The little alchemist’s eyes widened when he saw Manrie. He was very thin, and his tic was almost constant now, so that he gazed at her through a blinking eye. But even in the cage he couldn’t hide his spastic curiosity, or his manner of wanting to be kind if only he had the time for it. “It’s her!” he exclaimed, and the captain turned to look at his prisoners, trying to identify the one he was speaking about.
“Her?” he asked, wincing and reaching out to grab a mercenary’s shoulder for support.
“The girl who knows how to tame the land. She knows the secret of Lokeyn’s Calm!”
“And what is that? A type of medicine?”
“A type. Yes! Medicine for everything.”
“Which girl? This one here?”
“No. The one standing beside her. The one with the shifting face.”
The captain grunted. “Bring her forward,” he said, and a mercenary grabbed Manrie’s elbow and pulled her along. Koenbahki gasped her protest. Retoebaeni had stood up in his cage. His movement made it sway violently and the rusty chain sent a creaking cry over the ugly hilltop. “This one?” the captain asked as Manrie was brought to a stop before him. Magda the chaplain had risen to the top of Manrie’s consciousness. She was regarding the boy with the stick, and the boy was staring back at her, as if he could see her within the contours of Manrie’s face.
“Yes, yes!” Retoebaeni enthused, “that’s her!” He squatted to bring his eyes level with Manrie’s. The cage swung wildly back and forth. “Tell me, girl! Tell me the third ingredient. I know that you know. You tricked us, having us travel to Haerahiz. But it’s something simple, isn’t it? Something that grows everywhere.”
“Why are you here?” Manrie asked him.
“Never mind that. The ingredient.”
“Is Baenlaez dead?”
His tic fell silent for a moment. “Yes. Naiklora and Karkriesha battled for leadership. People died. I left the farm. Why should I stay? If I can make the Calm, I can share it with everyone.”
Manrie remembered Yoehnen’s voice, what he had said as he had squatted beside a fire along the road to Libreigia. *Perhaps they wouldn’t need to kill, if they had Lokeyn’s Calm*. Yoehnen, who had made her a prisoner without her knowing it. Who had been killed with his own sword, in the terrible darkness. “The third ingredient isn’t simple,” she said to Retoebaeni. “It is the flesh of an agorabehn born from a doe that has been struck by lightning.”
The little alchemist stared at her. The fervent light faded slowly from his eyes. “Oh,” he said quietly.
The mercenary captain gave a tart laugh. “That is always the problem with alchemists. They source their ingredients from such unlikely places. I have studied alchemists’ manifests. Full of impossible things to find. One must always pay attention to manifests and bills of sale.”
Retoebaeni sat down heavily and the cage swung him back and forth, cradling him. He stared at its rusty floor. Then his eyes widened and he looked up again. “I would like to speak to Lokeyn, please.”
“You can’t. He’s gone,” Manrie told him.
“Gone?”
“He was taken by the unseen monster. In the tunnel at the homestead. Where you killed all the people.”
Retoebaeni’s eyes twitched, then twitched again. “Not me. I didn’t kill anyone.”
“You did nothing as they were killed. Just like the people on the farm.”
He lowered his gaze. His veil of heavy silence seemed to settle over all of them. It made the little boy with the stick uncomfortable. He began to run about between the cages, using his stick to trace a pattern in the dirt. The captain shifted impatiently. He was still clutching one of the mercenaries by the shoulder. “There is something I don’t understand here. Who is this Lokeyn? How can this girl let you talk to him?”
Retoebaeni’s eye twitched open and closed. “He is a ghost. The girl ate him.”
The captain straightened. “Like I ate the apple.”
“Not like that,” Manrie said impatiently. “You aren’t possessed. Someone has poisoned you.”
“Nonsense.”
“Nonsense? Tell me one thing about the life of the boy you killed. What did his mother look like? What did she smell like? What did the boy like to eat? What songs got stuck in his head? Who were his friends? What did he feel like when he got into trouble?”
The captain’s eyes were wide. “Why would I know any of that?”
