The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(107)
On this occasion he left the regimented grid of the Apparatory and passed into the chaos of the Lower Palace, into the stores, one of the few places where the network of secret tunnels did not go. The panicked Prince-Imperial found himself stranded at an intersection of hallways, watching the Narindar recede into obscurity, becoming no more than a dimming succession of glimpses in the intermittent lantern-light.
Then, as he strode upon the very limit of visibility, Kelmomas thought he saw him step sideways, vanish into an alcove of some kind. The boy lay at the grill for some time, peering to no avail and debating what he should do. After weeks of shadowing the man with no problem, what did it mean to lose him here and now?
Was this how it happened?
He’s known all along! Samarmas cried. I told you!
Was this how Grinning Ajokli would avenge his sacrilege?
I told you!
Was this how everything had already happened?
He lay shaking in terror, all but immobilized when the great train of bearers—caste-menials by the look of them—began filing immediately below him, talking in hushed murmurs, huffing for the great baskets of apples they bore upon their shoulders. The smell filled the deep halls, crisp and sour. Nothing shouted the impotence of the Fanim and their siege more loudly than the streams of soldiers and provisions arriving by sea. They laboured past, dim, dark Men, bearing apples as swollen as Mother’s lips, crimson unto purple and green. The gossamer hairs across the boy’s body fixed him as surely as nails. He lay watching the head of the train climb the hallway toward the alcove where the assassin lay hidden. But the flotilla of intervening baskets obscured the lead bearer, leaving only the absence of turmoil to indicate that the Narindar merely observed the same as he. The passage of so many bodies had whipped the lanterns into momentary brilliance, and so Kelmomas clearly saw the last man pass the point where he thought the assassin lay concealed. The bearer toiled on unaware and unmolested, save that he stumbled, and sent an apple from his basket. The fruit hung waxen red and green for a moment, before spinning to the floor and kicking back down the corridor, gleaming as it bounced.
A hand reached out and snatched it.
And the Narindar was striding back the way he came, glowering into emptiness, taking vacant bites of the apple as he approached. The white of the apple’s flesh bobbed overbright in the murk. Kelmomas lay as stiff as a dead cat. He did not breathe for the entirety of the assassin’s transit.
Only at that moment did he truly understand the dread proportion of his circumstance.
Everything has already happened …
The young Prince-Imperial took to hand-wringing in his mother’s chambers that night. Even Mother, for all her preoccupation, glimpsed his agitation through the veneer he typically wore to court her adoration.
“There’s no cause to fear,” she said, sitting next to him on the bed, cupping his cheek and pulling his head to her bosom. “I told you, remember? I killed their Waterbearer. Me!”
Hands on either shoulder, she pressed him back to display her marvelling smile.
“Your mother killed the Last Cishaurim!”
She had wanted him to clap his hands and cheer, and perhaps he would have, were it not for the swollen urge to chew out her tongue …
There was so much he had to teach her!
“Now they have no hope of overcoming our walls, Sweetling. We grow fat, fed by the sea, while the whole Empire rallies across the Three Seas! Fanayal. Was. A. Great. Fool. He thought he would reveal our weakness, but in sooth he has only shown the savages who would rule in our stead!”
Kelmomas had heard it all before of course, how Father, for all the demands he made of the provinces, “smashed no idols.” But the boy had never considered the Fanim an actual threat. If anything he had come to see them as allies in his war against his sister—and imbecilic ones at that. The only fear they instilled was the fear they would simply melt away, for the day they decamped was also the day his hag-cunt-sister would betray him—Thelli! Even if Mother refused to believe her at first, sooner or later she would. Despite her peculiarities, despite her inability to emote, let alone love, Theliopa was the one soul Mother trusted above all others.
Kelmomas could feel his body retreat into a weeping cage for pondering the consequences. It was too much … too much …
Necessity impaled him. Necessity piled upon mad necessity.
Never, it seemed, not even in the darkest of the dark cannibal days following Uncle Holy’s coup, had he been so oppressed, so maliciously and monstrously abused. Even Mother had become an affliction! Taking Thelli’s word over his! Over his!
There was so much Father had failed to teach her. There was so much she had yet to learn.
The Postern Terrace deserted, Esmenet leaned against the balustrade, her eyes closed to the evening glare, her face alive to the mellow heat. The last of her Exalt-Ministers and their Apparati had dissolved into the solution of the city. Ngarau, perhaps sensing her humour, had withdrawn with all the slaves in tow. She had even kicked off her slippers so she might savour the dwindling of day through the soles of her bare feet. Only her Inchausti remained, discrete and motionless sentinels, men who would die, as Caxes Anthirul had died, to keep her safe.
And it seemed miraculous what she had accomplished …
Would that she understood any of it.
Rehearsing events, she had found, simply made them more baffling. But word of these atrocities and miracles—overthrowing Maithanet, killing the Last Cishaurim—had spread, sparking an even more profound wonder. The minstrels were singing of her, the caste-menials had shrugged away the Yatwerian foment and were claiming her as their own. Zaudunyani across the Three Seas now made her their example, testimony of the divinity of their cause. Pamphlets were distributed. Numberless bless-tablets were stamped and fired with her name. She became Esmenet’arumot, Esmenet-unbroken … Mother of the Empire.