Tal didn’t try to disguise how much of a relief this was.
“Yes, I thought you’d be happy,” said Sethennai. “I suppose Csorwe hasn’t said anything much yet?”
“Mm,” said Tal, surprised that he had asked. For some reason, he didn’t feel like mentioning Csorwe’s request for the newspaper.
“Strange,” said Sethennai. Weary, not as angry as he had seemed before. “Why do you think she did it?”
Tal didn’t know what to say. After a minute Sethennai set out a sheaf of papers and started going through his notes on the day’s business with the Inquisitorate, with occasional questions to Tal.
Sethennai’s daily debriefings were some of the dullest shit imaginable, but Tal didn’t hate this, sitting in the quiet cabin above the city as the ship listed slightly in the wind. And then there was Sethennai’s voice, the effects of which were indescribable, even when he was talking about what Inquisitor What’s-his-tits had said to the Lord High Whatever-the-fuck.
After a while, Sethennai reached out and ran his hand through the short curls at the back of Tal’s neck, in a way that made him forget what he was saying altogether. Sethennai laughed, and suggested that they retire to the stateroom.
“It’s been a while,” Tal said, half hoping Sethennai might not actually hear, because it was only a step away from admitting that Tal had missed him, which was altogether too close to claiming some kind of obligation.
“It has,” said Sethennai, wrapping his arms around him. He laughed again, in a kind of seismic rumble that sent tremors through Tal’s sternum.
Tal scrabbled for the door handle and fell backward into the stateroom, no longer much caring whether he looked like a man in control of his destiny, or, in fact, like a fool with weak knees and his shirt half off.
He felt Sethennai stop dead and turned to see what was wrong, although some wretched part of his brain was already crowing Told you so, Talasseres.
Of course—of course—Oranna was there in the room, sitting in the window seat. If she had been a cat, her tail would have flicked back and forth, but since she was just a terrible bitch, she smiled.
The smile suggested: I know about your orange-blossom water, I know about your new haircut, I know about your handsome shirt. I know exactly what you’ve done to get here, Talasseres Charossa, and I want you to understand that I don’t even have to try to be better than you.
It took Sethennai longer to accept the inevitable. He let go of Tal and stormed past him into the cabin, muttering an invocation and reaching for his gauntlets. Tal tasted the familiar tang of blood in his throat as the air began to hum.
Oranna held up one of the gauntlets between finger and thumb, and smiled. The other was already on her left hand. Sethennai was a bloody moron who must have left them in his room. At least the Reliquary was where it always was, locked away in the safe in the ship’s strong room.
“Good evening, Belthandros,” she said.
Sethennai stopped where he was. The crackling haze of energy in the air didn’t exactly subside, but it folded itself in and around the wizard, sharpening up its edges.
“Oranna,” he said. “This is a pleasant surprise.”
“Thank you,” she said, swinging her legs.
“And how in the name of the Exalted Sages did you get out of the isolation cell?”
“I don’t want to embarrass your security,” said Oranna. She didn’t even look at Tal. “Maybe you ought to select them on some basis other than pliant disposition.”
She got up from the window seat in a cascade of skirts, pulling on the remaining gauntlet as she did so, and smoothing out the wrist.
“Please, stand down,” she said. “I’m just here to talk.” She didn’t come any closer, just stood gracefully and watched.
“If you were here to talk you wouldn’t have worn that dress,” said Sethennai.
Apart from the gauntlets, she was wearing a long gown of wine-coloured silk. Tal didn’t see anything so special about it, except that it was expensive, but then, he had never had much interest in the kind of assets on display.
“Always the gentleman, Belthandros,” she said. “Let’s discuss this in your study, shall we?” She strolled past him, her gaze gliding smoothly over Tal as though he was an unexceptionable footstool, and took the wizard’s seat by the fire. Sethennai followed her.
Tal said nothing, and stayed where he was. There didn’t seem to be all that much point in getting up. Once they were out of sight, he curled up on the floor where he had fallen, wrapping his arms round his knees.
