Chapter Two

[cityofthehand]

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CHAPTER TWO






CHAPTER TWO



"Tell me what I have to do!"

Decaran feebly raised a bloody hand and touched her arm. "Left…pocket." His blood sizzled through her sleeve.

Switching pressure from one hand to another, she used the unharmed back of her free hand to push back his dark blue coat and skim along the satin lining until she felt some there. Clumsy with pain and the stickiness of drying, burning blood, she cursed until the black cord of a gold and white talisman was in her hand. She held it above him. He strained to hook a finger into the cord. He put it on his chest, just above her hand and whispered a sorcerer’s word. Maira shook her head. If the professor was a sorcerer, why hadn’t he defended himself with magic?

Instantly, golden light burst out and spread over the room, drenching the world in tones of gold, beige, and sand. He breathed easier and pushed her hands away from him with new strength. The blood disappeared, too, though her hands still burned.

If he’d been a sorcerer, why hadn’t he used magic to defend himself?

“You came,” he said in a clear, strong voice. Startled, she looked around. They were in the same room, it just looked very different. Had he healed himself?

“What is this?” she asked, holding her shaking hands close to her body.

“I am burning the last of my life and my soul to give you this warning. I don’t have much time. I can’t repeat myself. There is something in this house you must take. A device. Many would kill to have it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Shush, child.”

Maira scowled at being called a child, but held back her retort. “You need me to take it somewhere so that it can do what you meant it to do. It’s the reason someone tried to kill you.”

“Yes, good. You’re as clever as I’d expected. You’ll need to be. I’m sorry, but you are the only one left. It will look to you like a clock, but made strangely. It’s in a compartment under the rug, by that couch. When I die, the wards protecting it will be gone. Take it.”

“And then?”

“Hide it, keep it safe. There is a piece of paper, a spell is written on it. The spell will help.”
“I can’t do magic! I’m not a sorceress, I’m just a courier!” she screamed and winced, rocking slightly on her knees. Listening through the haze of pain and fear was very hard. Dying as he was, he still spoke too fast.

“Yes, you can. The magic will come, trust me, I know it will.”

“What does the device do? Is that why that person was hurting you, were they after it, too?”
“That doesn’t matter. Do not underestimate the power of what I created. It could turn a lord into a god. It has only one good purpose, after that it will destroy itself. The one who should have it knows this. Take it to them. I do not know their face or name, only where and when we were meant to meet. Metequ Square, the park there, noon on the second market day of next week. Do you understand? Remember that.”

“Yes. What does the device do, what is it for?”

“They want to let the darkness in, break the order of the world. I cannot count the suffering if it is lost. The person I was meeting knows the device’s purpose. This is the last hope of seeing it used correctly and in time, do you understand? You must see that it gets there. Use the spell.”

“But how will I know who, if you don’t?”

“Three red bands around your right arm. That is the sign we agreed on.”

Maira narrowed her eyes. How did they agree on anything if they never met, never even traded names? Maybe letters, but still, wouldn’t that mean knowing where to send the letters, and thus, where to at least begin finding this other person? She shook her head. It wasn’t important. “What if I can’t do it? What if I can get there?”

“You must.”

“If something happens? I need more! Please! Who told you about the other person?”
“The Tsaqa Tract. The signs were there first. She was the go between, so if one was taken, the other would remain.” Decaran’s eyes grew distant, glossy. Pale gold tears leaked from the corners of his eyes. “Everything was so beautiful in the garden that night, sweet like honeysuckle. The singing from the temple in all the blue lights. Oh, the blue lights. What a terrible thing to tell a person in that place. I trembled when I understood. ”

The golden glow around them flickered. Maira gritted her teeth, frustration mimicking fury. “Tell me who killed you! What does the device do, I need to know more!”

