Court of Fives

by Kate Elliott

  “The only thing that scares me is the thought of having to listen to you try to impress me with your sarcasm.” I grab the harness out of his hands. “Amaya, you’re next.”

  Her chin quivers as she steadies herself. She may be a sniveling spoiled brat of a younger sister, but she is a soldier’s daughter too. “I’m ready to go.”

  She staggers a little, and I will be cursed for a shadow if Ro-emnu doesn’t hasten forward to catch her just as if he has been lovestruck by her delicate features and proud courage. I roll my eyes and happen to catch Coriander’s look at the same moment. She has covered what I am sure is a snicker of laughter by clapping a hand over her mouth. Probably Amaya stumbled on purpose so she can lean on the arm of a large, strong, attractive man, even a Commoner, just because she has to make sure she can charm every man who crosses her path. Then I remember Denya’s tear-streaked face as she begged me to get word to Amaya, and I realize I don’t know what to think, that everyone and everything is wearing masks. Just like me.

  Faint but clear, three triple fanfares announce that the High Priest and his procession are entering the City of the Dead.

  We lower Amaya down. As I’m untangling the harness, Ro-emnu straightens with a hiss.

  Mother appears in the archway supported by Cook. She wears a loose linen sheath. Her skin looks blotchy and she can barely stand upright.

  “Jessamy?” she whispers. “Where are your sisters? Who is this young man?”

  “He has come to help us escape, Mother.”

  He coughs. “So this is the woman who paid the coin of her life to sleep with the enemy.”

  I shove him so hard that he staggers back. Before he can catch his balance I push him again so he slams against the wall. “What gives you the righteous purity to speak of her in that way? My mother is a woman, and she deserves respect!”

  He gets his hands up between us but he does not touch me. Instead his gaze flicks past me to where Mother leans.

  She says in a frail voice, “Jessamy, let it go. If he helps us escape then it does not matter what he thinks of me.”

  This is how she has lived all these years. This is how she has kept her dignity. Tears well up in my eyes and I step back because I do not want him to see me cry.

  Yet to my utter astonishment he walks past me, touches both hands to his forehead, and makes an odd dip with his knees. He speaks in Efean. “My apologies for my harsh words, Honored Lady. The dames of my clan would whip me if they were to hear of my rude disrespect. I beg you to spare me the indignity of being scolded in public by them in front of all the assembled households.”

  His words bring a smile to her lips, as if she has remembered the woman she once was. “Your secret is safe with me. What is your name, young nephew?”

  “My mother gave me the name Ro-emnu but my aunties call me Ro. I personally pledge my five souls to the task of bringing you and your people to safety, Honored Lady.”

  Tension fills her jaw. “I must find the strength. My daughters need me. Where is the baby?”

  “Already down, with Merry,” I answer.

  As Cook and Coriander adjust the harness to fit her, my mother looks at me. “There was another baby, Jessamy. The son your father wanted. We cannot leave him here in this hateful place.”

  Ottonor’s corpse conceals my poor dead brother beneath a fleshy arm and outflung sleeve. I don’t tell her how I used him because I am afraid she will hate me for it. “I will bring him, Mother. I promise.”

  Mother is my height, tall and well built, no lightweight even before the pregnancy. It takes all our bracing and grunted effort to lower her down. My Fives gloves rub along the rope. My hands ache from all the gripping. But determination feeds me. Cook follows, heavier yet. Fortunately Ro-emnu is exceedingly strong, packed with muscle. Afterward Coriander dashes back into the oracle’s chamber and returns with treasure stolen from the chest. I don’t care as long as we can get out.

  Horns blare a cheerful tune, getting closer.

  Ro-emnu and I lower Coriander down. Lamplight blurs the darkness below as she vanishes into an unseen passageway connected with the bottom of the shaft. Kalliarkos appears out of the passage, lit from the back, face in shadow as he looks up. He stands perhaps six body lengths below, the height of the tallest climbing post in Trees.

  I think he smiles although shadows make it hard to see. A flash of sunlight could not have heartened me more. I grin even though I am sure he cannot make out my expression. All my tiredness spills away as if the sea has washed clean my flesh and spirit both.

