The Empress’ face went taut and pale, so much so he thought she might faint and moved forwards in anticipation of preventing any fall but she twitched upright and he realised it had never occurred to her he might say no. Perhaps he was not allowed to say it. Hakka’s body had tensed. He waited.
‘I am given to understand that there is a slender possibility it may… that we… if there was a child…’ She never let her eyes move from his face. ‘Or even if we simply knew one another in that way, then you would have more to offer them than our words and treaties.’
Tzaban looked at Night and saw her work in this; she had explained Karoo matters more extensively to the Empress and been heard. He saw that the woman with a censer was a priest of a sort, an official in any case. His skin prickled. ‘You intend to do this now, in secret? What will I be, then?’
Hakka made to speak but the Empress’ hand flashed up, preventing him. He had to be satisfied with glowering. Tzaban smelled defiance and possession in his sweat.
‘If I make it public there will have to be an enormous fuss, not to mention many objectors who will attempt to foil me and perhaps worse. Regardless of such considerations there is no time for that. You are to leave for the dig the day after tomorrow.’
He read in her face, in the shimmer of that concealing dust, that the resistance was more than any disinclination of the people. There were others trying to stop her and in spite of her position they had mandates to do so. Her gaze at him was pleading, if anything, begging him to end the fighting before her strength ended and they overran her from the inside. He knew it was not his war, not this one he saw in her and not the other one at the forest edge either.
‘You don’t threaten and force me,’ he said, making it a question.
She shook her head, the heavy headdress of white wood and pearls like a coral forest clacking with her movement. ‘You’re free to say no. Do not worry. No harm will be done to you.’
He looked at the window. He breathed the air, scenting the open night far below them, full of wood and grass, damp leaves. He felt they would soon kill him here, if not her then others. He looked at her face. The bronzed dust shimmered over her skin. His wandering spirit returned through the window, sat with him, sank into him. He found it would not please him now to go and leave her with nothing.
He bowed his head to her, eyes closed. ‘As you wish.’ Although they were the correct words he found they came to his mouth of their own accord instead of being pushed and shoved there. He felt mild surprise that his own volition could make such a profound change in him so quickly, and then he endured the rest of the meaningless hour, following Night’s instructions to him until all that must be said was said and done done. All he remembered of it was the stink of the priestess’ fear, wondering what it was that made her so terrified when nothing of note was happening and nobody was there but the five of them.
When they had finished, the Empress herself had a grey-green tinge around her lips and her eyes were rolling in her head. Parlumi Night was holding to her left arm, holding her up by this time, murmuring to her reassuringly. Hakka, his face tight and ashen under its natural dark coloration, watched from only a half metre, ready to leap in. His anguish again seemed out of proportion to Tzaban which must mean something was happening he didn’t understand. The priestess gathered her bits and pieces into a ceremonial bag with an unseemly speed and made some garbled goodnights and an exit without anyone paying her more mind.
‘What is the matter?’ Tzaban asked, looking at Night for his explanation with a direct gaze.
‘The other Empresses,’ Night said, staggering as the girl finally lost her fight to stay conscious and passed out then and there, Hakka already holding her other elbow and then taking her up into his arms where she slumped against his chest like a small sackful of grain dressed up in a ludicrous costume. ‘They tried to stop her.’
Tzaban followed Hakka at Night’s side since nobody seemed like they wanted to stop him. He was not of a Karoo blood that possessed mental linkage. It would have given him a vulnerability and he had been made as a lone and silent wanderer. Those that were able to hear thought were beings he felt repelled by, particularly since they often formed groups of set hierarchy and he couldn’t bear subordination when it was not a voluntary thing. Even to see it made him feel mistrust and the brooding beginnings of aggression. He considered what it might be like to be a grouped entity and to stand alone against an opposition of seven equals, and when he and Night shared a look he knew that she also felt the same disturbed shiver in her spine. Whatever else the Empress was she had a personal strength in excess of anything most would dream of. It cast all her previous patience and thoughtful judgements in a different light. He became aware of himself becoming suddenly willing to bend perhaps, just in deference to that power. But still, a gestalt being was anathema to him. He didn’t trust them. There were too many hidden hands and eyes far from wherever he was able to sense their intent or feel their presence directly. There were too many throats he could not tear.
She had not asked him to rule however, nor to share any of that burden. The marriage seemed so far only to permit him to accompany her and to validate his seizure of her geha – the knowledge of her making and body. He followed the others. They might mistake it for obedience but it was simply a matter of ownership.
In her quarters the other two guards were awake and serious. The one called Eth went immediately to Hakka and his mistress, hair a blond cascade always surprising to Tzaban in its incredible straight abundance. The other, dark and braided, stood silently and watched Tzaban with narrowed eyes but Tzaban did not deign to notice his hostility; he was no threat.
There was some fussing as they set her up in her own bed, Night circling until she settled beside her in a chair, doing something he assumed was medicinal with smoke and tinctures she dropped into the girl’s mouth from a crystal wand. Recognising there was no use for him immediately Tzaban lay down at the bed’s foot until sleep overtook him.
