By Demons Possessed

by P. C. Hodgell

  Glass shattered against weeping stone. The garden vista lay in a broken heap, still reflecting a flower here, half of a rueful smile there.

  “No!” a shrill voice cried, almost unrecognizable until it modulated itself. “I mean, no. The dead are gone. They cannot return. Besides, he betrayed me.”

  “He did not.”

  Jame had dropped to her knees and was scrambling through the fragments in search of another reminder of Dally’s face.

  “If not then, he would have later. He was jealous of my success.”

  “He was not. He idolized you.” Sudden suspicion made her sit up. “Did you encourage that with your charms?”

  “No!”

  The voice that spoke was vehement but strained. He was half-Kencyr. Could he lie?

  “Did you order your brother’s death?”

  The whole fabric of the room rippled like a shaken screen. Jame felt herself thrust back into the claustrophobic room that she had at first entered. Somewhere, a door slammed. The Sirdan was gone.

  “This way,” said Darinby, his hand on her shoulder. He was panting.

  Outside, in the corridor, space returned to normal.

  “Darinby . . .”

  “He’s right, you know.” The thief’s eyes were fixed and his mouth too, in a desperate smile. “I thought, I doubted . . . I was wrong—wasn’t I? Yes. No. The entire city depends on his judgment. You don’t know what it’s been like here—people destroyed, families torn apart, the Guild facing ruin, haunts prowling the streets, the gods themselves, dead and alive . . . it will all collapse if we don’t obey him.”

  Through his voice, she felt his shifting passions.

  What he saw appalled the Darinby of old, who had mistrusted all politics and politicians, whose gods she did not know, but they must have been honorable. Now, as Men-dalis had been Dally’s hero, so he had somehow become Darinby’s, seen as beset on every side by treacherous foes. Therein lay Darinby’s weakness, bred out of his strength. Who would be so false as not to support such a master? At the same time, Darinby was a good man. At heart, surely he couldn’t believe what he was saying.

  She tried a different approach.

  “The Sirdan never said why he summoned me.”

  “Can’t you guess that? Dally was a . . . a splendid boy, but he is gone. What has returned, though . . . what can its purpose be except to destroy?”

  “Who?”

  “His brother, of course.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know!”

  He slammed his fist against a wall in frustration. His knuckles bled. Jame caught his wrist to stop him from striking again and supported him as he leaned, panting, against the bloody stones.

  “Is Men-dalis worth it?”

  “Yes.” He drew himself unsteadily upright and brushed back tousled hair from a white, sweating brow. “He has to be. Come. See what happens to those who will not listen to reason.”

  “Darinby! Talk to me.”

  He looked at her with wide, shocked eyes and grinned again.

  Their way led down into the foundations of Ship Island. Here stone walls ran with moisture and sodden moss squished underfoot. This must truly be below river level. Jame smelled mildewed wood and rotten leather. The hallway was lit with sputtering torches. Doors opened off it on either side, each with a small, barred window. Voices within moaned.

  “Men-dalis sanctions this?” she asked.

  “Not he. The Creeper does as he thinks best to support the Guild. So does Abbotir of the Gold Court, my lord’s loyal advisor. Sometimes I . . . I help. There has to be someone with dirty hands to accomplish any task.”

  “We call that Honor’s Paradox. It doesn’t work.”

  “It will in the end, so long as no one tells the Sirdan what the Creeper is doing.”

  “Don’t they even try?”

  “Yes but, well, face to face with him, they can’t. It would be . . . treason? Blasphemy? He doesn’t know. We can’t let him know. It would be terrible if he knew and yet . . . and yet . . .”

  “Let these things happen anyway?”

  “Don’t say it! Here we are. See for yourself.”

  What Jame saw beyond the opened door was a stairway leading down into darkness. She descended cautiously on slimy steps, leaning against walls felted with wet mold. Would Darinby shut the door behind her? It seemed not. He was still of a deeply divided mind. Besides, she hadn’t yet done his master’s bidding. Talk about divided hearts. . . . Men-dalis hadn’t even gotten around to saying what exactly his will was although she suspected that Darinby was right: he wanted her to kill Dally. Again.

