A dark-eyed woman glared at him, her breasts and flesh on display through a ragged gown; not honorably, or beautifully, but soiled and stained… so unbecoming of a priestess. Should they be allowed to self-destruct? Certainly, if a house could not manage its finances or its people… he ignored the obvious correlation to the state of his own house. He would make sure it didn’t happen.
His rogue changed direction, passing over the east road toward the magistrate district with its tall stone buildings and vaults. These structures jutted out of the crater wall and tunnels linked them to the inside. In this way, the valley turned in its taxes or goods to its high house. He joined a stream of debtors and workers intending to pay their dues.
A house of Lor’Toshtolin’s rank paid the tax in a more graceful manner, without the direct exchange of chits. More like a treaty, an agreement between equals, once a year when houses renewed their oaths. Though now the tax schedule was for more frequent payments. In the past, alliances and deals could offset the obligation, but the high matron imposed more control over it all, cutting through ties between the lower houses and making them compete for favor.
So many houseless Mornae… it had never occurred to him. So many hired on from who knows where. There was the nomad trail along the coast, with what passed for camps, even villages. He recalled what Silla Lor’Vamtrin had told him about the nomads joining houses bordering the Fringe. In their epics, east valley Mornae sang of the ancient inhabitants who’d merged with their Alcar ancestors, making something new. It sounded fine in a song about nomads long ago, but surely not the rabble walking the Fringe today.
He couldn’t make his rank known, so he allowed the stream to carry him through the street of offices where blue-robe diviners recorded the payments. He scanned the crowd but couldn’t find his shadowy man. A man bumped into him but quickly turned away. Taul thought he recognized him. Their eyes had met, and a strange acknowledgement passed between them. He turned away, pushing into the press of the crowd. There was no sign of his quarry.
A sudden nausea overwhelmed him, and the devices burned. He struggled through the crowd, searching for the telltale outline of the man’s magic.
In the distance, under the portico of the door to the magistrate’s office, he saw something. It was the faint outline of a man, a black-light silhouette. The rogue seemed unconcerned, almost cocky in the way he stayed hidden in plain sight. He’d changed his form again, taking on the less threatening appearance of a messenger. Yet the blades were still there, bulging under the Hosmyr tabard. Taul felt like he knew the man now, intimately, every inch of him a sign.
Taul made his way to him carefully, avoiding his line of sight. It wasn’t so hard in this motley crowd. He hunched down as best he could and moved in the slovenly way of the low born.
The door behind the man opened and a train of diviners poured out. The man altered his form, slowly reappearing into the world. The diviners took no notice at all.
But it was what followed that caused Taul to freeze.
Maunyn Ilor’Hosmyr, high consort and master of Isilmyr, stepped out of that vault and handed the rogue a pouch. The man bounced it in his hand. Taul crammed himself against a wall as Maunyn surveyed the crowd, so above them all.
What could this mean?
The two men exchanged words. Maunyn could not be talking to anyone else, though he kept his gaze high, not stooping toward the shifty man beside him. And then the high lord stepped out into the street, the people rippling away from him like a pebble dropped into a lake. The shadowed man offered the prime consort a deep bow to his back, then altered his form again, this time taking on deeper shadows as he darted down an alley.
Maunyn walked toward Taul, as if he saw him. A horde of gruff henchmen formed a wall around Maunyn. Taul suspected that a man like Maunyn had no need of guards. He was truly a god among them. Even Taul, of good lineage, was far and away beneath this man. If anyone was a lord, it was Maunyn.
The truth of this discovery dawned on him then. The high matron did not give out children because she was trading just one or two as favors to ailing houses. There was something bigger at work here. It was a large-scale enterprise, managing the placement of children for another purpose.
It must be. But why slay an acolyte so openly?
He grew faint. What if he’d caused it by following that man?
The devices said nothing, growing cold against his skin.
Goddess above, what had he done?
43
Ren pounced from one shadow to the next, moving along swiftly. He wasn’t sure why he’d entered the crater except to follow the man who’d been following him. He tempted fate by entering. All Hosmyr, its branches and vassals, were looking for the acolyte’s killer of course, but they wouldn’t be looking in the crater, and certainly not in the citadel’s shadow. This sanctuary was mostly empty anyway, its main occupants the fallen blossoms from a hundred puul trees.
The sanctuary’s tower rose high and thin into the air, solitary. Squat buildings, the instruction halls and offices, spiraled out from the tower with gardens between the arms, just like the great temple. Even here, they looked to reproduce what was great rather than attempt something new. Tradition was a crumbling foundation, his teacher had said. The Fall proved it.
A scruffy old diviner guided some youngsters, the well-dressed sons of merchants, across the courtyard to an instruction chamber. How easy it would be to snatch one from this place. Three girls followed a priestess, a woman who had no children of her own, one who had dedicated herself to the care of the sanctuary grounds; dressed—or wrapped, rather—in wide swaths of gray cloth so only her face and hands were visible. It was a recent trend, so different from the way priestesses had dressed in ancient times. Then, they’d displayed as much as possible, their perfection a sign to all. These days, priestesses covered themselves as if in mourning for what had been.
The beautiful acolyte’s face came to mind. He stored her perfection in his mind like a statue of the goddess. Her beautifully full lips opened just so as a ribbon of red spilled out down her throat.
He shook his head. That part wasn’t supposed to have happened.
