Part 15 Index Part 17
Ashira's Background Tea with Llewella
Indented and italicised text are Ashira's memories being recalled as she goes around the Pattern.
Everything else is her thoughts as she walks the Pattern.
I step forward, putting my foot onto the start of the glowing line of the Pattern. Instantly it is outlined in blue-white sparks. Then I put my other foot on the line, and feel a current begin to go through me. I take a step.
There is a crackle and I feel my hair rising, even as short as it is. I take another step.
The Pattern begins to curve abruptly back onto itself and after another dozen paces a resistance begins to rise. It feels as if a black barrier is growing up ahead of me of some substance that pushes back at me with each effort I make to go forward. I fight it. I suddenly know that it is the First Veil. Each step suddenly requires a terrible effort, and I feel sparks shooting from my hair. I concentrate on the fiery line of the Pattern, breathing heavily.
And suddenly the pressure eases. The First Veil parts before me as abruptly as it rose up, and I begin to remember. Things I had long since forgotten, pushed out of my mind and far away. Memories of long ago, of happier times. Memories I really do not want to experience again.
All my friends can talk. Why can't I talk? Why am I different? Mummy says she doesn't know. And it doesn't matter, she says. I'm special. I like being special. It's nice.
I'm five. It's my birthday, cake and candles and crystal and dancing in a big circle with all my friends as our parents clap us on and the music plays. I'm so happy and exited. I don't want my party ever to end.
I wondered why Mummy and Daddy had no baby pictures of me (as yucky as they are). Now they say I'm old enough to know. They're not my real mummy and daddy at all says mummy while daddy nods. I am ... adopted instead. They said my ... birth mummy and daddy are lost, or gone beyond. That makes me sad. The only thing of theirs left, mummy said, was my bell.
But mummy and daddy are my mummy and daddy anyway. I don't care about blood. Malintha and Sarashjur are my mummy and daddy, and that is all there is to it. I told them so. They seemed pleased when I do.
I met Lady Llewella at my sixth birthday party today. I curtsied and everything, like I'm supposed to. I like her. She's nice. Especially her hair. I've seen people with green hair before. But I never met one before.
I'm seven. We're riding in the city, in the sunshine, mummy and daddy and Lady Llewella and I. It's so much fun. I like riding.
I am well into the Pattern now and sparks are flashing continuously about my feet, reaching up to my knees. I don't know which direction I'm facing any more. The currents sweep through me and it seems as if my eyeballs are vibrating. Then comes a pins-and-needles feeling in my cheeks, and a coldness in the back of my neck. I clench my teeth to keep them from chattering.
Oh. No. I see. This ... is when I was little. And soon. Soon the Oricarians will come. But this is only remembering it. How can that compare to living it?
What are those noises coming from outside? They woke me up. It sounds like screaming. Things breaking. A crackling, like fire. What is happening? A crash, from downstairs. A scream. And daddy is there. He looks afraid. Why? He puts me in a cupboard, and tells me to be very, very quiet. He and mummy step away, and wait. The door is kicked in, and bad-looking ugly men come in.
No. Father. Sarashjur. No. Mother. Malintha. What has happened to Simbi, my little cat? What are they ... Oh, no. No. No! Stop! Someone make them stop. Make them stop! Stop mummy screaming! Make it stop! I barely notice my own tears, my nails digging into my hand so hard it hurts, the blood in my mouth as I bite my lip so hard it bleeds.
Just as bad. It's just as bad as living it. Like living it again. I'm sobbing, and crying. I can't help it. No. I can't stop. Xandra said I would die if I did, and Llewella said not to stop. I've got to go on. No matter how this hurts. Can't stop. I'll die. But I don't want to see this again. I don't. But I'd rather live, even so. Walk, damn you Ashira! Walk!
The towers are all broken, like teeth I think. And things are burning. The city is full of smoke and dirt and a strange iron smell I've not smelled before. There are dead bodies here and I'm cold and dirty and I can't stop crying, can barely see for tears and I want to go home and be clean and warm and have some soup and have mummy tuck me into bed and tell me a story. I've lost my bell.
But here comes an Oricarian patrol. Though I try to hide, they've seen me and even though I run they grab me, laughing nastily.
