Skeelana and I looked at each other at the same time, as if to check for any stray sprinkles of blood, but we were clean. That was one of the benefits of a crossbow, after all.
Since neither of us dismounted to wash up, I said, “I’ve only ever read about sorcery, and never expected to meet anyone actually practicing it, but I always imagined if I did, it would involve glowing runes in the air, or fireballs lighting up the sky, or…”
“Something flashy?” She laughed.
“Right. And as far as I could tell, you and Soffjian adopted the same sort of stance, did the same kind of thing with your hands, but the results were… different, to say the least. So, my question still stands: what did Soffjian do? How did she strike that Hornman down without so much as touching him?”
Skeelana’s eyes were fixed ahead. I looked where she was, and saw Soffjian crouching down around the edge of the fountain, dipping her fingers in, tips only, and rubbing them delicately along some scales on her armor. Her cloak disguised any blood that might have landed there. Without taking her eyes off the other woman, Skeelana said, “Oh, she can do a bit of memory planting as well if she has to, though frankly not as cleanly or clearly as I can. That isn’t her strength. Her skills are far more… aggressive in nature.”
“She does seem pretty comfortable in combat.”
“What makes you say that? The shiny armor or the long pointy weapon she totes around?”
I saw the gently mocking grin and mischief in her pale eyes. “So, Soffjian is some kind of… martial Memoridon then?”
Skeelana’s smile tilted across her lips. “Never heard that before. I like it. Catchy. Yes, something like that. Like the Syldoon, we are trained according to what talents we seem to possess in abundance. Soffjian showed early on that her mind was… very sharp.”
It was my turn to smile, as I looked at Braylar on the opposite side of the fountain. “Runs in the family, doesn’t it?”
“That it does. So in addition to being trained in a different branch of memory magic, she also underwent quite a bit of combat training as well. She might not be fully-fledged Syldoon trooper, but-”
“She can hold her own well enough.”
“That she can.” There seemed to be a mixture of both pride and trepidation there. “And as for what she did to those poor Hornmen who made the mistake of thinking her easy prey, well, I’m not even sure if I should say.”
It was hard to tell if this was earnest or if she was enjoying baiting me. “As you said, the Syldoon know a fair amount about how this works. Or its effects anyway, right? It’s not as if I’m asking you to reveal secret details about your arcane instruction. Though you can if you like.”
We watched the others climb back into their saddles, and then we were moving again, across the plaza and over to Canal Street, which led to the western gate. Or so I thought. I still hadn’t mastered reading the trails of ceramic tile markers above all the avenues that were supposed to designate what district you were in and where you were headed.
I hadn’t noticed it from the far side, but there was a pillory in one quarter of the plaza, very close to the entrance to Beacon Street. I was hoping it was unoccupied, but as we closed in on it, I saw a man there, head and hands sticking through one end, body the other, kneeling on the stones. His head was hanging, and I wondered if he was dead-while the temperatures at night hadn’t plummeted and the heat during the day wasn’t completely oppressive, that was with the options of taking shelter. Who knows how long he’d been out there in the elements, or how frequently they fed him or tended to his ailments. He looked gaunt-not quite skeletal, but surely not subsisting on much. His head jerked up at our approach, face stubbly, eyes in dark hollows but still hopeful. He licked his chapped lips and said, “A bit of water? Gods defend you, just a few drops?”
There was a wooden placard hanging around his neck that had one work on it: “Thief.” There were worse words to wear around your neck. But better, too.
When he realized we were soldiers, the hope seemed to ebb, and when he saw the Syldoonian noose tattoos on the necks, it disappeared completely. But some perverse courage remained, just the same. “My lords, you ain’t no friends to the Anjurians, and-”
Braylar said, “You are Anjurian, thief.”
“True as rain, but I was meaning the barons, the king. Fancy lords sitting on high seats. You got no more love for them than I do. Spare a few drops, I beg you.”
Mulldoos said, “Be grateful I don’t piss on you face, you stupid prick. Next time, don’t get caught.”
The prisoner’s head fell in despair, a curtain of dark greasy hair covering his face.
We started forward again. Humans really were ingenious when it came to devising ways to cause pain, discomfort, and death. I was actually wrestling with whether or not to turn back and offer the man water. He was likely guilty, but there was always the chance he wasn’t. And even if he was, lopping off a hand probably would have been less cruel. But then Skeelana leaned toward me a little, though not so much that it looked like conspirational whispering, and said, “I will tell you a little, archivist. Though this has less to do with any of your rhetoric, and more to do with my large mouth and inability to keep it shut long. If you wish.”
I got the feeling she somehow guessed what I was about to do and spoke up enough to distract me until the pillory fell behind us.
“I would like,” I replied, forcing myself to forget the poor wretch.
“Very well. It would be too difficult to explain in full, and I’m sure I’d need to violate several precepts in order to give you enough information to make complete sense of it. And since you aren’t even a Syldoon, you’re less than a bumbling neophyte.”
“Thank you kindly.”
“You’re most welcome. But it goes something like this. Everything we sense-with eyes, ears, tongue, nose, and skin, it seems like this is the entirety of the world. Our thoughts, memories, experiences, they are all defined by our senses, filtered through them, right?”
I nodded. “Following you so far.”
“Right. But that’s just it. It’s filtered.”
“No longer following you.”
Skeelana anticipated that. “Or course not. But that’s one of the first things you’re trained to recognize as a Memoridon. To know that we all have a veil.”
“A veil?”
“Several, in fact. And they filter out more of those sensations than you possibly know, letting only a small number of them actually through.”
This certainly wasn’t anything taught at university. Though again, given the source, I was willing to lend it credence. “And why would we have a veil? Veils?”
“Because the gods aren’t always cruel?” She laughed. It was a pleasant sound. Contagious. “See, if we didn’t have them, we’d become overwhelmed. Completely, utterly overwhelmed. Immediately. At least without the kind of instruction Memoridons receive. We learn how to slowly pull back layers of the veil, allowing more and more through, without being damaged by the deluge of sensations. It takes years to accomplish this, but it’s the source of most everything else we do-understanding how the veils work, and how to manipulate them.”
This was a heady idea, literally and figuratively, and I wasn’t sure I had a complete handle on it, but I knew I couldn’t press her about it indefinitely. And I’m sure there was only so much she could or was willing to divulge. “So Soffjian did, what, exactly? To the Hornmen?”
We left the plaza, turning down a street and heading toward the city wall and some gate or other. Skeelana leaned in my direction a bit and smiled. “Uninitiated or not, I figured a bright boy like you would have pieced that together. There’s an art to it-Soffjian could have pulled aside just a layer or two, knocked him unconscious or disoriented him, as he was overwhelmed, unused to the increased sensations. She could have been really precise had she chosen to. But the martial Memoridons, as you aptly put it, they’re a lot more like the Syldoon proper than the rest of us. So, not needing a prisoner or leaving him for someone else to finish off, she didn’t hold back.