There was an opening in the garden wall that didn’t lead onto a street but into a narrow foyer. Here I saw someone, at last, a slight figure with his back to me, a child, perhaps, with a dull knitted cap only just containing a mop of dark curls. Beyond him I heard more voices, adult voices, arguing, groaning, and flirting, and the air soured, the cloying perfume of the flowers doing very little to combat the rotten, stony smell that was drifting up from below us both. I thought of retreating, perhaps to find another way in, but he turned then and when his eyes met mine, they were glowing faintly gold. The world listed to the left and I felt like my stomach had dropped right out of my body. My arms flew out, as though I could steady myself, and he caught my hand. His touch was like fire, and he pulled me forward, pulled me into him, and I felt myself beginning to unravel as I passed through him. I felt Ji’s increasingly familiar resolve, her edges furious, racing toward some rebel’s bloody end. I fought harder than I had before to hold onto some part of myself even as her consciousness claimed mine, I wanted so badly to observe, to know, to remember. I even reached out to Theba, as though her strength of will could supplement mine, but though she uncoiled down my legs and arms, she was just as powerless as I was to stop what was happening.
For once, we weren’t fighting. We weren’t anything.
We were someone else, again.
The bathhouse was a necessary evil. I might’ve felt differently if I had been able to simply enjoy the water, the occasional splash of a handsome body slipping in, the cautious gossip passed between lovers and friends when their lips broke the surface. But I had business. The priestess I’d been charged with following was rutting with one of the king’s courtiers in the curtained pool behind me, and I ducked beneath the water to keep from rolling my eyes at her obviously staged cries of ecstasy. When I surfaced, there was someone worthier of my attentions newly arrived in the bathhouse. Two someones, in fact.
The crown prince, Shran, and his personal god—or so we joked—Tirce, here, in a public bathhouse. Either Shran was slumming it, as his father’s courtier was, or someone had displeased his divine shadow. They were both fully dressed and didn’t look like they intended to alter that state anytime soon.
I sank to my eyes, watchful.
“Ameth the Radiant. Where is he?” The god’s voice was penetrating, causing the marbled stone benches to quake as readily as the bathers who lounged upon them. No one answered the god, but pointed looks were cast toward the many-curtained enclosures where visitors were meant to sequester themselves in pious reflection and cleansing steam but were more likely to engage in deeds both intimate and illegal.
Yet the gods had eyes and ears everywhere, not to mention senses more keen than those of any mortal.
The pair had to pass by the pool where I waited, mouth obscured beneath the surface as I fought to keep the breaths I pulled through my nose measured and soft. The prince met my eyes briefly, his gaze cold and unreadable. Did he enjoy this work, rounding up his own people for scrutiny and inevitable punishment? Did he anticipate the oath he would take as king, which bound his life first in service to the gods, and only second to the people, whose blood and bodies were as vulnerable as his own?
I had hugged the pool’s edge to give myself quick exit if I needed one but it also, unfortunately, meant that when the pair stopped, they were too near to me for comfort, and all but blocking my view of the scene. I peeked around Shran as much as I dared to the curtained enclosures behind me, my curiosity momentarily overcoming my sense. Tirce did not wait for Ameth to emerge, reaching behind the curtain and yanking him to his feet with a stony fist. The fool surely knew what waited for him, and while I could only guess at his crime, there were no gentle punishments in this city.
Liquid streamed down Ameth’s legs, and I didn’t know if it was water or if he had lost control of his body in fear.
“Someone has been putting gold behind the things that they’re saying about me!” Ameth squealed, but Tirce wasn’t even looking at him, moving back already the way that he had come. “I would never cheat the temples. I give my tithe of blood and coin. It’s lies, what they’re saying about me.”
Shran shifted his weight to follow Tirce and his captive, giving Ameth a brief view of where I sat, partially submerged. Ameth’s face twisted into a grimace of glee.
“It’s her you want! Ji the sneak, the sly, the gutter-tongued. She has more dark deeds to her name than me! She’s a killer. They say she’s running messages for the rebellion.”
