He’d beamed innocently. “First time for everything.”
Eternal’s bow dipped into a trough. The tall stern came up. Aminata’s stomach rose with the whole ship. In the windowsill above her, Iraji yelped and clung to the sill.
“Come down!” she called.
“I can climb after you—”
“No chance, landlubber,” Aminata said, for although Iraji was probably nimbler than her on land, he’d never been a mast-top boy. “Hup hup.”
He lowered himself by his fingertips (the showoff) until he could curl his legs around her waist and fasten his arms over her neck. “Got me?”
“You’d better hope so.” Finger by toe she carried him down to the open shutters and the pigpens. “Are you really sure you want to do this?”
“If I think about it, I might faint, and then you’d drop me.”
“Not fair.”
He dismounted, jackknifed in through the window. Aminata got her calves and thighs inside, ducked under the windowframe, and slid to the floor.
The pigs screamed at her.
They lived in the dry filth of pens left too long unwatered, their dark dehydrated urine puddled beneath sunken bellies and blue-tinged skin. They trembled. They raised their trotters like prayer or jerked on their flanks in seizure. And from their tiny heads the baneflesh grew in fat tubules, bulbs, fans, shining red-black nodules, craters and strings, films like fungus across parched membranes of destroyed scalp.
This was what Iraji would have to put in his mouth.
There are no laws of magic, Tau-indi had told Iraji. There are neither rules nor calculations. Magic is akin to the human soul, and also to the cataclysms of the deepest earth, and also to the stars. It is like the enigma which separates a dead rock from living coral. I mean, very plainly, that magic is akin to the questions we ask, not to the answers we possess.
You cannot calculate or determine what magic will do. You cannot use magic to answer a problem.
But you can use magic to ask for a solution.
And most basic of all solutions is the apotropaic spell.
Iraji found a piglet. “Knife,” he called.
Grim-faced Osa gave him the sharpened comb.
I do know this, Tau-indi had said. Those who know magic most powerfully are also those who most powerfully suffer its effect. I cannot arm you with the radiant hands of a Cancrioth sorcerer, or allow you to burn without pain. I cannot make you giant like Innibarish, or unlock the secret strength of your body so that you can run five days without rest.
But I can teach you what you must know to confront the Brain and free the Eye. I can teach you the annulment of power. What spell is more common than the ward against bad luck? The aversion of malign influence? Everywhere but Falcrest, the common farmer knows and casts this spell.
I can teach you this spell. And you, Iraji, you in particular, can make it powerful beyond denial.
Iraji began to cut at the pig’s flesh. Aminata’s gorge came up hard but she knew he had it worse. When at last he rose with the baneflesh-swollen brain of the piglet in his hand, she had to catch him and steady him. “Are you all right?”
You, child, Tau-indi said, are a powerful tutelary, by which I mean a soul associated with a place, power, or idea. You are of the Cancrioth but you removed yourself from them. Do you see?
You have associated yourself with the estrangement of their power. You faint when the idea of the Cancrioth strikes you. You collapse their power into nothing. You do it in your mind, in your brain.
But the Brain will not fear you, for you have no immortata, no power of your own.
So you must claim one. Only with flesh to fuel your magic will they respect your threat.
“I’m fine,” he said, and then fell face-forward into Osa’s arms.
“Catch it!” Osa shouted, and Aminata, crying out in disgust, lunged and got the bloody mass of brain as it slid from Iraji’s hands.
Osa clapped the boy on the back as he moaned and squirmed. “Get his feet, will you?”
My life is a joke, Aminata thought. She kept the wet brain in her fist and scooped up Iraji’s legs on her forearms, so that they could stretch the boy out horizontal and force blood to his head. He came back with a jerk that nearly pulled him free. “I’m here! I’m here. I’m sorry.” When he saw Aminata holding the pig’s tumor-riddled brain, he made a face of the sweetest guilt. “I can hold that now.”
“Can you do magic? Or will you faint?”
“Yes, just, you’d better, ah, carry me around like this. Keep my head low.”
So off they went to retake the ship, carrying Iraji like a plank, with the piglet brain cupped in his black-inked hands.
They went forward belowdecks.
“I remember this,” Aminata said, thinking of how Masako had brought her to see the Brain. “Next frame we need to—”
From the stairway ahead emerged a funereal procession of men and women in white robes with domed hoods like a beekeeper’s. They took one step at a time, agonizingly cautious, and between each step they stopped to readjust their footing and their distance from each other. An escort of Masako’s rapier-armed Termites followed them at a careful distance.
