TheT/HoneyTonguedDevil
Talt, one of the Varang City-States. From great towers, the bells rang every hour, on the hour. Every hour, every minute was tracked with exquisite precision in Varang, for here the Sun, Luna, and the stars set the courses of life for the people below.
Astrologers ran a brisk business, drawing up horoscopes for both the highborn and the low. Guides also did fairly well in Varang cities. Through some obscure astrological law, the streets were rigidly arranged to form perfect triangles, something alien to most veteran city-dwellers from other places. Furthermore, the Varangans seemed to have some objection to signs. Instead, every building was painted or trimmed in a bewildering array of colors that were certainly meaningful to natives, but only confusing to the visitor.
Traveling through Varang was almost more trouble than it was worth, but there was money to be made, if one was willing to put up with the idiosyncrasies. Among the Varangans, there was a place for everyone, and everyone was well-advised to stay in that place – for so decreed the heavens. Outsiders were a mystery, a random element, possibly high born, possibly low, likely even good fortune. Just in case, they were given deference.
One of these outsiders was a rather smallish woman. Her black hair and fair skin, her bold nose and full mouth proclaimed her to be from the Blessed Isle, perhaps even of high birth, for she did not have the weathered look of a peasant or slave and her manner of dress was both rich and flamboyant. With her was a small cluster of porters and bodyguards, but she carried a slender sword at her side with a confidence born of supreme skill. Once she was Anjis Maret, a scion of the Realm, if a minor one. But now, she called herself simply Nil.
There were better places to be than the teeming streets of Talt. It was an ally of the Realm from which the Dragon-Blooded ruled. There was even a garrison of Dynasts here. While they were unlikely to recognize Nil as a fugitive from the Realm, she nonetheless kept her broad hat pulled low.
She had no choice, of course. She was leader of her own impromptu caravan, such as it was. They weren’t three days on the road from Chiaroscuro before the Guild caravan she had started with began referring to her as the Honey-Tongued Devil, due to her uncanny skill in making money off even the most improbable transactions. It was so easy for her that she caught the eye of Seyd, the caravan’s master, who sponsored her own entry into the Guild. Nil had always been good at business, but since the day she had become Anathema, she was her own good luck charm. She had but to think of where and how to sell a thing, and she’d know how to make the best profit. She could know the intrinsic value of a thing with just the proper glance.
At first just a mercenary, Nil’s talents as a merchant quickly came to the fore when she would make deals with the Guild’s merchants. By the time Varang was reached, Nil had amassed enough money to pay off her debt to Seyd, and then some, then struck out on her own as a full-fledged member of the Guild. With her new talents, she could navigate the bizarre Varangan culture with more ease than those who had been traveling there for years. She never mixed up a high-caste maker of vestments for a middle-cast seamstress. It was easy for her to pick up the proper signs and customs and phrases, and whenever Nil spoke, there was never any cause for offense. And then in Kriss, she had heard of a wondrous thing – a cask of black wood and the magical metal orichalcum. From the moment she heard of it, Nil could see that cask in her mind’s eye – in her dreams – and she knew she had to possess it. It was in Talt, and so Talt was where she went, amassing a small fortune to buy that treasure for herself.
A train of bearers and scribes and guards at her back, Nil found a guide to take her to the merchants district, a cluster of squat, multicolored office buildings. Trailing her small army, Nil passed within.
The outside was unimpressive, but the inside was richly appointed – rich carpets from the East, and bright gold and gems from the South, and everywhere intricate timepieces, a hallmark of Varangan society. Beyond the antechamber, in a spacious private office, as their contact in Talt, dressed in his precisely ordered finery. It all had some meaning, much of which was lost on Nil, but she could feel the greater flow of society here, if she tried. She knew the right words to say, and more importantly, what not to say. She was unprepared, however, for the pained sorrow that greeted her arrival.
“As I have been told, I have suffered a great loss,” the merchant she had come to meet told her. “There have been… bad omens.” He was already doing somewhat of a favor for Nil by selling such a dangerous item to a stranger. The Dragon-Blooded looked poorly upon those that sold items connected to the First Age or the Anathema to anyone but them.
“I am sorry to hear that,” Nil told him carefully. “Have the stars foretold some calamity of which I am a part?” Hands folded before her, she was all polite concern. “Would you let me hear what is to come, so perhaps we might work it out together? Sometimes the messages we hear have more meaning that which is immediately apparent.”
“I suppose so.” The merchant settled down again, behind the desk, and motioned for Nil to sit before him. “I am afraid your cask is already gone, however.”
