Wysper - Muzen's spies

From the other side of the door, the High Priest's voice calls out, "Send her in." Fat-boy's twin opens the door and I step inside.

I take in the scene as the door clicks shut behind me. The room is large, with chest-high brass braziers burning white coal that gives off heat without smoke, along with the scent of incense, and I take a moment to unwrap the blood-red pashmina as I look around. The stone walls are not stuccoed but bare, richly furnished with tapestries devoted to Yun-Kax and the harvest... and yet, the colors are faded and the cloth frayed. They should have been replaced a long time ago.

Likewise, the customary gold statues of the deities, in their traditional place on the shelf above an unused hearth, have been polished until they gleam... and yet, they are crude compared to the ones I have seen in Tesiphon, or even those I saw in the last satrapy we visited, where the local head priest hosted a banquet my priestess-sisters and I were permitted to attend.

I finish unwrapping my pashmina, laying my shoulders bare and catching the eyes of the three people sitting on cushions around a low, round table, as I walk barefoot over the wooden floor towards the High Priest. He is dressed exactly as I had expected, in the white robes with red borders that he favors, which contrasts my black dress with its matching red on the sleeves, as he looks away to pour wine from a delicate ceramic jug into three equally fragile cups.

However, the other two with him are strange. Across from him is a man from the eastern wastes, his dark eyes slanted in a face like a fox, weathered by many years in the harsh sun. He wears black leather resembling armor, though too thin to stop a blade, and silver hoops in each ear.

He is watching me with an inscrutable expression on his face, unlike the woman, who is staring at me with a hungry smile. Her skin is dark as ebony, while her hair is kinked as if made of black, twisted wire, her icy blue dress cut to reveal far more than it conceals. She wears silver at her throat, her wrists, and her ankles, the earrings attached to each lobe reminding me of icicles in winter. Except these icicles would never melt in the summer sun.

My eyes go back to the man, though, for despite his eastern look, his hair is the same dark red color as mine. He raises his eyebrows as if in question. I am staring at him in bad grace, so I avert my eyes and bow to the High Priest. "Your holiness has summoned me alone for the first time. May I be of service to you?"

He pats the cushion on the floor between the exotic woman and himself. "You have already been of service to me over the last three years, and I thought it high time we sat together and talked. Have you eaten?"

I shake my head as I kneel, then adjust to a sitting position, my bare legs remaining hidden under the flowing dress. "Servant-priestess Myra had just finished washing my hair when the summons came."

He gives me a knowing smile. "I thought that might be the case, so I told the Servant-mistress to prepare food from the kitchen and bring it up after you had arrived. I will feed you while we speak."

The man with dark red hair is giving me a curious look. "Feed her? Is the girl feeble in some way?"

The man does not speak in the Sasnayam noble caste tongue, as my priestess-sisters and I were taught, but as one lower born. The High Priest gives him a sly smile. "Wysper, this charming rogue is Redhunter, an outrider for the White Horde, while the delightful creature beside you is Zanzabel, a holy dancer for the cult of Osiris. Redhunter is a spy for the Khan, while Zanzabel is a spy for the Kingdom of Palmyra." He turns his dark eyed gaze upon me. "You have a clever mind. Tell me, why I am entertaining a pair of spies?"

I spend a moment arranging my dress as I struggle for a response. "Your holiness, Servant-priestess Thalia is the wisest of us. Everyone says so."

"While Myra is the most attractive. Yes, I have heard that repeated many times." The High Priest's eyebrows are shaved clean, but painted in a stylized resemblance of what was there, and he raises the right one as he regards me. "However, I see behind the masks others use to hide their true selves, as you have learned to do ever since you came here." Without taking his dark eyes off me, he grasps the delicate cup and holds it out. "I understand why you hide, as well as what I can use to draw you out from behind it. Lean forward and put your nose over the cup."

I do as he commands and sniff deeply. The wine smells red, with an earthy tang and laughing vines, awakening my sleeping thirst as the answer becomes clear. "You entertain them," I reply as I stare into eyes capable of holding me fast and staring into my soul, "because they are your spies."

The High Priest smiles. "Zanzabel, take the cup and let Wysper place her cushion beside you, so you may give her sips of wine at your discretion. Before you ask, she is not permitted to hold the cup, yet has a desire for it as great as Redhunter's. Greater, because she cannot pour for herself but must rely on others for help."