“Because when the spirits ride you, they show you everything. You become them. You have their memories, their wants, their loves, their hatreds. They take you over, and sometimes you forget who you are. You forget to be yourself.”
“Oh, Manrie,” Koenbahki breathed.
“Who are you?” the captain asked.
Retoebaeni answered for her. “She is Manrie. She was the slave of the scholar Aizdha. She murdered him and fled from Libreigia with his bestiary.”
“I didn’t murder him,” Manrie said.
Retoebaeni’s eye was twitching so rapidly that it seemed like his eyelid might fly from his face. “She studies monsters. She knows more about the monsters of this world than anyone else.”
One of the mercenaries mumbled something beneath his breath. The captain turned, favoring one foot, and stared at Manrie. “This is true?” He glanced at Old Yesaera. “Not a weaver from Hiraherra, then. One must always investigate and discover lies.”
“She is a weaver,” Old Yesaera said placidly. “Her work sits on my loom. And she has been to Hiraherra, I’m sure.”
The captain looked away from her. His gaze traveled the crest of the hill. “This bears thought,” he said. “Where is that stone?”
“I have it,” one of the mercenaries said.
“Bring it forward.”
It was slotted through the bars of Retoebaeni’s cage and placed on the floor in front of him. He gazed at it in silence, then slowly raised his head. “I don’t know what this is.”
“Of course you don’t, my dear,” Old Yesaera called. “Why should you? Captain, I’ve already told you what it is.”
“One must never rely on the gossip of old women,” the captain said. He turned to the guard. “How many cages stand empty?”
“Twelve at present,” the guard said indifferently.
“Jail these five,” the captain ordered. “I must make some consultations.”
The little boy ran back to the guard’s side. The captain began to turn away. “Don’t you want the ghost to leave you?” Manrie called to him.
He glanced back. “You said that I don’t have a ghost.”
“If you do. I can help you.”
He regarded her. “You and your friends have shown yourselves to be liars. I must consider. One must always consider.”
The little boy was very solicitous as he helped them into the cages. The mercenaries didn’t depart until they were settled. After they were gone, the guard bent and whispered to the boy and he ran off, trailing his stick, a line in the dirt following him down the hill. The cages swung to and fro. A breeze was blowing, dissipating the heat of the morning. Manrie’s cage turned slowly. As her cage revolved she looked out at Koenbahki, then Maedreth and Praeda, together in a cage, then at Old Yesaera. Retoebaeni was somewhere on the other side of the hill. The captain had left the disc on the floor of his cage. Manrie could sense it through the interest of the ghosts who rode her.
“Maedreth?” Manrie asked into the stillness.
“Don’t see me.”
“Maedreth, I see you. Where did you get the peach?”
The cage spun slowly. Maedreth came back into view. “She had a bag of them,” Praeda said from her lap. “She slipped out of the wagon, when we were outside of Hasra. She slipped through the dung hole. Then she snuck into Hasra and washed so that she wasn’t stinky, and then she stole new clothes, and then she stole some water and a bag of peaches.”
“Did you follow us through the darkness? All that time?”
Maedreth was looking down. Manrie turned her head to continue watching her as the cage swung around. “I ate most of them. I only had one left. But I was saving it for the little girl.”
“And you stole the Immortal’s needle?”
“Yes.”
“Did he find it again? In the cave?”
Maedreth didn’t answer. “She doesn’t know,” Praeda said. Then she said, “Manrie, I’m sad.”
“I’m sad, too, Praeda.”
“Why did it have to happen? Mama died, and then Cloedeya made us happy, and then he died, and Big Praeda, and Melsa.”
“How did Melsa die?”
“She fell,” Koenbahki said. “There was a cliff, in the cave. No one saw it. We were walking along it and no one knew it. The Immortal was angry. He said it was a waste.”
“I wish she hadn’t died,” Praeda said.
“I wish Aizdha hadn’t died,” Manrie said. “I wish the ghosts hadn’t risen. I wish the farmers never existed, and that the people at the homestead were still alive.”
