“Damn him! The Watch will be gouging the rest of us even harder to pay it,” Kirin growled. He took a deep breath and with a wrench of shame he forced the memory of his friend, who he could not help, away. “My family’s in trouble, Mother. We’ve got to have a new place to perform, and soon. That means a patron. Only where do we find one? Even Grandfather doesn’t know anyone with that kind of money.”
“Hmmmm,” she rumbled with her eyes half closed. “Ought to be a few. Try looking among the new merchant houses, especially the cloth-factors—and the shippers! Tell Pieter’s brother Sevan that Reshghar Bovea Millago and his wife Arriga expect their firstborn soon and are planning an extravagant child welcoming party. They’ll likely want entertainment. That new ballroom they’ve built onto their mansion in Cliffside can hold hundreds and has a high ceiling. Ask Pernod Iola DiBellun, the victualler, about making a joint offer to Millago. If your Magister plays it right, DiBellun will jump at the chance to partner with the DiUmbras on a bid for Millago’s entertainment.”
“Perfect!” Kirin said happily. “Now we need to get DiBellun to talk to us.” He knew the victualler had a higher social rank than mere acrobats, but the man would certainly be easier to approach than the owner of Aretzo’s largest shipping house.
“I can help you there too,” Mother Gee smirked. “He’s married to the cousin of Dona Abbithana, Priestess Zella’s new assistant priestess. She can give you a letter of introduction to him.”
Kirin fished out his two silver coins and set them in her open hand, knowing that the payment meant she wouldn’t tell anyone else. “Thank you, Mother!”
Her sharp eyes had noted the slenderness of his coin pouch. “I could use an extra pair of eyes and ears, boy. If you’ve got time on your hands, I’ve paying work that needs doing.”
“Sorry, Mother,” He shook his head. “Pieter would be angry, and Grandfather would throw a fit. I can’t. But thank you for the offer.”
She waved a hand negligently. “Keep it in mind. And don’t be such a stranger, boy; come visit me again sometime. Only don’t wait nine years, hear?”
Kirin smiled. “I promise, Mother.” He kissed her on one withered cheek and left the room by a different route than he’d used to arrive.
* * *
Kirin paused at the entrance to the narrow side street that led to the Temple of Heavenly Peace, Priestess Zella’s sanctuary. It lay on the wrong side of the Serpentine, the twisty street that wound along the high tide line where Aretzo fell into the half-drowned neighborhood between the docks and the Old City. He vaguely knew that centuries ago this area had once been the heart of the city, before the sea rose and turned streets to canals. For the past few centuries everybody called this tide-wracked area the Sump. Many of the sewers in the Old City drained into it. The stench hung heavy on this windless day while the rising tide backed up the canals.
He picked his way along the excuse of a street, indifferently paved and barely above the water, which lead to the old Temple’s entrance. Sagging tenements rose on either side. Most of them were crammed with people. A few with bad foundations were in various stages of collapse; those had more furtive denizens. Half the voices he heard were speaking something other than Silbari.
He looked around warily; the Sump had long been the roughest neighborhood in Aretzo. There were cheap doss-houses serving sailors and roustabouts who worked on the ships and piers that lay beyond the Temple. Pieter said that Law was no more than an infrequent visitor to the Sump. Travelling through to worship with the family had always been safe enough, since even the drunkest fool wouldn’t challenge a dozen very fit men armed with belt knives. But he was alone, now.
Ahead of him a seedy tavern spilled vomit and drunks into the narrow street. And fights. Garbled voices shouted as a free-for-all of wildly swinging men poured out to block Kirin’s path. A pale-skinned sailor wearing a red cap blundered into him. The sailor cursed him in Klinto and threw a roundhouse punch at his head.
Kirin ducked the blow, pivoted on one foot to lash out with the other. The heel of his buskin sank into the drunk’s gut and the man folded like a cut tree. A woman shrieked, more excited than frightened, and another fool tried to slug him. Kirin dodged that one and let the man blunder into the side of a building. Bricks intercepted a flailing fist with an unsympathetic crack. The drunk froze for a moment in shock, began to swear, absorbed now in his own pain.
