Read Online Cinnabar Shadows by Lynn Abbey - Free Book Online

you see? What did this Father-person say to
you?"
    Perhaps it was only the sun moving overhead, but the creases in the august emerita's face seemed to
have gotten deeper and her eyes even harder than they'd been before. She sat on the edge of her chair, as
arrow-straight as she'd paced, with her palms resting lightly on the pommel of the walking stick. The
pommel was carved in the likeness of a hooded snake with yellow gemstones for its eyes. Mahtra couldn't
decide if the snake or the august emerita herself unnerved her more.
    She went back to that not-so-long-ago morning and retraced her steps: cabra fruits, cinnabar beads,
and Henthoren's eerie message. The snake's eyes didn't blink, and neither—or so it seemed—had the high
templar's. Indeed, there was no reaction from the far side of the table until Mahtra came to the very end of
her tale.
    "... Father said he'd been killed with Mika and the others. He gave me an image of the man who'd
killed them. He said... He said I had patrons who could make certain no one else was killed. I knew the
man in Father's last image, Lord Escrissar's halfling slave, Kakzim. So I went to Lord Escrissar—to House
Escrissar—to wait for him."
    The august emerita was on her feet again, and pacing, holding her snake-stick but not using it. Her free
hand rose to the medallion she wore, then fell to her side.
    "You had no right to live there. The reservoir is a proscribed place; you saw King Hamanu's wards and
circumvented them. The one you call 'Father,' broke the king's law living there and taking you there. Urik
has places for those who cannot work or have no kin. They'd all be alive if they lived within the law where
the templarate could protect them."
    The august emerita's stick struck the mosaic a second time. "Ask him," she said, thereby reminding
Mahtra that her thoughts were not private here.
    She took her thoughts back to the cavern, then, and Father's last image.
    "Yes, yes—" the old woman said wearily. "The wheels of fortune'? chariot turn fair and strange, child.
None of you should have been living beside the reservoir, and you should have been among them when
catastrophe struck. Had the wheel turned as it should have turned, there'd be no tale to tell or no one to tell
it. But Kakzim... Damn Elabon!" She struck her stick loud enough to disturb her caged birds and insects.
"He was warned."
    Not knowing whether "he" was Kakzim or Lord Escrissar, Mahtra closed her eyes and tried very hard
to think of neither man. It must have worked; the august emerita started pacing again.
    "This is more than I can know: Elabon's mad slave and Urik's reservoir. I have been too long behind
my own walls, do you understand me, Mahtra?"
    Mahtra didn't, but she nodded, and the woman did not skim her thoughts to know she'd lied.
    "I do not go to the bureau. I do not go to the court. I am emerita; I've put such things behind me. I
cannot pick them up again. I mistook your purpose on his doorstep, child. I thought you were his, or carrying
his, that's all. In my dreams I saw nothing like this. Damn Elabon!"
    The old woman strode to a wall where hung several knotted silk ropes that Mahtra had not noticed
before. She yanked on one that was twisted black and gold and another that was plain blue, then turned to
Mahtra.
    "Follow me. I will write a message for you. That is all I dare do. There would be too many questions,
too much risk. There is only one who can look and listen and act."
    A message for her, and written, too. Mahtra shivered as she rose from the table. Writing was
forbidden. Lord Escrissar and Father both had warned her that she must never try to master its secrets;
Lord Escrissar and Father had almost never given her the same advice. But the august emerita was going
to write a message for her. Surely this was what Father meant when he said her powerful patrons would
help her.
    Mahtra snatched another cinnabar pebble from Ver's fountain, then hurried to keep up