“I wish my family was still alive,” Koenbahki said. “I wish Mueslahvin hadn’t revolted, and that the people hadn’t gone with him to his fort. I wish I had never married Craejo, and never had to hear Pruetahna as she made love to Jandro.”
“I wish my children knew me,” Maedreth said. “I wish my husband loved me.”
“I wish that witch hadn’t cursed you,” Manrie told her. “Why did all of this have to happen to us?”
*You are making a lament,* Magda said inside of Manrie, and her voice was full of approval.
“Why did it have to happen?” Koenbahki repeated. Then she said. “But I met you. I met all of you. I fell in love.”
“I’m glad you fell in love,” Old Yesaera said. “It is the way of life. Bad things happen. Then bad things are redeemed. But it is good to complain about them, sometimes.”
The sound of footsteps came over the crest of the hill. Manrie’s cage slowly revolved. Men were walking towards them. Not the mercenaries. They were led by the boy, who had discarded his stick and was eating an apple. Cloedeya recognized their leader. Slowly, reluctantly, Manrie dragged herself to her feet. The guard reappeared. The boy went to his side and he tussled his hair.
The leader of the group of men stood with his hands on his hips, moving a level gaze from cage to cage. He had a sharp and violent face that was forced to carry an expression of studied calm. His green eyes were hard and suspicious, and they seemed to find fault with Manrie’s robes, then with Koenbahki’s hairstyle. His gaze would stop, would linger, and his lips would move, as if he were taking an internal tally of the world’s disappointments. The men behind him were practicing the same attitude. All accept one. A tall, wiry youth who walked in a kind of half-squat and held his elbows tight to his sides as he lifted his hands before his face. Cloedeya knew him, too.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“You are Gaelspar Banjerhae,” Manrie said, breaking the man’s interior census, “and you have brought the fox with you.”
The suspicious gaze turned to her. But he cast his voice beyond her. “Who is this, Old Yesaera?”
“Her name is Manrie,” the weaver called. “She is my guest.”
Manrie’s cage was revolving but she turned her body so that she could keep facing the man. “You love pork, basted in a plum sauce and roasted slowly for many hours,” Manrie said. “You eat it with okra and balemahta seed pods.”
Gaelspar Banjerhae smiled cynically. “Many people have tried to get to me through my stomach. They’re not as blatant about it as you are.”
“Nonsense,” Old Yesaera called. “She’s not being blatant. She’s being eery. What do you want, Gaelspar?”
He turned his attention to her. “I’m not surprised to see you here, old witch.”
“Yes you are. You were never brave enough to jail me yourself. Left it to the mercenaries, didn’t you? Like so much else.” She paused, then said, plaintively, “Gaelspar, we used to be friends.”
He winced slightly. “You betrayed my friendship. And the king’s.”
“No, Gaelspar, I didn’t. And Mueslahvin didn’t, either. The farms stopped producing. You wanted to build silos to store the remaining grain, and then sell it back to the people. Mueslahvin wanted to feed them.”
“You are one of his partisans. I knew you were, but you have never been blatant about it before now.”
“What does it matter? I’m already in a cage. Are you going to execute me, like all the others?”
He winced again. The green eyes studied the rust on one of the cages and found it unsatisfactory.
“They have been haunting you, haven’t they?” Manrie said softly. “They come into your room at night and stare down at you as you lay in bed. You cry out in terror.”
The suspicious face blanched, then grew hard like an axe blade. “How do you know that?”
“Do you want them to stop? Do you want me to quiet them? To lead them to some cave in the countryside so that you can rest? I can do it, if you let us down from these cages.”
The fox spoke. He lifted a hand to his face and licked the back of it, then smiled widely. But his words were surprisingly clear and precise. “You can’t go into the countryside. No one can. There is a monster in the hills to the east.”
“Quiet, Fox,” Gaelspar Banjerhae said.
The fox ignored him. “It is a great lizard, although some say that it is a bear, and others say an insect. But I have seen it. I know it. I know that it is many things, layer upon layer of danger. Oh yes!”
