Redemption in Indigo (8 page)

His dragonflies patrolled the river and the wells and the ponds where the livestock were watered. The ladybirds bore the protection of superstition, for they were considered lucky, so he allowed them to settle on people's clothing and travel with them into houses where they could overhear all the latest gossip. The honeybees flew in and out everywhere, but were often distracted by flower gardens and kitchens. He managed them all with the fine skill of an orchestral conductor, scanning the news they found for information that would help him regain his power.

It became clear to him very quickly that the people of Makendha had no inkling of what was in their midst. He began to worry that perhaps the spider had, after all, sent him to scramble uselessly on a fruitless errand. Then he consoled himself. There was no way that any djombi could sense his presence in Makendha, with his power so widely diffused into such weak shadows. Also, why assume that the person who held the chaos power was indeed as proficient as the spider claimed?

Chaos was a far subtler force than most people realised. It would be so easy to sense if it threw off thunderbolts or sent barely sensed thrummings through the fabric of reality, but it was nothing more than the possible made probable. It did not break or bend any laws of nature or tip the balance of the universe. How would a mere human understand how to manipulate it? They would end up thinking they were merely lucky, or blessed.

Finding someone who held an unused or little-used focus of chaos was akin to the unenviable task of trying to find a needle in a haystack. He tried to see if there was anyone who stood out from the crowd. He looked for the village herb woman, he scrutinised the chief, he examined the local priest. They were all within the ordinary mould, with ordinary events surrounding them. Then he spied for a while on the strongest hunters, the most successful farmers, the wealthiest merchants. None of them had come by their fortunes recently and serendipitously. Finally, growing bored at last and ready to give up, he looked at the women of Makendha, to see who was the most powerful matriarch.

It took a bit of a stretch of the imagination, but the only person who remotely stood out was Tasi.

It made sense in a way. She was not a woman who stood out for her own merits, and yet her husband was prosperous enough and respected among the village elders, her daughters were of good repute, and her kitchen drew ordinary passersby like honey draws sugar ants. As he pieced together the gossip, he became even more certain. Her older daughter had married a man considered foolish even by human standards. When he came to Makendha to see his estranged wife, bizarre accidents were the result. He had left the village without her, and with very little of his dignity. Yes, ridicule was the weapon of the quiet woman.

His insects focused their attention on Tasi's household. Not only the kitchen attracted visitors. The younger daughter, who was still single, had several strings of admirers. It seemed as if Tasi was employing a very strict screening process, however. Before the suitors were given any opportunity at conversation with the object of their desire, they had to sit through a detailed interview with Tasi and her older daughter. Few made it past this first, intimidating obstacle, and those who did endured the chaperoned visits for interminable weeks after that. There were compensations; the food of Tasi's kitchen was truly delightful by all accounts. However, no one had as yet gained the prize.

Still, he needed confirmation. These were only hints, and he was not about to make a fool of himself for the Trickster to gloat over him. Then, at last, he found it. A junior, cunningly hidden in the shadow of a child, had insinuated itself into Tasi's household!

He instantly grew cautious. Sending away all but two of his shadows, he flew a bee in at the kitchen window and walked a ladybird over the threshold of the back door.

'Why don't you simply show me how to use it?’ murmured a woman's voice.

'I would rather not even touch it,’ a child whispered back.

His shadows were poorly positioned for a clear sight of the speakers. The djombi was easily identified by its piping child's voice, but the voice of the other could have been either of Tasi's daughters for all he could tell. He turned the bee and flew to the other side of the room so that he could see the faces?

Splat.

There was a sudden loss of aerial vision. His bee had been swatted.

'Neila! Why did you do that?'

'I hate bees. They look like they're waiting to sting you for no good reason.'

'That's wasps, Neila! You like honey, don't you? Then let the bees live!'

Those two voices were almost identical. He was growing confused. Determinedly, he set his ladybird crawling up a wall for a better line of sight. When he turned it about to look down at the room, he saw the two daughters, and the child-shadow. The child was looking up at his ladybird with an expression of cold suspicion, and he realised that he had spent too much time getting into position.

'Would you kill that ladybird?’ it said to Neila, continuing to look meaningfully at the bright red beetle.

'Don't be silly. No-one would kill a ladybird. What would happen to all my luck if I did a thing like that?'

A pot on the stove rattled. The older daughter was stirring the contents and examining them closely.

'The syrup is ready,’ she announced, bringing the steaming pot to the table and setting it on a round of stone.

A sheet of chilled metal was also on the table. She took out a generous dollop of syrup and handed the spoon to the child, who then carefully dribbled strings of syrup onto the cold metal. There was more confirmation if he needed it—the strings tumbled into weird spirals and highly specific knots, a sure sign of chaos if one knew what to look for.

...?ut the djombi wasn't doing it, at least not if he understood that first exchange correctly. Tasi wasn't in the room, so it wasn't her ...

The two sisters sat with heads close together, watching the liquid as it curled into its patterns and peeling it off when it solidified.

It had to be one of them.

He believed it must be the younger. A woman cautious of her luck, but contemptuous of the lives of bees, with half the men in the village and some from out of it beating down her door, yet perhaps close enough to her sister to do her the favour of ridding her of the encumbrance of a foolish husband??es, it was very likely.

He had no idea how biased he had become. He saw Neila's beauty, her casual cruelty, and her boredom, and he saw himself. Naturally he believed her to be the one gifted with his stolen power.

Careful not to attract attention, he let the ladybird fly away home. He no longer needed it. He felt so pleased with himself that instead of conjuring the hall, he relaxed and imagined himself a warm sunny pasture to lie in while he plotted out the recovery of his power. There was still the problem of where the focus was located. Humans did not hold such power within themselves easily; they had a deep-seated need for symbols, talismans, and representations. Somewhere in that house was the symbol of the force of chaos, and unless he took that with him, he could not take back the power.

