I stared at him, knowing I would have to be subtle. My mind was calm and as cold as ice water. I wanted nothing so much as to shift into the form of a tiger, burst my bonds, and tear his throat out.
I could do that now. Raym's object was in my pocket, and my guile surged within me. But I resisted the urge. In order to carry out my mission I would need money, and only from Krinos could I obtain it. Moreover, he had the Sea Star.
I wished I'd never heard of the thing, but Father had died for it. I would not let it arrive at Maltuk's court if I could help it.
Krinos stared back with a repulsive smile. Clearly he keenly anticipated degrading me. But despite his lust for vengeance, his core weakness was unchanged.
I knew I mustn't let him sense too great a challenge or I wouldn't get what I wanted from him. The Sea Star, I felt, was secure, probably somewhere under lock and key. If he were carrying it on his person he'd not be able to hide his awareness of it.
"So," he said. "A deaf-mute, are you? And slow-witted, too? But not so mute or so slow as you and old Cyra would've had me believe. Well, then you'll appreciate all the more what's coming to you, won't you?"
Through the cloth that bound my mouth I gave an angry moan.
He leered. "Oh, yes, I heard you speak today, and saw what kind of thing you are. But even a witch has her uses. And you won't speak again, witch."
I'd been right; he thought he was safe so long as he had me gagged. I must have yelled something when I went for him after he'd knifed Father, and the fool supposed that my words were what had paralyzed him. I began to writhe, struggling against my bonds.
A quick pulse beat at his temple and he laughed, revealing strong, wide-spaced yellow teeth. He leaned toward me.
I allowed myself to show a little fear and also my very real disgust.
The pulse beat quicker still. "Ah," he whispered. "Are the cords too tight? Well, I'll have to cut your ankles loose soon enough anyway. Have you a blade about you, witch?" He came toward me, knelt, and put his hands on me, moving them with deliberate slowness as if searching for a knife. When I shuddered, he smiled broadly. My loathing excited him. "No? Oh, that's right. I took it from you, now I recall."
Reaching into the folds of his tunic he drew forth my own sharp knife and quickly cut my ankles free. I kicked at him as forcefully as I could and he laughed again.
And then I put an idea into his mind.
He stopped laughing and drew back, breathing hard. "But I'm too impatient." He glanced around the dirty little space. "No need for such hurry, is there? And this is no proper place for courtship. My cabin will be just as private."
He jerked me roughly to my feet. "Come on." With my right arm firmly grasped in his hand, he unlocked the door, and retrieved the lamp. "Don't worry, witch. It's not far."
Resisting slightly, I let him half-drag me along the passageway and up a short ladder. I heard men's voices nearby in the ship but we met no one. When we reached the deck, I breathed deeply of the fresh sea air.
The pirate stopped at a door, opened it, and thrust me inside. I landed on the floor. He relocked the door and turned to me. Even in his excitement, his attention focused briefly on a small metal safe in one corner of the cabin, telling me what I needed to know.
"Now." He moved toward me like lightning, and I felt real fear. But drawing upon all the control Raym had taught me, I rolled away. I cleared my mind, and rose to face him. In the same instant, using the small shift, I assumed an illusory form, his mirror image. With a tremendous effort, I tore one hand loose from the rope that tied my wrists, and pulled the gag from my mouth.
What Krinos saw suddenly was an exact duplicate of himself, uncanny enough even if he'd been an innocuous figure. I improved upon this by snarling and stepping forward. Terror overwhelmed him, and an instinct I hadn't known I possessed made me draw my mind from his in time to keep it from overwhelming me, too. He gave an agonized grunt and clutched at his chest. His eyes rolled up until only the whites showed and he fell slowly forward onto the floor.
I stood over him for a few seconds, ready to overpower him with guile when he rose. But he didn't rise. He gasped harshly for breath once, twice, but not a third time. After a while I knelt and touched his throat gingerly. Even before I searched for a pulse and found it absent, I knew he was dead.