  “Jes.” The walls of the shaft magnify his whisper. “You come down next.”

  But I’m still thinking, plotting, planning. “What about the oracle? Wouldn’t it be better for the last of us to close up the bier and go out the air shaft at night? So if anyone ever opens the tomb they won’t discover how we escaped?”

  The sound of men singing temple hymns drifts through the slits in the walls. The High Priest approaches. I suddenly remember that the rope by which I descended the shaft is still wrapped around the exterior of the shaft up on the roof, in plain sight. All my joy and relief plunge into throat-curdling fear.

  I turn to see Ro-emnu examining the oracle. The gag cuts cruelly into her mouth because Coriander tied it too tight. Her eyes have a glassy sheen, as if she were drugged with shadow-smoke. Did she give up struggling against her fate long ago, or has she always welcomed the tomb? Were she a young man I think Ro-emnu would kick her, but even a contemptuous person like him will not hit a frail crone.

  He has a strong Efean face and a gaze that slices, like he is seeing beyond the mask every person must wear to disguise her secrets. “You and I have a decision to make, sullen schemer. Do you wish to force the oracle to eat the poisoned food so as to make it look as if it killed her? Or should we smother her?”

  “She’s just a pathetic old woman.”

  He lifts an eyebrow. “How Patron-bred you are. There is no such thing as a pathetic old woman, not among people who respect experience and wisdom. Only among your father’s people are such women discarded like trash. It’s shameful but no business of mine. All I see here is yet another Patron lady who would spit on me and have me beaten were I to get in her way on the street. We can’t leave her alive.”

  “I guess killing is nothing to you. Your sister admitted you were arrested for murder.”

  His grin mocks me and makes him look dangerous. “Is that what she said?”

  Retreat always looks like weakness so I take a step forward. “Are you saying it isn’t true?”

  Scorn curls his lips. “I did what they accuse me of, yes.”

  I try not to notice how the oracle stares at us, mouth slack as we talk so casually about her death. The way she clutched my brother has torn my heart open. “This can’t be the only life she has known,” I say, winding a path through this maze because I must find a way to convince him. “Oracles are young. Look how old she is. I think she once had a baby who died. Don’t you wonder why she was locked away?”

  He unties the gag and shakes her. “What is your story? What secrets do you know?”

  “You cannot treat me so roughly! You are a lowly servant, no better than mud.” She jerks out of his grasp, staring at something behind me.

  I turn as Kalliarkos pulls himself out of the shaft.

  “What is going on, Jes? Can’t you hear the High Priest’s procession? You must have secured the rope to the air shaft to come down. Is it untied so they won’t see it?”

  The oracle struggles to her knees, crawling toward him. “Kallos! My love! I thought they banished you! But you have come back. I knew you would not abandon me, my heart!”

  Astonished by this outburst Kalliarkos steps full into the lamplight. He is as handsome as an actor in a tragic play pretending rapt wonderment at an extraordinary coincidence.

  Her expression crumples, her weeping an incongruous dissonance across the priests’ harmonious singing. “You are not my beloved Kallos! Where is my bab
y that they stole from us?”

  Kalliarkos kneels, gently taking her chin in his hand. “Doma, quiet your tears. Be at peace. I will let no harm come to you.”

  Her sobs quiet. “You look something like him, he who was my rose bower love.” Her wistful tone peels away the years until the old woman becomes a young maiden caught up in the first sweet tremblings of desire. Yet her words turn sour. “But he fled away over the sea and they sealed me into the temple and told me that if I ever spoke of him again, the gods would smite him with a lance of thunder and a knife of lightning.”

  Ro-emnu looks like a merchant calculating an unanticipated bargain. “Who are you, Doma?”

  The priests have begun to sing the morning descant in praise of the Sun of Justice. As they climb the path I can pick out words: “… righteous light… pure judgment…”

  “Put the gag back on, you fool,” I whisper. “They’re almost here.”

  Startlingly loud and right up against the oracle’s alcove, a stentorian voice intones a prayer. “Oracle, awake! I who am High Priest in His Most Glorious Raiment and with the Holy Presence of the Gods’ Sweet Breath and Joyous Favor attend your sanctuary.”

