paizo.com #3236236, Corry Douglas
Chapter Ten
Old Wounds
But if they didn't have any eyes," Gav asked, "how did they see?"
Salim dodged an old man selling plums, then stepped to the side of the cramped avenue to make way for a donkey cart loaded high with rolled carpets. A dark-haired dyer holding swatches of bright cloth started toward him, then caught a glimpse of his expression and quickly turned her attention elsewhere.
"I told you, it was magic."
"Surely it was, gov, but to hear you tell it, none of them had eyes—not the little ones, not the big brainy thing. Even if they all share a whatsit—a mind hive—it stands to reason that some of them must have eyes, or they'd all be bumping into everything. A bunch of beggars pooling their money still ain't got nothing, if'n you catch my meaning."
Salim bit back his first reply, clinging to the last shreds of his temper. "A hive mind," he corrected quietly.
"Either way. And that ‘hive' thing doesn't really make a lot of sense, either—ever seen an anthill, Your Honor? Drop a rock on it, those little buggers run every whichaway—they aren't so single-minded as all that. All I'm saying is that if you want people to believe—"
"I'm not paying you to say," Salim snapped. "Or to believe."
The boy's eyes widened. Slowly, his face hardened into a mask.
"As you say, gov."
Salim immediately regretted the outburst. It wasn't Gav he was really angry at.
After the interminable period of the ritual—the seemingly endless stream of images and emotions that swirled through him like stormwater through a floodgate, siphoned out by the silent Caulborn—he had regained his wits enough to stagger to one of the arches and use the lintel stone, almost falling through into the alley behind Canary House. Gav, waiting near the inn for his return, had found him half senseless in the midden—miraculously not yet rolled by the thieves who preyed on drunkards—and helped him into the inn and up to his rooms. In the haze of exhaustion, Salim had said more than he should have to the boy before passing out. When he had woken, Gav was asleep on the floor beside the bed, close at hand in case his employer should need something.
He was, in short, a better companion than Salim could have ever hoped to find in a city of derelicts and exiles.
The excursion beneath the city had rattled Salim. Not the Caulborn—letting the alien things rifle through his memories was far from pleasant, but even that violation wasn't enough to account for his current mood. Nor was it simply frustration at being shoved about like a game piece by Ceyanan and, through him, Pharasma herself, goaded and lured like an obstinate camel.
No, the one Salim was really angry with was himself. He'd only been in the city two days, and already he'd called on the Gray Lady's power repeatedly. Despite his half-life as Ceyanan's cat's-paw, Salim normally still held that tainted magic at arm's length, refusing to let it inside him long after others might consider it necessary. And yet here he'd used it multiple times a day, as casually as a real priest.
This is how it happens, Salim thought. Each time, a little bit easier, until one day you wake up and don't recognize yourself.
"I'm sorry," Salim said, the words dry and unfamiliar in his mouth. "It's not your fault. Since coming here I've...done some things I'm not proud of."
The boy's stiff posture relaxed immediately. "This is the city, gov—point me out someone who hasn't. We'll charge folks a copper a peep to look at 'em and both get rich." He hesitated, then clearly decided to push his advantage. "So what'd you do?"
Salim considered ignoring the question, but the boy'd earned some answers. "Magic. Priest magic."
Gav frowned. "When we met, you said you weren't a priest."
"I'm not. I just...handle things for the goddess. She offers me some of the same magic as her priests in order to help me carry out my functions, but only because she knows I don't want it. I'm a Rahadoumi, remember?"
"So let me get this straight," Gav said. "You've got the Lady of Graves standing by to answer your prayers, and you're snapping like a whipped dog—no disrespect intended—because it goes against your values?"
Salim was starting to regret his apology. "A man's values aren't something to be laughed at, boy. They're all any of us has."
