CHAPTER ONE - NYAYA
Rain made mud of the layer of dirt and animal dung that covered the streets of Salt-Founded Glory. Even in daylight the addition of blood would hardly have been noticeable.
At night it was almost impossible to see, and of concern only to those whose blood had been spilt.
Nyaya knew from the sticky feeling of her shirt against the boiled leather strips of her armour that some of hers had been added to it, but her hand still closed around the curved handle of her spread-the-water knife and through the water clogging her ears she could hear the screaming of the man she was trying to protect; so she levered herself up right, using the long crescent blade of the weapon as a crutch when her bum knee protested the effort.
A traditional spread-the-water knife would probably have snapped under the weight, but Nyaya's was clumsy and thick-bladed - apprentice work too heavy for use by one of the Prince's men but sufficient for someone more used to shorter blades that chopped more than cut.
Two wipes of her sleeve cleared enough water and perhaps blood too from Nyaya's eyes that she could see and she threw herself into a stumbling charge towards the horse-sized spider that had its mandibles around the man's lower thigh.
With a surge of effort, she brought her knife down upon a joint in one leg, smashing it to ruin.
The spider let loose an unearthly howl and skittered back from its prey to face Nyaya. Much of the leg it had been gnawing upon came away as it released its hold.
"Now we're both limping," Nyaya spat.
The spider spat a gobbet of bloody flesh into the mud. Something glittered briefly in the moonlight. "I've seven strong legs," it replied. "How many do you have left?"
Nyaya chuckled morbidly. Mother wouldn't be happy if she came in looking like this anyway, covered in mud and blood. "You suck at counting," she announced.
"What?"
The woman lurched forwards, the jagged tips of her spread-the-water knife reaching to snare another knee.
Except the leg wasn't there. It snapped out and crashed against her own with crushing force that spun her back down into the mud.
Damn shame really. At least she should have been able to make good on the witty banter that she had had in mind.
Well fine, she wasn't a hero from a puppet-show. At least she could die with dignity.
A scream tore from her throat as the leg - or one of the six others - pinned her against the ground.
So much for dignity.
"Stay right there while I finish up," the spider hissed. "And if you're lucky I'll dine on your head before your other limbs." It walked away, each foot step splashing in the mud.
Nyaya wanted to protest, wanted to push herself up, but all of that would require breath and she was a little short of it right now. And she'd lost hold of her spread-the-water knife too. Constable Kanuna would throw a fit if she lost the weapon she'd drawn from the militia station's small armoury.
She was about to try anyway when a child-like voice spoke up. The words were incomprehensible to Nyaya but they sounded familiar, not entirely unlike the time she'd overheard visitors from the Realm speak to each other in the tongue of the Blessed Isle.
There was a sizzling noise and the spider's steps ceased.
Then there was a squelch of sandals and strong hands grabbed Nyaya's shoulder and hip, flipping her over onto her back. The face looking down at her was positively demonic, a pattern of black and blood-red in jagged lines that gave it the image of a cracked skull that had been painted in fresh blood.
The water that ran down it added to the latter impression, as did the black robes that for a moment gave her the impression that the face was simply hanging over her without an attached body.
But at least it wasn't a spider.
"Are you bleeding out particularly?" the child-like voice asked in flametongue.
Nyaya gaped at the figure, at a loss for words when she realised the voice was coming from the face.
Patiently, the... man? child? repeated the question or something close to it in wavetongue.
"I... I... don't think so," she stammered in flametongue, not trusting her rudimentary wavetongue - learned as it was on the docks of a half-dozen ports. "The spider?"
The head nodded. "Gone. I'd help you up but I think there's someone else needing me more urgently." Then he vanished.
It took two dozen heart-beats for Nyaya to lever herself upright and spot the small, black-robed figure knelt over the wounded man. She did so just in time to see the victim jerk awake with a scream of agony.
"What are you doing?" With fumbling fingers, Nyaya fumbled for her sporran and was pleased to find the pouch still hanging from the front of her belt. That meant there might be a chance she still had her whistle.
The little figure didn't look up. "Cauterising, before he bleeds to death." He - Nyaya thought, somehow, that it was a male voice - reached out with one long-fingered hand and pressed sharply against his... victim's? patient's? throat. The man clawed at the hand briefly and then slumped back onto the street.
Nyaya's fingers closed around the whistle. "You're a physician?"
"A surgeon."
She smelt the acrid scent of hot metal and then old memories spun up in her mind as that of scorched and burned flesh reached her nose. Darkness threatened to swallow her and convulsively Nyaya brought the whistle to her lips and blew.
