“My Sha—” Kirin began but Pieter hushed him.
“Enough, son.” He turned to Gee. “Why does she want to know about Kirin?”
“Exactly what I told you. Because he made such a big mess at Millago’s party.” She gave Pieter a hard glance before adding to Kirin, “I’ve had two inquiries already about you, and three reports from different sources. How else did you think I knew enough to question you?”
“Big mess . . .” Kirin remembered that moment when the dress flew apart and the crowd of mages and priestesses gasped. “Some of them are asking about me? Oh dung. Dung, dung, dung!”
Her face had gone dour. “Yes. You’ve come to the attention of the powerful, boy. That’s never good. I’ll steer them as best I can, but my influence is small. You need a powerful protector of your own, and you need him soon.”
She paused, looked Kirin straight in the eyes with an intensity that set his simmering anger back. “Or her.”
Pieter sucked in his breath. “You can’t mean you want Kirin to serve Ymera?”
“I do.” She kept her eyes on Kirin’s. “You haven’t much time, boy. I can stall the ones asking questions for a day, maybe two, but not longer. You could do a lot worse for a protector than Ymera.”
He stared back. The Witch-Queen, interested in him . . . as his protector? Or for some darker purpose? A flash of erotic fantasy crossed his mind, followed by shame that made him clench his fists. No! Maia, forgive me for even thinking that!
Pieter interrupted. “Gee, don’t give us this noise about a protector. What does she want from Kirin?”
Mother Gee made a palms-to-the-heavens gesture. “I don’t know what she wants. She may not know herself. She may simply be curious. Or she may have intentions far beyond anything I can guess. Trying to outguess her is a fool’s game. But I’ll have to send her a message about him, and I can’t wait very long to send it, or she’ll get suspicious.” She glanced aside at Kirin. “More suspicious.”
“Father—” he said, but Pieter made a quick gesture to silence him. Kirin bit back his annoyance as Pieter rose from the table and motioned for him to do the same.
“Gee, we’re leaving. I made a mistake ever agreeing to come back here. As for your money—” he threw the ten silver coins down on her table so hard that they bounced. “Keep it!”
“Pieter!” She caught a rolling coin with one hand even as she stretched the other out in supplication. As he turned away she cried, “Wait!”
Pieter ignored her and stormed out of the room. Kirin followed, hesitated at the door, looked back at her.
“Kirin, please think!” She implored him. “Ymera’s not going to leave you alone because you broke her spy spell. She’ll send more of them, and if she gets curious enough she’ll come looking for you herself. Damnation, boy! She’s the most powerful witch in Silbar. You’ve got to treat her respectfully!”
“Respect?” he answered slowly. “When has anyone powerful ever offered me any respect, Mother?”
“You don’t ask a lioness for respect. You either stay out of her way or you give her what she wants.” Gee’s voice had gone quiet now and her gaze didn’t waver. “That’s how little folk like us survive. I want you to live, boy. Please!”
Conflicting feelings warred in his head. He had always trusted her, but could he trust her now? Ten years ago he had learned to call her Mother; but today she had been ready to pass his secrets to the Witch-Queen without warning him. Some of his secrets, anyway, and with only an indirect warning. His heart hurt as much as his head.
“I’ll think about it.” He turned away and followed Pieter.
CHAPTER 19: KIRIN AND YMERA
Kirin woke to the sound of Temple bells ringing the tenth hour. He quietly slipped out of bed. He should have been spent and sleeping like Maia after their evening’s lovemaking. Instead his mind twitched restlessly around old memories of horror. He gritted his teeth and forced them away as he padded on bare feet to the room’s one window. Slivers of moonlight lanced between the thin curtains. He peeked through the gap between them, eyeing the inn’s courtyard and the jumbled roofs beyond. On the west side of the city lay the Palace, the Gray Fort, and the Red Street. The familiar vista from this fourth-floor window had always been a comfort. It told him that he had a place rooted in the centuries-old traditions of the DiUmbra family.
