by Mike Shel
Auric leafed through the book until he arrived at the twelfth record, detailing an expedition into a Busker temple in the western Karnes, in the hills south of Erinsea. He scanned the expedition composition. Agnes’s name was among their number. He skipped the first three interview transcripts until he reached Arla’s.
BEING A TRUE AND FAITHFUL RECORDING OF INQUIRY, BUSKER EXPEDITION 776f—G: “THE SUBLIME TEMPLE OF THRENODY” / SUBJECT: SIR ARLA OF ULSTERMYTHE / CITADEL THEATER / ON THE TWENTY-SECOND DAY OF THE NINTH MONTH, YEAR OF EMPIRE 776 / U. BEMBRY, RECORDING / CERTIFIED BY PRESIDING LICTOR, OZRIN TEMBRECH / SANCTIO: TRUTH-SPEAKER FAUSTON REEVE OF THE FOURTH PILLAR
Ozrin, Auric’s first preceptor. He thought wistfully of the clever man, saw the burn scars marring the right side of his face that cut the second half of his smile away. He owed so much to that man. Just one of the many victims carried off by last year’s plague.
“Skip to the last few pages, to the top of the page that begins mid-sentence—Sir Arla is speaking of an encounter that cost a life. Sir Arla is noted as SAU, LO for Lictor Ozrin.” Auric nodded, turning to the text.
—slick with condensation. As I’ve said, the place was humid. Those hills are shot through with hot springs. Pickney slipped and broke his damn ankle. Boy’s bones must be hollow like a bird’s.
LO: We’re familiar with the many injuries of Mr. Pickney.
(LAUGHTER)
SAU: So as we stood about waiting for Hackle to heal the ankle—Belu bless his memory—Agnes notices what looked to me like pock marks in the wall. She studies them and figures that they’re a musical phrase. I remarked that the humidity must be starting to make her brain damp, ‘cause they look like no more’n pock marks to me. But then I see it, too. Our piper for the expedition steps up then—honestly, Darla Kemp needs to be worked like a dog in the practice yard to build up her endurance. We climb one wall and she’s wheezing like she just scaled the Wyskings. Well, Darla studies the notes and pulls out her flute, and she starts to play the sequence—
LO: Without your consent?
SAU: No, no. I gave her the nod.
LO: Fine.
SAU: Anyway, it was an odd, mournful tune, wormed its way right into your heart to make you weep. Darla’s playing the tune a third time through, when—remember how hot it is in there—a bead of sweat rolls down her forehead into her eye—
FR: The left or the right eye, Sir Arla?
SAU: Vanic shit, Fauston! What bloody difference does it make?
FR: There’re some discrepancy with the matter.
SAU: Goddamned truth-speakers! You sit up there in the cheap seats and niggle away at minutiae, looking for conspiracy! I don’t remember what goddamned eye the sweat fell into! Why don’t you—
LO: Sir Arla doesn’t recall which eye, Truth-Speaker Reeve. May we continue?
FR: For now.
SAU: Oh, thank you, Fauston. May Tolwe strike me down if I deceive you on the crucial matter of that fucking bead of sweat.
LO: Sir Arla…
SAU: Yes. Well, the sweat dripped into one of her two eyes…
(LAUGHTER)
SAU: And it made her toot out a sour note. That’s when three worm-like…things squeezed their way out of some other holes in the wall, no bigger than my thumb, dark red, like blood congealing into a scab. And they stank. It’s like Babaloc hisself rose up from the deep and let out a titanic fart. Horrible. All of us start coughing as the things drop to the ground and start to grow. Big, fat, with th’ posture of a cobra, arching up for a strike, only a cobra that’s six feet tall. Three of ‘em.
LO: Where is Miss Manteo?
SAU: She’s standing next to Darla, coughing with the rest of us, but she manages to draw her rapier before anyone else can react. When these things rear up, they open their…faces, I suppose. Just a big round maw of nasty-looking teeth, like a leech. They hissed—made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. So Agnes lunges forward at one of ‘em just as it’s about to make a strike at Darla, again, like a serpent. Agnes skewers the thing in what I’ll call its chest. Vanic’s balls, that girl is quick. The thing lets out a horrific squeal and leans back. Agnes pulls out her blade and shoves it in again, then drags the edge down to open the wound wide. Some awful stuff spills out of the beast and it collapses to the floor in a messy puddle of blood and innards.
