They want to reform this awful thing? Not destroy it?Didn’t he listen to his own story? “Then there is a civil war inside the Merchantry. I thought so.”
“It’s worse than you know. The Merchantry’s Obverse allies have decided to become the senior partners. Their forces are fighting the Proprietor, the Equity, and us. It’s at least a three-way war, maybe more, with allegiances shifting with no warning.”
“The three fellers in the masks and dark green outfits…?”
“Assassins Guild. They used to be Merchantry-loyal, but it looks like they’ve either gone over to the Obverse or want make themselves masters. Bad, either way.”
What felt bad was my need to piddle. “Hold that thought!” With some pantomime I made it clear what I needed to do. He smiled and turned away, putting his jacket back on. I dashed over to a nice fat tree next to the junk pile and did my business. Just as I got ready to go back I inspected the trash heaps. Sometimes you can find perfectly good stuff that people just throw away. Found me a near-new Barlow knife once.
But these weren’t new garbage piles. They’d been there for years and years. In fact, some of the buttons and belt buckles and things looked to be decades old, maybe even older than Tyrell. Leather pieces, shoe soles, pieces of broken pipes, old animal bones…all of it had been there a good long while. Nothin’ worth keepin’ here. I took a step to head back to Tyrell, but something tickled my brain. Them ain’t animal bones. Taking more care to pick through the stuff on the mound, I saw that it wasn’t trash at all. I found skulls, some of them tiny. Bullet holes filled them. Arms had been tied behind the backs of skeletons. A grave.
The settlers heaped the bodies here…of the natives they’d massacred.
And that made this a place of great evil, where great wrongs had been done.
A low vibration thrummed up into my feet, like an earthquake clearing its throat.
Holy moley. This is an ostium.Our enemies can travel here. Just like at the Monument. We’re sittin’ ducks.
“Cap’n!” I yelled, running away from the death mounds as fast as my legs would take me. “They know we’re here! They’re comin’! Get your men ready! Now!”
Tyrell turned to see what I raved about. I saw a sick greenish light reflected in his brown eyes. Those same eyes grew big as wagon wheels.
Boy, somethin’ horrible bad must’ve just appeared behind me.
31/ Sha’ira
“You look shocked. They’re called the Assassins Guild, not the Maiden Aunts League.”
Zigzagging in an irregular way to make myself harder to hit, I let out a few bad words suitable for a soldier. Just once I’d like somebody nice to show up. I snatched the cup off my belt and willed it into a shield with a back sling. By the time I made it halfway to the boulder I’d given myself as much protection as I could from the unseen thing behind me. With a burst of frightened speed I dove over the rock and scrunched down behind it. By the time I landed Morphageus flashed in my hand. Since there was just room for one back there, Tyrell used the tree for cover. His big pistol in hand, he peeked around the trunk. I stayed put, panting and waiting for a barrage of polka-dot lightning or whatever the new monster had in its arsenal.
I waited a long while. Nothing happened. I waited some more, looking up at the captain to try to gauge our predicament. He just looked back toward the bone piles with a puzzled expression.
“So,” sneered Jasper, “are we gonna look, too, or just lie here till you’re a grandma?”
My snoot poked over the top of the rock. Maybe a hundred feet away, just in front of the skull heap, a figure sat cross-legged. Well, ‘sat’ might not be the right term. ‘Floated’ would be more accurate. The person bobbed up and down a little, maybe three feet above the marshy ground. Dressed in sheer green and brown brocade robes, the new arrival’s eyes were closed as if sleeping, yet her silent mouth moved. The long hair was the color of ink and the gold studs in ears and nose resembled fresh pen nibs. Our visitor’s skin, brown as fine old parchment, bore blue-black markings that I took to be writing at first, but soon saw were intricate pale tattoos with designs you see in pictures of Arabe buildings.
It’s the woman in my dreams.
