Cinnabar Shadows

by Lynn Abbey

  "Ah—you are awake, child. There is water here for washing, then you must dress yourself, yes? The august emerita waits for you in the atrium."

  Mahtra raised her head cautiously, with her fingers splayed over her malformed face, leaving gaps for her eyes. A human youth stood in the doorway with a bundle of linen in his arm. He was well fed and well groomed, with only a few faint lines on his tanned cheeks to proclaim his status in this place. She knew in an instant she'd never seen him before. Except for Kakzim, she'd encountered no slaves who'd stare so boldly at a freewoman.

  She wanted to tell him to go away, or to ask where she was and who the august emerita might be, since she knew no one by that name or title. But, that was talking and, especially without her mask, she didn't talk to strangers. So, she glowered at him instead, and without thinking stuck her tongue at him, as Mika had done whenever she told him to do something he didn't want to do. The slave yelped and jumped backward, nearly dropping his bundle of cloth. He turned and fled the room without another glance at her. For several heartbeats, Mahtra listened to his sandals slapping; the august emerita lived in a very large residence.

  Her mask could be anywhere. It could be in the next room, but more likely it was in the atrium, with the august emerita. If she could face Death every night in her dreams, she could face the august emerita. The sooner she did, the sooner she could get out of here and back to her vigil outside House Escrissar. Mahtra made good use of the wash-stand first. Life by the underground water had spoiled her for the city's scarcity. Even here, in what was plainly an important place, the basin was barely large enough for her hands and the water was used up before she felt completely clean.

  It was better than nothing, much better than the grit and grime she'd accumulated sitting in the alleyway. Her skin was white again, a stark contrast with her midnight gown, which had been brushed and shaken with sweet leaves before it was folded. She found her shawl beneath her gown. It, too, had been handled carefully by the august emerita— or her slaves. In lieu of her mask, Mahtra wrapped the shawl over her head, the way the wild elves did when they visited Henthoren in the elven market.

  The youthful slave had not returned; Mahtra set out alone to find the august emerita in her atrium. It wasn't difficult. An examination of the roofs and walls revealed by the bedchamber window had convinced her that she was, indeed, still in the high, templar quarter where all the residences were laid out in squares and the atrium was the square at the center of everything else. She made mistakes—the residences weren't identical, except on the outside—but she saw no one and no one saw her. Aside from the vanished slave and the august emerita for whom she was searching, Mahtra seemed to be the only person wherever she went.

  She thought she was still alone when she reached the atrium. At the heart of the august emerita's residence was a wonder of trees and vines, leaves and flowers in such profusion that, suddenly, Mahtra understood growing as she hadn't understood it before. The atrium was filled with sounds as well, sounds she had never heard before. Most of the sounds came from birds and insects in brightly colored wicker cages, but the most fascinating sound came from the atrium fountain.

  Lord Escrissar's residence had an atrium and a fountain, of course, but his fountain was nothing like the august emerita's fountain where water sprayed and spilled from one shallow, pebble-filled bowl to another, dulling the background noise of Urik so much that it could scarcely be heard. And the pebbles themselves sparkled in many colors —and some of them were the rusty-red of cinnabar! One cinnabar pebble from the fountain's largest bottom bowl surely wouldn't be missed.

  She heard laughter then, from two places: to her right, where the slave held his sides as he giggled, and behind, where a human woman—the august emerita—sat behind a wicker table and laughed without moving her lips.

  "Ver guards his treasure well, child," the emerita said. "Take your cinnabar pebble from another bowl."

  Mahtra was wary—how could the woman have known she wanted a cinnabar pebble?—but she was clever enough about the ways of high templars to know she should take what had been granted without delay. And the august emerita was a high templar. Though she wrapped her ancient body in layers of sheer silk just like a courtesan, there was a heavy gold medallion hanging around her withered neck. Mahtra snatched the biggest red pebble she could see, then, while it was still dripping, stuffed it in her mouth.

  "Good. Now, come, sit down and have something more nourishing to eat."