The shrill whistle echoed across the night streets.
Nyaya blew again before slumping back into the dirt of the muddy street.
E-X-A-L-T-E-D
Waking in a gutter wasn't something that Nyaya was totally unfamiliar with, although she'd been younger - by a year or two - the last time it had happened.
Waking with Constable Kanuna looking down his long nose at her was rather more unusual - the waking part, not the nose-looking-down.
"Do you recall the penalties for a member of the militia who sleeps on duty?" the Constable asked conversationally.
"Six lashes," Nyaya mumbled. And another four if it was due to drunkenness, she almost added before shaking off sleepy resignation at the recollection that she wasn't sleeping off a jar of something purporting to be brandy this time. "I wasn't asleep."
Kanuna raised his eyebrows. "You were snoring," he informed her, before shaking his head. "I suppose falling asleep right next to a wounded dynast would surpass all your previous misdemeanours, or very nearly."
"D-dynast?" A cold chill, worse than rain water, ran down her spine. There was no greater power in all Creation than the gathered might of the Scarlet Dynasty and Prince Laxhander was never shy to pander to them. If one of them was involved...
"Oh yes." Kanuna smiled coldly. "Mnemon Dhana was attacked on the streets of our city. Not one of the Exalted but close kin to several and friend of many others. This is going to get political. A good chance to make one's name or to tar it... tar it further in your case. At least you didn't misplace your issue weapon again."
Nyaya blinked and then closed her fingers around the grip of the spread-the-water knife. How had that come back to her hand? She was sure she recalled losing it.
Rolling over she scrambled stiffly to her feet. The sun must be somewhere above the horizon, although with the heavy clouds it was hard to tell. "What happened?"
"No, militiawoman. That's what you tell me. Now report."
Nyaya sighed and looked around, reorienting herself. "I was making my patrol along the Soaper's Street when I heard a commotion from this direction. When I got here there was a giant spider chasing after a man - Mnemon Dhana, I suppose."
"A wolf-spider inside the city?" asked Kanuna skeptically.
"No, bigger. It was bigger than I am." She shook her head. "I got smacked around like a rag doll when I tried to stop it. I didn't even get one lucky hit in until after it had him on the ground."
"I see." The Constable's tone of voice suggested that he didn't. "And where is this 'giant spider' now?"
Nyaya shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. It kicked me into the gutter and went back towards its victim. I guess the surgeon must have seen something."
She could practically see Kanuna's ears prick up. "What surgeon?"
"He said he was a surgeon. Last thing I remember before I passed out was him saying he'd cauterized... no that he was cauterizing the wounds to Mnemon Dhana's leg."
"There was no one here when we found you," growled Kanuna. "What did this mysterious surgeon look like?"
"Very small, with a red and black face..." Nyaya admitted, realising how ridiculous that sounded.
To her surprise however, Kanuna didn't accuse her of imagining it. Instead, his response was to utter a string of curses that she'd more have expected from someone on the docks rather than from her superior.
"You know him?" she asked when the man ran down.
"I almost nailed the little freak for illegal thaumaturgy last year," the Constable grumbled. "He calls himself Ghora but he's a foreigner, came down from the High Lands last year - probably one step ahead of the law - and set up camp down near the canal docks. So far as I know, he's still there."
"So he's not a surgeon?"
"I suppose he is that. The two aren't mutually exclusive."
Nyaya nodded. Most tradespeople knew some a few rituals that a very strict view counted as thaumaturgy, but to practical purposes were simply part of their profession. She knew a couple herself, one she'd learned at her mother's knee and another she'd picked up from a grizzled mercenary on the caravan road to Gem. But illegal thaumaturgy, while it could cover a multitude of sins, almost always meant something more sinister than keeping your sword rust-free or cloth from rotting.
"Go and find him." Kanuna wrinkled his nose. "And then get yourself cleaned up. Judge Jaja wants to be briefed on this at mid-day and I want both of you there as witnesses in case the Judge has questions."
"Sir, my militia service is only to an hour after dawn. I've got work waiting for me at home." Granted, apprentice scut-work cleaning up the workshops used by her cousins, but if she missed it then there'd be hell to pay. It would be pain enough after getting the stuffing beaten out of her.
"Well that's up to you," Kanuna said indifferently. "You can attend to make your report as one of the militia or to give testimony as a witness-under-guard."
I hope the Pale Mistress pays a visit on you, Kanuna. "Fine. Sir. I'll find him."
"I thought that you would."
