"Is there any chance that your aunt's
employer traced her here?" Thornaster asked. "Could she have been
the target of this series of deaths?"
"What reason would they have to hide
that she was the target? The only person who obviously benefits
from Genevieve's death is..." Acid rose to sear her throat, and
Cloud Cat stuttered to a halt as Ash sat back in the saddle, hands
clenching to fists. "She couldn't have. She – I'll –"
Thornaster nudged Arth forward and
gripped Cloud Cat's bridle, discouraging the mare from responding
to Ash's mistreatment of the reins. "Verel's been investigating
that angle," he said. "She's found no connection thus far."
"When did you–?"
"Who benefits is the first rule of
crime investigation," Thornaster said. "According to Verel, at any
rate. While early possession of a house doesn't seem like stake
enough for so many deaths, the idea is being given due regard, so
you will allow the Investigator to exercise her competence. Is that
clear?"
There was a note of pain beneath the
stern command, surprising Ash into taking a temper-controlling
breath.
"Genevieve couldn't change that she was
damned," she said, gesturing for him to let go of Cloud Cat's
bridle. "But she would have had years, decades. Shouldn't whoever
took them from her pay?" But even as she asked the question, she
shook her head. "I know. No good killing someone without being
absolutely certain they're the right person. Genevieve would tell
me to remember the difference between justice and self-indulgence.
It's just...people will think such horrible things of her, and want
to know why Astenar refused her, and she'll be in such pain, and
there's no way to
fix
it."
"I know, lad. But what we can't change,
we face. I'll stand with you through this."
They followed the curving road into one
of the deepest folds of Westgard's foothills, and Ash saw that it
would be worse than she'd anticipated. The last stretch into the
Blue Valley was made narrow by carts and horses, and dozens of late
coming walkers were straggling up the final rise. Genevieve had
touched many lives in the handful of years she'd lived in Luinhall,
and people had turned out in droves to pay their respects.
Even with the crowd just past the
entrance, the first impression of Blue Valley was that of an
immensity of blossom. The sloping curve, narrowing and rising
toward the far end, was a thick mass of flower-festooned greenery.
The garlands of the dead, a remembrance planted for every person
who had been buried: the only markers for the bodies.
Somewhere among all that riot of colour
would be a freshly dug scar, waiting. But the body of one Astenar
had damned would be taken far from the city and burned.
Leaving Arth and Cloud Cat to the care
of a cluster of obliging children, Ash and Thornaster followed the
slow flow of the crowd to a stepped cup of worn granite paving, a
Sun Circle, where Astenar's judgment would be made. Toward the rear
of the small amphitheatre was a table of stone, roughly oval and
broad enough to hold more than the single, linen-wrapped figure
that waited.
Eyes flinching from the muffled shape,
Ash looked at her feet, and the skirt of Thornaster's embroidered
robe, then the gold and brown gown of one of the waiting Godskeeps
as he struck a deep, imperative note on a large gong. The crowd
quieted, last handfuls slipping into the Circle. Ash grit her
teeth, lifted her chin and took her position as chief mourner at
the forefront of the steps.
The gong sounded again, and the senior
Godskeep, a woman with faded blond hair, signalled two others to
begin pouring honeyed water from the urns they carried. This ran
into a narrow channel around the rim of the stone on which
Genevieve's wrapped body lay. The urn bearers then began to sound
two smaller gongs, barely tapping them so that their resonance was
little more than a hum.
"The soul is present," announced the
senior Godskeep, as a faint golden shimmer touched the creamy
linen. "Speak."
The Godskeeps claimed the Speaking made
no difference to Astenar's judgment; that the words were for the
living. Ash, as first speaker, was supposed to tell of her sharpest
memory of her guardian, but that would always and ever belong to a
smoke-scented girl, sitting beside the Milk in the dark.
Under a pale sky and a false name, that
girl looked around at people who thought they knew whom they
mourned, and said: "I made a promise to Genevieve, the day I came
to her in Luinhall. And I made another, the morning I found what
had been done to her. I haven't kept either of them. But I will.
And I'll remember every day I had with her as a gift."
