She stared at Jedda, unmoving. Her eyes were two wells of knowledge, terrifying and absolute. Nothing the Nurian acolyte had ever done or would ever do, no depths of shame were hidden to that gaze. It was as if she Saw and swept aside, forgave and forgot Jedda’s whole life in an instant. None of it really mattered; none of it could touch Samiha.
Trembling, Jedda backed away toward the trapdoor, almost falling over the top of the ladder. She hastily descended the rungs then the stairs beyond, not stopping until she reached the door at the foot of the tower. After fumbling an excruciating moment to fit the key into that lock, she burst out of the door and rushed to the railing that encircled the steep outcrop, leaning over it to breathe in lungfuls of air. She did not realise someone was on the Temple portico behind her until she heard a tuneless humming, and winced as her master’s familiar tones rasped out.
‘Looks like you’ve had a shock.’
Jedda shuddered, peering over her shoulder at the Envoy walking down a short flight of steps from the portico. So she had been Seen, after all. She did not know what was worse, the insinuations of her master or the knowing eyes of the Being in the tower. ‘It’s nothing,’ she mumbled as he approached, her heart pounding in her chest. ‘I ate something that disagreed with me.’
‘You should take better care of yourself,’ remarked Lace. He came to stand by her, placing an arm about her shoulder with a show of solicitude. ‘You’re valuable to us, you know.’
Jedda hunched under his touch. ‘Yes, sir.’
She attempted to slip away then, but Lace had a terrible strength. He drew her close to him, eyes half closed and canines bared in a ferocious grin.
‘What’s that perfume you’re wearing, my angel?’ he murmured, inhaling deeply. ‘So familiar. Reminds me of something … Ah yes: treachery.’ His grip on her shoulder tightened as he hissed in her ear. ‘The stench of it clings to you, acolyte. Let me make this abundantly clear: you are here on my sufferance alone. It is I who indulges you in all your little games. It is I who keeps Gowron on his leash and who allows Tymon to live, as a favour to you. Do not think I do not See into your heart. I know each and every fickle inch of it.’
Gloating, he turned her forcibly around to face him and reached out his finger to flip the orah pendant from under her collar. ‘Did you really think you could walk away from this?’ he breathed. ‘Did you think you could do without it? I own you completely. Stray but an inch and you will return to being no more than an Impure female, an interloper in the sanctum of the College. Understand?’
‘I — I understand,’ she stammered, shrinking back from him in horror.
He let go of her. ‘I deplore such disagreements,’ he declared. ‘Let’s put this behind us, shall we? So much to do, so little time.’
He turned away, humming again, and strolled back to the portico. Jedda clutched the railing and stared sightlessly at the cloistered students’ courtyard far below, her face as deathly white as a sheet of the Kion’s paper.
* * *
‘Samiha?’
A hopeful spark of light gleamed in the rope-aperture. Tymon peered through the opening, then placed his mouth next to it, whispering through the gap. ‘Samiha?’ he repeated.
Something heavy scraped across the floor of the room below and a shadow crossed the gap. Then, to his joy, she was there. A blur of shorn red locks appeared as her familiar voice breathed into the aperture.
‘Tymon? Is that you?’
‘It’s me,’ he said eagerly. ‘Thank goodness we can talk. I wanted you to know—’
‘Quick,’ she interrupted. ‘We haven’t got much time. Whatever you want to tell me, first take these.’
There was a noise of something scratching through the gap and the light winked out below. A moment later, several sheets of tightly rolled paper emerged through the aperture.
‘There’s more,’ Samiha whispered as he plucked out the roll. ‘About five lots. Just a minute.’
She pushed the sheaves of paper through the gap, wheezing with effort. It must have been a high ceiling, barely within her reach if she stood on tiptoe on an item of furniture. At last all the rolls were through and Tymon was left holding an astonishing quantity of paper of different sorts: a great deal of the straw-fibre variety from Marak, a few pieces of vellum, some rough sheets of beaten bark and a stack of beautifully smooth pulp paper from the seminary stores. Every sheet was filled with Samiha’s neat, flowing Argosian script. There was practically a book in his hands.
