Kan entered and waited patiently.
“It’s here,” Miryo said at last. “I don’t know where exactly, not yet. I’m going to go out into the town. You and Sai wait here. Prepare one of the attic rooms to hold a prisoner, as best as you can.”
“I’ll do that,” Kan said. “Sai will accompany you.”
Miryo grimaced, but she wasn’t surprised. Her efforts to convince them she didn’t need a watchdog had comprehensively failed. “All right. I won’t be gone long.”
She went down into the streets, Sai ghosting along behind her in the midday crowd. It’s here, somewhere within these walls. No sense of direction, though; I must be too close. Real helpful. My instinct would choose now to desert me.
What if I wander into it, here on the street?
The thought turned Miryo cold. She wasn’t ready. Only Sai was here—not that a combat-trained Cousin was anything to sniff at. But it would cause all kinds of comment if there was a fight here on the street. And even if she didn’t encounter her doppelganger face-to-face, what if a merchant mentioned to it that he had seen a woman very tike it earlier that day?
Miryo turned on her heel and left the crowded street as quickly as she could.
Her feet carried her without any real sense of direction. She wasn’t sure which way the inn was, and couldn’t yet bring herself to ask Sai. As it was, her wandering brought her to a place she wanted to go.
She went up the steps and into the temple’s cool interior without thinking about it twice, it was the first time she’d set foot in a temple not built for witches’ use, and she gazed around it in curiosity. This one was pentagonal in layout, with a door at each corner; from her studies, she knew it was an unusual design. The interior face of each wall was devoted to a different Aspect of the Goddess. The middle was open to the sky; Miryo hummed and sensed the spell that covered the opening, keeping leaves and other such litter out. Rain, however, could enter freely, as could snow and birds, so the natural world still had access.
Standing in the sunlight, Miryo made a complete turn, looking at all five statues of the Goddess. Maiden, Bride, Mother, Crone, Warrior. She hesitated among them; the Warrior governed violence and death, but she could use the calm of the Mother’s Water, or the solidity of the Crone’s Earth. In the end she chose the Maiden’s shrine; that was her current stage of life, and determination and passion were what she needed at the moment.
Sai dropped back to give Miryo privacy as she prepared herself for prayer. Since the shrine was the Maiden’s, purification involved lighting a candle and meditating briefly on its dancing flame before she carried it with her to the shrine proper.
Once there, she slid her candle into the holder provided and sat cross-legged, gazing up at the statue of the carefree, passionate Maiden.
Youngest, Lady of Fire, you who are the energy of determination and drive—help me. I need your attributes. I’m not sure I can do this.
I’m afraid. And I freely admit it. I’m afraid of failure; I’m afraid of success, and what it might cost me. I’ve never killed a person; I never thought I’d have to. I’ve never even seen anyone die. But if I am to use my gift, the gift that is my birthright and what I have struggled for all these years—I have to kill.
Maiden, Goddess, why did you make it this way?
It’s one thing to kill the doppelganger as an infant, to go through the ritual before your gaze, your holy starlight, has fallen on the child’s face. The baby has no soul when it becomes two, and so the double can be killed without guilt, and the witch-child taken outside to be presented to you. But I do not doubt that, in the years it has been alive, my doppelganger has been in that starlight-has bathed in your light.
Does that mean it has a soul?
If it has a soul, am I right to kill it?
The question had been gnawing at Miryo for days, twisting her up inside even though she tried to put it from her thoughts. Did her doppelganger have a soul? If it did, could she in good conscience kill it, and go on with her own life?
The Maiden gazed down at her, laughing and carefree. Not worrying about consequences.
All right. If a man attacked me with a sword, I’d defend myself. And if there were no way to keep myself safe other than killing him… I’d do it. If there were no other choice. Souls don’t matter, in that situation—or rather, they do, and I value mine above his. There is no wrong in killing when it is self-defense, when there truly is no other option.
There is no other option here. I kill it, or my magic spins out of control and eventually kills me, and maybe other people along with me. How many times have I caught myself almost reaching for power, the words of a spell on my lips, waiting to be spoken? As in Haira. One of these days I won’t be able to stop myself. So I kill my doppelganger, or it kills me. Two choices. Because I have a will to survive, I know which one I will choose. And I will live with the deed. I do that, or I die.
The Maiden smiled blithely.
Lend me your energy, Lady of Fire. Lend me your passion and determination. Do not let me lose sight of what I have fought for all these years.
“In your name,” Miryo whispered, and stood. She backed out into the center of the temple, where she bowed to each Aspect, and then left, Sai following without a word.
Hunters often laughed that every other person in Angrim was an agent. It wasn’t all that far from the truth. Angrim played buffer between not one but two nearby Hunter schools: Thornblood to the north and Windblade to the south. Since the two didn’t get along, the town’s narrow streets were infested with their people, keeping watch from the overhanging upper stories of houses and shops. And other schools, having a vested interest in keeping an eye on those two, also seeded Angrim with their agents. The result was a city in which half the inhabitants were spying on the other half. Even those who weren’t hired to gather information still sold it as a hobby.
Because of this rampant intrigue, contacting a Silverfire agent was not so simple as it had been in Chiero. Mirage took the first step of the dance that afternoon.
“Beer and a leg of goat,” she said, dropping onto a stool at an open-air bar in the eastern quarter, safely equidistant between the Thornblood and Windblade ends of the city.
The barkeep raised an eyebrow. “We don’t sell goat here. Go to Razi if you want that.”
“You should serve it; tastes better than lamb. But forget the food. I’ll just have the beer.”
He served it to her, and went about his business.
A little while later, Mirage spoke to him again. “Do you know any herb-women around here? I’ve been having some stomach problems.”
“Where are you staying in the city?” he asked.
“The Fisherman’s Hook,” Mirage lied.
He nodded thoughtfully. “There’s a woman two streets over, on Thimble Lane, who could help you. She’ll probably prescribe urgony, though, so if you can’t stand the stuff you shouldn’t go to her. If that’s the case, I suggest the one at the corner of Lord’s Way and Axehaft.”
“Axehaft? That doesn’t intersect Lord’s Way.”
He smacked his forehead. “Fletcher, I meant. Fletcher Street.”
“Thanks,” Mirage said, and left.
She had to grin as she left. The elaborate steps she had to tread to meet the contact, though necessary, were a very silly game. The request for goat had marked her as a Hunter; the stomach upset asked after a certain contact. Since she had named the Fisherman’s Hook, he knew she was at the Cracked Oak. Urgony meant the contact would come tonight. The misnamed street said how.