Shkai’ra blinked, narrow gray eyes slitting as she turned to glance down at Megan. One eyebrow lifted. Megan waited for her to get up and walk away.
“You didn’t tell me you were a witch,” she said.
“Witch? Scarcely. I know a few tricks. But our people don’t like to show them outside the walls of the city; it tends to get them burned.”
“Hmmmm? In the Zekz Kommanz the dhaik’tz, the shamans, sniff out any witchcraft but their own; then eat the witches’ hearts, mostly.” She paused. Megan seemed to be tensed for something. I like her, she’s fought for me. So what if witchcraft gives me goose-flesh on my spirit—she’s still on my side. “Silly custom.” Long fingers rested on the Zak’s brow for a moment. “I trust you,” she added soberly.
* * *
The adepts filed into the chamber and stood circled around the bowl. One touched the bowl; it rippled, cleared, and revealed the two women in the park.
The magicians waited in silence, their minds studying the scene and its implications on the planes.
“So,” one said at last. “It seems that our message to the moneyhunters is a communication of more significance than we assumed, perhaps. But if we have found them, can the priests”—they all made a gesture of execration—“be far behind?”
“What matter?” another asked. “I still contend that we waste our strength here. These are all ephemera; what are their wars and quarrelings to the wise?”
“The self-christened Wise,” another mind added dryly. “Still, this matter has been decided. If you wish another Council ...”
negation.
“Yeva would be the one to deal with this matter,” a woman who looked sixty years old said. “Their worldlines have already touched hers, and she does excellent work. At present, we can only see that these will somehow give an opportunity to accomplish our purpose without attracting the attention of the Undying One. With his servants we can deal; with him ...” A collective shudder passed through the group.
“And let her not interfere more than the minimum,” the first agreed. “Too much, and we may abort the seed of chance that we seek to nurture.”
agreement/hope/action
Chapter IX
The solarium had been quickly repaired by Milampo’s servants. There were new plants, and the shattered glass had been replaced; all that remained was the zigzag scorchmark, snaking its way across the paneling of the wall.
Lightning was such a showy working, and so easy when the potential-paths through the air were ready in a storm. All you had to do was ... connect. Still, a priest would approve of retribution from the sky.
“Here, Bors,” Yeva said. With infinite gentleness, the huge man set her down on the cushions and helped to arrange the unresponding legs. She looked up at the scarlet blossoms of the trumpet flowers and let them brush against her cheeks, feeling the structure of the plant, its enjoyment of sun and water, the thoughts of the gardeners as they planted and tended it. Yeva inhaled the smells of flowers and burned cedarwood, a melancholy pleasure.
Milampo, she thought with a sigh. Not all visitors were as pleasant as the two women. There had been something strange....
The merchant bustled in, with the inevitable swarm of attendants. Several were members of his kinfast, along with clerks, bodyservants with pitchers of wine and juice, and four mercenary guards. Those were fitted with standard leather armor, but trimmed with bullion tassels along the fringes of the glossy varnished plates. Their spearheads are cheap mass-produced ceramic bound with implanted fiber, she thought with mild amusement how like the man it was to spend on show and neglect utility. But they all had steel swords, which meant a certain degree of competence, those being personal property. Not to be shown on the streets while they were in liveried service, of course. Fehinnan law frowned on private armies, particularly within the capital walls.
“Honored guest,” the merchant began. He was a short man, and the afternoon sun glistened on the sweat film that covered his skin. Rolls of fat overlapped the stiffly embroidered collar of his maroon velvet tunic, and the thin vein-embossed legs beneath were trembling visibly.
“Milampo, my host,” she said in a voice pitched to carry soothing tones below the conscious level. “A man of your years, unused to exercise, should not run up stairs so quickly. See, the veins in your temples are throbbing visibly; this is not good.”
The merchant swelled. She was surprised that he had the courage to confront her this way, although from the smell, his nerve had been heavily reinforced with firewine.
“Slaughter!” he blurted. “Temple Square, blood—”
She raised a hand. “Need we discuss these matters with so much company?” she asked mildly.
He paled slightly and turned, with inarticulate shooing motions. The hangers-on departed, except for the guards, who stood and leaned on their spears. Members of their guild were oath-bound to their employers and could not be summoned against them even in a temple court.
Milampo breathed deeply, and when he spoke again his voice was steady. “There has been a massacre,” he said.
“Which we predicted!” Yeva replied, and her tone sharpened. “Milampo Terhan’s-kin, did it not occur to you that your intrigues with gold and favor could lead to real blood being shed? Or did you see it as more columns of numbers in your ledgers?”
“Enough of that,” he said, waving a hand. Amethysts glowed on his fingers. “They are only shaaid; no shortage. But if the Sun-on-Earth”—his voice dropped unconsciously—“should investigate, the others will blame me.”
“As the leader in this policy,” she said. “Also as the one who proposed calling on the Wise. In which you were yourself wiser than your wont.” With suitable encouragement, she added to herself. An inward sigh; they had hoped to prevent violence, but in matters like this, action muddied the waters of foreknowing beyond certainty. As ever, to observe was to change; to act on the knowledge gained was to change events still more. Yet we cannot sit silent when we might save.
