SaltLotus/SaltLotus2
This is a work of fan fiction set in White Wolf’s Exalted fantasy setting and is no way meant to challenge White Wolf’s copy rights or trademarks. The characters Joyous Gift, Mirror Flag, Ribbons of Sorrow, Shield of a Different Day, Spinner of Glorious Tales and Weaver of Dreams of Victory, as well as the city Great Forks are trademarked White Wolf Property.
Some days later on the road to Great Forks…
Dawning Daughter sensed something awry when she drew into sight of the next village. Silence hung over the small cluster of houses, and the villagers walked with heads bent, each individual tensed as if expecting a blow to fall across his or her neck. The smoke of a late-morning cooking fire rose from the center of the dwellings, and in the fields, the farmers' nervous eyes turned back towards their homes in furtive glances. A single man in chain mail appeared between two of the small huts and the villagers redoubled their labor until he withdrew.
Tax collectors or perhaps brigands? There was little difference in Dawning Daughter's eyes. However, no houses had been burned and there was a lack of fresh funeral pyre heaps around the town's shrine, so she suspected that if this was a plundering, it was of the legal variety. Curious, she strode forward. The falcon had set her on this road to Great Forks, and she had hoped to obtain food and rest in this settlement. She was no woodsman by nature, and a warm meal and roof overhead would be welcome after weeks of living out of doors. A bath would be priceless.
The farmers glanced up in alarm from under their broad conical hats. One or two made eye contact with Dawning and gently shook their heads as they urged her to turn back. The others merely looked away and hoed at the earth all the more determinedly. Dawning Daughter entered the village and changed course, leaving the road to circle around the settlement's center and approach it in the narrow space between two gray wattle huts. A cluster of seven men in various types of chain mail armor, with a well-maintained variety of arms, sat on low benches in the small, central square. They had bowls and chopsticks in hand, and each faced the alley that Dawning Daughter stood in. She sighed. The village's shrine was nearly two stories tall, and the sentry on its roof had clearly managed to mark her approach . “Welcome girl,” said a red-bearded man. An unsheathed saber lay on the bench beside him. “Passing through just now, or would you care to join us for an early lunch?”
Dawning took a knee on the packed earth of the small alley. Each of the soldiers-for-hire looked at her with an eager interest that was muted by wariness. She knew what it was they saw: a coffee-skinned young woman in a voluminous, knee-length buff jacket, with the twin handles of crossed hook swords protruding up from over her shoulders. She also knew what it was that she saw: mercenaries who were made uneasy by her lack of fear. A well-developed sense of caution prompted their leader to speak politely, even as they attempted to discern any aura of vulnerability about her. One never knew, especially here in the Scavenger Lands, if the stranger on the road might be a god, demon, or an exceedingly desperate mortal.
“I’m on my way to Great Forks,” Dawning Daughter replied, “though in exchange for lunch, I would be happy to spend some small while in your company.”
“Why would a girl like you be on her way to the city of decadence all alone?”
“I am told I have friends there,” Dawning Daughter replied, her tone of voice indicating that more information would not be forthcoming.
The man with the beard shrugged and turned his head towards a barefoot woman of sixteen or seventeen who sat crouched on her haunches at the entrance to a house. The girl averted her eyes, went inside, and seconds later returned bearing a wooden bowl of rice gruel with a thin slice of seared and spiced pork laid across it. Dawning took the bowl without rising and noticed the bruises on the girl's wrists and ankles. The young woman's hands trembled as she withdrew to wait on the mercenaries.
Seeing that, Dawning decided to drive the soldiers from the village.
She tipped the bowl to her lips, sucked the slice of meat off the top and chewed as the man with the beard spoke. He offered her obvious lies, telling her that he and his soldiers were also only passing through. Looking around, it was clear that they had been here for sometime and had enjoyed the hospitality of the village through threats of violence. As the mercenary spoke, ancient memories of Essence manipulation rose up in Dawning Daughter's mind, and a meaning hinted at within the falcon god's battle instructions became clear to her.
