Death's Heretic

by James L. Sutter

  “Goodbye, Father,” she whispered.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Up above, in the great cathedral’s columned reception hall, Khoyar summoned an acolyte who stood ready with a sheaf of papers. This he handed to Salim.

  “Here are copies of the Lamasaran Guard’s findings,” he said. “When you return, there will be a room prepared for you here, should you desire it. Furthermore, Brother Hasam will stand ready to act as runner, guide, or anything else you need.”

  The young acolyte beamed anxiously, and Salim recognized him as the man who had guided him up into Khoyar’s tower earlier.

  “My thanks,” Salim said, bowing slightly to Hasam. The acolyte’s chest puffed out. “I suspect, however, that my investigations will leave me little time for sleep, and it may well be several nights until I return.”

  “As you wish,” Khoyar said. “Your comings and goings are your own.”

  If only, Salim thought, but there was little point in antagonizing the high priest now that they understood each other. He bowed properly this time and turned to Neila.

  “If you would show me to your estate, Lady?”

  “It would be my pleasure,” Neila replied, and despite the show she’d just witnessed with the meat husk that used to house her father, her voice was smooth and calm. “Please, come with me.” She turned toward the cathedral’s doors and Salim followed, stowing the papers in an inner pocket of his robe.

  Outside, the afternoon sun beat down in full strength, and the air hung heavy and dry. The sudden contrast hit him like the blast of a furnace, and made him suspect that the cathedral’s relative comfort had more to do with magic than simply the shade of the high walls.

  The thought disgusted him. The priests could have accomplished the same end simply by incorporating some of the local, open-air building styles. That people would indebt themselves to a god in exchange for magic, just to waste that power on minor tricks and comforts ...

  At the bottom of the stairs, a carriage had been pulled around. It was constructed in the Taldan style rather than that of the local rickshaws, completely enclosed and pulled by two magnificent horses. The scrollwork on the sides was highlighted with gold that glittered in the sun, blazing from the carriage’s near-white wood. Its wheels were the large, thin cart wheels of a vehicle designed for cobblestone streets, rather than the shifting sands of a desert road, but Salim supposed the Anvanorys rarely had cause to venture off the best-maintained thoroughfares.

  The cart’s driver, on the other hand, was a local. His deeply lined face was as brown as the twisted scrub trees that bore leaves only after the flash floods, and his body was swathed in loose robes of a sensible off-white. His head was garbed in a similarly colored keffiyeh that fell down in back to shade his neck. As Neila and Salim descended the steps, he leaped down from his perch and opened the carriage door for them.

  “Thank you, Olar,” Neila said, and stepped lightly up into the raised carriage. Salim followed, and the servant shut the door.

  Inside, the carriage was upholstered in lush purple, with bench seats both front and back. Windows of stretched fabric instead of glass allowed a small amount of airflow while still keeping out the worst of the dust, and the light passing through it lit the interior with a soft red glow, like sun seeping through closed eyelids on a bright day. Neila took the backward-facing seat toward the carriage’s front, and Salim the other. She reached up and slid open a narrow, rectangular window in the front wall, then rapped once on the ceiling.

  “Home,” she called, and the servant said something back in acknowledgment, his words cut off as she slid the window closed. There was the crack of a whip, and the carriage swayed as it began to move down the road. Neila settled back into her seat and crossed her legs.

  “So,” she said. “Where do we begin?”

  Salim studied the woman—though now he thought she was more of a girl, really—sitting before him. Now that she was away from the church—and presumably the remains of her father, which would be enough to unsettle anyone—she seemed to relax significantly. Where before she had seemed pretty in a sharp, aggressive fashion, like a bird of prey ready to strike, she now had the air of a proper aristocrat, smooth and soft. Her cheekbones were high, and the fabric of her dress, though cut modestly enough so as not to invite scandal or unappreciated attention, still swelled pleasantly with the curve of her breasts. Yet the hands that folded now on the covered point of her knee were strong and not overly manicured or jeweled, the mark of a woman not afraid to do things herself when necessary. Here was someone who could play both roles with equal ease: the retiring daughter of an affluent noble, or the commanding and iron-hard lady of the house, in charge of managing estate affairs and doling out punishment to the domestic staff. Both images probably served her well in this foreign land, so different from the one she had been born into.

