“Who are you?” she whispered.
“Dustspirit, Dustspirit. That is who I am. But you, Manserphine, you have the ability to help me manifest. I must become embodied. There is much yet to do. I must walk the Earth once again.”
Manserphine realised that the entity was speaking to her in Venerisian dialect. That was a curious fact. “Shall I fetch Cirishnyan?” she asked.
“No. I want you.”
“But I’m not from here. I’m faithful to the Shrine of Our Sister Crone.”
“An irrelevance. It is you who speaks to me.”
Suddenly frightened, Manserphine leaped to her feet and fled the chamber, ignoring the calls of the guard as she clattered down the steps. She burst into Cirishnyan’s chamber without knocking.
“I saw Dustspirit in the dusty bed, and she knowledged me!”
Cirishnyan was on her feet and hurrying to the door. “How?”
They began to climb the staircase. Manserphine continued, “She softly knowledged into my ear as I sat in the bed. Come quickly before she departs again.”
“Flowered up!”
Outside the chamber Cirishnyan listened at the door, before opening it and entering, Manserphine following. The face was gone. Random clouds filled the air.
“Dustspirit has departed,” she told Manserphine.
Cirishnyan did not look happy. Manserphine put all her emotions into her voice to reply, “She was
here,
and she may return.”
A pause. “We shall wait.”
So they waited, and after a few minutes the visage of Dustspirit began to reform in the air, shifting as the dust motes billowed. Unable to wait, Manserphine called out, “Knowledge to me once more!” and then, using in her own dialect, “Speak to me! I’m back.”
Nothing. Embarrassed, she turned to Cirishnyan. In silence Cirishnyan took her by the hand and led her away. “You were inaccurate, Manserphine. Dustspirit is eldritch, as mysterious as the sun, and your mind was overwhelmed by her fragrance. I apologise for allowing you to return to her bed. You see, she rises and droops at her own whim, although it is usual for her to open out when we wait. She has never knowledged us since our floral home bed was germinated, a hundred and two bloomcircles ago.”
Manserphine was shocked by this. Why had she been chosen? Had it been another of her visions? She might be dreaming now. She replied, “But I saw her and she knowledged me.”
“You are fading. It is long after flowerclose and I can see the dryness in your eyes. Come to a quiet bed to rest, and I’ll have Pollonzyn bring intoxicants and chamomile spice.”
Vainly Manserphine tried to resist. “Scentless…”
Cirishnyan insisted, her grip firm. “Scented. Come with me.”
Unwillingly, Manserphine was dragged to a ground floor chamber, very small yet packed with soft chairs and boxes, where she was sat down. Pollonzyn appeared, a tray in her hand that held bottles and small jars with teaspoons in. Cirishnyan poured a drink then spooned out something that sank to the bottom of the fluid and bubbled.
“Have this,” she said. “It is too late to return to your bed. Remain here until floweropen.”
Manserphine did not want to, but with the drink in her hand and the clerics waiting on her she felt she could not refuse their hospitality; and she could slip out easily enough later on. She drank.
She woke some time later, but it was difficult to be sure how many hours had passed. The Shrine was quiet—the window dark, so it was still night. Then she noticed that her chamber had changed so that it was yellow, and considerably larger. And there stood Curulialci all in blue, with a fierce expression on her face, standing like a ghost behind the image of the floating mermaid who appeared in all her visions. Manserphine was not sure where she was, her mind caught between the unreality of the vision and the reality of Curulialci’s chamber. The Grandmother Cleric was trying to say something, but, as so often, Manserphine found herself unable to hear anything.
She woke to the real world. The smell of cherry blossom was overwhelming and, coughing for air, she stumbled to the window, which she opened. A horde of insects buzzed out. Watching them, Manserphine tried to get her breath back. They flew as one, away to the south. From the low hill upon which the Shrine of Flower Sculpture perched she could see the ocean glittering under starlight, and she noticed a huge rock which lay out to sea in the insects’ path. She wondered if that was their destination.
The fear of Dustspirit and the oppression of the chamber made her run out into the street. Judging by the sky it was nearly dawn. She had all her belongings, so she decided to return to the Determinate Inn, a journey that she completed without difficulty. Her pass key allowed her entry, and as the sun rose she flopped into her bed where, after only half an hour, she managed to find sleep.