Kirin fended off two more drunks trying to grapple each other. He dodged a punch from a cursing Xir nearly two feet taller than himself. The man’s skin gleamed black as night and he bore elaborate ritual scars on both sides of his shirtless chest. The marks ran over his shoulders and up his neck to end in dramatic curls on his cheeks. Kirin shuddered to see them; Silbar’s Holy Writ forbade voluntary body disfigurement.
The big sailor saw the revulsion in his face. “Shibret!” he spit the word at Kirin, weaving closer for another try. The people of Xir had a tradition of pale-skinned Imps like Silbar did, but with nastier habits.
Kirin’s Shadow awoke with his own anger and uncoiled under his heart. The Xir sailor had reach to match his height. When he threw another punch Kirin barely dodged it.
The sailor spewed another insult referencing Kirin’s mother and an improbable coupling with a demon and a dog. Kirin’s Shadow rose into his eyes and he blocked and ducked until he found an opening and kicked the Xir in the groin.
The man groaned. He tried to draw his belt knife before he folded up but failed.
Kirin dodged him and ran. The street jinked around an old building. He leaned against a blind wall for a moment to master himself, and his Shadow.
It surged and tried to reach beyond his skin.
No! he thought at it sharply. Down, monster!
He ruthlessly forced it inward. It wouldn’t go back under his heart, not while that same heart pounded like a drum, but after a few breaths it stopped trying to reach outside his skin. He accepted that as victory enough, pushed off the wall and began walking again. This time he kept glancing behind as well as maintaining a wary eye on the buildings and people around and ahead of him.
The street finally opened to a tiny plaza fronting the junction of two canals that bordered the sacred building. Kids played at the edge of the stagnant waters, oblivious to the stench. An arching stone bridge more substantial than the street itself leapt the channel. The other end landed next to a tilted pillar, all that remained of the courtyard entrance of the Temple of Heavenly Peace. Kirin strode over the bridge and paused to look around.
Someone long ago had tried to save the venerable building from the rising waters by filling in the lower level and raising the courtyard up to the new sea level. The replacement pavement had settled badly, tilted and cracked, with mud filling the low places so that he had to watch where he stepped. The temple’s waterlogged foundations had given way and the dome and entire back half of the structure had collapsed decades ago, leaving a partly-roofed ruin with a single leaning minaret. The grand entry nave had become the sanctuary and Zella lived in a tiny set of rooms that had once housed offices.
I have to keep my Shadow under my tightest control here. He tried to drive it back into its cage under his heart, but the fight had strengthened it and it pushed back. He breathed deeply, did some of the Still Exercises that pitted muscle against muscle without arms or legs moving; Pieter had always been fond of those as an aid to prayer. Today they worked poorly. Try as he might Kirin still couldn’t completely suppress the monster inside him. The best he could do was a sort of half measure, the Shadow concentrated inside his chest and hips and quivering like a shaken pudding.
He seriously considered leaving and coming back some other time. Dona Zella understood his Shadow better than any other priestess. She knew he wasn’t an Imp and would welcome him even if Darkness leaked out of his every pore. Her assistant might be more easily frightened. He had a humiliating vision of a young priestess fleeing from him like some loathsome thing found in a sewer.
Ple
ase, Holy Haroun, he prayed. Don’t let me scare the new Priestess away. Please grant that she listens to me and helps my family. In the Name of the One I beg you.
He took a deep breath and entered. The holy precincts lay beyond an archway warded now by nothing more than a bead curtain. He let the strings drop behind him and looked around. Glassless clerestory windows let light in and swallows came and went. More light poured through another arch that had once led to the circular sanctuary of the original building, now a jumbled mass of broken stone ringed by stubs of wall. A family of ferrets chased rats through the ruins while a redheaded vulture perched on a broken column and watched with scavenger patience.
A crude altar had been built this side of the open arch. On stormy days Kirin remembered rain blowing in during services to wet priestess and congregation. He found nobody in the bare room, but he heard voices coming from the living quarters. He crossed the spalled marble floor and knocked on Zella’s door.