  “Perhaps you could start by telling me how you and your father came to be in Thuvia.”

  Neila nodded.

  “I was born in Yanmass,” she said, taking up the rhythm of someone with a long story waiting in the wings. “My mother died of fever shortly after my birth—as far back as I can remember, it’s always been just me and my father. Father was a successful speculator and caravan organizer, and as I got older, he grew even more successful. Yanmass is a primary hub for caravans coming out of Casmaron, and father was a master of the market. In addition to financing his own expeditions, he would walk through the markets and talk with the drovers, get a sense of what would fetch the highest price next season, and buy it all. We had a great house overlooking the river.

  “Though we were very rich, father was never quite content. He never took another wife, and while he was generally a happy, laughing man, he was prone to bouts of melancholy. No matter how well his business did, he could never come to terms with the fact that he was growing older. It had always been just the two of us, and the idea of leaving me alone one day filled him with grief. He said he wanted to be there to watch his grandchildren grow up.” She raised an eyebrow to indicate what she thought of that particular sentiment.

  “For years he dwelled on the issue, taking less and less pleasure in his surroundings. And then one day something changed. Where he had been growing steadily dourer, he was suddenly his old self, but with a newfound and unprecedented zest for his work. He threw himself into it, staying up long into the night poring over manifests and reports from the Empire of Kelesh. Our fortunes grew accordingly. And then, after a year of this, he came to me and told me to pack my things. We were going to be taking a journey. A very long one.

  “I threw a fit, of course—I was a child of Taldor, and hardly used to being put upon in any fashion. Yet for once, all my tears did little to persuade him. We sold off most of our holdings, boarded up the manor, and set sail down the river to Cassomir, and from there onto the sea. It was as we were leaving the Cassomiri harbor that he finally told me where we were going, and why.”

  “The sun orchid elixir,” Salim said.

  Neila nodded.

  “And what did you think of that?”

  She spread her hands. “Everyone’s heard the legends, but it’s another thing entirely to actually pursue them. To halt aging—it’s a universal dream, is it not?”

  “Almost,” Salim said. “But go on.”

  “Father’s plan was simple—using the funds that he’d acquired over a lifetime, he would set us up here for however long it took to ingratiate ourselves and be offered an invitation to bid. Once he’d acquired the elixir, he would drink it, and immediately set to work earning the funds to purchase me one.”

  “And that’s what you wanted as well?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose. Death isn’t something I dwell on overmuch. Or at least, it wasn’t. But I have no desire to die.”

  Salim leaned back in his own seat and steepled his hands. “Tell me about your arrival.”

  She gazed at the cloth window, across which flickered the occasional shadow as they passed buildings wh
ich temporarily blotted out the sun. The sudden flashes of shade stroked her face in an unknowable rhythm.

  “It was ...different. Completely unlike Yanmass. The heat was unbearable, and the green that I had grown up with was only a narrow band along the river banks. The people were strange, and often lapsed into languages that were meaningless to us. Yet the fundamental principles were the same. Commerce never changes, as Father was fond of saying, and he was able to purchase an estate along the river so that it might feel more like home. That was three years ago.

  “Needless to say, we’ve both adjusted. I enjoy the chaos of the markets, and the respect Garundi men pay their women, even if most of them don’t know what to make of a foreign one who speaks like a man.” The corner of her mouth twisted in a little smile. “At least here there’s no stream of perfumed dandies who expect the ladies to be colorful songbirds, kept solely for display. For all their modesty, Thuvian women are masters of their domain.”

  “So you adapted quickly, then.”

  She laughed, a genuine peal of amusement.

