Starless

by Jacqueline Carey

  Galdano the Shrewd.

  It was the first time I had encountered a fixed god, one who did not roam the land or inland seas over which it held aegis. Galdano was no less awesome for being permanently ensconced in his temple. He sat cross-legged on a plinth in the center of the central chamber, his gilded skin gleaming. The top of his head brushed the roof of the temple, and there were two great coffers of treasure on either side of the plinth. His golden face was impassive, jeweled eyes gazing across the sea of petitioners, but he had eight arms that were in near-constant motion; one plucking forth offerings from outraised hands, placing some in a scale he held in another hand, placing others in the coffers of treasure to either side of him. One hand held sheets of vellum and another an inkwell; a third scribbled notes upon the vellum. Other hands fished within the coffers, bringing forth various items.

  Some petitioners received written responses for their offerings; others received items in trade. Some rejoiced, while others went away disgruntled or confused by the god’s response.

  The poorest petitioners, those who had nothing of value to offer, paid a single copper coin to green-robed acolytes to light a candle in Galdano’s honor, placing it on an iron rack. It seemed they received nothing in response save hope that the god might hear their prayers.

  I daresay all of us hoped that one of those very acolytes might approach us in accordance with the prophecy, but although several gave our company curious glances, none came forward.

  Zariya leaned forward in her litter. “Well, it seems we must make an offering. What shall it be?”

  Jahno gave an uncertain shrug. “I do not know what is fitting.”

  “May I say something, my lady?” the litter-bearer on the left front pole inquired, looking over his shoulder.

  She blinked in surprise. “Of course.”

  “You sought something in trade from the Gilded Council and did not receive it,” he said. “Do you think it wise to offer less to the god in exchange for his favor?”

  “No, my friend,” Zariya said after a moment’s pause. “I think you make a very good point, and we are grateful for it.” She offered him a sincere salute. “Thank you.”

  He inclined his head to her. “Most patrons do not think to offer refreshment to the day-servants they hire.”

  It was another hour before we reached the base of the plinth. From this perspective, Galdano the Shrewd loomed even larger. The sole of his gilded right foot on the plinth before me was taller than I was. I had to crane my neck to see his impassive face, lost in the rafters.

  “State your desire and make your offering,” a green-robed acolyte said to us, the words sounding rote.

  We exchanged uncertain glances, and Zariya nodded to Jahno. “Seeker, I believe this yet falls to you.”

  Jahno took a deep breath. “Galdano the Shrewd, we seek the gathered pieces of the Scattered Prophecy that were lost when Koronis sank beneath the waves!” he called, opening the tray. “Here is our offering.”

  The god did not deign to look at us; but then, he deigned to look at no one, his jeweled gaze fixed on the distance. One enormous golden hand descended to pluck the necklace from its tray. It draped over his fingers, intricate gold links and inlaid rubies glinting in the shadowy light. Behind us came murmurs of awe and envy, for it was by far and away the most valuable offering anyone had made that day. Beside the plinth, another acolyte scrawled notes in a ledger he held, recording the nature of our offering.

  Galdano the Shrewd placed the collar in the scale it held in another hand, weighing its worth, then transferred it to the coffer to his left, heaped with offerings—necklaces, bangles, anklets, bejeweled mirrors, goblets, sacks of grain. I held my breath, hoping to see one hand dip quill into inkwell and write an answer on a sheet of vellum.

  It was not to be.

  Instead, another hand reached into the coffer to his right and drew forth a simple wax taper, the kind of candle the acolytes were selling for a single copper coin to impoverished petitioners.

  This, the god offered us in exchange for a necklace worthy of a Zarkhoumi princess’s wedding dowry.

  The recording acolyte startled, then made note of it in his ledger.

  I will own, my heart sank; I daresay all of ours did. Jahno let out his breath in a weary sigh, accepting the candle. The petitioners behind us whispered in sympathy or restrained glee at the poor trade we’d gotten.

