Serenet Vikale, The Book of Sand. New and popular, much quoted, certainly caught the sensation of the current heat. But, if one were feeling uncharitable, one might be inclined to ask questions about the state of the man’s private life.
Anyway. A wedding party in Sorlost. The meeting of two great families, a symbol of peace and stability in an uncertain time. That the two great families concerned were the cause of that instability is to be ignored. Get some money moving around the city, largesse distributed, gifts and jewels and silks bought. Demonstrate to the masses that all is secure and perfect. There is no reason to be concerned. Why should anyone in Sorlost be concerned?
Whisper it: there is discord in the Sekemleth Empire of the Asekemlene Emperor of the Eternal Golden City of Sorlost. Two high lords, Orhan Emmereth and Darath Vorley, conspired against their Emperor, hired assassins to kill him and all his court. The Emperor survived their manoeuvrings. The assassins all died in the attempt. But Orhan is now Nithque to the Emperor. The Emperor’s hands and eyes and mouth. He has the power to rebuild the Empire’s armies, restore its glory, rehouse its starving poor. Inevitably, such power has brought opposition. Enemies. For a brief few days, there was fighting in the city streets. The price of Orhan’s power is the sacrifice of Darath’s brother Elis to a rival nobleman, March Verneth. The weapon of choice is March’s daughter Leada’s wedding veil.
Thus, a wedding party in Sorlost.
Elis Vorley wore an ivory silk shirt fastened with diamond buttons, a long cloak trimmed with seed pearls, an arm-ring of wrought gold. Sweat trickled down his forehead, matting his hair beneath a garland of hyacinths and copperstem leaves. Darath and Orhan, similarly garlanded, stood and watched while a body servant made the last careful adjustments to the groom’s clothes.
“Are you finally ready?” asked Darath.
Elis gestured hopelessly at the body servant. “Ask him.”
“He’s fine,” Darath told the body servant. “He’ll do. We need to leave.”
Another delicate sweep of the man’s hands over folds of red and gold silk fine as breathing, an iridescent sheen on it like wet stone. “He is ready, My Lord.”
“Good. The bride will have run off with one of the flute players before we get there at this rate.”
Elis started to speak. Darath held up his hand. “Don’t say it, dear brother. Peace and concord and all that, remember? We all make sacrifices. I have a scar on my stomach the length of my hand; Orhan has the job of Nithque. You just need to poke a not unattractive young woman a couple of times.”
Another servant brought forward a dish of salt and honey. All three ate a mouthful. Salt and sweet: the grief and pleasure of this brief, pitiful life. Before battle. Before marriage. Before death. Before birth. The Emperor ate of it every morning and evening, to remind him that immortal as he was he was but a man. Outside the door a new litter waited, built of whale bone and silver lace. All things done as they ought.
“Come on then.” They climbed into the litter. A procession formed up around them, guardsmen and servants and hired celebrants crowned in copperstem, shaking rattles made of walnut shells. At the front of the procession a man danced in gold ribbons, life and light and the joy of the rising sun. Crowds had gathered to watch, shouted out luck songs to the groom. So hot, sweat seemed to rise from the flagstones. Everything shimmered in the heat, luminously unreal as the sheen on Elis’ cloak. A flute piped tunelessly. A street woman swayed on bound ankles in a tinkle of tiny bells.
Orhan thought of his own wedding procession, the bitter irony of the singing, the cold, sad sorrow in Darath’s eyes. The two of them in the litter, hands clutching, knowing it would all be different, saying it didn’t matter but it did matter, trying to see how beautiful each looked in his wreath of flowers, fiddling with the clasps and folds of their cloaks. It had been hot that day too.
The curtains of the litter were open to display the groom but there was still no air. Under incense and perfume bodies were already rank with sweat. Orhan wiped his forehead, damp and clammy, a smear of pollen coming away on his hand. Some petty magery kept the flowers from collapsing into mush. Save safe charms: useful for preserving meat and keeping dead things in bloom. The petals had an odd crusted feel to them like they’d been coated in broken glass. Darath smiled at him, deep blue hyacinths and pale pink roses against his gold-black hair and copper-black skin, sweat on his forehead like drops of honey, glints of longing in his silver-black eyes. Remembering the same thing.