  “Not in the least,” she said. “Father refused to trim his beard or wear a hat for the first six months, and was sunburned terribly. I spoke nothing but Taldane, and regularly paid twice what I should for everything we needed. The locals looked at us like we were half-orcs, and our interactions with them were a constant stream of faux pas and miscommunications. Yet we learned, and so did they. Our servants now are every bit as competent and dependable as those we left behind in Taldor. And though Father is a shrewd businessman, the merchants here appreciate a worthy adversary, and he quickly worked his way into the city’s higher social echelons. They all knew why he was here, but they’re used to it, and don’t mind. For every winner of the sun orchid auction who has the capital—and arrogance—to simply show up and demand an invitation, there’s another like father who seeks to ingratiate himself first. He was good at it.”

  Salim scratched at his chin. “So he had a lot of friends.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.” She cocked her head. “Father was a driven man, and didn’t have a lot of time for friends. I would say that they respected him, and he them.”

  “What about this Harlot, and the Jackal?”

  Neila’s lips made a moue of distaste.

  “I didn’t know either of them particularly well, but Father did. They’re foreigners like us, though not from so far away. All the elixir hopefuls know each other. Keeping an eye on the competition.”

  “But you didn’t like them.”

  A slight shake of her head. “Akhom—the Jackal—is personable, but it’s hollow as a blown egg. And Jbade...well, let’s simply say her nickname is accurate. Not the sort of woman I’d want around my father.”

  Interesting. Salim wondered just how close Faldus and this Jbade woman had been, and if there might be a certain amount of jealousy there.

  “Do you think one of them could have killed your father?”

  She looked away, toward the patterns of light on the window, and then met his eyes abruptly.

  “Yes,” she said, and her face was stone. “I think either of them could have ordered it. Or someone else entirely—someone father might not even have known. In winning the auction, father made us targets for every desperate lowlife in this city.”

  It was true. The prospect of immortality, even one that had to be regularly renewed, was an unimaginable draw. The elixir itself, Salim knew, was produced in a secret redoubt somewhere in the desert. Each year, a blind and mute servant emerged from the temple-fortress with six vials of the elixir, produced from the exceedingly rare flowers of the sun orchid. Those vials were then transported to one of the five major cities of Thuvia by any number of careful and mysterious means. Sometimes it was armed caravans, sometimes teleportation, always following different paths to help avoid thieves and bandits. The right to sell the elixir rotated between cities every year, and those invited to participate in the auction were allowed a single sealed bid, with all proceeds—win or lose—going to the city government.

  The elixir was the promise of eternal youth. It was quite literally priceless. And it had cost this girl her father.

  “That’s why your father made the arrangement with the Church of Pharasma, for them to resurrect him in the event of his murder.”

  Neila shook her head. “My idea. Father was too excited to worry overmuch about such things, but he saw the logic of it when I explained it.”

  “Was your father a member of the faith?”

  “Father?” she asked. “Not at all. He worshiped Abadar the merchant god, though primarily as an aspect of his business dealings. He would have made the arrangement with their banker-priests, but of course their rates were higher.”

  “And you?” Salim pressed. Neila eyed him levelly.

  “I’ve never bothered much with gods,” she said, watching for his reaction.

  “Good.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise. She looked about to say something, but then the gentle rocking of the carriage ceased, and Salim heard the muted thump as the driver hopped down from his perch. Neila looked to the door as it swung open.

  “We’re here,” she said, and gestured for him to go first. He slid out of his seat and stepped down from the carriage, long legs not bothering with the hanging wooden running board.

  He was no longer in Thuvia. The structure that sat at the end of the circular, crushed-stone drive was built in the style of a southern Taldan plantation house, white-sided and fronted by a half-rounded, columned portico. Yet it was not the architectural style of Anvanory Manor that made Salim feel suddenly disoriented. It was the color.

