The Tower of Living and Dying

by Anna Smith Spark

  The baby made a little noise and Lady Ventuel said, “Oh, he’s so adorable. Listen to him!”

  “I’ll talk to Orhan,” Bilale said. The baby whimpered and Bilale took it in her arms, held it very tight. “My beautiful beautiful baby boy.”

  “Look at his little ears, he’s a darling,” Lady Ventuel said. “I knew you’d help me, darling.” She took another cake. “Thank you.”

  There was a knock at the door. Janush came in. He looked very strange. As though there was a weight on him. Crushing him. His face was rigid.

  He bent, whispered something in Bilale’s ear.

  Bilale gave a cry. Her hand rose to her mouth. Her whole body flinched.

  The baby stirred. Lady Ventuel said with concern, “Bil?”

  Bilale got to her feet and Nilesh got to her feet also. Stepped forward to her mistress, for it seemed as though Bilale might fall down in a faint on the floor. Bilale said very slowly, “You need to leave, Retha. I … You will need to leave. Please.” She gave the baby back to its nurse, very stiffly, her hands shaking. The baby fretted, began to cry.

  “What’s wrong? Bil?” Lady Ventuel also looked afraid. And it was so strange and rare and terrible, to see these great ladies afraid. The look on Bilale’s face reminded Nilesh of the time long ago when she had sat in Bilale’s bedroom, heard a doctor tell Bilale the sickness she was suffering from was blackscab.

  Lady Ventuel’s face froze. She gasped. “Oh. Oh Bil. Something has happened to Orhan.”

  Bilale said, “It’s nothing,” in such a strange voice Nilesh almost began to weep.

  When Lady Ventuel had left them, Bilale did begin to weep. Screamed. Howled. Shook.

  “Please, My Lady,” Nilesh begged her. “Please, please, be calm.”

  “A messenger has come from Lord Vorley,” said Bilale finally. “The Emperor has summoned Lord Emmereth to attend him. Sent guards to ensure that Lord Emmereth is protected on the way.” She raised her hands to her mouth, tracing out the whorls of scar tissue across her lip. “Has he gone?” she asked Janush.

  Janush bowed his head. “Yes, My Lady. Lord Vorley wanted to accompany him, the messenger said, but My Lord refused. He took his guards, but was otherwise alone.”

  “Of course he would go alone.” Bilale picked at the scar. “Did he leave a message for me?”

  Janush said, “No, My Lady. He did not.”

  His death, thought Nilesh. He has gone to his death. To all our deaths.

  Bilale’s white scarred hands closed over her stomach, her long gilded nails like worms against her dress. “Your husband has made a lot of enemies recently. But now it comes … Ah, Great Tanis. I should go to my father’s. We had agreed that. Send someone to Lady Amdelle.” She looked over at the baby flailing red and angry in its nurse’s arms. “No one will believe it is not his child.”

  He is your husband, thought Nilesh. It won’t matter, whether they believe it’s your child or not. The penalty for high treason: if one of the great families is found to have committed treason against the Empire or the Emperor, they and every member of their household must be burned alive. Janush had talked to Nilesh about it, over and over, on and on. There was no escape. No appeal. No mercy. Janush and Lady Emmereth had watched it done to Lord Rhyl’s family. “They burned the girl who sewed Lord Rhyl’s nightshirts,” Janush had said. “A beggar Lady Rhyl ordered fed.”

  “But it might not come to that, My Lady,” Nilesh said. “It might be nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Bilale’s hands went back to the scars at her mouth.

  “The Emperor … He may only want to talk with Lord Emmereth. Seek his counsel. That is what his post is, after all. Nithque. Counsellor and friend.”

  Bilale shook her head. “For weeks, now, we have feared this. Since March Verneth’s death. I told you to send someone to Lady Amdelle!” Bilale shouted. Her voice was harsh: the baby’s cries grew louder, more afraid. The nursemaid cooed at it, raised it to her breast. Bilale watched. Wept.

  “Yes. Yes. At once.” Nilesh rang the bell. A young man came in, so quickly he must have been waiting outside the door. Every servant and bondsman would be waiting at doorways, whispering in the corners, sick with fear. Some were perhaps already preparing to run away. The man bowed low, pretty hair bobbing. Nilesh gave him his order. He nodded, wide-eyed, looking around the room. There was fire reflected in his eyes. Seeing all the beautiful draperies and gilded wood torn down and running with flame.

  Bilale stared at the baby suckling, rubbed at the patterns of her scars.

