"The vial first," the avatar informed him. "Poured on the knife edge and offered to each of our children."
Molin remained slack-jawed and motionless.
"The snakes," Shupansea's normal voice whispered, but the Rankan priest did not begin to move. "Hold your breath," she added after a long pause.
He had once said to Randal that he did whatever had to be done, be it moving the Globe of Power or unstoppering the lethal glass teardrop. He held his breath and tried not to notice the green-tinged fumes or the sizzling sound the liquid made as it ate through the carpet and on into the granite beneath. The obsidian shook when he extended it toward the smallest of the serpents-the one with its leaf nosed head resting on the Beysa's right nipple. He was prepared to die in any number of unpleasant ways.
The beynit's tongue flicked a half-dozen or more times before it consented to add a glistening drop of venom to the sulphurous ooze already congealing on the knife edge-and it was the most decisive of the lot. His lungs strained to bursting and his vision drifting amid black motes of unconsciousness, Molin faced the avatar again.
Shupansea held her hands out palms upward. He looked down and saw the lattice work of uncountable knife-scars there. During his youthful days with the armies he had killed more times than he cared to remember, and killed women more than once as well, but he hesitated-for once unable to do what had to be done.
"Quickly!" Shupansea commanded.
But he did not move and it fell to her to grab the knife, letting its noisome edges sink deep. 0 Mother! she prayed as her blood carried its searing burden toward her heart. It was too soon. The priests had said wait for the fifth decoction; they had abandoned their offices rather than preside at her death. The serpents plunged their fangs into her breasts many times over but it would not be enough. Not even the presence of Mother Bey within her would be enough to change the malignancy Roxane had created. Clenching her fingers together, the Beysa heard the rough edge of the knife grind into bone but she felt nothing.
She fainted, although the lifelong discipline of Mother Bey's avatar was such that she did not topple to the ground. Still, she was oblivious to the agony when the imperfect decoction reached her heart and stopped it.
She did not hear the collective gasp that rose from Beysib and Rankan alike when her eyes rolled white and the three serpents stiffened to rise two-thirds of their length above her shuddering breasts.
She did not feel Molin let go of the knife or see him ignore the hissing beynit to hold her upright when even discipline faded.
She did not hear Kadakithis's enraged shout or the slapping of his sandals across the stone as he raced to take her from the priest's arms.
She experienced nothing at all until the prince's tears fell into her open eyes then she blinked and stared up at him.
"We've done it," she explained with a faint smile, letting the now-harmless knife fall from her scarred, but uncut, hands.
But barely. Shupansea lacked the strength to gather the drops of blood now welling up on her breast in a second, pristine vial; nor could she take that vial and place its contents on the lips of first Gyskouras, then Alton. Her eyes were closed while everyone else prayed that the changed blood would awaken the Stormchildren and they remained that way when the two boys began to move and a chorus of thanks rose from the assembly.
"She needs rest," the prince told the staring women around them. "Call her guards and have her carried back to her rooms."
"She is alone with All-Mother," the eldest of the women explained. "We do not interfere."
Kadakithis blinked with disbelief. "The goddess isn't going to carry her to bed, is she?" he demanded of their glass-eyed silence. "Well, dammit, then-I'll carry her."
He was a slight young man compared to any of the professional soldiers in his service, but he'd been trained in all the manly arts and lifted her weight with ease. The trailing cosa tangled in his legs, very nearly defeating him until he planted both feet on the gilt brocade and ripped the cloth from its frames. The beynit, their venom temporarily expended, slithered quickly out of his way.
"She is alone with me," he informed them all, striding out of the bedchamber with the Beysa cradled in his arms.
Molin watched as they went through the doorway-turning left for the prince's suite rather than right toward hers. He suppressed a smile as the snakes found safe harbor with the other Beysib women, not all of whom were so comfortable with a serpent spiraling under their garments as Shupansea had been.
