Fox's Bride (12 page)

“They come here of their own will,” a priest said. “The Oasis Empire does not trade in slaves.”

Hiresha said, “If they were slaves, they might receive better treatment.”

The enchantress then asked the guards armed with bows to leave the wall, so they would not scare the people away. She hurled coins over the edge. They glittered in the sand. When salt miners and their children scrambled to find them, she called down.

“Who was it? Who told you there'd be gold this morning?”

“The desert tells,” a child said, his hair a tangle of black.

A man wore a rictus grin as he kissed a coin in each hand. “The desert tells!”

“How?” Hiresha asked. “How could you tell?”

“Feed for a year,” a man shouted then dashed away.

The grinning man said, “The desert tells it, one gold for one soul. Any more and your fortune is taken by the gods.”

Her enchantment would stick the gold to the nearest person, which indeed would not slow them when carrying but one coin. A feeling of defeat slimed Hiresha and made her perspiration stick to her in oily globs. She was ready to accept that she would receive no information of worth from the men below, and she began thinking of other ways to catch the thieves.

The priests had decided upon a less tactful approach. Guards rode out of the gates on camels and caught two salt miners lured by her coins close to the wall.

Guards held swords to their throats. “Who told you? Who's the god thief?”

One said that his brother's betrothed knew a man who had overhead a conversation about the chests, last evening. It had been the talk of the slums. The other captives began to plead a similar story when five Bright Palms sprinted through the gates.

Fifty bows drew and aimed arrows at them. The Bright Palms did not flinch or hesitate, their eyes shining with a calming magic. They knocked guards down with their shields, in one case whacking a camel's head back to force a way to the salt miners.

The guards dropped their captives, letting the Bright Palms retreat with them in a shield wall formation through the gatehouse. The guards lowered their bows, and one wearing a gilded scarab over his belly button let out a long breath.

“There'll be no riot, I think.”

“Godless men.” A priest glared after the Bright Palms then cradled his pudgy face in his hands.

“We should've captured one.” A priest smacked one hand into the other. “Maybe the thief is a Bright Palm.”

“A glowing thief.” Hiresha grimaced. “That seems probable.”

The priest lifted his clenched hands. “They might know the thief.”

“A Bright Palm could never be induced to betray their own, or their order.” Hiresha knew that Bright Palms could not feel fear, and personal threats held little meaning to them.

“Someone in the Tent Town has to know,” a priest said.

“Not necessarily.” Hiresha rubbed her temples, trying to ground herself. Her weariness pooled around her, and she worried she would float away in a tide of thoughtless slumber. She could not afford that, not when the vizier would kill Chandur in two days. She had to catch those thieves. “Twenty feet of stone keep your poor out of the city, and the theft happened within the walls.”

By stealing the fennec, the thieves risked a less-pleasant variety of death. Hiresha had assumed greed had driven them to recklessness. Abandoning the ransom chilled her, proved that she did not understand their leader.

“Bring me the stuffed fennec,” Hiresha said. “A thief must have touched it. I might be able to detect his essence.”

A scribe was sent scurrying after it while Hiresha was moved in her sedan chair to a garden. Short date palms brushed their green fronds over the heads of the guardsmen. A tributary stream descended from the sky, trickling along the length of a shiny chain. It emptied into a fountain. Guards drank from it. Eye paint darkened the men's eyes with insignias of the tails of scorpions, foxes, or camels. Nearby, a baboon clambered through an apricot tree, picking the ripe fruits then lowering itself upside down to place them in a basket.

The sound of water lulled Hiresha closer to sleep. She struggled against it as best she could, asking with slurred words for the priests and guards to recount all they remembered from the morning the fox god went missing. Their replies melded into the drip and splash of the fountain as the enchantress faded in and out of consciousness.

When the scribe returned with the stuffed fox, Maid Janny helped remove Hiresha's gloves. The enchantress held the furred decoration then allowed herself to plunge into sleep. She would have to find something in her dream laboratory that led her to the thieves. For all she knew, they could be succeeding where she had failed by escaping into the desert.

“The ransom might have been a diversion.” Hiresha balanced on the toes of one slippered foot. Jewels floated around her as weightless and glowing as she. Within her, thoughts whirled. “Perhaps there is but one thief who knew he could not carry so much gold to safety. He might’ve used the distraction for time to escape with the fennec. But why?”

