by Jane Kindred
The Expurgation had erupted in a wave of violent emancipation in every soth throughout the Delta, and Nesre had ridden that wave to power. The people had needed a scapegoat, and the usefulness of the Meeric race had run its course. In a perfect storm of opportunity and inevitability, Nesre had been ideally positioned to ensure their end. The Meer had been eradicated.
All but the one he’d fashioned for himself.
Prelate Nesre circled the outside of the octagonal room, watching his prized possession through the glass that was only a dark mirror on the inside. In the years before the Expurgation, the birth of a new Meer in the neighboring soth of Rhyman had fascinated him. The decrepit relics of their ancient religion were supposed to be infertile. Perhaps it was true of the aging women of the breed. But when a male of the species had copulated with a fresh, nubile—and ordinary—woman, the Meeric seed had proven just as viable as at the dawn of the Meeric Age.
Inspired by the event, Nesre had seized opportunity when it was presented. In the frenzy of the Expurgation, he’d cut the wrinkled purse of the dying Meer of In’La on the steps of his temple and harvested the last of his seed. MeerAlya had been a tinkerer—his idle fancies had led to the advent of artificial light—and Nesre had kept the seed frozen in one of the Meer’s own tubes of delicately blown glass until he acquired a host for it.
The young Meer of ancient days had been raised within the temples, carefully educated and encouraged in their talents, watching their sires and dams exercise the power of their breeding as they reigned before them. But Nesre had bred his special child to be raised without the benefit of the accumulated knowledge of the Meer. Like its feral ancestors who roamed the bogs and swamps before the Delta was born, it knew nothing of its own kind or of its power. He hadn’t even taught it to speak, and without words, a Meer had no weapons.
The child instead drew pictures of its visions. Like its father before it, the young Meer had a gift for art. Nesre had trained it only in this: seeing, and putting down on parchment what it saw. Through this visual necromancy, Nesre had become the most powerful ruler in the Delta.
He unlocked the glass cage and entered, raising the lantern to illuminate what the Meerchild had drawn for him today. The platinum-haired child scrambled back from the parchment, face and hands smudged with the charcoal it had used to create its latest work, and cowered on its pallet. In a series of panels, the young Meer had depicted the Expurgation itself.
Nesre bit his tongue to keep from calling the child names. It was difficult to remember not to teach it words inadvertently. The Expurgation was the past. The child was supposed to see the future. But Nesre stopped himself before his hand flew out to strike the little fool. This was the Expurgation of the Meer of Rhyman.
Great detail had been given to the open skull, crushed and caked with blood. The great Meer lay facedown on the temple steps, with naked limbs and torso twisted, the magnificent dark hair matted and dull with lifelessness. This was where the corpse had lain, bloating and rotting, denied the rite of fire that would release the spirit to return in another life. It was through this degradation of the bodies that they’d ensured the permanent extinction of the race of Meer.
The following panel showed the same twisted form, lying not on the steps of a temple, but in what looked to be a drift of snow. There was no snow in the Delta.
Nesre examined this one closely. The sharp crags of a mountain loomed in the background, Munt Zelfaal in the distant western waste. What could the child mean, depicting the corpse of a Meer in such in incongruous place?
He picked up the last panel, nearly crying out in his dismay. The artfully rendered drawing had a frightful, lifelike quality, and in it, the Meer was huddled in the snow, arms wrapped around drawn-up knees, black Meeric tresses slung forward over the covered face—and quite alive.
Nesre raised the lantern to look at the Meerchild rocking on its pallet and sucking its fist. Its eyes reflected the dark mirrored glass, seeing something again. The present, and Nesre, were invisible to it. He gathered up the drawings and tucked them under his arm as he stood. What he’d been watching for but hoping against had come to pass. It was time to send a message to the Meerhunters.
As he turned to depart, he remembered the mango he’d brought the creature as a treat. He tossed the paper packet down before the pallet, and the Meerchild scrambled forward and tore it open, sinking its teeth into the fruit and humming happily as the juice ran down its chin.
