Skullsworn

by Brian Staveley

  Dombâng’s dark, sinuous canals had run silent, somnolent, unnoticed in my blood. Her songs trembled in my tongue. Like the city of my birth, I had been busy, but complacent. When I closed my eyes, I could see the truth: for my own heart to catch fire, Dombâng would need to burn.

  * * *

  Goddesses and gods are less practical than haberdashers and fishmongers; they don’t tend to hang signs over the doors to their establishments, for one thing. The devout, it is assumed, will find their way. They will recognize the lineaments of their religion in the angle of a roof or the fluting of a wooden column. They will recognize the scent of the burned sacrifice, the incense or meat turning slowly to ash.

  I didn’t recognize the temple that I stumbled upon sometime well past the midnight gong. I certainly hadn’t searched it out. I hadn’t been searching for anything during my long, meandering walk back toward the inn. I wanted to be alone, to taste the air, to interrogate the details of what had happened with Ruc, to try to make sense of Ela’s inscrutable lessons. I might well have kept on walking half the night—roaming over bridges, following the creaking wooden walkways suspended above the canals, threading my way through crooked alleys—had it not been for the singing washing out from between the open teak doors.

  The single female voice wasn’t particularly good—rough and threadbare, tired, ever so slightly off key—but it was unique. In the way a face can be striking without approaching beauty, that voice was striking. The woman wasn’t singing a complicated piece, more chant than melody, a low, plangent drone, the kind of music that doesn’t dance but leans against the ear, against the chest, the long notes coming like winter waves against the shore, patient, laving away the sand in slow, inexorable degrees. It was only after listening for a while that I noticed the wooden trellis arching over the tall open doors, oiled wood spilling over in a cascade of night-flowering ghostblossom. Carved into the door itself, almost obscured by the tendrils and blooms of the plants, was a low relief, a wooden heart held in a wooden hand. I had come—following some long-forgotten memory or stumbling along in the footsteps of blind chance—to the temple of the goddess who so steadfastly denied me: Eira, the Lady of Love.

  Like a moth wandering mindlessly toward the candle’s flame, I stepped inside.

  I saw the swords first, twin blades flanking an aisle just within the open doors. The hilts were sunk into marble pedestals, and the points—waist high—stabbed straight up toward the vaulted ceiling above. White light from the scores of glass lanterns hanging above turned the steel of the naked blades to ice. Beside each weapon stood an acolyte in a red robe, each holding a white silk cloth slashed with dark lines. I took those lines for ink at first, some kind of pattern. Then, as my eyes adjusted, I realized it was blood.

  “Be welcome, sister,” murmured the nearer of the two figures, a young, gawkish woman who reminded me of one of the skittish delta birds. Without raising her eyes, she gestured to the sword at her side. “The goddess harries.…”

  She paused, obviously waiting for me. It wasn’t hard to figure out what was required, and after a hesitation of my own, I ran my finger along the blade. It was sharp, so sharp I almost didn’t feel my skin part. The blood welled a moment afterward, a neat red line, jewel-bright in the light of the lanterns. The woman stepped forward, took my hand in hers, and wiped the blood away. Then the other acolyte—rounder and sturdier than his companion—approached, dipped his own muslin cloth into a small bowl of ointment, took my hand from the woman, and wiped it clean. The salve’s cold soaked into my skin, erasing the pain.

  “The goddess harries,” the man intoned, his head bowed, “and she heals.”

  The woman wiped my blood from the gleaming blade, both of them returned to their original posts, and that was that. For the price of a few drops of blood, I had entered the sanctuary of the goddess of love. I glanced over my shoulder, studying the sword. I don’t know what I expected of Eira. Maybe a huge room filled with pillows. Different behavior from the people at the door. Hugging? A chaste kiss? Less blood, probably; fewer swords. Of course, Rassambur’s tidy gardens and whitewashed walls, the espaliered fruit trees and deep wells, the utter absence of bloody corpses or fountains of blood should have taught me long ago the ways in which we misunderstand the faith and devotion of others.

