by Kate Elliott
My thoughts careen all over everywhere. For once in my life I can only stumble forward into darkness, blinded by a mask that no longer fits. The laws of the gods are good and true. That’s what I was taught. But this is wrong.
The shrimp-seller stops so suddenly that I bump into the cart and leap back with an apology.
She is my mother’s age and as mean-looking as a dog about to do battle with a razorbird. “You mean to steal my coin, you’ll do better to make your move before we get into the warrens.”
My mouth drops open at her ugly tone. “I meant no harm. I’m just out walking.”
“Where do you dwell?” she demands.
“I’m an adversary in training.”
She cuts me off with a rude gesture. “You think if you wear the mask of their speech and their customs they will accept you as one of them, but they never will. Move off my shadow, mule. I don’t want your kind thinking you can shade me.”
I stagger past her and, driven frantic by fear, break into a run even though I know this will draw attention.
The Avenue of Triumphs is scattered with smears of fruit, sprays of vomit and urine, and sweet-smelling wreaths of flowers hanging from the stone statues of the heroes and gods who line the avenue. A night-soil wagon creaks as it trundles down a side street. The eerie lament of a night-chat warbling in a nearby garden heralds the coming dawn. I hurry across the grand Square of the Moon and the Sun. Seen from this side, the temple looks like a fortress, its long windowless wall guarding the City of the Dead.
Eternity Gate stands open to accommodate the last of Ottonor’s mourners.
As fortune has it, a file of soldiers comes walking behind a captain wearing the two-horned mare badge of the Kusom lordly house. Head bowed, I slide into the end of the line of attendants. The gate-wardens grasp ebony-wood staffs that gleam with priestly magic. They let me pass because they think I am with the soldiers, the girl who does their washing.
Lit lamps mark the open tomb on the dark hill. All of Lord Ottonor’s kinsmen and household have spent the night prostrate on the ground outside, watched over by a cohort of wardens, the men who patrol and supervise the City of the Dead. The bricklayers are starting to set out their tools and mortar by lamplight.
As I approach the porch I have no idea what I’m going to do once I get inside.
But it doesn’t matter. Before I reach the steps a tomb-warden lowers a staff to cut me off.
“You are not wearing the badge of Clan Kusom. Who is your master?”
I hesitate, trying to think of an excuse he will believe without having to show my badge.
“Hoping to steal from the offering cups, no doubt! You can tell your lies to the chief warden. Come with me.”
I skip sideways to avoid him, and he whacks me so hard on my left leg with his warden’s staff that I grunt and drop to one knee.
A man grabs me from behind. I brace to rip myself from his grip, but when he speaks his familiar voice makes me pause.
“Jessamy! I told you to wait beside the path.” Junior House Steward Polodos uses the harsh tone of an angry master, although I’ve never heard him speak harshly to our servants. “My pardon, Warden. I wondered where my servant had gone.”
The tomb-warden, seeing a Patron man like himself, returns to his guard duty.
Polodos tugs me away out of the lamplight. My leg throbs.
“Doma Jessamy, what are you doing here?”
“We have to get them out. Hurry! It’s almost dawn.” I yank on his arm but he doesn’t budge.
“What are you talking about?”
The captain of Clan Kusom emerges onto the lamplit porch, looking shaken by what he has seen inside. The first seeps of gray lighten the sky.
“My mother and sisters are being entombed as the oracle’s servants.”
His eyelids flicker as my words hit him, but he shakes his head. “A pregnant woman can never be entombed, because she might be bearing a son. Did you actually see or speak to them?”
“No, but I know it’s them.” My voice cracks.
“It can’t be, Doma Jessamy. It would be blasphemy. The priests would never allow it.”
My certainty wavers. Of course it isn’t them. Bettany would have fought and kicked the entire time. Amaya would have pleaded and cried, and Maraya would have argued. These attendants walked all that way on their own legs.
“You must go back to Garon Stable, Doma Jessamy. I expect you are out without permission, just as always.”
