Four days out of ten, I officiate at the ceremony of the dawn. Helase hates it, for it means waking in the dark of the night to prepare, but to me it is worth the waking. I wear a robe of silver, that shimmers as I walk. The priestesses sing a hymn of praise so beautiful it makes the heart weep. I carry fresh flowers and place them before the High Altar, and the scent of them clings to my arms and my hair, the weight of them in my arms smears my skin with pollen and crushed petals and dew.
Other times I walk in the gardens or play with the children. They make me laugh, the little ones training to be priestesses; they look upon me with such awe. Only the very young ones, who have not yet drawn their lots, I avoid.
There is a fine library in the Temple: I read anything I wish. Poetry I especially enjoy, and histories. I have read several histories of the Temple and the High Priestess, which is curious. Reading about myself, it seems, for their lives can have been no different to my own.
Twice a year, at Year’s Renewal and Year’s Heart, we celebrate the Great Ceremony. Year’s Renewal is more sombre, Year’s Heart wilder and more joyful. The Emperor and all the great families come to the Temple shining with gold and jewels; the ceremony lasts for hours; the people of Sorlost dance and sing in the streets, gather outside the Temple to light candles and offer flowers. Afterwards, there are parties and banquets all over the city, and no one sleeps until the sun has risen the next day. Even we, in our cloister, have a fine meal and stay up to see the dawn, though we pray and sing rather than drink and dance. It is the one day of the year I am allowed to dine with the other priestesses. I wear a dress of cloth of gold for the ceremony, like the one I was dedicated in. It is heavy and stiff, but so very beautiful it pains me to take it off. I look like the High Priestesses from the old poems, Manora or Valdine. I look like a queen from an old book.
I have people I think of as friends: Helase, Ausa, even Samnel in her way. The woman who tends my rooms and helps me dress is kind and I talk to her of little things. I have people I suppose I would count as enemies, were I not what I am – Ninia, who talks of the old High Priestess-that-was as if everything I have done for the last five years has been failure and uselessness, as if the very way I kneel before the altar is wrong when compared to the way Caleste the High Priestess-that-was knelt; Tolneurn, the Imperial Presence in the Temple, who loathes the fact I do not have to do as he commands me, though he has never tried to command me and never will; one of the servants who serves the meals, who looks at me with hatred despite the fact I have never spoken to her.
Mostly, my life is as dull and repetitive as any other. I have seen old pictures of emissaries from half the world kneeling in the Great Temple, spellbound and trembling before the might of Great Tanis Who Rules All Things. Now I officiate to peasants and petty merchants, while foreign kings laugh at us for our beliefs behind fat fingers. Pointless, it seems sometimes. All the candles, all the gold and silver and bronze. Pointless, in the way most lives are pointless. A ritual motion we must go through, for want of anything else to do or believe.
But that is not true. It is not pointless. Nothing is pointless, as long as one is alive. One moment of beauty. One moment of happiness. One moment of pain.
Lives for living. Nothing less and nothing more.
Chapter Thirteen
‘Big, isn’t it?’
‘Fancy, too. Must be a real bugger to keep clean.’
‘I like the way it shines like that. Very pretty, that is.’
‘Seems a bit … over the top, though, really.’
‘Well, if you’re the richest empire the world has ever known, I suppose you need something to spend your money on. If you’ve exhausted your capacity for wine and women, might as well be a bloody massive wall made of solid bronze. Probably a slightly more useful way to chuck money away than just digging a big hole and burying it.’
Alxine gestured to a small group of ragged, thin-faced men hanging about in front of them. ‘They could have given it to the poor.’
‘What, and have them waste it by spending it on things?’
‘I’m slightly disappointed, to be honest. All you hear about it, I kind of expected it to be taller.’
The bronze walls of Sorlost loomed before them. Five times the height of a man, shining in the morning sun. They had no seams or joins, a perfect ribbon of metal twisting around the city, punctuated only by the five great gates. The Maskers’ Gate, the Gate of the Evening, the Gate of Dust, the Gate of Laughter, the Gate of the Poor. It was impossible to conceive who had built them, or how. They had never been breached: even Amrath Himself had dashed His armies to pieces against them to no avail and given up in despair.
