“Your Lord Portreeve dared lie to the Temple of Doubt.” S’ami tapped his foot impatiently.
“Your Worthiness?”
“He could not lead me to the Gek. He didn’t in fact trade with them, despite his boasting. I had to learn through much difficulty it’s actually a woman who comes and goes among them. She knows their hand gestures and has walked in their trees. You know this woman.”
It wasn’t a question. Babba straightened as Mami took slow steps forward. She’d been right again, and the Temple had something to ask of her. Babba reached an arm around and held her tightly. “My honored wife, Lia.”
Mami rested a hand on Babba’s side and met the Azwan’s gaze straight on. His broad mouth cracked into a grin, but there was no warmth to it. “You are Lia, wife of Rimonil, then.”
Her voice was soft, almost imperceptible. “Most Worthy.”
“Your family has a history of defying the Temple. Am I right?”
“We serve the Temple as do others, each according to our gifts, great Azwan.”
“A good answer. It’ll suffice. I’d be reluctant to see you meet your mother’s fate when I’m apparently in some need of you.”
Mami blanched at that and bowed her head. She, too, made the cupping motion under her chin. Again, a mention of my grandmother. That made twice in two days. I had never heard the full story of her death. What I did know made me fear for Mami. My grandmother had been hanged and her body dumped in a canal and ordered left there for the wild animals.
S’ami accepted Mami’s hand-cupping with a curt nod. “I’m sure it isn’t easy to earn the Gek’s trust. A pity you’ll have to betray it.”
“Please, what is this about?”
“We leave before daybreak for their swamp. They won’t willingly give up what we seek, if they have it, so there’ll be soldiers. I can’t guarantee your safety, but I assume you’re smart enough not to protest.”
Mami’s voice betrayed no emotion. “I can talk with them, perhaps . . .”
“Perhaps. And perhaps they’ll kill us while you’re chatting.” The Azwan took a step toward Amaniel, who’d crept in behind Mami. He pinched her cheek. “You’re the daughter she’s training?”
At least this time, leaping forward didn’t seem rash but the sensible thing to do. I lunged in front of Amaniel and registered the look of recognition that flashed on S’ami’s face. His expression remained neutral as I spoke, and I squelched the urge to flee screaming. It wasn’t fear for my sister that made me do it. I had no doubt Mami would straighten matters out, given a chance, but it’d be just like Amaniel to want to trail along into the swamps in some twisted sense of reverence.
Indeed, she was smiling, both hands over her heart, the very portrait of adoration, with her eyes wide and lips parted. I elbowed past her. The good sister had to stay home, where she belonged.
“You’ll want me along, Azwan. I’m the natural one. Hadara.”
A quick glance around at all the stern faces told me I’d said something unseemly. I added a quick “Your Worthiness” and did my best hand-cupping beneath my chin, inwardly shrinking for this display of subservience. I was always bowing and scraping to a priest or a teacher and yet always somehow getting it wrong. I swore I’d figure out all this protocol and tradition someday, but obviously not this day. I wrapped my arm around Amaniel in what I’d hoped a sisterly fashion, more for boosting my own bravery than hers.
The Azwan waved dismissively. “Hadara, the natural one. Not a title I’d be proud of, if I were you. It seems you’re going to keep shouting at me until I find some use for you. Alright, you come. You’ll learn some piety if you make it back tomorrow. Not to mention manners.”
He strode off a moment later with a last flutter of amethyst silk, his soldiers falling in behind him. I exhaled crisply and tried not to look around at all the mortified faces. I didn’t think they were mad at me, but once again I’d made myself an easy target for other people’s blame. The natural one. Why did I say that? How stupid could I be? To love anything natural was to hate all that Nihil could do for us through magic. I may as well have stood on Ward Sapphire’s rooftop and shouted that I’m an unrepentant doubter. At least I’d gotten my wish—that I’d be going along on their mission, whatever it was.