  “Who’s there?” demanded a voice below, and chains clashed. “I demand to see whoever is in charge! We pay our taxes. We have rights!”

  Jame’s eyes adjusted to the gloom. At the foot of the stair, in a small room, was a bed, and on it sat a lumpy figure, glaring up at her.

  “Mistress Abernia, is that you?”

  “Yes! Have you come to hear my grievances?”

  “In a way.”

  The lowest steps led down into cold water that came nearly to the tops of Jame’s boots. The small, sodden bodies of rats floated in it. She waded to the bed and sat down on its spongy mattress.

  The cell’s inmate glared at her. Jame in turn saw a figure of confusion. Abernia wore skirts tucked at the top into pants, at the bottom into boots. She also wore a bodice pulled down insecurely over a barrel chest. A cowl overshadowed her face.

  “Abernia, may I talk to your husband Tubain?”

  The other pouted. “What you say to me, he can hear, as if that coward could keep anything from me.”

  “Please.”

  Jame eased back the hood. Tubain’s face peered out at her through gummy eyes.

  “Oh,” said the innkeeper, blinking back tears. “We have been so wretched here. Have you come to take us home?”

  “I hope so. Soon.”

  He gave a quivering smile. “Abernia said I was a fool to take you in. I said, ‘It will come right in the end.’ Is this the end?”

  “Not yet.”

  His face crinkled and he began to cry. Jame held him, her arms not quite reaching around his fat, hunched shoulders. In her mind’s eye, she saw the Res aB’tyrr which this man had turned into a haven for so many, including himself. He was genuinely good, as Cleppetty had claimed. The rest didn’t matter.

  “There, now,” she said, patting him on the back. “Can I speak to your wife again?”

  Tubain stifled a sob. “If you wish,” he said, and straightened where he sat. “Well?” demanded Abernia through his unkempt beard, impatiently wiping her eyes.

  This was going to be hard.

  “I can try to take you out now,” said Jame, with another glance up at the lit doorway. Had Darinby gone away or was he waiting, just out of sight? By now, who might have joined him? “But I don’t think Men-dalis is done with either of us. If you go back to the inn tonight, his people may be watching. That’s certainly the first place they will look when they realize that you’ve escaped. Will he dare attack the Res aB’tyrr openly?”

  Abernia considered this, reminding Jame yet again that she was the brains of the family, likewise all the backbone that it possessed. “The Five might consider it an undeclared war between a guild and a trade, which in itself is virtually unheard of. The fine placed on the instigator would be ruinous, yes, even for coffers as deep as the Sirdan’s. I think Men-dalis will hesitate unless, as some say, he truly has run mad.”

  “Or unless he finds a way to blame you for any trouble.”

  Abernia gave a bark of angry laughter. “We have been more or less in this situation before, have we not?”

  Yes, when a rival inn, the Skyrrman, had tried to destroy the Res aB’tyrr with an unsanctioned trade war. It was a miracle, partly engineered by the Archiem of Skyrr against his own rival, Harr sen Tenko, that they hadn’t succeeded.

  “I could take you somewhere else.” Patches’ house? The Maze?
>
  “No.” Abernia’s fortitude crumbled under the pressure of Tubain’s desperate need. “I w-w-want to go home!”

  “Then I will do my best to take you there.”

  No one waited at the top of the stair. A harsh sound reached her from down the hall. Darinby bent over in a far corner, retching. Damn Men-dalis for putting him through such misery, even more so for whatever the Sirdan had done to his innocent brother. Let Dally haunt him. He deserved it.

  Here was the door, the market amidships clearing away with the dawn, the Thieves’ Guild melting into shadows. Yes, that was as it should be.

  Chapter V

  The Res aB’tyrr

  Spring 56

  CRACKS OF DAWN showed though the overhanging rooflines, bringing the first faint light of day to the streets below. Rats scurried into the remaining shadows. Ignoring them, cats sat on doorsteps waiting to be let in after their nocturnal rambles. From within came the stir of waking life—a cough, a clatter of pans, someone calling to sleepy children in a sleepy voice:

  “Get up, get up, oh do get up . . .”

