The Unspoken Name

by A. K. Larkwood

13

  No Hard Feelings

  BELTHANDROS SETHENNAI KEPT THE windows of his quarters open at night. It was an indulgence, and a show of bravado. The wind freshened, and the Chancellor’s palace drank in the black desert night through every heedless pore.

  A moth flickered across the balcony of the antechamber and brushed the security mesh with one wing tip. There was a brief fizz of light, a satisfying crackle, and a faint, sad smell of incineration. It could have been worse. Csorwe had seen the same thing happen to a bat.

  She was waiting in the antechamber with Tal and Shuthmili. It had been a hard journey back to Tlaanthothe aboard the Qarsazhi cutter. They had stopped at a refuelling station only once, and all three of them were hungry and bedraggled, but Csorwe needed to see Sethennai before she could do anything else.

  “Hope you’re going to admit this was all your fault,” said Tal.

  “Remind me why I rescued you?” said Csorwe.

  “Because you need me to fucking carry you like I have been for years,” he said.

  If Csorwe had experienced a moment of treacherous relief when she’d found Tal alive, it had long since faded. To hear him tell it, he’d tracked down the Reliquary on his own, and had practically had his hands on it before Csorwe had snatched it from him and thrown it away.

  She was about to snap back at him when she saw Shuthmili’s expression, exhausted and apprehensive, and thought she’d better save this fight until later. The last few days must have been punishing for the Adept. Even Sethennai conserved his energy between workings. Shuthmili’s face was pinched and drawn.

  It wasn’t long after this that a footman emerged from Sethennai’s private study.

  “He says you’re to go in and I’m to take your friend to a guest room,” said the footman, gesturing vaguely at Shuthmili, who shrank further into her chair. “He says it’s late and he’ll see her tomorrow.”

  Shuthmili looked blankly terrified, and Csorwe realised she didn’t speak the language.

  “It’s all right,” said Csorwe, translating. “Go with them. It’s fine.” She had been so eaten up with the thought of seeing Sethennai that she hadn’t even considered what to do with Shuthmili. “I’ll come to see you later,” she added, and Shuthmili let the footman lead her away.

  Inside the study, Sethennai was sitting by the fire. He had swapped his chancellarial robes for a green silk nightshirt, and his seal for a glass of resin-wine, but he still gave the impression of sitting in splendour. Whatever was to come, it was such a relief to see him, like coming home after dark and seeing the windows lit up. As they entered he looked up with an expression of genuine pleasure.

  “Sir,” she said, and bowed. Tal did the same.

  “Why don’t you come and sit down,” said Sethennai. “I’ll have them bring up a new bottle. And perhaps you have some news for me?”

  Csorwe had expected him to know somehow what had happened, and to be furious already, but it was worse to realise that she’d have to explain it.

  “Sir—” she said. “In the dying world—it was—”

  His expression clouded. “What happened?”

  Csorwe opened her mouth, but could not speak. What could she possibly say? She wasn’t going to get any help from Tal. She looked up at Sethennai, still trying to formulate the words.

  “You were right,” she said. “The Reliquary was there.”

  Sethennai’s eyes widened, filling with a curious light, an excitement she had never seen before. Before Csorwe could think of any way to soften the blow, Tal cut in.

  “Csorwe lost it,” he said. “We nearly had it, and—”

  “Thank you, Talasseres,” he said, tapping his fingers once or twice on the surface of the desk. Sethennai never did anything involuntarily. Csorwe felt cold, as if the breeze from the open window had turned wintry. “You lost it?” he said, turning to her.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  She couldn’t meet his eyes. She made herself stare at the glass of wine, tracing the arcs of light and shadow. If she looked up she was sure she would see the walls and corners of the study beginning to fold in on her.

  She explained as clearly as she could. Her memories of the Hollow Monument were blurry in places, written and overwritten every time she tried to narrate to herself what had happened, and her account was halting. Sethennai looked at her all the time as though from a great distance.

