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She unwrapped one of the colorful turbans her head never seemed to be without.
A Kurian rested upon her bald, scarred head, an obscene cap that glistened and pulsed in the candlelight.
Or perhaps it was a Lifeweaver. They were the same species, with the same powers and potentials. Only by their actions could they be distinguished.
It resembled an animatronic, prickly cucumber more than a Kurian. Valentine, to his everlasting horror, had seen dead pregnant women and the children who had died in utero. This-entity-had the same misproportioned, squashed look-a melted model of the adult version. Its webbed arms were still tight-wrapped next to her body, only tiny hook-digits at the end clung to her skull.
The head, with its two cloudy topaz eyes so large it was a wonder they didn't roll right out of the soft flesh surrounding them, turned toward Valentine.
So we meet at last.
"Face to cephalopod," Valentine said. "Who are you?"
A survivor, the David. A survivor. I am a scion of one of the last Lifeweaver holdouts on Kur.
I will not take from sentient creatures. Indeed, I only consume other living beings with regret.
I do not have many years left, I think. Perhaps I would be dead already, were it not for Narcisse and her concoctions, and the scraps of lifesign from the chickens and rabbits and squirrels the Blake takes.
Valentine tried to comprehend speaking to a being who was alive when Julius Caesar walked the earth. No wonder the Kurians could look upon mankind as livestock. The endless cycles of war and killing, cruelty and hate. Distant observers, they. All they'd know is battles and pogroms, having never sat and listened to the audience laugh at A Midsummer Night's Dream or hummed the "Toreador Song" from Bizet's Carmen while digging in the garden the way his mother once had.
"You look like you need some air," Mantilla said.
They went out into the night. Valentine smelled Grog cooking on the breeze out of the city.
"There is one more caste, you know, Valentine. Beyond the Wolves, Cats, and Bears."
"Kurian agents?"
Mantilla smiled. "Not quite, though there are some similarities. No, we're talking about one that's been under a variety of names, but considering your time and place and background, we'll call it a 'Raven.' "
"You're one of these?"
"I am."
Valentine wondered if he could survive another passage to some new level of Lifeweaver mysticism. Did he truly trust Mantilla? Perhaps Frat Carlson wasn't the only Kurian agent who'd been close to him.
"What do you do?" he said, temporizing.
Mantilla looked skyward. "How shall I describe it to you? We bring messages from the Lifeweavers, and can talk amongst ourselves, after a fashion. Like Ravens of old, we flock to where the battle is thickest. Not to feast on corpses, but to report and intervene as needed. We are tricksters, able to take on a different appearance, at least for a brief time and with some help from the more gullibly minded."
"Like the Lifeweavers and Kurians-and their agents." Valentine didn't mean to cause offense, but Mantilla scowled at the comparison.
"In a sense. It comes down to us in the legend of shape-shifters, or the Rakshasa in India, where they may have been the last enclave of Kurians from the first invasion."
Valentine went back over his encounters with Mantilla. He'd hinted and hemmed and hawed about certain abilities in the past. Valentine gave him time to continue his explanation.
"Every Freehold has a Raven or two watching over it. I was, for a time, one of three in Southern Command. Then I became one of two. It was then that you met me for the first time, on the Arkansas River fixing my barge. Now I'm alone, save for a man who comes up from Texas from time to time. If a new freehold is established in Kentucky, it will need a Raven, for there's little chance a Lifeweaver can be found to guide it, at least anytime soon."
"So you act as substitutes for the Lifeweavers?" Valentine asked.
"It's rather more complicated than that I'm afraid. Have you ever heard the term 'symbiosis'?"
"Yes, it's two organisms of different species who survive better by cooperation. Like a bird who picks ticks off the body of a rhino. The bird gets to eat the ticks, plus I suppose the protection of something the size of a rhino and the rhino has parasites picked off."
Mantilla slapped an exposed brick wall and dust flew. "Verdammnt , I think you're in the wrong profession, my friend. You should be a teacher. Most shape-shifter legends involve duality of one kind or another. The poor sukhim is cursed with this other side living within. It is like that with us, though whether it is a curse or not ... How about the reproductive cycle of the Kurian/Lifeweaver beings? Do you know anything about that?"
"I heard they budded off-like self-cloning."
