Any warmth she showed him would simply remind others of his humiliation. His disgrace as a cuckold.
Five days out of Caraskand, after the slaves had hoisted and furnished the great pavilion, Achamian withdrew to his chambers so he might change into his evening attire, and there she was, standing in the canvas gloom, waiting for him, dressed in a panelled robe of gold and black, her hair bound in a Girgashi headdress. “Achamian,” she said, not “Akka.”
He struggled with his composure, beat down the desire to sweep her into his arms.
To his dismay, she spoke only on matters regarding the security of Kellhus’s person. He half expected her to cite the articles of his service, as though she were an empress and he a foreign counsel on indenture. Achamian found himself playing along, answering her questions concisely, astonished at the absurdity of their new circumstance, impressed by the rigour and insight of her interrogation.
And proud … so very proud of her.
You’ve always been my better.
Where others were simply walls to him, Esmenet was an ancient city, a maze of little streets and squares, where once he had made his home. He knew her hospices and her barracks, her towers and her cisterns. No matter where he wandered, he always knew that this direction led here and that direction there. He was never lost, though outside her gates all the world might confound him.
He knew the habit of lovers, their inclination to make scripture out of self-deception. There was little difference, he had often thought, between the devotional verse of Protathis and the graffiti that marred the bath-house walls. Love was never so simple as the marks with which it was written. Why else would the terror of loss come upon lovers so often? Why else would so many insist on calling love pure or simple?
What he and Esmenet had shared had been inexplicable, as was what she shared with Kellhus now. Achamian would often overlook the innumerable horrors she had endured. The death of her daughter, Mimara. The hungry seasons. The anger in all the faces grimacing over her. The bruises. The danger. With the exception of Mimara, she would speak of these things with dismissive humour—something that Achamian, for his part, had encouraged. How could he bear her burdens when he could scarce bear his own? The honesty would come later, in the way she squeezed his fingers, or in the momentary terror that flickered through her gaze.
He knew this, and yet he said nothing. He shrank from the work of understanding. He put his trust in the inexplicable. I failed her, he realized.
Small wonder she’d failed him in turn. Small wonder she had … succumbed to Kellhus.
Kellhus … These were the most selfish—and therefore the most painful—thoughts.
Esmenet had loved joking about cocks. She marvelled at the way men fussed over them, cursing, congratulating, beseeching, coaxing, commanding, even threatening them. Once she told Achamian about a deranged priest who had actually held a knife to his member, hissing, “You must listen!” After that, she said, she understood that men, far more than women, were other to themselves. He had asked her about the temple prostitutes of Gierra, who believed that despite the hundreds of men who used them, they coupled with only one, Hotos, the Priapic God. She laughed, saying, “No deity could be so inconsistent.”
Achamian had been horrified.
Women were windows through which men could peer into other men. They were the unguarded gate, the point of contact for deeper, more defenceless selves. And there had been times, Achamian could now admit, when he feared the raucous crowd that scrutinized him through her almost guileless eyes. All that had consoled him was the fact that he was the last to bed her, would always be the last.
And now she was with Kellhus.
Why was this thought so unbearable? Why did it cramp his heart so?
Some nights he would lie awake and remind himself, over and over, of just who it was that Esmenet had chosen. Kellhus was the Warrior-Prophet. Before long he would demand sacrifices of all men. He would demand lives, not just lovers. And if he took, then he gave as well—such gifts! Achamian had lost Esmenet, but he had gained his soul. Had he not?
Had he not?
Other nights Achamian would toss to and fro, silently howl with jealousy, knowing that she gasped and bucked upon him, that he used her in ways Achamian never could. Her climax would ring higher. Her limbs would tingle longer. And afterward she would make jokes about sorcerers and their stubby little cocks. What was she thinking, rolling with a fat old fool like Drusas Achamian?
