E LSEWHERE in Abrusio, the day passed and the soldiers did not come. The girl Griella, who had been a beast, dressed herself in some of Bardolin’s cast-off robes and sat at his table looking absurdly young and vulnerable.
They sipped cellar-cool water and ate bread with olives and a bowl of pistachios, which she loved. The imp stirred restlessly and watched them from its jar; it was almost recovered from its ordeal of the night before.
Why had they not come? Bardolin did not know; but instead of relieving him, their non-appearance made him more uneasy and this was compounded by the face of the slim young girl sitting across the table from him, swinging her bare feet as she ate.
She had a peasant face, which was to say it was browned and freckled by hours and days out in the sun. Her hair was cut short and it gave back a bronze tint to the sunlight, as though some smith had hammered it out on his anvil that morning. Her eyes were as brown as the neck of a thrush and her skin where the ingrained dust had been washed off had a tawny bloom. She was not more than fifteen years old.
Bardolin had helped her wash the clotted blood from her hands and mouth.
After lunch they sat by the great window in the wall of Bardolin’s tower that looked out to the west, down over the city to the sea and the crowded harbour with its tangle of masts. Out on the horizon ships were becalmed by the fallen trade. Their boats were hauling them in, oarstroke by agonizing oarstroke under the torrid examination of the sun.
“Can you see them?” Griella asked him. “I’ve heard that wizards can look further than any other men, can even watch the flames that flicker in the bosoms of the stars.”
“I could cast a farseeing cantrip. With my own eyes I would not be much good to you, I am afraid.”
She digested this. “When I am a beast, I can see the light of men’s hearts in their breasts. I can see the heat of their eyes and bowels in the dark, and I can smell the fear that comes out of them. But I cannot see their faces, whether they are afraid or brave, surprised or astonished. They are no longer men then. That is the way the beast thinks when I am inside it instead of it being inside me.” She looked at her fingers, clean now, the nails bitten down to the quick.
“I can feel their life give out under my hands, and it is a joyous thing. It does not matter whether they are my enemies or not.”
“Not everyone is your enemy, child.”
“Oh, I know. But I do not know of anyone who is my friend. Except you, of course.” She smiled so brightly at him that he felt both touched and disturbed.
“Why did they not come?” she asked. “You said they would try to take you away today.”
“I don’t know.” He would have liked to send the imp out into the city to nose around, but he doubted if it were up to that yet. And with Griella here, he did not like to go out himself. Though he had barely admitted it even to himself, he knew he would not let her slaughter any more men, even those who were taking the pair of them to their deaths. If the soldiers came he would smite her with a spell of unconsciousness. They might even leave her alone, believing her to be just another street urchin. If she changed into her beast form again, she would surely be killed.
“No, don’t touch that.”
She was tapping the imp’s jar and exchanging grins with the little creature.
“Why not? I think it likes me.”
“Nothing must disturb it when it is rejuvenating, else it might metamorphose into something different to what it should be.”
“I don’t understand. Explain.”
“The liquid in the jar is Ur-blood, a thaumaturgical fluid. It is the basis for many experiments, and is difficult to create. But once it has been made, it is . . . malleable. I can adjust it to the needs of the moment. At the moment it is a balm for the tiredness of the imp, like wet plaster being pasted over the cracks in the façade of a house. The imp was grown out of Ur-blood, helped along by various spells and the power of my own mind.”
“Can you grow me one? What a pet it would make!”
Bardolin smiled. “They take months to grow, and the procedure is exhausting, consuming some of the essence of the caster himself. If the imp dies, some of me dies also. There are quicker ways of breeding familiars, but they are abhorrent and the creatures thus engendered, called homunculi, are wayward and difficult to control. And their appetites are foul.”
“I thought that a true mage would be able to whistle up anything he pleased in a trice.”
“The Dweomer is not like that. It extracts a price for every gift it gives. Nothing is had for nothing.”
“You sound like a philosopher, one of those old men who hold forth in Speakers’ Square.”
“There is a philosophy, or rather a law, to the Dweomer. When I was an apprentice I did not learn a single cantrip for the first eight months, though my powers had already manifested themselves. I was put to learning the ethics of spellweaving.”
“Ethics!” She seemed annoyed. “I partake of this Dweomer also, do I not?”
“Yes. Shape-shifting is one of the Seven Disciplines, though perhaps the least understood.”
She brightened. “Could I become a mage, then?”
“To be a mage you must master four of the Seven, and shape-shifters are rarely able to master any discipline other than shifting. There was a debate in the Guild some years ago which contended that shifting was not a discipline at all but a deviancy, a disease as the common folk believe. The motion failed. You and I both have magic in our blood, child.”
“The black disease, they call it, or sometimes just ‘The Change’, Griella said quietly. Her eyes were huge and dark.
“Yes, but despite the superstitions it is not infectious. And it can be controlled, made into a true discipline.”
She shook her head. Her eyes had filled with tears.
“Nothing can control it,” she whispered.
He set a hand on her shoulder. “I can help you control it, if you’ll let me.”
She buried her head in his barrel-like chest.
Someone hammered on the door downstairs.
Her head snapped up. “They’re here! They’ve come for you!”
Under his appalled stare, her eyes flooded with yellow light and the pupils became elongated, cat-like slits. He felt her slight body shift and change under his hands. A beast’s growl issued from her throat.
While she is changing. Before it is too late.
He had had the construction of the spell memorized all morning. Now it left him like a swift exhalation of breath and swooped into her.
There was a savage conflict as the birthing beast fought him and the girl writhed, agonized, caught between two forms. But he beat the thing down. It retreated and underneath it he could sense her mind—human, unharmed, but utterly alien. The revelation shocked him. He had never looked into the soul of a shifter before. In the split second before the spell took hold he saw the beast spliced to the girl in an unholy marriage, each feeding off the other. Then she was limp in his arms, breathing easily. He shuddered. The beast had been strong, even in the moment of its birthing. He knew that if it ever became fully formed he would not be able to control it. He would have to destroy it.
Sweat was rolling down into his eyes. He set the girl down, still trembling.
“Prettily done, my friend,” a voice said.
Standing in the room’s doorway was a tall old man who looked as thin as a tinker’s purse. His doublet, though expensive, hung on him like a sack and his broad-brimmed hat was wider than his shoulders. Behind him a frightened-looking young man bobbed up and down, crushing his own hat between his hands.
“Master,” said Bardolin, a swell of relief rushing through him.
Golophin took his arm. “I must apologize for the rowdiness of our entrance. Blame young Pherio here. He does not like me walking the streets in these times, and he sees an Inceptine on every corner. Pherio, the girl.”