The Feverbird's Claw (19 page)

But had she and Figt not survived the place of Arkera death and spent the night with human bones? Had she not lived under the hollow eye of the moon? She refused to be afraid in this Delagua house.

Full of melancholy memories, she led Figt across the house to the room Old Tamlin had always kept for her. Nothing had been touched. She gathered an armful of silky Delagua cloth, remembering Old Tamlin's voice: “The cloth saves us, Moralin. It's the only way.”

She turned. Figt's gaze was fixed on a sword fastened to the wall. With a sound of disgust, she dropped the stick on the floor.

Moralin handed a dress to the other girl. “Put this on. No, no, this way.” She stepped back. “You look funny as a Delagua.”

Figt curled her shoulders uncomfortably. “You slept here? So closed off from air?”

“Not here. I kept things for when I visited Old Tamlin. But this place was almost …” She paused and looked around. “Home.” She choked on the word and couldn't go on.

The first dress she tried ripped. She dropped it on the floor and found a bigger one. Then she rummaged in an ivory pot for the paint and brushes she had used to make pictures when she was a child.

Figt took them. The brush whispered softly against the floor. Moralin bent to watch. The skin on her fingertips hurt, and she told herself not to chew her nails again, but she did anyway.

A one-legged bird. She walked around to study the design from another direction. “These marks show where the shadows live.”

Figt's eyes were shiny with hope.

“But …” Moralin shook her head. “I've never seen this one before.”

M
ORALIN TRIED NOT TO LOOK AT THE OTHER
girl's disappointed face. “I can think of only one place where we might find a clue,” she said slowly. The shadows lived in small groups around the city. But in one room, shadows mingled for a short time. Old Tamlin had been in charge of it.

With Old Tamlin's death, perhaps the place would be in some confusion. If she and Figt could find a shadow with the one-legged bird on his mask, they might be able to figure out a way to question him.

She told Figt her idea, not bothering to say that failure would end in death for both of them. That was true even if they did nothing. Together they climbed the steps. Several times Figt stumbled and muttered.

“So,” Moralin said, “the mighty Arkera warrior woman is stopped by a Delagua dress.” By the time they reached the top, though, she said, “These clothes are unhandy when you're out of practice.”

She led Figt to a long window cut out of the wall that allowed them to see the outside steps. A breeze brushed her face as she peeked out. When the sun reached the second step, Old Tamlin always began his duties. Once he had heaped forbidden on forbidden and taken her along.
He said you would someday save the city.

In Old Tamlin's chamber they put the netting over their faces, wrapped themselves in the cloaks, and pulled up the hoods. One of Old Tamlin's men usually guarded this secret entrance, but now it was deserted. Moralin slid the bolt, and they entered the fighting yard. Walk boldly. Manage your fear.

Fighting sticks swished and cracked. Someone yelped in pain. She had thought she would never see this place again. They strode past a group of gossiping soldiers. Through another door. Down some stairs. Old Tamlin had done this every morning. “If a commander stops us,” she had told Figt, “he will question us and kill us. But any underling will think we were sent to do Old Tamlin's work.”

At the bottom they turned left into a long, dim hallway hung with tapestries that showed Delagua history. From these the fighters learned, proud to take their place in some future tapestry. Moralin made her way cautiously toward the first small pool of light, cast by a high window. Silver-gray shapes seemed to rustle, but when Moralin whirled around, her heart lurching, no person stepped forward to challenge them.

The shushing of their cloaks sounded loud in the hallway. Figt made a startled noise as hers caught around her ankles. From the tapestry on the wall, Cora Linga's eyes gazed down with a strange expression. Amusement? Pity?

The next tapestry made Moralin bite her lip and taste blood. Delagua victory, Arkera defeat. Shocking things were being done to the Arkera people in the picture. The soldiers had looked majestic, almost holy, when she had walked here with Old Tamlin. Now they looked fierce. She might have even said bloodthirsty and cruel. Some were guarding shadows who tended fires. Bright pieces of Delagua cloth danced.
The cloth is the only way.

She moved on to a tapestry with five panels. First, sacred visitors stood before a Delagua royalborn. Then the visitors offered a precious jewel that had a hole in its middle. The weaver of the third panel had used vivid colors to show the Delagua ruler beckoning to a worm. In the next panel the worm was crawling into the jewel, trailing a thin silken line. Last, the gem hung on the silken string around the ruler's neck, while the worm was lifted high on a golden tray and all the people stood around with open mouths, giving the joy cry.

Keep going. Would the tapestry she needed be here? Yes. She stopped in front of the weaving she most wanted—and did not want—to see. Shadows ran through the streets with guards after them. A few were outside the gate. On top of the wall a shadow dangled a screaming child. So this was the great revolt. The child—

A thump somewhere above them nudged Moralin out of her thoughts. They hurried the remaining steps to the end of the corridor, and she put her hand to the door. A cry shuddered, deep inside. Please, Cora Linga. She pushed the door open.

The room stank with a sour smell of sweat and old food. A shadow knelt in front of a soldier, who had turned toward the sound of the door. Moralin made her voice into a low growl. “Shadow inspection.” To her relief, he merely nodded.

Shadows sat along the walls or stretched on mats. This was the room for those who had committed some transgression or whose lives changed when calamity forced adjustments to a household. Old Tamlin had come here every morning and afternoon.

Please, Cora Linga. We have come so far. May we find some clue here.
She and Figt walked up and down the lines. “Look up. Look up.” No. No one had the mark of the one-legged bird.

Back in Old Tamlin's house, Figt gave a bitter laugh. “We can never find him.”

