The Darkest Bloom (Shadowscent)

by Freestone, P. M.

  Every passer-by avoids his searching gaze. Servants study the flagstones. Merchants cover their noses with squares of perfumed silk and steer a wide path. When they’re ten paces clear, the fabric flutters to the ground. Stall porters rush out to retrieve the scraps with long-handled tongs.

  Superstitious fools. You can’t catch the Rot just from breathing its stench: I’m living proof of that.

  The man struggles to heave himself into the cart, but falters when a porter prods him with the tongs, prattling about calling the city guards.

  My fists clench and unclench at my side. I stride over, pushing past the porter to crouch next to the man. “Take my arm.”

  He grimaces as we work together to settle him in his cart.

  I rummage for the near-empty jar of willow in my satchel. It’s the last of my personal store, but I’ll be picking up supplies soon enough. “Here. It’ll ease the pain. Best taken in kormak. But not too much,” I warn, eyeing his bandages, “or it’ll prevent clotting and you’ll bleed.”

  “Thank you,” he says, voice thick.

  “Do you have somewhere to go? Can I help you get there?”

  “I’ll be fine.” We both know that’s a lie.

  “Are you sure?”

  He glances across the plaza. A commotion confirms the porter has found a patrol. “You should be on your way.”

  Now that’s the truth. Last thing I need is to run afoul of a guard captain having an off night.

  “Stars keep you, sister,” he says firmly.

  “And you.”

  Across the plaza, my destination is aglow with copper braziers. A row of young servants lines the threshold; their features smooth and fine, bodies lithe beneath kirtles of gauzy silk. Each bears a fan of woven palm fronds, wafting sweet red-tinged smoke into the street, beckoning buyers to come and indulge. The line of guards behind them says you need to be the right kind of buyer to be welcome.

  I am not the right kind of buyer.

  Good thing I’ve no interest in taking the front entrance.

  At the rear of the building, a stone staircase leads down to the basement.

  The guard on the door, dressed less garishly than those at the front, gives me a curt nod. I make my way along the corridor, almost tripping on the splayed limbs of a sleeping couple, the remnants of their elegant perfume overshadowed by the smell of empty purses and emptier heads. Dreamsmoke.

  In the main chamber, a crowd of onlookers surrounds a waist-high marble table near the centre of the room. Four men and a woman step up to the slab and a servant brings them tiny glasses arranged around the edge of a silver tray, at the five points of the starwheel. The cups could have been filled from the end of a rainbow; the liquid in each gleams a different jewel in the flickering candlelight.

  Ah, this game. Death in Paradise. The cups contain a cocktail of poppy milk and stiff spirit – each flavour sure to give the drinker a night-long love of the entire world and everyone they meet. The risk? One glass may or may not be laced with night jasmine: virtually undetectable in the honeyed liquor, and lethal within heartbeats. A test of skill. Lacking skill, a test of nerve.

  “Bottoms up!” The first player – a curl-headed youth wearing a robe dangerously close to imperial purple – raises his glass and empties it in a single swallow. His companions gasp, their expressions intent. But after a minute he upends the glass on to the tray with a flourish and a grin. “I’ll smell the gods’ perfume another night.”

  Onlookers whoop and clap him on the back. I don’t bother masking my derision as I cross to the bar. If they do look in my direction, their gazes will slide over me. Nobody sees the help.

  The bartender and I have never played at friends, and there’s no attempt at niceties when she eyes my satchel. “Leave that in the store. There’s a half-weight of zigs waiting for you. Next order due at half moon.”

  “I want to speak to Zakkurus this time.”

  “No chance.”

  I pat my satchel. “Want me to take this over to Rokad’s instead, then?” It’s only part bluff. Rokad pays better, but he’s also got a reputation for selling out his suppliers to the regulators.

  She sighs and reaches behind the bar. Half a minute of telltale clinking later, five cups are arranged in front of me. “Choose.”

  “I’m not some puffed-up sniffling seeking a thrill on the dark side of town.”

  “And Zakkurus isn’t a charitable benefactor willing to waste his time on whatever the cat dragged in. You want an audience. Choose.”