“Who wouldn't want a fennec?” The reflection spread a hand against the inside of her mirror, gazing out at the stuffed fox Hiresha held. “Awww! This one looks like he's sleeping.”

The stiff creature levitated from Hiresha's hands. She Attracted out all the debris caught within its golden-white fur, hoping to find some link to the thief. She made a face while examining a few dark hairs, and one eyelash. A fiber of blue-dyed linen was also extracted, from a priest's robe. They had handled the stuffed animal after the theft.

One mirror showed the recent conversation with the priests near the baboon picking apricots. She had missed most of the meaning at the time, but she could follow the words now with perfect clarity.

At the same time, another mirror revealed the guards and servants whom she had encountered at the First Trader's Inn. Hiresha scrutinized them. Their faces flashed by within the glass, in all the postures that Hiresha had seen, chiefly during the night she had eaten beside Chandur and embarrassed herself. She studied their expressions as they gazed at the fennec, examining them for anything untoward.

“Look.” The reflection pointed across the room to the mirror displaying the face of a guard. “His eyelash has the same length and curve.”

“As do others.” Hiresha reached outward to stone shelves. Glowing baubles flew to her hand, a sapphire honey jar and a rack full of vials of powdered jewels. “And I cannot ascertain if the hair came from the thief or those who handled the decoy afterward.”

“Then what're we looking for?”

“I am not certain.”

Hiresha was not in the habit of tracking miscreants. She specialized in regeneration and curative services, and her baubles would detect infection units, poisons, and sadly nothing else. The sapphire honey jar began to sparkle while the fox's fur ruffled.

“So do we change plans?” The reflection was clasping a third golden brooch to the same lock of hair. “Can we find another way out for Fosapam?”

The gems whirled around Hiresha in eddies of irritation at the thought of abandoning another plan. “Satisfying the vizier's conditions is the surest way to attain Chandur's safety, and I am neither so uncertain nor cowardly to change plans. The thief will be caught. If no other options present themselves, I’ll solicit the Lord of the Feast to track him down.”

One mirror focused on the face of the priest who had been sick the last few days, Inannis. While gazing at the fennec, his angular chin tended to point forward, and his sunken cheeks tightened. The expression only lasted part of a second, but Hiresha recognized it as a pose of aggression.

Hiresha said, “This priest harbors resentment against his animal god.”

The reflection shook her head, and when she frowned, her right cheek dimpled. “Maybe he got bitten.”

The baubles continued to hover near the stuffed fennec and work their magic. Hiresha flipped the dead fox over and positioned her hands on either side of it, Attracting its seams apart.

“Exact stitching,” Hiresha said. “Confound!”

Spider hatchlings swarmed out of the open belly of the stuffed fox. Five hundred and sixty-seven yellow abdomens with translucent legs spilled out to drop toward the ground or sailed upward on strands of silk. Several latched onto air-bound diamonds.

The reflection screamed within her mirror. Hiresha only raised one brow before Burdening all the spiders to the floor and crushing them.

Increasing an object's attraction toward the ground was a third-sphere ability of her magic and taxing. Destruction did not come easily to an enchantress, and a pinpoint headache followed the exertion. As a consolation, the spiderlings would be dead in the real world as well.

Hiresha banished the smashed spiderlings from her dream with a wave of her hand. “The thief apparently amused himself by planting a spider egg sac in the fennec.”

“How awful,” the reflection said.

“At least they were not venomous,” Hiresha said. “Perhaps I can trace the species to a localized place in the city.”

The reflection pointed a yellow glove toward the floating honey jar. “What did it find?”

Hiresha gripped the bauble. Its jeweled surface cooled her hands. “Now this is fascinating. An unaccountably high incidence of Blood Judgment contaminate.”

“Yuck!” The tendons in the reflection's neck stood out beneath her silk. “We'd hate to cough blood, and know our life's strand could end any day. We'd be afraid to get out of bed.”

“Indeed, no other malady can last so long and kill so suddenly.”

Those with the Judgment could live for decades or die in a day by drowning in their own blood. The condition was similar to leprosy in that it was less of an infection than a divine curse. Most everyone was exposed to its contamination units, but only the ill fated sickened from it.

“Someone with the Blood Judgment handled this fennec.” Hiresha batted a ruby away from her eye. “The diseased could not be a guardsman, as he would weaken beyond service. He could not be a priest, as none so marked by the gods could be accepted.”

