Yasellas’s appraising stare remained fixed on Achamian. “So what are you doing here, Akka?”
He shrugged, saying, “I follow the Holy War.”
“The same as us!” Yasellas exclaimed. “Though you might say we march for a different Tusk …” The other prostitutes burst out laughing—like men.
“And the little prophet,” another said, her voice hoarse. “Good for only one sermon …”
All the women howled, with the exception of Yassi, who only smiled. More jokes followed, but Esmenet was already pulling him into the darkness, toward what must have been her shelter.
“All of us camp in bands,” she said, pre-empting any questions or observations. “We watch out for one another.”
“So I gathered …”
“This is mine,” she said, kneeling before the greased canvas flaps of a low wedge tent not so unlike his own. Achamian found himself relieved: without a word she crawled into the blackness. Achamian followed.
Within, there was barely enough room to sit upright. Beneath the incense, the air smelled of rutting—if only because Achamian couldn’t stop imagining her with her men. She disrobed in the routine manner of a harlot, and he studied her lithe, small-breasted silhouette. She looked so frail in the remains of the firelight, so small and desolate. The thought of her pinioned here, night after night, beneath man after man …
I must make this right!
“Do you have a candle?” he asked.
“Some … But we’ll be burned.” Fire was the perennial fear of those raised in cities.
“No,” he replied. “Never with me …”
She withdrew a candle from a bundle in the corner, and Achamian ignited it with a word. In Sumna, she’d always marvelled at such tricks. Now, she simply regarded him with a kind of resigned wariness.
They both blinked in the light. She drew a stained blanket across her lap, stared vacantly at the snarl of coverings between them.
He swallowed.“Esmi? Why tell me … all that.”
“Because I had to know,” she replied, looking down at her hands.
“Know what? What makes my hands shake? What makes my eyes dart in terror?”
Her shoulders hitched in the gloom; Achamian realized she was sobbing.
“You pretended I wasn’t there,” she whispered.
“I what?”
“That last night at Momemn … I came to you. I watched your camp, your friends, only hidden because I was too afraid that I would … that I would … But you weren’t there, Akka! So I waited and waited. Then I saw … I saw you … I wept with joy, Akka! Wept! I stood there, right before you, weeping! I held out my arms, and you … and you …” The anguished light in her eyes dulled, flickered out. She finished in a different voice—far colder.
“You pretended I wasn’t there.”
What was she talking about? Achamian pressed palms to his forehead, wrestled with the urge to lash out—to punish. She stood close enough to touch—after all this time!—and yet she receded … He needed to understand.
“Esmi?” he said slowly, trying to collect his wine-addled wits. “What are you—”
“What was it, Akka?” she asked, rigid and cool. “Was I too polluted, too defiled? Too much a filthy whore?”
“No, Esmi, I—”
“Too bruised a peach?”
“Esmenet, listen to—”
She laughed bitterly. “So you’re going to take me to your tent, you say? Add me to the bushel—”
He seized her by the shoulders, crying, “You speak of bushels to me? You?”
But he immediately repented, seeing his own savagery reflected in her terrified expression. She had even flinched, as though expecting a blow. He noticed, as though for the first time, the bruising about her left eye.
Who did this? Not me. Not me …
“Look at us,” he said, releasing her and carefully drawing back his hands. Both beaten. Both outcasts.
“Look at us,” she mumbled, tears spilling down her cheeks.
“I can explain, Esmi … Everything.”
She nodded, rubbed her shoulders where he’d grabbed her. Female voices chimed in unison outside—they had started singing like the other harlots, promising soft thighs for hard silver. Firelight glittered through the open flaps, like gold through dark waters.
“That night you’re talking about … Sweet Sejenus, Esmi, if I didn’t see you, it wasn’t because I was ashamed of you! How could I be? How could anyone—let alone a sorcerer!—be ashamed of a woman such as you?”
She bit her lip, smiled through more tears. “Then why?”
Achamian rolled to his side and laid next to her, his eyes searching the dark canvas above.
“Because I found them, Esmi—that very night … I found the Consult.”
“I remember nothing after that,” he concluded. “I know I walked through the night, all the way from the Imperial Precincts to Xinemus’s camp, but I remember none of it …”
The words had splashed from him, an inarticulate rush, painting the horrific events that transpired that night beneath the Andiamine Heights. The unprecedented summons. The meeting with Ikurei Xerius III. The interrogation of Skeaös, his Prime Counsel. The face-that-was-not-a-face, unclenching like a woman’s long-fingered fist. The dreadful conspiracy of skin. He told her about everything except Kellhus …
Esmenet had curled into his arms to listen. Now she perched her chin on his chest.
“Did the Emperor believe you?”
“No … I imagine he thinks the Cishaurim were responsible. Men prefer new loves and old enemies.”
“And Atyersus? What of the Mandate?”
“Excited and dismayed in equal measure, or so I imagine …” He licked his lips. “I’m not sure. I haven’t contacted them since first reporting to Nautzera. They probably think I’m dead by now … Murdered because of what I know.”
“Then they haven’t contacted you …”
“That’s not the way it works, remember?”
