Chapter 9 - Part VIII

It was all Reiba could do to not sprint back to her quarters in the Wing of the Major Moon.  In the east the Minor Moon began to rise.  It was only once a tide or so, afterall, that a night was truly devoid of it.  In the east the blackness of the night had begun to succumb to a sickly yellow-blue.  The brightest of stars still shone but the others in that part of the sky had been overcome with the mere suggestion of the sun.  Dawn was fast approaching and she'd have to make her decisions quickly.

While she walked, she pawed at the little compromised pill in her pocket; each time flesh hit its smooth surface she had an instant feeling of being somewhere else.  On the roof.  Hidden in an alley way.  Sulking behind lone stands of cosmopolitan oak and ceder.  It was in one of the parks of the Eirdred.

As she approached her wing, she could feel that already the creature was out of the city.  Fast, she marveled.  She clutched the pill a little harder in her fist and let more information seep into her skin.

West.  He travels due west.  This surprised Reiba, who expected her quarry to make its way south, as it had when she first caught him.  She realized then she had always connected those two things in her mind, the art of the b'hei and the creature, as being from the same catalyst and as all the knowledge she held of compromising lay written in the Sandoran tongue, she had always assumed that it was Sandoran in origin.  If she ever saw Laenuc again, she felt confident that compromising crafter would know what the creature was.

I wish I had more time to study this further she thought mournfully as she motioned her servants to open the huge door to her quarters.  Sadly, she had more immediate concerns.  Whatever form of guilt the two nobles were looking for when they visited her, they must have found it when Zaexyl accepted the Tsitul proposal, but she could not help but recollect the look of surprise the Lady Kreihl herself had at the gift.  She seemed as clueless as Reiba had been before she recognized the earring she held.

It had been far too many years since she had tried that first experiment.  As the door servants closed the bulky oak door that separated her wing from the rest of the world, she made haste to her study. She blew out each of the candles that provided her with the light to study and explore the unknown, and slid the paper doors shut.  Every candle save one, that is, so she could see what she was doing.

With no small measure of hesitation, Reiba opened the the Tsitul gift box again and extracted the earring once more.  It was nothing a cube of bronze couldn't buy.  The stones of jade and turquoise that hung lazily from the hook seemed real enough, but highly flawed, sporting cracks and strange cuts.  She recalled from her childhood, youths who would search the midden piles of gemmers for such unpolished scraps.  For her, the couple of meals one could get out of a weeks worth of rock discoveries wasn't worth wading in the combination of food waste, broken pottery and animal feces that often built up in back alleys in between street cleanings.

But the cheapness of the earring also made it a suitable first attempt at using the art of the b'hei.  She blew out the remaining candle which left the room glowing only very softly as a consequence of the lit candles on the other side of the paper walls.  It was dark enough, however.

And the earring performed accordingly.  The glow of the earring looked more like the light of the moon than a candle or the sun itself.  It seemed to reflect luminescence rather than create it.  But there was no doubting that this was her earring.  It had to be.

Reiba had not worn those earrings since she experimented on them.  A quick flick of her wrist brought a match against a sandstone paperweight on her desk and in no time the study was again relit. She sighed, knowing invariably what she had to do next, but first wanting to know how this happened.  Her fist clenched around the earring angrily as she started flipping over the books on her desk.  Papers went flying in an almost celebratory fashion.

She then began tearing apart her study, ejecting books from their shelves, ripping out the drawers of her desk.  She moved to a closet she had kept locked since moving into the Archne compound.  Heri had, of course, asked her what she kept in it, the insatiably curious fellow he was.  She had told him that it was her garments of the night that she would use to surprise him from time to time.  This made him want to see the contents even more but somehow she had convinced him that the allure of seduction is as much the province of what you can't see, as what you can.