  There was a plate of things on the wicker table... pinkish-orange things with too many legs and wispy eyestalks that were still moving and were nothing that Mahtra wanted to eat.

  "Benin, go to the pantry and fetch up a plate of fruit and dainties. Our guest has a delicate palate."

  She didn't want fruit, Mahtra thought as the slave departed. She wanted her mask; she wanted to leave, she wanted to return to her vigil outside House Escrissar.

  "Sit down, child," the woman said with a sigh.

  Despite the sigh—or possibly because of it—Mahtra hied herself to a chair and sat.

  "How many days and nights have you been waiting, child?"

  Mahtra considered the layers in her memory: More than two, she was sure of that. Three or four?

  "Three or four, child—try ten. You'd been sitting there for ten days and nights!"

  Ten—that was more than she'd imagined, but what truly jolted Mahtra was the realization that, like Father, the august emerita could skim the words of her thoughts from her mind's surface. So she thought about her mask, and how badly she wanted it.

  The woman smiled a high templar's knowing smile. She looked a little like Father, with creases across her face and streaks in her hair that were as white as Mahtra's own skin. Her eyes, though, were nothing like Father's. They were dark and hard, like Lord Escrissar's eyes, which she'd seen through the holes of his mask. All the high templars had eyes like that.

  "All of us have been tempered like the finest steel, child. Tell me your name—ah, it's Mahtra. I thought so. Now, Mahtra—"

  But she hadn't thought the word of her name. The august emerita had plunged deep into her mind to pluck out her name. That roused fear and, more than fear, a sense that she was unprotected, and that made the marks on her shoulders tingle.

  I mean you no harm, Mahtra. I'm no threat to you.

  Mahtra felt the makers' protection subside as it had never done before, except in her nightmares when Death ignored her. This was no dream. The woman had done something to her, Mahtra was sure of that. She couldn't protect herself, and learned yet another expression for fear.

  "No harm, Mahtra. Your powers will return, but were I you, child, I'd learn more about them. I'm long past the days when helplessness excited me, but—as you've noticed—I'm an old woman, and you won't find many like me. I want only to know why you've sat on the doorsill of House Escrissar these last ten days. Don't you know Elabon's dead?"

  Dead? Dead like Father, like Mika, and all the others in the cavern? What hope had she of finding Kakzim if Lord Escrissar was dead?

  Mahtra lowered her head. She was cold and, worse than shivering, she felt alone, without the powerful patrons Father mentioned in his last words to her. Blinding pressure throbbed behind her eyes and strange high-pitched sounds brewed in her throat. She couldn't cry, but she couldn't stop trying, any more than she could bring back the makers' protection.

  Suddenly, there was warmth, but not from within. The high templar had left her chair. She stood behind Mahtra, massaging her neck.

  "How witless of me," the august emerita said. Lord Escrissar had used the same words in his apology after he'd left her alone with Kakzim. There was more pressure behind her eyes, more sound brewing in her sore throat. The coincidence had been too great; Mahtra couldn't bear the pain any longer. She slumped sideways, and only the considerable strength in the old templar's arm kept her from falling to the floor.

  Mahtra was ready to tell someone—anyone—what had happened, but it was very difficul
t to keep her thoughts dear enough for the august emerita to understand without saying the words, however poorly, as they formed in her mind. And without her mask, Mahtra was too self-conscious to speak. So, when Bettin returned to the atrium with a plate of sliced fruits and other appetizing morsels, the high templar sent him off after the mask.

  "You'll eat everything on that plate first, child."

  Eating, like talking, made Mahtra uncomfortable, but the light of food had awakened her stomach and the august emerita was not a person to be disobeyed. Mahtra ate with her fingers, ignoring the sharp-edged knife and sharp-tined fork the slave, Bettin, had laid beside the plate. She'd seen much devices before, in other high templar residences, and knew they were more polite, more elegant, than fingertips. She was eleganta, though, not elegant, and she made do with sticking her fingers under the concealing folds of her thawl. The august emerita didn't say anything about Mahtra's manners; the august emerita seemed to have forgotten the had a guest.

