Carnelian glanced at Osidian. ‘I will go, my Lord, and see to it.’
As he reached the edge of the platform, he looked back. Osidian was watching the Grand Sapients being sealed back into their capsules with an expression on his face of one betrayed.
Carnelian descended the tower against the flow of ammonites climbing it to begin the process of bringing down the Grand Sapients in their capsules. On the leftway, preparations were being made to leave. He saw that no Marula were entering the cordon of the Sinistral Ichorians and turned to gaze into the night, brooding over what Grand Sapient Lands had said. Light from the camp did not reach beyond the dragons to the sartlar, but their murmuring made him feel as if he stood upon a cliff looking out to sea. He tried to imagine the extent of several provinces of the Guarded Land. Could the sartlar over such a vast expanse really be moving in response to his summons? So much parched earth rising to clog the air. Hri yellowing, unwatered. The harvest meant to feed so many mouths left to rot in the Rains. Was he really responsible for bringing famine to the Commonwealth?
He became aware of a figure near him and turned to see an ammonite. The figure knelt. ‘Master.’
Carnelian regarded the man uneasily. Uncharacteristically, the ammonite had addressed him in Vulgate. ‘What do you want?’ he said in Quya.
‘Carnie, it’s me,’ the ammonite hissed.
Carnelian stepped back, alarmed, confused. He looked up and saw, close by, some Ichorians holding torches, but they were focused on the entrance to the tower. His Marula were within calling distance. Movement drew his attention back to the kneeling ammonite. There was a glint as it removed its silver mask and turned a little into the light. Expecting to see a face smothered in numerals, Carnelian began saying something. His tongue stilled. A chameleon tattoo. He stared at it, shocked. The cypher was achingly familiar and yet so very strange. It took him a while to notice the face smiling tentatively. His throat clenched as did his heart. ‘Tain?’
The young man beamed. It was Tain. It was his brother Tain. The boy become a young man. He fitted his face back into the mask, became an ammonite again, so that Carnelian was left almost feeling he had imagined it. Tain rose and beckoned Carnelian to follow him, who did, his thoughts frozen. Then he had enough to do dealing with getting through the Ichorian cordon, through ammonites, as Tain led him towards the first palanquin. They passed that, passed the second, continuing on, moving away from the tower and towards the rear of the procession. Carnelian’s mind thawed into an avalanche of speculation. He was reluctant to stop the purple-clad figure walking in front of him, though he wanted, needed answers.
At last they reached the seventh and final palanquin. It was quiet here, since most of the ammonites were clustering back near the tower, but one stood as if waiting for them. It indicated the palanquin with his head. ‘You don’t have much time.’
Carnelian stared. ‘Keal?’ It was the voice of his brother, whom he had not seen since he had left him on the coast so long ago.
The man gave a nod. ‘Hurry.’
Carnelian managed to wrench his gaze from his disguised brother to the palanquin. As he did so his heart beat faster. It was more desire than expectation prompting his hope of who might be inside. Unmasking, he reached out to take the handle and slid the panel open.
Peering into the gloom, he withered with disappointment. The old, wizened man inside the palanquin was unknown to him. A Master, unmasked, pale eyes in a sunken face.
The face lit up. ‘My son.’ Carnelian saw with shock it was indeed his father. Horror overwhelmed him. ‘What has happened to you, my Lord?’
Sardian was too preoccupied feasting his eyes on him to answer. He reached out to take Carnelian’s hands. ‘Son, it is a joy to see you.’
Carnelian glanced down at the bony hands gripping his, sapphire veins running over tendons and bones. He took hold of them, brought them up and bent to kiss them. ‘Oh, my father, what has happened to you?’ He looked up and, through tears, saw his father’s eyes sadden. He shrugged in a manner that tore at Carnelian’s heart for he had not seen that gesture for, it seemed, a lifetime. Sardian’s right hand pulled free of Carnelian’s grip and strayed back up his body to hover gingerly over his side.
‘The wound has never healed.’