They take me to a big warehouse in the docks. The harbour is full of their horrible black ships, so unlike the graceful schooners of Timashkurabad. Oh, let me go. Let me go back to mummy and daddy and I can't stop crying. Why? Why am I here, and why are all these other children here? They say we're slaves now. What is a slave?
Oh. They're selling us to other Oricarian's! Oh no, this is horrible. Gods, why aren't you doing anything? Why don't you stop this? Why don't you smite them? Are you there at all?
I try and tell them I can't talk, but they don't understand my signing, and they just hit me. It hurts. I cry, but no-one seems to care. No-one else understands me either, and I don't know anyone here. I'm so frightened.
And they tear all my clothes off and they put me up on a sort of stage in front of lots of Oricarian's. I try to cover myself, but to no avail. I'm crying. I would scream if I could. Oh, horrible, they can all see me. And I'm sold, as "A soft little mute girl, out of whom some use can probably be got." The grin of the man as he says that makes me so scared but I don't know why. Then I realise that it is like the grins of the men as they ... killed Malintha.
Someone buys me. And I'm taken off the stage and given clothes again, horrible ugly dirty scratchy things. But no shoes. My feet are bleeding. It hurts. Oh stop.
They take all of us who have been sold outside the warehouse, and there is a forge.
There are screams from inside. It sounds like those who were not sold. I don't want to know what is happening to them. I don't.
No! Take the branding iron away! I never saw one before today. But they keep us here in line, all of us who have been sold, and make us watch. People sob and scream and beg and faint as they are branded, all to no avail. Oh, gods, stop them. It's my turn. Here it comes, out of the fire, glowing red hot. I can't stop watching it. Can't close my eyes. Even though I want to. Here it comes. They hold my head, and laugh. It comes closer and closer, out of sight below my right eye. But I can feel its heat on my skin, hotter and hotter. Then it touches me.
Oh! It hurts so much. Agony. So much I think I should faint, or die of it. Ugh, the sizzle of my flesh burning, and its smell; gods why do you allow this. But I don't faint or die. I just feel it, through and through, and even when the iron goes away, oh, how it hurts still.
Then they take me, and others, to the factory.
I hate the factory. It's dirty and cold and I'm hungry all the time and my hands hurt and the food is horrible and the guards look at me strangely and so does Carathas, my ... owner. And where do they take those other girls and I want my mummy and daddy and I want to be away from here and I want things to go back to how the were before and why aren't I so sad any more? I saw ... them ... kill mummy and daddy. I cried and cried then. But why not now? I feel all broken inside, like I'm not really here at all and this is all happening to someone else, and I'm just watching. Let all this be happening to someone else, all you twenty million gods. Please let it be happening to someone else.
So much blood. I'm covered in it. Carathas'. Now I know what happened to all those other girls. Why the guards looked at me strangely. He was going to do to me what they did to mummy. And I couldn't stop him. Couldn't tell him to stop. I've never been so scared, not even when they did it to mummy. Crying and struggling. But he hit me, again and again. I wished myself dead, to avoid this.
But I didn't die. I changed. How did that happen? Was it a miracle? The gods putting forth their hand at last? I was a leopard. And I killed him, then ran, out the window and away. So much blood. I can taste it in my mouth. My leopard-self likes it, likes the taste, liked the feel of his throat in my teeth. But I don't.
But now that I'm away from the factory the streets are cold under the blackened stumps of Timashkurabad's spires here in the Ruined Quarter and I'm covered in sticky drying blood and I have only a rag about me and my feet are bleeding again and I'm hungry and no-one will help me. And the patrols will be looking for me and they'll kill me. If I'm lucky.
As I remember these events I can feel my body changing even as I keep crying. Into the leopard that was the first shape other than the one I was born into that I ever took. Then back to human form as I remember past those events and into events more recent.
"Come here, girl," comes the voice from the rubble at the mouth of an alley. "Come on, a patrol is coming." So ... I go. What choice is there?
It was only later that I realised how lucky I was that it was Alakhan I went with - was found by - after I escaped the factory. It could as easily have been any one of a thousand far worse people, and who knows where I would be now if it had been one of them. If my leopard form could have protected me from them, or let me escape again.
Through the rubble and the dirty twisted streets of the Ruined Quarter we go. I never imagined such streets even existed in Timashkurabad. Eventually we arrive at a filthy tumbledown house, rotting and damp inside.
