The Wages of Magick Ch. 03

Part the Third, In which Safia sets out to find The Grey Dove

There is little I do not share with my Master, the Mushir. This is because I owe him much.

It was He who plucked me from the gaggle of slaves liberated by the first forces of the Thawrat Al Shaab when they took the garrison of Erzurur on the Empire's eastern border. They took it by guile and stealth, true, but they took it nevertheless.

It was The Mushir who placed the blade in my hands and guided it to the first joint of the thumb of the right hand of the Mirliva, the garrison commander and my then owner, as he lay, naked and panting, on the frame, straining at the ropes, his frog eyes wide with terror. The other slaves had merely mewed and cried at the Mushir's invitation but I had stepped forward. I remember moving the blade lower until the sickle cupped the Mirliva's sagging scrotum. The Mirliva had gasped then wailed then pleaded. Much as I had wailed and pleaded that first time the Mirliva took me. The Mushir had smiled at the sound of his pleas. And nodded.

It was He who brought me into The Order of Those Who Seek. He who oversaw my growth, He who made turned me from a receptacle for the semen of the Empire's soldiers to an Arm of the Thawrat.

I owe him much. But there are some things I do not share with him.

These things I share now with you. To you, I tell all. Because these things, so long as they are true, deserve to be known. And I will be dust by the time you read this.

I know not how word came to us of the Grey Dove, simply that it did. Our agents had dispersed through the land, as sailors, as merchants, as peddlers and mendicants. From the very first beginnings of the Thawrat, we knew that it would be by learning that we would win and there we spent our coin. And so we learned of a woman fitting the Grey Dove's description in a village a half-day's ride east of Van in the province of the same name, the very outer limits of the former Empire.

We had had many such reports from all over the Empire but the Seekers sent out to investigate all of those others had returned. The two sent to Van did not. Nary a word. Our agents uncovered their trails but both seemed to have disappeared into the empty desert between the Taurus and Zagro Mountains.

I knew Van well. It was the place of my birth. My father had been a tanner there. My mother raised me and my seven siblings in a sun-baked mud hovel in two bare rooms, scraping together whatever she could from what little my father had left after the wine merchant had taken his due. It was the arrival of the ninth child that led to my being sold to the Mirliva. That and the flow of blood.

When the blood began, they knew. I shuddered in the corner, my legs slick with it. I remember my father's face, livid with rage. I remember my mother's wails.

"Cursed," he said. "Cursed," she wept.

I remember the doctor's sour breath, the fragments of meat in his beard, his fingers, rough and careless, as they probed between my legs. He had pushed the spectacles up his nose before speaking. He looked my father in the eye.

"Cursed," he said, "but I might have a way out for you. You have other children, yes? Mouths to feed? This cursed one has eaten your bread for long enough. Give it to me. I will sell it for you. I will take forty percent."

I remember my father bargaining with the man while I lay there on the table, my legs apart. I closed them when they struck a deal at twenty percent. For all his faults, my father was a hard bargainer.

I remember being taken home. I do not remember anything else until the Mirliva's captain appeared in the doorway days later. I remember the glint of the sun on the hilt of his scimitar. I remember the disgust in his face. My father had pointed at me. The captain threw him a purse then lifted me off my feet by my shift and threw me over his shoulder.

"God," he had sighed, "it stinks. You fucking peasants. You could at least have washed it for the money."

My last sight of my parents was of my mother, her back to me, kneading bread while my father hurriedly counted out the coins to ensure he had not been short-changed.

I knew Van. I knew her streets, her corners, her sins and her sinners. And on the journey from Van to Erzurur I learned of the desert. I walked upon her sands, tethered, like all the other slaves, behind a camel, stepping in its dung because we were too tired to alter our step. I felt her winds, sharp as a knife, cut through us as we huddled together under the night sky. I heard her voice in the call of the sparrowhawk and the eagle. I saw her face in the sunrise and sunset.

I knew the desert. It was fitting that I should go. That and the fact that I was the best.

The Mushir did not say it but he called me His Favoured One. Who else among The Seekers had killed Five Magickers? No one. True, three had been after The Taint set in, all fleeing powerless, but the other two I had killed in the full glow of Their powers. True, I killed them by stealth and guile, but I killed them nevertheless.

"The Grey Dove is an altogether greater proposition, My Child," the Mushir had said. We had been sitting on this selfsame balcony, awaiting the arrival of the Inker. He worked his prayer beads in his hands, clicking them back and forth, his one good eye looking up and out to the mountain. "She is not easy to catch. Or kill."

I had been seated on the floor, bare to the waist, scraping the skin of my chest with an oilstone. The inscription of The Khatt, the Runes, requires the essence to penetrate the skin. As with many things, preparation is the key.

"I will take her," I said. "She does not have The Power. She is weakened. I will take her."

He shook his head. "But she is cunning. She has lost none of that. She will be expecting another. She will be ready."

"I, too, will be ready," I replied. "And I will be expecting her."

He looked back at me at that. His one eye glowed. He grinned.

"Yes," he said. "Yes. You will. And I know of none better, My Favoured One." He turned back to the mountain. "Though my heart quivers at it, it is you who must go." He sighed. "We will send others behind you. I have called them in. Your Sisters and Brothers. As I speak, they come now from across the land. They will be behind you."

I nodded. "But I must go first. And I will."

He smiled at that. "Yes. You will." The smile faded quickly. I detected emotion in his voice at the next. "Kill her if you must. But-"

"I will not!" I replied. The edge of the oilstone almost cut into my skin, so fierce was my intent. "I will not. I will bring her to you. Alive."

The smile returned. "Alive. Yes. If you can. But, if I had to choose, it is you, Safia, that I wish alive. If there is any threat, kill her. And bring me her head."

"Head I will bring you," I said, resuming the strokes. "But it will be attached to the rest of her. Until you cut it off."

He had laughed outright at that.