Gav chuckled. He looked Salim in the eye. "You know what I value, gov? Bread in my mouth. A shirt on my back. Maybe a girl down on Box Street who likes my patter. Those are values, lord, and I know why they're called that—because they're worth what you pay for them. No more, no less." He gave Salim a pitying smile. "You asked before if I'd bow to a queen, and I said no. But I'd sure as hell take her coin if she was handing out alms. Principle's slippery, sire—try to stand on it too long, you wind up lying in the dirt. Me, I take care of myself."
Salim stared. This street child could give the philosophers of Azir a fair match in the garden forums. "And is that all there is, then?" he asked. "Taking care of ourselves? Is there nothing worth fighting for—worth dying for?"
Gav snorted. "If there were anything worth dying for, gov, we'd all be dead by now." He drew breath to continue—then stopped short, looking over Salim's shoulder. "Crows," he said. "Lots of 'em."
Salim turned and saw a half-dozen men and women in dark robes similar to his own striding purposefully toward them. At their head was a familiar mane of black hair and a gray cloak.
"Friends of yours?" Gav asked hopefully.
"Not exactly," Salim said. "And if you value your employment or your skin, you'll let me do the talking. All of it. Understand?"
"Not a word," Gav agreed, watching the approaching priests with decidedly less than his usual gamecock bravado.
Once again, the citizens of Kaer Maga showed their almost supernatural ability to melt away from potential trouble, spaces automatically opening up in the crowded lane in front of the advancing priests, then closing again behind them.
Salim folded his arms and let them approach.
For a second, Salim had the impression that Maedora might simply march straight over the top of him. When she was less than an arm's length away, she finally stopped, back parade-ground straight. The rest of the Pharasmin priests fanned out in a rough V behind her, looking grim even for them.
"Salim." The psychopomp's voice sounded human, but carried a cold weight a battlefield commander would have envied.
"Maedora. How lovely to see you again."
Her glare was even colder. "I warned you not to interfere with my investigation."
"And so politely, too," Salim noted. "As you can see, I haven't."
"Oh? And did it not occur to you that nearly starting a war between this city's faithful and the necromancers of Ankar-Te might complicate matters?"
"Mubb?" Salim was genuinely surprised. "That little worm? I didn't even touch him. At least, not much."
One of the Pharasmins—a rosy-cheeked dowager with hair cut in a rough bowl—stepped forward and spoke around Maedora's shoulder. "That ‘worm' is one of the best-known necromancers in the city. Your rash actions nearly cost us our truce, and now we'll have to make even more concessions!"
Salim turned hard eyes on the woman. It was one thing to be reprimanded by a psychopomp who'd traveled the planes. Priests were another matter.
"Perhaps," he said quietly, "your mistake was in making peace with your enemies in the first place."
The priestess blanched, clearly unused to being talked back to.
"But you know all about that, don't you, Salim?" Maedora stepped even closer, blocking the priests and filling Salim's vision. She was only slightly shorter than Salim himself, and though she was close enough to wrap in his arms now, Salim felt no thrill. Where he should have been able to feel the warmth of her skin or breath, there was nothing.
"Oh yes, Salim," the morrigna continued. "I know your story. Or do you think that a Rahadoumi priest-hunter in the Lady's service goes unnoticed, especia
lly one as problematic as yourself?"
Behind Maedora, the priests shifted and murmured to each other. One sketched Pharasma's spiral in the air.
"If you know who I am," Salim said, "then you know I'm the best at what I do."
For the briefest instant, Maedora's pupils flashed white, crisscrossed with threads of webbing.
"And what is that, exactly? As Pure Legion officer, you spent a lifetime tracking down and persecuting believers. Then as soon as you needed the goddess's help, you forsook all your godless convictions, selling out both yourself and the wife who resented you for it. You killed your best friends and ran away in shame, then tried to renege on your deal with Pharasma herself. You're an honorless man, Salim. You've betrayed everyone and everything you've ever cared about, and you make a show of hating the goddess only because it's easier than hating yourself."
Salim felt each word like a lash. He tasted blood and realized he'd bitten the inside of his cheek.
"Leave," he said.
