Farlander (73 page)

Her hand dropped limply to her side. She turned back to her son, lying on the altar within an arm’s reach before her, his final resting place before he was interred in the dry vaults of the Hypermorum.

Sasheen spotted something lying on his chest. She reached for it, her long nails hovering for a moment. Delicately, she plucked something from the bare skin, catching one of the wispy hairs on his chest as she did so. She inspected her fingertip. An eyelash.

It trembled against her breath, fluttered free, falling from sight.

My son is dead,
she thought.

Sasheen had never known pain like this before. It was a kind of madness, like that lurching of the stomach when you realized you had forgotten something vital, but it was much too late to correct it – except that sensation was now prolonged and constant, so that it consumed her every waking moment, and every sleeping one too; a screeching, tearing, animal terror that threatened to choke her if she did not release it in some way.

A wetness tickled her palms: her nails digging hard enough into her flesh to draw blood.

‘Soothe yourself, child,’ came the old crone’s voice once more from her side. ‘You are the Matriarch. You are the highest example of Mann. You cannot afford to be seen this way.’

Sasheen shrugged off the withered hand that settled on her shoulder.

‘He was my son. My only child.’

‘He was weak.’

The words hit her like a slap.

‘Daughter,’ soothed the old woman. Her tone might have been mistaken for an apology though it was not. ‘Come, sit with me a moment.’

Sasheen glanced about the chamber. No one was in sight, save for the Acolyte guards posted at the distant entrance. All of them had their backs turned to her.

Sasheen shuffled across to sit before her mother.

‘I cherished him too,’ said the old woman. ‘He was my grandson, my own blood. But it isn’t Kirkus you grieve for, Sasheen. He died swiftly, and no longer does he suffer. You grieve only for yourself.’

Sasheen looked down at her clenched hands. She could not pry apart her fingers.

The old woman scowled. ‘You must adapt to this loss, my child. Even a wild animal grieves for the death of its young. But like any animal, you must adapt and move on. You can bear another child, still. Rest assured, this grief is a passing weakness. You must hold fast to who you are.

‘My son was not weak.’

‘But he was, Sasheen, he was. How else could he have fallen without even a struggle? We pampered him, you and I. All these years we thought we were teaching him strength, when in truth he was merely learning how to hide from us his own deficiencies. If we had not been so blinded by our affection for him, we would have seen that – perhaps corrected it.’ She held up a palm before Sasheen could protest. ‘We must take from this lesson what we can. We have each become pampered in our own ways, daughter. We are rulers of the world, after all. But for our own sakes we must consider this as a warning. We are surrounded by enemies every moment that we breathe, and we will fall to them in the same way, to the knife, to the poison, if we fail to show them our fortitude. You wish to fall like your son, hmn?’

A silence, Sasheen’s eyes staring at the floor.

‘No, I thought not. So I will make a suggestion. We shall inform Cinimon of a new purging – for ourselves, for the order at large. We will cleanse the flaws from ourselves, and at the same time rid the order of those who do not deserve to follow the calling of Mann. Perhaps, in its own way, it will help you through this loss.’

Sasheen blinked, barely seeing at all. ‘Perhaps,’ she answered in a small voice, and it was a release, in a small way, to relinquish her will to that of her mother, even if it was only for the moment. ‘Perhaps,’ she breathed again, as she folded herself on to the cool floor of stone, and wept.

The old woman rose. She wore a heavy cloak over her robes, and paused for a moment as she removed it. With stiff limbs she knelt next to her daughter, as though intending to offer comfort. Instead, she lay the cloak across her daughter’s head and body, so that she resembled nothing more than a shuddering mound on the floor.

The old woman frowned.

*

It was four in the morning, according to the bell that chimed from the Mannian temple at the southern end of the great square. On cue, a patrol of city guards marched into the plaza, wielding shuttered lanterns and long, studded clubs. Their captain scanned the area for signs of disturbance, but no one was in sight in Punishment Square at this hour of curfew. All was quiet save for the distant barking of a dog.

A shadow drew further back into an alley. It waited until the patrol had passed. A movement followed: a hand motioning for someone to come forward. Together, two forms loosed themselves from the murk and padded silently into the square.

They rushed across the marble flagstones in bare feet, barely making a sound. At the very centre they paused, looked up to take in the horror that hung there – the burnt corpse of a young man nailed to a scaffold. A wooden board hung about his neck. It was branded with a single word, though it was too dark to make out now. They already knew what it said.

R
shun
.

Quickly, one of the figures hoisted the other on to the scaffold. The climber set to work with a knife. The body dropped an inch. With a moment’s more work it fell free and crashed roughly to the ground.

‘Damn it!’ hissed Aléas, still balancing on the scaffolding. ‘Could you not have caught him?’

Serèse looked up from the corpse, her face twisted in a grimace. In a whisper she said, ‘This is a little difficult for me, all right?’

‘Fine,’ replied Aléas, swinging back to the ground. ‘And it’s the easiest thing for me.’ He stooped and pulled free the board from about its neck, then wrapped the body in thick sacking. With a grunt, he hoisted it on to his shoulder.