  “This way,” the presiding acolyte said, ushering us out of the presence of the god. She nodded toward the iron rack. “You may light the candle in homage if you wish ere you depart.”

  “I suppose we might as well,” Jahno muttered, dejected. He handed the wax taper to Zariya, still seated in her litter. “It was your dowry, my lady. Since it seems we have spent it unwisely, you may as well have the honor.”

  The bearers lowered her palanquin and I helped her climb forth, holding the taper for her while she got her canes beneath her. The rack was a simple affair of concentric circles with crude sconces for the tapers, and one thick column of a candle in the center from which to light the offerings. Zariya lit our taper and placed it carefully in the nearest sconce.

  “It’s true!” a voice behind us murmured in awe. “You are the ones who were foretold!”

  I turned to see the acolyte who had been recording transactions beside Galdano’s plinth, an ordinary-looking young Tukkani man, no longer carrying his ledger. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re together, all of you?” He beckoned when I nodded. “Follow me. Leave your hired bearers behind.”

  Our company exchanged quick glances, but it appeared that a piece of the Scattered Prophecy was falling into place after all, and the matter wasn’t in question. I gestured to him. “Lead on.”

  We followed him through a door in an alcove that led to another wing of the temple, this one sized to an ordinary human scale; the spaces where the acolytes slept and ate and did whatever else it was that acolytes of Galdano the Shrewd did. He escorted us to a small study, the walls lined with ledgers, and closed the door behind us.

  “I am Badu, son of Ranalos,” he said expectantly. “And you are here in answer to my petition.”

  Jahno gave him a puzzled look. “Your petition? No, you sought us out in answer to ours. Do you not have counsel for us?”

  “I?” Badu the acolyte looked stricken. “No, my friends, not I. Can it be I have made a mistake?”

  “More likely we have,” Evene said in a sour tone. “And a damned expensive one at that.”

  “Yes, that’s the thing,” Badu said. “Galdano the Shrewd wrote a response to my petition. ‘Enter my service and those with the power to grant what you seek will come. By this you will know them: They will receive the least in trade for the greatest offering, and a candle flame shall be their sign.’ I have spent years in his service tallying the offerings, and never have I seen such disparity as with your offering today.” He tugged at his short, dark hair. “Does none of this mean anything to you?”

  Heads shook.

  I held up one hand. “Not yet, but wait. Perhaps it will become clearer. Tell us, what is it you seek?”

  Badu’s face darkened. “Revenge. Revenge against my former master, Lord Solinus. My sister and I were sold into debt-slavery in his household. He subjected her to all manner of depravity; he got her with child, and sold the babe when she displeased him. She took her own life because of it, and I fled his service.”

  All of us winced, and Essee whistled in horror and sympathy.

  “I am terribly sorry,” Jahno began. “But I do not see—”

  If this, then that; but if this, then that. What had transpired in the temple could not be a mere coincidence. I interrupted our Seeker. “Badu, your former master, is he a particularly fat man? Does he sit on the Gilded Council?”

  A cautious look of hope dawned on the acolyte’s face. “Yes.”

  I took a deep breath. “Then I think it is possible that he has something we desire very much.”

  “It
would be a book, or possibly a lengthy scroll,” Jahno added, his voice charged with renewed urgency. He untied the cylindrical khartouka bead knotted around his throat and passed it to Badu. “Written in these symbols. Did you ever see such a thing in his possession?”

  The acolyte studied the clay bead. “Oh, yes. I recognize the symbols. It is a scroll. He keeps it locked in his treasure room, but I have seen it many times when I dusted there.”

  “So it is confirmed,” Tarrok murmured in his deep voice. “But I do not see how that helps us or how our purposes align.”

  I did. “Badu, this scroll contains the only known copy of the lost prophecies gathered by the scholars of Koronis. Although it is useless in the wrong hands, in the right ones, it may very well be the most valuable item beneath the starless skies. We sought this item in trade and the Gilded Council offered us unacceptable terms. If it were stolen from your former master, would you consider it sufficient revenge?”

