Emissary

by Melissa McShane

  “Young lady—”

  “Thelos,” Zerafine said, her voice low and cut with ice, “if you call me that again I swear by my god I will call down a curse upon you the likes of which your gods have never dreamed. I have been polite and respectful to you and I demand the same respect in return. Now, one last time and I’ll remove my objectionable presence from your doorstep. I am looking for an apparition. You give a good impression of stupidity, but I doubt even you are so insulated from reality that you don’t know what I’m talking about. There is an area here where many of those presences have been seen. Tell me where it is, or who can give me that information, and I’ll be on my way.”

  The thelos had turned as gray as his hair. “Thelis,” he said, “I apologize. I truly don’t know where you can find what you seek. But if you ask the dock master, I believe she will be able to help you.”

  “Thank you. Atenas’s blessing be far from you,” Zerafine said, giving him the most cursory salute and turning away without waiting for his response. “Dock master?” she said to Nacalia, whose mouth was hanging open and eyes were wide as dinner plates. “Go on, we’re running short on time.” Nacalia nodded and trotted away, almost too fast for Zerafine and Gerrard to keep up.

  “I think you scared the kid,” Gerrard said.

  “Good. I don’t think she takes me seriously. I mean me as a thelis of Atenas. She needs to be clear on what it is I do.”

  “Make threats you can’t deliver on? Or does Atenas now curse people for simple rudeness?”

  “I know. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. Or lied to him about the curse.” It had been a small lie, more of a threat than a lie, but it still tasted bitter in her mouth. She adjusted her hood. The seicorum lining made the outer wool layer even heavier, and the mid-morning sun promised to burn as hotly as ever. She was already beginning to sweat through her undershift and into her ankle-length sleeveless linen tunic.

  The southern gate was wider even than the one they’d entered by the previous night. Its massive, brass-sheathed doors lay flush with the wall and were only closed in time of war; traffic passed through Portena’s harbor day and night. Near the gate, it was obvious that this was an area that catered to sailors and travelers. Even at this hour of the day, the taverns were bustling, and scantily clad women leaned out of upper windows, beckoning to all passersby, male and female. Gerrard waved at a busty, horse-faced redhead who whistled at him and then called to someone behind her to “take a look at the big one there.” Zerafine nudged him. “Stop encouraging them,” she said. The redhead called out something about Gerrard’s size that had nothing to do with his visible attributes. Zerafine thought his sunburn deepened for a moment and grinned at him. “Told you,” she said.

  Outside the gate, warehouses lined the city walls, great flat-roofed buildings with doors broad enough to admit two oxcarts abreast. The dock master’s house, its boards painted a weather-beaten blue, lay directly opposite the gate at the edge of the docks. All the traffic that came through Portena’s harbor had to pass by it. Zerafine led the way up the steps to the door and knocked. After a moment, a plump woman threw open the door, said “I told you—” and then gasped. She made a quick sign of warding, and Zerafine heard Gerrard make a noise deep in his throat that was just this side of being a growl. Zerafine didn’t take offense at people’s superstitions, but Gerrard had never gotten used to having warding gestures flicked in their direction.

  “Are you the dock master? I was told you might be able to help me,” Zerafine said. The woman recovered herself, blushed, and thrust her hands behind her back.

  “I thought you were my husband,” she said. “Please come in, thelis. You must be the emissary. It’s good to know someone’s taking our problem seriously.”

  They entered the warm, stuffy dimness of the house, and took seats in the tiny front room. The woman started to sit behind her desk, thought better of it, and came around to lean against it. Nacalia sat on the floor, arms wrapped around her knees, next to Gerrard’s feet. She reminded Zerafine of a cat they’d had in the dormitories at Atenar—small, independent, but quick to seek shelter with the biggest person around.

  “I’m Solina, madama thelis,” the woman said. “You’re here about Baz?”

  “I don’t know a Baz,” Zerafine replied. “I’m looking for some of these apparitions and I was told I could find one here.”

  “That’s Baz,” Solina said. She sounded relieved. “We’ve seen other apparitions, but he’s the only one that’s come back again and again. I know what the theloi of Sukman say, but it’s not madness; Baz never hurt anyone, and we all know it’s his ghost.”