LO: She killed one of them before anyone else even reacted?
SAU: Marcator be my judge, yes. What a gem that one is. The gods will’ve blessed the League—
Auric stopped reading for a moment, thinking back over the years, trying to recall another occasion on which Arla of Ulstermythe had a kind word for another agent, let alone effusive praise. He returned where he had left off.
SAU: Marcator be my judge, yes. What a gem that one is. The gods will’ve blessed the League with that one if she can overcome that taint.
LO: Taint?
SAU: Well…
LO: What do you mean?
SAU: Her father is Auric Manteo.
LO: Yes. What of it?
SAU: Well, sort of fell to pieces, that one.
(MUTTERING FROM THE GALLERY)
SAU: No disrespect. Thought he was bound for Kenther for certain. Glad of it when it didn’t happen. Bad business, what happened to him and his people. You know the man well?
LO: Indeed. I precepted him when he showed up on our doorstep.
SAU: Surprising that he was nearly an asylum resident. You never know who’ll break under th’strain, right? I don’t want to call it weakness…
(STIRRING IN GALLERY)
HELMACHT OF AELBRINTH: You seemed comfortable calling her parentage a taint only moments ago, Sir Arla.
SAU: A poorly chosen word.
HA: Are you a neophyte? One does well to choose words carefully at an inquiry, especially if one slanders another agent.
(SILENCE)
LO: Sir Arla?
SAU: I apologize. The suggestion was unkind and unnecessary.
LO: Back to Miss Manteo then.
SAU: She brings to memory Lenda Hathspry, wouldn’t you say?
LO: Aye. Others have said as much. Lenda was her godmother.
SAU: She was another gem.
LO: Agreed. I precepted her as well, with great assistance from Auric Manteo, I would add.
(SAU COUGHS)
SAU: Yes. But back to Agnes. The girl is a natural swordswoman, observant, clever. She freelances a bit more than is wise, but for the most part she’s able to show restraint if chastised. Rare in so young an agent.
LO: I might have said the same about her father, twenty years ago. Or Lenda Hathspry for that matter.
SAU: Point taken, Lictor. You’ve already had my apology.
LO: Yes. Nonetheless, the original slur is in our record now, along with my rebuke. Perhaps you can continue your narrative without further bilious opinions.
SAU: Fine, fine. Agnes spilled the insides o’ one of the serpent-leech creatures and dropped it to the ground. At the same moment, another was attacking me, and the third had launched itself at Pickney and our priest, Hackle. The beast’s mouth affixed itself to Hackle’s back, again, much like a leech, albeit a hundred times larger. Hackle screamed and the thing started to suck—its whole body undulates and there’s a sick slurpin’ sound. Hackle’s flesh was lily white in seconds, and he seemed t’wither, as though all his juices were bein’ drawn out of him. I foiled the attack of the beast on me, raised my arm up so its toothy hole caught hold of my vambrace. I was whacking at it with my blade and Darla was muttering Middle Djao mumbo jumbo. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Agnes lunging again at the beast attached to poor Hackle. It was bloated, half again as big as it was. When she penetrated its pulsin’ hide, a jet of blood shot from the hole she made, like a fuckin’ geyser. And it wasn’t the beast’s blood.
(UNINTEL
LIGIBLE MUTTERING FROM THE GALLERY)
LO: Really, people, are we quivering children? Sir Arla, please continue.
SAU: Yes. Understand, Pickney’s ankle wasn’t fully healed. He’s on his backside, proppin’ himself up with his arms while Hackle called down Belu’s bounty when th’ things appeared. He scuttled back at the first attack but found courage enough to draw his blade by the time Agnes stabbed the second creature. Anyway, that fountain of Hackle’s blood subsided, Agnes covered head to toe in a gallon of it, and the thing detached itself from the priest—who was dead now, understand—and turned its ‘head’ to Agnes. Its maw was dripping with Hackle’s blood and—Vanic gut me for a liar if this isn’t true—sort of…smiled at her. A terrible, bloody grin.
