by AB Bradley
They stand on just the other side of these stairs, Mara thought. One sound and they will know I’m here.
Jost and Kogamon shifted nervously. Mara’s heart thundered. Sweat coated her palms. She wiped them on her burlap and clutched her son. She feared Ialane and whoever walked with her, but more so, she feel the fears ebbing from the two men’s pores.
“You did not see the sorceress?” Ialane asked.
“No—no—no Sister Ialane.” Kogamon shook his head enthusiastically. “Patrols are scouring Upper Sollan as we speak. We will find her soon. We will not let her reach the Blooming Ring.”
“Praise be to the Serpent Sun,” Jost added. “May Good King Sol raise the Fourth Sun and burn the Six to cinders!”
“Spoken like a true believer,” a voice said, thin, wispy, and edged by sarcasm.
Ialane chuckled lightly. “You doubt his faith, Brother Caspran?”
Caspran? That must be her companion, Mara surmised.
“I doubt the faith of all men,” Caspran said. “No doubt these two licked the feet of the Mother’s shrine last Harvest Festival. They only bend to the king because he chokes the old gods’ power from the world to make his own. A sliver of their soul will always be in the Mother’s arms.”
“You are as much a poet as a priest, Caspran.”
Jost swallowed. Kogamon lifted his bearded chin. Neither said a word.
Ialane’s sigh was audible even from Mara’s hiding place. “How is it we have practically an entire army in Sollan, and yet a single, filthy ashwalk pilgrim can still evade you? Are you men that incompetent?”
Kogamon lifted his chin higher. His beard reflected the lantern’s light. “No, Sister Ialane. It’s just…”
He glanced nervously at Jost. His fellow captain tightened his jaw, his eyes flashing a sign that begged the other captain to keep his mouth shut, but if Kogamon saw it, he ignored it.
“…You say she is a powerful sorceress,” Kogamon said, his eyes once again fixing ahead. “Perhaps she has used her magic to keep herself hidden? And even then, we have no idea what she looks like. She could be any woman in the streets cloaked in any number of disguises. What fool would keep cloaked in burlap when the whole city would know her now?”
“What fool?” Ialane asked, poison dripping in her voice. “Do you want a description? Should I have the king’s best artisan sculpt you a likeness from marble? The witch still wears her burlap. I would have her by now if she did not.”
Mara frowned. Her gaze drifted to her cloak. The soot had sunk deep within its rough threads.
Kogamon leaned back. “You, ah, say she is a moon maiden? Perhaps you know more? From which pleasure barge? What might her eyes look like?”
“You know the barges well?” Ialane asked, the poison in her tone turning lethal. “I wouldn’t be surprised if your coin paid for the whore’s meals. Tell me, Kogamon, how well would you sleep at night knowing your coin lined the pockets of our king’s assassin?”
The man’s cheeks reddened above his dark beard. His high chin slowly dipped.
Captain Jost’s grip flexed on his lamppost, the scars on his skin whitening with his tightened fingers. The man took the smallest step back from Kogamon. Behind them, the line of soldiers also gave the outspoken captain room. Kogamon stared ahead. His breaths came out like a caged bull’s. His nostrils expanded with each exhale. Mara could almost smell the panic coming from him.
“Sis—Sister Ialane, I—I—I would never contribute to Good King Sol’s death. I would give my life for him—”
“Would you?” she snapped. “Brother Caspran, do you think he would give his life for the king?”
“I’m not quite sure,” Caspran said. An eagerness edged his voice, a hunger that chilled Mara. “But I do love a good test of faith.”
“So then, would you die for your king?” Ialane asked. “Would you give your life for Good King Sol?”
The captain struggled with the words wrestling behind the wall of his lips.
No, Mara thought. Don’t tell her what she wants to hear!
Mara’s heart ached for the man who would happily clap her in irons and cart her to the wicked priestess if he found her beneath the stairs. Still, she couldn’t help but pity Kogamon as Ialane’s trap slowly closed around him.
“Speak up, my good soldier,” Ialane cooed.
“I would give my life for the king,” he said, tears wetting his eyes.
