“It’s all right,” Tevin said, rising. His voice shook. “I didn’t mean to say all that.”
“Are you drunk?”
“No. Well, maybe a little. Wait.”
They didn’t speak again until a servant had come and gone, the glass in a pail and the floor wiped clean. Then Tevin said, “His next move will be to use us against each other. Be watchful for that. It will come in some way neither of us expects.”
“You have a hold on Goran if you need it. Do you have one on Doru?”
“No. He’s considerably slipperier.”
“Discredit him,” Esvar said. “Whisper in Karolje’s ear that he should have put down the resistance entirely by now. Let the king brood upon Doru’s failures. I’ll grant you that Karolje’s sane, but I think he’s breaking.”
Tevin considered it for longer than Esvar expected. “You’ll bear some risk,” he said at last. “Since you’re responsible for the raids, Doru can spin your own actions back at him and blame you for the failures. Or aim downward, at your soldiers.”
“I’ll chance it. He’s dying, Tevin, your way needs to be clear. Don’t worry about me.”
“I won’t, if you don’t go rogue,” Tevin said without heat.
“I won’t,” Esvar promised. Then he thought of Anza Istvili, who was in the resistance, and knew he might be lying.
ATTENDANCE AT THE execution of the arsonists could not be entirely compelled—there was not enough space in Temple Square, large as it was, for all the residents of the city, for one thing—but Anza and Radd worked much too visibly not to go. A little before midday they left his office. On their way to the square, they passed soldiers going in the other direction, ready to search shops and offices for people who had hung back.
On an ordinary day, vendors on the perimeter of the square offered religious charms: amulets with the signs of the gods, special candles and herbs and oils for offerings, prayer stones, and holy scrolls. The public scribes were there too, and untrustworthy apothecaries. All of them had been removed. Soldiers lined the square and stood with bows at the ready on the upper balconies of the nearby buildings. The priests would watch from the Temple steps, ready to receive the spirits of the condemned.
Anza and Radd took a place on the Temple side of the square, next to a row of ancient mulberry trees that provided some shade. The heat of the day was already intense. The pyre must have been prepared the night before. It was one long pyre with separate posts and chains for the victims, raised a few feet above the ground. Fitting for arsonists, but so cruel. Soldiers with unsheathed swords held the crowds back from all sides of the pyre. The Vetian flags, dark blue with the silver wolf’s head of the house of Kazdjan on them, were limp and motionless in the heat.
People talked, but in low voices. This sort of public execution had stopped being entertainment a long time ago. One never knew who would be next. The harpies were gathering in the trees and on the rooftops. From the walled Temple garden behind Anza, honeysuckle released its scent. Fallen and trampled mulberries had attracted wasps. The insects’ wings moved up and down as they sucked.
If she looked over her shoulder, she would see only the Temple, a large ancient building with its gilded dome shining in the sun and its tall bell tower obscuring the Citadel. It was no protection. Mirantha had not turned to the Temple for sanctuary, not even after her priestly lover was killed.
Esvar was up there in the Citadel, biding his own time. They weren’t done with each other, he and she, but Anza had no idea what to do next.
Radd said, startling her, “As soon as people are allowed to leave the city again, I want you to go to my family in Osk. I’ll come as soon as I can after that. We can start over there. It’s closer to your family, too.”
“You’ve taken care of me more than enough,” Anza said. “I can’t leave now.”
“Why not? Now that you have left Rumil, what other obligations do you have?”
She wanted to tell him everything, starting with her father’s death. Tell him about that, and the resistance, and Sparrow, and the prince. Tell him about the queen’s journal. She said, “My friends are here. Mid-country isn’t home anymore. If it gets dangerous, I’ll leave.”
He gestured at the pyre, the soldiers. “It’s dangerous now.”
“I have to stay. I can’t tell you why.”
That brought his head around sharply. He said, “I’m not going to pry into your secrets, Anza, but are they worth your life?”
