He stepped forward. Maybe it was strength, and maybe he was a bloody fool, but that voice had promised war and death, where Sarine stood against it. Weighed between ruin and whatever it took to stop it, he knew which side he wanted his family on. That was enough. If he had to fight, he might as well be on the side of something worth fighting for.
82
SARINE
The Master’s Sanctum
Gods’ Seat
Lapping waves churned under gale winds, with the boom of thunder overhead. The seas drank in the gray haze of rain, seeming to pour through her, arms’ lengths from the towering shadows of the Divide. It seemed thinner than it had when she, Axerian, Acherre, and Ka’Inari took their boat into its depths. Or perhaps it was only the storm.
She leaned away from the table, and the Master’s map reverted, first to seas as black as the clouds above them, then to a wide expanse of blue, then the coastline, the great mass of eastern land, and finally all the continents of the world, pulled far as the view would go.
“A powerful magic,” Arak’Jur said.
“It is,” she replied.
“How do you make it change?” Arak’Jur asked. “Does it show you what it wills you to see, or do you choose?”
“I choose a place,” she said. “I focus there, and the map shows me what I want to see. Look.”
She picked another stretch of open sea near the Divide, this one unobscured by clouds. The view shimmered, changing as it moved closer to the edge of the land, then to the open sea. Finally it seemed as though she was drawn in, the sounds of the waves roaring in her ears, the tang of brine in the back of her throat. And shadows. A great wall of shadows, extending as far as she could see. Here, too, the Divide was thinner, without the roaring intensity they’d seen before. But still there, towering above her, seeming to stretch all the way into the sky.
“May I?” Arak’Jur asked after she leaned back.
“Of course.”
The view had returned to its widest arc, all the continents at once, but quickly moved, this time toward familiar ground. New Sarresant, or more precisely, the lands just outside the city. First she saw the coastline, then the outlines of the city, the roads and rivers, the sites where the new barrier was being put up by the priests. Then it moved to another settlement, just north of the city, with a mix of tents and longhouses, and once more her senses were drawn in. This time she was greeted with darkness, the dim light of a mostly spent fire, and a foul smell assaulting her nose.
Arak’Jur made a choking sound, and she almost looked away. Then the shapes outlined in the shadows became clearer: a woman, wiping a soiled cloth along a baby’s backside.
“Corenna,” Arak’Jur said. “Kar’Doren.”
She watched for another moment, as the mother—Corenna—turned the child over, tucking the cloth away and letting him grab hold of the fingers on her free hand, suckling them as though they were food.
“Can …” Arak’Jur began. “Can they … hear me?”
“No,” she said. “The map can show you anything you like, but it’s only a view.”
She leaned back from the table, though Arak’Jur stayed still, looking down into its depths. She left him to it; if Corenna’s child was Arak’Jur’s, the sight wasn’t meant for her.
The hallways had grown since their return. Where before there had been three sets of living quarters, now there were six, though it had taken three requests for the Watcher to have him create one for her. That much she’d been able to puzzle out: The shadowy creature could definitely understand, and acquiesce, when she spoke to him through the blue sparks. She shifted her sight as she walked, and saw the shadow walking backward in front of her, as though he was mimicking her movements.
“We’ll need to settle on a name for you,” she said. The creature seemed curious, though if it could speak to her, she hadn’t yet found the way to listen. Even its gestures seemed more repeating her motions than trying to signal her or make its desires known, if it had desires at all.
Tigai’s door was closed, a heavy redwood carved with insignias of dragons, though it did little to muffle the sounds coming from within. Those made her blush, and quicken her pace. Evidently whatever had passed between Tigai and Yuli had rekindled here at the Gods’ Seat.
She kept on past Erris’s chambers, knowing the Empress would be working behind its doors, connected through Need to some generals or princes somewhere in her Empire. She was grateful for the former High Commander’s diligence, but until the Divide came down, there was no knowing where the battles would even be fought, let alone the nature of their fighting. Erris insisted they be prepared, that diplomacy was needed to heal the wounds inflicted by Paendurion’s maneuvering, and Sarine left her to it. The notion of ruling nations seemed as distant and strange as sampling the delicacies of the Rasailles gardens had once been, and with none of the appeal. A game for others to play. For once she felt as if she’d found her place, here, and her purpose in the months to come.
The library had been restocked again, but its character hadn’t changed. Rows of shelves and scrollracks, tables and benches strewn with volumes left open, and Reyne d’Agarre, seated on a long couch, poring over his Codex too intently to notice her arrival.
He was hers, too, now, for all she’d never have chosen to make a man like him her champion. The last relic of the Veil’s corruption.
She steeled herself, sitting on a couch opposite him instead of her usual place, among the tables and benches, and finally he noticed her, slipping a finger in the pages to hold his place.
“Sarine,” Reyne said.
“Reyne,” she said, returning the greeting. “I don’t know why you spend so much time studying that book. It was never more than Axerian’s instrument, and he died, in Kye-Min.”
Reyne smiled. A handsome man, with an easy confidence, altogether poisoned by the horrors she knew could be laid at his feet.
