by Gregory Ashe
Chapter 31
“You want to steal a brachal?” Mece asked. She slid a pile of chopped vegetables into a pot; she could not hold a knife well in her mangled hands, so she picked up after Vas and Siniq-elb. Jela had been more than pleased to have another woman in the kitchens; the balding woman couldn’t walk past Mece without giving the younger woman’s hair a pensive tug. “Are you mad, or just stupid? Not even Sikkim of Evirin ever tried anything like that.” Her mention of the infamous bandit brought a brief smile to Siniq-elb’s face; when he was a boy, he had dreamed of catching Sikkim of Evirin.
“It won’t do just to have the brachal,” Vas said, his dark eyes studying a turnip. “We’ll need the dew of flesh as well, and using the brachal carries a price.”
“What?” Siniq-elb said. “I’ve heard that before, the dew. From Dakel. But what in the world is it? And how could you know about it?”
“Read it in a book,” Vas said, still examining the turnip. He spoke distractedly, almost absently. “Arakh’s Limitless Paths. Or maybe her Blood and the Atasi Mountains. Or maybe Gozel’s Nakhacevir Unpathed. Can’t remember.”
Mece drew in a sharp breath. “He can’t remember. Three books you can be killed just for owning, let alone reading, and he can’t remember which he read it in, tair help us. Anything else we should know? Do you have a Cenarbasin Innervated bring you sweets at night?”
“I’ve never understood the fuss about Arakh and Gozel,” Vas said. He set the turnip down and started chopping. “They’re just books. The most important thing for people to do is understand each other, and we’ll never be able to do that if we close down conversations that we don’t like.”
“That’s a nice thought,” Siniq-elb said. “But I don’t think the eses share it. They have a little more riding on the matter than you do. Not to mention the fact that those women were two of the greatest heretics in the last hundred years.”
“I suppose,” Vas said. “Although it’s not quite fair to say that Arakh was a heretic; she was a dissenter, but a firm believer in the gods-made-flesh. If anything, her books were attempts to return to the roots of our religion, to the truth of the gods themselves.”
Mece snorted.
“Gozel might have been a heretic,” Vas continued. “Although it’s more likely she just didn’t care. Igene, writing a biography of Gozel a dozen years after her death, claims that Gozel ‘cared not for men nor gods, but for truth, and for the secrets of the growing land.’”
“Sounds like enough to be dragged to harvest,” Mece said.
“Hm?” Vas said. “Well, maybe. I think it just means that she was a natural philosopher at heart. Igene describes Gozel’s experiments with cross-pollination and with animal husbandry; I’m not sure those aren’t the same things as the secrets of the growing land.”
“And the dew made flesh?” Siniq-elb said, bending over another onion.
Mece drove her elbow into his side, and Siniq-elb grunted and looked up. Less than a pace away stood Zeyn, silent as ever, his blue-green eyes fixed on them. After a moment, he turned and continued on his way into the storeroom.
“Father take him,” Siniq-elb said. “Bastard doesn’t even have the dignity to make a living for himself; he comes to earn scraps from the temple.”
“What?” Vas said, blinking.
“He’s a Father-taken Khacen,” Siniq-elb. “The bastard should be out living off the bounty of the Path. What kind of Khacen would choose to be a servant rather than live free?”
“That’s not fair,” Vas said, his voice suddenly deep and soft. “You shouldn’t speak like that, Siniq-elb. It’s not fair.”
“Fair?” Siniq-elb said. “If I had feet, you wouldn’t see me moping around the tair’s kitchen, getting by with the least effort possible.”
“That’s not fair,” Vas said. “Everyone struggles with something. We have to be patient with each other, have compassion.”
“The dew,” Mece cut in.
“Arakh talks about it briefly in her Limitless Paths, just a mention really. She names it as one of the three original, ritual elements of worship for the gods-made-flesh.”
“What does it mean?” Mece said. “Blood? Is that the dew?”
