Unclean (4 page)

Maybe that had been because he was of Mulan descent, hence, at least in theory, a scion of the aristocracy. She, a member of the Rashemi underclass, had never had any particular feeling that she was entitled to a better life or that it would prove her unworthy if she failed to achieve it. He might have believed differently, knowing that at one time, his family had been rich and then lost everything.

Well, no, not everything. They’d still possessed their freedom, and with that reflection, dread clutched her even tighter, and sorrow sharpened into abject misery.

She lay helpless in their grip until someone off to her left started to cry. Then, despite her own wretchedness, she rose from her thin, scratchy pallet. The barracoon had high little windows seemingly intended for ventilation more than illumination but enough moonlight leaked in to enable her to pick

her way through the gloom without stepping on anyone.

The weeping girl lay on her side, legs drawn up and hands hiding her face. Tammith knelt down beside her, gently but insistently lifted her into a sitting position, and took her in her arms. Her fingers sank into the adolescent’s mane of long, oily, unwashed hair.

In Thay, folk of Mulan descent removed all the hair from their heads and often their entire bodies. Rashemi freemen didn’t invariably go to the same extremes, but if they chose to retain any growth on their scalps at all, they clipped it short to distinguish themselves from slaves, who were forbidden to cut it.

Soon, Tammith thought, I’ll have a hot, heavy, filthy mass of hair just like this, and though that was the least of the trials and humiliations the future likely held in store, for some reason, the realization nearly started her sobbing as well.

Instead she held her sister slave and rubbed her back. “It’s all right,” she crooned, “it’s all right.”

“It’s not!” the adolescent snarled. She sounded angry but didn’t try to extricate herself from Tammith’s embrace. “You’re new, so you don’t know!”

“Someone has been cruel to you,” Tammith said, “but perhaps your new master will be kind and wealthy too. Maybe you’ll live in a grand house, wear silk, and eat the finest food. Maybe life will be better than it’s ever been before.”

Even as she spoke them, Tammith knew her words were ridiculous. Few slaves ended up in the sort of circumstances she was describing, and even if you did, how contemptible you’d be if mere creature comforts could console you for the loss of your liberty, but she didn’t know what else to say.

Light wavered through the air, and something cracked. Tammith looked around and saw the slave trader standing in the doorway. An older man with a dark-lipped, crooked mouth, he looked odd in his nightclothes and slippers with a

blacksnake whip in one hand and a lantern in the other.

She wondered why he’d bothered to come check on his merchandise in the dead of night when he already employed watchmen for the purpose. Then a different sort of man came through the door behind him, and she caught her breath.

10 Mirtul, the Year of Risen Elfkin

Despite its minute and deliberate imperfections, the sigil branded on Tsagoth’s brow stung and itched, nor could his body’s resiliency, which shed most wounds in a matter of moments, ease the discomfort. The blood fiend wished he could raise one of his four clawed hands and rip the mark to shreds, but he knew he must bear it until his mission was complete.

Perhaps it was the displeasure manifest in his red-eyed glare and fang-baring snarl that made all the puny little humans cringe from him—not just the wretches scurrying in the streets of Bezantur, but the youthful, newly minted Red Wizards of Conjuration guarding the gate as well. Tsagoth supposed that in the latter case it must have been. With his huge frame, lupine muzzle, and purple-black scaly hide, he was a monstrosity in the eyes of the average mortal, but no conjuror could earn a crimson robe without trafficking with dozens of entities equally alien to the base material world.

In any case, the doorkeepers were used to watching demons, devils, and elementals, all wearing brands or collars of servitude, come and go on various errands, and they made no effort to bar Tsagoth’s entry into their order’s Chapter house, a castle of sorts with battlements on the roof and four tiled tetrahedral spires jutting from the corners. A good thing, too. He could dimly sense the wards emplaced to smite any spirit reckless enough to try to break or sneak in, and they were potent.

Inside the structure he found high, arched ceilings supported by rows of red marble columns, faded, flaking frescos decorating the walls, and a trace of the brimstone smell that clung to many infernal beings. He tried to look as if he knew where he was going and was engaged in some licit task as he explored.