“No, precious one. Don’t fret over me,” he said. He patted her arm and smiled up with a dreamy, happy gaze as if she was inordinately dear to him. He must have believed she was someone else, and she wondered who it was he longed for in that moment. “Tell no one. Many will come when I have died. Say nothing.”

“You’re not dying! Just keep talking to me, keep breathing. Someone will come, they’ll get a healer.”

The light flickered more, got dimmer. His eyes grew glassy, but his smile remained. “Look at you, I never thought to behold, I never…how could she have told me adequately…you.”

“No! Pay attention, the device! The one who hurt you, who were they?”

“Many will come, they’ll ask questions. Lie. Tell them I died and said nothing. Tell no one. Trust none but yourself. It must stay safe.”

“Who should I be watching out for, who? Just tell me who killed you!” she shouted. The light pulled in closer, the glow shimmered and faded slightly. Maira grabbed his shirt, shook his body to rouse him. Tears blurred her vision. “Stay here!”

“This is the last thing. Go to shadow. If trouble comes, shadow will protect you. Find shadow. Oh, shadow, I tried.”

“Shadow? What shadow? Shadow of what! I don’t fucking understand!” She sucked back a wet breath. The glow flickered one last time and was gone.

Panic struck like a hammer blow. She shook his body fiercely. “No! Keep talking! Get up!”

Nothing happened, there were no noises, not even a rattle of remnant breath. She raised up on her knees, gazing down in shock without realizing that her hands had stopped burning.

Maira sat back on her heels with a shivering sigh. The first thing she noticed was the blood. All of it, everywhere. On her, him, the floor, the furniture. Her blistered hands were too stiff to move. She stood up awkwardly, holding them close and searched around the room for the rug. She turned in circles for a long time, her eyes passing over it each time even though it was just beneath her feet.

At length, her mind cleared enough that she realized this. She pushed the edge aside with her foot and folded the rug on itself. Underneath, as promised, was a loose floorboard. Sinking to her knees, she reached for the small brass ring with her right thumb and lifted it. Inside lay a cube of glass framed in silver. Brass workings - cogs and wheels and joints - caught the glow at its heart of a bright green jewel that pulsed like a beating heart wrapped in silver wire. She reached in and picked it up by holding it between her arms, careful not to use too much strength lest the glass break. Under it was a folded piece of thin rice paper.

She pushed the trap door down with her elbow, stood up and pushed the rug back into place with her feet. She checked the door, but this time to make sure she remained alone. Now she prayed for the opposite of what she’d wanted moments ago.

Maira returned to the body and placed the device by Decaran’s head, just out of the reach of the blood and gingerly opened the folded rice paper with sticky, bloody fingers. The paper bore a sketched diagram with instructions in New Pahali. She let out a hard breath. She could read New Pahali, but not as well as she read Low Domainish. Her eyes drifted over the words and the images.

After reading and re-reading, Maira became fairly certain the spell was meant to hide the device by literally hiding it within in her. It would create a kind of magic pocket, the size of the device, by her heart that nobody would be able to see or feel. There it was meant to remain until she performed the second spell to take it out. Nervously, she scanned the instructions for a third time, then glanced at the door. People could show up at any time.

Maira shook her head. She’d never done anything more than a blessing on her door, and that wasn’t really magic because everyone did them. She checked the door again. The spirits only knew how long she had. With a deep breath, she braced herself for the pain of holding the device.

Cold sweat and acrid nausea rolled over her with each second she continued pressing her burned skin against the glass. She cast an eye downward and double checked the words before she mumbled the first of the transliterated symbols on the page. The sounds meant nothing to her, they only made her voice drone in her own head, resonating in her chest and through as she spoke. She got dizzy, but didn’t stop speaking. Each repetition of the seven small sounds got easier until they were slipping off her tongue automatically, sure and perfect each time. Her eyes rolled back in her head as if an invisible hand had tugged on her hair.

