by Rose Lemberg
I could see it now, knew the answer before I questioned him. And yet, I spoke. “If I satisfy your desire, will you contemplate the reverse?”
He tilted his head, as if considering me anew, considering me with a cold and dreadful finality.
“I do not submit.”
There was an edge to his voice, and the deepnames that had been faint and hidden in his mind like mica slivers flared now to a blinding ferocity, then faded again. Afterimages floated in my eyes, too many to count, too many for anyone’s magic.
I did not ask you to submit. I wanted you to hear what I wanted, just as I heard you—and yet you made assumptions, and you rejected without hearing. How can I trust you to hold the full vastness of me, what mastery of yourself you will offer me to savor, to trust, if you are so afraid? But I did not speak this. I was very old and he was young and hurting, and no one had ever said no to him before. No one could ever be trusted.
“You do not trust,” I said. “I understand.”
“You understand?” he snarled. “What do you understand, now that you’ve decided that I harbor this desire after I told you I’m not interested?”
His speech lost polish, became rougher, the sounds and lilts of his homeland more pronounced than before. I spoke carefully into that cresting wave.
“You cannot yet accept or reject my desire.” I smiled just a little, the way I smile when I walk into the room full of mages eager to learn from me and yet stiff in their pride. “Because you do not know it. It is not your submission that I want. But you told me what you wanted, and I would show you likewise what I want. That is all.”
His gaze slipped away from mine. And now his silence stretched between us, tense in the soft warm darkness of the room. I had relaxed into myself, but for him there was no relief from his tension, no escape from what haunted him, what cast this brittle shadow on his face in its unguarded moments. And truly I saw that he had revealed more to me than he had before, perhaps to anyone; for my pull, older and subtler than his, had loosened the grip of many secrets.
I felt the change in him when it came, subtle sparks flashing along the ages of a dark sea. I thought he would turn away, leave, as he had ordered me to leave before, but now he looked at me again, and I felt his pull washing over me, throbbing against my throat. His desire, deep, all-consuming, driving his fear away as he issued a challenge.
“Then show me.”
I did not smile back. That small smile of a teacher to students had been inappropriate. I had underestimated him, for he was no student of mine, or of anyone. And he dared me now—not in trust, but in defiance, in curiosity, in an all-encompassing need I sensed in him to unfurl the edges of himself, to learn his shape, to hold in his grip both my knowledge, and yes, me. Oh, but such things I would give him. Such knowledge. Such pleasure. For he could travel with me in the ways no one had traveled before, travel farther, beyond the horizon, beyond time.
“Behold,” I sang, and opened wide my arms, without touching him. My power unfurled like fire born of Bird, fanned out in a conflagration of dust that stretched to the farthest edges of the desert. I breathed, and my breath was the wind that lifts the surface of the sands, reveals secrets long hidden in catacombs of bone and blood-red gold that have once underrun the cities of ancient royals. And I brought my arms up and soared once again, carrying him in a sandstorm made of stars, encompassing him in my feathered mareghe, changing shape freely, man to woman to man to woman to sandbird to wind—
—and I felt his mind respond, felt our powers intertwining as we soared over this vision of the desert, a mighty wind never before seen, never before felt—such power, such pain—oh, how his desire would bleed out at last, my need birthing stars that sprouted in his darkness, the knowledge of time stretching for us until time itself was peeled back from the sands. Revealing a vision.
A younger Royal, myself and not myself, my predecessor, someone just like me, a brown-skinned tall person with short curled hair not yet gone white, a person who held between their fingers a condensed and bunished globe of red. The Royal crouched, casting their mind forward in time, pulling from it a concealment which was my home, the Starhill—a space that did not yet exist. The First Royal pulled this concealment over themselves—
To watch another. A figure massive and still, the swell of his shoulders clenching at me.
Ladder.
Above him, Bird danced the dance of pain, thrashing as the last, twelfth star, the Orphan, clung to her tail like a burr of iron and blood.
