by Jean Johnson
Dor nudged his elbow. “That’s us!” he whispered. “And I think I know who can get us deep into the archives. Or at least Alger does.”
“ . . . Four will search the geography archives for the ideal kingdom or nation for us to take over, somewhere with a weak government, lax laws, an oppressed people who might view us as kindly liberators once we gain the power we need. I am sick and tired of traveling like a common vagabond, and I know the rest of you are equally tired of being without readily available resources whenever we have to travel through the wilderness regions. Just in getting here . . .”
“Where is Alger?” Fran asked Dor under his breath, curious.
“He made the mistake of getting up early, so he got sent to the Index Hall to see if Torven has shown up yet,” Dor whispered. “He relieved Loker, who was up all night, which is why he’s being cranky about Alshai.”
Grunting, Fran forced another spoonful of overly “flavorful” food into his mouth and down his throat. Food was food, though. Even with magic to lure in animals for their cook fires, his group had nearly starved to death while crossing the North Haida Pass in the depths of winter. Burnt rice porridge that filled his bowl tasted better than a sliver of half-burnt, half-raw icehawk, and thin soup the next day from the bones and skin boiled overnight for stock.
“Shouldn’t there be a Group Seven?” he heard Stearlen ask.
“Whatever for?” Elcar demanded. Fran couldn’t see the ex-archbishop’s face, but he could hear the confused annoyance in his voice.
“For looking up tantric sex magic. I heard it raises a lot of energy,” Stearlen stated.
“Where did you hear that?” one of the other priests crowded into the largish room next to the kitchen demanded. Fran couldn’t be completely sure, but it sounded like a priest from the capital of their former land.
“Well, I heard some Mendhite boys snickering about it at the public refreshing room yesterday, near the marketplace we visited,” Stearlen claimed. “They were talking about it being in the less strictly guarded parts of the restricted archives. I’m all for Nurem, because women are stupid, uppity creatures to be put in their place . . . but if we can raise magic off of bedding them, then we should be trying that.”
“One, we don’t have any crystals to store that kind of energy in, and two, to get women to be enthusiastic enough to not try to claim we raped them,” Elcar retorted, “we run the risk of them worshipping for real.”
“I didn’t mean . . . ! Look, with respect, Father Elcar, now that we’ve left Mekhana far behind, we can get amulets that prevent babies from being born, right? And we can make amulets that capture and translate languages in an aura around our bodies, allowing those we speak with to understand and hear? So why not amulets that capture magics raised by sex?”
Fran didn’t like the sound of that. Even with willing females who gave permission for sex . . . that was taking their energies without permission, if they didn’t mention the amulets in question. If such a thing were possible.
“Listen, you little half-toothed cogwheel,” Elcar retorted. “The world isn’t just whatever you can piston to death! This is serious power we’re seeking! Don’t you think our ex-Patron would’ve tried to raise power that way if it were feasible? Or that Father Torv would have mentioned it among the ways to raise a great deal of power?”
“Even a handful of grains gleaned from the seeds left behind on a scythed field can feed a man,” Stearlen argued. “I’m just saying we should look into all sources of power, and pursue more than just one way alone. We may need such stored scraps of power to augument our efforts to attain a greater prize. If we’d had more power to spare, we could’ve put up shields strong enough to keep out those greasers that ruined our first summoning attempt!”
“Fine! I appoint you to be our holy fuck-finder!” Elcar snapped. “You are reassigned to Group Two. Brother Tasik can take your place in Group Six—and while you’re at it, Brother Stearlen, find a way to acquire more unpurposed power crystals to store all this pistoning-based energy you’re so determined to claim we can use. Cheaply, because we’re going to run out of funding if we have to buy it all ourselves!”
Still in the kitchen, Fran shook his head and continued eating his breakfast. Cogs and springs . . . Stearlen’s always thinking with his piston, isn’t he? There can’t be that much energy waiting to be gleaned from sexual couplings, can there? Gods and Goddesses of the world, please remember I’m trying to redeem myself by playing spy and saboteur. I just haven’t found anything I can sabotage . . . nor a way to get information back to that Longshanks lad . . . er, lass. Whatever.