  “Everything will be all right, My Lady,” said Nilesh dully. “Your beautiful boy … Of course it will be all right.”

  “Better he had never been born. My beautiful beautiful baby boy.” She glanced at the window. The sky was beginning to grow dark. Thick, weary yellow light. In the gardens evening flowers were coming open; a gardener went around lighting the lamps. A bad time. Any moment they would hear the toll of the twilight bell. Seserenthelae aus perhalish. But now comes the time when the death things are here.

  A knock on the door, they both started in terror. It cannot be fair, Nilesh thought, all I do is attend her, I know nothing about anything beyond the walls of this room. Why should I burn? Why should I die? What have I done? And the baby. So small … My beautiful beautiful beautiful baby boy … The door opened. Lady Amdelle came in. From the speed of her arrival and her face she knew what was happening, had set out before Bilale had sent for her.

  “Bil!” Her voice frightened. Her face frightened. Nilesh had never seen her like this, this distant terrifying woman, perfect as gems, impossible to imagine how she lived or thought or went about her daily business, her world so far removed from Nilesh’s life, so far even from Bilale’s. Perfect. But here she was, frightened, looking older, tired, weak, afraid.

  The two women embraced.

  “You have had no word from him?” asked Lady Amdelle. “But why now? Things seemed calmer. I had heard nothing. Nothing new has been said. Has it?”

  Bilale shook her head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know. That last absurdity about the false High Priestess … But that was nothing new. More nonsense.”

  “Holt is going to see Darath and Elis,” Lady Amdelle said. Holt, thought Nilesh. Lady Amdelle’s husband. Very powerful. Very rich. “Perhaps if we can find some bargain with Cam … If we can offer him enough …”

  “You should have got Symdle married off to Zoa before,” said Bilale. “He’d have a stake in it, then.”

  “That was Cam’s choice. And it’s obvious why, if he knew any of this. Or started the rumours himself. But it was too late anyway. As soon as March was poisoned, that was ended. We lost.”

  “Can Elis not get Leada to try to win over Eloise?”

  “How? Eloise told Ameretha she’s going to take Leada back to the House of Silver tonight.”

  Nonsense. Babble. A part of Nilesh thought: these are the great ladies of the Sekemleth Empire. The great high powers of the world. My mistress. My Lord Emmereth’s own sister. How can they be powerless? How can they be afraid? A part of Nilesh thought: they sound like birds. Like little pethe birds, chattering away at each other, shiny bright and meaningless. Little pethe birds in cages, beating their little wings.

  “Your father has influence with some of the merchant families. They seem to think Orhan has done well enough for the city. They won’t want to see him fall.”

  “He’s afraid,” Bilale said hopelessly in response. “Too afraid to act.”

  “Then he’ll see you and his grandchild die.”

  “He says it will not come to that. He thinks—”

  A part of Nilesh thought: how can my mistress’s own father be afraid?

  A part of Nilesh thought: stop talking! What do you think any of this will do? Do you think you can talk it away? Order it away? Buy it? Rattle off enough lordly names? If I was you, I would be running for the gates with a bag of gold hidden in my cloak, as some of the servants are doing already. They prattled
on like birds in cages and she wanted to scream it at them. Run away! Run away!

  There was a commotion in the corridor outside; Lord Emmereth came into the room. His face was haggard. He looked from his wife to his sister to the baby sleeping suckling, seated himself wearily on a couch. Slumped. One of his body servants fussed around him, fetched him a cup of water and a cup of wine. Finally he waved the boy away with a frown. Turned towards Bilale. His eyes fixed on Nilesh standing behind her chair.

  “You, too, Nilesh. And the—and my son.” His voice was cracked as his sister’s was. “Doubtless my wife will tell you all, or the guards I took with me. But a man must have some dignity left in his own house. And a child should not hear these things.” He almost smiled at the nursemaid. The baby stirred, angry at being disturbed in its slumber, whimpering, flailing its arms.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Nilesh went to the library in search of Janush. He would know what was happening. Four of the new guards stood outside the door she had come from, one of Lord Emmereth’s body servants prowled the corridor biting at his nails. Two girls were lighting candles in the hallways, looking nervously about them, expecting some great terror to come rushing through the walls. In the library Nilesh found Janush staring at a book without seeing it. He started as she put her hand on the desk in front of him. He, too, looked grey and older. He’d been Lord Emmereth’s bondsman for a long time.

  “You startled me, Nilesh. What is it? Does Lady Emmereth want to see me? Is the baby fretting again? Tell her I’m too sick to come and speak.”

  “Janush. What is happening?”

