The White-Luck Warrior (77 page)

But what she had not known, not truly, was the
danger
.

She had respected her custom—to be sure. She had her rules, precautions. No drunks, unless she knew them well. No white-skinned teamsters or black-skinned mercenaries. No ulcers. But she had always—and she found this thought difficult to think—believed herself greater than the sum of the men who used her. She was at least as embittered as other whores and perhaps more inclined to self-pity. But she had never seen herself as a
victim
—not truly. Not the way Naree so obviously was...

She did not think herself a lonely child used and traded between lewd and dangerous men.

Sometimes, peering through the narrow slots between the screen's panels, she watched their faces as they toiled upon the girl, and she balled her fists for terror, so certain was she that whoever it was would break Naree's neck for simple domination's sake. Sometimes, after the tall shadow had left, she would peer at the girl lying naked across mussed and soiled blankets, raising a hand as about to speak to someone, only to lower it in indecision. And the deposed Empress of the Three Seas would lie riven with thoughts of gods and animals, of heartbreak and pollution, and the purity that hides in the bewildering in-betweens. The World would seem a place of rutting hungers and Men no more than Sranc tied into more complicated knots.

She would yearn for her Palace and her adoring slaves, for the sunlight lancing through scented steam, and hidden choirs singing. And she would cry, as silently as she could manage, for want of her little son.

"I am... shamed," the girl said to her once.

"Why should you be?"

"Because... You could have me damned to Hell."

The Empress nodded in indulgence. "So you're
afraid
, then... not ashamed."

"You are
his
vessel!" Naree cried. "I've been to the Scuari—I've seen
Him
at your side. The Holy Aspect-Emperor. He
is
a god—I am certain of it!"

These words left a breach that only shallow breathing could fill.

Then Esmenet said, "What if he were simply a
man
, Naree?"

She would never understand the dark whim that overcame her in saying this, though she would come to regret it.

"I don't understand."

"What if he were simply a man
pretending
to be more—a prophet, or even as you say, a god—simply to manipulate you and countless others?"

"But why would he do such a thing?" the girl cried, seeming at once thrilled, confused, and appalled.

"To save your life."

Naree, for all her beauty, looked plain in her moments of unguarded sorrow. Esmenet watched her blink two tears before trying to find shelter beneath the false roof that was her smile.

"Why would he do such a thing?"

—|—

They took their meals in silence, usually. At first Esmenet attributed the girl's silence to her childhood slavery—slaves were universally trained to remain quiet and unobtrusive in the presence of their betters. But the girl's boldness otherwise led her to reconsider. In her darker moods, Esmenet thought she might be protecting herself, doing all she could to ease the betrayal to come. When her humour was lighter, she thought the girl was simply oblivious to the meanings that forever soak silence and so was unnaturally content with it.

At first there had been a certain comfort to their cohabitation, one borne out of an alignment between Esmenet's bottomless exhaustion and Naree's subservient wilfulness. Indeed, it was the
neighbours
, the constellation of sordid lives about them, across the street, above and below them, that generated most of the conflict. Usually, Esmenet thought Naree was simply using something incidental, like a random catcall from the women across the way, as an excuse to vent unspoken passion. The girl was always careful to use her meek, slave voice to be sure. But otherwise she hectored Esmenet as though she really were an ailing grandmother.

"You need to walk slower in case they see your shadow through the shutters! You need to be more sick!"

The complaints were nothing short of ridiculous at times, and yet she played along. Nothing is so incendiary as anxious fright.

"You need bend your back—hunch like an old woman!"

And so more and more terror came to own the air between them.

—|—

The Shrial Knight watched with eyes that could only blink.

A young boy with shaggy blond hair played alone on the parapet before him. When he stepped out of the shadow, his mane flashed near-white in the sun. But he was filthy otherwise, as though he had only animal wilderness to rear him.

"So what happens with the Ordeal?" the boy said, speaking to someone the Knight could not see.

"War," the boy replied as if answering his own question. "But not just any war.
Skinny
War."

He laughed at an unheard reply.

"Imagine there, at the top of
that
tree, there's a man standing, just standing, while below him, the skinnies run raging, a great mass of them, as big as the city, even bigger, unto the ends of what can be seen. Imagine the man singing in voices that shake through the bones of things, soaking the living ground below them with buckets of light—yes,
light!
—boiling the skinnies in their skin! Now imagine a necklace of such men, a hanging line of them, walking across the wastes, blasting the hordes shrieking about them."

The boy did a whimsical cartwheel, his limbs arcing with acrobatic precision. He grinned at his unearned expertise.

"
Father
told me. In his own words, he said, 'This is how it will happen, Kel.'"

The Shrial Knight tried to scream.

"Well, mostly in his words. Some of my words too."

He paused as if listening to an inaudible answer.

"Secret words—he even said so. Words that no one—
no one
—can hear."

He walked like an acrobat following a rope, heel to toe, heel to toe. Despite his diminutive frame, he seemed to tower above the ink pool of his shadow.

"No. He never
told
me to kill anyone. But then, why would he have to? The words were
secret
..."

For the first time the boy turned to look at the watching Knight.

"
Of course
he would expect me to kill anyone listening."

The boy skipped toward the paralyzed man, careful to avoid the pooling blood. He paused to peer down at him, hands on knees. His woolly head blotted out the sun's glare.

At last he addressed the Knight directly. "You heard
everything
, didn't you?"

He leaned low before his face, reached into his eye—almost.

Again, the Shrial Knight tried to scream—but his eyes could only blink.

Somehow, impossibly, the boy pulled a silver skewer from beneath his left eye, as if the Knight's head were a sheath. He dandled the thing against his face, left bird-tracks of blood high on his cheek.