Carnelian remembered the night his father had been stabbed by Ykoriana’s assassin.
‘The drug the Wise gave me has preserved me in the exact state I was in when I arrived for the election.’
Carnelian gave a shudder as rage rose in him, but his father raised a hand so thin it seemed translucent. ‘Immortality warned me what the drug would do, but I had no time to linger in a sick bed.’ His father smiled and Carnelian was warmed to see something of his beauty still there, though most had now fallen into ruin.
‘You must not grieve for me, Carnelian. On balance, I have had a fortunate life.’ His hand returned to cover Carnelian’s. ‘For instance, I had no hope of seeing you again.’
Carnelian sank for a moment into comfort. He had not felt so safe since, well, he could not remember. A thought came to him that made him stiffen with alarm.
‘What is it?’ his father asked, eyes widening.
‘Why are you here? The Wise…?’
His father squeezed his hand. ‘I have come here with their permission.’ He frowned. ‘We have scant time. Desiring to converse with the Lord Nephron, the Wise persuaded the God Emperor to let them come here. In exchange, they promised to bring Them you.’
Carnelian felt a chill of doubt in his chest. ‘Me?’
His father’s eyes flashed in reaction to something he thought he saw in Carnelian’s face. ‘Do you imagine I would betray you?’
Carnelian only half heard the words, contemplating, with surprise, how his father’s eyes had lost their power over him. Their gaze softened. ‘Forgive me. I have no right to be angry. What do I know of what you have suffered?’
Carnelian tried to work out where to begin, but his father had moved on. He held up his right hand, which bore no Ruling Ring. ‘I am no longer Suth.’
Carnelian’s nod caused his father to raise the ghost of what had been an eyebrow. ‘But I can see you knew that already.’
‘Aurum told me.’
His father’s face darkened. ‘Did he?’
Carnelian focused his mind on the situation. ‘The Wise have promised to reinstate you in exchange for you persuading me to return with you?’
His father nodded. ‘Not only that. They have promised me you will be pardoned so that you can assume the rule of our House.’
Carnelian could see how much his father yearned for that and it filled him with confusion. First he was surprised how much he yearned for it too. Then, even more surprising, his gut reacted against the thought of deserting Osidian.
His father cut through his turmoil. ‘But I have not come here to ask you to return.’
Carnelian looked a question at him.
‘Rather I have come to bid you flee.’
Carnelian was lost. ‘Flee?’
‘You must abandon this ill-conceived venture. Return to anywhere you have hope of finding refuge. Otherwise you will be encompassed in Nephron’s ruin.’ His father paused, suddenly very weary, weak, old. ‘I need to know that you are safe.’
Carnelian shook his head. ‘I do not understand, Father.’ He saw in his father’s face something he had never thought to see there: fear.
‘You know I have loved you since you were born?’
Uneasy, Carnelian gave a slow nod.
‘Never forget that.’
Carnelian watched his father’s face growing ashen and his heart began pounding. What was it that he wanted to say?
His father rallied his courage. ‘The thing is this. Though in every way that matters to me you are my son, it is not my blood that runs in your veins.’
‘What?’ Carnelian said, half numb, half exasperated.
‘Your mother came to me already carrying you.’
Carnelian fel
t his head was filled with ice. ‘Why then did you accept me as yours?’
‘I only discovered it much later.’
‘Much later?’ He groaned. ‘When?’
‘When I could no longer deny how much you look like your real father.’
Carnelian knuckled his forehead in a sort of agony. Then it all became clear. ‘The God Emperor.’
Sardian nodded solemnly.
‘That is why you took me to visit him.’
Sardian was nodding.
Carnelian was startled. ‘I drank his blood.’
‘We arranged it thus.’
For only the blood of his real father would ignite the ichor in his own. Carnelian stared at the man he had thought was his father. ‘This is why you chose not to come back from exile for so many years.’
Sardian nodded.
Carnelian felt his heart was rattling in his empty chest. ‘Then why did we return?’ He knew the answer. ‘Aurum!’
