“Hmmm.” Indris went to his wardrobe and picked out a fresh tunic, trousers, and cassock. He stripped, washed, and dressed as quickly as he could. Anj’s moue almost made him laugh but he did not want to encourage her. “Why are you here, Anj?”
“We’re overdue our talk, husband. You know how annoying I can be when I’m made to wait.”
“Where’ve you been?”
“As I said before, my business takes me here and there. Suffice to say I’ve spent time there. But I doubt you’ve spent much time seeking me out.”
“I’ve been busy, Anj. You may have heard that the rahns are quite inconveniently dying?” Her bored expression spoke volumes. “I’ve been helping the Sēq find a cure.”
“And?” Despite the petulance in her tone, her gaze sharpened with interest. “Have you found one? I’ve seen Femensetri walking you to the Eibon Hoje each night, and coming for you at dawn—”
“You following me now?”
“—And a wife is interested why her husband works mornings in the Manufactory, afternoons with the Suret, and nights in a library.” She unlaced her vest. “Rather than warming his gorgeous wife in the bed they should be sharing.”
“Anj … give me some time, please.” Her expression turned, and Indris held up his hands in a placating gesture. “You’re right, we do need to talk. Let’s start by you telling me what happened to me on the Spines.”
She rose from the couch, clothing in danger of sliding from her. She sauntered across to him, wrapped an arm around his shoulders, and stared him in the eye. “Let’s make a deal. You want your past from me and I want your present from you.” Her face came close to his, her blue lips parted, tongue a hint of pink against her white teeth. Desire welled up in him but was countered by his feelings for Mari, and the faint sense of oily nausea that proximity to Anj now gave him. For a moment she smelled of rotten seaweed and brine. “The future we can figure out together.”
“What happened to me in the Spines, Anj? The Suret never approved of us being together, so why would they send you to find me?”
“Can you save the rahns and their Awakening, Indris?” she countered. “Or will you need to Sever them, because there’s no way they can survive otherwise?”
Indris felt a chill. “How do you know that?”
“We both have questions we want answered, Indris.” Anj drained her bowl of wine, and fell back on the bed. Her smile faded when Indris remained standing. “Get yourself down here, husband. You want answers. I want answers. Now seems the perfect time.”
“I’ve work to do, Anj. My own curiosity needs to wait a little longer.”
“Until lives don’t depend on you?” Her tone was sharp. Anj’s veneer of affability slipped to reveal a hint of the darkness beneath. Indris felt the greasy residue across his Disentropic Stain, and her form blurred for a second, before it became stable once more. Do I want to ignore what you’re hiding, more than I want to know what you know? “And when will that day be, husband? Will there ever be a day when you’re not rushing off to save somebody, when there are people much closer to you who need your help?”
“They need my help, Anj. Am I to turn my back on them?”
“Sometimes people need to be abandoned to their fate, Indris. To rise above, or drown below. It’s the nature of things.”
“And sometimes people need to be shown how to swim. That’s what the Sēq are supposed to do. They learn, they teach, and they protect.”
“It’s not what they are anymore.”
“Some of us, them, try to be.”
“Weak?”
Indris held the door open for her, and gestured for her to leave. When she did not, he walked out, and closed the door behind him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Of the few regrets I have in my life, where I acted other than in the best interests of others and of my conscience, I can say that they were all fueled by the shortsightedness of vengeance. Nobody sees clearly when there is blood in their eyes.”
—from In Service to the People, by High Palatine Navaar of Oragon, second year of his reign (490th Year of the Shrīanese Federation)
Day 60 of the 496th Year of the Shrīanese Federation
Mari kicked the easel over, sending the precious paper, and sticks of charcoal, skittering across the floor of the sunroom. Not that there is any bloody sun in this place! All there is, is cursed rain, and snow. The world beyond the grimy window was an unfinished and monochromatic watercolor where the artist’s thumb had smeared the gray hints of morning smoke, mist, rain across town and sea. The world looked small enough that she could open the windows and touch its edges. Abashed, she picked her paper and charcoal up, smoothing the corner of one sheet where it had bent. The supplies had been hard to come by, a present from somebody who saw new hope in Mari’s resistance to the Dowager-Asrahn.
