sadness frayed the edges of his composed face. “That would cast me in the most unfavorable light. At my age, good lighting is of the utmost importance.”
“I already know who you are. What could be worse?”
“Very little, I will grant. But this Soultrapper is, and I do so ever wish you’ll point him out. I feel I must Feast soon.” His fingers dug deeper into the pink cushions.
“Unfortunately, if the Soultrapper cannot be a priest then, well, the last option is a past acquaintance,” I said slowly, unwillingly. Although Alyla had said her father had gone to dismantle my wall, I had yet to see him down there. “Harend Chandur by name. He is disaffected, yet I hate to think of him as a Soultrapper. No, I do not envision him being one. He could never have touched so many women.”
“Then why suspect him?”
Harend Chandur had touched me, and someone who had done that had impregnated me with an unchild, a condition from which I was only now recovering. “I would prefer not to say.”
“You must be certain. Morimound will have no second chances, and neither will I. Should I Feast on the wrong man, the Soultrapper may sense it, and he will waste no time in harvesting the Bone Orbs. On his guard, he may kill me as I kill him. Then my children would commence a gluttonous festival.”
At that, I mistakenly breathed in a sip of tea. After coughing twice in as ladylike a manner as I could into my napkin, I said, “Something connects all the Bone Orbs to the Soultrapper, and if I could find that focus, my enchantment would unmake all his spirit prisons.”
“The Soultrapper himself is the focus, his blood and his body.”
“Then after you kill him, I will have to...” I coughed again but a foul taste remained in my mouth. “...well, the essential point is that the body must be retained.”
Sadness flickered across Tethiel’s face once again, this time accompanied by his mouth pinching into a crescent of disgust. I found it comforting that he sympathized with me for having to sleep with a corpse.
A new thought occurred to me, one that pained me as if I had swallowed a handful of needles. “I can undo the Bone Orbs, yet what of the souls inside them?”
“Do souls not enter the body at birth?”
“No, at quickening. That time has passed, and the Orbs must contain souls.”
“Then, Enchantress Hiresha, what do you believe happens to people after they die?”
A coldness itched its way up my throat and welled behind my eyes. “Spirits journey to find the cavern of the Fate Weaver, where they view the synthesis of every being’s threads in the grand pattern of the Loom of Life.”
“Then there is your answer,” he said.
“I feel there must be more I can accomplish for them. Spirits should have lives.”
“They will have freedom, because of you. You will also stop the Soultrapper from imprisoning anyone else.”
“Will I? I still have no idea how he imprisoned so many. The Soultrapper must have touched each woman, yet he could never have done so.”
“Enchantress Hiresha, my heart, I believe you’ve solved it. The Soultrapper touched each woman, without touching her.”
“This is no time for your self-contradicting statements.”
“Truth only comes from contradiction.”
“Nothing comes from the impossible.”
“Clearly, this is possible.”
I snorted in irritation. “How then could a Soultrapper touch each woman, yet at the same time, not touch her?”
“That you must discover. I see no possibilities, so I will defer to your ability to create miracles.” He rose to his feet, and I saw his fingers had left ten indentations in the couch. “With your permission, Enchantress Hiresha, I will now depart.”
“To leave the city, only to return in a few days?”
“That would be most foolish, since I expect you to unmask the Soultrapper tomorrow.”
He left in a streak of red satin. I folded my hands over my chest, above the red diamond, wondering if he could be right.
No one else had ever had such confidence in me, not since my falling asleep over the spindle had frustrated my mother to despair. Enchantresses in the Academy aspired to my position and deferred to my judgment, yet they had also witnessed my failures to cure myself of sleep; they would not imagine me capable of overcoming a cataclysm on the scale of a Seventh Flood.
Excitement hummed through me even as drowsiness bowed me forward. I struggled for a moment with the quandary of touching without touching, yet my heart rate was slowing, my mind sinking into a morass of fatigue. Perhaps Tethiel was right; maybe I could unravel the puzzle in my laboratory.
Maid Janny chattered as she helped me to my feet. “Don’t know how you abide him. His face never moves, must be like talking to a corpse.”
“He has expressions,” I said. “You merely have to look closely.”
“You’re not buzzed with him, are you? I’m beginning to worry.”
“I will not even pretend to know what you mean.”
“Are you flipped over him? Roasted? Bunny-eyed? Jelly-kneed?”
“How absurd! Maid Janny, you are most respectable with your mouth closed. Remember that.”
She pestered me with a few more concerned noises as she guided me into my room. Secure in my sleep harness, I descended the hundred steps so I could identify the Soultrapper.
