The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(156)

No less than one hundred souls perished during the ensuing vigil. Not a man among them knew what it was they were doing, only that it was proper—the thing demanded. The sun crawled down from its meridian, sank low enough to match the gaze of the wasted Cepaloran Chieftain-Prince. Incredulous, the Scalded watched as the dead that had rolled out to Sea began drifting back, funnelled into the river mouth even as those upstream continued bumping south. The tides were rising, the learned among them murmured. The tides that flooded the Nele?st with brine had stalled the effluence of the River Sursa, the way they had since time immemorial. The waters became cloudy and viscous with decay.

More and more dead Sranc were rolled from the deeps, clotting and tangling, forming a macabre plate that spanned the whole of the river mouth. Here and there a glimpse of hair shocked the lithe, porpoise tangle. Sibaw?l Vaka stepped upon the waterlogged carcasses. He lurched and stumbled like a toddler, but nevertheless began crossing the great and ghastly expanse, kicking loose clouds of midges and flies like so much sand from a river’s bottom.

Men wept for watching the dark miracle.

And followed.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN


Momemn


It is no accident, they say, that Men pray to the Gods and the dead both: far better silence than truth.

—AJENCIS, Theophysics

VI. The Game, as the reenacting of the whole as whole, is cruel to strangers. To lose the Game is to take loss as a lover.

—The Sixth Canto of the Abenjukala





Mid-Autumn, 20 New Imperial Year (4132, Year-of-the-Tusk), Momemn

The honour of awakening the Blessed Empress of the Three Seas fell to ancient Ngarau, the Grand Seneschal. His mother, however, dismissed the pouch-faced eunuch, electing to laze in bed with her darling little boy instead. And so he lay in her embrace feigning sleep, his back curled into the gentle furnace of her bosom, covertly watching the pastel colours climbing from the frescoes on the walls, the sheers glowing for the morning sun. It never ceased to astound him, the way his soul would bob and float in her embrace, a thing ethereal, tethered and safe.

She did not think herself a good mother, Kelmomas knew. She did not think herself a good anything, for that matter, so long and so chill were the shadows thrown by her past. But the terror of failing her damaged son (for how could he not be damaged, given the horrors he had suffered?) cut her to the quick like no other fear. The boy seized upon these maternal insecurities without fail, sometimes stoking, other times soothing, always exploiting. He would often complain of being hungry or lonely or sad, anything that might provoke her guilt and indulgence.

She was too weak to be a good mother, too distracted. They both knew that.

She could only lavish him with affection afterward … always afterward.

So regularly did he play the neglected child that it now took effort not to, and he had found himself caught on several occasions, needing to escape, yet playing on her guilt anyway, trusting that her duties would force her to abandon him all the same. But sometimes, her fear for her precious son was such that it blotted all other concerns. “Let nations burn,” she had once told him, her gaze unnerving for sudden ferocity. This was such a morning.

He needed to resume his surveillance of the Narindar, not because he still believed watching the Four-Horned Brother would keep him safe, but because he needed to see … just what he did not know.

The happening of what happened, he supposed.

In earlier days he would have simply demanded his freedom, uttered something wicked, something cutting, knowing that her shriek or her slap, when it came, would grant him license to do almost anything, be it flee, further injure, or feast upon the comic profundity of her remorse. Little boys were supposed to be pompous and hurtful. Something never failed to balk within her when he played the perfect son. This was Mimara’s great lesson ere he had finally driven her away: that the children most flawed were the children most loved.

But since Thelli had come to him with her threat, an aura of delicacy had poisoned everything he now said. He had become loathe to contradict her in the old way, fearing what might happen were his accursed sister to reveal his secrets. It would break Mother no matter what, learning that her beloved son was no different than her husband, that he too possessed the Strength she thought accursed and inhuman.

So now he played along with her spasms, making of them what he could. He lay soaking in her warmth and fussing adoration, dozing in amniotic serenity, the heat of two bodies clasped between the same silken folds. And yet, more and more it seemed he could feel the Four-Horned Brother abiding in the nethers below, like a rat scratching at the backside of his thought. She kissed his ear, whispered that it was morning. She lifted the hand she had clasped, drew it up for a better view. Mothers are prone to inspect their children with the same thoughtless propriety with which they inspect themselves. He at last turned his head toward her, wondered at the paleness of his skin between her brown hands.

“This is how you spend your days,” she murmured with faux disapproval, “a Prince-Imperial grubbing in the gardens …”

Suddenly he noticed the black crescents beneath his nails, the faint lines of ingrained dirt. Why her observation should trouble him he did not know. He regularly smeared himself with soil to convince her of this very thing.

“I have fun, Momma.”

“You are indulged …” her voice began, only to trail into vapour, the papyrus whisk of the shears in the still-warm Meneanor breeze. She bolted upright, calling out for her body-slaves.