Age of Ash, page 28
“Andoma?” Halev said, and for the first time, he seemed almost unguarded. “Are you all right?”
“What brings me to the palace is… Elaine, I suppose.” And that was true. Elaine would bring her there, if only by her death. So that made sense. “We have been talking, she and I.”
“Have you now?”
“You knew that.”
“I did. What do you two talk about?”
“Byrn never followed the brotherhood,” Andomaka said. Which was true. All their conversations with their threads of love and sex and death, politics and magic, were about her father and his false blood. They had been talking about the betrayal of the city and her family’s role in it, even if Elaine didn’t know that. “It would be better for the city if she followed custom.”
“I hear what you’re saying,” Halev replied. She didn’t think that was true. He didn’t trust her, she could feel that, but he was also distracted. She couldn’t see the things in his mind that were drawing him away, not quite. There were glimpses of them. Something about wax and pig’s blood. Knowing it left her feeling lightheaded. “I’m afraid Elaine isn’t available either. Not right now.”
“Is she well?”
“She’s young,” Halev said. “Being young is always hard. Every generation fights to survive it.” Another odd answer. Evasive. Something had happened, there was no doubt, but it didn’t sound as if the girl was dead. Not yet.
“Another time, then,” Andomaka said, both to Halev and to herself in their different conversations. She would come back another time. The girl would die another time. There was a little thrill as her mind that drifted and her mind that lived in the world came together for a moment.
Halev made his bow and left. When he was gone, a redcloak came in to escort her out. They both pretended it was a sign of honor, but the sword at his belt wasn’t ornamental. The palace was on alert, and she had the sense—much as she’d sensed the winter caravan’s coming—that they didn’t know what they were guarding against. Like a sword fighter trying to parry with his eyes bound.
“What’s your name?” she asked the man as they reached the black, squat gates that led north from the palace and into Green Hill.
“Marback, lady.”
You will answer to my voice, Marback, she thought. This mouth will command you, and you will do what these lips say. She didn’t speak it aloud. He would only have misunderstood.
As she stepped out of the palace and into the openness of her quarter, most of the compounds stood elegantly to her left, bright stone and bare trees pregnant with leaf. She turned to the right. To the north and below her, the white ice of the river was darker. Bluer. A sound reached her, faint but vast. A giant the size of the world, whispering. The ice groaning. The living water restless in its sleep and ready to see the sky again.
If she had dreamed that her enemy had asked what brought her to the palace, and that the river had answered, it would have been prophecy. The thread of Kithamar had brought her here, at the moment of the thaw, when the world could shift again to keep her here but as prince.
All the way back to the compound, water ran. It was everywhere. Dripping from gutters, sliding down the streets. Filthy snow that the months had crushed into ice was transforming. The air itself felt lush with promise, and the world was changing. The implacable hold of winter had slipped. Thaw had come. A moment of change, and moments of change were dangerous and full of wonder. When she arrived, Tregarro was waiting. And Ausai was too.
She bathed before the ceremony, not because it was needed, but because it was beautiful that way. Warm water in a copper tub. The heat sinking into her flesh. She remembered her first initiations into the mysteries of the Daris Brotherhood. She’d been a child then. Her father, Drau Chaalat, had told her to put on her best clothes and come with him. That it was time. He had been the head of the brotherhood then, as she was now. He’d taken her through the doorless path to the private temple for the first time, and she had been astounded to find Prince Ausai waiting for her there. His hair had been thinning even then, but it had still been dark. The illness that had turned his skin dry as paper hadn’t declared itself. He’d been a man, strong and hale and vibrant with power. He had been the city.
That first ceremony had been little enough. He’d given her the words, and she’d mouthed them without understanding their significance. What she remembered best was the sense of him. His masculinity and grace, and the shivering sense of a great puzzle just beginning to solve itself before her.
That day had been the first step on the path that led to the last stone of today.
She rose from the water, dressed herself in ceremonial gowns and a jacket of red tapestry embroidered with gold. She brushed her pale hair for the last time, and a sense of peace descended on her like the first spreading warmth after a drink of wine. Life was made bearable through meaning, and the meaning of her whole life was this. There was no fear in her. Only the certainty that everything was as it should be. Everything was well.
She walked the doorless path alone this time. Her father was long since dead, his deathmark worked in stone. Still, she imagined him at her side. His calm approval. His certainty which was, after all, an echo of her own. Candlelight filled the temple, and a stray breeze that had somehow followed her in made the little flames shiver and dance like they were laughing. Tregarro stood at one side of the altar. Ausai, in the body of the Bronze Coast boy, at the other. Knife and scroll and cloth were all laid out. Her uncle nodded to her with the boy’s neck, and she bowed before him.
“This is the most important thing you have ever done or will ever do,” Ausai and Airis and every prince of the city back through the centuries said. She more than half expected the words to echo as Halev’s had, but they were only words. “We are proud of you.”
“Thank you, my lord,” she said, and began weeping from gratitude and joy.
“Be strong,” the boy said. The same tongue had once said, You don’t have to do this. We could escape together. You could be free. It had never been true.