Jance would say no. So would Esvar. Would he? He had not tried to talk her into leaving, even when he mentioned war. He left her to assume her own risks. Or perhaps she didn’t matter to him and he had forgotten about her entirely by now.
She remembered Irini’s face when talking of Velyana. River’s firm voice as he corrected her stance. “They aren’t my secrets,” she said.
“Be careful about that. When someone gives you a secret, it can be a trap, even if it’s not meant that way. If you had to climb down a cliff and this person held the other end of the rope, would you go over?”
“Yes,” she said at once, thinking of Sparrow. And Esvar too, for that matter. She had gone into her father’s house with him, alone, and emerged again. “I already have.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “All right. I know better than to argue with someone your age in a passion. But you have good sense and generally good judgment. I would not have kept you with me if you didn’t. For the gods’ sakes, don’t throw those to the wind. Karolje won’t live forever, and we need strong people after he dies.”
They were standing close to each other, voices soft and drowned out to observers by the other noises around them: conversation, soldiers’ feet, the faint stir of leaves in the breeze. She said, “What kind of a king will Tevin be?”
“That will depend on what he has to do to get and keep power. Now we’ve talked enough. Save your other questions for my office.”
It’s not safe, it’s not safe. The thought pounded through her, driving in a sharp nail of fear. She wanted Esvar to leap onto the stand and proclaim his brother king. She wanted the crowd to turn on the soldiers. She wanted a bow in her own hands. The world was on the edge of terrible change, and there was nothing she could do.
* * *
They waited for at least an hour before the prisoners were brought out. Two men, one woman, all blindfolded. The men were both Tazekhs by their dress and untrimmed beards. Anza shuddered. An example. The crowd would be frightened and turn its fear on the Tazekhs in the city, while the act sent a covert message to the resistance: every act you do I will counter with the death of innocents. Sparrow had anticipated this. Anza thought bleakly that Karolje could twist anything to his advantage.
Guards chained the prisoners to the posts, their backs toward her. Radd’s hand came to her shoulder. A chant arose. Burn the Tazekhs, burn the Tazekhs. The soldier nearest to Anza had a frighteningly eager face. Burn the Tazekhs. The chant wanted to suck Anza into it. Clapping began, rhythmic and relentless.
A horn blew, echoing around the square. The chant died raggedly out. Scroll in hand, a man dressed as a commander ascended the stand beside the pyre. He unrolled the scroll and read. The words did not carry as far as Anza’s ear, but she knew what they were. The charges, the names, the sentences. Lies.
He rerolled the scroll and raised his fist. As soon as he brought it down, other soldiers would approach with the lit torches and toss them on the oil-soaked kindling. The posts and chains would conduct the heat and burn the prisoners’ skin before the flames did.
The paper fell from his hand as he staggered. Something long and black protruded from his chest. Another arrow shot into his neck. He fell. Screams and shouts broke out. Her eyes followed the path of the arrows to a balcony where several soldiers were struggling with each other.
“Run,” Radd said sharply. “They can’t kill everyone. Go east. By the time you reach the street, the soldiers will be in the crowd. Go.” He pushed her.
She was pressed
between the crowd and the wall. The crowd was moving. She started running. She heard screams. She was shoved hard against the Temple wall. Run. Everything was heat and panic. No smoke yet. An elbow in her side, a foot coming down hard on hers, the scrape of her arm against tree bark. The furious hum of wasps an undertone to the shouts. If she fell, she would be trampled.
Another scream, much closer, and the crowd turned, pushed her backward. More screams. Soldiers nearby.
A column of fire erupted, violet-white at the core, and a wave of heat blasted against her. The crackle of wood. Something sharp struck her on the arm. A thunderous noise took her hearing. She stumbled and fell, the last sight in her eyes a soldier with a raised and bloody sword in a silent and slow world.