  Stink on a stick. I hadn’t bargained on this. But what choice do I have? If it’s not now, the apprenticeship trials will come and go for another turn. Call it the Affliction if you want to be official, but the Rot waits for no man. Or girl.

  And with the gods and the stars and that lack of, well, deference my life has shown them, there’s no other way. I need to know what perfume the Eraz’s daughter, Lady Sireth, will favour in the next turn of the starwheel – the scent that anyone who is anyone or wants to be anyone will be clamouring to douse themselves in. The scent that will be the final test in the trials.

  Willing my hand not to shake, I wave each cup under my nose, letting the bouquet envelope my senses. The third gives me pause. It’s the only one with a hint of bitterness, no doubt meant to deter. It’s also the only cup that lacks a cloying sweetness – the only one that’s clean. I’d bet my life on it. I’m about to bet my life on it.

  “Four?” I raise an eyebrow. “Stacking the odds in the house’s favour, eh?”

  The bartender shrugs.

  Meeting her stare, I bring the bitter liquid to my lips. Then I tilt my head back, and drink.

  For a breath or two, I feel fine.

  Until the floor rushes up to greet me.

  CHAPTER 2

  Ash

  Palace guards are trained to endure physical challenges. Imperial Family Shields face greater tests – learning to read the knife-edge niceties of court politics, while maintaining the illusion of being none the wiser. I may not be able to ignore the reek of Affliction permeating the imperial bedchamber, but, by divine mother Esiku’s mercy, my face will not reveal that fact.

  The servants have done their best. The silk drapes are tied back to let a breeze slide through the windows. Braziers smoulder, their embers agleam in the mirror-like surface of the black granite walls. Cuttings of bay tree lie strewn across the mosaic floor, while sticks of incense emit tendrils of fragrant smoke. Yet none of it disguises the stench marking the boundary between the world of the living and the realm of the gods.

  Anyone who entered the room would know it, as plainly as they would know their own nose: the Emperor of Aramtesh is dying.

  Correction. Emperor Kaddash has been dying for ten turns of the starwheel. He’s been dying longer than I’ve been shaving. But just like everything else he’s botched during his reign, when it comes to leaving this life, he can’t seem to do a half-decent job of it.

  Kaddash lies propped on a mountain of pillows. Barely on the sunset side of fifty turns, he looks seventy or more. Skin stretched parchment-thin, eyes sunken beneath a once-proud brow. Then there’s that undeniable fetor.

  First Prince Nisai sits in a low, ornately carved chair by his father’s sickbed, his slender form folded in on itself. As it is for almost every hour of almost every day, I’m at his side.

  Well, not technically his side. That wouldn’t be appropriate for the occasion. I’m keeping a respectful three-pace distance, clear view of the window and door, ample space between the twin swords strapped across my back and the wall, the polished stone cool beneath my palms.

  Watching Nisai’s expression hover between hope and grief sends a pang of feeling through me, like the dull ache of a scar before rain. With the well-worn ease that comes with turn upon turn of practice, I push the emotion down, shutting the lid tight.

  “Father,” Nisai pleads, gaze downcast.

  How I wish he wouldn’t. A First Prince should never, ever plead.

&
nbsp; He takes a shuddering breath and lifts his eyes to meet the Emperor’s. “Please, Father. Appoint a Scent Keeper. I’ve found references in the old texts – several references – suggesting their records go back longer than ours. They might know of something to improve your condition.”

  He looks to me on the last, as if seeking a supporting voice, though he knows full well I’m obliged to stay silent.

  Kaddash scowls. “Have you lost your wits? They’re charlatans. Witches. I’ll drive them to the far reaches of the Empire. See how they fare in the Losian Wastes. Or in that Lautus cesspit! There will not be another Scent Keeper in Ekasya while I draw breath.” Spittle collects at the corners of his mouth. “I would rather dine with Doskai.” The last comes out as a hiss, the sibilant name of the Lost God uncannily loud in the otherwise quiet chamber.

  I rub a palm over my stubbled scalp and glance around the room. It’s a convincing enough illusion of family privacy. But even I can’t guard against the walls having eyes and ears. Taking so long to appoint the imperial capital’s next Scent Keeper after the last went to the sky was controversy enough. If the provinces caught wind of the true extent of Kaddash’s shunning of the Accord … well.

