by P. J. Fox
But if the major survived the night, and given the stamina he’d displayed thus far there was every reason to believe that he would, his doctor rated him with a fair chance of survival. Aria also found out, and also not from Kisten, that but for Kisten’s determination Isha certainly would have died. When confronted with this evidence of heroism, Kisten said only that he disliked widows and would have gone to considerable lengths not to have to deal with Deliah as one. That woman, he’d told Aria, is enough to make the most devotedly heterosexual man rethink his choices. I can’t think why Isha tolerates her, or how he can, but if he’d died I never would have heard the end of it. And have you heard her shriek? She sounds like a hyena.
Thus did Kisten dismiss the fact that he’d carried an almost two hundred pound man through a warzone, while wounded, waiting until he’d delivered him into the hands of the hospital staff before collapsing himself from blood loss. He’d been reported as missing, because communications were down all over the city and, quite simply, no one knew where to look for him.
When he’d come to, some twelve hours later, he demanded to know where Aria was and how she was doing and since no one knew the answer to that, either, he’d gone home to find out for himself. And much, Aria suspected—rightly, as it turned out—against his own doctor’s orders. Kisten’s wounds were also more serious than he’d let on.
The city was in an uproar, but it was a cleanup operation, now, which the newly promoted General Raza had well in hand. The crisis that Kisten had so feared was past, and the bubbling cauldron of resentment that the Brotherhood had so adroitly stirred and that had inflamed the entire province was burned away to ash. Hot ash, to be sure, and Kisten wasn’t fool enough to think that no new crisis would arise to take its place. Only that this crisis had been, if not entirely averted, then at least robbed of its strength. Men had died, but many more had lived and Haldon’s local leadership, the so-called Merchant Council, was already making overtures in the form of suggesting that it might come out in support of the proposed sewer system and issue a statement to the effect that toilets were not dangerous.
Soon, after the fallen were mourned and arrests made, rebuilding would begin.
And in the meantime, Kisten advised, they should get some sleep.
FORTY-TWO
Aria sat in the shade of the alcove and watched as the late and largely unlamented Zerus Faraj was sped on to the next world. Women were discouraged from participating directly in the mourning process. They took no part in the procession from the deceased’s home to the cremation ground, and watched the funeral itself from a distance.
When it came to funerals, Bronte tradition encompassed many different rites and which rites a family practiced depended largely on how orthodox they were with regard to the True Faith. A funeral was, ideally, much like a wedding: short, sweet and to the point, and taking place as soon as possible. After a simple ritual involving bathing and shrouding the body there were prayers and, finally, a speedy burial in an unmarked grave. Cremation was technically forbidden, although according to Kisten still practiced by almost everybody.
Kisten’s grandfather had been about as unimaginatively orthodox as a man could be. How unfortunate for him, then, that he was being treated to a slightly more…pagan experience. He would have been appalled. Aria smiled slightly. Again, much like with weddings, many families blended the joyless minimalism of the True Faith with their own—often older—traditions. That, of course, had been the case at Aria’s own wedding reception. She’d had a flower from her garland preserved and suspended in polymer as a paperweight.
But in no instance was a Bronte woman a full member of society. Which at times like this, Aria decided, was acceptable. Although the oppressive, soul-sucking heat had broken in the storm, the sun was still hot and Aria didn’t envy her husband either the long walk with Zerus’ moldering body or the complex, drawn out string of rituals that he was now performing. He and the other men who’d chosen to participate in the funeral had been outside for hours before it even began. Aria, meanwhile, had been conducted to the cremation ground in state, in her own car, and was now reclining comfortably in a chair with Garja, her maid, standing behind her.
She sipped cucumber water and did her best to ignore the sour-faced shrew of a woman sitting on her right. She and Naomi hadn’t spoken since she’d thrown herself at Kisten. On Aria’s left was Alice, whom Aria was genuinely glad to see. Alice and Naomi had come on behalf of Deliah, who was at the hospital with her husband.