Ladder stood motionless, and only his face turned upwards towards the goddess. His lip curled up, almost like my guest’s, as he contemplated her struggle, her dance, and his eyes shone with a hunger.
Abruptly, I folded my arms. I shouted, filling the room with my power, dozens of candlebulbs banishing the darkness, banishing the last cloying traces of the vision, or so I hoped, oh, so I hoped as I waved my shaking arms in the air.
“What was it?” the Raker asked. “What did I just witness?”
I gulped for air, the heat gone from me. “Forgive me for ruining such a moment with my memories,” I said, and my throat constricted with that feeling I wanted so much to forget.
“I want to know. Please.”
“Ladder,” I said. “And now you know how I came to be an enemy of the Headmaster of the Second School, why his assassins forever hunt me.”
“It was Bird, wasn’t it. The very end of Bird’s star-giving dance.”
I said nothing. The feelings washed over me, again, again. I had to decide if I needed to be alone.
“He enjoyed it,” the Raker said, and wonder crept into his voice. “He enjoyed watching Bird struggle.”
Yes, I thought. Yes, he enjoyed this vision of her thrashing, the taste of Bird’s blood falling on his tongue like congealed embers that burned him with that sharpness, with that pleasure greater even than the world. I said nothing, watching as the Raker began to pace.
And in his face, of course, that hunger.
I needed to look away, yet I watched him circle. It seemed to me that he was wondering now what it would take to look up and savor such a struggle, open his mouth and let his tongue burn with the black amber and tar of her blood.
I need to be alone.
He spoke. “You know, all those years, Bird—Bird has been the only constant, in all this. Ever since she came. Spreading her wings over me. Watching over me. No matter what I did. And now cannot help but blaspheme in my thoughts, cannot help but want—”
I forced myself to speak. “I need to be alone.”
The Raker’s head snapped up, his restlessness interrupted by the force of my words. A short silence. “Yes. Yes, of course.”
Long after he left me I stood there, fists clenched, pushing against the whirligig of my past. At last, I cursed myself for a fool and thought myself mistaken. I had assumed what the Raker needed most from me was safety, but now I knew that an escape from pain was not his greatest, burning need. And I, I, who unfold the desert between my outstretched arms, who melt the buried royals’ gold into noontime heat—I, in my learning, my wisdom, my power, my splendor—was I too safe to sate that need of his?
* * *
A night that never ends
Despairing of sleep, I tossed in my bed, consumed by memories of that vision and what came after. A deep, deep voice, as if speaking from an abyss. Wind, blowing downwards from sand terraces. Youths training under a still-compassionate morning sun. Where my youngest students learned breath, his learned shadow—the smallest movements of the muscle, imperceptible to the eye. Later in their training, they would learn to don white spidersilk clothing and never to sully it even with the smallest drop of spilled blood.
You deceived me. You spied on me.
“I stayed on my land.”
It was not yet your land, your land, your land, stranger from the south, it was not yet your land—
I woke up to that reverberation, rattling every bone in my withered skin. The air of my chamber h
ung heavy and cloying, full of the sour taste of my sweat. I did not scream this time, but I drew on my power and banished that feeling in fire, in scourging light.
It was done. But I could not be still, as if some of that residue still clung to my arms.
I wanted to talk to my guardian.
My old guardian. Not Nihitu.
It had been almost a year, but I had not allowed that grief to settle in me. People die. When one is as old as I am, that grief is as commonplace as sand. No excuses. People come to me and they grow and they age and they pass, while I still rattle in the loose folds of my skin.
It is by choice. My star preserves me, and preserves what there is of me that is to be passed on when I go, memories of who I had been and what I had learned. Everything turns. It was nothing, I told myself. Nothing. And yet I had not allowed myself to mourn for my old guardian, and Nihitu’s presence brought me no ease. I brought myself to think I should consult with her, tell her of these disturbances. It was my duty.
