“Come on,” Bil said. She shuddered. It was so cold in the square for a moment, and surely the air smelled suddenly of blood.
They walked through the Street of Flowers, going more hurriedly, Bil looking askance at Orhan as they passed Darath’s house. The gates were closed. Beautifully carved onyx, a garland of black stone flowers on the edge of fading, overripe petals about to curl and fall.
Dead things. I’m sorry, Darath. I loved you.
All the things… all the things I made you do.
Two beggars slumped against the house’s walls, waiting to be beaten up and moved on.
“We should have gone the long way,” said Bil. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me.” Orhan said nothing. Nothing to say.
They stopped before the Great Temple. It crouched there sucking in the heat around it, shivering cold like it was carved of black ice. Huge as thought. Baleful. Loving. Beating and beating before the eyes like a heart.
The soldiers should stare at me, thought Orhan. The Temple should scream out to the God to strike me down.
Crowds around it, milling and talking, edgy and afraid. Immish soldiers with spears. Still faint traces of fire and blood on the square’s worn stones, underneath the Immish soldiers’ feet. They walked towards the steps up to the high narrow doorway. Black wood with the knots in the wood like a beast’s eyes. The great clawmarks in the door, at head height.
“Dear Lord,” whispered Bil as they walked through the crushing dark of the entranceway. “Dear Lord, Great Tanis Who Rules All Things, from the fear of life and the fear of death, release us. We live. We die. For these things, we are grateful.”
“Dear Lord, Great Tanis Who Rules All Things, from the fear of life and the fear of death, release us,” Orhan echoed. “We live. We die. For these things, we are grateful.”
They walked through the dark of the entranceway into the Great Chamber, candles burning in massed ranks blazing against the bronze walls, so many candles, so much light, so much fire burning for the joy of living, the flames dancing, rising to the heavens, the light dancing burning the eyes, the warmth, the heat of the candles the metal walls the bodies of the worshippers calling on the power of the God with the candle flames reflected in their faces, the priestesses kneeling, grey robes like rainclouds and jewelled masks. The child High Priestess knelt before the High Altar. Bil jerked when she saw her. Thin and small, hunched up. Her fine child’s curls falling over her face.
A sacrifice night tonight. Orhan had forgotten. He tried to remember the moon from last night. Not a new moon, he thought. A waxing moon. A man. Not a child.
A more popular choice than it had been for years, giving yourself up in offering to the God.
Bil went over to an altar. Silver metal, a long low bar of silver reflecting back the candles, glowing white against the candle-lit bronze. She knelt, stretched out the ruined stumps of her hands, bowed her head in prayer. Orhan knelt and prayed beside her. A rational man. But a fearful one.
“Please. Please, oh Lord, Great Tanis Who Rules All Things. Please. Just let them live. Bil. Dion. My sister. Darath. Just let them live.”
Marith Altrersyr is a boy, a petty warlord in the far north, king of nowhere important, what idiots these people are to think of him, to fear him. He will soon be defeated, killed, slink back to his home in shame. It is all a story. It is all happening an eternity away.
Great Tanis. Please believe me.
“I will come back this evening,” said Bil as they left. “For the sacrifice.”
“If you want to.”
“I should bring Dion again soon. He will soon be old enough.”
“For the sacrifice?”
She looked horrified. “Not when that is happening, no. Of course not, Orhan. But to pray. To make an offering. He is old enough now to do it properly.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.”
He is not that much younger than the High Priestess, Orhan thought. The High Priestess Thalia’s existence was now… ignored. Never mentioned. An inconvenient thing. The child Demerele who had been torn to pieces within the Temple itself was now… ignored. An equally inconvenient thing. The High Priestess Sissaleena is the High Priestess and was the High Priestess and does it well. Do not speak of it. Nobody speaks of it. All is well and well and thrice well.
A child of eight.
She had just turned four, when she was dedicated to her role.
She takes it better than Demerele-who-never-existed, thought Orhan. She was so young when she started in it, she had no idea what it is she does.
She drew the lot. If Great Tanis had not wanted her, she would not have drawn the red lot.
“Little thing,” said Bil, as they turned to leave.