  Clutching an ornate walking-stick as if it were a weapon rather than a crutch, the old woman paced circles around her fountain and her trees. She wasn't the tallest human woman Mahtra had ever seen, but she was just about the straightest: her shoulders stayed square above her hips as she took-her measured steps, and her nose pointed forward only, never to either side, even when Mahtra accidently hudged her unused fork, and it skidded and clattered loudly to the mosaic floor.

  Yet the august emerita was paying attention to her. She returned to her own chair on the opposite side of the table as soon as Mahtra had swallowed the last morsel of the last sweet-meat pastry. Bettin appeared, suddenly and silently, out of nowhere and disappeared the same way once he'd deposited Mahtra's mask on the table beside his master. Like her clothes and sandals, the mask had been carefully tended. Its leather parts had been oiled, the metal parts, polished, and the cinnabar-colored suede that would touch her skin once she fastened the mask on had been brushed until it was soft and fragrant again. The august emerita looked aside while Mahtra adjusted the clasps that held the mask in place.

  "Now, child, from the beginning."

  The beginning was a hot, barren wasteland, with the makers behind her and the unknown in front of her. It was running until she couldn't run anymore. It was falling onto her hands and knees, resting, then rising and running some more—

  "The cavern, Mahtra. Begin again with the cavern however many days ago it was. You lived by the reservoir. You were going home. What happened? What did you see? What did this Father-person say to you?"

  Perhaps it was only the sun moving overhead, but the creases in the august emerita's face seemed to have gotten deeper and her eyes even harder than they'd been before. She sat on the edge of her chair, as arrow-straight as she'd paced, with her palms resting lightly on the pommel of the walking stick. The pommel was carved in the likeness of a hooded snake with yellow gemstones for its eyes. Mahtra couldn't decide if the snake or the august emerita herself unnerved her more.

  She went back to that not-so-long-ago morning and retraced her steps: cabra fruits, cinnabar beads, and Henthoren's eerie message. The snake's eyes didn't blink, and neither—or so it seemed—had the high templar's. Indeed, there was no reaction from the far side of the table until Mahtra came to the very end of her tale.

  "... Father said he'd been killed with Mika and the others. He gave me an image of the man who'd killed them. He said... He said I had patrons who could make certain no one else was killed. I knew the man in Father's last image, Lord Escrissar's halfling slave, Kakzim. So I went to Lord Escrissar—to House Escrissar—to wait for him."

  The august emerita was on her feet again, and pacing, holding her snake-stick but not using it. Her free hand rose to the medallion she wore, then fell to her side.

  "You had no right to live there. The reservoir is a proscribed place; you saw King Hamanu's wards and circumvented them. The one you call 'Father,' broke the king's law living there and taking you there. Urik has places for those who cannot work or have no kin. They'd all be alive if they lived within the law where the templarate could protect them."

  The august emerita's stick struck the mosaic a second time. "Ask him," she said, thereby reminding Mahtra that her thoughts were not private here.

  She took her thoughts back to the cavern, then, and Father's last image.

  "Yes, yes—" the old woman said wearily. "The wheels of fortune'? chariot turn fair and strange, child. None of you should have been living beside the reservoir, and you should have been among them when catastrophe struck. Had the wheel turned as it should have turned, there'd be no tale to tell or no one to tell it. But Kakzim... Damn Elabon!" She struck her stick loud enough to disturb her caged birds and insects. "He was warned."

  Not knowing whether "he" was Kakzim or Lord Escrissar, Mahtra closed her eyes and tried very hard to think of neither man. It must have worked; the august emerita started pacing again.

  "This is more than I can know: Elabon's mad slave and Urik's reservoir. I have been too long behind my own walls, do you understand me, Mahtra?"

  Mahtra didn't, but she nodded, and the woman did not skim her thoughts to know she'd lied.

  "I do not go to the bureau. I do not go to the court. I am emerita; I've put such things behind me. I cannot pick them up again. I mistook your purpose on his doorstep, child. I thought you were his, or carrying his, that's all. In my dreams I saw nothing like this. Damn Elabon!"