Maedora smiled, a wax mask stretching. "You're a flawed tool, Salim. And when you break, I'll be there to pick you up and return you to Ceyanan."
"Leave," Salim said again. There must have been something in his voice, because Maedora glanced down and saw his hand, white and bloodless where it gripped his sword hilt. Her smile faltered, replaced by her normal flat affect. She looked back toward her followers and jerked her head, then led them on down the street toward Ankar-Te, the priests giving Salim a wide berth.
Salim continued to stand in the street for several long moments after they were gone, staring at nothing. At last he unclenched his hand and moved it away from his sword. He let out a breath and looked over at Gav, half-surprised to see the boy still there.
"They don't seem to like you much," Gav ventured.
"Me either," Salim said, and gave the guide a weary smile. "Come on, let's go."
paizo.com #3236236, Corry Douglas
Chapter Eleven
The Common House
Think this'll work for you, gov?"
The sprawling structure was less an inn than a stationary circus. Twice the size of a normal inn and only half-finished, with exposed scaffolding off to one side, the wooden structure had clearly been designed by several different architects who hadn't thought much of each other's aesthetics. Gables and arches clashed with rough-hewn columns and porticoes. Despite it being only early afternoon, the open windows disgorged laughter and music, as well as the occasional inebriated tenant. One such long-haired vagabond was currently doing some disgorging of his own against the side of a muraled wall, while a leather-clad elven woman laughed and another woman covered in red silks and blue tattoos looked on in disgust.
"It's perfect," Salim said. "And this is where the escaped slaves congregate?"
"More than that," Gav said. "It's their city hall. Everyone knows the Common House—it's where Halman Wright and the rest of the Freemen's leaders do their arguing and speechifying. But most folks just come here to drink and have a good time."
It was as good a place to start as any. Salim had considered simply walking through the district, which Gav called the Bottoms, looking for the walled house he'd seen in Anamnesis's vision, but one look at the maze of streets had quickly convinced him of the foolishness of that plan. Unlike Ankar-Te, the Bottoms wasn't all roofed over with the multiple floors of stone that turned that district and others in Kaer Maga into the masonry equivalent of an insect-rotted log. Here, the ring's high ceiling had partially collapsed, letting warm sunlight down onto a wide swath of city. Yet if anything, this had only increased the district's density, with narrow lanes winding between shops and workhouses and tenements. Salim had the feeling he could walk those alleys for a year and never see all of it.
That wasn't his only reason for coming here, though. Salim had taken time to cool on their walk south across the city, and discovered that, along with her personal comments, Maedora had said something that rang true. Salim had been sloppy with Mubb. He could have gotten the information he needed out of the necromancer any number of ways, yet he'd let his distaste for the man get in the way. He'd been throwing himself at the problem like a blunt instrument. It was time to start looking before he leapt.
"What do you know about these Freemen?" he asked.
Gav's brow furrowed. "As much as anyone else. They've been around for most of my life, but they're still pretty new as far as the city's concerned. About a dozen years ago, orcs brought in a big string of slaves, mostly ex-military, and thought they had 'em broken for sale. Turned out they were wrong. The slaves strangled the orcs with their own chains and ran down here to the Bottoms and dug in. When they realized that nobody in the city cared enough to clap 'em back in irons, they started building homes and gathering other runaways. These days, probably half the Bottoms folk are ex-slaves. If you were a slave catcher or bounty hunter, this place would be solid gold, but every time Halman and the others free somebody new, they teach 'em how to fight. Nobody messes with the Freemen."
Salim frowned, thinking of Akaan's singing slave girls at Canary House. "And the rest of the city allows this? Surely every slave in the city would make a run for freedom."
Gav shrugged. "It's complicated. In the beginning, the Freemen got greedy and tried to free all the slaves in the city, but the other gangs got together and slapped them down. Now there's a truce—no slavers allowed in the Bottoms, but Halman and Black Marin and the rest don't go around stealing slaves and setting them free. Or at least that's how it's supposed to go. Everybody knows that some of the Freemen still raid the other districts, but publicly the line is that all new recruits are refugees from outside the city. And in the meantime, the Freemen also buy slaves in the markets in order to set them free, so the slavers get theirs, too. It all works out."