As Nesre opened the door, another sound came from behind him that sent a chill up his spine. On a hiss of breath, the child said clearly, “Ra.”
He turned and stared. The child’s eyes were focused on the reflections as it rocked slowly on its heels. Nesre had never spoken to it, never spoken a word in front of it, he was certain. The caretakers that fed and cleaned up after it were all deaf and dumb. The Meerchild had never heard a word of human speech, and never uttered one until now.
“Ra,” it said again, nodding to itself and rubbing its fingers against its palms in the air at either side of its head, the vacant gesture of an animal. But there was no mistaking its alarming vocalization for a random babbling sound. It had been a perfectly formed word.
If it spoke again, it would have to be put down.
Ahr stepped over the side of the tub into the steaming water, grateful even as he winced that it was still hot enough to be painful. Boiling sufficient water to fill the tub before it got cold was a challenge he’d only recently begun to master. Having two very large pots on either side of the peat stove to boil simultaneously—pots he and Jak had bartered for in Mole Downs—helped immensely.
He drew up his knees and hunkered into a slump so he could submerge as much of himself as possible, as if the heat of the water could counter the cold hollow in his heart. With his forehead resting on his knees, he stared down at his cock floating in the water. The distortion of the water’s density made it seem as if it didn’t belong to him. He tried to look at it objectively, curious at the aesthetics of it, wondering whether someone else would find it appealing. He’d only seen one other in his life.
But that was another Ahr, in another life, and he shook the memory away.
Seeing Cree had brought the early days of his new life back to him. “Yesterday,” he’d told her. It was all yesterday, forever, a wound kept fresh because he deserved it to be so. He dangled his fingers in the water. The ring on the smallest one appeared larger through the liquid medium, the three delicate rubies like a stain of old blood. Or like the tears of a Meer.
He doubted Jak’s visitor could be one of that breed, though just the suggestion of the idea that she might be was chilling despite the heat of the water. He knew of only one Meer who’d survived. Ahr had sought the woman out to make his bargain with the devil: the Coal Woman of In’La. She hadn’t been Meer of that soth; it was where she’d fled her own during the Expurgation, disguising herself as a weak and aging crone who collected cast-off bits of coal and sold it in the marketplace. Though Ahr had discovered her to be anything but weak. And aging? Well, the Meer never did, so far as Ahr knew. They could project whatever appearance they liked but remained unchanged in the prime of life.
Until you bashed their skulls in.
Ahr shuddered and ran his hands through his hair where it hung over his face, finding a few strands of gray. There was no doubt he was aging. Twelve years now since he’d received his vetma—the blessing he’d begged of the Meeric crone. Another twelve before that, Ahr’s heart had died, yet remained trapped inside its unyielding cage, like a child dead in the womb. And fifteen preceding it since the day Ahr’s mother had welcomed her only babe into the world. If only Ahr had been stillborn.
Twelve and twelve and fifteen. And perhaps another, give or take, during the time when Ahr had been as the walking dead and simply forgot to heed the passage of time. Four decades, then. Time enough, he supposed, for a man to begin going gray.
&n
bsp; In the heat and moisture, the ring on his little finger loosened and fell into the water. Ahr grabbed for it as it descended with the illusion of suspended motion, holding his breath until his hand closed around it. Just as MeerShiva’s hand had closed around it when she’d seen it on Ahr’s finger. Shiva had shrewdly eyed the ring that belonged to a dead Meerchild and guessed at Ahr’s crime. All Ahr had wanted was to become invisible. Shiva granted the vetma, but it was Cree who’d given Ahr the idea.
He jumped at a sudden knock at the door. It had been over a month since the trip to Mole Downs, and Jak hadn’t been by since, their argument driving a wedge between them that Ahr couldn’t understand. His spirits rose as he climbed from the tub and hurriedly pulled on his shirt and pants, jogging up the short set of stairs to open the door.
But it wasn’t Jak.
One look at the pair of rough-edged Deltans staring back at him said Meerhunters.