Not a traditional speech, and she saw
Captain Garton frowning, but there were nods from the large cluster
of blond heads that marked out Larkin's family. Others stepped to
the front row to speak, story after story of pain eased, lives
saved, gestures of kindness. So many. Surely, whatever Genevieve
had done in the past, surely...
The Godskeeps gently tapped the gongs,
producing little more than a suggestion of vibration. Warning that
the time for Speaking was coming to an end. Ash remained chin up,
looking at the wrapped body. She could not change what was going to
happen, but she would not turn from it.
As the last speaker stepped back, the
four Godskeeps began sounding the gongs in earnest. Funerals
weren't strictly necessary. Astenar sometimes took the dead before
any ceremony, and would find them all eventually. But the ritual
drew the busy Sun's attention.
Ash had stood in this same circle with
Genevieve, watching as Astenar had taken the souls of the Kinriddy
twins. The response had been swift, the first gleam of gold
appearing almost as soon as the Speaking had ended. Minute golden
wings rose from the linen wrappings, joined by dozens of others, a
lifting mass as the gongs thrummed, and the air filled with
butterflies: a tiny, fluttering pyre rising into the sky.
With little hope of gold, Ash looked
instead for grey, for the moths that Luin would send if Astenar
judged a soul needed cleansing. But there was nothing, not one
single flutter, and Ash could feel the shift in those around her as
the Godskeeps struck a little harder, as their practiced rhythm
took on a moment's discord, as realisation began to filter
through.
As dismay grew obvious around them,
Thornaster lifted one hand to rest on Ash's shoulder. Never before
had she stood so determinedly upright, so unwavering. How long
before the Godskeeps gave up, before they accepted what was already
clear? Before all hope died and Genevieve officially became one of
the damned.
A burning feather drifted from the
sky.
Stiffened to tight rigidity, Ash could
not even look up, could only stare at the feather as it came to
rest by Genevieve's wrapped foot. It was soft, curling, and
shimmering white, with flames lifting from but not charring its
delicate strands. The Godskeeps' steady gonging missed a beat in
earnest, then thrummed to dying echoes as people gasped, shouted,
ducked.
White so pure it burned afterimages
into the eye. A golden throat, red-tipped wings. The tail, a
trailing fall of blazing motes. Heat beat at Ash's face, dried her
throat, as the stone table filled with a bird of fire.
"Yurefaen!"
The cries as all around her mourners
retreated several steps confirmed what Ash's mind could barely
accept. This was not a creature of Luin, but belonged to the
shattered moon, Yurefaer. When the old sun, Karaelsur, had struck
Yurefaer a near-fatal blow, most of the burning birds that were
Yurefaer's children had been killed. Those few survivors, Astenar
had taken as messengers. They lived in the hot places of Luin, and
appeared outside them only when...
Ash's legs gave beneath her, and she
sat heavily. The Yurefaen, turning on the now-blazing table, cocked
its vivid head in her direction, then the round, black eye seemed
to stare at Thornaster. It spread red-tipped wings, sending a wave
of heat beating out, then lifted back into the air, leaving behind
a stone table completely bare of anything but that single feather,
drifting languorously off the edge onto the ground.
Reborn.
The word rode the crest of the growing
outcry. Genevieve's soul had been taken by Astenar, and would be
gifted to a new-formed child. In years to come that child would
begin to remember a past once lived, and would be set to complete
some task that Genevieve had left unfinished. To be reborn was
considered a sign of greatness.
The crowd gasped out the implications
while Ash sat numb. Then, when Thornaster moved to speak to the
Godskeeps, friends and strangers came and shouted into her face,
hugged or shook her, wept. Never in Montmoth's history had anyone
been taken to be reborn. The few tales that seared the histories of
other lands were of heroes taken too soon, giants of the past.
"Ready to go? Or have you decided to
become an ornamental fixture?"
Despite the light words, Thornaster's
eyes were reserved, solemn. He glanced at one of Larkin's sisters,
holding the burning feather gleefully aloft and racing about
trailing lines of fire, then back at Ash when she spoke.
"Did you do that? Intervene somehow
with Astenar?" If he had then Ash scarcely knew how to feel. But
she would cleave a few mountains for him, to even begin to repay
such munificence.
"No. I have nothing like that kind of
power. To my regret, since I doubt I will ever again win such a
starry-eyed glow of approval."
