He spoke too fast, his will was too dark for me; I could stay silent, but I did not manage. “Once it is woven—what then?”
“Oh, then?” He smiled, and I saw that some of his missing teeth were replaced by emeralds, glinting in the cavern of his hunger. “In the end I will save you. I’ll honor you with a special place here, for you will have delivered to me two of the world’s greatest weaves, the weaves of song and death.”
I knew him, and honor you with a special place here as clear to me.
“You will kill me,” I said.
“Yes, of course. You are a rebel—but I will treasure you.”
I shook my head, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of shock or pleading. I should never have left Uiziya.
The Collector spoke still. “There is no need to deceive you. If you comply, I might preserve your companion’s life.”
“But you might not,” I said.
“I might not. It is a risk you’ll have to take; such is the nature of hope.”
Hope. Hope has been perverted here, in your Rainbow-Tiered Court, into a thing only you can possess.
He waited for me to say something, but when I did not, he simply gestured to the torturer.
They marched me down from the green tier, down to the blue, to the indigo, to the violet, all lavishly decorated each in different style and with different patterns and art—though his best art he would have kept hidden. Beneath the violet layer was stone, rough and familiar, but unadorned. No names here.
I was pushed even lower, down even more stairs, through the vast thickness of the unliving palace. Down we descended, down to where the treasure was buried, a treasure of art from all ends of the desert and beyond, and the treasure of people who never came back.
Uiziya e Lali
I shifted, relieving the pain of sitting too still. I was not done listening to bones, but my listening acquired a lilt, a shape, a feel. I needed to make a loom from my sisters, and I needed a yarn made of them. I needed to give them a shape which the goddess Bird could not give, for she came to look for these souls and was thwarted, and then she sent mortal birds to find out what went amiss, and they all died here as well.
These bones wanted to sing—not of hope, but of something as ancient: a passing that does not yield hope, and thus is not truly a passing, for nothing changes here. Death does not guide the souls unto Bird’s embrace, but returns them bereft to this place. To his collection.
I once—just yesterday, truly—wanted so much to please Benesret. To prove myself to her. Yet she had never truly woven a great work from death. She had made lesser weaves, garments to sell to the School of Assassins, but her greatest work had been that of hope, even though she had given it away.
Benesret said you had to care about the dead. To attempt this craft, she killed her husbands, and she killed my husband too. She was trying to teach me—knowing that you had to care deeply in order to weave from death. But she did not understand this—in her yearning, her failure, her downfall—that devouring those you cared about was not the way to this craft.
To weave from death, you had to listen to the dead. To know them deeply, to attend to what had been silenced, to care enough to help the dead speak again through every thread that made up the great work.
I needed to be alone among the bones, undisturbed, but I also needed help; and so I raised my voice and spoke in Surun’. “I heard all assassins are orphans.”
The assassin kept silent.
“I heard assassins do not go with Bird when they die. Do you share a fate with these bones?”
He kept silent.
I sighed. Repeated my question. “Do you share a fate with these bones?”
“No,” he said, in Surun’, with the same heavy, laborious lilt I remembered. “No. The bones remain.”
“And you?”
“We go into the Orphan Star, which all other stars disdained, the star that dwells under the School of Assassins. The Orphan Star alone embraces us in the end, for we have been disdained by Bird.”
“It is good to die into an embrace,” I said. “Would you not agree?”
He kept silent.
I spoke on, telling a story I have not often revealed. “I became an orphan when I was seven years old. I wandered the desert, wounded in my soul and helpless, and I heard the Headmaster’s song and saw the light that would lead me to your school.”
“But you did not reach the school,” he said.
“No. I stayed with my aunt to inherit her craft. I wove from wind and made my own cloth of transformation. When the sandbirds came to me and I changed my body, the yearning to harm myself lessened, and then I could no longer hear the song.” I often thought of that time as carefree, just after I changed, learning from my aunt and no longer in pain. Now I could no longer call what I felt carefree; but hope I had then, like never before.
“Why do you tell me this?” he asked.
“My aunt had woven from song. From all song. Even from the one that comes from the School of Assassins, for it is a form of hope.”
He crossed his arms. “It is true. Those who become assassins are disdained, and they have known despair, but there is hope in the school. A hope, as you say, of being embraced in the end.”
“There is hope everywhere. Even in your master’s coffers.”
“Not here,” he said. “Perhaps even here.”
We were speechless together, two people yearning for similar things, though we served different masters. Yet I was not sure Benesret was still my master. I had waited for her and served her, but now I hesitated. She spoke and spoke about weaving from death, but all she made was these assassins’ garments.
I broke the silence after a while.
“Help me make a loom from these bones. I will tell you which ones.”
“I would rather not touch them,” he said delicately. “Nothing must sully my garment.”
I laughed, short and bitter. “What do you think your garment is made of? My aunt weaves it. It is woven from death.”
The assassin looked taken aback. “The Headmaster never told us . . .”
Why would he? I shrugged. Every master has secrets to keep. Even I do.