My stomach clenched. Ameth knew me. While my reputation was a comfort in the streets and back alleys where it granted me a wide berth, now only cold dread crept forth from my belly, combating the water’s warmth. To speak such an accusation out loud was a desperate move. He further risked his own condemnation as well as mine.
Time to put my so-called gutter-tongue to task. “A man will say anything to save himself. I’m a servant of House Kaliri, reserving a space in the pool for my mistress.”
It was a common enough practice for a servant to hold a prime position in the water for her master, and there were enough merchant families in the city that I didn’t expect the prince to know everyone. My voice was pitched firm but deferential—an innocent who, though fearful, knows she has nothing to hide.
Tirce made no motion, expression impassive, but I could tell he waited for some confirmation from the prince. Shran’s hand tensed on the ceremonial blade he wore at his side. I was sure he’d never drawn it, or perhaps hoped that he had not.
“You’ll come with us. Two criminals are better than one,” the prince said, at last, expression unreadable.
“But, my mistress—”
“Now.”
There were gasps at my questioning the edict, and I wasn’t sure the crown prince was entirely taken in by my slow-witted servant’s act. I didn’t know many idiots, even, who would dare to defend themselves, but to follow the pair was certainly to die.
Still, he left me little choice. I rose out of the water, shrinking with the humility that was to be expected from a girl in the station that I claimed, for I wore not a stitch of clothing. My own instincts trended more toward lunging for the weapon the prince wore and giving it a first taste of blood rather than covering myself.
Tirce’s eyes remained fixed on mine before traveling cursorily down my lean frame.
“House Kaliri doesn’t waste much food in the keeping of their servants, then.”
It was a crude joke, and there were bathers relieved enough not to have been the target of Tirce’s attentions to laugh. It was then that I blushed, seething at the insult, struggling to remind myself that there were better causes to die for than wounded pride. Shran gestured then with chin only, a curt command, and I moved past him, angling away. He might look at me, he might judge, but he would not touch me. Tirce did not take my arm, which was a very small comfort. I was unlikely to get far if I chose to run, but I hadn’t ruled it out.
It seemed he had no intention of allowing me to recover my garments at the entrance to the bathhouse, either, but to parade me through the streets of the capital with less courtesy than one would a woman whose services could be bought. I conceded that there were matters of pride worth killing for.
Ameth took this opportunity to begin to jabber again in his own defense, to draw as much attention to us as possible.
“I’m not a rebel! They’re mad, with their talk of god-killing. My life is in service to the temple, to the crown. It’s her you want, and those like her. Not me, not me!” If he hoped for a distraction, a chance to slip away, he was more of a fool than someone who had simply allowed himself to be caught.
But I had been caught, too.
And his efforts weren’t entirely in vain. A crowd was beginning to gather, and it did not take long in this part of the city for a crowd to become a mob. I felt the eyes of the crowd, hungry for a spectacle, the entertainment of cowards. Some men grabbed at themselves, watching me. Women threw cold oils from their cooking, first, and the
n the contents of their waste buckets. I was their target, for Tirce was too close to Ameth and they wouldn’t have risked angering the god. There were soldiers among the crowd, though the crown prince hardly needed additional protection with the god at his side. The soldiers did nothing to keep the onlookers from attacking me, however. I fought to remain calm with every splash and the stink of urine against my skin, my face, their slurs as sour and as sick. But I wasn’t tortured, wasn’t shamed.
I raged.
My next move was calculated. I knew this part of the city, knew we were near a safe house and an entrance to the warren of the underground where they would not be able to follow without getting lost. I broke from the line into the crowd, hands clawing, legs kicking wildly with every stride. The crown prince and the god attempted to follow me, as I suspected they might, and the soldiers began to push their way toward me, as well. But there was chaos now and rebel sympathizers within the throng began to hurl their abuse more broadly. I cast a quick look over my shoulder to see Shran with a smear of mud, or something worse, in his bright hair. The look on his face was one of cold determination, resignation, as he tried to cleave to Tirce.
