She picked up the scroll again and studied the contents. She was required, most politely, to present herself at the Has on the following morning, with a range of tools. The Shah would, he said, leave those to her discretion. There was no attempt to bluster, or to suggest that Shadow herself might call his bluff by not appearing. That still left the issue of the disir. Shadow and Mercy had talked long into the night, but had been unable to come up with an explanation as to why Shadow, in particular, had been attacked. Was it connected with the Shah, or not? Had it been purely random? Whatever the case, two things seemed clear: the Shah had been keeping an eye on her, and the disir was now engaged. Shadow had wounded it, and it was somewhere in the Eastern Quarter. Shadow had no doubts that it would be back.
On the following morning, after a troubled night, Shadow walked to the Has. She kept the veil as thick as possible, feeling secure behind its magic, but she knew that this was illusory only, no real solution. The ones who wanted her would find her, and Shadow disliked feeling exposed.
The door was opened by the same old woman as before. She gave Shadow a knowing glance. “Nice to see you back.”
“Thank you,” Shadow said sourly. “Where am I to go, please?”
She was led up a narrow staircase. The Shah stood in a room high in the Has, a turret with fretworked windows that were shuttered against the sun, looking out over the courtyard garden and letting in diamonds and squares of dappled, pleated light. The Shah stood in mingled bright and shade, reminding her uneasily of her own sun-and-moon knife. The floor was tiled in white and blue.
“Good morning,” the Shah said, placidly. “I’m pleased that you could come.”
“I do not see the need to fence,” Shadow said. “We both know what I feel.”
“Yes. And although you will not believe this, you have my apologies. I dislike extreme measures. I take them only when they are necessary.”
“You are right. I do not believe.”
“Nonetheless.” The Shah’s voice remained mild. “I imagine that, under the circumstances, you are eager to start work.”
Shadow did not trust herself to speak. She walked past him to a window, hearing the heavy cream robes that he wore rustle against the tiles as he turned.
“I will have the ifrit brought up,” the Shah said. “Here in the heights, overlooking all, it is closer to the air and fire which is its element, and it will prove more compliant.”
“I would have thought that miring it in water and earth would have been a more sensible solution.”
“No. A curious paradox. Using its own elements against it has proved more helpful. Please don’t think that we have not tried.”
“I do not want to reinvent the wheel.”
“Of course not.”
She looked out over the quarter as the Shah clapped his hands and spoke into the air. The turret was higher than it had appeared: she could see the curving dome of the Medina and then the jumbled buildings of the Quarter beyond. There was the wall, her own windows mercifully not visible from this angle. There was the apartment in which Mariam Shenudah lived. Shadow blinked into the morning sun as the sounds of something heavy being carried up the stairs drew louder.
Interlude
The young man was walking quickly, his footsteps unsteady on first the steps and then the cobbled street as he made his way up from the cellar bar. She had not hunted here before, and she was enjoying the change of scene. Had this been the Northern Quarter, she would never have taken this sort of risk, but it was not. She was enjoying that, too.
In her mother’s house, she would be expected to bring back any kills. The cub was told to do that; any transgressions would earn a beating. But then, it was exactly the same in the Court. It did not occur to her to miss her mother’s house, that blackstone fort near Bleikrgard, but she did want to make her family proud. And jealous. She planned to accomplish that on her next visit home with a casual remark.
I’ve become very-close-to the Abbot General.
If they didn’t believe her, she’d show them the bite marks.
She watched, now, as the young man wove his way along the street. It had recently rained, one of those sea-stained downpours for which the Western Quarter was famous, not good cold northern snow. It occurred to her that had the Skein still been in dominion, she might not have taken such a risk then either, but they were gone and she stretched, luxuriating in unaccustomed freedom.
She wasn’t supposed to be out but, well, windows could be opened. It was a relief to be naked and free of all those formal gowns. She knew Deed liked them: that was the human half. His little disir doll. But he liked the row of multiple teats and the spiky spine, too. She watched the young man with eyes grown luminous until he reached the end of the street, and then she stepped, clicking, from the shadows.
She didn’t drink his blood. She wasn’t wampyr. But she did take a little memento.
Eighteen
Nerren was due in later that morning after a doctor’s appointment. The Library inspection had apparently gone as well as possible and Benjaya informed her that it had been thankfully brief.
“They said they’d do a more extensive one later.”
“Oh, good,” Mercy said. “Something to look forward to.”
Predictably, she found herself with a mountain of paperwork, and some explaining to do. She spent most of the morning of her return with the Elders of the Library, trying to work out where the disir had come from. Nerren had told them about the events in Section C, eventually. Mercy called on Librarian McLaren for moral support: he could be relied upon to talk sense, and he looked more like a warrior than a Librarian. She felt she needed that.
“It must be a priority,” Elder Tope said, her elderly face creased in concern. “We simply cannot have leakage.”
“This never happened when the Skein were here,” Elder Jonah lamented.
“But now the Skein are gone,” McLaren remarked. “We have to shift for ourselves.”
She looked at the Elders and suddenly felt very sad. Despite their age, they were like children whose parents had suddenly disappeared, leaving them alone and defenceless. She had thought this before and, of course, it was no more than the truth: the Skein had always taken care of everything. They might not have been gods, but they were god-like-powerful, benevolent, remote. Not for the first time, however, Mercy started to wonder whether this was really an accurate perception. How much had they really known about their masters and mistresses, after all?-although the Skein had changed gender seemingly at will, adopting new bodies as one might put on another set of clothes. They had always seemed kind, but when Mercy thought about it, she had the impression that the Skein treated humans as a sort of amusing pet, that their agenda lay entirely elsewhere. These thoughts did not make her comfortable, but this was not a comfortable world. And looking at the faces of the Elders, creased with worry and bewilderment, Mercy was conscious of a growing anger. Did you go away on purpose, she mentally asked the Skein, so that we would grow up? But in that case, why didn’t you prepare us better?
“Don’t worry,” she heard herself say. “I’ll take care of it. I promise you that I will.”