When the bearded man had finished his false explanations and Dawning Daughter her meal, she hurled the wooden bowl at him. It struck his chest with a satisfying crack, even as she came to her feet with a piercing shout. Her twin swords flashed out of their scabbards, and she cut through the air in a short, furious kata. The motion gave reality to recollection and wove invisible flows of Essence from within Dawning’s body into an elaborate mandala. She became as light as raptors' wings, and her gaze so focused and supernaturally intense that those who beheld it lost their coordination under the force of its power. She came out of the alley in a gliding leap. Her first blow clubbed down the nearest soldier, striking him with the reverse blunt backside of a sword between his eyes. She parried the spear thrust of the next man with the arced motion of both swords; then spun past him. Her Essence-fueled predator's glare slowed the bearded man as she faced him, knocked aside his saber with one hooked sword and decapitated him with the other. The rest of the mercenaries broke and ran. Dawning followed close on their heels. Her battle cry and blazing gaze turned the mercenaries' flight into a panicked route. Weapons were dropped and all pretenses of martial discipline vanished in a fearful, headlong retreat as each man attempted to save himself.
Dawning Daughter came to a halt at the edge of the woods and listened to the terrible clamoring of the men, each running apart from his fellows. An abrupt jolt of fear washed through her, and the hooked swords nearly fell from her hands. She had attacked seven men by herself, without thought and without planning. She had not lured them into the alley where only soldier at time would have been able to approach her, nor had she thought to wear them down in a running battle through the village. Instead she had flung herself into their midst and won only on the strength of a mystic Charm recalled from a distant, previous life.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” She hissed to herself and then slammed the pommel of one sword into her thigh, bruising the flesh there. “Never again!”
On her way back into the village, she turned her glare on the shrine's roof. The sentry who cowered there lost his ability under the force of her gaze, and his arrow shot astray — flashing past Dawning without any need for her to take further action in her defense. The man managed to flee before she reached the shrine. She discovered that he had left only his sleeping roll on the floor and the burnt remnants of modest sacrifices that he and the other mercenaries had made to placate the small god whose humble temple they had occupied. Among the traveling gear left in the village square, Dawning discovered papers. She could not read — aside from recognizing a few common words of Riverspeak, and among those, the word for woman appeared several times on one page . On the next page, the blank-faced sketch of a lady with a golden Caste Mark on her brow did not require literacy to understand. A half hour later, Dawning Daughter was on her way towards Great Forks with fresh food in her rucksack and the terrified blessings of the villagers at her back.
That night...
The war ghosts flared in flames of gold as the Charm-driven blade of glass cut through their materialized corpora. Burning away under the onslaught of Solar-aspected Essence, they experienced either the final horror of Oblivion or entry into the merciful state of forgetful bliss that would see them on the way to future mortal incarnations. As the last of the dead combatants flicked out, Holvic Kagi stood in a circle of illumination underneath the prophetic glow of the constellations. His vigorous expenditure of Essence had called into being the Caste Mark on his forehead, which shone with noon sunlight. The sun’s newly chosen priest waited in the Golden Essence Attitude stance for a count of thirty after the last opponent had vanished. He listened carefully to the wind and blowing grass to discern the sounds of additional enemies closing across the hilltop. At the end of his count he was certain that he was alone. There were no whispering ghosts lurking outside of the light, and the soldiers of his father’s talon were already weeks behind him.
After leading the Kagi soldiers to decimate the ranks of the dead outside the mining camp, Holvic had looked into the eyes of his friends and comrades. Fear, worship and abhorrence had shown separately on many faces while mingling freely on others. Holvic, the best of them, stood revealed as an Anathema or as the glorious apotheosis of the dead whom he struck down. Looking upon the Kagi soldiers, Holvic had seen that in his continued presence they would fall upon each other in violence.
And so he had led them out of the tributary lands of Thorns; away from the Mask of Winters invasion force. Once clear of the war zone, he had left them with a message for his father and family; then climbed into the nearest hills where he had fasted and gone through the kinetic meditations of the Sword Saint Forms.
Now, Holvic had a mission best suited for one unencumbered.
At present, he knew of no shadowlands nearby — of no overlaps between the lands of the living and dead in this region — and was genuinely surprised to have been attacked by war ghosts off the road leading to Great Forks. Had these been soldiers of Thorns’ new ruler? If not, he imagined that they must have been greatly astonished to have discovered that their intended victim was one of the Sun's Chosen.
Regardless, Holvic decided to depart quickly. His battle had cast displays of power that could be seen from far off at night, and the possibility of meeting another war band of the dead was not to be discounted. There were four hours left until dawn, and four hours of sleep forsaken would see him that much closer to his goal by the next time the sun set. Following omens seen in the lights of the sky and the flights of eagles, Holvic continued eastwards.
Elsewhere...
