Nights of Villjamur - Mark Charan Newton [132]
That means Urtica is safe. Tryst felt a surge of relief. “It doesn’t mean you can just kill whoever you want, contrary to the ancient laws of this city.”
“You’re going to arrest me, I presume?” she said, her gaze focused on the floor tiles.
He considered this point for a moment, but he had another idea. This woman might have some definite use for him. And afterward, he would turn her in, of course. Meanwhile, he had a way in which he could make Jeryd suffer, nothing too serious, just a little mental fun—a little revenge for blocking his promotion. And then he could feel justice had been done, an eye for an eye.
Tryst regarded her canvases once again. “You say you can paint anything, and then make it come to life?”
“I can try,” she said nervously, “What d’you have in mind? Are you not going to arrest me then?”
“I’ll tell you what,” Tryst said. “You seem like a sensible sort of woman, so I’ll let you keep your freedom if you can do me a favor.”
“What … what sort of favor?”
“I don’t want sex, Tuya, it’s your art I’m concerned with.”
“My art?”
“I want you to paint a woman for me. Can you make her stay alive for just a very short period of time?”
“I’ve not created a human for what seems like … forever.”
“Not a human, more a rumel. If you can’t, I will have you placed in the city jail pending execution.”
“What do you want her for?”
“Firstly, you must control her so that she does only what I say—just for the short time she’s alive. And I want you to make her exactly how I describe.”
“I don’t have a choice, do I?”
“Not really, no. And you will not say a word of this to anyone, not if you wish to go on living.”
“So, what do you want this woman to look like?”
Tryst proceeded to describe Jeryd’s wife.
CHAPTER 29
SHE COULD TURN STONE INTO LAVA, SEAWATER INTO ICE SCULPTURES, could make plants grow rapidly to the height of a building. She could create devices to flood the land with fire, and just as quickly quench it.
But she could not find Dartun Súr, Godhi of the Order of the Equinox.
Papus sat in the darkness and silence of her stone-built chambers, her fingers steepled, brooding over the situation while staring at the floor.
She hadn’t disclosed her full concerns to the red-eyed commander regarding what Dartun had been up to. He was clearly the one responsible for raising the dead. The real questions were how many of these walking dead were there, and what were the consequences?
Papus had known about Dartun for most of her life, because ever since she joined the Order of the Dawnir, rumors had persisted about his lifestyle, his abuse of Dawnir technology. She herself was the most skilled of all at using relics—or that was what she honestly believed, up until Verain’s visit. For years she had climbed through the ranks, watched others around her misuse the technology and die in accidents—her own great love, with whom she had hoped to abscond, included. It was all about maintaining image, being a cultist, and her whole family had belonged from time immemorial to the same, ancient order, the oldest of the cultist sects, a line stretching back generations. Most of her remaining kin were now in retirement on Ysla, well isolated from the rest of the Empire. But she was still here in Villjamur, still driven and still working and still competing.
Still Papus loved her work. What made her feel alive was the thrill that she might discover something completely unknown on any day, that she might then understand the universe better than anyone, that she might occasionally assist the advance of civilization in some small way.
And all the time, in the background, Dartun was quietly making a mockery of her.
People whispered about the Equinox. They gave cultists a bad reputation. There were questions regarding their ethics. But, knowing how Dartun liked to perpetuate his own myth, she had ignored the tittle-tattle up to a point.
Now he had gone too far.
He’d tampered with the fabric of life, and it was now a public affair. If he was indeed raising the