Starless

by Jacqueline Carey

  He shrugged. “Perhaps.”

  I pointed at the dead priest or pirate with his ruined crater of a chest, his chapped and bitten lips. “And him? He kept a second mob in reserve, brother. He sent them after Zariya and me and claimed it was the will of Miasmus. Are you still so very sure there is no prophecy at work here?”

  In the torchlight, Vironesh looked old; old and weary. “No.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  In the aftermath of the attack, the scene on the thoroughfare was one of chaos. I would have liked nothing better than to get Zariya back to the relative safety of the palace, but the streets were clogged with dead or dying men, dead or dying horses, unmanned litters, and panicked revelers fleeing.

  She insisted on getting out of the litter to survey it, and although it was against my better judgment, I understood.

  “By all the fallen stars!” Zariya leaned on her canes, looking pale. “Why?”

  I shook my head.

  There were hoofbeats and King Azarkal loomed out of the dusk astride his fine black mount, his face taut with grief and fury and fear. “Zariya! Zariya!”

  “Here, Father!” she called to him. “We are here.”

  He dismounted and enfolded her in a crushing embrace. “Thank the gods that you’re safe. You heard?”

  She nodded when he released her. “Yes, it’s terrible. Was anyone else in the family harmed?”

  “Minor injuries among the fighting men.” He looked past her, only now registering the number of slain attackers. King Azarkal had ruled for three hundred years and I do not think he was often dumbstruck. Tonight he was. “Ah, gods! I’d no idea they’d mounted such an attack on the rear of the procession.” His gaze settled on Vironesh, standing quietly by. “Your handiwork?”

  “No, Your Majesty. I was stationed among the City Guard, and nearest the newly wedded pair when the attack came. This was Khai’s doing.” My mentor’s expression was tinged with regret and bitter pride. “The Scouring Wind’s youngest chosen reaped a bloody harvest tonight.”

  King Azarkal’s gaze shifted to me. “So it seems. And if I’d heeded your request and placed you in the Royal Guard, Vironesh, I might not have lost a son tonight. I will not make that mistake again.”

  “I am resigning from your service, Your Majesty,” Vironesh said to him. “I will be rejoining the coursers of Obid.”

  “Are you mad?” The king stared at him. “After what happened here tonight? You’re needed here!”

  Vironesh beckoned to him. “What’s needed is an answer to a mystery. There is something I would show you.”

  When we showed King Azarkal the Mad Priest’s body and the charred remnants of the thing that had crawled out of his chest, he stood without speaking, his mouth compressed into a tight line. At length, he lifted his head and began giving orders to the surviving members of the Royal Guard. “I want this priest’s body taken to the palace and examined by physicians!” he shouted. “I want this thing that inhabited him preserved and examined by the royal zoologist! I want the streets cleared for passage, but I want every last dead Child of Miasmus identified before a single corpse is claimed! Is that understood?”

  There were murmurs of agreement; the Royal Guard was beginning to regroup, and set about obeying his commands. Within a quarter of an hour, the thoroughfare was clear enough to allow the royal procession to retreat to the palace.

  I had never thought to find myself so relieved to enter the confines of the women’s quarter.

  A day of celebration had turned into a night of mourning. Everyone in the procession was profoundly shaken, and Queen Makesha, mother of Prince Tazaresh, was inconsolable. In the hour of her loss, the others offered comfort and attempted to piece together the details of what had befallen him. The only point on which all agreed was that one of the assailants had hamstrung his mount. Beyond that, no one knew for sure who had planted a dagger between his ribs.

  Listening to them made my head swim.

  “Khai, my love,” Zariya said firmly to me, “you’re covered in blood. You need to bathe.”

  For once, I agreed.

  Her maidservant Nalah lit the lamps in the baths. I sent her for some rags that I might clean my weapons, which I did sitting on the broad lip of the warm bathing pool before disrobing. My yakhan would need whetting on the morrow, and I’d forgotten to retrieve the throwing dagger I’d used on the assailant crippling the guards’ mounts.

  Prince Tazaresh’s horse had been hamstrung, too. But the king’s had not, nor had Prince Elizar’s; and they had been in close proximity.

