Cinnabar Shadows

He'd had no doubts. Escrissar was the perfect dupe: cruel, avaricious, enthralled by his own importance, blind to his flaws, easily exploited, yet blessed with vast wealth and indulged by Lord Hamanu, the very enemy they both hoped to bring down. The plans Kakzim had made were elegant, and everything was going their way until a templar of the lowest sort blundered across their path.

Paddle, Puddle, Pickle... Kakzim couldn't remember the ugly human's name. He'd seen him once only, at night in the city warehouse when catastrophe had been the furthest thought from his mind. The yellow-robed dolt was boneheaded stupid, throwing himself into battles he couldn't hope to win. It beggared halfling imagination to think that templar Pickle could stand in their way at all, much less bring them down. But the bonehead had done just that, with a motley collection of allies and the kind of luck that didn't come by chance.

Kakzim had abandoned Escrissar the moment he saw disaster looming. Halflings weren't slaves; BlackTree Brethren weren't martyrs, not for the likes of Elabon Escrissar. Kakzim raided Escrissar's treasury and went to ground while the high templar marched to his doom on the salt wastes.

Ever dutiful to the elder brothers of the BlackTree, Kakzim had sent another message across the Ringing Mountains. He admitted his failure and promised to forfeit his now-worthless life. Kakzim used all the right words, but his admissions and promises were lies. He knew he'd made mistakes; he'd been bested, but not, absolutely not, defeated. He'd learned hard lessons and was ready to try again. The cause was more important than any one brother's life, especially his.

Brother Kakzim wasn't any sort of martyr. He told the elder brothers what they'd want to hear and fervently hoped they'd believe his promise of self-a

He'd wanted to send Cerk back. Bloody leaves of the bloody BlackTree! He'd wanted to kill the youngster on the spot. But without the resources of House Escrissar behind him, Kakzim discovered he could use an extra set of hands, eyes, and feet—so long as he didn't delude himself that those appendages were attached to a sentient mind.

"Brother Kakzim? Brother Kakzim—did you—? Have you—? Are you having one of your fits? Should I guide you to your bed?"

Fits! Fits of boredom! Fits of frustration! He was surrounded by fools and personally served by the greatest fool of all!

"Don't be ridiculous. Stop wasting my time. Tonight's an important night, you know. Tell me whatever it is you think I must know, then leave me alone and stop this infernal chatter about fits! You're the one with fits."

"Yes, Brother Kakzim. Of course. I merely wanted to tell you that the men have begun to assemble. They're ready-armed exactly as you requested—but, Brother, they wish to be paid."

"Then pay them, Brother Cerk!" Kakzim's voice rose into a shrill shout as he spun around on his companion. The cowl slid back, dusting his flesh with excruciation as it did. "We're so close. So close. And you torment me!" He grabbed the youngster's robe and shook it violently. "If we fail, it will be your fault!" *****

The elders of the BlackTree had warned him Brother Kakzim would not be an easy master, but that he should be grateful for the opportunity. They said Brother Kakzim was a genius in the alchemic arts. There was no halfling alive who knew what Brother Kakzim knew about the old ways of manipulation and transformation. Brother Kakzim had decrypted the ancient knowledge the Brethren guarded at the BlackTree. He knew what the ancestors knew, and he'd begun to use it. The elders wanted to know more about how Brother Kakzim was applying his knowledge. They wanted Cerk to be their eyes and ears in Urik.

An apprentice should be grateful for such an opportunity, for such trust, and Cerk supposed he was. Brother Kakzim was a master beyond reckoning where alchemy was concerned; Cerk had learned things in this foul-smelling village he could never have learned in the BlackTree Forest. But Cerk wished the elder brothers had mentioned that Brother Kakzim was completely mad. Those white-rimmed eyes above the ruined cheeks looked out from another plane and had the power to cloud another man's thoughts, even another halfling's thoughts.

Cerk was careful not to look straight at Brother Kakzim when the madness was on him, as it was now. He kept his head down and filled his mind with thoughts of home: lush green trees dripping water day and night, an endless chorus of birds and insects, the warm, sweet taste of ripe bellberries fresh off the vine. Then Cerk waited for the danger to pass. He judged it had when Brother Kakzim adjusted his robe's sleeves and cowl again, but he was careful to stay out of reach.

"It is not just the men who want to be paid, Brother Kakzim. The dwarves who own this place want to be paid for its use tonight, and for the rooms where we've lived. And the joiners say we owe them for the scaffolding they've already constructed. We owe the knackers and the elven gleaner, Rosu. She says she's found an inix fistula with the abscess still attached, but she won't sell it—"

"Pay them!" Brother Kakzim repeated, though without the raving intensity of a few moments past. "You have the coins. I've given you all our coins."

"Yes," Cerk agreed, thinking of the sack he kept under his bed. Money had no place in the BlackTree Forest. The notion that a broken ceramic disk could be exchanged for food, goods, or a man's service—indeed, that such bits, disks, or the far rarer metal coins must be exchanged—was still difficult for him to understand. He grappled with the sack nightly, arranging its contents in similar piles, watching as the piles grew steadily smaller. "I keep careful count of them, Brother Kakzim, but if I give these folk all that they claim is theirs, we ourselves will have very little left."

"Is that the problem. Brother Cerk?"

Reluctantly, Cerk bobbed his head.

"Pay them," Brother Kakzim said calmly. "Look at me, Brother Cerk—"

Cerk did, knowing it was a mistake, but Brother Kakzim's voice was so reassuring at times. Disobedience became impossible.

"You don't doubt me, do you?"

Cerk's lower lip trembled. He couldn't lie, didn't want to tell the truth.

"Is it the money, Brother Cerk? Haven't I always given you more money when you needed it? Money is nothing to worry about, Brother Cerk. Pay the insects. Pay them generously. Money grows like rope-vine in shadowed places. It's always ready for harvest. Don't worry about money, Brother Cerk."

He wasn't such a fool as that. The Brethren elders hadn't sent him out completely unprepared. It was the precision of money that eluded him: the how and why that equated a day of a man's life with a broken chip from a ceramic disk, while the rooms he and Brother Kakzim occupied above the slaughterhouse equated an entire ceramic disk each week, and Rosu's festering fistula was the same as an entire shiny silver coin.

Cerk knew where money came from generally and Brother Kakzim's specifically. Whenever the need to refill the sack arose, he sneaked into Urik following the brother through the maze of sharp-angled intersections and identical buildings. Brother Kakzim's money came from a blind alley hoard-hole in the templar quarter of the city, and it was much diminished compared to what it had been when Cerk first saw it.

No doubt Brother Kakzim could harvest ceramic disks and metal coins from other trees. Brother Kakzim didn't risk his fingers when he picked a pocket. All Brother Kakzim had to do was touch a rich man's thoughts with mind-bending power—as Brother Kakzim was doing to Cerk at this very moment—and that man would shed his wealth on the spot. As Cerk should have shed his doubts beneath the seductive pressures of Brother Kakzim's Unseen urging. And maybe the Urikites were as simple as lumbering mekillots. Maybe their minds could be touched again and again with them never recognizing that their thoughts were no longer wholly their own. But the BlackTree elders had taught Cerk how to defend himself from Unseen attack without the attacker becoming aware of the defense. They'd also taught him never to underestimate the enemy.