"Another truce." Kaer Maga seemed built on such agreements. "Alright, then. Once we're inside, we split up. You find out what you can about the house I described, and I'll see what I can pick up on my own."
"You sure that's wise, gov? Folk here aren't exactly the trusting sort."
"But they're clearly not entirely closed to outsiders if they're taking in runaways," Salim countered. "And you can probably get into conversations where I'd be a liability. Besides, I have my own methods."
And with that, Salim realized he couldn't put it off any longer. So be it—given the way he was feeling, one more dip in the cesspool didn't matter.
Turning away from Gav, Salim grabbed hold of the spiral pendant around his neck and brought it to his lips. To the other people on the street, it probably looked like he was kissing it. He smiled slightly. Working his tongue around his mouth, he conjured up a drop of spit and blew it onto the holy symbol, rubbing it into the stone. Beneath his circling thumb, the stone grew cold.
"Come on, then," Salim said under his breath. "You're not the only one who can play voyeur."
The rush hit him immediately, the icy slick of grave worms wriggling through his veins. Yet with the disgust came a heightened sense of awareness. He looked to the crowd passing by. Where a second before they'd simply been a mass of city-dwellers, now each person seemed distinct, body language clearly conveying thoughts and intent. A hunched shoulder betrayed a thief as clearly as if he'd held the stolen pouch aloft. An uneasy shift in a woman's weight declared that she was waiting for someone, not merely examining a fruit stand.
There was more, though. In addition to the real sounds of the street, Salim's mental ear now picked up a second broadcast—a murmur laid over the top of the others. He looked out toward the crowd, and though his eyes told him nothing had changed, he could sense the sources of the new sounds. In his imagination, he could almost see them—transparent beige bubbles encapsulating each person's head.
"Gov?"
Salim shook his head, and the image faded. He looked back to Gav, who was staring at him with a troubled expression.
"I'm fine, Gav." Salim put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Let's see w
hat we can dig up." Together, they crossed the crowded street and made their way up the two steps to the porch and through the inn's door.
Inside, the Common House was a study in contrasts, both well loved and well abused. Sawdust covered the floorboards, and the several bar tops were nicked and battered, yet surprisingly clean. Tables crowded the floor, which rose and dipped seemingly at random, and the tables themselves were crowded with folk of every shape and color, most with the dirty clothes and thick arms of laborers. Off to one side, a table raised above the others held several older men with the look of mercenaries, arguing and gesturing to the sheets of paper that joined mugs of ale on the tabletop. At the other side of the room, a lutist and a tambourine player plucked and shook for all they were worth, while men and women took turns doing a high-kicking dance in front of the stage, with great enthusiasm and varying degrees of success.
A group of younger folk called Gav's name. The boy waved to them, then looked to his employer. Salim nodded, and Gav immediately began weaving his way through the tables.
Salim watched him go, then moved out of the entryway, taking a seat at the bar closest to the door. Scanning the crowd, he let his eyes unfocus, loosening his hold on the magic running through him.
The bubbles returned. It was like every person in the barroom was wearing an inflated animal bladder as a helmet, a transparent apparition that was both there and not. Salim chose a table halfway across the room and focused.
One by one, the bubbles began to pop.
—I'll get the job yet, just you see if I don't, and she won't be able to resist me once she sees—
—always money with him. If only he'd listen once in a—
—Oh Ana, if you were here to see how these people live, you'd—
—more beer. Bring more beer. Look this direction, and bring me more beer—
Nothing useful. Salim shifted his focus to a new table.
—the Augurs say it'll work out, but—
—thinks he's better than me, does he? Just because he casts spells while someone else takes the lumps—
Pathfinder Tales: The Redemption Engine Page 12