But most of the time he simply lay still in the darkness, smelling the extinguished candles and censers, longing for her as he’d never longed for anyone or anything. If only he could hold her, he would tell himself, recounting recent glimpses of her the way the greed-stricken might count coins. If only he could hold her one last time, she would see, would she not? She had to see!
Please, Esmi …
One night, lying exhausted after the Holy War’s first march into the Xerashi plains, Achamian was struck numb by thoughts of her unborn child. He ceased breathing, understanding that this, more than anything else, was the measure of the difference between her love for him and her love for Kellhus. She had never surrendered her whore’s shell for Achamian. She had never even mentioned the possibility of children.
But then, he realized with a tear-blinking smile, neither had he.
With this recognition, something either broke or mended within him; he could not tell which. The following morning he sat at one of the slave fires, watching two nameless girls tear up stalks of mint for tea. For a time he stared in a blinking stupor, still awakening. Then he looked past them, where he saw Esmenet standing in the near distance with two Nascenti in the shadow of dark horses. She caught his eyes, and this time, rather than nod without expression or simply look away, she smiled a shy and dazzling smile. And somehow he just knew …
Her gates had been closed. She was a direction his heart could no longer go.
Memories of that other fire …
They came to Achamian as an affliction now. Esmenet leaning against him in laughter. Serwë clapping her hands in delight, her face beaming innocence. Xinemus with his eyes. Kellhus saying, “I was scared!”
“You were scared? Of a horse?”
“The thing was drunk. And it was looking at me! You know … the way Zin looks at his mare.”
“What?”
“Like something to be ridden …”
How they had loved teasing Kellhus! What joy they’d found in his feigned frailties! And that was the least of what they had lost.
That other fire. So different from this one, with its silk and awkward misery. Now they reclined with ghosts.
Achamian had come to Proyas’s pavilion out of boredom more than anything else. He could tell from the Kianene body-slave’s reaction that all was not right with his presence, but he’d been drinking, and he felt belligerent. The idea of annoying another struck him as justice.
The gold-chased streamers were drawn aside. He saw Proyas, dressed in a robe more appropriate to convalescence than to entertaining, sitting before a small iron-grilled fire-pot. Xinemus sat to his left, and a woman sat across from him.
Esmenet.
“Akka,” Proyas said with a nervous and telling glance at the Consort. His face was drawn. After a moment’s hesitation he said, “Come in. Please join us.”
“I apologize. I’d hoped to find you alo—”
“He said ‘come in’!” Xinemus barked with that antagonistic good nature only inveterate drunks could master. He had his profile turned to the air, as though he aimed his left ear.
“Yes,” Esmi said.
Her voice sounded forced, but her eyes looked sincere. It was only as Achamian drew up a reluctant pillow that he realized she’d spoken more out of pity for Xinemus than out of any real desire for his company. He was such a fool.
She, on the other hand, looked a breathtaking beauty. It almost galled him to glance at her, not only because all men secretly rank the relative beauties of women they’ve los
t, but because she had been but a lovely weed when she was with him, and now she seemed an astonishing flower. Pearls on silver strings. Hair like shining jet, fixed high on her head with two silver pins. A gown with a shimmering print. Dark and troubled eyes.
The body-slave busied himself collecting spent bowls and plates. Both Proyas and Esmenet paid the man extravagant attention. Everyone seemed stricken, with the exception of Xinemus, who gnawed meat from sawed ribs—pork stewed in some kind of sweet bean sauce. It smelled delicious.
“How are the lessons?” Proyas asked, as though just recalling his manners.
“Lessons?” Achamian repeated.
“Yes, with …” He shrugged, as if unsure of their old ways of referring. “With Kellhus.”
Simply speaking the name had become something like twisting a tourniquet.
Achamian brushed at his knees, even though he could see nothing that blemished them. “Good.” He did his best to sound lighthearted. “If I somehow live to write a book about these days, I’ll call it On the Varieties of Awe.”
“You stole my title!” Xinemus exclaimed, reaching out to fumble for some more wine. Proyas quickly intervened, pouring a deep bowl for him, smiling despite the brittle exasperation in his eyes.