Tears formed in her eyes, angrily brushed away. The news of Indris’s death felt like stones in her stomach. A heaviness deep in her bones, where love had once made her light. Love. The word echoed in her head, at once sweeter and more sour for never having been said. Mari strode to the small cabinet and poured herself a tumbler of whiskey, downing it in one gulp. She poured another. She clutched the glass tighter as her hands shook, and tears welled in her eyes again.
“Am I disturbing you?” Qesha-rē said from the door. The surgeon carried her box of instruments and unguents. Mari wiped her eyes and gestured the surgeon in. Ancestors know I’ve nobody else who seeks my company. Qesha-rē came across to the room, her concern evident.
“It’s a little thing; don’t worry yourself.” The man I love is dead. Mari took a quick, stuttering breath around what almost turned into a sob, but smiled anyway. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I’m off to give some of your cousins their routine examinations, so don’t have much time. We need to be careful how much time we spend together, Mari. But you asked whether I knew anything about the Feigning. This morning, I overheard Nadir and Eladdin discussing it. Apparently Eladdin is overjoyed that it won’t be him, and was horrified that his mother would ever have considered it. To be frank, I don’t think either man knows exactly what it is, save that the person used in the Feigning will not emerge the same … if they emerge at all. Apparently it relies upon a device your father has been trying to get working for some time, and now the College of Artificers in Avānweh has the answers he’s after. The Emissary speaks with his voice, so they say.”
“A device?” Mari wracked her brain. The description hardly narrowed the field: There were many devices of the old empires that her father coveted. She felt a chill. Father. It’s becoming little more than a word now. Certainly something less than the man who raised me. With very great care she asked, “Was it a Torque Spindle?”
“They didn’t say.”
Mari swore to herself. “Is Vahineh healthy enough to travel?”
“Not fast and not far, but we’re poor for choice,” the surgeon said, nodding toward the white outside. “Mari, moving her may kill her—”
“These people will kill her, Qesha. One way or another, Vahineh will die at their hands. I appreciate your ethics and your oaths as a healer but if she stays, she dies.”
The surgeon raked fingers through her hair. “Very well. What about Nadir’s soldiers, or the witches who guard her?”
“Let me take care of those, my friend. Please make sure both you and Vahineh are ready to travel tonight.”
“How are we to escape?”
Mari looked out into the murk. The bowl of the bay was filled with gently swirling white, with no sign of The Seeker. “I need to make contact with some friends, but I expect that we’ll need to be ready to leave very quickly. I doubt my grandmother will find it in the cold stone she has for a heart to forgive what I’m about to do.”
“You’ve friends in Tamerlan?”
Mari allowed herself a quiet laugh, and for the first time in a long while, her smile was genuine. “The likes of which you can’t imagine.”
/> “What did the surgeon want?” Nadir asked a few minutes after Qesha had left to treat other patients. Mari glared at Nadir from beneath lowered brows.
“She came to check on my wounds. Why else would she be here?”
“It was the why else that I asked.” Nadir glided farther into the room. Two of his Exiles remained watchful at the door, hands on the hilts of their long-knives. Nadir gave Mari an admiring glance. “You look good. Much better than one could expect, given your time here.”
“My time at yours and the Blacksnake’s mercies, you mean?” Mari chuckled bitterly. “Or at the hands of the Dowager-Asrahn? You’re all as bad as each other, and you’ll all fall together. Trust me on that.”
“You’re not in the world that loves you, Mari.” Nadir’s tone was urgent. He extended a hand, but dropped at something savage in Mari’s expression. “Not in that world at all. There’s still time for you to be saved.”
“From this Feigning you speak of? What is it, Nadir? What do my father and the Emissary have in mind for me, exactly?”
“The Emissary hates you, Mari. She threatened your father that he was not to harm Indris—”
“Why? I’ve done nothing to her! And what does Indris have to do with any of this?” Indris is dead, Nadir. There’s little my father can do to him anymore.