  Janush sighed. “Why do you want to know, Nilesh? Lady Emmereth will tell you soon.” What he meant was, she wouldn’t understand what was happening.

  “Please tell me.”

  “Did you not hear me? I’m too sick to speak. And I don’t even know, for sure. Only spies’ whispers. Though I’m told the Emperor shouted loud enough to be heard through a closed door. Lord Emmereth is dismissed as Nithque, Nilesh. Lord Tardein replaces him.”

  She did not understand clearly what the title of Nithque meant. Power. More guards. Her mistress happier. Yet also more strained.

  And Lord Tardein, she thought. The Lord of the Dry Sea. He had recently broken off his daughter’s marriage to Lord Emmereth’s nephew.

  Bilale shouting at Lady Amdelle: You should have got Symdle married off to Zoa before. He’d have a stake in it, then. Lady Amdelle shouting back: That was Cam’s choice. And it’s obvious why, if he knew any of this. Or started the rumours himself.

  Lady Ventuel saying sweetly to Bilale: The Nithque’s refusal to let anyone from Chathe inside the city is costing Aris a fortune. And not just Aris. He’s been talking about it to Cam Tardein. Cam is not happy either. Your husband has made a lot of enemies recently.

  Our enemy, Nilesh thought. Our enemy. In power in my master’s place.

  Nilesh said, “Why?”

  Nilesh said, “Will he burn us?”

  “The rumours grow and grow, Nilesh. A man from a village in the eastern desert came to the Emperor seeking audience this morning. He had a long, tangled story about a young man who walked out of the desert, having come from the direction of Sorlost. A beautiful young man with black-red hair and a scarred hand, rich enough to buy half the man’s village, he ordered the villagers to kneel to him, he had a sword that shone with mage light. He had a woman with him, rapturously beautiful, black hair, brown skin, blue eyes. Her left arm was covered with scars. As though she had been cut by a knife.

  “The Altrersyr demon, they say, has a scarred left hand. From where he killed a dragon with his bare hands, they say.” Janush shook his head. “The man was an ignorant farmer. The story was old, he was confused over the details. Could not explain why he had waited so long to tell. ‘I did not think it was important,’ he told the Emperor! But then, he was an ignorant old man from the desert. He wanted a reward, it seems. I would suspect that he is now dead.”

  Nilesh said, “If the Altrersyr demon truly was here, in Sorlost, then surely Lord Emmereth saved us all. He saved the Emperor’s life. He warded the demon off. He cannot be blamed if the High Priestess betrayed us.” They say he is the most beautiful man in the world, Lady Amdelle had said to Bilale.

  Janush sighed. “Indeed. That would seem the rational conclusion. But the rumours go on. The Altrersyr demon is raising a war fleet, Nilesh. Recruiting troops. They say he has started to call himself the King of All Irlast. The King of Death.”

  “But that is not Lord Emmereth’s fault!” shouted Nilesh.

  Janush laughed. “No, Nilesh. It is not.”

  “Lord Emmereth is a hero who saved the city. I don’t understand. Any of this.”

  Janush sighed. “Neither do I, Nilesh.”

  “What will happen to us, Janush?”

  Janush shook his head. “I do not know.”

  Nilesh went back to Bilale’s rooms. Servants bustled about, finding things to busy themselves with, looking round and staring hoping to see and hear. The baby’s wails drifted through closed doorways. Banished, Nilesh thought. A child should not be present to hear of his family’s ruin. Bad omens. Dangerous to the baby’s mind and heart.

  “Where have you been?” Dyani the perfume girl hissed at her. “She’s looking for you.” The boy who sang for Bilale slunk past, weeping. Dyani gestured: “You see the mood she is in?”

  Nilesh went into Bilale’s bedroom. Her mistress sat on her bed, she had opened up her boxes of jewels and was looking at them. A boy scattered cedar wood and lavender oil on a brazier. Soothing. Calm. The coals flickered and hissed. Bilale also had been crying. Her eyes were very red. “Where have you been?” she snapped at Nilesh.

  Nilesh knelt at her feet. “I … Walking around the house. I was frightened. Forgive me, My Lady.”

  Bilale said, “He’s gone out. To see him. Lord Vorley. He can’t be at home even now, didn’t even look at the child, he has to go and see him, tell him he’s fine. It’s all his fault. Lord Vorley’s fault. If he wasn’t so blind with love for him …”

  Did Lord Vorley then make it all happen? Nilesh thought. Betray us to the demons? Trick My Lord Emmereth into helping them? I don’t understand.