Alakhan understands my signing, for a blessing. He introduces me to the others there, children like me - or not like me, so much more sharp and assured, not scared at all and older-seeming. They scare me. But not as much as the Oricarians. He says they are thieves, and he is their master. And do I want to join them? Why me? I don't know, and he never explained. Perhaps he sees in me something I don't know is there myself.
But regardless, I sign 'yes'. They want to take me in. Help me. I can't say no.
I never do find out why Alakhan was there at the right time to take me in. Luck? Good contacts in the factory? I don't know, and now I never will.
Alakhan asks me what had happened. How I came to be semi-naked and covered in blood not my own on the streets of the Ruined Quarter. And I have to trust him - trust someone - so I tell him. Tell him about my killing Carathas. I cry and shake, can't help myself. He listens, and doesn't condemn what I've done. He says that perhaps, one day, he could get someone to teach me how to do the changing to leopard trick properly, if they really did exist. I don't know what he means at the time.
Alakhan gives me some clothes. But they are boys clothes. I can't wear these. Let alone ones as dirty and smelly as they are. Alakhan sees what I am thinking. "It's these or nothing," he says, "and you'll be safer this way than looking like a girl."
So I wear them. And he is right.
I take eight more rapid steps, reaching the end of an arc and coming to the beginning of a straight line. I start along it and with each step I take another barrier begins to rise. The Second Veil. Around a right angled turn. Another turn. Another. Another curve. It feels as if I am walking in glue as I move along it. I raise my sparking feet and set them down again; the effort is huge. My head throbs and my heart feels as if it is about to shake itself to pieces.
Then the going is suddenly easy again, and I know I have made it past the Second Veil. I continue to remember.
It is surprising - and nice - to discover that all of Alakhan's gang know at least some signing, which they use as a secret language. This comes as such a great relief.
As I associate with them more they all get much more fluent at it, too, for which I am glad.
At first, in the house with Alakhan and his gang I felt that I would almost rather starve than eat the horrible muck we had as food. It was even worse than the food in the factory. But I discovered ... that if I was hungry enough ... I would eat it, no matter how foul. Even, as time went on, relish it, and scavenge in bins and rubbish heaps with the best of them, one more filthy urchin with all the rest. And even rats, cats and dogs are things I will eat now, even if not nice. Gods, though, the first time I ate from a bin, the first rat, cat and dog. They were hard to get down, and keep down.
Now ... food is just fuel for the engine. No more.
I find I can't sleep easily in a bed any more, only somewhere hidden and private, and more soundly when I alarm the place. I am not the only one in the gang to feel this way...
I don't like Balkai; he's bigger than me, and much tougher, and he's Alakhan's favourite. He takes my food, has done for days, and pushes me around with Alakhan watching. I hate Balkai. But he's bigger than me, and I'm just a girl, not like these street toughs. Why doesn't Alakhan stop him?
Balkai takes my dinner again today, and I am really hungry. He just laughs. "Come on Ashira, just tell me to give it back," he mocks, holding it out of my reach, laughing. It makes me angry. Very angry. Angrier than I've ever been. So I hit him, biting and kicking and I had him on the ground crying and begging for mercy. Neither he nor any of the others bother me after that, but become friends instead.
Alakhan looks approvingly at me, to my surprise. "I wondered if you'd fight," he says. "Now we both know you can, and will."
And he teaches me - us - to fight. Fists and feet and knives and guns and chair legs and broken bottles and half bricks. Nasty. Very nasty. At first I want nothing to do with it. I've never even touched weapons before, and they scare me. But ... Alakhan gives me no choice. All the time I can't help thinking how terrible using or being hit by these weapons would be. For some reason the worst to me is a broken bottle. It seems so horrible. But gods, I felt safe, I really do, both going armed and knowing how to use my weapons. And in time ... I prove the best of us all.
We're in the park, me and Sarashjur and Malintha and all my friends. We're having such a lovely picnic. It must be my birthday. It's warm and the sun is shining down. The happy cries of other children drift over the grass to us from where they are playing. I look at it all, very happy, and glad that everything is all right.
Then I wake up. I'm in my hidey hole under the stairs. It's cold and damp and I'm filthy and something is crawling up my back. And I realise that that happy world was just a dream and this, this hell, is the real world, however much I might want those situations to be reversed.
Onwards. Round the Pattern. The faster I go the sooner this torture stops.
