Cordimancy

by Hardman, Daniel

  The shimsal became Shivi.

  She held two fingers to her lips in a gesture for quiet, then swayed slightly. Toril caught her as a knee bent, and she sank into a half-kneeling crouch.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered.

  “Just… tired.”

  “How did you...” Malena murmured.

  Shivi raised her eyebrows. “Become the Voice? I’ve been weaving spells... into bridal braids for years, making women look their best on wedding nights. Remember the flowers I gave you a few nights back?” She snorted. “‘Course, taking forty years off my bones... was a bit harder than blushing a young woman’s cheeks a bit. Completely wore me out.”

  “How did you find us?”

  “Whole town’s abuzz. First thing we heard about when we stepped off the ferry.”

  “Ferry? We left money with a girl who had a boat,” Toril said.

  Shivi sighed. “She must have been the one waiting for us on a rock at the last bend in the road. Took off like a scared rabbit when she saw Oji. It’s just as well—we realized he couldn’t come across with us, which saved some trouble when the ferry got around to picking us up.”

  “Everybody here is foaming at the mouth about the half lives,” Toril observed.

  “Yes. We left Oji hiding at the edge of the forest, waiting to spy out what happens when Gorumim shows up. Hika’s with him. Those two seem to understand each other in a way that’s almost eerie.”

  “Think the general will let people see his osipi escort?”

  “As prisoners, maybe. Or else he’ll leave them across the river. Once Oji knows what’s up, he plans to find a boat and sneak across the river after dark, and meet us on the bluff just north of town. We’ll know more, then.”

  “I wish we had some way to let him know we’re stuck in this cell,” Malena said.

  “Can’t be helped,” said Shivi. “But we can still make the rendezvous, Five willing.”

  “You came with a plan?” Toril asked hopefully.

  Shivi smiled. “I turn Malena into the shimsal and she walks out. Once she’s gone, we make a ruckus. The guards peek in, realize Malena’s escaped, and rush out to find her. In the chaos, Paka palms the keys and lets us out.”

  "You've got Paka waiting out there somewhere?" Toril said.

  "Not as hard as it sounds. All the younger men in town are drafted, or riding with the prefect to get new recruits. Just a few graybeards left, and most of them are volunteers with no training and no uniform. A few are in town from the highlands for the muster, so they don’t even know each other all that well. We borrowed a sash and a spear when someone got careless in the market, and Paka just strolled up and announced that he was detailed to help guard you. He must have offered to share his wineskin; his partners looked a bit tipsy when I walked by just now."

  “Sounds... possible.”

  “It sounds a lot better than sitting in this cell,” Malena corrected. “But can you pull off your part? Can Paka do his?”

  “I think so.” Shivi pulled a knife from a pouch at her waist and held it up. “But I need to cut your hair.”

  Malena’s forehead wrinkled.

  “Not all of it,” the old woman whispered with a smile. She pointed at a thumb-sized patch of bare skin behind her own ear. “Just enough for a symbol. If I’m going to make you bald, a little starter spot will make the work a lot easier.”

  Malena bent her head, shivering as steel slid across the nape of her neck. There was a brief painful tug at some roots. Then Shivi discarded a tuft of hair, tucked the knife away again, and reached out with strong, bony fingers to rub Malena’s scalp. She began to hum—a queer, tuneless melody that sounded at once exotic and strangely familiar.

  After a few moments, Toril sucked in his breath.

  “What?” Malena asked. “What do you see?”

  “She’s pushing the baldness out from that one spot. It’s covering your head a little more every time she pushes. Kind of like a baker stretching dough.”

  Shivi smiled. Her fingers continued to work. The humming went on.

  Gradually, Malena felt a numbness beginning to seep across her temples. The muscles in her cheekbones stretched. Her lips thinned. The curve of her forehead shifted. She could no longer feel hair on her shoulders.

  Shivi pushed Malena’s eyes closed and rubbed across the lids. “Now this,” she said, shrugging off the cloak she’d worn as she approached their cell.

