Cinnabar Shadows (6 page)

"Benin, go to the pantry and fetch up a plate of fruit and dainties. Our guest has a delicate palate."

She didn't want fruit, Mahtra thought as the slave departed. She wanted her mask; she wanted to
leave, she wanted to return to her vigil outside House Escrissar.

"Sit down, child," the woman said with a sigh.

Despite the sigh—or possibly because of it—Mahtra hied herself to a chair and sat.

"How many days and nights have you been waiting, child?"

Mahtra considered the layers in her memory: More than two, she was sure of that. Three or four?

"Three or four, child—try ten. You'd been sitting there for ten days and nights!"

Ten—that was more than she'd imagined, but what truly jolted Mahtra was the realization that, like
Father, the august emerita could skim the words of her thoughts from her mind's surface. So she thought
about her mask, and how badly she wanted it.

The woman smiled a high templar's knowing smile. She looked a little like Father, with creases across
her face and streaks in her hair that were as white as Mahtra's own skin. Her eyes, though, were nothing
like Father's. They were dark and hard, like Lord Escrissar's eyes, which she'd seen through the holes of
his mask. All the high templars had eyes like that.

"All of us have been tempered like the finest steel, child. Tell me your name—ah, it's Mahtra. I thought
so. Now, Mahtra—"

But she hadn't thought the word of her name. The august emerita had plunged deep into her mind to
pluck out her name. That roused fear and, more than fear, a sense that she was unprotected, and that made
the marks on her shoulders tingle.

I mean you no harm, Mahtra. I'm no threat to you.

Mahtra felt the makers' protection subside as it had never done before, except in her nightmares when
Death ignored her. This was no dream. The woman had done something to her, Mahtra was sure of that.
She couldn't protect herself, and learned yet another expression for fear.

"No harm, Mahtra. Your powers will return, but were I you, child, I'd learn more about them. I'm long
past the days when helplessness excited me, but—as you've noticed—I'm an old woman, and you won't
find many like me. I want only to know why you've sat on the doorsill of House Escrissar these last ten
days. Don't you know Elabon's dead?"

Dead? Dead like Father, like Mika, and all the others in the cavern? What hope had she of finding
Kakzim if Lord Escrissar was dead?

Mahtra lowered her head. She was cold and, worse than shivering, she felt alone, without the powerful
patrons Father mentioned in his last words to her. Blinding pressure throbbed behind her eyes and strange
high-pitched sounds brewed in her throat. She couldn't cry, but she couldn't stop trying, any more than she
could bring back the makers' protection.

Suddenly, there was warmth, but not from within. The high templar had left her chair. She stood behind
Mahtra, massaging her neck.

"How witless of me," the august emerita said.
Lord Escrissar had used the same words in his apology after he'd left her alone with Kakzim. There
was more pressure behind her eyes, more sound brewing in her sore throat. The coincidence had been too
great; Mahtra couldn't bear the pain any longer. She slumped sideways, and only the considerable strength
in the old templar's arm kept her from falling to the floor.

Mahtra was ready to tell someone—anyone—what had happened, but it was very difficult to keep her
thoughts dear enough for the august emerita to understand without saying the words, however poorly, as
they formed in her mind. And without her mask, Mahtra was too self-conscious to speak. So, when Bettin
returned to the atrium with a plate of sliced fruits and other appetizing morsels, the high templar sent him off
after the mask.

"You'll eat everything on that plate first, child."

Eating, like talking, made Mahtra uncomfortable, but the light of food had awakened her stomach and
the august emerita was not a person to be disobeyed. Mahtra ate with her fingers, ignoring the sharp-edged
knife and sharp-tined fork the slave, Bettin, had laid beside the plate. She'd seen much devices before, in
other high templar residences, and knew they were more polite, more elegant, than fingertips. She was
eleganta, though, not elegant, and she made do with sticking her fingers under the concealing folds of her
thawl. The august emerita didn't say anything about Mahtra's manners; the august emerita seemed to have
forgotten the had a guest.