  I mulled over these facts, and Zariya watched me, her dark eyes lustrous and grave, thinking the same thoughts.

  Once I had undressed, Nalah gathered my blood-soaked attire with a grimace and took it away.

  I sank into the warm water, plumes of crimson trailing from my hair. Zariya lowered herself carefully to the edge of the bathing pool. She took up a ewer and poured water over my head, then found soap and began washing my hair with gentle hands. “Tell me what you’re thinking, my darling.”

  “I am certain Vironesh is right about one thing,” I murmured. “Someone paid to arm and organize that mob, using it toward their own ends; and whoever it was, they had reason to benefit from Prince Tazaresh’s death.”

  Zariya slid her arms around my neck, putting her lips close to my left ear. “But there is more, is there not?”

  Not so very long ago, I would have flinched at the intimacy of such an embrace; now, I merely turned my face toward hers. “There is the fact that I do not think the Mad Priest had any interest in conspiring against the House of the Ageless. He believed what he said.”

  “Do you?” she asked.

  “Do I believe Miasmus will swallow the world in darkness?” I summoned a tired smile. “I surely hope not. But I’d like to know what in the name of all the children of heaven that thing was that crawled out of his chest.”

  “It sounds like the sort of nightmarish creature one might find in Papa-ka-hondras.” Zariya resumed scrubbing my hair. “We’ll consult Liko of Koronis in the morning. He catalogued a hundred and seventy different deadly plants and animals on the outskirts of the island and the surrounding waters.”

  Papa-ka-hondras … I remembered the name. The apothecary Nazim had told me about it; it meant “A Thousand Ways to Kill.”

  “The waters around that island are infested with death-bladders, aren’t they?”

  Her hands went still for a moment, then continued scrubbing. “I do believe you’re right. That would be an unlikely coincidence if it proves true, would it not?”

  “It would,” I agreed.

  As grateful as I was for the shelter of the women’s quarter that night, by midmorning the next day I was chafing once more at its confinement, yearning to know what passed in the city. But I saw alarm in Zariya’s eyes when I suggested I venture out to explore, and so I abandoned the notion. As courageous as she was, I needed to be mindful of the fact that nothing in her life’s experience had prepared her for the horrific violence of the attack. Still, when Vironesh paid a call on me, she insisted that I ought to meet with him. I left her poring over the lists of deadly things her beloved Liko of Koronis had compiled.

  After his heroic defense of the procession, it seemed a tacit agreement had been reached that Vironesh be restored to his former status of an honorary member of the House of the Ageless, and he was granted admittance to the Hall of Pleasant Accord. Veiled servants brought us tea and pastries, and a pair of the Queen’s Guard stood in attendance.

  “You may leave us,” Vironesh informed them. “Thank you, but your presence is not required.”

  They departed after a mere moment’s hesitation, and it galled me to note how much more readily they ceded to his wishes than mine.

  I poured tea for us both. “What passes in the city?”

  “Nothing good.” The purple man looked grim. “Guards are breaking bones and cracking skulls in the lower level, but if there are leaders to this conspir
acy, no one’s given them up yet.”

  “Have the slain assailants been identified?” I asked him.

  He shrugged. “Some. But by my count, there were perhaps three hundred men in the mob that attacked us. There are at least ten thousand people living in Three-Copper Quarter alone, and they protect their own.”

  “You don’t think the City Guard will be able to uncover the truth,” I observed.

  “No,” Vironesh said bluntly. “And I’m of no use in the effort, for neither side trusts me.”

  I sipped my tea. “And that’s why you mean to rejoin the coursers of Obid?”

  “The coursers of Obid know more about what passes beneath the starless skies than anyone else to sail the four great currents,” he said. “I have seen a great many things in their company. I have seen a wyrm-raider ship cutting across the currents, yoked serpents towing it like cart-horses. I have seen winged sharks that launch themselves above the waves, and I have seen patches of strangling kelp capable of bringing down a great tusked whale. But I have never seen a sea-spider burrow into a man’s chest. I have never heard a madman claim to speak for Miasmus.”

  I was silent.

