The Venom of Luxur

TEFERI HAD TRIED to follow Fallon out into the street, but in such a large and busy city as Kheshatta, even a head start of a few minutes had been too much. She was nowhere to be seen when he left the villa, and he was forced to make the rounds of the various taverns and roadhouses where he thought she might be.

He started at those places frequented by camel drivers. They were easily identified simply by sniffing the front door. A camel’s odor was pungent and unmistakable, though few in Stygia considered it objectionable.

On his third stop, a tavern located under a brothel on the west side of the city, he found a drunken Shemite who remembered seeing her. “Big woman,” he said, “dark hair. Large”—he giggled—“humps! Owns the white camel that is kept boarded at the western station. Is that right?”

“She asked about a caravan the snake worshipers brought in, full of some kind of armor, all tied up in tight bundles, like they were afraid it would get away.”

The Shemite looked up at him and grinned, displaying gaps from half a dozen missing teeth. “A drink for a thirsty traveler, just in from the desert?”

Teferi briefly considered removing a few more teeth, then put a few coppers on the table. A blond bar wench brought over a fresh mug of beer, and smiled at Teferi in hopes of a better tip.

The Shemite took a deep swig, then looked up at Teferi in surprise, as though he had just materialized out of thin air.

“She asked about strangers coming to Kheshatta. I told her I just came in with a caravan full of tinkers and smiths, and that word is they’ve been coming in from all over Stygia for weeks.” He laughed. “Tinkers and smiths? What need has a city of wizards and poisoners for so many tinkers and smiths?”

Teferi left the man to his drink and departed the tavern. Kheshatta was not famed for tinkers and smiths; but like any large city, it had its share, and they had their districts. He thought about going to the jewelers’ district, but the armor, though golden in color, had not truly looked like gold, and it was armor. Instead, he went to the district frequented by blacksmiths, bladesmiths, and armorers.

Smiths, as a rule, were not generally talkative people, and in fact, quite suspicious of strangers asking questions. Many jealously guarded family metalworking secrets handed down through dozens of generations, and assumed anyone nosing around was either a potential competitor playing ignorant, or a hired spy.

Teferi spent several frustrating hours wandering from forge to tavern, tavern to smithy, smithy to forge, learning nothing. He even went so far as to put a down payment on a very expensive dagger with a seemingly knowledgeable bladesmith, but he refused to pass along any gossip or even discuss Fallon.

His search might have ended there, had he not stumbled onto a broken-down old blacksmith in a bar near the lakeshore who admitted having spoken with Fallon.

The old man wore a patch over one eye, and his hands and arms bore the scars of countless burns. His eyebrows were entirely missing. Yet there were still ropes of muscle under his thin, leathery skin, and his good eye twinkled as he looked at the hearthfire in the back of the tavern.

“Oh, I seen your Cimmerian lady, but she’s a friend of mine. Walked arm and arm with me over to my smithy, where my worthless sons are running the business into the ground, then made a big fuss over me and even gave me a kiss on the head while they was looking! That’ll put those little rat bastards in their place for a while, think their old sire is used up and worthless!” He chuckled. “Friend of mine, so I will not tell you nothing.”

It took Teferi at least an hour of talking and the buying of many drinks to convince the old smith he really was a friend of Fallon’s and just wanted to find her.

“I do not know where she went, for sure, but she was asking about all these smiths coming to town. I told her that the Cult of Set built themselves a fancy new forge out near their guardians’ east garrison and been bringing in folks from all over. Outlanders. Pay them big money, too. They will not have nothing to do with us local folk. Figure we would talk too much I guess.” He spat on the floor. “Cursed snake-lovers!” He lowered his gruff voice to a whisper and looked around suspiciously. “You did not hear that from me, of course.”

Teferi pressed some silver into the pretty tavern wench’s soft palm and left the tavern, walking northeast around the end of the lake. He could see the garrison there, far around the lakeshore beyond the edge of the city sprawl, a utilitarian square-cornered fortress of moderate size surrounded by a walled stockade.

Though Kheshatta was historically a city besieged by border raiders and bandits, it was well protected by private armies financed by the poisoners and sorcerers. Their hired troops manned the formidable southern wall, which protected the city against raiders from Kush, and the various approaches by trail and caravan road. There was even a small freshwater navy of fast, shallow-draft fighting ships, equipped with both sails and oars, that plied the lake and patrolled its extensive shoreline.

