Anger lurched him to his feet. His tinsel-seamed trousers bulged, stretched by his packed muscles, and the leather of his ankle boots swelled. Animal fury mounted in him, filling the vacancy that his own magic had once occupied. He raged at his losses and what seemed to him a trap that the witch queen had sprung.
Aghast, Ripcat remembered his last dream as Reece and realized it had foretold that the charmwrights would harness him in this feline form for the witches. He howled again, and his fist came down on the table, smashing it to spinning splinters.
His claws flashed open, and he lifted them, trembling with violence, before the witch.
Esre jumped to intercede, and Lady Von motioned her aside. The witch queen threw off her cowl of veils, exposing her round face with its shorn brown hair. "If you must kill me to fulfill your rage, I will not resist and none of the Sisterhood will avenge me. Strike if you must."
Again, his dream haunted him. She had placed herself beneath his furious claws like a precious manuscript, the master-work of her Sisterhood, Irth's greatest humanitarian hope. Ire wrenched in him, held in check. His claws retracted. "Aaarrh!" He spun away and burst out of the tent.
Esre caught up with him as he stalked across the vacant lot, startling squatters in their cardboard huts and making children scream with fright. "Where are you going?"
Ripcat glared at her and showed his fangs.
Esre swept back her veils and shoved herself in front of him, confronting him with her patchwork face and a hard stare from her one eye. "Where are you going, Ripcat?"
"Get out of my way, witch." He slashed one hand before her, an inch from her good eye and yet too fast to see, its wind gusting the veils from her shoulders. "Don't try to throw me around again, Esre. I'm five times stronger than I was."
"Steady, Ripcat. Your wrath is a side effect of the transformation. It's irrational. Control it!" She dared place her hands on his furred shoulders and felt his bunched muscles. "We need you to stop the goblins. Help us."
The plea in her voice cut through his animal ferocity, and he remembered Jyoti and Dogbrick.
"Where are they?" He glared at the scarred witch. “These goblins, where are they?"
Esre paced beside him as he strode high-hackled through the weeds. "Calm yourself first. Calm." She pointed to the wild-eyed children with lean gray faces who watched him in terror from behind a desolate yard tree. "Think about the margravine and what she would want of you."
Ripcat stopped beside old stone footings of a lost warehouse. At the mention of Jyoti, he slung his head forward, fangs gleaming. "Where are the goblins?"
A lopsided smile graced Esre's scarred face, and her hand tightened with heart-strong vigor on his shoulder. "We will have to track them down, Ripcat. They are small and wickedly clever. They stay together. They must cleave to one another for the telepathic strength they need to possess the trolls and other beasts. The Sisterhood will guide us."
"Us?" The puma-stripes bracketing his hollow cheeks flexed to a grimace. "You want to continue to use me?"
"We are all used, Ripcat—some by what is noble, others by what is base."
"I do this for love—for Jyoti."
"Love is not enough." Esre stared directly into the bestial dark of his vertical pupils. "It's never enough against evil. That is why we must help one another. We are witches, and we believe what the Gibbet Scrolls teach—'Love, and you will have many helpers.'"
Overy Scarn
Primrose Stilts, the most elegant temple grounds in Arwar Odawl—many would say on Irth—solemnized coronations since pretalismanic times. With great precision, the magus had restored those majestic ceremonial grounds in New Arwar.
The temple consisted of "stilts." These seventy-seven pillars of smoky marble upheld a lofty gallery—a tessellated plaza open to the sky. Time dials, which measured the Abiding Star's shadow cast by an agate gnomon upon a limestone disk, stood at each of the four corners.
A small observatory, a cupola of red-veined blackstone, occupied one end of the gallery, and an elegantly simple rostrum of pale chalcedony adorned the other. The wide expanse between stood empty. Cloud shadows swept the mosaic surface.
The magus had altered the random pattern of variegated tiles so that the range displayed the names of everyone in Arwar Odawl slain when cacodemons dashed the floating city into the jungle.
Poch stood before the name of his father: Keon Odawl.
