Chapter 9 Sirsha #2
A small white house with a courtyard tiled in blue and green.
A boy beside a burbling fountain. He spoke tenderly to a mother cat growling at him as he approached her young.
At his words, the cat calmed, her fur settling, her ears no longer pinned back.
The boy’s smile lit his face as he peered up at Sirsha.
“Are you here to teach me?”
Sirsha blinked and realized the boy she was looking at was older than that boy long ago in Brijna. The fountain was larger. The cat a different color.
She shook herself, almost angry. She had a bleeding zealot to find and here she was, dwelling on things that had happened too long ago to ever change. She hurried onward.
Crowds of people ate and drank and flirted on Eltcia’s streets and balconies, and Sirsha heard gossip about Devanese nobles, about the local mayor tupping one of his gardeners.
She heard about the great war in the north, and the wealth of the Empire flowing to Jibaut in pirate ships heavy with loot.
After ensuring that no one was hunting a dark-haired woman who’d attacked one of Jibaut’s wealthiest merchants, Sirsha began to search for Dolbra.
Div was close—Sirsha could feel her oily presence—so Sirsha didn’t reach for her magic.
Quil had talked about Dolbra; she was in her fifties, with white hair and skin.
She had been high up in the Ankanese pecking order, so she’d likely be skilled at oration.
Sirsha made her way past a troupe of acrobats and musicians. As she waded through the applauding crowd, a sonorous voice penetrated the din.
“—the true faith, the faith of our savior, who speaks for the downtrodden and broken and forgotten. But she is bound to another and cannot freely walk among us.” The woman speaking had moon-colored hair and skin, and a voice that echoed powerfully across the market.
Her rags appeared to have once been green robes made of fine silk.
There were tiny eyes embroidered on the sleeves, and she wore a necklace with an eye pendant.
Only the Ankanese wore that symbol. Sirsha narrowed her eyes.
Dolbra.
As Div had warned, Dolbra wasn’t alone. Other Duranis were scattered through the market, identifiable by their simple green robes and fervent preaching.
Sirsha would need to get Dolbra away from her compatriots so they wouldn’t overpower Sirsha and drag her to whatever hidey-hole they were lurking in.
Dolbra had likely seen Sirsha in her visions. She was a seer, after all. Sirsha had to get close without tipping her off.
She eyed the seer and remembered a story Quil had told her of how his aunt taught him stealth: by leaving notes in his pockets or even his hands without him noticing her approach—and teaching Quil to do the same.
Sirsha was too chary to get near Dolbra herself. She dashed off a note on a bit of filched parchment and paid an urchin a coin to hand it to Dolbra. Then she headed to a park she’d noticed on the way to the market and waited.
After an hour, Dolbra approached the park alone, as Sirsha had requested. Her eyes widened when she spotted Sirsha on the bench.
“A miracle.” She sank down beside Sirsha, reaching for her fingers. “The Vessel!”
Sirsha snatched her hands away. “Enough of that,” she said. “You knew Aiz. You know what Div is capable of. I have questions, and you’re going to answer them or I’ll have Div gut you.”
Whatever Dolbra heard in Sirsha’s voice was enough to convince her; she nodded frantically.
“Tell me about the vision where you first connected me to Div,” Sirsha said.
“It was months ago.” Dolbra’s eyes grew distant, as if seeing the vision in her memory.
“A series of dreams. In the first, I saw a tear in the fabric of the world, a weight too great to name. In the second, that weight transformed into an ash cloud that stole the sun and choked the air. You stood at the center of the cloud, untouched. In the third vision, you clawed open your chest and invited the tear within, for its jagged edges fit yours.”
“Did you see an ocean in your visions?” Sirsha asked. “It would be filled with…with creatures. The sky above it would have been yellow, and it would feel hungry—”
Dolbra looked so mystified that it couldn’t possibly be feigned. Sirsha cursed and glanced around the park—no signs of Dolbra’s fellows yet, but she didn’t doubt they were on their way.
“What do you know about Div?” Sirsha asked. “Her history. Her weaknesses.”
“You do not know her story?” Dolbra looked down her nose at Sirsha, and the latter caught a glimpse of how insufferable she must have been as a seer. “Then listen well to the tale of ‘The Storm and the Storyteller.’
“Long ago,” Dolbra began, even as Sirsha kept a wary eye out for more Duranis, “our savior was an orator of great renown. She was invited to speak to the most learned minds in the land. The Jaduna. The Sun Lords of Firan. Even, rumor says, the jinn. But the monarch of her own land was a greedy man who wanted our savior’s knowledge for himself.
“When she refused to give it to him, he was angry. The monarch ordered her cast out of her beautiful home of glowing lamplight and into the stormy wilds beyond the city walls. The deep night was a time for monsters, and the orator moved carefully through the rain-battered wood. She used her knowledge to evade tigers and leopards and other hunting things.”
Sirsha shivered when she felt Div’s presence, glaring at the creature as she materialized on a nearby park bench. Div rolled her eyes and picked lint off her robe, as if she’d heard the story a thousand times.
“Alas,” Dolbra went on, “she could not survive the most vicious hunter of all. Man. They stalked and cornered her. Then they murdered her slowly. Her spirit, so peaceable in life, craved vengeance. She would cleanse the world of such men. She would do it through story. And so she tethered herself to the earth and called us to her to share her tale of woe. So that one day, we might bring her back to make a better world.”
Sirsha hardly looked at Dolbra, instead watching Div. But the creature did not appear upset, which seemed odd for an orator so obsessed with vengeance that she’d tethered herself to this miserable plane.
“Which one is true?” Sirsha asked Mother Div. Dolbra couldn’t see Div, so it would appear that Sirsha was talking to herself, but she didn’t much care. “This rubbish about you being an orator or the one about the wedding?”
“Both are true,” Div said. “And neither are true. My truth matters not. You have bigger problems.” Her gaze jerked over Sirsha’s shoulder.
She spun to find more than a dozen green-clad women streaming into the park. Some had weapons, others nothing but their bare hands. All stared at Sirsha like wolves on the hunt.
She’d lingered too long. Sirsha stood and broke into a run—there was an exit behind her; she could make it out of here if she was fast.
But before she reached the gate, more green-clad Duranis streamed in through it, choking off her escape.
She was surrounded.