The words sting. I snap back, “What do my father’s rules matter now? He threw us away.”
The placid young man he used to be has vanished to become someone with an edge. “You are quite mistaken. General Esladas wishes to make sure the Doma has money enough to set up in whatever business she desires. He has arranged for her and your sisters to take lodging at the Least-Hill Inn in the West Harbor District until they can sort out their circumstances.”
My heart clenches, half in anguish and half in triumph. “Father did that?”
He goes on like he is explaining to a child. “The general sold his captain’s armor and gave the money to me to bring to Doma Kiya.”
“Even though Lord Gargaron promised to make provision for them?”
“A man of honor makes sure of his family without going through an intermediary.”
In excitement I grab for his hand, then remember I am pretending to be a servant. “Is my family at the inn?”
Behind us the priests begin the hymn of sealing. Five of them progress into the tomb, each carrying a large silver cup for the final toast.
“No. I am to take them there but I haven’t been able to find them. When I went to our compound I found it swept clean, the Doma and all her servants gone. A neighbor told me that Garon stewards sold the debt of the Commoner servants into bonded labor to pay for the expenses of closing down the house. So I came here to speak to Lord Ottonor’s stewards. They tell me they had nothing to do with General Esladas’s household once Garon Palace took it over. I don’t dare apply to Lord Gargaron’s stewards to find out what happened to the women, lest they suspect the general’s intent.”
The bricklayers move in to lay the first course within the doorway.
“We have to make sure they’re not in the tomb!”
He takes a firm hold on my wrist. “Doma Jessamy, be calm. Of course you are worried on their behalf. I am too. I will start looking for them tomorrow in the city and I promise you I will find them. Now I’ll escort you back to Garon Stable. You shouldn’t be out on your own.”
The bricklayers stand aside as five women step over the brickwork and hurry down the steps to Lord Ottonor’s household, which awaits the final blessing. The bricklayers begin the second course of the big mudbricks. They work with the speed of long practice.
Polodos walks away and I follow, because of course he will look for them tomorrow, and I will have some freedom to help him. While he strides swiftly on, I glance over my shoulder. Five more attendants duck through the doorway and descend the steps. Denya walks among them. The bricklayers begin the third course.
“No.” All my terror resurfaces. I halt.
“Doma?” He pauses about twenty strides ahead of me, turning to look back.
He won’t believe me.
“You’ve got to go ahead, Polodos. We can’t be seen together or word might get back to Lord Gargaron. Imagine what would happen to Father if we were discovered! Hurry! Lord Ottonor’s people might have seen us already.”
Flustered by the possibility that he may have put us in danger, he does not argue. “Are you sure you’ll be safe?”
“I have a Garon badge. I’ll get word to you at the inn.”
He hurries off into the gloom.
I take slow steps backward up the path. When the file of Kusom soldiers jostles past, cutting me off from Polodos’s sight, I hasten toward the tomb. The third group of attendants is already out, the women drenched in tears as they walk free of the stones and the stink.
The bricklayers place the fourth course. Dawn lightens the air.
Lord Gargaron strolls into view from the other side of the tomb, accompanied by Garon soldiers. His glance takes me in with the merest flicker of surprise, and he changes course to cut me off.
“Here you are, Jessamy. I suppose I should have expected it.”
“Why should you have expected to see me, my lord? Garon Palace has already paid its respects and given its offerings to the dead man.”
He glances toward the tomb with a thin smile. “Yes, so we have.”
In that smile lies the truth: their fate was determined from the moment Lord Gargaron decided he wanted a new general.
He nods as he examines my expression and draws his own conclusions about my thoughts. “You have something of your father’s instinct for strategy. I saw it when I watched you run against my useless nephew. You calculated each obstacle. You found a way to lose without making it obvious you had thrown the game. That makes you an adversary to reckon with.”
All my caution flies out the window. “You came here to make sure they were bricked into the tomb, did you not?”
He considers me with a look I cannot fathom. “A man cannot serve if his heart lies in two pieces. General Esladas must not be distracted.”