It opened to reveal a woman taller and wider than he was. Her yellow robes were stained and faded, her hair screwed back into a businesslike bun, and she wore no wimple. Richer sinecures and benefices supported their priestesses in better style. Zella’s impoverished congregation barely kept her fed and clothed. Despite this she greeted Kirin with a cheerful welcome and ushered him into her combination sitting room, kitchen, and office.
A young woman in newer yellow robes wore a starched white wimple with two embroidered silver stars. The novice priestess stared at his face nervously and got up from her seat at the ramshackle table that was the largest thing in the room. “Perhaps I should go,” she ventured.
“Stay, Abbie,” Zella ordered. “This is Kirin DiUmbra, one of the acrobats who live in the Sulfur Serpent Inn. Kirin, this is Dona Abbithana D’Ivor Vidlet, my new assistant priestess, who arrived a few days after your troupe went on tour. You caught us finishing my sermon for this coming Holy Day.”
“Dona Abbithana.” Kirin put his palms together and bowed over his hands. “I’m honored to meet you. I confess that you are the reason I came here today.”
Dona Abbithana had the golden aura of a healer, more prominent that Zella’s own. At his words the young woman looked even more nervous. She mumbled a vague greeting while her eyes stared at his face.
No, he thought; at my skin and ears. He stiffened, remembering the Xir’s epithets, and the old pain and anger rose once more. He blurted out, “My sire was a Gwythlo, Dona, not Salim the Tormentor. I’m not an Imp! I’m just a man.”
Her face flushed mahogany-colored.
Kirin almost bit his tongue as he jeered at himself. Idiot! Getting off to a bad start with someone you want to ask for a favor! “I’m sorry, Dona, I’ve been rude. I shouldn’t have been—I mean, I apologize for presuming.”
From the look on her face, he’d presumed correctly.
Dona Zella chuckled. “Please forgive her, Kirin, she’s from a small town in the hills west of Anagni and has never been to a big city before. She asked for an assignment that would let her minister to the ‘poorest of the poor’, so she’s been sent to my parish. Somebody in the Hierarchy has a low sense of humor. Come, sit, and tell both of us what brings you here today?”
There were several stools around the rickety table. Kirin sat on the one that looked sturdiest. Dona Abbithana perched the full length of the table away from him. Dona Zella took her accustomed chair and looked at him expectantly.
“My family needs help, Dona Zella, Dona Abbithana.” He quickly sketched in the details, ending with “I’ve been told Dona Abbithana’s cousin is married to a man that might work with the DiUmbra Troupe to get patronage for both him and us. I’m hoping,” he gave the younger priestess his best beseeching look, “That you’ll be willing to introduce us to him.”
“Hmmmm, I detect Gee’s fine hand in your arrival,” Dona Zella said, smiling as Kirin sheepishly nodded. “Pernod Iola DiBellun is his name; Abbie’s cousin Millia married him a few years ago. An honest man, he could use some patronage.”
The younger priestess shifted uncomfortably on her stool. “I don’t know what to say, Dona Zella. I don’t feel right asking my cousin’s husband to do a favor for someone I don’t even know.”
“I’m not asking for anything more than an introduction,” Kirin explained urgently. “And not for myself, for the Magister of our troupe, my grandfather Grigor Sule DiUmbra. He would put together a shared offer with your cousin’s husband. I won’t even be there.”
He thought she found that somewhat more palatable, but she said nothing. He held his breath, desperately praying she’d accept. His Shadow churned uneasily inside him.
Dona Zella cleared her throat suggestively. “Two families might accomplish more by working together than either can apart.”
Abbithana’s face showed her thoughts; that her superior unfairly supported this disturbing stranger over her sister-priestess’ plain preference to stay out of it. She grudgingly nodded. “I suppose I could introduce Magister DiUmbra to Magister DiBellun.”
“Thank you, Dona Abbithana, thank you from the bottom of my heart,” Kirin told her fervently. He hadn’t known how worried he was until she agreed, and he found himself dizzy with relief. If this contact worked, if the family found a patron, if, if, if . . .
“Are you ill, Goodman DiUmbra?” asked Dona Abbie with wary concern. “You’re swaying.” Her golden aura reached out to envelop him as she tried a Diagnose spell.
His Shadow blocked it.
Abbithana’s mouth fell open in shock.
