“Anyway. The Architect. He came after me, a conglomeration of human and vhor bones wrapped in Monster’s latest shed skin, with Quezal perched on his clavicle. It sounds ridiculous now, but it was downright terrifying then. It took a while to find his skull, though. Penari wanted me to smash it, to destroy Rugen once and for all. Ah.”
She had come to a familiar dead-end. Fingering the lintel unlocked the hidden door.
“Penari? Master?”
The heart of the Maze was a wide, circular chamber extending up seven levels. A many-candled chandelier lit it, dripping wax on the table below and the papers that covered it. The walls were full of niches in which were displayed the spoils of a lifetime. Pride of place was given to two stones whose theft had created Penari’s legend, the Eyes of Abarraden. One was genuine, an uncut diamond the size of two fists clenched together. The other was mere glass.
“Boy? Is that you?”
Penari scrambled down one of the wall ladders that spiraled up the core, his gray beard flying over his shoulder. Halfway down, his foot fell on a broken step, but he clattered on regardless. In Tai-tastigon, belief goes far to create reality. Penari, nearly blind even in Jame’s day, had believed in the city as he had known it when still a youth, to the extent that he could cross roofs or steps that no longer existed.
He pattered across the floor and seized her by the arms. His eyes were now completely filmed over, but he seemed not to notice.
“Where have you been, boy?” he exclaimed, shaking her. She had never gotten him to admit that she was in fact a girl. “I heard such stories about you but knew better than to believe most of them. Was I wrong?”
Jame embraced him, at which he gave a snort of surprise and pleasure. “I had to run, Master. They said that I had killed your brother, the Sirdan, which I hadn’t. I couldn’t stop to say good-bye.”
“Well, well, well.” He patted her clumsily on the back. “Here you are now.”
Somewhere out in the Maze, something collapsed. The chandelier chimed softly and swayed. Dust drifted down.
“What is that?” Jame demanded. She found that Rue and Patches were both clutching her each by an arm. She, in turn, gripped the edge of the table.
“Huh,” said Penari, disgusted. “An infestation of stone-mites, among other things. This city is sick, no doubt about that. The worst I’ve ever seen it.”
“Do you know why?”
“Heh. I don’t walk abroad these days, or even venture much outside this chamber. My spy tells me stories, though. . . .”
Jame glanced at Patches, who shrugged. What could one say? For that matter, how did Patches’ master Galishan feel about her moonlighting, assuming that he knew?
“Something has gone wrong,” said Penari, chewing the ends of his beard as he considered. “Tai-tastigon used to be so full of life. The people. The gods. Even the buildings. Now I feel death seething through all three, melting their very bones. Yes, stone crumbles. So does wood. So do lives. G’ah, it’s obscene.”
“When did it start?”
“That’s a good question.” He spat out the wet ends of his beard and began to count events on his fingertips. “Let’s see: Theocandi died. Dally was murdered. Bane was blamed. You left. Men-dalis became the new Sirdan.”
“Do you believe that Bane killed Dally?”
Penari tapped his nose as if to say, “Here is a secret.” “A convenient story, and the Sirdan’s followers stick to it. Too convenient, if you ask me. Besides, something is wrong with Men-dalis. From the beginning there were hints, but he ruled well enough. The Guild was glad simply to be on its feet again and forgave him his little quirks. Then too, he does have charming manners, and I mean that literally. He makes people want to serve him, to make him happy. Oh, they fall over themselves to do that. It must be the god-blood in him. You know that his father is Dalis-sar the New Pantheon sun god?”
“Yes,” said Jame. She didn’t add that Dalis-sar was also a Kencyr. Things were complicated enough already.
“Around the last Feast of Dead Gods, though, the word is that he became obsessed with the return of the dead. He also listens too much to that foul spy of his, the Creeper.”
Patches glowered. “I didn’t tell you that.”
“Child, you gave me the clues. Should I share all of my deductions with you? For one thing, the Sirdan has become suspicious of potential rivals, who now tend to disappear—this, years before the next guild election. What has he to fear, eh?”