In the papooses slung across their chests, the white-robed people carried cylinders of brown spotted glass.
Before Aminata could bellow halt or Imperial Navy, get on the floor the nearest Termite threw up his hand in desperate warning. Everyone behind him froze.
“Death,” he said, in Aphalone, very clearly, very slowly. “Do you understand? If one of them breaks, if it gets out . . .”
Oh kings and queens of anguish. They were carrying plague up to the rockets. Dysentery, cholera, typhoid, buboes—it could be anything. It could be the Kettling itself. Aminata thought that she could see tiny shapes moving behind the grown glass, like dirt in turbulent water, like fleas or gnats. . . .
“Excuse me,” Iraji said, in soft, polite Aphalone. “In my hands I bear the baneflesh, with all its fearsome appetites. If those people carrying the glass are Cancrioth, and I think that they are, they will be very frightened to see it. They might drop something.”
The Termite looked at the brain in Iraji’s hands, at the fans and tubules of cancer grown between his fingers.
“I want no part of this,” he said. “You do your magic with the magicians. I’m bringing these vivariums up to the deck.”
“Where is the Eye, please?”
“I won’t help you.”
Iraji lifted the brain. The Termite said, quickly, “In the deckhouse, amidships.”
Afterward, Aminata muttered, “I don’t know who was more relieved to see the other go.”
“They were more afraid of us than we were of them.” Osa’s silent tears of pain sheeted her burns. “The worst they could’ve done was kill us. Our boy here could murder their souls.”
She settled Iraji’s shoulders higher in her grip. They climbed steep, narrow stairs, up into the palace deckhouse.
Here the Brain’s faction had tiled the floor and the walls with red clay tablets, covering up the patterns in the teak below. There was nothing engraved on the tablets. They were blank. Apotropaic magic, Aminata supposed.
They came to a short corridor, and a door covered entirely in tablets. The armed Termites guarding it could have been for any prisoner—but those tablets were cladding to keep the Eye trapped.
“What happens now?” Osa whispered.
“We go and open that door,” Iraji said.
“What about the guards?”
“Well,” Iraji said, shifting in Aminata’s grip, “I will have to cast a spell.”
He stuffed the piglet brain into his mouth. The worst of it, the sores and shiny blackseed spots and thick flesh tubers, protruded through his lips. He made a soft gagging noise but did not faint.
“Oh kings,” Aminata moaned.
Iraji rose from Aminata and Osa’s arms and went down the saltwater-warped floor of the deckhouse corridor toward the Eye’s cabin. He put his black-inke
d hands up in warning.
The guards saw him coming.
It wasn’t the first magic Aminata had ever seen. The Oriati pirates she’d fought commonly used sorcery, the sympathetic destruction of Falcresti flags and uniforms and the use of spirit circuits to hold back fire. But this was the most violent, the most sudden, the most appalling in its effect.
He screamed at them through the cancer, and when the Termites heard that wail, when they saw the moaning man coming at them with cancer in his teeth, they all began to shout and to pull at each other, a diffusion of fear, so they would all have the excuse of someone’s else tugging arms to explain the retreat. “Incrisiath!” one of them screamed. “Incrisiath! A sorcerer!”
The door to the Eye’s suite opened. The clay tablets rattled. One fell and shattered.
The Brain came out.
She looked more human than the shadow Aminata had seen. She had crow’s-feet and bruised tired eyes. Her body was wide and peasant-strong, but her feet dragged. She looked exhausted.
But she wore ancient bronze armor, and her hands dripped with fire. The green uranium power shone in the creases of her palms and ran down the web of her fingers to spill on the floor. At the sight of Iraji, her arms clenched, and the light gushed incontinent onto the deck like a dog marking.
Iraji screamed at her. Speak through it, Tau-indi had told him, speak so your voice becomes its hunger and when she hears that hunger she will feel her own immortata rise to answer it. It is the nightmare of all the onkos to be devoured by their own immortality, and for their Line to end in malignancy. Worst of all for the Brain, for her tumor is in her thoughts.
The Brain’s hands flew to her head. She fell to her knees on the clay-tablet flooring, and Aminata saw, distinctly saw, that there were tears of pain in the Brain’s eyes.
The magic worked.
At that sight she felt a cold twinge of migraine behind her own right temple. “No,” she said, out loud, “no, not me.” But she could feel it, she could feel the scream in her head.
