Riding the Serpent's Back (68 page)

Waiting in the room were two soldiers and an overweight, red-cheeked man with strikingly blond hair. The man peered at Red through a pair of tiny spectacles. Finally, he moistened his lips and said, “Red Simeni. Chi does, indeed, have a half-brother of that name.”

Red stared at him and the man arched an eyebrow in an expression that suddenly reminded him of Oriole.

He stopped himself.

He was being paranoid. “Who are you?” Red asked.

The man smiled. “My name is Petro Tez,” he said. “I, too, am Chi’s half-brother.”

“How do I know that?”

Petro frowned. “My sister, Sawnie, will confirm it, I am sure,” he said. “When she—”

“But she’s not here, right?”

Petro raised his hands in protest. “Please, please,” he said. “You have this the wrong way round. Oh dear, I am not a good interrogator. I’m the one who is supposed to be confirming
your
identity.” He turned to one of the soldiers and said, “Charlas, tell him I am who I say.”

The soldier nodded.

“There,” said Petro. “Do you believe me?”

Red nodded. “I believe you’re my half-brother,” he said. “In which case I will allow you to see Chi with me.”

“But...” Petro met his look and they both broke into laughter. “Chi said you were the slippery one,” he said. “‘A liar and a cheat,’ were his precise words, I seem to recall. I am pleased to meet you at last.”

~

He had a double shock when Petro took him to meet Chi over lunch.

They went to an inn across the square and waiting in the yard was a big, bearded man sitting on a horse. “This is our brother, Joel,” said Petro, reaching up to pat the man on the thigh. He patted the horse’s neck and added, “And this is Harken. The two are quite inseparable at present.”

Joel glowered down at the two of them and then, reluctantly, nodded at Red.

“How do you mean?” asked Red. In his days of prostitution one of his regulars had been quite attached to a donkey, but he was sure that was not what Petro had just implied.

Irritably, Joel flicked aside a fold of the blanket that had covered his legs. Red stared. The flesh of his half-brother’s legs merged into that of the horse’s side, like honeysuckle growing into a tree’s trunk.

He looked up at Joel. Most unusually, he was stuck for words.

“I lost a bet,” said Joel. “With a mage called Oriole.”

Red gasped and stepped back. The woman seemed to permeate everything, perverting all that she touched.

His second shock came when a group of four men approached, led by a small boy.

A small
bearded
boy with feathers in his hair.

Then he saw that there were actually five men: four marching and a fifth who was without legs, riding a sling on one of the men’s backs.

The boy spotted the new arrival and broke out into a grin. Suddenly, Red recognised something in the features, the smile, the general cockiness. “Chichéne?” he gasped.

The boy nodded. “They didn’t tell you, did they?” He came forward and grasped Red’s hands. “The shock of recognition always amuses Petro. So Red.
Red
. I thought you had rejected us? Kester told me you were in love.”

The boy led Red across to a long bench and sat down with him as food was brought hurriedly out of the inn.

“She did?” said Red. “She must have misinterpreted something I said. I’m not the kind to fall in love.” She had interpreted the situation even better than he had, he realised. “Is she here? I must apologise for my treatment of her. Do you think she’ll forgive me? I made a simple mistake. I’d hate her to resent me for it for ever more.” He realised he was protesting too much and shut up. It was only then that he realised how desperate he was for acceptance: if Chi turned him away, what remained?

“Kester is away,” said the boy. “She returned some time ago to the Jasperan mountains. She’s been recruiting and training guerrilla units all along the north-eastern flank of Lachlan’s territory. She’s doing a tremendous job.”

“Averna?” Red asked, thinking of Estelle’s parents and their precarious grip on power.

Chi turned to the man who had arrived with the cripple mounted on his back. “Marsalo?” he asked.

“It was in the report twelve days ago,” said the man. “Averna is ours.”

Red nodded. That was before he had gone to Samhab, yet there had been no mention of any upheavals in Estelle’s home province. Perhaps they hadn’t wanted Estelle to know, scared that she might upset Pieter’s allegiance to Lachlan.

Red reached out cautiously and touched his brother’s beard. It wasn’t really a child’s body at all, he realised: the shape and muscle definition were a man’s, only reduced in scale. “Are you going to explain why you are like this?” he asked.