“Yes, yes …” she replied, rolling her eyes and smirking. “How does it go? With the Cants of Calling, you need to know both the here, the individual, and the there, the location, to initiate contact. Since you march, they have no idea where you are …”
“Exactly,” he said, bracing himself for the inevitable question to follow.
Her eyes probed his, compassionate yet guarded.
“So then why haven’t you contacted them?”
Achamian shuddered. He ran shaking fingers through her hair. “I’m so glad you’re here,” he murmured. “So glad you’re safe …”
“Akka, what is it? You’re frightening me …”
He closed his eyes, breathed deep. “I met someone. Someone whose coming was foretold two thousand years ago …” He opened his eyes, and she was still there. “An Anasûrimbor.”
“But that means …” Esmenet frowned, stared into his chest. “You cried out that name in your sleep once, woke me …” She looked up, peered into his face. “I remember asking you what it meant, ‘Anasûrimbor,’ and you said … you said …”
“I don’t remember.”
“You said that it named the last ruling dynasty of ancient Kûniüri, and …” Her expression slackened in horror. “This isn’t funny, Akka. You’re really scaring me!”
She feared, Achamian realized, because she believed … He gasped, blinked hot tears. Tears of joy.
She really believes … All along she’s believed!
“No, Akka!” Esmenet cried, clutching his chest. “This can’t be happening!”
How could life be so perverse? That a Mandate Schoolman could celebrate the world’s end.
With Esmenet pressed naked against him, he explained why he thought Kellhus, without any doubt, had to be the Harbinger. She listened without comment, watched him with a fearful expectancy.
“Don’t you see?” he said, as much to the surrounding darkness as to her. “If I tell Nautzera and the others, they will take him … No matter wh
ose protection he enjoys.”
“Will they kill him?”
Achamian blinked away disturbing images of past interrogations. “They’ll break him, murder who he is …”
“Even still,” she said. “Akka, you must surrender him.” There was no hesitation, no pause, only cold eyes and remorseless judgement. For women, it seemed, the scales of threat and love brooked no counterweights.
“But this is a life, Esmi.”
“Exactly,” she replied. “A life … What difference does it make, the life of one man? So many die, Akka.”
The hard logic of a hard world.
“It depends on the man, doesn’t it?”
This gave her pause. “I suppose it does,” she said. “So what kind of man is he? What kind of man is worth risking Apocalypse?”
Despite her sarcasm, he could tell she feared his answer. Certainty despised complications, and she needed to be certain. She thinks she saves me, he realized. She needs me to be wrong for my sake …
“He’s …” Achamian swallowed. “He’s unlike any other man.”
“How so?” A prostitute’s scepticism.
“It’s difficult to explain.” He hesitated, pondering his time with Kellhus. So many insights. So many instants of awe. “You know how it feels when you stand on someone else’s ground—on their property?”
“I suppose … Like a trespasser or a guest.”
“Somehow that’s the way he makes you feel. Like a guest.”
An expression of distaste. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that.”
“Then it’s not how it sounds.” Achamian breathed deeply, groped for the proper words. “There’s many … many grounds between men. Some are mutual, and some are not. When you and I speak of the Consult, for instance, you stand upon my ground, just as I stand upon your ground when you discuss your … your life. But with Kellhus, it makes no difference what you discuss or where you stand; somehow the ground beneath your feet belongs to him. I’m always his guest—always! Even when I teach him, Esmi!”
“You teach him? You’ve taken him as your student?”
Achamian frowned. She made it sound like a betrayal.
“Just the exoterics,” he said with a shrug, “the world. Not the esoterics. He’s not one of the Few …” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “Thank the God.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because of his intellect, Esmi! You’ve no idea! I’ve never met such a subtle soul, neither in life nor in book … Not even Ajencis, Esmi! Ajencis! If Kellhus possessed the ability to work sorcery, he’d be … he’d be …” Achamian caught his breath.
“What?”
“Another Seswatha … More than Seswatha …”
“Then I like him even less. He sounds dangerous, Akka. Let Nautzera and the others know. If they seize him, so be it. At least you can wash your hands of this madness!”
Fresh tears welled in his eyes. “But …”
“Akka,” she pressed, “this burden isn’t yours to bear!”
“But it is!”
Esmenet pushed herself from his chest, propping herself with an arm to lean over him. Her hair draped over her left shoulder, an impenetrable black in the candlelight. She seemed watchful, hesitant.
“Is it? I think you say this because of Inrau …”
Cold clasped his heart. Inrau. Sweet boy. Son.
“And why not?” he cried with sudden ferocity. “They killed him!”
“But they sent you! They sent you to Sumna to turn Inrau, and that’s what you did, even though you knew exactly what would happen … You told me this before you even contacted him!”
“So what are you saying? That I killed Inrau?”
“I’m saying that’s what you think. You think you killed him.”
Oh, Achamian, her tone said, please …
“And what if I do? Does that mean I should relent a second time? Let those fools in Atyersus doom another man that I—”
“No, Achamian. It means you’re not doing this—any of this!—to save this-this Anasûrimbor Kellhus. You’re doing it to punish yourself.”