In the dark beneath Creation, a pale hand pressed against a pallid brow. The black Caste Mark concealed beneath the hand's palm had split open and now wept blood. Abnegation of Ebullience removed his hand and sat back in his high-backed chair of ash behind a writing desk of ebony. An open arch on the far side of his study revealed a view of the obsidian waters of the River Acheron, a mighty river that ran to a sea made up of all the tears the world had ever shed. The cold stars that glared down on the waters held nothing of the fates of the living — only the futures of the dead. Abnegation of Ebullience knew that a gifted servant of his master had divined the emergence of one of the hated Sun's Chosen by reading the skies of Creation. Acting on those omens, in accordance with his liege's wishes, Abnegation had dispatched bands of the sacred dead and packs of Hungry Ghosts to search for additional signs. The bond of power that had connected him to one of those bands had just been cut, signaling that five of his trusted sergeants had somehow come to their ends.
Abnegation sighed. Normally the Midnight Caste Abyssal would not have risked the sapient dead out in the realm of Creation. However, his lord had been specific in his orders and commanded that his priest’s best and darkest be among those dispatched with all haste. It was not Abnegation’s place to question his master’s wishes, but he sensed that his liege had learned of the Sun Child’s Exaltation somewhat late in the course of events, and that he was behind in the race to claim the vulnerable, newly Exalted Solar. His rival, the Mask of Winters, had his own dark Inquisitors roaming the hinterlands of his new dominion, looking for the Sun’s Chosen.
Desirous of acting correctly in the face of opportunity, Abnegation of Ebullience crossed the space of the room and knelt on the stone floor, facing the view of the River Acheron. Thus settled in a position of meditation, he prayed to his master's Neverborn patron for some sure sign of its intentions.
In Great Forks…
“And you are Master Berdi's son.” Sesus Bera announced, his words coming from out of the empty night air behind me. With my hand on the bolt of the courtyard’s side entrance, I nearly leaped out of my sandals.
So much for escaping unseen.
I turned about to find the Dragon-Blooded lord and his daughter standing not far away, and I was suddenly aware of the smells of pine sap and cold mountain winds. I had assumed that like the others in his entourage, Lord Sesus would already be abed. The hastily arranged dinner that my father had given to properly welcome our visitors on the second day of their stay had included heavy foods and potent wines. The wood-aspected Dragon-Blood had indulged in his share, which included smoking a truly heroic quantity of opium from the elaborate glass water pipe that my father had insisted on personally tending. Instead of having retired for the evening, though, Sesus Bera was now dressed for leisure, barefoot in a silk jacket and soft brown leather breeches. His wide-bladed sword was sheathed across his back, and his full green hair hung loose, spread over his powerful shoulders. His daughter's blue-streaked hair was still pulled into a tail, and her figure clad in the uncomfortable jade plating of her armor. The long lance with its heavy blade of white jade steel hung loosely in her hand.
Her brow furrowed and her blue eyes blazed as she stared back at me, growing angrier by the second.
“Leda,” her father growled in warning, and now it was her turn to jump in surprise. He then continued in High Realm, reproaching her for an offense, the nature of which I could guess. Each time he finished a sentence she nodded sharply and uttered a soft sound of ascent. When he was done, she swallowed and stood her ground.
Lord Sesus turned to face me again.
"I was merely reminding my daughter that the customs of the Blessed Isle are not those of the River Province, and that you meant no disrespect by looking one of the Exalted in the eye.”
The River Province: the term for the Confederacy of Rivers when the Dragon-Blooded Shogunate had ruled it and the rest of Creation before the coming of the Great Contagion. Even after seven centuries of independence and three failed wars of conquest, the Dynasts of the Realm acknowledge the Scavenger Lands' autonomy in neither thought nor word.
If Fia, whom I had yet to meet, is blessed with the better qualities of her elemental heritage, then I can only wonder about my own ancestry. Was there among my forbearers some trickster fae or perhaps a malevolent spirit of sharp pranks? As I stood there, facing two Princes of the Earth, the Exalted of the Five Dragons, I could only bite back a comment that would have pointedly reminded the Dynasts of their ancestors’ failures in this region. Choosing discretion, but not entirely, I swallowed the remark, straightened my posture, and addressed Sesus Bera head on with a lopsided smile and easy attitude.
“And you have my abject apologies for any offense on my part. I was about to venture out for an evening's entertainment and wonder if you would care to join me.”
On rare occasion, my intuition does not land me in trouble, and this time it seemed to serve well. Sesus Leda gasped, not believing that I had spoken directly to her father, while Lord Bera's broad face split in an ivory grin.
“Passic, I would be in your debt. I am unacquainted with the hospitality of the city.”
