“I didn’t sleep well.” Woken up in the dark, had to have a couple of cups of wine in the end before he could get back to sleep.
“The green ones, in the evening, they’re ferfews?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I knew that.” Closed his eyes, let his languor roll over him. They were sitting in the garden of the Great Temple, closed off from the city by a high black stone wall. There was only one door in and out of the garden: if he ordered it shut and guarded, they could be almost properly alone. The flowers grew very lush here, there were lilac trees and peach trees, a pool with fat gold fish. A very tranquil, peaceful place.
“It was sacred to the God Lord Tanis,” Thalia said, “of course it is a peaceful place.”
“What?” he had asked her, when they first came out into the garden—when she first showed him the garden—the way she looked at the green grass thick and rich beneath the lilac trees. She had only shaken her head. “I loved coming here,” she said, “when I lived here before.” He had ordered cushions to be set out, for them to rest on in the hot afternoon in the shade of fruit trees and birds’ wings, as all the poets said.
They slept at night in the bedchamber she had once slept in. The palace having been burned up in a column of white flame. It was here or Ryn Mathen’s wretched tent. And I am their god now, he told himself. Fitting and right. A small, not unpleasant room, a window looking out over the gardens; he had stared wide at the sky from the window, thinking with wonder that this had been her whole world once not so long ago. They had slept in his chambers in Malth Salene, in the bed he had shared with Carin. All across Irlast, they had slept in palaces where the last man to sleep there had died at his command. It is no different, he told himself.
From a little room hidden away at the very back of the Temple they had brought out a silver box filled with squares of painted wood. It was in his treasury, beautiful, valuable, old and precious, no different from any other of his beautiful precious looted things.
“The little girls, all the other girls who were dedicated to the Temple, all of them but you, they drew the lot and they were killed?” He had arranged the lots in a long pattern, staring down at them, shuffling them. So many black and white and green and yellow. One red. He didn’t know why he thought of it now. Talking about the different coloured birds, perhaps. Or looking at the green grass beneath the lilac trees.
“Yes.” Her hands had strayed over them. Almost touched. Not quite. She had drawn her hand back. “No. If a child drew a yellow lot, she became a priestess. Like Helase, Ausa—they spent their whole lives here, lighting candles, taking offerings.”
“She must have been seventy years old, that one who… Seventy years old. At least. And all she did her whole life was light candles in one room?”
A strange little indrawn breath. “I suppose so, yes.” He felt her body stiffen. He could feel her breath frozen, a kind of cold come over her in the soft garden heat.
“What’s wrong?” Gods, he thought, why did I start talking about that, her past? Shall I talk again about our dead children? Tell her I know she cries over it in the night when she thinks I’m asleep and I pretend she’s asleep? Ryn Mathen whispers I should put her away, he has a sister, he says suddenly, good child-bearing hips… King and Queen of All The World, and we can’t get a child like the peasants in the fields can.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Thalia said. She smiled. “Nothing. I’m glad we came back here. I’d forgotten how beautiful this garden was. Look at the sun.”
“Hmm?”
She kissed his face, got up. “You stay here, then, have a rest. I have things to do.”
“Yes. Yes. I have things to do too. I know.” Planning, preparing, logistics, subordinates, supply lines, his head bent pouring over maps… All these soldiers, all these places. Petitions and letters and messages from all over his empire. I lost a battle, stumbled alone in the barren darkness, believing myself almost dead. And my empire has gone on quite happily, unaware of it. I really should have killed every single one of them, he thought now. Remember that, when I have to go around and kill them all again. There is a petition from the people of Morr Town regarding their trading rights with Illyr, My Lord King Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. One of your tax collectors in Ith has absconded with six months’ of taxes, My Lord King Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. There may be the beginnings of another outbreak of deeping fever in southern Chathe, My Lord King Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. Alleen Durith has crowned himself King of Irlast, he is claiming that you are dead, My Lord King Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. The final structure and hierarchy of the new infantry division still needs to be signed off, My Lord Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. You need to make a decision about what is being done with the ruins of the Summer Palace, you said you’d have it yesterday, My Lord King Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. You still need to sign the condolence letter to Lord Fiolt’s widow, My Lord King Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. On and on. There’s rumours, My Lord King Ansikanderakesis Amrakane, that Cen Elora and Immier might be threatening rebellion. We need more money for your new temple in the ruins of the Summer Palace, my Lord King Ansikanderakesis Amrakane. The tailor wants to know, My Lord King Ansikanderakesis Amrakane, if you’re happy with your new cloak.