Alakhan teaches me - us, even those who already seem to know these things get extra lessons too - things I never even knew you could do. Picking pockets, opening locks, climbing and running and hiding and stealing, and driving carts and carriages. And then we go out and start doing it using his teachings, for real.
Being trained to pick pockets and locks is one thing. Fun even. Doing it for real quite another. I'm nearly nine now.
I'm scared - terrified even - the first time Alakhan points me out a mark - young, foppish, drunk. I bump into him; he offers an insulted shout and an inaccurate drunken blow; a slash of my knife on his belt and his money is mine. And I'm away. I was so relieved it went well. Of course Alakhan takes most of the money, but he lets me keep a little. I spend it on food.
At first it feels wrong - stealing, taking. But as I do it more and more that feeling goes away, and it becomes a strange sort of fun, instead, though never without the fear of what would happen to me if I were caught.
Quite soon, I realise I'm better than any of the others. Some don't like that - they're jealous. But some congratulate me for catching on so fast.
And then comes the day Alakhan proclaims me the best thief in all of Timashkurabad. How embarrassing. But also, how proud I am.
We went past a public execution today - there is no other kind since the Oricarians came. It was horrible. Torture and death and screaming and begging from the luckless victims. It reminds me ... of mummy's and daddy's deaths. I don't want to think about it, their screams and begging, but I can't help myself. The memories of today and that horrible day return unbidden. I wish they would stop.
Yes, how I wish they would stop.
I could barely bring myself to fight when we were cornered by that other gang. Not until I got hurt myself, and saw the others hurt. Until there really was no choice. But then ... I did. And we won. Drove them off.
There are many more Oricarian patrols on the streets this week than before, and there have been battles in the streets. We could hear them, off in the distance. I've seen the blood and bodies. It's horrible.
Alakhan says some people are fighting the Oricarians, trying to throw them out of Timashkurabad. It sounds like a good idea to me, but Alakhan disagrees. He says they have no chance of success. They are walking dead, and if we become involved we will be too. We should just keep our heads down until this all blows over.
I am dubious, but ... I need him. The gang. I can't survive without them. I ... know that. Without mummy and daddy I need them.
So I do what Alakhan says. And he is right. They are all dead before too long. Captured, tortured and executed, so terribly that everyone else is made afraid to rise up again. And no-one does rise up to throw them out ever again. Timashkurabad will be theirs forever. They will never leave.
While we are waiting for the Oricarian patrols to die down, we have a lot of time on our hands. It is very dull. Some of the others are playing cards, and they let me join in. It isn't any game I have played before, but they tell me the rules, and ... it's fun. Lots of fun.
We play a lot - only for pennies, as that is all we have - and I get quite good, certainly able to hold my own. And I enjoy gambling. It's a thrill without ones life being on the line, so that even when I lose, it's fun. Worthwhile. And although I learn all the ways of cheating as time goes by, still, I don't use them when playing for fun - what would be the point? Playing people outside the gang, for money, that's different. But in the gang, among ourselves? No.
In secret I return to our old house. Mine and Sarahjur's and Malintha's. It is tumbledown now, after the sack and the looting, on the edge of the Ruined Quarter, with some people even more impoverished than me - us - living in the ruins. I don't bother them; they don't bother me. If I cried any more, I would cry now, for what has become of the home I loved. I remember it all so clearly, the lights and the music and the joy ... something in my eye; not a tear at all. I didn't expect to feel so much, coming back here.
There is no sign of mummy and daddy's bodies. I hope they got a decent burial. But I very much fear they did not.
But I remember why I am here. My bell. I lost it in the cupboard, fleeing from mummy and daddy's murders. But I search, and eventually there it is, caught between two floorboards, the bell a little tarnished, the loop of cord faded, but my bell. Now I do cry, clutching it close to me. It has not left my sight or my person since.
At least I thought I didn't cry any more. It seems I was wrong, though.
I find I like drink, though I hate it at first, horrible burning stuff. Gin especially, by the pint. I find it takes a lot to get me drunk. It keeps out the cold and the dirt and the wet and the memories of mother and father, for a while at least. And how I miss them, and my old life, even if I know so well that my life now could be oh so very much worse.
I do not immediately enjoy tobacco. In fact, it is downright horrible, at least to start with. Smoked or chewed. But all the others use it, and I so do not want them to think me weak, too much the girl, that despite how foul it is, I keep using it. And, before too long, it stops being so horrible, and becomes another pleasure. One of the few. So I keep doing it, even in the hardest times.