  When she reached the end of the story, he nodded, but said nothing. The silence stretched beyond the moment and into eternity. This was agony. When she dared to glance at Tal, she saw his expression was studiously blank. It was his turn to explain himself next.

  “I sense,” said Sethennai, once they were done, “that the two of you may be about to embark on a point-scoring exercise, and I suggest you think better of it.”

  He rose from his desk and went over to the window, looking out at the lights of the city below.

  “So. The Reliquary exists. It has been found. Intact and extant, after all. It was within our grasp all this time. This should be something to celebrate.”

  Silence; nothing but the crackly song of the security mesh.

  “And yet you lost it. Not only did you lose it; you let it fall into Oranna’s hands. This should not have happened,” he said. “I don’t understand quite how you allowed it to happen.” Tal began to say something, and Sethennai raised his hand. “Either of you.”

  Sethennai stepped out in front of the window, making a blind silhouette against the stars.

  “I have been seeking the Reliquary for the better part of my life, and training you for the better part of yours,” he said, turning to face Csorwe. “And now it is in the hands of an enemy. You must know how deeply I regret this.”

  “She doesn’t know how to open it,” said Tal. “She kept asking. I didn’t tell her.” Csorwe could almost pity him when he got like this.

  “Oranna does not have even one scruple,” he said. “If she manages to open it—well, we’d better help ourselves, because there won’t be anything the gods can do for us.”

  “Why does she want it?” said Tal. Csorwe wished he would shut up. She just wanted the explanation over with so she could go and jump off a bridge or something.

  “I have to assume that a large part of it is spite for me,” said Sethennai. “Beyond that, she wants it for the same reason anybody would want it. Pentravesse’s legacy. All that knowledge. Oranna hoards up knowledge the way people hoard money. For the pleasure of turning it over in your hands and knowing nobody else has it. But that isn’t her only reason. She has an odd theory.”

  He turned back to them, composing himself. Storytelling always put him in a better mood.

  “A practitioner of magic is always in tension,” he said. “Even if one’s patron is a nice, tame, helpful goddess such as the Siren. On the one hand is the well of divine power. On the other hand are the limitations of one’s own frail mortal body. Desire always outstrips reality. We have access to the forces which shape and change the universe, but we are always anchored in flesh.”

  Sethennai held up his hand and flexed his fingers. “This fragile carcass, this little shell, it tires and ages and suffers, and fails faster with every drop of power you drink. Some find that frustrating. Oranna sees it as a challenge.”

  It could be said that Sethennai liked the sound of his own voice, but Csorwe had never disliked this about him. It was a good voice. Like a spider, he could anchor his argument in a familiar spot and spin himself out into unfathomable spaces.

  “There were always rumours about Pentravesse and Iriskavaal. It was said that they achieved an unprecedented union. That Iriskavaal manifested in his body without possessing him. That the goddess held him in her coils without crushing him.”

  Sethennai looked down at his hand again, turning it so that his rings glittered in the firelight.

  “Oranna certainly believes it was done, and that it could be done again, if one had the right bond with one’s divinity, and kne
w the correct ritual. She believes that ritual is one of the secrets contained within the Reliquary.”

  The power of his voice was such that, for a second, Csorwe thought everything might work out all right. If she was safe, with him, listening to another story about old dead wizards in ancient times, things couldn’t really be so wrong.

  She dared to look up, and saw the slight smile wither and vanish.

  “If she is right … I’m sure you can imagine what it is that she wants, Csorwe. If it could be done, Oranna would remove the last barrier between mage and god. She sees herself as the true emissary of the Unspoken One. She would become its incarnation. Living, walking, immortal, and unconquerable. She would bring it out into the light, with all its ancient knowledge and all its hunger.”

  Csorwe felt a chill creep up her spine and take a cold grip of her senses. She knew the Unspoken One still existed. But her ability to sleep and live her life had been built on the knowledge that it existed in its Shrine, in the wilds of Oshaar, where she never had to go again.