“But there is much that can be done to you, Mari. Even you will break in the end. Everybody does. Accept it.”
“We’ll see about that.” Mari’s lip curled. “I may be imprisoned on this rock with you, Nadir. But you’re also trapped here with me. Before my end comes, I swear I’ll plant your corpse in the Garden of Stones and watch you burn.”
“I’d listen to her, Nadir,” came a familiar voice from the doorway. “My sister is not in the habit of making idle threats.”
“Belam?” Mari’s breath caught. Her brother stood in the doorway, his ruby-scale armor glittering beneath his black clothes, the hood of his over-robe thrown back from his golden head. Beside him stood a small Tanisian woman. To Mari’s surprise, Nadir’s Exiles looked at the Tanisian with something akin to terror, and backed away. Belam gave Mari a small, hesitant smile that remained fixed as he assessed Nadir.
“Belamandris!” Nadir choked, his face pale. His hands dropped toward the hilts of his curved knives, when Belam made a gentle shushing sound. Nadir froze.
“Would you leave us, Nadir?” Belam asked. “I’d appreciate some time with my sister. Alone.”
“But my father and the Dowager-Asrahn—”
“Do not concern me in the slightest, Nadir.” Belam adjusted the folds of his over-robe so that Tragedy’s hilt became visible. “Go, while I allow it.”
Nadir flushed with anger, but did not press his luck. The former Exile stormed from the room, taking great care to give the Widowmaker and his Tanisian companion a wide berth. When he had gone, Belam gestured to his companion to enter, and to close the door behind her.
Anger burst like a boil in Mari. She stepped forward and slammed her elbow into Belam’s jaw. Her brother fell to his knees. Tears formed in Mari’s eyes. When the Tanisian woman started to chant, Belam held up his hand for her to be still. He rose unsteadily to his feet, where Mari hammered her fist into his stomach. This time her tears flowed. Belam doubled over, but rose again. Mari struck him harder, and knocked her brother to his back. She sobbed as he rose again, wiping the blood from his lips. Her next blows were ineffectual things of grief, loneliness, and sorrow. Belam took all she gave, and did not try to defend himself. The witch woman looked on, eyes wide.
“What are you doing here?” Mari asked through her sobs. “You left me here, Belam! My own brother left me with these—”
“I’m sorry, Mari.” Belam held his arms open, but Mari was not ready to take comfort from him. “There’s nothing I can say to undo what’s been done. I had no idea that Jhem and Nadir would bring you here. Father ordered me home, and left you in their care.”
“Care!” Mari wanted to scream. She bared her fangs in a snarl, fists clenched. “Do you have any idea what they’ve done to me?”
“No.” Belam’s voice was as ice, his expression no warmer. There was a terrible poise about him that gave Mari a chill. “What did they do, Mari?”
She straightened. “Nothing I couldn’t handle. Nothing like you might think, Belam—there are some lines they wouldn’t dare cross. Are you here to execute Father’s last request, this Feigning the Emissary is going to perform?”
The Tanisian woman choked back a bitter laugh, and said something in singsong Tanisian Avān that Mari did not understand. The woman repeated herself in Shrīanese Avān. “Your father has made one too many questionable choices, Pah-Mariam. Belam and I have decided it were best if we tried to find facts, before we formed truths.”
“Who’s your friend?” Mari pointedly asked her brother.
Belam gestured toward the woman with him. She appraised Mari, her chin tilted toward the much taller woman. Belam took the Tanisian by the hand and said, “Mari, this is Pahavān-Chepherundi op Sanojé, formerly of Tanis, now of wherever we happen to find ourselves.”
“We can help you,” Sanojé murmured. “We know your father’s plans, and the dark twists his mind takes. We know about his dealings with the Emissary—”
“The Emissary?” Mari scowled. “Somebody needs to plant that woman in ashes.”
“She was the one who saved Father, and continues to hold his life in her hand,” Belam said. He opened his mouth as if he were about to say something else, then closed it again. “She demands more with every boon he asks—and she’s the one who made him banish you to this forsaken place.”