With the hands of strangers pawing my body I dove for the ground, weaving between pairs of legs filthier even than my own, my escape assured even as I heard the soldiers calling for order, the voice of the god raised in a divine howl. I saw the sigil carved into the safe house’s foundation, the diamond divided. Our sign. I grinned at the risk of having my teeth kicked out of my mouth. They might have all the power, but there were more of us, and more wildness in us, more want, than any unfeeling god and his royal puppet could muster.
My heart beat hot and fast with Ji’s thrilling, her anger. My anger. Ji and I, a stranger and a woman estranged. I felt hollowed out, like an empty lamp or a waiting coffin. I came to myself slowly, my heart and head unwilling to relinquish the other world, another life.
“Eiren.”
Cold stone, cold as the frosted soil I’d clutched in the woods beyond Zhaeha. A stern voice, but warm, too. Warm enough to breathe feeling back into stiff fingers.
“Eiren, where were you?”
My eyes popped open. Gannet’s face wheeled above mine before settling into a familiar shape, smooth jaw, a sweep of pale hair, the worried curve of his lips beneath the unfeeling mask. I’d fallen out of my bed. He reached out a hand to help me from where I lay prone, but I didn’t take it, using my own instead to be sure that I was whole, unharmed. The smell of refuse faded from my nostrils, so real I could still feel Ji’s suppressed gag. Gannet frowned, and when I still did not take his hand, he retracted it.
“Another vision?” His tone was distant, but he couldn’t disguise his curiosity.
Already the fine details of Ji’s experience in the bathhouse and the street beyond were slipping away, and I scrambled to my feet, scanning the chamber for a writing implement. There was nothing to be had but last night’s wine, or the cold coals from the brazier. I snatched one up, beginning to scrawl on the stone floor as much as I could remember of the steps I had taken to the bathhouse, tracing Ji’s course through the street. As I worked I could in one moment feel the heat of water on my skin, the slick of pots of emptied waste, and in the next the sensations were as unfeeling as a dream. I couldn’t even remember the faces of the god, Tirce, or the mythic Shran, both of whom were far more interesting to me than they had been to Ji. The shock at having seen both appear in the vision stilled my fingers, and I was unsettled by the perversion of the friendship I had believed between them from stories. In the instant I hesitated, I felt more of the vision drifting away.
“Ji was thinking of a safe house, underneath of the city. A warren of places to hide, and to hide things.”
Gannet crouched beside me, eyes roaming over the dark, hasty sketch.
“Do you think you could find this place she sought?”
I wanted to promise him that I could, but even the sign she’d seen wavered in my memory. It had been a diamond, but corrupted, somehow. And would such a thing have survived the ages of neglect?
“I think we should try,” I answered at length, leaning back to study the etchings on the floor as he had. I was sure that I could trust the visions, though the landscape of the palace and the surrounding ruins had changed so greatly the way might be impassable. I caught Gannet’s eyes. “Is that why you came in here for me? Is it morning already?”
He nodded. “Only just. I wasn’t going to come in but I heard you thrashing around.”
“You probably shouldn’t have.” I didn’t need to elaborate, and Gannet’s jaw tightened.
“I’ve seen the way that they look at me. I know.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I insisted, heaving a sigh as I made an attempt to rise. But Gannet had laid a hand on my wrist, arresting my progress.
“It does matter, Eiren. If we live through this, it matters.”
He might have held my heart in his hands.
“I can’t even imagine what my life will look like in an hour, let alone what it might be after this,” I said quietly, his touch as perilous as the press of a blade. “As hard as it was for me once to believe that I was Theba, now I don’t know how I could be just Eiren, again.”
“It won’t matter what you call yourself,” he said, withdrawing his hand, a contrast to the intimacy of his words. “It won’t matter what you’ve done, or what you do to survive between now and then. I want to live to share that day, the day when this is over.”
Being so close to him and not touching was like sitting near a fire but feeling none of its heat. I knew there was warmth there, and comfort, but dared not get any closer. I struggled to mirror his restraint.