“It's not good.” Moralin's spirit was stone. How could it be that sometimes people came so far and did so much, still only to fail? While Figt curled in a corner, Moralin sat, lost in her tangled thoughts about the history she had seen.

When the Delagua chose to retreat inside the city walls, they demanded tribute from nearby settlements but they were also given the sacred secret of cloth making so they could trade for other things they wanted. Who would keep the sacred secrets? Even shadows couldn't be trusted with that.

She shook herself loose of her musings. They must seek the temple, she decided, and beg Cora Linga's help. “Come over here,” she told Figt. “Let me put your velee on.”

Figt stood still while Moralin covered both of their heads. “Do the best you can,” she said, her words slightly muffled by the cloth. “We need our faces hidden.”

As she opened Old Tamlin's little-used back door, she strained against the velee, wishing she could see more clearly. Everything seemed both sweetly familiar and dazzlingly new. It was as if she had lived here a long time ago. At first she had to look around after every few steps. Water was starting to run in the channels again, and its voice murmured secrets to her, but she didn't know its language. She tripped as one thing and then another caught her attention. Finally Figt made an impatient, anguished sound, and they began to walk more quickly through the bustling city.

There. That was the temple wall where she had seen Salla and the others. Poor Salla.

They climbed. Moralin touched her forehead, and they stepped inside. The great hall was filled with sunlight. She went to the central tapestry and lifted her arms. “Help us, Cora Linga.”

Silence. She thought about the other tapestries she had just seen. At least she now knew the answer to the question she had asked herself for so long. It wasn't a fish that changed her life. No, the guard said that before the great revolt Old Tamlin spoke often of his vision. That was why the shadows wanted her dead. Some shadow had probably also risked death to tell the fierce trainer that she was a girl. The shadows wouldn't have forgotten, any more than the guard at the trapdoor had.

She studied the toad scene.
Speak to me, Cora Linga.
She moved on to one where the Great Ones were shown as spiders. “I'm here. I'm waiting. Show me how to find the shadow we seek.” She barely breathed the words, as softly as if she could keep even the other Great Ones from hearing.

But though she felt dizzy with the effort of listening, she heard nothing. Nothing except the whoosh and shush of her own blood in her ears.

She must at least get Figt out of here tonight, while she still had a way to reach the secret tunnel. Even now the messengers for judgment and pity must be wrestling with Old Tamlin's spirit, making their decision. Tomorrow, after the priestesses had come for his body, the house would belong to Old Tamlin no longer.

She saw the tapestry that had scared her so much when she was a child. In the first panel, priestesses in their dui-duis, carrying bodies covered in white cloth, walked the silent, dark streets of the city to the temple. The next day's dawn brought temple mourning for families. Then bodies were taken to the convent for seventy days. After that, the bodies of highborn and royalborn Delagua were carried back to the temple, where they lay in an underground room with the body of a shadow on either side to serve them in death even as in life.

She returned to the first panel. “On the night when the invisible ones walk,” Cora Linga had told her in the dream. “Then does the fly escape.” No one dared look on the priestesses while they did their work, and tonight such would walk. Moralin nodded slowly. Could two people search a whole city in one night and find a one-legged bird? No. But what else was there to do?

When they were safely back, she explained. Tonight, the first moon-dark night, white figures would leave the temple. No one was allowed to look upon them or speak to them. So she and Figt could also walk through the city if they could only find the place where the dui-duis were kept.

“The priestesses will come to this house for your grandfather?” Figt asked.

Moralin stuttered out the word “yes” and fell silent.

Later, as they shared a piece of hard bread, Figt explained that The People said a dead person's bones must be out where the birds could pick them clean and where the sun and wind could purify them. Then their spirits would return to the air and not hover to steal people's breath.

It comforted Moralin a bit that The People, too, thought spirits went somewhere. She held out a piece of cheese and managed a small smile when Figt wrinkled her nose at the taste. Then they stretched on the floor of the great room to rest. After a long time Moralin said, “Figt.”

“Hmm?” The other girl was either full of her own pale thoughts or nearly asleep.

“Never mind.” Easier not even to try to find the words.

As the feverbirds whistled, signaling their evening's hunting, Moralin stood up. “Should we wear the velee?” Figt asked.

“I don't know.” Moralin rubbed the silk cloth nervously between her fingers. “My people believe it is death to look upon a priestess, so they will be in their houses. And the streets will be dark with no moon.”

“We can move better without them.”

In the end they decided to leave them behind. When night swallowed the sun, they left the house to walk swiftly through the streets. “Afraid?” Moralin whispered.

“Yes.” Figt was silent for a moment. “Afraid?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Silence cloaked the temple. Even priests and elders must not look on a priestess doing death work. Moralin hoped the stairs were in the same place as in the fighting yard. Important buildings were oriented to the stars and probably designed much the same way. Yes. And when they reached the bottom, she saw a lamplit hall to her left, just as with the fighting yard.

One thing was different: an alcove straight ahead. She motioned, and they quickly crossed the hall and stepped into it. The back wall was crisscrossed with red lines. In the center was a tapestry of a young girl kneeling.
Cora Linga. What do we do now?

Something creaked at the end of the hall.

“If someone finds us here?” Figt asked.

Moralin silently drew one finger across her throat. As if in answer, a sword clanked against stone.

Moralin caught the gasp that leaped in her throat.
Shhhh-shhhh.
Perhaps the men were not coming this way.

She heard a drip, drip of water far away. Then … footsteps. Maybe three men. Walking down the corridor.

She tried to swallow, but her mouth was sand-dry. To reach the stairs, they would have to walk right in front of the approaching men. Anyplace else to hide? Anyplace at all?