The Unbottled Idol (Chapter 5)

The site of the original village of Yanülevi was not chosen on a whim. This hilltop hosted a boulder believed to have been cursed by the Winds of Virtue. Known as Qinaq Qurbangahi, the Altar of Censure, it possessed the power to strip dæmons of the magic in their blood. Parī women who fell in love with human men would be chained to this rock and have their wings hacked off by Parīstāni executioners, who then left them to die. The current whereabouts of the Altar are unknown, but multiple sources suggest that Parīstānis chose the location of their consulate building to cover up this shameful period in their history.

- Myths and Legends of Yanülevi: a Tourist’s Guide (approved for publication by the Imperial Ministry of Information, pending review by the Imperial Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Imperial Inquisition)

Shapiev’s estate features a sprawling back garden. Kowsari and I sneak onto the property through it, escorted by a parī attendant whom Kowsari has either paid off or blackmailed. Before we’re even halfway across, I make two important discoveries. The first is that the Altar of Censure is not, in fact, buried under the Parīstāni Consulate. It’s here, beneath a low hillock with a wooden event pavilion on top. I can feel the eerie way the Soul skews around it, as if the Altar is a lead ball placed upon a bedsheet.

The second discovery is that someone’s tunneled into the hillock to expose the Altar. Through the Golden Veil, I see a thin ray of indigo light shining from between the pavilion’s support pillars. When I stare at it for more than a few seconds, I feel the pressure of the Soul building behind my eyes, drawn towards the light’s source.

I nudge Kowsari. “There’s –”

“Nooch.” Her eyes twinkle as she rebukes me. “Now I’m leading. You can talk when we’re inside, Your Grace.”

My whisper dies in an exasperated sigh. Kowsari’s enjoying this far too much. The only mystery is which she enjoys more: our reversed roles, or that she convinced me to disguise myself as a woman. I’d hoped, from her jesting, that she’d just drape me in a chador, but she insisted on dressing me up in the full attire of a Winds priestess. The long skirt, the many shawls, and the veil are stifling in this heat, even with Black Hand. The one consolation is that I’m wearing my own trousers underneath the skirt.

The attendant leads us on a snaking path through the gardens. The extravagant Consul’s Mansion looms before us. Architecturally, it’s the most boring building in all Yanülevi, being little more than a three-story box with windows and an arcade along the second story, but the parīs don’t need fancy touches to advertise just how deep Parīstān’s pockets run. Building this behemoth entirely out of wood sends that message very effectively.

As we approach the mansion’s veranda, the attendant’s veiled head twitches in my direction. I get the impression that she’s throwing a furtive glance in my direction. She whispers to Kowsari, “You’re certain he’ll behave?”

“Yes, Isaev, I briefed him. Eyes down, hands to himself, mouth shut until we’re alone,” Kowsari promises.

Isaev gives me one last doubtful look before floating up onto the veranda. As soon as she’s over wood, she allows her toes to touch down. The shimmer around her feet and wings disappears. She retreats to the nearest door on foot, returning with two bags and two pairs of leather sandals. “Your shoes, please.”

I study the wooden steps. The Soul will be practically inaccessible once I read the top. That shouldn’t be an issue, but since Kowsari saw fit to bring her weapons, I shouldn’t go in unarmed myself. I pinch off my connection to Soul, trapping the energy that’s already inside my flesh. A small trickle slips through my grip, but I’m holding on to enough to defend myself, at least for an hour or two.

Though I may die of heat stroke before then.

Ironically, that first step up onto the veranda is like going barefoot from sun-kissed pavement to an icy sponge. Each step up is progressively colder. All the while, the summer heat smothers me.

Thankfully, the air inside the house is tolerably cool. The parīs have installed heat sinks in several rooms, as well as fans to ensure circulation. This isn’t the only modern convenience they’ve added. Lamps with carmot bulbs hang from the walls, and I hear a phonograph warbling in one of the rooms. The house must have metal pipes running behind the walls and under the floors, creating conduits through which the Soul can flow close to the carmot devices.

I’m not given much time to consider whether I could access those same conduits. Before we reach the stairs, we encounter another parī. Unlike our escort, this one isn't veiled.

There's a split second where my mind goes blank. All I can see are the parī’s porcelain skin, her inky hair, and her amethyst eyes. An ache fills my entire body.

Then the Golden Veil forces my eyes to see past the parī’s enthralling beauty - or, at least, it tries. There are limits to what human flesh can do to keep up with the Veil. Still, it’s easy to drop my gaze to the carpet when my vision blurs and needles stab into my eyeballs. The pain lingers after line of sight is broken, chasing away the dregs of magically induced desire.

No wonder they cover up around human men. An unmasked parī would cause utter chaos.

Isaev and the unveiled parī converse in the musical tongue of their race. The language is similar enough to Yanülevan for me to recognize a few common words: “cleansing”, “observer”, “memorial”. Then we’re moving again. I don’t dare look up even as we climb to the third floor.

