by Anne Perry
Alexius was staring around him. There was awe in his face as he took in the sheer scale of Shinabari magnificence, the splendor of millennia of power, the gathered treasures of the earth. It displayed the arrogance of those who never conceived that their rule could end. It made imperial Camassia seem very new, very raw.
One of the servants moved forward nervously. He ignored Alexius and faced Tathea, very slowly sinking to his knees. It was a deliberate gesture of submission.
“Where is Hem-Shash?” she asked.
“Gone, Majesty,” he said so quietly she barely heard him. It was a moment before she realized he was terrified. He expected to be murdered.
“If you do as you are told, you have no need to fear me,” she said coolly. “When did he go?”
“Yesterday, Majesty.”
“Where to?” It was probably a pointless question. Hem-Shash would be a fool if he had told anyone, and this man had no cause to repeat it.
“South, Majesty, that is all I know.” He waited with head bowed.
“Get up,” she ordered. “Have rooms made ready, and food, water, clean clothes.
“Yes, Majesty.” The man jerked to stand upright, then hurried away, stumbling in his fear and relief.
Tathea looked again around the huge, vacant hall, and some glimpse reached her of the enormity of the task ahead in rebuilding this crumbling nation into what she would have it be. How could she satisfy even the simple needs—feeding and keeping order among a race which had not only been conquered by foreigners but had long since been defeated by its own apathy?
Instinctively she looked at Alexius.
He smiled back briefly, but it was not much more than a softening of the eyes. He had completed his part. Government was hers. She had begged for it, persuaded Isadorus to help her. She had marched across the desert, killed and conquered for it. Now it was in her hand.
Tathea had Hem-Shash’s belongings removed and replaced with new items she chose. Everything she owned she had left in Camassia, except the small lapis tortoise. The only thing that hurt her to leave behind was the little black and white cat, which she had left with Isadorus. It would have been impossible to bring it.
She walked through the once familiar palace. There seemed little of Mon-Allat’s left unchanged. She stood in the rooms where she had come twenty years ago as a bride, then lived as Empress. Every one was crowded with memories, some happy, too many now touched with a sadness as she realized how little she had understood. She seemed to her wiser self to have been so blind, so shallow of perception. And yet she could feel pity for the person she had been, and for those who had shared her ignorance.
Too many of them were dead now: servants whom she should have regarded as friends, guards who had pledged to give their lives to protect her, never believing they would have to. But how many of those she had regarded as friends had been among the assassins, or allies of the assassins, willing to follow the nearest paymaster?
She stood in the blue courtyard by the lily pool where the water ran down the walls in a smooth sheet, the sunlight from above shining on the mosaic-like jewels.
How much should she forgive? How much dared she? Would mercy be seen as weakness? If only Kol-Shamisha were alive to advise her. She did not know which of the old ministers from the past she could trust. She could not even consider those who had sided with the new tyranny, either in act or in sympathy. Those who had been loyal to Mon-Allat must have lacked perception, judgment, or they would have seen the rebellion before it happened and have offered warning.
Or perhaps they had, and Mon-Allat had not listened.
She ordered a new room furnished for her. She would not return to her old one; she would never go into it again. She commanded masons to seal the room which had been Habi’s. Let it rest in peace and silence. She could not bear to go into it, and no one else should enter it as if nothing had happened there. Servants could have her room and Mon-Allat’s, unless they were afraid to occupy them. If they were, then let those remain empty also.
A superficial order was imposed on the city within days. The Camassian army patrolled the streets, but the people showed little heart to fight. A few youths caused the occasional scuffle and were subdued. No one was killed.
Ra-Nufis was invaluable. He brought word to Tathea daily, advice, ideas, news of people and events, which each time proved accurate. He told her which governors and ministers in each province were loyal to the old regime and the principles of the past and which she should not trust. As the days went by, she began fully to appreciate the magnificent work he had accomplished in the years of her absence. She relied on his judgment as she could no one else’s.