  Vironesh sighed. “Khai … what passed last night may have naught to do with any prophecy. It may simply be that the Mad Priest and his followers targeted you because you are a symbol of the order he opposes. It may be that they reckoned you young and untried, and the rearguard of the procession vulnerable. But it has been four years and more since I sailed with the coursers. I would learn what they have encountered since I left them.”

  “I think it wise, brother,” I said quietly to him. “It is only that I will miss my mentor.”

  He looked surprised, then favored me with a fierce grin that showed his teeth white against his bruise-colored skin. “After last night, I think you have scant need of my training.”

  I turned my hands palm-upward on my crossed knees. “I had Zariya to protect.”

  Vironesh nodded. “Even so.” He paused. “I spoke to King Azarkal earlier this morning.”

  “Oh?”

  “I told him I had reason to believe that Prince Tazaresh was responsible for Prince Kazaran’s death, in the hope that it might ease his grief a measure,” he murmured. “I did not tell him why, and he did not ask. After all, it matters naught now.”

  “It matters who was responsible for Tazaresh’s death,” I reminded him. “If one of the Sun-Blessed was behind it, he or she has an army of ten thousand angry and impoverished denizens of Merabaht awaiting orders.”

  “Yes, and I told the king to look to the shipping manifests,” Vironesh said. “As I said last night, that’s a considerable amount of good Granthian steel. Whoever armed that mob had to have imported those weapons at some point, and somewhere, there ought to be a record of it.”

  I nodded. “A good thought.”

  Another silence fell between us, a silence stretching toward awkwardness. After four years, it seemed there ought to be more to say; and yet, I could not think what it might be. And then it came to me.

  I rose first. “I know you were hoping for redemption, brother,” I said to Vironesh. “Or failing that, perhaps revenge. I fear that neither opportunity has presented itself. I hope it is yet to come. And I hope that my actions as your pupil may in some small part give honor to you.”

  “Khai…” Vironesh shook his head at me, then climbed heavily to his feet and reached out to clasp my forearm in a firm grip. “In no small part, little brother. I’m shipping out as a hired sword with a Tukkani trader tomorrow morning. I’ll rejoin the first coursers’ ship to cross our path and return in less than a year’s time. No more prowling the city while I’m gone. Stay out of harm’s way and keep your charge alive, eh?”

  I saluted him. “Be well.”

  It felt strange to know that Vironesh was leaving. Our relationship had never been a warm one, but there was depth to it. He was my last connection in Merabaht to the Fortress of the Winds, and the only other living soul who understood what it meant to be a shadow to one of the Sun-Blessed.

  Still, it was in my heart that it was the right choice for him; and having found nothing in the annals of Liko of Koronis to suggest that the black star spider had come from Papa-ka-hondras—or any other place the esteemed scholar had studied—Zariya was of the same opinion.

  In the days following Vironesh’s departure, we received precious little information about events outside the women’s quarter. King Azarkal had insisted on increased security measures, and the usual networks of spies who served as sources of information in the quarter—the servants who owed fealty to Queen Adinah, Captain Tarshim, and those of his men who were loyal to Queen Rashina—were disrupted. We knew only that the city was in upheaval; and meanwhile, Sister Nizara’s planned retreat to hold a vigil in the desert must be postponed until a funeral could be held for Tazaresh, whose body must first be prepared for the pyre.

  In the desert, we gave the bodies of the dead into the care of Pahrkun the Scouring Wind and his creatures; in the city, the dead were consecrated to Anamuht the Purging Fire. Or at least among those who could afford it. The bodies of the guards who had been killed in the attack would be given a place of honor in the base of Prince Tazaresh’s pyre. I wondered what was to become of the dead assailants, but no one in the women’s quarter knew.

  Seven days after the attack, the House of the Ageless gathered in the Garden of Sowing Time. The pyre had been constructed on the highest tier beneath the lone rhamanthus tree that towered atop it, which seemed to me a dangerous prospect.

  “Is there no concern that the tree will catch fire?” I murmured to Zariya. “Or that the heat will damage the seeds?”

  She shook her head. “The seeds can only be quickened by lightning cast by Anamuht herself. The rhamanthus are impervious to ordinary heat and flame.”

