“Speaking of,” he said, “where else would you care not to be married?”
Her vision divided, and she saw herself standing with bridal flowers before the barred gates of Morimound. She had designed those flood walls, and they had been shut against her. Hiresha had saved many lives. They had forced her into exile. The thud of two-and-three-quarters feet of reinforced heartwood sounded in her chest.
She refocused on the facet with Tethiel. “Not in the Empire,” she said.
“And not the Alliance of Masks.”
“Your homeland?” Hiresha asked. “I should think you’d delight in a wedding invasion.”
“I would but for one snag.” He puffed out the lace of his cuffs. “I promised I’d not return.”
“Promised whom?”
“A god.”
“Your hypocrisy is acting up. You trespassed with me down the throat of They of Jade Skin.”
Her arrangements of amethysts backlit him with purple. His Feasters had left him alone with Hiresha. “We weren’t expressly forbidden, now were we?”
He had been banished from his homeland, as had Hiresha. What an inestimably strong foundation on which to build a relationship.
“My heart, we can challenge gods as an anniversary. Let us have humbler aspirations for the wedding.”
“I also prefer our marriage not defy the gods. Neither do I wish to grovel to the priests of the Dominion of the Sun. They’d wed me to war.”
“Then the City of Endless Day is right out,” he said. “One of the Dominion’s slave states would be more welcoming.”
“Would any be a fit venue?”
“Hoathas, the City of Flowing Gold.”
“The honey capital?” It was far from her hopes, from everything. Then again, Hiresha had never factored exile into her wedding plans.
“The beekeepers have surprising style sense. They will be devoted to you at once.”
“Perhaps I should visit.” The crystal palace of her childhood dreams shattered behind her. She would have to build new hopes, greater ones.
“The city matriarchs already know me, and I just had a lovely banquet with one of their upstanding sons. A hexer.”
She rubbed the smoothness of the gems imbedded into her hands. Hiresha could not allow a hexer to touch her jewels. She might wipe them off but never rid them of the memory of foulness.
Hiresha said, “The City of Gold gave the Dominion the crux of its magical power. My studies told that all hexers train in Hoathas. And yet it is a subjugate state. Can they not be bothered to rule?”
“The matriarchs prefer to resolve conflict without violence. The Dominion of the Sun was of the opposite opinion.”
“Then the City of Gold was sacked?” What a brutish world this was, loud with ignorance, and dimly lit with the shortsighted lusts. All progress was smashed into glittering powder.
“No,” Tethiel said, “the matriarchs negotiated a peace. Their magic for the city’s safety.”
“A compromise. That is an unexpected glimmer of decency. Yes, I will visit and see if the City of Gold will suit.”
“Don’t misunderstand me. It is awful,” Tethiel said, “but uniquely so. All great cities are.”
“Unique enough to accept a wedding full of your Feasters?”
“The City of Gold stands to gain. With my favor and yours the balance of power may shift in the Dominion. The matriarchs will understand this.”
He stepped into the center of the grove. The starlight reflected from his skin in a vitreous luster. At night, no part of him looked mortal. Onyx-shard brows, skin of opal, chasm eyes, hands that cast monstrous shadows, he was a deathless king crowned with a black triangle. The tattoo on his brow had transformed from a crudely inked brand into a three-sided pupil. Its silky pool of darkness wavered to the point of revealing something hidden in its depths, then clouded again. If Hiresha stared too long into that sign she might never find her way out again.
“You may be beyond handsome,” she said, “yet what I find most appealing about you is your foresight. As long as it’s not used against me.”
“Never.”
“I’m certain you mean, ‘Never again.’” Hiresha cleaved an amethyst crystal in front of him. “Concerning the wedding, I hope the guest list won’t feel unbalanced. I have few enough friends and no close relatives, while your family is everything but reasonable.”
“My children are legion,” he said, “but the important thing is that I outlived my parents. We neither of us are bringing a mother-in-law to the marriage, so it has every chance of a success.”