They walked back in the blazing heat. Midday sunshine scouring away all the shadows. Bil panted, wiping sweat from her brow with the stump of her hand.
“I wish we still had the litter,” she said irritably. Then she laughed. “But all this walking has made me strong. I’m slimmer than I ever was.” She wiped sweat out of her eyes.
They went the long way round, avoiding Darath’s house. In the Court of the Broken Knife someone had put a paper crown on the head of the statue, a garland of red flowers around its neck. Three people prayed at its feet.
Bil looked at the statue. “Is that what he looked like?”
Orhan looked at the statue. The eaten face. The knife. “Yes,” he said. “Yes. It does look like him.”
When they got home, there were two guards standing at the gates of the House of the East, waiting. Selim Lochaiel stood with them. And beside him, Lord Cauvanh the Immishman.
Selim said, “You need to come with me, Orhan. Now.”
Selim said, “I’m sorry.”
Chapter Eighteen
White porcelain gates opened before them. So fine they were almost transparent. White porcelain flowers, petals soft and full, white porcelain leaves. The air had a faint music to it. They went in under the gate of the palace into a courtyard of pools and fountains, and the fountains were made of gold. The water was coloured to look like liquid gold. Lord Cauvanh dipped his hand into the cascade of a fountain. Drew his hand out covered in drops of liquid gold.
Lord Cauvanh smiled. “I was born in the White City. I have travelled to Chathe, to Maun, to Cen Andae. I have lived here for five years. It still amazes me.”
They turned away from the glories and the grandeur. Slunk through a little bare doorway into the warren of passages and staircases that the servants would use. Up stairs, down hallways, and everything there was dusty and unkempt. Bare wood, bare plaster. Dead flies dried out in patches of light.
Lord Cauvanh opened a door, ushered them into a room painted and furnished all in pale green. On one of the walls there was a jewelled map of Irlast.
Orhan didn’t know whether to laugh or to weep.
“Sit down.” Lord Cauvanh pulled out a chair for him. It and the table it was paired with were set with milky pale jade.
“Does it have to be here?” he asked Lord Cauvanh. “This room?” Lord Cauvanh only frowned at him.
The room’s main door was gilded silver. It was closed; Lord Cauvanh was looking at it, waiting. It opened and another man entered. Tall and thin, with dark hair and skin that was the colour of fatty meat, dressed in the robes of the Immish Great Council, fur-trimmed, thick and heavy, stifling in the desert heat. Lord Mylt, one of the six members of the Immish Great Council. Thus one of the most powerful men in Irlast. Orhan stood up. Bowed his head.
Lord Mylt said, “Cauvanh. Selim. Orhan Emmereth.” Distant, cool, dull voice. But his eyes… Something, as he looked at Orhan . . . Trying to look as he should look… Orhan thought madly: is he afraid? Of me?
“You may go now, Selim,” said Lord Mylt. “You too, Cauvanh.”
The man frowned. “My Lord?”
“Go.”
Selim Lochaiel rose hurriedly, bowed low, went out. Lord Cauvanh rose, bowed.
“We will speak later, Cauv
anh,” Lord Mylt said in his distant voice.
“My Lord.” Cauvanh went out, and Orhan was alone with Lord Mylt.
The sound of footsteps, and a metal sound, outside the door. Guards. Sword blades.
“Will you kill me now?” Trying to keep his voice strong.
“Lord Emmereth,” Lord Mylt said. “I… I do not want to kill you. I want you to… to help me.”
“For ten years…” Lord Mylt smiled bleakly. “Let me gather myself. Tell you properly. From the beginning, then… For ten years, your enemy March Verneth the Lord of the Moon’s Light was conspiring with the Immish Great Council for an Immish invasion of Sorlost. For the last three of those years, your friend Tamleth Rhyl the Lord of the Far Waters was also, separately and quite independently, conspiring with the Immish Great Council for an Immish invasion of Sorlost. We had twenty thousand troops under arms. A magelord who swears he could have destroyed your famous walls. Food and water and fodder buried in stores across the eastern desert waiting for us. We even sent out a mage, to scout out the desert and the rumours of… things there, before the army was to march through.”
