“And mine.” He held her close against a gust of chill wind, and continued to hold her after it passed. “But is there anything I can do for you? I’m sorry I’ve been distant, and distracted. Between Fandra, Shar, Ekko … I’ve not helped you like I should.”
“We’ve each had things on our minds.” Mari patted Indris’s cheek, and her smile felt comfortable. “I love you, Indris.”
“And I, you. Who’d have thought we’d be here to say it?”
“Never doubted it.”
“Not ever?”
“Well, sometimes. A little. But then I remembered that I’m in love with the all-powerful Dragon-Eyed Indris.” Mari paused at the expression on his face. “I’m sorry, Indris. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was making light, is all.”
Indris smiled halfheartedly, and Mari saw how both his eyes now had the orange-yellow tint to them, as if fires burned behind the iris. He held out his hand for her to take, and Mari joined him as they dawdled the almost-empty streets. The question of what else had happened to him at the Pillars of Sand, and at Fandra, hung between them like grapes too long on the vine. But Mari let their silence linger, the two of them alone with the sound of the wind and the clatter of the leaves.
“What are we going to do?” Mari broke the quiet with her question, only half whimsical. “We didn’t break. We didn’t die. But I don’t think the places we know fit us anymore.”
“All we are is everything I love, Mari.” Indris pointed to the mountains. “Wherever we are. Over mountains, over seas, are places so beautiful and peaceful they’re hard to leave. I’ve a small home on the beaches of northern Tanis, overlooking the Deep Salt. There are fruit plantations, and cane fields that seem to stretch forever, swaying and sighing in the wind. On summer nights the lightning flashes, and the rain falls after a hot day and turns to steam. It’s too hot to wear clothes, so you lay naked on cushions and let the sea air dry the sweat from your skin, and listen to the surf crash on the beach.”
Mari held her breath for the beauty of the vision. Indris had seen so much of the world, and she so little. Duty to others had consumed her, but as Indris had asked her once, what about her duty to herself? Large parts of her world were broken; it was time to take the pieces she liked and make a new one. “Tell me more.”
“I’ve told you about the Nomad dancers and symphonies of Memnon,” he mused. “And the villas in Oragon where you can look out over the Marble Sea, and watch as the old ilhen lamps from the Petal Empire still shine beneath the water, wavering like fireflies. There’s the great migration of the zherba herds in Darmatia, where thousands of the most beautiful horses in the world thunder across a sea of emerald grasses, smooth and pale as mist in a gale, their horns shining. Eidelbon, the capital of Manté that they call the City of Masks, has relics of the Starborn that rise in towers amid ziggurats that are home to thousands of temple daemons in lapis, jade, and onyx. For years the Starborn towers have hummed, parts moving to follow the sun, or lights shining at night though nobody understands how.
“This is the world we can see, Mari. I’ve seen some of it, and there are places I love and loathe. But travel is more than half about the company, and the things you bring back with you—rather than what you take.”
Mari took it all in, the wanderlust alive in her. Yet her life was not yet her own just yet. Rather than what you take … like the burden of her House and its uncertain future. The guilt of her father’s crimes and the pain he caused, and the need to make restitution in some way to those people the Erebus had harmed. Would whatever penance her father paid ever be enough to wipe the slate clean, or would Mari forever feel as if she owed a debt to the nation Corajidin had split, and the lives he had ruined?
“Is it as easy as all that, do you think?” she asked. Please say yes.
“We can make it harder than it needs to be,” Indris replied. “But we don’t have to.”
“It sounds incredible. And, yes, I’d love to see the world with you. But Indris?” Mari stopped abruptly, Indris dragged to a halt. “Do you know what’s going to happen to my father? Belam? My House?” What would be enough to sever her bonds?
The smile fell from his face and dragged the corners of his mouth down. That he needed to prepare himself made Mari’s anxiety return. She knew her father had done terrible things … but he was her father. It was not until his illness that Corajidin had lost his way, the specter of his end making him dangerously desperate. For power, for glory, for salvation. “You can’t take the burden for things you’ve not done, nor had any hand in,” Indris said. “Mari, there’s no weakness in letting go, or putting one foot in front of the other and moving on.”