  Surely the city can’t be this complicated, thought Rue as she followed her small guide through yet another tangle of back alleys, which they had entered by crawling through an empty barrel from one apparent dead end to another. Rue had almost gotten stuck. Patches had snickered.

  Maybe the little thief was trying to throw off pursuit. The uproar of the island market had long since faded behind them into the murmur of the stirring city. Sometimes Rue thought that she had heard feet padding behind them. She knew something about spies, though, after dealing with Jame’s so-called spymaster Graykin, and didn’t think much of them.

  On the other hand, maybe Patches was just trying to confuse her. If so, she was doing a good job.

  The farther they went, the more lost Rue became. As with most Kencyr, her memory was excellent, but not trained to this pitch. Jame, as she understood it, was more of an adept in this bewildering city than most of its inhabitants. What a strange life she must have led here.

  But as a thief? That still made Rue uneasy. Once again, she was reminded how little she really knew about her mistress.

  Just the same, the farther she got from Jame, the more apprehensive she became. Would it be better or worse if they were formally bound together? Like everyone else at Tagmeth, Rue had considered what would happen if—no, dammit, when Torisen gave his sister the authority to bind more Kendar. Rue would jump for that . . . wouldn’t she? Oh, but what would she be joining herself to? Every time she thought that she understood Jame, something else happened.

  Should she ask Brier Iron-thorn? Maybe not, if the Southron was now in the temper that Rue suspected she would be. That touched a chord of guilt, but before she could track it down, they entered a larger street lit with glowing spheres.

  “Where are we going?” Rue asked, not for the first time.

  Overhead, a window opened. Patches leaped to the wall, followed an instant later by Rue. The contents of a chamber pot splashed into the gutter beside them.

  “Idiot,” remarked Patches, starting out again. “Night soil brings a good price from local farmers.”

  Randon-trained Rue was aghast. “You’ve never heard of latrines, or sewers, or dysentery?”

  “Sewers we’ve got, and a god to go with them. Sumph the Indiscriminate. Some people are just lazy.”

  Ahead of them, a black-robed priest paused under one of the hovering globes.

  “Blessed-Ardwyn-day-has-come,” he muttered in a bored voice. The light went out.

  Rue watched him depart, extinguishing spheres as he went. “Ardwyn is another of your gods, isn’t she?”

  Patches grinned. “I keep forgetting. You Kennies make do with only one, don’t you? How’s that working out?”

  “Not well,” Rue admitted. “We don’t like him (or her, or it) and he doesn’t seem to care much for us either.”

  She would have reacted more strongly before Kothifir. That had been Rue’s first experience with gods other than her own, although she was beginning to suspect that Tai-tastigon was in a class by itself. Still, if Jame had come to grips with it, so could she. Let the priests fight out the theology.

  The sense of being lost, adrift, tugged at her again. What would Jame do without her?

  “Where . . .” she began.

  The little thief stopped so suddenly that Rue nearly ran over her.

  “Here.”

  They had come to a square with a fountain bubbling at its heart and a handsome girl drawing water from it. To the left were the fire-scarred ruins of a large building, partly if ineptly rebuilt. Ahead stood another, far more interesting structure. Its four-story facade was covered with gamboling infants carved in high relief. As the sun rose and the shadows moved, they seemed to laugh and play. There was also a residual glow about them, like the globes, that faded as day broke.

  An obese black cat sat on its doorstep, meowing insistently. The door opened. Tail held high, the feline stiffly brushed past the woman who had obeyed his summons, disappearing within. The woman continued to stand there as if on guard. She was tall, thin, and middle-aged. “Sharp” was the word that came to Rue’s mind, as to form, posture, and intent. Also, “wary.”

  The girl at the fountain straightened.

  “Cleppetania,” she called. “Will he see me today?”

  “No,” snapped the other. “He’s still indisposed. No visitors.”

  The girl pouted. “You can’t keep me away forever. Tubain is my uncle, after all.”

  “Only by marriage, Kithra.”

  “Will he see my husband Rothan, then?”

  “No. Leave us alone.”

  Patches crossed the square, Rue behind her, and saluted the woman on the step.

  “Mistress Cleppetty. Good morning.”

  “You again. Who is this?”