Ahr pushed the door toward the frame, but one of them stuck his foot inside. The air rushing around it was icy. “What do you want?”
“We’ve heard about the legendary hospitality of the Haethfalt Mounds.” He gave Ahr a dark smile. “Surely you’ll ask us in for tea?”
“Surely, if you’ve heard so much about Haethfalt, you’ll have heard of me,” Ahr said in Deltan. “The rude outsider who doesn’t care to socialize.”
The Meerhunter laughed and held out his hand. “Pike,” he said, adding in Ahr’s language, “and this here is Smalls.”
Ahr stood where he was, not taking the offered hand.
Pike let it drop. “We received a tip there was a stranger about these parts who matched the description of a certain fugitive Meer.”
Ahr let out a sharp, ugly laugh. “There are no more Meer. And if there were, they wouldn’t come to the ass-end of the falend to hide out.” He bit his tongue on the rest of what he wanted to say: They’d destroy us all with a word, and we’d probably have it coming.
Smalls appraised him with a sharp eye. “Then you won’t mind letting us come in to take a look around.”
Ahr shrugged and opened the door wide. “Knock yourselves out.” Every inch of his one-room mound was visible from where they stood. “Be sure and check the outhouse too. Maybe you’ll pick up his scent.”
Pike gave him a wry smile and tipped his cap. “Sorry to have interrupted your bath.” He nodded toward the still-steaming water, flipping the muffler that had slipped from around his neck over his shoulder, while Ahr stood shivering. “I don’t suppose you’d know which mound might be harboring this newcomer?”
“No, I wouldn’t. I’m antisocial, remember?”
Pike nodded thoughtfully. “Not just an odd choice for a Meer, living out here—but for any Deltan.” He removed his foot from inside the frame.
“That’s me,” said Ahr, “odd,” and slammed the door.
Ra hadn’t understood Jak’s dismay, behaving as though blood wept instead of salt water were perfectly ordinary. Meer’s tears. It was an insult that even those who’d grown up in the high country were familiar with. The Meer were said to weep tears of blood to gain sympathy, going back to the times when they’d been hunted for their blessings and had supposedly used the trick to escape. Jak had always thought such tales nothing more than a gruesome absurdity. If the Meer were gods, how could they possibly have been hunted and captured like animals? But they were being hunted again.
Jak had gone to Peta, uncertain whether to speak of the odd tears Ra had wept, but needing to talk to someone. Pulling up a pair of work stools before the kitchen basin, they worked side by side cleaning a bushel of beets to prepare them for canning. Silence filled the room as Peta waited patiently, always astute to Jak’s moods.
There was nothing else for it but to say it. Picking out a beet heavy with clods of dirt, Jak took a deep breath. “I think Ahr may be a Meerhunter. I’m sure he was part of the Expurgation.”
Peta continued scrubbing dirt from the beet she was holding as if Jak had merely said Ahr liked the color blue. Beet juice washed down the drain like a river of blood.
“And this bothers you?”
Jak sat back on the stool. “Of course it bothers me. Dragging people from their beds and bashing in their skulls is hardly the sort of skill one wants in a friend.”
With the beet still in her fist, Peta pushed her silver hair out of her eyes with the back of her hand. It left a purple stain at her temple. “I don’t say they deserved it, but the Meer were capable of great atrocity. Your generation is so far from it, but I still remember my nan telling us about her childhood in the cities. Haethfalt was settled by people who had lived in terror of the Meer and their ‘divine’ rule. So if these Expurgists found a way to put an end to that, I’m not so sure I can be sorry about it.”
Jak brushed at the dirt. “Well, I’m not so sure I can trust someone who helped murder people, Meer or not.”
The sound of shattering glass pierced the stillness of the morning. Behind them, Ra stood motionless in the doorway among the glistening shards of canning jars.
“Ai.” The foreign interjection was barely a breath. Ra reached blindly for the lintel, pitching forward as her bare foot twisted on a piece of glass. Jak leapt up and caught her before she struck the ground. She sagged in Jak’s arms like an unfilled garment.