It worked on her, too. The magic worked on her too.
Suddenly the Brain seized the first two fingers of her left hand in the fist of her right. Then she cracked the fingers straight back at the root. Aminata gasped and cringed at the sound.
The Brain held up her mangled hand and screamed in hurt. Her own pain gave her focus, and a shield against the pain Iraji sent to her. It gave the Brain will enough for words. She spoke them like a whip.
“Iraji. Son of Ira-rya e Undionash. Bow down to me.”
And what could he do? What had ever triggered his faints, if not the memory of his birth? It was the name of his mother that beat him.
He went down on his knees, too, quivering, trying to hold up his head. Spit and blood gushed out around the tumor. Aminata tried to go to him but Osa grabbed her and held her back. “Not us,” she said, with grim certainty. “It’s not for us.”
“Who is teaching you to do this, Iraji?” The Brain hid her wounded left hand behind her back, and raised the uranium star of her right against him. “Whose weapon are you?”
Iraji looked up at her with the cancer bulging between his lips.
“Spit it out,” the Brain urged. “Slacken thy jaw and spit.”
Come on, Aminata thought, do something, I don’t know what and I don’t want to know what, but do something, Iraji, don’t let her—
“Sleep,” the Brain commanded. Her burning hand swept low metronome arcs before Iraji as she used her command of thought to force an idea into him. “You are at ease. You are at rest.”
Iraji’s head fell to the clay. There was a moment when he was gone, his whole body empty, and if you had told Aminata that the cancer in his mouth was the only thinking thing in him, she would have believed it.
But his head had fallen lower than his heart. And that was enough to rouse him.
He bit down.
Brain and tumor and gore parted between his teeth and with his festering tongue protruding from his mouth he looked up at the Eye and groaned like a beast.
“I’ll eat you,” he slurred. “I’ll eat you from inside.”
She was the Brain: she was as ancient as thought. She had known her whole life the awful appetite of the baneflesh, and the power of a child who repudiated his mother. Not with all her will and all her pain could she stop herself from knowing those things.
The Brain clutched at the trepanned hatch in her scalp. Aminata saw the special nausea of a woman trying to keep a piece of herself from erupting out of her skull.
“Let us in,” Iraji slurred, as the tumor drooled out of him. There was blood and cancer on his lips. “Let us inside. Or I will swallow it.”
“You are massacring yourself!” the Brain cried. “You call that power into yourself, to eat all the eternity that is your birthright? You don’t know the price you pay!”
“I never wanted to be one of you.” Iraji rose shakily. “I deny you. I deny your power. I will open that door and nothing you have will stop me.”
There was a chance, even then, that the Brain might have refused him, and fought. One of the Termites might simply have shot Iraji. But there were people watching: the Brain’s people, her navigators and sailors, the educated folk who believed hard in her and in the terms of her power.
If a Termite dared interrupt this confrontation, then the Cancrioth would see sacrilege. And if the Brain did not yield, then her people knew, the way all believers know what they believe, that she would be struck down. Her tumor would swell up and drive her mad.
And she knew they knew it, in the way that one brain considers the knowledge of another.
“I yield,” she said. “I grant you passage.”
23
A Masquerade
No one would go to the ball with Barhu.
Kimbune wouldn’t come out of her proof-protected room, especially not to a fortress made by Falcrest’s navy, where she thought she might spontaneously catch fire. Svir had delivered Barhu a new letter from her agent in Aurdwynn, and even explained how the Throne’s mail service was able to send enciphered text without knowing where the recipient might be. (The answer involved something called a gossip protocol.) But after their recent exchange of coercions, it felt uncouth to ask him to attend.
“Yawa,” Barhu called, through the newly installed door, “will you go to the Governor’s Ball with me? I’d love your introduction to Heingyl Ri. We can talk about improvements to the Welthony harbor, and the roads north.”
“Her home’s just been invaded, Baru. I expect her appearance will be perfunctory.”
“Then we’ll take her mind off it! I am the guest of honor now, remember?”
Yawa groaned through the door. “It’s supposed to be the Governor’s Ball.”
“It’s a masked ball. Isn’t it fitting the name should be a mask, too?”
“You’re insufferable. Anyway, I’m already going with Faham. I’m being myself and he’s posing as some Faculties functionary. Ask your diver.”