The men teased her when she took breakfast an hour after noon. “What curious hours you do keep,” said Vishilkaïr. “And what affairs stopped you out so late?”
“Private affairs.”
The two men gave one another a knowing look.
Manserphine asked, “Did Jezelva accept the chest of cowries?”
Vishilkaïr nodded, smiling. “Oh, she was very pleased.”
“Good. Now if you don’t mind I’m going to read in my room.”
“Be our guest.”
That evening Pollonzyn arrived with two altered dresses, which she handed over before departing. Vishilkaïr said nothing as he sipped rum behind the bar. The inn was deserted, so Manserphine returned to her room to try one of the dresses on. They were slightly heavier than before, and she could see where the Shrine seamstress had sewn in foot long strips of what felt like leaves, but which, from the various colours she could see through the fabric, were clearly artificial. The softpetal smelled of meadow flowers.
She slipped off her gown, took a dress, and pulled it on. For a minute all seemed normal. Then she realised she was leaning against the wall. Her balance had gone. She tried to stand upright, but the pain in her eyes was sharp enough to make her wince, and she gasped in a breath of air that chilled her lungs. She smelled something bad—like a decaying body. Then she was on the floor, her head throbbing with pain, her eyeballs burning, her ears full of the sound of whining, while her nostrils seemed clogged with the stench of carcasses. Rolling around the floorboards she moaned and tried to blink away the pain in her eyes, but it worsened. Her skin was on fire. She tried to clamber to her bed, but failed.
The dress! It was making her lose her mind; it was changing her senses. But she was weak. She pulled the dress half off, but the effort caused a headache so severe she felt she would faint, or vomit. At length she knew she had to try again or die, so she pulled up her legs and managed to tug the dress off with the clutching fingers of one hand.
The pain in her head vanished, but her body felt bruised. She knew she was going to be sick. She clambered upon her bed and wrapped herself in a blanket.
“Manserphine? Are you all right?” The voice was loud, but her confused mind was unable to recognise it.
She tried to answer, but it came out as a groan.
Vishilkaïr came in, Kirifaïfra following.
Kirifaïfra leaped to the bed. “What’s the matter? Are you ill?”
“Sick…” she managed to mutter.
Vishilkaïr appeared with a brass bowl, which Manserphine promptly filled with the remains of her supper.
“Bad spices?” Kirifaïfra asked his uncle. “Chestnuts off?”
“No, this,” Vishilkaïr stated, holding the dress.
Manserphine managed to murmur, “Don’t throw it away. Keep it.”
Vishilkaïr stuffed the dress inside a cupboard. “Kirifaïfra will look after you,” he said. “I’ll come and check on you in an hour.”
“All right.”
Kirifaïfra lifted her so that she lay comfortably on her bed with her head up on a bolster, then covered her with another blanket and gave her a tankard of water. “Are you well enough to drink this?”
“Um…”
“Wait a few minutes, then. Was it supper?”
“No, it was the dress. Oh, my head.”
Kirifaïfra took one of the dresses out of the cupboard and examined it, before returning it. Manserphine’s pain was receding, but her limbs felt weak, her stomach rebellious, and her headache had returned.
“They seem normal enough clothes,” he told her.
“They’ve been treated. Never mind how. It must be a reaction to the treatment.”
“How were they treated? By some Blissis criminal?”
“No, nothing like that. By some friends. They mean well. But I’m not sure why it happened.”
Kirifaïfra hesitated, as if uncertain what to do next. “I’ll get some more water.”
“Thank you.”
Left to think, Manserphine pondered what had happened. Clearly she had suffered a kind of alergic reaction to the strips of softpetal that had surrounded her body. Presuming softpetal to be similar in function as its hard cousin, that would imply that her body could not cope with network interference—or that her mind rejected it. She had never heard of such symptoms. She wondered if her sleepless, dreamless mind had somehow rejected the memories and teeming circuits that were sure to exist inside the softpetal.
Kirifaïfra returned with a pitcher of water. “You worried us,” he said. “We heard banging from your room, and a shout.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was going to happen.”
“You should be more careful. People in Novais don’t live like we do here, they have strange ways.”
“I know,” said Manserphine. “I interpret them.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”
“I know.”
