Chapter Six

The Death of Taliba

 

The city of Brandal on the planet Finn's End: 335 Standard years Previous

 

 

Taliba was a person who liked the routine. You didn’t have to think about your day because it was already laid out in front of you. Ever since she had adopted the child called Red Moon, she found it harder and harder to stay within the old, familiar ruts. Red Moon resisted her on everything. Taliba had to get tough and insist on some things. Like the ablutions of the morning bath.

“I don’t know why I have to wash my hair every day if you just put that stinky stuff in it afterward,” Red Moon complained.

“I make that stinky stuff, as you call it,” Taliba said as she worked the scented oil through the mass of ebony fluff this child called hair. “My clients like it. I have to comb it into your hair so I can braid it.”

“Don’t braid it. It is just fine hanging loose.”

“Yes? So the wind can turn it into a mess of tangles? You cried for hours last time I had to comb it out. I think I found half a tree tangled in there. Where do you get to during the day?”

“You may dress me like a girl but I don’t have to behave like one. Boys have more fun. Let me cut it off. I liked it better when I could pretend to be a boy,” Red Moon pouted.

“I remember the Watch bringing you home after they caught you and those hooligan friends of yours painting foul words on the side of the apothecary’s shop. I had to tap dance a bit to keep you and your gang out of the re-education school. You don’t want that. Stinking Thought Police will put a kink in your brain, fersure. I think that was the day I decided you needed to act like the girl you are.”

“Gods, will you never let me forget that? It was stupid, I know, but he called you “stinking gypsy” and worse. I wanted to pay him back,” Red Moon said angrily.

“I am a stinking gypsy. It is my long con, if you will remember,” Taliba said with a smile as she finished the last of the braids and began weaving the strings of freshwater pearls into them. “I don’t need you out on the streets telling people otherwise. Only my most trusted clients know I am a true witch. Turn and let me do your eyes.”

“Momma!” complained Red Moon. “You always make me look like a freak.”

“Kohl absorbs the sun and keeps you from squinting. Squinting is never attractive. How will you attract a husband?”

“I prefer ugly,” Red Moon growled. “I am not looking for a husband. I don’t like boys in that way. They are fun but stupid.”

“You just haven’t met one of your own kind. You won’t always think that way,” Taliba said with a smile, secretly pleased. Fifteen years it had been since she found the emaciated, alien child hiding in the crates at the space port and only now was she willing to call her Momma and mean it. “Hush and sit still. All gypsy girls wear the kohl around their eyes. And at least one bindu gem. I love the gold dots at the corner of your eyes. It makes you look mysterious.”

“A freak,” pouted Red Moon.

“Svetina, mind your manners,” Taliba warned.

Red Moon sighed. Using her gypsy name was a warning the girl understood. It was Taliba’s way of saying she was running out of patience. The girl settled, fluffed all the layers of her gossamer skirts over her thighs and lifted her face to let Taliba apply the bindu to corners of her eyes.

The transformation was stunning. The thin, exotic-looking child who did not seem to ever age was now older, more feminine, and thank all the gods, disguised so that if she should ever lose control of her emotions in public, the gold eyes would not be noticed. If they were, people would think it part of all the other flash she carried about her person. The child was growing up and learning to use the power inherent in her species. The shift was happening more and more often and with each shift, the changes were more dramatic. Taliba’s ability to hide this Ancellian child was being challenged almost daily.

Taliba repeated the gypsy history. “The bindu is a symbol of the religious pact between the wearer and the Oneverse. It is the sacred symbol of the Chaos of the Abyss from which all creation arises. It is a mystery every woman knows. Or should know. You will understand this once you have children of your own.”

The child grew still under her hands. Taliba could feel the flush rising in the girl’s skin. She was no longer surprised by what came next. Red Moon looked up at her, gold sparkling dangerously around the edges of her irises. “I will never have children. Ever.” The cold fury in her voice sent a chill up Taliba’s spine. It was said with utter certainty and complete finality. This aversion had nothing to do with the lack of sexual partners—though it was almost assured that there existed no more Ancellians anywhere on the known planets—but more an antipathy to all things Ancellian. So deep was Red Moon’s rage at her absent family for leaving her behind that she seemed to take a perverse pleasure in the continued extinction of her species.

Not for the last time, Taliba wondered what had been done to this tiny being before she found her way to the space port. Fifteen years of peace could not make this child trust her enough to speak of the experiences that made her excellent at fighting but terrible at basic human relationships.

“One day you will change your mind,” Taliba said, pushing her gently off the chair. Red Moon, who was called Svetina on this planet named Hallide Six, rose, took up the scarlet head scarf, draped it over her braids and beads and picked up the shopping basket.

“No,” the girl said flatly. “I don’t think I will.”

“You have my list. Do not come back without what is on it,” Taliba said. “I need all the ingredients to make that ointment for the broom-maker’s wife.”

“Yeah, yeah. You do not need to nag,” Red Moon said and then pressed her lips together, probably assuming it was not wise to argue further with her hedge witch teacher. She would have been right.

Red Moon kissed her mother on the cheek as an apology for being so difficult before leaving.

Taliba watched her go. The skirts swayed about those too-slim hips, her slippered feet taking long, unfeminine strides that would carry her far from this place one day. “Go far, my love. Tarry long,” Taliba whispered, watching until her Ancellian child disappeared around the far corner that took her toward the market square.

She took a deep breath and turned to prepare the house for the visitors. She had cast the cards over and over again in this last week and the spreads had all said the same thing. The hunters were coming and she needed them to believe she lived alone.

Edwin Grosee, the Mayor’s head servant, had sent her word this morning that a hole had opened in the world and disgorged a penta of Wizards upon the fine carpets of the Mayor’s office. Wizards never traveled alone and they always brought their machines, one of which was surely a Witch Finder.

Run. Get out. Hide, the note had said before it began to dissolve from the oils in her skin. It had been too much to hope that the child’s growing power had gone unnoticed. The Rebels wanted all the Ancellians gone once and for all, hoping to quench the fire in the bellies of the Royalist resistance. The Wizards hunted them with an almost inhuman focus.

Taliba put up her palm and thought of Red Moon. “Run. Run hard. Run far. Forget me. Do not come back.” she whispered in the old tongue as she traced a spiral in the air. It was paltry magic but it was all she had. Hopefully Red Moon would not realize she had been sent on an absurd quest for something that did not exist until it was too late.

The Wizards would come, ask their questions, and leave long before Red Moon returned. Taliba regretting only one thing.

“Oh, goddess, I wish that I had been able to say goodbye,” she whispered. She crushed the need to cry and built the illusion of a world in which she was just an old gypsy woman who had no magic but knew how to work a long con. If she believed it hard enough, the Wizard’s machines would too.

It was not hard to recognize the profession of the five men who entered her shop an hour later. The coronet of gold studs buried in their bald skulls was a dead giveaway. She did not want to stare but it was hard not to. Gold wires crisscrossed the skin of their skulls and the eyes, oh goddess, the eyes. When they looked at her with those dead, stone eyes, she had no more doubt. Taliba wondered, for the last time, why these men—men who were part machine—liked to call themselves Wizard when they believed in nothing, not even Magic.