Shadowkill

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The Angatines set up a tent as close to the Kipuny Shimmery as Jao juhFeyn would permit and held a mourning service every night she played, starting their keening the moment she came round the corner. Whitened faces and bodies moved in a somber, slow dance to the steady slow thump of the drums. The Blind Woman chanted her exorcisms in a wild rough contralto.

No one paid attention to them, they were just part of the show. She’d been afraid they’d wake hostility among the locals, but apparently the Rummers were used to the Angatines taking against somebody and calling the wrath of heaven on them. Apparently the wrath of heaven struck or didn’t strike according to the whims of God and the Rummers didn’t consider that any business of theirs.

By the seventh day there were crowds of child beggars, street singers, magicians, acrobats, cutpurses, food venders; Hadluk’s rumor-mill was working industriously and producing the desired effect. He knew his Rummers.