When Demons Walk (7 page)

“How did you survive?”

“Not by selling my body,” she said dryly, finding the sympathy in his voice oddly disturbing. She used a touch of magic to dampen the cloth and cleaned her hands and face as well as she could. The rest of her was cleaner than most people in Purgatory were, but clean hands and face would have made her stand out. “I knew a little magic. Thieving is not a bad way to make a living, not after the first time—though I know a whore who says the same thing about her line of business. My choice has a longer career span.”

“If ye don't get caught,” added Talbot, matching her dry tones.

“There is that,” agreed Sham politely.

She unfolded the sheet and took out the blue muslin underdress, shaking it out as best she could. The rest of the
wrinkles were swiftly eliminated by another breath of magic. Usually she wouldn't waste her energies on something so trivial, but she didn't have time to heat a flatiron.

Once the dress was on, she slipped the knife that usually resided in her boot into the thigh sheath, and slipped her hand through the hole in the skirt to see if she could reach the handle. It was a little awkward, so she pulled the sheath over the narrow strips of leather that she'd tied around her thigh until the knife came more naturally to hand.

She had to leave off her arm sheath and dagger, but the long, sharp hairpin was almost as good. The yellow overdress covered the small slit in the skirt, but as it was open on the sides it didn't hamper her access to the knife. A pair of yellow slippers completed the outfit.

“You can look, now,” she said, rolling the clothes she'd been wearing into the bundle she'd brought from the cubbyhole. She pulled her hair out of its braid and tugged the small wooden comb ruthlessly through the thick stuff until she was able to twist it neatly on the top of her head, securing it with the wicked hair pin.

“Now,” she said, “we are ready to visit the dressmakers and acquire a wardrobe.”

 

S
HAMERA SWEPT INTO
the castle, leaving Talbot to direct the disposal of her purchases. Looking neither left nor right she followed the path that she'd taken earlier in the day.

She'd scorned Talbot's suggestion that the Reeve wouldn't take a woman of questionable taste as his mistress. Everyone knew that the Reeve had never taken a mistress, so she had to be extraordinary. With her angular features and slender body, that left her wardrobe.

The dress she wore was black, a color that the Cybellians used only for mourning. She'd had the seamstress lower the bodice and take off the sleeves, leaving most of her upper body exposed. Small sapphire-blue flowers, torn hastily from another dress at Shamera's request, were sewn here and there on the satin skirt of her gown.

Her hair, free of its usual restraints, hung in thick soft
waves past her shoulders and halfway down her back. She'd colored her lips a soft rose and lined her large eyes and darkened her lashes with kohl. Her face she'd powdered until it was even whiter than usual, a shocking contrast to the darker-skinned Cybellians. She had even changed her movements, exchanging her usual boyish stride for a sultry swaying walk that covered the same amount of ground in a completely different way.

When she'd emerged from the dressing room at the dressmaker's, Talbot had started laughing.

“No one, but no one, is going to confuse ye wi' Sham the thief.” Even the outrageous bill that she'd run up hadn't been enough to take the wide grin off his face.

 

S
HAMERA DIDN
'
T BOTHER
to knock at the Reeve's door, but thrust it open hard enough that it hit the wall behind it with a hollow thud.

“
Darling
,” she gushed in heavily accented Cybellian. “I couldn't believe it when I heard that you were ill. Is
this
why you broke off with me?”

After a dramatic pause at the door, Shamera rushed over to his side trailing expensive perfume behind her and ignoring the stunned looks on the faces of the man and woman who were sitting in chairs next to Kerim. As she crossed the floor she looked at them from the corner of her eye.

The woman was small and beautiful despite the fine lines around her mouth and nose. Her coloring was the same as the Reeve's: thick dark hair, warm brown skin, and rich dark eyes. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful as a young girl; even now, with strands of silver and a slight softening of the skin of her neck, she would have brought a pretty penny at any of the higher-class brothels in Purgatory.