“She’s pregnant!”
“We are at war,” he says as if that answers everything.
“I’ll tell the priests! It’s blasphemy!”
“Do you think you will ever be allowed to get close enough to the priests to speak to them? Do you imagine anyone will listen to the mad rantings of a mule?”
The last group of women crawls out over what is now more a window than a door. The song of the priests drifts out from inside, the final blessing during which they cut away the dead man’s shadow and seal his flesh into the coffin. Over time his self will dissolve and his heart decay, but as long as the tomb stands Lord Ottonor’s name will remain alive in the world.
The oracle was telling me what I could not yet understand. Death might be a mercy.
“Put me in there with them, I beg you. That would be propitious, would it not? Like the Silent Orchid and her four obedient daughters. Let me go with them into the tomb. Please!”
“I think not. You will bring glory to Garon Palace, just as your father will. I will accept nothing less from you than the heights of the Illustrious.”
The priests crawl out of the tomb, the last to emerge. With hands raised on the porch, they sing the hymn of triumphant justice while the bricklayers stand atop benches to finish the final courses and seal the tomb.
A scream of despair rips out of my throat and breaks through my body as I dissolve into grief-racked sobs. But all of Lord Ottonor’s household is wailing too, in the customary manner. The women scratch at their chests and the men throw dirt onto their heads. My voice is so lost among theirs that it stops me cold.
I am not the screamer.
Why is Bettany not screaming and shouting? What of Amaya’s piercing whine? Have they smothered them as was the custom in the old country?
Are they dead?
The prayer of the priests reaches its crescendo in praise of the heavenly triumvirate of gods who have given the people prosperity, justice, and victory. In what was once a doorway the bricklayers leave only a thin gap for air like a mouth barely parted as it gives up its last breath.
My knees dissolve, all strength gone. The soldiers do not even glance at me. I am nothing to them.
I am nothing to myself. I am no longer Captain Esladas’s daughter. My mother is no longer a woman named Kiya but a faceless and voiceless ghost. My sisters are gone.
I collapse over my thighs, fists on the dirt.
Lord Gargaron’s feet shift in front of my face. I lift my head and see him motion to a captain, who escorts Denya to a carriage. Tears and exhaustion stain Denya’s face, yet even so I see how pretty she is.
I remember what my mother said when she came home from the City Fives Court on the day Father’s clothes were washed in Lord Ottonor’s blood: He was poisoned.
Lord Gargaron has taken everything he desired from the ruins of Lord Ottonor’s household.
“Bring her,” he says.
I walk before the soldiers can drag me. My legs stump like weights that belong to another person. Ahead wait two carriages. Lord Gargaron climbs into one. Denya is escorted to the other. I make ready to trudge behind the carriage but to my surprise the steward orders me in with her.
Its blue awning floats like the heavens, painted with cranes and sunbirds. I climb inside.
Denya looks up sharply, scrubbing tears from her cheeks. “Jessamy Tonor!” She laughs a little too wildly. “No, it is Jessamy Garon now, is it not? Just as I am Denya Garon.”
With a snap of reins from their drivers, the carriages roll.
As a courtesy I pretend not to see her cry. “So you are bound for the palace too, Denya Garon,” I say, the words as starched as waxed linen.
“Why are you so elevated? The lord would not take one like you to be a concubine.” She breaks off, realizing how the words sound.
“Why would I want to have to endure that man’s attentions in the bedchamber? I am at the Fives stable.”
She sniffs, drawing up her chin. “Yes, of course. Amaya said you were always sneaking out to run the Fives. My father would have whipped me.”
“Was Amaya tattling to all her friends?”
“No. Just me.”
There falls a silence. Denya was a loyal friend to Amaya. She deserves better than me hitting out at her in fear just because she’s the only one I can touch.
I try again, attempting a kinder voice. “What will happen to your father, Captain Osfiyos?”