But a great wash of warm peace came over him. The green of the leaves and the blue of the sky were soft as silk sheets. “If you’d drawn yellow,” he said sleepily towards Thalia as she went out, “you’d have lit candles and done nothing else.”
Thalia turned back to look at him. “And gathered flowers and sung hymns. Yes.”
He yawned, looked at the flowers. “Probably not that bad a life.” The hidden guards on duty opened the door for her into the King’s Palace as though it was magic opening it and she was gone to do her queenly things.
“They buried the sacrifice dead under the trees here,” he said aloud to the silent garden. “She thinks I don’t know.” So many of them the bones were layered deep. Piled up, all the dead bodies, running down and down, men women children all cut open, some by his wife’s hand. The earth beneath the tree must be miles deep with them, bones and flesh entangled so deep into its depths. The trees grow up beautiful and perfumed, rich and green and strong. It’s such a fucking obvious metaphor it hurts. Lilac smells of sex.
There was so much business to attend to. But Marith Altrersyr the World Conqueror, the new god, the only man in all the history of the world to sack the city of Sorlost, stretched out on silk cushions in the shade of a lilac tree in the gardens of his new palace and went to sleep in quiet peace.
He slept till almost evening, woke to the falling shadows blinking and confused. In the Tem—in the King’s Palace, the windows were all lit. It is a shame that the mage glass in the Summer Palace was all broken when I set light to it, Marith thought.
There was a celebration of some kind again tonight in the Great Chamber. He should get himself dressed, he thought, I wonder what Thalia will wear tonight? She was looking very well, although she had had to cut her hair shorter, after the desert winds had ravaged it. Her new serving woman, this women Lenae, had found her a man who called himself a doctor, who had brought her a potion to drink. “So now there is no danger that I will conceive again,” she said. “It’s for the best,” she said. “We should accept it.” She had held out her arms to him last night, hot sweat scent of her, licking salt off her body, the fish-yeast-flower-birth scent of her sex. Marks on her stomach, where the skin had stretched to hold their child, silver scar-folds. I know what that reminds me of. The scars on her arm were worse, from being out in the dry heat and the desert sand and the desert sun. The celebration for the death of Yanis Stansel, that was it, what the party tonight was for. I was half-dead in the wilds, defeated, my army wiped out, and on the other side of the world my will is done, my enemies are cast down, the glory of my empire shines on. My triumph, my glory. So great I am, such a king, such a conqueror; death comes while I myself need do nothing. Her body, her eyes, her arms that clutched at him. They had fuck
ed and fucked and fucked and she’d enjoyed it more than she had for, maybe, gods, years. After me is only death. Later he’d had to go and drink wine to get back to sleep.
Thus the party, later:
“Hail to the king!”
“Glory to the king!”
“Triumph! Triumph to the king!”
His cloak stank and his brooch felt rough at his shoulder. The servant had scratched her finger on the pin fastening it.
The Great Lords of his empire sat in what had until recently been the Great Chamber of the Great Temple and was now the King’s Hall. The floor was scored in places, if one looked closely, where they had scrubbed off the blood. Traces of slave women’s fingernails: get down on your knees, scratch it off with your hands if you must. The doorway was open, through the entrance corridor lights flickered, long tables set out in the Grey Square for the soldiers of the Army of Amrath, loaded with food and drink. The lowliest soldier would eat off gold plates and drink from crystal goblets, as the beggars of Sorlost were said to do and very obviously did not. They would be coming to reface the Grey Square and the Temple in red porphyry soon. That was one of the things he should have seen to that afternoon. In the King’s Hall the diners reclined on low couches of sweetwood and red samite. Each wore a crown of gold flowers, garlands of white lilies and darkest red-black roses hung around their necks. But they ate the same food off the same plates as the army, drank the same wine from the same cups.