Nyaya waited until the Constable's back was turned before spitting on the ground. A flicker of memory crossed her mind, the spider spitting chunks of meat from Mnemon Dhana's leg across the street and she shuddered, empty stomach churning.
E-X-A-L-T-E-D
Salt-Founded Glory was, for the most part, built on top of Salt-Founded Glory. Legend had it that there had been a city here since before the fall of the Anathema beneath the blades of the Dragonblooded. The Shore Princes ruled from the city when they weren't attending upon the Realm's Satrap in An Teng's capital city and generation after generation of nobility and mercantile gentry had built and rebuilt their townhouses and palaces here.
Nyaya's first destination after leaving the scene of the crime wasn't the canal port that served as the hub of trade with the rest of An Teng. Instead, she made for a once proud district that had been left behind by fashion and the elite that once dwelled there. Some of the buildings had been torn down, but others survived and one of them - once bath-house for some long-vanished noble clan - now provided the service to anyone willing to pay the coin.
This early she knew there wasn't much of a crowd and sure enough, there was only one other person waiting to check in their clothes and personal items. The Old Bathhouse wasn't the cleanest or the cheapest place she could have come, but the proprietor was a fanatic for making sure that no one stole from his customers.
It had cost Abunai the Elder a year's profit to hire the Prince's sorcerer Lalaca to send a demon after the one thief who'd successfully flouted that decree but he'd boasted it about it for the rest of his life and made the money back in six months. His nephew, Abunai the Younger had removed the gnawed bones of that thief from the shelf over the counter when he took over, not out of any scruples but, in his own words: "to make room for the bones of anyone who thinks I have less stomach than my illustrious uncle."
There hadn't been a second theft.
Nyaya stripped down in the lobby, piling her armour and knife on top of the clothes, then handed a second yen to the young clerk. "Have them cleaned quickly for me, I haven't more than an hour." Then she crossed to the baths, cursing Kanuna under her breath. Not only was she being kept from her family obligations but two yen was more than she really wanted to spend.
There was no alternative though - she'd be fined as much if she returned the armour and knife to the armoury in this state and the Constable would probably do exactly the same if she arrived in front of the Judge looking as if she'd crawled out of the gutter, even if her report made it clear that that was exactly what had happened.
With a sigh she took a bar of soap and started lathering up.
When she walked out into the lobby, scrubbed to the point that she felt - and smelt - more or less human again, the clerk was standing with his back pressed against the wall and Abunai the Younger was glaring at him from the counter. The young man squeaked nervously when he spotted her and Abunai turned his head with snake-like smoothness.
"Is there a problem?" Nyaya asked, her momentary relief disintegrating. Obviously there was.
"A small one," confirmed Abunai. "There has been a small... accident with your clothes. Nothing beyond the abilities of my laundry workers but it will take a little longer for them to be cleaned."
Oh of course. What now? Pine sap rubbed into them? Scorching with a candle?
Nyaya wanted to grab the clerk by his tunic and demand to know why, but again, she knew the answer.
She'd left An Teng without her mother's permission - run away, to all purposes. She was a scandal, an embarrassment to the respected matriarch of a successful craftsman's family. She was, when you come down to it, as much of an easy target as the families that worked the canal boats. Tengese... but not quite Tengese. She had little recourse for it was unlikely that Nyaya's mother would take her part.
So there was opportunity. Throw in that she was, as a member of the militia, assumed to share sympathies with Prince Laxhander and by extension with the Realm, whose satrap demanded more silver, more rice, and more opium every year and yet who was less and less able or willing to call on the Imperial Legions to provide the security that was in theory the trade-off... there was motivation too.
"This reflects less than well upon your establishment's high reputation," she said in a neutral voice.
Abunai nodded his head solemnly. "My illustrious uncle is no doubt looking down upon me with expectations that I shall make this right."
The clerk's eyes flicked nervously to the shelf above the counter.
The owner of the bathhouse let the moment drag on cruelly and then spread his hands. "You will of course receive a full refund of the... three yen that you have paid."
"Two yen."
Abunai nodded, holding out three of the green copper coins. "As I said, three yen. I will have your clothes delivered to your home as soon as they are cleaned, your armour and weapon fortunately suffered no such mischance."
One yen profit from the encounter wasn't exactly the outcome Nyaya was looking for. She certainly couldn't replace her shirt or her kilt in a hurry on the strength of it. Decent as Abunai was being - driven, no doubt, but concern for the reputation of his business for security, it wasn't going to get her out of trouble. Perhaps that was the angle to exploit.