  Malena removed the woolen cloak that hung heavy with coins from Corim, tossed the new one across her shoulders instead, and stood, monitoring her husband’s face to gauge the extent of her transformation.

  “Wow!” he mouthed.

  “You’ll pass,” Shivi said, her voice sounding a bit shaky. “But I can’t maintain it for long, so summon the guard now, and leave as soon as they let you out. Duck into a dark corner somewhere so nobody notices when your appearance changes. Then head for the bluff and find a good hiding place there, where you can watch for the rest of us to come.” She touched Malena on the arm. “The less you talk, the better; I saw the shimsal from a distance, and I’ve had a lot of practice weaving spells of appearance. But I’ve never heard the woman speak, so I couldn’t do anything about my voice when I came in. I got away with it by coughing a bit. With luck you can just stay quiet.”

  Shivi limped to the back corner of the cell, where a casual glance from the guards might assume she was the younger woman.

  Malena felt a thudding in her chest. She walked to the door and tapped on the bars.

  38

  cattails ~ Kinora

  "Blink at me if you're still alive," Kinora hissed.

  The lids around the toddler's glassy eyes failed to move.

  "They're loading us on a boat," she added, her voice quavering. "I think whoever's trying to rescue us won't catch up in time."

  A dragonfly flitted up from the eddy in the concavity of the riverbank. The sun, now approaching the horizon, cast vertical slashes through the reeds, lining her face. Kinora sniffled, looked at the boy, wiped a filthy hand across her cheek. For a dozen heartbeats, she peered through the cattails. Boots squelched through mud and shallows as soldiers carried children to a waiting dinghy, heaving them aboard like sacks of onion or potato. Other than a few groans, the children endured this treatment in wretched silence.

  A grunt, a splash, and a watery flutter at the margin between river and sandbar told her that the boat had shoved off. The queue of waiting children had dwindled. They'd make one more trip, rowing out to the big barge, and then it would be her turn.

  "Just a little blink?"

  Coffee-colored eyes continued to stare.

  Kinora put a hand over the boy's half-open lips and waited so long that her heart began to pound. At last, his chin lifted slightly. His nostrils were too crusted with dried mucus to route air; he needed his mouth uncovered. A faint wheeze of inhalation ensued.

  "That's better," she sighed, parting the tangles above his eyebrow.

  She peered through the reeds again.

  "Can you be brave, little Cricket?" she asked, without turning her head. “Can you?”

  Cricket remained silent.

  Kinora’s eyes flicked to the path that had led them down to the water’s edge. The golden warriors were nowhere to be seen; the two remaining soldiers stood on the far side of the wagon, deep in conversation. Her fellow child prisoners were sprawled in a mute, unseeing huddle.

  Abandoning her peeking, Kinora turned. She slid one arm beneath the little boy’s neck, another under his limp knees, and levered him out of the mud. After another glance over her shoulder, she shuffled forward on her knees toward the spot where reeds and willows were thickest.

  “I’m not going to let them put you on that barge,” Kinora puffed, her breath uneven as cattails closed around them. Her knee hit a sharp rock, and she winced and rocked onto the other leg to relieve the pressure. This made her lose her balance and drop the boy’s legs for a moment. But she recovered her burden and shuffled f
orward again.

  “Whoever is coming has to be close. They have to be. But it won’t do you any good if you’re floating away down the river when they come.”

  Kinora stopped. The rushes were thick all around them, now. She allowed her elbows to sink into the mud beneath the little boy’s weight, then withdrew her arms and watched his bony shoulders flop. If he’d blinked during the brief crawl, she hadn’t seen it; he continued to stare upward with a glassy expression. But she thought she saw his chest rise again.

  “You need someone big to help you. I can’t tell what’s wrong. I think if you stay quiet, the bad men won’t notice that you’re gone. But if you hear someone else come by in a little while, you need to make a noise so they find you. Can you do that for me?”

  Still the boy remained mute and motionless.

  “Please,” she pled in a whisper. “I don’t know what else to do. Can you promise me you’ll make some noise so the people who want to help us can find you?”

