'I shall dismiss Jaspar's men and leave some of my Ichorians to make sure you are not disturbed. They will attend to you. In their presence you may remain unmasked. While I am He-who-goes-before they perform the function of our tyadra. Please, do not leave this chamber until either I come myself or send a summons. Will you do that for me, my son?'
Carnelian nodded, smiling, but his smile crumbled as he watched his father's painful walk across the floor. Turquoises and iridescent blues streaked across the opening door. For a moment Carnelian glimpsed the two half-black men standing guard outside wearing the lictors' golden fish-scales, then the door closed. As he lay back, it felt as if his head were being nailed to the bed.
Carnelian found that if he paced about, the pain in his head became more bearable. The shutters drew him with their fevered shaking. He ran his fingers up the bright crack where they met. The smooth wood led his touch up to a cold mechanism. Bringing his fingertips to his nose, he could smell bronze. He brought a lamp to see the handles, then yanked them down. The lock clicked and the shutters slapped against his hands. As he opened his arms, air and light broke over him like a wave. For moments he was blind and blinking but then a round shape formed in the glare: the Plain of Thrones. Beyond lay the Skymere's fading blue. The looser curve of the Sacred Wall hardened up from its edge. Over it, the Guarded Land was a patchy lilac layer squeezing away under a colourless sky. He was so high that he imagined his outstretched arms were wings lifting him soaring above the crater of Osrakum.
Next day, Carnelian was fretting. He had thrown the last of the sickness off as he slept. With his vigour fully returned, he regretted the promise he had made his father. The chamber felt like a cage. He climbed out of bed and was putting more wood on the fire when there was a knocking at the door. Eagerly he grabbed his mask, hid his face and bade whoever was outside to enter.
A two-headed monster came into the chamber. Carnelian backed away, looking round for something to use as a weapon. The monster kneeled on its three legs and bowed its heads. 'Seraph,' two voices chorused in Quya.
Carnelian pressed his mask to his face to see the creature better through the eyeslits. His head jerked up as another of the creatures came into the chamber. This was four-legged and its two abdomens each had its own head. It was carrying a long box with the outermost of its four arms.
'Seraph?' said the monster still kneeling in front of him.
Carnelian looked down. It was offering him a letter in its tattooed hand. He reached behind his head to tie on his mask and then he took the letter gingerly, as if the hand offering it were fanged. Keeping an eye on the creature he turned the letter and saw that it was sealed with his father's Ruling Ring. He broke it open and read:
Carnelian. Hopefully, you will have recovered. I have sent syblings to prepare you and then to convey you to me.
He heard the door closing and looked up to see that the second monster had disappeared. The box was in the middle of the floor. He looked again at the first monster, still kneeling. 'Please… please rise.'
As the creature rose up onto its three legs it looked up at him and in the firelight he saw it had a pair of beautiful girls' heads. One was tattooed and had eyes of jet like wet tar; the other was unmarked marumaga honey with living eyes that caught the light. They might have been two girls of heated wax pushed together so that their waists and touching legs had melted into one. The left of the pair was all tattooed. Tiny glyphs poured their ink down from her head, swirled her shoulders and arms, one leg and half the one she shared with her sister. Under her gleaming tattoos the continuation of her sister's golden skin showed like cracks in a glaze. The eyes of the unmarked girl moving down his body made him aware of his nakedness.
He blushed behind his mask. 'You… you are syblings?'
Their heads inclined together. The living-eyed one flashed her pearl teeth in a grin. Her jet-eyed sister frowned. 'Why yes, Seraph.'
'I had heard of you… in fairytales, but…'
'Fairytales?' The living-eyed sybling giggled.
Her sister hesitatingly touched his hand with hers. 'See, we are flesh and blood, Seraph.'
'You are…?' said Carnelian, still feeling the fading warmth of her touch.
'We are the Quenthas.'
'Both of you?'
'I am Right-Quentha,' said the living-eyed sybling. She slipped an arm around her sister's shoulders. 'And this is Left-Quentha, my better half.'
Left-Quentha gently slipped her torso free of her sister's arm. 'Will the Seraph allow himself to be prepared?'
Carnelian managed a nod.
The syblings walked round their middle leg to turn to face the chest. They knelt. Their outer arms pushed back its lid while the inner ones began fishing inside. Carnelian gaped as all four arms began taking objects out, laying them in a crescent on the floor. Their movements reminded him of spiders walking. They stood up and turned. Right-Quentha had a smile on her lips. 'Would the Seraph be so kind as to stand here?'
Obediendy, Carnelian moved to the spot her golden hand suggested. She produced a copper mask green with verdigris and carefully placed it over her face. One of her sister's hands helped her tie it on. As all their arms rose up to remove his mask, Carnelian was relieved to see the copper mask had no eyeslits. He looked from one to the other as they cleaned him. It would have been difficult to believe they were anything other than two girls standing close together, except that their arms moved with such a confounding, cuttlefish co-ordination.
'Are there many… people like you, here?' He blushed again.
Left-Quentha jerked her hand back from his cheek as if she had felt its burning. 'Does the Seraph mean Ichorians?'
Her sister's copper mask turned to her. 'I think he means syblings.'
The other frowned. 'You must not speak about the Seraph as if he were not here.'
'I was asking about syblings,' Carnelian said quickly to demonstrate he had taken no offence.
Left-Quentha unstoppered a jar that exhaled sickly myrrh.
Carnelian groaned. 'Do we have to use that?' The Law demands it, Seraph.'
Carnelian submitted and they began painting him with the gum.
'We form four cohorts, Seraph,' said Right-Quentha. 'Of attendants?'
'Of blood guards, Seraph. We also are Ichorians,' said Left-Quentha, touching the silver collar at her neck.
Carnelian looked at their delicate melded body showing the first sweet swellings of womanhood. 'But… you are women, and… and…'
'And one of us is blind, Seraph?' said Right-Quentha, as they bent together to pick fans up from a cloth they had laid out on the floor.
'Well, yes,' he said, grimacing at his clumsiness.
They wafted his skin with the fans.
'I might have given up my fleshy eyes at birth, Seraph,' said Left-Quentha, 'and have always been in darkness, but ears and skin are their own sight.'
'Besides, Seraph,' said Right-Quentha, 'we share much more than just our body. I have access to many of my sister's sensations and she to mine.'
When Carnelian's skin was dry, they carefully held his mask over his face while at the same time tying it on. Right-Quentha removed her copper mask and then they began to dress him in undergarments of pale padded silk that Carnelian recognized as similar to the ones his father had been wearing when he visited.
'But why is it necessary? The blinding, I mean?'
'Mortal eyes would be blasted if they looked on the face of They,' said Left-Quentha. She clinked her stone eyes with her nail. These can behold Them unblinking.' Her face was proud.
Then you are handmaidens to the Gods?'
'Mostly to Their sons.'
'Nephron and Molochite?'
Right-Quentha smiled warmly. 'Most recently, to the Jade Lord Nephron.' 'But also Molochite?'