I'd not meant to kill him, only to scare him into submission. Apparently the shock had been too much for his heart. For just a moment I was overcome with dismay, but I remembered what he'd done to Father and Jareth, and the feeling subsided.
Searching with distaste through his pockets, I found his keys and went to the safe. From it I took my father's purse, a heavy leather sack, the traveling pack Father had bought for me, and the small box that contained the Sea Star. After I relocked the safe and shrugged the pack over my shoulders, I touched the pocket holding the object I would need for the Great Shift. I cleared my mind and executed the Shift.
Now the illusion was no illusion. Physically I was a forty-five-year-old Maalian, the image of Krinos. Crouching, I lifted his body and hauled it onto his bunk. I retrieved my knife from his pocket and dropped it into my own, followed by his keys, both purses, and the Sea Star. The Shift had clad me in replicas of the Maalian's clothes as surely as it had clothed me, days before, in goose feathers. I was confident that the pirate's crew wouldn't doubt my authenticity. I went to the cabin door and opened it.
Two men, apparently common sailors, stood in the passageway nearby. When they saw me they ducked their heads. I knew they'd been trying to hear what went on inside the cabin.
"You!" I barked, and resentful fear came into their eyes. "Make yourselves useful for a change." I jerked my head in the direction of the cabin door and they approached with some trepidation. "See what's on the bunk?"
As they stepped toward the door I cast an illusion over the pirate's body. Both of them eyed it in surprise.
"Y-yes sir, my lord," said the older man. "It's the witch we brought from port. The one we took below, earlier."
So these were the men who'd carried me onto the ship in the first place. Maybe they'd seen their captain leading me to the cabin and decided to stand by for some entertainment.
"I brought her here to question her." My tone suggested I didn't care if they believed this or not. "She wouldn't be questioned. She wasn't much of a witch, either. There was an accident, let us say."
I took one of the leather purses from my pocket and drew out a couple of coins. "It'll be dark in a few minutes. Roll her in that blanket then and put her over the side. There's this for you now and another when we reach port, if I haven't heard anything more about her."
The two men approached the corpse cautiously.
"Don't worry. She's dead, all right. No more spells from her." I laughed rudely.
They pulled the blanket around the pirate, their late captain. His body was a good deal heavier than the one they thought they saw, but I hoped to disguise this fact with influence on them both. I took a bottle of brandy from its cabinet, and passed it to the sailors, after taking a hearty swig myself. It was all I could do not to cough it right back out again. I'd never tasted strong drink before, and somehow I'd expected something less volatile. But the men both shuddered too, so I decided it was an expected reaction. I corked the bottle and turned back to them.
"All right, it's dark enough now. Take this and dispose of it. Have a meal brought to me when you're done. I want no company until we reach port; then I'll see the two of you again and you'll get what's coming to you." I paused. "Whatever that may be."
Probably they wouldn't keep the story to themselves, but I really didn't care, as I suspected that Krinos wouldn't have taken too many pains to conceal it.
* * * *
How much of what we like to think of as our personality, our individual essence, is really only physical gesture, as habitual to our human body as flight is to a goose? During the next few days I stayed as much as possible apart from the ship's officers and crew, and affecte
d a foul, short-tempered mood when I had to meet any of them. I reasoned that this would save me from unwanted conversation, which would quickly have revealed my ignorance of the entire situation. I also sensed that such an attitude wouldn't seem unusual in the man I was pretending to be. But the cantankerous temper was easier to maintain than I'd have guessed. Although I wasn't really Krinos, I was something like a twin brother to him, one whose memories were inexplicably those of a young woman but whose every physical and even emotional inclination was nearly the same as the pirate's had been.
The experience was unsettling, to say the least. I passed the time in Krinos's cabin, sleeping when I could, with strange, dark dreams, eating the meals that were brought to me, and the rest of the time throwing darts at a target that hung on the wall, which seemed to satisfy some weird and apparently masculine impulse. I thought sometimes about my father and brother, but I shed no tears. Perhaps I'd taken on enough of Krinos's nature to harden my heart. If so, the tears would come later, when I was myself again.