“How?” Nil sat up straight, incensed. “How could you do that? I sent ahead a messenger –“
“Who never arrived,” the merchant said, hands twisting nervously.
“Then you’ve sold my item to an imposter.” But her anger was already fading, thinking over what had happened. Someone very quick and very smart had planned this out, nearly to the hour. The idea of such a theft was both disturbing and thrilling all at once. Nil loved a challenge.
“I know,” he said, hands now nervously rummaging through papers on his desk. “Another came, not an hour ago, with a small sack of priceless stones. He took the cask I was to deliver, claiming to be your agent. He knew every detail.” The merchant’s tone turned more than a little bitter. “And when he left, my money was gone. Who was I to report this to? The Guild? The Realm? I am never dealing in such things again.”
“Why don’t you tell me your horoscope, and we’ll proceed from there,” Nil said. It was equivalent to asking a proud parent about his or her child, in Varang territory. Everyone worth anything consulted astrologers here. Besides… the horoscope might actually turn out to help.
“I was told night would take away my fortunes, but not to fear, for an eclipse would bring it back to me. The light of the sun would be clouded, but it would take two suns’ departure to bring me a blessing of double measure.” The merchant hung his head. “I have interpreted matters too literally. I thought I was safe until nightfall – now must I wait for an eclipse for my fortunes to turn again?”
Something like a half-buried memory tugged at Nil when she heard the merchant’s words. Since she had become Anathema, such feelings had come more often and more strongly. Sometimes, she would wake up from half-remembered dreams of a place of wonders she had never seen with waking eyes, where she was revered instead of reviled for her unique talents. The word ‘eclipse’ evoked the image of the mark that sometimes shown from her forehead, a golden disk within a golden circle. To her tutors on the Blessed Isle it was the mark of the Anathema known as the Deceivers, identifying Nil as a demon in the shape of a mortal being, a hellish liar. In some ways, the moniker of Honey-Tongued Devil was more right than the carvaneers would probably ever know.
“Noble merchant,” Nil said, after a moment of thoughtful silence, “I believe I might be able to assist, if you will allow. You may place your trust in me, for I was born under an eclipse.” Not quite the truth, but unless the merchant was an astrologer, he would not know it. Eclipses, after all, did not show over the whole of Creation at once. At least Nil was taught so. “My retinue shall remain here, with your payment. This thief shall learn the depths of his folly. Either way, you get the payment I brought you, in my sincerest apologies.” After all, she could always make more.
Alone, she went into the city, leaving behind her guards and her treasure, hoping beyond hope to find this thief quickly. Though she’d never been here before, she knew where she was going. There weren’t many criminals in the Varang cities, because everyone was guaranteed a place in life and a more or less productive occupation – all except those outcasts who had the misfortune of being born in such a way that the minute and hour of their births could not be recorded. These people made a living doing jobs that were too menial or demeaning even for the lowest of castes. And those that did not wish to demean themselves turned to crime. Nil had a guide point her in the direction of the outcast quarters of town.
Talt was a big city. Angle after angle, a mind-boggling swirl of colors, the quiet murmur of the crowd attending to its meticulously plotted business… Nil found the whole thing a touch disturbing. She couldn’t wait to get out of Varang territory. Slowly, but surely, the tenor of the city shifted. Now the angular streets were choked with debris. The buildings were grimy and decaying, their colors faded. Here, everyone wore only black or gray, the colors of the outcast. There was little speech here at all, and every eye turned suspiciously to the brightly-garbed woman that walked in their midst.
There might have been a time when Nil would have been wary of such a place. Her rich clothing made her an obvious target, despite the straight sword at her hip. But now, she was the match of a dozen men. Still, it wouldn’t do much good to draw attention to herself. She made quiet inquiries to likely prospects and spread a bit of gold around, to see who might be in the market for First Age artifacts. No one was foolish enough to buy something that would attract so much attention. It was two hours later (by the bells) when Nil realized the thief wasn’t going to sell what he’d taken. He was leaving the city. She cursed herself for a fool and hoped she wasn’t too late – it was time to retrace her steps with a different tack in mind.
“They’re going to attract the wrong kind of attention, no matter how good at hiding they are,” said a young pickpocket Nil managed to accost again. Either he didn’t know any of the gang’s hiding places or wasn’t talking. Nil didn’t have it in her to badger a boy, so she let him go, but only after getting the name of the gang’s preferred forger.