“I don’t think so; in Blood and the Atasi Mountains, she goes to great lengths describing the original rejection of blood as an element of tair-worship, and its subsequent reappropriation from the Father cults living in the southern-most Paths. It can’t be blood, really, because she already mentions the dew in her first book as part of the original worship.”
“So what is it?” Siniq-elb asked. “Piss? Should we ask the suffering Zeyn if he knows?”
“What’s wrong with you?” Mece said.
“Nothing. I just want to figure this out.” The truth was, he didn’t know what was wrong; Vas’s words had put a burr in Siniq-elb’s trousers, so to speak, and Siniq-elb wanted to lash out at someone.
“Gozel talks about it most clearly; she refuses to associate it with the tair, even though she links it with the brachal and the practice of what she calls ‘voramancy.’ She claims that the power of the su-eses is not derived from the tair, but from the use of older magic, from before the gods-made-flesh. One of the ingredients in this magic was human fat, rendered into a liquid, and called dew.”
Mece’s mouth twisted up, as though she wanted to spit, and Siniq-elb felt the same way. “Tair around us, eating human flesh?” he said.
“Well, fat, actually. And drinking it. But yes.”
“Tair help us if that’s true,” Siniq-elb said. “Where would they keep it?”
“You still want to go through with this?” Mece said, hurling handful of carrots into a pot so hard that they rang against the copper. “You’ll get yourself killed.”
“I’m more daring than Sikkim,” Siniq-elb said with a smile.
“I doubt that.”
“Where would they keep it, Vas?” Siniq-elb said.
The stout man shifted uneasily, his gaze going from Mece to Siniq-elb. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Vas,” Siniq-elb said, his voice rising.
“I don’t know! I don’t. They’d keep it close, though. If Gozel is right, it’s like fuel for a fire; they need it for the magic to work, but it burns out if it isn’t replaced. Without it, they’d be nothing more than normal men.”
Siniq-elb nodded. “Then it seems like we’re going to have to do some snooping.”
“Are you really set on this?” Vas asked.
With another nod, Siniq-elb slid the last of his onion into the pot Mece was holding. He wiped the knife clean on a kitchen towel and then, giving both Mece and Vas a deliberate stare, tied the blade to his upper thigh with a few strips of cloth and covered it with the tunic.
Mece slammed the pot down. “Tair help you both for a pair of fools. I’ll not get myself killed. You’re on your own.” She rose and made her way to Jela, and after a quick exchange, left the kitchen.
“Will you help me?” Siniq-elb said.
Vas nodded, jowls trembling.
“It’ll be alright,” Siniq-elb said, but again he was reminded of how weak Vas was, of how little help the man would actually be. And Siniq-elb, a cripple and a fool, would not be able to do much more.
Jela made her way over to them, a frown tugging at the corners of her mouth. Hands planted on her stained dress, she looked each man in the eye for a handful of heartbeats. Siniq-elb felt his pulse rise; what if Mece had told her about the knife? Or about their plan? Or what if Zeyn had spoken, or Jela had just seen them? Tair and Father, Siniq-elb’s plans could be over before they even began.
“If either of you ever makes that poor little thing cry again,” Jela announced, her cheeks almost as red as the cookfires. “I’ll strap the both of you myself so that you’ll wish your mother had never borne you.”
Siniq-elb stared up at her, then glanced at Vas. She was worried about Mece?
“Understand?”
Both men nodded.
�
��Good,” Jela said, relaxing a bit. “Now, I’m sorry to bear bad news. I tried to get you out of this, but Khylar insists that everyone take a turn, and he seems set on having you in particular.” She nodded at Siniq-elb as she said this. “You’ll be entertaining tonight in the hall, so best take a few minutes to eat now and then get going.”
In spite of himself, Siniq-elb felt his heart begin to pound again. He would be within a few feet of Khylar, and he would have a knife strapped to his leg. The opportunity of a lifetime.