He really should have expected this. The only thing he believed with certainty about the universe was that it was just incapable of giving Talasseres Charossa a break. He didn’t need any more evidence to support this hypothesis, but oh yes, there it was: the door, ajar, did nothing at all to block the sound of the conversation taking place in the study.
“I’m not here to coax it out of you, Belthandros,” she was saying. “Surely you recognise that you’re not in a very good bargaining position. I have your gauntlets, and you won’t channel without them.”
“Is that so?”
“I worked that much out years ago. They’re a prophylactic.” Sethennai snorted, but she went on. “A shield. That’s the first part of the secret. I knew that in principle before I even met you. You need something to protect your body from the power. Am I wrong?”
“If you’re sure of your reasoning, you don’t need me to tell you one way or another,” said Sethennai. He got up; Tal recognised his footsteps moving from one side of the study to another.
“What are you doing?” said Oranna.
“I’m sure you’ll come to the point, given time,” said Sethennai. “In the meantime, I am lighting a cigar.”
She laughed. “Someone ought to have murdered you years ago.”
“Are you certain you’re not here to coax me?” said Sethennai. “I think I might prefer to be coaxed.”
Tal looked around uselessly for exits, but there was no way out without passing through the study, unless he felt like leaping out of the window: all things considered, not an unappealing prospect.
“I know what you are, Belthandros,” she said. “It amazes me that no one else has figured it out. Does nobody ever ask you where you come from? Or about your family? Where you made your money, or learned your magic? Not in Tlaanthothe, that’s for certain, and yet you’ve been Chancellor there for more than forty years, give or take a spell in exile.”
“I’ve studied all over the place,” he said. Tal, paying attention despite himself, heard the faintest caution in his voice.
“Before that, you were an astronomer in Salqanya. A hundred years ago you were an advisor to the clan-liege of Damogad. A hundred years before that, Tlaanthothe had its first Chancellor Sethennai. I have documentation for all this, and more.”
“You’ve been busy,” said Sethennai. Tal got up and crept to the door of the study, peering into the room, where they sat facing one another, heads lowered as if readying themselves for a prizefight.
“So have you, it seems,” she said. “If I’m wrong, open the Reliquary and prove it.”
Sethennai took a drag on his cigar. “Haven’t you heard? It opens only before the throne and earthly mansion of the Lady of the Thousand Eyes.”
Oranna laughed again, high and tense. “I know. The Lignite Spire fell into ruin after the fall of Old Ormary, several thousand years ago, and yet it has a back door into your estate.” She got up from her chair and walked toward him, as if daring him to challenge her.
“You know, I always wondered,” she said. “If the throne of Iriskavaal was truly shattered, what had become of the shards? A thousand fragments, each struggling to understand what it had lost, each possessing a shadow of her power and her rage.”
“There is the Siren, of course,” said Sethennai. “And I hear you released some unfortunate creature from the Hollow Monument—”
“No,” said Oranna. “Two fragments explain noth
ing. She should have left shrapnel in every world. We could never have healed of those wounds.”
“So, what are you saying?” he said. “That the throne is intact?”
“Not as it once was,” said Oranna. “Iriskavaal knew that her people had betrayed her, and that her enemies were hunting her. So she came to the most trusted and beloved of her followers, and together they made their plan. Am I wrong, Belthandros?”
“My dear, how should I possibly know—”
“I had assumed, as you did, that the Reliquary was created to save Pentravesse from his own mortality. But what if they both intended to cheat death?”
“What if, indeed?” Sethennai stubbed out his cigar. He no longer sounded entirely amused.
“When all the world hunts you, you pretend to die, and you hide away, and perhaps you forget.”
Oranna reached out and laid her gauntleted hand on his chest. “Iriskavaal never truly died. She lives still in you. You are the throne. You are the earthly mansion. You are Pentravesse.”
Tal crouched behind the door, listening. He could no more have looked away than he could have cut off his own hand.