“Open rebellion,” muttered Patches. “Did you also ‘deduce’ how much people hate what’s going on, even if they can’t seem to say as much to his face?”
“Ha. We may be thieves, but we are a guild of laws. The one hundred landed master thieves (or most of them anyway) support him. So do the lords of the five guild assessment courts. Most of all among those, there’s Lord Abbotir of the Gold Court. Many listen to him, all the more so since he was voted our representative to the Five’s Council.”
“It’s just politics,” Jame murmured to Rue, who was looking confused. “I’ll explain later.”
“And yet . . . and yet . . .” Penari frowned. “Something is wrong. The Creeper’s shadow increases, as if he were the darkness that Men-dalis casts. I don’t know. It’s all too much for me. But I tell you this: since the last Feast of Dead Gods, Men-dalis has gotten more and more peculiar. Something happened then that knocked the whole city off balance.”
“I’ve seen the wandering dead gods,” said Jame.
“Oh, them too. With Men-dalis, though, it was something more personal. For one thing, he began to obsess about the general return of the dead. For another, he started wearing his late brother’s jacket.”
Jame stared. Dally’s d’hen would be a mess; after all, he had died in it either of blood loss or of shock, unless someone had been so charitable as to strangle him first. What could possess his brother to cling to such an object?
The chamber shook again. More debris, somewhere, fell.
“How long can Tai-tastigon stand?” asked Jame, still clutching the table.
Penari grinned at her, all yellow teeth except for the gaps. “Why, how long can you, or any of us?”
A flicker caught the edge of Jame’s eye. When she looked up, the scrolls on the table had been rearranged, and Quezal was crouching on top of them like a stone paperweight.
What Penari couldn’t see, he could hear.
“What is he doing now?” he hissed.
“Uh . . . rearranging papers.” She craned to read. “These have something to do with Abarraden.”
“Rugen keeps on about that. She was his mother’s goddess, but he turned from her to worship his craft. Sensible, I call that. What’s the use of being dead if you can’t have your own opinions? The Eye is mine, though, I tell you. Mine!” He turned to shout this at the walls in general. Dust rattled down. “D’you hear me?”
“He’s gone.”
Quezal could only move when unobserved. Now he perched motionless on the shelf that held one of Abarraden’s eyes. The stone rocked, fell, and shattered on the stone floor. So. The fake.
Penari screeched. “Dammit, Rugen, stop it!”
“Is he here now?”
“What do you think?”
Rue tugged Jame’s sleeve. “What happened to the Architect?”
Jame had almost forgotten her story.
“It turned out that Rugen’s death had been an accident. I asked him for justice. There was a pause. Then Rugen shoved Penari and me out of the way as the chandelier finally collapsed under Monster’s weight. In the end, Penari let the architect’s bones lie under the floor, wrapped in the linen shroud that were the building plans.”
“And he’s still there?”
“Evidently. He and Penari would still seem to be quarreling, though.”
She regarded the stone slab under which Rugen’s bones lay. The grave seemed undisturbed, never mind than his gargoyle Quezal was currently bouncing off the walls. What determined which of the dead re
turned? Dead gods, yes, it seemed, or at least some of them, but mortals? Not Rugen, who had forgiven his accidental murderer. Did a general absence of guilt explain why the city wasn’t overrun by revenants?
“Master,” she called to Penari, who was now plunging back and forth with a broom, swatting at every sound, while Quezal popped up behind him wherever time he turned. “I have to go.”
“You’re always leaving.” The old thief paused, panting, as the gargoyle leered at her over his shoulder. “Next time, don’t stay away so long.”
III
WHEN THEY EMERGED FROM THE MAZE, Darinby was waiting for them, looking uncharacteristically anxious. What would he have done, Jame wondered, if she had been unduly delayed? Penari’s remark about the Sirdan’s “charming manners” came back to mind.
Darinby is a good man, but he is not himself.
What had Men-dalis done to her old friend, and to what lengths might Darinby now go to please his new master?