Leda's grip tightened audibly around the ironwood shaft of her Dire Lance as her leather glove creaked under the strain. I most carefully did not look in her direction this time. Her father glanced towards her, said something melodic in High Realm, and she remained standing there as we opened the heavy side door to the courtyard and left.
The door’s bolt slammed home loudly as we walked away
My heart pounded in my throat as Bera and I proceeded into the Temple District. Nothing to be worried about, I reassured myself. This was just your average student of the House of Learning out for a night’s leisure with his drinking companion, a 150-year-old Dynast of the Scarlet Empire.
“I trust that I am not interrupting anything more serious than some midnight rendezvous with your age fellows?” Lord Sesus asked, his head swiveling as he took in the ordered flagstone streets and the lantern-lit skyline of temples, shrines, coliseums and playhouses. The alabaster dome of the Palace of the Three loomed above the Temple District, as well as the dozen rose-and-gold, domed astrological towers of the House of Learning. The avenue that we walked was illuminated at regular intervals by oil-fed flames screened by cylinders of parti-colored glass. As we crossed a set of arched bridges, the narrow canals below were ablaze with candle-bearing boats, each the size of an open hand. Underneath the glassy lens of star-filled blackness that was the sky, mortals and small gods mingled in the commerce of worship.
“No, nothing more important than a night out,” I answered, unable to keep unabashed curiosity from my voice. At least the terror I had lived with since the Dragon-Blooded’s arrival did not show, or I fervently hoped that it did not. Did they know? Would I have still lived if they had known that I had been exalted by the Sun only days earlier? Even if by improbably good fortune I remained undetected, mortal danger still awaited me in the future. I was now one of the afeared Anathema, not just in the eyes of the Dynasty’s Immaculate faith, but to many of the Scavenger Lands’ inhabitants as well.
Not that I felt anything like a possessed victim of demonkind. While legend and religious doctrine describe the Anathema as dark beings who had ground humanity beneath their boot heels at the dawn of time, the radiant memories that had accompanied my Second Breath contained visions of righteousness. These had revealed none of the wickedness ascribed to those once known as the Solar Exalted. Rather, it was we who had ruled Creation with the Mandate of Heaven. Nor did I recognize any inherent spiritual superiority in the Dragon-Blooded. It was they who had been our soldiers, handmaidens and engineer workmen. When I thought of the Terrestrial Exalted, I recalled not divine right, but treachery and slander.
I had been returning to Great Forks on one of Berdi’s errands when the Second Breath had come upon me. The Exaltation, in all its light and gravity, was of a magnitude of sensation that I had not experienced since my unknown mother had born me into this world. The trees in the forest around me, sun-bleached and faded as they had been from the sudden power that shone within me, had still contained greens and browns richer than any I had previously perceived. Even more wonderful, I had heard the forest’s breathing, felt and not merely understood that its great oaks were participants in the vast cycle of Essence. Both the part and the whole drew in and expelled out in accordance with the dictates of the seasons, and I knew that I had been made even more a part of that cycle. A shard of the Sun’s power was embedded within my lower soul and allowed me to channel Creation’ Essence through my skills and talents. Nor was it merely my immaterial self that had been changed by the doubled flow of the world’s lifeblood. If I had been light on my feet before, I was now nimble as a water spirit and later found myself comprehending with ease the texts that had baffled me only days earlier. I knew that mortal illnesses would be of little concern to me, and that I could recover from the most grievous of injuries short of death.
I shook off the memories of the Second Breath. In the here and now of Great Forks, mortals and the ethereal forms of lesser deities stepped to the left side of the street as a procession approached. Three dark-haired slave children led the way, casting rose petals on the ground before the inhumanly slender, silk-wrapped figure of Ribbons of Sorrow. The deity’s four concubines — two youths and two young women — were bound to Ribbons by the yards-long scarlet silk strips that made up the local god of slavery’s body suit. The slaves’ faces were encased in white ceramic masks that mimicked their owner’s sharp-featured visage. Behind Ribbons came the celebrants, around fifty in number — many no doubt paid professionals who were there to sing the god’s praises at the behest of the guildsmen and other traffickers of human flesh who employed them. As we passed, Ribbons of Sorrow’s posture became icily perfect and his eyes never came to rest on us as he ignored Sesus Bera to the best of his ability.
There was little love lost between the Dragon-Blooded of the Scarlet Dynasty and the terrestrial gods of the East.