Moving on. Was it as easy as remembering, but packing the feelings away until time and distance had no further use for them? “Indris, tell me.”
“Mari, I’ve not been involved in any of the—”
“Tell me. Now.”
“Your father is likely to be charged with several counts of treason for starters,” Indris said softly. He placed his hands on Mari’s shoulders and locked her gaze with his own. His words were quiet, but relentless and monotone. “I’d expect them to make the charges of regicide stick, as well as more counts of murder and conspiracy than I care to think about. Your father went for the big prize, Mari, and made a mockery of sende, and the law, on the way. People won’t forget it, and the Teshri and the Magistratum will want to make an example of Corajidin, so that nobody thinks about following in his footsteps.”
“They’ll kill him, won’t they?” She was surprised at how even her tone was. I expected this. I just needed to hear it said out loud by somebody I trust to be honest with me.
“They’ll kill him.” Indris stopped, eyes distant as he considered. Before Mari could drag his next words out of him, Indris gave them up. “From what I know of the mood of the Arbiter’s Tribunal, the Teshri, and their nervousness about the opinions of the foreign governments, the Arbiter-Marshall will most likely level the most severe sentence against your father that she can.”
“Indris, they’re going to kill him!” Mari said, exasperated. “What more can they do?”
“Under the laws of the Awakened Empire, most of which we still follow, the Arbiter-Marshall can call on the Magistratum to agree to confine Corajidin in a Sepulchre Mirror, a prison from which he will never escape.”
Sepulchre Mirror? Why was that familiar? “A prison? You said they were going to kill him.”
“Sepulchre Mirrors are eternal prisons for the soul, Mari. Similar to an Angothic Spirit Casque, which is what your father imprisoned Ariskander in. We retrieved a Sepulchre Mirror from the Rōmarq, before your father had a chance to use it on somebody else. It’s here, in the possession of the Sēq.”
“How?” Her mouth was dry, and she wanted to vomit. The thought of her father languishing for eternity was quite different from seeing him strangled, a clean death, his soul free to travel to the Well of Souls, his body planted in ashes.
“He’ll be shackled to a chair, or a frame, and brought before the Sepulchre Mirror. A scholar—not me, never me—will Sever him from his Awakening. He’ll face the mirror, and it will absorb his soul, like the annuli of the Soul Traders. But for him there’ll be no escape. Not ever.”
Mari laughed hysterically, then covered her mouth with her hand. She wanted to sit down, but in sitting wanted to stand. She wanted to run, or fight. Instead she settled for tears.
“Will he feel anything?” It was important that he did not.
“I don’t know, Mari. There’s no way of knowing.”
Clouds passed before the sun, making the city dull, colors bland. The domes lost their shine. Snow became soiled gray: leaves on the streets litter, rather than beautiful. Between one stuttering breath and the next, the city was once more sun kissed and bright. How things could change in a moment. How such a simple thing as the clouds across the sun could make the world seem so different.
Her father thought her a traitor—to him, she was. With
the knowledge that he would be gone from her life forever—with no chance of a reconciliation in the Well of Souls, in the love of their Ancestors—the immediacy of his death weighed on her.
“Indris, can I meet you at the Wanderer later?”
“Of course. Good luck.” He did not need to ask Mari where she was going.
She kissed him, then raced away as fast as she could run toward the gaol where her father was being held. Up sweeping flights of stairs, across bridges that spanned vast and empty depths, and along roads where the cold wind burned her face, Mari sped. She remembered the way to the gaol, having been a guest there herself not so long ago.