* * *
The sun was painfully bright. She turned her head and saw a bandage on her arm. She had enough strength to put her uninjured right arm over her eyes, to block out the light. She lay, hardly thinking. Around her she heard pain and grief and some stronger voices, commanding. She heard the word water. Her mouth was dry and her body was a mass of pain. The ground vibrated a little as someone walked by. She smelled clean grass and burned flesh and bitter salves all at the same time.
She slipped in and out of consciousness. Time had no meaning.
* * *
A voice, calling her name. Familiar.
She lifted her head. She lay in early evening shadow on a folded cloak on the ground. A man squatted beside her. A soldier. He was familiar. She could not remember why. Not Jance. Her mind felt clotted.
“Anza Istvili?” he said.
At the tone, a memory snapped into place. He wants to see her. Now. Esvar’s captain. She did not know his name. “To the prince,” she mumbled. Her tongue was thick and cumbersome.
“Yes,” he said. “Good.”
“Radd, what about Radd?” She tried to sit, but he pushed her gently down. Full memory of what had happened was coming back.
“Wait. You’ve been hurt. Lie still. I’ll bring you a drink.”
She waited, staring at the sky. A flock of starlings swooped blackly against the blue. Her eyes watered from smoke, and dull pain throbbed in her left arm.
Footsteps. The captain put an arm under her shoulders and raised her to a sitting position, offered her a flask. The water was sweet and cool and reviving.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
His dark eyebrows went up. He said, “Orders. I’ve been here for hours. It’s chance I happened to see you. How much pain are you in?”
“Everything hurts.” Each movement made her wince, but none of the pain was the pain of a broken bone. “It’s not too bad. What happened to my arm?”
“A cut, the doctor said. He was worried about your head.”
She felt. A lump on the back of her skull was tender and sore to the touch but not bloody. “I’ll be all right.”
“Let’s see what happens if you get up.” He reclaimed the flask and helped her to her feet. She was briefly faint, then steadied.
She was in the Temple public garden, not far from a wall. A flock of harpies was gathered, waiting. Several soldiers stood alertly. The covered shapes of the dead lay everywhere, too many to count. Two men were walking among the wounded. It looks like a battlefield, she thought.
“I want to see Radd,” she said. He would not have left her. “Where is he?”
“The gravely wounded are in the Temple,” the captain said.
Oh gods, if he died, if he died… Light lay golden on the grass. Their shadows were long. She caught a faint scent of honeysuckle. The sounds of people in pain intruded on the peacefulness.
Ten narrow steps led up to the Temple’s garden entrance. Oil lamps burned at the bottom and top steps. Stone figures in demonish shapes, streaked green with moss where rainwater spilled out of their grinning mouths, loomed from the roof. Inside, torches cast parts of the room into shadow and illuminated others. Tiled on the surface of the high dome was an angel with a raised sword, standing with one foot on a demon’s stomach. Patches of dirt-encrusted tiles on the walls and ceiling showed gold and blue and red against the dull stone. Carved faces stared down from the walls and pillars, faces with wings behind them. The building was enormous, and old, and patient.
Columns formed an arcade along three walls, sheltering the wounded. Radd was halfway along the western side. He lay unconscious, a blood-soaked bandage where his eye and cheek had been and a swelling black bruise over his stomach. He wouldn’t live the night. Anza went to her knees beside him and picked up his wrist. His pulse was faint and unsteady. The movement of his breath was barely visible. She touched the bruise and felt the pressure of the blood pooling underneath the skin.
No, she thought, no. It wasn’t fair. Her throat ached.
She sat with him until he died. It might have been an hour.
Two years ago she had knocked on Radd’s door with a letter from Master Tinas. He had taken it and read silently in that way he had, then shown her into the next room and to her desk. He had paid her and taught her and respected her, and now he was gone.
She leaned against the wall, her face pressed into her forearm. The gloom of the Temple enveloped her, the old smells of stone and incense, the hundreds upon hundreds of people who had trod the floor and prayed. Grief was a cloak, thick and sheltering, protecting from the ever-watchful eyes of the god. From the wingbeats of the Messenger.