“Glory to the king!” They would never stop cheering him. The glitter of their costume was almost too much for his eyes, the sound rang too loudly off the bronze walls. He hesitated, standing in the stairwell to go in to them, shook his head trying to clear it. Stumbled, because of shaking his head. It was a very long walk down the aptly named Great Chamber, to stand in the doorway and accept his troops’ acclaim, to go back right to the end to the Small Chamber, where their couches were set, king and queen’s, all made of solid gold. The Emperor’s throne behind the couches, ugly gold chair, the gold all crimped where the palace had burned around it, taken thirty men to shift it. Fixed his eyes on the brimming cup waiting for him. Nod and smile, nod and smile, the lords and ladies of his empire applauding him, rustle of silk, flash of jewels, feathers, perfumes, a man with a coat embroidered in every colour of the rainbow, patterns moving in the thread, a woman with mirrors on her gown reflecting his face back at him. Smile and nod. Keep looking at them. He stumbled, caught Thalia’s hand, his fingers brushed against the lace sleeve of her dress. There’s Ryn Mathen, he looks tired, now Osen’s dead and he’s so very very important, he’s still smarting after the woman Lenae turned him down with a slap on his cheek. Some Sorlostian noblewoman in red satin trying to cosy up to Ryn, red is the Altrersyr colour, she shouldn’t be wearing red. Lord Vorley, who arranged all this, understandably on edge. Lord Emmereth, still looking like a walking corpse, clinging onto Lord Vorley like Lord Vorley will die too if he lets go for a moment, I shouldn’t make them come to these things, either of them, it’s too cruel to them both, leave them in peace. Alis Nymen: everyone else betrayed me, all of my friends, Valim, Alleen, Yanis; watch him, watch him. Secretary Gallus: chiselling little petty bureaucrat, sucks up to power whoever holds it, I hate him, doesn’t everyone hate him?
Got to his couch, sank down, drank. Kiana Sabryya got to her feet. A wince of pain, quickly hidden. Sorlost was famous for its doctors—a shame no one had told his men that, as they went through the city killing everyone. Try the chap who burned Thalia’s womb out, Kiana. He might help you. Or better not.
“My Lords and Ladies of the Empire of Amrath Returned to Us,” Kiana called to them. Sweet happy delighted false silence. Faces all fake joyful lit up. Another hilarious drinking game one could play was to down a cup every time anyone looked something like that.
“We are gathered to celebrate a triumph over the Ansikanderakesis Amrakane’s enemies,” Kiana said.
We are in-bloody-deed. Oh yes. Marith stood up. Knocked the table, his cup went over in a pool of green. Thought I’d finished that. “A building collapsed. That’s all. A building collapsed. How proud I am.” Thalia’s hand reached for him, then dropped back. He said, “Fuck off.” Kiana started, stared around her panicked, looking for help. Lord Vorley, glimpsed through the doorway into the Great Chamber, looked like he’d shat himself. Lord Emmereth next to him was crying with fear. “Fuck off.”
It was so silent, almost a weight of it. Hippocras dripped off the ivory table onto the floor. Like sweat. Thalia said, very quietly, “Marith. Stop.” He stumbled out of the Small Chamber, the bronze walls of the Great Chamber staring at him, reflecting him. All the terrified faces, drained of colour like dead men bled out. Carin’s face had looked like that, all drained and shocked, all the blood run out, shocked frightened white lips. At the little door up to his bedchamber, as the door slammed behind him, he heard a woman’s cracked terrified laugh.
He flung himself on the bed. She had slept here, after she had killed children for her god. Because of you, Thalia. Because you keep life and death balanced. Those who need death dying, those who need life being born. Five years, she’d slept here after killing them. One morning he had found a tiny smear of old blood on one of the sheets, from the arm of a High Priestess where she cut herself after the sacrifice. From Thalia’s arm, perhaps. He had been too revolted to speak of it to the servants. Pretend it was a trick of the light. He ran over to the window, the night air was pleasant but in the garden beyond were all the bones of her dead. He could smell them, taste them. The leaves on the lilac trees rustled in the wind.
There was a jug of water on a table near the bedside. Poured himself a cup. There was ice in it: “The servants bring fresh jugs of water every hour to keep the ice from melting, have you noticed?” Kiana had said in astonishment only yesterday. He crunched one in his mouth. It reminded him of crunching icicles with Ti in the winter back home.
