Cinnabar Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page B

challenged folk sometimes as they entered or left, letting
the lucky pass and leading the unlucky away, unless they executed them on the spot, but they never
challenged her, even when she approached the gate at a panic! run.
    Maybe they knew who she was—or where she spent her nights. Maybe she was too different, even
for them. They let her pass between them and through the gaping gates without comment this morning as
they had every other morning.
    Unlike the other markets of Urik, the elven market wasn't a gathering of farmers and vendors who
arrived in an empty plaza, hawked their wares, and then disappeared. The elven market wasn't a market at
all, but a separate city, the original Urik, older than the Dragon or the sorcerer-kings, older than the barren
Tablelands that now surrounded the much larger city. Lord Hamanu's power was rightly feared in the elven
market, but his laws were largely ignored and could be ignored because the unwritten laws of this ancient
quarter were every bit as brutally efficient.
    Enforcers had carved the mazelike market into a precinct patchwork through which strangers might
wander unaware that every step they took, every bargain, every sidelong glance or snicker was watched
and, if necessary, remembered. The market residents were watched by the same network, and paid dearly
for the privilege. In return, those who dwelt within the old walls of the elven market, where the Lion-King's
yellow-robed templars feared to travel in gangs of less than six, were assured of protection from everyone
except their protector.
    Mahtra was neither a stranger nor a resident. She paid several enforcers for the privilege of walking
through the precinct maze early each morning when the market was as close to quiet as it ever got. Having
paid for her safe passage, Mahtra was careful never to deviate from her permitted path, lest the eyes that
always watched from rooftops, alleyways, and shadowed, half-open doors report her missteps to the
enforcers.
    Once, when she was much newer than she was now, curiosity had lured Mahtra off the paid-for path.
She meant no harm, but the enforcers didn't believe—or couldn't understand—her mute protestations.
They'd sent their bully-boy runners after her, and they'd learned the hard way that Mahtra would protect
herself. She couldn't be harmed, except at great cost in lives and the greater risk of drawing Lord
Hamanu's attention down to their little domains.
    That long-ago morning, when she was very new and didn't understand what was important, Mahtra
said nothing to Father when she returned to the cavern, nor anything when she went out at dusk. But when
she returned the next morning, five corpses, all tortured and mutilated, lay in the chamber at the head of the
elven market passage to the cavern. The enforcers had decided that others—born-folk without her ability to
take care of themselves—would pay the price of her indiscretions.
    Men and women with weapons in hand were waiting for her in the cavern, demanding justice,
demanding retribution. Mahtra prepared to defend herself, but Father told her no, and faced the angry mob
himself. She heard herself called terrible things that day, but Father prevailed, and the mob dispersed.
    When they returned to the hide-and-bone hut, Father took her wrists firmly in his hands and said cavern
children were allowed one mistake, no matter how serious, and that he'd persuaded the others that she
should be granted the same grace, because being new was like being a child. Then, holding her wrists tight
enough to hurt, Father said she must concern herself with the born-folk who were their neighbors along the
shore of the underground water. She must not endanger the whole community with her curiosity; she must
stick to the path she'd paid for, else he himself would be the one to banish her and nothing her makers had
given her would protect her from his wrath.
Father had come into Mahtra's mind then, as a