Presuming she even remembers me . . . and remembers the fact that I offered to do all of this infiltration stuff to help her and the others out . . .
Chapter Twelve
Sitting in a floor-length taga of pale lavender silk, embroidered all over with the rainbow pei-slii teardrops representing each of the nine branches of the Hierarchy of Mendhi and decorated at her hip with the small golden labrys of her office, Elder Librarian Anya’thia sipped at her morning cup of tea and regarded the man seated across from her. Next to him, the new Elder Mage tried not to fidget, waiting for Anya’thia’s decision. Pelai had ensured her penitent charge had taken a bath, neatly combed and braided his hair, and donned a fresh kilt and matching vest in hunter green that brought out the green in the bands inked around his biceps, granting him greater strength and greater speed.
“Access,” Anya’thia finally said.
“Yes,” Pelai agreed.
“To the Restricted Archives.”
“Yes.”
“A penitent.”
“Yes.”
“Who is a Partisan.”
“No.” The reply to her flat-voiced, skeptical statement this time came from Krais himself. “I have broken away from my father’s influence. I no longer scribe down his beliefs in any way.”
“Hmphf.” The noise came out sarcastic, but her expression remained placid. Mostly placid.
Pelai had always thought Anya’thia to be a very handsome woman, the kind with excellent features that aged well. She had paler skin than most Mendhites, more the color of milk in strong tea than the darker, more usual sun-brown most sported; her medium brown hair had a distinct curl to it, and very little gray.
Those steady, assessing eyes boasted specs of green mottling their brown, like leaves scattered across wood. Some source of outlander blood gave her those exotic touches, though her face was as moon-round as any Mendhite could wish. Those lips were more suited for smiling, a trait echoed in the fine wrinkles along the edges of her mouth and at the outer corners of her eyes, suggesting she did so often. At the moment, she did not smile.
Neither did she frown, however. Pelai chose to take that as an encouraging s—
“I wish to read his soul.”
If she had been the one sipping tea, Pelai would have choked and spat it out. For anyone else, that would have been an impossibility; the marks of the Disciplinarian were for a Goddess-approved person to bear, and only another Disciplinarian could peer into a person’s soul via their own marks. Despite her great power and training as the Elder Mage, Tipa’thia could not have done so, and not even the current Elder Priest, Aleppo’thio—who had his own direct connections to the Goddess Menda—could read a soul like a Disciplinarian could.
To the Elder Librarian, however, Menda granted the power not only to understand any language, but to read anything. The knotted and beaded string-words of the Tilleshu Isles. The gestures and hand signs of the Thialian Monks of Silence. The most heavily encrypted codes used by assassins, thieves, conspirators, and military generals. All of it. The Elder Librarian could read, understand, and know the meaning behind any form of communication. That ability alone made the Elder Librarian very dangerous to encryption specialists around the world . . . but it also made her very popular with young children trying to explain
their scribbled drawings to adults.
This was not a drawing contest. The Elder Librarian could not trigger the soul-reading—Anya’thia did not have the special tattoos for it—but she could “ride along” when a Disciplinarian did so. Considering the implications, the ramifications, and what she knew of Krais’ soul . . . Pelai breathed deep and nodded. “You have my permission. Penitent, do you grant permission?”
“I . . . have nothing to fear,” Krai stated, hesitating just a little. “So I do not object.”
Anya’thia gave him a pointed look over her mug of Aian tea. “But do you give permission?”
Squaring his shoulders just a little, he said, “I give you permission, Elder Librarian.”
Satisfied, Pelai commanded, “Stay seated, Penitent, and keep your eyes forward.”
“Yes, Doma.” He stared straight ahead, ignoring the way the two women rose in tandem and moved.