“What is the most dangerous beings, Passic?” Lord Sesus asked me when the clamor of the celebration had had passed behind us. “Let us say, the most fearsome of warriors.”
“My friends and I are divided on this,” I answered carefully.
“How so?” He said looking down at me.
“There are those who say that the Dragon-Blooded of the Immaculate Order’s martial artists are the most dangerous fighters…” I said and trailed off as I tried to phrase my next thought in the politest way possible.
“But?” Sesus said, sounding amused.
“There are rumors,” I said cautiously. “Rumors that at the downfall of the city of Thorns there were…combatants…among the army of the dead who matched or overmatched the lord of Thorns’ Dragon-Blooded advisors.”
“You should not put much faith in gossip,” Lord Sesus rumbled. “I was thinking of the Solar Anathema as the most dangerous beings to walk Creation. In my experience, these are the most potent adversaries that one may face.”
I was now perfectly calm because I was sure that I was already dead. At any moment I would realize that Lord Sesus’s sword had been loosed, and my higher soul was walking forward even as my cloven body fell to the ground.
But, as it was, I still lived. Lord Sesus said nothing more for some minutes while we wandered through the District of Temples, breathing in the smells of incense and the fragrant smoke from the scented wood of burnt offerings. We were presented with sweets and garlands of flowers by different crowds of revelers, and Lord Sesus accepted a single saffron blossom, which he toyed with between his large hands as we continued onwards. Off the main avenue, in a large park of trees and streams, we stopped at the impressive, wood-lined, stone temple of the Mistress of the Eternal Hunt — the East’s patron goddess of hunters. Inside, Sesus Bera placed the saffron blossom on the green jade marble alter, dropped to his knees, clapped his hands three times loudly and filled the temple with his profound bass voice as he sung an homage in Old Realm. The gaunt, sharp-eyed priests looked on proudly, satisfied to see one of the Dragon-Blooded honoring their mistress, and I followed Sesus’s words as best I could. It soon became clear that not only was he declaring to the goddess that he was engaged in a hunt of the most dangerous kind, but that he was still searching the land for his fearsome prey. When he had finished, and we had departed the temple, I could no longer restrain my curiosity.
“Lord Sesus. I hope you will forgive me, but as I was charged by my father with making sure that this night’s dinner went without interruption, I never heard why you and your daughter have honored us with your company.”
“Passic, you do not need to be so formal. I have known your father for some time as a close friend, and though you and I have only recently met, I would offer you a similar friendship.”
“I…accept.”
Lord Sesus smiled his ivory smile again. “I owe your father much, are you aware of that?” he asked. That came as a true surprise — my father had always acted as though he was in debt to Sesus Bera. Then again, even if one has done a favor for a Dynast of the Realm, discretion is probably a healthy trait.
“There was a time when I found it necessary to leave the Blessed Isle for awhile. I had made a miscalculation in the game of house politics, and it was for the better that my enemies not be able to locate me after that particular mistake. For reasons too boring to discuss, I ended up here in Great Forks. Your father allowed me to join his scavenging expeditions, and I learned much that I would not have if I had passed those years in the Realm. In answer to your question, why I am here now, I am escorting my daughter on a tour of your Confederation of Rivers,” he explained, and he winked to acknowledge his use of the forbidden name by which the Scavenger Lands' inhabitants referred to their collective homelands. “Leda has recently graduated from the School of Bells, and more than anything she yearns to take a commission in the legions in pursuit of what she imagines to be martial glory. She has thoughts and aspirations on how she will ascend to the pinnacle of warfare with her clinical eyes and cool hands. Such dreams are well and fine…” Sesus Bera said, even though his heavy tone spoke of disapproval, “but as a father I can see that she lacks the perspective needed to implement them. She yearns to be away at arms already, and she can not believe that I have forced this tedious graduation present on her. But such is my prerogative as a household elder. And as an aside, one never knows what one will find here in River Province. I have found this to be a most excellent region in which the young can experience alien cultures and perspectives.”
Another prank-like thought stole upon me with a morbid gallows humor before I could stop my mouth. “Here, one never knows whether one walks with a ghost or god,” I said slyly.
Now he arched an eyebrow and I could tell that I had struck some nerve of annoyance.
“You have a brother in my household. Did you know that?” He asked, and I faltered in my pace. These were indeed the days in which my old life was ending. “Nearly 18 years ago your father saved me from an ancient trap in a forgotten jungle city, and afterwards, my wife traveled all the way from Lord’s Crossing to our encampment while I was recovering. She felt compelled to reward Berdi for his quick thinking and loyalty.” Lord Sesus said this in a tone of complete ease, as if pleased with the generosity of her wife.