You wouldn’t call her beautiful. Her features were too sharp, too strong. Almost masculine but not quite. A face that’d been used to being obeyed once, but maybe not any more. Somebody had marred it with a blade, leaving a thin white scar just under her left eye and across the cheekbone. From what I could see of the rest of her, she was no delicate blossom. The shoulders, as broad as Tyrell’s, and the muscled arms spoke of hard work in the past. She had dirt beneath her nails, but her hands, though strong, were as well-shaped as though planned by a sculptor. My dream-lady’s legs rivaled her arms for power and grace. Soft suede boots with upturning toes covered her feet.
Gasping once, she opened her eyes and unfolded her legs. In a split-second she’d positioned herself in a low crouch, a recurved Eastern bow at the ready, arrow notched. Whoa! She’s quick. That was the first thing I noticed. The second was that she wore a stone around her neck, like I did. But hers looked to be a creamy white moonstone. It had even been cut in a crescent shape, in case anybody didn’t get the lunar theme. It glowed as if a candle lived inside it.
The third thing I noticed…her eyes were the same shade as her stone, and gave off the same glow.
“Yeah, that’s creepy,” Jasper whispered. “Go say ‘hi’ anyway.”
I stood up with Morphageus in small shield form. Every muscle stayed tense as her bowstring, ready to dive aside if she let that arrow fly. Pulling the Legacy Stone out where she could see it and recognize me, I found that it felt warm as blood. Well, that’s good. Maybe this’ll go well, then. Tyrell hissed at me to stop, but I slid around the boulder and took a couple of steps toward her. The arrowhead tracked me for a second, then dropped down. She kept it notched, but relaxed the string. Okay, even better.
Dream-lady spun her head around as if she’d just realized she’d arrived in a strange place. Nudging a skull with a toe, sniffing the air, cocking her head to listen, and even looking up into the treetops, I got the feeling she had survival skills Tyrell and I could only wish for. She seemed satisfied with her inspection, for she slid the arrow into the embossed leather quiver on her back, right next to the curved sword she also kept there. Now I noticed a short, straight dagger inside one of her calf-high boots, and a crescent one that matched her sword and rested at her left hip.
“Somebody’s lookin’ for trouble,” Jasper said.
“Or just expectin’ it,” I breathed. I waved at Tyrell. “It’s okay, Captain, I know her…sort of. Move where she can see you and holster your hand-cannon.”
The Reb eased out from behind his tree, LeMat already out of sight. “Hope you know what you’re doing,” he muttered.
“That makes two of us.” I held my hands out wide so she could see I offered no threat. “Should I bow or somethin’?” I thought to Jasper.
“Hey, you’re the Stone-Warden,” he replied. “Maybe she should bow to you.”
“I don’t know. She don’t look like the bowin’ type.”
The new arrival solved my problem by putting her fists on her hips and glaring down at me. And I do mean down. She wasn’t much short of six feet tall. “You’re a child,” she sighed in a warm husky voice with an accent I’d never heard before.
I shrugged. “Sorry.”
“You carry the Stone?”
Holding it up and peering at it, I gave her an apologetic little smile. “Afraid so.”
“Allah preserve us!” she spat, throwing her hands into the air.
Jasper snickered. “You need to work on makin’ a better first impression.”
“Pfft! Look who’s talkin’.” Instead of a bow I just nodded my head a smidgeon. “I’m Verity Sauveur, and like it or not, I’m the Stone-Warden.” Morphageus flashed in my fist, a shield no more. “Here’s your proof.”
Unimpressed, she smiled like a wolf stroll
ing amongst sheep. “Put that away before you hurt yourself.”
Tyrell felt me tense up and start to say something I might regret. He patted me on the shoulder and stepped toward the woman. Sweeping his hat from his head, he purred, “Laurence Tyrell, ma’am. Captain, Confederate States of America. Whom do I have the honor of addressing?”
“Your chivalry is wasted on me, young man. You are a Redeemer?”
Undeterred, he shot her one of his glowing smiles. “I am.”
She rolled her eyes. “Romantic optimistic fools.”
His smile disappeared. “Better that than a sneering cynic.”
After a long pause, giving us both a stern look, she shrugged. “Perhaps.” She made a sort of graceful rolling gesture with one hand. “Salaam. I am Sha’ira.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Tyrell and I said together. Then I added, “You’ve been sendin’ me dreams.”