Things flashed in her mind, all strange and wrong. She heard light and tasted sounds. The words took on shapes, stories, even personalities. Over and over she spoke them, calling them, creating their forms in the air with her breath and filling the room with these seven gathered entities, now more than mere words.

Maira pressed the device into her breastbone and with a hitch of panic, the cube slid through skin and muscle. Her chest tightened, but she kept speaking, breathing in short little pants. She pushed in harder. Breathing got more difficult, but she fought for air, fought to make her chest expand as the box went into a nothing space beside her heart. She focused sharply on the words, clung to their feel, their pattern. A strong word, then a slippery one, then an elegant cool word that tasted like the sound of soft silk against skin. She pressed with her blistered palm until it was just skin against skin. She dared to look down, but did not stop. The device was all the way in. Her next breath came so easy it was sweet. She stopped and her mind congealed into rightness again.

She bore no mark, save a smear of blood on her shirt and skin. Nothing that would indicate what was hidden there. She herself could not even feel it. She laughed, hysterical and shaking and picked up the paper. She folded it again and tucked it into her right boot, under her sock.

Maira rose and went for the open door. For a moment, her voice evaded her. The lovely quiet of the night had turned oppressive. She considered fleeing, but the nightwatchers had seen her coming this way. They’d see her leaving, without bag or coat, covered in blood. She could do nothing if she were arrested.

She ran into the middle of the street, looking right and then left. With a breath so deep it stung her throat, she screamed with all she had. “Help! Murder! Murder!” Maira ran south in the direction of the Palace of Supreme Unity, announcing the murder with every exhaled shout. Eventually she would have to encounter a nightwatcher, a guard, or a soldier.

Turning a corner, she stopped to gather breath and hold her still bleeding side. When she raised up, two figures moved from behind a building. She shouted to them and raised her hands. Steel at their sides glinted, they walked with quick but unhurried gaits. “There’s been a murder! Help!”

They stopped, turned. She waved even more frantically. “Murder! Murder!”

They jogged to her. Both were Dhatan, but she couldn’t make out much more in the darkness. She only knew their race by their height and heavy, looming builds. When they were closer, inside a slip of light coming from someone’s door she caught sight of their solid, milky beige eyes and their light green-brown hair. That confirmed it. Definitely Dhatan. “There’s been a murder, I was delivering a message and I found him, they killed them, they killed him!” she told them in a rush. Playing the part of a panicked bystander came very easy.

“Show us where,” said the one to the right. She nodded and wasted no time leading them, in a run, back to the house where the professor laid as she’d left him. She lead them in through the open door to the body. The professor was exactly as he’d been left. Maira could not fathom why she was surprised to see her coat, still pressed and bloody on his chest, unmoved.

“What happened here?” the second Dhatan guard demanded. The first rew twin daggers. They traded a look and the other went off, creeping slowly around the house to secure it.

The lie came in a rush, tumbling from her lips so quickly she didn’t have time to thin. “I’m a courier, I was delivering a package. I heard him screaming and I came in and this man was stabbing him and then we fought and he cut me and then he ran off and I tried to help him and his blood it burned me and I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t, and I didn’t know what to do. He just died, I couldn’t stop it.”

The Dhatan sighed and stooped down to examine the professor, then called in a booming voice, “Orryn-wi!”

Orryn-wi came rushing back into the front room from the back of the house. “What?”

“It’s the Professor. Decaran.”

The word Orryn-wi replied with must have been a curse word in Dhatan, which Maira did not speak except for a few functional phrases. They talked to each other in that language, back and forth. Maira understood nothing of what they said.

Then they stopped and turned to her. Orryn-wi asked in High Domainish, “You saw the attacker?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“Did you know who it was?”

“No. I’ve never been here before in my life. I’m was just delivering a package.”

“Do you have it?”