The bond agent from Dig Dog Ltd. addressed him, "You agree, of course, that your sister must never hear of our meeting?" The agent smiled knowingly. A portly woman with meadowsweet flowers in her curly brown hair, she wore an amulet-frock of power wands and clustered rat-star gems hidden almost entirely by gauzes, ribbons, and colored silks. "She is—you will excuse me—a fanatic, as I suppose margravines must be. She will guard her rights of ownership to this city zealously."
"She and the magus rebuilt it from ruins," Poch said without looking away from his father’s name. "There would be no New Arwar this day if not for my sister and her consort."
“True. That is why Dig Dog prefers to keep her brood in place to manage the city. Though, naturally, if another brood were to come along with the resources to pay off the debt, they could claim rights of rulership."
"Not likely in this war-stricken time," Poch said almost distractedly.
The agent noticed Poch’s fixation. "Your father would surely have wanted to keep the lineage of this city intact. You and your sister are the last of your brood. How just and good that you fulfill the titular role of margrave when Dig Dog assumes proprietorship of the city."
Poch looked worriedly at the agent. "Jyoti will not happily relinquish her station."
"She cannot legally challenge us." The agent turned so that her green velvet slipper covered the name of Keon Odawl, forcing Poch to look at her. "Though your sister rebuilt the city, she financed all the goods and services necessary to bring the city to life with us. Dig Dog paid for locating and transporting the infrastructure workers. We also installed lumber mills and carpentry shops that are the mainstay of the city's economy, such as it is. Without us, all this is an elaborate monument to the dead. We gave this heap of stones life." She swept a wide-sleeved arm at surrounding hillside streets and undulations of tiled roofs and chimney pots. "It's unfortunate that the dominions are once more threatened by goblins and the margravine cannot make her payments. We must protect our investment. That is my job, my sworn responsibility as Dig Dog's bond agent."
"Dogbrick would write off the debt entirely."
"Yes, surely! He structured Dig Dog to retain that authority for himself." Her thick eyebrows bent with feigned sorrow. "Dogbrick is not on Irth, though, is he? He might not even be alive. Dig Dog’s investment return is now my responsibility, according to the charter Dogbrick drafted." The pudgy fingers of both her hands pressed against her chest. "I must answer to our investors. I, Overy Scarn. No one else, because I am accounts manager as well as bond agent. And, frankly, the goblins are hurting me, too." She shook her head with stricken anguish, and a meadowsweet blossom fell from her curls. "Many of my investments in other dominions are unrecoverable—completely lost—because of rampaging trolls. What am I to do? How am I to answer those who have entrusted me with their money?" Her eyes glistened, verging on tears. "New Arwar has been spared thus far. Circumstances preserve Dig Dog's investments here. That is why I must foreclose. I need to cover other losses."
Poch gave her a crisp stare and a cold smile. "Why do you need me at all? Evict the Odawls and take the city for yourself. Then you can call it Arwar Dog."
"Don't be sharp with me, Poch." Overy Scarn's wet eyes hardened. "You know that only a Peer can rule a dominion. No matter how much money Dig Dog invests, we cannot take this city for our own. We can declare rights of proprietorship—only if the executive Peer, the dominion ruler, consents. Your sister would certainly choose to declare bankruptcy. In that case, Dig Dog will lose everything we invested. And this dominion will have to scrape by on its o
wn, without further investment capital."
"In this perilous time, with goblins using trolls to tear everything apart, what has Jyoti to lose?" Poch passed an impatient hand through his hair. He knew that this penurious agent had a strategy, and he wanted her to stop circling around. "I'm surprised she hasn't declared bankruptcy already."
"She expects the magus to find Dogbrick on the Dark Shore, and he will forgive her debts. Then, she can continue to finance her ambitious rebuilding program." Overy Scarn leaned conspiratorially closer. "I don't believe Dogbrick is coming back. Not from the Dark Shore. And when the margravine realizes that, my opportunities in this city are lost. Unless you are margrave."
Poch looked askance at her. "I am not margrave."
"Assume the debt," the agent answered flatly. "If you can make the payments, then regency law declares that you have the right, as only other survivor of the Odawl Brood, to replace your sister as dominion ruler."
