'Show me this command!'
'Can you not wait and ask him yourself?'
'Why,' snapped the don, 'do you always answer questions with questions?'
'Does it annoy you?'
'Yes it does.'
The woman smiled.
Hamish leaned across the table, peering at her blindfold to see if it was genuine. 'Why should we trust you? How do we know you are not sent by the enemy? Or are just a fake? How old are you?' He was seriously annoyed.
'Will you believe in me when I give you such boils on your backside that you cannot sit down?'
'Do that, and I'll wring your bird's neck and make it into soup. Why are you blindfolded?'
'If Chabi must be my eyes, will not the noon sun be too bright for her?'
'Well, yes, but…' Hamish straightened up. Frowning, he fell silent as he tried to puzzle out what that answer-question implied. At least the shaman had taken his mind off Lisa.
CHAPTER FOUR
They might be violent by nature, but soldiers of fortune were rarely monsters. The men of the Don Ramon Company were as concerned for the welfare of their souls as most other men, as heedful of the guidance of good spirits, and as abhorrent of demons' mindless evil. They were reasonably devout — but only reasonably. They would have as soon trusted their opponents not to use gramarye against them as they would have gone into battle wearing paper helmets. Only gramarye could fight gramarye, so the death of the company hexer had been the cause of much foreboding. If Longdirk tried to lead them to war before he found a credible replacement for the late Karl Fischart, he would march alone. Could they accept a woman? Even more unlikely, could they accept a shaman, whose style of conjuration would be so unfamiliar to them?
Could he? It was to be expected that the Tartar prince would show interest in the victor of Trent, but for Sartaq to assign his personal shaman to one of the smaller mercenary companies out of all the dozens in Italy was a gift horse with a very large mouth indeed. Was Sorghaghtani what she said she was? Whom did she serve? Hamish did not want to trust her, although he could not explain how he would test any adept for hidden loyalties. Toby was prepared to accept her because the hob seemed to. Either she was a hexer of such enormous power that she could blind the hob, or else she meant no harm. If he vouched for her, Hamish would go along, and the don probably would. How about the rest of the Company?
Sorghaghtani herself asked that question before he did. She also inquired why he did not invite all the officers to meet her at sunset in the courtyard and why he did not show her to her quarters in the meantime.
Since Fischart's death, the adytum held no spiritual threat to disturb the hob. Toby could go there now and had even inspected it a few days previously with the idea of turning it into a gunpowder store, eventually deciding it was too close to the villa. He conducted the little shaman there. She seemed pleased with the building and asked why he did not leave her to get on with her work.
He walked by it a few times during the day and each time heard her drum throbbing away inside as if she were performing some sort of shamanistic spring cleaning, but the hob paid no attention. Twice he tapped on the door to ask if she needed food and neither time was there any answer, but when he went to fetch her at sunset, she came out to meet him with her drum slung around her neck, all ready to go. An instant later the owl swooped down to settle on her shoulder.
'Do you need food, madonna?'
'Who? Why give me titles? If my mother called me Sorghaghtani, is that not good enough for you? Who can quest in the spirit world with a full stomach?' She hobbled off along the path. She was blindfolded, although the light would not bother her owl now. He could not tell whether her awkward gait meant that she was old or just badly shod. For all he knew, there was an adolescent inside that grotesque costume.
He caught up with her, staying on the non-owl side. 'Have you cleansed the adytum of evil influences, Sorghaghtani, the shadow Oreste mentioned?'
'Have you sharpened the pikes, Little One?'
'You would rather I did not ask you questions?'
'Is not one of us enough?'
He could not tell if she was being humorous, since her face was hidden — he was so much taller than she that he could not even see the owl's goggle-eyed stare. He tried again. 'I have assembled the officers. Will you tell me what you propose to do?'
'Why cannot you wait and see?'
'Do you ever say anything that is not a question?'
'Why do you ask?'
Toby sighed. 'I'm beginning to wonder.'
She chuckled, and that was an improvement.
'I have seen your owl many times in the last few weeks, and heard a drum. Was that you?'
'Who else?'
'Why were you spying on me?'
'Was I spying or just trying to find you?'
'I assume when you answer like that… I mean, I take that answer to mean that you were trying to find me.'
'Do you?'
This was becoming more than a little irritating. 'Warn me what you plan tonight, Sorghaghtani, because the hob — my imp as you call it — will not tolerate gramarye.'
'Have I vexed it yet, Little One? Would it behave so well if I were a danger to you? How much will it do your bidding?'
'I try not to let it do anything. If I do, it will soon learn to bypass my controls and then overpower me. The tutelary at Montserrat warned me of that many times. Let sleeping demons lie.'
The shaman chortled. 'Tutelaries? You always believe tutelaries? Why do you carry it so strangely in your heart?'
'I do not carry it willingly at all. It cannot be exorcised, for we have grown too much together.'
'Think you I cannot see that? Will not both become one soon?'
'Not soon. In many years perhaps, and I can only hope that then I will be the one who survives.'
She did not offer her opinion of his chances.
Even before the horrors of Trent, Toby Longdirk had seen more manifestations of gramarye than most men, but not all of it had been violent and destructive. In the days before he learned to suppress its antics, the hob had often played tricks around him — often embarrassing, as when he found pretty things collecting in his pockets, sometimes deadly, but once in a while very convenient, almost as if it could think and were trying to please. So he knew gramarye, and yet Sorghaghtani's seance that evening was unlike anything he had ever witnessed before. It was subtle and stunningly effective, and the hob never stirred.
The courtyard was deeply shadowed, lit by a willowy moon in the pink dusk and the gleam of a few candles inside the villa itself. After the long-awaited payday, not all the officers of the Company were available to attend a council or competent to understand what was happening if they did, but the don had collected at least a score of them, perhaps thirty. They stood in small groups around the edges, under the trellises, staying well back, as if frightened the new hexer would turn them into goats to demonstrate her skills.
Toby presented Sorghaghtani, personal shaman to His Highness Prince Sartaq. He mentioned how honored and fortunate the Don Ramon Company was to have acquired such a hexer. The resulting silence might have come straight out of one of the age-old Etruscan tombs that were being excavated around Tuscany. Unless these men could be convinced, they would not persuade the rank and file.
'Are you always so mud-headed?' Sorghaghtani demanded shrilly. 'What must I show you? Will you give me