The forger turned out to be more useful than the pickpocket. “Must be a big gang, very good at hiding. They haven’t been using my skills for very long, but every time they come down here, it’s someone new, with the same reference. Call themselves the Fortunates.” Nil paid him just as if he’d done a job for her. It was always good to leave with a favorable impression.
“They’re smart, they are,” commented a whore who had more than a passing acquaintance with a certain member of the Fortunates. “Ain’t been around long, but they’ve got plenty of money to spread around. They never stay in the same place for long. They got a few safehouses around, just in case. I always thought they was preparing for a big job. Looks like I was right.” She was pretty enough for an outcast prostitute, much more willing to sell information than her body, if at a much higher cost. Nil didn’t even negotiate price – the people here all needed money in a bad way.
“I don’t know his name,” the whore said, in a sudden moment of concerned contrition, “but he treats me well. You ain’t gonna hurt him, are you?” Nil promised she wouldn’t, except in absolute self-defense. That got her a description of the customer, a wiry, spiky black haired, sharp featured man, nd the location of one safehouse.
Squatters were occupying the first house, at least for today, their meager possessions spread out under a roof that looked likely to let more elements than it kept out. They remembered Nil’s quarry, though, by the description, and described a friend that came around often, another man, this one stocky and bald, their memories jarred by Nil’s silver. Armed with two descriptions, Nil found her way to a fence, a dealer in stolen goods, one that she’d seen earlier that day. Now, she had the proper questions to ask.
“Ah, the Fortunates. Pickpocket, but their talents are wasted,” he told Nil. The descriptions brought up the name of the gang without her even having to ask. “Doesn’t surprise me much they did something that big. They got a pretty large group, it seems, but they’re good at hiding, for all that. Came together under Golden Fortune, who always brought me some premium stuff, but he’s not been in for a while, always sending some of his Fortunate people instead.”
The name Golden Fortune, and the constant bribery, got Nil to a second safehouse, in another ramshackle building. A quick search found a trapdoor leading to a basement, and in that basement were two men and a woman trying to frantically uncover a hatch leading below into the sewers. These were the two men she’d been told about.
“Wait! Please!” Nil quickly unbuckled her sword, and laid it carefully on the ground before her. They all paused, and she took her opportunity to speak. “My name is Nil, and I’m not with the Realm. But I need to find Golden Fortune. He’s got something and he doesn’t know how important it is. I know how to deal with such things, how to render it impotent. And most importantly, how to keep it out of the hands of the Realm.” She was exaggerating a bit, yes, but it was worth it. She had to have that cask.
The bald stocky man glanced at the woman, a fire-haired, dusky-skinned Southerner. Nil could almost see the thoughts flickering between them. The man in the back, wiry with spiky black hair, halted in the midst of unlatching the hatch. He wanted to run, but didn’t want to leave his friends behind – they were about the only friends he had. The stocky man was wavering, doubts that had beset him for a long time, coming to the fore, coaxed out by Nil’s words. The red-haired woman knew the man next to her was unsure, and was all the more stubborn for it. She was a lost cause, for fear made her all the more defiant, and Nil would have to concentrate on the men. She could read them all so easily; she could see the Essence between them all flow and twist with their emotions, the bonds between them visible to her eyes.
“I’m here alone,” Nil said, hands up. “I just need my cask back. It’s only going to get you in trouble. You knew that all along, when Golden Fortune first brought it in, even when he first proposed your plan, didn’t you? Did he even tell you it might be from the Anathema? I’ll bet he didn’t.” It was a guess, but Nil knew it was true, when the stocky man’s eyes started shifting again. “I’m just a treasure hunter, and we can sweep this all under the rug if it ends soon, but if word gets out that you’ve got an item connected to the Anathema, it’s going to attract the wrong kind of attention. Please, I won’t hurt him. I just want to know where he is so I can retrieve my things. Maybe we can make a more equitable deal. A less dangerous one.”
“You can’t pay us as much as Fortune would have brought back!” the red-haired woman blurted. “We’re going to leave this damn city and make something of ourselves! You don’t know what it’s like living here.”
“I can get you that and more.” Nil’s eyes remained on the stocky man, holding his gaze. He was the weak link in the chain, after all. “I won’t say a word about you to anyone, and I’ll do what I can not to hurt Golden Fortune, either. I need that cask, though. It’s very important to me. He doesn’t know what it is, like I do.” Another exaggeration, but just as important as the first. To add weight to it, she took off her money pouch, laid it on the floor, then kicked it lightly over with her foot. “If you lay low, that’s enough to avoid stealing for a little while. Hopefully long enough for me or Golden Fortune to come back and get you out of here.”