Marith stood and gazed up at them in awe. It was still early, only a short while past dawn, and he could feel the cold radiating off them. In the heat of the afternoon, the sun beating down upon them, they must be hot as coals to the touch. The morning light flashed off them blindingly bright. Approaching from the east as the sun rose had been wondrous, the metal turning from inky dark to blazing fire, more beautiful and vivid than the dawn itself. The moment the light hit them had been like watching someone thrust a torch into a bowl of pitch. An explosion of light. Dragon fire. Joy. Hope.
There were no villages immediately outside of the city. No houses at all. The town where they had spent the previous night had been the last place before the gates, after that there was an hour’s walk through empty country, barren grassland and scrubby thorns. No wealthy villas or shanty towns of starving untouchables, just bare ground as though they were in the remotest part of some abandoned kingdom, and, rising before them, the great walls.
A stillness, too, very few animals or birds to be seen. The air smelled of metal. The land around was a vast graveyard, for the people of Sorlost buried their dead in this silent place outside their walls. Most were unmarked. Once, they had passed a fresh grave, the earth still dark, a few flowers scattered on the hump of soil. Someone especially beloved: the people of Sorlost did not as a rule concern themselves with such things. To bury someone so close to the road, to offer flowers … Perhaps an only child, a new married wife, a beloved parent. The one joy of the mourner’s heart. Marith looked, and then looked away.
He had studied Sorlost’s history and culture, her language, her poetry and art. Well educated indeed. You need to know your enemy, his tutor had told him as he groaned over the complexities of Literan grammar, the tedious list of the Emperor’s thousand tedious little lives. To be walking here before her walls was strange as dreaming. The others felt it too, he could tell from their laughter, their dedicated attempts at nonchalance. As long ago as tomorrow, beneath the brazen walls of Sorlost.
Within sight of the gatehouse, Tobias drew them to a halt.
‘Everyone know what they’re doing and saying?’ he asked briskly. ‘Any last questions? No? Fine. Good.’ He gestured to Marith with a flourish. ‘Over to you then, boy. Your Lordship. Lead on.’
Marith took a deep breath. Again, strange how unnerving having to act himself was. Far more frightening than acting someone else.
Four soldiers stood to attention outside a brick building straddling the road before the open gates. Two storeys with a portcullis and towers, but it looked absurd beneath the vast bronze walls. A toy fort with toy soldiers. Old wooden gates, splintered and worm-eaten, carved with blank-eyed faces. Behind it, the great mass of the Maskers’ Gate like a roaring mouth. They know, Marith thought madly. They see it. Help me. Help me. What would Tobias do, he wondered, if I stopped in the road and screamed? The soldiers stared at them, asked them a few bored questions, waved them on. Past the gatehouse they stepped into the great cavern of the wall. The air stank of metal. Their footsteps echoed, a ringing sound that was unpleasant to the ear. None of them spoke.
It took perhaps ten paces to walk through. A very long ten paces. Almost a death, or a rebirth. Then suddenly they were out in a great square, the Court of Faces, blinking in the light, surrounded by people and sound and noise and stink. Lik
e a magic trick. More soldiers gave them cold glances. Traders and hustlers surged forward, offering guides and recommendations for a good lodging house. A crowd of thousands, hair and skin every possible colour, clothing bright and dark and pale as water, glittering with gold. Colour and texture and beauty roaring in the eyes. Shouts in every language, birdsong and music, dogs barking, bray of asses, buzz of flies, bleating of goats. Sweat and incense, spice and honey, wood smoke and rot and shit and vomit and piss. Vast buildings, white marble, yellow brickwork, gilt wood, red paint. Carved porticoes and stone columns and velvet awnings and jewelled domes. Clockwork toys and paper flowers and silk carpets and caged birds and silver jewellery and roast meat.
The decaying heart of a decayed empire.
Sorlost.
‘Right.’ Tobias smiled at them warily. ‘We’re in. Just got to find everyone else now.’
‘Friendly bunch, aren’t they?’ muttered Emit, glancing back at the soldiers. ‘Or maybe they just don’t like His Lordship here.’ Can’t say I blame them, his eyes continued.
What have I ever done to you? Marith thought bitterly. He felt again a vague desire to kill the room.
