There was a tizzied screech, a fluttering of hands: no one might put off a herald of the Holiest King of Kings, Sovereign of Great Olorum, City and Nation: no one! So Aqib washed his hands of the matter. And—no, indeed!—they mightn’t have a moment to throw on appropriate robes, nor freshen up, either. Aqib and Lucretia were packed into a wheeled sedan, the puller-men departing at a dead run, nearly, toward the precincts of the Sovereign House. Passing the mathematicon’s open casement doors, they heard the second power in all Olorum roar scatological abuse. Aqib flinched. Kept sweet, the Blest loved her jokes; she was fun and only playfully foul-mouthed. Never provoke her, though.
Outside the ramparts of the Sovereign House, crows fed upon the impaled remains of a cavalry captain, pulchrissimus, who had often sought to catch Aqib’s eye, or corner him in shadows, at fêtes and functions. Some youth, seduced; his parents, enraged; and then a public impalement. The captain was no longer surpassingly handsome, needless to say: a few birds lifted, cawing irritably, when the sedan stilled and the passengers alighted; they hungrily fell back to with the flock, as Aqib and Lucretia entered the gates. Awaiting them in the atrium, the Blest his sister-in-law, the Most Holy, and Her Grace—thronged by courtiers—broke at once into noisy babble, all the while hustling father and daughter down vaulted hallways toward the Daluçan Garden. Distractedly answering the query that rang out loudest, Aqib said, “The Blest was at her studies when the herald arrived,” and that won him a moment’s stunned and knowing silence. His attention was largely elsewhere.
What had he, as a child, ever imagined the “sin of Daluz” to be, exactly? Probably it’d been a thing beyond his imagining, as doubtless the matter was for little Lucretia now. Saints forbid she give it any thought! Had Aqib ever, then? Had he never wondered why these men alone among sinners were impaled . . . thusly onto spears, to die slowly before the Sovereign House, in full view of all Olorum and the Saints? Well, maybe not: he had been a very stupid boy, after all. The cavalry captain had pursued Aqib with such sly charm, so sure of his ground, that a bit of common knowledge must surely circulate in certain circles. No villain, by any means, that poor dead fool had only been too . . . thirsty. Those heavy-lidded eyes had used to track one’s position, progress, every movement at midnight prayers and parties, at formal court audiences and devotions; those full lips always ajar and tongue peeking—tongue licking—in carnal speculation. Ever caught alone, Aqib might well have given up exactly what was desired of him. But he himself wanted life, not horrible death; and so never could the handsome seducer find him where a tryst might be fixed for later, much less consummated on the spot.
In her own way, the Blessèd Femysade helped his resolve. Sometimes she still complained that the vows of marriage enjoined a woman three times to faith, and yet never once required likewise of the man: “I’d kill you,” she liked to say tenderly, tangling fingers in his hair. He rather thought she would, too. Therefore Aqib kept always right where eyes could see, never just out of sight. He cast his gaze aside whenever another man’s sought to catch his own. And if ever on the road at night, he went accompanied by many attendants, his wife’s spies among them. Never once alone since, since . . .
The Daluçan Garden.
Topiary trees. Clipped grass. Shining white marble. The colonnade, polished to glaring reflectancy, squared the rich lawn of the peristyle. There, in the center, grew a shady grove of mevilla trees, the branches freighted with many dark fruit and a few, here and there, just blushing orange. Two gods sat under the trees. One stood up—not six but seven feet tall—and beckoned welcome to Aqib and Lucretia, inviting them into the shade, among the strewn pillows. With the same gesture, the god waved off the royal crowd. Father and daughter walked alone from the colonnade, out under white light and onto the green grass. Lucretia lagged, clutching his fingers tightly.
The gods?
They were better looking than any people you know. Both women, they were a full foot taller than even the Blessèd Femysade, who at six feet towered over Aqib. The gods’ hair—wonderful to behold—was scissored and combed into rigorously perfect spheres. Oh, they were beautiful! The younger god smiled very patiently, as some mother will smile to say, “Yes, it is, isn’t it,” when her baby exclaims, “The sky is blue, Mama!” Well, what else would it be? Olorumi were brownskinned, and Cousins generally of the duskiest, richest color. The gods were much darker, of truly black complexion. Or not exactly: imagine the iridescence atop a natural pool of petraoleum, though the effect was never so blatant, but rather at the very borders of perception, subtlest of qualities. Their skin seemed faintly faceted. Now and again, a glimmering prismatic rill would trickle across a god’s hand, down her cheek, or along a foot: over any flesh exposed to the sun. Aqib sat where the gods gestured. Lucretia would not.