TORADA
Torada woke to a gloomy midday. She heard rain pounding the garden, splashing on leaves and drumming the crystal glass panes of the dome overhead. Something was different… but she had a hard time for a while discovering what it was. Her mind and her atman were quiet, woolly, as if they had been stuffed with rainclouds and could hold nothing else. Gradually she became aware of Meixia and Haru, the Empresses Murmur and Beckons, at their normal positions on the public edge of her atman, the totality of her awareness. All the other places were empty. She searched discreetly, not wanting but still wondering about the others, but even a brief effort revealed the truth of their previous evening’s declaration. They had gone. The Eight were in union no longer, the rest forming a seven, and only two of those were with her now, a secret triad.
She felt the distant awareness of Haru, keeping space from her until requested to move closer, as she always had. Meixia was sleeping – it being night where she was. She was not sure if their loyalty was genuine or spying for the rest. She knew her action had effectively exiled her. Only Meixia was close enough to be of any practical help, but even she might be forbidden to act. Torada, and Glimshard, was now on her own. Before she had to drown in the implications of that she lay and looked up at the glass dome and the rain washing it. She felt no victory, only exhaustion and a kind of relief that Dirt and Spire were gone at least, if not the rest. Dirt and Spire – she hadn’t realised how much their disapproval had painted every moment of her life until now, when it was absent. She listened to the weather and lay still, relishing every beautiful moment.
A sigh from nearby interrupted her some time later. She looked around without moving her head, thinking first Eth, but then knowing it wasn’t. Her room appeared quite empty and peaceful, as she liked it. But it was not empty. Her gaze moved to the end of the bed, then to the side, and she saw the white end of the Karoo’s tail there, a plume like Hakka’s polearm tassel, only shorter and nearly icy in colour instead of blond.
T
onight – tomorrow. She had only hours. He had to prepare to leave so he was out of the city soon. Mazhd had sent word he was sure something would happen over the next day or two but Alide had told her to hold back from action because seizing a few conspirators now would send the rest to hide. She must not have Tzaban dead. He had to be her emissary. Without him she had no chance in the south. And for the ball they must both be ready. She would have to convince the entire city of her wisdom when she was not sure it was wisdom at all. The Karoo, as she understood it, might simply kill him and then all this would be for nothing.
But first she had to face him alone, her husband, a creature she could not pretend to understand and upon whom so much hope was pinned. For a moment the yawning gulf of probabilities stretched out inside her, between the best and worst case scenarios. She knew herself hurtling into its black gap and for a moment froze before she reminded herself it had never been different. Just sometimes she forgot the gap when she had a great deal to do. She wished her choice had been more positive. She wished it had not been because she could not stand another minute of Dirt and Spire stalking her, knowing they had people within her walls who did not wish her to retain the Gleaming throne. She could not trust them.
She had married a Karoo. He was beneath any social level, outside any known group. She might as well have married the monster from the river bottom who steals small children from the shallows and walks in the night as a traveller, moving islands, moving always to fresh waters until dawn comes and finds it buried in the silt again, water overhead and shade and the ever-moving current.
She wondered what it meant to him. Nothing perhaps. He had seemed as unmoved as a stone by the entire process once he’d agreed and she’d no idea why he had changed his mind. The strangeness of that mind intrigued her; the world it came from fascinated her and had since childhood though nearly all Karoo stories were like the river monster, full of death and oddity. There were none with happy endings, unless the Karoo went away or were killed. Only her intuition and instinct had insisted that this one was important, against all evidence and lore to the contrary. She wondered if she felt up to what must come next, and thought that she would have to be.
‘Tzaban, are you there?’
The tail lifted and withdrew. She saw his head and shoulders appear, facing away from her as he sat up and realised he had not changed his clothing, must have been there since the night before.
‘Yes. I am awake.’ He got up smoothly and stretched, surprising her with how relaxed he must feel.
She sat up too and pointed to the bed beside her. ‘Please sit down.’ It was nearly big enough for four, the edge did not bring him so very close.
He looked at the spot indicated and then after a moment walked around the curved side and sat there, one leg up with his ankle on the other knee, the shin resting like a kind of fence between them. His foot was bare. She looked at it, seeing how long it was, coloured deep blue, the tigerish markings on it nearly black all the way to his black toes with their filed black claws, and then up at him.
‘Night has told me that you collect knowledge. I mean that males do that, where Karoo have them. And then they trade it to females for certain kinds of favour.’
His eyes were the most disturbing orange amber colour but it was less the colour than the quality of the look that made her almost lower her gaze, though she didn’t. Years of training distanced her from the primal domination she recognised in his face. It had been one of the first things she learned, although this was one of the only times she had felt a sense of actual danger in the act of not submitting. He looked as if he wanted to go for her throat. It was rather thrilling but she repaid him with an expression of calm enquiry. Finally he spoke.
