The moon jabbed rays through a gap in scooting clouds, sweeping Antieux with patches of racing light that rippled across the rooftops and the gullies of alleys and streets …
Socia’s heart leapt into her throat.
She was a thousand feet up. Between her and the rooftops below a vast eagle was rising.
The moonlight swept onward. In the instant the eagle’s eyes would be adjusting Socia tipped over into a strike dive.
She closed most of the separation before the eagle discovered her. It thrashed out of her way, evading attack. But a strike was never her intent. She continued her plunge. The eagle lost track.
Socia changed into a naked young woman as fast as she could. She dressed, clumsily, shaking badly.
She watched the eagle from the darkness behind her window as it searched for her.
She squealed when Guillemette asked, “Are you all right, Countess?”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you come in. What are you doing here?”
“I came to build up the fire. I do that every night. I’ve never found you awake before.” Nor with the window open, her curious glance said.
“I had a bad dream. Then I couldn’t get back to sleep.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Once Guillemette finished building the fire, she shut and latched the window. “Good night, ma’am.”
* * *
“She would have caught me if she’d walked in five minutes earlier,” Socia said.
Brother Candle nodded. “A cautionary event, then.”
“For sure. It was looking for me, Master.”
“You thought fast and did what you had to do. Another cautionary event.”
Socia scowled. “Always lessons. Always learning.”
“And when you don’t pay attention you end up suffering through the same lessons again.”
“Stuff all that. I want to know what the hell was chasing me.”
Brother Candle said, “I’ll visit Radeus Pickleu again.”
“As soon as you finish stuffing your face.”
Brother Candle told Bernardin, “You would think that, after all my years educating her, I would have drummed some manners into the girl.”
Socia chose her response from the vocabulary of a day laborer, and added, “I’m as civilized as the world lets me be.”
“Or, we could say, the world is as civilized as you let it be.”
Socia stared, glared, growled, “There’s no winning with you, is there?”
“There won’t be breaking even if you observe normalcy’s rules.”
* * *
Bernardin had a soldier trail Brother Candle. The protection proved unnecessary. The Perfect found Pickleu’s home by asking. The physician welcomed him as an honored guest. “Come in, Master. Come in.”
“I hope I’m not intruding…”
“Not today. No patients. Somebody might break an arm later. We all thank you deeply for speaking to the Champion. It’s been peaceful since. How may we honor you?”
Brother Candle vaguely recalled having heard Bernardin called Champion at some point. “I’ve got another mysterious Instrumentality to identify. I hope to have better luck with this one.”
“Yet here you are at last resort. I hope I’m more use this time.”
“Yes. Well. So. Last time here I was not entirely forthcoming. As you no doubt realized.”
“My feelings suffered no permanent damage. It must be hard to trust the discretion of a man who never stops talking.”
“Indeed. I’ll be more honest this time.”
“Something has happened.”
“Yes indeed. Something entirely unexpected. The Countess may be in danger from this Instrumentality.”
Pickleu frowned, pursed his lips, made a little sweeping, bouncing hand gesture. “And this is a different one?”
“For certain.”
“All right. You have my word. Short of torture no one will hear any of this from me. But let me make sure the wife and the boy don’t hear something they should not.”
Pickleu gone, Brother Candle considered the small room. It was perfectly comfortable and reflected Pickleu’s personality. It was busy and cluttered.
Pickleu returned with two pieces of Firaldian glassware, probably blown in Clearenza, simple cylinders in glass of mixed colors. “Rhaita was just making lemon water. She’ll do her marketing while we talk. The boy is out working somewhere. So say on.”
Brother Candle provided a more detailed report on the visit from the girl, to which a dreamy-eyed Pickleu said, “I wish she would come see me. So. She blessed you with deadly tattoos. And put strange fish into Amberchelle’s flesh.”
“Yes.”
“What do they do?”
“We have no idea.”
“And the Countess? It stands to reason the demon’s gift to her stands behind this visit.”
“In a way.” Brother Candle explained the power of the crystal and Socia’s use of it.
“Ah,” Pickleu said. “I do believe I’d like that even more than seeing my little friend learn to stand up all over again.”
Brother Candle had not withheld the fact that his own little friend retained its renewed vigor-when he thought about the demon girl.
“A marvelous gift,” Pickleu said. “The crystal.”
“You said before that you might have heard of something like it.”
“I was wrong. I don’t know of anything that bestows the ability to change shape. The Countess hasn’t shown much imagination using it, has she? She’s treating it like a toy.”
Brother Candle nodded.
“I understand that she is an impulsive sort. That she still has little feel for the weight of station that came with her marriage.”
“She is trying.”
“So. What has you so excited? A new Instrumentality in the mix?”
Brother Candle related the facts as they had been given to him.
“She was chased by an eagle several times her own size.”
“With a deformed wing.” The Perfect was sure that was important.
“Right wing tip. Yes. Uhm. Not many Instrumentalities are known for their deformities. Some pantheons have a smith figure with a bad leg. Said to harken to a time when a tribe’s smith was so important its people broke his leg, then let it knit badly, so he couldn’t run away. The Devedian experience makes me suspect that those smiths were outsider slaves. Otherwise, most gods and goddesses resemble your visitor. Young and ferociously beautiful. Or middle-aged and endlessly randy.”
Brother Candle sighed. He sipped lemon water. Pickleu’s spouse had garnished that with a touch of honey.
Pickleu said, “The northern pantheon has several handicapped gods. A Beyish, Bayish, Boyish, something like that, was blind because of a cruel practical joke. Zaw, or Zer, the god of war, was missing a hand that got bitten off by a monster. Which he killed with the mystic spear, Heartsplitter, using his off hand. And the top god only had one eye. Sacrifice was big with the Shining Ones. He traded the eye for…”
“Which hand?”
Pickleu shrugged. “I don’t know. Right hand sounds logical, doesn’t it?”
“It does. Is that the extent of it, then?”
“My expertise is entirely relative. As you should know by now.”
“And you know no better source?”
“Certainly. But I don’t think you can tap it.”
“That would be?”
“The Collegium. In Brothe. Several Principatés are as conversant with the old religions as they are with their own.”
“I see. So, once again I return to the Countess no wiser.”
“Here’s a thought. Have her fly to Brothe and take the shape of a member of the Collegium. She could ask those who have access to the right information.”
* * *
“Take someone’s else’s shape?” Socia asked. “He actually suggested that?”
“He did. And he was dead serious.”
“Can I do that?”