“Is there no wisdom to be gleaned from holy books, when their authors are long dead?” Reyne asked. “I would think, having been raised by a priest, you could appreciate a search for truth.”
“Don’t,” she said. Her uncle was beyond discussion here.
He maintained his smile, but shifted as though he’d rather return his attentions to his book.
“I didn’t come here to talk about your Codex,” she continued. “I came here to talk about Zi.”
“Ah,” Reyne said. “I wondered how long it would be before you asked.”
For his smiles and sophistry, she’d as soon have put it off further. But then, she had to know.
Anati had appeared, draping herself over the arm of the couch where Reyne was lounging, staring at her with coal-black eyes.
“Your new kaas,” she said. “When you bonded it, you must have visited their world.”
“That’s right,” Reyne said.
“And you met Zi there.”
He nodded, seeming to relish the silence where he had to know she craved answers.
She didn’t give him the satisfaction, letting silence sit between them. Reyne’s kaas had appeared as well, lying on the cushion just beneath Anati’s armrest, letting its head droop backward over the front of the couch.
Finally Reyne laughed, reaching to stroke his kaas’s scales. “Xeraxet may not be as ancient as your Zi, but he knew what to show me. I witnessed Zi speaking to a shadow, of the very sort that appeared when you went to bond d’Arrent. Paendurion was certain he knew what it meant: Zi assisted the Veil in her rebirth, cultivating you as a vessel, and both of them had a deal with the Regnant. Paendurion was sure it was the only way the Veil could have escaped her prison.”
Lies, Anati thought. My father would never work with our enemy.
“Nonetheless,” Reyne said. “I know what I saw.”
“How did you visit the kaas’ world?” she asked, and earned a renewed glare from Anati, this time her eyes glazed over with a ruby sheen.
“Quite by accident,” Reyne said. “It’s here, all aroun
d us. Perhaps only in the Gods’ Seat? But no, you must have visited it when you separated from Zi.”
“So there’s no way to get there without releasing your kaas’s bond?”
“I can’t speak to what’s possible,” Reyne said. “But Saruk left me the moment I could see their plane. It’s a fascinating place—all lights and shapes, absent any colors. Strange, given their predilection for reds, greens, yellows, and the like.”
Anati continued smoldering. She’d warned as much, and given Reyne’s bonding of a new kaas, Sarine feared the warning would prove true. She couldn’t visit the kaas’ world without severing her and Anati’s bond.
“Thank you,” she said, rising to her feet.
“That’s all?” Reyne asked. “I warn you: Paendurion was quite sure. Zi is not to be trusted. In fact, I believe there is a passage here that might be of relevance …”
“No,” she said. “I have what I need.”
Reyne’s soft laugh saw her out of the library, winding back through the halls toward the room she’d claimed for her own. Plain couches decorated the living space, with a small bookcase and fresh sheaves of paper and charcoal waiting for her each time she returned. It could have been any other chamber, save for the stained-glass reliefs etched into the far wall. Exact replicas of the Sacre-Lin’s windows, down to the glow of sunlight streaming through to paint rainbows on the chamber floor. She had every confidence there would be only smooth, cold stone behind them if they broke, but the Watcher had done well. Whatever he’d done to plumb the depths of her memory, the room greeted her with the same sights she’d been accustomed to in her uncle’s loft. A taste of home, though she could have benefitted from her uncle’s wisdom during their preparation for what was to come. He would have admonished her to trust the Gods’ examples, to remember her virtues, to strive for goodness in her life and the lives of others. It still would have been nice to hear him say it. Instead she had her champions. And Anati, already glaring at her with ruby eyes as she entered the room.
You mean to sever our bond, Anati thought before she could even be seated.
“Anati …” she said.
It’s a simple thing, her kaas continued. Focus on the spaces between a thing and itself; that is where we kaas live, in the spaces between—
“Anati, stop.”
Her kaas fell silent, her eyes darkening as she perched atop the writing desk. From the angle Sarine stood at, it was as though Anati were a sketch come to life, half submerged in the paper, half coiled and staring, with a deep crimson flushed through her scales from head to tail.
“I’m not going to sever our bond,” she said. “And I don’t think you’re lying to me. But even during my best times with Zi, he was always hiding something. Keeping something from me. It’s not beyond reason to think there might be more going on than either of us is aware.”
He wouldn’t, Anati thought. He wouldn’t betray your trust.
“I believe you. But he might not consider whatever he’s doing a betrayal.”
Your kind are too complicated.
She smiled, coming to sit at the desk instead of the couch, extending a hand to brush Anati’s scales.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m still learning my place in all this.”
So am I. But you are bold. A better Goddess than the Veil.
A ridiculous notion, made no less so by the deadly seriousness in her kaas’s expression. Nothing for it but to receive it with the same solemnity.
“The Divide will fall soon,” she said, changing the subject, and Anati bobbed her head up and down. “It’s going to mean violence, when it does.”
Anati said nothing, though her eyes flared from rubies to emeralds, the rest of her body flushing green to match.
“Here,” she said, brushing Anati back as she pulled loose a clean sheet. “Let me sketch you.”
Why?
“Because Zi never allowed it. Because I’m afraid there won’t be time, after.”