He offered her a hapless shrug. "I don't have the funds to make any payments."
Overy Scarn reached out and set right several skewed amulets on Poch's vest, then stood back and searched his face carefully before she said, "I will see that you command those funds. You will find them in a cache among some dismal temple ruins in the Reef Isles of Nhat—treasure hidden by Hu’dre Vra. As docent at Blight Fen, you possess the means and opportunity to find this illicit hoard. Dominion law states that the finder keeps such plunder. It is legitimately yours. Use it to pay the debt and take your place as margrave."
“Titular margrave, of course." His gaze thinned knowingly. "You will, in fact, own New Arwar and run the commercial concerns of the city, compounding your initial investment manyfold."
"You understand perfectly." Dimples small as puncture holes deepened in her cheeks. "Do we have an agreement?"
Poch glanced at his hearken fetish and observed that the quartz pendant remained cloudy. No one had overheard.
"My sister has tried to manage my life since I was a child. When our parents died, she became unbearable. I'm unhappy around her. I wouldn't even be here now if my consort had not been too timid to stay at Blight Fen." He lifted his chin proudly. "When the money is mine, I will confront Jyoti and take the title of rulership."
Overy Scarn's small, cherubic lips curled to a gracious smile. "I anticipated your acceptance. The treasure has been located in ancient ruins at the Cloths of Heaven by a survey team deployed under the docent’s authority. The surveyors clearly identified the hoard of charmware as the Dark Lord’s booty—a small mountain of hex gems. And the Titles Catalogue identifies you as sole docent of record for this stupendous find. The funds are already in the city's bank under your name, margrave."
Mental
Jyoti sat at an onyx desk in the niche of an oriel window overlooking tile roofs and flamboyant flame trees. White sublimities of cumulus filled the sky.
She reviewed reports of troll attacks from every dominion. Chaos reigned. Goblins had used their insidious telepathic prowess to direct basilisks and ogres against every major city.
"Why are we spared?" the margravine asked her weapons master.
Nette stood at the vaulted room's center. She leaned over a viewing orb, a crystal sphere Charmed to scan the surrounding jungle. She swept through corridors of monkeys and gaudy birds carousing among spiny palms and looping vines. Flowering trees and shrubs sprang up on every side. Nowhere did she find trolls or ogres within their shadowy nooks.
She spun the rotating platform of the pearl-inlaid table so that the viewing orb's scene soared out of the fierce greens of the jungle. She swung her gaze across the terraced city of New Arwar. Rooftops of gingerstone buildings passed under her gaze until she came to the corbeled window behind which sat the margravine. "I see no threat, my lady."
Jyoti slapped the reports onto the onyx tabletop. "Why? Why are we spared?"
"Our jungle troops are well armed," Nette offered. "The highway patrols also."
"Ux and Sharna-Bambara are even better armed, and yet trolls attack." Jyoti shoved back from the table and swiveled around. "The goblins are sparing us. Why?"
Nette straightened and clasped her hands behind her back. "Perhaps they believe the magus is still with us. He is of the Dark Shore. They cannot sense he has departed."
Jyoti accepted this with a clenched expression and shake of her head. "Our search for him has gone beyond Moödrun. Too many people know he is lost." She sighed. "And where has he gone?"
The assassin drifted closer. "I did not want to tell you this until I had confirmation. There are sightings from Bryse of a beastmarked man who fits the description of Ripcat."
The margravine stood. "Could Reece have changed again?"
'These are unverified reports." Nette looked down at the sheaf of battle notices on the desk. "This is a tumultuous time. I would not leap to conclusions."
A knock sounded at the paneled door, and Nette glanced at the eye charm on her cuff. "Your brother, my lady."
Jyoti nodded for him to enter, and Nette waved the key amulet that unlatched the door.
Poch stood at the threshold and stared uneasily at the assassin. "May I speak with you alone, Jyo?"
"Come in, Poch." She gestured him to a window bench in a bay of the room luminous with silver light from a sky window. "You can speak freely in front of Nette."
"I'd rather not." He walked slowly toward the tall windows. “This is something that concerns just you and me."
