The Unspoken Name

by A. K. Larkwood

  “Speak, then,” said the Unspoken One.

  “Unspoken and Unspeakable One, where is Oranna, once your priestess?”

  She had talked this through with Shuthmili. The Unspoken Name was usually prepared to answer two questions, possibly three.

  Tsurai fidgeted, just as if she were a real child trying to think of the answer, and not the vessel of a god.

  At last: “She seeks the key to the Reliquary of Pentravesse.”

  “And what is that key?” said Csorwe.

  “The key is not an object but a place,” said Tsurai. Csorwe ought to have seen that coming. The Unspoken did not lie, but gods had a strange way of thinking about things. Tsurai was watching Csorwe through the smoke with hard, attentive eyes. Even when she tilted her head, those eyes did not seem to move. She seemed to be trying to place Csorwe, to work out how she recognised her.

  Still, this gave them almost nothing to go on. She had to dare another question.

  “Where is that place, Unspeakable One?”

  “In the domain of the Lignite Spire. Before the earthly throne and mansion of the Lady of the Thousand Eyes.”

  “And where—” said Csorwe, but Tsurai cut her off.

  “The one called Oranna is my priestess yet. She is loyal. She serves in devotion. But you—” Tsurai rose up from the throne. Her whole body was shaking, but her eyes stayed on Csorwe. “You I know, faithless child. Why have you returned to me now?”

  Prioress Cweren swooped up onto the dais. Whether she was trying to calm Tsurai down or planning to order her acolytes to set upon the traitor, Csorwe did not wait to find out. The wrath of the Unspoken began to sound in the hollows under the mountain; soon it would overflow into the hall. The last thing she saw was Tsurai, crumpling to the floor like a paper doll. Csorwe took Shuthmili’s arm and, once again, they ran.

  * * *

  They grabbed their bags from the outbuilding where they’d stashed them, and they fled down the road to the town below. The stolen barge was waiting where they had hidden it. The forest sank away beneath them and they rose into the starless sky of Oshaar.

  “Your god is more powerful than I expected,” said Shuthmili, settling into her seat and rubbing her hands together to warm them.

  “Yeah,” said Csorwe. “The Unspoken is as old as hell and everything here has been the same for six millennia or however long. It’s a dumb piece of shit and it just wants to sleep in the mountain and eat a child every fourteen years. And that’s all I’ve got to say about it.”

  “I see,” said Shuthmili. “But of course, it can’t hear anything you say up here.”

  “Mm,” said Csorwe. “You’re right.” She slowed the barge and leant over the edge. A thousand feet below, the pine forest was as black as the sky. “You can’t hear me, can you, you old bastard?” She laughed, bitterly, the cold air catching in her throat like a mouthful of ice water. “We got away again. How does that feel, friend? You’re ten million years old and see and hear everything but I guess you’re slipping in your old age because you didn’t fucking watch me close enough.”

  She fell back in the bottom of the boat and laughed with sheer, idiot relief, until she thought she might be going mad. In the cold air her laughter came out of her in great wheezes, like a leaky bellows.

  Eventually she could open her eyes again, and saw Shuthmili leaning over her, holding the lantern. She blinked away tears of laughter, expecting Shuthmili to look either arch or disapproving. Actually, she was smiling, the same unhappy, unconvincing smile Csorwe had seen before.

  Csorwe realised, now—and in fact she must have been pretty dense not to see it before—that Shuthmili was unspeakably beautiful. That everything about her was perfect and that it would be worth doing almost anything to coax a genuine smile out of her. Csorwe lay still where she had fallen, lightly stunned.

  “Is something wrong?” said Shuthmili. She brushed her hair back out of her eyes in a way that made Csorwe want to take her face in both hands and kiss her.

  “No,” said Csorwe, pleased with herself for how impressively normal her voice still sounded. “I was just thinking.”

  “Oh, do tell me how that goes,” said Shuthmili. “I’ve heard it’s not as good as people make it out to be.”

  “I don’t recommend it,” said Csorwe. She swallowed, sat up, took her place, and started the engine again. Her cheeks were hot despite the cold wind. She had never been so grateful that it was dark.