He stood beside her not only as a minister in government and a disciple of the Book. He cared for her well-being as a brother or a son might have. He was concerned when she grew tired and made certain that she ate, whatever the pressure of audiences, decisions, or documents to be read or discussed. He was the one person with whom she could share both the past and the present.
“Is there any word of Hem-Shash?” she asked him ten days after the victory. She stood in the blue courtyard. He and Alexius were the only people she would receive here. It was her place of retreat from the formality of the great hall and the memories of the rest of the palace. Here she was herself, no longer entirely Shinabari. Here she could also speak of the Book.
“Yes, Majesty,” he said gravely, biting his lip.
She looked at him quickly. She was wearing Shinabari dress, loose-flowing trousers under a long tabard of white muslin embroidered with thread of gold, as befitted an empress. But there were Camassian army guards posted at each door, with scarlet cloaks, not blue. She still felt a sickening tightness of fear when she saw the copper and turquoise of the Shinabari Household Guard. Memory was not quelled so easily. She did not tell Ra-Nufis so, or Alexius, but if she woke in the night to the heat and the silence and the smell of bitter herbs, the nightmare returned, and she found her body rigid. The sweat stood out on her skin. Her heart almost burst.
How could six years disappear like that?
“Have you found him?” she asked. She had spent many hours trying to decide what to do if Hem-Shash were brought back captive. She could see his bitter, treacherous face in her mind’s eye as easily as if he stood before her. He was Mon-Allat’s elder sister’s son, but the throne did not pass through the female line if there was a male alive. He had always resented it, felt cheated by birth. But with Mon-Allat and Habi dead, he was the only male left in direct succession. After the assassination, he had not needed to usurp the throne, merely to allow justice to be carried out and wait. If he were not guilty of the murder of Mon-Allat, then he was still by right the Isarch. Tathea as widow had no claim to the throne except possibly as regent were Habi alive. As a childless widow, she had no rights at all.
She dared not let Hem-Shash live, and yet she could not execute him unless she could prove he was guilty of murdering the Isarch. She was not certain it was true. He may have wished it and been eager enough to take the fruits when it was done, but the man she remembered had neither the courage nor the skill to carry it out himself.
“No, Majesty,” Ra-Nufis said softly. “But he has been seen far to the south. It seems he is making for the barbarian borders. It is conceivable he thinks to rally the armies, but he will not succeed.” He said it with a certainty that surprised her.
“Won’t he?”
He smiled in the sun, the light glinting on the blue and turquoise of his tabard, the traditional colors of the Shinabari royal house. “No, Majesty. I know the general and the governor of the south. They will never send armies away from the frontier. They dare not, even if they wished to. They are realists. They will be happy enough to have a strong Isarch again. They, of all people, know we cannot afford a civil war.”
Without thinking, she put out her hand and took his arm. “Thank you, Ra-Nufis. You have done more than any other man to make this succeed. I am not unaware of your loyalty, or your
worth.”
“I serve my people, Majesty.” He looked straight at her, meeting her eyes without blinking, for a moment without deference. “Above all, I serve the Book, and the beauty I see in it.”
“I know you do,” she answered him. “That is why you will not fail, and why I trust you.”
He smiled widely, a beautiful, radiant smile. “None of us will fail, Majesty, none of us who serve the Word of God.”
One person Tathea had put off seeing for as long as possible was the old Queen Tiyo-Mah, Mon-Allat’s mother. She had never liked the old woman. Their relationship had been fragile at best, at worst discreetly hostile. Tiyo-Mah had never been beautiful, but in her youth and well into middle age she had had an allure which had tantalized and captivated many men, and an appetite to take whichever of them was profitable or entertaining to her. Above all she was clever. She traced her ancestry back to the first Isarchs through both her parents’ lines, and no one guarded Shinabari power or heritage more jealously than she did.
Tathea did not need to wonder what Tiyo-Mah would think of her return at the head of a foreign army, and a Camassian one at that. Of all the old enemies, Tiyo-Mah hated Camassia the most profoundly because it presumed the highest. She referred to the City in the Center of the World as Pellagris, the ancient name it had borne as a village a thousand years ago, when Camassia was barely civilized.
