And the pebbles themselves sparkled in many colors—and some of them were the rusty-red of cinnabar! One cinnabar pebble from the fountain’s largest bottom bowl surely wouldn’t be missed.
Squatting down, Mahtra stuck her fingers into the cool, clear pool, but before she’d claimed a pebble, something brightly golden and sinuous streaked through the water. It struck her fingertip with raspy sharp teeth. She jerked her hand back so quickly that she lost her balance and wound up sitting ungracefully on the leonine mosaic of the floor. A bead of blood, not cinnabar, glistened on her forefinger.
She heard laughter then, from two places: to her right, where the slave held his sides as he giggled, and behind, where a human woman—the august emerita—sat behind a wicker table and laughed without moving her lips.
“Ver guards his treasure well, child,” the emerita said. “Take your cinnabar pebble from another bowl.”
Mahtra was wary—how could the woman have known she wanted a cinnabar pebble?—but she was clever enough about the ways of high templars to know she should take what had been granted without delay. And the august emerita was a high templar. Though she wrapped her ancient body in layers of sheer silk just like a courtesan, there was a heavy gold medallion hanging around her withered neck. Mahtra snatched the biggest red pebble she could see, then, while it was still dripping, stuffed it in her mouth.
“Good. Now, come, sit down and have something more nourishing to eat.”
There was a plate of things on the wicker table… pinkish-orange things with too many legs and wispy eyestalks that were still moving and were nothing that Mahtra wanted to eat.
“Benin, go to the pantry and fetch up a plate of fruit and dainties. Our guest has a delicate palate.”
She didn’t want fruit, Mahtra thought as the slave departed. She wanted her mask; she wanted to leave, she wanted to return to her vigil outside House Escrissar.
“Sit down, child,” the woman said with a sigh.
Despite the sigh—or possibly because of it—Mahtra hied herself to a chair and sat.
“How many days and nights have you been waiting, child?”
Mahtra considered the layers in her memory: More than two, she was sure of that. Three or four?
“Three or four, child—try ten. You’d been sitting there for ten days and nights!”
Ten—that was more than she’d imagined, but what truly jolted Mahtra was the realization that, like Father, the august emerita could skim the words of her thoughts from her mind’s surface. So she thought about her mask, and how badly she wanted it.
The woman smiled a high templar’s knowing smile. She looked a little like Father, with creases across her face and streaks in her hair that were as white as Mahtra’s own skin. Her eyes, though, were nothing like Father’s. They were dark and hard, like Lord Escrissar’s eyes, which she’d seen through the holes of his mask. All the high templars had eyes like that.
“All of us have been tempered like the finest steel, child. Tell me your name—ah, it’s Mahtra. I thought so. Now, Mahtra—”
But she hadn’t thought the word of her name. The august emerita had plunged deep into her mind to pluck out her name. That roused fear and, more than fear, a sense that she was unprotected, and that made the marks on her shoulders tingle.
I mean you no harm, Mahtra. I’m no threat to you.
Mahtra felt the makers’ protection subside as it had never done before, except in her nightmares when Death ignored her. This was no dream. The woman had done something to her, Mahtra was sure of that. She couldn’t protect herself, and learned yet another expression for fear.
“No harm, Mahtra. Your powers will return, but were I you, child, I’d learn more about them. I’m long past the days when helplessness excited me, but—as you’ve noticed—I’m an old woman, and you won’t find many like me. I want only to know why you’ve sat on the doorsill of House Escrissar these last ten days. Don’t you know Elabon’s dead?”
Dead? Dead like Father, like Mika, and all the others in the cavern? What hope had she of finding Kakzim if Lord Escrissar was dead?
Mahtra lowered her head. She was cold and, worse than shivering, she felt alone, without the powerful patrons Father mentioned in his last words to her. Blinding pressure throbbed behind her eyes and strange high-pitched sounds brewed in her throat. She couldn’t cry, but she couldn’t stop trying, any more than she could bring back the makers’ protection.
Suddenly,