He stared, dumbstruck. Was that what she thought?
“You say this,” Achamian breathed, “because you know me so well …” He reached out, traced the pale edge of her breast with a finger. “And Kellhus so little.”
“No man is that remarkable … I’m a whore, remember?”
“We’ll see,” he said, tugging her down. They kissed, long and deep.
“We,” she repeated, laughing as though both hurt and astounded. “It really is ‘we’ now, isn’t it?”
With a shy, even scared, smile, she helped him pull free his weathered robes.
“When I can’t find you,” he said, “or even when you turn away, I feel … I feel hollow, as though my heart’s a thing of smoke … Isn’t that ‘we’?”
She pressed him against the mat, straddled him.
“I recognize it,” she replied, tears now streaming down her cheeks. “So it must be …”
One lamb, Achamian thought, for ten bulls. Recognition.
He hardened against her, ached to know her again. As always, the images flickered, each as sharp as glass. Bloodied faces. The clash of bronze arms. Men consumed in billowing sorceries. Dragons with teeth of iron … But she raised her hips, and with a single encompassing thrust, sheared away both past and future, sparing only the glorious pang of the present. He cried out.
She began grinding against him, not with the expertise of a harlot hoping to abbreviate her labour, but with the clumsy selfishness of a lover seeking surcease—a lover or a wife. Tonight she would take, and that, Achamian knew, was as much as any whore could give.
Wearing a harlot’s face, it sat in the blackness, its ears pricked to the sounds of their lovemaking—glistening sounds—a mere arm’s length away. And it thought of the weaknesses of the flesh, of all the needs that it was immune to, that made it powerful, deadly.
The air was suffused with their groaning scent, the heady perfume of unwashed bodies slapping in the night. It was not an unpleasant smell. Too devoid of fear perhaps.
The sound and smell of animals, aching animals.
But it knew something of their ache. Perhaps it knew far more. Appetite was direction, and its architects had given it direction—such exquisite hungers! Ah yes, the architects weren’t fools.
There was ecstasy in a face. Rapture in deceit. Climax in the kill …
And certainty in the dark.
CHAPTER FOUR
ASGILIOCH
No decision is so fine as to not bind us to its consequences. No consequence is so unexpected as to absolve us of our decisions. Not even death.
—XIUS, THE TRUCIAN DRAMAS
It seems a strange thing to recall these events, like waking to find I had narrowly missed a fatal fall in the darkness. Whenever I think back, I’m filled with wonder that I still live, and with horror that I still travel by night.
—DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, THE COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR
Early Summer, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, the fortress of Asgilioch
Achamian and Esmenet awoke in each other’s arms, sheepish with memories of the previous night. They held each other tight to quell their fears, then as the surrounding encampment slowly rumbled to life, they made love with quiet urgency. Afterward, Esmenet fell silent, looked away each time Achamian searched for her eyes. At first, he found himself baffled and angered by this sudden change of demeanour, but then he realized she was afraid. Last night she’d shared his tent. Today, she would share his friends, his daily discourse—his life.
“Don’t worry,” he said, catching her eyes as she fussed with her hasas. “I’m far more particular when it comes to my friends.”
A frown crowded out the terror in her eyes. “More particular than what?”
He winked. “Than when it comes to my women.”
She looked down, smiling and shaking her head. He heard her mutter some kind of curse. As he clambered from
the tent she pinched his buttocks hard enough to make him howl.
Wrapping an arm around her waist, Achamian led Esmenet to Xinemus, who stood chatting with Bloody Dinch. When he introduced her, Xinemus merely offered her a perfunctory greeting, then pointed to a faint swath of smoke across the eastern horizon. The Fanim, he explained, had infiltrated the mountains and had struck across the highlands. Apparently a large village, a place called Tusam, had been taken unawares during the night and burned to the ground. Proyas wanted to survey the devastation first-hand—with his ranking officers.
The Marshal then left them, bawling orders to his men. Achamian and Esmenet retreated to the fire, where they sat wordlessly, watching long files of Attrempan horsemen pass into the deeper byways of the encampment. He could sense her apprehension, the certainty that she would shame him, but he could find no more words to amuse or comfort her. He could only watch as she watched, feeling excluded in the manner of slaves and cripples.
Then Kellhus joined them, peering as Xinemus had at the eastern horizon.
“So it starts,” he said.
“What starts?” Achamian asked.
“The bloodshed.”
With something of a bashful air, Achamian introduced Esmenet. He inwardly winced at the coldness of her tone and expression—at the bruising still visible on her cheek. But Kellhus, if he noticed, seemed unconcerned.
“Someone new,” he said, smiling warmly. “Neither bearded nor haggard.”
“Yet …” Achamian added.
“I don’t get haggard,” Esmenet said in mock protest.
They laughed, and afterward Esmenet’s hostility seemed to wane.
Serwë arrived shortly afterward, still wrapped in her blanket. From the first, she seemed to regard Esmenet with something between wonder and terror—more so the latter after seeing Esmenet talk rather than simply listen to the men. Achamian found this troubling, but remained certain they would become friends, if only to find respite from the masculine clamour that characterized their nights by the fire.
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