“Why?” Esmenet asked. Achamian winced at the sharpness of her tone. Blind as he was, Xinemus saw slight everywhere. He had become worse than the Scylvendi. “What’s your title, Zin?”
Xinemus slurped some wine, then in his classic deadpan muttered, “On the Varieties of Ass.”
They howled with laughter.
Achamian looked from face to beaming face, pressing away tears with his thumb. Memories flooded him. For a moment it seemed that Esmi need only reach out and clasp his hand, press the pad of her thumb against the nail of his own, and everything would be undone. Everything that had happened since Shigek.
All of them are here … all the people I love.
“My sense of smell!” Xinemus protested. “I’m telling you, my sense of smell reaches farther than my eyes ever did! Into the deepest of cracks … You, Proyas, you think you ate mutton last night …” He looked to empty spaces, grimacing. “But it was really goat.”
Esmenet rolled back on her cushions, chortling, kicking her small feet. Xinemus swung his head toward the sound of her laughter. He wagged a knowing finger, which he then brought to his nose. “There’s beauty—so much beauty—in what we see,” he said with mock eloquence. “But there’s truth in what we smell.”
Their laughter became brittle then, suddenly keen to a dangerous shift in his manner. In a moment it trailed away altogether.
“Truth!” Xinemus cried with savagery. “The world stinks of it!” He made as though to stand up, but rolled back onto his rump instead. “I can smell all of you,” he said, as if in answer to their shocked silence. “I can smell that Akka’s afraid. I can smell that Proyas grieves. I can smell that Esmi wants to fuck—”
“Enough!” Achamian cried. “What’s this madness? Zin … who’s this fool you’ve become?”
The Marshal laughed, possessed of a sudden, improbable lucidity. “I’m the same man you knew, Akka.” He shrugged in a drunk’s exaggerated manner, holding his palms out. “Just minus my eyes.”
Achamian fairly gaped. How had it come to this? Zin …
“My world,” Xinemus drawled on, smirking in a lurid approximation of good humour, “has been shorn in half. Before, I lived with men. Now, I dwell with asses.”
No one laughed.
Achamian found himself standing, thanking Proyas for his hospitality. The Conriyan Prince sat as one broken, silent as the grave. Despite his fluster, Achamian understood that the Prince had made Xinemus his punishment. By overturning all the old reasons, Kellhus had rewritten the regrets of many, many men.
Xinemus coughed, and Achamian saw Esmenet start at the sound. More than foul humours ailed the Marshal. He seemed worse every time Achamian saw him.
“Yes,” Xinemus said, “by all means, flee, Akka.” His sneer seemed hale despite his pallor.
“I’ll return with you,” Esmenet said to Achamian, who could only nod and swallow.
What’s happened to us?
“Be sure to ask her,” Xinemus growled as they hurried to the threshold, “why she’s fucking Kellhus.”
“Zin!” Proyas cried, more in terror than anger.
His thoughts buzzing, his face burning, Achamian turned to his former study, but in his periphery he could see that Esmenet had turned to him, blinking tears. Esmi …
“What?” Xinemus laughed with mock good humour. “Is the blind man the only one who can see? Do the ancient tropes so rule us?”
“Whatever it is you suffer,” Proyas said evenly, “I will endure its course—I’ve sworn this to you, Zin. But I’ll tolerate no blasphemy. Do you understand?”
“Ah, yes, Proyas the Judge.” The Marshal leaned back into his drink and cushions. When he continued, it was with a strange, dislocated voice—one that had discarded hope. “So he bade Horomon,” he quoted, “to offer his cheeks into his hands, saying to the others, ‘This man, who has put out the eyes of his enemy, the God has struck blind.’ Then he spit once into each socket and said, ‘This man, who has sinned, I have made clean.’ And Horomon cried out in wonder, for he had been sightless, and now he could see.”