I wanted to be rid of the Azwans already. Either one or both. Both. I didn’t have many skills the Temple of Doubt considered useful, and the ones I did have were likely going to be the death of me. S’ami had already said we were unlikely to return the next day, so I was going to need every copper-weight of smarts and strength I’d ever possessed.
Maybe I knew less than I should about the Temple and much more about things the Temple didn’t want to know. There had to be an advantage in there somewhere. If there was anything in Mami’s lore that could keep religious men at bay, Mami could make them go, but I knew in my soul she’d never risk seeing us harmed—any of us, even down to the most distant cousin. That left me—and the Gek. If those creatures had found something the Temple wanted, then I wanted it first. Maybe it had some power, or maybe it was something to trade, and maybe I could manage to do so without getting myself killed.
I exhaled crisply and watched S’ami disappear the way he’d come, my resolve wavering. Take on the Temple? Of course, and make Kuldor rotate backwards, too.
But one glance at Babba changed my mind back again. He was staring past where the Azwan had gone, his mouth open, stock-still, his hand poised above Mami’s shoulder, frozen.
He looked like a man who’d just been told his wife and oldest daughter would die the next day.
Gold at dusk, then silv’ry bright,
Mighty Lunyo rules the night;
Qamra flaunts a changing mien,
While Keth’s bright orb is seldom seen.
—“The Three Moons,” a children’s rhyme
I couldn’t sleep on what promised to be my last night alive. I drifted off in fits of almost-dreaming but then lurched back into a sad, tossy-turny wakefulness. My mind darted between thoughts of the haughty Azwan and remembering how it felt to be behind Valeo’s shield, his chest to my back, the heat of his breath on my neck. I’d try to recall what I could see of Valeo’s face beneath his helmet and then squeeze my eyelids shut as if they could scrub away the image like a stain.
Then my imagination would dive into the next day’s mission. I was calling it that in my head, as if I, too, were a Temple Guard. A mission. My mission. I tried to go over how I might escape or fight back. I couldn’t outrun Gek, and I had no skill with weapons. I’d be among soldiers and the Azwans, who would insist I help them get whatever it was they thought the Gek might have.
What could they have? Some sort of rock from the night sky that S’ami wasn’t calling a meteorite? I’d noticed that. He and other clerics, priests, and Azwans alike, had been referring to it as a star or a demon, or both. Amaniel wasn’t much help. She’d repeated what she’d told me on the pier the day the Temple’s ships came—Nihil couldn’t battle a demon from the stars in person or we’d all die in some terrible fire. She’d shown me the passage in Scriptures, but it didn’t tell me what could possibly be alive in a fallen piece of moon or however such things came to be.
All I knew was that come morning I would die, and Mami too, and probably some soldiers, unless I was badly overestimating the Gek.
All for this star-demon. What was it? I watched Lunyo wax full and cast chalky moonbeams through the slats in the window onto the wide divan, where my sisters slept beside me. As the moon rose, its stripes of pale light broadened to a series of horizontal bands that worked their way across the room. As a tot, I’d memorized that Lunyo is the Feroxi moon, the biggest and brightest. Humans get rotating Qamra, who can’t sit still or make up her mind. And tiny Keth, like the Gek, darts out of reach in its elliptical orbit. Myths, all of them, but with rational and natural workings beneath them. So what would be rational about the star-demon? What laws of nature did it obey?
I had always loved astrology. I
wished I could sneak over to my chest of drawers and pull out my star maps with all my scribbled notes. I wondered what moons Valeo would’ve been born under. Perhaps both Lunyo and Qamra, the Feroxi and human moons, with traits of both. Steadfast and fiercely loyal on the one hand, adventurous but fickle on the other. What destiny was wrapped up in the mooncast of this soldier who kept threatening me and then changing his mind?
Twice in my lifetime, I’d seen Lunyo and Qamra full together, making evening as bright as twilight. It made for a fierce spring tide, when we could walk near halfway out the harbor, and flocks of cranes had dived and darted for stranded crayfish. The last time had been when Mami was pregnant with Rishi, watching us lazily, feet dangling off the boardwalk, and rubbing her tummy while Babba twirled his two daughters in crazy dances through the suddenly shallow canal. We’d splashed and kicked, swirling wetly to made-up songs, peals of giggles splitting the eerie half-light.
