Exiled: Keeper of the City

by Peter Morwood

  Her fur was most astonishingly perfumed: something fresh, something that made you want to lean in closer.... “But it’s stories, mostly.”

  “I know. It was just the expected thing to say. I think you actually have just an ordinary couch.”

  He smiled. “True enough. And am I really expected to send for you very soon, or can this take a while to develop?”

  “No rush. You’re the police chief, after all. They expect you to be difficult.”

  The matter-of-fact information, delivered in the husky, sweet, purring whisper, made him want to chuckle a little. “All right,” he said. “But bear in mind ... if I can prove that you’re doing all this for the detriment of Niau, I’ll throw you ears over tail in gaol.”

  “You’ll have to prove it,” Laas purred, and nipped his ear. He reached out to catch her.

  There was no one there.

  Wine, Reswen thought; it’s death to the reflexes. And indeed he felt pleasantly tiddly, He spent a few minutes making his good-evenings to the most senior Councillors present, and to various other notables, and to the Easterners, who were mostly much farther gone in wine than he was, and then he headed out into the cool dark air.

  One of his people, an officer both of the police and the H’satei was standing outside the Councillory door; he came to attention as Reswen paused by him. “Oh, relax, Biuve,” Reswen said to the young mrem. “You’re not needed here. Do this for me: run to the Underhouse and tell Krruth’s people that I’m not going to bother doing the first night’s surveillance myself. I leave it in their capable paws. But tell them I want special attention paid to the blue-eyed party. Krruth will understand. Once you’ve done the errand, you’re dismissed for the night.”

  “Yes, sir,” Biuve said, and went off at a trot.

  Reswen stood breathing the good cool air, then headed off home himself, away from the torches of the Councillory, out into the quiet streets and the darkness. He thought nothing more about blue eyes, and nothing at all about golden ones.

  But golden eyes watched him walk away ... and narrowed.

  She never tired of inhabiting them, not really. It was one of the reasons she had been assigned this mission, and every now and then she had to admit it to herself.

  The training for inhabitation usually took a long time, for her people. They tended to be unwilling to get into a skin; skins were what one got out of. And generally speaking, when someone mentioned to one of her people the concept of actually putting on one of these skins over one’s own, the result was revulsion. Well, perhaps it was understandable.

  She had certainly felt that way herself, the first time. One of her teachers had had the idea that she would have an aptitude for the inhabitation, and she had been quite young—though already old in magic—when they brought her the fur-thing and told her to put it on.

  She had been shocked. Even then she had known that she was beautiful by her people’s standards, and was somewhat vain about it. No one had tried to stop her, either; that beauty was a tool that she, or they, would use later. But now her teacher sat there in his great squalid bulk, at the other side of the small cave where they worked, and the fur-thing crouched huddled and terrified on the floor between them. Its fur was falling out in patches, and it looked as if it had been beaten.

  Not that that particularly mattered, of course. The fur-things were their slaves, to do with as they pleased. They had no other purpose in the world, and no better one. But here was this verminous thing, with the queer-stink of the fur-things about it, and her teacher wanted her to slip free of her “hard” skin into the ethereal one, a hundred times fairer—and then into this? It was worse than being asked to become a beast. Much worse, for this beast thought that it was a person.

  “I will not,” she had hissed, that first time, her tail lashing in disgust at the thought. Her teacher had clashed his jaws at her in annoyance—a sound she had grown used to, and learned to discount—and ordered her to. She had refused, and turned her back on him.