“Yes,” said Sethennai at last, in what must have been defeat. Tal had never heard him sound like this before. “I suppose you are right.” He wasn’t smiling, but there was an unfamiliar surprise and delight in his face. “I had forgotten so much. It took the Reliquary itself to remind me. It’s an interesting new world to wake up to.”
“Isn’t it, just?” said Oranna.
“But then, you must know the Reliquary will do you no good. Iriskavaal has her incarnation already, and she is no friend to the Unspoken.”
“Oh, the Reliquary is yours. I’m not interested in taking it from you any longer, and I have my own patron. I just want to know how you did it. Both of you.”
“Having difficulty seducing the Unspoken, are you?” said Belthandros. “Well, I can’t help you with that, I never did understand what it wanted.”
“It is forgetful,” said Oranna. “It doesn’t realise what it is. What it could be. What it could do in the world.”
“Ah,” said Belthandros. “Well, that I do understand.”
They went on talking, in softer and softer voices, about things Tal didn’t comprehend. The horror of it all broke around him in waves. He could never have been enough. There was really nothing he could ever have done.
When he got his head above water, he realised that he missed Csorwe. She was both the most boring and the most unfriendly person he had ever met, with all the personality of a prison shiv, but he wanted to get drunk and pick a fight with someone.
He wondered what her breaking point had been. Something must have given way. Had it happened all at once? Had she just turned a corner one day and thought, Fuck you, Belthandros, this wasn’t what I wanted from my fucking life? This wasn’t how I thought it was going to be. You never promised me anything and I never asked for anything because I didn’t want to humiliate myself, and yet here I am, sitting in a dark room listening to you with her, and it turns out to be pretty fucking humiliating.
Certainly something like that.
* * *
Csorwe stared at the wall of her cell, counting reasons not to despair. Maybe there was still a chance. She didn’t know how long the trial would take. She would know more if Tal brought her the newspaper. Maybe if she could get away from here she could find where they were keeping Shuthmili again …
But then, she had only got into the Traitor’s Grave because they were waiting to trap her. She had no power here. She didn’t know the city’s pressure points. She didn’t understand the Qarsazhi or their Church. A huge, alien machine, dealing in signals she couldn’t decipher. There was no time, and even if there had been, she didn’t know where to begin.
Tal didn’t bring her breakfast. Maybe, she tried to believe, it was because he’d gone into town to get the newspaper.
When he finally turned up, he was dressed in outdoor clothes. There was something like an apology in his look, something vaguely guilty, and against all evidence and likelihood, her heart rose.
“Did you get it?” she said. “The newspaper? Was there anything about the trial, or the, the—” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word execution.
“What?” said Tal. “No, obviously not.” He glared through the bars at Csorwe with a brief kindling of defiance, followed by a smile of hard, brittle brilliance as he withdrew a key from his pocket. “I can do you one better. We’re getting out of here.”
“What is this?” she said. “This is some kind of— Sethennai put you up to this.”
“No,” said Tal. “I’m leaving him.”
“What?” She hadn’t thought there was anything that could still surprise her, but this did it.
“I’m leaving him. I’ve quit. I’ve cut ties. I’m a free agent. I’ve returned his letters. Is any of this getting through? Do you need me to speak slower?”
“I don’t believe you,” said Csorwe. “Go away. Tell him—tell him I’ll talk to him, if he wants to talk to me, if—”
“He doesn’t,” said Tal. “Because he doesn’t give a shit about you, or about me, and he never has.”
She shook her head. “I don’t believe you. Go back and tell Sethennai I—”
“I’m not telling him anything, because I’m not going back to him, because he’s a pompous fucking prick and I hate him.” All this quite brightly. With relief, even. “Fuck me, Csorwe, is it really so hard to believe?”
“Prove it,” she said.
“I can, actually,” he said.
He unlocked the cell door and came inside, thrusting something else toward her, wrapped up in a bundle.
Csorwe knew what it was before she opened it.