‘What’s this?’ he asked, before remembering that he had Seen her writing it, covering page upon page during the voyage back to Argos city.
‘Everything,’ she replied. ‘The whole story. Why I left Sheb. What happened in Marak. I wrote it down to explain. So you’d know why I’m going through with it.’
‘Through with what?’ he asked, his heart sinking.
‘I’m going to my execution tomorrow. You know that.’
‘That’s just what I came here to talk to you about. I — we had a plan to rescue you, Pallas and I, but it may not work out quite the way I’d hoped. Anyway, I wanted you to know that I’m still trying, and I’ll do my best—’
‘There’s no need,’ she interrupted again, though her voice was gentle. ‘I’ve made my peace with the old prophecy, Tymon.’
He heaved a sigh. ‘The prophecy exists, I’ll grant you that. I Saw it all laid out too, in a Reading. But I’ve also thought carefully about this. You can fulfil your destiny in Argos city without having to die. The Oracle agreed with me, by the way. The priests know about the first plan, but perhaps we can work out something else with a few of these Jay scaffolds …’
‘What makes you think they won’t predict that, too?’ she countered. ‘The Dean and his lot are expecting you to be busily dreaming up a way to save me. They’ll See each new plan, and stop you every time.’
She was right, he realised, frowning unhappily in the darkness.
‘Believe me, I’ve thought about it too,’ she said. ‘I have to go through with this. You’re right: destiny isn’t a given. But once you know how people work it becomes pretty obvious. Maybe after they get rid of me, they’ll finally listen to what I have to say.’
‘Is that what all this is about?’ he objected with rising frustration. ‘Making your point? You want to be some kind of saint everyone respects when they’re dead?’
‘It’s not just “my” point. It’s the only real issue of importance here.’
‘Which is what, Samiha? What’s so important that it’s worth throwing your life away for?’ His throat was tight: he had had this argument with her before, too many times.
‘Change,’ she whispered. ‘Everything changes. The priests have tried to keep things as they were, propped up a dead branch when it’s ready to fall. And believe me, that’s what causes all the harm in the world. The Tree of Being Grafters talk about — it’s no more or less than Change, glorious eternal Change, the will to grow and improve and become. But it’s also the ability to give way and die so that others have space. You can’t stop that process.’
He could have cried aloud in despair, faced with her philosophy at this juncture. She had always been eager to play the martyr. Now, perhaps because of her experiences in Marak or faced with her execution, all shades of grey were gone. She never doubted her credo for an instant. Even if the plan with the air-chariot had been fail-safe she would have resisted coming with him, he realised.
‘What about me?’ he ground out. He was glad she could not see him; furious tears pricked his eyes. ‘What about all the other people who love you and want you to live? Can’t you make your point without being a damned-to-root martyr, Samiha?’
‘That’s the world we live in,’ she replied sadly. ‘I don’t control the way the priests react. I can only use the opportunities I have. One very powerful opportunity is willing sacrifice.’
He bowed his head. This was it, then. He would lose her to the suicidal logic of asha. This was the true harm the prie
sts did, he thought bitterly. They drove people up against a wall, persecuted and bullied them until they felt they had no choice left.
‘There’s always a choice,’ she said, just as if she had heard him.
The echo of the Oracle’s words was infuriating to Tymon. ‘Then I suppose I came here for nothing,’ he snapped, and immediately regretted the outburst.
‘No, no, my love.’ Samiha’s answer was kind. ‘I’m very glad indeed you came here. Without you I’d never have a Witness. Half the story would be lost.’
‘You can have as many witnesses as you like,’ he mumbled, miserable. ‘The streets down there are crawling with them, whipping themselves raw with stupidity.’
‘The deaf and the blind and the dead,’ she said with quiet vehemence. ‘What use do I have for them? You are my one and only, Tymon. The rest of them look at me and see only what they want to see. They’ve been told to expect something and I fulfil it: Saint or Whore. Only you can truly understand me, because you won’t let anyone else decide what you’re looking at. You just see what there is. You See it.’