They soon came to the River Tone and, breasting its current, to Ship Island. Why had the Thieves’ Guild chosen such an iconic bastion, Jame wondered, much less a nautical one stranded hundreds of miles inland? She stared across at its prow. On it was a stone figure, a maiden holding aloft two severed heads.
She has your face, Bane had said, with a smile. One head is that of the Sirdan. The other is mine. Have you noticed that every time we meet, someone ends up bleeding?
They crossed a stone gangplank and joined the crowd gathered amidships. Like the Moon, here was another tradition that would be among the last to go. Every night, apprentice thieves set up booths for their masters, sometimes on spots claimed for generations. From these they hawked their purloined spoils after the appropriate court had assessed how long each agent was liable for their theft and that period of jeopardy had passed. Here also citizens wandered, stopping to haggle for their lost possessions or for those of their neighbors.
Usually the market was a raucous place, some of it good-natured, some not, but tonight it seemed unusually subdued. This changed when a nearby apprentice, snooping on his neighbor’s table, grabbed a particularly gaudy necklace and started screeching.
“Wretch, cheat! I recognize this bauble. The woman who wears it lives in my master’s district. You’ve been poaching!”
The thief in question came around his display and threw himself at his accuser. Both went down in a flurry of punches. Burly guards in royal blue d’hens arrived, plowing through onlookers, and pulled the two combatants apart.
“Little fools,” one guard growled. “D’you want to end up on the Mercy Seat? Be quiet.”
Then they saw Jame, and abandoned the small fry.
“Here, Tush, would you believe it? It’s that freak, the Talisman. Come back, have you?”
As they advanced, Darinby pulled her toward the palace that opened off Ship Island’s forecastle. Some thieves tried to stop them. Even more fought merely to get out of the way. Rue and Patches were separated from them by a wash of struggling bodies. By the time they had reached the door, the entire market had erupted behind them into a lively brawl that owed more to relief at being able to make an uproar than to enmity.
Darinby shoved Jame inside.
“Dammit!” he said, shutting and barring the door against the outer tumult. “It’s all right,” he added to a servant who came hurrying up. “The Sirdan wants to see her.”
“But Rue, Patches . . . !”
“Patches will see that your young friend comes to no harm.”
“Darinby, what in Perimal’s name is going on?”
“Well, you know that they’re still after you for Theocandi’s death . . .”
“I didn’t mean that. Since when have apprentices been threatened with the Mercy Seat for quarreling? There used to be fights every night. Other thieves bet on them.”
He led her on, through ornate rooms, then through a concealed door into the palace’s hidden maze. Spy holes emitted shafts of light that laced the inner corridors. The ways were well swept: Men-dalis must make frequent use of them.
Darinby stopped her. “I should have told you before. The Guild has been . . . unsettled of late. Men-dalis has a vision for us, but people keep working against him. We are the stuff of legends, he says. It behooves us to behave accordingly. Anything less is . . . is an insult. To him. To us. Dissent, confusion, criticism—how can we be great while these flourish?”
“What do people criticize him for?”
“Oh.” He gave an embarrassed laugh. “Small things. He has doubled his percentage of each night’s take—two, four, no, six times. Well, he needs to present a certain image to the ruling Five. Otherwise how can we compel their respect? Without that, what are we?”
A parasite on society, Jame thought. It had never occurred to her before to ask, but what did the thieves offer beyond a reshuffling of wealth? What had Tubain said about stealing, though?
Nearly everyone in Tai-tastigon does or has or wants to. It’s fine work, I hear, if you can get a good master and, of course, don’t get caught.
People followed the exploits of famous thieves avidly. Their skill, their daring, the noses that they thumbed at Tai-tastigon’s more stolid residents of the day . . . There was a glamor to such work that far exceeded its true worth. The Guild had made it so.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “That can’t be the only trouble if the Mercy Seat is involved.”
