he was well outside their normal range.
His efforts to appear inconspicuous were only making him seem furtive, and another escape attempt would put him in terrible danger. Although a Witness should never meddle in events, surely a word of caution to a child would not incur the wrath of holy Mayn.
She crossed the bridge to Milk Yellow and he to Limpet Bend.
As Sister Tranquility, Lonia was one of the most senior and most respected members of the Maynist cult, and commonly regarded as a possible future Eldest. She was a native of Skjar. She loved the horrible old city, crammed between its canyon walls, even when it was insufferably hot or unbelievably wet, which was almost all of the time. She knew every one of its sixty-sixty islands and innumerable bridges, all its splendid buildings and imaginative vice hovels-and, as a Witness, was even aware of what was going on inside, activities that varied from the frightful to the farcical.
She had recently been appointed Mother of the Skjar lodge, a posting that gave her enormous satisfaction, recognition of her long service to the cult. She could no longer deny her white hair, her wrinkled exterior, and sagging interior, but she still had all her faculties, thank the goddess. The thought of becoming Eldest one day held no appeal. Her new duties were quite challenge enough.
As she set foot on Snakeskin, Dantio began crossing to Egg.
Tranquility was one of the most outspoken critics of the infamous treaty the current Eldest had made with the bloodlord a decade ago. Although Stralg and his brothers were certainly Werists, Tranquility and her supporters maintained that their sister Saltaja was a Chosen and probably their father Hrag had been one, also. It was written in the laws of holy Demern: Thou shalt not covenant with the Evil One. It was true that the Maynists had no proof to back up their suspicions, but if Stralg had accepted help from Xaran, the Eldest’s compact with him was invalid and always had been.
Earlier that year, the bloodlord had lost two-thirds of his horde crossing to Florengia, but he himself had survived and was reputedly meeting almost no resistance there. His brothers and brother-in-law could not match him as warriors, but the Witnesses would prop them up and help them suppress any revolution before it became dangerous. Saltaja was going to continue ruling Vigaelia in Stralg’s name for some time to come. Skjar was her capital, and when Mother Melody died, the Eldest had sent Tranquility to replace her, with orders to keep an eye on the Queen of Shadows. In other words, she was to prove her case or shut up. There never could be proof in the Maynist sense, because the Ancient One veiled Her followers from the sight of the All-Seeing, but there might be ordinary, extrinsic eyewitness evidence of chthonic actions.
Dantio crossed to Snakeskin.
Tranquility adjusted her route so that eventually they must meet face-to-face. She waited in a doorway as he dodged ever closer, then stepped out in his path.
“Dantio?”
He yelled in terror, dropped his burden, and fled off into the crowd. She watched him doubling around through alleys and courtyards until he went to ground under a wooden doorstep, wriggling down in the filth like a human worm. She took the shortest route there and laid down his food sack at the end where his head was.
“Dantio,” she said, “the seers in the palace see you. When you are missed, Satrap Eide will ask where you are and they will tell him. They don’t want to, but they have no choice-they must answer any question a hostleader asks.”
He was trying very hard to keep his weeping silent. He had opened some of the half-healed welts on his back.
“Then the lady Saltaja will have you flogged again. I heard her threaten you with double next time. I know she meant it.”
“You’re another!” said a muffled whimper.
“Yes, I’m a seer, but I’m not on duty just now. I am trying to help you. Why not come out and we’ll talk about it?” This was outright meddling. She made a mental note to reprimand herself severely.
After a moment he began to wriggle. She reached down to help him and the moment their hands touched, she learned that he was a seasoner. She had never encountered seasoning before. It was so rare that the instructors at Bergashamm could only describe what they had been taught themselves. The only known living seasoners were Stralg Hragson and Saltaja Hragsdor. Now much more than compassion fueled Tranquility’s interest in the hostage.
She walked Dantio back to the palace while explaining about the wicked compact and why he would always be caught if he tried to run away. She did not mention that she had been present in the palace during his last flogging, enduring his agony and terror.
“I promised my brothers,” he said, over and over. “Benard and Orlando. I promised my brothers I would go back for them.”
“Saltaja is a very evil woman, Dantio. She never makes an idle threat. If you continue to defy her, she will keep increasing the punishment until she kills you.”
He said he believed, but she could feel the untruth. Racked by homesickness and imagined guilt, the boy was so desperate that he truly did not care.
That night she sent an urgent message to the Eldest, in Bergashamm.
Tranquility was in the duty room the next day when Satrap Eide sent a summons for a Witness. Guessing the problem, she looked and saw Dantio already on the far side of Triangle. She sent Ember to answer the satrap’s call because her range was not great, but Ember found the boy anyway. Her dismay when she had to report where he was moaned through the palace like eldritch funeral horns. Eide sent Werists to bring him back, and Saltaja sentenced him to a dozen lashes, four on each of three days.
Sick with horror, Tranquility fled to the Home of Holy Nula to consult the Senior Mercy, Mother Dolerian, who was a distant cousin of hers. Dolerian was tall and spare, but wore her years well. Her hair was silver, her face un- lined, and not a wrinkle marred the fall of her brown robe. So great was the calm she projected that even to sit in the same room with her was to feel one’s burdens grow lighter. She was sympathetic in this case, but not cooperative.
“Punishment is never pleasant, Lonia dear,” she said. “But obviously the brat is stubborn and will have to learn his lesson.”
“Lesson? You call that a lesson? She started with a leather belt, went on to a stick and now she’s using the plaited leather whip they use on adult criminals! Wielded by a Werist! It cuts his flesh to the bone. And three separate floggings! Flogging unhealed cuts hurts much more. This is inhuman!”
Dolerian sighed and nodded. “But if the trollop finds out that we have been easing his suffering, Lonia, won’t she simply increase the punishment?”
That was a very valid argument, for almost nothing happened within the palace without Saltaja hearing of it. Nulists were the kindest, most sympathetic of people by definition, but Mother Dolerian was stubborn, and nothing Tranquility could say would change her mind, not even angry sneers that she must be afraid of the Queen of Shadows. Defeated, Tranquility crawled back to a palace aflame-it seemed to her-with a boy’s torment.
For a thirty after his ordeal on the whipping post, Dantio was kept in solitary confinement. Typically, when Saltaja eventually sent for him, it was in the middle of the night. As always she wore black, even to a black wimple and black cuffs covering her hands. She sat on a black throne in a black room lit by a single lamp, so almost nothing was visible except her corpse-pale, strangely elongated face. This treatment had been known to reduce strong men to gibbering terror, but the boy kept his poise. He was too young to see that such courage just increased his danger.
“If I release you, will you run away again?”
“Honored lady, I have learned my lesson. I swear I never will.”
The seers eavesdropping in the duty room felt his duplicity like a slap in the face.
Saltaja was skeptical, too. “That is good,” she said. “From now on you will report to the guard four times a day, and if you fail to do so just once, boy, I will have you gelded and your ears cropped. You believe me?”
The boy said, “I do believe you, honored lady,” but his reservations were obvious to the watching seer. First you will have to catch me.
The Eldest responded to Tranquility’s report by agreeing that seasoning had never before been detected in one so young. She directed Tranquility to be extremely diligent, which meant that meddling would be overlooked, within reason. She also ordered that a Witness be assigned full-time to study this Dantio Celebre. Tranquility took