Tonight, it seemed as frail and threadbare as the curtain itself. Who knew what the Witch-Queen could do?
She might be watching me right now.
Conscious of his nudity, he went to the wall-pegs that held his clothes and pulled on hose and a shirt. Cautiously he went back to the window. He peered with his magesight at the courtyard and the walls and roofs of the surrounding buildings. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. If any creature out there in the night carried a spell, it stayed far enough away that he couldn’t see it from this window.
Madame Ymera. He brooded over her name. She kills unborn babies so she can live! She’s a monster. I can’t have anything to do with that. Haroun be my witness, I can’t!
Then a mosquito bit him in the sensitive spot behind one ear. Instantly he slew it with his Shadow. The tiny life flickered through him and into the Darkness.
The brutality of his unthinking habit stopped him cold. I kill too. I do it every time I clear the vermin out of our rooms. He remembered what he’d tried so hard to forget for nine long years; the taste of Gerlach’s life as his Shadow drank it. The horrible forbidden richness of it, damnation in that terrified swallow. The heat of his anger drained away and he shivered.
Maybe I’m a monster too. Maybe . . . maybe I’m like her.
He tried to fling the horrible thought away. It circled back to him like a black fly, persistently biting. Please, Father-Seraph Haroun, not that! I don’t want to be a monster. Please, please, please, I beg of you, anything but that.
A shooting star arced across the night sky. A promise, or a condemnation? He could think of only one way to find out.
He tenderly kissed Maia on her sleeping forehead and let himself out of their room.
Less than an hour later he picked his way through the revelers on the Red Street. The Silbari Brigade was back in town, uneasily sharing the Gray Fort with the now-outnumbered Gwythlo troops that would escort Governor Ap Marn home in half a season. Men from both forces strolled the flagstones whose color originally gave the Red Street its name. Freshly-washed soldiers still emerged from the baths at the entrance facing the Gray Fort. Ymera had long let it be known that she expected her women’s customers to arrive clean and with money in their pockets. Kirin gave way to a swaggering pair of soldiers headed for a whorehouse. He stepped aside and ducked his head even as sullen anger burned in his heart.
She spied on me. I’ll show her. I’ll spy on her!
Festive lanterns with red-and-orange panes hung from ropes overhead and pushcarts sold food and trinkets. Bawdy laughter and singing echoed from the cheaper houses crowded full of soldiers waiting their turns. Perfumes and music wafted from every house; some of the ornate buildings crowded the very edge of the pavement and towered four stories high. Others were set back amidst gardens where naked couples cavorted shamelessly.
Kirin blushed and averted his eyes. He must be hideously conspicuous in his battered buskins, worn hose, and stained shirt. He hadn’t even brought his coin-purse, and his belt knife looked puny compared to the swords worn by the bodyguards escorting lordly patrons. A wealthy young merchant scion passed by, peacock-proud in silks and gems, and spared him a disdainful glance before turning to enter a brothel so exclusive that it had gilt-framed glass windows lit by expensive mage lamps within. The women who welcomed the merchant were dressed even more richly. Two of the man’s guardsmen settled themselves to wait with several others on benches outside; another went on to a nearby house where handsome young men clad only in loincloths lounged on open windowsills.
Kirin belatedly remembered that he had no idea which house Madame Ymera laired in. He stopped in the
shadow behind a corner of a brightly-lit four-story building that looked like it catered to officers and upper-level civil servants. Grunts and soft cries of ecstasy floated down from open windows overhead.
This is her domain, he reminded himself. The spells here will all be her own.
His magesight showed him only a baffling blur of spells on the street. He’d never seen so many spells at once, even on the audience at Millago’s house. He closed his eyes and called up his Shadow. It flowed outward from that secret place under his heart until it filled him to the skin. His magesight strengthened and an orderly web of spells revealed itself under the confusion. Wards on the buildings, wards on the street itself, they were all connected by strands of control that gathered together like bundles of invisible strings.