I realized that I had come to a halt, and Lord Sesus was looking back at me, again amused. No doubt a patrician of the Realm or one of the Dynasts would naturally have seen the propriety of a Dragon-Blooded woman sleeping with the man who had saved her husband, but when I thought of Berdi together with Sesus Bera’s wife, my stomach turned sourly inwards. I felt a wretched curiosity about the nature of the Dynasts and their empire. Rumors and students’ stories told that the Elemental Dragons’ Chosen lived lives of utter opulence on the Blessed Isle. Even as the Realm began to totter towards civil war and the great houses armed themselves in the Empress’ absence, the Dynasts’ lusts knew little restraint. It was said that among the Scarlet Dynasty it was unremarkable for a mother to share a son’s bed, or a father a daughter’s. I had dismissed these claims as the product of my peers’ lurid imaginations and been shocked into near silence when Berdi had confirmed the truth behind the stories. Then he had told me of the Dragon-Blooded’s coming of age parties, where a male and female dancer ritualistically removed the veils that were each others’ only clothing, and the newly anointed graduate chose one or both of the dancers to take as a lover on the first night of his or her adulthood.
Lord Sesus had stated that Leda had recently completed her schooling. I wondered, with an unbidden jealousy that stunned me, whom she had chosen. And a brother? I had a brother who had been raised as a Dynast on the Blessed Isle.
Having thus disrupted my wits, Bera made his next play.
“Among your father’s frequent traveling companions was man named Silen He was a talented individual and aided Berdi in rescuing me. I am hoping that he is here in the city, and that it would be possible for me to meet with him.”
Still at a loss for words, I nodded. On other nights, I would have been able to dissemble with sufficient skill to convince Lord Sesus that I had no recollection of where to find the man. Or at least I like to think I could have fooled a 150-year-old Dynast who had survived decades of the Realm’s blood-soaked intrigues. At any rate, my father would have been furious to discover that I knew of Silen’s favorite haunt, and even angrier to know that I had on occasion visited that particular establishment. Did I mention that a scavenger lord is part tomb thief? It would be no mean exaggeration to say that if some of Berdi’s associates and hirelings were not criminals, they were not far from it either. Often the work of a scavenger lord involves getting into locations where others — perhaps long dead, perhaps still living — do not wish him to go. In his youth, Silen’s specialty had been breaching barriers and opening doors. While he was still an unmatched mortal expert in that area, he had since moved from working directly in his field to becoming something of an manager. He knew people who knew people, including many of the younger specialists within his chosen field. In short, he knew more than a little of Great Fork’s criminal underworld.
Soon it became clear that Sesus Bera needed eyes and ears for his hunt, and Silen was more than willing to supply them.
That evening, outside Great Forks…
Wendai’s slave had removed her mistress’ armor and was brushing the ex-Guardswoman’s hair when Laril approached to make her report. The former sergeant dropped to one knee in front of Wendai, who sat cross legged on her outspread sleeping roll. Across Wendai’s lap lay a silken pillow large enough for two to share. On the pillow was a thumb-sized gem of pale green.
Laril touched her right hand to the earth. “The camp is set as per protocol, and the list of the watch has been drawn.” Around the women, in the dark of the pre-dawn gloaming, the former soldiers’ bedrolls were cunningly placed in hollows between the gnarled roots of trees, so as to be invisible to anyone who was not nearly upon them. The tired horses were hidden and hobbled within the center of the copse, dry twigs had been scattered around the concealed encampment, and fishing lines with tiny dark bells were strung at shin height. Not, Wendai suspected, that these precautions would give much warning should the wandering woman suddenly return from her reconnaissance of the city Great Forks.
“Very good, Laril,” Wendai said. Then, after a moments pause, “Would you care to share warmth with me?” she said, touching her sleeping roll. “Would you like to share the dreams with me?” she asked as she glanced down at the gem on the pillow.
The muscular, dark-skinned woman bit her lower lip nervously, and then shook her head. “No, my Captain. I would ask to sleep alone this morning.”
Wendai masked her disappointment and nodded her dismissal. Her comrades’ loyalties were torn between reverence for their former husband and respect for their commander, who had been chosen by an even mightier deity. In their hearts, Wendai might still be their captain, but for the moment at least, she was no longer their sister.
