A rank of robed creatures meet them here, and at first the cub flinches from them. They are men, male and female, and each of them wears a mirrored mask split down the middle with a jagged line. But they part into welcoming lines to let the procession pass, and when the cub smells them they smell like simple grains and milk, like soap and dates and honey. No blood and no wrath.
As the procession passes between them, they each raise both hands to the separate halves of their masks, as if to remove them, or as if to shield their eyes from horror.
Inside the building is cool, a great echoing space of polished floors with a table at the far end on a raised platform. The table is simple wood, freshly scrubbed, and the source of the good smells. It holds bowls of cooling porridge and honey, glasses of wine.
A man stands in front of it. She wears a gleaming mirrored mask like the others, but her robes are sewn with mirrors and her sleeves of plain white linen drip from arms spread wide. She makes a greeting noise, and sweeps down the steps from the platform.
Something occurs between her and the loud creature, some conversation the cub cannot follow. She strokes the mother’s bloody ear and bows her head, which looks like sadness despite the mirrors. With gestures, she points the loud creature and the bearers to lay their burdens before the table.
And then she turns to the cub, and to the pack. She crouches before them, holds out her hand to the father. He cringes and shies back, then creeps forward on tiptoe, coat bristling, to sniff offered fingers at the full stretch of his neck. The cub does not shy so much, but neither does it lean in to sniff.
The robed man stands, and the cub realizes that everyone else has drawn back in a wide ring. It glances over its shoulder, but the path to the door is not blocked. And they must have been careful to leave it open, when there are so many.
The robed man comes forward hesitantly and the cub waits. It lets her touch its ears. It lets her touch its tongue, fingers damp with something that tastes of salt and water, although it makes a face and shakes its head, after.
The robed man draws back, sweeping everything aside with gestures like a pack-mother’s, and when it returns it carries bowls of cooling porridge from the altar in its hands. It sets them on the ground before the father and before the cub, then goes back for more, until there are bowls of food or milk or honey before every member of the pack.
Cautiously, the cub inches forward. It crouches, its elbows resting on its knees. And it watches the food and the robed man. But it does not eat, and neither does the father.
When the Eidolon of Kaalha backed away from the food she had set with her own hands before the child and its jackal friends, Brazen went forward. She sighed as he came up beside her, so he knew she’d registered his presence, but she did not turn her mirrored mask to face him until he spoke.
“Jackals are sacred to Kaalha,” he said.
She looked up. “Jackals are welcome here. But one of those is not a jackal.”
“Nor yet is it a human child.” Brazen glanced aside. The child had dabbled its jeweled fingers in the bowl before it and was studying the porridge clinging to them, as if readying itself to taste. “I will apprentice it. But—” He looked back at the Eidolon, helplessly. “As we have seen today, even Wizards must return to Kaalha.”
While his eyes were on the child, she had raised both hands to her divided mask and pressed one to each side. The reflections of her fingers hovered in the surface. He might be a Wizard of Messaline, but the prospect of the revealed face of a Goddess could still bring a shudder.
Under the mask, one side of her face would be terrible, scarred with acid since her initiation—in homage to the terrible side of the goddess’s face. The other—
“You wish me to promise the temple will see to its care when you are gone.”
Brazen found himself holding his breath. He forced some of it up his throat, to say, “Yes.”
The mask hid all expression. All he could see was her hands, his own worried expression behind them. Of course the child could care for itself. Of course, in the new and ever-stranger Messaline that would grow up from what had changed today.
He had to know, for Bijou’s sake, that the child would have safe haven.
She lifted down the left side of her mask, revealing skin blemished only by years and duty, a sparkling black eye framed by an arched brow. Revealed half-lips arched in a half-smile, showing small dry lines around the edges.
“Jackals will always be welcomed here. But Kaalha of the Ruins did not bring you a half-destroyed child for no reason. Now take it home, Brazen the Enchanter, and think of how you will raise it to become a Wizard of Messaline.”
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank Leah Bobet, Emma Bull, Amanda Downum, Jodi Meadows, Sarah Monette, Jaime Moyer, and Delia Sherman, without whom this would never have been written. I would also like to thank my agent, Jennifer Jackson, who rocks my socks.
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 by Sarah Wishnevsky.
All rights reserved.
Dust jacket Copyright © 2010 by Maurizio Manzieri. All rights reserved.
Interior design Copyright © 2010 by Desert Isle Design, LLC.
All rights reserved.
ELECTRONIC EDITION
ISBN 978-1-59606-379-2
Subterranean Press
PO Box 190106
Burton, MI 48519
www.subterraneanpress.com
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