Finally, a key slots into a lock, and then there’s a click. “You have half an hour,” Isaev warns.

“Understood.” Kowsari grabs my wrist and tugs me inside.

As soon as the doors close behind us, I look up. We’ve entered the sitting room of a lavish suite. Silk-upholstered stools and divans surround a black ironwood coffee table carved to resemble an eagle. Curtained doorways to either side lead to other rooms, while drapes along the opposite wall hint at a row of windows. The air’s stagnant and musty. Since Shapiev’s death, I doubted anyone has opened those windows or turned on the heat sink.

“Where do we start?” I ask.

“First, cold air.” Kowsari strides over to the heat sink. There’s no pull cord – after all, parīs don’t need to worry about gravity – so Kowsari unbuckles her shamshir from her waist and uses the scabbard to prod the activation switch. She then pulls on lamé gloves and walks around the room, turning on lamps. “Now, I’m going to turn this place over. You stand out of my light and let me know if anything jumps out at you. Maybe pretend you’re blessing the room, in case someone walks in.”

I frown. “How am I supposed to do that?”

“You seem like a man who goes to temple regularly. I’m sure you can figure it out.” Kowsari walks to a chest of drawers along one wall and sifts through it.

I look over her shoulder. There’s a great deal of stationary in the top drawer, and none of it looks or smells magical. “My devotion is to the Shepherd of Dust, not to the Winds of Virtue. I doubt I could make the act look even remotely convincing.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You pull off that dress, after all. How hard can the rest be?” Kowsari prods the edges and back of the drawer before moving down to the next one. “What did you want to tell me outside?”

“I saw the Altar of Censure – the boulder that Parīstān used to use for mutilations,” I clarify, when Kowsari arches her brow at me. “It’s buried under the pavilion, but someone's dug a tunnel to access it again.”

Kowsari frowns. “Really? Why would someone want to do that?”

“I haven't the faintest idea.”

Kowsari snorts. “I see your doctorates were tax dollars well-spent.”

None of the drawers in this chest yield anything of interest. Kowsari moves on to a side table that has another drawer on its side. She’s still walking towards it when something cloyingly sweet, like rotten fruit, cleaves through the lingering must in the air.

As quietly as possible, I tap Kowsari on the shoulder.

She doesn’t freeze, she doesn’t go still, and she doesn’t ask for clarification. Instead, her hands go to her gambeson, quickly doing up the buttons. When she glances back at me for another jibe, I see how cold her gaze has gone.

Kowsari mouths, What?

Rakshasa, I mouth back.

She opens the side table’s drawer. Keeping her voice light, she says, “Anyway, as I was saying before, I doubt that that the parīs working here have memorized all the rituals of the Winds. Just make something up while speaking in Yanülevan. That should convince them.” Then, silently, she asks, Where?

I take a deep breath. The scent draws my gaze to the room’s left wall. When I don’t spy the rakshasa, I point to the curtained doorway on that side.

Kowsari points into the drawer and makes a rummaging motion. I loudly rustle through the papers within. Under this cover, Kowsari draws her revolver, pops out the cylinder, and dumps the bullets into the drawer. She fishes different bullets from a pouch on her belt. I catch the smell of garlic. Unlike the reek of rakshasa magic, this scent is perfectly mundane. Phosphorus bullets have been around for nearly eighty years, since the Great War.

After all, if the Empire learned anything during the Great War, it’s that only magic or fire can truly harm a rakshasa.

I make my own preparations as Kowsari reloads, silently chanting the traditional Black Hand battle mantra. Shepherd, make my muscles as steel. My bones as tungsten. My joints as mercury. My tendons as rubber. My nerves as copper. I fix the properties of each substance in my mind as I invoke their names.

The Soul rushes to answer the prayer. My flesh hardens or loosens in all the right places; I feel like I’ve gone from a state of acceptable fitness to that of a champion athlete. My flesh hasn’t truly transmuted - no human can pull that off, not without divine help - but the Soul is granting my body the grace to defy natural limits.

“Why aren’t you married yet?” Kowsari asks. Thanks to the enhancement to my nerves, her words are stretched and deepened, and she moves in slow motion as she snaps the revolver’s cylinder back into place.

With a rakshasa around, distorted noises just make it easier for me to get jumped. I drop the line about nerves from the mantra. The world returns to normal speed while I demand, “You’re asking me this now?”

Kowsari throws me an incredulous look and waves her hand in a circular motion. “It’s just you don’t seem like the bachelor type, especially with how you talk about nurturing the kids you work with. Seems like you’re the type who’d want to settle down and have his own children.”

“I’ve been busy.” The irritation bleeding into my voice isn’t an act. Having Kowsari meddle in my personal life, even if only as a distraction, isn’t much better than her meddling with the Register.

“Well, if you play your cards right, I might have an alchemist friend you’d be interested in.”

Kowsari twists a knob on the side of her revolver, the one that controls how strongly the carmot firing mechanism draws upon the Soul. She stalks towards the indicated doorway. Without warning, she dives through the curtains.