She supposed that she wasn't wholly lying.  A corset was among the items in it, along with a necklace, a hair piece, and some older articles of clothing.  Rats had tried to chew at the closet to get closer to the corset, the necklace constricted at the mere touch of her finger and she knew if she wore the hair piece she'd suddenly have bowel movements that mirrored those of the nearest person.  The butterfly affixed on the hairpiece not only looked real though, it acted real.  Its antennae seemed to probe the air for the scent of a mate.  Reiba kept very clear from the hairpiece. 

And of the earrings, both lay silently in a small box, same as the day she had forged their compromise.  There might be half a million of these types of earrings in Eirdred alone, but only hers glowed, as they both did now in the dimmed light of the closet. And now it was hers and this other, one earring.  She opened her left hand but was shocked to see that all she carried now was a lifeless granite rock.

No.  There is no such thing as magic, this is compromised!  But how?  What does it show? Her assault on her study left the Tsitul box unfazed and Reiba replaced the rock within the box.  She pulled a silk cord and had to wait only a few minutes before Vergaihl placed a soft but firm rap on her door.  She met him in the social room.


"Enter." she beckoned and the doors opened for the house master.





"My Lady, the boys are not yet..." he began but was quickly cut off by an impatient mistress.


She passed him the box.  "Do you recognize this?" she asked.


"Yes My Lady, this is the gift box from House Tsitul."


"Open it." she commanded.

Vergaihl did so, but with great hesitation.  It was not the lot of a servant to deal with noble gifts.  He kept glancing back at her then the box, expecting her reproach at any moment.  When he finally looked at what was in the box, he gasped and dropped it like it was a pox laden child.


"What did you see?!" Reiba demanded impatiently.

"I am so sorry," Vergaihl collapsed to his knees, "Please, it was only in fun.  It was only between my family and I.  I am ever your loyal servant..." he cried but Zaexyl was in no mood to hear his protestations. 

"Never mind that.  What is the object in the box?"


The poor man, who was not slight by any means but who nonetheless cowered now, had a look of fear and confusion on his face.

"Tell me exactly what it is.  Spare no details.  Give me context."

"Uh...", he began, lips quivering, "It is a letter to my family.  I've not seen them in so long.  They live in the country and.."

"Stop babbling.  Why are you so afraid of it?"

Every fiber in the elder man's being told him that to repeat the words he had written down was treason.  Yet to not answer a direct command could also be seen as treason.  He looked like a rabbit cornered by the wolf.

"In this letter," he tried, being as delicate as possible, "I explain to my wife that your Ladyship is a very ambitious woman.  That you, my lady, might have had," he searched for the words, "a strained relationship with your husband." he could not make himself confess further.

"You think I killed Heri?  That is what you wrote?" she interrogated the man.  His silence confirmed her suspicions.  "I see.  Now pick up the object in the box and show it to me."

Sure enough at this point it was a letter; its waxy seal of the house master of Archne broken and its pages slightly crumpled.


"Interesting." Lady Archne observed to herself, uncaring if Vergaihl heard her at this point. "What amazing things the b'hei does.  I wonder what weakness this carries."  She paused deep in her thoughts before she remembered that her servant was still there, surely awaiting the wrath and potentially lethal punishment from his mistress.  "You may go now Vergaihl.  Actually, return to your home.  Clearly you have been over worked.  You need a rest.  Return to your home.  Go ahead, collect your wages for the next month.  Do not delay.  And regardless of what you hear, do not come back tonight."

"Thank you, My Lady," was all the man could offer, so confused by the recent turn of events.  He bowed quickly and exited the room, afraid that this was all a trick and the sooner he was on his way, the less time she had to put him in a noose.

It was only a matter of time before whoever was really looking for Reiba would find out who and where she was.  And who looked for her was more than the petty lords who deigned to offer her their second sons.  They understood the art of the b'hei, and they knew of the creature.  Now more than ever, she felt trapped.  The Secondsword would be returning soon enough, and likely with him his cronies.  She'd be painting the walls of the Augur red all over again with the blood she could expect to lose from the impending torture.

 I won't give them the satisfaction, she thought angrily to herself.