“I am so glad you would. You are a good soldier.”
The man blinked. He looked up, a smile creeping up his lips. “Yes, Sister Ialane, I serve the king faithfully.”
Kogamon’s eyes widened until Mara could see the wet whites surrounding his pupils. He stumbled back, palms raised before his face.
“No…no!”
A serpent slithered into view, its sandy scales glistening in the lamplight. Kogamon fell into the line of the men he once commanded.
“Keep him still!” Ialane ordered. “He has given his word he will die for his king, so let him do it.”
“Or we may have to test the faith of all you good soldiers tonight,” Caspran added.
The soldiers grabbed the flailing captain, holding his arms wide and pinning his feet to the cobbled road. The man cried and writhed, his wide eyes locked onto the slowly slithering snake. “Please, I don’t want to die like this! I’ve done nothing, Sister Ialane. I serve the king faithfully!”
“Then you will die faithfully for him.”
The snake paused at the man’s feet. Its tongue flicked out, striking the captain’s polished greaves.
“I don’t understand! What have I done?”
The snake coiled around his ankle. Kogamon sobbed. Mara grimaced, sending a prayer to the Six.
“What have you done?” Mara heard Ialane take a deep breath. “‘Decimus was a good man,’ you said. ‘His loyalty to the Coin Counter was misplaced, but he did not deserve that fate.’ These were your words, uttered from your lips, infecting the men you so dutifully commanded.”
Kogamon choked on his sob as Ialane Donra repeated the words he’d spoken to Jost. “I said his faith was misplaced…” he murmured. “I did not mean to anger you, the king or the Serpent Sun with my words.”
“Kogamon, I have given you a simple task. I have sent the king’s men throughout Upper Sollan. You were to find one girl. One girl. Yet, you cannot. And then I find not one, but two patrols idling in an empty lane, gossiping like hens when our king’s life hangs in the balance. And when it is abundantly clear I wish you to continue your search, what do you do?”
She laughed, and the sound sent a shiver down Mara’s spine. “You stand there like a fool and say you want a description, that a fucking ashwalk pilgrim is not enough for you.”
“They always need more,” Caspran said. “They are never satisfied. It is in their blood to hunger, to beg like a dog that’s eaten from the master’s table.”
The serpent slithered up Kogamon’s leg. The man bit his trembling lip. He shook his head, his braided beard swaying over his breastplate. “Please…”
“This man, this captain of yours, he is no stranger to the pleasure barges,” Ialane said. “I can see in his eyes he knows the soft touch of a moon maiden. I can almost hear his thoughts as he stares at my serpent, the regrets of his many nights full of sin and naked flesh and glimmer tingling down his throat. He claims his coin did not support our enemy. But he cannot say for certain. He doubts!”
“I do not doubt,” the captain rasped. “Mercy, please.”
The snake twisted around the man’s breastplate. It reached his shoulder, its ruby eyes glittering as its tongue lapped at the soft, sweaty flesh at the base of his neck.
“But I will show you mercy, good soldier,” Ialane said. Jost and the soldiers holding Kogamon exchanged confused looks.
“Oh thank you, Sister Ialane.” The man slumped, tears staining his cheeks and disappearing into his beard. “Thank you. I swear it will never happen again.”
“Just answer me this.”
/> The relief vanished from the man’s face as the other soldiers’ features hardened. Mara cupped her son’s head in her hands and pressed him against her collar. Although he drew no breath and his eyes would never open, she made sure he did not face what she suspected would soon happen to poor Kogamon.
“What would you ask me?” the captain asked.
“Can you tell me with all certainty that not a single coin of yours ever helped that whore? Say the words, soldier. Say them, and if they are true, then they will save your life.”
The serpent coiled around the man’s neck. It faced him, its tongue flicking his nose.
For a moment, not a breath slipped from the lips of any in the lane. Not even Mara risked a taste of air.
Kogamon looked up. His head shook so lightly, Mara almost missed the motion.
He clenched his jaw, and his face twisted in a snarl. “I’m dead no matter what words I say. So I spit on you and spit on our heretic king. He is no god. He will never defeat the Six. The serpent you worship and the one you screw at night can starve in the ash fields of hell for all eternity. Blessed is the Burning Mother, for all who bleed for her will dine at her table for eternity!”