The woman glared, more suspicious than ever, but her companion with the bald head picked up the money. “There’s a house, not too far from here, and it also leads to the sewers, but this one has a way out of the city, too. It’s guarded, but Fortune says he can get by, and I don’t doubt it. He’s… changed. Something’s happened to him.” A sharp elbow from the redhead made him fall silent, but the wiry man in the back spoke up now.
“He’s always been obsessed with leaving the city. I think he’s made a deal with something, like a sorcerer or a demon. He might even be Anathema himself. He can change shape. He can look like any kind of person, man, woman, Easterner, Southerner… I saw him open a lock just by touching it. Fortune’s a good man, but… I’m afraid for him. Even the best man can be tempted.” And with that, she got the directions to the last safehouse.
It was dilapidated, like so many other buildings of the outcasts, a saggy-timbered residence. It was empty, but the dust was disturbed. In the basement corner was a sleeping pallet hastily departed. It didn’t take much work to find the hatch into the sewer and she quickly took it, sure she was close on the heels of Golden Fortune, at long last.
It was the slightest of sounds, the faintest splash of the muck that saved her. Nil turned, her sword flashing out of its sheath, and knocked away the knife that that spun toward her. It splashed harmlessly into the water, and there was a faint curse, and the sound of flashing feet running away. Nil gave chase, and stumbled to a stunned stop as the knife flew up out of the river of filth to return to its owner, somewhere ahead in the gloom.
Light shone from above as the thief opened a hatch and exited into the street. Nil didn’t bother to use a ladder. There wasn’t time. She bounded from the wall, caught the lip of the hole and lifted herself up with her left hand, still gripping her sword in her right. She immediately threw herself to the ground and another knife went spinning by overhead. Rolling to her feet, she found herself in a narrow alley, lined with debris, which Golden Fortune was using to climb to the rooftop.
Nil gathered herself, jumped against one wall, pushed with her feet, and jumped from the opposite wall, then back, then back again, ascending to the low roof just in time to aim a kick at her quarry’s face. Unfortunately for her, he was no longer there. Holding on with one hand to the edge of the roof, he rolled to the side, gripped with his other hand, back to the wall, then repeated the maneuver to pull himself over the wall with both hands. Even as the thief topped the wall, his knife flashed back into his hand.
“What are you?” Nil demanded. She had to know. The anticipation was almost painful.
And the thief’s forehead blazed with golden light, a sun-bright circle flaring against his dusky skin.
“I am Anathema! Flee, if you value your soul!” Golden Fortune drew himself up, rather convincingly. But Nil, of course, knew something he didn’t. She let her own mark, the golden disk within the circle of gold shine forth from her own forehead.
“Me, too,” she told him, and sheathed her sword. “So why don’t we sit down and discuss this like intelligent demon spawn?”
Golden Fortune sat, likely more due to his legs giving out from under him from shock than out of any desire to obey her request.
Nil sat down across from him. “That cask is mine. So, why don’t we strike a deal that both of us can agree with, before you have the Realm after you?”
“There isn’t any deal you can strike that I’ll want to hear,” said Golden Fortune, more than a little sullenly. He was young, perhaps seventeen, several years younger than Nil herself. His curly black hair, wide dark eyes, and the almost delicate curves of his face would keep him boyishly handsome for years after boyhood was long past.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Nil said, projecting unconcern. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want my sister back, Guild scum.” Fortune’s entire body was tensed, ready to get up and fight again, if need be.
Nil wasn’t quite expecting that. “I… don’t even know your sister.”
“Of course you don’t. None of you ever know, or care. You buy and sell people like animals. Less than animals. At least animals are never sold to the Fair Folk to have their souls devoured.”
She knew better than to argue. It was time for him to talk, and for her to listen. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened, and I’ll see if it helps me help you.”
The doubt was plain in Fortune’s eyes, but he spoke anyway, after a long moment of staring at Nil. Or more directly, at the symbol on her forehead. “Our mother sold her, and left town. It’s been two years now. She’s probably already use all the money on drugs and ended up face down in a gutter somewhere. And good riddance.” He laughed, a rough sound completely devoid of humor”. “What better way to get back at you Guild scum than to steal from you, so I could find my sister? Bit by bit, I took those gems from merchants on their way out of town. They never even know I’ve robbed them until they’re long gone.” He grinned, savagely. “Like your messenger.”