If there was one thing I could change, it would be the dirt. Perhaps I'm still that soft little girl at heart, but I dream of being clean, though practicalities prevent it in reality. At least I seem largely immune to the sores and scabs some of the others get. But short hair, at least, is essential; too long and things begin to live in it...
Ten paces more and a swirling filigree of sparks confronts me. I begin to walk it, sweat breaking out (and instantly vanishing in the water). It is tricky, damn tricky. It seems as if the waters of the room are moving so as to sweep me from the Pattern, but I resist them. I don't dare raise my eyes to see how far I've come and how far I have left to go.
The currents subside, and I recall more of my memories as I continue on.
I thought my slave brand might mark me out on the streets, but there are so many people with them that it turns out not to be a problem.
I do live in fear of what happened to Malintha happening to me if I am caught, or otherwise. But what can I do, beyond showing caution?
There are places that I fear too, more than simply the city as a whole, now. Dark alleys. The areas the other gangs control. The execution grounds. The Oricarian interrogation cellars. Especially the last. The stories we hear of what goes on there ... Brrr...
Why am I so fast, strong, and fit compared to everyone else? Am I some kind of monster, or freak? I don't know. But ... it is useful even if I am a monster. It is not as if I have fur or horns or anything.
Is it something to do with why I cannot talk, and can turn into a leopard?
But anyway .. I think ... will is more important. The will to act and do things, regardless of how strong or fast one is. If I was too scared to use my strength and speed, it wouldn't matter how they compared to other people's.
I didn't want to kill that guard, the first time I have killed someone since Carathas. But the guards were there and he would have alerted them. So I cut his throat. So much blood. I'm only nine, I don't want this. So different to my killing Carathas in leopard form. I could barely flee, and once I was home cried for an hour. I couldn't help thinking what the guard must have felt when I killed him.
But how much more swiftly my tears dried after my next killing, and the next, and the next...
I'm ten. I came back from a successful days pickpocketing and Alakhan takes my haul and has me come into a room he usually keeps locked. Who is this horrible smelly old man in here? He looks like he has been living in a cave, for years. Filthy long hair and beard. Mad eyes. Alakhan says that, at last, he has found someone who can teach me to properly master my leopard-changing skill. He doesn't ask my permission or opinion, but I don't really mind. I can see how useful it could be to him - to us - if I could do it. So I learn, two hours a day.
The old man really is mad. I don't know what Alakhan paid him with. He is a shape-changer, and he teaches me. His teachings are sometimes frightening, but more often simply hurt, sometimes enough that I don't want to go on. Not that Alakhan gives me any choice in the matter. And slowly, I learn. Controlling my change to leopard form is the first step. Then my other form - my demon form. It is hard to accept such a monstrous thing being inside me. But coming to relish its strength and power the most of any form. Learning to heal myself - the most useful skill, but not enough to remove my slave's brand. Then other forms - animals, people. And primal, unconscious form. Risky and dangerous, to be avoided.
As I remember my training with the old man I again feel myself changing, from form to form, as I recapitulate the sequence of forms I learned. Leopard again. My demon form. Others; people and animals. I resist my primal form as I feel it coming on, and manage to avoid shifting to it. I think assuming it would be fatal, here.
But before long, once I have mastered all the old man has to teach, I surpass him in speed and ease of changing, and Alakhan sends him away. The old man was not happy when I surpassed him - with his long years of training - so quickly.
Human shapes are easiest. Animal shapes are harder; it is like learning to walk again for four-legged creatures, and swim again for aquatic ones. But I master them. Flying forms and un-living forms seem simply impossible; just something to do with how they are built or how they work, I suppose.
And so I go out and use my power to help Alakhan and all of us in his house. How will the guards suspect someone whose power does not exist other than as a myth? Alakhan says I owe him for this, and though it is a debt unasked for, I cannot but agree.
My first outing since learning to take my demon form, opening a window high up one of surviving spires, the city spread out below me in the dark, holding on with many tentacles, working the window open with others. Seeing all around me.
At last the window opens with a click and I'm in. Emptying drawers and boxes with many busy hands.
Only my all-round vision in this form lets me see the door opening slowly. But before I can do anything a man leaps in, his eyes wide as he sees me in my demon form, firing a blunderbuss. It is horribly loud in the confined space of the room.