  Shuthmili peered over the side, looking down at the shadow-woods below. “I’m sorry that we didn’t get much we could use.”

  “What d’you mean?” said Csorwe.

  “The Unspoken One was just laughing at us, don’t you think?” said Shuthmili. “The Domain of the Lignite Spire.”

  “Before the earthly throne and mansion of the Lady of Fuck Knows, yep,” said Csorwe, though her skin prickled as she remembered the statues of Iriskavaal that she had seen in Echentyr.

  “It’s a myth, isn’t it?” said Shuthmili. “Iriskavaal is gone. Her throne was shattered three thousand years ago, and her earthly mansion was in Ormary, and that’s been gone since Pentravesse’s time—it must be—or half swallowed by the Maze…”

  “The Unspoken One doesn’t lie. If it says this place is the key to opening the Reliquary, then it exists.”

  “I suppose it makes about as much sense as anything else I’ve seen this week,” said Shuthmili.

  “You heard what the Unspoken said,” said Csorwe, raking the fingers of both hands back through her hair. “Oranna is still loyal. We have to assume she knows as much as we do, or more. I’ll bet she’s already on her way to the Lignite Spire.”

  They might already be too late, Csorwe thought. She might already be there. How would it look, when Oranna became the incarnation of the Unspoken? What would it do? Living, walking, immortal, and unconquerable. Ready to devour new worlds. The possibilities whirled like falling snowflakes.

  “In that case, I don’t believe the plan has fundamentally changed,” said Shuthmili, wonderfully matter-of-fact. Her voice called Csorwe back from the edge of another panic. “We will find her, and if we are very lucky she will destroy herself in an attempt to commit this appalling blasphemy, and if not, we will stop her ourselves. Someone told me you do this kind of thing all the time.”

  “Someone may have been getting ahead of herself,” said Csorwe.

  “In any case, it seems to me the real question now is how we’re going to find this imaginary place,” said Shuthmili, evidently in no mood for objections. She sounded almost enthusiastic. “I’ve never seen it marked on any map, and our education in geography at the School of Aptitude was just as rigorous as the rest.”

  Csorwe was grateful, at last, to have a question she could really answer. “The refuelling station at the Peacock Gate. A friend of mine from back in the day runs a shop there, selling charts. If the Lignite Spire is a real place, she’ll have the map. It’s two Gates away, so you’ll probably want to get some sleep.”

  * * *

  The night was still. The barge’s engine hummed, a thin icy wind made Csorwe grateful for her winter coat and gloves, and Shuthmili breathed softly in her sleep. There was no other sound.

  Once their course was set for the nearest Gate, she allowed herself to look back at Shuthmili, and let the terrible new realisation that she’d felt earlier settle over her like a thin snowfall.

  The Gate was visible from miles off, casting its light across a network of frozen rivers. They passed into the Maze, where a golden false dawn bloomed, and Csorwe narrowed her eyes against the light.

  Shuthmili was the most beautiful and interesting person she had ever met. That didn’t mean she needed to do anything with this information—not yet, or ever. It was just something nice to hide away and think about from time to time.

  For now there wasn’t anything to do but keep moving. She didn’t have time to reckon with this along with the rest—Sethennai doubting his faith in her, the Unspoken One still clawing
its way after her out of the past—and Shuthmili seemed to have plenty going on too. Gods knew they were both going to need their wits about them for this next part.

  She hadn’t lied to Shuthmili about the Peacock Gate. There was a refuelling station. A woman who lived there really did sell rare charts of the Maze—charts with a reputation for accuracy, no less—and Csorwe really had known her, back in the day.

  Calling Big Morga a friend was a bit of a stretch, though.

  Last time Csorwe had seen Morga, she’d cut Csorwe’s face open and thrown her into the snake pit. Once Olthaaros was out of the way, Morga and Sethennai had struck a deal, in which he would give her a huge amount of money and she would go away forever, just in case anyone decided to start making trouble about the counter-usurpation.

  Well, she’d decide how to handle that particular awkwardness when they got there.