The man sitting next to her was similarly beautiful; his features were fine-boned and mobile, a refined version of the Reeve's. The dark eyes were large and long-lashed. A warm, approving smile dawned on his lips at her appearance, revealing a single dimple.

Shamera reached the Reeve's chair and leaned over, pressing a passionate kiss on his mouth, lingering longer than she'd really intended when he responded with matching theatrics. Breathing a little harder, she pulled back before she ended up sitting on his lap in front of the woman who, judging by the look of moral outrage on her face, could only be his mother.

“But sweetheart,
what
is it they are feeding you?” Sham looked with honest horror at the mush on the tray that sat on a table beside Kerim's chair. She picked up the tray and sought out the servant standing in the shadows, where a good servant learned to make himself at home.

“You, sir, what is your name?”

“Dickon, my Lady.”

“Dickon, take this back to the kitchens and get something fit for a man to eat.” She thickened her vowels deliberately when she said “a man” it
might
have been her accent.

The servant came forward to take the tray, stiffening slightly as he got a good look at her face. But he took the gold inlaid wooden slat without commenting and left the room before anyone had a chance to object to Shamera's order. She turned back to the remaining three occupants in the room and noticed that Kerim had lost control of his laughter.

She widened her eyes at him and gestured dramatically, saying, “Horrid man, I come here to
rescue
you, and all that you do is laugh at me. I think I shall leave.” With that she turned on one foot and took two steps toward the door.

“Shamera,” Kerim's voice darkened and Sham felt as if he'd run a caressing hand down her back. “Come here.”

She turned back with a pout and crossed her arms under her breasts. The effect caused the other man in the room to swear softly in admiration and the immaculately garbed woman's eyebrows rose as Shamera's gown slid lower. Slender she might be, but not everywhere.

“Shamera.” There was a soft warning note in the Reeve's voice, but Sham was glad that no one but she was looking at him. No one could have missed the inner
amusement that danced in his eyes. She felt her lips slide out of their pout and into an honest smile in response.

“I'm sorry,” she offered softly, obediently traversing the floor between them, “but you
know
I don't like being laughed at.”

He took the hands she offered him and brought them to his lips in apology. “Dear heart, your presence is like a breath of summer in these dark chambers.” He spoke in the sultry voice that would have made a young maiden swoon.

“
Our
presence is obviously unnecessary,” commented the other man. “Come Mother.” The older woman took his arm and allowed him to assist her to rise.

“Wait,” ordered the Reeve raising a hand imperiously. “I would like to introduce you to the Lady Shamera, widow of Lord Ervan of Escarpment Keep. Lady Shamera, my mother the Lady Tirra and my brother, Lord Ven.”

Shamera's shallow curtsy was hampered by the fact that Kerim hadn't released her hand. She smiled at them and then turned back to Kerim, without waiting to see if they would return the greeting. With her free hand she smoothed the hair out of Kerim's amused face.

Shamera heard the Lady Tirra draw her breath in to speak as Kerim's servant came in with a new tray from the kitchen. Sham straightened, took the tray, and gifted the servant with a warm smile for his timely interruption; she wasn't sure how far she could push Lady Tirra without offending Kerim. Balancing the meal easily on one hand, she lifted the warming covers to reveal a nicely roasted chicken with an assortment of greens.

“Ah, that's
much
better. Thank you, Dickon.”

The servant bowed and retreated to the corner he'd occupied from the beginning as Sham set the richly carved wooden tray on Kerim's lap rather than on the nearby table. She knelt in front of him, ignoring the damage to the material the dressmaker had so carefully pressed.

“Eat, my Leopard; then we will talk,” she purred in the sultriest tone she could manage; it must have worked
because she heard the rustle of crisp fabric as Kerim's mother stiffened with further outrage.

Without taking his eyes off Shamera, Kerim spoke. “My thanks, Mother, for your concern. It seems that I will not be dining alone tonight after all. The gentlemen of the court are doubtless awaiting your late arrival.”

Lady Tirra left the room without another word, leaving her youngest son to trail after her.

A
s the door closed, Kerim turned to his servant. “Dickon, I believe Talbot will be nearby. Find him and send him in, will you?”

