“No.”
It must have taken her, oh, ten heartbeats to decide to use the money. Perhaps she’d fashion a wax doll and stick a few pins in it when she returned home.
Orhan said wearily, “You can’t blame Darath, Celyse.” Time and time again he told her that. Sometimes, if the birds were singing in the trees and the sun was shining and he hadn’t left the house for a while to be mocked and hissed at, he might believe it himself.
Should say: “Darath asked at the last to get involved in my plot against the Emperor. Darath had nothing to do with conceiving and planning it. Darath supported me, defended me, stood by me.”
Should say: “Darath married his brother Elis off to my enemy March Verneth’s daughter, to shore up support for me. Darath killed my enemy March Verneth when it became obvious that hadn’t worked. Killed his brother’s goodfather! For me!”
Should say: “I cheated on him. I lied to him. When the Immish came, the plague was ravaging the city, Darath was sick. His brother Elis had just died. Darath had been locked in his house with his brother’s corpse and his brother’s dying widow, wracked with pain, terrified of death. The Immish turned up demanding entry, twenty soldiers, long spears, offers of a bargain, a doctor who claimed he had some miracle cure—who could blame him for giving in, confessing, blaming me for everything?”
“He loved you, Orhan,” Celyse said. Time and time again. “I know he did. I envied you more than you can imagine, that Darath Vorley loved you more than anyone has ever and will ever love me. If you love someone like that… how can you betray them? Throw them to the wolves like that?”
I loved him. Ah, God’s knives, Celyse, I loved him so much. “He’s alive and well, Celyse. Putting his life back together. I…”
I’m glad. Glad he’s alive. Glad he’s happy. I loved him. So I want him to be happy. God’s knives, Celyse, would you think I was a better man if I hated him? Wished he had been brought down with me into ruin? Would you think I was a better man if I’d stuck the knife into him first, blamed him for everything, absolved myself by ruining him? I could have destroyed him to save myself. I didn’t. Because I want him to live.
“I…”
The child cried out from the garden. A loud crow of triumph over something. Bil shouted with delight. Janush laughed.
Celyse said, “And your son, Orhan? Your wife? Janush your bondsman? Me? Everyone in your household, who depend on you, who had nothing aside from your name and your wealth? What did you want for them?”
Bil’s hands are like chewed-up leather. Dried splintered sand-scoured wood. Sword wounds running down her face. Sword wounds sewn up and knitted together over the blackscab scars that cover her face. She had almost died saving the boy’s life. The boy had almost died before he had really even lived. We dismissed the servants, we threw them out to starve in the streets.
Orhan thought: love and desire like I have for Darath—sexual love is the most selfish thing in the world.
Celyse went out shopping. Bil played with Dion. Orhan sat in his study staring at his empty shelves.
The city of Sorlost had been beautiful. Rich and beautiful. Terrifying. Brilliant. It had once ruled the world—or controlled it, might perhaps be the better term, bought and sold it, traded in human lives, countries’ futures, kings’ thrones. The gold coins of the Sekemleth Empire that were worth more than whole cities. The word of a Sorlostian merchant that could overturn a kingdom. Its city walls were made of solid bronze. Its Emperor’s palace was of white porcelain. Its streets were full of starving children. Its beggars ate rancid scraps from golden plates. Its God must have blood, that the dying find death and those waiting to live be born. And Orhan Emmereth had sacrificed his son’s father, and his sister’s marriage, and his friends, and his wife, and his lover, to save it. And its streets were full of starving children. And its beggars ate rancid scraps from golden plates.
Celyse came back with new clothes for Dion. Orhan was summoned to see, the boy shouting with excitement, “Come! Come!”; Bil’s face was glowing, watching Celyse dress him in a soft shirt of green and silver, scrolled flowers, “Look,” she said, “oh, look, how beautiful he is.” He was. He danced before them proud of his finery. Spun round and round, shouting, preening himself. A funny little strut like a bird. Celyse had a new dress for Bil also, pale yellow, like dawn sunlight against the sunset fire of her hair. Dion rejoiced at that.
“Pretty Mummy.”
Bil laughed. Her face went pink, joy- and shame-flushed. “Say thank you to Aunt Celyse, Dion.”
