"So you understand," Mimara continued, swallowing. "My first years on the Andiamine Heights were hateful… shameful, even. You understand why I did everything I could to punish Mother."
Achamian studied her for a moment before nodding. The company had crested a gradual slope and now descended, using webs of bared roots as steps. A rare glimpse of the sun flashed above, making silhouettes of shagged leaves.
"I understand," he said as they picked their way down, feeling the raw weight of his own story, his own grievances, press through the tone of his reply. They were both victims of Esmenet.
They walked in silence, their strides as thoughtless as they were quick.
"Thank you," Mimara said after a time, fixing him with a curious gaze.
"For what?"
"For not asking what all the others ask."
"Which is?"
"How I could have stayed all those years. How I could have allowed myself to be used as I was used. Apparently everyone would have run away, slit their master's throat, committed suicide…"
"Nothing makes fools of people quite like a luxurious life," Achamian said, shaking his head and nodding. "Ajencis says they confuse decisions made atop pillows for those compelled by stones. When they hear of other people being deceived, they're certain they would know better. When they hear of other people being oppressed, they're certain they would do anything but beg and cringe when the club is raised…"
"And so they judge," Mimara said sourly.
"They certainly picked the wrong woman in your case!"
This coaxed another smile-another small triumph.
She began talking about her younger siblings, haltingly at first, then with more confidence and detail. She seemed surprised by her own reminiscences, and troubled. She had foresworn her family-he knew that much. But watching and listening to her describe the embittered object of her anger, he came to suspect she had gone so far as to deny her family, to tell herself that she was in fact alone, without the guy ropes of kith and kin to prop her.
Small wonder she had been so reluctant to tell him anything. People are generally loathe to describe what they need to forget, especially the small things, the loving things that contradict their precious sense of injustice.
She started with Kayutas, the child Esmenet had carried in her womb the day Achamian had repudiated her before the assembled Lords of the Holy War. He would have seemed a kind of god to her, she said, had her stepfather not been Kellhus-a real God. "He is the very image of his father," she said, nodding as if agreeing with her own description. "Not so remote, certainly… More…"
"Human," the old Wizard said, scowling.
She then turned to Moenghus, whom she described as the most normal and difficult of her younger siblings. Apparently he was quite the terror as a youth, given to episodes of inconsolable anger and continually brooding, if not sulking. Esmenet regularly left the boys in her care-with the hope of fostering some tenderness for her younger siblings, Mimara presumed. She despised the swimming expeditions most of all.
Apparently Moenghus enjoyed diving under the water and not reappearing for the longest time. The first incident was the worst-she even called on their bodyguards to help her, only to watch Moenghus's head break the flashing water several spans away. He ignored her commands and curses, and repeated the stunt again and again. Each time she would tell herself he was simply playing, but her heart would continue counting beats, and the panic would well higher and higher-until she was fairly beside herself with fear and fury. Then his head would magically pop into sight, his black hair glazed in white sunlight, and he would glare at her shouting antics before descending again. Finally she turned on his brother, demanding an explanation.
"Because," Kayutas said with a detachment that clammed her skin, "he wants people to think him dead."
The old Wizard responded with a nodding snort. When he asked her whether anyone knew about his true parentage, she merely frowned and said, "Questioning our holy parentage is sacrilege."
Lies, Achamian mused. Deceit heaped atop deceit. In the early days of his exile, he would sometimes lie awake at night, convinced that sooner or later someone would see through Kellhus and his glamour, that the truth would win out, and all the madness would come crashing down…
That he could come home and reclaim his wife.
But as the years passed he came to see this for the rank foolishness that it was. He-a student of Ajencis, no less! Truths were carved from the identical wood as were lies-words-and so sank or floated with equal ease. But since truths were carved by the World, they rarely appeased Men and their innumerable vanities. Men had no taste for facts that did not ornament or enrich, and so they wilfully-if not knowingly-panelled their lives with shining and intricate falsehoods.
Mimara's eldest sister, Theliopa, would be the only one of her siblings to occasion a true smile. According to Mimara, the girl was almost incapable of expressing passion of any sort and was oblivious-sometimes comically so-to all but the most obvious social graces. She was also dreadfully thin, famine thin, and had to be continually cajoled and bullied to eat. But her intellect was nothing short of a miracle. Everything she read, she remembered, and she read voraciously, often to the point of forgetting to sleep. Her gifts were so prodigious that Kellhus made her an Imperial Adviser at the tender age of twelve, after which she became a continual presence in her mother's entourage: pale, emaciated, decked in absurd gowns of her own design and manufacture.
"It's hard not to pity her," Mimara said, her gaze flat with memories, "even as you marvel…"
"What do people say?"
"Say?"
"About her… peculiarities. What do they think caused them?" Few things inspired more malicious speculation than deformities. Conriya even had a law-back before the New Empire, anyway-rendering misshapened children the property of the King. Apparently the court diviners thought a careful reading of their deformations could reveal much about the future.
"They say my stepfather's seed is too heavy for mortal women to bear," Mimara said. "He took other wives, 'Zikas' they call them, after the small bowls they pass out for libations on the Day of Ascension. But of those who became pregnant, none carried to term-either that or they died… Only Mother."
Achamian could only nod, his thoughts roiling. Kellhus had to have known this, he realized. From the very beginning he had known Esmenet possessed the strength to survive him and his progeny. And so he had set out to conquer her womb as one more tool-one more weapon — in his unceasing war of word, insight, and passion.
You needed her, so you took…
Regarding her sister Serwa, Mimara said very little, save that she was cold and arrogant.
"She's the Grandmistress of the Swayali, now. Grandmistress! I don't think Mother ever forgave Kellhus for sending her away… I saw very little of her, and when I did my teeth fairly cracked for envy. Studying with the Sisters! Attaining the only thing I truly desired!"
Inrilatas, on the other hand, she discussed for quite some time, partly because Esmenet had sought to involve her in the boy's upbringing. According to Mimara, none of her siblings possessed more of their father's gifts-or more of their mother's all too human weaknesses. Speaking long before any infant should. Never forgetting. And seeing deeper, far deeper, than any human could… or should.
His subsequent madness, she said, was inevitable. He was perpetually at a loss, perpetually overwhelmed by the presence of others. Unlike his father, he could only see the brute truths, the facts and lies that compelled the course of lives, but these were quite enough.
"He would look into my eyes and say impossible things… hateful things…"