Cinnabar Shadows (3 page)

"Can you see it, Brother Cerk?"

"I see it all," Cerk agreed, then squaring his shoulders within his dark robe, he grimly followed his
companion and master down from the balcony to the killing floor where a silent, surly crowd was already
gathered. "I see everything."

That evening was like a dream—a living nightmare.

At sundown, Cerk took a seat behind a table, beside the abattoir door. He methodically and mindlessly
put a broken ceramic bit onto the palm of every thuggish hand that reached toward him once its owner had
crossed the abattoir threshold. A decent wage for a decent night's work: that's what Brother Kakzim said,
as though what these men—the thugs were all males, mostly dwarves, because their eyes saw more than
human eyes in the dark—were going to do tonight was decent.

And perhaps it was. The killing that went on in the abattoirs and would go on in the reservoir cavern
wasn't like the hunting Cerk had done as a boy in the forest, and it wasn't sacrifice as the Brethren made
sacrificial feasts beneath the branches of the BlackTree. In Codesh they practiced slaughter, and the
slaughter of men was no different.

When the doors were shut and barred and a ceramic bit had been placed in every waiting hand, Cerk
had done everything that Brother Kakzim had asked of him. He rolled up his mat, intending to slip quietly
upstairs to his room, but got no farther than the middle steps before Brother Kakzim began his harangue.

Brother Kakzim was no orator. His voice was shrill, and he had a tendency to gasp and stutter when
he got excited. The burly thugs of Codesh exchanged snickering leers and for a moment Cerk
thought—hoped—they'd all walk out of the abattoir. But Brother Kakzim didn't harangue with words. Like
a sorcerer-king, Kakzim used the Unseen Way to focus his audience and forge them into a lethal weapon.
Brother Kakzim worked on a smaller scale than Lord Hamanu: forty hired men rather than an army, but the
effect was the same.

The mat slipped out of Cerk's hands. It bounced down the stairs and rolled unnoticed against the wall.

Cerk returned to the killing floor in an open-eyed trance. His inner voice frantically warned him that his
thoughts were no longer his own, that Brother Kakzim was bending and twisting his will with every step he
took. His inner voice spoke the truth, but truth couldn't overcome the images of hatred and disgust that
swirled up out of Cerk's deepest consciousness. The dark-dwellers were vermin; they deserved to die.
Their death now, for the cause of cleansing Urikj was the sacrifice that redeemed their worthless lives.

With his final mote of free thought, Cerk looked directly at Brother Kakzim and tried to give his
whipped-up hatred its proper focus, but he was no mind-bending match for an elder brother of the
BlackTree brethren. His images were overwhelmed.

The last thing Cerk clearly remembered was grabbing a torch and a stone-headed poleaxe that was as
long and heavy as he was. Then the mob surged toward a squat tower at the abattoir's rear, and he went
with them. Brother Kakzim stood by the tower's door. His face shone silver, like a skull in moonlight.

Delusion! Cerk's inner voice screamed when Brother Kakzim's eyes shot fire and one of the thugs fell
to the ground. Mind-bending madness! Go back!

But Cerk didn't go back. Wailing like a dwarven banshee, he kept pace with the mob as it made its
noisy way to the cavern.

Later, much later, when he'd shed his bloodstained clothes, Cerk consoled himself with the thought that
he wasn't strong, even for a halfling. He had no skill with heavy weapons. It was possible—probable—that
he hadn't killed anyone. But he didn't know; he couldn't remember anything after picking up the torch and
axe.

He didn't know how his clothes had become bloodstained.

He was afraid to go to sleep.