Oh, that hurts; not many of my tentacles escape damage, but it seems this body has no vital organs, and I do not fall, dead or pumping blood.
My own pistol whips up, and though less loud, its sound seems much more final as the ball hits and the man falls. I snatch his blunderbuss and my loot and flee the approaching guards, stirred up like a nest of hornets by the shots, out the window, more slowly than I came up because of my wounds, and away.
My demon form is so useful for climbing and thievery. But still, I forgot, and was nearly lynched. I don't like the hue and cry when I am not its prey, let alone when I am. I only barely escaped over the rooftops. I must never be so lax again. Alakhan agrees.
I hate the rain. These old clothes simply do not keep it out; nor does the house. And once wet it takes so long to get dry again, even with a fire.
Bastard slavers. I hate them. They thought I would be an easy mark, the two them against me alone. But fortunately I noticed them before they jumped me, so it did not come as a total surprise. Even so, it was fairly close. It was only the gin bottle I had with me that saved me, though I lost the gin. Smashed it. Used it on their faces. They'll both live, I made sure of that, but neither one of them will see or talk again. And no-one will ever want to see them after what I did.
Is that Hilangard? One of my friends from before the Oricarians came? Walking behind that Oricarian so subserviently, head down, her eyes so dead, slave brand like mine on her cheek. She only looks like the happy, lively Hilangard I remember. And of course me here, in my male clothing, loitering, skulking, pickpocketing, how would she ever recognise me? Even so, I pull my hat brim lower, hiding my face from her, in case. I want to talk to her, but how can I? Too much risk, for us both, and I can imagine what has happened to her since the Oricarians came...
Hilangard is the first and only person I knew before the Oricarians came that I ever even see after their arrival.
Puberty, while not unexpected, is difficult. Changes to myself I have no control over come as an unpleasant surprise so soon after learning shape-shifting. But as with everything, I survive the changes imposed on me by forces beyond my control.
The only thing I really don't like, now, is looking like a girl, rather than just a child. At least I'm still thin and show no signs of developing the curves and bulges that some other girls do. I don't think I'll ever be beautiful, and I'm glad. The more I can blend in, the more I like it. No question of it.
Puberty is also a problem closer to home. The boys in the gang start wanting to get me into bed, which I do not want. I remember what happened to Malintha and I want nothing of it. It is only when I break Timastas' arm as he tries to have his way with me that they take my protests seriously, and leave me alone. Some of the other girls are not as lucky.
I have changed. We have no mirrors, but still, when I see my reflection, I sometimes barely recognise the girl who looks back at me. Thin faced, hard-eyed and filthy. Who is she? Where did she come from? Alas, I know the answer to that all too well.
I've seen my world turned to dust. Everyone I cared for murdered in the foulest of ways. My childhood destroyed. I've been enslaved and made myself free by the narrowest of margins. And myself turned into nothing I ever wanted to be. But yet, here I stand, still.
It is driven home to be how we have only ourselves to rely on for justice, or revenge, or both. How important loyalty to ourselves is, even if to no-one else, even if we fight amongst ourselves sometimes. The rape and murder of Timanla. She was one of us. One of Alakhan's gang. A friend. She didn't deserve what happened to her, but no-one cared. No-one but us. So we found them, the gang of sailors who did it. Not even Oricarians, but people from another part of Eraslon the Oricarians have taken over. They had left Timashkurabad by the time we found out it was them, sailed on. But they returned, back to Timashkurabad. And we found them. Made them pay. Made them suffer what they did to her. It was all they deserved, and perhaps a little more. But how could we do anything else? No-one else would have...
I really dislike knife fights. They do hurt so much. 'The victor goes to the hospital, the loser into the ground,' as the saying goes. But as ever there was no real choice. At least my shapechanging power lets me heal more quickly than someone else might...
With each step, each memory recalled, I feel myself shifting without my control into the form or forms I was in when those events took place. But strangely, unlike the effort I would normally feel changing so much, the effort seems to be subsumed into that required for walking the Pattern itself rather than being an additional drain on top of it, for which I am heartily thankful. This is bad enough as it is; I don't know if I could survive much additional exertion.
