Buried Heart

by Kate Elliott

  By now ordinary city dwellers have crept to the edges of the square that fronts Seon’s temple. There are far more Efeans than Saroese in this growing crowd. However fast news travels, not everyone in the city yet knows what is going on. And why would they? We haven’t won yet. There are still Rings turning that we have to leap through to reach the victory tower.

  The Honored Protector halts at the base of the temple steps. The four spiders thump up the stairs to its portico, where they halt on either side of the monumental entrance. Each one is accompanied by a squad of firebird veterans detached from the main unit that remained behind to guard the Royal Fives Court with the rest of the spiders. I’m sure they’re here because Father never fully trusts anyone except men he has himself trained.

  Although I’m separated from Kal by only a few ranks of soldiers, he never looks around, only straight ahead and up the stairs, awaiting the arrival of the High Priest. For the last many years, the Inkos priest Lord Gargaron blackmailed has presided as High Priest over all the temples of Efea. But it is not a man dressed in the red robe and black hat of Inkos who emerges.

  Instead a woman wearing a simple linen sheath gown walks out and halts at the top of the stairs. A butterfly mask fashioned from blue, yellow, and red feathers conceals her face but her bare black arms and her hair reveal to the prisoners what manner of person this is who has usurped the priests’ territory. Despite their helplessness the men of the royal household and the captured heads of clans murmur angrily. By Patron custom, for a woman to preside over a temple is blasphemy. That she is a Commoner of course makes it worse.

  “What mockery is this with which you defile our holy temple?” calls Gargaron.

  “Silence!” shouts Ro.

  The Honored Protector starts up the stairs. Ro murmurs into Kal’s ear like a sage steward giving advice to a beleaguered lord in a play. Ro’s part is crucial, because he has only these few moments to persuade Kal to take the biggest chance of all.

  Kal says something short to Ro and, still supporting his sister, climbs the stairs in the wake of the Honored Protector. Lord Gargaron, the heads of the many highborn clans, and the Garon Palace men come next. At the back the ladies of the royal household hold hands as they follow their menfolk. Most are weeping, but nevertheless they keep their chins high. Lady Adia has fallen to the rear amid the stewards and officials, not one person extending a hand to aid her. Something about the way her body sways and her chin dips down alerts me. I shove through the ranks and dart up just as she begins to collapse with the passive invisibility of people who are drowning.

  I grasp her arm in time to stop her from hitting the ground. Only then, seeing my hands on her, do the nearest stewards yank her away and hastily convey her forward out of my reach. One spits at me.

  The Efean soldiers at my back break their silence, muttering furiously, but I wave them back. This is not the place. We must let the performance continue to its end.

  We enter the temple, a square hall lined with pillars. A statue of four-faced Seon rises at the center, looking in every direction for, as the sages teach, justice shines in every direction. Two stone goats kneel, one by each of the god’s legs, according to an ancient custom by which the good, unblemished goat is given to the god as a sacrifice that atones for the misdeeds of the people while the other goat is expelled as an outcast into the wilderness.

  “This is a farce.” Gargaron strides past Princess Berenise and steps in front of his niece and nephew to command the stage. “Only the High Priest can judge the royal clan and the highborn lords.”

  “I am the High Priest,” says a yellow-robed young man sitting in the seat of judgment, which is placed at Seon’s feet between the two goats. He is the man I met at the Jasmine Inn, the one who was promised this job, whose name I never learned. He is flanked by nervous priest-wardens armed with swords and spears festooned with the colored ribbons of the holy temples. The old High Priest, stripped of his hat, cowers amid a huddle of frightened colleagues off to one side.

  The young priest of Seon looks down his nose at Gargaron with searing contempt. “I and my pure-hearted confederates will restore the worship at the temples so its judgments are not bought by gifts and favors. You, Lord Gargaron, stand chief among those who have bribed the very priests who claim to be the holy servants of the gods but instead have been corrupted by greed and lust.”