Sha’ira moved past us to stand on the boulder and scan the area. Satisfied that the Reb troopers were no threat, she said, “I have. Warnings. Guides. Little experiments. My new talent is not an exact science yet.”
“Seems pretty exact to me,” I told her. “Everythin’s come true so far. Do you see the future or are you makin’ these things happen?”
“A good question. I have no answer for it. Perhaps someday, but not now.”
“You don’t know? You’re just shootin’ in the dark?”
“A good metaphor, that. Yes, I am. A trance comes upon me, I scribble things, I send them. Where they come from, I don’t know.”
I let out a groan. “Well, that’s just peachy-keen! Here I’ve been sweatin’ bullets doin’ dream interpretation and you don’t know any more about it than I do?”
She softened a little and gave me a genuine smile. The ghostly pale glow of her eyes faded into a gray the color of a cloudy day. It made her seem more human. “Sorry to disappoint you. I forget that you are new to all of this, that you have lost your loved ones, been hunted by Shades. It’s a wonder your mind is still so strong.” With that she sat down on the big rock and patted it. I accepted her invitation and plopped my backside next to her.
“Sha’ira. What’s it mean?”
“It’s Arabe. My father named me Poet.”
“That’s nice. Mine named me Truth.”
“That he did. Two sides of the same coin, I think.”
I took that as another invitation. “Then tell me some truth.”
Tyrell jumped in. “Starting with how you could use a Merchantry ostium. That’s supposed to be something only their agents can do.”
“I wasn’t certain I still could. I’d given up that life long ago. But I imagined myself as a Shade again and here I am.”
“Ah. So I thought.” Tyrell backed away, hand near his pistol.
“Be at ease, Captain. I’m not a Shade in truth, but I fooled the ostium into thinking I was. You’re safe. You must know that if I were still in the Guild you’d be dead already.”
He relaxed a little. “I don’t know about that. They didn’t gut me last night.”
Sha’ira raised an elegant eyebrow. “No, they did not. Which means that either you are a wondrous fighter for a man---” In an eye-blink she’d spun behind him, curved knife blade at his throat. “---Or they chose to let you make it here.” She strolled away, sheathing her dagger. “Which is the more likely, do you think?”
I looked back and forth from the one to the other. “What’s she talkin’ about?”
Jasper snorted in my head. “‘It’s a wonder your mind is so strong’. In a pig’s eye, it is.”
Tyrell crossed his arms. “Your new friend once served the Assassins Guild. Charming, eh?”
My mouth dropped open. “A woman?”
Instead of looking offended, she thought it funny. “Yes, a woman, Miss Stone-Warden.”
Looking down at myself, I got her message. Oh. I guess it is funny. “Pretty dumb.”
“Not at all. You have been reared in a man’s culture, as I was. What those men don’t know, and could never believe, is that the Assassins Guild is entirely female.”
I did the jaw-drop again. “All of ‘em?’
“Yes. Women are faster, smarter, can withstand more pain, make better and quicker decisions.”
“So those three last night---?”
Her mouth tightened. “Averna, Morrigan, and Nephthys. Using Pluto’s Bane. They should be ashamed to call themselves Shades.”
“Shades? Not Assassins?”
“Those in the Guild call themselves Shades, referring to spirits of the dead. We dress and move like such beings, to inspire dread, and we turn our victims into shades. Appropriate, no? The Guild scours the earth for candidates, girls as young as three. They are placed with those who can teach them the basic skills they will need at the Guild Academy when they turn thirteen. Thieves, pirates, mercenaries. At seven I myself went to live with Bedouin raiders in the desert, learning survival, evasion, ambush. At the proper age they take the girls to the Isle de Corse for five years of brutal training in the mountains. Just ten percent will be accepted into the Guild. Only half even survive. Those who are initiated forswear all allegiance to family, nation, or party, save the Guild. They abjure the touch of man and the taste of wine. We take the names of the goddesses of death, for such we are.” She paused and swallowed. “Were. I killed as Manat. No more.”
“You’re retired, then?” I asked.
“No one retires from the Guild. They either die in battle or are sung off into the Fields of Glory when their usefulness has ended.”
