"Anything, Your Glory."
Kelmomas closed his eyes, floated in the luxurious sensation of her fingers twining through his curls.
"I need someone, Sankas," she said from the darkness immediately above him. "I need someone… Someone who can kill."
A long, appreciative pause.
"Any man can kill another, Empress."
Words. Like flakes of poison, a mere handful could overturn the World.
"I need someone with skills. Miraculous skills."
The Patridomos went rigid. "Yes," he said tightly. "I see…"
Lord Biaxi Sankas was a son of a different age, possessing sensibilities that never quite fit the new order Father had established. He continually did things that struck the boy as odd-like the way he not only dared approach his Empress but actually sat upon the edge of her bed. He gazed at her with bold candour. The play of dim light and shadow did not flatter him, drawing deep, as it did, the long ruts of his face.
"Narindar," he said with a solemn nod.
The young Prince-Imperial struggled to preserve the drowsy sorrow of his gaze. He had heard no few tales about the Narindar, the Cultic assassins whose name had been synonymous with dread-that is, before Father had unmasked the first of the Consult skin-spies.
Funny, how men had only so much room for their fears.
"I can arrange everything, if you wish, Your Glory."
"No, Sankas. This I must command myself…" She caught her breath by biting her lower lip. "The damnation must be mine alone."
Damned? Did Mother think she would be damned for murdering Uncle Holy?
She doesn't believe this, the secret voice whispered. She doesn't believe a Dunyain can be a true anything, let alone the Holy Shriah…
"I understand, Your Glory." Biaxi Sankas said, nodding and smiling a humourless smile that reminded the boy of Uncle Proyas and his melancholy devotion. "And I admire."
And the boy craned his head up to see the tears at last overwhelm her eyes. It was becoming ever more difficult, finding ways to make her cry…
She clutched her boy tight, as if he were her only limb remaining.
The gaunt Patridomos bowed precisely as low as jnan demanded of him, then withdrew to afford his Empress the privacy that all anguish required.
CHAPTER NINE
The shape of virtue is inked in obscenity.
Early Summer, 20 New Imperial Year (4132 Year-of-the-Tusk), The High Istyuli
"I am the smoke that hangs from your cities!" the Nonman screams. "I am the horror that captivates! The beauty that chases and compels!"
And they gather before him, some kneeling, others hanging back with reluctance and terror. One by one they open their mouths to his outstretched finger.
"I am the plummet!"
Twelve walkers, little more than grey shadows in the veils of dust, lean to the rhythm of their exertions. The forests, vast and haunted, are behind them. The Sea, trackless and heaving, is behind them. The dead who mark their path are long rotted.
The plains pass like a dream.
Food becomes scarce. Xonghis continually scans the ground for sign of voles and other rodents, leads them on a winding course, toward this or that high-circling bird of prey. Whenever he finds a warren, he directs the Wizard to tear up the ground while the others stand ready with their weapons. Arcane lights prise the earth in broad sheets. When the Imperial Tracker guesses true, most are killed outright, while the others are stunned or lamed enough to easily skewer. Fat-limbed rats, Mimara can not help but think as she devours them, her face and fingers greased in the evening gloom. Because finding the warrens is uncertain, they heap uneaten carcasses on their backs.
This is what kills Hilikas: sickness from spoiled meat.
The twelve become eleven.
Starlight provides their sole illumination at night. The Captain speaks only to Cleric, long murmuring exhortations that no one can quite hear. The others gather like shipwreck survivors, small clots separated by gulfs of exhaustion. Galian holds court with Pokwas and Xonghis. The three gripe and joke in low, suspicious tones and sometimes watch the others, only to look away when the subject of their scrutiny turns to question them. Conger and Wonard rarely speak but remain shoulder to shoulder whether walking, eating, or sleeping. Sarl sits alone, skinnier, and far less inclined to ape his former role as Sergeant. Mimara catches him glaring at the Captain from time to time, but she can never decide whether she glimpses love or murder in his eyes.
Of the Stone Hags, only Koll remains. Never has Mimara witnessed a man so gouged. But he awakens, wordlessly, joins their long striding march, wordlessly. It seems he has forsworn all speech and thought as luxuries belonging to the fat. He has abandoned his armour and his girdle. He has tied a string from the pommel of his broadsword, which he slings about his forehead so he can carry the blade naked across his back.
Once she catches him spitting blood. His gums have begun bleeding.
She avoids all thought of her belly.
Sometimes, while walking in the dusty cool of the morning, or the drought-sun glare of the afternoon, she catches herself squeezing her eyes shut and opening them, like someone warding much needed sleep. The others are always there, trudging through their own dust in a scattered file.
As are the plains, stretching dun and white to the limit of the bleached sky…
Passing like a dream.
"How I loved you!" the Nonman weeps. "So much I would have pulled down mountains!"
Stars cloud the sky in sheets, vaulting the night with innumerable points of light. In the shadow of the False Man, the scalpers bend back their heads, open their mouths in infant need, infant wonder.
"Enough to forswear my brothers!"
They wave their arms in exultation, cry out in laughing celebration.
"Enough to embrace damnation!"
Koll watches them from the dark.
– | The Wizard recites long-dead poets, his voice curiously warm and resonant. He argues metaphysics, history, even astrology.
He is a wild old man, clad in rancid hides. He is a Gnostic Mage from days of old.
But he is a teacher most of all.
"The Qirri," he says to her one evening. "It sharpens the memory, makes it seem as if… you know everything you know."
"It makes me happy," she replies, resting her cheek on her raised knees.
A beaming smile splits his beard. "Yes… sometimes."
A momentary frown clenches his brow.
He shakes it into another smile.
The plains pass like a dream.
She sits with herself in the high grasses, thinking, Could I be this beautiful?
She finds herself fascinated by the line of her jaw, the way it curves like a chalice to the soft hook of her earlobe. She understands the pleasure that mirrors hold for the beautiful. She knows vanity. In the brothel, they endlessly primped and preened, traded fatuous compliments and envious gazes. Beauty may have been the coin of their subjugation, but it was the only coin they possessed, so they prized it the way drunks prize wine and liquor. Take away enough and people will treasure their afflictions… If only to better accuse the world.
"I know what you're doing," she whispers to the thing called Soma.
"And what am I doing?"
There are differences to be sure. It wears the rags that were once Soma's gowns, for one. And the thing is filthier than she-something she would have not thought possible before encountering it here, away from the others. Especially about the face and neck, where the remains of multiple raw feedings have sheathed and stained its skin…