  Ro-emnu claps a hand over the oracle’s mouth. I am afraid to move and almost too scared to breathe. How did the High Priest arrive so quietly?

  “I, the humble living, beg you, the separated who is dead, to speak into this world through your hidden mouth. Speak the words whispered to you by the gods from their high thrones of Seeing. Speak the words which you are gloried and sanctified and required to utter.”

  The fragrance of the priests’ holy incense wafts through the slit in the wall. The harsh scent tickles right up my nose. Ro-emnu sneezes and his hand slips off the oracle’s mouth. She wails, an ululation of grief, before he slaps his hand back. Too late. Now they know someone is alive inside.

  29

  The oracle must always speak if she is summoned by the proper ritual words. If she does not, there is a longer ritual to coax her voice awake. I need them to go away quickly so no one notices the rope looped around the air shaft on the roof.

  I run into the oracle’s chamber and sit on the stool before the “mouth,” the slit through which worshippers can hear her whispered prophecies. No priest would look directly through the slit so all I see are the robes they wear, dyed in colors that represent the god each priest serves: blue for Lady Hayiyin of the Sea, yellow for Lord Seon the Sun of Justice, and red for Lord Judge Inkos who rules the afterlife. The High Priest wears purple to mark his descent from royal ancestors, since only palace-born men can serve as High Priest. Whether or not he is in on Lord Gargaron’s plot, I have to convince him to leave.

  My pulse pounds in my ears so loudly I am dizzy with it. If the words she spoke leave my mouth, do I become the oracle?

  “The tale begins with a death.” I pitch my voice low to disguise it. “Where will it end? There could be a victory, a birth, a kiss, or another death. There might fall fire upon the City of the Dead, upon the tombs of the oracles. A smile might slay an unsuspecting adversary. Poison might kill the flower that bloomed brightest. A living heart might be buried. Death might be a mercy.”

  Silence pools like fate as a scribe writes my words down. It takes all my willpower not to bolt for the bier’s shaft, but at length, singing a hymn, the priests walk away to complete a circuit of the tombs. The instant it is safe to move, Kalliarkos grabs the rope at the bottom of the air shaft.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper.

  “I have to climb up and cut the rope free. It’ll be tricky coming down but it’s nothing more than a very tight blind shaft.”

  “What if they see you?”

  He shrugs. “If they arrest me, I won’t have to go into the army, will I?”

  I kiss his cheek for luck.

  He rests his fingers briefly against my cheek in answer, then climbs the rope hand over hand, the muscles tight in his arms.

  “Time to go, Doma, if you can pull your eyes away from the handsome prince who’s showing off for you,” says Ro-emnu, watching me from the arch.

  I see no need to answer such an impertinent comment. Pushing past him, I stop short. Lord Ottonor’s corpse has been put back into the coffin, and the oracle is gone. Only my brother remains. Ro picks up the tiny bundle and offers it to me.

  “You did not tell me there were two babies, Doma. Twins are sacred.”

  “Twin boys are considered a sign of good fortune, and twin girls of ill fortune, but they’re not sacred.”

  “You’re speaking like a Patron. Twins are sacred to the five.”

  “To the Fives? The game? What are you talking about?”

  “You don’t know anything about being Efean, do you?” His dark gaze mocks me. “What I can’t believe is that you just discarded him on the floor.”

  “She gave birth to him in darkness. Don’t think you can judge what you were not here to experience.” I am not about to confess the desperate thing I did in my panic. Instead I kiss the baby’s cold forehead as a blessing. Watching me, Ro-emnu’s sneer softens.

  A bed-curtain sliced up makes a sling to tie the baby against my body. Unlike my new sister he feels empty: no spark heats him, and his self has long since fled. Father never had any luck with his sons.

  “Where is the oracle?” I ask.

  “Why do you care?” His sympathetic expression fades into his usual derision.

  A thump interrupts us. Kalliarkos trots in with two lamps, the rope and harness, and a sealed reservoir of oil. He grins with a cocky confidence that looks good on him.