“She can’t go. She’s forbidden from public enthusiasms. And she’s meeting some shipping factor to arrange a voyage home.” Barhu thought of the freshly delivered letter. “I’ve just had word from my agent in the Wintercrests. Would you like to help me decrypt it?”
Yawa ripped the door open. “Don’t say that so loud,” she hissed, “and yes, of course I would.”
Header notes tracked the letter’s long course from Purity Cartone’s station in Mansion Hussacht, carried by foot to the Duchy Vultjag, from there down the river Vultsniada to the river Inirein and to Welthony port on the Ashen Sea, where it was shuttled to Treatymont and copied into the gossip protocol with other secret mail. “Who’s your agent?” Yawa asked her.
“As if I’d tell you.”
“Is it still Purity Cartone? You do remember that I was the one who sent him to you?”
“Hush, Auntie,” Barhu snapped, making Yawa laugh.
TO MY AUTHORITY AND HANDLER
YOUR EYES ONLY
INITIAL RECEPTION TO YOUR OFFER WAS NEGATIVE, ALTHOUGH KING SEEMS INTRIGUED BY PROSPECTIVE RETURN OF HIS BROTHER. ARRIVAL OF MISSING KNIGHT DZIRANSI IMMENSELY COMPLICATED MY MISSION, AS HE SEEMS SPIRITUALLY CONVINCED THE KING MUST MARRY GOVERNOR HEINGYL RI OF AURDWYNN.
MANSION HUSSACHT ARMY IS ON THE MARCH INTO AURDWYNN BUT KING HAS ORDERED THEM TO AVOID UNNECESSARY PILLAGE OR RAIDING DUE TO HIS DESIRE TO COURT LOCAL LORDS: STAKHIECZI FORCES ARE THEREFORE SUBSISTING ON FORAGE AND TRADE WITH LOCALS.
RIVAL POLITICAL FACTION “MANSION UCZENITH” HAS CHALLENGED LEGITIMACY OF KING ATAKASZIR’S POSITION ON THE GROUNDS THAT HIS CONTINUED KINGSHIP IS NOT BRINGING THE STAKHIECZI MANSIONS ANY BENEFIT THEY COULD NOT OBTAIN ON THEIR OWN. MANSION UCZENITH ARMY CAMPED IN POSITION TO THREATEN KING’S MANSION.
LOSS OF KING’S AUTHORITY WOULD LEAD TO GENERAL DISPERSAL OF STAKHIECZI FORCES INTO A PELL-MELL LAND GRAB, MASS PILLAGING, ETC AND SO FORTH.
I HAVE BEEN QUARTERED WITH THE WOMEN DUE TO MY CASTRATION WHICH GRANTS ME EXTENSIVE ACCESS TO DOMESTIC GOSSIP AND NETWORKS OF EXCHANGE BETWEEN FEMALE WEATHERWORKERS. MANSION WOMEN BELIEVE AN ACT OF VENGEANCE OR A SIGNIFICANT STRATEGIC BREAKTHROUGH WOULD BE REQUIRED TO RESTORE KING ATAKASZIR’S POWER OVER THE MANSIONS. CURRENT OPINION IS THAT THE KING WILL DECLARE HIS INTENT TO MARRY HEINGYL RI, BUT THAT THIS WILL BE REJECTED AS A REPEAT OF HIS FAILED ATTEMPT TO MARRY YOU, LEADING TO ATAKASZIR’S EXECUTION BY RITUAL SCALPING.
NO STAKHI KING HAS SURVIVED MORE THAN FIVE YEARS IN THE LAST TWO CENTURIES.
KING ALSO IN DESPERATE NEED OF HEIR. NO STAKHI WOMAN WILL HAVE HIM AS HE IS SEEN AS A DEAD MAN. HE HAS BEEN COURTED BY EXILED ARISTOCRAT NAYAURU AIA BUT HER POLITICAL DOWRY IS TOO WEAK TO SECURE A MARRIAGE.
IT IS VERY COLD IN THE MOUNTAINS AND I AM IMPAIRED BY ASTHMA OR A SIMILAR CONDITION. FAIRLY BREATHLESS WITH EXCITEMENT IN OTHER WORDS!
CONTACT ME AT: KETLY NORGRAF, FERRY STATION, VULTJAG. HAVE ARRANGED FOR RANGERS TO CARRY COPIES OF YOUR MISSIVES TO STAKHI WOMEN.
I AM VERY HAPPY TO SERVE.
The Tyrant Page 49