The Chosen

When they reached the final landing they found many of the Great waiting before the glowering Iron Door. Carnelian expected his father to sink and rest but instead he commanded the syblings to take away the support of his staves and strike them both against the door, crying, 'He-who-goes-before seeks audience with the Regent of the Twins.'

Once the dull thunder reverberated to silence the door opened to show the Hanuses, who bowed.

'I have come with the Regent's nephew to speak to her.'

The syblings lowered their double head in a deeper bow and the door closed. Carnelian felt the gleaming mass of his father rum to look back down the stairs and he went to stand beside him.

'Do you remember standing on the weir gazing down at the sea?' he asked in a low voice.

His father's sun-haloed head shot with fire as he nodded. To both that morning was already a lifetime away.

The Iron Door rumbled open and a Ruling Lord came out walking with a staff, followed by other Masters of his House. He gave Suth an angry look before he and his companions inclined their crowns and stood to one side.

Carnelian's eyes were drawn away to where the Hanuses had one face turned obliquely to him, the other hidden.

The syblings' hand beckoned them to follow. Preceded by his staves, Suth slid glimmering into the Thronehall and Carnelian followed. After a few steps he moved to one side to allow him to see past his father's brocaded trunk. Red braziers painted a bloody road across the night to a bonfire in whose heart something like a blade was standing.

They followed the syblings down the road between the braziers, in whose lurid light Carnelian could just make out the sybling guardsmen on either side. Moonlight pierced the Creation Window and fell around the throne. A black fence edged the lamplit clearing below its pyramid. The palings turned and Carnelian saw they were Sapients with their hole eyes and scar mouths.

Suth took hold of his staves and the syblings that had been carrying them walked away. 'My Lords of the Wise,' he said, with a nod.

The Sapients bowed and turned back to strangle their homunculi, gazing blindly up into the light towards a welter of red like a blooded sword. This scarlet figure stood between two court staves. Curled at its foot was an exquisite carving of white jade, a youth crouching.

Carnelian felt as much as saw the rustle of his father's robe settling. Even kneeling, Suth's chest was at Carnelian's eye level. Carnelian stood uncertain, only falling to his knees when his father touched his shoulder.

The red figure lifted a slim long-fingered hand that had two Great-Rings on it and released a veil. The gold angel face appeared like the sun at dawn. When the other hand rose Carnelian saw that it too had a pair of Great-Rings and then he knew without doubt he was in the presence of the Dowager Empress, Ykoriana. The hand kept rising and pulled a chain that in turn uncurled the white youth to his feet. By his height, his blue eyes and the perfect pallor of his skin he might have been Chosen. The youth's nakedness, however, displayed his mutilation and when Carnelian looked more carefully he saw his eyes were sapphires.

The scarlet mass slid down a little as Ykoriana knelt on her ranga. Her gold face bent towards the youth's ear.

'Sardian, have you become so decrepit that you must needs use your own son as a stick?' The youth's voice was smooth as honey but more sweet. Homunculi mutterings echoed it.

The Regent must know how long and perilous a journey I have had returning to Osrakum,' said Suth.

'We have heard something of it,' said the melodious voice. 'Do you come here as He-who-goes-before or as Suth Sardian?'

That is in your choice, Celestial.'

Every word was repeated by the homunculi.

'I would talk without the Wise.'

The Empress flicked open a hand like a fan in a gesture of dismissal. The Sapients released the muttering throats of their homunculi who hand in hand fled away into the darkness.

'Must their masters stay?' asked Suth.

'You forget, my Lord, that though I am Regent the rigour of my purdah must still be observed,' said the melodious voice.

'It is not only you, Celestial, who have suffered seclusion.'

'Did you then suffer much those long years you spent in the wilderness?' purred the youth. 'Do you mock me, Madam?' 'Perhaps a little. We have led parallel lives.' 'You chose the suffering for us both.' Thwarted love is the charioteer of vengeful deeds.'

Tell me, Ykoriana, have your acts of vengeance brought you joy?'

'Vengeance is a pale creature in comparison to joy, but still, Sardian, she is brighter than darkness.'

'A darkness of your own making.'

Laughter rang out from behind the golden mask making the youth turn round and gaze up at it.

'Sardian, I do think you could take a little more pride in your handiwork,' said the Empress in her own, rich voice.

This was no work of mine,' he said in outrage.

'How not? My husband, now sadly deceased, told me I could buy my eyes with your release.'

Suth shook his head. 'I was horrified when I heard what had been done to you.'

'Spare me your pity.'

'Outrage rather than pity, Ykoriana. Such mutilation was without precedent.'

The Wise found that it was not, my Lord. When I would not bend to my husband's will, he asked them to enforce an ancient form of purdah. Oh, they put me into the dark gladly enough. They envy others the life of sensation that is denied to them.'

'You cannot hate all the world, Ykoriana.'

'Do not presume to lecture me, my Lord, on hatred. On that subject I am as learned as the Wise.'

'Let go your bitterness, Ykoriana, lest it should consume you with its fire.'

She chuckled. 'Do you know he never stopped loving you? All I achieved by sending you away was to make you even more permanent in his heart. The Wise claim that embalming makes the dead live for ever. I thought if I brought you back from your tomb in the sea, your faded beauty, your bitterness would poison the memory of the youth he clung to. It was this that made me release you from your blood oath. But you cheated me even of that small hope. Tell me, Sardian, why did you not return when once more you could?'

'I feared what you might do to my son.'

The Empress braced herself on the youth. Her head fell. 'You know how much I loved Azurea. How could I ever harm her son?'

'You really think you did not harm him, forcing him to grow up outside in the wilderness’

Ykoriana sat back. 'Have you forgotten the offer I made you long ago? My quarrel was never with the child.'

'Perhaps I misjudged you.'

'It is too late for apologies, Sardian, too late for regrets.'

'Is it too late for him to know his mother's sister?'

Ykoriana turned her mask away. 'Have him speak that I might hear his voice.'

Suth urged his son forward. Carnelian obeyed him and found himself staring up at the Dowager Empress in her widow's robes.

‘Speak then… nephew,' she said.

Carnelian licked his lips. 'Celestial… I do not know what it is that you wish me to say.'

The Dowager Empress's mask nodded. 'Perhaps there is something of her in your voice. Sardian, does he look like Azurea?'

'Very much.'

A sound of footfalls was coming up behind them. Carnelian turned to see a pillar of green jewel fire sweeping towards them from out of the dark. He saw the mask floating high above and the horned crowns.

'Celestial, I did not expect…' he heard his father say, then Suth bowed his sun-crowned head as the Jade Lord swept past trailing a quetzal-feathered cloak.

Carnelian knelt watching the cloak slide past. The faces of the Sapients had turned towards the Jade Lord. With his staff, one of them ratded out a rhythm on the floor. The Jade Lord loomed above the Sapient. Carnelian imagined he could feel his hot anger. The homunculi were streaming back. As they folded into their masters' embraces, they began to mutter, first one then another until all had murmured the word 'Molochite'. The Sapients bowed and then opened their fence to let the Jade Lord through. He climbed the steps towards the Dowager Empress, who put out a hand that he caught and folded in his own. Carnelian watched their hands flow in each other's lasciviously and saw that the homunculi were watching too, murmuring, relaying every touch back to the hands at their throats.