  And that was when she received a surprise, for suddenly, without his even leaving his skin, his presence was all around her, and the pressure of it on her mind was something awful, a fire that crushed. “You will do it,” he said, and to her own astonishment and terror she watched her body wheel around, slowly, watched her foreclaws move, first one, then the other, drawing her closer to her teacher. She found herself, after a moment, looking directly into his jaws. Suddenly the clash of them made somewhat more of a threat than it had, as she crouched there frozen before him, her body refusing to answer her. Convulsively she tried to slip free of the hard skin, and found that she could not—that her teacher was holding her there against her will, something she had not thought was possible. She was trapped in this body, trapped, as the great jaws opened, as the teeth lowered to her, as the maw delicately slipped around her long throat, as the jaws closed, and she felt the soft pressure of the fangs, pushing in, pushing—

  She roared, or tried to. It came out as more of a squeal than anything else. After a few seconds the pressure released, and the hold over her muscles went with it, and she almost fell on her face before her teacher. It took her a few moments to regain her composure. When she did, and gathered the courage to look up at him again, his cool old eyes were bent on her, full of an expression equally comprised of amusement and scorn. She hated him, right then, as she had rarely hated anything in her life, but she knew he scorned that too, for she had not nearly the strength to even think of challenging him.

  “You will do it,” he rumbled, “or I shall force you. You will not find it pleasant.”

  She held a hiss inside—surely for the moment it would be wiser; but her chance would come. Sooner or later it would be her jaws around his throat, and she would not let him free.

  She had turned away, then, and turned her attention to the shaking, furred thing on the floor. She suppressed the feeling of revulsion that rose in her, as she had suppressed the hiss. Slowly she lowered herself to the stony floor, composed herself, slipped free of the skin.

  The vermin lay there before her, panting with fear.

  There seemed another aspect to it, from this angle, in the overworld: she could see its own self-shadow burning in its muddy colors, and could see what to do. Through the cool fire that seemed to fill the cave in the overworld, she drifted toward the creature, leaned down toward its selfshadow, and put her teeth into the dim, dirty fire of it.

  The scream that went up from it was bizarre music for her. There was a moment of crushing, cramping—and suddenly it was gone. She was inside the thing. Oh, it was horrible, there was no mistaking that. The hot stench of these things from inside—the reek of their thick blood, the hurried pound of their organs, the itch of it all, the caged feeling! But she was not alone in the cage ... and that alone began to fill her with a rich and perverse delight.

  It was terrified of her. It loathed her even more than she did it. But its fear shot down its veins like the cold blood of her own people, and filled her until she wanted to hiss with pleasure. It knew itself helpless, it knew she could kill it with a thought—but it knew that she was much more likely to do worse than kill it. She was much more likely to stay right where she was, inside its own head with it, unutterably alien and horrible ... and enjoying its horror.

  She did enjoy it. She was intoxicated with its fear. There was nothing she had ever tasted that was sweeter—no flesh, no blood. Drunk with it, she sought some way to make the fear more intense. She moved the thing’s limbs, let it feel her do it, let it feel how helpless it was. She lifted one hand before its face, unsheathed the dirty, sharp claws one by one, made it stare at them. Fear rose in it, beat at its breastbone to get out, the heart fluttering like a trapped bird. She moved the claw closer to its face, drank the fear like wine.

  She did not stop until she had made it put out both its own eyes. Then, with its own claws, she made it tear its own throat out, and s
tayed with it, almost staggered with evil bliss, as it leaked out its life on the floor, the fear never ebbing until abruptly there was none left.

  It took her a while to find her way back to her body.

  Her teacher crouched there on the floor, waiting for her to find her senses again, and looked down at her with that same amused contempt. But now she didn’t care. Now she knew why she had been forced to this. Her people’s needs could be well served by inhabitations of this sort; the other vermin would never suspect what was going on, when she and others like her could control every move they made, every word they spoke, almost every thought.

  “Crude,” her teacher said. “You will learn more delicate control. More subtle satisfactions.”

  She had bowed her head to him, for the moment. She had applied herself. She learned that control, those satisfactions; she learned them perhaps better than many around her, in that sheltered little enclave, had suspected. When it came her teacher’s time to die, however, she had cast subtlety away, remembering the first time. The bloody fragments of him that they later found were a source of terror and wonder to her other teachers, and simply of terror to her fellow students.

  That was when she had been given this mission.