There’s a moment of breathless silence.

“Clear!” she barks. “Get in here, Yavari.”

I don’t take that call at face value. For all I knew, the rakshasa has magically subdued Kowsari and imitated her voice. I seize upon the first challenge question that pops to mind. “What about that other woman you promised to introduce me to? The one with the kid?”

“Cute, Yavari. I’m still not letting you put anyone on your watchlist. Will you just get in here?”

I part the curtain. Kowsari stands alone in the middle of Shapiev’s bedroom. I check the floor to confirm that there isn’t a second Kowsari sprawled in the corner, but everything’s clear. The Kowsari standing before me is the real one.

Then where’s the rakshasa?

The scent of rotten fruit lingers, fading fast yet still stronger than what I caught from the sitting room. The Veil should reveal the rakshasa’s true form to me. However, none of the spiders I see in the corners of the ceiling have a phantasmal image superimposed upon them. There's a moment I think I hear claws skittering across the floor, but that's merely a floorboard creaking as I shift my weight.

“There was a rakshasa here,” I insist.

“I believe you.” Kowsari jerks her head at this room’s heat sink. “The cold air didn’t turn itself on.”

She walks to the closet, which is protected by a latticework door. A sharp kick breaks it open. No rakshasa hides behind it, but there is a gold-plated safe sitting in the middle of the closet floor. A blue attaché case stamped with the seal of the Parīstāni Consulate leans against it.

Kowsari cocks her head, studying the safe. “It’s been drilled.”

I creep forward. There does indeed appear to be a small hole in the door of the safe. Slipping past Kowsari, I tip over the attaché case. A hand-cranked drill, vials containing what I assumed to be corrosive liquids, and a selection of wires and tiny mirrors slide out.

“It must have disguised itself as a parī to sneak its tools in,” I mutter.

Kowsari eyes the safecracking tools before handing me the revolver. “Since it got things started …”

I gape at her. “You can’t be serious.”

Kowsari selects one of the mirrors and holds it up to the hole while twisting the safe’s dial. Raising her voice, she declares, “I’m very serious. We didn’t break into the safe. The rakshasa did. It’s tragic that we weren’t here in time to stop it, but these things can’t be helped.”

I scan the room, confirming that the rakshasa hadn’t popped out, and whisper, “What if it’s here to steal our evidence?”

“I’m sure that it is … but either it hasn’t succeeded yet, or it can’t leave until we do. Even if it transformed into a rat and swallowed the ring, a rat’s not squeezing under those outer doors.” There was a clang as Kowsari cracks the safe. “What will it be, then? Leave without the ring? Or pray you can transform and open the door fast enough to get out before we catch you?”

Only tense silence answers her.

“Shame,” she mutters.

I gape at her. “Were you goading it into confronting us?”

“That strategy’s worked for me before.” She peers into the safe and extracts a wooden ring box. “Here – take a look at this.”

The box is surprisingly heavy when I take it with my free hand. I pop it open to discover gold plates lining the interior. A lamé cushion with an empty indent at its center shows where the ring belongs. Two overwhelming scents assail me: sulfur, plus the coppery tang of blood.

“Was one of Nikbin’s rings in there?” Kowsari asks.

“Yes.” I snap the box shut and hand it back to her.

“Recently?”

“Yes, but I’m not sure how long –”

The rotten, fruity odor washes over me anew. I whirl. No rakshasa springs out at us.

Dread drags me back to the curtained door. I burst into the sitting room. There, crouched before the outer doors of the suite, stoops the rakshasa.

I’ve caught it midway through transforming into a parī from whatever tiny form it used to sneak past us. Its body is a congealed mass of jellied meat, about the size of a human girl, with half-formed wings and a rapidly shrinking tail. Bruise-purple haze swirls thickly around it, filling the room with that magical, rotten stench as it fuses to the rakshasa. The Veil shows me more: a phantom of a saffron-skinned, four-armed figure with the head of a crocodile. It shimmers atop the gelatinous mass, hunched in the same posture as the humanoid body that’s rapidly taking shape.

The bloody light of a Philosopher’s Stone glows in the phantasm’s belly.

In that breathless moment, as we stare at each other, something inside me shifts. A nostalgic intensity hums through my blood. The world becomes clearer.

For the first time since Kambūjiya dismissed me, I’m back on the hunt.

The rakshasa dives for the furniture in the middle of the room. Without hesitation, I fire. The shot barely misses, burrowing into one of the divans and sending up a sputtering streamer of white smoke. I thumb back the hammer for a second shot, but the rakshasa is already behind the coffee table. This revolver can’t punch through wood that dense.

Kowsari reaches my side. “Where is it?” she demands, drawing her shamshir.

“There!” I say, nodding at the coffee table. “You go around to the left. I’ll cover –”

The coffee table launches towards us like an artillery shell.

Thank you all for joining this week! Chapter 6 releases August 5th! I hope you’ll join us as the battle with the rakshasa continues!