The voyage was rough but, according to the reports of the officer who came diffidently every day to inform me of our progress, not so harrowing as might have been expected from a passage across the often-stormy sea. When, on the morning of our docking, the two sailors I'd employed to get rid of the pirate's body appeared, eager for the rest of their reward and eyeing each other furtively--although the younger one gave me a grin surprising in its friendliness--I was almost hysterical with relief to think I could soon shift back and become the person I'd been all my life.
I ordered the ship's purser to pay off the officers and crew, and said I had business on shore. A half-hour later I was striding through the crowd at the docks. I'd checked to be sure the Sea Star was in its case, and I'd counted the money in both purses. There would be plenty to take me wherever I wanted to go now and to share with my two remaining brothers later. Maybe I'd even try to find out if Krinos had left anyone in need, although he'd seemed a man who'd have few ties of affection.
The port where we'd anchored was less busy than the one where my father had gone to meet Krinos. The harbor held fewer ships, fewer merchants were doing business in the town, and there were many more beggars everywhere. Staying in the character of Krinos, I brushed past these without a glance and hurried along as if I had an important destination. Actually, I was looking for a private space where I could shift. When I at last found an empty room at the back of a warehouse I did so gratefully.
It was good to be myself again. Now I'd require sleep, but the need wasn't immediate. I'd become better with each Shift at managing the depletion of energy that the effort cost. I put the purses inside my pack, tied that securely around my waist, and located my knife. It had occurred to me, leaving the ship, to take my own advice and get rid of the Sea Star, but something told me that I ought to hang onto it for at least a while longer. Now that Krinos was dead and I was in my own form, there was no logical way it could be traced to me. I put it, too, into my pack, hidden under a spell of guilish illusion as secure as I could make it. After a few minutes, while adjusting my clothing like a woman coming from an amorous assignation, I walked out of the building and set off briskly for the town.
I hadn't gone far when I realized someone was following me. I spotted a fairly busy tavern and crossed the street to it. Just outside the door, I looked up and down as if searching for someone. When the man got closer I saw that it was the younger of the sailors I'd paid to dispose of Krinos's body. I ignored him.
He came to a halt beside me and gazed at me as if he were waiting for me to speak. Finally I gave him a brief, unrecognizing glance.
He responded with a meaningful smile. "I was hoping to talk with you," he said.
I sighed. "Apparently you've mistaken me for someone else. As I'm meeting someone here any minute now, I suggest you go away."
I assumed he'd followed the person he supposed was Krinos. When he saw me come out of the warehouse, he must have decided I was a prostitute, though why he'd want to deal with a woman who'd just had a close encounter with his captain, I had no idea. I attempted to enter his consciousness to see what his intentions were, but his mind was as blank as a baby's and no easier to read.
The man shook his head. He was lanky and freckled, my age or younger, and like most Maalians lighter-skinned than the people of my country. He had an easy smile. "I know who you are. Or rather, what. You're the witch Tonio and I brought onto the ship unconscious. You're the one who killed Krinos."
I gasped with surprise and turned it as best I could into a laugh. "A witch? And I killed someone? Oh, you really do have me mixed up with someone else. Now, please go away before my friend gets here. He won't take it kindly, you bothering me."
He smiled again as if we were old comrades. "You're very good, you know. I saw the illusion, one of them anyway. When Tonio and I came into the cabin, I thought it was Krinos who called us. But what you did to the body on the bed wasn't so good, and under the shimmer I saw Krinos lying there too, dead as can be. Don't worry, I didn't mention anything, and the old man's at the bottom of the ocean where we both wanted him."
How could this be? I'd never met anyone but Raym who could see through my illusions, although I knew there were un-guilish people who saw what this young man called "shimmer," which let them know there was an illusion in place.
But however he'd done it, he'd found me out.