“How peculiar. My mother wouldn’t have approved of you, the wedding, or my work. And yet I am still sorry that she expired before she could see me married.” Hiresha touched her chest below her red paragon. The ache there was full of piercing sharpness.
“No matter how overfond we are of our mothers, they always deserve more.”
The pain split into two distinct shards that dug lower into Hiresha’s abdomen. “We must discuss something else in that vein. If it drives us apart, better now than later when we’d look like idiots.”
Tethiel plumbed her with his midnight eyes. “You’re afraid I’ll want a son?”
“And that you’ll want me to bear him.” The admission didn’t come easily. She could rip a banyan tree out of the ground, roots and all. She had barely enough strength to say this to her betrothed. “Once I wanted children. Someday I may wish to raise one, yet likely not bear one. Not to carry, not to birth.”
“Understandable, after you saved Morimound from a womb curse.”
“In Morimound we have the tradition that a wife must bear a son. Until she does, she may be thrown out onto the street on a whim.”
Tethiel pulled on a coat cuff to straighten it. “A worthy fear, but you may bid it farewell. As we both know, I already have too many children.”
“And an heir?” Hiresha gazed toward the path out of the banyan fortress. Celaise would be outside.
“Yes. She is not of my loins, but wine is thicker than blood. We drink from the same cup.”
Wine was not as viscous as blood; his meaning was nonetheless clear. What pure crystalline relief if they could resolve this with such ease. Most any other suitor would’ve coveted a son from the Lady of Gems. That was even more true of her other self, Hiresha the Flawless. Approximately every man in the Empire wanted her to beget. Maybe Tethiel wished that too. He might only be lying to please her.
“Not so,” he answered, though she had not spoken her question.
“By tradition,” she said, “a marriage is a promise between a man and woman to make a family.”
“Are we not above tradition? Never follow a precedent when you can set one. Your children will be knowledge and wonder.”
Her jewels shone like pleasant dreams. Her gem piercings were cool points of stability in her forearms, feet, chest, and down her back. She extended a glittering hand to him.
He lifted her fingers to his lips. They were warm against her skin and thrilling against her jewels. “My heart, when you visit the city, don’t hide. Let them see your true brilliance.”
“I well may.” She ought to stay inconspicuous, yet it was a travesty to conceal her jewels.
Tethiel waved a spindle-fingered hand toward the entrance. “Someone is coming.”
“Spellsword Sagai? I should think the assassin would have the sense to avoid us at night.”
“No, a woman I invited here. A woman you’ve waited long to see.”
“Janny Barrows.” It had to be her. Understanding flashed over Hiresha. In her other facet, Janny had tried to introduce Hiresha to a man with well-proportioned musculature yesterday. Or that would happen tomorrow. Hiresha could not parse which facet came first temporally, yet it only made sense that another man introduced Janny tonight.
The woman in question bounded and bounced into the workshop. In contrast to the grey maid clothes she had worn serving in the Academy, colors battled each other across her dress. Her t
urban was a confusion of paisley.
“You old slab, I’ve missed you,” Janny Barrows said. She seemed ready to barrel Hiresha over with her embrace. Her body had grown more generous in this facet.
Hiresha met the collision and lofted her friend in an air-born hug. “You old indulgence, I haven’t missed you at all.”
“Liar.”
“Why, I saw you only hours ago,” Hiresha said.
“It’s been near half a year. That’s about a thousand beers.”
Over Janny Barrow’s shoulder, Tethiel ghosted his way out of the workshop. He had given them time alone. Hiresha had another chance of explaining herself to her friend. “You’ll note I’ve changed.”
“Never seen you all yellow before.”
“This is a dress of citrines. And?”
“You don’t look so droopy. Ah!” Janny Barrow’s cheeks jiggled when she saw they were levitating ten feet above the pond. “We’re flying.”
“Suspended in the air.”
“Did you sprout wings out your ass?”
“I am awake, and asleep.”
“You’re making no sense.”
“My strength comes from paradox,” Hiresha said. “My jewels shine with the power of dreams. My eyes are yet open.”
