Stations of the Tide - Michael Swanwick [31]
“She gave me a hug then, and told me she had never seen anyone do as well, that I would someday be more famous than she.”
For a long moment the witch was silent.
“I slipped through an open window and into the next room when Madame led Gregorian in. More silent than a wraith, I drifted from shadow to shadow, leaving not the echo of a footfall behind. I left the door open one fingerspan, so I could peer from darkness into light. Then I retreated to a closet within the second room. Through the crack of the door I could see their distant reflections in the mantel mirror. Gregorian was skinny, barefoot, and dirty. I remember thinking how insignificant he looked alongside Madame Campaspe’s aristocratic figure.
“Madame sat him down by the hearth. A murmur of voices as she explained the rules. She drew away the fringed cloth that covered the box. Cocky as a crow, he placed his hand within.
“I saw his face jump—that involuntary hop of the muscles—when she first touched the dial. I saw how pale he grew, how he trembled as she increased the pain. He did not take his eyes off of her.
“She took him all the way up to seven. His body was rigid, his fingers spasming, but his head held straight and unforgiving, and he had not blinked. I think even Madame feared him then. Sitting there in his ragged clothes, his eyes burning like lanterns.
“I was so still my heart did not beat. My immobility was perfect. But somehow Gregorian knew. His head rose, and he looked in the mirror. He saw me, and he grinned. A horrible grin, a skull’s grin, but a grin nonetheless. And I knew then that try though she might, she would never break him.”
* * *
“I’m done now.” She set a piece of cheesecloth over the tray, and the bureaucrat followed her back inside, slim crescent moons winking at him one after the other from beneath the blanket.
“What’s it good for?” he asked when they were both seated on the bed again, facing each other cross-legged, her vagina a sweet dark shadow within the protective circle of her legs. “The powder you make from dogs.”
“We mix it with ink and inject it beneath the skin.” She rotated a hand before his face; in the shadows it was colorless, unmarked. “Each design represents a ritual the woman of power is entitled to perform, and every ritual represents knowledge, and all knowledge properly applied is control.” Suddenly a marking on her hand flared into light. It was a small fish, visible through the skin. “Turning the markings on and off at will is a reminder of that control.” One by one the tattoos flickered on: a pyramid, a vulture, a wreath of cocks. Stars flared into subdermal novae and struck fire to serpents, to moons, to alchemical elementals. “Mirandan microflora is all but incompatible with Terran biology. Injected beneath the skin, they can get enough nourishment to stay alive but not enough to grow. There they stay, starving and comatose until I awaken them.” Now all the tattoos were aglow. They climbed her arms almost to her shoulders.
“How do you do that?”
“Oh, that’s one of the very first things you learn, how to raise the temperature of your body. Here.” She lifted one of his hands. “It takes next to nothing. Concentrate on your fingertips, will them to be warmer. Think of hot things. Try to make them hot.” She waited, then said, “Well?”
His fingertips tingled. “I’m not sure.”
“You think it’s just power of suggestion.” A tiny starburst appeared at the tip of her finger, floated before his eye. “This is the first marking I received. Turn your finger hot, the goddess said, and it burst into light. I was so amazed. I felt then that my life had taken a great turn, that nothing would ever be the same again.” She was touching his leg gently, sliding fingers slowly up, rapidly down, stroke stroke stroke.
“What goddess said?”
“When someone teaches you that which is of spiritual value, you do not learn such things from a human: The person partakes of divinity, becomes as one with the godhead. Thus, when Madame Campaspe taught Gregorian and me, she was to us the