In Plain Sight

“He had a what?”

“Tattoo. Front of his shoulder. I might hardly know my letters, but it had too many wedges and lines goin’ on to be ordinary writing. Antediluvian, is what you call your special magic glyphs, right, sir? It looked like one of those.”

“Draw it, as best you can.” Uzdel passed a wax tablet and a wedge-stylus across his desk to his man-at-arms. When he got it back…

He made to set it aside, then thought better of that. There were rogue sorcerers here and there whose lust for power drove them to try forming contracts with demons, and he didn't want to chance such an individual taking inspiration from whatever abomination his guard had drawn. He scraped the tablet blank, then scooped an armful of scrolls and codices from the bookshelf behind him. He opened one book to a page of sigils and code-signs used by all manner of magical covens, fraternities, and secret societies.

The guard shook his head.

The tax-collector sighed. “Did it remind you of anything?”

“Maybe a bit of the Cainite sigil. Not the same symbol, obviously, but like it, if a portion through the middle were twisted around a bit… my lord?”

Uzdel’s eyes were wide. “And where did the outlander say he hailed from?”

“I never heard it from his mouth, but if it's the same outlander who was hanging around Gahari’s last week, he's said to talk of a homeland called Japan. No place I've ever heard of, but I'm sure you know it, sir.”

“Actually, I have not heard of Japan. And because I haven't, I think I may have solved our riddle.” Uzdel reached for a box on his bottom shelf, where he kept books that, for one reason or another, would not be flattering to display openly. Nothing strictly improper for a sanctioned djinn-invoker climbing the ranks of the civil service to possess. Chiefly, they were academic works on topics that were not precisely in-fashion among the Jalabartan intelligentsia at the moment. The unverified, somewhat fringe theory of Penitents, for example.

He pushed a stack of scrolls aside, and pulled out a small codex of heavily scraped and reused vellum pages, not all quite the same size, bound in badly-tanned goat leather. Setting it on the desk, he flipped to a chapter with seven sections, each headed by a large Antediluvian ideograph with its meaning spelled out underneath in the modern script.

Each of these symbols looked like two of the modern syllabic characters superimposed, or perhaps the later sound-symbols were derived from elements used in these characters. Specifically, all seven were an upright kr character, superimposed with the far more rarely-used sts character rotated to a different offset for each of the seven. They were organized such that the first symbol had its sts component rotated about an eighth-turn clockwise– lust, it was labeled– and proceeded in further turns of about one-eighth. The next one down, with its sts set perpendicular to the underlying kr, was the well-known Mark of Cain, which was here labeled envy. Uzdel flipped through its long corresponding section, until he came to the next symbol.

“That one.”

Uzdel scanned the page. The section after envy was quite short, actually, and there were two symbols visible on this two-page spread. He expected his soldier to be pointing to the one near the end– pride, with its sts component completely inverted– but no, his finger was set on the one between pride and envy, nearly forgotten even by the author of this treatise.

“Sloth?”

“Clear as day.”

“On his shoulder?”

“Or I'm a jumping scorpion.”

Uzdel rubbed his temples. “And he has been on that cross for how long, at this point?”

“He went up early yesterday evening.”

The tax-collector sighed. “Fetch one of your comrades, and three horses. If he is still alive, I must speak with him, and if not, I would at least like to examine his body.”

The sun was kissing the horizon by the time Uzdel and his two guards reached the hill above Lish-Zadir. Not that it made any difference.

“I swear, my lord, we planted the cross well in the ground. The jumping scorpions must've been particularly hungry last night.”

“The jumping scorpions, yes…” Uzdel was distracted, his ruddy-orange eyes running over the fallen cross. He understood that, to many people, bodily fluids lacked a distinctive sheen that he and others with near-red eyes could see. His guards, one with brown eyes and the other with green, would only see a bloodstain where the thief’s foot had sat, and another at the shoulder. To him, the criminal’s whole outline shown with the glint of sweat…

And nothing else. No blood, no brain or digestive fluids. And even to those who could see only a limited range of light, the lack of bones piled around the cross should be a giveaway. The condemned had escaped by the will of the gods. Or…

His eyes followed scrapes in the dirt to where an uprooted bush sat caught in a cactus, its leaves caked in dust. Walking over, he saw where the scrapes ended, and a pair of sandaled footprints began. Hoofmarks, as well, not quite big enough for a horse.

He turned to his guards. “Our thief is alive, I think. Ask around in Gahari's alehouse, quietly. Find somebody who knew our man, who is known to have left Ak-Toum around dusk yesterday, riding or leading an ass. Bring any such person you find to me… undamaged, would be best.”

It might be an embarrassment if it became known too early, that Uzdel was funneling resources into apprehending and studying a Penitent. The theories regarding them were widely considered outrageous. Humans from another world, from the bloodline of Cain’s brother, sent to Nod after death because of their sins. Whether they were sent so that Nod might punish them, they might punish Nod for its sins, or one might somehow cleanse the other was unclear even within the most speculative models used to explain the phenomenon. If he presented a model of his own, however, with full explanations and indisputable proof… well, such an insight into the workings of Heaven would virtually guarantee him a priesthood of at least the third degree. From there, a provincial governorship or an ambassadorship to Lugo would be well within reach, and after that a marriage to a royal princess… and then, who knew? The king only had one son, who still had a long way to go before his fitness to rule was properly demonstrated by his accomplishments. Or maybe, he could be denied that chance altogether.

But Uzdel was getting ahead of himself. The thief, first, or all the rest would remain a daydream.