"That was supposed to be
secret
..."

And the little boy grinned, an angel with the face of a demon.

—|—

Naree had to stifle a scream when she saw him darkening her door—both women had fretted his latest absence.

Imhailas had become increasingly more furtive in his visits. Few women had as much reason to despise men as Esmenet, to think them vain, cruel, even ridiculous, and yet she found herself yearning, not simply for
him
, Imhailas, the man who had sacrificed all in her name, but for the simple aura of his strength. When it was just her and Naree, it somehow seemed as if
anything
might happen, and they would be helpless. They were refugees. But when he came to them, bearing the scent of public exertions, they almost seemed a small army.

As rude, as apish, as it could be, masculine strength promised as much as it threatened. Men, she reasoned, were a good tonic against Men.

He had dyed his hair and beard black, which probably explained Naree's almost scream. And he had changed his clothes: he now wore an iron-ringed leather jerkin over a blue-cotton tunic. His armpits were black, and his thighs were slicked in sweat. His height always surprised her, no matter how many times she saw him. She could not look at his arms without feeling the ghost of their embrace. His face looked stronger for the blackness of his beard. His blue eyes more wintry, and if it was possible, more moist with devotion. He had come to seem the very incarnation of refuge, the single soul she could trust, and she loved him deeply.

Esmenet froze where she stood. She need only see his expression to know that he had found some answer to her most desperate question.

Imhailas pressed a dismayed Naree aside. He strode forward and fell immediately to his knees at his Empress's feet. He knew her. He knew she would not forgive specious delays. So he spoke the very thing she had glimpsed in his eye.

"Everyone, Your Glory..." He paused to swallow. "Everyone believes that Kelmomas is hiding with
you
. Maithanet does not have him."

The words did not so much explode within her as explode
her
, as if Being could be palmed and tingling Absence slipped into its place. First Samarmas and now... now...

For so long Kelmomas had been her strongest, surest limb, and her heart had been its socket. Now that it had been wrenched from her frame, she could only fall back, bleeding.

Kelmomas... Her dear, sensitive, sweet...

"Your Glory!" Imhailas was calling. Somehow he had managed to catch her mid-swoon. "Your Glory—Please! You must believe me! Maithanet genuinely
does not know
where Kelmomas is... He lives, Your Glory—
he lives!
The only question is who? Who could have smuggled him out of the Palace? Who has hidden him?"

And so, because Imhailas was a dutiful soul, one of those servants who truly placed the desires of his masters before his own, he began listing all those who might have taken her son into their protection: the Exalt-Ministers, the body-slaves, the officers of the Army and the Guard. He had known his news would dismay her, so he had rehearsed his encouragements, his arguments against abject despair.

She recovered some measure of herself in the strength of his ardour, in the beauty of his earnest declarations. But she did not truly listen. Instead she thought of the Palace, of the labyrinth hidden within the Andiamine Heights' labyrinthine halls.

And it seemed a second mother to her... the subtleties of her Home.

Please keep him safe.

—|—

Dragging, huffing because grown-ups are so big. Mopping, scrubbing blood, because grown-ups become keen when one of them goes missing. Then dragging more, down into the dark where only memory could see.

Dropping, grinning as the dead knight plummeted down the well.

Then carving, cutting.

Biting, chewing—he must be quicker next time, so the meat does not grow so cool.

Chewing and chewing and crying...

Missing Mommy.

—|—

"So what are you saying?"

"We can trust this man, Your Glory. I am sure of it."

Esmenet sat, as had become their custom, on the settee with Imhailas cross-legged at her feet. Naree lay curled on her bed, watching them with a kind of envious disinterest. An oil lantern set upon the floor provided illumination, deepening the yellow of the walls, inking the grooves between the tiles, and throwing their bloated shadows across the far regions of the apartment.

"You're saying I should flee Momemn! And on a
slave ship
, no less!"

Imhailas became cautious, the way he always did when speaking around her wilder hopes.

"I'm not saying you
should
flee, Your Glory. I'm saying you have
no choice
."

"How can I hope to recover the Mantle if—?"

"You are imprisoned or dead?" the Exalt-Captain interrupted. She forgave him these small transgressions, not simply because she had no choice, but because she knew how sovereigns who censored their subordinates quickly became their own worst enemies. History had heaped their corpses high.

"Please..." Imhailas persisted. "Few know the ways of Empire better than you, Your Glory. Here, Maithanet's rule is absolute—but not so elsewhere! Many of the Great Factions clamour—fairly
half
the Empire teeters on the edge of open rebellion... You need only
seize
that half!"

She understood the force of his argument—not a day passed where she failed to inventory all those she thought she could trust. House Nersei, in particular, in Aöknyssus. Surely she could depend on Queen Miramis—Saubon's niece and Proyas's wife—to at least give her sanctuary, if not prosecute the interests of her family. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, it seemed she could hear the laughter of her children, Xinemus and Thaila, smell Conriya's saline winds...

"All you need do is find
some place safe
," her Exalt-Captain pressed. "Some place where you can plant your Standard and call on those who remain faithful. They
will
come to you, Your Glory. In their
thousands
they will come to you, lay their lives at your feet. Trust me,
please
, Your Glory! Maithanet fears this possibility more than all others!"

She stared at him, her eyes pinned open to avoid blinking tears.

"But..." she heard herself say in a small, pathetic voice.

Imhailas seemed to blink her tears for her. He looked down, and a part of her bubbled in panic. He knew that she had surrendered all want for power, that she had been truly defeated, not by Maithanet, but by the loss of her little boy...

To leave Momemn would be to leave Kelmomas—and that was something she could not do.

Yield another child.

—|—

The girl did it, Esmenet knew, as much to spite her as to win him.