Shock. They had never been this careless at the Asylum. Never. But they’d been so focused on getting him safely into the bath, Zhahar had submerged without conscious thought so that Zeela could come into view and provide the needed muscle.
That kind of casual submergence/emergence was something they only did in the privacy of their own rooms.
::He knew the difference before he touched us,:: Sholeh said, taking on a tone of scholarly curiosity. ::He can’t see us, so how did he know?::
=Not now, Sholeh,= Zeela snapped. “I’m Zeela. Zhahar’s sister. I help her sometimes.”
His hold on her tunic and arm didn’t ease. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I came in when Kobrah left.” More or less true.
His grip didn’t lessen, but his expression was thoughtful. “I’ve felt your resonance before, heard your voice before. With Zhahar.”
By the triple stars, what does that mean?
Now his grip on her arm eased, and his thumb brushed over the scar. “Accident?”
“Knife fight in a tavern. I won,” Zeela replied.
His cloudy eyes seemed to stare at her face. “Prove you’re Zhahar’s sister.”
“How?”
“Describe her.”
“It’s against the rules to participate in inmates’ sexual fantasies.”
His thumb brushed over the scar again. “‘Physical description’ to ‘sexual fantasies’ is quite a jump. Describe yourself, then. You have any other distinguishing features besides this scar?”
“A tattoo on my left bicep. It’s a heart inside a triangle.”
Why did she tell him that?
“What does it mean?”
She could feel Zhahar pushing to come into view and tell him. Their core sister had been intrigued by this man from the first time she’d seen him, spoken to him. Intrigued enough to be too trusting? Was Zhahar’s willingness to trust lowering her guard as well?
“If you have to ask, you’re not meant to know,” Zeela said.
He cocked his head, as if he’d heard more than he should have. “One more question. Are you the older sister?”
“I’m the middle sister. Zhahar is the oldest.”
He released her and settled back in the water. “Ah. I thought I recognized that particular tone of bossy when she was ordering me around.”
*I am not bossy!* Zhahar said.
=Ha.= “You have an older sister?”
Naked grief, there and gone. “You have any soap?” Lee asked, his voice subdued.
“Yes. First, lean back so you’re on the headrest. There’s a secondary basin for washing hair. I’ll do that first.”
“Couldn’t you just cut the hair?”
Zeela hesitated as she reached for the jar of hair cleanser. “Why do you want to cut it?”
“Short hair will be cooler in a hot climate like this.”
She narrowed her eyes as Sholeh piped up, ::How does he know it’s not just a hot summer?:: She repeated the question.
“It doesn’t feel like a hot summer in a cooler climate,” he replied.
*Ask him,* Zhahar said, while Zeela washed Lee’s hair.
“We— I haven’t been there, but I’ve heard Vision’s northern communities have cooler weather than here in the southern part. Is that where you’re from? One of the northern communities?”
“Never heard of the city of Vision until I landed here a few weeks ago—or however long it’s been.”
Zeela hesitated before asking Zhahar, =Isn’t that part of his mind-sickness, thinking he’s from a place beyond the city?=
*I’m not so sure he isn’t,* Zhahar said. *After all, we aren’t from the city either.*
“Where are you from, then?” Zeela asked.
Lee hesitated. Then he smiled. “I’m a madman. How would I know?”
I cast out the Light.
Glorianna Belladonna had built her cage with five words.
I’m a madman. How would I know?
He had built his with seven. As long as he played the madman, he would be kept at the Asylum—and kept out of the hands of the damn wizards who were trying to gain a foothold in this city. As long as he didn’t play his part too well, he would, eventually, be free of the restraints and be allowed to move around the grounds. Not that a blind man could go anywhere or do anything. Maybe that should bother him, but it didn’t. If nothing else, it gave him time to solve the mystery of Zhahar and her sister. Sisters? Sometimes he heard three voices in unison when she spoke to him. One of the voices was Zeela’s. The other voice wasn’t the Helper’s, so whose was it?
A man with a loose grip on sanity could ask all kinds of questions without giving offense. Couldn’t he?
I’m a madman. How would I know?
Seven words that equaled a strange kind of freedom. Or would once they let him out of the restraints that secured him to the damn chair.
Danyal paused at one entranceway to the porch and watched Zhahar cut Lee’s hair. His wrists and ankles were strapped to the chair, and Kobrah and Nik, one of the male Handlers, were standing nearby, ready to assist or restrain.
Lee’s muscles twitched and his face looked tight, but there was control. A lucid madman.
Was he truly mad or simply a troubled man who had gotten lost in the world? Or was Lee something more?
Danyal silently stepped over the threshold. Lee immediately turned his head, although those cloudy eyes didn’t quite look in the right direction.
“Hold still,” Zhahar scolded lightly.
“May I join you?” Danyal asked quietly.
“Of course,” she replied.
Lee said nothing, and Danyal had the impression that not offering an opinion was unusual—especially when he had the equally strong impression that Lee didn’t want him there. And that was why he needed to be there. To observe. To try to understand.
“How long have you been blind?” Danyal asked.
“For as long as I’ve been in this city,” Lee replied.