  “Oranna has been obsessed with this idea as long as I’ve known her,” said Sethennai. “And now we’ll find out if she can really do it.”

  “We can stop her,” said Csorwe, trying to rise above her growing panic. “We can find her and take it back.”

  “No,” said Sethennai. “I will find her. You two … I think you had better stay here at the palace, where you can do no more damage.”

  “Sir—” said Tal.

  “You heard me, Talasseres,” said Sethennai. “I have no further duties for you at the moment.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” said Tal. “We were so close, and Csorwe fucked it up. Let me go, at least. I can find her. I’d like to show her—”

  “No,” said Sethennai.

  “This isn’t fair,” said Tal, adding, through gritted teeth and with obvious effort, “sir.”

  “Perhaps not,” said Sethennai. Tal sat forward in his chair, fists clenched tightly at his sides. When it became clear that Sethennai had nothing else to say, Tal stood up, shoving the chair back with a screech, and stormed out of the room.

  Csorwe kept her head down, sinking deeper into misery. Sethennai paced back and forth. There was no sound but his footsteps on the floorboards.

  Eventually he came to sit down again, in the seat Tal had vacated, facing Csorwe on the same level.

  “I am not angry with you,” he said. “I share in the blame, really. I made a misjudgment about your capacities. Oranna’s presence affected you,” he said.

  He was watching her with great sympathy; this would have been a consolation if it didn’t look very much like pity. He was right. She had run as far as anybody could run from the House of Silence and she was never going to get away from it.

  “I still want to help,” said Csorwe, managing each word with an effort.

  “Csorwe, you understand that I need agents in whom I can place my absolute trust. You are dear to me, but—in this particular matter—you cannot be relied upon.”

  She had expected to be punished for her failure. Sethennai rarely shouted, but he could be cold. She expected to be excoriated, humiliated. Instead, this. Anything would be better.

  “I really do think,” he said, and with him this kind of hesitation was always rhetorical, “that it would be better for you to remain here for the moment.”

  Sethennai was not a softhearted man. When he had rescued her from the House of Silence, it had not been an act of mercy. Her training was an investment. She had been useful to him. She had gone some way to repaying her debt, and the act of a moment had undone it.

  It would have been easy to claim, like Tal, that it wasn’t fair, but Csorwe wasn’t prepared to indulge herself. Sethennai’s judgment was unbearable, but it wasn’t unjust. She hadn’t been reliable. She couldn’t be trusted with this. She was less than she had been to him. Only children and the sick are pitiable.

  She hardly heard him dismiss her. She rose, numb, blind, cold, and left his presence.

  * * *

  Tal made it back to his room without losing it completely, biting down hard on his lower lip to stop himself shouting or bursting into tears or whatever it was his fragile carcass thought it wanted to do.

  He would never have made it out of Psamag’s fortress alive if he hadn’t got good at this, keeping everything locked down tightly until he was alone.

  He shut and locked the door to his quarters. He took off his jacket and dropped it on the bed. He looked furiously around his room as though one of these mute objects could offer him some kind of consolation, and then, with clinical poise and precision, kicked a hole in the door of his wardrobe.

  His whole body was tender from the beating he had survived in the dying world, so he couldn’t destroy things for very long. Eventually all he could do was fall over on his bed with his hands knotted in his hair, as if the pressure on his scalp might relieve some of the misery seething underneath.

  You heard me, Talasseres.

  Fuck you, old man! I didn’t even get to tell you half of what happened to me—

  Tal actually didn’t want to think about what had happened to him on Oranna’s ship. With that in mind he decided to get drunk. There was a tavern not far from the palace where they knew he didn’t like to be talked to.

  On the way out, he ran into Csorwe in the corridor. Her room was next to his, and he had half hoped they might cross paths. Not that he ever wanted to see her, but there was something unpleasantly satisfying about the inevitability of it, like picking off a scab. And despite his various bruises, this was one fight that might actually feel good.

  “Pleased with yourself?” he said, squaring up so as to block her path.

  “Go to bed, Tal,” said Csorwe.