  But now, as she lazed, out of the skin once more, she had to admit that subtlety had its uses, and this present business was one of them.

  Her overself lay in the middle of the floor of one of the great rooms in the house the Niau-vermin had given to her people. She had not bothered to move this long time, not since the slave she had chosen for the day had come into the room to begin her preparations.

  They were not entirely verminous, some of the slaves.

  She still could not bear that some of them had magic, and this one she would surely drink the blood, and fear, and soul of, when all this was done and her work complete. But in the meantime it was well within her power to increase the small abilities the she-vermin had. And there were other compensations.

  How she had relished seeing the creature step through her, this afternoon, as it came upstairs to make ready. The slightest shudder; yes, on some unconscious level it knew she was there, lolling on the cool marble floor, watching it slip out of its so-fine garments, watching it throw itself prone on the huge opulent bed, and slowly, luxuriously, begin tonguing itself. Slowly its shudders died away; the creature began to writhe and purr with a small absurd pleasure at its own touch.

  She lay there and watched it for a long time. The creature was supposed to be a she; that was part of its value on this mission, she was told. They had told her that these creatures actually were somewhat swayed by sexual attractions introduced to them in their business dealings. That, she had hissed with disbelief on first hearing, but now she had come to accept it as one more fang in her jaws, one more piece of information to use in her mission. She supposed that the creature was attractive enough even without the small help its talents lent it. Her tail twitched again at the thought. Magic—

  But her magic was stronger. On impulse she rose, slipped over to that huge bed, leaned over the creature. It paused in its washing, discomfited, not knowing why.

  She savored the sight, her tongue flickering in pleasure, tasting the fear on the air of the overworld. Then slowly she slipped in. No ripping of the muddy colors, this time. This time she seeped into them slowly as oil into water, silent but heavy, a presence, feelable. The creature shuddered as she leaned down onto its feeble, fragile soul, oppressed it with the feeling that something was watching it, something terrible, and that if she did not do exactly as her superior told her, something awful, awful would happen. A hint, an image, a flicker, there and gone, of teeth, closing, the pressure—

  Then she let up the pressure, banished the image, and retired to the back of the creature’s thoughts—watching them, letting its hurried little emotions wash over her. Fear, irrational fear leapt up instantly, followed by another fear that it somehow had not done right, followed by more fear of a petty theft that it had been contemplating—

  She hissed with inward laughter, caring nothing about that. The creature could do its little stealings as it pleased. She would sooner or later have something from it that was much more worth stealing. And in the meantime, it would do her will, without question. She had only to make a suggestion at the right time.

  She waited. Waiting had never been a problem for her. Even as her people counted it, she was patient—as her teacher had discovered, not so long ago. She lay there on the ghost of a marble floor, and watched the gathering start in that other building across the City. She had no need to go there. She had eyes there. Through the little vermin who was her mount at the moment, she saw them all—the other vermin, dressed in their ridiculous toy finery, flaunting their little pomp at one another, jabbering, trying to impress.

  Her pet did this quite well. She was pleased. Out of its eyes she looked at them, gazed into the furry eyes, gauged (though dimly, as if looking through a gauze) which ones would be worth her attention at another time. She could not ride more than one of the vermin at a time; no one could, and it was a pity. She could have done miracles, brought this whole business to an early end, and been about the part she enjoyed—the blood, physical and psychic. But meantime, one was enough, and through her pet’s eyes she marked the greedy, the fearful, the ambitious, the angry. One by one she would impress her will upon them.

  One had to start somewhere, of course. She picked the one, one of the “councillors” of this wretched little place, and steered her pet toward him. Looking through her eyes at him, as her pet’s talent reached out and made him susceptible, she could see things that would be of great use to her: vanity, an overblown sense of its own importance, and a stupidity colossal even for one of the vermin. Oh, this one would make a fine tool, and better yet, he was a great coward. How his soul would scream when her teeth closed on it at last! With relish she filled her pet with the desire to have this one want her as she liked to be wanted. Then she withdrew to watch.