He stepped closer. “Show me what needs to be done.”
It took hours, but we assembled the loom from the bones of people and birds, stark and glowing now in the darkness. Beyond it, bones called and called to me: choose me, choose me, but some whispered, we do not want him here, and others whispered, he killed us, and yet others whispered, first we need to be fed with living blood, for otherwise bones would never soften into a thread for your weave.
They wanted me to kill the assassin, I knew, but I had no weapon and could not move, and he had a knife and skill that surpassed mine. I had to do the only thing I knew how: feed death with my own flesh.
“Come closer,” I said to the assassin. “I saw you have a knife.”
“What of it?”
“I need you to bleed me. To feed the loom.”
“I . . .”
“Just me.”
He came closer. “My master said to assist you.” The blade glinted once more in his hand.
“Make a shallow cut then, which will bleed, but not kill.”
He was close to me, taking me in, and I him. I felt a wild yearning in him, beneath all his coolness, and under it all, his bones, singing.
He opened the ample flesh of my arm where another assassin had grazed it, not so long ago. The wound that nen-sasaïr healed was open again, and blood welled from it. The assassin appeared unsettled—by my closeness, the scant light from the assembled loom, the reverie of blood. Then he took a step back, and tripped on one of the bones.
His grip on me unbalanced; my body toppled onto his. We tumbled to the ground. His arms flailed, trying to avoid my blood, which welled onto his white cloth. He twisted, desperate. And in that moment, I knew.
The fail-out we had found in Lali’s tent: the diamondflies had not killed him. I had, without knowing. My blood
had fallen on his cloth. And assassins must never besmirch their clothing, and they must never harm the maker of the cloth; and my aunt’s blood was mine, and our spirits and lives and knowledge had mingled when I gave to her and she took from me.
The assassin began to scream and the knife fell from his fingers. My blood had burned the cloth he wore and the cloth now devoured him, consuming at first his skin. Soon it would feed on his flesh. If he were to die in the desert, diamondflies would come to feed on the cloth and feed my aunt, but they could not find this place.
I was by his side, on the ground. Breathing hard through my pain.
“The cloth keeps you hidden and helps you kill, but you are trained never to sully it with blood, for you do not know what blood is its maker’s, and so you are told to be careful in it.”
He writhed on the floor, breaking the scattered bones, but the cloth had burned him, and it was too late to escape. He was being scorched to death by my blood. His body parts touched by it and the white cloth withered to nothingness. For moments, his eyes still watched me from his corroding skull, past his last breath, watched me as the rest of him withered away. I turned from him, at last. He could have been my brother. I did not wish such a death for him, but it was a death I had to give. A death which was, in some ways, less lonely, less final than the death of my sisters.
I drew on my deepnames and closed the wound he had made. This was not Benesret’s wound. Just ordinary. Repairable.
“I am sorry, my friend,” I told the assassin, or what remained of him. “You should hold on to this: you will go into the Orphan, unlike all these women you helped torture and kill. I simply hastened your way.”
But he had no words left for me. Soon, what remained of his body corroded and fell to the floor as fine ash; what remained of his life, of my blood, of my aunt’s cloth he wore.
Then I felt it—the vast Orphan Star, opening wide its embrace from under the earth, from southeast and away, calling the assassin’s soul home. Bird had no access to this place, for the Ruler of Iyar had barred it; but he had not thought to ward the place against the Orphan.
I sighed. Perhaps in another life we were siblings. Perhaps even in this one, for my brother had wandered away as a child, lost among the dunes. But this man had been younger, and his Surun’ speech was different from mine.
No matter. I sighed now, and smiled, for I was alone at last among my sisters.
nen-sasaïr
I considered my captors as they dragged me farther below through the narrow stone corridors. The torturer was more powerful than me, even though I had three deepnames, the most a mind could hold. Yet his deepnames, also three, were shorter and thus stronger than mine. He held the Warlord’s Triangle, the strongest configuration in the land. His carved iron rod was even mightier.
The second guard was not nearly as mighty. I would have expected an assassin; an assassin from the Orphan Star’s school always lurked in the palace. But assassins fully trained were a precious commodity, and even the Ruler of Iyar would not have more than one. Perhaps his assassin was otherwise occupied.
“Listen,” I screamed. “I have a secret to reveal to your master.” I would use Benesret’s words in a desperate gamble.
“Shut up,” yelled the torturer, dragging me.
“The Four Profound Weaves. It is not a thing he knows—”
“We should listen,” said the second guard. “Perhaps the reward—”
“Shut up!”
At last, they threw me into a cell, dark and damp, but I was satisfied, for I sensed the lingering presence of Uiziya. She’d been held somewhere close, perhaps even in this very cell, just a short time before.
The torturer said, “Now, speak your secret.” In his hand, the rod of faces flushed with heat.
Uiziya e Lali
I sensed nen-sasaïr in the stone above me, the familiar rattling of bones inside his flesh. I could play his bones like reed pipes, weave from them even as he lived his last breaths. He would be with me then. Not abandon me ever again.