  “Go to bed, Tal,” he said, taking a step toward her. “Fuck you, Csorwe. Do you think we’d be in this position if you hadn’t screwed up so badly?”

  “I’m not doing this tonight,” she said.

  “Oh, sure, you think you’re being so reasonable. You did this. You fucking did this. I work so hard and he always favours you. I have to live with all your mistakes.”

  “Yeah, you and me both,” said Csorwe. She turned on her heel, glancing back over her shoulder at him as she stalked away. “Go to bed.”

  Tal thought about going after her. Instead he went to the tavern and sat in the corner and drank resin-wine until it seemed like time to move on to hard liquor.

  It had been a mistake to expect anything else from Sethennai. By now, surely, Tal knew exactly what it was that he got, and there was no point hoping for anything else.

  Oh, Tal, you could have died! He tried to think how that would sound in Sethennai’s voice. Even imagining it was pathetic. But then it’s not like I really would’ve given a shit one way or another.

  The thing was, he decided, halfway through his second licorice spirit, that it wasn’t fair of him to expect Sethennai to give a shit, because Tal hadn’t really shown him yet what he was worth. Tal wasn’t a brilliant scholar or a wizard or a statesman, but he was resilient, wasn’t he? However many times he was knocked down, he always got up, and always tried again.

  The tavern closed, and Tal picked his way unsteadily back up to the palace. The night steward was one of his cousins, another young Charossa who’d decided to throw his lot in with Sethennai rather than stand up for the memory of Olthaaros. A smart move, since all Olthaaros’ supporters were now in jail or dead, some at Tal’s own hands. Sethennai had strong feelings about loyalty.

  “Evening, Talasseres,” said the cousin, looking Tal up and down with what he took to be a sneer. “Out on the Chancellor’s business?”

  “Go fuck yourself, Matheos,” said Tal, stumbling back over the threshold and toward the stairs.

  He fell back onto his mattress. His thoughts took a second to catch up with his body, but when they did they were perfectly clear. Loyalty, that was the thing. This was a test, as it always was with Sethennai. He needed to prove that he was still loyal,
and that he was still worth something. And he knew how to do it.

  * * *

  After avoiding a fight with Tal, Csorwe wanted nothing more than to go back to her room and fall into bed, but she had promised to check on Shuthmili.

  Security at the entrance to the guest wing let Csorwe through without question. They were all used to the sight of her coming and going, though she wasn’t exactly friendly with them. Most of the palace guards were ex-mercenaries from Psamag’s old company, who’d found work with Sethennai after the company had broken up, and she didn’t like to think that some of them had probably watched as Morga cut her face open.

  She found Shuthmili in the room where they’d put her, sitting by the window and examining a potted aloe in detail, as if preparing to make a scientific illustration. Her hair was damp and newly combed, falling to her waist in dark waves.

  “Hope they’ve treated you all right,” said Csorwe.

  “Yes,” said Shuthmili. “I thought I might never have a bath again.” She did look restored by it. Csorwe felt very grubby by comparison. She hadn’t washed in at least a week. No amount of finger-combing could get all the blood out of your hair.

  They had also given Shuthmili a spare nightshirt to wear. It was much too big for her, and she looked absurdly delicate. Her Adept’s robes had covered her from toe to chin and Csorwe hadn’t seen her bare arms before: they were smooth and brown and slender, without any of the random scars and calluses that marked most of Csorwe’s body. Csorwe looked away hastily.

  “I’ve been thinking about how to get you back to Qarsazh,” said Csorwe. Shuthmili was obviously keen to be home, and Csorwe didn’t need the distraction of figuring out how to entertain a guest. She’d get Shuthmili onto the next ship back to Qarsazh. And then there would be work to do for Sethennai. She would find something to do—anything to prove that he could still rely on her.

  “The mailship is probably quickest,” she said. “And it’s not too expensive. I’ll take you down to the docks tomorrow.”

  Best to focus on a logistical problem; it helped to take her mind off everything else.