K Parker: Shadow

'Really? What's that?'

'I'm a priestess.'

He sighed. Maybe if he could remember anything he'd know that the world was usually like this, though in all conscience he found that hard to imagine. 'You're a priestess,' he repeated.

'Not a real one, you fool. Just like he wasn't a real god. Come on, use your head. Or did you get all your brains knocked out along with your memories?'

'Oh, I see,' he said. 'You're-' He couldn't think of a polite way of saying it: swindlers, conmen, coney-catchers. 'Impersonators,' he said.

'I like that,' she replied. 'Divine impersonators. That's us, or at least it was, till you showed up. He was the god and I was his priestess. We drive round the towns and villages taking the rubes for money. It's a living.' She sighed. 'Or it was. Now what the hell am I going to do?'

He laughed, although he had an idea it wasn't tactful. 'You and me both,' he replied, and as he said the words he thought of something. 'Where are you going next?' he asked.

'What?' She sounded preoccupied. 'Oh, there's a small town half a day to the west, we were headed there. No point going now, of course, except I suppose I could sell the cart, that'd probably be enough to get me to Josequin. Except I just left there, getting out of Josequin was the whole bloody point…'

'What's the town called?'

'Cric.'

'Cric,' he repeated. 'No.'

'What do you mean, no? Oh, I get you, you wanted to see if it sounded familiar. It doesn't, I take it.'

'No, unfortunately.' He slumped down on to his heels and rubbed his face with his hands. 'Not to worry,' he said, 'I'll get there eventually. I must do, or I'm really in trouble.'

'If you like-' That was a different tone of voice; a little sympathy, and there was something she wanted, too. 'If you like,' she said, 'I'll take you there in the cart. After all, no skin off my nose.'

He looked up. 'Thank you,' he said. 'That'd be kind.'

'No trouble. We'll stay here till it's light. I suppose we'd better bury him, too.' This time there was something else in her voice, the way she said him; a deliberate transfer, from valuable asset lost to nuisance to be dealt with. Nothing if not pragmatic, this woman. 'I'm going to get under the cart.'

'Why?'

'Because it's dry under there, you fool. You may be so drenched it doesn't matter, but I was nice and snug under the cover before-well, all this. And a fine priestess I'll sound like with a streaming cold.'

Ah, he thought, so that's what she wanted. 'Mind if I get under there too?' he asked.

'You'd be an idiot not to,' she replied. 'It's raining.'

They lay side by side in the dark, the underside of the cart a hand's span from their faces. 'My name's Copis,' she said.

'Copis,' he repeated. 'No, that's not familiar. Not unfamiliar, either. Not anything, really.'

She laughed. 'Thank you very much,' she said. 'Actually, I'd be surprised if it was. It's not a Bohec name, you see. I'm from Torcea, right on the other side of the bay.'

'None of that means anything to me,' he replied.

'Really? You don't even know where you are? That's…' She paused for a moment, presumably marshalling her thoughts. 'All right,' she said, 'it's like this. Actually, I'm having problems with this, because geography really isn't my strong point, but we're just south of the Mahec River-does that mean anything to you?'

'No.'

'Oh. Right, then. There's the Mahec, which starts in the eastern mountains and runs west to the sea, I think I've got that the right way round. South of the Mahec there's this big hilly plain-can you have a hilly plain? Well, you know what I mean. Moorland and hills and valleys, mostly too high for growing anything, so the towns and villages are down in the valleys. In the middle of that is Josequin, which is the only city worth a damn north of the Bohec. Still nothing?'

'No,' he replied, 'but it's very interesting. What's the Bohec?'

'That's another river,' she replied, 'more or less parallel with the Mahec, much bigger and more important, because ships can sail right up as far as Mael-Mael Bohec, that's its full name-and there's three other big cities: Boc Bohec on the west coast, Weal Bohec about a day inland and Sansory two days upriver from Mael. Got that?'

'I think so.'

'Well done. Anyhow, it's another two days due south from the Bohec to the south coast-that's the bay-and it's a day's sail from one of the south coast ports straight across the bay to Torcea, where I come from, but of course you can only do that in summer; the rest of the year you have to go the long way round, to the east. Due west's just open sea, of course, and nobody's got the faintest idea what's on the other side of it. And that's all, really. At least, they're the only places I've ever been to, and they're enough to be going on with.'

He was feeling drowsy, but this was all good, solid information, as good as tools or weapons. 'Thank you,' he said. 'And where are we, right now?'

She laughed. 'Oh, we're nowhere much,' she said. 'We're at least three days from Josequin; actually, Weal or Mael would be closer, but there's two lots of mountains in the way.'

'Have you got anything to eat?'

'Yes,' she answered. 'In the cart. Lift the lid off the box, you'll find ajar. Josequin biscuits.' She laughed. 'And if they don't refresh your memory, you really aren't from around here.'

Josequin biscuits turned out to be round, flat and thin, slightly bigger than the palm of his hand; oatmeal sweetened with honey, and there were bits of nuts and raisins in them as well. He didn't remember them, and they'd have been a little too sweet for his taste if he hadn't been so hungry. He ate two.

'It's one of the odd things about this racket,' Copis said. 'Either you're starving on the road between jobs, or you're eating wonderful stuff like that-only delicacies are fit for the god, you see. Salmon, smoked lamb, partridges, peacock-plenty of that kind of thing, but if you want a stack of griddle cakes and a hunk of cooking cheese, forget it. Same with drink. If you'd told me five years ago there'd come a day when I'd swap a jug of wine for an equal measure of milk, I'd have laughed in your face. Truth is, though, I never did like wine much. How about you? You don't know, I suppose.'

'No.'

'Oh well.' He could sense that she was about to ask. 'You know,' she went on, 'I've been thinking. I've lost my partner, you're at a loose end till you get your memory back. Seems a bit silly for both of us to wander around the place with no means of earning a living.'

'You want me to do what he did. Pretend to be a god.'

She giggled. 'Not a god. The god. Oh damn, I suppose I've got to explain that, too. Have I?'

'It'd help.'

'All right, then. Lately-let's say the last ten years, give or take a year-a lot of people, especially up here, have started believing in this new god-well, he's not new exactly, he's in all the old stories, but he was supposed to have gone away, and he's due to come back just before the end of the world. Really he's kind of a mixed blessing, because he sorts out the good from the bad, however you define that kind of thing, and if you've been good you get to survive and inherit the earth, while if you're bad the enemy's going to get you. For the enemy,' she went on, 'read the pirates, or that's the way people are taking it, and you can't blame them, all things considered. Of course it's all just a load of old rubbish. But you know what they say: opportunities and mushrooms.'

'Opportunities and mushrooms what?'

'Grow up out of horseshit,' she explained. 'So what do you think? I mean,' she added, 'it's not as if you're spoilt for choice, is it?'

He laughed. 'I was thinking earlier,' he said, 'about how all of a sudden every damn thing was a choice; all the options you could ever wish for, and no reason for favouring one over the other. I don't know,' he went on. 'What if we show up in some place and it turns out I've been there before and they recognise me?'