Pleated lavender hemline rustling over the wooden floor of her office, the Elder Librarian moved in front of Krais, and the Elder Mage and former Second Disciplinarian moved behind him. Pelai brought her hands down on his shoulders. That earned her a frown.
“What are you doing?” Anya’thia demanded, frowning at Pelai.
“ . . . I’m about to read his soul?” Pelai returned, quirking her brows. “Like you asked?”
“Not like that!” the older woman fussed. She fluttered her hand at Pelai’s wrists. “I can’t see a thing! They’re facing the wrong way. I need to see your Goddess marks.”
“Well, I’ve never done this before!” Pelai retorted, stripping off her bracers. “I didn’t think that you had to actually see the marks. I . . . hmm. Do you know how to . . . ?”
“I haven’t done it, either, though I do remember watching my predecessor doing it,” Anya’thia muttered. She frowned while Pelai tried to turn her arms this way and that, and finally sighed. “I’m sorry, I can’t remember the position the Disciplinarian used.”
Pelai couldn’t really turn her wrists so that the insides faced forward, and she couldn’t bend them the right way and still get her palms firmly on his body, which the tattoos required. . . . Finally, she gave up any pretense of dignity, crouched, laced her fingers together, and pressed her hands against the back of his head. “Can you see them now?”
“ . . .Yes, both of them. Thank you for having your hair braided tightly today, young man,” Anya’thia told Krais in an aside.
“You’re welcome,” he grunted, head pushed around a little by the way Pelai wobbled briefly on her toes, forced to use his skull as a temporary bracing post.
“Sorry,” she muttered, balancing herself better.
“Forgiven,” he returned.
“Right, then. Activate the reading whenever you’re ready, Pelai’thia,” Anya’thia directed.
Nodding, Pelai reached down into herself, then out to the skin of her wrists. The skin, the muscles, the tendons, the bones. The special tattoos that had been inked on her inner wrists in the same shade of tan as the skin found there, similar to the illusion-piercing tattoo around her left eye, glowed.
Pelai could not see it directly, but she knew what it looked like, for newly elevated Disciplinarians were required to clasp hands with a senior in rank, displaying their tattoos faceup, and show the effects while reading their senior’s soul, to prove the tattoes were true. At first, the specially inked pei-slii design shimmered in faint gold, lightening and brightening the skin-matched hue of the ink, then it sizzled from the pen-tip point to the scroll of the teardrop. But instead of a spiraling design, the center of that teardrop held a spiral encircling a closed eye.
Between one breath and the next, those closed eyes opened, shining iridescent gold light past each of Krais’ ears. Shining an inner light down into Krais’ soul. The light of the Goddess illuminated the faint wrinkles of encroaching age on the forty-eight-year-old woman’s face. Hazel eyes widening, Anya’thia sensed what Pelai did. Sensed what lay within the Painted Warrior’s soul.
Arrogance that had faded, sins scrubbed down to specks through hard mental, emotional, and philosophical work. New paths laid bare yet with care within the Painted Warrior’s life, while the old trails were left to vanish under neglectful weeds. A sense of purpose had removed his old ways, beyond selfish interests, bitter regrets for mistakes, replaced by a solid resolve to change his ways.
Dismay, disgust, and resolve-bolstering horror at the thought of their world being ravaged by demons from the Netherhells. Regret, shame, and discomfort at the realization that one of his brothers was fated to help, or perhaps just let that invasion begin. Uncertainty over his own role in all of this, but a determination to do the right thing, and not just whatever his father demanded.
This time, Pelai sensed a touch of stubborn defiance, even if he was not resisting their soul-searching. Rather, this was an awareness that he wanted to share with the two women examining his soul. A determination that he wasn’t changing for anyone in his life other than the Goddess . . . and for humanity itself as a whole. But not for either of them.
That determination amused her. Pelai considered it proof he was still the same Puhon Krais who had refused to submit over a decade ago. Now that the blindfold of father-worship and father-obedience had fallen from his eyes, he intended to be his own man. To forge his own choices.