“I hear she’s no friend to me. But what am I to her that she’d do that?” There came the sound of a horn from down the corridor, and the strident clash of metal. “If you’re not here to end me, why are you here?”
“A mission of liberation,” Belam said. “One long overdue. One that’ll help me regain my honor, and your friendship. Eventually, perhaps even your love and respect.”
“Belam,” Mari said hesitantly. “I can’t just forget what’s happened to me here.”
“I don’t expect you to. I’m your brother, and by my inaction you’ve been wronged. By my actions, others have been wronged. Sanojé and I know it’ll take a lot to redeem ourselves for what we’ve done, but can’t our attempt at helping you be a start?”
Mari caught and held Belam’s gaze. “I could use the help, and plans are in place for which you’re ideally skilled to help. You’re my brother, and you’ve never lied to me. But don’t make a fool of me, Belam. You don’t want me as your enemy.”
“I don’t, and I’ll not.”
“Then care to join me?”
“In what?” Belam asked.
“Leaving.”
The high sun was hidden behind clouds, and the Hearthall of Tamerlan was filled to bursting. The fires burned so hot that most of the people had stripped to their tunics and trousers. The rough windows and tiled walls sweated, water dripping from the ceilings. A bound-caste servant sluiced blood from the floor with a bucket of water, while another used a rough broom to send the filthy mess toward the great Maw.
The Dowager-Asrahn’s family flocked around her, faces etched as much with fear as pride. Eladdin stood bare-chested and bloody on the floor, arms held wide, knives dripping gore as his sycophants chanted his name.
Mari made her way to a table laden with platters of seafood, rice, and grilled seaweed, and jugs of beer and horns of mead kept cool in vats of melting snow. One look from her cousins was enough to tell her she was not welcome at the high table. Belam and Sanojé played their parts, nestled in among family members. Mari let her gaze slide to the empty chairs at one end of the table, where she and Dhoury had sat. Her fingers curled in anger, imagining they were wrapped around her grandmother’s scrawny neck.
As long as I live, that old hag will give nobody else to the sea.
Cradling a mug of beer and a small plate of food, Mari sau
ntered through the crowd. Occasionally she checked to see whether anybody in authority paid her undue attention. Soldiers sworn to the Dowager-Asrahn kept their eyes on Mari; two followed at a distance, but did not get close. She swatted away the grabby hands of swaying, sweating drunkards. Eladdin glowered at her, face reddened by drink and blood lust where it was not marbled with bruising from their last encounter. The Sidewinder turned to his crew and said something: They looked in Mari’s direction and laughed. Mari smiled back, pointed to her own nose, and pantomimed crying. His clique prodded him, but Eladdin averted his eyes, and kept his distance.
“Waiting is a dangerous thing, Pah-Mariam,” Kyril said as he wandered past. He stood to watch two oiled young men wrestle. “The weather’s turning, and we’re running out of time. We need to leave soon if we’re ever going to.” He sipped at his beer, grimaced, and let it dribble from his mouth, and back into the mug. “How can people drink this swill? The thought of wintering here with nothing but this piss to drink is, frankly, more than I can stand. So darling princess, let’s get you and your sick friend away from here, eh?”
Mari nodded. “Is tonight soon enough for you? There’s one thing I need to do before we go.”
The nahdi looked at her with raised eyebrows in a silent question.
“I need to end my grandmother, and her influence.”
Kyril snorted, until he realized she was serious. “We don’t have time for vengeance, Pah-Mariam! Your friends—and my husband—risked much by coming here to find you. Morne’s an honorable man, sometimes to the detriment of common sense, which is why he has me: to remind him of when a job is no longer a wise investment. For the love Morne bears the late Indris, and the love your friends bear you, save retribution for another day.”
Mari stepped aside to let the crowd gather around the wrestling men. She gestured for Kyril to join her, and the two slipped away as the crowd grew, eluding the soldiers that followed her in the press of bodies. The corridor outside was gloomy and chill, their breath steaming in the cold gray light as they walked away from passersby.
The Pillars of Sand Page 15