While Mari and her father had their differences, Mari had never stopped loving him. Belam had told her how their father had given him his blessing to go to Tamerlan and free Mari from the clutches of the Dowager-Asrahn. So much had happened, so quickly, that neither of them had the chance to sit together, to talk, and to remember what it was like to be father and daughter. She remembered their reconciliation at Amnon, how he had shared his secrets with her. What he had shared had made Mari more resolute, but the fact was he had loved her enough to open his hearts to her.
Mari would not leave the gaol until he had done so again. If she were lucky, she may even be able to help him remember at least something of the man he had been: the father she had loved, before the threat of death, and ambition, had blinded him.
The shadows had flooded the city by the time she arrived at the gaol. Out of breath, Mari rang the old bell. Then again when there was no immediate answer. She pounded and kicked at the door, and yelled to get the guard’s attention. Eventually there came the rattle of the key in the lock, and the scrape of the bolts. The door opened to reveal a middle-aged man in the green coat, and taloub, of a kherife. He clutched a studded maul in hand, and looked very much as if he knew how to use it.
“Can I help you?” he asked, clearly irritated.
“My name is Pah-Erebus fe Mariam,” she said. Best to dispense with all that now, and save time arguing. “I’ve come to visit my father, who I understand is being held here.”
The kherife bowed when he heard Mari’s name, and surreptitiously hid the maul behind his back. Mari cut his apologies off and walked past him. It was dim inside, and quiet. There were no other guards, which Mari found strange. She waited, but the guard did not move from the door.
“Will you please escort me to my father?” Mari asked. I can’t save him, but I can save what remains of us. Please hurry, damn you! She summoned an imitation of a smile, hoping it did not look as false as it felt.
“I’m not sure how to tell you this, Pah-Mariam,” the guard said. Even those words were a kick in the stomach. She did not want to hear the rest, but he went on regardless. “The Rahn-Corajidin is no longer a guest here. He was moved three hours ago.”
“Where?”
“I do not know, pah.”
“Who?”
“They were elite soldiers of the Arbiter’s Tribunal,” the man stammered. Worse than the secret police, and harder than steel. The militant arm of the law. “They came with the Arbiter-Marshall and took your father away.”
Mari nodded stiffly. She concentrated on her step as she exited the gaol, and marched like an automaton down the road. She was not sure when the tears started, or the sobbing. It was still happening when she reached Nanjidasé. The petitioners had gone for the day, but the Feyassin and the Anlūki all knew Mari. They looked at her, expressions gentle, as she walked into the depths of the place in search of Belam.
Her brother greeted her with a smile that the look in her eyes killed. Mari walked past him, and with steadier hands than she thought possible, poured them each a bowl of wine, filled to the rim. As best she could, Mari explained to Belam what she knew of their father’s fate. He sat down hard in shock. They emptied their wine. Poured another.
Then brother and sister laughed, cried, and were silent by turns, as they did their best to remember the best of the man they would never see again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Inevitability is silent. It is the absence of a beating heart, the indrawn breath that never comes, or the cry for help that is never heard.”
—Zamhon, Father on the Mountain for the Ishahayan Gnostic Assassins, and Master of Assassins to the Great House of Näsarat (259th Year of the Shrīanese Federation)
Day 86 of the 496th Year of the Shrīanese Federation
Corajidin glowered at the knuckles of his left hand, covered in dried scabs, and the dented headpiece of his prosthetic hand, both damaged in his fits of impotent rage against the moldy walls of his cell. The cell was taller than it was broad and deep: He was already familiar with the five paces by five paces of his accommodation. There was no natural light, only a few dirty ilhen to provide a jaundiced gloom. Nor was there was furniture, not even a refuse pot.
His new cell was marginally worse than the one they had moved him from yesterday. Silent warriors had placed a leather hood over his face, shackled him into a coat where his hands were bound behind his back, and unceremoniously manhandled him through a long, stumbling darkness. Before too long, they had thrown him into a conveyance of some kind. Corajidin had doubted it was for the transportation of people, given the miasma of animal feces and urine that pervaded the air. The soldiers had folded his legs up so that he was curled in a fetal position, then slammed the doors shut, bolts rattling loudly. His body had been wracked with spasms during the journey, his guts knotted, and he had thrown up a small amount into his mask, another odor he was forced to contend with, as well as the sour taste, and the sensation of regurgitated food on his face. He had wet himself twice when the conveyance had gone over a bump, and Corajidin had counted his few blessings that he had not voided his bowels, also.
