—surely the differentiations between the schools can't be as simple as that. Otherwise any hedge wizard would—
Still nothing. Even setting aside his disdain for the goddess's magic, Salim wasn't a fan of sifting thoughts—not because he was above invading someone's privacy, but because it turned out that even interesting people spent most of their time thinking boring, inconsequential thoughts. Still, it was worth a shot—someone in the bar had to know something about what was going on. He focused on a new table.
"Help you, Father?"
Salim turned back to the bar to find a tall, broad-shouldered woman standing behind it, wavy brown hair tied back in a ponytail. She wore a humble homespun brown shirt and a bar rag over one shoulder.
"Ale," he said.
"Sure thing," the bartender replied, but she didn't move. Instead, she set her elbows on the bar and leaned in, studying him. "First time in the city."
It wasn't a question. Salim smiled at the woman's brazenness. "What gave me away?"
The woman matched his smile, but her gaze didn't waver. "Oh, this and that. Partially your accent. But more that you clearly don't know well enough not to get caught staring. Folks who stare don't last long here."
Her tone remained easy, but Salim could hear the bed of steel beneath it. Strangers might be welcome in the Common House, but they were also dangerous.
Which was just fine. Salim hadn't expected to try to pass as a local, not in a group as tight-knit as this one. Paranoia was standard issue for escaped slaves. His cover story was far simpler, and his eyes lit on the battered tin tankard hanging from the woman's belt. "You're a priest as well," he said. "A follower of the Drunken God."
The woman smiled. "Most folk around here view Cayden Cailean more as the god of freedom, but obviously we don't mind a drink or six. You don't miss much, do you, Father?" She stuck out a hand. "Vera Barrenou."
"Salim Ghadafar." He took the proffered handshake, her callused palm as large as his own. "And is this your place, Vera?"
The bartender laughed. "Hardly. The Common House belongs to the Freemen as a whole. Several of us take turns tending bar in exchange for free drinks." She nodded to the symbol of Pharasma around his neck. "Healers drink free as well, provided you do some good works for the customers."
A friendly enough offer, yet Salim felt its edge.
"I gather not many Pharasmins take you up on it."
"No." Vera's smile dropped. "I'll be honest, Salim. Most crows in this city don't care two shits about the Freemen or what we're trying to do down here. Far as most of us can tell, the Gray Lady only cares about people after they're dead, and her priests are an equally stiff-necked lot. So I'll ask you straight out: why are you here? Because I don't think it's just for a drink."
Salim smiled. "You're right. But I'm not like the Pharasmins you've met."
"Oh?"
The best cover stories were true ones. "Are you familiar with the Rahadoumi?"
Both eyebrows shot up. "The Godless?" She looked him over again, taking in his dark skin and hair. "I guess you could be, at that. So you're from Rahadoum, then."
"I was."
Understanding dawned. "And they chased you out for your faith."
Close enough. "Let's just say I know a little something about being a slave and a runaway."
Vera smiled, and this time it wasn't quite as guarded. She held up a hand and let the sleeve of her shirt fall back, revealing a thick band of scar tissue running around her wrist—the mark of a manacle. "You and me both," she said. "And most the folk in here, for that matter."
Salim looked at the old wound. He hadn't lied, exactly—what was he if not a slave to the goddess?—but his bondage had never been quite so literal.
She caught his expression. "Around here, we wear our scars with pride."
Salim nodded in approval. To stay scarred for philosophical reasons rather than running to a god for healing—it was almost Rahadoumi.
Vera was still looking him over, this time with a new thoughtfulness. "Thanks to the city's reputation, we get runaways from all over, but still—I don't think I've ever met one of the Godless before, let alone one who's found religion. Hold on." She turned around and whistled at someone on the opposite side of the room.
Salim took the moment of distraction to concentrate on the spell still buzzing in the back of his head. It was dangerous to work such magic while in conversation—split your attention too far, and your preoccupation became obvious to those you were trying to read. Plus, as a cleric, Vera might notice the magic at work, and that would be very bad indeed. He didn't want to fight a good woman just because she'd noticed his eavesdropping.