I flung open the doors of my chamber but found only sleepy servants behind it, crouching on their haunches by the door. No Nihitu. Grudgingly I accepted their help in dressing—a light-colored flax robe with bone beading, seven long chains of beaten gold—and I told them to stay as I walked down, deeper into Starhill, towards the honeycomb library.
There was no peace in the corridors. Shadows moved and whispered in a language I did not understand. A smell, as if of raw spidersilk, tickled my nostrils—both strange and deeply familiar, the subtle odor of the white robes worn by Ladder’s assassins.
I flung my mind towards my star. It enveloped my mind. A few long moments feeling nothing but the unspeakable rush of its almost-scalding flow, and I was divested—of my memories of the years since this last happened, of the parts of myself that would be preserved until a new Royal, reborn, would reach out to claim them. And now I felt in myself the gnawing emptiness that accompanies such divestments, as if I hung suspended between breaths, waiting for death. Not ready to die. No, I wanted to live. But I had lived long, and if I was to be slain tonight, then—I told myself, then—
I waited in darkness, the tendrils of my star enveloping me in a cocoon of heat, until the smell receded and the air felt still again.
Beaded in sweat and shuddering, I stumbled towards the octagonal doors of my refuge. I would sit on the cushions by the desk and replenish myself with honeyed water, and then I would rest. My star had my memories and those parts of my self that I wanted preserved, but I had them as well. I had them all, still. A doubling, dizzying feeling.
I would rest. And then... I would restore myself by reading. I knew what I wanted to read, in the silence and safety of my aloneness: scrolls of starlore from Keshet, endless ledgers of stars in the sky. After that first Birdcoming, after my city of Che Mazri had been established and the first chambers of my palace dug in the ground, I had asked for and received the starcounts every year from the great University of Keshet.
But when I stepped through the octagonal doors into my refuge, I was not alone after all. The Raker was already there, sitting on cushions by one of the long, low round tables. Books and charts were spread before him, and numerous candlebulbs hung in the air above, illuminating the blue basine desk, a carafe of water, his bare chest, the now-familiar sleeping pants. His long hair was loosely braided and slung carelessly over one shoulder. He held a book in his left hand.
The Raker lifted his eyes and smiled at me. At the crown of his head, multiple dizzying deepnames shone subtly. “I could not sleep.”
I opened my mouth to greet him, then closed it. I did not want him to see me this way. Shaken. I’d wanted to be alone. And then... I looked again, taken aback, recognizing the book he was reading—it was the Accounts and Annals of The Twelve Stars, which I had always kept under lock with the two pieces of my ancient broken tablet.
“I did not give you permission,” I said, rage growing out of my almost-death and my fear and his smile.
His brow creased, the smile sliding away. “I thought you wanted to show me your books.”
“Not this one.” I hobbled across the room on painful legs, and plucked the goatskin-bound volume from his hand. “Didn’t under lock mean ask consent to you? Or do you only ask when it is convenient?”
He recoiled, and his cheeks flushed with blood. “It was not locked. On the shelf. You said that you wanted to share. But of course, of course I should have known. You are so Bird-plucking eager to teach me, but everything must always be a lesson and every lesson to come from you. You are no different from all those others. Knowledge must always be given. Controlled. Never something that I truly learn.”
He got up and strode past me, and everything just sank in me. I grabbed his arm without thinking. “Don’t go.”
He pushed back, vehement. His deepnames reared up and combined into a dazzling structure of steel and light, rotating and unfolding in his rage. “Don’t. Touch me. Without. Permission.”
The force of his shove propelled me backwards, slammed me against the wall. I slid down to the floor. My ribcage hurt, but I made no movement to fight him. I shouldn’t have grabbed him. Such actions were not my custom. It was a testimony to my distress, to the fear, that I did so. Unthinking.
I rasped, “It is dangerous out there.”
“Yes?” He snarled back. “Your guardian will kill me for daring to resist you, Oh Teacher?” His deepname structure swayed, darkening, careening.
