On Blue's waters

He and Evensong waited outside while I explained what I had learned from Krait on Green. I tapped the window when I had finished, and they came in again. “Will you do whatever we tell you, if I release you?” I asked the inhuma. “Or shall I make good on my threat?”

She said nothing in reply, her face buried in her hands-a naked, hairless, reptilian thing in woman’s shape, stripped for the moment of all her pride. Mehman and Evensong positioned their chairs a half step behind mine and sat in silence, watching her.

“I warn you, if you will not I am going to spread my knowledge everywhere. I will be believed, because I am ruler here.”

The face she lifted was a woman’s once more, beautiful and depraved. “What do you want from me?” Her eyes were green, or if they were not, they appeared so.

“You are quick.” I sat too, drew my sword, and laid it across my lap.

“I used to be. Tolerably so.” Her bony shoulders rose and fell, much narrower shoulders than Seawrack’s, and thinner than hers had ever been. Skeletal.

Mehman stood, having remembered his duties as host. “You will honor me by drinking tea, Rajan?”

Seeing that it would please him, I nodded and asked him to bring me a bowl of warm water, soap, and a clean towel as well.

“Tea for the rani?” He bowed to Evensong; when I was newly come it never occurred to me that my wives would be awarded the title of the ruler of Trivigaunte.

Evensong nodded and smiled, and Mehman bowed again and bustled away.

“I’d ask you how long you were in the ground under that stone, if I thought you knew,” I told our prisoner, “but I don’t see how you could.”

She shook her head. “Years, I think.”

“So do I. Is your word good?”

“Freely given to you? Yes.”

“Then give me your word that you will do exactly as I order you.”

She shook her head more vigorously, so much so that the chain clanked and rattled. “It would be worth nothing at all as long as I have to wear this. Take it away, and my oath will bind me.”

I got out the key, but Evensong caught my hand.

The inhuma began, “You were surprised that I didn’t want to know why you had-had…”

Her emotion may have been feigned, although I doubt it.

“I wasn’t free. You had locked this thing around my neck. Take it away.”

Motioning for Evensong to remain where she was, I did.

“I will obey you in all things, Rajan,” the inhuma declared. She rubbed her neck as if the chain had chafed it, and although they were faint I could see scales where pores should have been. I glanced at the window, and found that it was gray now instead of black.

I said, “You give me your word for that?”

“Yes.” Even knowing that her empty jade eyes and hollow cheeks were more than half illusion, I pitied the face I saw. “You have my word, unless you command me to go back into that place of living death.”

“I won’t. And when you have completed the task I’ll give you, I’m going to let you go.”

Evensong made a little sound of displeasure. “I don’t like it either,” I said, “but what else can I do? Kill her after she’s fought for us?”

The inhuma made me a seated bow that may or may not have been mockery.

Because I thought it would be better to wait for Mehman to return, I said, “It’s just occurred to me that you inhumi are rather like a kind of lizard I’ve noticed in my garden. It can change colors, and because of its size and shape, and because it remains so still, it is easy to take one for a piece of brown bark, or a green leaf, or even the flesh-colored petal of a rose. While I acknowledge that you inhumi are a much higher form of life, it seems to me that the principle is about the same.”

I expected her to say that we three were merely large monkeys without tails (as Krait would have), which would have been at least as just; but she only nodded. “You are correct, Rajan.”

Evensong said, “Pehla showed me one of those. They catch insects with their tongues.”

The inhuma nodded as before. “We do the same, rani. You haven’t asked my name, or given me yours.”

Evensong introduced herself. I explained to her that I had not inquired about the inhuma’s name because I knew that any name she gave us would be false, at which the inhuma said, “Then my name in this town of yours shall be False. Is that how you say it?” Mehman came in just then with my water, soap, and towel. “I have no tray, Rajan. I am shamed.”

“I am shamed, not you,” I told him. “I ought to have paid you better, and I will. I’ll give you a tray, too. This inhuma would like us to call her by a name that means false or lying. Something like that. What would it be?”

“Jahlee.”

“Thank you. Jahlee, this man is Mehman. Mehman, we will call this evil woman Jahlee, as you suggest.”

He bowed to her.

“Jahlee,” I said, “you are not to harm Mehman or any of his people.”

“I am your slave.”

“Look at him carefully. Neither Evensong nor I are typical of the mass of people here, but he is. He is a typical citizen of our town, tall and dark, with a nose, eyes, mouth, and so on quite a bit like mine.”

“I have seen others, Rajan.”