‘Yes. The only knowledge they care for is of the body, of the making and the growing, the shape and the spirit. All else is worthless. Mmn, except perhaps knowledge of rich land good for growing. But I would not bet my life on that.’
His seriousness on the final point rang an alarm in her. ‘Is that a bet you must make?’
He nodded solemnly. ‘Female Karoo are absolute and merciless. They are like Empresses, only all of them are Empress… hnn… something like this. To give false information, too little, worth too little… that is a fatal decision for any male.’
Torada found her hands clinging to her sheet and blanket. ‘I do not kill people who make poor decisions.’
‘Perhaps you should rethink that,’ he said, apparently serious.
She was speechless for a moment, at the notion. ‘How? Why do they kill? Wouldn’t it be more sensible to let the male go and find something out?’
Now it was his turn to look confused and struggle with an idea. ‘Gendered Karoo are rare, at least fixed ones. Females have no time for useless males. They are uh… waste of resources… empty hands always eating.’ The eyes looked at her, knowing very well the talk was mostly a delay, but he let her have it. She wondered…
‘Do you see me like them?’
‘No,’ he said immediately. ‘You would have eaten me by now.’
‘Eaten?’ she repeated, faintly. His eyes blinked, slowly, for the first time.
‘They do not like waste.’
‘But—’ She felt moved and put her hand out towards him, suddenly not knowing what she expected him to do with it. His chiselled, angular features invited no sympathy. ‘And if they eat you, then? Do they gain all that you know?’
He nodded once.
‘So um, supposing they enjoy what you have brought and find it good. Then what?’
‘Then I would survive.’
She decided to speak what was uppermost on her mind, and had been since Night first mentioned it. ‘How do you pass the knowledge? Is it like human mating?’
Tzaban’s eyes glowed briefly – a disconcerting sight even to someone as used to mages as she was. ‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘It can be done many ways.’
‘So when I must give this to you you don’t have to…’ She left it hanging for him to fill.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I am human-like. Not human. That is not necessary.’
She felt abruptly disappointed and wanted to laugh at herself for her assumptions. ‘Do Karoo have sex?’
He seemed to struggle with this. ‘Anything could be that, or not that. Sometimes it is as you do it, but not… hm.’ He lapsed into silence then said, ‘You do it for many reasons, not only exchange. Our connections are different.’ He shrugged at her, helpless to express it, and gave up.
‘Will you take it now then?’ she asked, trying not to let her fear show because she knew that it was dangerous to feel that around him. Night had told her his nature. But she was afraid that it would hurt.
He nodded. She marvelled at how simple everything seemed to be for him, and she envied him. ‘Give me your hand,’ he said and held out his own.
‘Will it hurt?’ She carefully extended the same hand as before.
‘If you try to pull away and resist me, yes. But mostly me.’ He took her offered hand and she felt small and puny, seeing her fingers in the huge palm and grip of his. ‘Now do not move. It will feel strange, prickly.’
She secured herself far from the Empresses, feeling a slight, odd burning where her skin and his met, then a sharp prickle as he had promised, but because she was expecting it there was no real shock and it was not very bad, like touching a sparkwire with a mild charge in it. She giggled, nervously, and heard footsteps as the sound attracted the guard.
Tzaban tensed and the sensation of pins and needles intensified too. She waved Jago away quickly as she could with her free hand, signalling she did not wish to be disturbed. His black frown was so familiar she saw no extra disappointment in it as he retreated again. Her commands were absolute and he would not return until she called.
‘Is this…’ she began uncertainly, staring at their joined hands, feeling as if they held nettles between them.
‘This is all,’ Tzaban said, his free hand reaching out to clamp her wrist and
make it still almost as if he thought she would try to tear it away. His grip was much stronger than she expected, blood flow and bones nearly crushed as his hand engulfed her. She felt the roughness of his skin, sandy and tough as the pads of a hunting dog’s paw. Although it was painful and made her heart leap with a moment of fear she said nothing and kept her face in its schooled expression of mild interest.
His orange eyes narrowed and his throat pulsed once as if he were drinking. She looked closer and saw fine threads at the edge of his palm and hers, joining them together, but so gossamer delicate they were nothing more than spidersilks, almost as thick, a little more green in colour where they massed together. With a shock she realised he had grown into her, like a tree putting down roots. She focused all her mind on it but it was not a mental thing and remained closed to her most powerful sense. She felt no robbery, but intuitively guessed he was drawing all knowledge of the how of her making out of her, harmlessly and without pain. It seemed wrong that he could take everything but the essence of her being and she not feel anything for it but this slight discomfort which was already abating to a simple blur of tiny pulses.
‘This is how Karoo mate?’ She heard the disappointed surprise in her own voice.
‘Mmn, partly,’ he said. ‘Though the details of the contact are not important.’
Torada watched the filaments slowly withdrawing, at the very limit of her ability to focus her eyesight. They left her skin apparently undamaged and his the same. After a minute it was done and he let her go. She drew her palm to herself and felt it sensitised and sore. Then she examined his face. He looked pensive.
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