“I’m not a slaver,” Nil told him, trying to be placating without sounding placating. “Frankly, all my mercantile efforts for the past few months has been to gather enough money to buy that cask. I have to know more about what I am. We are.” Wryly, she added, “I get the feeling the whole Anathema story isn’t the entire truth.”
“So, I give you the cask and the gems I stole. And then, what? You let me go? Empty-handed?” Fortune started to rise again.
Nil held up a placating hand. “No, no. I’m so glad to find another one of us – whatever we are. I really want to try to find something accommodating for both of us. Look, when I leave the city, I’ll take you with me. You wanted to get out of here, anyway, right? I have money, and you were just going to sell the cask anyway, right?”
“We’ll find my sister?”
“We’ll find your sister.”
Again, Fortune looked doubtful, but then a smile touched his lips. “Swear it,” he said, holding out his hand.
Nil’s mind raced. He knew what she could do! Somehow, he knew exactly what she was. She jumped to her feet, and Fortune jumped to his, and they stood for a moment, staring at each other. Then, Fortune held out his hand again. “Swear it.”
“Not until you tell me what you know about me,” Nil whispered. She knew she was something other than Anathema, a demon clothed in some mortal’s skin, but the truth was elusive. Every night, she dreamed about it, fits and flashes of a world of wonders, of walking among the courts of spirits and binding demons and Fair Folk into enduring pacts. In these dreams, she was not Anathema, but the highest of Exalted, as far above the Dragon-Blooded as the Dragon-Blooded were above common mortals.
“You don’t have the dreams?” Fortune lowered his hand again, for now. He had the advantage now. “We’re not demons. That’s just what the Dragon-Blooded call us to have popular support in killing us. We used to be the true Princes of the Earth, Exalted of the greatest of the gods, the Unconquered Sun.”
Nil had never heard any of this before, but even as Fortune spoke the words, she knew them to be true.
“You’re an Eclipse,” Fortune continued. “A diplomat, a maker of deals and writer of treaties. I’m a Night. I’m supposed to do the things the rest of you are too uncomfortable and unsubtle to to do.” There are supposed to be three other Castes, too, but I’ve never met any of them.”
“So… since the Wyld Hunt is rarely called anymore, we’re cropping up all over the place, “ Nil mused. She had heard the rumors, after all, just like anyone else. The more she thought about it, the more the idea appealed to her. A new Circle, one in which she was an equal. She had been a companion to her Exalted brother and the twin sisters Ledaal Linopa and Ledaal Niloba, but when they had shown to be Chosen of the Dragons, and she herself had not, she was on the outside of their fellowship. Her own subsequent Exaltation, not to the Dragons, but to the Unconquered Sun, had widened that gap. Ledaal Niloba was likely doing her best to hunt down the Anathema that had consumed dear little Anjis Maret, the woman Nil once was.
“Something like that,” Fortune said, with a shrug. Apparently, this was not so important to him. But to Nil, a whole new world had just opened up. She could form a new brotherhood, and from there, make her own mark on the world.
Nil held out her hand and Fortune took it. “Give me the cask, and the gems you stole, and I shall do what I can to help you find out the fate of your sister.” Runes of binding swirled around them, scribed in the air in white fire, and she was sealed to keep her word. The oath may have been necessary for Golden Fortune, but not for Nil. She had finally found one of her own, and was not prepared to let him go so easily. Now, he was as bound to her as she was to him.
And when the merchant had been paid his money and the gems, as compensation, Nil had an extra member in her retinue, and the small cask in her hands. It felt light, though it was made from black wood and filigreed with oricalchum, and sealed shut, with no way to open it. But it had come to her. It was destined to come to her. If only she could open it.
“There’s another one,” Golden Fortune told Nil once the city of Talt was behind them.
“Another what?” Nil was absorbed in watching the world roll by through the window of the wagon.
“Another Solar. I was going to find him to open the cask, or at least tell me what it was, so I could get a better value of its worth.”
Nil already knew what it was worth. Certainly far more than she had paid, or ever could pay, the merchant of Talt. “Then, I suppose that’s where we’re going next. I don’t suppose you’re willing to tell me any details?”
“I don’t know any. Just that there’s some Anathema from the East, a sorcerer who specializes in old things like that cask,” Fortune said. “I was hoping he’d trade it for something less hot.”
“I think we both might just get more than we ever dreamed of getting, Golden Fortune,” Nil mused. He might have still be suspicious, but to her, it felt so right.
The tiny collection of horses and wagon moved steadily northward, away from Talt, closer to whatever fate held for the two Exalted within.