  Nisai sighs, resigned. “Try to stay calm. No good can come from upsetting yourself.”

  The Emperor’s shoulders had risen like hackles during his tirade, but now they slump into his scented pillows. “Calm. Yes. First useful thing you’ve said all day. A little dreamsmoke would help. Recommended by the Guild in medicinal measures. Yes, yes. Summon the physician.”

  A young page appears, quiet as a dockmouse slipping into the river. He tugs a rope concealed behind the drapes. The bell chimes, thrumming through the stone of the palace so that I feel it as much as hear it.

  The door opens, and the page whispers something to the guard outside.

  I look to Nisai. A tiny furrow appears between his brows, the one that says he’s sceptical but too diplomatic to voice it. The Guild of Physicians is gaining prominence, though for all their insistence on new “empirically proven” methods and practices, I’ve heard of few cases in which a patient has been healed without loss of something – sense, limb, or, at very least, a significant portion of their purse. And when it comes to the Afflicted? The Guild may extend lives, but only the gods can save them.

  The physician arrives swiftly.

  Always waiting in the wings.

  The Guild’s uniform of sober black seems a direct rebuke of the lustrous feathered dresses of the temple. Dark, rough-spun wool can’t be comfortable on a morning like this: the breeze attempting to whisk the sick-stench from the room is decidedly warm; the last of the turn’s snow melted from Ekasya Mountain moons ago.

  The page clears his throat. “Zostar Alak, Guild of Physicians.”

  Black Robes doesn’t budge.

  The page looks to Nisai, then back at the new arrival, his face flushing as he realizes the physician is expecting more. “By personal appointment to Emperor Kaddash the fourth!”

  Black Robes gives a satisfied nod. He bustles across the chamber in that way short men often do – as if they’re trying to give the impression of meriting more space. I’m no master perfumer, but even I can smell the cloud of vinegar fumes trailing behind him.

  I shift my weight, reinforced leather vest creaking underneath my palace silks.

  The physician’s eyes dart towards me.

  I give him my blankest, most dull-witted look.

  Suspicion pinches his brow, but he continues towards Kaddash, placing his bag on the bedside table with a clink of glass. He pinches a honey-hued cube into a tiny dish, igniting it with a taper lit from one of the braziers.

  Nisai sits back in his chair, coughing as he waves the smoke from his face.

  “Keep clear, my Prince,” the physician instructs.

  I pull one of my knives from the sheath at my wrist and run the tip under my nail, cleaning a non-existent speck of dirt. Angled just so, the blade catches the morning sun, splaying light across the physician’s face.

  He glares at me.

  I pretend not to notice.

  Nisai gives me one of his “did you have to?” looks. Yes. Indeed, I did. Old Black Robes has been getting too big for his sandals these past moons. I’ve heard some of his quips about “true medicine”. It’s not hard to deduce where the Emperor’s more blasphemous ideas are coming from.

  After more fussing and clinking, Black Robes retrieves a vial of cloudy liquid. He taps several drops into a goblet, and a servant slips forward to fill it from a kettle of steaming water. The Emperor smiles and leans over the cup, greedily breathing its vapours.

  Placated, Kaddash pats Nisai’s hand. “There’s a good boy. Why don’t you run along now? Time for papa to rest.” His tone has shifted to the sing-song of someone who thinks he can roll back the starwheel and speak to the small boy he neglected for so many turns.

  “First Prince, if you would excuse us. The Emperor is ready for his Therapeutic Calmative Insufflation.” Black Robes enunciates each term as if it warrants its own sentence.

  Therapeutic. Say that of anything and it transforms an idea that’s all smoke and no scent into a socially acceptable treatment.

  Calmative. Oh, I don’t doubt it. Nor do the highbrow merchants and aristocrats ensuring the dreamsmoke dens across the Empire do a roaring trade.

  Insufflation. Call it what you will, but it is what it is. Blowing smoke up the Emperor’s arse. Literally.

  I’m grateful when Nisai says his goodbyes and makes for the door. I follow without a backward glance.