(MUTTERING IN THE GALLERY)
LO: Hmm.
SAU: The truth! Agnes paused a shred of a second, then pulled her rapier from the wound and stabbed it again, drawing her dagger at the same time and laying into it with that as well. Now Darla had cast some shrivelin’ charm at the beast attacking me, allowin’ me to open its belly and pry its teeth off my leather. I ran over to Agnes to join her against the beast and now three of us, including Pickney, who’s on the ground still, mind ya, are stabbing and hacking at the thing. It was literally the bloodiest thing I’ve ever witnessed. The beast did nothing to shield itself from our blows, just let us butcher it. We didn’t kill it so much as hack it to bloody bits.
LO: You paint a vivid image.
(LAUGHTER)
SAU: Agnes Manteo deserves that commendation I put her up for. Don’t know how that fight might have gone had she not taken the first down and hurled herself at the second.
LO: Yes, I’m afraid we won’t be able to honor that request, sister.
SAU: And why the hell not? She earned it, and then some!
(MUTTERING FROM THE GALLERY)
LO: We are lowering Miss Manteo’s career trajectory for a bit.
SAU: What? What on earth for?
LO: It is a matter that needn’t concern you.
Auric’s face flushed. He knew why. He had written letters to the Lictor’s Council, begging them to prevent Agnes’s rapid advancement. He had called in favors to retard her career, to protect her from harm. It was the cause of their rift, when she found out about his machinations behind the scenes. It shamed him now. Tomas, dead in his first Busker tomb. Marta, dead by her own hand. Lenda, killed by hungry corpses in a Djao temple ruin, nothing but her brutalized head brought back to the Citadel for burial. He couldn’t bear the thought of Agnes dead as well.
“What is the point of showing me this, Lictor Rae? Are you saying Agnes will keep whatever secret you have as a way of paying me back for delaying her career with the League?”
“Good heavens, no, sir. Dear Agnes still has something of the girl in her, but she’s not a vindictive woman. We held Agnes back, Sir Auric, not you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This is but one example of ways in which Agnes stood out, showed that she was destined to be an exemplary agent of the League. But the Lictor’s Council opted to slow her down because we concluded such rapid advancement would see her in a funerary urn before she was with us half a decade. She needed a more subordinate role, to learn some of the less glamorous aspects of being an agent. Still does, in fact. We kept this fact from her and you concluded your requests were respected. Frankly, had we not reached the conclusion ourselves, I would have personally suggested you take your letters and shove them up your bunghole.”
Auric found the obscenity from her mouth an odd shock, but nodded. “Fair enough.”
“You don’t know everything, Sir Auric. You are not a lictor of the League, never wished to be. There are things we keep compartmentalized and hidden for the good of our brotherhood, but also for the good of its individual members. Agnes will decide if you need to know more. I have faith she will see our reasoning. If not, well, I’m wrong about the woman she is, and that particular secret will be revealed to you. Now, if you don’t mind, I will try to rest myself while we wait for Agnes to return.”
Rae closed her eye and adjusted the velvet patch over the empty socket it covered with her shaking hand.
Auric sat contemplating the lictor’s words, then spent the next two hours reading the transcripts of all the inquiry interviews, including that of Agnes. His heart swelled with pride at how she conducted herself: with modesty, deference to the seniority in the room. Her story was told in a way that was systematic, and her answers to questions lacked the typical defensiveness of younger agents. But it was also about the way others spoke of her. Sometimes as Miss Manteo, sometimes as Agnes, sometimes as Peregrine. What a fine person his daughter had become. What parent wouldn’t look on such a child with enormous satisfaction? He wondered how much he was responsible for. How much of who she was because of her mother, Marta, how much from the teaching and influence of Lenda?
What a joy, he thought to himself, to find you would both love and respect your child, even if no familial attachment existed. Still, he hoped she would decide he had a right to know what all this hubbub was about, despite Rae’s lecture. How could she not?
There was a knock at the door of the Too-Tall Library. Lictor Rae, whom Auric thought was sleeping, bade the knocker enter. He sat up with a start, realizing he was edgy with anticipation. It was Kennah, looking as solemn as ever. The corners of Auric’s mouth turned down with disappointment, but as he walked through the doorway, Agnes appeared behind him, dwarfed by the big man. Auric made to stand, smiling, but stopped. Agnes’s face froze him in his seat.