Quickly, they hurried from the square.

*

Patrols were everywhere. A curfew had been declared, no one to be allowed on the streets after midnight. Earlier, they had heard talk of the ports being sealed. No one was being allowed to leave the city.

It took over an hour to track their way across Q’os to the industrial areas on its south-eastern coastline, where they were to meet with Master Ash and Baracha. It was mostly wasteland here. Vast warehouses lay slumped beneath the faint light of the stars, sinister in a way that reminded them of the dark entrances to caves. Aléas and Serèse avoided these structures by crossing a strip of marshland, at times wading up to their knees through cold, sucking water. Beyond, they struggled up the face of a dune stained with soot.

The night sea shone before them with scuffs of luminescence. A breeze blew against their faces, salted and fresh. Aléas panted for breath, the weight of Nico’s body now a burden he could barely continue with. Serèse did not offer to help him.

Together they descended the other side of the dune, and made their way down into a secluded cove that was all but hidden from sight. Baracha sat there by a small fire, chewing tarweed and nursing the bandaged stump of his left arm. He lifted his blade with the other as they approached.

‘It’s only us,’ said Aléas, and his master relaxed and returned the blade to his lap.

A dark recumbent form shifted to acknowledge them: Ash, lying on the sand on the other side of the fire, head resting on his pack. He grunted, forcing himself to sit up.

They had spent the day gathering driftwood into a pile on the sand of the little cove – or at least Aléas and Serèse had, for the two R
shun were barely fit to stand. With care, Aléas now lay Nico’s body on top of the pile, a few sea-smoothed logs tumbling loose. Ash limped over as he did so. Clumsily, the old farlander began to yank off the sacking.

‘I think perhaps it’s better left alone,’ suggested Aléas, placing a hand on Ash’s shoulder. Ash shrugged free of his grasp. He only stopped when the body was uncovered and he could gaze down on it by the light of the fire.

The old man drew in a sharp breath. He swayed for a moment, enough for Aléas to steady him.

Gently, Ash’s fingers dabbed at the blackened flesh. They brushed against the end of the crossbow bolt buried in the boy’s chest. Ash did not move for many minutes.

Baracha stumbled over with a burning length of wood. Without ceremony he stuffed it into the inner depths of the pile, twisted it as though stoking an already lit fire. The pyre began to smoke. They stepped back from it and after a time caught sight of the first sparkle of flame.

Baracha picked up a handful of sand. He cast it on to the newborn flames, reciting words beneath his breath. Aléas comforted Serèse; both cried freely now, for the first time that day. The flames crackled higher, twisting through the crisscrossing of logs to take hold of the body on top. Colours danced amongst them: vivid blues and yellows and greens from the sea minerals that caked the wood. Fat spat from the pyre. A smell of burning meat came with a shift of the breeze.

After a while the pyre collapsed into itself, consuming Nico.

In the distance, far out to sea, the sun’s first light leaked into the predawn sky. Shadows shafted across the horizon as the castings of unseen clouds.

Ash recited something in the farlander tongue. He repeated it in Trade, perhaps for the benefit of his young apprentice.

His eyes, though in shadow, were alive with two pinpricks of flame. He declaimed: ‘Even though this world is but a dewdrop . . . even so . . . even so.’

*

Ash had instructed them to obtain a clay jar wrapped in leather to hold the ashes. Wearily, but with much presence, he raked the grey dust until it lay in a flat bed across the scorched sand. He paused. For a moment, he watched particles of dust playing in the remnants of heat.

For his mother,
he thought, as he scooped ashes into the jar with the aid of the stick. Portions of bone lay scattered amongst it, and he scooped the smallest pieces up too. Once it was full, he stoppered it, and lay it carefully in his canvas pack.

He had a smaller jar too, a clay vial really, the length and thickness of a thumb, to which was fixed a loop of leather twine. Into this he scraped some more of the burnt remains and plugged it with its wooden stopper. He slung it around his neck, so that it hung there against his chest like a seal. It felt warm against his skin.

In standing up, a sudden pain flashed through his skull. Ash swayed. Someone was talking to him, though he could not see the owner of the voice. He teetered backwards, fell.

Sprawled on the ground, barely breathing, hands tugged at him. A voice asked if he was all right, could he hear them? The pain stabbed again, deeper than ever. Ash gritted his teeth, cried out in the harsh farlander tongue. And then unconsciousness took him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

There was no way out.

All the ports had been closed following the death of Matriarch Sasheen’s only son. Checkpoints were set up on the city’s main thoroughfares and in many of the lesser side streets. The city guards compared the faces of passersby with sketches they held in their hands. People gossiped that R
shun had come to the city – one of them a farlander – and killed the boy priest, and were still here amongst them. Some said it had been an act of revenge for the young R
shun burned to death in the Shay Madi. Patrols roamed everywhere. At night a curfew was enforced under penalty of execution. Squads of soldiers, led by grim-faced Regulators, crashed into hostalio rooms, or illegally open tavernas, brothels, private apartments, demanding answers by force, dragging away suspects, searching always for someone.