“Very good, my lord.” Dickon bowed and left the room.

As soon as the soft click of the latch reached Sham's ears, she relaxed and sat back in a more comfortable cross-legged position on the floor.

The Reeve looked at her for an instant and then began laughing softly, his shoulders shaking. “I was wondering how we'd pull this off. You'll forgive me, but when Talbot proposed this, I thought he was insane.”

“Thievery requires a certain amount of boldness, and a touch of theatrics,” she answered, batting her lashes at him. “I have it on good authority that being a mistress has similar requirements.”

He nodded. “No doubt it does, but I've seen warriors quake at the sight of my mother.”

She started to reply, but a soft sound from the corridor caught her attention. A moment later there was a gentle tapping on the door. She stood without tangling her feet in
the yards of material that formed her skirt, and strode across the room to open the door for Talbot.

The former sailor entered with his usual rolling gait, aiming a wide grin at the Reeve. “Impressive, isn't she?” Talbot nodded at Sham with the expression of a doting hen viewing her egg. “Told her that black was for when folks were dead. She raised her brows and looked down her nose and said black was erotic. When she came out looking like that I bought a nice black nightdress for the missus.”

“I didn't expect her this soon.”

“Mmm, well now, it seems that she'll not be needing tutoring in court ways—she was brought up here under the old king.”

Kerim turned to her, and Sham nodded, quipping, “ 'Fraid I'm not much credit to my upbringing.”

The Reeve gave her a thoughtful glance, then turned his attention back to Talbot. “No word tonight?”

Talbot looked grim. “Nay, sir, but it'll come.” Looking at Sham, he explained, “Our killer likes to hunt every eight or nine days: 'tis the only real pattern the thing has. Yesterday was the eighth day and no one died, so tonight's it.”

She frowned, trying to remember what little she knew about demons. “Is there any pattern to the numbers? Like three times it feeds on the eighth day and then twice on the ninth?”

“I don't know,” answered Talbot, intrigued, “I hadn't thought it might be a fixed pattern rather than whimsy. I'll go through the deaths again and see.”

“Is it important?” asked the Reeve.

“It depends,” she said, helping herself to a roll that was sitting ignored on Kerim's plate. She found a comfortable chair and tugged it around until it faced the Reeve. Talbot took up a seat on the nearest couch.

“On what?” The Reeve picked up his eating knife and began to carve the chicken.

“On whether or not you believe in demons,” she replied—though she didn't recall any pattern to demon killings. She waited smugly for his reaction. Intelligent, educated Cybellians did not believe in demons.

“I've seen a few,” said the presumably intelligent, educated Cybellian Reeve thoughtfully, “but never anywhere near the city.”

Sham choked and then coughed when she inhaled a crumb.

Kerim ignored her outwardly, though she thought there might be a hint of amusement in the lines around his mouth as he continued, “There is no way that these murders are the work of demons. The last victim died in his room in the middle of the day. He kept thirty-odd servants; if it had been a demon, the thing would have been spotted long before it found Abet's room.”

“Abet's locked room,” added Talbot meaningfully, looking at Shamera.

“In any case,” continued the Reeve, “I can't imagine one of the swamp demons dragging its carcass through the whole of Abet's mansion without someone noticing. Not only are they loud, but they stink like a week-old fish.”

“Ah,” said Sham, enlightened. “These demons of yours, are they strong and devilishly hard to kill? Roughly human in shape?”

The Reeve nodded, “Sounds like all the ones I've met.”

“Uriah,” she said firmly. “I've never met one—not that I'm complaining. But I'll tell you this much, I'd rather face a hundred of the things than take on a demon. Uriah are monsters, abominations created by magic. Demons
are
magic.”

“
Magic
,” barked the Reeve, at last giving her the reaction she'd been waiting for. “Every time you Southwoodsmen hear about something that is not easily explained, you sit around nodding sagely and say ‘magic'—as if the whole pox-ridden world turns on it.”

She laughed, “It does, of course. Only self-blinded Easterners can't see it.”

