She closed the curtain with a slow hand and turned back to us, bright-faced.
“Will you kill me now or will you wait for a less guarded opportunity? I admit I’ve been wondering if the inevitable attempt would be daring enough to come while I am ensconced in my antechamber, attendants a mere door’s width away—or if the new oath-breakers would wait until I was asleep. For you are oath-breakers, are you not? Your order forbids violence, and yet, here you are. How very Nurian of you—the will of the gods is supreme unless the Papacy needs a puppet.”
Bartholomew walked to her very slowly, his head bent in real respect, and when he spoke he made his voice as comforting as our snouts and lolling tongues can manage. We held our breaths, waiting to leap to his aid the moment she moved.
“I am sorry for you. I am sorry that you were once innocent and young, and that the Caliph used you for his ends. I am sorry that you have had to come such a long way, through such suffering and foul magic. I wish that you had been allowed to stay a tender of wiry goats in the sweet-breathed mountains. I wish that we had not heard your story. But you do not know Al-a-Nur simply because you once died at its hand. That you cannot comprehend the selflessness of Cveti-who-became-Ghyfran, or the pity, the love, she must have felt for you, to administer the last sacrament of her faith to a nonbeliever, tells me no more than that you are not fit to be the lowliest novice, let alone the Papess of our spiritual menagerie. You could never understand what we suffer for the sake of that beautiful garden of gods, or why we would incur this stain on our souls so that others may live free of sin. I am sorry, terribly sorry, that you have wagered so much for vengeance when all who harmed you are dead, and that you must fail now, before you could see the spires of the Twelve Towers catching the dawn light and spinning it into a fall of crystal. Before you could even begin what you must have planned all those years in your little vial. But we have sworn, and we are, if nothing else, obedient dogs.”
All this while, I and Balthazar had inched towards her, and when our brother stepped back, with tears in my eyes, I leapt and closed my teeth over her throat, but my jaws snapped on empty air. Ragnhild stood suddenly behind Balthazar, and she smiled sweetly, like a little child with a caramel.
It seemed to each of us that her face floated before ours in all its frigid beauty. It seemed to us that she bent her lips to our panting muzzles, and her breath smelled of bundles of violets clutched to the breasts of dead maidens, of gauze stretched over noble profiles and coins pressed into eye sockets. It seemed to us that she kissed our mouths, and our eyes clouded over with red and black, our bellies trembled and boiled in our skin. We were maddened, frenzy licked at our brains, we could not breathe for the blood screaming like blades sharpening inside us.
Ragnhild stood utterly still, a pale column against the wall as we spat and snarled, squaring off against each other. She inclined her head, ever so gently, towards Barnabas.
How can I tell you, little sister? How can I give words to what we did? We, who would not eat the slowest fox or hare! We, who loved each other as limbs of one body! How can I confess? How can I speak of it as though it were no more or less than any other act I have committed, as though it were not the greatest sin of my heart, of my tongue, of my teeth!
At the nod of her head we threw ourselves onto the smallest of us, onto Barnabas, our sweet brother, and devoured him leg by arm by torso, blood swirling rich and smoky in our mouths. We howled up from the ruin of his belly, not in mourning, but in hunger and delight. We snapped at each other, quarreling over the choicest bits. We were no more than dogs, though the hands that held him and the fists that punished his spine were those of men. Our minds fled from us, we exulted in his death.
And Ragnhild swept from the slaughter room without a sound, as though her feet did not touch the crystal floor.
BAGS SHOOK HIS HEAD MISERABLY.
“I can still taste him,” he whispered, barely giving breath to his words. “Taste his flesh, like ash and lye. We will never be clean of this. She let us leave the city unmolested—what else could she do to us? She had already ensorcelled us into betraying our faith and our brother, she had already made all our vows, our holy will, useless with a kiss. We are lost, and we cannot even say it was for the greater good—she lives, and danger still stalks the City like a cat in the grass.”
He held his hands out to me helplessly.
“She is coming, she is coming and she will madden us all. Poor Barnabas—he sits heavy in my belly and I will never hear him extol the sweetness of blueberries again.”