  I turned back to the hall, a high, graceful nave supported by carved pillars. The altar at the end stood empty—it was almost midnight, after all. The singing I’d heard came from one of the small chapels flanking the nave. The singer knelt in prayer before a single candle, long black hair flowing water-smooth down her back. I watched her for a moment, then took a seat in one of the pews facing the altar. I tried for a while to imagine the type of service that might be held here during the day, the shape and nature of this worship, then gave up. In a full day of speculation I never would have guessed the sword at the door. Instead, I knelt, closed my eyes, and while the singer traced the lines of her melody across the passing night, one note at a time, I offered up a prayer to Eira.

  It began unpromisingly.

  Goddess, I said silently, I’ve always thought you were a bitch.

  You’re a picker, a chooser, a player of favorites. Ananshael comes for us all, eventually, but you? Some people go their whole lives barely catching sight of you. While you’re busy lavishing love on one woman, surrounding her with family and friends, filling her heart to the brim, you’re neglecting her neighbor. While your chosen ones are falling asleep, safe and warm in the arms of their mothers, fathers, lovers, the rest of us, the ones from whom you’ve turned your face, are left with no more blanket than the night’s dark.

  How do you decide? It doesn’t have anything to do with deserving, obviously. It’s not something we earn or fail to earn. Some children have love the moment they slide into the world bloody and bawling, they inherit it as though it were a birthright. Everyone else makes do with the scraps.

  Well, I’ll tell you what: I was fine with the scraps. I never wanted to be a fish on your hook anyway. I’ve seen what you do to people, how you make them weak in the knees, the way you turn reasonable women into fools. I’ve always preferred my legs to stay steady under me. The madness you’re selling? I don’t need it.

  Um.

  I didn’t need it, that is.

  Now I do.

  I have no idea why my god—an older, stronger, more merciful god than you’ll ever be—insists on muddying his ritual with love, but it’s not my place to question. We’ve been strangers my whole life—you and I—but the song says I need to love, and so I’m here. I left my blood on that sword by the door. I’m praying to you.

  Probably I should be more polite, apologize for calling you a bitch, but if you can hear this prayer, you can probably hear the rest of what’s going on in my head, so what’s the point? You know what I think, which means you know I think you’re a bitch, but you also know that I need you now. You know this is a true prayer.

  I need you.

  I don’t know how you choose which hearts to fill with love and which to leave empty, but please, pick mine.

  Pick mine, Eira. Goddess, I beg you.

  I shook my head silently.

  Fuck you, also, for making me beg.

  I opened my eyes. Nothing inside the temple had changed. The lanterns still cast their warm, white light across the wooden floor, the wooden pews. The altar remained empty. Not that I’d expected Eira herself to come down to answer my prayer. A few silent accusations followed by a little begging weren’t likely to change her lifelong absence from my life. I thought of Ruc, imagined his green eyes staring back at me, remembered the kiss we’d shared on the dock, his hand on the back of my neck, pulling me close. My heart beat faster at the memory, but what did that mean?

  How fucking long does it take?

  That seemed, somehow, like the wrong question.

  I rose from the pew, suddenly tired from the long day out in the sun. It was time to quit wandering around, to go back to the inn and get some s
leep. Ruc would be up early, and I wanted to be up with him. I wanted another kiss; I wanted more than a kiss. I was failing—that was obvious enough—but I intended to fight the whole way. When Ela came for me with her knives, I intended her to find me naked in Ruc’s arms, in his bed, my legs locked around his hips, his lips at my throat. Sex wasn’t love, obviously, but I didn’t know what else to try.

  I glanced over at the singer as I passed. She was still kneeling before that candle, still pouring her song into the warm night. I continued on toward the door, then paused, turned back.

  Her hair was silk soft in my hand. It smelled like jasmine when I tipped her head back. She didn’t stop singing, even as she met my eyes. Music can do that to a person—it’s a labyrinth in which you lose yourself. She smiled at me around the note, her dark eyes gazing up as though I were a friend or a long-lost lover—maybe Eira’s devout feel love for everyone all the time. How would I know? As I cut her throat, I tried to imagine what that might be like.

  One who sings, lost in the song.