Unimpressed by the ceremony surrounding them, the Storm-children behaved as if just awakened from their daily nap. They had already pulled the velvet hangings from the altar. Arton twisted the cloth around his head in unconscious imitation of his S'danzo mother's headgear while Gyskouras put all his efforts into wrenching the golden tassels free from its comers.
The archpriest turned to his single acolyte, Isambard, who could scarcely be expected to control the Stormchildren when they became either adventurous or cantankerous-which they were certain to do. "Isambard, go downstairs to the hypocaust room and remind Jihan that the children need her more than anyone else." The young man bowed, backed away, then scampered from the room.
Molin then turned his attention to the Beysibs in the room. The musicians he dismissed immediately, sending them on their way with only the most perfunctory of compliments. The women stared at him, defying him to give them orders as they gathered up the discarded cosa and bore it reverently from the chamber. This left him with a double-handful of priests, their foreheads still bent to the ground, who had been left to him by Mother Bey's high priest.
Ignoring the holes and the sacrilege, he paced the length of the gold carpet and back again. "I think a feast is in order: a private feast. Something delicate and easily shared: shellfish, perhaps, and such fruit as remains in the pantries. And wine- watered, I should think. It would not do to dull their appetites." He paused, waiting to see which shiny head would move first.
"You'll see to this." He pointed his finger at the most curious of the lot; with their bald skulls, bulging eyes, billowing tunics, and pantaloons, the Beysib men all looked alike to him. He seldom thought of them as individuals.
The Beysib he had addressed cleared his throat nervously and the one at the front of their triangular formation pushed himself slowly to his knees. "The priests of All-Mother Bey serve only Her transcending aspects. We... that is. You, the Regum Bey, do not serve the Avatar," he explained.
Torchholder leaned forward to grip the other man's pectoral ornament. Reversing it with a quick snap, he used the golden chain as a simple garrotte. "The Beysa will be hungry. My prince will be hungry," he said in the soft, intense voice his own people had come to fear.
"It has never been so," the Beysib protested, his face darkening as the Rankan priest hauled him to his feet.
"There is a first time for everything. This could be the first time you visit the kitchens or it could be the first time you die...." Molin gave the pectoral another quarter turn.
It was true that the Beysib could show white all around their eyes even when they were staring. The priest gasped and clung to Torchholder's wrist with both hands. "Yes, Lord Torch-holder."
The mosaic floor of the hypocaust room was hidden under icy, ankle-deep water. Isambard removed his one-and-only pair of sandals and tied them together over his shoulder before stepping into it. With his lantern held high he moved cautiously, knowing there had been snakes down here once and not knowing if the cold water would stop them.
"Most Reverend Lady Jihan?" he inquired into the darkness, addressing her as he would have addressed Molin's long-absent wife.
Silence.
"Most Reverend Lady?" he repeated, sloshing a few steps further.
They were all heaped together on the pallet where they had tied the demon possessed mercenary, Nikodemos: Jihan, Tem-pus, Randal, and possibly Nikodemos himself-Isambard couldn't be sure in this light. They weren't dead, or not all of them anyway, because someone was snoring
.
"Great Vashanka-Giver of Victories; Gatherer of Souls- abide with me on Your battlefield."
Lantern rattling in his hand, the acolyte moved forward. He cleared one of the great columns that continued upward all the way to the Hall of Justice. A faint light reflected off the water- a faint blue light such as his lantern could never cast. His heart seized with panic and his gut tumbling with fear, Isambard turned around.
A column of ice loomed midway between the bodies and the far wall. Within it a blue sphere the size and height of his head throbbed; water cascaded to the floor with each rising pulse. The light grew brighter, calling to him. He walked toward it: one step, two steps, three-and put his foot down squarely on the sharpened clasp of Tempus's discarded cloak. The pain jolted him backward and backward and broke the spell.
He had left the room before he had time to scream.
