The Tower of Living and Dying

by Anna Smith Spark

  A man’s shoe trod neatly on the fallen petals. Crushed them into the wet dust. Into little shredded limp pink grey pieces of rag. Firelight winked on jewelled shoe buttons. Nilesh looked up into the face of the man in the green coat.

  “That was wisdom,” he said shortly. He ground the petals further into a smear on the flagstones with the toe of his shoe.

  “She is sick with the fever,” Nilesh said suddenly. “The sweet-seller. She’s sick.”

  The man in green nodded. “Many are sick.” He pointed. “Look.”

  A man in the white silks of a knife-fighter was kneeling on the flagstones vomiting. The crowds swirled and moved around him, trying to avoid him, curling round him to include him in their endless movements around and around. Even as Nilesh watched he fell forward slowly on his face, lay still.

  “He’s dead?”

  “They have made a sacrifice to the God,” the man in the green coat said. “‘Every night! Every night!’ So should the God not now be appeased and stop them dying? Cure all who witnessed it of the plague?”

  He spoke like Lord Emmereth sometimes did, in such a way Nilesh could not quite understand what he was saying.

  “Look,” the man in the green coat said. Two women lifted the knife-fighter back to his knees. His head rolled upwards, Nilesh saw that he was not quite dead. The women lifted him between them while a third put a cup of something to his lips. Then they let him drop again. He fell heavily, caught himself with his hands, knelt in a crouch. Spewed up whatever they had given him, began to crawl across the square towards the Temple steps.

  “But he’s dying?”

  “I would think so, wouldn’t you? Unless the God miraculously cures him in the next little while.”

  “You’re joking,” said Nilesh awkwardly.

  After a while, she said, “There was a man in the Court of Evening Sorrows yesterday who claimed he could cure the plague with the touch of his hands.”

  The man in the green coat looked at her. “He’s dead.”

  Another bonfire flickered into light in the square. A circle of figures danced around it, dark against the flames, writhing and twisting and jumping hand in hand.

  “It’s almost dawn,” said the man in the green coat.

  Nilesh turned her face around the square, gazing up at the sky. Her eyes imagined they could see pale faint light. Yes. Dawn.

  “You served Lady Emmereth, didn’t you?” said the man in the green coat. “Until you were thrown out?”

  “My Lord Emmereth was merciful and generous,” she said stiffly. How good it felt, to hear someone want to speak to her the Emmereth name!

  “You are wondering, perhaps, how I know who you are?”

  Nilesh looked at him in puzzlement. “All in the city know My Lord of the Rising Sun and his household, My Lord.”

  He paused. Nilesh thought that he seemed at a loss. He seemed about to speak, then stopped himself.

  After a moment he said, “Your name is Nilesh, I think? Mine is Cauvanh.”

  Nilesh bowed her head even lower. “My Lord Cauvanh.”

  Laugh. “Just Cauvanh.”

  A shout went up in the square. Dawn! Dawn! Voices calling the Great Hymn to the rising sun, the most beautiful of all the songs of the God. Nilesh felt her heart rise in joy. The flames of the bonfires leapt higher, trying to match the light of the sky. The dome of the Summer Palace came alive in a blaze of gold. Even the black marble walls of the Great Temple were softly tinged in dreaming pink.

  “Great Tanis! Great Tanis! Lord of Living and Dying! Great Lord Who Rules All Things!” The people in the square began to dance again, embracing and kissing one another, spinning like glorious joyful birds. Nilesh was caught up with them, one of the women who had tended the knife-fighter grasped her hands, pulled her into a circle of women dancing, street girls in sheer beaded dresses, merchants’ wives in billowing satin, a little girl in a foam of yellow lace. “The sun rises! The sun! The sun! The sun!” As if they had all believed, deep in their hearts, that the sun would never rise on them again.

  Men in armour appeared again in the square at the mouth of the Street of Flowers. Glittering like the dome of the Summer Palace. Young men, silent, looking fixed straight ahead. Young men with tall barb-headed spears.

  The dancers whirled to stopping. The voices singing the hymn died away.

  A few ragged shouts and catcalls: “The God is angry!” “Every night! Every night!”

  The lines of soldiers opened to let through a man in a fine blue coat. Nilesh recognized him with a start as the man Lord Emmereth had been speaking to the night before. He had come to the House of the East a few times to see Lord Emmereth. Gallan, his name might be. Gallise? Gallus?

  “People of Sorlost,” Gallus said loudly. The crowd fell silent.