“The Guild kills ‘em? Its own?”
She gave me a grim smile. “You look shocked. They’re called the Assassins Guild, not the Maiden Aunts League.”
“Then how are you---?”
“I am a rebel, like Captain Tyrell. Always looking over my shoulder for a knife held by my former friends. My eyes were opened and I renounced the dark path I walked.”
Tyrell looked at the small leather pouch on her right hip. “You became a scribe?”
Sha’ira nodded, opening the pouch. “I did. I thought it fitting, given my name. Kismet, even.” Bringing out the green-gold glass pen I’d seen in my dream, she let it catch the morning sunlight. Something moved inside its translucent body. Something alive. “As payment for a death not given, on my final assignment, my intended victim presented this to me.”
“A soul pen,” Tyrell breathed, peering at it. I did the same. The pen looked as thick as a man’s thumb, wasp-waisted, and made of whisper-thin glass in several different shades of green and gold that ran down the thing in wavy streaks. Visible within it, backlit by the light from the sea, sat a tiny winged figure. Unlike an insect trapped in a bottle, this little beastie seemed perfectly content, relaxed and moving with grace.
“Not unlike your sword, this pen holds the essence of someone once living. A sprite. Her name is Naia, and she wrote great verses for her people. Renowned as a poet, when her time came she chose to animate this pen. It is her wisdom that guides my writing.”
Naia waved at me and I waggled a finger at her in return. “In my dream I saw you use blood as ink.”
“Only in a trance. Through Naia I have developed a gift. I can create visions in the mind of anyone to whom I address a verse. Blood and fire activate the charm.”
“You write somethin’ down in your own blood, burn it, and it goes into their mind? Just like that?”
“No, not ‘just like that’. It isn’t so simple and there are many difficult things involved, but essentially, yes.”
“But you use real ink the rest of the time?”
She took a small bottle of black stuff from the pouch. “I am a scribe. Since I’m forced to wander to keep ahead of my Guild sisters, this enables me to earn my bread. I write letters for the illiterate and verses for the unimaginative. Also legal documents, wills, whatever is needed.”
Naia feigned a big yawn as if this all struck her as terrible dull. “And Naia helps?”
“Just
as your Stone magnifies your natural abilities, Naia increases my poetic force.”
I pointed to the moonstone pendant around her neck. “And what does that do?”
Tucking it away inside her robe, Sha’ira said, “This…will have to wait.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Tyrell muttered, looking past us, “something’s up.”
The Reb sergeant-major and Romulus jogged up to us. Neither of them looked bruised or bloody, so they must’ve reached an understanding during the grave digging. Romulus held his Bowie and the trooper gripped his saber.
“Trouble, sir,” said the Confederate. “There’s---who’s this?”
Tyrell seemed about to respond when we all saw that Sha’ira and Romulus had embraced. Stepping back and slapping his thick arms, she beamed and said, “I heard about this! Humanity suits you.”
My friend smiled back, almost blinding us with his pearly whites. I’d never seen that before. “I misses my sense o’ smell, and I be slower than molasses when I runs, but it’ll do. You looks better this way than in yo’ Shade suit, come to mention it.”
“You get the feelin’ were missin’ a chapter or two here?” asked Jasper.
“At least,” I said. We all stared at them, waiting for an explanation.
Getting a bit flustered, something else I’d never seen, Romulus cleared his throat, said “Long story,” and glanced at the sergeant-major to pick up where he’d left off.
“She’s here to help,” Tyrell told him. “What’s the trouble?”
“Yankee gunboat right off the beach. Or Merchantry ship masked as Yankee. Pitcairn’ll have a devil of a time gettin’ here, if he’s even comin’. Haven’t heard a peep outta him for a week.”
That reminded me that Roberta and Ernie were missing in action. I hope they’re okay.
“We’ll have to get word to him to move the landing site farther up that peninsula,” said Tyrell. “Send a flyer on a roundabout route north. Have him hook around and tell the Kiss to meet us at Hog Island. They can’t come into the Bay to get to us.”
Brimstone and Lily (Legacy Stone Adventures) Page 32