Her voice trembled with emotion. She approved of him, he realised, with slow surprise. Her words penetrated his cloud of despair and he remembered her dream.
‘You Saw all this coming,’ he said. ‘You told me about it, in Sheb.’
Even as he spoke, a light appeared twinkling on the tip of the buttress near the temple stairs, followed by another. Faraway figures held up torches, shouting and running toward the belltower. Somehow, either by sorcery or more prosaic means, his presence had been discovered. The visit was at an end.
‘Yes,’ came the soft reply, from below. She did not offer any further explanations.
‘Jedda told me something strange,’ he continued, bending close to whisper through the gap, though the lights were fast approaching. ‘She said you weren’t human. She said you were Born.’
‘You should go,’ urged Samiha. ‘You’ll be arrested if you don’t leave.’
‘Just tell me. Is it true? Is that why you See without being a Grafter?’
‘Tymon.’ He caught the gleam of her eye, blinking close to the bottom of the aperture. ‘I’m as human as you are. For the love of the Sap, get out of here. Leave the city; it doesn’t matter where you go, just save yourself and my story. Please.’
Her hand appeared, fingers stretched through the aperture toward him. A door at the base of the tower slammed and feet thudded up the interior stairs. And still he crouched on the enclave floor, trying to squeeze his own fingers into the gap to touch hers. A slew of voices burst into the room and Samiha’s hand was snatched away. Tymon stumbled back to the Jay scaffold, half blinded by tears and clutching the bundle of papers to his chest.
He was a few yards down the side of the tower, wobbling precariously on the little platform, when the trapdoor in the arched enclave burst open and torchlight glinted on the bells. There was a babble of voices as silhouettes peered over the edge of the building, and the whir of a javelin missed him by inches. Then feet clattered down the stairs inside the tower again. He realised he would never be able to descend all the way to the buttress before being apprehended from below, or skewered from above. There was only one thing left to do.
Taking a deep breath, he placed his hands on the wall and pushed himself as hard as he could away from the tower, into the open night. The floating scaffold wobbled away from the wall. He could see the door of the tower flung wide below and torchlight streaming onto the buttress as the men rushed out, barking orders. Javelins arced through the air, followed by the whine of arrows. One then another pierced the platform with a dull thump and a perilous lurch. He crouched low, out of their reach.
The scaffold held together. Tiny and unnavigable, it drifted over the city at the mercy of the wind while the guards’ torches spilled down the temple stairs in pursuit. The breeze blew Tymon swift and strong from the southwest across the first tier of the town; he realised he would be smashed into the trunk-wall like a dry leaf at this rate, and set to work releasing ether from the sacks. But the scaffold lost altitude too slowly, still drifting high above the buildings as the massive wall loomed close. Finally there was nothing for it but to risk the drop down to the rooftops. He stuffed Samiha’s papers into his belt and eased himself over the edge of the craft, holding on to the underside an instant before letting go.
He crashed down onto a steeply angled roof, lightwood tiles scattering as he slithered and rolled off the eaves, only to slam into another house a short distance beneath. This time, the incline was not so steep and he was able to arrest his movement before tumbling off the edge of the building. The scaffold hit the trunk wall with a dull crack, followed by the clatter of falling debris.
Tymon clung to the roof, breathless. He moved his limbs experimentally: all appeared to be in working order. There were no sounds of pursuit in the streets, though he guessed the guards would not be long in reaching him. He peered past his splayed legs to glimpse an alleyway three storeys below. Shivering with cold, he shuffled across the tiles to reach a gutter pipe he had seen running down the side of the building. He was able to swing himself onto it and make a precarious descent, inching hand over hand toward the alley. About halfway down, one of the braces on the hardwood tube came loose and he slithered the rest of the distance, twisting his right ankle awkwardly on impact. He bit off a groan and tested his weight on the foot: he could still walk. Above him, a window opened and the querulous voice of an old woman called upon the Divine Mother to condemn all cats to fire, death and dismemberment.