The boy stepped to the front of the altar and knelt. Tregarro stepped behind him and put the cord across the thin, youth-smooth neck and tightened it. The boy’s face grew dark as he was strangled. She had wondered if there would be a struggle at the end, but apart from a moment’s reflexive and impotent gasping, the thread of Kithamar met this new death with calm. The stink when the body’s bowel loosened should have been disgusting, but it wasn’t. It was only an indignity of flesh, and almost endearing. Tregarro gently drew the corpse down to the floor at the altar’s foot and placed a dark cloth over the dark face and protruding tongue. They were alone in the temple, the two of them. She found herself weeping, but neither frightened nor sad.
When Ausai had died before, he had been older, ill, and surrounded by the members of the court. He had suffered then, fighting to remain on this side of death’s dark waters until the missing blade could be found, until the boy who was his secret refuge could be brought, until the conspiracy against him could be understood and defeated. His other caretakers and physicians hadn’t been initiates of the brotherhood, and he’d been too weak to visit the brotherhood’s house. There had been so few moments when she could sit with him and whisper their progress into his failing ears. She wondered now whether Byrn a Sal had called for a close watch on their uncle in order to keep his false claim to the throne secret, or if it had only been the care and attention it had seemed.
In the end, the old man’s flesh had failed him. He had drowned far from water, refusing anything that might ease his passage in a bid for just a bit more life. He had died with his hands in claw-like fists, not knowing whether she would find the way to bring him back, or if the thread of Kithamar was cut forever.
Byrn a Sal hadn’t suffered so much as a strange dream when the rite failed. And the boy—Ausai’s son and not Byrn’s cousin—had been left with the slavers hired to bring him. Everything she’d trained for, everything her father had raised her to do, had become meaningless.
And now, this new death of Ausai’s, quicker and without fear or illness. It was a death without struggle and with faith in resurrection. Andomaka was, before all other things, a priest. Her life was in the service of her god and her city. She sat beside the dead boy now, her hands wide above his empty body, and began his funeral. His soul was made safe, as it had to be. She sang the hymns and cleaned the body, Tregarro at her side with scented oil and fresh cloth. The dead boy-child who had been her uncle, she treated with reverence and respect. And when rite found its end, she drew his deathmark.
As she did, she felt something deep within the temple shift. Ausai was at peace again, and would be until she drew him forth. The thaw was in the air as well, a moment of change. Of thinness and possibility. Of renewal for the city, and of culmination for her. She let her eyes close and felt her own body, her awareness moving through each limb and joint like a hostess preparing a room for an honored guest.
“Are you well?” Tregarro said.
“I am perfect,” she said, and it was true apart from the one unsettled echo. What does bring you? She had answered that, hadn’t she? She’d understood the prophecy. But the echo of the question remained. That was strange. Why did it remain?
“We can wait if you like,” Tregarro said.
“There’s nothing to wait for,” she said as she opened her eyes. He gave her his hand. She rose to her feet. There was a scar on his thumb too, wide and pale and ropey as the ones on his face. He was a beautiful man, in his way. She was grateful that he had been here to stand by her and the brotherhood.
The rite itself felt like images of itself drawn on onionskin and laid one atop another. In all the history of the brotherhood, there had never been anyone who performed the ritual three times. Her first, failed attempt the night that Byrn a Sal had taken his crown, then the actual redemption of Kithamar, after they’d recovered the blade and the boy, and now this third and final time.
Souls faded. Even now, with the child’s body still warm, the thread would be falling from the world. She had saved it before. She would save it again now. She took the blade and drew in her own blood the deathmark she’d only just bestowed. It darkened. It burned. The cold smoke that came with the attention of the dead complicated the air. She shivered and told herself it was only the chill of the passing winter. Or joy at the approaching transformation. She cleaned the blade with a cloth that had never been touched by sunlight. She dipped the silver into a basin of river water. Anticipation lifted the hair on her arms and neck.
She crossed the deathmark with the letters of her own name. Herself, her life, all that she was or had been, written in water. After the last line, she put down the blade and placed her palms flat on the altar. The stone bit her skin like ice.
For a fraction of a breath, she was afraid it had failed. She almost called out to Tregarro. But only almost. The cold smoke that wasn’t smoke thickened, billowing into the air from no place. Or from a place that no living eyes had seen. She’d never been aware of this before. She felt as though she were falling from a great height, and the smoke was a vast and turbulent sea waiting to receive her.
Something moved in that sea. At first, she couldn’t make out its form. And then she could.
The question was answered. She understood what was bringing her to the palace. She saw what she had spent a lifetime serving, and the sense of betrayal was deeper than seas or skies. Her regret was instantaneous, complete, horrified. She tried to turn back, willing herself into the flesh she’d already half abandoned. She tried to scream.
The thing that called itself Kithamar, the thing that had eaten its rotting way through generations of her ancestors, caught her in grey-white teeth. It shook its vast head like a terrier killing a rat, and the thin, bright connection of herself to herself, already made tenuous by years of grooming and effort, snapped.
Andomaka Chaalat, great lady of the city and high priest of the Daris Brotherhood, didn’t die. It wasn’t so gentle as that.
