“Whenever a F’dor spirit came forth from its broken vault within the Earth, it took an initial host. It had to be a fairly powerless one, like a child, or a weak man, because it can only subsume a host weaker than itself, or at best as powerful as it is, and when it is first out in the air of the world it is weak. Blood is spilled—perhaps just a drop, but there is a bond of blood each time. It needs that blood to tie it to a living entity. That blood becomes the demon’s own. Even as it grows, that blood remains its own, though it is mixed and tainted and diluted with the blood of each new host it takes on.
“The F’dor who fathered these children was a spirit from the old world. It doubtless had many hosts on Serendair. We know it has had even more since it has been here.” He stopped, and they both turned their heads at the sound of giggling. A group of children, mistaking them for lovers nuzzling in a back alley, stared for a moment, then scattered at the ferocious look in Achmed’s eyes, the only of his features visible. He scowled, then returned his lips to her ear.
“Given how powerful we know it is now, it has doubtless masked what might have begun as one drop of blood with the blood of hundreds, perhaps thousands of other hosts. Then it made the Rakshas. It mixed the blood of feral animals with that of its human host. The Rakshas impregnated the mothers of these children, diluting the content of the F’dor’s blood even further.
“So understand—to me, the signature of the F’dor’s blood in the veins of these children is like a whiff of perfume I have smelled only once before. You are asking me to find that odor in the air of this town, amid all the other scents here. And the person who wore that perfume wore it a month ago.”
“Well, he probably hasn’t bathed in the intervening time, if that helps,” Rhapsody said lightly. Her green eyes sparkled, then grew solemn. “I’m sorry to put so much weight on your shoulders. What shall we do next?”
Achmed sighed and leaned away, standing upright again. “We’ll head southeast, and see what we find. And if we can’t find this child, or any of the others, we’ll have to make do with the one or ones we can find, even if it’s only the baby we know will be born in Tyrian nine weeks hence. You have the exact time, date, and place for that one. All I need is a small amount of pure demon’s blood.”
“And abandon the others to their damnation? To the Void?”
Achmed didn’t blink. “Yes.”
“You would really do that?”
“In a heartbeat, so to speak. Now, come. Our chance to find this thing grows slimmer with every moment that passes.” Achmed put out his hand, gloved in a thin leather sheath, and Rhapsody took it. Together they crossed the alley and disappeared into the depths of Yarim Paar.
5
Omet did not like the new apprentice.
Under normal circumstances, Omet was busy enough that he would be hard pressed to have even noticed the new apprentice. As an apprentice himself in the tile foundry, two years away from his journeyman’s year, work was endless and life sleepless. He didn’t have time for opinions, or sentiments, or anything else that might distract him from remembering to check the temperature of the slip as it cooked, or getting up every two hours to stoke the fires of the ovens through the night with peat and coal, dung, and, sparingly, wood.
The red clay of Yarim had been of little use for raising crops, but it made wonderful tile. In its heyday Yarim had produced most of the utilitarian drainage and paving stones that built the great Cymrian cities, as well as the mosaics and ceramic tiles that decorated them. Yarim had adorned itself in the grandest pieces, from the glistening fountainbeds that surrounded the duke’s palace to the walls of the Oracle’s temple. Even now, in its declining years, with the availability of the water necessary to make it limited, Yarim still produced both tile and pottery for export.
The enormous foundry was the city’s largest building outside of the various government facilities and the temple of the Oracle. It stood, partially empty, at the outskirts of the city to the southeast, near the largest interprovince thoroughfare. Caustic black smoke from the fires that burned night and day hung heavy in the air above and around the building and the nearby streets, making it difficult to breathe, so there were few other buildings, and no residences near it.
When Omet’s mother had apprenticed him to the proprietor of the tile-works, she had known full well the life to which she was sentencing her son. The foundry’s owner, a diminutive woman of mixed human and Lirin blood by the name of Esten, was known by sight or name or reputation not only through all of the province of Yarim, but west in Canderre and south in Bethe Corbair as well.
Esten’s small physical stature was in direct opposition to her social one; publicly she was the owner and operator of Yarim’s largest foundry. Even more commonly known was her position as chief of the bloodthirsty Raven’s Guild, a coterie of blacksmiths, thugs, and professional thieves that ruled the dark hours in Yarim.
Despite her ferocious reputation, Esten’s face was a pretty one, an exotic countenance with angular lines and high cheekbones, probably owing to her Lirin blood. That anyone had even seen it at all was a testament to her status in and of itself, since most women in Yarim took the veil. Most striking of all that face’s features were the eyes, dark and inquisitive like that of the bird her guild had been named for. Those eyes always held a hint of amusement, even when they were black with anger, and were more piercing in their stare than an ice pick. Omet had decided at the meeting where he was chosen as an apprentice that he would always avoid their gaze if at all possible. The few seconds he had been the target of it had made him fear he would lose his water onto the floor at her feet. It was of little surprise to him that his mother had not come to visit him once in the five years since then.
For the most part he had managed to avoid Esten’s notice. She came every new moon to check the progress of the tunnel, and when she did he made certain he was busy feeding the slave children or stoking the ovens so as to eliminate any encounter but a chance one.
Perhaps his decision to remain away from her notice had been an error in judgment. Ever since Vincane, the new apprentice, had been pulled from the tunnel and promoted to work beside Omet and the others, he had gone out of his way to endear himself to Esten, to curry her favor in a dozen slavish, obvious ways that had turned Omet’s stomach. Those antics had seemed to have turned Esten’s head as well; now she favored Vincane, brought him small treats and tousled his hair, laughing and teasing him. There was something in Vincane’s eyes, something dark and inquisitive that mirrored Esten’s own, and it served to place him in a position as her pet.
It was not this favored status that bothered Omet. Rather, it was the cruel streak that Vincane displayed without reprimand, occasionally toward Omet and the other apprentices, but mostly toward the slave children.
For the most part, no one saw much of those children. Food and water were handed down the shaft several times a day, always as a reward for making their quota of clay. Fifty buckets of clay came up, one pail of water was lowered down. One hundred buckets of clay came up, one box of food went down. Up, down, up, down. Such was the life of a fifth-year apprentice, hauling the hook-stick up out of the well, dumping the clay, tossing the pail back down again, occasionally bestowing a little bread and broth on the small dark beings that scrambled like rats at the bottom of the shaft and in the tunnel beyond. In between they handed down the hods of finished tiles and mortar, all the while minding the furnace and the ovens, checking the huge vats of clay slip as it baked in the sweltering heat, ringing the bell to summon the journeymen from the separate annex in which they lived and worked when their special firings were finished.