Glancing at the Rose Tower, she saw that Lord Merchandy had fallen prostrate on the steps and that Lady Professionate was bending over him. Lord Artifice apparently had fled.
Which way should she go, after the kidnappers or up the tower? The Karnids were gone. On the stair, the plump girl looked wildly around for help, none of which was forthcoming.
“Take the ten and try to track down the Karnids,” Jame told Brier, shouting to be heard over the uproar, gripping the Kendar’s collar so that they wouldn’t be torn apart. “Free the Tishooo if you can.”
“And you?”
“I’m needed elsewhere.”
Jame used water-flowing to make her way through the seething mob to the foot of the stair. Then she bounded up the steps. Merchandy and Professionate hadn’t moved. The old man lay panting and his color, from what Jame could see, wasn’t good.
“Help us!” the girl gasped.
Between them, they raised and dragged him, stumbling, up the steps. Tattered clouds revealed Kothifir’s ring of desolation, then the gilded heights above, already looking perilous as the glamour below them faded. A catwalk took them across the plaza, over a nightmare scene, to a white tower. All Merchandy’s servants had fled. Here in an inner chamber draped with creamy silk was his bed. They laid him down on it and Professionate loosened his clothes while Jame watched, unsure what else to do.
“What’s the matter with him?” she asked.
“An old illness, potentially fatal in his current state.”
“He’s mortal again?”
“Yes. So am I.”
As Jame had guessed, the Kencyr temple had failed. The acolyte Dorin had said that a mere change in the weather might trigger its collapse, and this was so much more.
The girl sat on the edge of the bed, holding a hand like a bunch of twigs. Merchandy gasped for breath, the cords in his skinny neck standing out, his pale blue eyes glazed with effort. Given that bone structure, he must once have been a very handsome man. Now he looked like an animate corpse in need of immediate burial. Professionate brushed thin, sweat-darkened hair off his brow and looked at Jame.
“We met once before,” she said, with an obvious effort to be polite. “In the Undercliff. But we weren’t introduced. My name is Shandanielle. My friends call me Dani. This is Mercer.” She gave an unhappy little laugh. “By name and by nature, he would say.”
“I’m Jamethiel Priest’s-bane. Call me Jame. Will he recover?”
“Perhaps. If he wants to.” With her free hand she dipped a cloth into a bowl of lavender water and wiped his face with it.
“He has been in pain for a long time. Being immortal doesn’t stop that. If anything, it makes things worse. And he has been greatly shaken by the failure of the trade mission.” A note of petulance crept into her voice. “I told him that it wasn’t his fault, that the city, that I need him, especially now; but he insists on blaming himself for our current dilemma.”
Jame shifted uneasily. Had the fall of Langadine been in any way her fault or, like Mercer, had she simply grown used to taking responsibility for everything?
“How will the Change affect you?” she asked.
Dani laughed again and wiped her eyes. “Maybe this time I will outgrow these damned pimples.”
Jame remembered that this girl had been mired in adolescence for nearly thirty years. What a horrible fate.
“Would you like to remain mortal?” she asked.
“Oh, I would love it, at least until I catch up with myself. It’s maddening to have an adult mind in a thirteen-year-old body—if I really am an adult. How does one know when one is grown up?”
Jame took the question seriously. “From what I can tell, some people never mature, however long they live. Others are born old.”
“And you?”
“A little of both. That seems to be the way with the god-touched.”
“Ah, I knew it! You too. I think we could teach each other much, whether or not I regain immortality. Oh, but what if I don’t? Who will be the next Lord or Lady Professionate? It could be an architect or an engineer or, heavens save us, a lawyer. I suppose each would be good for the city in a different way, but could any of them keep Mercer alive? I think we really need him now that Kothifir must alter in order to survive. Besides, all these years he has been so kind to me, as if I were the daughter that he lost as a baby, when his wife died. My own parents sold me to the physician for whom I worked before I came into the white.”
“I didn’t know that there were slaves in Kothifir.”
“Not as such, and only among certain old sects where females are considered chattel. The guilds call them apprentices, and not all are sold or ill-treated. You don’t know what it was like, though, to be the least of servants, at everyone’s command. My master took advantage of that. So did his chief assistant.” She shuddered. “A gross man, that. His weight nearly crushed me. Then I became a god, still as a child, and I dealt with both of them. That taught me that revenge hurts all involved in it. I have never misused my powers again, even when my parents demanded my return, saying that they had been cheated out of a valuable asset. However, Mercer refused them and King Kruin supported him. Now they are old and my younger brother is full-grown. I still get letters from them from time to time, demanding money or other favors.”
The floor seemed subtly to shift, although the bed curtains didn’t sway. Mercer twitched and groaned. Jame tottered, cursing. Of course, if the Kencyr temple was down, Krothen was no longer a god-king with control of his city’s heights.
“How long is this apt to go on?”
Dani shrugged plump shoulders, looking helpless. “Once it lasted for half a year, or so I’m told. That was when most of the outer towers fell. But Mercer can’t survive that long now. Oh, what are we going to do?”
Jame didn’t know. First, she had to determine the status of the temple. With that in mind, she bade Dani good-bye and started down the stairs.
Someone was coming up them with a heavy tread.
Jame slipped into an alcove. A large man in worn worker’s clothes passed her, his expression set in a determined scowl. On impulse, she followed him up to the chamber where the former Lord Merchandy lay and the former Lady Professionate tended him.
“So there you are,” he said, standing framed in the doorway. “What price godhood now, uh? Come on. You belong at home.”
He crossed the room and seized her arm. Dani struggled in his grip. “No! He needs me!”
“Your family needs you more.”
“Then why did you sell me as a child?”
“We needed the money to buy my apprenticeship. Don’t you see, you silly chit? That way, both of us were provided for.”
“But you failed your tests and had to become a common laborer.”
He snarled at her. “The guild master wanted a bribe. That’s all. You could have provided it.”
“I keep telling you: I never ask a price for my services. People donate what they can.”
“The more fool you, but all of that is over now.”
Jame slipped up behind him.
“Let her go.”
The brother gave her a contemptuous look over his beefy shoulder. “Who are you, to interfere with family matters?”
“Some family,” said Jame, and pinched the nerve in his elbow. He let his sister go as his arm went limp and turned, furious, on Jame.
“Why, you little bitch . . .”
“Right sex, wrong species.”
He lunged at her, and she slid past him in wind-blowing, giving him a kick in the pants as he staggered past. He ran headfirst into the bedroom wall. Then back he came as furious as a dazed bull. Jame swept his feet out from under him and he plowed into the marble floor face first. Blood spread around his head as he lay there, inert, snoring.
“With luck, it’s only a broken nose and a concussion,” Jame told Dani, who stood by horrified, hands over her mouth. “If he thought you were vulnerable, how long before Master Needham comes looking for Lord Merchandy? I think, on the whole, that you two should go Undercliff, where Fang, Kroaky, and Mother Vedia can look after you.”