The elder god sat down with them, and said, “We are pleased to meet you, Sanctified Cousin Aqib, and you, Blessèd Lucretia—your parents gave you a Daluçan name, how charming!—but where . . .” The god peered to the right and left, with polite theatricality. “ . . . is she, Blessèd among Olorumi, your wife, Femysade?”
Aqib thought to lie discreetly; then, considering to whom he spoke, thought again. (It was said the gods could smell a lie!) “Your summons caught the Blessèd Femysade amidst deep studies,” he said, “and engaged in work requiring her utmost concentration. But I do assure you: the Blest hastens in her endeavors even now, that she may obey your summons at the earliest moment”—possible was untrue, and convenient insulting—“practicable.” Aqib was pleased with himself. He’d cleaved to truth, however technical the cleaving. The gods were trading a glance; did the younger one smirk? “On her behalf and mine, I bid you the Saints’ welcome to Olorum, City and Nation,” Aqib said. “And you, Daughter, will you not greet our visitors, too?” Lucretia would not: she would crawl into her father’s lap and turn her face to his chest. “Come now, Lucretia; mind your manners. Lucretia! I do apologize to you both.” Aqib was aware he should reprimand the child and force her to behave in a manner seemly for her age and station. Femysade certainly would have answered such antics with a slap. But he too was a little overwhelmed, and solace may be had in giving it. He patted a hand on her back, and Lucretia sucked her thumb like a much younger child. How did one address the gods, properly? Which honorific . . . ?
“You may call us by our names, Royal Cousin. We Ashëans are not so formal as you Olorumi. I am the prophet Adónane. This is my granddaughter, who is called, hmm, let us say ‘Perfecta.’ She’s the greatest of our miracle workers, paramount among magi of the Ashëan Enclave.”
Adónane and Perfecta wore long loose shifts, sleeveless and monochrome. The prophet wore crimson, the maga a brilliant shade of saffron; across their naked shoulders, twice-wrapping the tops of the arms, the gods wore shawls of the same fine linen, but fabulously embroidered. The brocade told stories in the stitched shape of gods and mortals, minarets and grass huts; here a rain of bright fire, there what must be white driven snow. The god Perfecta, silent this while, had slipped a smooth oblong of ceramic from her pocket, and she stared down at it. The god’s eyes tracked, as did his wife’s or daughter’s when sitting before a codex.
Perfecta glanced up. “I wish you wouldn’t think of us as gods,” she said. “Rather call us, ‘children of the Tower Ashê.’ Or call us Ashëans. Once, Cousin, there were gods dwelling on the earth, and this planet was a sink of poison before they reformed it and made all good things grow. A little of their theogenetica persists among us purely bred Ashëans. But even so, we are as human as you, Cousin Aqib, and just a little longer lived. Indeed, we are kindred in truth, you and I. Did you know that your great-grandmother is sister to my grandmother here, Adónane?”
“Osorio, Most Blessèd by Saints?” Aqib sat straighter, looking around as if family-legend might momentarily step out of the colonnade. “Does she yet live? Is she here with you?”
“Ah, no . . . ,” the younger god said, regretfully. “Osorio hasn’t come with us here, no
r is she, mmm, alive, in any sense you might understand. She is become a Discorporate Intelligence—”
The elder god, gently chiding: “Perfecta.”
Causing the younger to abruptly sum up: “—your great-grandmother is dead now.”
“I see,” Aqib said coldly. Quite how the states of alive or dead might admit of ambiguity wasn’t clear to him. That it did so for these seven-foot sublimities nipped his heart of any budding sense of kinship. No, he was nothing to do with these immortal giants.
Perfecta turned from Aqib to catch the eye of his daughter, peeking out in curiosity.
“Blessèd Child, sit up a moment and have a look above your papa’s right ear. Try looking into his hair here”—Perfecta touched the side of her own head, an inch or two back from the temple—“and tell us what you see. Go on, child—you’ll get a surprise.”
Lucretia looked at him. Aqib shrugged, nodded.