  The slap of oars from the dinghy penetrated the rushes, and Kinora looked back. After a long moment, she bent and kissed Cricket’s cheek, hiccupping slightly. Then she sniffled a final time, wiped a forearm across her eyes, and crept away, allowing cattails to close behind her.

  39

  escape ~ Toril

  Toril stared at the guard who’d come, trying for insolence and wondering if he merely came off as worried. He wished it had been Paka letting Malena out.

  “Not much longer now,” the man said, returning Toril’s glance with bloodshot eyes. “I just had word that the general’s party’s been sighted at the bend of the road on the other side of the river.” Toril caught a whiff of wine on his breath. He turned the key and pulled the heavy door wide, inviting the woman that he believed to be the shimsal to exit the cell.

  “Will you be back when Gorumim shows up?” he asked, turning to Malena-as-shimsal.

  She shook her head, snapped her fingers, and pointed at the lock.

  “Of course,” the guard said, sounding a bit miffed by the impatient gesture. Toril heard more jingling on the other side of the door.

  Malena-as-shimsal glided toward the sliver of pre-sunset fire at the far end of the hall, and disappeared around the corner.

  Toril watched Shivi’s face. How long could she maintain the illusion? She looked strained—even more weary than Toril had seen her on their long march, or as she’d sat on the river bank in the half-light, trying to recover from a near drowning. Her jaw was set. He saw her eyelids flutter.

  He thought about how he’d felt under severe magical strain. Curing Malena didn’t count; he’d lost consciousness immediately on that occasion, and ever since it’d been hard to tell how much of his fatigue was caused by lack of sleep and breakneck travel, and how much came from lingering after-effects of the cure. But when he’d eased his father’s breathing, stifled the impulse to cough, taken away the pain in his chest—he’d kept that up for a dozen heartbeats, maybe, or a score. And it had sapped him deeply. Sapped the most talented lip the clan had seen in hundreds of years.

  This old woman wasn’t doing healing magic, but she wasn’t doing simple parlor tricks, either—and she was doing it for fifty heartbeats. A hundred. Two hundred...

  When her eyes rolled back and she first swayed, then sagged out of the corner of the cell, Toril caught her. She felt feather-light in his arms—a mere speck of a woman.

  He quieted his breathing as he held her, half expecting a shout from the other side of the door. Had Malena managed to hide herself?

  Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed before Toril was able to revive Shivi. By the time she sighed and opened her eyes, Toril was beside himself with worry.

  On the one hand, he was relieved that no clamor filtered down the hall from the corner where guards sat at attention. That probably meant that Malena had made a clean escape—and the longer the guards didn't notice she was gone, the better her chances of keeping her freedom.

  On the other hand, every moment Gorumim was drawing closer to Two Forks. It had been about noon when they'd been captured, and shadows were now long and orange. The prefect was due back any moment. He'd probably bring with him an infusion of men, and better discipline; their opportunity to cause a disturbance and slip out in the chaos was vanishing. Besides, the guard had announced a sighting of the general on the far side of the river; how long would it take for him to ride across on the ferry and come inspect his prisoners?

  “Malena got away?” Shivi whispered.

  “Far as I can tell. It’s been quiet. We need to go.”

  Shivi blinked an acknowledgement and leaned sideways to roll onto her knees. Toril lifted her. She stood, swaying slightly.

  “Glad the magic part is done,” she said. “That really took it out of me.”

  Toril looked at the bars and raised his eyebrows.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  Toril grabbed Malena’s discarded cloak and gave a loud whistle.

  “Save it for the general,” called a gravelly voice from around the corner. “He’ll be here soon enough.”

  “Hey!” Toril called. “You’re going to want to see this before he arrives. Unless you want your head on a platter.”

  Two silhouettes approached. Toril recognized the rhythm in one man’s pace, but kept his expression neutral as Paka’s face resolved out of the backlight of the sunset at the end of the hall.

  “What is it?” Paka said, sounding more peeved than Toril had ever heard him before. “I almost had this fool bettin’ against me in our game of thrones. I was going to make back all my losses.” He slapped his companion on the shoulder.

