batted the dish across the lab. It smashed and splashed its contents over scalpels, forceps, needles, bonesaws, retractors, and other tools of surgery and torture. Vizars also served as the bakkal’s inquisitors. Peeling prisoners for information, it was said, was the only task at which they smiled.
“You’ll need to return each night,” gloated the vizar-in-waiting, “lest your wound turn necrotic.”
“You don’t see enough rotten flesh?” she asked. “Have you no other entertainment?”
Amenstar couldn’t look at the vizar-in-waiting’s glittering black eyes. No one knew how old the cleric was. Rumor said the highest vizars plied spells to arrest decay, channel negative energy, and steal others’ life-forces. They were insane, all of them. Probably the holy order attracted madmen at the start, or else the skull-branding cooked their brains. From the dank corridor, Star heard a dog or hyena whimper. Vizars also practiced vivisection, teasing animals to death to see its onset. The samira shivered.
Swinging her legs, Amenstar hopped off the marble slab, straightened her ratty traveling clothes, and limped out of the laboratory. Four bodyguards fell into step behind her, and together they took a spiral ramp to escape the vizars’ netherworld of icy death. Warm air and light beckoned, and cedar-resin torches scented the air, but Star rubbed her hands over her arms, still cold.
“Those slimy sons of Skahmau,” Star said to herself. “I’ll die before I ever let them touch me again.”
“Aaaah,” warbled a fluting voice rich as a bronze bell, “there you are, dear! Is your leg all better?”
Star craned her neck to see the speaker, for Vrinda was nine feet tall. An administrator genie, Vrinda had run the palace bureaucracy for fifteen hundred years, overseeing the affairs of generations of bakkals, yet she never seemed to age nor grow a gray hair. She’d been tasked by Great Calim when the Palace of the Phoenix was newly built. At some point the genie had lost her ethereal qualities and become solid flesh, but she still towered over humans, and her elevated features were golden as honey, her nose pert, her hair the color of ginger and braided into a train, her clothes puffy and brocaded, antique. Her huge hands were dyed red with henna, an ancient symbol of slavery, and under an arm was trapped a slate palette, her badge of office.
“Come along, Samira dearest,” said the genie like a nursery maid. “The seamstresses await. You want to look your best for the gala, don’t you?”
“No, I want to look hideous,” groused Amenstar. Vrinda giggled as if at a joke.
With her leg throbbing at every step, the daughter of royalty and genies threaded winding corridors, ramps, and stairways. The Palace of the Phoenix was central to Cursrah, the city’s showpiece, but no one lived there. The royal family’s living quarters was a nearby sprawl of opulent buildings and wings, all walled and guarded from curious commoners. Because summers in the valley were relentlessly hot, and winters dismal and drizzly, and so family and servants might pass undetected, the entire center of Cursrahpalace, royal family compound, civic buildings, even templeswas honeycombed with tunnels, some even passing under the palace moat. So extensive were the tunnels that icons and arrows were painted at corners lest people become lost.
Spiraling upward on the wide ramps, Amenstar heard the tramp of hobnailed sandals. As the soldiers came into view, they broke ranks and scuttled against the walls to let the genie and princess pass. From their tall triangular shields Star knew they were her father’s most elite troops, the Bakkal’s Heavy Infantry, a troop of four who marched downward to replace the afternoon’s guard detail.
The Palace of the Phoenix had many homegrown mysteries and despite living here since childhood, there existed corridors and rooms Amenstar had never seenor been allowed to see. Still, she knew some of
“You’ll need to return each night,” gloated the vizar-in-waiting, “lest your wound turn necrotic.”
“You don’t see enough rotten flesh?” she asked. “Have you no other entertainment?”
Amenstar couldn’t look at the vizar-in-waiting’s glittering black eyes. No one knew how old the cleric was. Rumor said the highest vizars plied spells to arrest decay, channel negative energy, and steal others’ life-forces. They were insane, all of them. Probably the holy order attracted madmen at the start, or else the skull-branding cooked their brains. From the dank corridor, Star heard a dog or hyena whimper. Vizars also practiced vivisection, teasing animals to death to see its onset. The samira shivered.
Swinging her legs, Amenstar hopped off the marble slab, straightened her ratty traveling clothes, and limped out of the laboratory. Four bodyguards fell into step behind her, and together they took a spiral ramp to escape the vizars’ netherworld of icy death. Warm air and light beckoned, and cedar-resin torches scented the air, but Star rubbed her hands over her arms, still cold.
“Those slimy sons of Skahmau,” Star said to herself. “I’ll die before I ever let them touch me again.”
“Aaaah,” warbled a fluting voice rich as a bronze bell, “there you are, dear! Is your leg all better?”
Star craned her neck to see the speaker, for Vrinda was nine feet tall. An administrator genie, Vrinda had run the palace bureaucracy for fifteen hundred years, overseeing the affairs of generations of bakkals, yet she never seemed to age nor grow a gray hair. She’d been tasked by Great Calim when the Palace of the Phoenix was newly built. At some point the genie had lost her ethereal qualities and become solid flesh, but she still towered over humans, and her elevated features were golden as honey, her nose pert, her hair the color of ginger and braided into a train, her clothes puffy and brocaded, antique. Her huge hands were dyed red with henna, an ancient symbol of slavery, and under an arm was trapped a slate palette, her badge of office.
“Come along, Samira dearest,” said the genie like a nursery maid. “The seamstresses await. You want to look your best for the gala, don’t you?”
“No, I want to look hideous,” groused Amenstar. Vrinda giggled as if at a joke.
With her leg throbbing at every step, the daughter of royalty and genies threaded winding corridors, ramps, and stairways. The Palace of the Phoenix was central to Cursrah, the city’s showpiece, but no one lived there. The royal family’s living quarters was a nearby sprawl of opulent buildings and wings, all walled and guarded from curious commoners. Because summers in the valley were relentlessly hot, and winters dismal and drizzly, and so family and servants might pass undetected, the entire center of Cursrahpalace, royal family compound, civic buildings, even templeswas honeycombed with tunnels, some even passing under the palace moat. So extensive were the tunnels that icons and arrows were painted at corners lest people become lost.
Spiraling upward on the wide ramps, Amenstar heard the tramp of hobnailed sandals. As the soldiers came into view, they broke ranks and scuttled against the walls to let the genie and princess pass. From their tall triangular shields Star knew they were her father’s most elite troops, the Bakkal’s Heavy Infantry, a troop of four who marched downward to replace the afternoon’s guard detail.
The Palace of the Phoenix had many homegrown mysteries and despite living here since childhood, there existed corridors and rooms Amenstar had never seenor been allowed to see. Still, she knew some of
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