Kirifaïfra poured a tankard of water, then asked, “Do you know the Flower Sculpture people well?”
Manserphine frowned, trying to hide her reaction to this question. She knew they would be thinking hard on what they had seen, weighing the evidence, hazarding guesses. She said, “Why them? I work for the Shrine of Our Sister Crone.”
“I suppose you do.”
“Is your life so boring that you have to discuss mine all day?”
Kirifaïfra tapped his teeth with his fingernails. “My life is far from boring. But yes, you do intrigue me, with all these mysteries surrounding you—I mean, the money, that woman arriving, the late nights, and now this fit and the dresses.”
“All my affairs. Not yours.”
He sighed. “Regrettably so.”
Manserphine laughed out of sheer frustration. “You’re sorry? Have you nobody else to prise secrets from?”
“Maybe.”
“And what is it that you do when you aren’t bustling about for your uncle?”
“I enjoy myself.”
Manserphine sat back, tired of talking. She wondered if she would sleep tonight. So many things to think about. She watched Kirifaïfra tidy the objects on the hardpetal desk. His pigtail had been wound with a wire beaded with copper insects.
She wondered again about the vision-insects. They had remained an enigma for years, ever since the visions had started. Thinking back to her view of the sea, she wondered if she could trace their line, so to tell the direction of their flight.
“Kirifaïfra?”
He was at her side immediately. “Yes?”
“Downstairs in the bay window is a map of Zaïdmouth. Would you get it for me, also a straight edge, and a quill too?”
“Certainly.”
She heard him leap down the stairs, and a moment later caught a barking laugh from Vishilkaïr. When Kirifaïfra returned he handed over the items. Manserphine supported the map on a board and took the quill in her left hand, touching the tip to her tongue to activate the ink pump. It tasted of peppermint.
“What are you doing?” Kirifaïfra asked. He leaned across her shoulder to look at the map, and she smelled musk on his body.
“If I tell you will you promise not to annoy me by asking more questions?”
“I promise.”
“I bet you don’t keep it. What I’m doing is drawing the direction of some insects I saw flying yesterday. They went in a straight line from the Shrine of Flower Sculpture-”
“Ah!”
“Towards this rock in the sea.”
Manserphine drew the line with the aid of the ruler. She looked at her handiwork. She frowned. The line skirted the marshes west of Emeralddis, passing very close to the Shrine of the Sea.
“Hmmm,” she said.
“Has it worked?”
She ignored him. She thought back to other times that insects had appeared, and recalled an incident of ten, maybe fifteen years ago when as an initiate of Our Sister Crone she had been on the Shrine roof with friends, hoping to see a meteor shower. They had slept in their tent, but she, suffering insomnia with aching eyes, had watched the stars and the sea long into the night, and later had a vision. She remembered seeing insects fly south, directly towards the White Star, then at its zenith, yet only a few degrees above the horizon. So she drew another line on the map, from the Shrine of Our Sister Crone to the southern cardinal point. It crossed the first line not four hundred yards from the Shrine of the Sea. And she recalled now the insects of her vision here at the inn, which had flown out of her window, then risen and sped away to the south, again towards the Shrine of the Sea.
“You look worried,” Kirifaïfra said. He held her hand. “If you’re in trouble, I’ll help.”
Manserphine extracted her hand. “I’m not in trouble. Not yet.” She looked again at the oval that marked the Shrine of the Sea, situated on the western mouth of the Zaïd estuary.
“Aren’t you?” he gently queried.
“What do you know of the Shrine of the Sea?”
He shrugged. “Nobody knows much about the Sea-Clerics. They live isolated in Aequalaïs, in their golden Shrine. Strange people live in that urb, stuck behind the Water Meadows. The Sea-Clerics worship the sea. They have always refused to take their seat in the Outer Garden and it remains empty for them every year. They speak funny, and people can’t understand them.”
Manserphine laughed. “I speak some of that public dialect. Really it is only a variation of our language, spoken in long, flowing sentences that take time to digest.” She looked away, her eyes defocussed, and a poignant sea longing came to her mind. “Their speech rolls and sways like the ocean swell.”
“If you say so.”
Manserphine looked again at the map. “Something is saying that a part of me lies inside that Shrine.”