  The other man—the same guard who’d let Malena out a little earlier—rolled his eyes and stepped up to the grate in the door.

  “What am I supposed to be seeing?” he growled. This time the smell of wine on him was stronger. He blinked to clear his vision and peered into the shadowed corner where Shivi stood. “Who’s she?” he asked thickly.

  Playing his part perfectly, Paka pushed his companion aside and had a look himself. “Where’s the young one?” he snarled at Toril. “Where’s the girl?” When Toril opened his mouth he shook his head faintly, then wheeled around and bellowed back down the hall. “Jasmo, get over here! We’ve got trouble. Bring a sword or somethin’.”

  Another guard pounded down the hall at a half trot, panting. This one was paunchy and unfamiliar; he hadn’t been on duty when Toril and Malena were taken into custody. Nor had he attended Shivi-as-shimsal or Malena-as-shimsal. He looked far more alert than his companion, though he was just as ancient. The sword belt around his hips was empty, but Toril’s heart leapt when he saw the staff in the man’s hands.

  “What is it?” he asked, wheezing ponderously.

  Paka stepped aside and waved an invitation for the man to scan the cell. “The girl’s gone,” he said.

  “What do you mean, ‘gone’?”

  “As in, not where Gorumim’s expecting her,” Paka said. “We’re dead. The general will have our hides.” The tremble in his voice was masterfully done; Toril found himself wondering if the man had been trained as an actor in the harvest festival dramas, or just had natural talent.

  The heavy guard leaned forward, searched, and blanched. “She must be hiding in there somewhere. No one’s come down the hall, and that’s the only way out.”

  “Where would she hide?” Paka asked.

  It was a good question. The room held no furniture. The ceiling was flat stone. Through the bars, it was possible to see along either near wall, all the way to the corners.

  The drunk guard scratched his jaw and squinted. “I heard a rumor this boy’s a lip,” he ventured. “Maybe he’s using some magic on us.”

  “Yes! He’s just changing how she looks,” the other guard said hopefully.

  “Easy to test,” Paka said. He reached for the staff and nodded at the keys hanging from his companion’s belt. “Give me a minute in there with him. Bar the door behind me.”

 
“What are you doing?” said the drunk guard.

  “He can’t very well kindle if he’s out cold,” said Paka, sounding impatient. “Just make sure he doesn’t come through the door when you open it.”

  Toril backed into the far corner of the cell, opposite Shivi. She was looking frail and terrified. He folded his arms across his chest. “You’re wasting your time,” he said, trying to radiate confidence. “There’s no deception here.”

  The door opened, and Paka came through with the staff. The faces of the other two guards blocked out most of the light at the grating. Before Toril could formulate a plan, the tip of the staff shoved out into his gut. He doubled over. Paka whipped the staff around and drubbed him between ear and shoulder.

  Toril fell to his knees, then collapsed to stone. As soon as he’d understood Paka’s intentions, he’d had wild imaginations of needing to fake a fight. But the blow above his belt had been real enough to steal his breath. The follow-through was more theatrical than real—the loud thunk had come from shoulder muscle rather than skull—and he wasn’t in any danger of losing consciousness. Even so, lying inert was about all he could do.

  He heard Paka’s feet beside his cheek, felt a knee beside his shoulder, felt fingers touch his throat.

  “Got ‘im,” Paka said with satisfaction. “And he’ll still be breathin’ for the general.”

  “But she’s not changing!” said Paka’s fat companion, pointing at Shivi. His voice was rising into a wail, and his finger shook. “The girl’s gone. That’s the one the shimsal said mattered the most.”

  Toril heard Paka snap his fingers.

  “The shimsal!” said Paka, layering his voice with a generous texture of disgust and assurance. “That’s how he did it. A woman came in, and a woman came out, but they switched places. He didn’t call us until he was sure she’d slipped away.”

  Toril heard curses from both the other guards.

  “We’ve got to find her!” Paka said. “She’s got a little head start, but she can’t have gone far...” Toril heard his feet retreat toward the door. Metal clanked. Wood scraped across stone.