"Whatever it is, you'll have to say it in front of her, Poch." Jyoti crossed to the cushioned bench and sat down. "She's my weapons master. I can't have any secrets from her, no matter how personal. You understand how it is. We are at war. And I am margravine."
"Not anymore." From a sleeve pocket, he unfurled a slip of bank-ochre paper dense with cipher notations. "I have personally assumed our dominion's debt to Dig Dog Ltd. I'm margrave now."
Jyoti exhaled with disbelief.
"You're surprised?" Poch dropped a soundless laugh. "I don't blame you, Jyo. Not one bit. How could a failure like me retire such a huge debt?"
"Let me see that." Jyoti stood and took the cipher note from his hand.
"It's legitimate." He sat himself where she had been sitting and crossed one leg over the other, both arms stretched out across the bolsters. "Regency law states—"
"I know regency law." Jyoti spoke softly, still scrutinizing the note. "Where did you get this kind of capital?"
"I found a trove of charmware the cacodemons had hidden on a reef isle." His eyebrows shrugged. "Work as a docent at Blight Fen proved more lucrative than you had guessed, hasn't it?"
"That's a lie, Poch." She tossed the cipher note into his lap. "You didn't find any treasure."
Poch's face hardened. "Don't tell me what I did. Not anymore, Jyo. I'm margrave now. I'll tell you what happened. Otherwise, you can leave New Arwar. I believe there's an opening at Blight Fen."
"Where did you find this treasure?" Jyoti challenged quietly. "How did you recover it? Who appraised it?"
Poch rocked his head side to side. "I don't have to answer any of that. Consult the Titles Catalogue. And the city bank. All that matters is I've got the money to pay Dig Dog—and you don't."
"I will put a trace on where this money came from—"
"No, you won't." He thrust his chin at her defiantly. "A money trace requires authorization of the executive Peer. In New Arwar, that's me now. I'm margrave. You're just my sister."
Jyoti shook her head. “There has to be a review of venue before the ruling title changes."
"Nope." He smiled, and crinkled lines of merriment radiated from his eyes. "I thought you said you knew regency law? There is no review of venue within the same brood so long as there is no challenge from any other Peer in the brood. It's just you and me in our brood, Jyo. Just you and me. And there won't be a review."
Jyoti sat down beside him. "Poch, why are you doing this?"
"Because I can." A somber expression shadowed his face. "Why shouldn't I
be margrave? Don't you trust me to do as Father would have wanted? You can't treat me anymore as if I have some mental incapacity. I'm a man now. With funds." His eyes glittered merrily. "I will marry and have heirs—and a whole new dynasty begins with me."
Octoberland
Life shapes itself on the anvil of dreams—and the hammer is death.
—Gibbet Scrolls: 21
Street Exiles
“You don’t have to stay with me,” Jyoti flatly informed the assassin Nette. "I am no longer margravine, and you may now serve my brother as weapons master."
Alone with a Peer in the conference chamber behind the audience hall, Nette spoke with firm yet quiet deference, "Lady Odawl, your brother is unstable. Remove his amulet-vest and he will collapse into a gibbering idiot. I cannot serve him. And you should not have conceded readily. Why would you not allow me to conduct a thorough investigation of his funding source?"
"Because I already know his source is bogus." Jyoti's hushed voice reverberated in the domed chamber. A holoform projector generated in midair a luminously detailed image of the city. "If we challenge Poch, he will stir up the avaricious factions that see me as an obstacle to their ambitions. All those who have been demanding a sky bund and industrial tracts in the jungle will rally to him. There will be insurrection."
"We would quash it quickly." Nette stood behind one of the chairs and set its bucket seat spinning with a decisive twist of her wrist. "You are still popular. We have the allegiance of the jungle troops and the highway patrols."
Jyoti leaned back against the table. "Whoever is orchestrating Poch's ascension does not care about popularity. Only power. Terrorist bombings, rioting mobs, assassinations—anything to wreak havoc. People will die. And I will not have New Arwar become a place of slaughter."
Octoberland (The Dominions of Irth Book 3) Page 8