Short hair or none was the mode at court, so Aqib would have long since shorn his off, except the Blessèd Femysade wished it kept wild and long as on the day they’d met. His daughter’s fingers rooted in the bushy thickets round his right ear. “I can’t see anything, Papa,” she complained, but then said, “ . . . oh!” Lucretia patted an excited hand on Aqib’s shoulder. “Oh, Papa, you have one too! You have one long hair growing just the same as theirs: blue!” Except on the very crown of their heads, where a patch grew black as any mortal’s, the gods’ hair was all some celestial shade: the elder god’s as pale as the blanched sky of morning, Perfecta’s as bright as the noonday heavens.
“So you have hair like ours, Royal Cousin,” said Perfecta, “and by blood of your great-grandmother, even some vestige of Ashê’s power comes down to you. That little witch-gift mutation of yours. Or haven’t you marked that beasts obey, and get along better with you, and with your father, than with all others?”
Aqib recoiled, though he had so marked. “It’s only that I was raised working in the Menagerie.” He made the gestures of a man putting something unwanted from him. “I grew up around all manner of animals,” Aqib explained. “And so naturally I learned to know them and their ways.” He stilled his hands and made himself smile politely. “There’s no great wonder in that. No ‘magic.’”
Perfecta gave him a long look. She held up a hand, index finger extended, and—mimicking astonishingly—the god warbled, chittered, trilled. After a moment, a little golden songbird fluttered down from the mevilla tree shading them. It lit on her finger. “Now, Royal Cousin, you call the bird.”
Of course Aqib could do no such thing. He shook his head, his smile becoming strained, even a little supercilious. The gods were fallible after all, it seemed. “I do beg your pardon, Perfecta, that I should prove so unable.” Aqib spoke in a clipped tone. “I wish that I could obey.”
The god reached out her free hand and said, “Aqib bmg Sadiqi,” lightly tapping his right temple, above his ear, “Call the bird.”
At her finger’s touch, the world’s richness and vividity doubled; it trebled and redoubled again. Aqib’s perception expanded into a whole other dimension. Bees’ buzzing, locust-chatter, the birds singing: no longer was this empty noise. It was lyric’d music, song with words. In a distant courtyard of the Sovereign House, a bitty lapdog barked and barked. Welcome home, I love you, Whee, Yay, Hurrah. Aqib had always . . . guessed? some of this: now he knew. Now he heard it plain. The opposite of overwhelming, this fresh discernment gave him heart: heartening as sunlight striking down through a fogbound forest, heartening as for the traveler—all turned about and lost in trackless murk—to suddenly find the way before him bright and green and known.
Aqib sang to the bird perched on the god’s finger. Will you not come and visit? The golden bird flew across to his own finger. Hello there, strange fellow, she sang. You’ve a lovely song! Aqib laughed and thanked the bird and dismissed her again to the free air.
“Oh, Master Aqib.” Lucretia seized him round the neck in an embrace. “Papa, Papa, that was marvelous. I kindly beg you ask the gods to do it for me!”
Aqib looked at Perfecta, who smilingly reached to bestow another such gratuity, but this time hesitated and drew back her hand from the little girl. “We Ashëan purebloods are born to our gifts: ‘congenital’ we say, meaning they are fixed and unchanging. But with you witches the life you lead, it seems, may shape your gift. Lucretia, you are so young that yours is not yet formed.” The god looked back to Aqib. “It was a simple matter to open your eyes, Sanctified Cousin. You had yourself been struggling to do so all your life. Your Blessèd daughter, however, stands at the forking of many roads. At such a junction, I think I’d better”—Perfecta glanced at the other god, her grandmother, who shook her head—“not fix her feet to any one road. Best leave the child untroubled, that she come into her own.”
Aqib thought he understood, but Lucretia certainly did not. As his daughter had not done in years, she burst into noisy false tears. It was the first stage of working herself up to a proper fit. Just then, the name and arrival of her mother, Aqib’s wife, “The Blessèd Femysade!” was heralded from the marble colonnade. At once, that announcement quenched Lucretia’s kindling tantrum. The girl scrambled from Aqib’s lap to sit beside him in the grass; no less upright and poised than the gods, than her father—or, indeed, than the Blessèd Femysade herself, who crossed the garden swiftly to her husband’s side and sat down gracefully there. She cast one cool quick glance over her daughter. The girl sat up straighter.