Even if he had the order to snatch a child here, of this age, most were as tall as he was. And this place... He stepped over a thin line of black steel embedded between the stone pavers. A tingle ran over his skin, and he was sure had he borne a shell, it would have dissipated. The place was ancient, with ancient defenses.
He felt eyes on him, no doubt some busybody priestess or diviner, so he continued on. Indeed, another cocooned priestess stood at the end of the atrium, staring at him. He darted away into another hallway toward the spire.
The instruction chambers, framed by arching columns and pillars, sat empty. It was the end of the season already. This year’s acolytes had made their vigils at the sacred pool, received the goddess-word declaring them priestesses; the young men named squires and returned to their homes. The ones that remained were those pursuing other skills such as accounts or tending or other boring skills.
He toyed with the pommel of his blade. He’d never received such instruction. He was a hired man, a ruffian. Hidden in his shadows, he may as well not even exist. There were so many like him now. Long gone were the days when a house claimed every Mornae. Hosmyr would never claim him, a lowborn no one, only skilled in stealing children.
A sudden regret balled up in his throat.
And murdering innocent acolytes. Is that why he had come here, to this empty place? To seek a sign from the goddess?
He pulled his coat closer around him as he entered the sanctuary proper and slid behind a stone pillar. Like most Mornae buildings, it was tall rather than wide, its smooth walls climbing to the heavens. Above him, mosaics, dulled by time and neglect, depicted a summer night sky during a tenday. During the goddess-dawning, the dome would become clear like glass, and goddess-light, bright and all-consuming, would fill the space and worshippers.
A shape huddled beneath the dome, in a circle of black stone tiles.
For a moment, Ren thought he saw the tingle of a familiar shadow, an amateur’s effort. Yes, indeed, it was the man who’d been following him.
Relief washed over Ren. It hadn’t been his master tailing him at all, but a… merchant? That’s what the man’s clothes said to Ren: simple, respectable. Solid upper middle rank. His hands were on the mend, though, wrapped in the healer’s silks. Curiosity drove him closer to the man until he could hear his mutterings. Prayers should be private, otherwise your weakness spilled out everywhere. But something about the earnestness of the man’s tone and the heaving slope of his back told Ren that this must be a good prayer, worthy of hearing.
Was Ren the goddess’s herald sent to listen to and then favor the poor man? Ren the Benevolent slid between the pillars closer to the man.
“Great Goddess,” the man said softly, “what have we done to offend you? What can I do to atone?”
Ren frowned. Why did Mornae, even of this higher tier, think the goddess had anything to do with their offending or amending? Shadows wisped at his fingertips. Herald of the shadows and the Dark, Ren was certain that it was his fate to set this man right—and not just him, but the lovely acolyte he’d accidentally sent to the goddess—so he drew even closer, just a few paces away, and listened.
The man was now talking to himself, muttering and cursing. A child lost… the second one. His consort was an empty vessel. Ren almost sighed. Such a common story unless you were one of Maunyn’s matrons. They always seemed swollen with his seed.
The merchant seemed so earnest and… Ren had almost forgotten. The man had been following him. What might he have seen? Did he weep for the acolyte? Ren squinted, suddenly angry. This man was just as blameworthy for that crime. If he hadn’t chased Ren, the acolyte would still be alive, and he wouldn’t have lied to his master about the ampule. An insatiable curiosity filled him too. What did the man know, and more importantly, what to do with the sudden sympathy he had for him?
He thought of Maunyn’s interrogation days before and him commanding them all to search out the assassin. His lord had said the high matron was terribly upset, and wanted the killer found and executed in front of her eyes. It might have sounded overdramatic, except Maunyn said it with the same unfeeling voice as always. The dogs were in the Outer City. Kiseyl hounds never forgot a scent. Shadows and illusions had no effect on them. They were closing in on him, surely as the goddess rose every ten-day.
He should gather his things and head south. He’d heard of great cities to the far south. He could live in the shadows… like a god.
Yes, he could flee now, or he could kill this man just to be sure.
He sighed and his shadow-shell undulated, trapping the sound. The shell held him like a womb that he wanted to escape.
The man rose, making five ritual prostrations, the kind the high born Mornae used to make to their matrons on special occasions. Some still did it in the valley. The fervent, the ones that wholly expected to return to the Mornae’s former glory. The Zauhune champion was famous for doing it. Ren’s teacher had been dubious about the matter. This is our time, and they had theirs, he’d say.
The murdered acolyte’s face bullied into his thoughts. Across the sanctuary rose a statue, the rays of dawning sun which cut across the jagged crest of the crater in slivers lining her perfect form in orange. The Voice, the goddess, some said. Guilt, like a stone, sank into Ren’s gut and churned there.
He pressed a fist into the column, recalled the Benthrae boy and the poor slob whose face he’d pummeled only last week. So many wrongs, too many to count. It’s not like he’d offended nomads and barbarians. No, he’d been a viper in his own nest, to his own people.
“Goddess above, what have I done?” he asked.
His shadow-shell fluttered, and the praying man turned, looking for the source.
Ren should be the one prostrating, wringing his hands, pulling out his hair in anguish. He used her gifts but gave her nothing in return, and what did he do all this for except to seek the favor of the cruelest, coldest man he knew? When Maunyn learned that his own man had killed the acolyte… Ren shivered just thinking about it.