Roxane had been within the Globe of Power longer than was prudent especially since her bond with life was through Tasfalen-who was dead and already beginning to ripen. With her reacquisition of a globe, the Nisi witch was powerful beyond comparison but even she could not do all the things which Sanctuary's situation required at once. She had a demon hounding her now, as well as all the other enemies she had accumulated since the first battles were fought along Wizardwall. The strain of uprooting her soul so many times was starting to show. She was getting careless-being gone so long, leaving a freshly claimed sack of bones like Tasfalen without ensuring that it was life-worthy.
Haught, who was frequently foolish but never careless, knelt beside Straton's unconscious body on the floor of the Peres house kitchen. The interrogation Haught had promised his new mistress/master was going worse than slowly. In his delirium, the Stepson made no distinctions between truth and imagination; wandering, his mind had given Haught no more than tantalizing hints about Ischade or Tempus-plus a throbbing headache.
He comprehended smaller healings like the slash on Moria's foot; he could tamper with the magic of his betters as he had when he'd exerted his control over Stilcho but he lacked the complex magical vocabulary necessary to contend directly with the inertia of a dead or mortally wounded body. He had failed with Tasfalen; the Rankan noble's body had turned a pasty shade of blue and its stiffness, when Roxane returned, would be far more serious than muscle cramps. But Tasfalen had been Haught's first attempt; he had already learned from those mistakes-and Straton was not dead.
The would-be witch studied Tasfalen's silver-white eyes. A touch from the globe and he'd have the power to mend Strat's body enough that the Stepson would no longer have his retreat into delirium and imagination. He'd unwind the man's secrets like so much silk from a cocoon and present his mistress/master with a portion of it.
Just a touch.
A piece of Haught swiped out toward the Globe of Power like a child dragging a finger through the icing on a cake. He had enough to heal and a bit to hide for the future but he hesitated. The wards were wrong: weakened, eroded, vanishing. He reached a little farther and had a vision of an equine face surrounded by ward-fire; consuming the ward-fire-
"Impudent slime! Ice water! Damn her! And you-"
The voice was Tasfalen's but the inflection was all Nisi and malice. The witch swung a clublike open hand at him, striking with the force of a Wizardwall avalanche. Haught heard his spine crack against the far wall and felt the blood streaming from his nose and mouth.
She does not love you, a nameless voice rose out of Haught's memory. Remember your/other: a wind-filled husk of flayed skin when the Wizardwall masters had finished with him. Haught shook the blood from his hand and healed as the witch ranted, cursed, and swallowed the globe.
Haught was against the cupboard where Shiey kept the knives. Silently he called one to his sleeve and held it against his forearm when he meekly rose and followed his mistress/master from the room. He said nothing about the wards or his vision.
Stilcho crept back up the stairway to the dark landing where Moria waited.
"It's now or never," he told the quiet woman, grateful he could not see her face when he found her wrist and led her back down the stairs.
There were two stairways leading to the kitchen of the Peres house: one came up from the larder and pantries in the basement, the other ascended to the servant's quarters under the eaves. Both had been occupied. Stilcho opened the door to face the malevolent leer of the household's cook, Shiey. He knew that face-the last face his missing eye had seen-and it turned his bowels to ice. His resolve and his courage vanished; Moria's hand fell from his trembling fingers.
"We're taking Straton to the stables," Moria said in a soft but firm whisper as she stepped out of Stilcho's shadow. She had her own fears of these servants whom the beggar-king Moruth had provided for the house and she had learned how to hide those fears long ago. "You and you," she pointed to the burliest pair, "take his feet." She looked up to Stilcho.
Giving the one-handed cook a lingering glower, the one-eyed man took position at the Stepson's shoulders.
"We'll get him into the lofts, if we can. And we'll wait for the help that's going to be coming-from everywhere."
"An' if'n it don't?" Shiey demanded.
"We bum the stables around us."
They grumbled but they had been listening as well; none disagreed. Moria held the outer door for the men while Shiey gave her cupboards a final inspection.