“Fox, be quiet,” Banjerhae said again, and then he reached out and casually clubbed the man with a fist. The fox whimpered and skittered back, taking refuge among the other men. Banjerhae turned his attention back to Manrie. He glared at her, but there was fear and longing in his glare. “You can lay the dead to rest?”
“Yes.”
His gaze judged her. Then he nodded. “Let her down.”
“And my friends,” Manrie said.
“Your friends are surety. For your good behavior.”
“No. Let them down, or I don’t come with you.”
“You have no choice. We can carry you. We can drag you.”
“They are needed. I need them to make a shrine. I can’t put the dead to rest without them.”
“You need a crone and a little girl?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that I don’t have spies? That I don’t know what happened in Tzurfaera? Or in Raesidae?”
“You don’t know what happened in Raesidae. There were no witnesses when I laid the dead to rest there. But the old woman was with me. She helped. And if you knew anything about Tzurfaera, you would know that my friends stood outside of the cave. That they sang, and led me back from the darkness. I cannot do it without them.”
“We have singers.”
“They don’t know the song.”
“There is only one song?”
“Yes.”
The glare was like the sand that blew across the hill. It wanted to scrape her raw. She stood against it. She allowed Katemzan Daturi to rise to the surface. The cages were speaking of rust, of boredom. Gaelspar Banjerhae was wearing a locket. The locket was strangely hungry. It nestled in his chest hairs like a predator in the underbrush. There was a chorus of other voices from the objects that were carried by the other men, but Katemzan knew how to sift and ignore them. She was interested in the fox. His robes were afraid of his body. They flinched away from his skin.
“Why is your face moving in that way?” Gaelspar Banjerhae asked.
“The dead ride me,” Manrie said. “Let us out, or I will send them to ride you as well. You will be forced to live their lives inside your skull. You will know everyone you killed, everyone you had executed.”
He stepped closer to her cage and whispered to her. “You will not make me lose face in front of my men. You will beg, now, for the release of your friends.”
He stepped away again. She stared at him. Then she said, “I beg you, Patriarch. I beg you to release my friends.”
He held her gaze for a moment longer, then nodded. “Very well,” he said. “They will all come.”
“Old Yesaera, too,” Manrie said. “I beg you, Patriarch.”
“Why is she needed?”
“She is teaching me how to tether myself.”
He scowled as he studied her, but he nodded. “It doesn’t matter. Bring her, too.”
He turned and stood with his back to them as the cages were lowered. He seemed to be studying the other cages. They rotated quietly in the breeze, their occupants unmoving, reduced to piles of rags. Manrie’s cage touched the ground and the little boy opened its door. He stood looking up at her. Katemzan Daturi wouldn’t go back, wouldn’t hide within her consciousness, so Manrie sent her outwards. *Go,* she thought, *go into the city. Find out what you can.*
The ghost stepped from her, and the chorus of speaking objects grew faint and whispered along the tether of possession. A constant susurration in Manrie’s inner ear. Then the boy was stepping aside and Koenbahki was in the doorway of the cage. She reached out a hand and Manrie took it.
They were led down the hill, and Magda the chaplain was very alert. She was whispering words, a poem that Manrie didn’t know, with words that were unfamiliar to her. Whispering it over and over again. The words calmed Manrie, strangely. She was holding Koenbahki’s hand, and her fingers gradually relaxed. Koenbahki looked at her and gave her a weak smile.
They reached the base of the hill and started along a straight avenue. Hovels on either side, giving way to flat fronted merchant houses. Cloedeya noted that they were passing the purveyor of the best cooking oils in Yenceyan. There was a wall up ahead. One of the seven walls that controlled the city. A gated tunnel loomed beneath it. Katemzan’s ghost had already gone through it. She sent back a clamor of spears, each bragging of its victories. Manrie looked around quickly, to make sure her friends were close. Her gaze met Old Yesaera’s. “When we come to the other side of the tunnel, fall flat on the ground,” she hissed.
