Carnelian ran his hands over the carvings on the block of jade, over its handle, its tassels. 'Here, take it.'
Fey put her hands out and he put the Seal into them.
'Please, go now. Take it to her with my respects. Come back as quickly as you can. I'd like you to help me make arrangements to go to Coomb Imago. If I leave it to anyone but you I'll get a lot of fuss. All I really need is a mourning robe.'
INTO THE LABYRINTH
Crucifixion is a punishment capable of infinite refinement. A spectrum of pain effects can be readily achieved. With judicious care, the agony can be extended for long periods without danger of accidental fatality. The technique is particularly useful as an object lesson to the inferior and has, besides, an element of aesthetic display.
Fey struck the smallest heart-stone turtle. Its chime rippled off across the water. Fey struck it again. The second vibration dulled away to silence. The crater seemed to be an ear listening to the sky. The further curve of the Sacred Wall could have been a crack in the world. Carnelian's red mourning robe looked grey. He turned to look along the quay, up past the towers of the Lower Palace to the Eyries. While waiting for Fey, Carnelian had tried to sleep, but he had been unable to quieten the arguments in his mind. At last he had given up and gone to a window from where he could see the Pillar blotting milky swathes of stars. He had reread the letter that Spinel had given him many times, until he was able to convince himself it might have come from his father. Fey had come at last, alone, as Carnelian had asked her to. She had helped him put on the mourning robe. Then, together, they had made their way down the stair with guardsmen carrying lanterns to fight the steps.
On the quay, as he searched the darkness for the kharon boat, Carnelian felt the ceiling sky begin to redden. Twilight still filled the crater right up to its brim. Mist seemed to be teasing out from the bobbin of the Pillar. A thin birdsong stirring only thickened the silence. The Yden's lagoons were reflecting some murky alien sky. Beyond them, the Labyrinth seemed a burial mound. Carnelian shivered though he was immersed in the hot humid breathings of the lake. He began to ask Fey about the crater mosdy to feel breath moving in the cavity of his mouth, to bring his world back to a scale in which he was more than just a sliver of fleshed bone. He drew answers out of Fey as if they were arrowheads buried in her flesh, but then paid no attention to them.
Suddenly, Fey turned to him. 'Please tell the Master that though I failed his trust I never betrayed his love.'
'You can tell him yourself when we both return,' said Carnelian.
Fey would not look at him. Carnelian felt he was being judged.
'We'll come back, Fey. We will, and when we do, we'll put right all the wrongs.'
Fey put her hand on his arm. 'You've already put things right with your forgiveness.'
He put his hand over hers. As they watched the pallid boat ruffling the fiery mirror of the lake, Carnelian checked his hand to make sure he had brought the jade rings he needed for payment. He looked down at Fey. 'When Tain's finished his quarantine, will you see if you can find a way to send him to me?'
'Of course, Master.'
The bone boat was slipping along the quay, a ferryman at her bow, his one eye spying out her way. Carnelian squeezed Fey's hand and let it go. There were tears in her eyes.
'It'll take a few days to get a household to you. I'll make sure to include a court robe.' That's good.'
They looked at each other. 'Goodbye, Fey.' 'Goodbye, Carnelian.'
He stood for a moment, unsettled by her use of his name, then climbed aboard. As the boat sighed away he looked back at her. She was a forlorn stump on the quay. For a moment he was sure he could hear a wind keening over the lake. He shuddered, not understanding where the feeling came from. Perhaps this parting reminded him too much of sailing away from the Hold. He told himself it was not the same at all, lifted his hand and waved.
The bone boat rippled the shadowy reflection of the Sacred Wall. Far above, its edge caught fire in the dawn. Sunlight burned quickly down the buttresses and deep into the coombs. Carnelian watched it reveal palaces and the jewelled colours of the gardens.
They rounded a promontory, into a coomb bay that gouged deep into the wall. He looked along the blazing deck, wondering where the ferryman was taking him. He could see no palaces, no gardens. One more outcrop swung past the starboard bow, allowing him to look into an inlet whose upper reaches were filled with a dazzling avalanche of sculpted stone. Terrace piled on terrace. Spires and towers frowned and stared with faces. Giants stood impaled, disembowelling balconies, their skin riddled with windows. Where terraces came out over the water they were held up by buttresses shaped like men up to their waists in the lake.
The boat was nearing a white caryatid colonnade. The figured columns looked down, their faces desperate, enraged as they bent under a mountainous piling of balconied halls. As the boat came to rest, Carnelian squinted into the cavernous atrium framed by their shins. He used the bone post to swing himself onto the quay, and swivelled round into the blinding sun. He could feel his mask aflame. His sight was slow to return. Like an Ichorian, the crater was half in shadow, half in light. The division of the two vibrated along the ridge of the Labyrinth mound and up the flank of the Pillar of Heaven. Into this vision the kharon's bone-patchwork stern was shimmering away.
Carnelian turned to peer into the atrium. He walked round a lichened foot and column leg. For a time there was nothing but blackness. Then from the gloom there emerged a wall of crowding Masters, tall as trees. He discovered in their midst a doorway that even they could have entered without stooping. It opened onto a flight of steps flanked by oily mosaics. He ran his hand over the amber and jade. Hearing footfalls, he looked up the endless stair. Men were coming down looking smaller than his hand, their faces crossed with dragonflies.
He waited till they were close before he stepped out into the light. 'I've come to visit your Master.'
His words produced a hunching commotion on the stair. He moved back to give them space to kneel. Their faces were so tight with fear it narrowed their eyes and made them unable to close their mouths. He was lifting his hands in reassurance but they were throwing glances back the way they had come. Carnelian looked up the stair expecting to see the horror that stalked them.
'Your Master…?' he asked gently.
They shook their bowed heads erratically. 'Sorrow, sorrow…' one of them began.
Another looked up, eyes popping from between the wings of his dragonfly tattoo, brown blood smearing his forehead. 'Expected?'
'Well,' Carnelian began, but stopped when the guardsmen started squashing themselves against the stone. Carnelian could feel their shaking. Silk was sighing down the stair. A Master was descending, wrapped in the flame of a scarlet cloak, his mask smouldering in his cowl. The guardsmen backed away as if the Master were on fire, and as he planted his bright foot among them they began to thud their heads bloodily on the stone.
Carnelian lost his voice watching that reddening.
'You trespass,' said the Master with Jaspar's voice.
Carnelian gestured appeasement, found words. 'You know I have some understanding of your grief, Jaspar.'
'You are mistaken, my Lord, I am not he,' said the scarlet Master. Then who…?'
'You are the stranger here, my Lord. It seems hardly appropriate that you should question me. Who are you that dare intrude upon our grief?'
'I regret the intrusion, my Lord, but I am come as a friend… a friend of Imago Jaspar.'
'Even at a normal time your demeanour, my Lord, would invoke suspicion. Is it your habit to appear naked like a beggar at the door of a Great House? What is your rank, my Lord?'