But just as Tathea had lost her husband, so Tiyo-Mah had lost her son, and also her grandson. And whatever their private feelings, she was the last of the royal line left, and morally and politically Tathea must treat her with the respect which was due her. As far as Tathea knew, Tiyo-Mah had not failed in either courage or patriotism, and had acted, as much as was in her power, in the best interests of her people.
She had her own palace in the ancient part of the city. It was far smaller, and as old as the narrow streets around it. The first Isarch had built it in time lost in the mists of memory. It was made of black basalt with fine, needlelike columns in front of it. It had none of the colored frescoes of the later periods, only low, carved reliefs and inlays of veined agate and crystal. There were no watered walls to keep it cool—they were a later invention—only the currents of air that its shape and layout were designed to promote.
Tathea was admitted by a single, unarmed steward and was startled to see how the inside had been renewed and embellished with breathtaking wealth. The building’s design was simple, with smooth, dark walls. The doors were three times a man’s height, but now as they swung open for her, she saw with a momentary shiver of awe that they were faced with beaten copper and hung with pictures inlaid with silver and gold. Ebony tables with golden claws held ewers of chrysoprase, jasper, and alabaster. She saw a gold tortoise with dark green malachite studded across its shell and thought with a smile of the lapis tortoise Ra-Nufis had given her. To her left a perfume box was set with rubies.
She was led down a flight of stairs. The main rooms were three-quarters below ground level, kept cool by the earth around them and high-windowed to let in little sun.
The last doors were opened by unseen hands before she reached them. It was unnerving, as if a steward on the far side could see through the polished metal. The room beyond was lit by candles which burned with a heavy odor.
Tiyo-Mah sat in a high-backed chair whose armrests were inlaid with copper and gold, and an expressionless slave moved a painted fan as wide as a man’s outstretched arms.
She was utterly changed. Tathea was not prepared for it, and the sight jolted her like a physical coldness. Tiyo-Mah was an old woman. Her black hair was thin and scraped across her skull so the shape of the bone showed through. Her cheeks were sunken, the outlines sharp. Her nose curved more cruelly. Her mouth was soft as old silk, perished at the corners. But it was her eyes that had changed most. Once they had been vivid, penetrating the mind, so dark as to seem black. Now they were filmed over with a pale opacity, and she seemed to peer as if uncertain where to focus.
“Ta-Thea?” Her voice was as clear and cutting as always. The sound of it took Tathea back to their first meeting when she had been a new bride in the palace, uncertain, overawed by her new position, the honor and the duty it carried. She had been more frightened of Tiyo-Mah than of anything else in Shinabar, and Tiyo-Mah had known it.
“Tiyo-Mah. I am glad to see you well, but I grieve for your loss,” she replied formally. It was the correct way to begin, and for her own sake as well as the old woman’s she must preserve the dignities.
Tiyo-Mah’s face was unreadable. “Of my son or my grandson, Ta-Thea?” She leaned forward a fraction in her carved chair, her long hands gripping the arms. “Or of my country and all that Shinabar has been for three millennia? Or that a foreign army has invaded and taken my freedom and that of my people? What is it you are sorry for?”
“For the loss of your son,” Tathea answered levelly, feeling her heart beat faster and her breath tighten. The old woman always did this to her, and even now, when she was the conqueror and Tiyo-Mah beaten, the pattern died hard. “I do not know what has happened to Hem-Shash. Word has it that he has gone south but that he is unhurt. I grieve for our people.” She stressed the commonality. “And our country that it has fallen into an apathy where the old virtues are no longer even admired, still less practiced. The foreign army will leave, and when it does we will begin to restore the values we used to have, and others even greater.”
Tiyo-Mah’s expression remained closed. Tathea wondered if the old woman could see her as anything more than a shadow. She seemed to be half blind. She blinked often and moved her head very slightly as if trying to place the sound of her visitor’s voice.
