by Jane Kindred
They’d asked her to be present when they brought him out. The wronged woman standing before the deposed Meer who had used her and tossed her aside would send a message of the people’s liberation, their retribution against centuries of oppression embodied in her. She’d protested, demurred. She had no desire to see Ra’s face so close again. But they persisted in their entreaties, and offered the one thing that struck her wounded heart to the core: the opportunity to confront him with her unveiled countenance.
They’d rightly surmised that she kept the veil not out of pride, but because Ra had refused to acknowledge her deflowering. He’d taken her with the privilege of the ruler of his soth, and yet treated her as a virgin, invisible as every other virgin on the streets of Rhyman, as if her sacrifice meant nothing.
Ahr agreed at last to stand before him and unveil herself as he was led away to his execution. She hadn’t known they would execute him in front of her. She hadn’t known she would see his skull split open on the steps of the temple at her feet. She hadn’t known that sound would haunt her, waking her screaming from the nightmare of it for haunted years on end.
She hadn’t known RaNa would be there.
They’d led Ahr forward through the crowd, and as the raging mob parted, she’d looked up into her own deep blue eyes in the face of a pale, frightened girl. Their eyes had communicated in that brief instant. RaNa had known her. Ahr’s heart had stopped. RaNa wheeled on the balls of her feet and shrieked in terror as someone shoved her forward, her long, black braid, like Ra’s own hair, glistening in the early morning light. And then the templar holding RaNa—
Ahr sprang from his bunk and vomited into the waste bucket they’d left in his cell. He crouched over it, clutching the sides of the pail, trying to vomit out the memory as he’d tried so many times before.
—The templar holding RaNa had swung her with her braid wrapped around his fist and dashed her against the sharp edge of the marble steps. Ahr had been frozen in horror, and then Ra had been before her and the rage at what he’d taken from her had swarmed out of her, torn from her breast as Mila had been torn. He’d taken her Mila. He had done this. He’d taken her baby. Ra had destroyed her.
And yet he dared to gaze into her eyes with surprise and sorrow as she showed him the face he’d refused to look upon. It was her turn at last to destroy him, to take from him what he loved, and so she spat her hatred at him. There was no time for anything else. There was no time for anguish or remorse. She’d surrendered herself to the blinding squall of hatred—like a wash of Meeric tears in her own eyes—to obliterate the image of the broken child before her that she must not see, and screamed at him as they struck him: “Remember Ahr!”
Ahr shuddered against the floor of his cell, unable to bring up anything more. Unable, as always, to expel the torment he deserved: the memory of Ahr’s own eyes in the face of a child. “You will not ask after RaNa-Mila, but I will tell you of her. Her heart was broken. It is the heart that returns, again and again, to life.”
But why had Ra’s heart returned?
Ahr rocked forward, hugging his arms, his forehead pressed against the stone floor. Why had he come to Rhyman? Why had he followed Ra after all he’d done to escape these memories that plagued him now? What was the point of any of this? It was as if the sight of Ra induced madness.
Ahr cursed at the sound of the door opening above—the only door in Temple Ra, and one that hadn’t been of Ra’s making. The jailer’s jangling keys and boot steps sounded on the stairs. What could the prelate want of him now? They’d asked him over and over again what business he had in Rhyman. How many times could he answer that he was only returning home? How many times could he avow he was only a man?
He raised his head and met Jak’s eyes. Jak hadn’t spoken to him after getting dressed, still sitting on the other bunk, and might have been watching him this way for hours. He hadn’t dared to look up.
“You have a visitor,” announced their jailer. Geffn was behind him.
“Geff!” Jak sprang up from the bunk. “Thank sooth you’re all right.”
The guard made a raucous sound in his throat and spat on the floor beside Geffn. “You have five minutes. Unless you want to join your friends.” Ahr repeated the admonition in Mole.
Geffn waited until the guard had retreated before he spoke, his voice low, though the Deltan guard wouldn’t have understood him. “They wouldn’t let me into the temple. I finally found someone who understood a few words of Mole and asked for the foreigners, which apparently is understandable in any language when it’s babbled directly from the mouth of one. I thought they were going to arrest me as well. I couldn’t determine what the charge was.”