  “They’ve gone on around the hill. We did it, Jes! Everyone is out!”

  I can’t allow myself to relax. Disaster lurks around every corner.

  We tidy up the tomb, then wrestle the heavy stone lid almost all the way back over the bier.

  “Tomb robbers built this so they could sneak in,” I say after we set the coffin on top.

  Ro-emnu scoffs. “Men from the Efean masons’ guild built it, Doma. Your father’s people are the tomb robbers, not mine.”

  Kalliarkos sets a hand casually on Ro-emnu’s shoulder. “Ro, we have got to go, not argue about history.”

  Instead of scorching him with a retort, Ro-emnu shoves him away companionably. “You’re right, Kal. We can argue later.”

  I’m impressed by how Kalliarkos has so quickly forged a comradeship with a Commoner criminal.

  “Jes, you go first,” Kalliarkos says. “You won’t need the rope. It’s an easy climb. Ro and I will close the bier and follow.”

  Even with the baby bundled against me it is indeed an easy climb. Hand- and footholds have been carved into the rock, as if this really is a route for tomb robbers. A lantern burning at the base of the shaft guides me down. The stonework is fine masonry in a crisscrossing pattern, obviously laid by a master craftsman. At the base I look around curiously. A jagged cleft makes a passageway out of the shaft but I wait, a hand curved atop my brother’s cap of hair. Above, the stone lid grinds as they shift it, then clunks into place. Ro-emnu descends. The way his feet thump as he probes for footholds betrays him as an inexperienced climber. A stream of words pours out of him, sounding like the silkiest poetry even though he is cursing about donkeys, manure, and breaking legs in holes filled with scorpions. Just above me he slips and plummets the last body length.

  I press back against the wall to avoid his feet but steady him so he doesn’t smash. He slams into my side, grabbing hold of me for purchase. He’s very strong.

  Above us, Kal laughs. “I heard that slip! Best stagger out of the way as I’m coming down.”

  Ro-emnu’s murmur teases my ear. “Hard to imagine a petted and cosseted princeling running the Fives when he could be sitting in the stands making bets on the outcome and eating grapes offered to him by a prettily masked slave like you, Doma.”

  The insinuation is a slap in the face. I twist out of his arms and shove him into the cleft. “Efeans are the ones who enslaved their own people. K
liatemnos the First and his queen, Serenissima, put a stop to that evil custom. We don’t keep slaves.”

  “No, you just call them something else and treat them worse. How your father’s people love the lies they tell!”

  “I’m down!” says Kalliarkos cheerfully. The lantern bobs as he picks it up and follows us into the narrow passage.

  “That was fast for a pampered lord,” says Ro-emnu in a tone so affably joking that I feel my neck has been wrenched by his abrupt change of mood.

  “Climbing is my best skill, as both you and Jes should know by now,” replies Kal in a laughing way that confounds me. His voice is as bright as the lamp, glittering with triumph. “We have only to follow the chalk marks back out to the pool we came by, and we’re free.”

  “Good thing you brought the chalk,” says Ro-emnu.

  “Now you see the value of running the Fives, don’t you?”

  “It’s a foul game that Patrons love. No offense.”

  “None taken. We’ll contest the matter later over a drink.”

  Lord Gargaron is wrong to think that Kalliarkos’s instinct to treat others as equals is a flaw. Even I thought so at first, believing him too nice, but his ability to respect others and set them at ease makes him strong, not weak.

  The cleft opens into a perfectly square chamber. Lamplight’s golden aura washes the shadows into the corners. Mother sits in the center of the room with Cook on one side and Maraya on the other. The baby suckles at her breast. Amaya rocks back and forth, arms crossed over her belly as she groans in pain. Coriander stands guard over the oracle, who hides her face behind her hands.

  “There’s no door,” says Coriander. “How do we leave?”

  Ro-emnu snatches the lamp from Kalliarkos and swings it so its light falls full on one corner. “We climbed up this shaft.”

  There is no shaft, just a square depression with a grate lying beside it and grooves in the stonework where the grate would fit over a hole, if there were one.