‘To the City at the Gates. I shall also take the huimur in the Plain of Thrones.’
Tribute took Carnelian’s words from the throat of his homunculus and then made it speak in the same garbled manner that they had been using before. Sound and murmuring interwove as the Twelve conclaved. At last they fell silent and Tribute’s homunculus alone spoke. ‘Will you accept our aid, Celestial?’
Carnelian considered this. At last he raised his hand in affirmation. He would feel better if at least some of the Twelve were where he could watch them. In truth, he was grateful for any help.
‘Then Legions, Lands and Cities will accompany you, Celestial.’
Carnelian nodded, looking at Osidian lying on his bier.
‘We shall take care of Them.’
Carnelian saw the children, Morunasa’s victims, being carried by the Marula. ‘I shall take these children with me too.’
The Wise voiced no objection. Carnelian remembered the thousands more out in tithe cages. ‘Henceforth, you will consider all of the flesh tithe to be under my protection.’
Even as he spoke Carnelian realized these were the preserve of the Domain of Tribute. It could not help but be understood by all the Wise as a challenge to their leader’s authority. So be it; on this issue, Carnelian would not back down.
‘Your property, Celestial?’
‘If that is what it takes.’
‘Very well,’ Tribute said, at last. ‘We shall accept this. For now.’
Carnelian watched the children being led or carried off by syblings towards the cages of the flesh tithe. Other syblings, armed, escorted the few surviving Oracles, who had promised to oversee the children through their period of infestation. Carnelian had felt no need to threaten them; for, after all, most of what survived of their god was now contained in the tiny bodies of those children.
He frowned, remembering the long weary journey through the darkness. It had taken the fight out of him. The whimpering of the children had frayed his compassion, until it was replaced by disgust for what they harboured in their flesh. By the end, however unfairly, he was angry with them. He shook his head. They were just a place to put his anger. He glanced back at the Forbidden Door, uncertain what he was leaving behind. The Twelve were free. Osidian would, most likely, recover. Carnelian was glad that, when he had asked them, the Quenthas had agreed to remain behind to protect him.
He gazed at the Plain of Thrones. Flanking the edges of the Black Field the dragons remained in the positions they had held since the Apotheosis. The multitude they had menaced had all been driven out of Osrakum, leaving the Black Field a mired and stinking plain. He scanned the towered monsters. It would be best to lead them out on Heart-of-Thunder, from whose tower they were wont to take their commands.
Coming up through the floor onto the command deck, he was aware that the cloying, sickly smell pervading the tower was stronger here. As he stepped away to let Fern up, Carnelian became aware the air was being sewn by buzzing flights. Flies. His heart began pounding, his throat grew dry, as he searched the shadows at the back of the cabin. Somehow, Morunasa’s god had found his way here. A bundle lay against a wall. Soft and tapering at both ends like some monstrous chrysalis. As he approached it, he became quickly aware it was the source of the sweet odour. A smell of meat near rotting. He stood over it. Fluids it had oozed had stained the deck. Creeping horror claimed him as he realized the chrysalis had something very like a head. A bloated, leaking, swollen face. He stared with shock as he recognized it. He jumped when it moved. It was alive. Of course he was. Carnelian had seen enough corpses, had smelled enough, to know he was not yet dead.
‘What is it?’
Carnelian looked into Tain’s anxious face. He tried some kind of explanation. His brother’s face twisted strangely when he heard the name. He did not seem to be listening to Carnelian’s explanation of why this thing was there. As Tain gaped at what was left of Jaspar, Carnelian remembered what that Master had done to Tain when he was a boy. Carnelian wondered if the expression on his brother’s face was the satisfaction of revenge. Disturbed, he looked away. There was a shape in the shadows he had not noticed before. Something like a child in a tight knot.
‘You there.’
The knot tightened.
‘I can see you there.’
The shape unbent and Carnelian saw its face and recognized it. ‘You!’
Legions’ homunculus cowered.
‘What are you doing here?’
The little man indicated Jaspar with a shaking hand. ‘Taking care of the Seraph.’ Carnelian’s frown of incomprehension forced more words out of him. ‘Giving the Seraph water. Chewing his food for him.’
Carnelian stared at the homunculus, unable to understand why he should have chosen to prolong Jaspar’s agony. Anger rose in him at the cruelty.
Then Tain cried out: ‘He’s looking at me.’
He stared in horror at Jaspar, whose eyes had squeezed into view between the bloated lids. Carnelian imagined how riddled Jaspar’s body must be with worms. How long had he lain here? Tended by the homunculus just enough to keep him alive. Just alive.
Tain grabbed at Carnelian’s arm, dug his fingers in. ‘For the gods’ sake kill him.’
Carnelian looked at him, not wanting to ask him, asking him: ‘Do you want to do it?’
His brother stared at him as if he thought him mad. Tain shook his head, frowning, backing away. Carnelian became aware Fern was there, watching. He put his hand out, and Fern understood, for he unsheathed a blade and put its hilt in Carnelian’s hand, who turned, crouched, then insinuated its point under the dewlap chins and, finding the root of an ear, punctured the flesh and sliced down. Then, rising, he watched a dark pool widening around Jaspar’s head.
From Heart-of-Thunder’s command chair, Carnelian gazed out to starboard, through the rain, at the ring of standing stones. Though he had had Jaspar’s body removed, the deck scrubbed, the flies driven away, killed, the smell still lingered. He could still see the stains Jaspar had left in the deck. He looked round to the other side of the cabin to where Fern and Tain were sitting against the wall; Fern staring, frowning, grim; Tain still in shock, haunted. Further back, in the shadows, the homunculus. Carnelian felt like punishing the little man for his cruelty. Empathy quenched this impulse. How long had the homunculus been there, tending Jaspar’s near-corpse? Abandoned without hope of rescue. Perhaps he had been cruel, perhaps merely lonely and terrified. Carnelian had to accept that it was he most of all who had abandoned the little man, had forgotten him.
A mutter at his feet made him turn, feeling the dragon beneath responding to his Left’s whispered command. The view through the screen began sliding right until the narrow entrance to the Plain of Thrones came into view. He focused grimly on the task he had before him and wondered what he was taking them all into.
As they came off the Great Causeway, the downpour abated. On either side, the Turtle Steps cascaded down to the lake. Ahead, something smouldered. Staring at it, Carnelian felt a heaviness descend upon him. Though he knew it was the gilded Clave, it reminded him of the Iron House burning in the midst of a landscape of sartlar dead. Grimly, he contemplated that he was on a mission to inflict more carnage on the poor brutes.
When Fern coughed, Carnelian turned and saw him indicating Tain. His brother had the look of a terrified child, listening. Carnelian listened too. Beneath the shudder and rattle of the cabin there was a dull roaring. He glanced at Tain, then ordered Heart-of-Thunder onto the Cloaca Road. As the monster turned, a canal came into view, cut into the Valley floor, a spillway. Only a dyke separated it from the lake shore, through whose immense stone comb the Skymere poured into the spillway in many waterfalls. Carnelian recalled that Tain’s ordeal in the quarantine had terminated somewhere near those falls. He glanced round at him. Clearly, the encounter with Jaspar had left Tain shaken. A solution occurred to him, not only for Tain – and for the homunculus as well, whom Carnelian knew he could not bring before the Wise – but for relieving another worry.