  Badu knit his brows as he considered my question; at length, he gave a reluctant nod. “It is not the revenge I would have chosen,” he admitted. “I wish to see Lord Solinus suffer, as he made my sister suffer. However, it is true that this would humiliate him in the eyes of his peers and the eyes of the realm, and perhaps that is a greater revenge than I could have imagined.” He shook his head. “But this theft would be a very, very difficult thing to accomplish.”

  I felt Pahrkun’s wind stirring within me. “Why?”

  “There is an outer gate that is locked; the manor is locked; the treasure room is locked,” Badu said. “There are guards on duty at all hours. There are even bells on strings stretched across the treasure room itself to sound an alert lest any servant attempt to sneak past the guards in an effort to steal from their master in the small hours of the night, and their position is changed every day at sunset.”

  I laughed.

  He eyed me. “It is not a jest.”

  “I can open the outer gate for you,” Evene said to me. “But I’m not going any further.”

  “Nor should you,” I replied. “By all accounts, you’re a lousy thief.”

  “And you a brilliant one in training and theory, my darling.” Zariya’s gaze was troubled. “But you’ve never actually done this before, have you? And knowing that we seek the scroll, this Lord Solinus may have doubled his guard or taken other measures you cannot anticipate.”

  “There are twenty-one members of the Gilded Council,” I said. “The fat man has no reason to suspect that we have attained certain knowledge that the scroll is in his possession.”

  “The Gilded Council will be expecting a counteroffer,” the acolyte added. “Not an attempted theft.”

  Zariya shuddered. “Do not think me weak and foolish to confess that the prospect nonetheless terrifies me.”

  “I would never think such a thing,” I assured her. “You are one of the bravest people I know, Zariya. But Brother Saan defied the other elders of the Brotherhood of Pahrkun to ensure that Brother Yarit taught me the arts of the Shahalim Clan, dishonorable though they were reckoned. Brother Saan Saw that it might be necessary. If not for this, then what?”

  She gave me a wistful smile of surpassing sweetness. “I fear you are right, of course.”

  I turned to Badu. “Can you draw a map of the manor and the grounds for me?”

  The acolyte unstoppered an inkwell, smoothing a piece of vellum on the table before him. “Most certainly.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  Nightfall.

  With the likely arrival of the children of Miasmus only a day in the offing, we dared not delay.

  Lord Solinus’s estate was situated on a hillside some half a league from the center of the city. A tall wall that stretched from the base of the hill surrounded it, with a single entrance marked by a large pair of fretted iron gates.

  I wore close-fitting dark attire, smudges of kohl darkening the glittering marks of Pahrkun that slashed across my cheekbones. In the satchel slung across my torso, I carried a set of lock-picks and a light grappling hook and line. My belt-dagger was thrust into my sash and a thieves’ lantern hung from a cord around my waist. I had a handful of pebbles in the pocket of my breeches.

  I had committed Badu’s map to memory. I felt light, alive, vibrant; though I felt, too, the keen ache of separation from Zariya. Lirios and Evene had accompanied me. Hunkered across the way in a dense copse of trees, we waited for darkness to fall.

  Shahal the Dark Moon was full and rising bloody overhead; for once I took it as a good omen. We watched as lamps and candles were extinguished in the estate, windows turning dark one by one until there was only the faintest glow from within. Atop the hillside, I could make out two guards with torches patrolling the grounds, circling the manor in opposite directions. I waited, timing the circuit of their rounds until I was certain of it.

  “Now!” I whispered to Evene.

  We crossed the cobbled thoroughfare. I could feel her trembling as she laid her hands upon the iron gates. The lock gave way silently, the gates creaking slightly as she pushed them ajar.

  I nodded to Evene. “Go.” The remainder of our company was already aboard the ship and we had agreed that it would be for the best if Evene were to join them as soon as her part here was done. If I were caught or roused pursuit, it would be safer.

  She touched my arm. “Good luck, shadow.”

  I saluted her and slipped through the gates, pulling them not-quite-closed behind me.