All residents of Urik knew precisely when Lord Hamanu's curfew began, but few knew exactly when
it ended. Those who could afford to laugh at the Lion-King's laws said curfew ended one moment after it
began. Templars said curfew ended at sunrise and they'd arrest or fine anyone they caught on the streets
before the sun appeared above the city walls, but usually they left the city alone once the sky began to
brighten. Someone had to have breakfast waiting when the high and mighty woke up. Someone had to
entertain the nightwatch templars before they went on duty and again when they left their posts. Someone
had to sweep the streets, collect the honey jars, kindle the fires; someone had to make breakfast for the
entertainers, sweepers, honeymen, and cooks. And since those someones would never be the yellow-robed
templars of the night-watch, compromises as old as the curfew itself governed Urik's dark streets.

Nowhere were the nighttime rituals more regular than in the templar quarter itself, especially the
double-walled neighborhood that the high templars called home. Even war bureau templars, each with a
wealth of colored threads woven into their yellow sleeves, knew better than to question the comings and
goings of their superiors. They challenged no one, least of all the thieves and murderers, who'd undoubtedly
been hired by a dignitary with the clout to execute an overly attentive watchman on the spot, no questions
asked. And if the watch would not challenge the criminals in their own quarter, they certainly left the high
templars and their guests alone as well.

The sky above the eastern wall was glowing amber when an alley door swung open and a rectangle of
light briefly illuminated the austere red-striped yellow wall of a high templar residence. The dwarven
sergeant leaned heavily on the rail of her watchtower, taking note of the flash, the distinctive clunk of a
heavy bolt thrown home again, and a momentary silhouette, tall and unnaturally slender, against the
red-striped yellow wall. She snorted once, having recognized the silhouette and thereby knowing all she
needed to know.

Folk had to live, to eat, to clothe themselves against the light of day and the cold of night. It wasn't any
templar's place to judge another poor wretch's life, but it seemed to the sergeant that sometimes it might be
better to lie down and die. Short of the gilded bedchambers of Hamanu's palace, which she had never seen,
there wasn't a more nefarious place in all Urik than the private rooms of a high templar's residence. And
the slender one who slipped quietly through the lightening shadows below her post spent nearly every night
in one disreputable residence or another.

"Great Hamanu's infinitesimal mercy strike you down, child," the sergeant whispered as the footsteps
faded.

It was not a curse.

Mahtra felt anonymous eyes at her back as she walked through the templar quarter. She didn't fear
those who stared at her. There was very little that Mahtra feared. Before they drove her out onto the
barren wastes, her makers had given her the means to take care of herself, and what her innate gifts could
not deflect, her high templar patrons could. She had not developed the sensitivities of born-folk. Fear, hate,
love, friendship were words Mahtra knew but didn't use often. It wasn't fear that made her pause every
little while to adjust the folds of the long, black shawl she clutched tightly around her thin shoulders.

It wasn't because of cold, either, though there was a potent chill to the predawn air. Cold was a
sensitivity, just like fear, that Mahtra lacked, though she understood cold better than she understood fear.
Mahtra could hear cold moving through the nearest buildings: tiny hisses and cracklings as if the long-dead
bones that supported them still sought to warm themselves with shrinking or shivering. Soon, as sunrise
gave way to morning, the walls would warm, then grow hot, and the hidden bones would strive to shed the
heat, stretching with sighs and groans, like any overworked slave.

No one else could hear the bones as Mahtra could, not even the high templars with their various and
mighty talents, or the other nightfolk she encountered in their company. That had puzzled Mahtra when she
was new to her life in Urik. Her sensitivities were different; she was different. Mahtra saw her
differences in the precious silver mirrors high templars hung on their walls. They said mirrors could not lie.
Of course, everyone was different in a mirror's magical reflection. Some of those she met nightly in these
identically striped residences were more different than she was. That was hardly surprising: the high
templars who commanded the gatherings Mahtra attended were collectors of the exotic, the new, and the
different of the city.

Mahtra's skin was white, that was one difference—not pale like that of a house-bound courtesan who
never saw the light of day, but white like chalk or salt or bones that the sun had bleached dry. Her skin was
cool to the touch, harder and lightly scaled, as if she'd been partly made from snakes or lizards. Her body
grew no hair to cover her stark skin, but there were burnished, sharp-angled scars on her shoulders and
around her wide-set turquoise eyes, scars that were like gold-leaf set into her flesh. The makers had put
those scars on her, though Mahtra could not remember when or how. They were what the makers had
given her to protect her, as born-folk had teeth and knives. Mahtra knew she could protect herself against
any threat, but she could not explain how she did it, not to Father, not to herself.

