What didn’t escape him were the random spills of blood on the street. Most had been tracked through by the passage of feet and hooves, and were now dry. A few were more vibrant red—more recent, more wet. One remained in a pool, as though spilled that very hour. It left him with the impression that disputes and punishment were dealt with instantly, severely. He might have expected as much. What he hadn’t thought he’d see was a detail of human men dressed in gunny cloth with blood-pink rags strapped to their knees. These men hunched and knelt near buckets of water, scraping up the blood with flat knives. Behind them came a few more men with mops and fresh water buckets. The stone shone and smelled again of wet basalt before they were through.
Then, as soon as they’d sponged away one mess, they went searching for the next spill.
He moved through the city for another hour, cataloging as much as he thought he could remember. Without trying, he found himself at the basilica. As massive as the other buildings were, this structure loomed above the others as though it had sired them all. The dark grandeur of the place came in not just one towering hall, but a collection of six. Kett approached the nearest gate, staring up.
Against a slate-grey sky, the basalt stone rose, ascending as if it might touch the clouds. From the street, several floors rose, more than Kett cared to count, and each larger than the last. Each successive rooftop bore sharp spires that stabbed heavenward like accusing fingers.
He was just noticing the many large glassless windows of the basilica, when a Bar’dyn approached.
“You’re Kett Valan?” he asked, hints of both satisfaction and disgust in his voice.
“I am.”
“The assembly waits on you.” The Bar’dyn turned and started to disappear back the way he came.
Kett spared a thought for Saleema—to quicken his own resolve—and followed close behind.
Just inside the main gate, they strode down a wide outer corridor, dimly lit by windows on the outer wall. The carvings in the black stone on each side of the passageway were difficult to make out. And he had little time to discern such things, as the Bar’dyn came soon to an inner door and abruptly turned.
“Down this corridor. You will enter the Assembly Hall. Step onto the stand at the center.” The Bar’dyn promptly turned and left.
Kett had questions, but sensed he shouldn’t ask. As he began walking toward a rectangle of light at the hall’s end, his gut tightened and his legs grew weak. He knew broadly what he’d come here to do, but an expectant silence spread with every step he took. He had to think now of his children to steel himself against whatever awaited him at the corridor’s end.
Without pause, he strode slowly but confidently into a great round arena. From the main floor where he stood, tier after tier rose, each wider than the last, like a great indoor theater. At even intervals around the circumference of the main floor, eight stairways ascended to the very top, some fifty tiers high. And every tier was completely filled with seated Quietgiven, silently staring at him. The aggregate feeling of ill will was crushing. Kett had the sudden impression of a great many deaths witnessed in this place.
Pushed back against the wall of the main floor stood several types of apparatus: basic stocks, a gallows, a pile of chains, racks, tables of edged instruments and pliers for gripping things that wouldn’t stay still. None of these things were new, but they were all clean.
He began to feel the flutter of panic, wondering if Balroath had meant all along to lure him here. Here, where he could be dealt a meticulous death in this theater of pain.
He remembered Taolen, slowly crucified to provide a warm, salty drink for Praefect Lliothan. With the memory still fresh, he went directly to the center of the round. He stood, waiting, trying not to look defiant—a hard thing when one’s thoughts linger on the crucifixion of a friend. He noticed that the basalt floor around the front of the stand was wet, newly scrubbed. The smell of wet stone and washed blood began playing at his nerves. That and the unnatural hush. If a single Quietgiven shifted in his seat or shuffled a foot, he didn’t hear it. The silence was deafening.
Then, like a clarion call, a deep voice shattered the stillness. “Kett Valan, you are here today of your own choice, a member of the Inveterae, to give yourself to Quietus. Is that correct?”
The words struck Kett like a spike maul. The powerfully low pitch. He knew the owner of that voice. Kett turned to see Balroath.
Looking at the Jinaal officer, the reality of what he was about to do descended on him like a rockslide. Give myself …
But he managed to nod to Balroath, who stood in the first row of the first ring.