"Unfortunately, I will be meeting with Judge Jaja at mid-day," Nyaya explained. "I really can't turn up like this." She gestured down her nude body, bruises purpling her skin, belly sticking out and the tracery of old scars marking her past. "He's a delicate flower of the nobility and I doubt he's been exposed to such before."
Abunai glowered at her for a moment. The implication of dropping the name of his bathhouse to the Judge in a negative sense was more or less an empty one but it wasn't a bluff that the man could afford to call. "I am sure we can lend you something suitable to the occasion," he agreed and bowed slightly.
Nyaya returned the bow and caught the murmured "And don't come back." as she straightened.
E-X-A-L-T-E-D
Clad in a rather nice, if ill-fitting, shirt and kilt under her armour, Nyaya reached the canal port in time for the Sun to finally conquer the clouds and shine down upon An Teng. Like about half of the people on the streets, she paused to murmur a quick devotion to the Golden Lord at her first sighting of the sun that day.
In most towns of An Teng the momentary prayer would have been almost universal, but here in Salt-Founded Glory there were quite a number of adherents of the Immaculate doctrine that considered mortal prayer save under their direction to be an affront.
Away from her homeland, Nyaya had fallen into the habit - standing out more than she already did was unwise. And this sort of comfortable custom was what she'd come home to enjoy.
Wasn't it?
The moment passed and she reached the waterfront without further incident. The quays were busy, as usual, with labourers carrying sacks of rice, loose-slatted crates of live poultry and jars that probably came from every brewery north of the River of Queens.
What wasn't in evidence was a surgeon. Well, it wasn't as if it was likely that he'd be running around on the working docks themselves. The smart thing was to ask someone who knew the area.
Approaching one of the overseers (whose main job was to keep pilfering by the labourers at an acceptable level) she asked politely: "Please could you direct me to the surgeon Ghora."
The woman looked her over thoughtfully and then shrugged. "I don't know of him. Have you tried asking a boat crew? They use all the quays, I only know this one."
"Thank you." Nyaya bowed and moved over towards a boat that was almost unloaded. "Excuse me, I have a question."
The man perched on the aft deck stitching up a tear in a sail looked up. "Yeah?"
"Do you know of a surgeon called Ghora?"
He pursed his lips. "Can't say I know the name. Have you asked any of the dockworkers? I just got here."
Nyaya bit back her initial response. "Thanks. I'll try that."
"Can't help you. Try asking a boat crew."
"Haven't heard of him. Have you asked anyone on the docks?"
"Ghora? Doesn't ring a bell. You should try asking one of the boat crews."
"Don't know any surgeons in Salt-Founded Glory. I'd have ask a dockworker."
After the fifth repetition, Nyaya had got the idea. The responses were too obviously mirrored to be anything but a run-around.
Wonderful, just wonderful. "If I'm going to get this everywhere..." she began and then shook her head. No. She had a job to do and if she didn't like it... well, she'd done a fair number of things she didn't like over the years, when she was called on to do them.
Which still left the problem of how to find Ghora. For whatever reason, the dock workers and boatmen were all blacking her and she didn't think it was greed that motivated them. What did that leave?
Fear was possible. A man gifted in thaumaturgy, one who had been accused of using it illegally could well be capable of intimidating even usually redoubtable boatmen and dockers.
Another possibility was fondness. The families that operated the canal boats could wind up anywhere in An Teng, which cut them off from the more stable family structures of the nation. They were clannish and might well rally around in a conspiracy of silence if someone they considered to be theirs was threatened.
But that wouldn't explain the dockers - their families were local and established. Confrontations between the two groups hadn't been uncommon in the past.
Nyaya looked along the docks. She'd only been down here once since her return to Salt-Founded Glory and that once had been on her arrival. Thinking back to her younger days though... yes, it was different. No less busy but there was an air of restraint to the interactions between dockers and boatmen that hadn't been there before.
It might be nothing to do with Ghora, she reminded herself. But if he's working here then there has to be some way for patients to find him...
Well that's a thought.
She squinted up at the sun. Was she really that desperate? It was perhaps halfway to noon.
Looking at the boats, Nyaya considered just walking up to one of those ready to depart and asking if she could work passage down to Dragon's Jaw. She'd not be obviously out of place in that den of pirates... but of course, it was a den of pirates. Don't be a fool, Nyaya, she reminded herself. You came home to get away from places like that.
Which meant...
Yes, she was that desperate.
A few minutes later Nyaya walked up to one of the quays and cornered the supervisor between herself and the water. "I appear to have injured myself," she explained, indicating her dislocated arm with her good hand. "Could you direct me to a reputable surgeon?"