“She is coming, yes. And she does not want to destroy Al-a-Nur, she wants to best it. She wants to prove to the world that we are all liars and heretics and faithless grotesques. That she is holy and we are demons. That is why she let us go. We are her first victory,” Balthazar snapped, his voice bursting from behind me and startling both Bags and me.
Bartholomew sidled up to his brother and added in a thick voice: “However wretched her origins, she chose freely to continue her crimes against us from the moment she woke to this life. It is easy to forgive beautiful women, especially when they lay a sorrowful tale before you like a sugar-dusted meal. It does not mean they deserve forgiveness. We must tell Yashna that we have failed and accept punishment. And we must close the gates against the Apostate, for I do not doubt that she is, as you say, coming.”
Bags snuffled away his tears and turned his face from his brother. Shame radiated from his hunched body. When we broke camp in the morning, he leaned over my shoulder and whispered:
“There is a debt between us. If you have a grief that weighs on you, I will take it.”
I smiled as brightly as I was able and lied. “I am too young to carry suffering on my back like a pauper’s pack.”
He nodded distractedly. “Then I will repay my debt when you have grown.”
It was only two days later that we saw the gleam of Al-a-Nur flare in the distance like the birth of a dozen stars. My breath caught itself in a net of wonder, and the Salmon Gate rose up finally before me, silver and quartz, carved fish leaping with eyes of onyx, metallic waves brushing their delicate fins. I had come home, to the truest home of my deep bones.
The rings of the City were thronging with monks and priests of all kinds, each wearing costumes that clearly held some meaning for them, but that to me were simply bright splashes of color and patterns wriggling like merry snakes over the fine fabrics. Many sat in small groups, bent over a circular game board and loudly cheering each player’s move.
“That is Lo Shen, little love,” Bartholomew said, “our sacred Game. It is prayer as well as a Game—the object is to defeat the opposite player’s God, surrounding that chief piece with involved patterns of the lesser pieces. The entire City plays at one level or another. It is very complex, but you will learn.”
The brothers, though their errand was urgent, seemed to drag themselves through the sparkling city, reluctant to reach its center. Instead, they guided me through its streets, inching closer to the innermost Tower with each step. As ever, they buried their sorrow in the cairns of their wolf hearts, and behaved as happily as the rest of the Anointed City.
The markets were manned by men and women dressed in vivid yellow garments, clasped at the shoulders with a fabulous crest: a golden rooster wrestling a peacock encrusted with bright blue stones. With each sale, which only occurred after extensive and enthusiastic haggling, they bowed deeply and anointed the head of the buyer with water—they were, I learned, the merchant-monks of the Coral Tower. Balthazar explained that the exchange of goods was for them a ritual honoring their chief goddess, Ge-Sai, Star-of-Gold, who in the first days gave birth to all the precious things of the world. Each coin they earn brings the children of Ge-Sai together under the eyes of their mother. The rooster and peacock represent finery for its own sake struggling with finery for the sake of the world—for the peacock’s pride is its functionless beauty, while the rooster crows up the sun each day, and his feathers echo the colors of hi
s charge.
Through the streets, whose smells and raucous sounds seemed like an endless carnival, strode the Draghi Celesti, masked in ivory serpent-faces, priests and priestesses of the Tower of Ice and Iron, guardians of the city. Their uniforms were silver and blue, over-tunics emblazoned with a curling winged snake which extended from shoulder to ankle. They were not belligerent, but seemed as merry as any of the Lo Shen players, joking and sparring in the streets. They consulted with the rather plump women of the Tower of the Nine Yarrow Stalks, who were every one of them Oracles of great skill. Bags snickered that they were so fat because they were expert extispicers, readers of entrails—a great deal of meat was left over after each ritual, and as they believed waste to be a sin, the women were forced to have a great many feasts.