“Is that what you came to tell me?” she asked coldly, a tremor of uncertainty in her voice, as if she were still not quite decided whether or not to allow her anger to show.
“In part,” Tathea replied. “I also came to see how you were and to know if all decencies were performed for my husband and ...” even now she found it difficult to say, “my son.”
Tiyo-Mah rose to her feet slowly, fumbling for the stick which Tathea now noticed leaning against the chair. It too was ebony and heavily ringed with gold. Tiyo-Mah did not quite straighten her back and hobbled across to the slit window, silent on her feet in spite of her awkwardness. She stood with her back to Tathea, hunch-shouldered, her long floor-length tabard black in the shadow, plum red under the candlelight. Tathea was snatched in memory to another underground room and an old man with a withered face who wore red, and for a blinding instant she was drowned in power and pain. Then it was gone again, and Tiyo-Mah spoke, her voice low and grating.
“The murders stunned me. For days I was too ill with grief to rise from my couch. My only son ... assassinated by his own people. His heir killed in his infancy. The throne that has been in my family for a thousand years stained with blood and passed into the hands of traitors to their Isarch and their gods.”
Tathea was moved to a moment’s pity, forgetting it was Tiyo-Mah and seeing only an old woman whose heart had been shattered in one fearful night. But the gulf between them was unbridgeable, and there was no comfort for such grief.
“To begin with I could do nothing,” Tiyo-Mah continued, still with her back to the room, her face to the light of the high window high up in the dark wall. “But word came to me. There were still those who were loyal. I gathered knowledge ... power.” Her voice caressed the word. “And within a month I had sufficient to come out of my silence. I had the usurper overthrown and executed. His body was fed to the dogs.” She said it slowly, tasting the words with satisfaction. “The assassins I had hunted down and killed. Their bones lie on the sand as a reminder to passers-by of what happens to those who betray the Isarchs of Shinabar.” She stood quite still. The smell of the incense in the candles was overpowering.
“And Mon-Allat’s body?” Tathea asked.
“Dug up and reburied with his ancestors in the Tombs of the Isarchs, where it should be,” Tiyo-Mah answered. “His sarc
ophagus is made of alabaster and gold.”
Tathea forced herself to say it: “And Habi?”
Tiyo-Mah did not reply. The air was thick in the room, the incense clogged the throat, and smoke stung the eyes. Or perhaps it was imagination. The ancient builders had known the secret of air currents, and even in the height of summer it was cool down here.
Tathea would not ask again.
“Beside him,” Tiyo-Mah said at last. “He would have been Isarch in his turn.” The tone of her voice dropped; it even shook a little, just the faintest tremor. To Tathea it was an acknowledgment of grief, and for the first time she could remember she shared something intense and fiercely personal with Tiyo-Mah. Perhaps it was a thread of hope for a rebirth here as well.
“Thank you,” she said.
Nothing more was necessary. Tathea bade Tiyo-Mah farewell and with the smallest guard necessary for safety, rode out into the desert to the Tombs of the Isarchs. She left the others outside and entered alone. She had not been here in twenty years, since Mon-Allat’s father had been buried and she had come with Mon-Allat to pay her respects.
The vast chamber was cool, half underground, like Tiyo-Mah’s palace. It dated from the same period. It was simple, hewn out of the living rock and faced with plaster painted with scenes of the lives of each Isarch buried here. One could trace the dates by the changing styles of art, from the stiffly hieratic through the merely formal to the present day’s almost lifelike representations. Dress had remained largely the same, and the colors were always copper and blue.
She had come not for the comfort of the familiar or to be impressed by past splendor, but simply to grieve. She paid her respects to Mon-Allat’s sarcophagus, remembering the beginning between them when there had been so much hope and trust and certainly innocence. She deliberately thought of everything that had been good in him and blocked out of her mind anything else. She found she was able to think of him with more gentleness than she had in many years, to recall laughter and a kind of love, not passion but at least a tenderness.