  Gargaron gestures toward the masked Protector and Custodian, who still have not spoken. “I see you have found Efean puppets whose strings you can pull. Who has masterminded this plan? Surely not you, a mere youth?”

  The High Priest ignores him. “The trial of Garon Palace begins now. You are accused of bribery, perjury, theft, and murder.”

  With her distinctive rolling walk, Maraya approaches the High Priest, scrolls piled in her arms. She is accompanied by other clerks, each of whom carries additional documents. Gargaron’s stunned expression gratifies me for only a moment, because like me he is a decisive person.

  “You should have been smothered at birth,” he snarls. “Your father was weak to allow you to live, much less to breed another like yourself.”

  He leaps forward and, taking her completely by surprise, sweeps the scrolls out of her arms, then slaps her across the face. As she stumbles back, he shoves her viciously to the ground. She hits hard, with a cry of pain.

  I push forward, trying to reach her.

  But of course Father did not stay in his spider, not knowing how quickly the situation might change inside the temple hall. In dusty scout’s gear he shoves roughly through the ranks faster than I can. Just as Gargaron is about to kick Maraya in the belly, Father grabs him by the shoulder of his silk jacket and flings him to one side with so much force that the lord slams into the blemished goat with a smack that makes everyone wince.

  “You will not harm my daughters ever again.”

  By now I’ve broken through and rush up as Father kneels beside Maraya.

  He tips her face so he can look into her eyes. “Can you speak, Maraya?”

  “Yes, just shaken up.” She clings to him, and he lifts her, sets her on her feet, and indicates that I should let her lean on me.

  “So it was you all along, General Esladas.” Breathing hard, one hand pressed to his side, Gargaron glares with the enraged satisfaction of a man who has finally figured it out. “Your ambition could not be content with the command of the Royal Army. Now you have turned against your rightful masters and fomented this overthrow. How clever of you to use Commoners as your figureheads to get them on your side. They’re easily led, as you must know from years of experience.”

  “You don’t understand what is going on at all.” When Father drops the my lord from his answer I know beyond all doubt that he has chosen Efea.

  “Of course I understand.” Gargaron gestures toward Mother. “You can crown yourself king and call a Commoner woman your queen, but you will never be royal.”

  “This can’t be true, Esladas. I’m your wife, not her.” Menoë presses a hand to her chest.

  Father has kept his gaze fixed on Gargaron, but when Menoë speaks he glances toward her. It’s not regret, precisely, that shadows his face, but disquiet that he has caused pain where he intended none.

  That glance is all it takes. That one moment of distraction. Gargaron moves, grabbing a sword out of the hand of one of the priest-wardens.

  “Father, behind you!”

  Father thinks I’m warning him about a threat to Mother, and he looks the wrong way. He looks toward the woman he has loved from the first day he set foot in Efea. I release Maraya and jump forward, but it’s too late.

  Gargaron’s blade enters Father from the back, thrust so hard the point comes out through his belly, a wink of bloody metal that’s withdrawn as quickly as I glimpsed it.

  Maybe I mistook a flash of light for a blade. It can’t really have happened.

  Father staggers a step, then collapses. Blood pumps out of the wound.

  Gargaron lifts the sword to point
at the heavens. “Cut off the head, and the body will die. Now. All of you, kneel before your rightful king and queen and I will forgive this trespass. This one time. But do it quickly because my patience and my mercy have worn thin.”

  In the horrible silence, I throw myself down beside Father. Maraya cradles his head in her hands as he just did to her. The royal household, the highborn clan heads, and the disgraced priests kneel before Kalliarkos and Menoë, bowing their heads. But all the other people gathered in the temple—and they are many—stay on their feet.

  The Honored Protector pulls off his mask and draws his sword.

  “Good Goat! Inarsis! Whom do you pretend to be in this festival mask?” Gargaron demands with a laugh.

  “I am the king of Efea,” says Inarsis without the slightest flicker of doubt, “and this man was my general, who served me.”

  Gargaron shakes his head. “After all that Princess Berenise did for you, this is how you repay us? Today will not end well for you, Inarsis.”