Though they were mercenaries, the ones Teferi had met were a proud and disciplined lot. Resignations were rare, and there were never many openings in the ranks unless a raid resulted in casualties. Most of the officers had served steadfastly for years, and some families had been in service of the city’s forces for generations.

The guardians of Set were more tolerated than welcomed within the city’s boundaries, and massed troops could never appear without provoking a confrontation with this private army. It had to be galling to the guardians, as their authority was near absolute throughout most of the rest of Stygia.

Still, if the cult had something of importance to guard, this was the one place, besides the Temple of Set itself, where they would logically keep it.

That he could see the garrison did not mean it was close. It was a considerable walk, and he was considering what to do when he spotted an old, and in this case useful, acquaintance. He stepped into the street in front of a mule-drawn carriage and waved.

The brown-skinned, bald-headed driver waved back, and Teferi stepped to the side as the colorfully painted wagon rolled up next to him and stopped. The driver, moving spryly for a man of his age, jumped down from his seat. “Teferi! A pleasure as always! I have not see you for a while.” He looked around. “Where is your friend, Anok Wati?”

Teferi found himself frowning slightly at the mention of the name. “He is otherwise engaged today, but I am in need of transport and perhaps the latest gossip.”

“Well then”—the man gestured at the bench seats in the back of the open carriage—“get in.” He climbed back up onto his driving bench and picked up the reins. But before moving on, he looked back, an apologetic look on his face. “I am afraid I was not sad that you were alone today. Master Anok, I must admit, I find his presence sometimes—unsettling.” He snapped the reins, and the two mules started moving at a stately pace.

“I’ve known him since we were boys, Barid, but I do understand. My old friend has changed much this last year or so, and I fear it is not for the better. My quest is to end his troubles and restore the friend I once knew. It is in this cause that I today seek information.”

Teferi grinned. “Nosy business that the guardians would not approve of, which is why I only wish to go near. To get closer and see what I wish to see will require care and stealth.”

Teferi raised an eyebrow in surprise, but Barid was, through his passengers, his friends, and his seemingly never-ending supply of brothers, well connected in the city. “What do you know of a forge?”

“My third brother, Mesha, is one of the finest brickmasons in all of Kheshatta.” He seemed to consider this for a moment. “Well, he is at least one of the fastest masons in all of Kheshatta, which seems to be why the priests of Set hired him. They have been building a new compound next to their stockade, and at its center, a great forge for the smelting of metals. The forge is finished, but he still is working on the sheds and walls that surround it. He says they value speed over all things, and they seem to care little that the brickworks might collapse after a few monsoon seasons.”

ANOK RETURNED TO his sleeping chamber and drew the curtains, trying to rest, but that didn’t last long. He lay awake, staring at the painted and plastered arch of the ceiling and snatching flies out of the air, crushing them dead and flicking them carelessly into the corner of the room.

He tossed restlessly, thinking about all that had happened to him since leaving Khemi. Despite his recent vision of Parath, his mission seemed less clear than ever.

He had set out to join the Cult of Set, to learn its secrets, and use those to strike at it from within. In the former he had been successful, in some ways beyond his wildest expectations. He was now on the path to become a priest of Set, to have some real power and autonomy. As he had learned, acolytes were often little more than servants and sorcerous foot soldiers who danced at the whims of the priests.

As for secrets, there seemed to be no end of them, and if he seemed no closer to finding his father’s killer and unraveling the mysteries of his death, he found himself truly enjoying the acquisition of sorcerous secrets, the study of arcane objects and tomes, and he even hungered to delve into Kaman Awi’s “study of natural law.”

Now, with the might of the Mark of Set, balanced against the control of the Band of Neska, he finally felt ready to apply some of the sorcerous knowledge he possessed.

But with all this power and knowledge, he had little idea how to use it in service of his goals. With all his power, he could not last an hour, perhaps not even a handful of minutes, against the sorcerers and armies of Set. Ramsa Aál and Kaman Awi seemed to be planning something that would put all that power to shame, something that Sabé said could remake the world.

But wasn’t that exactly what Anok wanted to do? Didn’t he want to wipe the foul Cult of Set out of existence, bring vengeance on those who had wronged him and those he cared for, free the people of Stygia from tyranny and wickedness?

That was it! It had been there all along. That was his mission! He was not to hinder Ramsa Aál in his plot to remake the world. He was to embrace his role as a new priest of Set and Ramsa Aál’s strong right hand. He was to aid the priest in every way possible.