Sardian nodded. ‘The moment he first saw you, he knew you were Kumatuya’s son.’
Carnelian watched a dangerous light come into his father’s eyes. ‘To protect you, I would have slain him, all of them…’
Carnelian looked down at his hands, then he understood. He looked up. ‘You wanted to bring me back to Osrakum and so you put yourself in his power.’
‘He assured me your identity would be safe, for he alone was old enough to have seen Kumatuya’s face before it was hidden for ever behind the Masks.’
Carnelian nodded. It was all so clear. ‘In exchange you agreed to help him in the election…’ He paused, feeling as if he was falling. ‘He’s my brother.’
‘Will you forgive me?’
Carnelian glanced at his father, but barely registered his look of entreaty. ‘Osidian, my brother?’ Things fell into place and with each realization he released a groan. He became aware of his father’s distress, but a wall of ice had risen up between them. ‘There is nothing to forgive. You saved my life.’
Even to himself, his voice sounded cold. He watched his father withdraw behind his own defences, but something stopped him from reaching out to him.
‘And I seek to do so again, my Lord.’
Carnelian felt they were trapped on either side of a barrier and could see no way to scale it. It was easier to slip back into the relationship they had once had: father and son. He focused on what his father had said, instead of the look of pain on his face. ‘Only Aurum knew,’ he said, half to himself. Then it became obvious. ‘He told Ykoriana.’
His father nodded. ‘I do not know that for certain, but I can find no other reason why she would have commuted his deposal to exile. She has as much bile for him as she does for me.’
Carnelian looked at his father. ‘She fears I will accuse her of abduction?’
His father snapped a gesture of anger. ‘To attempt your life before, it was enough for her that she blamed you for the death of her sister in childbirth. To protect herself, as well as out of hatred, this time she will make sure you die.’
Carnelian nodded. It made sense. ‘If I do not return, what will happen to you, my Lord?’
His father shrugged. ‘For the time I have left I can endure Spinel. Then, our- my lineage will die with me.’
Carnelian felt a stab in his chest. The hollows of his father’s face already seemed to be cradling the shadow of death. He wanted to say something, but he was too numb to work out what.
‘I brought your brothers so that you can say farewell to them.’
Carnelian rose, nodding, wanting to get away from this man, who was and was not his father. He turned his hooded face enough to make sure no one else could see him unmasked. He regarded his brothers, now both also unmasked. Their faces had changed, but in a way they were just the same. Suddenly he could not bear the tears in their eyes. He gave them a curt nod, pushed his face into his mask, then strode back towards the tower.
Carnelian stood on the heliograph platform almost unaware of how he had got there. Osidian was a hole cut in the shimmering band of the embassy of the Wise below as it moved off along the leftway. Osidian was his brother. So many things suddenly made sense.
The black shape turned its head as Carnelian approached. Standing beside him, Carnelian gazed down at the torches moving north. The man who had once been his father was down there and those he had once believed to be his brothers. Though they were no longer that, he still felt a tug at his heart to follow them. ‘So what happens now?’
‘Nothing has changed,’ Osidian rumbled. ‘We march against my brother and destroy him.’
Carnelian felt another shock. Molochite was his brother too. He focused on Osidian, struggling to grip this new world. ‘Did nothing the Grand Sapients say affect you?’
Osidian cast an angry gesture into the night so that, for a moment, against the lights below, his hand seemed the wing of a crow. ‘The Wise are desperate. They would do anything, say anything, to regain the power they have lost.’
Carnelian snatched at some hope. ‘You think Lands was making up the threat of famine?’
‘I imagine that is true enough.’ Osidian shrugged. ‘Should we care about some of our subjects perishing? That is their lot. Once I wear the Masks we will re-establish the food supply. Their numbers will soon be replenished. They breed like flies.’
Carnelian turned to see his profile. His brother. It was there clear to see in the face, but their hearts were nothing alike. Sadness soured to anger. ‘Remind me, Osidian, why it is we deserve to defeat Molochite?’