Some hours later not far away…
“Fia, this is a sad night,” said Ribbons of Sorrow as he sat kneeling across from the courtesan, surrounded by the austere beauty of the tearoom. Ribbon’s four slave-concubines knelt forming an X centered on their master, scarlet bands running from their throats to his body suit. Fia faced the regional deity of slavery on her knees, and a prepared futon waited behind her. She was dressed in a simple silk robe colored in the shade of Venus’ blue.
“A sad day, Lord Ribbons?”
“Yes, very much so. For you are no longer mine, are you?”
Fia heard wounded pride buried within the god’s voice, and saw anger sparkle in his eyes. She resisted the urge to open a paper fan and hide her lower face. Dissembling before even a minor deity required a sharpness of wit exercised with none of the tell-tale pauses of deception. She made her reply immediately and evenly, keeping her eyes fixed on his throat.
“I have never been yours, only a reluctant subject of the realm over which you have jurisdiction.”
“Your status as a bond woman meant that I could always have you for the price of a few coins paid to the house mistress,” Ribbons said, and a sharp smile played over his thin lips.
“Yes, that was your privilege and a condition of my unfortunate state,” Fia replied. It was Ribbons of Sorrows’ habit to travel in procession around the city for a full day, once each lunar month, and stop at each of the major teahouses to ravish selected slave-courtesans. For reasons unknown, Fia had attracted the god’s ire, and his two previous visits had been painful ones of endurance and humiliation as his concubines had looked on from behind their white masks.
“And you bore your servitude so gracefully,” Ribbons said mockingly, “your hurt with such sad beauty.”
Moved by the stirrings of anger, Fia met the divinity’s gaze for the first time. The corners of Ribbon’s lips twisted downwards as he absorbed the insult of eye contact from a mortal.
“I do not think you will be happy in your freedom, my love,” he said, his voice cold and iron like.
“Is that a foretelling, son of heaven, or is it merely your nature expressing itself?” Fia asked and tilted her head to one side, indicating scorn for the slave god’s character.
“It is an observation that for nearly two millennia, none of those gifted by the Sun, the mightiest of the Incarna, have long survived their Exaltation. He has turned his back on his Chosen, and his children reincarnate without purpose or protection.”
Fia felt her heart pause, missing a beat. Ribbons of Sorrow knew of her Exaltation, and not just of her having passed beyond his jurisdiction. Were the slave god’s other words also true? Then she recalled the day of the eclipse, when the Sun had turned his face towards the world. Her anger became a slow tide of inexorable emotion, and she smiled coldly. She detected a nearly imperceptible tremble that ran through the god’s delicate hands in response to her expression.
“The world is changing, is it not, Ribbons of Sorrow, and you are a being out of place. Is it proper for a Terrestrial deity to walk the face of Creation wearing material form, or to dwell in a Manse with mortal servants? Or, in the Celestial Order is your place that of an ethereal observer and silent servant of the Terrestrial Bureaucracy?”
“The Celestial hierarchy is corrupt, and Heaven’s magistrates care little about what transpires on earth,” the slave god hissed. “Merely because your patron glanced towards the world does not mean that you are somehow watched over, Crowned Sun!” As soon as those words had left his lips, Ribbons of Sorrow blanched and his four concubines moaned as the silk bands tightened around their throats. He had not meant to use Fia’s title, but recognition of her Caste and authority had been forced upon him by an ancient compulsion buried in his soul.
“Then pray to your superiors and request that I fall soon, before I come into the full powers of my office,” Fia said as Essence stirred within her, and the golden disk-within-a-circle Caste Mark appeared on her smooth forehead.
The god surged to his feet, stared with open fear and then left, dragging his gasping attendants behind him. Wooden screen doors slid open before him, offering Fia a glimpse of terrified bath attendants, musicians and the mistress of the teahouse as they fled the deity’s path. Then the doors slid shut again.
Fia knelt in silence as the mark of her Caste faded. She did not know how Ribbons of Sorrow had learned of her Exaltation, but that he could implied that others would do so as well. She was in danger so long as she remained in the city where she was well known. Fleeing would be difficult, but possible. Over the last five years Fia had hidden away enough jewelry and other gifts from her patrons to suffice for the necessary bribes. With her new-found conviction in destiny, she could be gone from this place in hours.
There was a single knock, and one of the doors slid open. A lithe woman, cloaked and hooded in grey stepped through, then another followed and closed the door behind her. The first moved with an impossible grace and sat down cross legged, facing Fia. The second — similarly attired — was somewhat less elegant in her motion as she knelt and drew back her hood.