  Zerafine bit back a sharp reply. Instead, she said, “Baz was a friend of yours?”

  Solina laughed. “Not so much a friend as a lovable pain in my ass. He was a sailor off the Bouncing Biancha who spent his pay faster than he could earn it whenever he came into port. Hard worker, when he was sober, and treated the women nice. He fell overboard when the ship was at sea and drowned. We all knew about it, had a little service for him at the temple, and then four weeks ago people started seeing him around the docks. Figured it was just drunken foolery at first, but then I saw him on the first of Ailausor, right by warehouse twenty, acting like he was toting a load just like always. And I don’t drink, madama.” She poked the air in Zerafine’s direction for emphasis. “We’ve asked for tokthelos Genedirou to come, but he’s too busy to pay any mind to our part of the city. And tokthelos or no, madama, I’m not best thrilled at being told I’m suffering from a temporary madness. My wits are as good as the next man’s. What else could it be but some new kind of ghost?”

  Zerafine was impressed by the woman’s emphatic speech even as she totted up the flaws in her argument. Ghosts couldn’t travel over water; if Baz had left a ghost, it would have appeared on the ship immediately, not waited until it had returned to port. And the plain fact was that there were no other kinds of ghosts. Ghosts were fragments of memory desperate to regain a body, not immaterial illusions of people. Was Genedirou telling people that the “ghosts” were a form of traveling madness?

  “I’d like to see Baz, if possible,” she said.

  Solina nodded. “He’s usually at pier 7 around this time of day. We might have to wait a while,” she warned.

  They walked down the docks to pier 7, which was empty of ship and ghost alike. Zerafine pushed back her hood and let her hair fan across her back. In all directions, sailors scrambled up and down rigging, bare-chested men hauled loads into waiting carts, and drovers guided their wagons through warehouse doors or the gate to the city. The briny odor of seawater mixed with the bite of hot tar and the stink of animal waste. No one seemed to be paying attention to them, or if they were, they were unusually discreet about it. It was nice to feel anonymous for a few minutes.

  Zerafine turned her attention out to sea and was startled to find a stranger had joined their party. He was bald, with a tremendous mustache drooping down both sides of his mouth, and wore ragged trousers and a stained linen shirt. He seemed not to notice them, but sat down on the edge of the pier and kicked his bare heels above the water.

  Solina clutched Zerafine’s arm. Her earlier fear of the thelis had vanished. “That’s Baz,” she whispered. She sounded excited and terrified at the same time.

  Zerafine exchanged glances with Gerrard, who gave a typical shrug. “He wasn’t there one second and he was the next,” he said in a low voice. “No fading in, no noise or flashing lights or...I don’t know what else you might expect. Just standing there.” Nacalia peered out from behind Gerrard, her eyes wide.

  Zerafine knelt down beside the apparition. He seemed more solid than the woman they’d seen in the market, but there was still a translucency to him that made it clear he wasn’t human. She waved her hand in front of his face and got no reaction. She sat down beside him and said, “Hello, Baz.” The man ignored her. He pursed his lips and began to whistle soundlessly, his feet waving, his hands propped behind his back. Zeraf
ine thought for a moment, then, before she could talk herself out of it, swung herself to sit on Baz’s lap.

  She looked down and saw her own body overlaid with Baz’s suddenly more transparent one. Other than that, she felt nothing. Baz seemed nothing more than an image, but she couldn’t help feeling that if she could just—

  --and Baz disappeared, and Zerafine inhabited her body alone. She felt no different, felt no lingering effects from Baz’s presence. She scrambled up to face Gerrard, his face crimson, who shouted, “What in Atenas’s name were you thinking? That thing could have killed you, or scrambled your brains, or worse!”

  “I didn’t think of that,” she admitted. “It just occurred to me that if it were a ghost, I should be able to communicate with it. It’s not a ghost,” she added.

  Solina’s face fell. “So what is it?”