The other women present—there were far fewer women than men—were mostly the consorts and older daughters of the cantonment’s top brass who were, at least in the attenuated sense, keeping their husbands and fathers company. No one had liked Zerus, but everyone, although he seemed not to realize it, liked Kisten. And since Zerus had no son of his own it fell to Kisten, as his nearest male relative, to conduct the all-important last rites. A final irony that Zerus would have found exceedingly vexing and the reason, of course, that he was being sent to the Gods in true Mara Sant fashion.
If he’d wanted something else, as Kisten had told Aria that morning before he’d left, then he shouldn’t have died on Tarsonis.
Despite cremation being technically disallowed, at some point in the distant past a cremation ground had been built in the foothills outside Haldon. It looked something like one of the nicer cemeteries she’d visited, growing up in Cabot: an open, park-like expanse of trees and flowering shrubs that had been beautifully pruned to look as natural as possible.
Traditionally, on Brontes, the deceased was burned and his ashes scattered over water: ideally the River Cerne or one of its tributaries, as it was the longest river on a large planet. Or, sometimes, over the ocean. Water had significance, to the old faith.
This cremation ground had been built out over a lovely mountain lake that reflected the peaks of the mountains in water as pristine and still as glass. The cremation ground itself was quite large, at least 150 acres, but the pavilion housing Aria was comparatively small. A series of arches formed a long sort of covered colonnade, which provided shelter and privacy for the female attendees. It was carved from blocks of some sort of marble, and even in the heat beads of condensation formed in the seams and dripped down from the ceiling. The air inside smelled of moss and the low, mineral tang of lake water.
Aria, who’d grown up on a lake, felt comforted by this unexpected familiarity. She didn’t, as a rule, care much for funerals—who did?—but this was the first funeral she’d been to where the body was so nakedly on display. The arches opened onto a wide, stone platform almost like a large patio that had been built out some distance into the lake. Aria herself was sitting over the water, and could hear it moving through the weep holes in the floor beneath her. Spaced at regular intervals were a series of five enormous stone platforms that looked like dining room tables. Between them were broad stone steps that went right down into the water. The bottom steps were green with moss and looked slippery; Aria had taken a peek before removing herself to the women’s area.
Under the alcove, she was lost in shadow; no one could see her, but she could see everything. Including the guest of honor, who was far too close.
Zerus, enveloped in snowy white cotton, lay in the center of a wooden bier. Only his head was uncovered. His eyes, now slightly sunken, stared up at the sky. Rigor mortis had set in before anyone had thought to close them, and the Bronte did not believe in embalming.
He still lay on the palanquin in which he’d been carried, which would be burned along with the rest of him. The palanquin had four carrying poles, two at either end, and earlier that morning those who’d volunteered for the task had begun carrying him toward the cremation ground. They hadn’t carried him the whole distance—it was well over an hour’s drive—but only the last mile or so, as many in the party were injured.
Kisten, as chief mourner, a task he found singularly repellent, had led the procession and carried an earthenware pot of coals that would be used to light the
bier. It had something to do, Aria thought, with a man being immolated in flames from his own hearth. The hearth being the symbol of the home, and of divine grace.
In poorer villages, or so Garja had explained, each householder contributed a small measure of wood for the bier. Within the royal family, it was customary to make a substantial offering to some favored charitable institution. A million darics had been given in Zerus’ name to a local organization that promoted tolerant discourse among members of different faiths.
Aria and the other women had been present when the procession arrived. One of the men who’d volunteered to carry Zerus had been Setji; he and Kisten were oddly loyal, for two men who hated each other. He was standing next to Kisten now as Kisten poured water over the body. Aria had no idea what the significance of that was; it seemed rather contraindicated, given that Zerus was about to be lit on fire. Setji and the other mourners then took turns pouring oil on the body; the bier itself was already saturated. Kisten said something in a quiet voice that Aria couldn’t hear, and then began to recite the prayer for the dead.