Orhan sat very still.
“We were three days’ march from here when your conspiracy unfolded. Had things gone to plan, your friend Lord Rhyl was to have opened the gates to us and welcomed us as saviours following the outrageous attempt on the life of your Emperor by… you.” Lord Mylt said, “I was the Immish point of contact for both March Verneth and Tam Rhyl. I was the Immish point of contact for your agents in Alborn. I personally wrote the confession that you were to give before they burned you. So I think I can say with some confidence that all of this is true.”
A bird flew past the window in a flash of shadows. So close Orhan could hear the sound of its wings. Lord Mylt said, “‘The Immish have been occupying Sorlost for the last four years, Orhan. And, actually, you know, things are better now than they were.’ All my life, I have worked to see this. My life’s work. My life’s goal. I failed and I failed, but I got here in the end.”
What can Orhan say?
“You know the cost of it as well as I, my Lord Emmereth.” A weary little pause. “I did not work all those years only to see it all about to crumble away.”
“The Emperor is a child who speaks only Immish,” said Orhan. “I do not think you need have any fears that the people of Sorlost will rebel. Keep the gold flowing, and who cares who rules here? Apart from you?”
Lord Mylt said with his teeth all on edge, “I have no fear at all of the people of Sorlost, Lord Emmereth.” A pause. “The sellsword company I recommended to your agents, however… with hindsight… may have been a mistake.”
Aha. Aha. God’s knives. What can one possibly say?
Lord Mylt said, “After the demon destroyed Bakh, he gave it to the Immish as a sign of friendship. Bakh and all of Cen Andae. A kind gift. We on the Immish Great Council sent him grain and gold and men and horses, acclaimed him as King of Immier and Cen Elora, made him a nobleman of Immish. Gave him most of Cen Andae back again. We planned to rebuild Bakh, repopulate it from Immish. The ground there is so poisoned with corpses that no building will stand one stone on another. Of every ten workmen we send to work there five die of sickness and two go mad with grief. A fine bargain: we have a barren dead wasteland; he has men and wealth and supplies for the army with which he has sworn to conquer the world.”
Orhan said, “But I’m sure he is as proud of his status as a nobleman of Immish as he is of that of King of All Irlast.”
Lord Mylt ignored him. “Immish is his ally. Immish kneels at his feet and fawns on him. The greatest desire of the Great Council now is for him to send us even an emissary to stare at us with contempt. My colleagues on the Great Council have already drawn up great plans, feasts and festivities, gifts, wonders, tributes, should he deign to send his pot boy to lord it over us.”
“Perhaps…” said Orhan slowly, “that is the wisest course.” Knew what was coming. Pretended he did not know. I saw the demon’s eyes, once. His face was nothing but blood, and he was beautiful.
He thought then: I wonder if he remembers me?
Lord Mylt said, “The demon gave Immish a dead wasteland. Now Immish will give the demon… Well…”
Silence. Even great men have some shame buried. Lord Mylt fidgeted with his hands. “He has burned this very building once already. And, of course, his wife…” Looked away from Orhan, at the map on the wall, and then his face went pale and he looked away at nothing. “As one of my fellow Council members put it, ‘When a wolf is at the door, rather he eats one’s prize sheep than one’s own children.’”
Silence.
Orhan said, “Yes. I suppose it is.”
Lord Mylt said, “I would not tell you this, were I not desperate. I…” His hand tightened around his cup, his knuckles white. A fierce look to his face. A disgusted look. “Your Emperor kneels to me. You great High Lords of the Sekemleth Empire bow down to me. My life’s work. I will not see it thrown away.” It’s coming. You can say no, Orhan. Refuse and walk out. He won’t come here, it is inconceivable that he will come here, this is my life, this is Sorlost, it cannot happen here, to me. Lord Mylt said, “You wanted to rebuild your city. You wanted to make it great and worthy again. You… you have seen the demon’s face, Lord Emmereth. So I beg you now: help me.”
For a moment Orhan saw something there behind him, a shadow reflected on the mosaic tiles of the map on the wall. The Sekemleth Empire gold and yellow diamonds, Ith in shadow, Illyr, the White Isles at the far eastern edge.