Kerim shook his head at her, and resumed his speech-making. “I've lived here for almost ten years and I've never seen someone work magic. Sleight-of-hand, yes—but nothing that can't be explained by fast hands and a faster mouth.”

“The wizard-born aren't stupid, messire,” said Talbot mildly. “Ye weren't here for the blood that followed the conquest of the city—the witch hunts we have now are nothing in comparison. Proper terrified of magic, yer armies were, an' they slaughtered any mage they could find. The wizards who survived would prefer ye kept on thinking magic's what the streetcorner busker uses to pull a coin from behind yer ear.”

“And it's easier for me this way,” added Shamera, to stir up the Reeve again, who'd begun to let Talbot's calm voice soothe him. “It gives a thief a decided advantage to be able to use magic where no one believes in it. Who am I to ruin the fun?”

“Do ye remember how long the Castle stood against the Prophet's armies after Landsend itself had fallen?” asked Talbot, ignoring Sham.

“Nine months,” said Kerim reluctantly.

Talbot nodded. “Nine months on what little food they had stored here. Did ye ever find a water source other than the well that was dry long decades before the siege?”

“No.”

Shamera noticed that the Reeve was beginning to sound huffy, as if he didn't like the direction that this conversation was taking. She had thought that Talbot was only trying to calm Kerim down, not change his mind.

In a spirit of general perversity she said, “The weekly mopping of the secret passages aside—”

“Every other week,” corrected Kerim.

She ignored him. “—I would wager there are still ways out of the Castle that no one knows about. Master Talbot, if the Reeve is determined not to believe in magic it's a waste of time to try and prove otherwise.”

“If his ignorance is a threat to his life it needs to be altered,” countered Talbot with a touch of heat. “This killer is attacking in the Castle, it might choose the Reeve next.”

“Who could stop it if it did?” replied Shamera, becoming serious. “If
I
don't know what to do with a demon,
how could a magicless Cybellian—whether he believed in demons or not?”

“Others have tried to educate me concerning magic,” said Kerim neutrally. “Why don't you educate me about demons instead?”

“Very well,” agreed Sham. Adopting her best “mysterious sorceress” manner she said, “Demons are creatures of magic, called to this world by death and dying.” She grinned at the expression on the Reeve's face and switched to more matter-of-fact tones as she continued. “Actually, they are summoned here by black magic.”

“What makes you think that it is a demon we're hunting, not a man?”

“Because my friend—the one Hirkin said I murdered—was killed by a demon.”

Sham looked at the Reeve carefully, trying to see what he was thinking, but his face was as neutral as his voice. “What makes you so certain?”

She shrugged. “He told me as much before he died.”

Talbot stepped in to keep the Reeve from offering the offense disbelief would be. “I doubt ye ever met him, sir, ye came later to Landsend; but the old man who died was Maur, the last king's advisor.”

Kerim frowned thoughtfully. “The King's Sorcerer was tortured before he disappeared from the Castle dungeons, but I didn't think he was as old as the man who died looked.”

“Wizards,” said Sham, striving to keep the bitterness out of her voice, “—especially those as powerful as Maur, can live longer than mundane people. When he could no longer access his magic, he aged rapidly.”

Kerim looked her in the eye. “I was not here when he was tortured, and I would not have countenanced such an action. Magic or no magic, if the records of his words in the King's council meetings are accurate, he was a man of rare insight.”

Sham allowed herself to be mollified by his answer. “He was attacked by a demon called Chen Laut. He drove it away, but was mortally wounded before it fled.”

“How did he drive it away?” asked Kerim with obvious patience for her Southwood-barbaric beliefs.

She smiled sweetly. “Magic.”

“I thought Maur couldn't work magic,” said Talbot, frowning.

Sham shrugged, seeing no need to explain the difference between calling magic and working magic.

“So what does a demon look like?” said Kerim. He ignored her attempt to bait him and finished the last of his food.

Sham smiled in anticipation of his reaction. “I don't know. I couldn't see it.”