His Shadow greedily reached for the power in the stone wall at his back. He had to rein the dark creature in lest it break something she would notice. Ethereal cables of spells floated overhead, leading down the Street. He followed them.
They led to a House merely three stories tall and converged on the cupola that adorned its slate roof. If not for those skeins of spells, he might have entirely overlooked the place. Not particularly large, it sat back only a couple dozen feet behind a modest front garden that could not be called grand. But a flight of tiled steps led up to a broad front door of elaborately-carved wood, all the windows were glass, the music refined, and subtle perfumes wafted from open windows. The guards that waited in the garden were the most finely-equipped that he’d ever seen. And attentive, too; at least three of them watched him with thoughtful eyes as he gaped at the place.
He hastily turned away and hurried past her house, and the next one too. There he found an alley, obviously meant to serve the kitchens and support areas hidden behind the grand frontages. He ducked into it and discovered it had been blocked a few feet in by a spell stretching wall to wall. Intruders weren’t just unwelcome here, but actively barred.
He hesitated, turned back toward the Street. There might be a better way.
A Duermu man carrying a sack strode by the mouth of the alley, paying him no mind. The smell of sweet incense lingered in his wake.
The fortuneteller said I’d suffer fear and loss, Kirin thought. I thought the Gwythlos at the cemetery were what she meant, but if Millago’s house wasn’t both, then I’m a monkey. She said Powers would help me, and that priestess did. I’m only steps away from Ymera’s back door. He turned back to the alley.
He took a deep breath, wrapped his Shadow over his skin and stepped through. As the spell rippled over him he sensed a repulsion woven into it that smelled like dung and vomit.
Another spell lurked beyond it, this one woven of fear and pain; it left the taste of blood on his lips.
The third spell stank of steel and death.
He staggered through them, his Shadow churning in frustration as he refused to let it eat the magic. On the far side he leaned against a blank brick wall and panted while he struggled with his Shadow. He had rarely been so near to so much magic before and it drove his burden ravenous with hunger. The Shadow boiled against his will until he feared it would throw off his control and gorge itself. Ymera could hardly fail to notice if it ate dozens of her spells. For an agonizingly long moment he wrestled with it in the darkness of his mind, until, reluctantly, it submitted.
Relief filled him. He still had control over his Shadow and the ward spells hadn’t even noticed him.
But passers-by might. The alley ran arrow-straight and contained nothing big enough to hide behind. He let his tamed Shadow flow out a little farther, merging himself into the lesser shadows around him. The blank brick walls ran well over a hundred feet back before they made a sharp turn. When he got to the corner he retained the wit to listen carefully rather than stick his head around the angle.
Two male voices gossiped desultorily; they had to be guards standing not very far away.
Kirin backed up a few steps, examined the brick wall. It didn’t have enough space between bricks to squeeze his fingers in and climb like a ladder. But it stood only ten feet tall.
He crouched, leaped, caught the top and pulled himself up and over to find a paved path on the far side. The soft leather soles of his buskins barely made a sound as he landed. This narrow passage seemed to lead around the house next to Ymera’s own. He hurried to the back corner, found a kitchen yard with a compost midden and an ash-pit. A solid wooden gate barred access to the back alley. Thankfully the two gossiping guards were on the far side of that. A detached kitchen and bakery on the yard’s far side stood silent and separate from the house proper. Of course; a whorehouse wouldn’t need bread until noon at least, so the oven would merely be kept warm with a banked fire at this hour of the night. He glided quick as he could down the alley between them, sure-footed in the dark. It ended at a blank wall of smooth close-set stone separating this house from his goal.
Atop that wall, something slithered and glowed.
He gaped up at it for a moment. It looked like a snake with a beaked head surrounded by a bushy mane of long feathers. The top of the wall had been made flat and broad enough for the thing to coil along with a writhing motion that made his stomach twitch. The head turned this way and that; it had four eyes and they swept across him like a hawk searching for prey. But the baleful gaze moved on, and he knew it hadn’t—couldn’t—see him.