I never thought I would hate anyone more than the Oricarians. But it turns out I do. Those people of Timashkurabad who co-operate willingly with the invaders. The collaborators, most once of the lowest scum or weakest rich, who are rewarded for their treachery with the money, positions, homes and titles of their betters, who they betrayed. I hate them, and I hope they rot. In fact, I would rather rob and hurt them then the Oricarians - they deserve it more, and the reprisals for doing so are less.
The first betrayal in Alakhan's gang is one of our rivals. It is hard for me. Very hard. We knew what the Oricarians would do to them, and like us they were only trying to survive, make a living. But they were our enemies too, and would have done it to us given half a chance. So we did it to them first. I made myself go and watch their executions, also a hard thing to do, but I felt I had to.
But the next time it was easier to do. And the next.
Alakhan always rated us over beggars, at least. But if I had to I could do it quite well, I think. Look crippled and diseased, at least.
Now I am scared. I was noticed, pickpocketing. I got overconfident and now the hue and cry is after me. Thank the gods they didn't see me go up. But I couldn't move for a while, for the trembling and fear of what might have been.
We watch the house until the owners - collaborators, not Oricarians - leave. Only a few guards and staff remain. Then it is into demon form, and over the wall I go; it was not built to keep out such as it. A slash of a dagger thorn and the gatekeeper lies dead, not even aware of my presence; an obstacle removed. I open the gates, letting in the others, and in minutes the house is ours, everyone who belongs there dead for only a few of us injured. We loot the place, loading a coach, and when we are done, we flee, timing ourselves to avoid the patrols. Behind us the fires we set begin to raze the house as we cover our tracks.
Alakhan is pleased with our haul, our best yet.
I am fourteen.
Balkis thinks Alakhan is getting too old, and we should make him move aside to be replaced by someone else (preferably Balkis, of course). I am against it. Alakhan is a good leader, and I owe him a great deal. We should all be loyal to him, but in particular because of all he has done for me I see no way I would betray him, as much as I have betrayed others.
Balkis tries to gather support in the gang for what he wants, but not many people are with him. Alakhan just lets things takes their course after that, but is clearly keeping an eye on things.
Eventually Balkis leaves the gang, and Timashkurabad, with his few supporters in tow. We never hear from him again. No matter how wrong they were, I hope they still live, and prosper...
I am coming back to our house from a successful night of second-storey work, tired but satisfied with a good job well done. I come round a corner and, oh horrors, the place is swarming with Oricarian patrols. I hide and put on another face, then mingle with the crowd. See all the others being dragged out. Some are clearly dead. They are the lucky ones. The rest will wish they are dead soon, I fear, and then will be in reality. Oh shit. Oh dear. Oh damn. What can I do? I don't know. I can't spring them all, or even any of them.
Were we - was I - too good? Did we - or I - draw them here by being too successful? Gods, let it not be so.
Then a week later, the executions. In fact, not just theirs, but those of many, many people from the Ruined Quarter, caught in the crack-down by the Oricarians. I had to go. See them one last time, even like that. They had been tortured already. That was clear. But that didn't stop the Oricarians, and their screams at their torture and eventual excruciating deaths. It seems to go on forever.
I'll never forget. Don't want to forget. Wish I could forget. I can still hear their screams, see their blood and what was left of them at the end. I still miss them, and wish I could have saved them. But no-one gets away once captured, and I was afraid. Afraid of being caught. Of joining them up there.
The year that followed is a lonely one for me, and hard, very hard. With our house gone, I have to hole up where I can. I can still survive, still have my skills, but there seems so much less point to it all now. I know the Oricarians will never leave, and I am trapped in Timashkurabad and Eraslon by them. The world has been a prison since the Oricarians came. Only now, now, on my own, I can feel the chill of the bars of my cell that much more clearly. Only the long habit of survival keeps me alive, though I find myself drinking more and more.
'Congratulations Ashira', I think to myself at one point, 'you're barely sixteen, but you feel a thousand years old, and as if jailed for ever in hell with no hope of release or parole. And sooner or later you'll die here, killed by a jailer or one of the other inmates.'
I consider leaving Timashkurabad, finding a new place elsewhere in Eraslon, but where would I go? I know nothing of anywhere else and anyway, from what I hear there is nowhere in Eraslon the Oricarians have not taken over. So it would have all the disadvantages of being here with none of the advantages local knowledge brings. I stay in Timashkurabad.