He quoted The Tractate, Achamian realized, the famed passage where Inri Sejenus restored the sight of a notorious Xerashi criminal. For many Inrithi, “seeing with Horomon’s eyes” was synonymous with “revelation.”
Xinemus turned from Proyas to Achamian, as though from a lesser to a greater enemy. “He cannot heal, Akka. The Warrior-Prophet … He cannot heal.”
Achamian had hoped the air outside Proyas’s pavilion would be free of the cramped smells and madnesses of the air within. It was not. The sky was clear, though not as sharp as the arid nights of Shigek. A haze of smoke, bitter with the scent of wet wood, washed across the deserted clearing, as did a scattered chorus of nearby voices—Conriyans drinking about their fires. He looked to Esmenet, grinning as though in relief. But she was staring at the shadows. In a tent somewhere nearby, someone was muttering with the concentrated rage of a drunk.
He cannot heal, Akka.
Neither of them uttered a word as they walked side by side through the dark lanes. The various tents and pavilions loomed out of the darkness. The fires glared. His left hand tingled with memories of holding her right. He cursed himself for the longing that filled him. How could he walk in the midst of so much dread wonder and yet feel only the tug of her? The world clamoured, encircled him with a thousand dire claims, and yet he could listen only to her silence. I walk, he reminded himself, in the shadow of the Apocalypse.
“Zin,” Esmenet abruptly said. She spoke hesitantly, as though after a long and inconclusive reverie. “What’s happened to him?”
Achamian’s heart leapt, so violently he found himself dumbstruck. He had resolved himself to silence. To walk with her alone in the dark was torment enough—but to speak?
He looked to his sandalled feet.
“You think the question stupid?” Esmenet snapped. “You think—”
“No, Esmi.”
There had been too much honesty in the way he spoke her name—too much pain.
“You … you’ve no idea what Kellhus has shown me,” she said. “I too was Horomon, and now—the world that I see, Akka! The world that I see! The woman you knew, the woman you loved … you must know, that woman was—”
He couldn’t bear these words, so he interrupted. “Zin lost more than his eyes in Iothiah.”
Four silent steps in the dark.
“What do you mean?”
“The Cants of Compulsion, they … they …” His voice trailed.
“If I’m to be Master of Spies, I need to know these things, Akka.”
Esmenet was right—she did need to know these things. But she pressed the issue, Achamian knew, for far different reasons. The estranged always resorted to ta
lk of third parties. It was the most convenient course between insincere pleasantries and dangerous truths.
“The Cants of Compulsion,” Achamian continued, “are misnamed. They’re not, as many seem to think, ‘torments of the soul,′ as though our soul were some kind of miniature thing, something vulnerable to sorcerous instruments the way the body is to physical. The Compulsions are different. Our soul is different …”
She studied his profile, but looked away when he dared glance at her. “Souls compelled,” he continued, “are souls possessed.”
“What are you saying?”
Achamian cleared his throat. She had spoken as one accustomed to cutting through the verbal dross of underlings. “They used him against me, Esmi. The Scarlet Spires …” He blinked, saw the Hundred Pillars Guardsman gouge out Iyokus’s eyes. “They used him against me.”
They had passed near a crowded bonfire. He could see her face in the intermittent firelight. Her look narrowed, but in the careful way of those sceptical of someone they pity.
She thinks me weak.
He stopped, glared at her impossibly grand aspect. “You think I fish for sympathy.”
“Then what’s your point?”
He beat down the anger that welled through him. “The great paradox of the Compulsions is that their victims in no way feel compelled. Zin sincerely meant everything he said to me, he chose to say them, even though others spoke the words.”
Whenever Achamian had explained this in the past, the questions and challenges had been immediate. How could such a thing be possible? How could men take compulsion for choice?
Esmenet asked only, “What did he say?”
He shook his head, graced her with a false smile. “The Scarlet Spires … Trust me, they know which words wield the sharpest edges.”
The Thousandfold Thought Page 18