“It broke,” she whispered, staring unseeing at the ground as Jak steadied her.
“It’s all right, dear,” Peta assured her. “They’re only canning jars.” She shrugged at Jak’s inquiring look as she fetched the broom. “I put her to work.”
“Come sit down.” Jak drew Ra away as Peta began to sweep. Ra allowed herself to be led into the gathering room, staring ahead as though somnambulant. Her heel left red prints on the stone floor of the entryway.
Jak knelt to examine her foot after Ra sank like an unanimated doll into the cushions of the chair by the fire.
“Just a sliver,” said Jak after a moment, holding up a piece of glass on the tip of a finger, glittering in the firelight.
Ra pressed the heel of her hand between her eyes. “Wine,” she murmured.
“Of course.” Jak started to rise. “Peta will brew you a ket’.” But a dainty crystal flute was already in Ra’s hand as though it had grown from her open palm, its sky-blue well dark with liquid. Jak swore softly, looking up to make sure Peta hadn’t seen. There was no pretending this hadn’t been conjured.
“You can’t do that,” said Jak.
“Why?” Ra drank it in one draught.
Jak snatched the empty flute out of her hand and stuffed it in a pocket. “Because it isn’t…safe.”
Ra lay back against the cushions and closed her eyes, dark lashes in sharp contrast to the marbled white skin and the sharp bones of her cheeks. Her long limbs were serpentine in heather gray beneath a sleek charcoal sheath. More necromanced clothes.
Jak glanced through the open doorway. Peta had finished sweeping up the glass and was busy in the kitchen, her attention elsewhere. “Look, Ra. We don’t—ordinary people don’t just open their mouths and create things.” Ra peered from beneath the black tresses scattered across her face. “Only certain people can do that. People who—”
“Meer.” The word was chilling on her tongue. “I heard you speaking of them. You think that’s what I am.”
“I—”
“Well, I’m not.” She sat up and stared into the fire. “Maybe he taught me to conjure.”
“Who?”
Ra shook her head.
“I don’t know how you do it, Ra, but you have to stop. The others wouldn’t understand.”
“But you do, Jak? You understand?”
“No, but I…” Jak paused, losing the train of thought for a moment. How could this delicate-looking woman have been a threat to anyone? If she was Meer, then they were wrong about them—the whole damned world was wrong.
Flame glinted in the darkness of Ra’s hair and eyes as she stared into the fire, leaving her face almost translucently pale. The only color was the red of her lips, a heady red as though stained with wine. Without realizing, Jak leaned closer to the mesmerizing color. It was like being drunk—something that had gotten Jak into trouble more than once.
“But I don’t care,” Jak finished, lightheaded, and kissed the wine-dark mouth without thinking. It was completely out of character, but it didn’t seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter but the taste and scent of Ra.
Ra whispered against Jak’s lips. “I won’t, then.”
Jak paused. “Won’t…what?”
“Conjure.” She unfolded her long limbs from the chair and left Jak with the lingering taste of her kiss.
Six: Entanglement
They didn’t speak of the kiss or of conjuring again. True to her word, Ra made an earnest effort to learn to do as her hosts did, and Peta, oblivious to Ra’s abilities, seemed pleased to take her under her wing.
Jak spent the darkening days building a set of furnishings for Ra in the empty chamber along the front spoke of Mound RemPeta. It was a custom for the mounds to be dug with one room greater than the size of the moundhold, a gesture of the openness of their familial communities. Ra hadn’t precisely been welcomed with open arms, but it was winter, and she was without kith or kin, and she had come to them, for whatever reason. More practically, Jak wasn’t enjoying the hard bed of the hearth.
From an afternoon by the fire learning to spin the fine qirhu wool, Ra wandered in to watch Jak sanding the posts of the new bed in her burgeoning den. “You do beautiful work,” she said from the door.
Jak grunted a vague acknowledgement without looking up.