Anati stared at her for a moment, a flash of yellow creeping into the center of her eyes. Then her kaas bowed her head, nestling into her coils at the edge of the desk. So like Zi, and yet so different. She got to work with her charcoals, tracing the lines she’d always imagined using for Zi, though he’d never allowed her to do it. Bittersweet, to think she might not see Zi again, but then, Anati was just as dear to her, in her own right. It made the sacrifices more bearable, knowing there would be light when she passed through the dark.
AFTER
EPILOGUE
OMERA
Kandake’s Palace
The City of Konghom, Bhakal Lands
The Kandake’s guards bowed low, a score of them at once, each dropping to one knee with rhythmic precision. He alone remained standing. The aftereffects of tisa irinti lingered in his veins, ingraining in him the perfect servitude he’d willingly accepted, before his pilgrimage abroad. But he was home now. The need for deference had been smothered by the fire of ubax aragti, its red leaves mirroring the heat it conferred to soldiers, traders, and diplomats on the eve of battles, difficult negotiations, or voyages into the unknown. It felt appropriate for his return to his mother’s court.
A sharp grunt echoed through the chamber, repeated on the voice of every soldier as they pivoted, still kneeling, toward the veil of beads draped across the far entrance. Marble tile covered the floor in a pattern of blue and green, two swirling colors vying for control, with colonnades supporting the ceiling, all directed toward where the Kandake would make her entrance. His Sarresanter’s clothes had been exchanged for a simple robe of red wool, too simple by far for the audience he was about to receive, but that, too, had been selected for a purpose, to send a message of humility and respect.
“She comes,” a voice intoned. “The Kandake Amanishiakne of Konghom.” A deep voice, echoing through the chamber as though it came from everywhere at once, yet had no specific source.
The beads parted, and his mother entered the room.
Gold paint decorated her face and forearms, a layer of cosmetics over skin as lustrous and dark as polished jet. Tanpa shain, a fungus from Kinigari Shuhet, produced the effect, making her appear as though she were carved from precious stone. She wore gold silk dashed with a blue that matched the tilestones, wrapped around a stomach swollen in the last weeks of pregnancy. Yet even with the girth in her stomach and hips, she flowed more than walked through the beads, coming to a halt and placing the butt of her staff with an iron clank.
Now he joined the soldiers in kneeling, slowly, taking twenty heartbeats to lower himself into a supplicant’s pose.
“Mother,” he said finally, when his eyes were lowered, his nose and hands pressed to the cold stone floor.
“Rise, Omera,” his mother said, her voice stoic and cool, but unamplified by magic.
He followed her command at once.
She met his eyes as though daring him to do the same, and he did, the fireweed in his veins giving him the courage to stay steady on his feet.
“You return early,” she said. “A presumption, for a son tasked to remain across the sea.”
“I have come to reclaim my eye,” he said. “Bearing knowledge of events abroad, and portents of things to come.”
He’d rehearsed the words a hundred times on the ships he’d taken, first from the port at New Sarresant and then again from Al Adiz, making landfall at the Sardian stronghold at the mouth of the great river. They sounded weaker than he’d intended, under the scrutiny of Kandake Amanishiakne. Easier to think of her as her name and title, here, and not as his mother.
“You claim the gift of future sight?” the Kandake asked.
“No,” he said quickly. “No, Your Majesty. Only signs. I have witnessed great events in New Sarresant, across the sea. I have seen a thing no Bhakal man has seen in a hundred generations. I returned to speak of it, with you, if it pleases, while there is still time to act.”
The Kandake paused, seeming to lean against her staff as she considered his words. The
rest of the chamber was frozen, silent, a score of armed guards awaiting her command.
“Approach,” she said, and he obeyed.
The guards remained prostrate as he drew to within five paces of her, tensing as she beckoned him even closer, a sudden tautness spreading through the room. His mother deigned not to notice, flowing toward him with her elegant stride, coming to hover over him despite his advantage in height. She extended a hand to brush his cheek, a delicate gesture, though her skin was cold as ice.
“My Omera,” she said. “You come before me dressed as a commoner. Why? Did they so ill treat you, across the seas?”
It took effort to remain collected. In the presence of so many guards or lookers-on, she had only ever been Kandake Amanishiakne, yet here she was mother—the teacher, the sage, the woman who was ancient when the eldest living elder first drew breath.
“I was not a slave, Mother,” he said. “But I chose to use tisa irinti, to bring myself close to their seats of power. I saw an Empress rise. I saw a man—”
She moved a finger to her lips, shushing him to silence.
“Walk with me,” she said instead, and at once the guards grunted and pivoted again, this time rising to their knees, each man directed toward the Kandake at the center of the room.
“No guards,” she said to the rest. “I walk with Omera alone.”
Another grunt, this time accompanied by bowed heads, returned to pressing flat against the tile.
She led the way through the beads into a long hallway, and for the first time Omera could recall he was alone in a room with his mother. His heart thundered as she led the way, an effect of ubax aragti, but also of nerves, raw and full of fear. The clanks of her iron staff kept time as they passed through the hall into a long chamber beyond, then down another hall, sloping upward until they emerged into open air.
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