There was little one could do to correct a man who had been correcting his own path for half a year. Maybe a little spanking, Pelai thought, amused. Or a little hot wax . . . mostly just for fun.
The eyes on her wrists closed, and the glow faded. Withdrawing her hands, straightening with some relief for her aching back, Pelai tugged her bracers back on archer-style, with the lacings placed along the outside and the solid leather covering her inner wrists. Warrior-style would have been with the solid leather on the outside. Warrior-style bracers would have also come with metal plates riveted to the leather, to catch and block blows from weapons.
She had seen Krais and his brothers wearing such things many times over the years, along with other bits of armor, some of it boiled leather scribed with protective runes, some of it adorned with very functional, protective plates. Not Gayn as much as Foren, since Gayn had only just reached his twenties, and not Foren as much as Krais; the middle brother sat in his middle twenties, and the eldest, her penitent, was her own age of thirty-one. Pelai was more certain of his age than his siblings’ because she had been one year into her own apprenticeship when she witnessed Krais fail the start of his.
But that failure was a lifetime ago. Or rather, a life-change. Enough of a change that Anya’thia came out of her trance with raised brows, and stared past Pelai’s shoulder with a thoughtful look while her fellow Elder tugged on and laced up those bracers. Finally, the Elder Librarian nodded.
“Very well . . . it is clear he passes this test. But I’m still not convinced you need fuller access.”
“I wouldn’t ask for fuller access under any other circumstance,” Krais replied dryly. “I’m not my mother. I’m not a librarian at heart.”
“Then what are you, Puhon Krais?” Anya’thia asked dryly. “You’re not a Disciplinarian, you’re not a librarian . . . what are you?”
With her wrist tattoos covered, Pelai moved to the side just in time to see Krais arching a brow at the older woman, his upper lip wrinkled in a little sneer. His voice stung with the scorn to match his expression, too.
“You make that sound like it’s a sin not to be anything,” Krais stated. “Do I lose my humanity, my very right to exist, if I’m not something you approve of?”
His demand hit the Elder Librarian like an invisible smack to her chest. She jerked back, blinking, her curls and her taga folds swaying a little. Unlike most other Elders on the Hierarchy, however, she did not bristle with a self-important level of indignation. Rather, she acknowledged the rightful chiding. “I . . . I didn’t—! . . . I apologize, if that was
the impression I gave. The Gods Themselves gave you the right to exist. I am simply trying to ascertain what you think of yourself. What you’d call yourself, in order to give yourself definition, now that you’ve cut yourself adrift from being your father’s professional lackey.”
His answer came without hesitation. “I am a Painted Warrior.”
“And what does that mean, to you?” Anya’thia questioned him, pressing for details.
“It means my body is covered with the Writ of the Goddess, empowered by my magic and my will, and it is to Her that I will answer for all the deeds I have performed, once my life is through,” Krais recited. Then added tartly, “Right now, it means I owe Her reparations for all the wrongful deeds I committed, or attempted to commit, with the marks on my skin. That includes making sure I follow Her prophesied commands. Serving the Elder Mage is one of those commands.”
“So you’ll go from serving one person blindly to serving another?” Anya’thia muttered.
That narrowed Krais’ eyes. “On the contrary, I intend to challenge anything the Elder Mage does if it does not make sense.”
“And yet the prophecy says you must not protest any of your punishment,” the Elder Librarian countered.
“How did you—?” he asked, startled that she apparently knew.
Pelai answered for her. “It was in one of the messages I wrote out and sent yesterday. I do have to keep the Elder Librarian up to date on all prophecies.”
“Inter-hierarchical cooperation is an essential part of being an Elder of anything,” Anya’thia agreed primly. “Pelai’thia understands how these things work.”
Krais snorted at that. “You mean, every Elder Librarian since the dawn of the position has threatened everyone else to share any such material they may have, Or Else.”