I tried a different tack. "All right. Just to humor you, let's say you're right. If I've done what you say, I'm in desperate trouble, aren't I? I've heard how people in this country treat witches. So unless I were crazy too, I'd have turned you into a bug by now, wouldn't I? But here I stand, talking freely, when one word from me could make you disappear. Or at least make you wish you'd disappeared. How do you explain this?"
Now he laughed out loud. "Easily. For one thing, I know that witches do what they do in other ways than words. See, I'm something of a witch myself. Not so good as you, I'll grant you, but good enough to know things about you that you don't think can be known. For another thing, I'd intended to kill Krinos myself. I was a little disappointed when I saw you'd beat me to it, but I'll get over it. Anyway, we have another project in mind. And I could use your help. If you'll walk with me a little way, and not turn me into a bug, I'll tell you more."
In spite of myself, I was intrigued. The young sailor wasn't afraid of me, and he was not sorry to be rid of Krinos. It might not hurt, I thought, to have an ally in Maal. But I'd have to be careful.
It bothered me that I hadn't sensed guile in him at all, only a cheerful and pleasant frankness. If he was good enough to have seen through my illusion, I should've been able to pick up a glimmer from him, and I didn't, even now. Which meant he was also good enough to hide it from me. This was worrisome.
I decided to probe him more deeply, and this would have to be done verbally, since I was getting nothing from his mind. "We, you said just now. You and who else?"
"A few friends. Four, besides myself. They're witches, too, and stronger than me in a lot of ways, but not as good as you." He paused, giving me a quick glance from the corner of his eye. "I can't tell you any more until they've met you, except that you'll be able to get away if you want to."
I shook my head. Maybe he was telling the truth, but I didn't need the troubles that might ensue if he wasn't. "Sorry, but I have projects of my own. I can't afford to take any more time than necessary."
The young man sighed. "Look," he said. "I don't know your name, and you don't know mine. The fact that you killed Krinos makes me believe you're not in league with our enemies. Anyway, I'm willing to take a chance that we're on the same side. That our projects, shall we say, could even coincide."
"Yes, that is a possibility. But pardon me for putting this bluntly. You need help; I don't." I'd dealt with one group of witches at Ladygate; that was enough.
"Oh, it'd be to your advantage. As I told you, I can see through illusions. And as you must be finding out, I can block my mind very well. Th
ose may be the only things I can do with my guile. Or not. You see where I'm going with this, don't you?"
I shrugged. "Maybe. So?"
"The spell you put over Krinos's body was a good one, you agree?"
"Not my best, but good, yes. Considering I couldn't read you, so I didn't know I'd have to fool a witch. Where are you going with this?" But I was afraid I knew.
"I'm not stupid," he said. "There was no shimmer on you when you seemed to be Krinos. There's no shimmer on you now. That means one thing, nothing else. Like I said, I don't know who you are, but we do know some of your country's witches by reputation, and the Great Shift is a rare thing. You may be the Lady Harken. Who knows, you may even be Taso Raym. Or someone else entirely. Whoever it is, I think it would interest Maltuk's witch to know you're here in Maal. And to know what you are."
I blinked. "If I were that, you'd be a very unlucky young man, wouldn't you? I could kill you now, paralyze you with guile, stop your breath. Fly away."
"No. You couldn't afford to. Because you don't know who I am, either. Or what. At the very least, I might have communicated what I know about you to someone else by now. Or it could be much worse than that." He smiled sweetly.
I felt the tug of a cautious thought. He was right. Two could play at the game of the Great Shift, if they were the right two. I didn't really believe that this cheerful sailor was anything but what he seemed, a clever young man with a very intense and very narrow range of guile. But there was no way of knowing for sure, and I didn't want to engage with a powerful, unknown witch, perhaps even Orath herself, here on a strange street in broad daylight.
"All right. You win, for now. But I'm not promising anything."
We exchanged names. His was Mani. It occurred to me that I'd be safe enough if I simply turned and walked away. But I did need somewhere to rest, and if his friends were as innocent as he seemed to be, and as friendly, they might have a spare bed. Anyway, what could a few hours of procrastination hurt?
A Glimmer of Guile Page 8