“I do, too,” I replied, at last, keeping my eyes carefully leveled on the partial map I’d scrawled on the floor, as though looking at it could bring back more of the vision’s details. I took a deep breath. “Let’s find a safe house.” Though it was just barely morning, as Gannet had implied, we were far from the only ones stirring. No one was about belowground, so we went above. Soldiers who either hadn’t slept, or had been up for some time, stalked to or from some skirmish, carrying messages, delivering reports, ferrying the wounded. It was a short walk from the small series of chambers where my family slept, ate, and received news to an interior courtyard that served as both a hospital and a practice yard. Many of those who served under Jurnus had no military training or nothing more than what they’d learned brawling in the streets of Jarl. As we followed two soldiers supporting a third between them, I heard the cutting sound of steel against steel and was not surprised that they were already being drilled.
Lista, my brother, and a few of the more seasoned members of my family’s force were working with smaller groups of men and women. I saw Esbat and Anise at the courtyard’s edge, ladling out porridge and discs of hard, flat bread to the soldiers who were not fighting. Esbat met my eyes from across the courtyard and released them immediately. I didn’t need her to look at me to feel the force of her thoughts, the scrutiny over how close I stood to Gannet, her wondering over where we meant to sneak off to today. I didn’t have to report to anyone, but I resented the notion that I could not be trusted and resolved to speak to Jurnus myself, explain what I had seen and what I hoped to accomplish today.
When we drew near, Jurnus had just disarmed a young man who couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen. Both were sweating profusely despite the early hour, and I wondered how long they had been at this work.
“Jurnus,” I said at a distance, not wanting to startle him. When he looked up from explaining some military particulars to his sparring partner, his eyes flitted quickly between Gannet and me. A brief, whispered exchange with Esbat was at the front of his mind, and I felt the same suspicion in him that I had in her. My temper flared, and I fought to keep it from my voice. “I believe there may be another cache of some kind nearby. We’re going to look.”
Jurnus had a definite swagger as he strode to meet us. It was not an
affectation I had seen in him before; he must have developed it during my absence.
He carried a spear, which I knew was not his favorite weapon but was the preference of most of the soldiers of Ambar. No doubt he had been observing the enemy’s tactics, and hoped to master the weapon.
“It would be useful to know more about what to expect from this invading force,” he said, driving the spear’s shaft into the sand beside him with some force and cocking a hip against it. Despite his posture, I knew the weapon could be easily readied. “Gannet, you’re a man of Ambar. What training have these bastards received? What weaknesses can we hope to exploit?”
The challenge in his voice was plain, and Gannet stiffened slightly beside me.
“Gannet’s not a warrior, Jurnus,” I began, but my brother raised a hand, silencing any further comment. Jurnus had never known when to shut his mouth, and I’d never wanted to throttle him more for it than I did just then.
“Neither was Lista. Neither was I. We watched, we learned. What have you learned in your years of service, Gannet?”
Several of the sparring pairs near us had stopped to observe the exchange, and their attention quickly spread to others. I felt Gannet walling himself up, and I had no idea what he intended to do until he adjusted the fittings of his cloak. Not to remove it, as Jurnus imagined he might in anticipation of a fight, but to tighten it.
“I do not think that what I learned in my years of service will be of much interest to you,” he answered in the superior tone that had once been so irritating to me. I hadn’t heard it in weeks, and I knew now he did it to protect himself. “Patience, watchfulness, delayed gratification. Useful skills in war, but rarely possessed by those who wage them.”
Jurnus’s nostrils flared at what he perceived as a subtle insult, though I couldn’t tell what Gannet had intended. Whatever passed between them now was beyond me, though I suspected I played some unsought for role in the exchange. Instead of responding, Jurnus swiftly tore the spear from the sand and tossed it forcefully to Gannet. Rather than let it fall, Gannet caught it. Though he shifted it in his hand to hold it properly, it looked wrong, and I didn’t like seeing him armed.
The Dread Goddess--Book of Icons--Volume Two Page 16