His eyes were itching, the skin of his face raw. He found he was rubbing at his mouth and forced his hands to drop to his sides. His body felt heavy, the armour he wore hot and awkward hidden under his shirt. The noise and the confusion was almost too much for him, after the long days of silence in the desert sand. He had liked the emptiness, the feeling of it like a pain in his body, fear and yearning and sorrow that cut like great claws. Dragon’s claws, he thought with a bitter laugh. Everything had seemed briefly easier, with nothing between himself and his shadows, nothing to think about but walking onwards in the dust. Calm. Clean. Empty. This clamour and bustle of life made him uneasy, as though he were walking a high tightrope and might easily fall.
But there should be things here … He gazed around the square with nervous interest. Street sellers offered skewers of meat, thin cakes of sweet bread, flowers, drinks of lemon water, sherbet ice. Even this early in the day a few whores touted for business, worn and raddled in the fresh light. Two beggars with withered limbs and running sores jangled alms bowls. A drunk lay slumped against the base of a statue, sleeping in a puddle of vomit beneath rearing stone hooves. Almost nostalgic.
He eyed the whores with wary anticipation. A young woman noticed him staring and teetered towards him. Her legs were bound with tight cords to give her a mincing, hobbled gait; she wore bells at her wrists and ankles that tinkled irritatingly. Curious things, other people’s sexual peccadilloes. Anywhere else, most men would have got bored and walked off by the time she got near. Marith took a half step towards her. So close … But she moved so painfully slowly …
Then Rate noticed the woman and whistled. Marith’s heart sank. Taking risks. Letting things slip. I’m not so desperate, yet, he thought, though he knew that was a lie as he thought it. He shuddered and tried not to rub his eyes.
Tobias was looking at him with a frown. ‘Getting into character are we, My Lord?’ he said scathingly. ‘She’s a bit out of your price range, I’d have thought, unless she’ll give credit. Leave off, girl,’ he shouted to the woman, who had now advanced a good half a yard towards them. ‘He’s not interested.’
The woman flinched, blinking her eyes and rubbing a hand absently across her mouth. A pinched, desperate expression came over her face. Marith shuddered. Pain in his eyes. So close. So close. Turned to Tobias, trying to look embarrassed and relieved. Tobias gave him a look then pointed to one of the streets off the square. ‘I think we should be getting on,’ he said firmly. ‘We need to go that way, I think. We’re lodging at the Five Corners on the Street of the South.’
‘Sounds charming,’ said Rate. ‘Want to bring your new friend, My Lord?’
‘Wouldn’t know what to do with her,’ Emit muttered.
Marith trailed behind them, gazing back at the woman with hungry eyes.
Even equipped with a map, it took them over an hour of wandering before they found the Street of the South. It was a small, neat lane in an unremarkable area of the city that was not particularly rich, not particularly poor. Shoppers and merchants bustled about, engaged in their own honest business, assuming others did likewise. Flower boxes bloomed in many of the upper windows, a small garden square with a dried-up fountain was alive with birds. All bathed in the lovely soft golden desert light. Safe. Safe, and warm, and welcoming. Marith felt his heart rise within him. One could almost pretend, here, that the world was a good place.
The Five Corners itself was equally charming, a homely lodging house with faded yellow walls and honeysuckle growing around the door. From inside came the smell of fresh bread, the sound of a woman singing in a high sweet warbling voice.
It was run by three sisters, each prettier and friendlier than the last. Rate flirted with them shamelessly from the moment he set eyes on them; even Emit grinned at them and called them ‘ladies’ in a cheerful voice. The rooms were small but clean. Again, ‘My Lord Marith’ had his own room, the others shared two between them. He half wondered if the whole set-up was some elaborate joke of Skie’s.
They sat down for lunch in a quiet corner of the house’s common room. It opened onto a small garden with flowering trees in painted pots. The middle sister, Alyet, brought them eggs cooked with chicken, green leaves and spices, fresh bread still warm. To drink there was dry sharp wine mixed with lemon, fragrant and refreshing. Marith sat quietly, looking at the trees, enjoying the taste of the wine in his mouth and the sweet smell of the bread.
‘Gods, we’ve lucked out here,’ said Rate through a mouthful of eggs. ‘The others can’t possibly all have got lodgings as nice as this. Skie must have a solid gold bed or something, if he’s staying somewhere nicer than this.’
