“Tell Barrick… “ she said,”… tell Barrick…” but that was all she could manage before weariness finally breached the stronghold and conquered her.
11. Bride of the God
THE BERRIES:
White as bones, red as blood.
Red as coals, white as clay.
Are none of them sweet?
If Qinnitan had thought the autarch’s throne room would be a more intimate setting than the cavernous Temple of the Hive, she would have been very wrong the majesty of the Golden One’s entourage was even more overwhelming here, the white-and-black-tiled hall packed with hundreds of soldiers and servants and the representatives of dozens of noble families and of trade and bureaucratic interests, all joined together under the eyes of the watchful, wide-eyed gods painted on the ceiling. The autarch himself sat at the center of it all on the great Falcon Throne, an immense bird’s head covered in topaz feathers, the eyes red jasper, Sulepis Bishakh am-Xis III himself was seated beneath the awning made by the upper part of the giant raptor’s gaping golden beak. The autarch was surrounded by his legendary musketeers, the Leopards, and the Leopards were surrounded in turn by an almost equally famous troop of Penkalese mercenaries, the White Hounds. These Hounds were all second or third generation now, their forefathers originally captured by the current autarch’s grandfather in a famous sea battle. Few of them could still speak the language of Penkal, but the master of much of the continent of Xand had more than enough pale-skinned women at his disposal to keep the present generation of Hounds as white as their forebears. They were strange-looking men, these northerners, even to Qinnitan’s frightened, confused gaze, built more like the bears she had seen in pictures than like hounds, hairy and wide-bearded, broad of back and shoulder.
From behind the Perikalese mercenaries, one of the Leopard soldiers was staring at her—an important soldier, judging by the long black tail on his helmet. He had a frown like a gash, and his elaborate armor only emphasized his own broad shoulders. Terrified she had already done something wrong, Qinnitan dropped her eyes.
When she looked up again, the knot of courtiers was moving away from the Falcon Throne, shuffling backward with many bows and flutterings of hands, and she could see the autarch once more. The young god-on-earth leaned back and gazed up at the stretching beak above his head as if the room was empty but for himself, and briefly scratched his long nose. His gold finger-stalls glittered, tiny guardians of the safety of all creation: it was a truth as powerful as the blueness of the sky that the autarch must not accidentally touch something impure.
Qinnitan’s mother was weeping again. Qinnitan was frightened, too, but she still couldn’t understand such behavior. She bumped her mother’s side with an elbow, a piece of impertinence that would have been unthinkable in most families. “Hush!” she whispered, which would have been thought even more inexplicable.
“We are so lucky!” her mother said, sniffling.
We? Even through the terror at being singled out, the overwhelming strangeness of it all, and even an unavoidable tingle of pride at having somehow caught the eye of the most powerful man in the world, Qinnitan knew one thing: she didn’t want to marry the autarch. There was something about him that frightened her very much, and it was not simply his matchless power or the things she had heard about his cruel whims. There was something in his eyes, something she had never seen in another person, but might have seen once in the eyes of a horse that had bounced its rider off his saddle and then, when the man’s foot caught in the stirrup, dragged him to his death through the crowded marketplace, smashing the rider’s head against the cobbles for a hundred paces before a soldier brought the beast down with an arrow. As the horse lay gasping out its last bubbling red breaths, she had seen its eye rolling in the socket, the eye of something that was not seeing what was really there.
The autarch, although calm and apparently amused by what he observed around him, had such an eye. She did not— did not —want to be given to such a man, to go to his bed, to undress for him and be touched and entered by him, even if he truly was a god upon the earth. The very idea made her shudder as if she had a fever.
Not that she had any other choice. To refuse would be to die, and to see her father and mother and sisters and brothers die before her—and none of the deaths, she felt sure, would be swift.
“Where are the bee-girl’s parents?” the autarch asked suddenly. The room fell silent at his voice. Someone let out a little nervous cough.
“They stand there, Golden One,” said an older man wearing what looked like ceremonial armor made out of silver cloth, pointing a finger toward the place where Qinnitan’s mother and father huddled facedown on the stone floor. Qinnitan suddenly realized she had not abased herself, and put her head down. She imagined the man in silver cloth must be Pin-lmmon Vash, the paramount minister.
“Bring them up,” commanded the autarch in his strong, high voice. Someone coughed again. It sounded loud in the silence that followed the autarch’s words and she was terribly glad it wasn’t either of her parents.
“Do you give her up to be the bride of the god?” the minister asked her mother and father, who still cowered, unable to look up at the autarch. Even through her own misery, Qinnitan was ashamed of her father. Cheshret was a priest, able to stand before the altar of Nushash himself, so why should he be unable to face the autarch’
“Of course,” her father said. “We are honored… so… we are…”
“Yes, you are.” The autarch flicked his glittering finger at a wooden casket. “Give the money to them Jeddin, send some of your men to help them carry it home.” The Leopard soldier who had been staring at her earlier murmured a few words and two of the autarch’s riflemen stepped forward and lifted the chest. It was clearly heavy.
“Ten horses worth of silver,” the autarch said. “Generous payment for the honor of bringing your daughter into my house, is it not?”
The men with the money chest had already started back across the throne room. Qinnitan’s parents scrambled awkwardly after it, trying to keep it in sight but not daring to turn their backs even slightly on the autarch.
“You are too kind, Master of the Great Tent,” her father called, bowing and bowing. “You bring too much honor on our house.” Qinnitan’s mother was crying again. A moment later, they were gone.
“Now,” said the autarch, then somebody coughed again. The autarch’s lean face writhed in annoyance. “Who is that? Bring him up here.”
Three more Leopards sprang down from the dais and out into the room, their polished, decorated guns held high. The crowd shrank back from them. A moment later they returned to the dais, dragging a frail young man. The crowd drew even farther back, as though he might be carrying a fatal illness, which in fact he probably was, since he had drawn the angry attention of the god-on-earth.
“Do you hate me so much, that you must interrupt me with your braying?” the autarch demanded. The young man, who had fallen onto his knees when the Leopard soldiers let go of him, could only shake his head, weeping with terror. He was so terrified his face had turned the color of saffron. “Who are you?”
The youth was clearly too frightened to answer. At last the paramount minister cleared his throat. “He is an accounting scribe from my ministry of the Treasury. He is good with sums.”