Chi shrugged, and poked at some meat on his plate. “After I left you in Totenang—”

“You abandoned me,” said Red, old resentments rising up in a sudden rush. “Just when I needed someone I could rely on.”

Chi looked at him through narrowed eyes. “I’m not going to try justifying myself,” he said. “My life has been a succession of letting people down, abandoning friends when they needed me, avoiding my responsibilities. But now I’m making a stand. I sometimes think I spent my other life dodging fights so that I could conserve myself for the big fight, the one upon whose outcome the entire future of the Rift peoples depends. I thought I was in control, but it turns out that I am doing exactly what our father said I must eventually do.”

“Your ‘other life’, you said.” Red had been thinking Chi must somehow have shrunk, he still didn’t understand why his half-brother was as he was.

“After I...abandoned you, I returned to the Serpent’s Back”, said Chi. “On the run again. But I showed my face to a man who knew me from before and from that point it was inevitable that I would be driven from my last refuge. I used my healing powers to copy my animus into the template of my unborn son. I was born something over four years ago.”

“But...” Red reached across again and tugged at the beard.

“I hadn’t anticipated how hard it would be to live as a man in an infant’s body,” said Chi. “Another of our brothers suggested I turn my powers in upon myself.” He smiled now, and explained, “So I healed myself of childhood. It is a great improvement.”

Petro had been eating busily as Chi talked. Now he dabbed at his mouth with the cuff of his jacket and said, “Are you going to tell us
your
story, Red? Why you turned Kester away? Why you have joined us at last?”

“I was a fool,” said Red. “A fool who thought he was in love.”

“‘Thought’?” prompted Petro.

Red nodded. “It was a trap, you see,” he said. “I was sent to Harrat in Averna to escort Principal Pieter Lammer’s bride-to-be back to Totenang for the wedding. She was young and fun, and one day I took her out riding ahead of the convoy. We were fooling about – just having a little innocent fun – when we came across an old hag. You know the sort: with all her possessions bundled up in a cloth slung across her shoulders. She started gabbling away and we were polite and exchanged a few words.

“She misunderstood what we said and blessed us, cursing us with love.” He closed his eyes. He was able to picture the scene quite clearly. “‘Oh!’ she cried.” He copied the raucous rattle of her voice. “‘What a lucky man indeed, that this good lady is to be your wife.’ I tried politely to dismiss her, but she was insistent. Then, just before we got away from her, she said, ‘You are both kind to an ugly old tramp. And in return I grant the two of you the blessing of Anathea Presland that your love will bind you forever.’”

Suddenly, Chi was leaning towards him. “Did you say ‘Anathea Presland’?”

Red nodded. “Why?” he asked.

Chi was quiet for a time. Then he said, “I always feared something like this would emerge. I told you before of my assault on Lachlan, and my efforts to save him. All I could do was copy his animus into an unborn child, but by then his real mother was unable to go through another pregnancy. I paid a servant to bear him. She—”

“And her name was Anathea Presland,” Petro interrupted. “But why should she do this? Why help you save Lachlan, then reappear to trap poor Red?”

“That’s not all,” said Red, softly. “I’ve come from Samhab, you see. I was with Pieter and Estelle, who were there as Lachlan’s guests.” He glanced up at Joel, who was watching and listening glumly. “There’s another hand in all this: the mage who trapped Joel is Lachlan’s closest adviser—”

“We know that,” snapped Joel. “She plays him like a puppet...you’re telling us nothing new.”

Red nodded, then said, “But did you know that Lachlan’s mage is a shape-changer? Every new person I meet I think is going to be Oriole in a new form. One of her other guises is an old tramp who was once a servant: Oriole and Anathea are the same person.”

Petro was smiling and nodding, as if pleased by the discovery: another new game to play, another set of possibilities. “It all falls together, doesn’t it?” he said. “Lachlan’s mage has been manipulating us for years. Orchestrating events so that we are driven together in this way to fight each other and tear our civilisation apart.”

“But why?” asked Joel, from his mount. “Why do this to us?”