Unearthly eyes of luminescent blue, burning with fury, confronted Fia. The courtesan shifted slightly, freeing her folded paper fans within her wide sleeves. Her Exaltation had conferred upon her a recalled proficiency in the Celestial martial art, Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Style. Among the style’s techniques was a Charm with which a practitioner could imbue her fans with the potency of swords and war axes.
Fia had cause to be cautious. Joyful Gift’s remarkable blue eyes had more than once promised additional suffering to the courtesans and slaves whom Ribbons of Sorrows had ravished, for the demon-blooded harlot was his jealous lover. Commonly, little was known about Joyful Gift’s origins, though Fia had heard it whispered among her divine patrons that the girl was the castoff daughter of the demon Mara. For reasons unknown, Gift had formed a devout attachment to Ribbons, and at least one slave-courtesan that he had favored had been found strangled to death within her own bedchamber. Mentally, Fia readied herself for desperate combat. She had seen and experienced first hand several times that wives and sweethearts were often a courtesan’s most implacable and unreasoning enemies. Often they cared not at all that a slave-courtesan would be punished for resisting the money-backed advances of other women’s husbands or lovers.
What came next surprised Fia.
“Demon Malwia,” Joyful Gift rasped, her voice raw with anger. “Execute your commissioned duty; escort this woman safely out of the city.”
The lithe woman drew back her hood. The smoldering sticks of incense on either side of the futon behind Fia snuffed out, and the candle flames within the room lost color, becoming transparent teardrops of heat haze. Malwia’s clear eyes were impossibly large, square-shaped, and misted with fine, dull drops of scarlet — as if spattered with blood on the inside. Her mask-like oval face was perfect, her chin delicate, and the full red lips of her mouth formed a pert bow shape, which Fia could imagine any full-blooded male desiring to kiss. Braided tresses of metallic silver hair fell below the demon’s shoulders.
Fia felt herself poised for battle and at a loss for words. The Wyld Hunt of the Scarlet Dynasty could not openly pursue Anathema here within the Scavenger Lands — the 7th Legion and many nations forbade it. However, it was spoken of in rumor that the Realm employed assassins, bound demons and fanatical members of its Immaculate Order to covertly strike down Solar and Lunar abominations in lands that lay beyond its jurisdiction. This, however, was nothing like Fia had expected. Nor was the chain of surprises yet complete.
“No,” the demon said, her sonorous voice sending shivers up Fia and Joyful Gift’s spines. “This is not the one I am summoned to defend.”
Joyful gift glanced furiously at Fia then back at Malwia. She opened her mouth as if to shout at the demon, but Malwia forestalled her with a raised finger.
“Say nothing, half breed. Leave us, and I will solve this mystery on my own.”
Joyful Gift again opened her mouth to speak, but faltered again under Malwia’s glare.
“Only respect for your mother stays my hand. Go.”
Suspicious, Fia channeled Essence into her scrutiny of the demon and half demon. This was an ancient magic, normally employed to allow a Solar diplomat to attune herself to the complex interactions of a court or other groups of assembled individuals, but it sufficed for smaller gatherings as well. It became immediately clear to Fia, reading the traces of Essence and the nuances of expression, that while Malwia was in fact motivated by a sorcerous compulsion, Joyful Gift was the subordinate of the two. Before Fia’s eyes, the tenuous bond of the relationship ended as the Demon-Blooded excused herself from the room.
“Are you truly one of the Sun’s Chosen?” the demon asked when they were alone. Only the discipline granted by years of slavery allowed Fia to maintain a calm demeanor under the gaze of the alien being that sat across form her.
In response to the creature’s question, Fia allowed Essence to shine through her anima. The gold Caste Mark again appeared upon her brow, and the flickering, gold-edged corona of white holy light enveloped her. The demon scowled.
“The stars above this city are confused. Some force obscures Creation’s strands of Destiny and Fate. I was sent to protect a scholar, and instead I find a diplomat of the Eclipse Caste. Clearly Joyful Gift failed to anticipate the presence of two Solars within the city when she agreed to aid me in my mission. Perhaps she was only too anxious to see you removed from the reach of her lover.”
“And perhaps I am the only Child of the Sun of whom she was aware,” Fia said wonderingly. “What will you do now, demon Malwia?”
“Wait,” the spawn of the Yozi said, and smiled. Her grim expression of delight revealed a mouth of silver needles behind her-perfect scarlet lips.
Next: Arrival in Great Forks. The Dragon-Blooded prepare to hunt in Salt Lotus: Cycle 3
Return to: Salt Lotus Page