Into the cool darkness. The sound of the men’s footsteps echoed off of the curved roof of the tunnel. The fox trotted along at Manrie’s side. He turned his long face to regard her and grinned. Light grew around them as they reached the end.
“Down!” Manrie called, and there was a cry of pain, the sound of heavy objects flying through the air. She felt Little Praeda and Maedreth at one side, Koenbahki at the other. They were laying in the gate’s shadow, a blade of light cutting the street just in front of their faces.
A voice was shouting, “The Patriarch! Protect the Patriarch!”
“Each one is as bad as the next,” Old Yesaera muttered. She sounded more angry than frightened.
The ghost of Katemzan Daturi had stopped in the middle of the street to observe the battle. The Banjerhae men had formed a cordon around their leader. They weren’t trying to hold the street, but were retreating to a narrow lane that ran between the houses to the east. They were stalked by mercenaries who had thrown their spears and drawn their swords. Careful, professional men who knew their business. One of the swords hated its scabbard and was rejoicing in its freedom. Another had fallen into a deep depression after the Battle of Mueslahvin’s Fort, and was reluctant to be drawn. There were voices coming from the lane that the Banjerhae men were retreating down. Spears, whispering, like a gaggle of girls about to play a trick on a boy.
A shout, and the Banjerhae men came running forward again, into the cleared area in front of the tunnel. Three of them were down. The mercenaries who had ambushed them were stalking forward from the lane. One of the Banjerhae men had fallen to his knees. He was holding his arms out in supplication. “We surrender! We surrender!”
The mercenary captain detached himself from the shadow of a porch. He limped into the street, supported by one of his men. Katemzan’s ghost had lost interest. She turned and floated further into the city. A sandaled foot appeared by Manrie’s face. She looked up at a mercenary, who gazed down at her and muttered, “Stay where you are. It will be over in a minute.”
Gaelspar Banjerhae was standing, refusing to kneel. The mercenary captain limped up to him. “Hello, Gaelspar. You seem to be stealing something that belongs to me. One must always keep track of one’s rival’s movements.”
“Seerlahk,” Gaelspar said. “You will be dead by nightfall.”
“Will I? Your allies will revenge you? Is that your hope?”
“No. You will die of the poison I fed you two days ago.”
A deadly silence fell over the scene. “I am immune to most poisons.”
“Yes. You brag about it. It wasn’t hard to learn all of your immunities. Importing a poison that you did not know of, that was harder.”
Silence again. Manrie made to stand, but the mercenary who loomed above her pressed a foot down on her back and shook his head.
“One must never believe an enemy,” the captain said at last.
“One shouldn’t go about spouting aphorisms,” Gaelspar said. “It annoys people.”
Again silence. Then the captain spoke in a changed voice. “Kill him,” he said. “Then bring the prisoners. We will keep them in our tower.”
The ghost of Katemzan Daturi had come to another wall. There were people gathered around it, and their presence contrasted sharply with the odd emptiness of the rest of the city. The people were laying on pallets, or on the bare earth. Katemzan was outraged by their appearance. They were so thin. The bones showed through their skin, and their stomaches were distended. Famine, and the king had used what food he had to feed his army, so that he could punish a disobedient servant. Manrie was seized by Katemzan’s self-righteous indignation. She watched as a mercenary slit Gaelspar Banjerhae’s throat and felt disgust.
Katemzan had moved through the gate and was in the palace grounds. Cloedeya knew these grounds well. The kitchens were off to the left, taking an entire wing opposite the slave quarters. The king’s cook had always been fierce with jealousy, only allowing Cloedeya to use the ovens when ordered to. Cloedeya had made stuffed peacock for the king, basting the meat carefully under the cook’s steady glare. Katemzan was entering the throne room, and someone was taking Manrie’s hand and pulling her to her feet. Koenbahki. They were being moved forward in a group, walking in the center of a phalanx of mercenaries.