But I was not alone, here among my dead sisters’ keening. I had been abandoned through death and through dereliction, through carelessness and callous choice, through chance. But now it was my choice whether or not to abandon others.
I, an orphan, a widow, deserted and hurt by my teacher, a woman sixty-three years old—I, Uiziya e Lali, could now choose to stand by those who had been treasured here.
I lifted my hand and engaged my two deepnames, one-syllable and three-syllable, known in the desert as the Weaver’s Promise, for of all crafts, our people are most given to weaves. I made of my single-syllable a central pin and spun the three-syllable around it, creating a spinning wheel of deepname light. Bone after bone I made them stretch, soft and pliant, on my spinning wheel until with my magic I spun them all into bone-thread, white from the people and deep gray and blue from the birds. And then, on my loom of bones, I wove from them all. In between the people-yarn I wove from birds, all the birds that Bird had sent to bring these women into her embrace.
But they had not died into an embrace. They died and were stagnant, unchanging, here in this chamber, killed and collected for the satisfaction of the person who ruled Iyar. I would not abandon them, and neither would they abandon me, for as I wove from them, they sang.
I wove of their death, and not of death. I wove of them, of their stories, of what remained here—smothered and stifled and dried, which the Ruler of Iyar had revealed to me only for the sake of this weaving—but all those were my sisters. They sang as I wove them, a song that begged to be heard.
nen-sasaïr
I was in the low-ceilinged stone cell that still felt like Uiziya, but she was not here. Just the torturer with his rod of faces, and his helper.
“Reveal your secret,” hissed the torturer, and the faces screamed and twisted.
I had to make the most of what I had learned from Benesret. It wasn’t much, but it might bring me time. Perhaps a chance.
I spoke. “The Four Profound Weaves are the greatest mystery of the desert. But I know it, and I will tell it to you. Your master said he possessed the cloth of winds. And then Uiziya’s sand-woven carpet; and her aunt Benesret’s great carpet of song. Soon he will have the last of them, which is woven from death. The secret is what happens when those four are put together.”
The torturer swung the flaming rod into the flesh of my side, and I screamed unreservedly, endlessly. I put all my power into the scream, and as I did so, on the very edge of my voice, I heard music.
“What is the secret?” the torturer shouted, as persistent as Uiziya.
“I don’t know,” I lied. “I don’t know!”
He hit me again, the rod twisting into my flesh. “The secret of the sibling gods,” I screamed at last, as in my mind the holy music swelled and stung. It is simple—the sibling gods would come closer if the four are put together, summoned by the desert’s deepest weaves.
I did not speak this, but what I said was enough.
The torturer snapped at the guard, “Go. Tell this to the master.” When the guard hesitated, the torturer snarled, “Go! I will manage.”
We were alone.
He said, “If you think you will escape, think again. I see you have three deepnames. Your Builder’s Triangle might be great for artifice, but it is no match for my Warlord’s Triangle, let alone my rod.”
I had brought myself time, but I did not understand how to resist him, and despair flooded my already painful and weary body. I called on my deepnames, the one syllable, two syllables, three syllables, to create a healing weave, to lessen at least the pain in the flesh, but the torturer sensed my intent. He laughed, and shoved the hungry faces into my flesh once again. I saw the child up close, his rows of sharp, iron teeth opening to consume me. He, too, was beloved once, and was still beloved.
As I thought this, the edges of my healing magic stirred toward Juma. I did not resist the impulse, and my power washed gently over his face. The child stopped screaming a
nd looked at me, and the other faces twisted around, their mouths opening and closing, while I stared down at them.
None of this the torturer noticed. “You have such powerful deepnames. I should tear them away from your mind. I hear that you were born a woman, and women should not carry deepnames.” He shoved me again with the rod. As he did so, the faces screamed in pain once more. I felt my mind tear as the teeth grasped my flesh, and the torturer’s magic closed on my two-syllable deepname, like a vise. Why this one, I did not know. It was the most active in working the healing, but now it stretched under the onslaught of the torturer’s power. I screamed, flailing, and even as I screamed, I saw the child’s face in the rod as it twisted away from me.
It did not bite.
Because I had eased his pain.
“Juma,” I mouthed, my pain overwhelming, fighting to keep my eyes focused on the child’s face. “Your friend worried for you—Juma—”
The child’s mouth closed, and their eyes bulged. The women in the rod, too, unlatched their teeth from my flesh and turned their faces towards me. They were Juma’s mother and grandmothers, grandfather, uncle. The torturer’s loved ones whose deepnames and then lives he had taken to serve him.
The torturer’s power still was latched on to my two-syllable deepname, and then, through the pain, at the very edge of my senses, I heard again the holy song. I thought I had left it behind when I turned away from the lock and from the white walls of the Khana men’s domain. I thought I had fled the voice of my god. But Kimri was right here, had always been here, listening to all my screams and my silences. The hidden god waited for me to sing.
The Four Profound Weaves Page 10