  “The Talisman sent her,” said Patches, trying to match the insouciance of the black cat but with a cautious eye to her hostess. “There’s trouble. Well, there always is, isn’t there? By the way, is there any word of Mistress Abernia?”

  “She’s still the guest of the Thieves’ Guild, as far as I know. And still we get no satisfaction from the Five. We’re on our own here.”

  “You don’t trust me because I’m a thief,” said Patches, with doleful regret. “You should. You do my mentor.”

  “You mean Jame. She was just here and said nothing about you or any guest.”

  “Maybe she forgot.”

  The woman snorted. “Maybe you lie as easily as breathing. Most people do.” She turned to Rue. “But you, girl, you’re one of her kind, aren’t you?”

  “A Kencyr, yes. More like Marcarn Long-shanks, though, a Kendar.” Rue gave her a clumsy bow. “Honor be to you and to your halls.”

  The other’s mouth broke into a lop-sided, reluctant smile. “So she said to me, once, and Marc is a dear friend. Well, then, child. Welcome to the Res aB’tyrr.”

  Chapter VI

  Many Meetings

  Spring 56

  I

  JAME FOUND HERSELF once again by Ship Island, but this time on the south bank. It had seemed important to lead any pursuit away from the Res aB’tyrr by backtracking, although she hoped that she had avoided the Creeper’s agents altogether.

  The eastern horizon lightened through a haze of clouds. In the Riverland, it would be hours before the sun rose over the Snowthorns, but here windswept plains stretched to the Eastern Sea, a whole world that she had barely thought about since her abrupt departure years ago.

  The thieves’ market amidships had dispersed. The Guild’s night was the city’s day, under most circumstances. In her time, she had usually slept while the sun was up. Now, she felt oddly adrift among the city streets. By night, they seemed to rise forever, up to the stars and an inconstant moon. Now, here at least, a vault of blue sky fretted by gathering clouds capped them. Merchants stirred, opening doors from whose cracks strips of stuffing fell. As people emerged on the s
treets, yawning, vendors began to cook breakfast. Jame’s stomach growled. Trinity, how long was it since she had last eaten? Somehow, the lack of food was harder to bear than the lack of sleep, even for someone who ate as little as she did.

  Beside her ran the River Tone, its rippling current catching the dawn glow. Something massive surfaced in it, which Jame only saw out of the corner of her eye. It had dived again when she turned to look, leaving a single, liquid comment:

  Bloop.

  No. It couldn’t be . . . could it?

  Anyway, what next?

  Tubain, she hoped, was safe, but for how long? Men-dalis would realize, soon enough, that he had escaped. Would the Sirdan pursue him? Why had he taken the innkeeper prisoner in the first place if not to force her return to Tai-tastigon? That had succeeded. Here she was. But what he really wanted was to be freed of guilt over his brother’s murder, even if he hadn’t said so directly, perhaps because he couldn’t bring himself to do so. Was he responsible for that death? She had always thought so, but with what proof? Even if she obtained it, what could she do with the Five apparently under his thumb through his minister Abbotir?

  It was a puzzle with too many pieces missing.

  Something tugged at her collar. Reaching back, she encountered a hook attached to a long line. It twitched again.

  “Psst,” said a voice above. Jame looked up.

  “Sparrow!”

  “Climb,” said the other and Jame did, hand over hand up the taut rope with her feet braced against the nearest wall.

  The rooftops of the city opened out before her, a rugged landscape of steep peaks patched with red tile and green slate, dotted with puffing chimneys. Sparrow embraced her at the top.

  “We thought we would never see you again!”

  “I’ve been off scaling cliffs, not walls. One, I swear, was three thousand feet high.”

  He grinned at her. “Why am I not surprised? You always did climb like a polydactyl cat. Welcome back, Talisman!”

  “How are you, and how is your king?”

  “It’s Prince Dandello now. His uncle died of a chill caught after celebrating last Spring’s Eve cloud-clad. We honor the god of wind and weather whenever we can, given that we’re so subject to the whim of both up here, and better the south wind than the north, that only brings trouble. Oh, we had a glorious pyre to warm the old man’s bones. An entire block went up in flames. Anyway, now that you’re back, Dandy is sure to want to see you. Just stay away from the edge.”