Her skin was pale, as though the leech thing he’d read of had bled her dry, and her eyes were puffy and red from crying. He could see her laboring to keep from weeping again, her lips quivering slightly, a twitch at the corner of her eye.
“Sweet Belu, daughter!” exclaimed Auric. “What happened?”
Agnes shook her head back and forth, biting her lower lip. Kennah stood behind her now and put an awkward, comforting hand on her shoulder. She turned to look at it, and it seemed she might rebuke the bearded man’s gesture, but instead she looked at her father. He couldn’t read what was behind her eyes. She had witnessed something terrible.
“Agnes, dear, I see you have been informed,” said Rae, as calm as if she was making a supper invitation. “Can you share your judgment with us? Should your father be informed as well?”
Agnes looked at Pallas Rae. There was some anger there, and other feelings Auric couldn’t decipher. Agnes turned to him, her expression a skirmish of emotions, her eyes pleading. She made to speak, then put a hand over her mouth, as though to catch the words from falling out. Kennah kneaded her shoulder. After a moment more, she spoke.
“I’m sorry, Father. No, Lictor Rae. Under no circumstances should we share this piece of information with Auric Manteo.”
10
The Queen of Calamities
Agnes stayed isolated in her small room at the Citadel for three days, sleeping as much as she could with the aid of a foul-tasting draught provided by League alchemists at Pallas Rae’s direction. Her father checked in on her once a day, respecting her need for isolation—and, it seemed, her decision to keep him blissfully ignorant. Perhaps it was only the apparent impact her ordeal had had on her that held her father’s questions at bay. Whatever the reason for his deference, she was grateful. Kennah came and sat with her on the second day, his usual taciturn self, with no words of wisdom or comfort, nothing to share beyond his quiet, brooding presence. He didn’t ask her what she had seen, either. That filled her with gratitude as well.
Barely a minute passed during her semi-seclusion when an image of her godmother’s severed head, bloody and smiling, didn’t appear before her mind’s eye. Aunt Lenda—if Lenda it was, and not some cruel Netherworld spirit’s masquerade—had no explanation for how she still occupied that fragment of her flesh. She called her state �
��an astounding predicament.” Other, more apt terms came to Agnes’s tongue, and she spoke them aloud sometimes in her solitude. Early in that terrible session with her godmother, she had to suppress an image in her mind of drawing her weapon and hacking the abomination into little pieces, just so that it would stop talking, talking as though nothing was amiss. And there—how her mind still went back and forth between calling it her, Lenda, and it, thing.
“No doubt I am strange to you,” Lenda had said, sporting the cock-eyed smile she had worn so often in life. “But you will grow used to it, as I have.”
Never, she thought. Belu grant I never get used to it.
Lenda told her many things in the hour they spent together: that she now possessed Second Sight and had some special connection to the Djao and all aspects of their culture. How she had aided the linguists’ and sorcerers’ employment of her father’s tumultu to begin deciphering the Higher Djao pictograms.
“You tease, Lenda, revealing only bits and pieces,” said Olbach, as though he were speaking with any other colleague. “I think you hide much.”
“Come near to my mouth again, Olbach,” said Lenda with a red-toothed smile. “I’ll whisper more secrets to you.” The linguist blanched at that, his hand reflexively shielding the stained bandages on his ear.
Auric had told Agnes of his last expedition as a Syraeic to the Barrowlands, in fragments at least; had shared that he was found wandering in the wilderness with Lenda’s head, half out of his mind. A notion entered Agnes’s thoughts and she had to suppress a lunatic giggle. Not half so mad as I feel right now.
Much of their dreadful session was spent with it telling Agnes things only the real Lenda would know, attempting to convince her that this was indeed her beloved godmother, or at least what remained of her—literally. Maybe it was. But there was something else on board, a subtle, intricate malice, looming just below the surface; it set Agnes’s teeth on edge. Perhaps it was Lenda, but horribly changed—not only her flesh came back mutilated from the Barrowlands. Somehow her soul was spoiled as well.