The child nodded gravely. Hugged Celyse with thin boy’s hands. She kissed his gleaming hair. “Thank you, Aunty Celyse.”
“Thank Darath,” Celyse said to Orhan and to Bil.
“And I bought you this,” Celyse said to Dion. “Now you’re such a fine-dressed young man, here’s a toy for you.” A spinning top, painted red, spiralled with silver. Dion took it breathlessly. He didn’t know what it was, turned it in his hands admiring it, shook it. Threw it, just to see. It clattered on the stone floor. Orhan winced.
“Oh, Dion,” Bil burst out. “Look, you might have broken it. Be careful. You need to take care with things.”
“It’s all right,” Orhan said. He crouched down beside Dion. “It’s a spinning top. See, Dion?” Set the toy spinning. It was a good one, smooth and fast. The silver flashed as it spun. Dion stared. Delighted.
Dion put out his hand to touch it. It rattled over onto its side on the floor. “Oh.” Orhan set it spinning. Dion laughed and laughed. Dion put out his hand and stopped it. Orhan laughed with him, spun it again.
“It’s a bird!” shouted Dion.
“It’s not a bird, my baby silly baby baby boy,” said Bil.
“Do it again!” shouted Dion. “Again! Please!”
Celyse crouched down, tried to set the top working. She spun it badly and it rattled on its side, making a nasty sound on the stone. Dion and Orhan laughed at her.
“It is like a bird,” Orhan said to Dion. “I see what you mean.”
“Like a fish,” said Dion, looking over towards the gardens where they had once had long golden fish in a fountain that was now dry and unpleasant with stone dust.
“I can’t make it work,” said Celyse. “Show me, Orhan.”
“There’s a knack to the way you hold your wrist,” said Orhan. “See?”
“No.” She spun it badly, made it grate on the floor.
“My turn!” shouted Dion, and threw it.
“Careful,” said Bil. “Careful, Dion.”
“A bird and a fish and a jewel,” said Dion, running with the top in his hand held out in front.
Orhan went out that evening. A long mindless walk. Dressed in the cheap clothes of a poor man—and of course he was now a poor man, he barely had to pretend—tattered greys and creams with lurid coloured trim, cheap flashy jewels, his hair covered in a green and gold headcloth: he looked enough unlike himself that he could not be recognized. Spared the jeers. And no one really knew his face. His name hissed with revulsion, Orhan Emmereth the Betrayer, Demon-Friend, he had become a demon himself, his name haunted the city, for all the ruin that had befallen them his name was invoked in blame. But no one really knew his face. Thus the one thing he had left, walking, mindless in circles across the city, watching other men’s lives. Spies watched him and knew him, reported in his doings. Item: Orhan Emmereth sat in a wine shop, drank a cup of cheap wine, left. Item: Orhan Emmereth watched a knife fight, betted one dhol on the outcome, lost, left. Item: Orhan Emmereth sat by a fountain in the Square of Children, stared at nothing, left.
The streets were darker than they had been. Buildings coming into greater decay. Empty houses, dead windows like the windows of the palace. Deeping fever had come to Sorlost in the demon’s wake; whole households had died bleeding and screaming; houses sat boarded up and abandoned, falling into ruin, overgrown with weeds, birds nesting in their walls. Cursed. Rubble and ash where buildings had burned in the subsequent rioting, not be
en rebuilt. On one street, rebuilding had started, stopped, started, stopped again. Orhan’s dream to improve the lot of the poorest in the city. A group of beggars were bedding down among the building stone. What was to have been a portico with Orhan’s name on it made a convenient place to rest their bottles of drink. An argument was in progress. A bottle broke with a stench of firewine. Voices raised shouting. In Pernish, the accent of Cen Andae.
Refugees from the demon’s wars, crowding into the city with stories the city did not believe. Soldiers, mostly. Strong, healthy young men. They had the strength in them to run away. They marched out of their city’s walls to defend their people, and so they could run away. So they said. More and more of them, every year: they crawled around the gates of the city, begging, pleading, and the people of Sorlost, in their infinite compassion, let them in to crawl among the rubble of the city’s backstreets. They set up altars and prayer stones to their gods, muttered warnings, were scorned and disbelieved.