“Very well,” Balroath said. “Let us make clear your intentions, and then we’ll make clear what it means to be given to Quietus.”
Again, Kett nodded.
Balroath addressed the assembly more than he did Kett. The Jinaal looked over the hundreds of gathered Quietgiven, representing races Kett knew and more that he did not. And again, to his surprise and dismay, he saw some he recognized instinctively as Inveterae but could not name.
“You were tried for your part in a movement to lead Inveterae out of the Bourne. In exchange for your life, and the lives of your children, you agreed to use your knowledge and influence with these separatists to convince them to abandon their plans. Is this your understanding?” Balroath pointed at Kett.
“I will convince them that we all seek the same thing, to live beside those beyond the Pall.” Kett watched to note the Quietgiven response to what he said.
Most of them remained expressionless, but a few turned to look at Balroath with slightly more interest.
Balroath dropped his chin. “There are consequences should you fail or try to deceive us.”
“I understand.” He could feel the assembly’s scrutiny, as they sought to discover any falseness in him.
“No, I don’t think you do, Kett Valan.” Balroath stood beside one of the stairways, and now stepped down onto the main floor. He raised an arm to point at him. “Which is why you will give yourself to us.” Balroath’s deep voice resonated in his chest. It carried an intonation of harm.
So when Kett spoke, he didn’t equivocate. They had to believe he wouldn’t betray their confidence. He would need that for his ruse to work. “I have given you my word on my family’s lives. I have pledged to help put an end to the hope my people have of escaping a captivity unjustly thrust upon them. Have I not already given myself—”
“No, Kett Valan, you have not.” Balroath came halfway between Kett and where he’d been standing, his footfalls loud in the Assembly Hall. “Your oath to join us will mean more than betraying your friends or losing your family. All of us here, including you,” he pointed at Kett, “have been abandoned. But we,” he gestured to the assembly, “are born to this work, given life by Quiet hands. To be given means something more.” Balroath smiled. It was an awful thing to see, as though the Jinaal’s face didn’t know how to form it.
Kett said nothing, waiting.
The Jinaal squared his shoulders to Kett. “It means consecration. Do you understand? Of your every thought. Of your every action. You have nothing else we can’t take from you, or from your Inveterae coconspirators.”
Kett nodded gravely.
Balroath went on. “It is a binding of your soul, Kett Valan. It is a surrender … of Forda.”
He tried to maintain a stoic expression, but a surrender of Forda … dread bloomed afresh in his chest. “How will I do what you ask if I’m dead?”
Balroath smiled his awful smile again. “It is not a separation of body and spirit, Kett Valan. We will bind your heart to ours. If asked, you will gladly allow the Velle to render your spirit. More importantly, when you act contrary to your new heart, we will know, and we will come to redeem our right to the spirit within you. You can now always be found.”
Kett’s heart sank. How would he finish what he’d begun if he gave himself to the Quiet this way?
“No barrier or distance nullifies thi
s vow, Kett Valan. So, if you have been playing us false thus far, I will generously grant you death even now.”
Kett held in his mind the image of his children, and did the only thing he could. “I believe in the common bond Inveterae share with you.” He looked up and around at the assembly, then down at Balroath. “I will take this oath.” He hoped it sounded convincing.
He also hoped that once sworn there’d be a way to undo it.
“Very well,” Balroath said, seeming neither pleased nor disappointed.
The Jinaal came forward and put a hand on Kett’s chest. In a resonant voice, and in a tongue Kett didn’t recognize, Balroath began a low chant. His chest warmed under the other’s touch, and he could feel that warmth spread through his entire body. A searing pain grew inside him. He believed a portion of his soul was being rendered, that he was being bonded to the Quiet somehow. To Quietus. Then, something happened inside him. The closest way to describe it was that the feelings he’d had for Saleema … faded some. But that wasn’t right, either. In his mind he saw bark peeling from ailanthus trees and falling slowly to the ground. He saw the tough silk of ailanthus moths woven into braided bonds.