This aspect of the funeral, at least, was orthodox and suitably joyless. Acting as his grandfather’s intercessor, Kisten asked God to forgive those who were alive and those who were dead, those who were present and those who were absent, and about a thousand other dichotomies, asking in each case that God let each one live as a member of the True Faith or, if he died, that he die a believer.
She wished he’d hurry up; the weather might be much nicer, but every stirring of the breeze brought a fresh breath of corruption. Zerus stank. He’d only been dead two days, but somehow two days had been enough. Corruption was advanced.
Lifting one of the burning brands from the earthenware pot, Kisten touched it to his grandfather’s body: first at his right shoulder, and then at his left, and then at each of his feet. The flames licked, and caught, engulfing the bier with a hollow rushing sound. Tossing the still flaming brand onto the bier, Kisten turned and accepted the earthenware pot from Setji. He then tossed that onto the bier, and stepped back. The other mourners followed suit. Black smoke billowed outward, the product of so much oil.
Somewhere deep within, the earthenware pot exploded with a bang.
Now they waited.
Although the True Faith had clerics, it did not advocate priesthood in what Aria thought of as the conventional sense. Any trustworthy, believing adult male was equally capable to perform what few rites the religion contained. Which was how Ceres had come to officiate at her wedding.
Kisten practiced the True Faith, at least in public, and she knew that he believed in God, but she wasn’t entirely clear on what form his faith took. He both abjured some elements of the True Faith and seemingly accepted others, and there was a statue of one of the old gods in their bedroom. It had just appeared one evening, with absolutely no explanation, along with a malnourished street urchin that Kisten had presented to her as some sort of human gift. Neither she nor Garja had known quite what to do with the poor thing, who’d been suffering from withdrawal and appeared to have no formal training except as a prostitute.
Aria hadn’t asked.
Most Bronte practiced the old rites, at least to some extent, but belief in the so-called old religion was much more prevalent in the colonies. This far from Brontes, there was nothing Karan could do to stop people from worshipping as they chose. And no one came to the colonies because they so loved orthodoxy in all its many and varied forms. And as for Tarsonis, anyone who’d willingly move to a place where flushing toilets were considered demons was by definition willing to try something new.
That first night—only the night before last, although that seemed impossible—she’d been so overtired that she hadn’t felt tired at all. In fact, she’d been too wired up to sleep and had felt in all honestly like she could happily go the rest of her life without ever sleeping again! Kisten had opened one of his prescription bottles, given her a couple of pills and told her to swallow them. He hadn’t bothered to explain what they were, but he’d provided a shot of brandy with which to accomplish the task. She’d done as she was told, and ten minutes later she’d been out like a light. Just like poor Aros, who was now standing on Kisten’s other side and staring at the bier with open hatred.
When she’d woken, it had been to discover that she’d been asleep for almost an entire day. Afternoon sun streamed in through the window and Kisten was sitting at his desk, typing. He saw that she was awake, arched his eyebrow, and said nothing. This sudden return to normality had been profoundly unsettling. But for the wound in his side and the smoking piles of rubble surrounding the residence, she might have convinced herself that the mutiny had been a bad dream.
Shortly thereafter, her husband had left to attend a series of meetings. She’d remained in bed, staring dazedly into space and trying to recover from the shock. Garja had appeared, complaining loudly about her new understudy, the drug-addled Khalimah, and Aria had found herself eating a piece of fruit without quite understanding how it had gotten into her hand. She’d given her blue-skinned companion, Mohana, a hard look and he’d smiled serenely back at her just like he always did. The statue was almost as tall as she was.
That night, she and Kisten had shared a quiet dinner. She hadn’t said much; part of her—still—had trouble believing that he was really real. That this wasn’t some sort of misery-induced hallucination that might end at any moment. Too much had happened, too quickly. How long ago was it, now, since she’d left Solaris? She pondered that, and other questions, as Kisten explained that he’d decided not to rebuild the governor’s palace and instead would expand their current residence. It had a far more defensible position and, moreover, a less ostentatious house would make a better impression on the locals.