There is no hope for me now. Of survival in the long years ahead. Of escape. Of things changing. Of things becoming better. But for now my instinct - urge - for survival alone is what keeps me from simply finding somewhere to lie down and die.
Then comes the dandyish fop, red-haired, beard hiding his weak chin, outlandishly dressed. He seems to be looking for something. A mark if ever I saw one. His money was mine, or so I thought. But he detects me, catches me. Faster, stronger and more alert than I. But I have never met my equal in these things, let alone my superior. Who is he? He looks at me, surprised, as if he sees something in me.
And rather than his calling over an Oricarian patrol, he takes me aside, and we converse.
The fop introduces himself as Prince Bleys of Amber, in a way that implies I should both recognise the name, and be impressed. I don't, and I'm not.
He says I am a relative of his, to my extreme scepticism. But somehow he sounds convincing, even when he begins talking about this Amber and other places - shadows, other worlds. At least he understands signing. He clearly sees my scepticism though, and offers to show me. Well, that's more than any other charlatan has ever offered to do. So I agree.
And he leads me on, down streets I know do not exist in Timashkurabad, and on to places that could never have existed in Timashkurabad. I hide my amazement and fear as well as I can. How do I get back? But then I realise that this could be the way out of Timashkurabad and away from the Oricarians that I have been seeking, and hope he is not of a mood to send me back there when we are done. He says it is something he calls the 'Pattern'. Silly name, but it seems powerful. Apparently, as a member of his family I can get this power too. Then perhaps I shall.
All right. I will allow myself to be convinced, for now. He says I should go with him, meet this family. When asked he shows me cards of them. 'Trumps' he calls them. And there, lurking innocently in the deck is a card of Lady Llewella. I had always thought she had died along with so many others when the Oricarians invaded. I try to hide my reaction on seeing it there, but the shock was simply too much. He must have seen, though he did not comment.
Does that mean she is really my mother? Regardless, I want - need! - to talk to her. And I shall.
And oh, the door to the prison that was Timashkurabad swings wide before me, and I find I want to live. I want to see all this. These worlds. My family. Amber. Shadow. The Pattern. I feel ... something ... for a moment I don't recognise it, it has been so long. Could it be a hint, just a tiny hint, of hope? For the future? For me? For a better life than Timashkurabad? For friends and a family again? Gods, let it be so.
Given the fate I saw awaiting me in Timashkurabad, I suppose this means that I owe Bleys my life. And if Llewella sent him there to find me, as she said she did, then I owe her too. Things I need to consider if loyalty becomes an issue, and if Bleys ever tries to take over Amber, as he threatened to do...
I have become the sort of person my parents and I would have avoided like the plague, before. Not a nice person at all. That makes me sad. But ... I don't really care. Why should I? I'm very good at what I do, and moral qualms and niceness have no place in the doing of them.
And what has followed, since. The inn. Meeting my cousins. Brand's fortress. The battle by the Abyss. Tanisla Hendrake. Sergeant Aximar. The Eye of the Storm. The party. The clash with Xandra. The fight by the Pattern. Azaria. Llewella. Failing to rescue Fiona and/or Martin. Tea with Llewella. To Rebma. The 'Grand Tour'. And down here, to the Pattern.
I emerge from the filigree and make my way along the Grand Curve. I feel as if the forces that shape the universe are falling on me and reshaping me in their image.
I remember it all. I am weeping, the most I have done in years, since the Oricarians came, though the water carries my tears away as soon as they are formed.
I walk three more curves, a straight line, a series of sharp arcs and I hold within me a consciousness that mine, now, is the power over shadows.
Ten turns which leave me dizzy, another short arc, a straight line, then the Final Veil rises before me.
It is agony to move. Everything tries to beat me aside. It is cold, then boiling hot. I struggle to put one foot before the other. The sparks are as high as my waist, then up to my chest, then to my shoulders, then above my eyes. They are all about me. I can barely see the Pattern itself.
Then a short arc ending in blackness.
It is two steps away. One. The last step is like trying to push through a solid stone wall. But I do it, though it feels as if it takes an age. And I am through the Final Veil and collapsing to my knees in the centre of the Pattern. I have never been so tired. But I have made it...
That ... hurt ... so much. Not physically, but inside. I never want to do that again. I think ... only death ... would be enough to force me round this thing again.
And ... I am so tired. I really. Need. To. Sleep...