Janny Barrows folded her hands around one of Hiresha’s. The calluses of the former maid rubbed over the jewel piercings of the once enchantress. “You’ve stuck yourself more than a seamstress.”
“I am two selves, two places at once.”
“So you’re cracked?”
“Faceted,” Hiresha said. She had to make Janny Barrows understand. She was Hiresha’s friend. She should know. “Enchantresses can only cast spells when dreaming. Since I don’t know if I sleep or wake, I have my powers in both worlds.”
Janny Barrows had sucked her lips into her mouth, making a moue of puzzlement.
“Both facets feel like a lucid dream. For the first time, you’ve seen me wholly alert.”
“You’re awake as a nude sitting on ice, that’s plain. The rest isn’t.”
“I know you in two worlds. In the other, I call you Janny. Here, I’ll call you Missus Barrows.”
“But I’m Janny.”
“Don’t you understand? I see two of you, and if I called you the same thing in both facets I’d only confuse myself.” The Janny in the sunset facet appeared both young from Hiresha’s regenerative magic and haggard from worrying about the plagues, while this one had a disposition of sunburnt happiness.
“When I see two of a person,” Missus Barrows said, “I call the night a success. Maybe you’ll make more sense after a few drinks.”
Hiresha sagged to the ground with her friend. Missus Barrows didn’t understand. They never did, no matter how Hiresha tried to explain her dream inversion. No one understood her except Tethiel. Only with him could she speak her whole mind. She would have to close part of herself off to the rest, even to her oldest friend.
Missus Barrows patted Hiresha’s cheek. “Wring the glum out, you old rag. Tell me if it’s true you’re getting married.”
“I am betrothed.” Hopefully they could speak of this. “To Lord Tethiel.”
Missus Barrows sighed. Thankfully, she didn’t scream. “Feasties are a bad lot, but they know how to throw a party.”
“You sound as if you’ve mollified your opinion of him.”
“If that has anything to do with mulled wine, then yes. He and I vanquished a thirteen-course banquet together. We’re comrades in cups.”
“Awe inspiring.”
Missus Barrows scratched at her turban. “And, you know.”
“Most things, but which one in particular?”
“My own daughter is a Feaster. Can’t help but love her a bit. Even if she is a no-good brat.” The corners of Missus Barrows’ lips puckered with guilt. She blamed herself for what the girl had become.
Missus Barrows hadn’t been able to spend much time at home, with all the assistance Hiresha required while stricken with her sleeping disease. Hiresha owed her a great debt. “You’re a good woman, Missus Barrows.”
“Don’t call me that. The young bucks will think I’m married.”
“‘Will Miss Barrows do?”
“Suppose anything is better than ‘Maid Janny.’”
“Then, Miss Barrows, might you be bold enough to attend my wedding?”
“Don’t you doubt it, Miss Jewel Toes, but only if I can be the maid of honor.”
Hiresha had not been brought up with that marriage tradition, yet the Lady of Gems had little need for convention. Tethiel had to be right. She was one of a kind. Well, one of two, to be precise.
Her jeweled hands clasped Miss Barrows’ rough ones. “Will you be my maid of honor?”
“You can have honor, and I’ll be your maid.” She winked.
“Why, did you not just claim you disliked being called maid?”
“This kind is more fun. Not that you’d know anything ’bout that.”
They talked until dawn. Miss Barrows bathed her feet in the pond. “Free of leeches, you will observe,” Hiresha said while carving her amethyst scales. The fennec napped alongside Celaise and Jerani. They had come in to sleep under Hiresha’s watch.
“Don’t let yourselves become too settled,” Hiresha said. “Spellsword Sagai and Naroh Sen are likely to arrive this morning. I will endeavor to send the assassins away with minimal fuss. Is that them coming now? Very punctual.”
Hiresha turned to face the path at the sound of someone else, a pair of unexpected feet. Merely two, not four. Plodding, not deft.
“That isn’t them.” Hiresha concealed herself in her rags and uncomfortable shoes. The robes were all so much dead weight, yet she would need them if that tread belonged to whom she thought. The steps were familiar in their heel-slapping, in their favoring one side, though heavier today, weighed down and stumbling.