  The hours wore on. Shuthmili stayed fast asleep. At first Csorwe planned how she’d convince Morga to give them the map. Then she just daydreamed about the possibility of getting a hot meal at the station. She had a deep weakness for station food, even the seaweed candies they kept in suspicious vats.

  They were already so far from the House of Silence, and its chill had faded. That place had nothing to do with who she was anymore. This was her real life: the boat, the wind, the lonely inner reaches of the Maze, and a certain quarry to chase.

  * * *

  Three white canopies moved under an arch of ancient stone, like seabirds returning. The shadow of the mazeship Ejarwa rippled across the blanket of fog below as she passed.

  Ushmai was at the wheel. Oranna stood on the ship’s viewing deck. The air of this world was chilly and full of dust. It tasted like salt on the tongue.

  She should really have been used to the cold by now, but she kept thinking about her library, back in the House of Silence. That had been the last time she had really been warm.

  Mortification of the flesh is an offering to the divine, adding salt to the meat of sacrifice. It sharpens a practitioner’s ability. Oranna had no desire to sew up her lips or put out her eyes, but she was far from the Shrine of the Unspoken and she needed to squeeze out as much power as she could. Constant, low-grade cold and hunger seemed to be doing it so far.

  It helped that they had run out of money a month earlier, shortly before they travelled to the Hollow Monument. Oranna tended naturally toward a pleasant roundness, but in recent weeks her cheeks had hollowed as their supplies had run low. The last of the House of Silence candlesticks had gone to fuel for Ejarwa, and that was almost all used up. The last of the lay-brothers was dead, sacrificed in the Maze to fuel Oranna’s navigation spell. She was burning through the dregs. Only Ushmai was left, and even she would find her ultimate use in time.

  Everything was rushing toward its end. The only solid object was the Reliquary, safely tucked into an inner pocket of her robe. Its hard edge bumped against her thigh whenever she moved.

  The rush of the end wasn’t as exhilarating as Oranna had hoped. She was exhausted in body and soul. There was no joy in her work anymore, and no spark of dark elation when the Unspoken answered her call. There was just more to do, and more danger to guard against.

  It would be worth it, she told herself. She had spent such long years in the House of Silence, cold, bored, and deprived of any worthwhile company. She knew how to bear the hard slog. Belthandros’ visit had provided the spark that she needed—a taste of the bright world outside—and since then she had gone so far beyond what he’d been prepared to teach her.

  The mage’s death lies always just ahead of her, as if she stands with the sun behind her and looks upon her shadow. Another principle she had learned in the House of Silence, where they were always so keen on your acquiescence to death, and so fearful of any challenge. When the Unspoken One accepted her as its incarnation, she would no longer know weariness or weakness or doubt. She would have its power and its knowledge, and she would have life. So many years of life. A whole future, to write and rewrite the world.

  Early on, she had thought of taking back the House of Silence—making her library whole, teaching Cweren the consequences of usurpation, and turning the place she had hated for so long into her own fortress—but it was almost beneath her now. If she was going to build a citadel for the Unspoken, there were other places. She had heard, for instance, that Belthandros Sethennai had a city that was dear to him, and it might be amusing to make him give it up.

  At last, they rounded a corner, and she saw the tower. It bit the fog like a single jagged tooth, cutting with its serrated edges into the sky itself. It was a broken bone, a shattered spur, a claw.

  It was real. The earthly mansion of Iriskavaal had survived. It was within her grasp. Everything she had worked for, everything she had suffered and struggled and killed for. The Lignite Spire was still standing, and it held the key to the Reliquary.

  Oranna clung to the rail and laughed. The wind carried the sound away.

  “Ushmai,” she called. “Take her in. We’re here.”

  17

  Young Blood

  THE PEACOCK GATE WAS set high up on the flank of a canyon. Every now and then the Gate flashed as a vessel passed through, sometimes a bitten-off rhythm of flickers as an entire convoy arrived.

  The station had begun as the hulk of a single merchant tanker, colossal and derelict, anchored to the rock just below the Gate by great chains to serve as a place for the trade ships to refuel.

