by Emma Bull
"What did she do?" Teshi asked Kerlaf. "Did she have others with her?"
"No one else," Kerlaf said. "She … she gave us hot spiced milk when we returned to our room last night—a welcome cup, she called it, and then … the next thing I remember was her standing over me. I was on the floor and Ayla was beside me, so still. She must have drugged us only I didn't finish all of my drink. I tried to rise, but she hit me with something. I started to pass out, but she just kept hitting me, and Ayla … I knew Ayla was already … I knew she was …"
He didn't weep again, he just closed up. His eyes went bleak and he slumped against the headboard.
"If I wasn't so … so sinking weak …"
Teshi and Saffer exchanged glances.
"We'd better tell my brother," Saffer said. "Demar can—"
Teshi shook her head, her eyes cold and hard as diamonds. "Let me deal with this Bica," she said.
"I don't think that's such a good—"
Something flickered like fire in Teshi's cold eyes and Saffer suddenly remembered that this was a wizard she was arguing with, not one of her friends.
"All right," she said. "Sink the Guard. Let Demar dump me on Crab Isle when he finds out. What do I care."
Teshi's dog jumped onto the wizard's lap and she patted it absently. "Twig and I, we look after our friends," she said. "Even when we've only just met them."
"Fine," Saffer said. "Perfect." And do you know any spells to get one off of Crab Isle? she wondered.
Teshi rose. Twig leapt to the floor and danced eagerly by the door, while the wizard laid a comforting hand on Kerlaf's shoulder.
"I'll be back," she told Saffer, and then she and the little dog were gone and Saffer was alone with Kerlaf.
"Ah … you really should try some of this broth," she told Kerlaf.
Her patient made no reply. Lovely, Saffer thought. Not that she blamed him. But looming larger in her mind than Kerlaf's grief were her own worries about Demar. He was going to kill her.
•
The dead woman sat upright in the chair. The day was wearing to its end outside, but it was always dark in the cellar where the corpse sat. In the flicker of the lantern light, its features almost seemed alive. But the corpse was mummified and tied to its chair. Its withered cheeks were gaunt. Its skin clung like dry leather to its limbs. Dark hollows lay where its eyes had been.
Across from the corpse sat a living woman. She too had a wrinkled face, but her eyes glittered darkly like a crow's as she stared at her dead companion. Her hair was a faded salty yellow and hung limply past her sloped shoulders.
"He went and stayed alive," she told the corpse, "and Bica doesn't like that. He'll bring Guards, he will, and maybe wizards. You'd like that, wouldn't you? Maybe the wizards will put your soul back in your body, or set it free—I'm sure you don't care, just so long as you can get away from Bica. But Bica has a plan, you know. Bica will just find him and cut his throat and then no one will know that Bica had anything to do with it."
She grinned at the corpse, exposing long yellow teeth in poor condition.
"Maybe Bica should bring him back here to be with you and then you wouldn't be so lonely. Would you like that?" She cocked her ear. "Oh, you'll have to speak up, or Bica will keep him for herself." She listened a second time, then rose to her feet. "Well, Bica gave you a chance to speak, but it's too late now. Bica's made up her mind. It's the knife for him and the dark cellar for you."
Catching up the lantern, she held it up to the dead woman's withered features. "It's almost night now," Bica told the corpse. "Soon Bica will go out and find him and play a game of skin and knife with him. Do you remember that game? It's the one Sadabel played on Bica before Bica tore out his heart. See this? See it now?"
She lifted her blouse to show the dead woman the scar tissue on her abdomen.
"You peel the skin back, bit by bit. And then you cut a muscle here, and another there. And then you twist the blade, just a touch, until the blood's running freely. And then you peel some more skin back. It's a fine game, isn't it?
"Remember when Bica played it with you? You didn't like it. You kept crying for Bica to stop, but Bica remembered that you had a little power. Bica knew that you'd helped Sadabel hurt her, so Bica had to cut away, cut, cut, cut, until there was just the skin left to cure and the bone left to wire, and then the puzzle to put all back together again.