Poverty was a real issue in their new home, in the capital and everywhere else on the planet’s sole inhabited continent. There were classes on Brontes, Kisten had explained, but nothing like this; the lowest of the low anywhere on Brontes had a better standard of living than the so-called middle class in Haldon. Than many of Haldon’s so-called upper class. The previous administration had done nothing to alleviate the problem, either. During his tenure as governor, Nan Jhansi seemed to have spent much of his time and most of the resources at his disposal on enlarging and aggrandizing his palace. Even as it burned, the mutineers had been heard to remark that it was a true architectural marvel.
Such an ostentatious symbol of wealth in the midst of so much want was bound to cause resentment. The old palace had been enormous, rising up from the ring of simple buildings surrounding it like a leviathan. Most of Haldon was one or two stories high; the palace had been five, and visible from the mountains down to the wide, sluggish river that bordered the city’s far side.
Instead of rebuilding it, Kisten had decided to expand the officers’ housing and build a separate group of small villas for diplomatic guests. The round trip from the Home Worlds to Tarsonis took six months on the inside; guests, when they came, tended to stay.
Aria didn’t mind; their current home was the nicest she’d ever lived in, and she’d never had so much space to herself. Unlike her mother or, indeed, Naomi, she’d never cherished a secret yearning for solid gold faucets. She liked her verandah, and the garden surrounding it; she wrote, and spent time with her friends, and found herself to be more or less content. Growing up, her mother had done her best to control every aspect of Aria’s life; no detail was too small, or too petty to be ignored. In comparison, Kisten’s iron-handed rule was a joy. He, at least, took no particular position on what flowers she liked, what books she read, or whether she wore her hair “wrong.”
The heat from the flames was intense, even so far removed from the bier. Sweat beaded along her hairline. She was back in what Kisten referred to as suitable attire and happy enough to be so, although she missed her brief flirtation with men’s clothing. She was wearing a subdued gray, suitable for a funeral, the edges of her sattika trimmed in maroon the color of dried blood. Her hai
r was pulled back in a severe bun under a simple veil.
Beside her, Naomi looked far showier and, Aria thought meanly, far less attractive. She’d dolled herself up in a shimmery gold number that made her look like a prostitute. And for a funeral? Aria had never met anyone who needed attention more.
She’d greeted Naomi politely enough when she’d arrived and Naomi had cut her dead. The two women hadn’t spoken since. Alice, at least, had made no secret of her delight in seeing Aria. Naomi’s hostility made no difference to her, for which Aria was grateful.
Alice leaned in and addressed Aria in low tones. “I don’t mean this to sound disrespectful but…how, um, long do we have to wait?”
Aria had asked that same question, herself, the night before. “The cremation itself can take hours,” she whispered, “and the ashes won’t be cool enough to collect until at least this time tomorrow, but we’re only here until the skull explodes. After that, we can leave.”
Alice shuddered.
FORTY-THREE
At the post-funeral reception, which took place in the residence’s formal gardens amidst piles of still-smoking rubble, Alice seemed quite taken with a certain Captain Gore. Kisten had pointed him out, but Aria had never spoken with the man before now. Even so, he’d become something of a minor celebrity during the past few days, and had his own coterie of admirers. Aria could see why. The dashing young officer had survived the siege with only minor injuries but, judging from the rapt expressions of those around him, a great many stories.
And Alice, Aria decided, watching the younger girl from the corner of her eye, wanted to hear them all.
She turned back to the woman in front of her, a sallow-faced shrew whose name she’d forgotten but who was assuring her that Zerus had been a model of faith and was undoubtedly in Paradise. Aria hoped that Zerus rotted in Hell, but refrained from saying so. She smiled politely, not feeling even a little bit guilty, and thanked the stranger—some officer’s consort, no doubt—for her condolences. Exclaiming over Zerus turned into a diatribe about the evils of colonial life, and Aria was grateful when Kisten rescued her.