“We are the strong ones, the soldiers, and we ran from him. He will come here. He will fight you. He will conquer the world. Fear him.”
“Cowards. Weak. They are weak. We are strong.”
On the foundation block for a column they or others like them had carved a god face, two crude eyes above a beaked mouth.
Little wars. Little kings fighting far far away across the endless desert. No concern to us. Never was, never will be. Sorlost the Unconquered, the Unconquerable, we need not concern ourselves with these petty things. Our soldiers will come tomorrow and scour the heathen carving out. We let them in, give them our pity—what more do they want?
“Why does he do it?” Bil had asked Orhan. “Why does he do it, Marith Altrersyr? What does he want?”
“To conquer the world,” Orhan had said, astonished at her sudden idiocy.
“Yes, but,” she frowned, “why?”
You with your maimed hands, your scars, you almost saw your child die before you… should you not understand? But… Orhan thought: but, is it the same? Just violence?
“And his men… They are a thousand miles from their homes, their families. So many of them will die. But they follow him.”
“They are poor,” Orhan had said at last. “They are a people of violence.”
“Many places are poor,” Bil had said. “And don’t do this.”
“We, of all people, should know what might drive someone to these things,” Orhan had said to Celyse later. “And yet… I don’t know. Is it the same? Why they follow him? Why do they do this? We kill and plot and stab each other in the darkness, there is violence here, there is murder, there is cruelty and rape and theft and all of the things that the demon’s army inflicts. We are cruel, bad people. No better than the men of the White Isles, I am certain. Men die every night in our streets. But we don’t… I wouldn’t…”
“No?” Celyse had said.
“No!” Orhan had cried out.
It was the truth. Orhan stooped, placed a single bronze dhol at the base of the refugee god’s carved face, walked on.
His walking took him to the Street of Yellow Roses, the wine shop he sometimes went to there. No desire for more wine. But the sound of voices, the music of a flute, the smell of spiced food… Faded old men lost in their memories, living in the clouds of the past. Old tired men, who like all old men had in their lives done things they had cause to regret. There he could sit in peace.
A game of yenthes was just starting. The first player drew yellow. Sucked his teeth. Yellow and blue tiles rattled on the copper surface of the table. The player spread an arc of tiles. A semicircle, like a picture of a domed roof. The audience murmured. A few nods. His opponent drew yellow also. Another murmur from the audience at that. Looked at the pattern on the copper table. Smiled. The tiles clattered down, changing the yellow and blue dome into a circle like the sun. The first player drew red. A spiral, dancing across the table. His opponent drew white. A square, one side open like a door. A circle again, white and silver. A diamond, silver and green. Dancing tiles, and the soft rattle as they came down.
The Pearl Singer was sitting in the corner opposite Orhan, staring at the floor, a cup resting in his hands. Long thin withered fingers. Nails bitten down to the quick. Dried bloodflakes on his fingertips, from where he scratched and scratched at his eyes. Moved on from drinking firewine to drinking firewine with hatha mixed in it. He who had once been a poet such as sang in the houses of the mighty, performed before the Emperor to be rewarded with a pearl arm-ring, sang of desire so that the noble ladies of Sorlost followed him with their eyes, sent him feathers and cut gemstones, let him caress them naked beneath lilac trees. His coat was embroidered with pink flowers. A woman’s coat. Tattered to pieces. Smelled of stale piss. Today you are no longer beautiful. Orhan dreaded some nights that the man would get up, try to sing.
In the backstreet slums the plague still lingered. Pestilence sank into the city’s earth. Sweating faces bleeding begging for death.
The yenthes game ended. The first player won. The audience exchanged winnings and losings. Clicking sound, like heavy storm rainfall, bone on bone, as the box of tiles was shaken for another game. It shivered over Orhan: pleasant sound, like someone running cool fingers over his skin. Hissing of rainfall on a pool of water. The tiles falling over and over, pouring over each other like sand. Shapes and colours, patterns, pictures, falling together, every possibility of shapes and patterns and colours the tiles could form. A game of luck, as much as skill. The Pearl Singer raised his head. Blurred misted eyes. His head moved with the slow heaviness of dreams, looking for the sound.
Chapter Seventeen
Bil said, “I am going to the Great Temple, Orhan.” She went there often now. The only place she went. Said sometimes, and Orhan was never sure if she was joking, that Great Tanis had heard her prayers, kept them alive.