"But you're still here, aren't you, and don't you look fine? Oh, yes. Bica didn't want to send you away. Bica wanted to keep her eye on you. Like Bica should have done with Sadabel so that she didn't have to keep killing him, over and over and over again …"
•
Teshi stopped by her rooms in The Luck's Shadow after leaving Saffer and Kerlaf. She stayed only long enough to change, then left by the rear, transformed into a shabbily-dressed woman by the simple magic of a disguise. Her beautiful robes and jewelry were replaced with well-worn clothing that was too large for her, while her fingers glittered with rings of polished tin and brass set with great chunks of brightly colored glass. She carried a bag over one shoulder, and a small disheveled bundle of fur dogged her footsteps as she headed towards Rat's Alley.
She paused across the street and eyed the battered three-story dwelling. Twilight lay thick on the streets, but the building was dark, giving it a gloomy look. The door was an odd-colored green—the paint chipped and flaking, she discovered as she crossed the street to approach it. She was about to knock when the door opened.
Teshi took a step back and Twig growled while hiding behind her ankles. The woman who opened the door leaned on a knobby stick of a cane and glared at them until she spied the bag on Teshi's shoulders.
"Looking for lodgings, are you?" she asked.
Teshi took another step back. An unpleasant odor hung about the woman that grew more pronounced when she opened her mouth.
"Don't be shy, don't be shy. Bica's got room enough for everyone, isn't that the truth?"
"I haven't much money," Teshi began, but Bica waved that notion off.
"Paugh! Bica likes to help people and, in turn, people like to help her. Bica always has room for those that need it, don't you know. You can pay a little and help out a little…" Her eyes narrowed slightly. "Do you know any magics?"
Teshi shook her head.
"Too bad, too bad. Bica likes to trade lodgings for magics, especially guardspells." She leaned close and Teshi held her breath. ''There's some that don't like old Bica, you know. They live up there." She pointed straight above them.
"What—on the upper floors?" Teshi asked.
"No, no. In the sky. In the moon. Bica's far too clever for them, though."
When Saffer had described Bica as a crazy old woman, Teshi realized, the young cittern player hadn't been exaggerating. She felt Twig still rubbing nervously against her ankles so she hoisted him up into the crook of her arm.
Bica eyed the dog with sudden suspicion. "Where are you from?" she demanded.
"Not from the moon," Teshi said.
"So," Bica said after a long moment of silence. "You want a room?"
Teshi blinked, then nodded. "Yes, but—"
"Oh, don't you worry about your little dog. Bica loves animals, doesn't she just."
She put out a hand to Twig—who suffered a rough pat with only a little trembling—then turned and led the way inside. The room she offered Teshi was the first on the right from the front door. Leaving the wizard to inspect it, Bica bustled off, "To get you a little welcoming gift, and wouldn't that be nice?"
Teshi studied the rented room. In different circumstances, it would have been amusing. The room was clean, but it was such a crazy quilt of colors that it made her head spin. Bica must have furnished her house from the pickings of Fortune Way—but only after a more thorough cleaning than anyone else would want to get close enough to give the various articles. She sighed and turned to Twig. The little dog sat in the middle of the room, fastidiously wrinkling his nose.
"Yes," Teshi said. "There certainly is an air
of—" Bica chose that moment to return with a tray and two steaming mugs of spicy milk. "—A charm about the building," Teshi finished.
Bica nodded. She smiled, but the revelation of her yellowed teeth only made her look worse. "There is something about these old buildings, isn't that the truth?"
She put the tray down on a table by the door and handed Teshi a mug. Then before she picked up her own, she muttered something about that shade not hanging quite right.
As soon as Bica crossed the room, Teshi surreptitiously exchanged the mug she'd been given for the one still on the tray. Twig barked a warning.
Teshi caught a glimpse of Bica with her knobby cane in her hand. Then the cane hit her head as though powered by the force of one of the new railway engines, and she collapsed to the floor, her milk mug spilling from her hand. Twig growled as Bica approached his fallen mistress, but the old woman swung the cane at him and he had to back off. She chased him all the way to the front door, coming closer and closer to hitting him with each blow, until he finally turned and fled out onto the street.