  It did not take long. Her pet was not much good for looking at anyone else for the rest of the evening. One odd glimpse she got, in passing, of one of the vermin who was not impressed by her pet, and that troubled her obscurely, so that she stored his face away to look at more closely later. Odd, for before she had thought he was as stricken by her pet as the rest.

  But meantime there were more amusing things to watch, as she lay there on the cool marble, in the dark, and heard the thick movements in the bed, the rustlings, the cries, the whispered questions. The stink of verminous lust was in the overworld’s air. She flickered her tongue at it every now and then, savoring the odd hot smell with a perverse pleasure. Disgusting it was, beastly, completely unlike the decorous joinings of her own people. But amusing to watch, at least.

  She put her head down on her claws, lazy, and watched, and the hiss of her amusement was soft in the air. All was going as it should. Soon enough the time for waiting would be done. Then this bed, and many another, would be a welter of blood. No one would ever know what had happened.

  But considering what was going to happen to this city, it was only a kindness. One had to look after one’s own pets, after all….

  THE ONE thing about being a wizard that Lorin had always hated most was the hours. You had to do so much of your business at night, just to avoid attracting the neighbors’ attention. And Lorin was a day mrem at heart; as soon as it got dark, he started to yawn.

  But when you had work to do, you had no choice. He had cursed a little over it, of course, when Reswen had shown up on his doorstep. Grateful as he was to the police in general and Reswen in particular for letting him live in peace, he still shuddered inwardly when any need for his services came up. And he was more nervous than usual, at the moment. The memory of his trip out of body—a kind of travel he tried to avoid whenever possible—was still filling him with dread. It was none of Reswen’s business, that, of course; probably nothing that
would interest him. But Lorin hated the thought of doing any sort of magic, at this point, or anything to do with magic, and possibly attracting the attention of something worse than the neighbors. That cold regard, the memory of the hissing, and of the priest, were still much with him.

  Still—this stone-and-water thing needed looking into. It was certainly a spell of some kind, and a spell meant a magic-worker. He would need to find out which of the Easterners it was before talking to Reswen again, and though Lorin really didn’t care much for the thought that he would have to do magic to that purpose, he had always taken a certain pride in making sure that the information he gave the Policemaster was as complete as he could make it. He might be a crook, in the eyes of the city’s law, but he was an honest crook, and liked to give good value for his bribe money.

  So Lorin did his usual business for the day, making his normal rounds of the seedier taverns at lunchtime, taking bets and paying them off—and then went home to count his takings, and hide what needed to be hidden. It was well into late afternoon when he finished, and much as he hated it, he took a nap then—being careful to lay wards around the bed, this time, drawing the appropriate circles and diagrams so that his sleep wouldn’t be disturbed just now, when he needed it. Of course the presence of the wards themselves would alert anyone who was looking for evidence of a working wizard, but they would first have to be physically close to detect them—and it would take an active imagination to think that there would be a wizard working in this part of town.

  Lorin sighed a little as he lay down, considering it. Truly, he could do as Reswen had been urging him, use some of his pay from the police—it was considerable—to take a better place in town. And indeed sometimes he walked by them, some of the snug little houses between the market and the hill, with their walled gardens, and thought seriously of having one himself. A garden, with flowers; a little warm sunbaked place, sheltered from the wind, and quiet, as this part of the city hardly ever was.... But then the truth of the way the world was would reassert itself. Someone would start wondering where he had gotten the money to afford a place like that—certainly not from bookmaking—and questions would start being asked. Questions were unhealthy for a wizard. People still had a tendency, remembering the depredations of the liskash in the old days, to burn a wizard first and ask questions when there was nothing left but the smell of singed fur. And even if that didn’t happen, questions were just as unhealthy for a bookmaker ... or a police informant. No, it was better that things stayed the way they were, and that he stayed snug in his hovel, and counted his money, and used it (however occasionally) for a small feast down at the local cookshop, or a she from one of the less filthy joy-houses.