He couldn’t name it. But in himself he did feel a kind of indifference that he’d not known before. He didn’t even care about the pain in his body.
Balroath removed his hand. The warm feeling faded. And Kett was given.
Silent stares of approval came from many of those seated in the hall. A few, Kett saw, still wore the intense disdain of Quiet who had only one idea about how to handle Inveterae.
A few of the Inveterae who sat in the assembly … their expressions were unreadable. He suspected they’d stood where he did now, and had felt the warm touch of the Jinaal.
The gallery then began to stand and exit, climbing the stairs to archways at the very top of the great theater. None came onto the floor to either exit or talk to him. As if by tradition, Balroath stood beside him until the theater was empty. It was hardly more silent now than it had been when the many Quiet had sat in their seats.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Handsong
There are other proofs of erymol that we could bring to Succession, but the College of Mathematics would laugh us from the discourse theater.
—Nanjesho Alanes, on the mathematics of movement, during the most recent Succession on Continuity
Twelve days after departing Naltus, Mira led Sutter out of the shale stretches of the Soliel and into the rolling hills of Elyk Divad. The kingdom had once been a proud nation, united under a blue banner bearing the white sigil of a lance.
They skirted just south of the Sotol Wastes for another three days, enjoying a warm spell of sun, and avoiding small towns, riding wide of them and staying off roads for leagues afterward.
Mira found new admiration for Sutter; he hadn’t complained once. Most of the time, when they weren’t on the move, Sutter practiced with his sword. Mira taught him the Far Latae dances—a fluid anticipation of movement and striking only known to the Far. He took to it well. Surprisingly well. Sword mastery had become an obsession with him.
Each passing day more of her Far nature escaped like steam from a cooling boilpot. She’d begun to believe that she would no longer die when she came to the end of her eighteenth year. Instead, she’d live a human’s lifetime and go to her earth with a human’s blemish, never to inherit the promise given the Far of a life beyond Aeshau Vaal. If true, perhaps it freed her in ways she hadn’t anticipated. Like knowing Tahn better, longer. Perhaps she’d even have the chance to be a mother to a child for all its life.
But only if I cannot find an answer.…
On the morning of the fourth day since entering Elyk Divad, Mira caught sight of a forest of aspen on a low mountain to the north. Several wide fissures could be seen at a distance, as though the mount had been cloven repeatedly by a wood-splitter’s wedge. It looked just as it did on the map Elan had given her.
Leagues from any road, any town, she turned north and led Sutter to the last range of mountains north of the Sotol Wastes.
* * *
The fresh scent of aspen bark and the sound of rustling leaves soothed her as they climbed the moderate slopes. With the dapple of sun and shadow over the ground, the world about them became gentle, calm. The hint of danger that resided in the Soliel and even across Divad vanished as they entered the boreal forest.
At midmorning, the slope flattened, the trees ended, and she found herself looking out over a city nestled into a low summit. Smoke lazed from chimneys, and absent was the hum of merchant voices barking or wagon wheels creaking.
“Laeodalin?” Sutter asked. “I thought you said they guard their privacy.”
“They do. We wouldn’t have been allowed this far if they didn’t trust that we would behave.” She gave him a scolding eye. “Don’t make a nuisance of yourself.”
She got moving again, catching Sutter’s exaggerated shrug as they rode toward town. Looking ahead, she noticed that no one rode on horseback. At the last stand of aspen, she steered them to the side of the road and they tethered their mounts back in the trees. They then entered the quiet community on foot.
There was no bustle to the place. The residents moved here and there, most of them wearing pleasant expressions. Some looked at Mira and Sutter with easy smiles, some simply walked by, unrushed and unworried.
They passed many simple structures, most fashioned by the hands of expert carpenters—wood seams were hardly visible, and engravings were simple and smooth. A few limestone buildings likewise showed care in every chiseled detail, and in the formation of corners and steps—nothing appeared too small to have deserved attention. Even the road they walked had been cobbled expertly, the fitting of stone to stone immaculate.