Tregarro watched as she made the deathmark, drawing it in her own blood, and at once, it darkened and smoked. If anything, the effect was faster and more violent than before, as if the blood might catch fire. A sign, he guessed, that Ausai’s spirit was close. She cleaned the blade, and perversely, he felt the urge to tip over the little basin of water. Ruin the rite. But it was only a moment’s perversity, and it passed. She drew her name in water. The deathmark spat. She put down the blade, leaning forward with both palms flat against the altar. Something shook, but the candle flames didn’t waver.
Andomaka shifted forward with a little cough like a gasp. She straightened, and she stood. The laugh that came from her throat was as familiar as his own voice. But it wasn’t her.
“Oh, it is good to have that done with,” she said, then stretched. On the floor, the dark cloth had slipped off the dead boy’s face. Andomaka stepped over, looking down at the corpse with something like compassion in her eyes. “I would have been beautiful in that one, given a few more years. Such a waste. We’ll want that burned and the bones ground down.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Lady,” Andomaka said. “Your lord is now your lady, after all. Kithamar has become a woman again.”
“Yes,” Tregarro said. “Of course. My apologies.”
“It’s always an odd transition. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a body like this. It will be a pleasant change,” she said, and sat on the altar as the boy had so often done. “We’ll want to put the blade someplace much safer than last time. With any luck, we won’t need it again for a very long while, but I’m not too proud to learn from my mistakes. I don’t want to do this all again a few decades from now.”
“Of course.”
Andomaka rubbed her arm idly, as if she were feeling the cloth sleeve of a new jacket. “And with this behind us, I think we can turn to the other work at hand. My nephew and his daughter…” Andomaka stopped, shook her head, and laughed again. “My cousins. Byrn a Sal and Elaine. And also Saffa and our unwelcome visitor.”
Tregarro took up the knife, wiping away the last clinging drops of water with the ritual cloth. His throat felt thick, and he wasn’t sure why. He hoped he wasn’t getting ill. If Andomaka noticed, she didn’t say anything.
“Saffa’s girl,” she said. “She was Inlisc with a Longhill slant to her vowels. We have some of those in our coin box, don’t we?”
“A few, yes,” Tregarro said.
“Well, gather up our hired knives, Tregarro, my friend. It’s time we sliced off some loose threads.”
PART THREE
SPRING STORMS
Violence is the nature of the world. Peace is the pause between blows.
—From “Aunt Thorn and the King of Crows,” a traditional Inlisc folktale
I don’t know,” Alys said to no one for what had to have been the thousandth time at least. “He didn’t tell me that he was doing it. We found the place together. The plan was to go in, the both of us. But Ullin’s Ullin. Sometimes he changes the plan. I guess he went in without me.”
Her room was silent apart from the distant rumble of carts in the street and a man’s muffled laughter that came through the wall. Alys shifted on her mattress, trying to find a position of comfort. She couldn’t.
“The girl that was with him?” she said, answering the question no one there had asked. “I wasn’t sure there was one. Anything could have happened to her. You’ll have to ask him.”
And could they? If anyone could haul the dead up out of their graves, it was Andomaka. If Ullin rose from his own ashes, she didn’t think he’d likely cover for her.
It would have been so much better just to have done it. A few swings of her club, and the girl’s brains would have been ready for a sausage casing. Alys would be dreaming at ease instead of worrying at a story that she wouldn’t have believed if she’d heard it. Only she wouldn’t have been. That was the hell of it. She’d have been losing the same sleep for different reasons.
“I don’t know,” she said again. “I don’t know what happened.” And then, to Andomaka or Ullin or Darro, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
She didn’t weep. She was done with that. The shock and sorrow had been hard as a fever at first, but they were gone. All that was left were the bone-deep dread and the shame of her own cowardice. Darro would have followed through. Darro would have killed the girl. The box of ashes was on the table. From where she lay, she could just catch sight of it. One of her shutters was open, and the sunlight fell on Darro’s deathmark like the gods were pointing a finger at it.
“You would have, wouldn’t you?” But even in her imagination, her brother was silent.
The ache and emptiness she’d felt that terrible day at the temple when she’d seen Darro’s corpse had been pure and overwhelming. Something had screamed in her then, and gone on screaming for weeks. She still felt it sometimes, but she had to work for it now. She had to will the pain back to its fresh, transcendent rawness. The ache was duller now. Grey as ashes.
She was losing him. Darro’s face, his voice, the way he held his weight over his feet like he was always on the verge of running. She could remember them, but they didn’t intrude on her the way they had. The grief was in her, but it was weary, and she was weary along with it. And Darro wasn’t there to help her remember. She wanted the pain back. She wanted it to whip her on, because if it didn’t she might decide to stay in her little bed in the shadows and let herself starve or else eat her own shame until it poisoned her.
“I don’t know what Ullin did. You’ll have to ask him,” she said.
She wanted to feel bad for Ullin, and she did, a little. She’d liked him well enough, and seeing him dead was a blow. But she’d felt pure grief before this. She was a proud citizen of grief, and flew its flag in her heart. With Ullin, it was nearer to embarrassment that she’d let him down.