“How disappointing,” Ialane murmured.
“Yet not unexpected,” Caspran added.
Kogamon spit in the snake’s face. “Long live the Six!”
Ialane’s serpent hissed. It bared its fangs and struck, burying them deep in his throat. Rich, crimson lines gushed from the wounds as the creature sunk its poison into his blood. He twisted and writhed. Blood ran down his breastplate and dripped onto the stone. His face reddened as his veins turned into black lines like rivers on a map.
His eyes clouded. His mouth foamed. He seized, and then he slumped.
The snake uncoiled from Kogamon and slithered to the ground. It disappeared behind the stairs, returning to Sister Ialane standing just out of Mara’s sight. The soldiers who held the captain dropped him unceremoniously on the street. Beneath his body, a pool of burgundy blossomed like a rose opening for spring.
Ialane Donra cleared her throat. “Now that the good soldier is finished with his rather childish heresy, we have pressing matters to address. Find me that girl. She is a moon maiden. She is an ashwalk pilgrim. You do not need any other description than this. Any guard who captures her will receive her weight in gold. Kill her where she stands, and bring the corpse she carries to me.”
Mara swallowed the sharp cry in her throat. She turned from the grisly scene and pressed her back against the stairwell. She gripped her son. Her angry tears stained his burlap. She grit her teeth into a granite wall and lightly stroked his tiny temple.
My son will never be a serpent’s feast, she thought. I don’t know why they want you, Son, but I promise you that no serpent will sink its fangs into you tonight.
Mara closed her eyes and listened to her pounding heart. The patrols split and headed to opposite ends of the lane, leaving Kogamon’s corpse laying on the road.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Silent Sons
Mara struggled from the stairwell’s shadow. Aloe leaves poked and prodded her cheeks as she swept through the verdant curtain that had kept her hidden from Sister Ialane and Brother Caspran. She’d scraped her knees when she slid beneath the stairs, and each time they pressed against the cobbled road a flare of fire shot up her legs.
With her child tucked in the crook of her arm, she crawled into the lane and lurched to her feet, gaze darting down each end of the avenue. After some hesitation, her eyes landed on the poor captain’s corpse. Kogamon stared dully into Harvest Festival’s starry sky. Blood stained his throat and matted his dark hair. The serpent’s poison blackened his veins and opened his mouth in a silent scream.
No longer did Mara think of him as a man. He had more in common with the discarded oyster shells she tossed to the coral sharks than a soldier in the king’s army.
She knelt before the body and closed her eyes. “Burning Mother, receive his spirit. May he dine at your table under the endless suns in the heavens.”
Gently, she closed his eyes and pressed her fingers beneath his jaw so his lips sealed. “You were not an evil man, Kogamon,” she whispered. “King Sol and this serpent god of his, Ialane and Caspran, they’ll pay for this evil. The Six will not stand for it. Their power will return, and then…then there will be peace.”
Mara had never truly prayed to the Six for much of anything. But standing before the mangled corpse, his body alone and abandoned after what was probably a life of service to his king, it twisted her heart. Captain Kogamon had a mother. She had held him as a babe as Mara held her son that very moment. His mother had once closed her eyes and dreamt of the wonderful things her son would do. Now, his mother may never even know the child she bore into the world lay dead in a pool of his own blood, the only funeral he would receive a quick prayer from the woman who caused his death.
“He is no good king, the one who rules this city.” Mara scowled, coming to her feet. The king—her king—took advantage of the Six’s waning powers. He had his eyes on heaven, and if the rumors were true, he would ride a great serpent to reach it. Whatever the Serpent Sun cult might be, whoever its priests were who spread its words like a pox through the kingdom, they all had to be stopped.
She gave the dead man a parting look of respect as she darted past his corpse. The road gently sloped upward. Twist after bend greeted her harried steps. Always she climbed. Always the buildings thickened.
