“Oh, it is much more than that, Corvus Nightfeather.” Shahrokh entered the round room from above, a battered cylinder held in his large hands. “Here. A gift.”
Corvus accepted the cylinder but dropped it almost instantly as he collapsed in pain to the transparent floor. He felt as if all his feathers had been plucked at once.
“Be calm. You are still intact. Though that is not what the cinderlord proposed, by the way. He thought a celebration was in order once we agreed the book is real, and he suggested we pluck you and roast you over coals. If there is a more barbaric race in the universe than the efreet, then we have not encountered it in a hundred thousand years of exploration.”
Corvus found that he could speak, after a fashion. “Perperhaps if your people … had not spent so much of that time exploring the insides of bottles, slaves to the whims of m-mortals …” He braced for another wave of magical torture, but none came.
“An insult that was old before your people lost their power of flight,” said Shahrokh, unperturbed. He gestured, and the curved length of old metal floated back into his hand. “The pain was no work of mine, by the way. Merely an ancillary effect that came when all your active rituals and contingencies were disrupted by this item. I must admit, I had hoped the famous nest would spill its contents from your chest, but the possibility was small. Lost to the cosmos, I suppose.”
Corvus managed to lift his head from the floor. His view of the city below was washed in red mist, whether from the blood still running from his eyes or that already pooled on the floor, he could not guess. “Djinni magic is more finely cast in stories,” he said. “Perhaps the cinderlord could adjust your toy there so that it works as intended. Certainly the WeavePasha could.”
Shahrokh’s laughter sounded friendly. “Oh, even those two worthies could do little with this relic,” he said. “Its full restoration of power must await the return of my Lord Calim. This is a fragment of a destroyed artifact of the old world, sifted out of the rubble below. It is a segment of the storied Taros Hoop, repurposed by an elf slave to leech magic.”
Corvus wondered if he could stand yet, then thought better of it. “Your dependence on mortal magic is as great as your dependence on mortal society. Does the pasha know you are mining the ruins for old human relics?”
Shahrokh laughed again, though this time his laugh was less genuine. In other circumstances, Corvus might have described it as polite. “Like all the windsouled, he knows exactly what I tell him and no more, kenku. You know this.”
“I wonder,” Corvus said. “Perhaps you underestimate him, as you have his son. Though of the two, I imagine it will be the boy who kills you.” He struggled to his feet, and in doing so, saw that the blurriness of the buildings below was not in his vision, but was an imperfection in the transparent stone itself. Unlike the flagstones in the courtyard, this room was floored with floating crystal of less-than-perfect clarity.
“They will kill each other long before the thought of raising a hand against me enters either of their thick skulls,” said Shahrokh. He looked down. “What are you staring at, assassin? There are no shadows for you to coax to your bidding in this room, even if you still had access to your arts. Why do you think I chose it?”
Corvus took hold of his lower beak and snapped it sharply to the left, correcting a minor displacement that must have come with the fall. “I thought it must be humility. These clear paving stones are from your home clouds in the Elemental Chaos, aren’t they? This one is cloudy itself, so I took it as a demonstration that the djinn and their works are less than perfect. Yes, I see it now. You are apologizing for your ridiculous ego in the only way you can. I am moved, approaching tears, in fact. I wonder if you would send for my short sword so I have something to wipe them away.”
Shahrokh did not laugh this time. He waved, and Corvus fell to the floor again, hard. “That cloudiness is the foundation stone’s power, fool. You think these stones are windows for the windsouled to use to gaze down on their petty holdings? The buildings of Calimport are not earth-motes. They are items of power themselves. The stone you bleed on holds this palace in the sky, and it is the envy of the mighty, even in the Elemental Chaos.”
“Not an apology, then,” Corvus groaned. “In that case, I must admit you have me stumped. Now that you’ve used the magic of a mortal-wrought artifact, restored by a mortal, to disrupt my mortal rituals, why are you still floating there like a duckling on a storm-tossed sea? Are you confused, Shahrokh? Now that you have the book back-a book stolen by a mortal and returned to you by my efforts-are you at a loss as to what to do next? Need advice from your betters? More help cleaning up messes you made? Please, Shahrokh, do not be shy. I want to help. Sincerely, your wish is my command.”
As he spoke, Corvus regained his feet and made a careful study of the floor, then the walls. There was no sign of the door he had been pushed through.
The djinni moved around to where Corvus had no choice but to meet his eyes. “Perhaps,” he said, “as you intimate in your ceaseless cawing, I
Corvus decided he was through talking.
“It is a simple question, spy. When did you withdraw from the game?”
Corvus did not look away from the djinni’s eyes. He did not blink, and he did not answer.
“Ten years ago,” Sharokh said, “when we first approached you, I would never have guessed that it would be the WeavePasha you betrayed instead of us. We believed you would never turn the book over if you managed to locate it, and we had made our preparations assuming that. When you told us to make ready for the el Arhapan whelp to be returned as an instrument of the WeavePasha’s will, we even made arrangements should that plan have succeeded. Other windsouled have been prepared to take that family’s role in the Rituals of Return. All of that work assuming things would go awry. Yet at some point, you made a decision to do exactly what we asked of you. When was that?”
Corvus said, “I see there has been some mistake. If I have fulfilled my obligations, then I am sure you meant to offer some other reward than to strip me naked and torture me.”
Shahrokh considered this. “No, I do not believe we did. Once again, and this is the last time. The third time, which should please you. When?”
If Corvus could have smirked, he would have. “Never,” he said.
“You will never answer?” asked Shahrokh.
“No, you floating fool. I never did what you asked.”
When he awoke again, Corvus was in a squalid cell lined with straw, dimly illuminated by gray light falling from far above. The door was open, and a short figure squatted on its heels just beyond the door’s frame. Ah, thought Corvus, raising himself up on his elbows. Now this is what I expected.
The shadowy figure stood, revealed to be a halfling man with an ugly scar running down one side of his face. He threw a bundle at Corvus.
“Bird-head man,” he said. “Ain’t never seen one of them. The slave tattoo looks funny through your feathers. Here’re your tunic and your pail. Tunic’s to wear as clothes, use as bandages, whatever you want, really. Pail’s for slop. The kind that goes in and the kind that goes out, both. Welcome to Calimport Between.”
Corvus rose and cracked his knuckles. He felt the indelible tattoo of windblown sand marking him as a slave as a dull throbbing pain on his forehead, but whatever spell had put it there had also healed the worst of his injuries. He made a swift check of his surroundings, then wasted no further time in pulling the filthy shift over his head and gathering up his pail.
“Don’t you mean Calimport Below?” he asked the man.
The halfling was already walking away. “Sure, bird-head man,” he said. “Whatever you say.”
Chapter Fifteen
Alas, the only person who could
grant her redemption was herself,
and herself she never thought to ask.