After a few moments, she drew herself up and called over the nearest priest. She hastily made burial arrangements, then went in search of the captain.
He was talking to a priest. She waited until he broke off. “I need to talk to you,” she said.
The captain said, “What about? I’ll give you an escort home. You’re in no danger. From anyone.” He put a slight emphasis on the last word.
“And when I’m home, then what? Soldiers outside my door to watch me?”
“Excuse us, please,” he said to the priest. He escorted her to a shadowed alcove and said harshly, “Don’t waste my time, girl. The prince wanted to meet you once. That doesn’t give you any claim on me. Do you want an escort home or do you want to spend the night here?”
“I want to see Esvar.”
“Why?”
Why? was better than many other responses. She had no good answer to the question, though. She wanted to rail at the prince for Radd’s death, she wanted to know why Lady Jeriza had been arrested, she wanted to shout at him to do something. She wanted him to prove he was not his father.
She realized she was shaking. She breathed out deeply, calming herself, and said, “Please. Just tell him I’m here.”
He considered it for a long time. He must have some discretion of his own, which she counted on him to exercise. At last he said, “I’ll send. I can’t promise an answer.”
* * *
She was not sure how much time passed after that. She dozed, but her dreams were too horrifying to sleep through. The Temple was cold and quiet. Like a tomb, she thought. If this were a play, a ghost would appear and tell her what to do next. She drew her knees up to her chest and leaned into them.
“Anza.”
She raised her head. Esvar himself. She was immediately wide awake. She came to her feet, trying not to seem as wary as she felt.
“We’ll talk in the priests’ garden,” he said.
Priests and soldiers accompanied them as far as the door, but no one followed down the steps. An oil lamp burned at the base. The walled enclosure was small, a fountain at the heart and white-skinned birches lining the path to it. Anza resisted looking back as Esvar led her around the fountain to a bench on the other side. No one could see them through the water. No one could hear her if she yelled.
He sat first. She lowered herself carefully to the opposite end of the bench. Her sore muscles had stiffened again, and she felt graceless compared to the feline litheness of his movement. It was too dark to see into his eyes.
“Why did you send to me?” he asked.
“Why did you co
me, my lord?”
His laughter was sharp and humorless. He said, “What did you see out there in the square?”
“The commander was shot. Twice.” She remembered the men struggling, the strangeness of motion when the rest of the square was still. “After that was the explosion. I was knocked out.”
“Did you see the man who shot?”
“I was close enough to see that he was a soldier. I think everyone could see that. Is he still alive?”
“Yes. He’ll be hanged. He was an experienced soldier. He confessed to supplying weapons to the resistance.”
Why had the man exposed himself when the only death he bought was a commander’s?
Because it was public. No one could think the Tazekhs were responsible when the shots came from one of the king’s own soldiers. The man had sacrificed himself to show that Karolje did not have the loyalty of all his troops. She wished Sparrow had told her the plan so she and Radd could have stood farther away.
“What was his name?” she asked.
“Tarik Ashvili. He wasn’t married; he could afford to take the risk.” Esvar’s soft voice demanded her attention. He had taken the time to learn something about this soldier.
“But he didn’t set the explosion off.”
“After the commander was shot, someone lit the pyre. There was an explosive laid within it. That would have happened even if there had been no archer. The pyre was rigged to kill as many people as possible. It’s like the war. Everyone will think it was Asps.”
Burn the Tazekhs. Burn the Tazekhs. She thought of the soldiers standing around the pyre. They had been the targets. “How many soldiers died?”
“Twenty-two so far. Sixty other people. The numbers will rise.”
Four score people dead. But the explosion would not have been part of a resistance plan, unless someone had broken with Sparrow. Sparrow would not have ordered anything that killed sixty ordinary people and could be blamed on Tazekhs. Karolje must have done it. Killed his own soldiers, his own people, to turn their hate and fear away from him. She was afraid to make such an accusation to Karolje’s son.
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