“Nice comfy litter,” said Darath. “But whale bone? Somewhat eccentric for you, I’d have thought?”
Elis groaned. “Eloise insisted on it. Said it had more cachet. Certain people’s sisters have set the stakes in litter fashions remarkably high. I keep thinking I can smell bloody fish when I look at it. And as for the cost … do you have any idea how much people charge to carry a dead whale for a month through high desert? But Eloise went on and on. I have no particular objection to marrying Leada. It’s the fact I seem to be marrying her grandmother as well that’s going to cripple me.”
“You should be filled with gratitude Eloise judges her granddaughter such a jewel. You wouldn’t want a wife whose own family thought her only worth a cheap knock-off job.” Darath said, “You’ve got something on your face, Orhan. Come here. No, stay still … Pollen. Stop poking at your garland or you’ll be yellow by the time we get there.”
“It itches.” A stem of something, rubbing arhythmically against his left temple. Sure to be there nagging at him all day.
They reached the gates of the House of Silver. More crowds, gathered to peer at the brilliance of the spectacle. Also March had probably paid them. Shouts of “hurrah” as the litter swept past.
“Here we are then,” said Darath with an encouraging smile at Elis. “Marital bliss.”
“Taking one for the team,” Elis muttered. “I expect some very good New Year gifts from you two.”
“Oh come on. She was meant for you. If she takes after her father, there can’t be two people in the city better matched. Stupid, venal, fat arsed, terrible taste in clothing … Who else were you planning to marry, anyway? That bath girl you like with the wonky nose?”
Litter servants came to hand them down carefully, stepping them onto a man’s broad thick back. Another final rearrangement of clothing; Orhan pushed at the garland in the hope it would stop digging into his head. Then looking up at the House of Silver that glittered before them, its doorways crowned with orange blossom, walls suppurating in the heat.
So here is the man who wants to kill me, Orhan thought. The last time he’d been here … the last time he’d been here had been the night of Eloise Verneth’s party, when Tam Rhyl had mocked him and Darath had begged to be involved in the conspiracy to kill the Emperor. Such complex patternings. Orhan thought: I think maybe I sealed your death that night, March.
Inside the first atrium the air was thick with perfume. Rose. Jasmine. Cinnamon. Mint. Paper blossoms floated in silver bowls. Outside in the courtyard shouts and the jangle of rattles. A murmur of voices from the room beyond. Elis tossed his head. Darath and Orhan led him through into the wedding chamber, where all the great families of the Sekemleth Empire were gathered. Hot, sweaty stink beneath their oils, reeking of life and the glories of human flesh. A mass of light and colour. Shifted as the guests turned. Fluttering of silk sleeves, jewelled feathers nodding, painted faces opening in panting smiles.
Leada Verneth was sitting on a high golden chair at the very end of the room, swathed in a silver bridal veil. Black skin and hair showed through vaguely, like a shadow of a woman, very still but if you looked you could see her head moving, her gaze shifting from guest to guest and then to her bridegroom as he walked down towards her. She stood awkwardly; Elis lifted her veil and folded it back. Not an unattractive young woman, indeed, and could carry her wedding splendour, swirls of gold paint over her cheek bones, diamonds on her forehead, pearls the size of pigeon eggs hanging from her ears. She looked at Elis and
smiled.
Darath as the groom’s kinsman was given a dish of bread and oil, came up to them, broke the loaf in half, dipped each half in the oil, gave a piece to each. Bride and groom solemnly ate a small mouthful, put the rest back on the dish. March as bride’s kin repeated the same with a sweet cake dipped in wine. The couple sat on their matched chairs and the women of the house sprinkled them with water. Sighs. Muttered cheers. They stood and clasped hands and walked together back down to the perfumed atrium, out and into the lace and bone litter with its dancers and flurries of noise.
The sacrifice is made. Married.