  Since then it had grown and grown again. Broken ships from a hundred different worlds had been tethered to it in tiers, laced with covered walkways and pontoons, canopies and bridges and floating outposts, so that now the whole place looked less like a flotilla and more like a single monstrous organism, a tumour of maze-oak and canvas. Out of this chaos it had become something more than a refuelling station and more than a trading post: a floating town, a home to hundreds of people.

  The lower part of the station was porcupined with mooring-trees, where hundreds of newer ships floated at anchor. Csorwe took the barge in cautiously, navigating through the cloud of small cutters, barges, and shuttles that buzzed around the station. Shuthmili watched over the side, chewing her nails.

  It was difficult to pick out individual ships from the mass, but as they approached, Csorwe saw for the first time: the Qarsazhi frigate Reflection in Tranquillity was here, battened on to one side of the station like a gigantic flea.

  “Shit,” she said, dread rising in her like sickness. The brief sense of purpose and freedom she had experienced out in the Maze drained away. “Your aunt’s here already.”

  The Peacock Gate was one of the busiest in the Maze. She should have anticipated this. Almost everyone had to pass through it eventually. That was the whole reason Morga had set up her shop here, but it also meant that if you were hunting a fugitive you could do worse than waiting and watching at the station.

  Shuthmili worried at the corner of her nail and shoved her hands into her pockets. “How many people are there on the station?”

  “Maybe a thousand,” said Csorwe, her eyes still fixed on Tranquillity as if she could will it into nothingness. “Hard to say. Lots coming and going all the time.”

  “Do you think we can do this? I mean, if we try to sneak in and get to your friend without being spotted? In your professional opinion?”

  Despite the cold fear in her belly, Csorwe grinned. She enjoyed the idea of having a professional opinion.

  “We can do it,” she said. “Station security is pretty territorial. They won’t be any friendlier to your aunt and her people than we are. And I know some back ways around the station. But I can’t ask you to risk it, if you’re not sure.”

  “No,” said Shuthmili, “I’m sure. We’ve come this far. And it can’t be much worse than the revenants.”

  “Let’s hope,” said Csorwe, noticing with some pride how much bolder Shuthmili seemed now than even a few days ago. She thought of the first time she’d struck out on her own, back in Gre
y Hook, and wondered whether Sethennai had noticed it. Had he felt a similar sort of pride? She hadn’t seen it at the time if he had, but then, it would have been the least of the things she hadn’t realised about him.

  The shuttle barge they were flying was conspicuously Qarsazhi, so Csorwe landed it out of sight and stashed it in a crevice of the rock. Then they joined the rest of the foot passengers on their way up to the station.

  The Inquisitors would be looking for two women, one Oshaaru and one Qarsazhi. They were much too obvious. Shuthmili was wearing Csorwe’s coat over her nightshirt, which was less recognisable than her Adepts’ robes but still odd-looking. Possibly they could buy some new clothes once they reached the station. It would be good to buy food, too, and other supplies. Csorwe had itemised her possessions, and all she had left was a stack of dry flatbreads, a half-charged alchemical lantern, and a handful of rude notes from Tal Charossa.

  All the same, she thought their best bet was to get in and out as quickly as possible. She put her dream of a hot meal aside for now. If all went well, perhaps they could go shopping after they got the map.

  Behind the relative order of its security barriers, refuelling bays, and public gangways, the station was an organised shambles: broken-down ships stacked on top of each other in loose tiers, chaotic but more or less stable. The air was hot and thick. The smell varied from tier to tier, but was always bad. Latrines, algal vats, dirty laundry, and fermented anchovies. Csorwe had visited the station many times on business for Sethennai, but it was still difficult to find the way.

  The noise and chaos hit Shuthmili hard. As they were buffeted by the crowds, her eyes became ever wider and glassier. Csorwe remembered the early days in Grey Hook all over again.

  “So, look, we don’t have enough money to afford the map,” said Csorwe, taking her arm firmly to distract her. “Morga knows she can charge. Especially if she figures out how badly we need it. But I have an idea of how we can convince her.”