  “I don’t know. Not a ghost. Not some kind of madness. An illusion, maybe. And you’re not going crazy, Solina. Baz hasn’t hurt anyone, has he?” Solina shook her head. “Then I think you should just try to ignore him—yes, I know it’s going to be hard, but I don’t know what else to tell you. I can promise you, though, that I will figure it out.”

  Chapter Five

  “That’s a risky promise,” Gerrard said as they walked back toward the central plaza. “Last I heard, you have no power over figments.”

  “It’s not a mere figment, Gerrard,” Zerafine said. “But I didn’t have time to fully open myself to perceive it. I felt as though, if I could just get the right angle on it, I would understand what it was. We really need to talk to Genedirou. If he’s capable of banishing these things, that might give us something to go on.”

  “I suppose it will really annoy Berenica if we don’t finish quickly and move on.”

  “Who’s Berenica?” Nacalia asked. Relieved temporarily of guide duties, she was amusing herself by dancing ahead of them and swinging back around in large swooping circles.

  “That’s madama tokthelis to you, whelp,” Gerrard said. “Anyway, who says Genedirou is interested in help from a thelis not even of his faith?”

  “Mam says the tokthelos of Sukman is crazy,” Nacalia chirped. “He’s as loony as a bag full of cats. He’s got a head full of butterflies drunk on rum. He—”

  “The theloi of Sukman are not crazy, Nacalia,” Zerafine chided her. “You’d better not talk like that when we get to the sanctuary.”

  “Better not to talk at all, disrespectful whelp that you are,” Gerrard said with a grin, tousling her wild black locks.

  “No, sirrah,” she said, and then added, in a tiny voice, “They won’t make me crazy, will they?”

  “You don’t have anything to fear from them, little one.” Zerafine shaded her eyes. “What on earth is that?”

  They were at that moment passing the temple of Kalindi. Not so far ahead, a roiling mass of people thronged the plaza, their movement centered on one point. Gerrard nudged Zerafine, and the three climbed the temple steps to the first landing to get a better look. The central point turned out to be the temple of Sukman. From their vantage point, they could see a small figure emerge from the sanctuary and raise its arms as if in benediction upon the crowd.

  “Should we join them? I’d like to hear what he has to say,” said Zerafine.

  “I’d feel happier if we weren’t part of that crowd. I don’t like how they’re crushed together,” Gerrard replied. “Besides, you can guess what he’s saying. ‘Behold, the displeasure of Sukman is upon you, be humble and donate more, yea verily.’”

  “Don’t blaspheme,” Zerafine chided him, but with a smile. “Though I admit the thelos Rovalt implied something like that. Or, at any rate, that Genedirou would like for this to be Sukman’s responsibility. But I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s not easy to serve Sukman at any time, much less under these circumstances.”

  They watched as the small figure led the crowd in some sort of complicated ritual dance, the sound of chanting carried to their ears by the light wind. At their distance they couldn’t make out the words, though since this was a ritual of Sukman, the words might not make any sense. When the crowd began to disperse, Gerrard led them down the stairs and across the plaza to the temple. The worshippers they passed seemed exhausted and not a little downcast. Unusual, Zerafine reflected, given that temple ceremonies were supposed to make one feel better, not worse.

  A steady stream of worshippers continued to file up the steps and into the sanctuary. Zerafine shamelessly used the power of the red robe to push her way past the line of people, Gerrard and Nacalia trailing in her wake. At the basin, Rovalt was anointing each worshipper with water and a murmured blessing. His ceremonial robe of silk and velvet patchwork was far nicer than the clothes she’d seen him in that morning. He caught her eye and nodded toward the office they’d met in earlier that day. Zerafine cast her eye on Nacalia, who appeared suitably subdued, then led their little group down the hallway.

  Genedirou was a tall, middle-aged man whose lean physique was interrupted by a small potbelly that threatened to grow larger. His crazily embroidered robe hung open over a loose shirt and long trousers, and his feet were bare. He stood next to the empty fireplace as if in contemplation, ignoring their entrance, then looked up a moment later as if he’d only just heard them come in. Zerafine was fairly certain he was simply being dramatic. “Welcome, thelis, Rovalt told me you were coming,” he said, his voice gravelly in a pleasant way. “I am tokthelos Genedirou.”