I wanted to believe in double moonlights and impossibilities.
Alone in the shimmering rays, I thought and overthought scenarios that could work against the Gek, things I could say or explain or ask. Mami and I had only been out that far a few times this year, but it was a few times more than anyone else. I stood a chance if the Gek had no more idea about a star-demon than I did. We could all beat an apologetic retreat and be home for supper.
But S’ami had waved that gold totem of his and insisted he’d felt something. That was another mystery to me. Amaniel had shrugged when I asked, saying he’d have told us what he was feeling if he’d wanted us to know. The girl could be a mountain of not-helpfulness.
I bunched my blanket around me, and Amaniel woke with a start. I hadn’t meant to do that and whispered my apology; then I told her why I wasn’t sleeping.
“When we’ve mastered our doubts,” she said, “our faith will be strong.”
“I know,” I said. But I didn’t.
“The Azwan stared at you at the Customs House. It’s right you should go.”
“He remembered me today.”
“Of course.” She propped herself up on one elbow. “He is certain. We are uncertain. That’s why he’s here to minister to us.”
“Then why isn’t he the Azwan of Certainty?”
She groaned. “You’re the worst student, Hadara. We learned why back in first year.”
There was no denying my ignorance. “Well, if I had a temple, worshippers would be certain.”
We both muffled our giggles into our sleeves, and Amaniel tucked in closer to me. “I’ll miss you. I know I said horrible things. I’m sorry. I really will miss you.”
“I’m not dead yet.”
“I hope they bring your body back. You can’t wait for us beneath the Eternal Tree if we can’t cremate you.”
“Amaniel!” More not-helping. I wasn’t ready for the Eternal Tree and greeting all my dead relatives. I didn’t even know those people. “Don’t you want me to come back alive?
“Oh, Nihil’s earlobes, yes. I’ll cry a lot if you really do die. But at least you’d be martyred in the fight against the dybbuk. Nihil would remove all doubts from your name.”
“I suppose.”
“He would, Scripture promises. You’ll see.”
I won’t, I wanted to say. Not if I’m dead. I squeezed Amaniel’s hand instead. A pair of skinny legs thrashed on the other side of me. Rishi was stirring. Amaniel and I shushed her, tucked her blanket close around her, and settled back down to rest. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on a memory of Qamra and Lunyo full together, outshining the stars.
From winds and from water, from stardust and sand, Kuldor sculpted men and women from the gifts I had given him. Two peoples I saw first: one towering and proud, the other shorter, with handsome, even features. Then Kuldor pointed overhead to the treetops, where I saw the mud-and-stick huts of another people.
Who are they? I asked.
Lizards, he replied, with skin like jewels.
I like them best, I said, as they are small and live simply.
But the lizard people ran from me and hid.
— from “The Creation of the Races,” Verisimilitudes 2, The Book of Unease
Brown snakes as thick as a man’s arm slid from branches on either side of our punt and into the water, where they writhed across the murky surface. The boat paused to avoid them and then skirted the narrow, spiked waterwood roots that poked above the water line. A pole wedged between several roots the puntsman couldn’t see, and he twisted it free.
I shared the narrow craft with Mami and S’ami and two guards to pole us along. It was a tight fit, and knees would knock at any unexpected turn of the craft. I wasn’t going to make good on my days-ago wish of throttling S’ami with my head scarf, but it did take effort not to wince whenever he looked my way. He was the only Azwan with us. The other Azwan and half the guards had remained behind in the expectation that S’ami would die.
I’d forced myself to keep my head straight and not glance around, feverishly looking for Valeo. I hadn’t made up my mind whether I wanted him here or not. I didn’t want anyone I knew, even slightly, to be out in the wilds with us. But I also didn’t want to die alone here without a single ally among the hulking Temple Guards. Who else besides Valeo would care even a little whether Mami and I made it back?