Ahr’s laughter was flat. “The charge is that we are—or at least I am—a Meeric sympathizer. I, who helped to plot their downfall. The irony. I’m sure you’re ecstatic.”
Geffn glared at him. “I take no joy in the misfortune of others. No matter how richly they may deserve it.” He looked at Jak, who said nothing, hands curled around the bars of their confinement. He lowered his voice again. “You said there was another, that she might have gone there. Tell me where.”
Jak’s forehead pressed against the bars. “You’re going without us. You’d have us rot here. My god, how you must hate me.”
“I have no choice, Jak! What can I do? If I stay in Rhyman, they’ll have me in lock as well. And surely they won’t keep you here indefinitely without proof of a crime.”
“Then why not wait?”
“She could be gone by then.” Geffn’s mouth was set in a firm, intractable line.
Ahr rose and crossed to the iron bars and met Geffn’s eyes. “The one you want is in In’La.” He rasped the words in a low and dangerous growl. “The coal woman on Bank Street. Now get the fuck out.”
Jak’s hands slipped down the length of cold iron. Geffn waited a moment. There was nothing else to be said. He turned and left them.
Nesre fought the urge to beat the child again. Indulging his temper had been unproductive the last time, and had perhaps caused the difficulty he was facing now. The Meerchild had ceased to draw. Nesre couldn’t determine whether it was a refusal to do as he asked, or if the visions had somehow stopped. The child was sullen and withdrawn, and Nesre suspected its failure to draw was not for lack of vision.
He’d received word from Rhyman that Prelate Vithius had a certain unidentified Deltan expatriate in his custody, along with a sexual deviant from the falend, obviously the pair the Meerhunters had followed from the wasteland. Vithius seemed to think the mysterious Deltan could be a fugitive Meer. Nesre himself had put the idea into his head, of course, but the Meerhunters had confirmed before leaving Mole Downs that he was merely an ordinary man. MeerRa, meanwhile, seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth.
Nesre tried to cajole the Meerchild to draw with treats of sugared plums and iced cakes. He brought it a special box of paper in thick, individual leaves and a tin of pastels. The Meerchild sat listlessly in its corner, uninterested in anything Nesre brought it.
Seventeen: Unveiling
Ra knelt before Shiva for an endless stretch of time until her bones seemed to turn to gelatin and she found herself drifting and dripping like liquid to the ground. She didn’t bother to pick herself up; there was no self to lift. She stared unblinking at the pillow of the coal-grimed floor. She couldn’t feel the cold of it. She felt nothing.
The powerful Meer moved at last, joining Ra on the ground and curling around her. Her arms stretched over Ra, and she pressed down upon Ra’s head, drawing her body tight and compact like a bud within the circle of her limbs.
“You are as you came into this world,” Shiva said into her ear. “Without encumbrance. Only the body, formed and unfilled. Renaissance prevaricates.”
Ra curled further into herself, and Shiva seemed to grow around her, enveloping her in a mass of sanguine warmth. The room
had vanished. Shiva was all there was. Ra heard the beating of the ancient heart pounding strong and fierce in her ears. The rush of a current swelled in and around her, surging forth on the strength of the steady beats, receding in their absence. Existence, Shiva, was a body of liquid—vast, and dark, and fathomless. The fluid of existence coursed into Ra’s mouth, penetrated her, washing through her with the burn of acid. Her lungs filled involuntarily, breathing in at the merciless beckoning of instinct. The equally involuntary urge of her body to expel it, heaving, produced only liquid breath. The earth was silent but for these mechanistic sounds of circulation and aspiration.
Sometime later, the element in which Ra had been absorbed dissolved into the ingress of sound—a wail, a song. Ra lay as before against the coal woman’s floor, now wet and cold, and Shiva was lifting her, curled into her arms like a child. The great Meer crossed to the bed and brought Ra into it with her. She opened her cloak and was bare beneath it, breasts full and engorged. She pulled Ra to her chest and placed Ra’s mouth against her breast, and Ra took it, and her mouth filled with milk.