A woman from the village came into the grove. Yes, it was the mother of Nahui. Grief had turned her face into a rocky tightness.
Hiresha lifted the geode in her gloved hands. Nahui had left it for her yesterday, to open, to marvel at the garden of crystals within. She had been well enough to walk here. The enchantment had cured her, yet something had gone terribly wrong.
A sense of despair rang through Hiresha. The foreboding felt as real as prophecy. Nahui would never see the inside of this geode.
“What happened to your daughter?” Hiresha asked the woman.
“You killed her,” she said.
Hiresha rested the geode in the dead girl’s hands. She had died yesterday, when Hiresha had been asleep in her reliquary. Hiresha had been dead to this world. She had been powerless to help. Rigor mortis had set in, yet the girl had so little muscle that Hiresha could shift her arms to a more peaceful pose.
A small dose of magic eased the stiffness in the girl’s hands in order for her to grip the geode. The ancient water had flowed out of stone and left it hollow. Exposed now, its interior glittered with three hundred seventy-three crystals. They were quartz and clear except for ghosts of amethyst purple at their cores.
The girl had cuts around her ankles from rope burns. Hanging her upside down had drained her blood faster from the severed artery in her neck. She had been sacrificed.
Hiresha could be angry. She could be disgusted. Five years ago she had balked and blanched when a priest from her homeland had suggested sacrificing citizens. He had claimed their ancestors had given up their kin for the favor of the gods. He must have been right. Go back far enough in any nation’s history and one would find human sacrifice. They usually called it “war.”
Hiresha gripped the sides of the girl’s face. Mud spattered her open eyes. Hiresha could try to bring her back. The girl had been dead for twenty-one hours, and decay came fast in the jungle. Hiresha could still quash the infection units, Attract the girl’s blood from the soil back into her veins, force her heart to pump, and attempt to regenerate her rotting mind.
What an exercise in futil
ity. Even if it worked, the uproar would shake the continent. Hiresha was helpless. With all her power and knowledge, she could do no more for the girl or her grieving mother.
The woman stood hunched over; her hands bent into claw fists; and her face trembled from the effort of not crying. “She was so close. Next full moon and she would’ve had a new name. She would’ve been a real person.”
The priest stood over the woman. Thorns pierced his blood-crusted ears. The jade sacrificial knife hung from his belt. “Remember your daughter with pride. She’s brought the rain’s gladness. Her blood is the richness that blooms from the ground and from wombs.”
The mother did not reply.
He turned his staff over. Within was a void full of seeds, which plinked downward in a sound like rain as he walked away.
The mother leaned toward Hiresha and spat. Hiresha let the glob hit her robe. “The King’s Spear chose her because of you,” the mother said. “He told the priest to kill her.”
“Did he say why?” Hiresha tucked the girl’s hair behind her ear. The curative amethyst Hiresha had placed against her scalp was gone. It had been cut off.
“Nahui died because of you. You did something to her. What?”
“Not enough,” Hiresha said.
The King’s Spear was watching Hiresha, not trying to hide his grin. His foul little mind must have its speculations. After she left the crying mother to approach, he handed Hiresha the curative amethyst.
She flicked off the dead skin from the gemstone. “The girl reported that this came from me.”
“Her strength came back, but not from no god. She only had your stone.”
Hiresha couldn’t blame a six-year-old for breaking her promise. However, Hiresha had thought only her own future was at risk.
“Should’ve told Macco you had some magic,” the King’s Spear said. “Shouldn’t have wasted it on a girl too young to be people. Not when Macco’s stuck out in the wilderness.”
What Hiresha had to determine was if he had told anyone else about the enchanted crystal. If her secret could die with him, then it would. “Maybe I will share my magic, if no one—”
“‘Maybe’ nothing. You will.” He waved his poisoned spear with its green band in front of her face. “You think you can choose? ‘No, the gods can’t kill this girl.’ ‘No, I need the crystals sooner.’ ‘No, I won’t help Macco become the king’s greatest warrior.’”
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