No one questioned him as he prowled around, and after a time he peered into yet another hall and beheld a prison of sorts, a pentacle defined in red, white, and black mosaic on the floor. The design caged two devils, both displaying the ire of spirits newly snared and enslaved. The kyton with its shroud of crawling bladed chains snarled threats of vengeance. The bezekira, an entity like a lion made of glare and sparks, hurled itself repeatedly at the perimeter of the pentacle, rebounding each time as if it had collided with a solid wall. Judging from their chatter, the two Red Wizards minding the prisoners had made a wager on how many times the hellcat would subject itself to such indignity before giving up.

It wouldn’t do for either the warlocks or the devils to spy Tsagoth, not yet, so he dissolved into vapor. Even in that form, he wasn’t invisible, but when he put his mind to it, he could be singularly inconspicuous. He floated to the ceiling then over the shiny shaven heads of the Red Wizards. Neither they nor their captives noticed.

Beyond the hall with the mosaic pentacle was a row of conjuration chambers adjacent to a corridor. Three of the rooms were

in use, the occupants chanting intricate rhymes to summon additional spitits. One of those chambers was several round-arched doorways removed from the other two, and Tsagoth hoped its relative isolation would keep the warlocks in the other rooms from overhearing anything they shouldn’t. Still in mist form, he flowed toward it.

Beyond the arch, a Red Wizard chanted and brandished a ritual dagger in front of another magic circle, this one currently empty and drawn in colored chalk on the floor. Though intent on his magic as any spellcaster needed to be, he had a glowering cast to his expression that suggested he was no happier to be practicing his art than Tsagoth was with his own assignment.

In the wake of Druxus Rhym’s assassination, Nevron, zulkir of Conjuration, had directed his underlings to summon spirits to buttress the defenses of himself, Aznar Thrul, and Lauzoril, the third member of their faction. If, as many people believed, Thrul himself had engineered Rhym’s death, then it followed that the effort was merely a ruse to divert suspicion, and maybe the fellow flourishing the knife resented being forced to exert himself to no genuine purpose.

Perhaps, Tsagoth thought with a flicker of amusement, he’ll thank me for helping him complete his chore quickly. He floated through the arch, over the mage and along the ceiling, then, fast as he could, he streamed down into the center of the pentacle. There he took on solid form once more. His forehead immediately throbbed.

The conjuror stared. A demon was supposed to materialize in the chalk figure, and to superficial appearances, that was exactly what had happened, but it wasn’t supposed to manifest until the Red Wizard finished the spell.

“Eenonguk?” he asked.

Tsagoth surmised that was the name of the spirit the warlock had tried to summon, and he was willing to play the part if it

would help him complete this phase of his task more easily. “Yes, Master,” he replied.

“No,” the wizard said. “You’re not Eenonguk. Eenonguk is a babau demon.” He dropped the athame to clank on the floor and snatched for the wand sheathed on his hip.

Tsagoth hurled himself forward. As he crossed the boundary of the pentacle, his muscles spasmed, and he staggered. But since the warlock hadn’t drawn the figure to imprison creatures of his precise nature, it couldn’t contain him.

It had delayed him, though. The wand, a length of polished carnelian, had cleared the sheath, and the Red Wizard nearly had it aimed in his direction. The blood fiend sprinted fast as ever in his long existence, closed the distance, and chopped at the conjuror’s wrist with the edge of his lower left hand. The blow jolted the rod from the wizard’s grasp.

Tsagoth grappled the Red Wizard, bore him down, and crouched on top of him. He gave the wretch a moment to struggle and feel how helpless he was then bared his fangs.

The display made him feel a pang of genuine thirst, for all that the blood of humans was thin and tasteless stuff. Resisting the impulse to feed, he stared into his captive’s eyes and stabbed with all his force of will, stabbed into a mind that, he hoped, terror had disordered and rendered vulnerable.

The Red Wizard stopped squirming.

“You will do what I tell you,” Tsagoth said. “You will believe what I tell you.” “Yes.”

“You meant to summon me here and you did. Afterward, you bound me without incident.”

“… without incident,” the mage echoed.

“And now you’ll see to it that I’m assigned to the house of Aznar Thrul.”