Pricked by envy, Aqib noticed that his wife had stopped to dress. And quite possibly the Blest’s star outshone the gods’: she wore sumptuous silks, two arms’ worth of red-gold bangles, and diamonds of state. Certainly no one could call her splendor any less. Oh, what do you care, Femysade had said to him on past occasion. You’re pretty enough in rags. Which missed the point, Aqib felt. Right raiment lent one strength, while the flesh was only weak. “Blessèd among Olorumi,” he murmured, inclining his head.
“Husband.” The Blessèd Femysade laid a proprietary hand, ink-stained, on his knee. She turned to the visitors with so little awe, anyone would have sworn the gods called round every day from the western bayou. Glancing over their storied shawls and bright gowns, the Blest spoke simple greetings: “Archmage,” to Perfecta, and to Adónane, “Prophet paramount.” An interrupted genius clinging, still, to patience gives a particular sort of pained smile. “You have called us from our studies?”
“We’ll come straight to the point, O Blest,” the elder god said. “Having now examined your husband and daughter, we believe you are the one foretold to aid the Ashëan Enclave in its greatest enterprise. For such help as you, Blessèd Femysade, can give us, the Ashëan Enclave would remunerate you—and all Olorum, City and Nation—in coin, in goods, and in kind: with knowledge and miracles.”
“Mm.” The Blest smoothingly ran a hand over the folds of her gown. “And what boon does the Ashëan Enclave seek of us? Devolved and short-lived creature that we are.”
The younger god looked up from her oblong piece. Aqib could see now that her ceramic flickered, tiny colored lights or images washing indecipherably across its surface. Grinning in triumph, the god Perfecta seemed not a moment older than her apparent age of twenty. “Nana, she’s savant!” the younger god exclaimed joyfully to her elder. “The Blest has an extraordinary witch mutation!”
The elder god’s face woke joyfully too. “Before going further, O Blest,” Adónane said, “we’d like to ask a question meant to evaluate your eideticism and savance. May we?”
This unmistakably roused the Blessèd Femysade’s interest. “Is it a test?”
Adónane nodded.
“Then certainly you may.”
“Perfecta, ask her a three-body problem, and aloud, using no telepathy, nor the retinal laser, either. If the Blest can retain the whole unaided, without augmentatives, then with them she’s guaranteed to be able to—”
“Nana, I know!” The younger god, staring at her ceramic piece again, sa
id, “The bright medium is working on a problem now. And here it is: we Ashëans, O Blest, make use of microsingularities in our science, as models; and so we’ll ask you to consider these in a straightforward three-body problem: smallest orbits smaller, both orbiting the third, largest: 2.145 × 1013 kg, 1.715 × 1015 kg, 5.71 × 1020 kg, respectively; diameter, for all three, .137 mm.”
The Blest said, “Standard deviation and mean of orbital resonance?”
“Oh, please,” the elder god interjected. “Never mind all that fuss! We’d just like to see some rough math hacked, that’s all.”
The Blessèd Femysade said, “So then you mean . . .” and spoke a long equation.
“Yes,” the younger god said, “precisely. Time elapsed and starting position and velocity as follows . . .”
“I wonder,” the Blessèd Femysade interrupted, “earthbound singularities, as models?”
“Do not be alarmed. We have means to contain their gravitational fields, although we cannot, unfortunately, prevent the gravities of the planet, moon, and sun from acting upon them.”
“That is unfortunate: complicating, one imagines, all your computations by many orders of magnitude, and compromising too, one would have to think, the ultimate predictive value of every modeling scenario.”
“An ugly problem, yes.” Perfecta sighed, with a little concordant nod. “One we should so like to turn over to you, soon. And it seems, O Blest, there’s no need to bring you up to speed anywhere.” The younger god Perfecta looked up from her hand-piece. “Shall I skip straight to the numbers then?”
“Yes,” said the Blessèd Femysade, “do.” She looked downward and aside, her gaze abstracted, the corners of her lips upturning in the slightest smile. (It was the countenance of a daydreamer, a cloudgatherer, some stranger might have supposed; but Aqib knew this attitude signified the opposite: the Blessèd Femysade’s attention at most keen.)
A Taste of Honey Page 4