Far away, in the room at the top of the bell-tower, Samiha stood silent by her empty desk. The soldiers had come and gone in a whirl of noise and fury, locking all their doors behind them, their commotion extinguishing her candle. There was no sound in the little room, no other presence except the one that was always there beside her, in the darkness.
‘You lied to him,’ said Ash in astonishment.
29
Tymon limped down a cramped alley on the eastern borders of the town, breathing hard and nursing his sore ankle. He heard the sound of running feet and shouts echoing a few streets away and froze in the shadow of a building; when no one came his way, he hastened in the opposite direction to the sounds, down a side route to the air-harbour. As he neared the city gates, the going became easier. The streets were filled with revellers and he was able to slip through the crowd unnoticed. His pulse quickened as he approached the gate tunnel. The guards had evidently been placed on high alert, for two men stood with torches on either side of the tunnel, inspecting people as they passed.
Tymon wondered briefly how his enemies could have had the time to recognise him on the buttress as well as circulate a description to the city guard, then understood they had not needed to identify him at all. A description had already been furnished by the priests in advance, accompanied no doubt by a warrant for his arrest. He drew his cap low over his eyes and attached himself to a large group of young men in an attempt to pass the gate unnoticed.
It almost worked. He slipped by the nearest soldier on the right, keeping close to the laughing youths — apprentices from the Trade Guild, judging by the colour of their tunics. He was two-thirds of the way through the gate-tunnel when he heard a voice cry out behind him.
‘You with the cap! Halt!’
One of the guards was striding down the tunnel toward him, holding up his torch. Tymon pretended not to hear and shuffled on, his heart in his mouth. As soon as he was through the gates, he turned sharply to his left.
‘You! Brown tunic and cap!’
The call rang out, relentless. Tymon hobbled as fast as he could along the eastern boardwalk, making for the strings of coloured paper lanterns bobbing above the Jay vessels. The soldiers burst out of the gates behind him. One gave a shrill blast on a whistle. Tymon broke into a shambling run, grimacing as a sharp pain shot through his ankle. He pushed desperately through the sluggish throng near the theatre barges. Figures turned toward him, oddly juxtapos
ed: the well-dressed and unkempt, modestly veiled and brazenly painted all milled together on the quays. The green and red lanterns swung in the breeze, spilling a lurid, fitful light on the scene. Faces streaked with blood peered at Tymon with dull passivity, remnants of the witnesses’ orgies of repentance. He heard the far-off clanging of a gong.
Again and again the guard’s whistle blared. He gritted his teeth and quickened his pace, ignoring the ache in his ankle. The striped pavilion was visible over the heads of the crowd. He fixed his eyes on it, willing himself to go on, but he was too hurt, too slow to escape the soldiers. The whistle shrilled at his heels. The guards were almost upon him as he struggled up the ramp that led to the circus barge.
A Jay performer rose in front of him like a mirage, a crimson apparition on stilts. Tymon gazed up at the face behind the mask in a wordless plea for help and plunged headfirst between the stilts, aiming for the door of the pavilion. The red cloak dropped like a forgiving curtain behind him. The soldiers came up short, yelling in protest as the acrobat bent down with slow, theatrical flair to offer them three crimson tickets. He said no word, but would not let them pass, shaking his masked head in silent admonishment. Tymon belatedly identified the bright eyes of Anise beneath the mask before plunging into the dim and smoky atmosphere of the tent.
The scent of oil lamps stung his nostrils in the warm darkness. Illumination in the circus pavilion came from partially covered lanterns placed around the stage, glowing points about a sawdust ring. A drumbeat rolled out, slow and steady. The Jays’ evening performance had begun: on stage, dancers circled in a stately procession. As Tymon’s eyes adjusted to the low light he realised that the bleachers stretching in a long oval about the sides of the tent were packed with people. A quick scan of the benches did not reveal Pallas. Tymon had not had the chance to ask Samiha whether she thought the Nurian youth would regain his memory; he dreaded that the worst had happened, and Pallas had been apprehended at the warehouse, for the scout had not kept their appointment.
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