"Probably not." Despite his denial, Ash
couldn't help but suspect a connection. "It looked like it was
talking to you."
"Did it?" Thornaster held a hand down
to pull her to her feet. "I wish I'd had a chance to meet your
aunt. I'd guessed she was out of the ordinary, but for a Yurefaen
to come for her, she must have been remarkable."
"I thought so."
Ash glanced around, catching the eye of
a few of her particular friends now she had the heart to do so.
With a promise to meet him at the horses, she left Thornaster to
grab a few words with one of her Huntsmen, Melar, and then Captain
Garton. Though light-headed, dizzy with delight, she kept herself
to brief exchanges, and had calmed down enough to think by the time
she reached the horses.
"So, what did it tell you?" she asked,
as soon as they were riding back down into the city. And when he
lifted his eyebrows at her, added: "Don't give me that look. You're
acting like you've gone to the granary and found only mice.
Genevieve being reborn wouldn't make you
worried
."
"No." Thornaster studied her, mouth
stern. Weighing, once again, a question of trust. "It said the city
smelled of Karaelsur."
The old Sun? "What's that supposed to
mean? Karaelsur is–" Ash paused. The stories only spoke of
Karaelsur's Sunhood being taken away. "Don't gods die? The far gods
stripped Karaelsur of power, but Karaelsur didn't die?"
"Think what it means to die, and the
magnitude of Karaelsur's crime. Most gods do not carry smaller
lives. They burn or they freeze, and...well, my father calls it
'dancing'. An existence very different from ours, beautiful but
arid. For a Sun and a World to start life is considered a special
achievement, a matter of pride, but the Yurefaen were Yurefaer's
alone, born from fire held in Yurefaer's heart. Their existence was
a thorn in Karaelsur's conceit, and so Karaelsur committed
treachery of a magnitude to damn a god."
"In the same way as–?"
"Substantially. The body, the ability
to act is taken away, and because there is no greater whole to
return to, what remains faces a gradual dissolution. With a god,
that takes a great deal longer." The Aremish man gazed down over
the city, face grim. "With a god, there is a way back."
Ash stared. "Are you sure? How do you
know? Does everyone know this?"
Thornaster's quick glance warned Ash
she was close to babbling, so she pressed her lips together and
waited.
"I know because there have been
incidents in the past, attempts by Karaelsur to regain strength.
You've probably heard of them, even if you don't have the full
story. One, in Firuvar, ended the Imperator line. Halide's death –
that explosion in Diadem – was another."
"...that means Karaelsur's return can
be stopped," Ash said, only a little breathless, for all that the
Imperators had been god-descended, and Halide a hero without peer.
"So what do we do?"
The Aremish man was frowning down at
his hands, and Ash realised that he, too, was feeling overwhelmed.
Daunted. But no more ready to back away than she.
"In part, the first step is already
underway. Land which is not bound to a Landhold, whether a
Smallholder or Luinsel, is...not hidden entirely, but obscured from
Luin's regard. Arun's change to the laws regarding the binding of
Smallholdings needs to be made as soon as possible. And I need to
talk to Verel about some disappearances she mentioned."
"Why disappearances?"
"For every birth, the Sun gives a tiny
spark of life. Soul stuff. As the child grows, that spark grows
with it, and the soul the Sun takes back after death is more than
was given. In the past incidents, Karaelsur found accomplices
to...procure souls in such a way that Astenar would not be aware of
their passing." He stared at the line of houses they were
approaching. "If that's happening here, then it's no wonder Rhoi
Malaster felt Montmoth was out of balance."
"Does this mean – are the murders
related? Or just coincidence?"
"I don't know. A Rhoimarch without a
Rhoi is vulnerable, and removing both Nemators would produce a
delay while the Landsmeet decided on first candidate, just as the
timing of Rhoi Malaster's death during Arun's absence meant weeks
where the Rhoimarch was unbound. If the deaths thus far have been a
precursor to Arun's, then it's probable Karaelsur's accomplice can
be found among the likely candidates, and that the ceremony itself
would bind Montmoth through Karaelsur rather than Astenar. And yet,
I would know if I met someone who had been tainted by the old Sun.
The corruption caused by the use of those stolen souls would be
marked."