  “Zerafine of Dardagne,” she replied, saluting him as an equal. “My sentare, Gerrard of Kionnar.” She didn’t bother introducing Nacalia; he wouldn’t expect her to. “Thank you for taking time to meet with us.”

  “Anything for the theloi of Atenas,” he said, indicating that she should sit; Gerrard, naturally, continued to stand at attention, and Nacalia hid behind him. Genedirou took the seat opposite her. “Though I have to tell you, meaning no offense, that I’m surprised you’ve bothered to remain, seeing as how this is clearly the responsibility of Sukman.”

  “No offense taken,” Zerafine said, excusing herself a little white lie. “But it was the Council who requested an emissary from Atenar, not the temple acting on its own initiative, so I’m obligated to conduct an impartial investigation.” She resisted the urge to put emphasis on the word “investigation.” “But I’d like to know what you think.”

  “An investigation?” Genedirou sounded surprised, which was natural, but also a trifle angry, which was not. “What do you mean, investigation?”

  Zerafine cocked an eyebrow. She decided to pretend disingenuousness. “Investigation is part of my responsibility, you know. I interacted with one of the apparitions just half an hour ago. I was surprised to find it had no substance—”

  “No substance apparent to mortal eye, yes,” Genedirou said. He clasped his hands together in his lap. “You were very fortunate in your encounter. These figments of Sukman’s madness have been known to drive people mad themselves. I’ll have to ask you not to interfere with them again. For your safety.”

  Patronizing and pulling rank, eh? We’ll see how far that will take you. Zerafine smiled. “What do you mean, ‘figments of Sukman’s madness’?” she asked, making no promises.

  Genedirou sat back in his chair. “Our Lord is, of course, profoundly mad,” he said. He sounded more like a bored schoolmaster than a thelos. “We care for those He touches, though we cannot cure them, and we attempt to reach Him in His madness by embracing madness ourselves, though temporarily. Now, however, Sukman’s anger at this city’s pride and selfishness has manifested itself in these illusions, visible to some as a warning to all. I have been able to banish many of these illusions, though at great cost to myself, and my theloi labor daily to guide the people in worship that Our Lord might turn His wrath away.”

  “Have you any idea what Sukman might want? What could possibly turn His wrath away?”

  Genedirou gave Zerafine a narrow-eyed look, but she returned it with one of innocent
concern. “More humility in their treatment of others,” he said. “More generosity in dealing with their fellow men and women. Sukman’s mind is hard to read at the best of times, but in this time of greater madness, it’s almost impossible to know the truth. The outpouring of support for our temple is certainly a heartening sign.”

  “I saw the noonday ritual,” Zerafine said, “though I regret I was too far away to observe closely. I imagine worshippers have also been very generous to the temple.”

  Genedirou nodded sharply. “Money is of little consequence to us; you’ve seen how we live. But Sukman’s work is always aided by...financial support.” He clasped his hands so tightly that his knuckles showed white against his olive skin.

  “I understand,” she said with sweet, false sincerity. “Sirrah, I thank you for your time. You’ve certainly cleared up a lot of my questions.”

  Genedirou rose when she did, and saluted her perfunctorily. “I hope your visit here won’t be entirely wasted on our problems,” he said. “And that your...investigation...will be swiftly concluded.”

  “Oh, we’ve decided to stay here for a few weeks anyway,” Zerafine said cheerily, and was rewarded with Genedirou’s tightening all his facial muscles at once. “We’ve been traveling for so many months, I think we’ve earned some rest, even if it is during the height of the summer heat. I find Ailausor to be so draining, don’t you?”

  They exchanged a few more inconsequentialities, then Zerafine took her leave. The three were silent as they crossed the sanctuary, still full of people, but Zerafine took a moment to salute Rovalt, who nodded in return. Back on the street, they walked for a while in silence, Nacalia running ahead, until Zerafine said, “Well?”

  “He’s milking this thing for all he can get out of it,” Gerrard said. “He was definitely not happy that you were meddling in what he thinks of as his affairs.”

  “Agreed. I would bet he has no idea what these apparitions really are.”