Her mouth twists as she makes several messy snorts of grief. It is an embarrassing sound but I cannot laugh at her. Probably this is the only time she will be allowed to cry. At Garon Palace, as a woman brought in to please her master, she will need to show a smiling face.
“He was broken down into the ranks. My brothers must start over as apprentices. Our family was ruined because of Lord Ottonor’s debts. There was talk of me marrying a captain from Lord Nefelyan’s household but that is all gone.”
Just when I think she is going to collapse entirely she stiffens her spine and ruthlessly wipes her cheeks because she is a soldier’s daughter too.
“I shall have elegant clothing that my father could never have afforded. I just wish Amaya could see it. If she and I could go shopping together we should have such pleasure. At least my older sister is safely married out of the household. We had a younger sister but she was dedicated to the temple as an infant.” She stretches out her arms to study her hands as if imagining the rings she will wear, but the twist of her mouth betrays the rank taste in her throat. “I would rather endure Lord Gargaron’s attentions than be buried alive.”
He has buried them alive! An abyss has opened in my heart and I am tumbling endlessly, for there is no succor and no mercy.
Denya reaches across the gap, the pressure of her fingers like fire, her eyes lifted to mine all wide and trusting. How many times have I seen her and Amaya whispering together, hands clasped?
“You look sad, Jessamy Garon. Have you news of Amaya? Where did she go?”
I blink.
She doesn’t know. No one knows. He has hidden it because he knows it is wrong.
She leans closer, her shoulder touching mine. Her lips touch my ear as she whispers, although how anyone could overhear us as the wheels roll and the horses clop along I cannot imagine. “I’m so worried about her. If you get news can you please find a way to slip a note to me? You helped her smuggle the notes in before.”
“Was that awful poetry from you?” The mention of those dreadfully mundane and ridiculous love paeans breaks through my agony. She ducks her head as though to avoid a blow. “Unfolding petals and tongues of flame?”
Blushing, she struggles to meet my gaze. “We were just practicing. A married woman has to know how to… write lo
ve poetry and do other things. After she has given her husband sons, then people will look the other way if she wants to do things that unmarried women aren’t allowed to do.…” Like an actress playing the part of a modest lover, she presses a hand to a cheek.
Memory pulls me deeper despite the pain that recollection causes: the family courtyard with its lamps and the marriage couch where Mother loved to sit, content to know her man would return to her. Amaya would read plays aloud in her expressive voice, and we would laugh, or pretend to cry, or gasp in fear, or murmur in shocked surprise, according to her pleasure and the passage she was declaiming. Amaya was always brilliant at acting a part.
“We didn’t mean anything by it.” Her tone has an anxious lilt.
Perhaps for the first time in our years of acquaintance I really look at Denya. Her beautiful eyes are so brown they are almost black, with brows a perfect bow. The shroud drapes her body, hinting at a shapely form beneath. Her hair is clubbed up, but if let down it would be as straight and thick as that of the actresses on stage who are renowned throughout the land for their beauty. Dressed in finery, adorned with cosmetics and jewelry, she will be lovely. But it is the grief and fear and hope in her face that tell the truth of her heart.
“Were you and Amaya lovers?” I blurt out.
She draws back with an intake of breath but the truth is written all over her face, as good as a confession.
“I don’t care what you did with Amaya,” I say in a voice too accusing, for it isn’t Denya I rage at. How have I been so blind? “I just hope you will be well treated by Lord Gargaron.”
“I don’t want your pity. Go run your Fives, Jessamy Garon.” Her anger scalds over me. “You never saw anything but what you wanted. You only helped Amaya so she would help you.”
She turns her face away and closes her eyes to make it clear the conversation is over. A tear slides down her cheek but she makes no sound.
Nor do I make a sound. I am bricked up and my heart is buried, but that does not mean I cannot fashion hate into a weapon. Yet I cannot confide anything to Denya; I cannot be her friend. Someday soon she will be in bed with him whether she wants to be or not. She might give up the secret of my hate without meaning to. She might give it up in exchange for a reward.