In magic, the strength of the touch lay in proximity, given that distance tended to dilute spell power. The nearness of the magic user’s soul might be the causative agent, yet that explanation was insufficient because I knew enchantresses could lie close to someone but fail to draw him or her into dream if clothing separated the two. The touch of flesh upon flesh had to matter.
I sat floating in the air, one arm crossed over my chest, the other propping up my chin. Green light shone down on me, and then orange, as first a glowing emerald then a fire opal passed overhead.
Neither could flesh alone explain it, I knew. I could not take a lock of someone’s hair and sleep with it, expecting to capture its owner’s entity in my dream, yet I could craft an enchantment by touching a jewel then giving the jewel to another. Intermediaries could exist.
Soultrappers would not work with jewels but in corrupted flesh. Tethiel had said they branded a dying man with their own blood to create a spirit prison, and I wondered if they could achieve similar effects by entrusting their blood to a follower, who would use it to paint a glyph.
Marking so many women could never have escaped notice. In the Third and Fourth Ages of the city, blood from animal sacrifices had been applied to the sick and to newlyweds. Such rituals had long since fallen out of favor.
Assuming that the followers could somehow have written fifty thousand glyphs without anyone observing them, which I deemed impossible, I estimated they would need at least five drops of blood for each woman. This Soultrapper would have had to leech all the blood from his body twice over to account for the pregnancies.
I doubted both that the Soultrapper possessed sufficient followers for this feat and that he could store his blood long enough to accumulate the needed gallons, over several siphonings. Even cooled by ice chips, blood tissue would degrade.
To avoid such prohibitive quantities, I wondered if the Soultrapper could have applied the same blood to different women at different times. Again, blood seemed less than conducive to this function because of its tendency to dry and clot, yet I imagined him distributing some part of himself that would pass from the hands of one woman to another, touching them all indirectly.
Salkant of the Fate Weaver was missing the tips of four fingers, ostensibly from spider bites, yet a man had attacked me today wearing the robes of one of his acolytes. I imagined Priest Salkant cutting off his own fingers and inserting them into thimble-sized reliquaries, which his acolytes would press against each woman before reading her fate in a web.
Jewels raced over the walls of the laboratory and up into its dome, their speed embodying my anticipation. I could tell I was close to viewing the Soultrapper’s face; soon I could point to one man and name him responsible.
No precedent existed for acolytes of the Fate Weaver to touch women with talismans or finger-sized objects. Even if Priest Salkant had invented one, application of four dismembered fingers would have taken a month or more, given the number of women; in the God’s Eye Court, I had noted the conceptions tended to center around one week for all but those of wealthy families, who had begun gestation a month later, on average.
The disparity in conception times could be explained, if the four dismembered fingers were applied later to those living on the Island District, perhaps to delay suspicion in the authorities, yet I could not believe this method could affect so many women within a span of a week. If women had stood in long lines to receive the “blessing” of the Fate Weaver, acolytes of the other god would have squealed to me about it.
Given that a task could not be done fast enough with four vectors, the obvious solution would be to cre
ate more of them, or in this case, subdivide the fingers. I cringed, imagining the fingertips dissected into pieces then disseminated among the women, and I wondered at the method of dispersal. All the women I had examined in the Court had been pregnant, and to achieve that degree of morbidity, the pieces had to have reached them through a means in which all women engaged.
All women ate, and I considered the possibility of minute quantities of the fingers implanted into foods, poisoning the women with pregnancy. This method had the advantage of explaining the disparity among the rich, as they would eat different foods.
I steepled my hands in concentration then twined my fingers at the thought that my womb too had begun to foster an unchild, meaning I might have consumed a sliver of a human fingertip. The concept of having inadvertently been a cannibal gave me no little displeasure.
The piece of the Soultrapper would need be infinitesimal, both for reasons of covertness and because there was only so much of him; however, the smaller the piece, the greater the chance it would be digested before its magic took effect. The Soultrapper’s magic corrupted the flesh, not strengthened it, and the ingested-finger theory began to seem less probable, unless the modicum had a means of protecting itself.
This gave me an idea. I replicated myself and gestured for my clone to lie on the operations table; she did so, wearing only her red undergarments. Blue diamonds flurried around my fingertips, and I used their enchantment to bisect her stomach at intervals of one thousandths of an inch.
Even though I had expected it, I gasped when I found a morsel of the Soultrapper imbedded in my stomach lining. Two-sevenths the size of a grain of sand, a mote of bone floated in a cyst in the wrinkled mucus membrane, shielded in a bubble of inflamed tissue.
The bone mote contained units with formative fiber matching those of the unchildren. More than that, I sensed the Soultrapper peering at me; he no doubt knew I scrutinized a piece of him.
“How much,” the replica asked, “do you think he perceives of our laboratory?”
Brood of Bones Page 21