She lay curled in Shiva’s lap, drinking life from her. There was nothing else.
The Meerchild wept against its pallet, staining the straw, staining its pale hair. Its chest burned with longing as though the Meeric heart within it were full of fire and knives.
Madness trickled in the great Meer’s veins, trickled from the life-giving abundance of her breasts into the mouth of MeerRa. But even the madness wasn’t meant for the Meerchild. It would never receive that soothing balm. Its own Meeric essence was too weak within the anamnestic flow for the other Meer to notice it.
It was only the pearl, the Master’s cultured pearl, and here it would remain within the nacre of its glass shell.
The Meerchild opened its mouth against the pallet as it watched the images in the darkness, tasting the blood of its own tears as they dripped over its lips, and another sound breathed out of them. “Pearl.”
A tiny, silvery orb appeared on the pallet beside it. The Meerchild stared at it with dismay. It knew very well it wasn’t supposed to speak, but it hadn’t known why until now. To speak was to create. The child picked up the little ball and held it between its fingers. The pearl was the color of its hair. If the Master discovered it, he would drown the Meerchild in its water bucket. It had seen the vision in the glass when the Master thought of it with particular vehemence.
The Meerchild placed the pearl against its tongue and swallowed.
The Northern Lake lay frozen below them. Cree stood at the window wrapped in a heavy woolen blanket, contemplating the wisdom of this trip—or lack thereof. Ume had been stricken by the Hidden Folk’s story of a young orphaned Meer kept caged like an animal. She’d always been kindhearted, even hating to trap and kill animals for food on their travels, though she did what she had to. And she’d had a soft spot for children since her dream of becoming a mother had been dashed by Cree’s damaged plumbing.
Ume tried not to let her see it, but Cree had watched her in unguarded moments gazing at other mothers’ children with longing and sadness. There really hadn’t been any question once a child had been mentioned but that Ume would choose to go. And Cree hadn’t seen much of a choice at any rate. The Caretaker had saved her life, possibly even brought her back from death for all she knew—and had certainly done it not out of altruism, but to exact this favor from her and Ume. She owed the Hidden Folk, and she’d promised to show her gratitude in whatever way she could.
What they were going to do when they arrived in In’La, Cree had no idea. Break a child out of a cage in the middle of Ludtaht Alya? How on earth were they supposed to get anywhere near it? She clenched her fists at her sides, nails digging into her palms, knowing what the Hidden Folk expected—that Ume would sleep with Nesre and steal the key to the cage. Cree knew it wouldn’t be that easy, and the thought of Ume being touched again by that swine was almost more than she could bear.
At least the Meerhunters had been put off their trail. The Hidden Folk had let them travel under the hill—which seemed to be more a state of mind than a physical place—to exit far to the east of where they’d entered. Here at the southern tip of the great Northern Lake, the Anamnesis began. Keeping to the northern highway close to the river would mean more little towns like this one along the way, and less sleeping outdoors in makeshift tents.
The Hidden Folk had given them fresh supplies and clothing, and even horses. They could disappear with them, go to the northern coast, but she knew Ume would never do it. The child—the Hidden Folk didn’t know whether it was a girl or a boy—had no one else. Ume would never abandon it.
“What are you doing?” Ume murmured from the bed. “Come keep me warm.”
Cree relaxed her hands and turned, smothering her worry. Right now, they were together. “Sorry, love.” She snuggled back under the covers. “Just watching the moonlight on the ice. It’s crazy beautiful.” She ran her thumb over Ume’s bottom lip, staring down at the catlike amber eyes almost glittering in the darkness in the honey-toned skin, the once infamous tawny-port tresses spread across the pillow like the burst of a fallen star across the horizon. “Like you.”
Ume shivered and wrapped herself around Cree, naked beneath the covers. “Okay,” she whispered. “That worked. I’m warm.”