“And you and your kin will go to the tables, and your wealth will be forfeit to the state,” she added equably.
He wilted, then darted a glance of suspicion at her. “Never forget, if I am betrayed, none of my wealth will be yours,” he said. “I also have you, as guarantee of good faith. I could order you speared this instant.”
Yeva caught the glance the guards exchanged behind their master’s back. One tapped a finger to her brow. These were not temple guards, or even regulars.
“Come, come, have we not agreed to aid you?” she soothed. “No need to talk of disharmonious violence.”
“Agreement? Where is my message? Just now I found my faithful servant dead beside the west gate, and no such message upon her.”
Yeva started, with a look of dawning interest in her uncanny eyes. Then her gaze filmed over, and Milampo shrank back with his next sentence unuttered, making the Sun sign on his breast.
information/essence/confirmation flowed through her mind. This was not speech; it was what speech imperfectly counterfeited. Ah, then her suspicions about the two were correct. The exchange of information stumbled slightly.
apologies, eldersib.
Calm yourself, all who are masters were apprentice once, inform the council I have their message.
gratitude/appreciation/obedience.
She returned to the world of phenomenon that most thought real. “Be at peace, my host,” she said tranquilly. It was difficult, this stumbling with words. “The message which links you to us has fallen into the proper hands.”
“Whose?” he asked, paling. That message, and the circumstances of it, were enough to earn him three days of dying.
Yeva considered, and decided that it would be cruelty to inform him that the proper hands were those of two wanderers who would doubtless attempt to sell it to the highest bidder. How could she explain? Even to those with the inborn talent and long years of painful mastery, it was no more than trained intuition that those two would use their burden to br
ing a favorable resolution. That was merely likelihood, not certainty. It was her duty to turn the probability into fact under the bright focus of the now.
“That will be revealed at the appropriate conjunction of the planes,” she said. A yellow bird fluttered in, to land on her outstretched finger. She slipped a feather from the sleeve of her robe and stroked the tiny creature beneath the throat, enjoying the total submergence in sensation that the bird was feeling, possible only in a creature beneath or beyond self-consciousness.
“Observe, my host; never stroke a bird with your finger, for fear of disarranging its plumage or the subtle oils thereon. Instead, use a feather in the hand.”
Milampo made a choking sound and wheeled from the room, followed by his guards and a lingering smell of oily, overheated flesh, rose-scented soap and expensive musk. She smiled at the memory of his appearance, bouncing like a paper balloon filled with hot air at a child’s festival. At least he had taken his noisy mind and body away ... She chided herself at the thought. Every human soul had its purpose, and it was no more just to despise a merchant for being a merchant than a dog for being a dog.
Still, she was heartily sick of being the trader’s “guest.” The only interesting conversation he had was on matters of trade, and with the laborious gentility of the second generation he avoided that as ill-bred. She glanced at the forked scorchmark the bolt from the storm had left. The stroke had been clumsy, but what did Milampo think to threaten her with, if she could block that? Would he have the gardeners beat her to death with hoes? The mercenaries would be as likely to spear him; he was not the sort of employer who would inspire devotion beyond death. He’d inspired more or his servants to loyalty when he was younger, when the memory of his kinparents lingered. As he’d grown older, his ideas had hardened along with his growing callous attitude to other people.
Calming, she settled into a light trance. The minds of the guild washed around her, and she traced the lines of force out over the city. The palace was like a beacon to her sight on this level, one she carefully avoided: minor tricks of seeing and lifting were beneath the notice of the male avatar of Her, but any major alteration of the webs of probability would draw attention like a wasp to sugar. For the sake of balance, she could endure the contact of those on the Left Hand of the council; the guild existed for their common interests, after all. But the God was truly mad and very dangerous; as well provoke a bull elephant in rut. Yet ... at the far edge of perception, where entropy faded the lines of might-be into a chaotic fog, there was the unmistakable presence of the Sun-on-Earth. She would have a hand in this, at the last.
She sat, tracing the possible consequences of one course of action after another. Some she might have anticipated; others were bizarre. Yellow-skinned foreigners disembarking from ships drawn by whales? No, that was vanishingly unlikely. Still, it had its origins—Yes, try eliminating the stranger women—light brighter than noon, then black ruins under black sky, birds falling to lie unrotting where even death was dead, ... Shuddering, she pulled her consciousness back and scanned the time dimension. The future: more than a double hand of years, impossible to tell how much further. Now, nobody had ever seen that before; no force on earth could produce such effects. How could the elimination of two outland mercenaries make such a difference?
The bondservant’s mind interrupted her with a blast of unconscious fear. The servant set about trimming one of the newly placed shrubs, that clearly needed no such attention. Will Milampo never learn? the sorceress thought. A direct lesson was necessary; next time something more important than mere free-association scrying might be lost by jostling her concentration. Sensitivity had its price; she found screening more difficult than most.
Motionless, she made a complex and completely nonphysical shifting. In a room away from the solarium, Milampo Terhan’s-kin started violently as a voice spoke behind his ear. A young voice, breathless and sweet.