I shook my head, but it was the wrong motion, as dizziness swept over me. “Assassins. Someone was stalking me just now, coming here. I have no idea where Nihitu is.”
He stared at me.
I tore my gaze away from his steely structure, to look at the book I still clutched in my hand. The familiar black goatskin binding, but it wasn’t Accounts and Annals of The Twelve Stars. “Strong Builders of Che Mazri,” I said, my voice failing. Of course.
“What did you think it was? How to kill the Old Royal and Take Over The Great Burri Desert: A Foundational Discourse?” He breathed in, deep. And again.
“There were two books made for me and bound in the same goatskin. I have not read this one in centuries. I forgot it existed.” I made to stand up, then winced and desisted. The dizziness seemed to be worsening.
“I have no house,” he said, his voice bitter. “But if I had a house, the rule of guestright would include the library.”
“Yes. Of course. It does.”
“Yes?”
“I apologize. I made assumptions.”
The Raker continued to breathe. At last, his dazzling structure folded.
He said, “Are you badly hurt?”
“Not badly.” Maybe. I was not sure. “I had to call on my star... before. It is always difficult.”
I’d seen now what the others had seen. How his rage just flared, from nothing to everything. He would defend himself with an unthinking and immediate vehemence. Combine that with his proclivities in pleasure, and they would call him a criminal, see him as dangerous, a creature to be caged, or at least leashed.
I felt dizzy. More dizzy. I did not find it in myself to fault him, but I was too old to be thrown against the wall.
He chewed his lips. “I, too, apologize. I overreacted.”
I said nothing.
He stretched a hand out towards me, not touching. “I would help you up.”
“Not yet.”
He waited. Then he crouched on the floor by me and waited more. I waited as well, to feel better. But the dizziness and pain did not recede.
“Can you heal yourself?” There was worry in his voice. “Should I call someone?”
“You should offer to heal me.” Like you should heal your lovers. But I did not say it. We had flayed each other enough.
He hesitated, then spoke, in a voice that was barely above a whisper. “I do not know how.”
“They do not teach this either, at Mainland Katra University?”
He shook his head. “I do not know. Perhaps in third year
.”
I exhaled. My first impulse was to instruct him, but he had made it clear that he did not want to be taught. So I waited more. Until I felt clearer. I drew on my deepnames and began to assess.
The body learns from wounds. But not immediately, for at first the body refuses to accept the wound, remembering only how it was before. In the short window of time before the body forgets, deepnames can be used to heal, or rather to undo.
This wasn’t that bad. It could have been much worse.
I started to work, and as I did so, I noticed that the Raker, too, had drawn on his deepnames and was mirroring the structures I made with mine.
When I was done, he offered me his hand once again, and I took it. I felt very weak now but not dizzy, and he helped me to his reading cushions and poured me a glass of honeyed water from the carafe. I drank it, leaning against his shoulder. The room was full of subtle heat and glimmering candlebulbs. And everything had changed.
“I did not want to harm you.” His voice was hesitant, and yet firm, and beneath that, I thought, he was hurting. “Just... just. Please. Ask me before... touching.”
“We are touching now,” I said.
“This is different.”
No. Yes. Maybe.
He lifted his right hand and brought it close to my face. “Can I?”
Not my neck. It did not feel like he wanted to touch my neck right now. Still, I did not know what I could say yes to, if anything. No. But I was not ready for that finality, either. “Not tonight.”
He took his hand away and drew a breath. I felt it against my back and shoulder. Then he shifted, still supporting me, but the touch of his body lessened. I was glad of it, I thought. I was not sure.
He spoke, not angry, but tight. “Let me summon someone.”
“No.”
We sat in silence, and I regarded the papers strewn on the desk, the books. Charts he had made, all of Che Mazri-style clay buildings and the various modes of constructing their circular naming grids, and the junctures where deepnames would be planted.
It had always been hard to resist discourse about deepnames. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a builder.”