"Took my best cleaver, didn't he?" She prowled quickly through the cutlery, slipping her favorite implements through the leather loops of her belt. "Here, lady." She spun around and flipped a serrated poultry knife the length of the room. Moria felt the hardwood hilt smack into her palm before she'd consciously decided to catch the knife rather than dodge it. "Ain't nothin' can't be hurt wi' a good knife," Shiey informed her with a grin.
* * *
Walegrin shoved the trencher to one side. Whatever the barracks' cooks had thrown into the dinner pot smelled as bad as the smoke he had breathed all afternoon, and tasted worse. He had men still out in the streets-more than a dozen good men, not including Thrusher, who had yet to return from his special private assignment. Maybe the palace had good reason for wanting plague sign splashed over every other color of graffiti out there; he hoped they did. The populace was reacting with predictable panic.
He'd kept his men busy fighting but now the sun was down. A Rankan oar-barge flying Vashanka's long-absent standard had tied up at the wharf, its passengers and cargo under imaginary quarantine. No one had yet seen a disease-slain corpse; rumors were getting wilder and darker with each retelling. So far Walegrin didn't believe any of them, but some of the men were showing doubt at the edges and the night had just begun.
Before he could decide on a course of action, the door to his quarters slammed open admitting one of the veterans who'd been with him for years.
"Thrush's at the West Gate with Cythen. They've got a body between 'em an' they say they won't give it over."
"Bloody hells," the commander exclaimed, crumpling his cloak in one fist. "Watch the pot, Zump. I'll be back."
He went down the stairs at a run. He'd believed in Kama; believed in the mugs of ale she'd downed with Strat and him a scant week ago. He'd believed she hadn't put an arrow in Straton and believed she was smart and wary enough to keep herself alive after it'd happened.
The temporary palace morgue was just beyond the public gallows. It glowed faintly in the late twilight. With plague sign up the gravesmen were taking no chances and had laid a fair carpet of quicklime beneath their feet. Thrush was arguing loudly with his escort as Walegrin approached.
"As you were," he commanded, positioning himself carefully between the gravesmen and the shrouded corpse. "What's the problem?"
"It's gotta stay here," the chief digger said, pointing to the dark object behind Walegrin's feet.
Thrusher sucked on his teeth. "But, Commander, he's one of ours: Malm. He deserves the rites inside-beside the men he served with for the last time."
Malm had died two years bac
k and had never stood high in Thrush's estimation. Walegrin peered into the darkness. His friend's face was unreadable. Still, he'd known Thrusher for thirteen years: if the little man wouldn't leave Kama's body with the gravedigger's there had to be a good reason.
"We tend our own," he told the gravesmen.
"The plague, sir. Orders: your orders."
It was easy for the straw-blond commander to lose his temper. "My man hasn't got the plague, damn you. He's got a big, bloody hole where his stomach used to be! Take him to the barracks, Thrush-now!"
Thrush and Cythen needed no urging to heave the sagging burden to their shoulders and double-time it across the parade-ground while Walegrin dueled silently with the gravediggers.
"Got to tell 'em," the gravesman said, looking away as he cocked a thumbtoward the Hall of Justice dome. "Orders're orders. Even them's that make 'em can't break 'em."
Walegrin ran a hand through the ragged hair that had escaped the bronze circlet on his brow. "Take the message to Molin Torchholder, personally then. Tell him Vashanka's rites -want performing in the barracks-plague or no plague."
The least of the diggers headed for the hall. Walegrin waited a moment, then turned back toward the barracks, quite pleased with himself. Until the gravesman threatened him, he hadn't been certain how he was going to get a message to his mentor without drawing the wrong kind of attention.
"Upstairs-Cythen's room," Zump said as soon as he'd crossed the barracks' threshold. Every one of the half-dozen men in the room was watching him. But at least they weren't thinking about plague or imperial barges. Walegrin forced himself to walk slowly as he climbed the half-flight of stairs to where Cythen, the only woman billeted with the regular garrison, slept.
Soul of the City tw-8 Page 24
