For there was a part of the song that spoke of death, and loved death; that spoke of killing, and loved killing. There was a part of the song that proclaimed that there must be expiation for the crimes, and the only payment that could be made was death, and that only he who loved death could pay that price.
Only one person in the room understood that part of the song.
The Mayor of the palace looked last at Ferret, who alone was silent. He had torn his stomach open with his own hands; with his own hands he was throwing his bowels onto the floor. Again and again, with gushes of blood, he spilled himself. His face was in ecstasy; he alone in the room had found an outlet adequate for the pressure of the song.
He kept on rhythmically destroying himself until at last he had found his heart; with the last of his strength he tore it from his chest, held it in his hands. Only then did he look down. And he watched his hands as they crushed the organ. It was his benediction. He could die.
And as he fell to the ground, the song ended, and Riktors's screams ended, and the only sound in the hall was the Mayor's heavy breathing and the soft crying of Kyaren at the other end of the hall.
KYAREN
1
It could have been chaos. Word could have gone out, and a thousand soldiers and managers and prefects and rebels of every stripe could have plunged the empire into a civil war that would have undone every work that Mikal had built and Riktors had maintained.
Could have.
But did not. Because the Mayor of the palace was a man who knew he was not adequate to handle the responsibility thrust on him. Because Kyaren was a woman of great presence of mind, who could set aside grief until she needed it
Riktors Ashen fell into a coma, and when he came out of it, he refused to talk; though his eyes registered that he could see light, he would not blink when something was thrust at his eyes; he would not answer; when his arms were raised, they stayed raised until someone put them down. There was no question of his continuing to govern the empire. No one knew when he would recover, if he ever would.
But few people knew there was anything wrong at all. The Mayor of the palace immediately put tight security on the places in the palace where the truth could not be concealed. Riktors's chambers, where he lay attended by two doctors who suspected that unless something happened they would never get out of the room alive. Ansset's room, where the boy with perfect Control, now nearly a man in stature and old in grief, lay weeping hysterically when he was awake. The prison cell, where Josif came out of his drugged stupor and killed himself by stuffing a sheet down his throat until he suffocated. And the rooms where the Mayor of the palace and Kyaren met with imperial officials and gave them Riktors's instructions, as if Riktors were merely busy elsewhere. Those ministers and advisers who usually had close access to the emperor were sent on assignments that kept them out of reach, so they would not wonder why they were denied his presence. One of them was assigned to replace Ansset as manager of Earth. And when anyone asked why Riktors had not held court for so long, the Mayor replied, Riktors has brought his Songbird home again, and they wish to be alone. Everyone nodded, and thought they understood.
But they could not keep it up indefinitely, they knew. Some decision had to be reached, and it was too hard for them. They were both gifted at government, the Mayor and Kyaren, and because they needed help desperately, they depended on each other, and were not jealous, and gradually began to think as one on almost all the issues; when one made a decision alone, it was invariably the decision the other would have made in the same situation. Yet they needed help, and after only two weeks, Kyaren decided to do what she had known she would have to do almost from the start.
With the Mayor's consent, she sent a message to Tew, asking Esste to leave the High Room and come cure the ills of the empire.
2
It is quiet, a silence as black as the dark beyond the farthest star. But in the silence Ansset hears a song, and he wakes. This time he does not wake to weeping; he does not see Josif always before him, smiling shyly and carefully, as if he did not feel the mutilation of his body; he does not see Mikal crumbling to ash; he does not see any of the visions of agony from his past. This time the song controls his waking, and it is a sweet song of in a high stone tower with fog seeping in at the shutters. It is a song like the caress of a mother's hand in her child's hair; the song holds him and comforts him, and he reaches out his hand, groping in the darkness for a face. And he finds the face, and strokes the forehead.
Mother, he says.
And she answers, Oh, my child.
And then she talks in song, and he understands every word, though it is wordless. She tells him of her loneliness without him, and sings softly of her joy at being with him again. She tells him that his life is still rich with possibility, and he is not able to doubt her song.
He tries to sing back to her, for once he knew this language. But his voice has been tortured, and when he sings it does not come out as it ought to. He stumbles, and the song is weak and pitiful, and he weeps at his failure.
But she holds him in her arms and comforts him again, and weeps with him into his hair, and says, It's all -right, Ansset, my son, my son.
And, to his surprise, she is right. He goes to sleep again, rocking in her arms, and the blackness goes away, both the blackness of light and the blackness of sound. He has found her again, and she loves him after all.
3
Esste stayed for a year, working quiet miracles.
I never meant to involve myself directly in these things, she said to Kyaren, when it was time for her to leave.
I wish you wouldn't go.
This isn't my real work, Kya-Kya. My real work waits for me in the Songhouse. This is your work. You do it well.
In the year that she was there, Esste healed the palace while holding the empire at bay. Humanity had been disorganized for more than twenty thousand years, knit together in an empire for less than a century. It could have come apart easily. But Esste's deft voice was confident and forceful; when it was time to announce that Riktors was ill, she already had the trust or respect or fear of those she had to depend on. She made no decisions-that was for Kyaren and the Mayor, who knew what was going on. She only spoke and sang and soothed the million voices that cried to the capital for guidance, for help; that searched in the capital for weakness or sloth. There were no holes for the knives to go in. And by the end of the year, the regency was secure.
Esste, however, regarded as far more important the work she did with Ansset and with Riktors. It was her song that at last brought Riktors out of catalepsia. She was the antidote to Ansset's rage. And while Riktors did not speak for seven months, he did become attentive, watched as people walked around the room, ate decently, and took care of his own toilet, much to the relief of his doctors. And after seven months, he finally answered when spoken to. His answer was obscene and the servant he spoke to was mortified, but Esste only laughed and came to Riktors and embraced him. You old bitch, he said, his eyes narrow. You've taken my place.
Only held it for you, Riktors. Until you're ready to fill it again.
But it soon became clear that Riktors would never be ready to fill his place. He became cheerful enough, after a time, but he was often overcome by great melancholy. He was taken by whims, and then forgot them suddenly in the middle-once he left thirty hunters beating the forest and walked back to the palace, causing a terrible panic until he was found swimming naked in the river, trying to sneak up on the geese that landed in the eddies near the shore. He could not concentrate on matters of state. And when decisions were brought to him, he acted quickly and rashly, trying to get rid of problems immediately, uncaring whether they were solved right or not. He had lost no memory. He remembered clearly that he had once cared about these things very much.