  “I have killed Saroese kings. Don’t think I don’t know how to kill a lord.”

  Inarsis is a man who has trained long and hard for victory. After a short, sharp exchange he neatly disarms Gargaron, slapping his sword aside by sheer force. He backhands Gargaron across the face so hard he stumbles, then punches him in the jaw with the hilt of his sword. Forcing the lord to his knees, Inarsis lays the edge of his blade against Gargaron’s throat and looks to Mother.

  “What is your wish, Honored Custodian?”

  Father breathes hoarsely as he fights to stay conscious. His blood leaks over my fingers in steady, sluggish pumps.

  I want to scream for Inarsis to stab Gargaron again and again in the gut so he can feel this pain too.

  Mother has still not removed her mask. As much as Gargaron has done to me, his offense against her outweighs all else.

  In a hoarse voice she says, “Don’t kill him. Let the trial proceed. Let the evidence be presented. Then judgment will be passed in the sight of their own gods and their own laws.”

  Only then does she walk to us and, with a hand pressed to her side like she too has been stabbed, kneel at Father’s side.

  His eyes track her. His lips shape, “Beloved,” but he can’t get enough air to speak. He raises a hand to touch her yet hesitates, not sure if she will accept it. Instead he pulls the hand to his chest, fist to heart, in the theatrical gesture of a person heart-stricken by a hopeless love.

  She takes off her mask and presses his palm to her cheek.

  “Maraya!” I’ve slammed into the worst of dead ends but a desperate opening winks into view. “Do you have the crow priest’s bag? Please tell me you have it.”

  Of course she understands me instantly.

  “Yes, I have it with me. But I don’t know if I can.… I only read about the transfer and discussed it with the boy, because he’s helped with it twice.”

  “You have to try.” My voice is ragged as I fight back sobs. “It’s what he would want.”

  He can hear us. He whispers, “Let me serve, even after death.”

  “There’s no spider.”

  “There is!” I say. “There is one waiting for him. We just have to get him there before…”

  I can’t say the word. Instead I look around, the hall a blur of confusing light and movement, so many people ablaze with the spark that is life.

  Menoë has collapsed into Kal’s arms; she’s not weeping and she hasn’t fainted but she looks as if the world has given way beneath her, and it has. Kal’s gaze snags on mine. I shake my head. He can’t help us, not for this.

  The curtain of the litter is being held open by an attendant so Princess Berenise can see. She’s not looking at me because I was never anything to her except a tool she could use to get Kal to do what she wanted. She’s looking at Gargaron.

  “Ro! I need Princess Berenise’s litter. Now.”

  Of course Kal’s gaze flashes to Ro, then back to me. Of course Ro leaps to obey, paying no attention to Kal.

  The princess’s attendants refuse to move.

  Kal orders, “Let them take the litter.”

  Only then do the princess’s attendants assist her to get out. Firebird soldiers carry the litter to us. I rip down one of the curtains. We slide the cloth under Father and lift him onto the cushioned platform. Even jostled as he is, which must be agony, he makes not one sound, but his hand tightens on Mother’s fingers until tears start up from her eyes. She grits her teeth and lets him hold on as she stays by his side.

  We walk in procession, leaving as we came, only there are fewer of us now: the baker’s youngest son and the woman he loves and two of his daughters, attended by some of the trusted veterans he led in war.

  When we reach the Queen’s Garden I lead us to the overgrown thicket. The dented spider sits where I left it, dappled by sunlight beneath the foliage. We set down the litter, but Father’s hand has gone limp. His whole body is slack. At first I think he’s stopped breathing, that he’s dead, that it’s too late. But then Mother bends close to him, trembling as she brushes her mouth to his as in a kiss.

  “He’s still alive.” She exhales her breath into him, as if her will can make it so. “Do it now, Maraya.”

  With remarkable composure, Maraya says, “Hold his arms and legs.”