  We begin the walk to the First Prince’s chambers in silence. Along the Hall of Emperors, I can’t help but wonder what the men in the finely stitched tapestry portraits would have thought of Aramtesh’s current ruler. Sawkos the Great is too intent on hunting feather-maned lions from his chariot to spare a care for the future. But I swear there’s a frown of disapproval from Emoran the Lawmaker. And vague disappointment seems to emanate from Awulsheg II, framed by the colonnades of the imperial university as he puts quill to scroll.

  As we pass the scholar and his successors, the rulers who presided over The Great Bloom of the fifth and fourth centuries Pre-Accord, Nisai runs his fingers along the polished cedar rods beneath each portrait. They keep the tapestries from curling, but they seem something more to the Prince. Talismans. Touchstones.

  Nisai pauses underneath the final tapestry. Kaddash is seated on one of Ekasya Palace’s many glossy black stone balconies overlooking the river plains far below, a lute before him, his fingers plucking at the strings. He’s surrounded by beautiful young courtiers, some laughing with cups full, some drowsily reclining on cushions with dreamsmoke pipes. There’s no title beneath the portrait, but it could easily have been: Kaddash, Life of the Party.

  “What makes a good emperor?” Nisai asks.

  I answer without hesitation: “that’s for you to decide.”

  “Is it?”

  He wipes an invisible speck of dust from his father’s portrait and continues down the hall.

  Issinon, Nisai’s valet, waits outside the prince’s chambers. He dips into a deep bow, hand clasped around the purple silk sash denoting his office. Straightening, he proffers a tiny scroll. “First Prince.”

  Nisai shrugs off the weight of the morning and gives his valet a genuine smile. He waits until we’re alone before unrolling the message.

  I raise an eyebrow.

  Nisai holds the parchment under my nose.

  “Is that exactly what it smells like?”

  He only grimaces and theatrically draws his finger across his throat.

  We’ve been summonsed.

  The scent of power presides over the Council chamber.

  I remember the first time I smelled that combination of nectar and spice. It was long ago, at the base of Ekasya Mountain, between the walls of the imperial capital and the river. Down where the slums cling to the slopes like clusters of freshwater mussels. In that no man’s land,
where everyone is provinceless, nothing had ever smelled as sweet as when Nisai led me, a grubby street runt stinking to the sky of only Riker-knows-what, before his mother: a regal figure in robes of imperial purple, a diadem of amethyst and ruby glinting from her brow.

  I stood there for what seemed like eternity, my throat dry, my child’s heart mocking me – thumping so loud I thought she must have heard it, that with each beat it was betraying to her my guilt and shame and fear, as clear as temple drums declare the starwheel turned. But her perfume embraced me while her eyes held me captive, measuring but merciful, as if her son had brought a stray tabby home and asked to make it his pet.

  Then she smiled at me with her wide, white-toothed smile, rose to her feet and declared: “If my son wishes to take him to the palace, he will come to the palace.”

  And that was that.

  Whether she saw my secrets, whether she knew the truth of what I’d done to save her son, I’ll never know, and I’ll never ask. Nisai and I agreed on that from the start. Too risky. What happened earlier that day must always be kept between the two of us. Only us.

  Now, Shari regards us from across the circular table dominating the room. Carved from smoky volcanic glass, mined deep beneath Ekasya Mountain, its polished surface is inlaid with gems in a stylized map of the starwheel on the night of the Founding Accord, the twin moons in gleaming mother-of-pearl.

  The remaining four Councillors, Kaddash’s other wives, are seated before the constellations of their respective provinces: the Losian cobra ready to strike, the aurochs bull of Trel, the golden eagle flying high over Edurshai, the line of stars tracing Hagmir’s snowfox from nose to tail-tip. I doubt that Shari’s place at the winged lion of her heritage just happens to be opposite the door. The Council of Five may be egalitarian by law, but these days it hangs on the words of the Aphorain imperial wife.

  Shari wastes no time getting down to business, her manner formal. After all, the Council has summonsed the heir of the Empire, not simply her son.

  “Aphorai has announced the date of the Flower Moon.” She states the obvious – the Ekasya temple sent a rainbow of smoke skyward yesterday – one link in a chain since Aphorai lit up hundreds of miles away. Signals are burning across all of Aramtesh by now.