The healing effects of the Rōmarq had faded almost immediately after his arrival in Avānweh. Between the sudden, violent relapse of his illness and his recent wounding by Roshana and Vahineh, Corajidin wondered whether he would survive long enough to attend his trial. Corajidin could afford the best arbiters in Shrīan. Even an advocate who hated him could be swayed to greater effort when given enough money to live the rest of their life on in splendor. Such had always been Corajidin’s way, to find the glittering lever of another’s self-interest, and turn it until it pointed in the direction Corajidin most needed.
His lip curled as he paced. He had not been charged with any crimes, and they had breached all rules of sende in their humiliating treatment of him. But how best to approach his situation? A veneer of contrition, with an admission to being influenced by the forces of darkness, and a donation to the Crown and State for reparations? Perhaps an appeal to Roshana, Nazarafine, and Siamak, to think of the stability of the nation and to benefit from Corajidin’s experience? If he could get a message beyond the walls of his cell, he could better prepare for his defense, and ensure the right people were motivated to act in Corajidin’s best interests. Better yet, a bribe to the guard to help Corajidin escape. Once he was free, he could retreat, consolidate his strength, and resume his path to his destiny.
Yet no guards came. There was no sense of time, and the walls of his cell closed in with every count of his faltering hearts.
Agony seeped through his body as inexorably as his blood. He longed for the Emissary’s potion, just a taste, to help abate the pain for a while. Lying in his own fever sweat, bile, and excrement, Corajidin wrapped his arms about himself and let the chills take him. Wolfram had told him that there were bends in the road to the future, and for Corajidin to die now was intolerable. He was the Thrice Awakened, the one who would usher in the new age of empire. To die now was more than intolerable: It was impossible. Destiny will protect me from the lapses in fate. All I need is the chance to continue the work.
For that chance, he needed help, and there was only one place where such help could come. Through dry lips he chanted the Emissary’s name, and listened for her coming. She, his dark deliverer. She, to whom he owed debts that his de
ath would never see repaid.
She left you for dead, he said to himself.
No! She left to save Kasraman, he argued back.
Kasraman left you for dead, too. Everybody can be replaced, Corajidin. The world so rarely makes one of anything: the concept of rarity, of the value of uniqueness, is the vanity of the civilized mind.
I need one more chance, that is all. I will not fail again.
Sleep came and went. His eyelids fluttered closed, to open again as he startled himself from his slumber. Always there was the same gloomy light that froze moments in place, so that time became an illusion. Neither food nor water was brought. Nothing to break the monotony of his claustrophobic little world. He slept again, his fever dreams filled with basso voices in the deep, the accompaniment of gibbering sopranos, shrill pipes, and wailing flutes. Tentacles writhed from the depths, decked in diadems of air bubbles. They coiled about, tossed him in the wake of their movement. Massive eyes that saw him, and saw through him. Flayed him of all veneers and misconceptions: to lay him bare, his failures made manifest—
He scrabbled to wakefulness, his sweat smelling like brine. A shadow loomed, and Corajidin screamed. He scuttled back on crooked fingers that refused to straighten, until his back and head slammed against the wall. There was not enough room to distance himself from the silhouette that filled so much of Corajidin’s small space.
“I promise I will do better!” Corajidin heard the desperation in his voice. The silhouette cocked her head, leaned forward, and extended a hand. “Please, Emissary, I will do whatever you want! Kill whomever you want! I will topple the thrones of the world, and give to you the Twelve Stones of Avānisse. The Keys of Castavān. I will find the original Torque Spindle, and we will have a Feigning such as has never been seen.
The Pillars of Sand Page 41