“He is a priest.” The reflection gestured to another mirror where the sickly priest's chest shuddered a fraction of an inch suppressing a cough spasm. When his tongue darted between his flushed lips, a red slickness covered it as if he had recently eaten a pomegranate. “His name is Inannis.”

“He is no priest.”

Hiresha masked her excitement in the dream. After the defeat on the city wall, she had needed a breakthrough, and she believed she had found it. Excitement charged through her, and all the jewels in the laboratory brightened.

“Observe how he maintains a lazy expression, yet his eyes dart beneath half-closed eyelids.”

The smooth orb of his cranium contrasted with a face of defined cheek bones and sharp jaw. His fingers were short and delicate. Within the mirror, he displayed an economy of movement, every action measured and precise.

The reflection asked, “Do we think he's the thief?”

“He is worth questioning.” Despite Hiresha's calm words, her heart sped. She had not failed to notice that the other bauble, the rack of jewel vials, had detected trace amounts of several poisons on the fennec. The toxins may well have come from the hands of a poisoner.
Inannis' hands.
“I will be cautious.”

“We don't really need to confront him, do we?”

Five garnets on Hiresha's gown glared with purple light. She enchanted them to protect her from various toxins.

“Even if we caught the thief, catch Inannis, we'll still have to escape the guards.” The reflection made fists in her yellow gloves and tucked them under her chin. “Won't we still need get out of Oasis City?”

“Chandur will be safe. I'll have satisfied the vizier's conditions.” Hiresha Repulsed the baubles, and the weaker spell caused them to drift at a slow rate back to their shelves.

“We don't need to serve the vizier. We don't need the priests or their nasty rituals. Break Chandur free ourselves.” She kissed the mirror glass. “Then escape with him.”

“How?”

“Not with weapons. We're as coordinated as a drunken baboon while awake,” the reflection said. “We'll use magic.”

Hiresha loved her enchantment magic, but her power only came in dream. She could only affect people she held while going to sleep, or indirectly by imbuing spellcraft into jewels, stone, or precious metals. Enchantresses were respected as artisans and scholars. They certainly had no place on a battlefield.
Everyone knows that.

She said, “I can do nothing without Spellsword Chandur. Perhaps if enchantresses could activate enchantments while awake, yet, no. I could never overcome the guards.”

“More than one magic in the Lands of Loam.”

Hiresha slitted her eyes, revolving in the air to square her shoulders with the mirror. Specters of chill rippled from her spine around her back to her belly.

The reflection rested a yellow finger on her chin and looked away. “Is there a magic that could help us? That could hide us, could protect us? One that'd give you everything you want?”

“I know who you are,” Hiresha said. “What you are.”

“Why, I am the truer you.” A smile was an upward hook on the face of the woman in the mirror, and her lips darkened. So did her dress, and she stretched, grew taller. Her eyes turned violet. “The Lord of the Feast could help us. Help you.”

Hiresha believed an essence of forbidden magic had seeped into her consciousness and grafted onto her thoughts.
The Feaster in me.
She did not know how to best fight the infection or if she could ever rid herself of the sapphire beauty. Behind the Feaster, deep in the shadows of the mirror, an enchantress in a yellow dress was bound and gagged with silk. The jeweled Feaster had kidnapped Hiresha's reflection and used her image as a disguise. Fury and fright revolved within Hiresha.

“His magic could help you.” The Feaster flourished a hand. Instead of nails, claws of black sapphires glittered in wicked points at the end of her fingers. She rested a hand on the curve of a hip. “No one could resist you.”

“Short-sighted, as always.” In her dream, Hiresha could constrict the veins in her face and neck to hide her blush. “If I begin Feasting, Tethiel would be my lord.”

“Would that be alluring?” She stroked a dark thumbnail over her purple lips. “Or delightful?”

“I would have to stay in the city and hunt his imagined enemies.”

“You can save yourself,” the Feaster said. “You don't have to die in a dusty sarcophagus.”

“Feasting is its own manner of prison. Bright Palms would hunt me. All would hate me.”

“You're too intelligent to be discovered.”

“Tethiel is paranoid,” Hiresha said, “and your thoughts are not appreciated.”

The invader in the mirror said one thing more, and afterward, Hiresha wished she had left the dream seconds earlier so she need not have heard it.

“These aren't my thoughts. They're yours.”