Wordlessly Perkar handed him a water skin. The warrior drank deeply.
“Does your leg hurt?” Perkar asked.
“It hurts.” He took another drink of water, then threw the skin back at Perkar, who caught it deftly. “You may call me Good Thief.”
“Good Thief,” Perkar repeated. “Fine. Good Thief, why did you attack us?”
“To kill you.” The warrior sneered. Across the fire, the Black-god chuckled in appreciation.
“Well, you failed in that,” Perkar apprised him lightly.
“Yes. Because we did not believe,” the man retorted bitterly. “We thought the gaan was exaggerating.”
“A shaman?”
“He saw you in a vision. He said you were a disease upon the land. He said you brought the war with the Cattle People.”
Perkar stared. “What?”
“Yes, but he said you were also demons, that only by singing and drumming could you be killed. Only by fighting you with gods.” He turned to gaze at his companion's corpse, at the messy ruin of the horse. “We should have listened, but we wanted your skins. We were fools.”
“You came after us, specifically after usT Perkar pressed, frowning, poking at the fire with a branch, unwilling to meet the Mang's accusing eyes.
“The Brush-Man and the Cattle-Man, traveling together at the stream. The gaan saw you in a vision.”
“Saw us in a vision,” Perkar echoed dully.
The Blackgod sidled up to the fire, sat closer. Ngangata, finished with the tent, joined them, as well.
“You see,” Blackgod said. “You have many enemies, Perkar. Enemies you don't even know about. You need my advice.”
“What do you know about this?” Perkar demanded.
“In the west, there is a Mang shaman. He has been given a vision and seeks your death.”
“Given a vision by whom? By what god? You?” Perkar snapped.
“Oh, no,” Raven answered. “Sent by another friend of yours, the Changeling.”
“The Changeling,” Ngangata interjected placidly, “is not so sentient.”
“Oh, well, certainly you know more about gods than I do. Certainly you know the Changeling better than I, his brother.” Raven grinned evilly, “Listen to me. All you know is altered, for the years have moved. Once the Changeling was the most cunning of us all. Once he was stupider than a beast. Now—well, now he has awakened sufficiently to send dreams to a shaman. To do other things, as well.”
“Why? And why does he provoke them to kill Ngangata and me?”
“That is simple enough,” the Blackgod said, his voice laden with dark glee. “He knows that you have the means to destroy him.”
VI Old Friends
GHE stopped outside of the library door and fingered his neck again, felt the ridge of flesh beneath the high collar, hoping no one would find it suspicious. High collars came in and out of fashion in the palace. They were currently out, but then, he was supposed to be Yen, a merchant's boy who joined the engineer corps of the priesthood. Merchants' sons were known for ambitious but uninformed fashion sense.
He fingered through his memory, as well, retracing his fictional Ufe as Yen, trying to remember all that he had done and said. It would be both embarrassing and dangerous if Ghan were to catch him in a he. Fortunately, he had rarely spoken directly to Ghan, but instead to Hezhi. What he didnt know was how much Hezhi had told Ghan about Yen.
And so he continued to hesitate near the arching entrance to the library, peering around the dark places in his mind, recreating Yen. Soft updock accent, each syllable of each word carefully pronounced. Different from his own Southtown accent with its clipped words and clattery consonants, but familiar enough to him, easy to imitate. His father was supposed to be an up-River trader, himself a lover of the exotic. The trace of a smile lightened his brooding features as he remembered the little Mang statuette he had given Hezhi, the story he fabricated about how his “father” obtained it. Hezhi had loved it—how well he recalled that. Surrounded by a palace full of riches and servants, her eyes had genuinely flown wide in delight at a stone's-weight of brass cast in the form of a horse with a woman's upper body. How would she have felt had she known he took it from the shelf of a petty noble from the Swamp Kingdoms, just after ending the man's overly ambitious career?
The hallway was beginning to become crowded as midmorning absolutions approached. Gaudily clad nobles, prim maidservants, bodyguards, and austere counselors all mingled through the arteries of the palace. Elsewhere they were pooling in fountain rooms, praying to the River where he erupted into the palace itself.
He should leave the hall, he knew. It would not do for someone—from the priesthood, for instance—to recognize him. Especially not now, when the Ahw'en arm of the priesthood—those who investigated mysterious goings-on—must surely be active, searching for some trace of a certain vanished nobleman—the man whose clothes Ghe was currently wearing. The Ahw'en were often Jik, like himself. No, best he avoid crowds.
Thus, although not certain he was prepared, he stepped into the library, where few in the palace ventured.
It was, as he remembered, daunting. Mahogany shelves suffused the illumination from thick-paned skylights, swirled it about the room like cream stirred into coffee. Ghe was struck by the illusion that walls were hung with tapestries woven from the bodies of enormous millipedes, each segment of their bony armor the spine of a book. Most of the books were black and brown, enhancing this impression. The few that stood out—here a deep yellow, burgundy, indigo—these only suggested, somehow, that the great worms were poisonous. The books curled thus around a carpeted area in which several low tables stood, surrounded by cushions for sitting. Beyond, the shelves wandered back into the deep, narrow labyrinth Hezhi had named the Tangle. He remembered how effortlessly Hezhi had glided through the endless shelves of books, selecting first this, then that one for “Yen.” At first he had only pretended to pay attention to her talk of the “index” and the manner in which books were filed. Eventually, however, her enthusiasm proved infectious; knowledge was a weapon, and Hezhi had an arsenal at her command, one she seemed willing to share. He wondered now, belatedly, if she hadn't used that arsenal to defeat him; certainly she had used it to escape the city. But had she somehow found the pale stranger with his supernatural weapon in the pages of these books? Had she conjured him, like a demon, from some tome?
Ghan's desk was set apart, and behind it sat the old man himself, copying or annotating a bulky volume. He wore an umber robe, and his skin gleamed a peculiar parchment yellow, so that he seemed as much a part of the room as the ancient documents that filled it. His features were sharp—jagged, almost—harsh frown lines etched permanently in his flesh. Not a pleasant man, Ghe remembered. He had dreamed, on first meeting him, of slipping a knife into his heart. Later he had come to think of the scholar as brave—but he had never learned to like him.
Though Ghe was the only other visible person in the room, Ghan never raised his eyes to acknowledge him.
He approached Ghan timidly, as “Yen” might. The old man continued writing, obscure and beautiful characters licking from his pen onto the paper with astonishing speed. Ghe cleared his throat.
Ghan did look up then, his eyes hard pinpricks of annoyance beneath the wrapped black cloth that obscured his bald head.
“Yes?” he inquired testily.
“Ah,” said Ghe, suddenly not certain that his reluctance was entirely feigned. “Master Ghan, you might remember me. I am—”
“I know who you are,” Ghan snapped.
For a frozen instant, Ghe felt a stab of something like fear. Ghan's gaze seemed to tear away the brocaded collar and reveal his throat, his true nature. He was acutely aware of all of the things he had forgotten. Had Ghan ever known him to be a Jik?