Orhan travelled back to the House of Flowers with Bil in their own litter. Rather have gone with Darath, but … He felt himself more accommodating towards Bil. Less pitiful in her pride, perhaps, now he and she, Lord and Lady Emmereth, the Nithque and the Nithque’s wife, were the centre of the Sekemleth Empire, the most powerful of all the inhabitants of Sorlost. Ten guardsmen with drawn knives marched around them. It had been a horrible scrum of bodies as the cream of high society scrambled for their litters. Jamming the streets as they processed to the groom’s house for the bridal feast. The litter kept having to stop: Orhan shuddered each time, feeling Bil on edge too beside him. Vulnerable, prostrate within their silk curtains. Not that long at all since a mage had brought down fire in an attempt to destroy Orhan. Killed several of his guards. The litter curtains would go up in streams of white silent burning. Knives and swords and magery tearing around Orhan and Bil as they sat …
“March didn’t want to kill you, Orhan,” Darath had reassured him. “He only wanted to humiliate you.”
“I’ll tell that to the bereaved families.”
“He’ll hardly likely try anything on his own daughter’s wedding day, will he?”
“No,” Orhan had agreed. Of course not. Carried entombed in silk through slow crowded streets, Bil’s swollen body beside him, he thought: of course not, of course not.
Darath had excelled himself arranging the wedding banquet, decking the walls with silk ribbons, finding some wonderworker to make the ceilings swirl with coloured lights. A soft murmuring sound like the fluttering of wing beats or the drumming of heavy rain.
“Not … not …?”
“No, of course it’s not the same mage, Orhan! March sacked him and drummed him out of Sorlost.”
Low couches spread with green brocade clothes were arranged in intimate groups of four or five diners, each with its own sweet-faced young table servants to attend: they would be dining in the old high style, reclining, titbits eaten with fingers, small shallow bowls for the drink.
Behind the newly-weds, Elis’ bridegifts were arranged on a canopied dais. March should be well content there, at least. Stacked up four deep with so much carved gem work they seemed to be giving off sunlight but carefully judged to indicate that the Verneths were the wealthier. Bil flared her nostrils daintily as she looked at them.
“Tasteless.”
“Most of them, yes. It’s meant to be something of a joke.”
“How?”
“Because March won’t see how tasteless they are.”
They were led to their couches, very close to Elis and Leada, in a group of four with Darath and a friend of Bil’s. Orhan squirmed a moment. Waiting for Bil to say something bitter. She frowned then smiled at Darath. The bright carapace she had drawn up around herself, hard and polished and silent, unreadable as glass. Or no, let us be charitable, thought Orhan: a child coming, and such power and status in her hands. It was like this a long time ago, Orhan thought, the three of us, and I hoped it would work then, and perhaps it can work now. Ameretha Ventuel said words praising the beauty of Bil’s dress, got on to asking about the preparations for the nursery, had Bil decided on clout cloths yet, who was making the Naming Dress, what about filling for the bedding, lilac petals or rose? Bil smiled more sweetly and relaxed herself, though Orhan could see Darath next to her burning into her and her nerves edgy underneath; but he would not give up sitting next to Darath any more now for her so she would have to manage, the three of them would have to manage, because love and pride and honour and happiness; he would not break his heart again after what he had done and made Darath do.
“They make a charming couple,” said Ameretha, twisting a long white neck towards the bride and groom on their couch. “Look almost as though they’re enjoying themselves.”
“Elis protests too much,” said Darath, “they’ll be fine.”
The sweet faced servants brought them dishes of candied dogs’ hearts, green lotus roots stewed in red vinegar, cold boiled doves’ eggs three days off hatching, cimma fruit with sandfish cutlets, unborn goats’ tongues in jellied hot sauce, iced wine (as the heat mounted Darath had toyed with the idea of scrapping the prepared menu and serving only roast meats and hot punch). March made a long rambling speech about marital harmony, visibly licking his lips at his daughter’s new home. Elis toasted his bride and managed to get her name right. The dogs’ hearts in particular were superb.
“I want to go home now,” said Bil. She was getting more and more tired in the hot weather, but complained every morning about being unable to sleep. The swell of her body seemed to be sucking at her like a stone drawing up heat.