As we ventured into the interior of the city, I saw the home of my companions, the Chrysanthemum Tower, thrusting up through the earth like a living thing. Indeed, it was entirely hidden in a vast cloak of chrysanthemums, yellow and red and orange, all crowding together like flames licking at a new branch. But at the door, guarded by two impeccably groomed Cynocephaloi brandishing garden shears—for it was necessary to prune the flowers from the door each hour, so eager were the blossoms to engulf the stone—Bartholomew, Bags, and Balthazar stopped and turned solemnly to me. Bags knelt and smiled his toothy smile.
“It is unlawful for those who have not committed their lives to the Tower to enter. If you wish to live in Al-a-Nur, you must choose a Tower—naturally, we hope you will choose ours, but we cannot guide your decision.”
“On the bright side,” Bartholomew added cheerfully, “you are somewhat limited. You have not the training to be an Oracle, nor a Draghi. They require entrance in early childhood—you would not pass the first of their tests. You cannot join the Tower of Patricides—”
“Why not?” I protested.
“You are not male. The Patricides are separated into father and son dyads. The father raises his son in the traditions of the Tower, and when the son arrives at the age of Enlightenment, he kills his father—who is normally quite elderly by the time his son is ready to perform the rites. The son then grows to have his own children by women from outside the order, and the cycle continues.”
“That’s barbaric!” I cried, disgusted. My own father had died when I was an infant, and my fury leapt up as quickly as a pheasant bursting from the grass.
“It is done with great care and love,” Balthazar explained gently, “and the solemnity of the ritual is touching—for them, to kill the father is to release the son from the shadow of that great man, and to place your death in the hands of a beloved son is the most noble way to perish. We do not judge. We never judge. Nevertheless, you are equipped with neither male aspect nor a father, and so could not enter the Tower. And since it is rather clear to us that you are female, the Tower of Hermaphrodites is also barred to you—the secret must be kept from all, and we are already aware of your sex.”
“You are left with the Tower of Sun-and-Moon,” Bartholomew went on, “who have their eyes turned ever upwards, charting the courses of the heavens, and ever earthwards, watching for glimpses of dustbound Stars. They collect ways of worshipping—some say the Stars were chewed out of a black horse, some out of a woman whose skin was the sky, some say they were awled in the belt of heaven, or worried out of the keel of an infinite ship by celestial mice. The Tower has all their gospels catalogued. But the Stars are not gods, they say; they are just lost children, as we all are. They are the most ancient order among us, and also the poorest, for the educated and wealthy have palates refined towards more complex and colorful faiths.
“The Nightingale Tower, too, would take you: Their method of worship lies in music, and the filling of the heavens with their songs, for they serve the sibling-Stars Chandra and Anshu, who made the first music of the world between them with their illuminate voices. There are also Towers of the Living and the Dead. With the Living you would be bonded to a creature: a falcon, or a wildcat, or a serpent, even a little green mantis—for they believe that divinity resides in even the smallest of beasts, and that they are the voices of heaven. Your union with the creature would be absolute; you would hunt and live and die as one being.
“In the Tower of the Dead, you would study the bodies of all those who die in the City—blood-magic and lymph-magic and the arcana of rigor mortis. They believe that this life is only an initiation, that death is the beginning of enlightenment. The corpse is the vessel of knowledge; the soul goes on to other spheres, leaving the body saturated with the secrets of this world. They worship the Manikarnika, who are long dead, their bodies long lost, and raise altars to their ghosts.”
“But which one is right? The real gods? The truth?” I asked.
Balthazar smiled gently, as if speaking to a very slow child. “That is not for us to judge. Each of us believes what seems true enough to him, and allows others the same luxury. Who can know what happened in the dim dawn of the world? We can barely decide what to have for breakfast without a theological debate—the Nurian law is polite disagreement. We do our best with how the world appears to our own eyes.”
Bags snorted and scratched behind his furry ear. “I think you’re forgetting one, brother.”
“Oh, yes,” said Bartholomew, dismissively, “the Tower of St. Sigrid, which, while we certainly do not judge, is hardly a religion at all. They follow in all things the example of the philosopher-mariner, Saint Sigrid of the Boiling Sea, who was neither a Star nor any other sort of god, and whose feats change each time you ask a Sigrid about their Lady. She was a great navigator, they say. She was a sea-goddess in the lands of old. She was a humble oarswoman. She had three breasts and grew a beard. Who can tell? They are secretive, and they ply the river’s current on ships of cypress-wood and tell no one of their rites.”
