His father rallied his courage. ‘The thing is this. Though in every way that matters to me you are my son, it is not my blood that runs in your veins.’
‘What?’ Carnelian said, half numb, half exasperated.
‘Your mother came to me already carrying you.’
Carnelian felt his head was filled with ice. ‘Why then did you accept me as yours?’
‘I only discovered it much later.’
‘Much later?’ He groaned. ‘When?’
‘When I could no longer deny how much you look like your real father.’
Carnelian knuckled his forehead in a sort of agony. Then it all became clear. ‘The God Emperor.’
Sardian nodded solemnly.
‘That is why you took me to visit him.’
Sardian was nodding.
Carnelian was startled. ‘I drank his blood.’
‘We arranged it thus.’
For only the blood of his real father would ignite the ichor in his own. Carnelian stared at the man he had thought was his father. ‘This is why you chose not to come back from exile for so many years.’
Sardian nodded.
Carnelian felt his heart was rattling in his empty chest. ‘Then why did we return?’ He knew the answer. ‘Aurum!’
Sardian nodded. ‘The moment he first saw you, he knew you were Kumatuya’s son.’
Carnelian watched a dangerous light come into his father’s eyes. ‘To protect you, I would have slain him, all of them…’
Carnelian looked down at his hands, then he understood. He looked up. ‘You wanted to bring me back to Osrakum and so you put yourself in his power.’
‘He assured me your identity would be safe, for he alone was old enough to have seen Kumatuya’s face before it was hidden for ever behind the Masks.’
Carnelian nodded. It was all so clear. ‘In exchange you agreed to help him in the election…’ He paused, feeling as if he was falling. ‘He’s my brother.’
‘Will you forgive me?’
Carnelian glanced at his father, but barely registered his look of entreaty. ‘Osidian, my brother?’ Things fell into place and with each realization he released a groan. He became aware of his father’s distress, but a wall of ice had risen up between them. ‘There is nothing to forgive. You saved my life.’
Even to himself, his voice sounded cold. He watched his father withdraw behind his own defences, but something stopped him from reaching out to him.
‘And I seek to do so again, my Lord.’
Carnelian felt they were trapped on either side of a barrier and could see no way to scale it. It was easier to slip back into the relationship they had once had: father and son. He focused on what his father had said, instead of the look of pain on his face. ‘Only Aurum knew,’ he said, half to himself. Then it became obvious. ‘He told Ykoriana.’
His father nodded. ‘I do not know that for certain, but I can find no other reason why she would have commuted his deposal to exile. She has as much bile for him as she does for me.’
Carnelian looked at his father. ‘She fears I will accuse her of abduction?’
His father snapped a gesture of anger. ‘To attempt your life before, it was enough for her that she blamed you for the death of her sister in childbirth. To protect herself, as well as out of hatred, this time she will make sure you die.’
Carnelian nodded. It made sense. ‘If I do not return, what will happen to you, my Lord?’
His father shrugged. ‘For the time I have left I can endure Spinel. Then, our- my lineage will die with me.’
Carnelian felt a stab in his chest. The hollows of his father’s face already seemed to be cradling the shadow of death. He wanted to say something, but he was too numb to work out what.
‘I brought your brothers so that you can say farewell to them.’
Carnelian rose, nodding, wanting to get away from this man, who was and was not his father. He turned his hooded face enough to make sure no one else could see him unmasked. He regarded his brothers, now both also unmasked. Their faces had changed, but in a way they were just the same. Suddenly he could not bear the tears in their eyes. He gave them a curt nod, pushed his face into his mask, then strode back towards the tower.
Carnelian stood on the heliograph platform almost unaware of how he had got there. Osidian was a hole cut in the shimmering band of the embassy of the Wise below as it moved off along the leftway. Osidian was his brother. So many things suddenly made sense.
The black shape turned its head as Carnelian approached. Standing beside him, Carnelian gazed down at the torches moving north. The man who had once been his father was down there and those he had once believed to be his brothers. Though they were no longer that, he still felt a tug at his heart to follow them. ‘So what happens now?’
‘Nothing has changed,’ Osidian rumbled. ‘We march against my brother and destroy him.’
Carnelian felt another shock. Molochite was his brother too. He focused on Osidian, struggling to grip this new world. ‘Did nothing the Grand Sapients say affect you?’
Osidian cast an angry gesture into the night so that, for a moment, against the lights below, his hand seemed the wing of a crow. ‘The Wise are desperate. They would do anything, say anything, to regain the power they have lost.’
Carnelian snatched at some hope. ‘You think Lands was making up the threat of famine?’
‘I imagine that is true enough.’ Osidian shrugged. ‘Should we care about some of our subjects perishing? That is their lot. Once I wear the Masks we will re-establish the food supply. Their numbers will soon be replenished. They breed like flies.’
Carnelian turned to see his profile. His brother. It was there clear to see in the face, but their hearts were nothing alike. Sadness soured to anger. ‘Remind me, Osidian, why it is we deserve to defeat Molochite?’
Osidian began one of his interminable speeches about his rights, his god. Carnelian cut through it. ‘This is hopeless. Every move we make only serves to bring more victims into our circle of destruction. And for what? Your childish need to undo something done to you that you consider unfair?’
Anger leached away leaving him feeling sickened. He was no better than Osidian. He had been driving himself on with the delusion he could save others. He was like a fish caught in a mesh whose ever more frantic struggling only served to draw others into the net. When had he come to believe that power would be safer in Osidian’s hands than Molochite’s? Had his confidence that he could influence him always come from a hidden understanding that they had a bond that could not be broken?
Osidian was looking at him, but his face was shadow. ‘The Wise have frightened you. Have you forgotten the promise in your dreams?’
Carnelian burst into laughter that quickly gurgled away to self-disgust. He shifted into Vulgate. ‘We really are so alike, both driven by dreams. By Earth and Sky, I can’t deny I hate the Masters and I’ve supported you because I’d hoped that together we might destroy them, but now I find I can’t go on. Can’t you see that the Wise are right? Even at the price of letting the cancer that is the Masters suck away at the world, our order is better than chaos, than famine’ – Carnelian swept his arm out to take in the sartlar below – ‘better than letting those poor wretches be turned to charcoal by Molochite’s flame-pipes.’ He brought his arm back and took Osidian by the shoulders. ‘This madness has to end. Let’s end it together.’
Osidian pulled himself free, snarling. ‘What’s happened to you?’
Carnelian felt suddenly almost too weary to stand. He knew nothing short of death would stop Osidian. He knew also that he would never be able to kill him. ‘My father came with the Wise. We spoke.’
Osidian’s hands came up to his head. ‘Surely you can see they brought him here to trap you?’
‘Nevertheless I’m going to join him.’
Osidian’s hands fell to his sides and he grew very still. ‘You intend to betray me?’
Carnelian shook his head, finding some comfort in understanding the true nature of the love he felt for Osidian. ‘Not willingly.’