“If you like.” Darath was drinking too much and rolling his eyes at the speeches, and the wreath was still poking Orhan in the side of the head. A good time being had by most and sundry, so yes, fine, time to go home.
“We’ve only just finished eating,” said Darath as Orhan got to his feet. “You can’t slip off before the bride and groom.”
“Bil’s exhausted.”
“Oh, Bil can leave.” Darath gestured to a server to refill his cup. “No, go. Virtuous as you are, escorting your wife home. Such a good man, isn’t he, Bilale? I’m sure Elis will be the same.” His face changed, the same endless strained weariness Orhan felt. Concern in his eyes. “Take care, going home.”
The heat dust was almost obscuring the stars, so that for a moment Orhan hoped it had clouded over and might rain. If the heat breaks, he had begun to find himself thinking, things will settle again. It seemed some kind of wager with himself: if I can just get through until this … until that … Beneath the closed drapes of the litter, with Bil’s pregnant body, after several cups of drink, it was stifling. Sweat ran down Bil’s forehead, gathered in the hollow between her breasts. In the darkness, her scars were less visible: many men, Orhan supposed, would find the traceries of her body attractive, there in the hot dark. She seemed heavier, graver, like an old statue, her skin so white and her hair so beautifully gloriously red. She blew air onto her face in an attempt to cool it, smiled wanly at him.
“Did you enjoy it, then?”
“I suppose so. As these things go.”
“Darath did well with the food, I thought. I should get the recipe for the goat’s tongue.”
“Yes.”
“Retha says rose petals, for the bedding. Better for calm temperament.”
“Oh? Yes, I suppose they would be.”
Bil said, “Is March really our enemy, Orhan? Was he really conspiring with the Immish against Sorlost?”
“Who told you that?”
“Celyse.”
Naturally. Why even bother to ask? Orhan said, “Celyse shouldn’t be telling anyone.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I don’t know,” Orhan said. That’s not an answer either, he thought. His head was hurting. He thought: I need another drink.
Such slow going, with the swarm of guards around them with knives out. Bizarre and absurd, that they could possibly need that many. Orhan had a knife, too, tucked quietly beneath the litter cushions, his hand resting on the hilt. Patterned metal slick with sweat. Yet it still felt … absurd, to need so many guards. Orhan shoved off the wreath; the flowers were sagging despite the enchantments on them, petals crushed and brown. They felt grainy, like they’d been crystallized and left to go rotten, unpleasant, like rotting ice. A funny smell to
them now. It filled the litter. Maybe cover the scents of sweat and wine and two people’s bellies over-stuffed with food. Bil sighed and stared out through the green curtain, giving up attempting to talk. I wonder if she’ll take one of the new guards as a lover? Orhan thought. Or already has? The gates of the House of the East swung open before them, the litter passed through, the gates shutting again noiselessly, sealing themselves. Relative safety, unless an assassin could climb a wall. The litter servants helped them carefully down, guards still flanking them, watching, torches raised to check for shadows that might be men with drawn blades. Elis might be taking Leada up to bed by now, Orhan thought. Darath no doubt cheering as he followed behind. He handed Bil carefully in through the pearl doorway.
“Good night, Bil.”
She frowned. “You’re going back out?”
“I am.”
“Where?”
None of your business. Where do you think? We agreed, once, that we wouldn’t ask these things, either of us. She sighed, walked away. She wasn’t sleeping with any of the new guards, Orhan thought.
“Be careful, Orhan.”
“I’ll go in the litter. With half the guards. Order the rose blossom tomorrow, then, if you like.” His head was aching. The litter was foetid with sweat and flatulence. Candied dogs’ hearts gave a man truly terrible wind.
The litter bearers went slowly. Tired out, like everything. The streets still swam with people. In the heat sleep was painful, so they wandered endlessly around the city day and night. At the House of Flowers the wedding feast was ending. Feathers and sequins and gemstones and flakes of paint and flower petals were scattered over marble floors. The detritus of beautiful wealth. Servants smiled in the corners, had probably made bets on whether he’d come back. Darath smiled in his bedroom doorway, held out his arms.
The Tower of Living and Dying Page 10