Tobias looked up from his plate, glared at Rate. Alyet came over to them smiling with another basket of bread and he said loudly, ‘You’re too kind, miss, too generous indeed. The best bread I’ve ever eaten.’
Alyet laughed sweetly. ‘I’m sure you say that to everyone.’
‘Why of course,’ Rate said. ‘Means it, too. I, on the other hand, would rather praise a lady’s face than her baking. Your smiles are sweeter than the moon, Alyet, and far, far sweeter than this fine bread.’
Alyet laughed again and bustled off to another table.
‘We don’t talk about the rest of them,’ Tobias said angrily. ‘They’re spread out across the city and we don’t know where they are and we don’t run into them, and we don’t look at them if we do. I shouldn’t even have to tell you that.’ He passed the basket to Marith. ‘More bread, My Lord? Another drink?’
After lunch they went out for a look around the city, equipped now with Alyet’s advice on where to go and where to avoid. Marith looked around him in fascination. This was the city that had escaped Amrath’s armies, that had refused to recognize Turnain of Immier as a god on earth. The golden, the eternal, the most beautiful, the first, the last, the undying. The unconquered. The unconquerable. The richest city there had ever been. He had read more about this city than any other place in all the world. Dreamed of seeing it.
In some disappointing ways, it was just a city like any other. The streets weren’t paved with gold, nor did they run with innocent blood. Most of the buildings were just shops and houses filled with ordinary shop and house things. The people out walking were engaged in the same business they would be in any other city. But a sense always of things beneath the surface. Things out of reach. They passed a dark alleyway that gaped like a mouth, in which shadows moved and from which a low noise came, a crying wail that made the skin on Marith’s back crawl. They passed vast gates of ivory and silver, studded with diamonds that flashed in the sun. They passed hollow-eyed children in silks and satins, scrabbling for rubbish blown in the corners of the streets. As long ago as tomorrow, beneath the brazen walls of Sorlost …
They stopped in a large square, grand and ruinous, white marble and pee
ling gold leaf on the walls. A huge statue of a man dominated it, its face eaten away, a stone hand clutching an object too worn to be recognized.
‘The Court of the Broken Knife,’ Tobias said, consulting his map.
‘That’s the knife, then?’ said Rate brightly, indicating the broken blade in the statue’s hand. ‘Looks more like a sword, I’d have said.’
Two women were sitting beneath the statue, one old, one young. The young woman wore a veil of white silk through which her eyes showed large and dark. She was lighting a little candle, her hands shaking on the taper she held. The old woman sat weeping. A tiny child played at their feet. Marith looked at them a moment. Almost as though he remembered them. The child smiled back at him shyly, gestured something with its grimy fingers. He shuddered at the sight of it, as if the child’s gaze might hurt him. The child’s lips moved, as though about to speak.
There was a disturbance in the square, a shifting of people, a chattering of voices. The child pointed. A man. Tall, middle-aged, flabby in the body with a short greying beard and a balding head, dressed in the simple loose robes of the south. Entirely unprepossessing. But he carried in his right hand a tall staff of dark wood.
The mage positioned himself in the centre of the square near the statue. Gazed around at the crowd and gestured for them to be silent. Tobias grunted almost as though he was pleased.
‘He’s just going to … perform?’ asked Rate. Amazement in his voice. Awe. ‘Like a travelling musician?’
‘He’s probably a wanderer, seeking whatever it is people like him seek, and needing to raise a quick bit of cash,’ said Tobias. ‘Or he fell out of favour somewhere and is down on his luck. Just because he’s a wonder worker, doesn’t mean he’s wealthy. Never heard the term hedge wizard?’
Rate shook his head. ‘Magery’s punishable by death in Chathe. Don’t have many hedges round my way either.’
The mage gestured again for silence. The tip of his staff began to glow with a soft emerald light, delicate in the sunshine, growing brighter until his face and hands were tinted green. A ball of light rose up from the staff and floated across the square above the heads of the crowd. Another and then another, tracing out a complex pattern as they crossed and recrossed each other’s paths, their colours shifting, rising and falling, dancing, alive.
The Court of Broken Knives Page 11