The dignitaries she met at the high templar gatherings were fascinated by her skin—as they were
fascinated by anything exotic. They handled her constantly, sometimes with ardent gentleness, sometimes
not.

The reasons for their fascination were unimportant to Mahtra, so long as they gave her something
when they were finished. Coins were best; coins had so many uses. She could take them to the market and
exchange them for food, fuel, clothing, or anything else Father and the other waterside dwellers needed.
Jewels were almost as useful; they could be turned into coins in the elven market. Sometimes, though, her
nighttime consorts gave Mahtra things she kept for herself, like the long, black shawl she wore this chilly
morning.

A human merchant had given Mahtra the shawl at one of the first high templar gatherings she'd
attended. He said the forest-weavers of Gulg had woven it from song-spider silk. He said she should wear
it to conceal her delicate white-white skin—and the dark mottled blotches he'd made on it. She obeyed
without argument. Obedience was so much easier than argument when she was still so new and the world,
so old.

Father had sucked on his teeth when she handed him the shawl. Burn it or sell it, he said, throwing it on
the damp, stony shores of the water; there were better ways to live above ground, if that was where she
was determined to live. But Father couldn't tell her how to live those better ways, any more than he could
explain the difference between made and born.

So Mahtra disobeyed him, then, and kept the shawl as a treasure. It warmed her as she walked
between the hut and the high templar residences and it was softer than anything she'd felt before or since.
She didn't think about the merchant; neither he nor the mottled blotches mattered enough to remember. Her
skin always turned white again, no matter how dark a night's handling left it.

And the shawl would hide her no matter what color her skin was.

Hiding; hiding was why Mahtra kept the shawl pulled tight around her. The stares of folk who were
only slightly different from each other hurt far more than the hands that touched her at the high templar
gatherings. Children who looked up from their street games to shout "Freak," or "Spook," or "Show us your
face!" hurt most of all, because they were as new as she was. But children were born; they could hate,
despise, and scorn. She was made; she was different.

Mahtra clung to her shawl and the shadows until she reached yesterday's market. Early-rising folk and
nightfolk like herself were dependent on the enterprising merchants of yesterday's markets: collections of
carts that appeared each sunrise near Urik's most heavily trafficked intersections. Yesterday's markets
served those who couldn't wait until the city gates opened and the daily flood of farmers and artisans surged
through the streets to the square plazas where they set up their stalls and sold their wares. The vendors of
yesterday's markets lived in the twilight and dawn, buying the dregs of one day's market to sell before the
next day's got under way.

Yesterday's markets were very informal, completely illegal, and tolerated by Lord Hamanu because
they were absolutely necessary to his city's welfare. And as with all other things that endured in Urik,
yesterday's markets had become traditional. The half-elf vendor who laid claim to the choice northwestern
corner where the Lion's Way crossed Joiners' Row sold only yesterday's fruit, as his father had sold only
such fruit from the cart he wheeled each dawn to that precise location, and as his children would when their
turn came. His customers, sleepy-headed at either the start or finish of their day's work, relied on his
constancy and he, in turn, knew them, as well as strangers dared to know each other in Urik.

"Cabras, eleganta," he said with a smile and a gesture toward four of the husky, dun-colored spheres.
"Almost fresh from the Dolphiles estate. First of this year's crop, and the best. A bit each, two bits for the
lot."

The fruitseller talked constantly, without expecting an answer, which Mahtra appreciated, and he called
her eleganta, which Father said was a polite word for improper activities, but she liked the sound of it.
Mahtra liked cabras, too, though she had almost forgotten them. Seeing them now on the fruitseller's cart,
she remembered that she hadn't seen them for a great many mornings. For a year's worth of mornings,
according to the half-elf.