"Bica likes to eat dogs!" the old woman screamed after Twig before slamming the door. Her momentary ill-humor at the dog dissolved as she stood over her newest victim.
"Thought Bica wouldn't know you had a new body, did you now? Thought you could fool her, but Bica's too smart. Always was, always will be. And this time Bica knows what to do with you. It's the skin and knife game for you, and won't that be fun?" She paused long enough for Teshi to answer, but the wizard lay limp on the rug. "Oh, yes," Bica nodded. "It'll be such fun, wait and see."
•
Saffer was sitting in her window seat, working on the particularly intricate bit in the middle of a reel called "Wrap Up and Roll." Winny Lind, the bones player, had showed it to her on Meggy's whistle once and, while it wasn't quite a cittern sort of a tune, Saffer had always wanted to learn it. With Kerlaf asleep once more, and Teshi still gone, it seemed the perfect thing to keep her mind off her troubles.
She had just about got the three rolls of triplets that were giving her the most trouble when she happened to glance out the window. Surprised, she started to lean over the ledge, then quickly ducked her head back in. Demar was out on the street, heading for her lodgings.
Perfect, she thought as she laid down her cittern. She gave the bed a glance, but Kerlaf was still asleep. Maybe she should curl up on a pillow and pretend to be asleep as well. Demar would peek in, see them sleeping, and then—
Demar's characteristically loud knocking interrupted any further planning. Was that the first thing they learned when they joined the Guard? How to knock down doors with their knuckles?
"I know you're in there!" Demar called through the wood.
Saffer swung the door open and lifted a finger to her lips. "Will you keep it down? I've got a sick man sleeping in here."
Demar gave the bed a quick glance. "Sorry." He caught the door before Saffer could close it on him. Taking her by the arm, he pulled her out into the hall where he was standing and then shut the door. "We have to talk."
"About what?"
"Let's start with the wizard you had in your room this afternoon."
"Demar, have you been spying on me?"
"Only as much as you've been holding back."
Saffer tried a fierce frown on him, but it did no good. "It wasn't my idea," she began, then told what had happened since Teshi had arrived. As Demar listened, a storm gathered in his face.
"Saffer," he said grimly. "I warned you what would happen if you held back on—"
"Odd's end, Demar! She's a wizard. What was I supposed to do? Stand in the way and get turned into a frog or a newt?"
"Wizards don't do that kind of a thing."
"It happened to Dumps—he told me so himself."
"Do you believe everything he tells you?"
Saffer shook her head. "No, but—"
Demar held up a hand to cut her off. "Please, Saffer. No more."
"What are you going to do?" she asked as Demar turned to go.
"Talk to this Bica and your wizard. We have laws in this city, Saffer, and a Guard to see that they're obeyed. Both you and Teshi are in a lot of trouble."
"But—"
"I want you to stay in your room and don't budge until I send someone around to collect you."
"But—"
Demar took a step towards her. Saffer skittered back into her room and closed the door on him. But when she heard him going down the stairs, she crept out into the hallway again. As Demar went out the front door, she bolted out the back, meaning to make her own way to Bica's rooming house. But in the alley that the back door opened onto, she almost stepped on a little bundle of fur.
"Twig!" she cried when she recognized it. Then her heart lurched inside her. If the little dog was here, alone, what had happened to his mistress?
Twig gave a bark.
"Aren't you a clever little thing," Saffer murmured. She scooped him up and, holding him against her chest, took off at a run for Bica's once more.
•
The dead woman in Bica's cellar had company now. Teshi was tied to a chair, just as the corpse was. All her clothes had been stripped from her, every belonging from the small bandage on one ankle where her sandal had been chafing to the tiniest of her rings. It all lay in a pile at the far end of the cellar, well beyond Teshi's reach.
Humming to herself, Bica sat in a third chair. Lamplight spilled from the copper-based lamp on the table beside her, lighting both the corpse, which stared straight into eternity with its sightless gaze, and Teshi, whose head was limp against her chest. The melody that Bica hummed was one that Saffer might have recognized. It was a Zhir knife-sharpening song and Bica honed away at her knife with a whetting stone as she hummed.