“And there is our own Tower,” said Bags fondly, “the Chrysanthemum. And of us you know already—The Book of the Bough and The Book of Carrion, the sanctity of plants, of all growing things, which give us of their own lives so that we may live.” He tousled my hair as if I were a child. “Of course, all the Towers are specialized and rarefied faiths—some have to do with the countryside faith of the Stars, some do not. Religion is a starchy dish, and we spice it more exotically here.”
I breathed deeply, intoxicated by the variety of Towers and people—my village had contained no more than a few hundred souls, and only one Temple, little more than a cave of ice in the mountainside. But I did not have any particular predilection for birds or cats, beyond the eating of them; I could neither sing nor play any instrument at all. In the end, I decided that I had spent half my life already in the worship of the sky—I had given enough to them, more than enough. And, much as it shamed me to think it, I did not wish to bow down to flowers and never again eat venison rich with spices. I saw no sin in it; it was not in my nature. And this left but one Tower.
“I will not say I have decided—I know so little! But take me to the Tower of St. Sigrid…”
In the Garden
THE GIRL’S EYES SEEMED TO REFLECT THE MOONLIGHT, SILVER TRACKS appearing in the solid black of her skin. Her voice had suddenly ceased, cutting off her tale like a fisherman tying off his line. She looked into the distance at the waving plum trees, their leaves glinting dark and light as the wind shuffled them lazily. The pond rippled silkily beside them, lapping against the cattails and arching roots of bowing willows. The boy shifted, feeling that he was hardly noticed anymore, that the girl was telling her tale to the night itself, and did not even see him sitting before her. Would she now brave his tower window to sit beside him? He feared to leave her, that he might never find her again in the vast Garden, with its labyrinth of hibiscus and jasmine, its flocks of tame birds, their tails glittering like a treasure house, its tall cypresses pointing upwards like hands of pilgrims.
His breath was as short as it ever was when her voice slid into him. Despite his confusion, the city of Al-a-Nur had laid itself out somewhere in h
is belly, spreading its Towers through his little body, and he had fallen into the trance that the girl could induce in him so easily, roaming those profoundly blue streets and smoke-filled alleys in his own dreaming gait, nibbling a sugared apple bought from a yellow-robed monk, and yearning to vanish into a Tower of his own.
Suddenly the girl focused her attention on him, and his heart leapt like a frog after the moon at its sound.
“I am sorry… sorry that I left you for so long. I didn’t mean for you to be hurt by it.” She hid her face in the shadows, and the boy trembled a little, but did not let it show.
The girl smiled, tentative as a hare in a field, and began again.
SNOW’S FINGERS WERE WET AND THICK; SHE COULD hardly feel the coarse net ropes between them. She turned her head away from Sigrid, shamed. She felt suddenly as if she were a ghost in her own life—this woman had been young and alone like her, and had found her way to a city of gods and wolf-headed friends, whereas Snow had found nothing at all but a cold waterfront and a teasing nickname spoken so often she had forgotten what her real name might ever have been. All she had done was slowly turn the color of this freezing, heartless town, and the color of the sea that battered it with salt. She wondered if she had any blood left in her, or if her body had just filled up with water and cold.
“I wish,” she whispered, “that I were as brave and bright as you, that I could go to such a place, and meet such folk, and know about such things.”
Sigrid frowned, her curly hair flattened against her broad forehead by the damp, like a monk’s tonsure. “That’s funny, you know. I spent most of my time in Al-a-Nur wishing I were as brave and bright as Saint Sigrid. We all have someone we think shines so much more than we do that we are not even a moon to their sun, but a dead little rock floating in space next to their gold and their blaze.”
Snow breathed on her fingers. Their tips did not warm, even the littlest bit. She looked up sidelong at Sigrid, whose cheeks were whipped to scarlet in the wind.
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