  Twilight was falling when Sister Nizara gave a brief invocation, a torch kindled from the Sacred Flame in her hand. “Prince Tazaresh of the House of the Ageless, Sun-Blessed son and brother, may Zar the Sun, father of us all, receive your spirit, and the spirits of your brave companions, with kindness and mercy.”

  She lit the pyre, thrusting the torch into the southwestern corner of the structure. By design, the pyre burned slowly at first, until the creeping flames reached the portion wrought of oil-wood. Then it spread in a rush, gouts of flame rising upward. Once it was well and truly ablaze, the pyre burned hotter than a forge. I could make out the bodies of the guards, embalmed in sweet oils and wrapped in linens, twisting in the flames at the base of the pyre. On a platform at the very top, the shrouded figure of Tazaresh had not yet been touched by the fire.

  Above the pyre, the tallest rhamanthus stretched into the sky, the sun’s light yet gilding its crown; impervious to heat and flame; impervious to the petty machinations and griefs of the long-lived mortals clustered around its base; impervious to all save the will of Anamuht the Purging Fire.

  “What is it that you require of us, Anamuht?” I whispered, gazing upward at the tree. “Only tell us, and I will see it is done.” Beside me, Zariya slipped her hand into mine and squeezed it.

  The flames reached Tazaresh’s body. Save for Zariya, the royal women wailed and rent their garments in mourning, some of it genuine. Princess Fazarah was among them; of course, she was Makesha’s daughter, too. The soft glow of khementaran pulsed at her wrists and her throat, rendered faint by the pyre’s blaze. I had asked Vironesh once why he had not entered khementaran when Prince Kazaran died; he told me that it only came upon the Sun-Blessed.

  Why? I wondered. Because of Zar’s fire that was said to run in their veins?

  All the fragrant oils beneath the starless sky could not entirely disguise the scent of charred flesh. King Azarkal’s face was impassive as he watched his son’s body burn; the son he favored, the son who might have been responsible for the death of the son the king had favored over him. The son who might have been murdered in turn, the victim of yet another endless conspiracy.
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br />   There are too many of us, and we live too long.

  I had a wild urge to seize Zariya and flee from this place, flee to the depths of the desert where honor and status were cleaner and simpler things. We could live among the tribesfolk.

  Zariya had said that given the choice, she would wed a kind man. Unexpectedly, I thought of the boy Ahran whom I’d met at the gathering of the clans, the lively, laughing boy who’d waded into the Eye of Zar with me and poured water over my head in the Three-Moon Blessing. I’d wager he was growing into a kind young man, one who would see the bright spirit within her and treasure it.

  And there in the desert, I would … what? Ah, there my vision went dark. I could not see a place for myself.

  As though sensing my unspoken thoughts, Zariya gave my hand another reassuring squeeze.

  Her place was here.

  And mine was beside her, no matter what dreams of the desert I might harbor; here, and nowhere else.

  Despite the size of the structure, it burned more quickly than I would have guessed, collapsing onto itself and sending a vast shower of sparks into the darkening sky, accompanied by the ululations of the royal women. The sight would be visible clear down to the lowest level of Merabaht. In other times, I understood, it would allow the denizens of the city to mourn along with the House of the Ageless. I doubted many of them were mourning tonight.

  Once the pyre had burned down to embers and the charred bones of the dead were indistinguishable from the handful of beams that continued to smolder, most of the royal family retreated to the Hall of Pleasant Accord, where a feast was to be held in Tazaresh’s honor. As High Priestess, Sister Nizara would remain behind to hold a vigil until the last ember died. In the morning, she and the other priestesses would spread the ashes throughout the Garden of Sowing Time and gather the bones that they might be ground into a coarse meal to fertilize the rhamanthus trees.

  I would rather have been gathering bones in the garden than attending that feast. It began civilly enough, with platters of lamb stew cooked with saffron and dates served over a soft grain, flagons of palm wine and toasts to Tazaresh’s memory, many of them offered by Kozar and Bazar, the twin sons of Kayaresh, who was the second-junior-most queen. Simple souls, I remembered Vironesh had deemed them; good foot soldiers in someone else’s campaign. Based on the genuine quality of their grief, it seemed that someone had been Prince Tazaresh.