That junior djombi would be on the alert now. It would look out for insects and guard its words from being overheard, and warn the women to guard theirs too. It would double its efforts to teach Neila how to use her new gift effectively. He had little time if he hoped to avoid an unseemly battle with juniors and inferiors.

He remembered Neila's offhand tones after she spoke of killing the bee. She was interesting, in a mundane and wholly human kind of way. Perhaps he could convince her to give up his power without a struggle. She looked like a woman who could be bribed. In fact, she looked like a woman who could be flattered. If he came to her as a suitor, with enough wealth and beauty to dazzle her, would she even notice that her power over chaos was no more when she saw all the apparent luck around her?

True, it had been a while since he walked the earth in a human role, but there were precedents. It might be the easiest way to get back his power. Who knows what terrible things they had said to her about him? Better that he try honey and temptation to reach his goals rather than attempt to use force, which might only justify any misconceptions already given.

It sounded like logical reasoning, but he was biased again. He secretly wanted to punish Neila. She would choose him as her husband, but after he got what he wanted, he would desert her. He wanted to humble her, to make her feel as if she was winning and then show her the face of her defeat when she was a mere hair's breadth from the pinnacle. She dared to take the power of a senior djombi, then let her defend herself!

Remember what we mentioned to you before. This is a dangerous person. He enjoys lulling the prey into a feeling of safety before killing it. That instant of betrayal, that twist of perception when one realises that one's entire universe is founded on a lie—that is the moment that acts on his boredom as splendidly as champagne on a jaded palate.

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Those who live in Makendha say that Ahani is the place where con men hold their conventions. They may be right—certainly it must have had some seedy flair to attract the regular attention of a djombi like the Trickster. Another claim made about Ahani is that a man can make something of himself there. That also had some grains of truth. Certainly it was not kind to women seeking their fortunes—not entirely baseless is the belief, widespread in Makendha and beyond, that women rule the villages but men rule the towns. As for making something of oneself, the question remains, what would that something be?

The indigo lord was going to Ahani to make an identity and a reputation for himself. Just because he considered them vermin didn't mean he lacked awareness of how humans operated. As individuals they were puny, but as hives their communication networks had power. There was no way he could impress in Makendha if no-one had ever heard of him in any of the larger cities.

He went to a stash of gold which he had put away—the legacy of an adventure in more innocent days. Perhaps I will tell you about it later, if we have the time. He had never expected to use it for himself, but that was the nature of chaos; its effects spanned time in ways that were not always immediately discernible, not even by beings outside of time.

He found a modest but highly reputable guest house in Ahani, one where his lack of goods would not be commented on. His first step was to hire a man of discretion. The way that he did this was to conduct the interviews in his usual shadow. Those who flinched at the strange colour of his skin, or whose eyes asked questions, did not pass. Finally, he selected a man by the name of Bini, whose calm eyes and unruffled demeanour spoke of vast pools of patience and a truly inhuman lack of curiosity. His only concerns were his duties and his pay, and once assured that the former were legal and the latter significant, he had nothing more to say.

Except one other thing.

'May I ask m'lord's name or title, so that I might know who has hired me and for whom I will be hiring?'

It was a fair request. The indigo lord had an answer waiting. ‘You may call me Taran.'

'Taran’ was not a common name. It meant ‘star’ in the local language. Bini merely nodded, taking the strangeness of the name and dropping it into the bottomless pit of his nonchalance.

Having secured his majordomo, Taran, as we may now call him, assigned to him all the hiring of the lesser servants and the acquisition of goods. Bini proved to be the same as all the rest, but when he returned with his first and only set of doctored receipts, Taran gave him a moment to feel comfortable and then struck him down with the truth, that truly formidable axe against which little can stand. Bini deserved credit; rather than bluster or try to cover up his gaffe, he said quietly that the receipts appeared to be misleading and he would return in a while with the correct figures. After that, there was no more trouble with Bini, though Taran kept a changing guard of insects near him—a beetle one day, an ant the next—just to be sure.

Taran showed his face once to Bini during the interview; after that he covered himself entirely, robes, gloves, boots, and veiled headdress with only his eyes glinting beyond a rectangle of mesh. He looked like a desert prince travelling incognito. He offered no explanation for his sudden change in garb. As a human, Bini would come up with his own speculations??hen again, as Bini he would probably not care.

I myself have wondered why Taran did not simply change his shadow to blend into his environment. I suspect—and this is subject to correction—that such large-scale changes to one's own shadow were performed infrequently. It may be that the act of shadowcrafting not only requires great effort, but also creates a ripple that can be sensed by like beings. For all his pride, Taran was not above using stealth in order to gain the advantage. Or maybe it was indeed pride that made him cover himself so that he would not be soiled by human touch, not even by their eyes resting on his features. I do not know.

The underlings hired by Bini did speculate. He overheard one declaring that he was probably hiding ghastly scars from a severe burning, and another guessing that the mark of pestilence was what caused him to hide his skin. The most inventive hypothesis thus far was that he was terribly sensitive to heat and light due to albinism, which would also explain the strange purplish hue of his eyes that could be detected even through the mesh.

Taran had not forgotten his plan. He ensured that his clothes were tailored to fit him well so that all could see that his shadow was healthy, excellently proportioned, and lacking in deformation of any kind. He correctly assumed that his wealth would provide sufficient attraction to counter the unseen but imagined flaws. Beautiful women like Neila are not interested in competitors. Without a doubt she would prefer a man with the means to display her beauty to its best advantage over a man whose beauty rivalled hers.