Kerim paused briefly, then shook his head with an air of long-suffering patience. “Demons are invisible. What else can you tell me about them?”

She shrugged, enjoying herself. “Even in Southwood, most people believe in them the way that you believe in magicians—stories told to keep children in at night. You know—” she switched to a sing-song voice and recited,

 

“The evening comes, the sun is fled.
Shadows chase the fleeing light.
Let fear inspire your silent tread
When demons walk the world of night.”

 

“I've never heard it.” The Reeve bared his teeth at her. “So tell me a story.”

She returned his smile, such as it was. “Demons, like dragons, are creatures of magic rather than mere users of it. They are almost always evil, though there are tales of some that have offered aid or shelter. Demons never appear unsummoned, and are difficult to get rid of. The Wizard's Council has forbidden the use of sacrifice or human remains while working magic since just after the Wizard Wars about a thousand years ago. Apparently such things are necessary to get rid of demons as well as to summon them.”

She had meant to stop there. She really had. If only he hadn't gotten that self-righteous, see-what-an-ignorant-savage-you-are expression on his face.

She leaned forward and lowered her voice dramatically. “The wizards would find a likely young man and kidnap him. Demons have no form here on our world. They must be given one. The ceremony is long and brutal, culminating in the young man's death as the demon takes his body.” That was true enough, as far as she knew. She decided to add a few of the choicer rumors to go along with it. “Sometimes though, the first victim's body was not usable, due to the brutal rites that summon the demon. You see, the death spells set to keep the demon's host body from procreating have a tendency to kill the person, or in this case, body they are set upon if the subject is too weak.” She grinned cheerfully and saw that even Talbot looked grim. “If everything is successfully completed, the wizard had a demon enslaved to his will until the wizard's death.”

“What happens after the wizard died?” asked Kerim, who had resumed an impartial expression soon after she'd began her last speech. How entertaining to find someone who could resist her baiting.

“The demon was destroyed by a contingency of the original binding—” she replied, “—unless the demon was the one who killed the wizard, in which case the demon controls itself.”

“Ah,” said Kerim, “now, the stories.”

“Tybokk—” she said, nodding at Kerim's remark, “—is probably the most famous of these. The name of his summoner is lost to time, but for four hundred years, more or less, he would join a Trader Clan as it crossed a certain mountain pass—”

“And kill them all?” offered Kerim blandly.

Shamera shook her head, “No, Tybokk was more creative than that. The travelers would arrive at their destination, every one of them, chanting a simple rhyme, day and night; until, one by one, they killed themselves.”

“The rhyme held the clue that destroyed the demon?” suggested Kerim.

Again she shook her head. “That would make a good story, but no. As far as I have heard the rhyme was something like this:

 

‘Winds may blow,
To and fro.

But we'll ne'er more
A roaming go.

Tybokk, Tybokk, Tybokk-O!'

 

He would probably still be destroying Traders if he hadn't killed the family clan of the man who was then the ae'Magi.”

“The who?” asked the Reeve.

“The ae'Magi,” replied Talbot, sotto voice. “It's an old title given to the archmage. He's the wizard who presides over the Wizard's Council, the appointed leader of all of the magicians—usually he's the most powerful, but not always.”

Sham waited until they were through talking before she began again. “The ae'Magi was born to the Trader Clans. When news came to him of the deaths of his family, the ae'Magi went hunting. For three years he traveled over the mountain pass that the demon frequented, accompanying various clans as none seemed to be favored over the other. When a stranger joined the party, not an uncommon occurrence, the ae'Magi would test him, to see if he were a demon.”

“How did he do that?” asked the Reeve.

Sham shrugged. “I don't know. Since the proscription on demon summoning, many of the magics associated with demons have been lost as well.”

She cleared her throat and continued. “One day, or so the story goes, the clan that the ae'Magi was traveling with came upon a skinny young lad, placing the last stone on a newly dug grave. There was a wagon overturned nearby with both of the horses that pulled it lying dead in their traces. The boy had a few scratches, but was otherwise unhurt by the wolves that killed his family while he watched from a perch in a tree.