17
the sisters in charge, and the trickster in trouble
The search for Paama and the indigo djombi was still on. Sister Elen watched diligently every day and sometimes at night and wrote down everything that she could see. Sister Deian hovered beside her in case there was anything to tell Paama. Sister Carmis worked the hardest, spending hours upon hours in sleep or meditation. She said she was looking at probabilities, but they had become too varied and numerous for her to find anything meaningful. Instead of following a few bright threads in the fabric, she was caught in an irregular, brilliant, dynamic web.
'Not very informative,’ she admitted, ‘but still rather exhilarating.'
The other searchers were moving with equal blindness, arriving at places moments or hours after their quarry had left. If the djombi had pooled resources with the Sisters, they might both have gotten somewhere, but the djombi didn't think to take human abilities seriously, and the Sisters, knowing little about such beings, didn't imagine that it was even possible to collaborate with djombi, so they were both the poorer for it.
However, when humans must rely on their own powers, they can be immensely resourceful. Sister Carmis put the idea out into the open by telling the Sisters of a dream she had had of a warrior-hunter seeking Paama's trail.
'That's it,’ said Sister Jani. ‘We'll hire a tracker.'
'Not from around here,’ warned Sister Elen hastily. ‘I think we should not alarm Paama's family just yet. We need to keep our actions secret.'
'Ahani is the place to find good trackers,’ Sister Jani remarked. ‘No-one asks your business there.'
The Sisters nodded, and then an awkward silence fell. None of them wanted to go to Ahani. Makendha supplied most of their needs, and on the rare occasion that something additional was required, it was sent for.
'There is something else that concerns me,’ said Sister Carmis. ‘We saw the truth of what happened that night, a truth that no-one now seems to recall. The poet Alton appears to be content to be a lord, and Neila is willing to marry him, but what of that man, the majordomo, who once more pretends to be so ordinary? I do not trust him. I would be happier if he were out of Makendha.'
'How are we to accomplish that?’ asked Sister Elen. ‘I might Read him from a distance, but if I dared to speak to him face to face, I might lose my memories and my purpose in an instant. His master may have put protections on him, the same as he did for his poet.'
'Then we deal with him from a distance,’ said Sister Deian.
'We will send him a message threatening him with exposure,’ said Sister Jani, her eyes flashing. ‘Let him try to modify the memory of an entire town full of people after we tell everyone who he is.'
'Wait,’ Sister Carmis said, frowning. ‘He might know something about where his former master is going. Shouldn't we try to bargain with him first?'
'Who knows if these people have any sense of honour?’ Sister Elen sighed. ‘We need something to bind him to be obedient to us, at least for a while.'
If the Sisters sound rather daring in their plans, it is because they did not really know who they were dealing with. Although their memory of the evening was untouched, their perception of what had happened was awry. Both the Trickster as Bini and the indigo lord in his disguise as Alton had shown but slight signs of something changed in appearance. Alton, on the other hand, had been almost entirely controlled by the indigo lord so that he could have the demeanour of a lord to match his own gift of eloquence. He had shown so much influence and interference swirling about him that Sister Elen had Read him as the most dangerous, and Sister Deian had pronounced him the centre of the entire disturbance.
The confused scenes that had followed had been made even more obscure by the darkness and by the peculiar effect of the time bubble, which did not easily permit sight at a distance. They knew that Bini the majordomo was deeply involved in the conspiracy to get the Stick and the subsequent cover-up, but they had not yet grasped the fact that he was not human. Out of all the three, Sister Carmis was the only one who had the slightest idea of his true nature, but unfortunately she had taken her dreams of spiders to be as symbolic as her dreams of the visible web of probabilities.
Therefore the Sisters are plotting something that would work very well for a human, but that will have unexpected consequences for a djombi.
The Trickster was treating himself to a sort of holiday. He was going to establish Alton permanently as Lord Taran, preferably in a residential district just off Ahani so that Neila's nouveau riche tastes could be satisfied, and then he was going to hand in his resignation and go back to his usual haunts in Ahani. As for the real Lord Taran, the Trickster didn't spare him a thought. He had seen enough. Getting between half the host of undying ones and one fallen comrade would be going to a level of danger that he was not accustomed to. Danger for the sake of fun, that he could appreciate, but unreasonable risk taking was not part of his character.
So comfortable was he in his vision of his likely future that the note that came down from the House of the Sisters via the postboy was quite a shock. Humans had seen him and remembered him? How was that possible? He would have to start paying closer attention to the little toys and gadgets that were so popular in the larger cities, and that now, apparently, had come to the hinterlands as well. He read the first part of the message more closely and realised that they had not, in fact, seen
He raised the crumpled paper in his fist and laughed as he shook it in the direction of the House of the Sisters.
Grant him this one theatrical moment. It is going to be of extremely short duration.
His laughter choked off as he saw before him not a human fist, but the sharp-tipped, bristly leg of a spider. He blinked in horror and tried to reassert his image, but nothing happened. The postboy, who had been waiting in case an immediate reply needed to be sent, stared at him in frozen terror.
The Trickster pulled himself together. ‘There is nothing to worry about,’ he told the boy as reassuringly as he could manage. ‘These things happen. Just run along and deliver the rest of your letters.'
Other powers remained intact, for the postboy paused in confusion, nodded peacefully, and then went off to complete his work.
The Trickster gnashed his mandibles in irritation. The power over memory worked best when used on those whom one would rarely see. It was perfect for large and busy towns or cities, and for short interactions, but in a small village like Makendha he would end up having to destroy the short term memory of half the inhabitants to sustain his disguise.
He smoothed out the crumpled note and read it through carefully with a feeling of grudging admiration. Not many people managed to trick the Trickster, but when they did he was willing to give credit where credit was due. Well, he was not going back to Ahani without his secondary power of disguise intact. With a little less elegance than his previous employer, he waved a forelimb in the air and stepped through the crack in space and time—out of his own tent and into the House of the Sisters.
Sister Elen was the first to see him. She started to scream, but he raised a leg wearily.
'This is all your doing, so don't fuss. Who do I have to deal with to get my disguise back?'
She stared at him. ‘Deian!’ she yelled.
The Dreamer came running. On her head was a cap made of the same fabric that covered the cushion she had given to Paama. The Trickster looked at her and observed the immunity to mind tampering.
'No need to be so defensive,’ he said, trying to make soothing gestures with his forelegs, and failing miserably. ‘I realise that perhaps you didn't know what was beneath the disguise when you decided to block my
