They puts him in the fire and he kills us. He kills us all.
Ji studied John silently for several moments. Finally, she said, "You have come from far away and you have great power."
John nodded again, not trusting himself to speak. Ji leaned closer to him. He could smell the animal musk of her heavy golden coat.
She said, "If I teach you, you must swear to use your power to serve the Fai’daum."
John balked. He had already committed one murder. He didn’t know how many more deaths he could bear to be responsible for.
"I don’t want to kill people," John said. The fathi in his blood made him feel that this might be a reasonable response. "I don’t like hurting people."
"Few of us do," Ji replied. "But if we are to save this world from the Payshmura, that will be necessary."
Ji stared intently into his face. A pale ring of light glowed up from the dark depths of her animal eyes as she studied John. Her intense gaze seemed to pierce him.
"How many people will you destroy if I do not train you?" Ji whispered the question. A wave of cold fear cut through the sweet warmth of the fathi.
She knew what he was.
John couldn’t look at her. He gazed down at his hands.
"If you’ll teach me, I will use my power to serve the Fai’daum," John said.
Ji nodded and padded away from John. She turned her attention to Saimura. "I assume you wish to sponsor Jahn into the Fai’daum?"
"No, I brought him here so that you and Giryyn could amuse yourselves by feeding him fathi and making him tell you the details of his love life," Saimura replied with undisguised sarcasm. He must know Ji well, John thought, to speak to her like this.
Ji just ignored Saimura’s jab. "Very well. Then Jahn will be inducted tomorrow. Right now he needs a bath and sleep. The fathi should wear off by morning."
Giryyn, who had been quiet for most of the conversation, now addressed Ji, "What about this storm?"
"That will have to wait until tomorrow when Jahn is better rested and I’ve had time to prepare." Ji showed her white teeth. John didn’t know how to read the expression. "It may well be another day or two of snow."
"Gin’yu and her men need to leave soon if they are going to get the supplies to Sabir," Giryyn said.
"One more day isn’t going to matter. Gin’yu will see Sabir soon enough." There was a tone to Ji’s voice that John had not heard previously: bitterness.
John reached out and clumsily patted her. Ji glanced to him at the contact and John attempted to offer her a sympathetic smile.
"Saimura, you’d better take your man down to the Warren before he collapses," Ji said.
"Thank you." Saimura stood up and helped John to his feet. John hadn’t expected to have such difficulty. As a rule he rarely stumbled and never fell. But the fathi affected him strongly. He leaned on Saimura as they staggered down the narrow stairs at the back of the chapel. Saimura led him between casks of aging wine and huge rounds of wax-sealed cheeses. Hidden behind a wooden rack of pungent sausages there was a small door and another flight of stairs.
As they descended, the closeness of surrounding stone and earth soothed him. He traced his fingers across the rough surfaces of the carved walls, feeling the strength of granite and iron flowing into him. After a few steps he found that he could walk on his own.
The tunnels were narrow and lit with the same pale green lamplight that the kahlirash’im had used in Vundomu. John remembered thinking that the lamp water had to contain some kind of bioluminescent life. Now he thought he could see tiny forms flickering.
"Moon water," Saimura said to him.
John nodded. Wah’roa had told him the same thing.
That had only been three weeks ago. It felt like years had passed since then. Bill had still been alive. Laurie had been free. John remembered gazing at Ravishan and feeling that their future together was assured.
Sorrow welled up in John, but seconds later it was lost in the soft haze of fathi. John ran his fingers over the rough surface of the wall, exploring the hard angles where picks and hammers had bitten into the stone. Men and women had to have spent decades carving out these tunnels.
"Jahn?" Saimura asked.
"Sorry. My thoughts were drifting."
"I’m the one who should apologize. I can’t believe that they would feed you fathi."
"They had to be sure I wasn’t a spy," John said, shrugging. "It was a reasonable thing to do."
"They could have trusted me," Saimura grumbled.
"Maybe they will next time." John’s words came out slowly. He had to concentrate hard on them. It had to be a side effect of the fathi. A speculation was neither a lie nor the truth. For a moment John felt a little dizzy, but it passed.
"Ji thinks I’m still a child," Saimura said. "I’ve killed men and she still treats me this way. I suppose mothers are just like that."
"Ji is your mother?" John asked. At first he thought he had misunderstood Saimura. John had no idea how a dog could give birth to a human child. But then, four years ago he couldn’t have imagined that a dog would have been interrogating him either.
Ji did act like Saimura’s mother. She had come for him at the blood market despite the ushman’im and ushiri’im gathered there. And though he didn’t know her well, he couldn’t imagine that anyone with her reputation would have tolerated snide comments from just any random subordinate.
Saimura glanced away and nodded. He didn’t seem embarrassed so much as resigned as if he expected John to say something awkward or crude. John imagined even well-meaning people had made revolted comments despite themselves. Even by the standards of Basawar, Saimura’s birth must have seemed bizarre. Most likely, Saimura endured on a routine basis the same kind of horrified look that Giryyn had just given John.
"She wasn’t always a dog. For a very short time she wore a woman’s flesh. But I think she felt guilty for taking the woman’s life…" Saimura paused a moment, then added, "My father is Sabir. Just in case you were curious. People generally are after they find out that Ji is my mother."
"Oh." John wasn’t sure what else to say. Saimura seemed to expect something, so he said, "I’ve heard the name before, but I don’t know anything about him."
"Really? I thought everyone knew Sabir."
"No – never met him," John said.
For some reason this made Saimura laugh.
The air in the tunnels was warm and sluggish. A smell of bread ovens, human bodies, earth, and animals rolled over John. The atmosphere struck John as both comforting and confining.
"Sabir was one of the founders of the Fai’daum," Saimura told John. "Before him there had been farmers’ revolts, but nothing organized across all of Basawar. He traveled both north and south, gathering fighters and uniting factions into the Fai’daum."
The narrow tunnel they had been following suddenly opened up into a wide cavern. It stretched out before John and Saimura like a city street. Large pale green lamps hung on chains from the stone ceiling. Doorways and small windows had been carved into the walls.
A cluster of women wearing wool dresses looked up as John and Saimura passed. John noticed the brief exchange of hand signs between one of the women and Saimura. None of them said anything. A young boy darted out of one of the doorways, pulling a goat on a lead behind him.
"Sabir has wives and children all across Basawar," Saimura said quietly to John. "But Ji never married him."
"He doesn’t sound like much of a husband anyway," John commented. Saimura looked a little surprised at the response but then grinned at John.
"I’ve met him twice, but I’ve never gotten along with him," Saimura whispered. "Most people love him."
Steadily, a humid heat began to seep through the air. After so long in the snow and harsh wind, the moisture felt soothing to John’s chapped skin.
"The baths are just ahead," Saimura said. "I thought you might want to wash up before you sleep."