"Cruel," Zanzabel says as she takes the delicate cup from his hand, while I shift my cushion so I am sitting next to her. "You find our weaknesses and use them to control us."

The High Priest merely shrugs as Zanzabel holds the cup to my lips and lets me take a sip. "Why do you think I am high priest of the most powerful god in the Sasnayam pantheon? Or why the empire is holding firm against both Palmyra and the western 'Empire of the East'? Knowledge is power, and the news you bring me about your respective masters helps me maintain it, while the news you bring them is what I want them to hear."

"Which is the truth," Zanzabel says, giving me another sip of wine as she moves so her body is pressed up against mine, "with a few creative embellishments." She sets the cup down as she looks at me. "For example, when I return to Queen Zenobia, I will tell her that the rumors she heard about blood corn are true, then give her the small bag of it that I managed to steal out of the temple storeroom."

The High Priest reaches underneath the table and brings out a fist-sized leather bag, which he tosses onto the table beside the wine cup. Zanzabel leans over to take it, opening the bag to show me what it contains: corn kernels three times as large as normal ones, red as the blood I shed to create them, and faintly glowing. She smiles and closes the bag before placing it in a hidden pocket of her dress. "Thank you. The queen's son is sickly, and after she tests it on a few slaves to see the effects, she will likely use it upon him."

"Forgive me if I speak out of turn," I say, "but blood corn is better at strengthening than it is at healing. If she uses too much on the slaves, there will not be enough to fully cure her son."

"At which point you and I will be back in Tesiphon," the High Priest replies, "with the blood corn gathered after each sacrifice safely locked away in the temple vaults." He raises his painted eyebrows, expecting an answer.

Thinking about the times Fat-boy has spoken to me of politics, and shown me maps, I slowly nod. "She will have to bargain. Palmyra is now a friend of the Etruscans, what is called the Empire of the West now, and neutral to their cousins, the Empire of the East. You will use blood corn as a way to shift her friendship over to your side."

Redhunter takes a swallow of wine. "I'd say it's to keep Palmyra out of the next Sasnayam-Eastern Empire war. Muzen, one of these days your cleverness will be your undoing."

The High Priest shrugs. "Perhaps. Yet, today is not that day. Going back to Wysper being forbidden the use of her hands, you were born a Blood mage because your mother wore a red dragon scale over her belly all during her pregnancy, correct?"

"While the girl's mother wore the same over hers, occasionally wearing a golden scale just above it to give her daughter the golden bangs I see at her forehead. What of it?"

"Besides being a scout and a scoundrel, are you ever called upon by the White Horde to use your powers?"

Redhunter gives the High Priest an indignant look. "You know I use them all the time. Besides keeping me alive if I'm ever wounded, blood magic lets me sense people better so I know their moods, which is one reason Khan Khingla has me here and not out scouting, or hunting." He shrugs. "I don't have the talent to use it for crafting, but during the last plague, I helped the healers-" Redhunter stops and stares at the High Priest. "You tricky old bastard."

Instead of becoming upset, the High Priest gives him a smug smile. "You laid your hands upon those who were sick, and let the power flow through you to strengthen them. Mana flows through the body like a river, only in Wysper's case, the river is dammed. Much of the dam is sympathetic magic; she is a virgin, and as long as she remains virginal, only little of her mana will escape through her hands. By forbidding her to use them, I insure the flow is completely blocked."

Zanzabel gives me another sip from the cup. "All that mana has to go somewhere, and so it builds up inside her, forming the second heart I watched you rip from her chest."

"Mana node, actually. If she truly had a second heart, Wysper would have bled to death a long time ago, and not by my hands." He takes a sip off his own cup. "It took me quite some time to figure out how Pan had done it, because normally when mana flows through the body, it does not matter whether a female remains virginal or not. But through trial and error I hit upon the method he used and recreated it."

"Recreated it?" My eyes go wide. "Your Holiness, I do not understand. How can you recreate something given to my... to the Brittani people by the gods?"

Zanzabel picks up the cup and lets me inhale its fragrance before giving me the smallest of sips, the desire on her face speaking volumes about her secret weakness as Redhunter drains his cup. "The gods. Tell me, Wysper, do you believe in the gods?"

Is this another test? "Of course I do."