Thalia had followed him up. She said, “What are you doing? Marith? All those people down there, waiting—”
“I don’t know.” A memory of something he had been thinking about earlier: “I’m going out.”
“Going out?” She said after a pause, “I’ll come with you.”
“I want to go alone. No. Yes, please, come.”
She brushed her hands down her dress. Pale pink silk, almost perfectly sheer, a collar of diamonds from her throat to her breasts. Opened her mouth to say something, stopped. “Everything will be in confusion,” Thalia said, “down there. The Great Lords and Ladies of the Empire, scrambling to leave the palace with any dignity. Poor Lord Vorley. He worked so hard on it. Brychan will follow us, I should think. Shall I send him away?”
“No.” Marith gestured Brychan over, the man came out from the shadows guilty and relieved, his hand still resting carefully on his sword hilt.
“I want you to take us to the place they are keeping the wounded,” Marith said.
“My Lord King… That would not… Are you certain, My Lord King?”
It was at Thalia that Brychan was looking. She had flinched when he said it, but she said quickly, “Yes.” She said, “Bring me my cloak, Brychan. And one for the king. Put your sword away.”
A long walk, to a storehouse beside one of the lesser gates. Dark in the darkness. The smell came up the street to meet them, and a sound from inside, there were no windows and the door was barred and the sound clawed its way out of the stonework. The street around was empty, every house shattered, no lights. No one would live here, even the beggars. Rats and beetles ran in the street. And flies. Many flies. Over the roof of the sickhouse a shadowbeast curled, licking shapeless paws in its faceless mouth. Here is my house and my people and my temple, Marith thought.
“Here,” said Brychan. “In there, My Lord King. If you’re sure . . . But please, My Lord King, My Lady Queen… Don’t go in there…”
“Have you ever been in there?” Thalia said to him. Brychan shook his head. The door was unbolted, slid open. No one was guar
ding it. No one was watching it.
There stood Thalia, beautiful, in her dress that was pale silk nakedness, dripping jewels, honey and wine on her breath. The dying lay on the bare stone floor in rows like the rows of his sarriss men, writhing with fever the sweat dripping off them in salt pools, shivering clutching at the flagstones with cold, their lips blue their fingertips blue. Two men lay together, clutching each other, tight embraced and their bodies were rotting together, black meat oozing together so that one could not tell where one began and the other ended, and they had no beginning and no end now, the two of them, one circle of flesh with four mad eyes staring, staring. An arm thrashed against the floor striking it bruised and bloodied from the flagstones. Striking striking it, a drumbeat, “It sounds like horses’ hooves galloping,” Thalia whispered, “make it stop, Marith,” she clutched at him shaking on her feet. The man had no face, he did not move except that his one arm beat against the stone floor so that it bled.
“Peace,” Marith tried to say to him. This lump of flesh. “Peace. You were a hero of my armies.” They moved away down the ranks of dying men, a few faces turned, could almost see them, mould growing over eyes over mouths, bodies corroding away in fungal patterns into the flagstones. Shapeless lumps of flesh without arms or legs. A few of them he recognized. From Arunmen to Turain to Elarne to Sorlost they had trailed along in the carts with the baggage, hanging on beyond life and death. Through victory and defeat. There still the old woman who tended them, grey as their wounds, herself shapeless, walking among them offering water, wiping away their sweat. “My son. Be at peace now, my son.” Her voice crooned it to nothing rambling on at nothing. Like the Temple slaves of the Small Chamber, she had forgotten anything but this place.
“Will any of them survive?” Thalia asked.
“A few of them, perhaps, My Lady Queen,” said Brychan after a time, when Marith did not speak. “No,” Brychan said then.
The bright glory, the killing, the joy, sweet pleasure in it, the triumph, the certainty of my own immortality in that. The towers of skulls raised to my victory, the bodies of my enemies trampled into a slurry of flesh and rot. These are not real things. Not living things. These men are not real men. When Thalia was killing a child in her Temple, she didn’t think it was a real child, that was really alive, and would be really dead. When I fight my battles—I don’t really, deep down, I don’t really think it’s real people, being alive and then being dead. Because that would be absurd. Real people. Being dead. Killing them.
The House of Sacrifice Page 46