where trees branch and thicken according to their exposure to the sun, the trees of the Mop fork into the low nethers, as though begrudging all open space. The creature hangs from the lowermost skein, unnaturally still, intent with scrutiny and malice.
The thing called Soma.
Her fear falls short of reason. If it had wanted to kill her, she would already be dead. If it had wanted to steal her, she would already be missing.
No. It wants something.
She should cry out, she knows, send it fleeing into the sepulchral depths, chased by the crack and thunder of sorcerous lights. But she does not. It wants something, and she needs to know what. Slowly, deliberately, she stands and draws up her leggings, winces at her own humid reek.
Its face hangs down just far enough to be discernable in the murk. Soma, as if glimpsed through a veil of black gauze. The canopy's high-hanging glow paints his edges with traceries of green.
'He's killing you,' it coos. 'The Nonman.'
She stares up, breathless, immobile. She knows this thing, she reminds herself, knows it as surely as scalpers know Sranc. Assassins. Deceivers. Sowers of resentment and mistrust. Discord arouses them. Violence spills their cup. They are, as her mother once told her, the consummate union of viciousness and grace.
'Then I shall kill him first,' she says, shocked by the resolute tenor of her voice. Her whole life she has been surprised by her ability to appear strong.
This is not the reply it was expecting. She's not sure how she knows this: its hesitation, perhaps, or the click of indecision that passes like smoke across its false expression. Regardless, she knows that it does not want the Nonman dead… at least not yet.
'No…' it whispers. 'Such a thing is beyond your power.'
'My fath-'
'He too would certainly perish.'
She glares upward, peering, trying to discern the folding digits that compose its face. She cannot.
'There is only one way to save yourself,' it rasps.
'And how is that?'
'Kill the Captain.'
– | She rejoins the company as if nothing has happened. She should tell Achamian. She knows this without wanting to know. Her reflex is to hide and to hoard-a product of the brothel, no doubt. Too much had been stolen.
Soma came to me…
She circles this thought, stalks it, returns to it the way she continually reaches for her Chorae where it hangs about her neck. As troubled as she is, as frightened as she is, a part of her soul exults-in the mystery of it, certainly, but also because it had chosen her before any of the others.
Why had it saved her during the Stone Hag attack? At the cost of revealing itself, no less!
Why was it following them in the first place?
And why was it reaching out to her?
After the nightmare of Maimor, Achamian spent long miles verbally pondering the skin-spy and its presence among the Skin Eaters. From the outset he made assumptions, forgivable assumptions: that the skin-spy had infiltrated the Skin Eaters immediately after he had contracted them. That he, the outcast inheritor of their ancient and implacable enemy, Seswatha, was the motive for the infiltration. That it was charged with killing him, lest he discover something too decisive… And so on.
More than anything else, what prevents her from telling the old Wizard is the fear that he is wrong — utterly and catastrophically. The suspicion that the Consult has sent the skin-spy, not to assassinate Achamian or to sabotage the expedition, no. Her fear is that the Consult has sent it to assist them… to ensure they reach Sauglish and the Coffers.
And why not, when Drusas Achamian is the enemy of their enemy? According to her mother, the Consult waited months before finally attacking Kellhus during the First Holy War. 'The only thing they found more terrifying than your stepfather,' she said, 'was the possibility there could be more like him.'
The possibility of Ishual.
The origin of the Aspect-Emperor. As much as Achamian desires this knowledge to judge Anasurimbor Kellhus, would not the Unholy Consult covet it even more?
She has seen the Wizard with the Judging Eye-seen his damnation. At the time she simply assumed that sorcery was the cause, that contrary to her stepfather's claims, sorcery remained the unpardonable sin. And this seemed to lend credence to Achamian and his desperate case against the man who had stolen his wife. But what if this wasn't the case? What if this very quest was the ground of his damnation? There is poetry in the notion, as perverse as it is, and this more than anything else is what hones her fear to a cutting edge. To strike out in the name of love, only to inadvertently unleash the greatest terror the world has ever seen. When she mulls the possibility, it seems to smell of the Whore through and through… at least from what she has seen of Her.
This is what makes telling the Wizard all but impossible. What was she supposed to say? That his life and the lives of all those his deceptions have killed have been in vain? That he is a tool of the very apocalypse he hopes to prevent?
No. She will not speak what cannot be heard. Soma would have to remain her secret, at least for the immediate future. She needs to discover more before going to the Wizard…
Kill the Captain…
She knows this creature. She can number the bones in its false face. She even knows the questions that will confuse it, hint at the absence that is its soul. It stands upon a different field of battle, vast and spectral and devious with a thousand years of patient calculation. And for some reason, it needs Lord Kosoter to be a casualty of that cryptic battle.
Kill the Captain. Understand this command, she realizes, and she will understand Soma's design.
She has watched the slow transformation of loyalties and rivalries within the company. She has seen the glint of sedition in Galian's eyes. She has noticed the way Achamian has come to accept, even prize, the Captain and his ruthless methods. Lord Kosoter will deliver them to the Library of Sauglish-despite all the perils and uncertainties. He is simply one of those men, possessed of a will so cruel, so domineering, that the world could not but yield.
He was the Captain. The harsh shadow, bloodthirsty and pitiless, forever standing in her periphery.
She has always watched, and her eyes are nothing if not critical, but she has never probed, never tested. According to Soma something was happening, something that would eventually imperil their lives. According to Soma things transpired that neither she nor the old Wizard could see.
So she will squint against the glare of the obvious, peer into the gloom of implication. She will pretend to sleep while pondering possibilities and assembling questions. She will solve this one mystery…
She will become a spy.
So far the Mop has climbed and conquered every terrain they have encountered, scaffolding the sides of hills, braiding the heights above rivers, pillaring broad plains. She has peered through the green murk and trod across root-heaved earth for so long that sometimes she forgets the arid smell of open places, the flash of sunlight, and the kiss of unobstructed wind. All is humid and enclosed. She feels like a mole, forever racing beneath the thatch, always wary of flying shadows. When she thinks of the Stone Hags who have fallen in exhaustion, they are already buried in her soul's eye.
Finally they come to a stone formation jutting like a great fractured bone from the earth. Scrub clings to its scarped shelves, but nothing else, and peering up they actually catch ragged glimpses of sky where its bulk breaches the canopy. Standing aloof from their curious peering, the Captain bids them to find a way to the summit. Though hours of daylight remain, they will camp.
The sun glares. The air chills. The Mop tosses on and on, an endless ocean of swaying crowns. Whatever relief they hope to find in wind and sunlight is snuffed when they look to one another. Squinting. Eyes glittering from blackened faces. Ragged like beggars. In the gloom below, they seemed as true to their surroundings as the moss or the humus. Here on the heights, there is no overlooking either their straits or their desperation.
They look like the damned. Achamian, in particular, given the Mark.
They make camp on the formation's rump, where enough soil has accumulated to sustain a thin wig of