  I do as she asks but I watch my mother’s face as Maraya casts the netting over our dying father, cracks his breastbone, and cuts out his heart. Mother ignores the grisly surgery. She looks only at his face as his eyes flutter open from the shock, and he sees her so close, just as it used to be, and he smiles.

  32

  Father’s spark leaps from the netting into the brass of the sleeping spider. The metal flares as brightly as if the sun has plunged from the heavens to inhabit it, and we all cover our eyes.

  The glow fades. When I lower my hand the spider gleams with traces like the ghosts of heat lightning chasing shadows through its metal skin. Maraya’s hands are bloody yet she wears a look of peace. She neatly tucks the lifeless heart back into the red gaping wound in Father’s chest as she might put away a tool. After she rolls up the net and stuffs it into the bag, her gaze flashes up to meet mine with grief-stricken eyes. It scares me a little that she dared to try it, that she holds a terrifying capability in her hands, but then she smiles her comforting eldest-sister smile and I remember that after all she is Maraya, not a Saroese priest with the power of life and death over the land.

  Mother cups her hands around Father’s face, now emptied of the spark that fuses the five souls together. His shadow is cut into patches by the heavy vegetation around us. Unbidden and unasked, the soldiers who served with him speak of his deeds, stories I haven’t heard, for he never boasted of his exploits. All he is to me is my father, who flew to Efea nourished by air and courage, who fell in love with a girl he met in the market, and who did his best.

  When the witnesses fall silent, Mother sits back on her heels and wipes a smear of his blood onto richly embroidered silk.

  “This palace curtain will be a fitting shroud, for he let ambition goad him into forgetting those he cherished most and yet in the end he turned aside to walk the righteous path.”

  “A shroud?” I murmur. “Will he not be interred in a tomb?”

  “He fought for Efea, so he will receive an Efean funeral.”

  When the Saroese soldiers murmur discontentedly she rises to face them. All fall silent before her grief. We roll his body up in the bloody curtain and lay it on the cushions of the litter. Men of his Firebird Guard become his bearers and we his entourage. When I step away to climb up into the spider, Mother catches my arm. Her grasp is harsher than usual as she fights to keep a composed face.

  “Please stay beside me, Jessamy. Another can be found.”

  So another person takes the levers of Father’s spider to lead the procession as we head back to the Temple of Justice.

  As we come out of the Queen’s Garden near the walls of the Lantern District we meet a seething crowd of Saroes
e who have set up a barrier to close off their residential neighborhood. They fall silent and let us pass, confused by our purpose and intimidated by the clanking spider. The gates of the Lantern District are guarded by Efean soldiers. They stare belligerently at our numbers, and one of their sergeants approaches us.

  Even in shock Mother retains her wits. When she pulls on her butterfly mask, the sergeant touches hand to heart and lets us pass.

  As we cross the lower slope of the King’s Hill back toward the temple, uniformed men wearing the firebird tabard come pelting down in squads from the King’s Hill above. They line the street and pound swords against shields in tribute to their commander. More spiders swing in before and behind us as we cross the Avenue of Triumphs, and so the Honored Custodian returns to the Temple of Justice as might any Saroese queen attended by a martial honor guard in a land imperiled by war.

  She leans heavily on me as we ascend the steps and enter the temple hall. As strong as she is, without Maraya and me on either side of her holding her up, she would fall.

  We move forward down the center aisle. I’m so numb that at first I don’t realize Kal keeps looking at me, trying to get a response. I shake my head just once but he must already know by the way Mother can’t even stand on her own.

  When we reach the Honored Protector, Inarsis indicates that Mother should sit. I help her onto a stool and kneel, leaning against her for fear she may topple over. Yet despite everything she sits with back straight, like the queen she is.

  The proceedings do not falter to accommodate our entrance. It is Saroese custom that once a trial begins it must end with a decision.

  A Saroese priest finishes reading out loud from the extensive list of evidence that Maraya, Polodos, and their assistants have compiled from various documents.

  “Documents may be altered or forged.” Gargaron stands at the railing, in the place allotted to the accused.