Clutching an ornate walking-stick as if it were a weapon rather than a crutch, the old woman paced
circles around her fountain and her trees. She wasn't the tallest human woman Mahtra had ever seen, but
she was just about the straightest: her shoulders stayed square above her hips as she took-her measured
steps, and her nose pointed forward only, never to either side, even when Mahtra accidently hudged her
unused fork, and it skidded and clattered loudly to the mosaic floor.

Yet the august emerita was paying attention to her. She returned to her own chair on the opposite side
of the table as soon as Mahtra had swallowed the last morsel of the last sweet-meat pastry. Bettin
appeared, suddenly and silently, out of nowhere and disappeared the same way once he'd deposited
Mahtra's mask on the table beside his master. Like her clothes and sandals, the mask had been carefully
tended. Its leather parts had been oiled, the metal parts, polished, and the cinnabar-colored suede that would
touch her skin once she fastened the mask on had been brushed until it was soft and fragrant again. The
august emerita looked aside while Mahtra adjusted the clasps that held the mask in place.

"Now, child, from the beginning."

The beginning was a hot, barren wasteland, with the makers behind her and the unknown in front of
her. It was running until she couldn't run anymore. It was falling onto her hands and knees, resting, then
rising and running some more—

"The cavern, Mahtra. Begin again with the cavern however many days ago it was. You lived by the
reservoir. You were going home. What happened? What did you see? What did this Father-person say to
you?"

Perhaps it was only the sun moving overhead, but the creases in the august emerita's face seemed to
have gotten deeper and her eyes even harder than they'd been before. She sat on the edge of her chair, as
arrow-straight as she'd paced, with her palms resting lightly on the pommel of the walking stick. The
pommel was carved in the likeness of a hooded snake with yellow gemstones for its eyes. Mahtra couldn't
decide if the snake or the august emerita herself unnerved her more.

She went back to that not-so-long-ago morning and retraced her steps: cabra fruits, cinnabar beads,
and Henthoren's eerie message. The snake's eyes didn't blink, and neither—or so it seemed—had the high
templar's. Indeed, there was no reaction from the far side of the table until Mahtra came to the very end of
her tale.

"... Father said he'd been killed with Mika and the others. He gave me an image of the man who'd
killed them. He said... He said I had patrons who could make certain no one else was killed. I knew the
man in Father's last image, Lord Escrissar's halfling slave, Kakzim. So I went to Lord Escrissar—to House
Escrissar—to wait for him."

The august emerita was on her feet again, and pacing, holding her snake-stick but not using it. Her free
hand rose to the medallion she wore, then fell to her side.

"You had no right to live there. The reservoir is a proscribed place; you saw King Hamanu's wards and
circumvented them. The one you call 'Father,' broke the king's law living there and taking you there. Urik
has places for those who cannot work or have no kin. They'd all be alive if they lived within the law where
the templarate could protect them."

The august emerita's stick struck the mosaic a second time. "Ask him," she said, thereby reminding
Mahtra that her thoughts were not private here.

She took her thoughts back to the cavern, then, and Father's last image.

"Yes, yes—" the old woman said wearily. "The wheels of fortune'? chariot turn fair and strange, child.
None of you should have been living beside the reservoir, and you should have been among them when
catastrophe struck. Had the wheel turned as it should have turned, there'd be no tale to tell or no one to tell
it. But Kakzim... Damn Elabon!" She struck her stick loud enough to disturb her caged birds and insects.
"He was warned."

Not knowing whether "he" was Kakzim or Lord Escrissar, Mahtra closed her eyes and tried very hard
to think of neither man. It must have worked; the august emerita started pacing again.

"This is more than I can know: Elabon's mad slave and Urik's reservoir. I have been too long behind
my own walls, do you understand me, Mahtra?"

Mahtra didn't, but she nodded, and the woman did not skim her thoughts to know she'd lied.

"I do not go to the bureau. I do not go to the court. I am emerita; I've put such things behind me. I
cannot pick them up again. I mistook your purpose on his doorstep, child. I thought you were his, or carrying
his, that's all. In my dreams I saw nothing like this. Damn Elabon!"