  The old woman strode to a wall where hung several knotted silk ropes that Mahtra had not noticed before. She yanked on one that was twisted black and gold and another that was plain blue, then turned to Mahtra.

  "Follow me. I will write a message for you. That is all I dare do. There would be too many questions, too much risk. There is only one who can look and listen and act."

  A message for her, and written, too. Mahtra shivered as she rose from the table. Writing was forbidden. Lord Escrissar and Father both had warned her that she must never try to master its secrets; Lord Escrissar and Father had almost never given her the same advice. But the august emerita was going to write a message for her. Surely this was what Father meant when he said her powerful patrons would help her.

  Mahtra snatched another cinnabar pebble from Ver's fountain, then hurried to keep up with the fast-striding woman. They wound up in a smaller room where the only furnishings were another table, another chair, and shelf upon shelf of identical chests, each with a green-glowing lock. On the wall behind the table someone had painted a fresco-portrait of Lord Hamanu. The Lion-King glowered at Mahtra through gemstone eyes while the august emerita snipped a corner off a fresh sheet of parchment and covered it with bold, red lines of ink.

  Two more human slaves, neither of whom was Benin but who were like him in all other ways—lithe, tanned, and lightly scarred—joined them. Mahtra guessed that one of them was the blue rope while the other was the black-and-gold, but she had no way of knowing for certain, and the august emerita did not address them by name.

  "You will accompany Mahtra to the palace. Show this to the sergeant at the gate, and the instigator, too—but don't give it to them, and don't let Mahtra out of your sight until you reach the golden doors. Stay with her. Show my words to anyone who challenges you."

  She folded the parchment, struck a tinder stick with flint and steel, and then lit a shiny black candle. She sealed the parchment with a glistening blob of wax. One of the two slaves took the candle from her hand and extinguished it. The other handed her a stone rod as long as her forearm and topped with the carving of a skull. Black wax and a skull. The symbols and their meanings were inescapable: the august emerita was—or had been—a deadheart, a necromancer at the very least; but considering the way this necromancer plucked the thoughts of the living, more likely, an interrogator, like Lord Escrissar himself, and one of the Lion's cubs.

  Mahtra cried out when the august emerita hammered the rod against the wax. She felt foolish immediately, but these two slaves were not the laughing, teasing sort that Bett
in was. Or perhaps they, like her, were overwhelmed by the old woman's intentions.

  "This should be sufficient." She handed the sealed parchment to the slave who'd held the rod. "It shouldn't be opened at all until you reach the golden doors. But if it is, remember the face well. Remember all their faces, their masks, their names, if you hear them."

  No one had dared tamper with Kakzim. Not even the august emerita.

  * * *

  Sobered and chastened, Mahtra accompanied the two slaves from the templar quarter and through the wide-open gates of Hamanu's palace. The courtyard was as vast as the cavern, but open to the sky and dazzling in the midday sun. Here and there clots of templars, nobles, and wealthy merchants conducted their business. She recognized some of them. They recognized her by pretending not to. And though the air was dead still and the heat oppressive, Mahtra hid herself within her shawl.

  They were hailed at the inner gate by a war bureau sergeant and a civil bureau instigator, each in a yellow robe with the distinctive and appropriate sleeve banding. The war bureau sergeant wanted to carry the message himself to the next post. He told the two slaves that they were dismissed, but he withdrew his order when the taller slave said:

  "I will remember your face."

  After that they traveled through a smaller courtyard where trees grew and fountains squandered their water. Threads of gold and copper were woven in the sleeves of the templars they encountered next, and more metal still in the sleeves of the third pair who stood at the mighty doors of the palace proper. Mighty doors, but not golden ones— Mahtra and her two companions were passed to a fourth and finally a fifth pair of templars—high templars, with masks and other-colored robes—before they came to a closed but unguarded pair of golden doors.

  "You've done well," one of the masked templars said to the slaves. "Remember us to the august emerita. We wish her continued peace." He took the black-sealed parchment, then opened one of the golden doors. "Wait in here," he said, and as quickly as that, Mahtra was completely alone.