His broad, tattooed hand numbed by all the alcohol he’d already consumed, Aoth Fezim carefully picked up the white ceramic cup and tossed back the clear liquor contained therein. The first few measures had burned going down, but now it was just like drinking water. He supposed his mouth, throat, and guts were numb as well.

His opponent across the table lifted his own cup, then set it down again. He twisted in his chair, doubled over and retched.

Some of the onlookers—those who’d bet on Fezim to win the drinking contest—cheered. Those who’d wagered on his opponent cursed and groaned.

Aoth murmured a charm, and with a tingle, sensation returned to his hands, even as his mind sharpened. It wasn’t that he minded being drunk, to the contrary, but it was still relatively early, and he feared passing out and missing all the revelry still to come. Better to sober up now and have the pleasure of drinking himself stupid all over again.

He waved to attract a serving girl’s attention and pointed at the length of sausage a fellow soldier was wolfing down. The lass smiled and nodded her understanding, then gave a start when a screech cut through the ambient din. Indeed, the entire tavern fell quiet, even though the cry was nowhere near as frightening as it could be when a person heard it close at hand or could see the creature giving voice to it.

At the same moment, Aoth felt a pang of … something. Discomfort? Disquiet?

Whatever it was, nothing could be terribly wrong, could it? After an uneventful flight up the Pass of Thazar, he and Brightwing were properly billeted in the safety of Thazar Keep. He’d seen to his familiar’s needs before setting forth in search of his own amusements, and in the unlikely event that anyone was

idiot enough to bother her, she was more than capable of scaring the dolt away without any help from her master.

Thus, Aoth was tempted to ignore her cry and the uneasiness that bled across their psychic link, but that wasn’t the way to treat one’s staunchest friend, especially when she was apt to complain about it for days afterward. Consoling himself with the reflection that even if there was a problem, it would likely only take a moment to sort out, he rose, strapped his falchion across his back, and picked up the long spear that served him as both warrior’s lance and wizard’s staff. Then, pausing to exchange pleasantries with various acquaintances along the way, he headed for the door.

Outside, the night was clear and chilly, the stars brilliant. The buildings comprising the castle—massive donjons and battlements etected in the days of Thay’s wars of independence against Mulhorand, when the vale was still of strategic importance—rose black around him, while the peaks of the Sunrise Mountains loomed over those. He headed for the south bailey, where Brightwing was quartered, well away from the stables. Otherwise, her proximity would have driven the horses mad and put a strain on her discipline as well.

A soldier—tall, lanky, plainly Mulan—came around a corner, and an awkward moment followed as he stared down, waiting for Aoth to give way. The problem, Aoth knew, was that while he claimed Mulan ancestry himself, with his short, blocky frame, he didn’t look it, particularly in the dark.

He was easygoing by nature, and there was a time when he might simply have stepped aside, but he’d learned that, looking as he did, he sometimes had to insist on niggling matters of precedence lest he forfeit respect. He summoned a flare of silvery light from the head of his lance to reveal the badges of a rider of the elite Griffon Legion and the intricate tattooing and manifest power of a wizard.

Not a Red Wizard. Probably because the purity of his bloodline was suspect, none of the orders had ever sought to recruit him, but in Thay, any true scholar of magic commanded respect, and the other warrior stammered an apology and scurried out of the way. Aoth gave him a nod and tramped onward.

The masters of Thazar Keep housed visiting griffons in an airy, doorless stone hall that was a vague approximation of the caverns in which the species often laired in the wild. At present, Brightwing—so named because, even as a cub, her feathers had been a lighter shade of gold than average—was the only one in residence. Her tack hung from pegs on the wall, and fragments of broken bone and flecks of bloody flesh and fat—all that remained of the side of beef Aoth had requisitioned for her supper—befouled a shallow trough.

Brightwing herself was nine feet long, with a lion’s body and the pinions, forelegs, and head of an eagle. Her tail switched restlessly, and her round scarlet eyes opened wide when her master came into view.

“It’s about time,” she said.

Her beak and throat weren’t made for articulating human speech, and most people wouldn’t have understood the clacks and squawks. But thanks to the bond they shared, Aoth had no difficulty.