“Would you…” Hesitation. A smile for him, weary and knowing him. “Would you like to come?”
She was wearing a grey dress, pale grey like the robes the priestesses sometimes wore. Long, loose sleeves, a high neck. Orhan had thought she was more ashamed of her scars now. Hadn’t understood, for a long time, that the way she dressed now was because she no longer cared about her scars.
“I’ll come.” The God alone knew why. Something to do with himself. Something that wasn’t staring at empty walls. Bil smiled. Trying to look pleased with him.
They walked out down Felling Street into a city burning already in the morning sunshine, white light beating off white stone. A child’s voice shouted and Orhan almost flinched at it, waiting for it to be a voice shouting at him, calling him all the things he was. Bil smiled. All these children, every one of them, she seemed to love.
They walked through streets that were noisy with people, street girls, beggars, more children in rags and filled with laughter, merchants touting all the things in life a man could ever need. Orhan braced himself for jeers, but no one noticed them. Just two people, man and wife in simple clothing, taking a walk. A troop of Immish soldiers went by, didn’t notice them. Orhan’s eyes followed the soldiers. How could they not see him? How could they not know? They, too, looked weary. Preoccupied.
The ragged children ran past the soldiers. One of the street girls shouted a price, was ignored. The soldiers turned a corner and were gone in the hot dust. Some soldiers, taking a walk, looking hot and weary and preoccupied. Who cared? There is absolutely no reason in all the world to care about any of this. There never was. Some soldiers. Taking a walk. God’s knives, that’s hardly a catastrophe unmatched in a thousand human lifetimes. Everything I imagined came to pass, the Immish occupied our city, and that’s the result. Some soldiers. Taking a walk.
In Beating Heart Lane a food seller was offering skewers of meat up cheap. Two Immish guards stopped to buy some. They were wearing bright jackets over their armour, red leather sandals on their feet. On first glance, they might have come from Sorlost. They leaned against a wall eating, licking grease off their lips.
/> “Buy a flower, sirs?” a street seller called to them in Immish, a young girl with a bright face. “A paper flower, for your wife back in Alborn? A silk flower, for your mistress here in Sorlost?”
“What kind for the woman who spurns me?” one of the soldiers called back to her in passable Literan. She laughed, went up to him and kissed him on the cheek.
In the Court of the Broken Knife a woman was sitting weeping beneath the statue. Someone was always weeping in the Court of the Broken Knife. In the far corner of the square a shrine had been set up, a lump of wood bleached white, garlanded with ribbons and tiny white bones. The statue in the centre of the square stared away up into the clouds, faceless, nameless, eaten stone like leprosy, ripped away by wind and sand and dust. The broken knife blade in its right hand stabbing downwards. Futile gesture. Stabbing empty air. Scented oil glistening on the broken blade of the knife. That looked obscene. The burden in its left hand was raised to the heavens. A shapeless nameless eaten lump. We kill for nothing. We die for nothing. We fight and fight, struggle, triumph, fail. The figure stood holding aloft its burden. Orhan was struck by a sense that it was not triumphant but in pain.
“They say you can see its face more clearly,” said Bil.
“Its face? What?”
“Its face,” said Bil. “They say you can see its face.”
The woman shouted out, “We carved this for Him a thousand years ago. From the beginning of the world it has stood, waiting for Him. Soon He will come to claim it. The knife will sharpen. The burden will grow greater. The knife will strike down. He is returned in glory! Worship Him!”
A refugee from Cen Andae came into the square, prostrated himself full length at the statue’s feet. Shouted out, “Death! Death! Death!”
Dead. Dead. A boy’s face, falling backwards in a shower of coloured glass. Tam Rhyl’s voice as he died, gasping out, “What have you done, Orhan?”
Balkash has fallen, they say, and its citadel is torn down. The demon met the men of Ander in the field and routed them; his magicians raised the tempest to drown their city, the Sea of Grief is choked with their dead. His dragons came down upon the Neir Forest and left it a barren wasteland. The demon spreads his shadow across the world. Vomits up human blood. We sit and hide, and it is nothing, ignore it and it will all be gone.
The House of Sacrifice Page 16