The Great Ordeal (Aspect-Emperor #3)(34)
“How?” she asked. “How could it be possible?”
How could a mere man murder a D?nyain?
He pursed his lips in lieu of shrugging.
“I am but a vessel.”
And it pimpled her skin, this answer. Were she a caste-noble, she would have been oblivious. Only a soul reared in slums and gutters, a caste-menial or a slave, could understand the dread import of what he meant, for only such souls understood the horror of the Four-Horned Brother … Ajokli.
Only the most desperate turned to the Prince of Hate.
The Blessed Empress of the Three Seas signed a charm that only Sumni harlots would know. By happenstance a slave scurried between them bearing a shallow basket stacked with peaches. She plucked one from the man’s passage, whether to allay or to conceal her anxiety she did not know. “Catch,” she called, tossing it to the Narindar.
The man picked it from the sky. Then, closing both of his hands about it, he raised it above his open mouth and violently squeezed, so that he might drink its nectar directly, in the uncouth Shigeki manner.
Esmenet watched with a kind of appalled fascination.
“I want you to remain here in the palace,” she said as he lowered the pulped fruit. Sunlight limned the runnels of juice across his shaved chin.
At first she thought he looked at her, but then she realized that he looked beyond, as if spying something on the distant hills …
“With me,” the Blessed Empress of the Three Seas said, biting a pensive lower lip.
The man continued staring around her edges. Shouting rose up through the Imperial Audience Hall, fractured for the accumulation of echoes. At last they had found him, Caxes Anthirul, her Home Exalt-General, the man who had capitulated to Maithanet—who would have assured her doom, had the Whore been less generous.
The Narindar, Issiral, lowered his head in cryptic obeisance.
“I will consult my God,” he said.
Kelmomas breathed like a child asleep, lay motionless like one, his limbs akimbo above tangled sheets, his eyes shut in the slack manner of dreaming souls, but his ears were pricked to the mazed darkness, and his skin tingled, alive to the promise of her touch.
She stalked the apartments beyond, exhausted, he knew, yet restless with the alarums of her day. He heard her clasp the decanter on the Seolian side-board, the one stamped with the serpentine dragons that so fascinated him from time to time. He heard her sigh in gratitude—gratitude!—that the thing had been filled.
He heard the silken gurgle of a bowl deeply filled. The gasp between compulsive swallows.
He heard her staring out into vertigo, the wine-bowl clink to the floor.
Inwardly, he clucked for glee, imagining her acrid smell and her embrace, at first timid, then growing more fierce with the waxing of her desperation. He was clean, his skin scrubbed pink with cinnamon-scented soaps, then rinsed in dilute tinctures of myrrh and lavender. She would hold him, tighter and tighter, and then she would weep, for fear, for loss, but for gratitude far, far more. She would clutch him and sob, her lips pursed against any audible wail, and she would exult in the beatific glory of her living son … she would tremble and she would gloat and she would think, So long as I have him …
So long as I have him.
She would rejoice as she has never rejoiced, marvel at the miraculous deformity of her Fate. And as the excesses of her passion dwindled, she would hang numb and awake, listening to the enemy’s drums on the night air. She would comb his hair with absent fingers, assuming the solitary authority of all mothers abandoned by their husbands. She would muster the countless injustices she had suffered and she would lash them into a semblance of order. And she would plot ways to keep him safe, never knowing, never dreaming …
She would think herself heroic, not so much to reward efforts made as to goad efforts required. She would torture anyone who needed to be tortured. She would kill anyone who needed to be killed. She would be whatever her sweet little boy needed her to be …
Protector. Provider. Comforter.
Slave.
And he would lay besotted, breathe and breathe and breathe …
Pretend to sleep.
The Andiamine Heights clattered and hummed with subterranean industry, alive once again—resurrected. The Blessed Empress sauntered to the bedroom, drawing the long pins from her hair.
A fraction of her will be watching, his accursed brother whispered.
Silence!
Uncle Holy told her something.
Five golden kellics flashing in Naree’s dark palm.
Imhailas vanishing with the heat of his blood.
The Collegian sneering at the girl, saying, “And here’s a silver to remember her by …”
Esmenet could not blink without seeing these and other desperate things as she made her way up the marble stair. It made her dizzy thinking of the darkness of those days, mourning Inrilatas, fretting for Kelmomas and Thelli, fearing her brother, the Holy Shriah of the Thousand Temples. The soldiers had fled upon her appearance, leaving the wrought-iron camp lanterns they had placed for her benefit swaying like dowser sticks. Her shadows bobbed, angles splitting and combining as she climbed the steps. Hooves rained as hail across the street outside. Officers bawled at their formations. No one expected problems, but with the tumult of the days, she had decided to err on the side of precaution. Almost dying in one riot was enough.
Besides, it was important that she arrive as she was, Anas?rimbor Esmenet, the Blessed Empress of the Three Seas. She savoured the joy of the triumphant return, the petty jubilation of returning as master to a place where she had been a slave. The Empire climbed these stairs as much as she!