  Where the rest of Lamasara’s landscape had been painted in shades of yellow, red, and ochre, the Anvanory estate was green. Full-size fruit trees surrounded and half-screened the house from the rest of the grounds. Beyond them were fields thick with ripening crops, irrigated by long and meandering canals. To the east, the waters of the river were just barely visible, lazily swirling past the entrances to the canals and bringing life to the fields. And to the south, demarcating the edges of the Anvanorys’ fields, was the telltale green smudge of a full-fledged forest, following the meandering river up toward its headwaters.

  “Unbelievable,” Salim breathed. There couldn’t be more than a few stands of trees that large within a hundred miles.

  “Stunning, isn’t it?” Neila stepped down lightly from the carriage behind him, ignoring the driver’s proffered hand. “It cost Father a fortune to acquire such a large swath of riverfront, but he insisted that it was imperative for us to be reminded where we come from. So he had this house built, and the surrounding land cleared as a plantation. It’s proven rather productive—it turns out that farming has done as well by us as mercantilism, albeit on a smaller scale.” Lady Anvanory moved past Salim and up two smooth stone stairs, into the shaded entryway. “Please, come in.”

  Salim followed. Inside, the strange feeling of having been somehow transported back to Taldor was only amplified. Though the walls were primarily of the same adobe as the rest of the city, rather than absurdly expensive wood, the style was all wrong—in place of clean Thuvian lines, every surface was hung with framed portraits and curtains, the floor of marble instead of baked tile. Two grand staircases curved up from the high-ceilinged entryway to a recessed balcony that was the main hallway of the second floor. Were it not for the brown skins and loose robes of the servants, Salim would not have been able to say for certain that he was still in the desert.

  One of those servants approached now and bowed low, his demeanor and the small coat of arms stitched to the breast of his robes marking him as the majordomo.

  “Developments?” Neila asked, without greeting the man. The word was sharp and quick, but out of efficiency, not anger.

  “None regarding the master, Great Lady,” the man said, remaining bent at the waist as if he were addressing her feet. “There was another incident in the southwestern field, but the men are fine, and the harvest cont
inues on schedule.”

  “Good,” she said, then turned to Salim. “Are you thirsty?”

  Salim wasn’t, particularly, but something about the way she looked at him held significance. Suddenly he realized that she was, in her own way, presenting her version of the water ritual between host and visitor. The thought of it coming from this white-faced Taldan girl was amusing, but he held up his end.

  “Your hospitality honors me, as it does your ancestors,” he replied formally. She nodded in approval.

  “Have drinks sent up to the study, Amir” she said, “but don’t let anyone enter it.”

  Still not meeting her eyes, the servant nodded, then stepped back a pace before straightening and moving briskly down one of two long hallways that appeared to run most of the length of the house.

  “Come,” she said to Salim, motioning for him to follow her down the hall the servant hadn’t taken. “I suspect you’ll need to know the layout of the house before you’ll be able to tell me anything about the assassins.” Salim murmured his agreement.

  Anvanory Manor was an enormous, sprawling maze of rooms, made even more grandiose by the fact that it existed solely to house a man and his daughter—plus their extensive retinue of servants. They passed through the so-called front rooms—the grand dining room with chandelier and a table fit to seat twenty or more, several sitting rooms and parlors, a den that smelled thickly of old pipe smoke and bore the leering, mounted heads of half a dozen game animals—and on into the servants’ quarters.

  Where the other rooms had been perfect, precise, and lifeless, held in state like a well-preserved corpse, these new chambers were ablaze with life and activity. Cooks in the kitchen bawled orders to maids, who in turn shooed children away from new loaves of bread before any could go missing. Steam and smoke filled the air with the aroma of garlic, cumin, and turmeric. Out the back doors, washerwomen sang in rhythm with the rasp of fabric on the washboards, their beautifully discordant harmonies reminding Salim of the cries of wading birds in the river. Beyond them were the open-air sleeping porches that housed the field workers and their families, with their canvas sides that could be closed in case of sandstorms or the periodic downpours that brought life to the desert. Neila led Salim on a circuit of all of this, then up the entryway stairs to the second floor.