"What if I told you the gods are actually a race of beings known as Celestials, and that Muzen, your High Priest, is in fact Yun-Kax." The idea is so ludicrous that I put my hand over my mouth for a moment, and he frowns. "What's the matter? Are you ill?"

"She is trying to keep from laughing," the High Priest says in a mild voice as he refills the man's cup. "Wysper, the White Horde believes that there is only one god named Tengri, who created everything."

Either this is another test or his spy suffers from madness. "But I have seen the god's priests work miracles, both here and when I lived on the island of Britannia."

Redhunter looks at me as if I were a child. "These 'miracles' are nothing more than the same magic Ishi uses to power the manikin that washes my clothes. The only difference is in their power, and the creative ways Celestials get people to believe they're anything other than ordinary magic."

Drawing myself up, I look Redhunter straight in the eye. "I would hardly call the creation of blood corn ordinary."

The High Priest chuckles. "She has you there."

The man takes a sip from his wine cup before waving it in a sweeping gesture. "It's unique only because none of the other Celestials have figured out how it's done... at least, up to now," Redhunter saluting the High Priest with his cup before setting it back down.

The High Priest inclines his head, acknowledging the complement, but I am not finished. "I will grant you that point, yet how do you explain the great statues, crafted from pieces of Artifact into the likeness of a god such as Pan, that come to life and speak to us when their priest invokes them?"

"They aren't statues." Redhunter is not backing down from his madness as he sets his cup down. "They are devices like the manikin Ishi uses, except these are powered and controlled by the Celestials themselves, who sit inside the device as if wearing a suit of armor. The Celestials first used them in their war with the Daemo princes, but now only bring them to life occasionally, to keep the people believing the gods still exist."

"It is the same in Palmyra." Zanzabel holds the cup to my lips and lets me drink as she continues. "Once a year, Osiris celebrates his feast day with a festival of sacred dance, culminating in the Chief Priest climbing inside and animating the statue to have it dance with us."

I cannot believe what I am hearing. "Zanzabel, I do not wish to give you any insult, but you are making it sound like the Chief Priest and Osiris are the same person."

She reaches out and rubs the edge of her thumb along the bone of my jaw as her other hand sets the cup down. "There was a time I believed as you do, that the gods were real and looked down from the heavens upon their people. Then I was initiated into the sacred mysteries of Osiris." She runs her smooth forefinger down the side of my face. "We are fortunate that the ones people believe are gods, are actually Celestials living among us, for they are far more interested in our welfare than gods would ever be." Zanzabel motions outward with her hand. "Take blood corn. Muzen went to a great deal of trouble acquiring you and the other priestesses, along with the dragon scales used to create the ritual." She glances up at the High Priest. "Though I wonder at the cost to the Brittani people."

The High Priest shrugs. "That is not my concern. Stabilizing the Sasnayam empire is, and blood corn has done wonders to quiet the rumblings of discontent coming from the empire's satrapies, especially those bordering the waste. Once we return to Tesiphon, preparations for an attack upon the Empire of the East shall begin in earnest. Armentia belongs to us, and despite many of its people reconciling themselves to now being citizens of the decadent west, they will return to the fold whether they like it or not. From there, we will strike north and take Causia, or at least the eastern part where its gold mines lie. That will give us better protection against the empire's magic, and allow our forces to march west, possibly even to Konstanopolis itself."

"Queen Zenobia will be distraught at the thought of your armies sweeping west to the north of us."

The High Priest smiles. "I believe returning the ancient city of Palmyra and the rest of Syros to her hands from the Eastern Empire's might go a long way to easing her fears."

Zanzabel is staring at him in shock. "But Armentia is many leagues to the northeast. How can your forces-"

"Our forces will never set foot on even one hectare of Syros' soil. There is an organization in the city of Palmyra made up of those friendly to Palmyra, who want Queen Zenobia in charge of Syros instead of Emperor Konstanos, who are ready to overthrow the royal governor whenever-" A sword pommel hammers on the door. "What is it?"

"The food you requested, your holiness," the eunuch's voice answers.

"Send her in." The door opens, and Pigeon comes inside holding a platter with a metal cover, a worried expression on her face. "Zanzabel, my dear," the High Priest says as a small figure steps out from behind the Servant-mistress, "I always plan ahead, and will be as ruthless and as cruel as I must be to keep the empire safe and growing." I see the child-like figure and terror rises inside me like a serpent wrapped around my throat.

Yrg is here.