The beige cloud of thoughts around Vera's head became visible, and he touched it lightly but quickly, searching for anything that seemed related. A cleric of Cayden Cailean would be an important member of this community—she must have heard something. In the quick-running stream of her surface thoughts, he sensed that he'd overcome her initial suspicions. Yet there was still something else there...a tension...
Vera grabbed someone's hand and turned back to him. Salim quickly shifted his attention back to the physical world—and fought to keep his face neutral.
"Salim, meet Xulaine."
The woman standing next to Vera was perhaps in her late twenties, and quite pretty, with almond eyes and deep black hair tied up in an elaborate bun that spilled half of it back down her shoulders. She was dressed in clothes only slightly finer than Vera's own, but they accented her slimness well. Her light brown skin was smooth and unblemished.
Also, her mouth had been sewn shut. Once Salim got past the initial shock, he realized that the wound was old—very old. Though thick black threads pierced both sides of the lips, creating a tight weave, it was clear that the skin beneath them had long since grown together, lips fusing until there was no longer truly a mouth at all. Only in the center was there a break in the stitching. There the lips remained parted in a tiny opening, pursed as if for a kiss.
The woman reached out a graceful hand and Salim took it. "Salim," he said politely.
Despite his effort to control his face, Vera must have noticed something. Rather than being offended, she smiled apologetically.
"Right—you're new. Xulaine's probably the first Sweettalker you've met, I suspect?"
"I'm afraid so."
Vera's grin broadened. "Well, go ahead and ask, then."
Salim turned toward Xulaine and searched for the right words, then simply settled for, "Why?"
The woman trilled a high, fluting whistle, ending in a series of clicks. Vera laughed and responded in kind, then returned her attention to Salim.
"Xulaine's a Sweettalker," she explained. "They believe that speech is a gift from their god, and that to use it for anything less than the god's name is blasphemy. At the same time, none of them believe themselves worthy of speaking that name. So they sew their lips shut."
"That's...dedicated," Salim said.
"You're telling me!" Vera agreed. "All Cayden asks of us is to make up our own minds about things and get drunk now and again. All things considered, I prefer our way. But there's a fairly large Sweettalker community up in Oriat—they all immigrated together, generations ago."
"From where?" Salim asked. "What god do they follow?"
Xulaine whistled again, a succession of notes so rapid that Salim quickly lost track. He looked to Vera, who shrugged.
"Your guess is as good as mine. But I'm pretty sure it's nowhere I've heard of, and that the god's not one of ours." She slid an arm around Xulaine's waist and drew her close. "We communicate well enough about most things, but theology isn't one of them."
"I see." Salim would have loved to learn more, but this wasn't getting him any closer to the information he needed. He decided to risk some direct digging. Splitting off a splinter of his attention, he let the thoughts fade into view around the two women's heads once more.
He moved closer to the bar, lowering his voice. "Vera, you seem like
a good sort, so I'll be honest with you. You said earlier that Pharasmins don't usually care overmuch about the living, and you're right. They don't. But I'm not like most of them."
Sudden wariness from both women, but also interest. Good.
"I hunt men," he said. "Evil men."
Alarm. He felt it radiating from their thoughts like the heat of a forge, read it in the tensing of their limbs.
"We don't truck with bounty hunters," Vera said cautiously. "God-fearing or no. Too many of our folk have prices on their heads. Everybody starts over in the Freemen."
"I'm no slave catcher," Salim said. "Runaways and escapees aren't my concern. I hunt the real evil—men who can't be redeemed, who can't be sent to their judgment fast enough."
Xulaine clicked something, and Vera nodded. "So what do you want with us?"
"I was hunting one such man," Salim said. "True filth. He's what brought me to the city. But when I tracked him down, I discovered that someone else had already taken him. Which is fine—I'm not in this for money." Salim took a breath and focused—this was the gamble. "But I started looking deeper, and began hearing about somebody else cleaning out the city's gutters."