  “He cheats on him, you know? Celyse’s spies have watched him at it. He weeps as he comes. And Darath knows about it. Maybe he’s watched him too.”

  Bilale picked up a heavy necklace of turquoises. A rope of green pearls, made two months’ journey away in the impossible to imagine sea. Citrines in gold, carved into the shape of flowers, tiny as children’s teeth. A ruby pendant the size of Nilesh’s closed fist. “I’ve never even worn some of these. My bridegifts, some of them.” She threw the pendant across the room. It struck the wall by the curved lattice of the shutters. A chip in the painted plaster. A clink as it hit the floor.

  “Better I had died in childbed,” said Bilale. “Better my son had died in my womb.” Her voice was savage. But she frowned, picked up the tangled useless lacework, took a long deep breath. “What shall I do, Nilesh?”

  “What did … did Lady Amdelle say, My Lady? And My Lord Emmereth?”

  “Nothing.” Bilale placed her hands over the jewels again. Her nails clicked against them. “Nothing! We will do nothing. The Emperor has accused him of nothing. They are all equally as weak and afraid.” Her hands went back to her scabs. “He is dismissed. There is nothing we can do.”

  The next morning, Bilale went to the Temple. Lord Emmereth had not come home; Nilesh guessed, from the looks on the guards’ faces, the way the servants took an eternity preparing the litter, that he had forbidden anyone in the household to go out. Bilale was already forbidden to go out. Bilale shouted at them to be ready. She was wearing the ruby pendant, a dress of gold and silver silk. Her face was like a mask, with dry, white-edged lips. She kissed the baby tenderly before climbing into the litter. “My baby baby baby boy,” she whispered. Her eyes ran with tears.

  In the streets the litter went fearfully slo
wly. The curtains were tightly closed, yellow silk making the world beyond like honey or amber or Bilale’s citrines. The soft warm pleasure of holding closed eyes up to the sun. It gave Bilale’s whiteness a sickly look, though it shaded away her scars. The shadows of the guardsmen moved on the curtains and they could see nothing beyond them. The noise of the streets drifting in distantly, like sounds in dreams. Bilale twisted her hands in her lap. Touched at her scars.

  We will all die, Nilesh thought. Not yet, but it will come. I am her servant. My whole life, nothing but her servant. And now when she dies, I will die.

  “We only exist because they exist,” Janush had said to her once. “We are like lice crawling on their bodies, for whom Bilale’s beautiful red hair is the earth and the sky and the house of God. If they were to stop commanding us, do you think we would disappear, Nilesh? Cease to exist?” He’d been drunk on firewine. She’d had to call servants to put him to bed. His words had terrified her. Terrified her now.

  The litter came to a stop. They had been recognized: voices shouted. “Murderer! Traitor!” They had at least not been spat on. An attendant handed Nilesh and then Bilale down. Bilale moved so awkwardly, her body rigid with fear. She looked so pitiful, thought Nilesh. So vulnerable. So weak. Her hands shook, as she steadied herself on the attendant’s arm. The guards drew close around them. Morning light on their swords. Bilale looked at them with indrawn breath, tears welling in her eyes again. More of them every day. They did not look at her or at Nilesh, looked stone faced at the muttering crowds in Grey Square.

  They did not look, Nilesh, thought, as if they would disappear if Bilale or Lord Emmereth stopped commanding them. It came to her, with a dizzying stab of shock, that they could as easily decide to kill Lord Emmereth, or the baby, or Bilale. They had very sharp swords.

  She followed Bilale up the steps to the Temple. The last time they had been there, their hearts had been so full of joy. It loomed over them, vast dark bulk as high as eternity, cold with sorrow, oh, Great Tanis, it was itself alive. Nilesh had heard stories of lands far away, Chathe and Ith and Tarboran, where the ground itself rose up hugely to meet the sky. But nothing, surely, nothing could be as high and as huge and as vast as the Great Temple of Great Tanis the Lord of Living and Dying, He Who Ruled All Things, the Sekemleth Empire’s God. Bilale went forward through the Temple door that looked at them with wooden eyes. A high, narrow doorway, a narrow passageway, dark as night. Nilesh held her breath as they walked. Bilale’s hair showed faintly in the darkness, her jewels, she turned her head towards Nilesh and her skin was visible like white shadows. The dark: is this what it will be like, Nilesh thought, when we die? Then out into the light of the Great Chamber, the bronze walls, a thousand scented candles burning, everywhere gold and bronze and gems. So bright and blinding. Nilesh gasped. Almost spoke her fear and joy aloud.