Around me, soldiers waded through black water up to their thighs, making passage slow through the muck. Boots stuck with every step as the men fanned out, wordless and grim. They enjoyed the swamp far less than I did, and I wanted to tell them they’d feel the breezes better without their armor. The wind stirred under the dark spread of leaves, and insects chirred unseen all around. Flocks of gray cranes rose like sudden smoke from the tall grasses, while solitary raptors circled above their high nests. Steam rose from the water in pale wisps that dissolved into a fine, silvery mist.
The men passed all this without speaking, holding their pikes aloft to avoid dragging them through the water. More than once a guard would stab the blunt end into the mire to regain his balance. Their shields would throw them off again, sliding across their backs or catching on low-slung branches. I imagine in soldiering school they didn’t teach proper swamp wading, but they’d clearly mastered the official sharp-eyed lookout glower. They kept their focus straight ahead, never wavering, as they tramped through dense brush and silent water that hid a hundred hazards and gave off a musky aroma of decaying leaves and ripening fruit.
Stingflies buzzed in the men’s ears and found all the places they couldn’t reach to swat or scratch. I’d have offered them hydrocanth oil mixed with citrine extract to smear on their skin if it wasn’t considered immoral, so Mami and I alone were spared the welts and itching. More than once, we’d exchanged looks that said if only we weren’t too intimidated to even offer the help. She’d reach over and pat my hand a few times, as if making sure I was still there. I couldn’t seem to muster up a smile for her, so we simply sat and watched the murky water slip beneath the small craft.
The whole day had been odd and unsettling, not what I’d expected even after imagining a solid day of terror. The first leg of our trip went through the salt marsh with all the soldiers in rowboats or punts, and it had all been disturbingly cheerful. You couldn’t shut S’ami up. We’d expected haughty silence. Instead, he gave us a tour of the blackened spot in the fens where the meteorite had hit.
He described measuring it with spools of rope, how all the world’s astrologers would crave a look at his notes. His own father was the royal astrologer in Tengal, did he mention? Yes, he’d mentioned. I got the feeling he wasn’t doing this for our benefit, but as practice for when he saw his father again. A grown man, one of the most powerful in the world, fretting over what his babba would think. I suppressed a snort. I wondered if I’d be trying to impress my parents years from now when I was halfway to old age.
After the gaping hole in the marsh, our flotilla made a more or less direct line for the swamps. S’ami also moved on in his chatter, this time to rate all the ex
cellent fish he’d been served so far in Ward Sapphire’s dining hall and how surprising our thriving little port was when you got out to see it. The goods you can find here! Silk from his native Tengal, as refined as anything he’d wear himself, the heartiest aged wines from Primaria, filigree metalwork from Ferokor. He’d heard the food in our cantinas had no equal and was beginning to believe it. He joked about what fine illegal herbs must’ve made their way into our cuisine.
Even I knew that was meant to draw Mami out about her medicines. She let him talk, and I followed her cue. It wasn’t much different from Mami smiling at the folks on our patio as they asked where she got this or that and was she sure she wasn’t trying to poison them, body and soul. Only this time, Mami wasn’t smiling.
I had time to study the Azwan more carefully. He wore sturdier clothes today, hemp broadcloth instead of spider silk, in teals and browns. His wardrobe’s plainness didn’t alter the snooty lift of his chin or the narrowing of his eyes as he studied us right back. I had to like his dark complexion. Saphirrans are a practical people in a sun-kissed land, and his ebony skin made him handsome by that and many other standards. He had a muscular build, even with a paunch. But his talking! My old aunties didn’t gab as much at Sabbath dinners.
He eventually gave up on hints and instead peppered Mami with questions about her work. Mami hesitated, casting her eyes downward. S’ami leaned forward to catch Mami’s soft diction and kept assuring her not to fear him.
Mami shook her head.
“It’s my colleague, the Azwan of Ambiguity, then?” he asked.
Mami bit her lip and stared blankly at the sweaty, unhappy men all around us. “You said you knew about my mother.”
The Temple of Doubt Page 9