“Sorry, Dona,” Kirin muttered, hastily driving his Shadow back under his heart; this time it went. “You surprised me, I wasn’t ready.”
“You’re a Mage!” she said incredulously. “Only a very powerful mage should be able to block my Diagnose spell.”
“No! No, Dona, I’m not,” Kirin hastily tried to explain. “It’s just that sometimes I’m, ah, sort of blank to magic.”
Zella chuckled. “Kirin’s like a man with Haroun’s Gift, Abbie; he has a selective immunity to magic. Except that his Talent is more erratic than the Gift. See if you can Diagnose him now.”
Kirin tried to look virtuously submissive. The young priestess sent forth her aura again and this time he held his Shadow bound tight and let her spell penetrate his skin. Her Talent was considerably stronger than Zella’s and he had to suppress a shiver as it brushed his heart. If she chose, she could stop its beating as easily as healing a scratch.
“This is very strange,” Dona Abbie complained. “There is a place under your heart that I cannot touch. What is that? I’ve never known anything like it.” Her aura prodded his insides.
Kirin twitched and lost control of his Shadow. It expanded, and he fought to keep it confined inside his skin, frightened of what she might think or do. Dona Abbithana might be young and wear only two stars, but that didn’t make her harmless. She could take back her agreement to make the introduction.
“Look!” The young priestess whined to Dona Zella. “My aura is being swept right out of him! Even Haroun’s Gift doesn’t do that. How can that happen?” She glowered suspiciously at Kirin.
“It’s because you’re frightening him.” Dona Zella reached out and patted Kirin’s hand reassuringly. “Let me guess the next words out of your mouth, Abbie. You’re wondering if he’s a demon in disguise, or maybe possessed by one, right?”
Dona Abbithana’s lips firmed and her eyes peered at Kirin with renewed suspicion, which did nothing to calm his nerves. “I am starting to wonder.”
“Kirin, show her your shadow,” Dona Zella commanded. “Do one of those wonderful juggling tricks.”
Kirin winced. “Dona Zella, are you sure?”
“I am. Give her a demon-stration.” She grinned like an imp herself and added, “Do it.”
He bit back the vulgarity that came to his lips at her mischievous choice of words and bowed his head. Sometimes her humor resembled the canal stench, obnoxious and hard to bear. He took a deep, trembling breath and p
oured forth Shadow into his hands. He molded it into a ball, and made another, and another. He began to juggle the three inky balls of Shadow. Dona Zella tossed him a clay cup with no handle and he added that to the routine, then a candle stub—unlit, fortunately, he didn’t think he was up to juggling fire right now. He set the five going faster and faster. At last he snatched the cup out of the moving stream and used it to catch the three balls of Shadow, one two three, and lastly caught the candle stub. His Shadow flowed through the clay and back into him through his fingers. When he turned the cup upside down only the candle stub fell out. He passed the cup to Dona Abbithana to witness its emptiness.
The young priestess looked at it like a scorpion. She poked it with a spoon, then a finger, and when nothing snapped at her she finally picked it up and looked inside. She looked at him accusingly.
“That wasn’t some clever trick—that was real living Shadow! You have a Shadow inside you! You are possessed!” Her aura turned bright gold and pulsated.
Kirin looked beseechingly at Dona Zella, who shook an admonishing finger at the young priestess. “Don’t be hasty. What’s the first rule of demonic possession?”
“That any demon can be banished,” she hissed angrily at Kirin, her aura strengthening as she visibly rehearsed a spell.
“Proven thousands of times,” Dona Zella agreed. “A truism of our craft, known to apply for twenty centuries without exception. But Kirin’s shadow cannot be.”
Abbithana looked at her in frank disbelief at this contradiction. “How do you know?”
“I’ve tried. By myself and in concert with my late superior in this parish, Dona Tinea.” Zella arched an eyebrow at Abbithana. “Who, even in her dotage, was far more powerful than you are now, my dear. As am I, in this respect at least, though I admit your capacity for Diagnosis is better than mine. Whatever Kirin’s odd little talent may be, it’s certainly no demon. Will you take my word for it, or do you have to prove yourself at the expense of this unfortunate young man?”
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