And yet there was no pretense in any of it. Just care in craftsmanship, in the good use of hands.
After walking through several streets, they turned into a plaza where a crowd had gathered around an amphitheater recessed in a broad circle at the plaza’s center. As they approached, a soft, indefinable music rose in Mira’s ears. Perhaps it wasn’t music at all, except that it carried the same legato feeling, and seemed to rise and fall in pitch and rhythm.
Walking as quietly as she could, and shushing Sutter with a silent gesture, she crept to the lip of the amphitheater and looked down. At the center of the theater where a young woman wearing no clothes stood gracefully moving her hands and arms in patterns and gestures. The girl never spoke. Her wrists and elbows seemed to intertwine, but never touch, as they wove elegant shapes in and around each other. Her fingers, too, danced in slow, lissome ripples. The entire spectacle was almost hypnotic, as the woman bent at the hips, forward, to the side, weaving her beautiful dance.
The Soriah song, Mira thought. And a handsinger. Deafened gods, it’s true.
She looked at the gathered crowd, and could see the rapt attention and pleasant smiles on their faces at the sounds the young woman was producing with her song. But when she looked at Sutter, she saw a different kind of delight. Not unseemly, but rather as though he watched a marvelous dance, but did not hear the performance.
She looked back at the handsinger, drawn into the sound, grateful her Far ears still possessed the ability to hear this song. It came like the subtle stirring of the air, where the girl’s hands and arms moved through space, creating harmonics few would ever perceive.
In some moments, the handsinger’s fingers were spread far apart, sometimes cupped together, and still other times held close to one another, producing higher, tighter intonations. Then her forearms would roll past one another and sweep outward from her body, carrying deeper tones. The girl would slow, her limbs barely moving, making a song like unto silence, the beauty of which Mira would find difficult to describe. And then the movements would begin again—faster, though never frenetic—her arms passing near one another, stirring and playing off the ethereal notes they created as she pulled them in flowing rhythms.
Though the music w
as sublime to watch, Mira pitied Sutter that he couldn’t hear it: melodies created by a stirring of the air, notes sounded in an acoustical realm that his human ears simply couldn’t reach.
The handsinger gradually slowed, her arms and hands coming to rest at her sides. When her movement had completely ceased, each member of the crowd raised a hand toward her—applause, Mira realized. Then they began to disperse, and the young woman at the center of the amphitheater pulled on a modest white chemise, and began to climb the stairs from her cobblestone stage.
Mira motioned Sutter to follow, and moved to intercept the handsinger where she would reach the theater rim. They arrived at the top of the stair just as the young woman did.
“Excuse me,” Mira began, speaking softly.
The girl started at her speech, a look of concern rising to her face.
“Please,” Mira said, “I don’t wish to alarm you. I heard your song. It was beautiful. Is there somewhere we can speak more privately?”
The handsinger still looked uneasy. Then it came to Mira—not uneasy, confused.
“Do you understand what I am saying?” she asked.
The handsinger said nothing, staring back.
She stood there awkwardly for a few moments, trying to think of how she could communicate with the young woman. Then she lit on something. She motioned gently for the handsinger to follow, and led her and Sutter to a strip of trees and flowers growing to the side of one building. She knelt near the flower bed, and with her finger wrote in the loam the word “friend.” She looked up, hoping to see understanding in the girl’s face.
The girl watched, but her puzzled expression remained.
Spoken words broke the silence. “I think I can help.”
Mira turned to see a middle-aged man with an easy manner. He wore a light brown tunic, and had thinning black hair over a tanned scalp. He smiled kindly at them, one hand out and palm up in greeting.
She stood and took the man’s hand in a clasp of friendship. “I’m Mira Far, this is Sutter Te Polis. We’re not wanderers, or merchants. We come with a request.”
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