  That song faltered as the god took her, but I’d been listening to it since before I stepped into the temple, and I picked it up easily enough, singing as I wiped my knife on her robe, slid it back into the sheath, then made my way toward the door.

  I could pray to the goddess all night long, I could beg for her favor, but Ananshael was my one true god, and I had neglected his worship too long.

  16

  I returned to the inn to find all the intricate architecture of my lies in shambles.

  Despite the preposterously late hour, Ruc was sitting on the deck, all alone at one of the Dance’s round tables. My pulse quickened at the sight of him. My mind churned through the possibilities. Had he learned something else about the transport, something about the insurgency or the Vuo Ton? Or had he come here for me, for another kiss, for something more? Just as I started to call out, I saw Ela approaching him, a fresh carafe of wine in her hand, that delicious, throaty laugh spilling out of her throat.

  “I notice you still haven’t touched your quey,” she said, pausing to elbow him in the shoulder. “It’s enough to make a woman think you don’t enjoy her company.”

  Ruc didn’t even glance at the clay cup in front of him. “I’m still on duty.”

  “That’s what you’ve been saying for the past hour. When is the duty over?”

  “Soldiers have been grappling with that question as long as there’ve been soldiers.”

  Ela made a face. “I like a man in uniform, but all this talk about duty is getting tedious.”

  She leaned across in front of him, so close he could have kissed her on the neck, took his mug of quey, straightened, then tossed it back in a single gulp. She was wearing a blue ki-pan, the cut even more revealing than normal. It was impossible not to notice the way she brushed up against the man I was supposed to learn to love as she slid the cup back into place on the table. She took the seat right next to him, not across the table, where I would have sat.

  I watched them from the wooden walkway beyond the deck. I felt as though there were one or two small mice trapped inside me, right below my diaphragm, nibbling at something important. The bites weren’t large enough to hurt, not really, but I could feel that something was wrong.

  The scene was a study in contrasts: Ela drinking bright plum wine from a long-stemmed glass, Ruc ignoring the empty cup before him. She was all languid motion, all crossing and uncrossing of legs, all stretching out to touch his hand; Ruc remained still as a baited snare. Ela had lowered her voice when she sat down. I couldn’t quite make out her words, but she was talking, evidently recounting a story, words spilling out like water in a brook. Ruc remained silent. Ela laughed over and over, brown eyes aglitter. Ruc did not laugh.

  I felt guilty watching them, though I couldn’t say why. I interrogated that guilt, tried to stare it down, to see the true shape of it, but it flitted away like a bat darting through lamplight. I almost felt like a bat myself, a creature unseen in the darkness, looking in on the light with wide, glassy, imperfect eyes. It seemed, suddenly, like I wasn’t supposed to be there. Ruc had come because of me, obviously, but my absence hadn’t hampered whatever was taking place between them. He didn’t look excited, didn’t look happy, but he hadn’t looked happy since the transport. Not even when we kissed. He was sitting there silently, listening to Ela’s laugh, watching her smooth limbs as she mimed a series of inscrutable gestures. Whatever he’d come for, he wasn’t looking for me anymore. That much was clear.

  “Now do you see why I constantly consider giving her to the god?”

  The voice was right at my ear, and I’d slipped my knife from the sheath before my mind processed the familiar dry drawl: Kossal.

  “Sneaking up on people is a good way to get killed,” I muttered, not turning to face him. For some reason, I didn’t want him to see my eyes.

  He grunted. “The god will take me when he takes me.”

  “Don’t you want your last sacrifice to be more than a stupid mistake?” I demanded, channeling my inexplicable anger.

  “Mistake or martyrdom—dead’s dead.”

  I was only half listening to his answer, my eyes fixed on Ela. “What is she doing?” I hissed.

  “Looks to me like she’s seducing the man you were kissing by the river a few hours earlier.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Presumably because she likes the look of him. And because you moved too slowly.”

  * * *

  “And that,” Ela was saying as we drew closer, “was the last time we tried dressing Kossal up as a concubine.”

  She shook her head at the invented memory. “Let’s just say there wasn’t anywhere to hide a dagger, let alone a decent sword. Ah!” She clapped her hands together, as though she’d just at that moment noticed my approach. “Here they are now. Pyrre! Kossal! Sit down and pull up a glass.”