Which either meant all his life or not that long.
“The southern part of the city is hot for most of the year,” Danyal said, keeping his voice pleasant. “That’s why there is this wide, screened porch that runs around the outside of the building on all four sides, only broken by the two outside doors. The isolation cells are inside rooms that are completely enclosed, but the rooms inhabited by the less-troubled inmates have a window that opens onto the porch.”
“What are you telling me?” Lee asked. “To enjoy the fresh air while I can? Or that if I behave I’ll be given a room with a view?”
The sharpness in the question surprised Danyal. Not just clean summer rain now in Lee’s heart-core. There was a storm building.
“All done,” Zhahar said brightly. She handed the scissors to Kobrah, who slipped them into a jacket pocket. Then she began undoing the restraints that held Lee to the chair—a sensible precaution when she’d held a potential weapon. “Would you like to sit out here for a while longer?”
“I have something else in mind,” Danyal said. He stepped closer and saw Lee tense. “I think it will help you.”
He closed his hand around Lee’s arm, then waited for Lee to accept the contact. When Zhahar put her hand on the other arm, there was no resistance, no tension, no hesitation to accept.
“Where are you taking me?” Lee asked once they left the building. His steps were hesitant at first but grew more confident.
How many times had the hired muscle let Lee stumble around, walking into walls or tripping over furniture? How many times had they frightened him into trying to escape and deliberately put him in harm’s way?
“I am a Shaman,” Danyal said. “When I came here to be this Asylum’s Keeper, I set up a small temple. That’s where we’re going.”
“Shaman,” Lee said softly. “That explains why I’ve been sensing a Landscaper’s presence, but no one knew what a Landscaper was.”
“While I enjoy being outdoors, Shamans tend to the city and it
s people, not its gardens.”
“Shaman, Landscaper, Magician, Heartwalker, Heart Seer. Different words for the same thing, although how the power manifests in them reflects what their piece of the world needs.”
“What do you think these people are?” Danyal kept his tone politely curious, but his heart began to pound, especially when he noticed how Zhahar was glancing between him and Lee.
“Someone who has a special connection to the world,” Lee replied. “Someone who acts as a landscape’s bedrock, as the sieve through which Ephemera responds to all the other hearts in that place. And a rare few are true Guides of the Heart and have such a strong bond with Ephemera, they can reshape the world.”
“They don’t sound human,” Zhahar said softly enough that Danyal was sure she hadn’t meant to say it out loud. It was one thing to think that about the Shamans; it was another thing to say it to one’s face.
“They aren’t human,” Lee said. “Ephemera made the Guardians of the Light and the Guides of the Heart. And it made the Dark Guides too.”
“How do you know all this?” Zhahar asked.
Danyal didn’t look at Zhahar, but it took effort. One moment he sensed the summer lake of the heart-core he identified with her. The next moment he sensed the summer lake and the bright water, meaning another of those unexplained heart-cores had suddenly appeared, making it feel as if he were addressing two women when only one stood before him.
And the way Lee cocked his head made him think the madman was sensing something too.
“How do you know?” Zhahar repeated.
A long pause. Then Lee wrinkled his forehead. “Know what?”
“Hold for a moment while I open the door,” Danyal said as he released Lee’s arm.
A lucid madman or a cunning man playing a strange game? Were the men claiming to be Lee’s uncles his enemies or were they his accomplices?
To speak an unspoken truth about Shamans so matter-of-factly…
The Shamans, as the voice of the world, were not human as others were human, despite coming from human families that had no touch of demon, and there was nothing in the city’s history to explain how or why that could be. In order to earn a place for themselves—and a piece of the city in which to form their own community—they became Vision’s spiritual guides. And sometimes they channeled their will into the world in order to shape justice on behalf of those who had been harmed.
What would Vision be without the Shamans?
Standing back, Danyal watched Zhahar lead Lee into sorrow’s room. Was the blindness real? Yes. And recent. Lee didn’t move like a man used to making his way through a world he couldn’t see. Was the blindness permanent? Locked in his desk he had the medicines Lee had been given. This evening, he would walk the streets and see if he could find the Apothecary’s shop that matched the seal on the bottle of eyedrops.
That would tell him some things about this man. This room would tell him more.
Zhahar settled Lee on one of the cushions, gave him a small mallet, then guided his other hand to the gong. “You just strike the gong.”
“Why?” Lee asked.
Danyal scuffed his feet as he walked up to them so that Lee would hear him approach. Kneeling next to Lee, he said, “Striking the gong helps you release sorrow.”
An odd pause. Then Lee shrugged and tapped the gong—and flinched. “Guardians and Guides.”
When the sound faded, he struck the gong again, harder. The third time he struck the gong, tears began rolling down his face and his teeth were clenched.
Lee was full of summer storms that offered a fierce kind of cleansing. Danyal had doubts about the man, but the pain in Lee’s heart was real.
When Zhahar picked up a mallet and struck a gong, doubling the sound that lanced heart wounds, Lee let out an anguished cry and collapsed.
Danyal caught him, held him tight, and asked quietly, “Do you know the cause of this sorrow? Can you give it a name?”