Cree scrambled to undress just enough beneath the covers to take Ume inside her, knees digging into the mattress as she straddled the narrow hips, her ankles crossed in the tangle of fabric, and breasts bared to press against the warm skin. Ume was her girl, and she wasn’t going to let anyone take her away.
She buried her face against Ume’s neck, nipping at her as Ume moaned and crooned with pleasure, moving faster inside Cree. She loved the noises Ume made. Along with the position her tangled clothes had forced her into, they drove Cree to a swift and bone-shattering climax, and she closed her mouth over Ume’s panting breath to muffle her own loud outcry as Ume fucked her faster, shivering with delight.
Ume pulled Cree’s hair just a bit with her fingers curled at either side of her head, lifting Cree away from her mouth as Cree’s wail died down. “Shouldn’t travel alone boy,” she growled at her with a grin, hearkening back to their aborted game of highwaymen, and then spilled into her with a throaty shout.
Cree relaxed against her with a contented sigh, not wanting to be separated. “Yes, sir,” she murmured. “Thank you for teaching me a lesson.”
Ume slapped her ass beneath the covers. “Now who’s the minx, minx?”
It was agony to leave the warm bed before dawn, but with Pike and his Meerhunters looking for them, they couldn’t afford to linger. The empty highway had a cold blue cast of shadow on it even after the sun rose, wisely avoided by other travelers who’d had the sense to stay in bed. For the next fortnight, they pushed themselves and the horses, riding as far as they could in a day before finding an inn or making camp for the night, trying to keep ahead of Pike. There was little energy or desire for much more than a kiss by the time they crawled beneath the covers.
Fatigue and Cree’s growing sense of dread the closer they got to the Delta made her ill-tempered. The dwindling snow cover and the disappearing ice on the Anamnesis meant it was imminent. The morning they set out from a roadside inn to find the temperature mild and the river flowing, she was particularly moody, snapping at Ume over nothing when they stopped to the rest the horses and eat the hard sausage and apples they’d packed at the inn.
Still dressed like a boy—she’d never quite had the build to look like a man—with her hair tucked up under her cap, Ume’s expression was equally testy as she paused in closing her saddlebag. “Did I do something to you? Why are you in such a foul mood?”
Cree shrugged as she bit into the crisp apple, knowing she was being an ass.
“If you didn’t want to accept the task—”
“It’s not that,” Cree said around her bite and shook he
r head, taking time to think while she finished chewing. “We can’t leave that poor child to be used by Nesre. I just—I hate knowing you have to go near him.”
Ume’s eyes got that sad look that meant she was dwelling on what had happened to Cree so many years ago. “I’m sorry. I wish there were another way to accomplish it, but the Hidden Folk knew what they were doing in manipulating us. No one else could get as close to him as I can.”
“I know.” Cree sighed. “I know.”
Ume sucked at the corner of her lip. “Actually, I don’t think you do. Not completely.”
Cree frowned. “What do you mean?”
“There’s only one way I’m going to get that close, and the Hidden Folk knew it.”
Cree clutched the apple in her fist, a spark of alarm in her chest. “Ume, what are you talking about?”
“The Meerhunters will catch up to us shortly. And you have to let them take me.”
Geffn came to the small province of In’La, four days downriver of the teeming capital of Rhyman, and pondered how to find Bank Street without speaking Deltan. He followed the river, distracted by the strange inventions of the province on the roads above him: tall, bi-wheeled cycles and long, low carriages that belched a thick steam into the air, entirely mechanically propelled. The buildings grew more densely packed and the population thinned, and he saw that he was coming to the edge of an area of industry, closed up and incarcerating its crews within dark, chimney-topped buildings until the brief midday exodus for food. He’d been fascinated by travelers’ tales of electricity, but he didn’t envy this so-called seat of civilization, where the “comforts” of society seemed more like voluntary imprisonment.
He turned back on the bank and observed the long, narrow street that followed the river, as he did. Bank Street. Of course. It was the riverbank Ahr had meant. But how he would discover this “coal woman”, he didn’t know. He climbed the bank to the street and followed it from end to end for several hours in frustration, wishing the bastard Ahr had given him more specifics.