“Really?” she said, looking down at the Reliquary. Wrapped up in one of Tal’s shirts it almost looked ordinary.
Tal giggled. “Brought your sword, too.”
She made a derisive noise, but buckled it back onto her belt. It wouldn’t do her any good, but she felt somewhat more complete. “So. What’s brought this on?”
To her surprise, Tal told her everything.
“I’ve always thought he was older than he looked,” he said. Csorwe realised she had never thought about it, as if he had come into existence fully formed at the House of Silence eight years ago.
“He lied to us,” said Tal. “About the Reliquary. Bunch of bullshit.”
“I don’t know,” said Csorwe.
“Unless he really just forgot,” said Tal. “Do you think that’s possible? Imagine being immortal.”
Csorwe tried. All she could think was that if she were she could throw herself at the doors of the prison and howl for the Quincuriate to come down and fight her. They could cut her down and she would rise up again and go back, and even then she could never kill enough of them to stop what they were going to do to Shuthmili.
“No wonder he’s like that,” Tal went on, dismally. “No wonder he wanted the Reliquary so badly.” He shrugged. “I always thought I was just doing something wrong, but—”
“Yeah,” said Csorwe. “Guess we’re both traitors now.” She looked down at the Reliquary for a second longer.
“What’s new?” said Tal. He shifted his weight restlessly, and when Csorwe made no reply, he went on. “We should go, or we’re never going to leave. I ought to visit my mother or something. Apologise for being such a piece of shit. You can do whatever you like. Go and buy as many newspapers as you want. Kidnap yourself a whole harem of Qarsazhi babes.”
“Shut up, Tal,” said Csorwe, beginning to have an idea, suddenly transfixed by her own audacity. It had occurred to her that, after all, even very large machines could be stopped if you knew where to throw the spanner.
She didn’t want to hope. She couldn’t bear it. It was a breathtakingly dangerous idea. She could try and hope and fail and die, or she could stay here, alone, and live.
The only real question was whether it would be hard to get Tal on boa
rd.
“Why have you done this?” she said. “The Reliquary, I mean. What are you going to do with it?”
“I don’t know, I just thought it would be funny,” said Tal, clearly certain that it would, eventually, be funny. “Serve him right.”
“Oh, sure, I should’ve remembered you’re a fucking joke,” said Csorwe.
“You’re a joke,” said Tal, for form’s sake.
“More and more every day. Want to do something stupid?” she said. Realising she could rely on him for this was like falling out of a window and landing on something soft: you felt more ridiculous than ever but god, it was a relief.
“If you can think of something stupider than this, sure.”
She told him the plan. It was loud and dumb and very likely to hurt, so, of course, he agreed.
27
Leverage
ON THE DAY THAT Qanwa Shuthmili was condemned to die, Inquisitor Tsaldu Grichalya came to the Grand Arena to observe the spectacle from the Inquisitorate box.
He would have preferred to sit with the Qanwa, a few boxes away. In a just world he would have been owed an invitation. He had caught Qanwa Zhiyouri’s murderer. It seemed unfair that they had invited Chancellor Sethennai and left him out.
Tsaldu took his seat among his fellow Inquisitors, regretting the immense noise, the stink, and the heat of the day. Down below, the lower tiers overbrimmed with groundlings. Beneath them, in the arena itself, an oval of combed white sand glowed like a mirror.
“Oh, the violence is rather undignifying,” one of Tsaldu’s colleagues was saying. “But I understand it is a wonderful deterrent of crime.”
“And the people love an execution,” said a High Warden.
“Oh,” said a young Inquisitor from the Bureau of Censorship, fanning herself with a programme. “First of all, we are to be enlivened with a pageant.”
“Oh, yes,” said the High Warden. “‘The Combat of Linarya Atqalindri and the Dragon Zinandour.’ Marvellous.”
The pageant began with a deafening noise of horns and a flood of dancers, all costumed head to toe: black for the Dragon and her attendants, and red for the dancer playing Linarya, who wore a crown of roses and lilies.
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