  Kossal stumped past me, dropped into a chair, then waved over one of the servingmen.

  “Quey,” he said.

  “One cup?” the sculpted young man asked.

  “Bring the bottle,” Kossal replied.

  I made no move to approach. My eyes were locked on Ela. She smiled, her perfect white teeth flashing red in the shifting light of the lanterns. She might have just bitten through someone’s throat, except for the fact that throat biters weren’t supposed to look so lovely, so composed.

  “What are you doing?” I asked her.

  Ela gestured expansively to Ruc. “Entertaining the commander of Dombâng’s Greenshirts. Did you know that he’s descended from Goc My himself?”

  “I did.”

  Ruc turned his gaze from Ela to me. “Your Wingmate has been regaling me with your Kettral exploits.”

  “Has she.” I glanced at Ela. I hadn’t explained my cover to her or Kossal, but if she’d really been following me all around Dombâng, she’d probably heard at least a few of my conversations with Ruc.

  “And you,” Ruc said, turning to consider Kossal. “I understand you’re the Wing’s demolitions expert.”

  “Nope,” Kossal said, glancing over his shoulder as the young man returned with his bottle of quey.

  “May I pour, sir?”

  Kossal shook his head. “Just put it there.”

  “No?” Ruc asked, raising an eyebrow.

  My heart kicked restlessly. My palms had begun to sweat. The Kettral cover was solid enough. I could keep it up, even against Ruc’s constant pressure. Kossal and Ela, however, were another matter entirely.

  “Don’t mind that old goat,” Ela said, waving a negligent hand toward Kossal.

  “Actually,” Ruc said, cutting through her objection, “I’m curious about the old goat. What do you mean, ‘no’?”

  Kossal put his flute on the table before him, took a long swig from the bottle, winced as it went down, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “I mean I’m not Kettral,” he said blandly.

  Ruc shifted just slightly, putting a l
ittle more space between his body and the table, making sure the sword at his left hip was free.

  “How interesting,” he said, looking over at Ela, then up at me. “And yet, your Wingmates tell such vivid stories.…”

  I could feel all my work unraveling, my plans torn apart like rotten nets, everything I’d hoped to catch sliding silently through and away. If Ruc discovered the truth, our tenuous partnership was over. There would be no more boat trips out to the remote delta to look at bodies, no more kisses, no more opportunities to try to shape the space between us into something that resembled love. At best, he’d stop trusting me; at worst—if Kossal actually convinced him we were servants of Ananshael—he’d try to have us captured and executed. At which point I could either flee or fight, neither of which would get me any closer to completing my Trial.

  Ela leaned across the table toward Ruc, murmuring from behind a cupped hand. “Kossal takes mission security very seriously.” She winked.

  I sat down at last, heavy and ungraceful, as though someone had hacked my legs from underneath me.

  “Kossal is a horse’s itchy, fly-bitten nutsack,” I said grimly. I was looking at Ela, not Ruc. “And so are you.”

  Kossal grunted. I could see him take another pull on the bottle out of the corner of my eye. “Fly-bitten nutsack doesn’t sound all wrong,” he conceded. “More accurate than Kettral, anyway.”

  Ela met my eyes, raised her hands helplessly. “He’s ungovernable. What can I say?”

  “The thing is,” Ruc cut in, “we do have a government in this city. And it’s my job to make sure that government stays right where it is. So when strangers show up claiming to be Kettral, then claiming not to be Kettral, I start to experience what I can only describe as a more than mild concern.”

  He didn’t look concerned. Ruc didn’t pick at his fingernails or chew the inside of his cheek. He hadn’t raised his voice when he spoke. Well before I met him, he’d filed off all the tics and habits that might broadcast his play before he made it. Anyone else on the deck who happened to glance over would see a man nearing his thirtieth year, serious but relaxed, one bare, well-muscled arm tossed over the back of his chair, the other resting casually on his knee. I saw the violence beneath, boiling like a school of qirna just below the river’s gorgeous, motionless, sun-spangled surface.