  In truth, the wall would have posed little difficulty for me and I would sooner have had Evene’s aid in opening a door into the manor, but any risk eliminated was to our benefit. There were tall trees lining the paved approach to Lord Solinus’s manor. On silent feet, I darted from shadow to shadow, working my way closer. The acolyte Badu had suggested that the entrance to the servants’ quarter would be the easiest one to access and the most lightly guarded course within the manor.

  I waited for the guards to cross paths, then stole behind the one patrolling clockwise as the shadow of a sun’s dial moves, following him to the rear of the estate. The door to the servants’ quarters opened onto a terraced garden carved into the hillside. I waited for the guards to cross paths once more, then assailed the door.

  It was locked with a simple padlock. My fingers had not forgotten their skill; I could have picked it in my sleep.

  Inside the servants’ quarters, it was pitch dark at first. I closed my eyes and breathed slowly, my skin alert to any stirring of air; but no, all was still and silent. When I opened my eyes, I could see that the banked embers in the stoves of the kitchen ahead of me alleviated the darkness.

  I crept past the kitchens, placing each foot with care as I had been trained to do, breathing in silence.

  The stairway that led from the servants’ quarters to the upper stories was steep and narrow, but Badu was right, it was unguarded. I traversed it in darkness, my fingertips brushing the walls with the lightest of touches. I found the first landing by feel. That would be the second story, where the merchant-lord and his family members had their bedchambers.

  The treasure room was located on the third story; and there, Badu had assured me, a guard would be posted, but his attention would be bent toward the formal staircase, not the servants’ approach.

  I emerged from the stairwell’s darkness into dim light, following the light’s source until I came upon it. A single torch burned in a wall sconce outside the treasure room. Beneath it, a lone guard leaned against the wall, his arms folded over his chest, his eyes blinking sleepily. I squatted on my heels in the shadows, rested my chin in my palms, and considered him.

  The easiest thing, the simplest and safest thing, would be to kill the guard. It would be a dishonorable killing, for he had done nothing to deserve it, but it would be in the service of honor beyond honor. It would be in the service of saving the world from the rising darkness.

  Ah, but Zariya had asked me not to kill any innocents unless it was absolutely necessary. Was it?

  The gua
rd looked to be some thirty-odd years of age. Like as not he had a family, perhaps a wife and children like Tarrok; hopefully, they cared for him more than it seemed that Tarrok’s had. His eyelids flickered, heavy with the desire for sleep, his chest rose and fell in long, peaceful breaths.

  I should kill him.

  I didn’t, though.

  In the end it was both the thought of the quiet disappointment in Zariya’s eyes and the notion that killing an innocent servant of the household would be a poor kind of vengeance for Badu’s sister that swayed me. Untying the garrote from my hair, I fetched a pebble from my pocket and tossed it past the guard. He startled fully awake with a gasping snort, hand seeking the hilt of his sword as he peered in the direction I’d thrown the pebble. I fell upon him from behind, whipping the garrote over his head and throttling him. I kept up the pressure past the point of unconsciousness, easing him to the floor. When I touched the soft place beneath the joint where his jaw met his throat, I felt a faint pulse yet beating.

  The lock on the treasure room door was considerably more difficult to pick than a simple padlock. I knelt and worked at it patiently, hearing Brother Yarit’s voice in my memory exhorting me.

  At last it gave way.

  I pushed the door open a cautious fraction. No bells rang. I glanced back at the guard, who was still unconscious. I was not sure how long he would remain that way. I slid sideways through the door, my skin tense and alert.

  In the treasure room, I unshuttered the thieves’ lantern. It was a cunning device, holding a single glowing knot of oil-wood in a nest of a particular lichen that was impervious to flame. It did not shed a great deal of light, but it shed enough. Brass bells glinted on the tight strands of thin rope that crisscrossed the treasure room. It gave me a pang of nostalgia for my days of training in the Hall of Proving. If this had been an exercise, Brother Yarit would have scoffed at the ease of undertaking such a challenge without a blindfold.