From time to time, Bica tested the blade against her thumb. Then she went back to her sharpening, her own eyes glittering like a carrion bird's as it dropped from the sky to feed.
When Teshi finally regained consciousness, the first thing she saw was the dry weathered skin of the corpse's face. Its dark eyeless sockets gazed emptily back at her. That, combined with her nakedness, the coolness of the cellar, and Bica's humming, sent a shudder through her body like a wave.
"Awake now, are you?" Bica murmured.
Teshi lifted her head and turned it slightly so that she could see her captor.
"Didn't think Bica would recognize you in that body, did you? But Bica's no fool. Bica always sees right through the skin—don't you know that by now?"
Teshi's gaze went from the woman's mad eyes down to the long wicked blade that she was sharpening.
"We're going to play a game," Bica said. "The skin and knife game. Bica's let you go free too many times, so this time you'll stay with Bica forever, just like your lover has. Bica's going to wrap your soul around your bones, then sew it all up in your skin and then won't you look fine?"
Teshi remembered Saffer's argument about leaving this to the Guard and wondered why she hadn't done just that. She strained against her bonds, but the ropes were tied too tightly. Her gaze lit on the pile of her belongings. Her luck was invested in a small gold band that she normally wore under her larger gaudier rings. She could sense it lying there, just across the cellar. But it might as well have been on the moon for all the use it was to her now.
"Looking for your power, are you?" Bica asked with a grin. "Bica's got the power now, wizard. You should have plunged your knife straight through Bica's heart instead of teaching her the skin and knife game, isn't that the truth?"
Teshi saw something change in the madwoman's eyes—just for a moment. There was a flash of anguish, a weight of pain for which there could be no measurement, but it was quickly suppressed. The fire returned to Bica's eyes, glittering and mad.
"I've never met you before," Teshi said quietly, but firmly.
"Isn't that a laugh?" Bica said to the corpse. "Our good friend Sadabel doesn't remember us." She looked back at Teshi and held up the knife. "Bica thinks you'll rememb
er quick enough, and won't it be fun, won't it just?"
She returned to working on her knife's edge and began to hum once again. Teshi stared at her, then at the corpse. Bica had called her Sadabel. Teshi tasted the name, trying to recall why it sounded so familiar. When the memory finally came to her, she shuddered again.
Bica looked up with a grin. Testing the knife against her thumb, she set the whetstone aside and stood up.
"Bica thinks Master Knife is ready to play," she said.
•
Demar arrived at the green door of Bica's house and brought his fist down against its wooden panels. Once, twice, again. He waited a moment, then repeated the hammering. When no one came after a quick count to twenty, he reached for the doorknob. But before he could touch it, the door swung open and a shabby old woman who could only be Bica stood there leaning on a cane and studying him with small glittering black eyes.
"Oh," Bica said. "What's this? A guard looking for lodging with old Bica? Isn't that fine."
Demar rubbed a finger lengthwise against his lips. "Er, not exactly," he said. While the old woman was probably a few bricks short of a load, she didn't exactly appear to be the villainous madwoman that Saffer had painted her.
Bica fluttered her eyelashes grotesquely. "What? Have you come courting old Bica then?"
Demar took a half-step back. "I'm looking for the wizard Teshi," he said in his most formal tones.
"Ah, the wizard." Bica revealed her yellowed teeth in a grin. "Of course. The important wizard." She stepped aside. "Come in, come in. Don't be shy. Bica doesn't bite."
Demar nodded uncomfortably and moved past her. "I just have to ask her a few—"
Before he could finish, Bica hit him from behind with her cane and he went stumbling to his knees. He stopped his fall with his hands, but she hit him again, across the shoulders, then once more on the back of his head. The floor turned black and swallowed him.
Bica pushed at him with her cane. When he didn't move, she cackled to herself. "Bica's blows are worse than her bite," she told him. Laying aside the cane, she grabbed his shoulders with surprising strength and began to haul him down to the cellar.