The old woman strode to a wall where hung several knotted silk ropes that Mahtra had not noticed
before. She yanked on one that was twisted black and gold and another that was plain blue, then turned to
Mahtra.

"Follow me. I will write a message for you. That is all I dare do. There would be too many questions,
too much risk. There is only one who can look and listen and act."

A message for her, and written, too. Mahtra shivered as she rose from the table. Writing was
forbidden. Lord Escrissar and Father both had warned her that she must never try to master its secrets;
Lord Escrissar and Father had almost never given her the same advice. But the august emerita was going
to write a message for her. Surely this was what Father meant when he said her powerful patrons would
help her.

Mahtra snatched another cinnabar pebble from Ver's fountain, then hurried to keep up with the
fast-striding woman. They wound up in a smaller room where the only furnishings were another table,
another chair, and shelf upon shelf of identical chests, each with a green-glowing lock. On the wall behind
the table someone had painted a fresco-portrait of Lord Hamanu. The Lion-King glowered at Mahtra
through gemstone eyes while the august emerita snipped a corner off a fresh sheet of parchment and
covered it with bold, red lines of ink.

Two more human slaves, neither of whom was Benin but who were like him in all other ways—lithe,
tanned, and lightly scarred—joined them. Mahtra guessed that one of them was the blue rope while the
other was the black-and-gold, but she had no way of knowing for certain, and the august emerita did not
address them by name.

"You will accompany Mahtra to the palace. Show this to the sergeant at the gate, and the instigator,
too—but don't give it to them, and don't let Mahtra out of your sight until you reach the golden doors. Stay
with her. Show my words to anyone who challenges you."

She folded the parchment, struck a tinder stick with flint and steel, and then lit a shiny black candle.
She sealed the parchment with a glistening blob of wax. One of the two slaves took the candle from her
hand and extinguished it. The other handed her a stone rod as long as her forearm and topped with the
carving of a skull. Black wax and a skull. The symbols and their meanings were inescapable: the august
emerita was—or had been—a deadheart, a necromancer at the very least; but considering the way this
necromancer plucked the thoughts of the living, more likely, an interrogator, like Lord Escrissar himself, and
one of the Lion's cubs.

Mahtra cried out when the august emerita hammered the rod against the wax. She felt foolish
immediately, but these two slaves were not the laughing, teasing sort that Bettin was. Or perhaps they, like
her, were overwhelmed by the old woman's intentions.

"This should be sufficient." She handed the sealed parchment to the slave who'd held the rod. "It
shouldn't be opened at all until you reach the golden doors. But if it is, remember the face well. Remember
all their faces, their masks, their names, if you hear them."

No one had dared tamper with Kakzim. Not even the august emerita.

Sobered and chastened, Mahtra accompanied the two slaves from the templar quarter and through the
wide-open gates of Hamanu's palace. The courtyard was as vast as the cavern, but open to the sky and
dazzling in the midday sun. Here and there clots of templars, nobles, and wealthy merchants conducted their
business. She recognized some of them. They recognized her by pretending not to. And though the air was
dead still and the heat oppressive, Mahtra hid herself within her shawl.

They were hailed at the inner gate by a war bureau sergeant and a civil bureau instigator, each in a
yellow robe with the distinctive and appropriate sleeve banding. The war bureau sergeant wanted to carry
the message himself to the next post. He told the two slaves that they were dismissed, but he withdrew his
order when the taller slave said:

"I will remember your face."

After that they traveled through a smaller courtyard where trees grew and fountains squandered their
water. Threads of gold and copper were woven in the sleeves of the templars they encountered next, and
more metal still in the sleeves of the third pair who stood at the mighty doors of the palace proper. Mighty
doors, but not golden ones— Mahtra and her two companions were passed to a fourth and finally a fifth
pair of templars—high templars, with masks and other-colored robes—before they came to a closed but
unguarded pair of golden doors.

"You've done well," one of the masked templars said to the slaves. "Remember us to the august
emerita. We wish her continued peace." He took the black-sealed parchment, then opened one of the
golden doors. "Wait in here," he said, and as quickly as that, Mahtra was completely alone.