I promised. I swore to myself. To Dion. To Bil. Great Tanis, can I never be forgiven for what I’ve done?
“I know—I have a contact,” Lord Mylt said. “In…” He blinked. His hand grasped tight around his wine cup. “I have a contact in Marith Altrersyr’s court. One of Marith Altrersyr’s companions, his captains. One of his friends. He has… had some thoughts about his own position. He is an ambitious man, could be persuaded to do certain things. But we in Immish are of course the demon’s ally, and my contact knows that, does not trust me. Thus I need someone who is not connected with Immish to help me.”
“Why me?” The dull stupid question. “I failed. I am no one. A poor man who is spat on in the street.” If I am the best you can do, Orhan thought, I will go home now and cut Dion’s throat.
Lord Mylt placed a purse on the table. Yellow silk, like the Emperor’s diadem. Symbolic. Cruel. No—merely thoughtless “Here is gold for you to… cease to be nothing, Lord Emmereth. Cauvanh will help you, Lord Emmereth. He is a useful man. Very clever. I doubt I have to warn you not to trust him. All of your dealings with my contact in the demon’s court… he must not know, now, that you are working with me. The risk must be yours alone. Sorlost’s alone. Of course you see that.” The certainty returning to Lord Mylt’s voice as he held the purse out. Gold is confidence. We are the richest empire the world has ever known, Orhan thought. They say the demon cannot be killed. But there is nothing in the end that cannot be bought.
“My contact and I already have an understanding,” Lord Mylt said. “He would like to see certain things happen. Aspires to… higher things than he currently is.” Lord Mylt rattled the yellow silk purse he held. “Let us see what my contact will do, then, if you encourage him to dream of higher things.”
There is peace in sitting in this cool green room at the top of a high tower, the breeze blowing, a faint scent of incense from the Temple, so much clearer than the squalor of candlelight and prayer. Two men sitting talking, seeking power, in the Temple they kneel and trust the God, beg Him, in this cool green room we are alive, take some action on the world, plot great things. Here we began all this. Here we shall hope and pretend to bring it to an end. Item: Orhan Emmereth will change the world. Having come so far, sacrificed Darath’s love, sacrificed his wife’s hands, he cannot now say that he is frightened, that he will not do it. My wife, my son, my life, my heart, Orhan thought. All of these things I will offer up, because I cannot tur
n away now after what I have already done and what I have already lost. He saw again the boyish face, beautiful, blood-soaked. The voice crying out, “I’ll kill you, then.” The mad grey eyes and the broken glass.
“This is a city built of dreams,” Orhan said.
“I think we are done, then,” Lord Mylt said. “Lord Lochaiel will see you out. We will talk again soon.” Echoes and echoes of the past where he might once have hoped.
Chapter Nineteen
In the north, they say, beyond the desert, in the demon’s lands, in the north the world truly dies at Year’s Renewal, the trees put forth no leaves, no flowers bloom, no birds sing, the sun is hidden, the earth is frozen into ice. At Year’s Renewal in the north the world is truly dead and reborn. Orhan thought: this is how it must feel, what it must look like. The street children, the hatha eaters, the Immish soldiers marching with bored and boring men’s faces, the grandeur, the filth in the streets—so different, so strange. Ghosts. And yet… I acted to save this city, Orhan thought. It doesn’t matter. It never mattered. Soon we shall die, I think, all of us, whatever I try to do. I will die in pain and all that I love will die in pain, as Darath cursed me. Yet… Groping for words, for feelings. Yet… I am glad I acted as I did. Look, Orhan! You gave the city… a few extra months of violent intrigue, before the Immish turned up. But think of them, just think of them, out there in the desert, hiding in the dust, and then they got the news: Lord Rhyl has failed! Lord Emmereth has won! You’ll have to go off home again. Hang your swords back on the wall. Wait a few months.
Orhan thought: could I ask Lord Mylt to write it all down for Darath? Recite it to him? Do you hear this, Darath, do you hear this, oh you people of Sorlost? As you fall beneath the demon’s spears, know it to be true: in the beginning, when we were all innocent, Orhan Emmereth was right!
The House of Sacrifice Page 17