The Dew of Flesh

by Gregory Ashe

  Chapter 81

  Ilahe rinsed the gummed blood from her last remaining wound, the cut along her side from the seir, and took care not to break the fresh scab. The cam-ad had still had enough power left to heal most of the damage, and while the seir’s wound would leave a set of fine scars, it was no longer serious. Drawing a deep breath, and wincing at the stitch of pain, Ilahe dropped the cloth into the ceramic basin. Pink water sloshed in response.

  The sun had not yet risen over Khi’ilan. The drums celebrating the High Harvest had ceased, and the strange pull of the tair’s call had gone silent. Ilahe sat in the dark, quiet kitchen of the shrine of life. Only the creak of the house settling, the scurry and chirp of an occasional mouse, broke the stillness.

  She had left Siniq-elb and his companions at the gates to the temple; much of the compound was on fire, and more than once Ilahe had heard the terrifying click of stone on stone, or—more frequently—the clang of metal and shout of combat. Somehow they had avoided all of it. Even before she had left them, though, the quiet had pressed down on Ilahe, heavy, but comfortable, like a wool cloak in winter. Their parting had been nothing more than a nod, clasped forearms with Siniq-elb, a single squeeze to tell him, the best way she could, her gratitude. And then disappearing into the darkness of early morning to find her way back here through empty streets.

  Finally, unable to delay any longer, Ilahe heaved herself to her feet. Aside from the fatigue, and the wound in her side, she felt well. The cam-ad had healed her other injuries. She could gather her belongings, leave the city before the chaos at the temple spread out to engulf the city. In a few hours, this chapter of her life could be closed, written to an end as finally as any Istbyan romance.

  She stopped at Hash’s door and, after a moment, opened it and stepped inside. Hash was awake, sitting on his bed in shirt and trousers. It did not surprise Ilahe; she had expected this. To judge by his even gaze, he was not surprised either, although red-rimmed eyes told a different story. The lines of his shoulders, the tension in his jaw, his furtive glance away and back—it all bespoke his pain and anger. Heat rose in Ilahe’s cheeks, but she closed the door behind her and crossed the room to sit beside him on the bed.

  “I’m sorry,” Ilahe said.

  Hash glanced at her, his deep blue eyes wide.

  “I never meant—” Ilahe cut herself off. “I was so afraid. That you would come to your senses and see what I was. That I would be left alone, again.”

  The words fell into the room without response.

  “I never found her,” Ilahe said. “Daye, from the inn. The woman who trusted me. I went to find her, but . . .”

  The silence flowed between them, a river swollen with the rains of past memories.

  “You are beautiful to me,” Hash said, his gazing darting to her eyes, and then back to the charcoal drawings on the walls. “I should have said that, before.”

  Ilahe gave a soft, scornful laugh.

  “I’m serious,” Hash said, turning back to her with those impossible eyes, so handsome he caught Ilahe’s breath. “I see the way you look at the other women here, the way you watch them. You know you’re different. And I think you hate yourself for it.”

  Ilahe opened her mouth, but Hash’s hand found her arm, soft and firm at the same time.

  “No, listen—when we first met, you called me a whore. Or you would have. And you’re right, that’s what I’ve been. But what you should know is that if anyone knows how little the body can mean, it’s a whore. You’re beautiful to me because you help people, even when you’re hurting so much that other people would have lain down and died. Whatever your reason for coming here, it wasn’t to save the same pregnant whore twice. It wasn’t to try and save a foolish innkeeper who had read too many books. It wasn’t to do the accounting for a shrine of life. And it certainly wasn’t to drag me out of madness and despair. Tomorrow, we can go back and look for that foolish innkeeper, and we’ll keep watching out for Ly and Naja, and Cu will always need help with the books.”

  He smiled and his hand slid down to hers. “But you need to stay for all that to happen. I want to be with you, Ilahe.”

  For a moment, Ilahe stared at him, taking in his face, his jaw, those full lips. A part of her, buried deep inside, wounded and hidden at the back of her heart, flared to life. Anger—at him, at his presumption, at the way he took her hand as though he owned her. At presuming to know her life and her pain and to tell her what she was. At him for being a man, for everything that men had done to her in her life. At men in general, at the priests and gods who had taken her child and left her with a godling waiting to awaken. Loneliness her only defense.

  And then Ilahe remembered the caverns under the temple, and wanting to die, and watching Mece put her broken hands under Siniq-elb’s arms to pull him to safety. She remembered the pain in Hash’s eyes when she had found him drawing with charcoal, trying to escape his own past. She remembered walking forward to face the seiri, letting go of her own pain to give her life meaning.

  Hate—hatred of gods, of men, of herself. Hate had become her prison. Hash turned toward her, brought his thumb to rest against her chin, his hand cupped the curve of her jaw. His breath rolled over her, as smooth as the ocean in the morning. In a moment of struggle that stretched out into eternity, Ilahe looked inside, balanced between the two clusters of memory. Then, with a long, low breath, Ilahe let hate go. As she did, her fear of the godling within her fell away. And suddenly, trembling under Hash’s touch, Ilahe was free.

  She ran her hand along his shoulder, down his side, tracing the lines of his body, and leaned forward to kiss him. Heat, but no fire. Salt, but not the salt of sea-spray on midnight skin. Ilahe pulled Hash’s shirt over his head, her hands running down his body. Pale, firm muscle—not the almond blossoms, white against dark bark, that she had once imagined. The white sky of this strange land before dawn; the pale strength of stone.

  Pulling him down onto the bed with her, Ilahe kissed Hash again, and this time, memory fell away between them. She would never kiss Cinar again while ocean breezes brushed her bare thighs. She would never dance again, thin and beautiful and desired, under the perfect twilight of the Iris. She would never hold the child they had taken.

  It was not home. It was not the past. It was not the life she had lost.

  But it was enough.