Osidian began one of his interminable speeches about his rights, his god. Carnelian cut through it. ‘This is hopeless. Every move we make only serves to bring more victims into our circle of destruction. And for what? Your childish need to undo something done to you that you consider unfair?’
Anger leached away leaving him feeling sickened. He was no better than Osidian. He had been driving himself on with the delusion he could save others. He was like a fish caught in a mesh whose ever more frantic struggling only served to draw others into the net. When had he come to believe that power would be safer in Osidian’s hands than Molochite’s? Had his confidence that he could influence him always come from a hidden understanding that they had a bond that could not be broken?
Osidian was looking at him, but his face was shadow. ‘The Wise have frightened you. Have you forgotten the promise in your dreams?’
Carnelian burst into laughter that quickly gurgled away to self-disgust. He shifted into Vulgate. ‘We really are so alike, both driven by dreams. By Earth and Sky, I can’t deny I hate the Masters and I’ve supported you because I’d hoped that together we might destroy them, but now I find I can’t go on. Can’t you see that the Wise are right? Even at the price of letting the cancer that is the Masters suck away at the world, our order is better than chaos, than famine’ – Carnelian swept his arm out to take in the sartlar below – ‘better than letting those poor wretches be turned to charcoal by Molochite’s flame-pipes.’ He brought his arm back and took Osidian by the shoulders. ‘This madness has to end. Let’s end it together.’
Osidian pulled himself free, snarling. ‘What’s happened to you?’
Carnelian felt suddenly almost too weary to stand. He knew nothing short of death would stop Osidian. He knew also that he would never be able to kill him. ‘My father came with the Wise. We spoke.’
Osidian’s hands came up to his head. ‘Surely you can see they brought him here to trap you?’
‘Nevertheless I’m going to join him.’
Osidian’s hands fell to his sides and he grew very still. ‘You intend to betray me?’
Carnelian shook his head, finding some comfort in understanding the true nature of the love he felt for Osidian. ‘Not willingly.’
‘Then you’ll stay with me.’
Carnelian shook his head again. ‘Not this time. I’m going to do what I should’ve done long ago and walk away.’ Misery claimed him. ‘I really don’t know why I ever thought this was a g
ood idea. It’s all such a stinking mess.’
‘I won’t let you go,’ Osidian said, his voice ice.
Carnelian heard in it the tones of an abandoned lover and wanted to tell him they were brothers, but even were Osidian to believe it, Carnelian could not see that it would change anything. ‘Then, you’ll have to kill me.’
They stood as shadows, confronting each other. Just then, Carnelian would have welcomed death at Osidian’s hands. The moment passed. He turned and walked away.
By the time he reached the roadway, he was cold with fear. Not for himself, but of what Osidian might do to Fern and the others. He strode through the camp until he found them around a fire. Poppy and Krow looked up at him. Carnelian motioned and they made space for him to sit. He sank beside them, hunching, seeking not to draw too much attention from the auxiliaries around them. ‘I’m leaving.’
Poppy’s face lost colour. ‘Where’re you going?’
He nodded towards where the embassy was a faint gleam along the leftway.
‘Why?’
Krow beside her seemed as anxious as she was, but Fern was staring into the fire as if it did not concern him. Carnelian focused on the youngsters. He tried to marshal his thoughts. ‘I feel I’ve just woken from a strange dream. In the horror… the guilt following the massacre…’ They all glanced at Fern, but he showed no reaction. ‘I allowed myself to get drawn along the same sort of path the Master walks. Led by dreams; sacrificing people with a view of reaching some goal.’
Carnelian looked first into Poppy’s eyes, then Krow’s. ‘Even if my motives are wholly different from his, my methods have been too similar. The people who’ve just left came to explain to both of us the stark realities. We can’t hope to win and, even if we did, we’d gain nothing. Just in making the attempt, countless more people will die. Worse, what we’ve already done is going to bring famine to the Gods know how many.’
The fear in their young faces made him pause.
‘For the Masters this is all a game and I believed I could beat them, but I was wrong. I’ve just made things worse.’
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