She nodded and went for her bag, laying by the wall where it had been dropped. The small package, boxed and tied up with plain string, was difficult to get at. Her fingers refused to bend. The slighest pressure resulted in intense pain. Once she had it, she handed it to Orryn-wi, afraid of the giant hand that snatched it from her. Orryn-wi nodded to the other Dhatan who then jogged out the door, blowing a high pitched whistle. Absently, Maira thought that maybe getting a whistle of her own might be a good idea. It seemed a lot more effective than yelling. She realized then that her throat hurt.

“You will sit and tell me everything,” Orryn-wi instructed, pointing to the couch with a thick commanding finger. She nodded silently and shuffled to it. She sat on very delicately on the edge, worried about getting the professor’s very nice couch dirty. It must have cost a lot, upholstered in fine blue Southern silk as it was. Blood would ruin it. She stared at the whirling floral pattern in the silk, suddenly fascinated by it.

“What happened?” Orryn-wi prompted, loudly.

She came out of her trance with a full body jerk and looked around as if she wasn’t sure where she was. “Oh, sorry. I, uh, I’m a courier. I work for Haringe in Blue Gardens, in the Tayeland.”

“I know it. Go on.”

“I came here to deliver the package I gave you. I heard screaming so I came in, and someone was on top of him, just stabbing him over and over.” Maira put the back of her hand to her face as her stinging eyes watered and her lips quivered. Across from her, Orryn-wi’s face remained impassive, reflecting the indifference she expected of a Dhatan guard. There would be no sympathy from this one. The other four races looked down on humans. Unlike the others, humans had no internal magic, no wings, no powers, no shapes to shift into. Any magic they worked came from words, talismans, and secret books with secret words. They couldn’t bend the wind and weather like the Asna’isi or shake the earth like the Dhatan. The other races, and even many Rok who were half human themselves, considered them weak. Some even said humans were deformed.

“Then?”

Maira gathered herself with a deep breath. “I tried to help him. I grabbed the knife, and we fought and then they cut me and they ran off. And I tried to stop the bleeding, but the blood burned my hands.” She held her palms up to the Dhatan guard. Orryn-wi grabbed her wrist harshly and pulled it close to better inspect it. The beige eyes ran over the blistered, bloody, peeling skin of her hands.

“It seems you tell the truth. This is sorcerery far beyond you.” The contempt was obvious, the sneer on Orryn-wi’s face redundant. She pressed the back of her hand once more to her face, as though she were about to sob again. This time it was to hide in case she revealed herself with an angry frown or an inappropriate smirk. She had done quite a bit of sorcerery in the last hour of her life, and done it well. Well enough that her heart was beating even though there was a device the size of half a loaf of bread in there.

“Who was he?” she asked, looking to the professor’s body.

“You do not need to know that. What did the attacker look like?”

“Human. Tall. Lighter skin than me, but darker than the professor. Dark hair and dark eyes, too.”

“What garments did the killer wear? Were there any markings?”

“I don’t remember. I think something dark blue or dark green, a long coat maybe. I didn’t get a very good look. Everything happened so quick.”

“It must have seemed that way to you,” Orryn-wi said. More contempt. “You will stay until you are released to go. You will not discuss this with any other person unless you given permission. Do not move from this place.”

The other Dhatan guard returned, accompanied by other guards who were not Dhatan. Two were Tsaqa and one Asna’isi. They folded their wings close to their bodies. The Asna’isi guard had to duck like the Dhatan because the door, built for a human, wasn’t quite tall enough.

Shaking her head to keep aware and alert, she watched the guards. They conversed in whispers and periodically looked over their shoulders at her. They were not speaking in a language or volume she could understand, probably Asna this time. She looked down at her hands. The pain had subsided to a throbbing that stayed just below her threshold. If she didn’t move, it didn’t hurt so much. She opened her mouth to ask if they had a healer or at least some bandages, but the squinting stare the Tsaqa guard gave shut her up.

It was best to say and do nothing, to sit on the couch and do her best not to cry, and to try to figure out what she was going to do next.