“Glorianna,” Lee sobbed. “My sister, Glorianna.”
“Why does your sister cause you such pain?”
“She’s gone. She’s gone. I lost her.”
Zhahar sucked in a breath and looked stricken.
“You’ve been angry with her for leaving you,” Danyal said, rocking the weeping man. “You’ve been hurt and angry and grieving, haven’t you?”
“Y-yes.”
“Perhaps it’s time to heal.”
The hurt and anger and grief went deep in this man. It wouldn’t be healed in a day. But healing the heart was something Danyal could help Lee do.
After that, he would decide how far the man could be trusted.
Chapter 13
Zeela strode down the shadow street, and everything about the way she moved told the men watching her from dark doorways that she had business on this street and wasn’t looking for company.
Halfway down the second block, she spotted the Apothecary’s sign.
Shaman Danyal had spent two evenings walking this street and the surrounding ones, looking for this shop. When Zhahar suggested letting her sister find the Apothecary, he hadn’t been happy about sending a woman but had agreed to let Zeela try.
Of course, the Shaman wasn’t aware that Zeela had had dealings with the Apothecary before and wouldn’t have any trouble finding the shop.
*Don’t be smug,* Zhahar scolded. *He really is concerned about you being here.*
=I know.= She was also fairly certain that, good man or not, the Shaman wouldn’t let Zhahar keep her job another minute if he found out they were Tryad and what that meant. But that was an opinion she took pains to keep from both her sisters.
She opened the shop door and took a swift look around. This wasn’t business she wanted to transact when there were other customers present.
When she reached the counter at the back of the shop, the Apothecary pushed aside the thin curtain that separated the shop from his work area.
“What can I do for you today?” he asked pleasantly.
Apothecaries were shadowmen, neither good nor evil. Like the streets where their shops were located, they couldn’t be found by everyone, but those who could find them came from the Light as well as the Dark. They made what their customers asked them to make, and it was said that whether they were good or evil depended on the person standing on the other side of the counter.
It was also said that the potion in the bottle could turn against the person buying it if that person lied to the Apothecary.
Zeela pulled the bottle of eyedrops out of her trouser pocket and set it on the counter with the label facing the Apothecary. “I need this refilled.”
“Are you sure?” he asked.
She withdrew money from her other pocket, set it on the counter beside the bottle, and fanned the bills enough to show him it was the standard amount he charged for information. Whatever he might put in a bottle to justify the visit was never more than an additional token fee.
“I would like this bottle refilled with information about who first bought it and why.” She saw him hesitate, so she added, “I’m asking on behalf of a Shaman.”
“Ah.” The Apothecary relaxed a bit. “A man who doesn’t know enough to mind his own business. Or so I’ve heard.”
“I’ve heard he doesn’t let anyone tell him what should be his business. The man these drops were used on? He’s now the Shaman’s business.”
He nudged the bottle with a fingertip. “First bottle? Pain and cloudy eyes. Blindness. But once the drops are no longer used, sight will gradually return, although it might never be all that it was. Second bottle?” He shook his head. “Destroys the eyes. Permanently.”
“Is there anything that can help reverse the damage already done?”
“Perhaps.” He studied her, then went behind a curtain. When he returned, he set another bottle on the counter, along with a pair of dark glasses. “Two drops in each eye, morning and evening. After the drops go in, put a cool, damp cloth over the eyes to soothe. Sunlight will be pai
nful while the eyes are healing—might even cause damage, so be careful.”
“When this bottle is used up…”
“This much will fix whatever can be fixed.”
*Lee might still be blind,* Zhahar said, sounding fretful.
=He might,= Zeela agreed.
::But we’ll help him,:: Sholeh said.
“What do I owe you for these?” Zeela asked, waving a hand over the eyedrops and dark glasses.
Another long look. He pocketed the money she’d already placed on the counter. “This is enough.”
Giving him a nod of thanks, she slipped the bottle into her trouser pocket. After a moment’s thought, she tucked the glasses under her shirt, between her breasts.
“Two other things, because you came on behalf of the Shaman,” the Apothecary said. “First, he should not wander the shadow streets for a while. Something has been slithering in the corners lately, and the shadow streets have gotten darker because of it—and I’ve heard whispers that what slithers would like to silence those who are the voice of the world.”
Zeela suppressed a shiver. There was something out there that posed a threat to the Shamans?
“Second,” the Apothecary continued, “the men who purchased that first bottle were killed last night.”
Zeela felt Zhahar and Sholeh’s fear, but she held herself quiet—and ready. “How?”
“They were struck by lightning. Both of them.”
She frowned. “There was no storm last night.”
“This lightning came out of an alley and burned through them. It wasn’t a kind death. They screamed as they burned, but there was nothing anyone could do to help them. I’ve heard rumors that other men have died that way in the northwestern community—good men who asked too many questions.”
“A strange death, to be sure,” Zeela murmured.
“Stranger still because the city guards had been around that very afternoon, looking for those men. Made the citizens of our little street wonder if those men had become an inconvenience to someone.”
“I’ll pass along the information.” She turned and walked swiftly to the front of the shop.
As she reached for the door, he said, “Travel lightly.”