It might have other senses. He watched in fascination as it slithered on towards the front of the property, moving fast. Perhaps he could climb the wall behind it quietly enough to avoid drawing the creature’s attention.
Before his courage could falter he rushed forward, leaped and caught the top. Magic tingled through his palms and he struggled against both his Shadow’s hunger and the slick stonework. He managed to drag himself up on top, looked down into a landscaped bower centered on a small round pool bracketed by two stone benches. Trumpet-flower vines climbed a set of trellised arches and the nearest stood right in front of him. He heaved himself over the wall, grabbed the trellis and descended it like a ladder. Laths creaked and leaves rustled, but he made it to the ground without a cry being raised. The patrolling guardian kept on slithering away down the wall, oblivious to him as he basked for a moment in his personal triumph. He’d gotten through all her guardians without getting caught.
“I am impressed. Five spells on that wall and you didn’t alert any of them.”
Startled, he spun around to face the house. A side door had opened to reveal a woman and he didn’t know how he could have missed her, she glowed so brightly with power that she should have been visible right through the wood.
“You—” Before he could speak armed men poured out of the shrubbery. Four spears were leveled at him and a man advanced between each shaft with a drawn sword.
CHAPTER 20: KIRIN AND YMERA
Kirin almost drowned the garden in Shadow before he realized the men were too close for him to escape that way. They need only lunge blindly forward and at least one blade had to find him.
They had stopped with the four spear points pressing his shirt against his skin. The two blades in front prodded his belly; those behind threatened to skewer his kidneys. The swordsmen were worse. The one behind him had already relieved him of his belt knife while the men to his left and right touched the tips of their blades to his throat. The man in front had knelt as he advanced and now the point of his sword hovered at Kirin’s crotch.
His guts trembled. His balls tried to crawl up inside him. He stayed very still and fought to hold his Shadow inside as well. If it escaped, those sharp points would surely stab.
The woman descended two steps from the house, advanced to the bench on the far side of the pool and stared at him over the head of the kneeling swordsman. Layers of spells made a shifting veil draping her head to toe, but her face shone through them all like alabaster. There were sharp, pointed fangs behind those pale lips and he couldn’t help staring at them. People whispered about her but seeing still shocked him.
*
* *
He’s staring at me, at my face—no, my mouth, Ymera noticed. Ahhh. He can see through my superficial spells. She smiled at him and noted how his attention sharpened. An aspect to his power that I’d not considered. He does more than simply devour or evade magic.
“Ordinarily I’d be quite cross with a lad who invaded my garden uninvited,” she told him. “But it happens that I desired to speak with you, so you’ve saved me the bother of sending an invitation. I’ll consider that adequate compensation for your failure to use my front door.”
His body’s tension ebbed a trifle at her words and he no longer looked quite so ready to fight or flee. His eyes followed her as she settled on a bench and contemplated him across the little pool. I am his world at this moment. Now how can I persuade him to reveal what I want to know?
“Please pardon me for not asking you to sit down quite yet,” she added drily. “You do still have a strong air of violence about you, young Kirin DiUmbra. Perhaps that’s to be expected, given how poorly many Silbaris treat those who look—different.” She made a graceful gesture at him, turned the same hand on herself.
Confusion flickered across his face, then his eyes widened.
That’s right, boy, she thought. You have eyes and a brain. Use them.
* * *
Kirin’s thoughts raced. She’s telling me something. She’s disguised to look like a beautiful Silbari woman, but underneath she really looks like a monster. I don’t have any disguise spells. I always look like a halfbreed. Underneath—He squeezed his eyes shut and trembled. Is she telling me that I’m a monster too? Please, Father Haroun, not that. I don’t want to be like her. If I have to kill babies to live—I’d rather be dead!
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