Years and crops confused Mahtra. Her life was made up of days and nights, strings of dark beads
following light beads, with no other variations. Others spoke of weeks and years, of growing up and
growing old. They spoke of growing crops, of planting and harvesting. She'd been clever enough to piece
together the notion that food wasn't made in the carts of yesterday's market; food was born somewhere
outside the city walls. But growing was a more difficult concept for someone who hadn't been born, hadn't
been a child, couldn't remember being anything except exactly what she was.

Staring at the cabras, Mahtra felt her differences—her made-ness and her newness—as if she were
standing in an empty cavern and her life were a meager collection of memories strewn in a spiral at her
feet.

When she concentrated, Mahtra found six cabra-places among her memories. Six cabra-years, then,
since wherever cabras were born, wherever they grew, they appeared on the fruitseller's cart just once a
year. That made six years since she'd found herself in Urik and memories began, because the sixth
cabra-place, all bright red and cool, sweet nectar flowing down her throat, was very near the beginning of
the spiral. She'd have to make a new cabra-place in her memory today, the seventh cabra-place. She'd
been in Urik, living in a hide-and-bone hut beside underground water, for seven years.

Changing her hold on her shawl, Mahtra thrust her hand into the morning. She extended one long,
slender finger tipped with a dark-red, long, sharp fingernail.

"Only one, eleganta? What about the rest? Share them with your sisters—"

Mahtra shook her head vigorously. She had no sisters, no family at all, except for Father, who said the
sweet cabra nectar hurt his old teeth. There was the dwarf, Mika, who shared the hide-and-bone hut. Like
her, Mika had no family, but Mika's family had died in a fire and Father had taken Mika in, because he'd
been born. He was "young," Father said, not new, and without family he couldn't take care of himself.

Mika had arrived since the last cabra-place. Mahtra didn't know if he liked sweet fruit.

She extended a second slender finger.

"Wise, eleganta, very wise. Let me have your sack—"

She retrieved a wad of knotted string from the sleeve of her gown. The fruitseller shook it out while
Mahtra sorted two ceramic bits out of her coin-pouch. By the time she had them, the half-elf was stuffing
the fourth cabra into the back. Mahtra didn't want the other fruits, but he didn't notice when she shook her
head. She considered reaching across the cart to get his attention by touching his hand; Father said
strangers didn't touch each other, unless they were children, and she—despite her newness—wasn't a
child. Grown folk got each other's attention with words.

With one hand deathgripped on her shawl and the other clutching her two ceramic bits, Mahtra used
her voice to say: "Not four, only two."

"Eh, eleganta? I don't understand you. Take off your mask."

Mahtra recoiled. She let go of the ceramic bits and snatched her string-sack, four cabra fruits and all.

"Eleganta...?"

But Mahtra was gone, running toward the elven market with her chin tucked down and the shawl
pulled forward.

She took off the mask only in the hide-and-bone hut, where Father knew all her secrets, and in the high
templar residences, but no where else. Though the mask wasn't a part of her, like the burnished marks on
her face and shoulders, she'd been wearing it when her awareness began. Her makers had made the mask
to hide their mistakes. That was what Father said when he examined its carefully wrought parts of leather
and metal... when he'd looked at the face her makers had wanted to keep hidden.
It wasn't the mask that made Mahtra's words difficult to understand; it was the makers. She'd
collapsed the first time she saw her face in a silver mirror—the only time she'd lost her consciousness.
Then she smashed the mirror and cursed her nameless, faceless makers: they'd forgotten her nose. Two
red-rimmed counter-curving slashes reached down from the bony ridge between her eyes. The slashes
ended above a mouth that was equally malformed. Mahtra's lips were thin and scarcely flexible. Her jaw
was too narrow for the soft, flexible tongue that other sentient races used to shape their words. The tongue
the makers had given her, like the. fine scales on her white skin, might have come from a lizard.