King Pesijhalaeya was alone in the throne room. He was seated on a little stool in front of wall hanging. Katemzan’s ghost regarded the hanging with amazement. The famous Fleece of Yenceyan. It whorls caught the lantern light and wavered with a pattern that teased the mind, never quite distinct but hinting at a deep and entrancing order. The king was barely breathing. Katemzan’s ghost stood beside him and remembered breath, and the taste of green leaves, and the glow of sunlight on her skin. Manrie wanted to follow her into the fleece’s pattern, to become entangled in it and know its sensations. But Big Praeda wouldn’t let her. Big Praeda could never get lost within the fleece’s enchantments. She had eaten the okubrahchi with Cloedeya and Melsa. She was tied to them. Theirs was the pattern that held her mind.
“Manrie,” Koenbahki was whispering in her ear. “Manrie, are you all right? Manrie, we need you. Come back. Come back now.”
She pulled Katemzan away from the fleece and the ghost came rushing back to her. Katemzan was angry. The fleece had been speaking the most complex sentences, had been filling her mind with memories that she couldn’t quite grasp. It was the one object in this world that she had been truly meant to hear. She tugged at Manrie like a dog on a leash. But Magda the chaplain stepped forward within Manrie’s consciousness and began to soothe her.
The mercenaries had led them to a tower. It sat astride one of the city’s seven walls, and the wall seemed to break against it like a wave. It was a square tower with an enclosed inner courtyard that they were being led through. Men and women were turning from their attention to small tasks and watching them. A few of them stepped forward to speak to the captain. He had grown paler, and was holding a hand to his side. He hissed sharp orders at them. Then Manrie and her companions were led to an inner stair on the far side of the courtyard and up to a drafty room. The captain’s own quarters, plainly decorated, holding little beside a sleeping pallet and a desk which was littered with correspondence and bad penmanship. The door was closed behind them. It had no lock, but two guards stood outside of it.
“Manrie, you should lie down,” Koenbahki said, and led her to the pallet. It smelled of sickness. Of sour sweat and urine.
“Watch for people with injured hands,” Manrie breathed.
Koenbahki nodded. “I don’t think that the Immortal is here. I think it’s gone, Manrie. Lost in the cave.”
Old Yesaera was standing at the window, looking down into the courtyard. “They’ve brought the alchemist,” she said.
“Retoebaeni? Why? What do they want with him?”
“The captain is poisoned,” the weaver said. “They must be asking him about an antidote. The captain doesn’t look happy. Oh!”
“What?” Koenbahki asked sharply.
“They killed him.” The old woman sighed. “Foolish, that. They are very afraid.” She stepped quickly back from the window. “They were looking up at me,” she said in answer to Manrie’s questioning gaze.
“Yesaera?” Manrie asked softly, “have you looked at the fleece?”
“I have.”
“How did you withstand it?”
The weaver smiled. “An odd question for a moment of peril. I suppose I allowed myself to be more interested in its fiber than in its pattern. Patterns I can make myself. Fibers are things of this world. And the fleece’s fiber is unlike any I’ve ever seen.”
The sound of footsteps on the stairs, voices calling in the courtyard below. “Where did the fox go?” Manrie asked.
“He slipped away when the mercenaries attacked,” Old Yesaera said. “I’m sure that he’s gone to the other patriarchs, that he’s gathering them to oppose Seerlahk and his company. The First Families will never starve. They’ll die at each other’s hands before it ever comes to that.”
“There was food in Tzurfaera,” Manrie said, and it was Cloedeya who was speaking in her. “And in Raesidae. The crops aren’t failing everywhere.”
“There would be food here, too, if it wasn’t for the monster in the Sand Hills. It has been attacking caravans. Some say that it is Mueslahvin, getting his revenge.”
The door opened and the captain came in, supported by two mercenaries. He was sweating profusely and the skin around his eyes was puffy and dark. “Get out of his bed,” one of the mercenaries barked at Manrie.
Koenbahki helped her stand and Seerlahk took her place. He gazed up at them. More mercenaries came into the room.
“Here is what’s going to happen,” the mercenary captain breathed, staring up at Manrie. “I will die, and my ghost will possess you.”