Confusion. Conflict. Excitement. Both women's thoughts whirled as they attempted to decide what to do with this new information.
And there it was—a name in both their minds. Caramine.
Salim decided to double down. "I know about Caramine," he said. "I want to help."
The storm of thoughts doubled in strength, and the two women put their heads together, whistling rapidly to each other like excited birds. Then the storm calmed. A decision had been made.
"We're not involved," Vera said. "But most folks around here know that something's going on, even if they don't know what. Caramine's selective about who she brings in."
Jackpot. "Who is she?"
"A bloatmage." At Salim's confused look, Vera added, "A hemotheurge. Bloodcaster. Anyway, she's lived in the Bottoms for a while, used to keep to herself. About nine months ago, she started building this big house down in the south end, all walled like a fortress. And she started recruiting. Nobody really knew what she was recruiting for—all very discreet—but in the last month or two, word in the barroom is that her crew has started cleaning up the city—taking the worst of the scum into that compound. Rapists. Murderers. Most of all slavers. And once they go in, they don't come out."
"And what do the rest of the Freemen think about this?" Salim asked.
Vera shook her head. "It's all pretty quiet. Halman and the others have to know, but they're not a part of it. My bet is, they don't want to be—Caramine's doing some good, but it won't last. Sooner or later, they're going to bite off more than they can chew, take someone they shouldn't, and when they get slapped down, the Freemen's hands will still be clean."
Xulaine whistled something short, and Vera looked surprised.
"What?" Salim asked.
Vera shrugged. "Bloatmages are a little crazy at the best of times—they have to be, I guess, to do that to themselves. But they say that Carmine got the idea from an angel."
"An angel?"
Vera gave a dismissive wave. "So she claims—or so the street claims she claims. You know how stories like this grow."
Salim did, in fact. But he also knew that most rumors had a kernel of truth in them somewhere, however distorted. "Where can I find Caramine?"
"She rarely leaves that house anymore. Straight south of here, then east at Kites and Crows." Vera looked at Salim with concern. "Be careful, Salim. They aren't likely to meet with an outsider, and they're probably pretty paranoid by this point. I would be."
Salim smiled. "Don't worry. Meeting people who'd rather not meet me is a specialty of mine."
There was a tug on Salim's sleeve, and he looked down to find Gav. The boy smiled up at the two women.
"Afternoon, Miss Vera. Miss Xulaine."
Vera returned the smile, reaching out to rustle the boy's hair. "Gav, you scamp. How's the leg?"
"Good as it's ever been." Gav pulled up one leg of his trousers to reveal a skinny but otherwise unremarkable calf.
"Excellent," Vera said. "Next time, try waiting until their backs are turned before hitting 'em, neh? Cayden appreciates bravery, but that doesn't mean you have to be stupid about it."
"A lesson well and truly learned, ma'am." Gav looked up at Salim. "Ready to continue your tour of the fabulous Bottoms, gov?" He winked. "And I don't mean those present."
Vera reached out and clipped the urchin casually on the back of the head. "With a tongue like that, boy, you'll end up back here in no time."
Salim extended his hand. "Thank you both, ladies. I appreciate the information."
"Good luck," Vera said, and Xulaine trilled agreement.
"Let's hope I won't need it."
∗ ∗ ∗
Back out on the street, Gav led Salim south down a broad avenue, just as the bartender had said. Surrounded by the near-crushing weight of the crowd, Salim let the mind-reading magic lapse, this time for good. He sighed in relief as the bubbles around passersby faded and the goddess's power left him, the polluted stream inside him finally running clear. Gav looked up at him questioningly.
"So what did you find out?" Salim asked.
"There's definitely something going on," Gav said, "but nobody I talked to was quite sure what. Some say there's a new group taking out slavers, others that they're trying to clean up the streets, and still others that they're harvesting folks for some sort of experiments. Regardless, they haven't taken anyone somebody would miss, and the woman in charge contributes a lot to the Freemen's cause, so folks are pretty positive." His nose wrinkled in disgust. "Even if she is a bloatmage."
"And is that woman named Caramine?"
