"Hurry with the waterskins, Lennem!"
Sssr'dss bent dusty-trousered legs over the sides of the caravan and leisurely walked to hoist the liquids from the primates' supplies. The supplies, it corrected itself. Its grouping and pods and sibs all lay dead; it was itself, alone, and it had begun to convince itself that it was better this way.
"Here, Gart." The tan-dappled pair of horses drew up their forelegs, tossed their heads, and snorted in fear at Sssr'dss' walk by them. It was ever an irritant that the most advanced tricks somehow failed to deceive brute beasts, but at least they had started to learn that Sssr'dss meant them no harm. For the time being. Horsemeat was not so tasty as primate flesh, but it made a meal better than the strips of dried jerky and bread stored for the road. Their driver poured down its throat the water and Sssr'dss moved to the next who wished a drink.
"Lennem, thank you," Syrria said, and moved its mouth to a smile. The nourishing primate was of middle years by their standards, its hair greying and curling and its material skirts always long and thick. Sssr'dss had designed its form to be nondescript, tedious, able to turn glances away: a generating-primate with light brown complexion, a face lined but not strongly scarred, and hair and eyes a shade or two darker than the colour of the flesh. Syrria gave glances as if it wished to mate even though older primates were supposed to be past nourishing or generative years. They wore so quickly.
"And three days until we reach Lagreme! It's been a warm autumn. A strange summer, all told," Syrria said, sweating from its pink primate flesh. "You always look so calm, Len."
Sssr'dss feigned tiredness and mopped a sleeve across its forehead. The cloth of the shirt was true as the trousers, and both were truly encrusted with dry light brown dirt. "All an illusion. I am as impatient at long days as you." It had spent time in caravans in the service of the one who was not the Golden One's true parent, and was used to adjusting flesh to the constant jerking motion of horses and wooden planks; but it still preferred journeying on foot.
"Before I married Merteyn and had the children, I'd done this run a hundred times, or so it felt," Syrria said; its primate mate had died six seasons' turning before and it carried merchant goods in its stead. "Then he took it over while I watched the business at home, and I grew unused to it; but things ever move on. Have you lost someone, Len?"
"I have lost my siblings," Sssr'dss said flatly. It was the closest it could come to the loss in a primate's analogy. "But they died because they made foolish mistakes."
Syrria shook its head and pursed its lips together. "That's no way to think of it, you silly man! You lost them, but that's no reason to lay the blame all on them. I understand why you'd say it that way, but it won't help you—simply continue on's the better way. Look to what's coming and know they'd have wanted you to have it."
"They might not have," Sssr'dss said simply, imitating a primate's baring of teeth.
Syrria hesitated. "Got themselves into trouble, then? Bad lots? Well, you're a type to mind your own business, I see, and I'll not help by poking my long nose where I see it's not wanted. Better get on with those skins."
"I will, Syrria," Sssr'dss promised, and walked on. It would talk with Syrria later when the stop came for the night, when they lit fire where the primate caravan-driver and its scouts gave the signal. Sometimes Sssr'dss cautiously read spells in the light, where it could concentrate while on the still ground; to revise the lessons of the Lady Cythandria.
Sssr'dss returned to its caravan and laid itself down on the planking, its hands below its heads to make a pillow. Its fellow primate passenger dozed and snored like an ape, another generative primate with little to nothing to say for itself.
Three things were true, Sssr'dss thought: the Golden One was destroyed, the Lady Cythandria was craven, and the primate-face and the phoenix-primate had alike won the day and slain all of Sssr'dss' podsibs and kin. For Sssr'dss could credit the primate-face for it; that the primate-face had lain hidden and the phoenix-primate with magic had lain hidden and in the end they had been stronger than the Golden One who had slain the old Red Master.
It considered once more, the wood moving and jerking below its flesh while the primates' horses jogged slowly forward. It had been angry at the Lady Cythandria on its awakening, wounded and stranded in cold tunnels; but then it had gone upward and found that the Golden One was dead, the Noble People were known by all to have infested the city, and as far as it knew it was the only doppelganger to have escaped. It supposed it could have tracked the Lady Cythandria, but there was no point. The primate-face and phoenix-primate had defeated it already; and it had won against Sssr'dss by a clever trick, but it would not be prey. It was no longer powerful enough to be worthy of attention. Besides, the Lady Cythandria had instructed Sssr'dss in precious magic, and it did not even have to be considered an enemy.
No. Sssr'dss would achieve Greatness through the primate-face. It had planned the phoenix-primate to masquerade as a Golden One, but Sssr'dss was one of few who had seen its darkened mind. It was of the same substance as the Golden One no matter what it wished others to believe. But to defeat it needed more than mere shapeshifting tricks...
Secretly, Sssr'dss stroked the engraved covers of its book of spells. The Lady Cythandria had been right. Arcane magic was the route to true power. Gods had whims and hands failed but if the mind went then so too did all the person. Sssr'dss would find wizard primates who would teach all they knew, and then Sssr'dss would seize the power that primate-face refused to use.
The beginnings of spells danced in Sssr'dss' brains while the turning of the caravan's wheels lulled it to quiescence. It had important plans to seek.
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