“Silly. Why bother, when that-self Yeva cannot walk.” A silver bowl sat on a window ledge; it was a simple curve of metal, and a part-perception of the sorceress’s mind admired its restraint. Gracefully, it moved away across the room and down the hall toward the solarium garden, leaving the merchant crouched on his cushions, the knuckles of one hand pressed to his lips.
The gardener dropped her shears with a clatter as the bowl carried itself into the still-scented warmth of the roof-level chamber. One blade shattered on the marble tiles, the edges of the vitrified clay glinting with silica in the sunlight. Yeva took the bowl in her hand and extended it.
“I wish this filled with water, from the spring against the south wall, the one that cannot be seen from here. Do not let the water or the bowl touch the ground. When you return, place it here and then go to your master. Tell him—again—that I do not wish to be disturbed at my work. And, that he has merely annoyed me. Have him contemplate the consequences if I become angered.”
She retreated into herself, monitoring breath and heartbeat, feeling the thrill of fatigue along her nerves. Even to move a metal bowl in the physical universe was savagely tiring; magic was rarely useful for such gross manipulation, particularly without preparation or patterning.
Afraid, she thought. All of them, and of what? One without the use of her eyes or legs. But that was part of the fear; that one such as she could be a figure of power, rather than another beggar on the temple steps. She sighed. In the guild, there were few enough who could look past the surface of things; outside, almost none.
The bowl was extended toward her on trembling palms. “Young one, I thank you for this service,” she murmured, taking it. There was a rapid patter of departing feet.
She placed the curve of silver in the tripod before her and waited for it to be still. She was weary, but it would be as well to be informed. The red one first ... a pattern of thought wrapped in black, tempered. A name rose into her mind: Shkai’ra Mek Kermak’s-kin. The dark. Force constrained, and a place of age. Ice and iron, the sound of a waterfall, sunlight on water. Creak of rigging. Megan Whitlock.
Holding the images in her mind, she gestured at the water and spoke certain words. It rippled and smoothed, to show ... nothing. A wry grimace crossed her mouth; she had never been very skilled at scrying in water. There was a sudden flare from the brazier at her side as she drew heat from the water and cast it into the charcoal. The silver dinged and sang as the water within it shifted from liquid to crystalline ice in much less than a heartbeat. The beads of moisture on its outer surface flashed into crystal, and the wrought metal rang in protest at the swift change in temperature.
Yeva smiled, remembering the pride she had felt at first mastering that trick. Then she spoke again, weaving the names of the two she sought into the chant. Names were a thing of power; the symbol was the thing it represented, that was the core of magic. Lesser to greater, and distance could not sunder the bonds between objects linked by similarity.... A complex form grew in her mind, as structured as a snowflake with inter-lattices of meaning, glowing with the color of hot steel as she pushed energy through it. To the Sight, images formed.
Ice is much better, she thought.
Chapter X
“You trust me?” Megan said incredulously, happily. “Who do you think I trust in showing this?” Shkai’ra inclined her head, accepting the implied rebuke.
“True. But my people ... fear magic, wherever from.”
Shkai’ra laughed suddenly. “They cast me out, so sheepshit on their customs. Why don’t we go back, count our loot, and feed my cat?”
A sound echoed down the street to their left, from the direction of Temple Square. A rhythmic stamping, thousandfold, the sound of three thousand sets of ceramic hobnails striking the ground in unison. It was more a blow through the air than a sound, thudding against chest and gut. It overrode the crowd murmur, flattened clatter of hooves, creak of wood, even the slow pounding of the pace drums. And a chanting accompanied it.
“Earth, sky, fire, stone,
Steel cuts to bone.
The droning marchsong echoed back from the fronts of the buildings. The first regiment swung down the avenue, six ranks broad, pikes a perfect vertical forest of poles with the butts resting in slings braced around the neck. Behind the soldiers came a line of carts, six-wheeled and massive, grain-movers in time of peace. Now they bore another burden, one that drained in threads of red onto the paving stones, like the pressings of grapes piled high in the harvesters’ baskets. Death’s vintners escorted their fruits. The heavy butcher-shop smell of fresh meat hung on the air.
“I agree.” Megan said. “As soon as the road is free. The cat will probably not forgive you for, oh, a day or two if you neglect him so shamefully, and somehow this place seems improper for the counting of monies.”
She pulled two of her knives free, reminding herself that these people were not kin of hers, but couldn’t help feeling for their kin, under such a tyranny—much like home. She bit off a wave of homesickness and laid the knives on the bench, searching for a polishing cloth in her pouch. “These new toys have already been tested.” She scrubbed at a drying bloodstain around the hilt of one, glad that the other woman was there. With so much death around, being alone in a strange city was doubly hard.
“Hmmmm, don’t forget some might have gotten in along the tang. Had a blade rust out and snap at the hilt once, that way.”
“Teach your baba to suck eggs, long-legs.” Megan said amiably.
Shkai’ra chuckled and looked down critically at the knives. “Good weapons, but haven’t you ever wanted to put a little more steel between you and the nasty people?”
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