Gav raised an eyebrow. "You work fast, don't you, gov? Yeah, regardless of which rumor you believe, they all point at Freewoman Caramine."
"What's a bloatmage?"
Gav looked surprised. "You've never seen a bloatmage?"
"I'm not from around here, remember?"
"That's for certain," Gav said enthusiastically. "Well, you know how sorcerers are always claiming that magic runs in the blood, which is why they're all special and don't have to spend their time studying like wizards?
"Yes."
"Well, bloatmages believe that too, except they try to rig the game. The way they figure it, if magic's in the blood, more blood must equal more power, right? So they use magic to beef up their heart and make more blood—more blood, more power, see?"
"Interesting," Salim said. "Does it work?"
Gav shrugged. "It must, or there wouldn't be so many of them—it's not exactly the most appealing condition. You'll understand once you see them. Their whole bodies bloat up like sausages—guess that'd be blood sausages, wouldn't it? Anyway, some of them have to use leeches to keep from getting so much blood that they pop or go crazy."
"Lovely," Salim said. First trolls and zombies in the streets, then the Sweettalker, and now bloatmages. Was no one in this city normal? "What else did you hear? Anything about an angel?"
Gav gave Salim a look. "No offense, gov, but if you keep scooping my information, you're liable to make a chap feel redundant."
"Humor me," Salim said. "What do you know?"
"Not much more than that. Folk say that before Caramine shut herself up in that fancy new house and quit letting anybody in except for the folks she's recruited, she had some sort of revelation—an angel that came down and told her how it was her holy duty to redeem the city." He snorted. "As if we need it. Bloatmages are a crazy lot, sire. All that blood pounding in their head gets to them." He paused, then looked up at Salim. "You don't think she actually saw an angel, do you?"
"No," Salim said. "But I wouldn't be surprised if she saw something." While an angel didn't seem likely, there were plenty of things that might have taken such a form by magic in order to better influence this Caramine woman. Obviously, the idea of cleaning up Kaer Maga's streets was just a cov
er. You didn't need to steal souls in order to do that—it was actually counterproductive, given that you'd normally want evil souls to go to judgment and their well-deserved tortures in the afterlife.
Keeping a soul from reaching Pharasma's Boneyard was extremely difficult. Assassins sometimes did it, using powerful magic to ensure their targets were never resurrected or contacted by the living. More often, though, it was about profit—a trapped or bottled soul could fetch a high price in the extraplanar markets, or anywhere with magic-users of sufficiently high power and low moral fiber. Witchlike hags from the Outer Planes were notorious for haunting mortal dreams, then trapping the dreamers' souls and selling them in the bazaars of Hell. Daemons and the twisted death-spirits called devourers were happy to pay for such treasures. Even mortal spellcasters sometimes found use for souls in their rituals.
Ever since the briefing, Salim had presumed he'd find one of the usual suspects behind the thefts. When the Caulborn's visions had pointed him to a group of abolitionists, of all things, he'd been surprised. But with the addition of this "angel," things began to make more sense. The Freemen weren't the masterminds—just the suppliers.
Gav tugged at Salim's arm, pulling them both sideways off the street and into an alley. "There it is, gov."
It was just as he'd seen in the Caulborn's vision: a huge manor house of reddish-brown brick, stretching far back from the street. From where Gav and Salim stood, only the topmost floor and peaked roofs were visible, the rest surrounded by a ten-foot-tall wall of mortared stone, blank and imposing. The closed front gate was wooden, wrapped with iron bands, and two men with swords lounged casually in front of it.
"Look over there." Gav kept his hand close to his body as he pointed, so the gesture wouldn't be noticed from across the street.
A covered cart had pulled up in the narrow alley running along the side wall of the compound. The two men driving it, both armed, leapt down, while a third emerged from an alcove in the wall and opened a smaller side gate. The drivers reached in and dragged out a much larger man with a burlap sack over his head. Though clad in lacquered armor, the warrior's exposed hands were bruised and bloody, and chains bound his ankles and wrists, forcing him to bend nearly double.
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