“Can’t you see?” asked Petro. “Like every mage there has ever been, this Oriole is an egomaniac. When this is all over she will have manufactured for herself the pivotal role from which she is most likely to emerge in a position of power. Maybe she even wants Lachlan to fail so that the energies of Samhab will be released in a chaotic manner, so that she can feed on them and become an even more potent force.”

Chi was staring intensely at Petro. “We’ll stop her,” he said. “We have our own mage, Herold. We have to stop her.”

They ate in silence for a time, until the mood was subtly altered by the arrival of a stocky, ginger-haired woman in a priest’s smock. She paused to exchange a few words with Joel, before his glum responses deterred her.

There was something familiar about her, although Red was certain they had never met.

She left Joel and came to stand at the foot of the bench, eyes jumping from one face to another. Her gaze settled on Red. He didn’t like her look, loaded, as it was, with distrust. He should expect no more, he supposed.

“Monahl,” said Chi, and suddenly Red knew this was another sibling. “Come and sit down. This is our half-brother, Red Simeni of Totenang. He joined us this morning.”

Monahl sat and reached across for some food. Red smiled half-heartedly but her hostile expression didn’t change.

“You’re staring at me,” he said.

Like a child, she replied, “You’re staring at me.”

It was Petro who intervened, trying to smooth over the hostility with his charms.

Later, Red couldn’t help but overhear Monahl telling Chi about some kind of vision she had experienced in the night. He was intrigued to note how seriously the boy took her claims. So Monahl was Talented, too.

Another half-brother was coming to join them, it seemed. Another one who had been away for some time, perhaps another doubter like Red.

“He’s heading here,” said Monahl. “This evening, I think. Coming alone on foot along Two Rivers Road towards Brierley.” Red had passed that way only this morning. “And I don’t know why, but when I woke up I was convinced he was in danger: someone wants him dead.”

Red moved to join them, sensing an opportunity to prove himself. He had to earn their trust in some way, he realised. Perhaps escorting this Leeth on the final part of his journey might be sufficient.

Chi turned and reached up to put a hand on his arm. “You see, Red? It’s not just me Monahl fears for. Now she thinks someone wants to kill Leeth, too.”

“He’s coming here?” Red asked, playing the innocent. “Then, with your approval, I will set out and meet him and ensure his safe arrival.” He smiled at Monahl, knowing that was sure to annoy her. “Perhaps then our sister will believe that my motives are pure.” From the expression on her face, it was clear that she thought his motives anything
but
pure. When Chi said he should do it, she looked as if she would explode.

“How will I know him?” Red asked.

Chi shrugged and said, “I don’t know. You see, our half-brother is a shape-changer.”

Red felt as if the world had been tugged from under his feet. He pictured Oriole in the garden of fountains, how easily she had altered her posture and expression to show that she had once been Anathea.

Someone coming in alone.

A shape-changer.

“I’ll go immediately,” he said.

And he would go alone. If Oriole was coming here, then she had to be stopped.

~

Leading a spare horse for Leeth, he rode hard until night started to fall. Travel in this edgy region could never be a speedy business: he felt that he must have spent less time travelling than stopping to explain himself to spotty young guards who had seen him only that morning.

He kept trying to convince himself that he was leaping to foolish conclusions: Oriole could not be the only shape-changer alive, after all. Monahl was sure it was their brother returning along this road and she was not exactly the least distrusting person he had met.

He passed many travellers on his way, but most were soldiers travelling in small groups, or refugees fleeing the impending conflagration.

But the road was deserted when he came to the start of a long rise and spotted a figure approaching on foot.

It was a young man, he saw, of average build, darkish hair, about as nondescript as you could get. He suddenly knew this was the shifter: settled into a form that would draw least attention to himself as he travelled.

He felt suddenly uneasy: how could he think of this thing as a man? It was a shifter. He slid a short spear into the sling of his atlat, just to be safe.

When the man saw him, Red dismounted and approached him on foot.

“Leeth?” he said, warily.

“Red Simeni?”

The thing knew his name!

Suddenly, there was a blur of action and Red acted instinctively, jerking the atlat back over his shoulder and then snapping his wrists as he hurled the spear.

He had time to register the startled look on Leeth’s face and then the spear whistled past the shifter’s ear and buried itself in the chest of the man who had appeared on the road behind.