After a few tense moments of darting and dodging and ducking the patrols filtering like ants through the streets, she came upon a set of stairs built into a tall rock wall. Lanterns drilled into the wall lit the stairs in a citrine glow. Long stalks of ivy and brilliant blossoms of dragon’s breath the color of richest wine spilled over the top like foam from a frothy beer. The stairs rose high above her, but unlike the wall that separated Lower and Upper Sollan, this one lifted the city higher. It was more a platform than a wall.
“No, more like a table,” Mara said, a grin slowly splitting her lips. “A very high table!”
She knew this place. She’d heard it before. It was the line between the rich and the elite. Upper Sollan housed the rich. Upper Sollan glittered with wealth. Still, it did not compare to those whose wealth was as old and vast as the Sapphire Sea. Beyond the stairs curling up the wall, she would find herself in the Blooming Ring outside the mighty wall of Hightable.
Mara swallowed. Her gaze drifted to her loose burlap sleeve. Hunted in a land so close to her heart, yet so very strange, and there she stood at the edge of the city’s heart. Her arms began to tremble.
Giving up now? Olessa’s voice whispered in her mind.
Mara spun away and rocked her son. “I should never have made it this far.”
Take the step, Mara. Gia’s voice was a soft tickle down her neck. You must take this step. The night will not last forever.
“Don’t be afraid,” Mara said, although she meant her words more for herself than her son. “What would you do, Gia? You would stride up these stairs like the king himself owed you coin. Olessa would have already been banging on his bedroom doors and threatening to feed him his chamber pot.”
Mara faced the stairs. She placed her foot upon the first step. Then, she climbed them. The air cleared with each step higher. Halfway up, the narrow stairs rose above the last tiled roofs of Upper Sollan.
Wind whistled in her ears and kissed her dry lips with its cool caress. She tightened her grip on her son and darted up the last steep flight.
She reached the top and twisted around as a gust billowed through her cloak. Below her, Sollan spilled out like a forest of brick and stone and tile. The city stretched into the distance, lanes upon lanes, homes upon homes, until the Sapphire Sea met the shore and slowed the city’s spread. Although the sea sought to stop the city, Sollan’s docks still thrust their long fingers over the water as if in defiance of the place where men were never meant to tread.
“And the Floatwaif
,” she whispered.
Mara’s heart skipped a beat. She leaned onto the balls of her feet and squinted. In the distance, beneath the shadow of the mighty titan set upon the horizon, she spied the bobbing grid of Floatwaif, the barges flecked with swaying lanterns dancing like fairies over the Sapphire Sea’s waters.
She waved like a little girl at the lights. Even if a thousand people surrounded her, she still would have giggled like a toddler at the sight of her home. Mara looked to her son and smiled. “Has it really only been hours since we left them? I feel like we’ve crossed half of Urum tonight.”
The lights of Floatwaif glittered on the waves. Mara slowly shook her head and let the vision sink into her memory. “And yet, I already feel a stranger. I miss you, Gia. Even you, Olessa, with your hard lessons and silk glove. I wish you could be here now. I wish you could see our home. We are not poor from a distance. We are a field of stars floating on the waves. It is so beautiful.”
Tears welled in Mara’s lids. She wiped them on her sleeve and turned from the world she knew. Atop the raised table she scaled, a vast park full of tall palms, aromatic junipers, and massive olive trees sprouted. Between the trees, the tall grasses were filled with poppies every color of a brilliant flame. Long, placid ponds held Eloian swans purer white than the belly of a fresh cloud. Athe peacocks squawked amongst the grasses. Their feathers shimmered slate and sapphire in the starlight, crowning their thin heads in brilliant, feathery halos.
“And this is the Blooming Ring,” she said.
The park she faced, the beautiful, serene picture of heaven she saw, it all ended at the high wall surrounding Sollan’s heart. Mara thought the stairs she had just scaled tall. She thought the wall separating the upper and lower city mighty. The one she faced dwarfed them both. The park stretched toward it. It encircled the wall like a moat of blossoms and ponds.
If something lay beyond the barrier, she could not see it. Hightable’s wall towered over her world. Whatever it guarded would not be given up easily.
“Hightable,” she whispered. “They built you to turn back the titans themselves.”