“That’s the fault of his spymaster, the Creeper. An evil man, or whatever he is. He’s always ferreting out dissent. Some people go to the brig and are lucky not to rot there. It’s in the basement below water level, you know. Their families come to plead for them, but what can the Sirdan do? Then, as you say, there’s the Mercy Seat.” He gulped. “Well, the original fell into a chasm the night you left, but the Creeper replaced it. Now anyone who displeases him is apt to end up there.”
“Flayed alive?” Jame asked, aghast.
“Sometimes. Not often. The threat is enough for most. Others are bound there for a day, or a week, or longer if the Sirdan . . . that is, the Creeper . . . forgets. By then they can dine off the fruit and vegetables thrown at them. But, yes, we have had deaths.”
“One would think, after Dally . . .”
“Yes. One would think. Here we are.”
He opened a door and gestured her through, following on her heels.
The room in which they found themself was not one that Jame had previously seen. Nonetheless, it felt familiar, furnished richly to the point of suffocation in blue velvet and silver gilt. Chairs, couches, statues, and draperies crowded inward, on top of each other. There were no windows, though, and along the walls hung a gallery of smashed mirrors.
Somewhere a door opened—she could tell by the shift of turgid, scented air—and here was the man himself.
Flowing golden hair, sapphire blue eyes, a smile sweet enough to tempt a goddess . . . Men-dalis was even more handsome than she remembered and his garments more lush. He seemed to float in clouds of royal blue silk shot with mute silver lightning. The room expanded around him into roiling space as if all horizons had rolled back, and the air was fresh.
Ahhh . . . it breathed.
Oh, to inhale it forever. . . .
Now the room appeared to be spacious, lined with columns, canopied with a vaulted ceiling on which were painted delicate astral figures, male or female, impossible to tell which, as were their activities. Vistas opened out between the colonnades onto gardens of blue hyacinth spangled with bobbing white columbine, cerulean lilacs and pale lilies.
Hanging between, however, was more shattered glass.
Jame tried to get a grip on herself. After all, she had experienced Men-dalis’ glamour before, a heritage from his god-sire Dalis-sar. In fact, had she ever seen him when he had not been clothed with it? What did he really look like, when not clad in glory? But these were fleeting thoughts, overwhelmed by his present magnificence.
“Lord,” she said, and was furious at herself for the husky not
e that had crept into her voice. “Why have you summoned me?”
“Why, what but to do your duty?”
All the things that might involve rose in her mind. There were glittering tasks to accomplish, beside which her former triumphs in the Thieves’ Guild seemed mere dross. She would go arrayed in a rainbow of satin by day, in the whisper of black silk by night. No one would be safe from her, nor would any want to be.
“I lost my greatest treasure to the Talisman,” one merchant would brag to another, “and glimpsed her as she passed.”
Princess of the evening—no, queen, the delight of her sovereign lord who would value her as none other could . . .
Ugh.
“Duties,” she heard herself croak. “D’you mean ‘to obey the laws of the Guild, to uphold its institutions, to conduct myself to its credit and to that my master’? That was what I swore. How have I failed?”
His divinely handsome face twitched, then smoothed.
“There are higher standards for people such as you and I. Would you align yourself with those who seek to diminish our legacy? Think how it has benefitted you. Think how we took you in.”
Jame coughed. Her throat was dry and seemed to speak despite her. “My master, Penari, saw to that. Now you threaten him.”
Men-dalis appeared delicately to shudder. “Ask my servant the Creeper about that.”
“I ask you.”
“Don’t!”
For a moment he turned peevish, and the grandeur around him faltered. That silk coat he wore—surely now it was shorter and more plainly spun although still royal blue, one sleeve fit tight, the other flared. A button was missing at its breast, and dark stains smudged it.
He wears his dead brother’s jacket, Penari had said. Why?
Then Men-dalis regained control.
“Ah, do not question me. I am the Sirdan, the master—no, the servant of my people. I know best. Accept that.”
His will beat on her. She was so close to agreeing with him.
Dally, she thought, and her eyes cleared.
A trim, familiar figure stood among the flowers, and with it seemed to come a breath of cool, clean air. It smiled at her.
By Demons Possessed Page 6