  He knows My Lord Emmereth, Nilesh thought. So surely they must respect him for that, what he said would be worth hearing and give them cheer.

  “People of Sorlost. I come to you from the side of the Emperor himself. The Emperor understands your fears. Fears and mourns with you. Like you, he has watched all that has befallen us with grief. Like you, he fears that the God is angry with us, that such strife and fear has befallen our great city. Like you, he feels anger. Like you, he seeks a way to heal our city and placate the God.”

  “The Emperor’s dead!” a voice shouted. “He’s dead!”

  And a new shout, in a voice rich and tremulous: “We’ll all die!”

  “The Emperor is not dead.” Oh Great Tanis! Lord Emmereth himself stepped out from the line of guards to stand beside Gallus. Nilesh flinched, seeing him so close. He must see her, surely, standing only a little way across from him in the light of the morning. Cauvanh, near her, stiffened. She felt him look briefly at her.

  Shouts of “traitor,” “hero,” “murderer.” Cheers. Murmuring. Curses.

  “The Emperor is not dead,” Lord Emmereth said loudly over the noise. His face was grey, his body was clenched tight. He was shaking. Like a man in the wind. “I have come from his chambers, where he has sat all night awake in prayer. He desires only to come to the Temple to give offering to Great Tanis. But he cannot come, for there has been violence done here. He is not dead, but he is afraid. The priestesses cannot hold the service of the dawn sun rising. So the Emperor implores you to leave and return to your homes and let the Emperor and the priestesses pray for the city, as is their task and their duty.” His face turned to the body of Tolneurn the Imperial Presence in the Temple, then to the dead and injured mixed together against the Temple’s wall. “Enough violence has been done here! The God has surely heard you! The Emperor hears you! He begs you, people of Sorlost the Golden, people of the Sekemleth Empire, the Empire of the Golden Dawn Light, of the Lord of Living and Dying, the richest empire the world has ever known, your Emperor begs you, his children, to return to your homes in peace and let him pray to the God for us all!”

  Silence. Murmuring, like birds waking. A few uncertain movements. Catcalls, but quieter now. People’s faces looking almost half ashamed.

  Then Cauvanh shifted. Shouted.

  “The Emperor is dead! He is lying!”

  Threw a stone.

  The soldiers moved into life around Lord Emmereth.

  The crowd began to run.

  People running up the steps into the Temple. Voices shrieking from inside. A child’s scream. The door to the Temple slammed.

  The spears came down.

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  “The Temple’s clear.”

  Orhan nodded wearily.

  Gallus said, “I had the men put the bodies in a pile in the Temple gardens. You’re right, we don’t want people to see them being carried out.”

  “Burn them,” said Orhan.

  Fever and contagion. Putrefying diseased bodies. Sickness of madness and of plague. “They need to be destroyed now.”

  Things you learnt. The destruction of the body by fire. The stacking of the pyre, the pouring on of the oil, the kindling of
the flame. The way the fat sizzled. The smell of burning hair.

  We’re all dying.

  Flies flies flies eating the whole world.

  Gallus nodded. Equally wearily. He ran his hands through his hair. “And the … the High Priestess, My Lord? Should we … should we bury her?”

  Even you, thought Orhan, even you doubt, now, that the High Priestess Thalia is dead, that that poor child was rightfully High Priestess.

  He thought: the child was an abomination before the God, indeed. A curse on me. Filth on my skin. Just not in the way you and all the rest seem to think.

  “Display her body on the steps of the Temple. Don’t try to pretty her, or disguise it. And if you can, wreath her in copperstem.”

  “I could put up a notice,” said Gallus. “‘So die all who blaspheme against Great Tanis the Lord of Living and Dying.’”

  Orhan in turn ran his hands through his hair. “You could.”

  “Have you got any rest, My Lord?”

  Almost laughed. “Rest? I’ll rest soon enough when they come to kill me. Or when I kill myself. But I don’t think I can ever rest again.”

  Gallus looked at him and their eyes met bleakly. Sharing something deeper even than he’d ever shared with Darath. Pain and self-loathing like no one should ever feel.

  “It was necessary, My Lord,” said Gallus.

  “Yes. It was.” “Kill them,” he’d ordered the soldiers, after the mob killed the High Priestess in the Great Chamber of the Temple itself. “Kill them all.” An apple, for five cimma fruit. Half the city, for something and no one could say any more what. Plague and fire and madness tore at them. But something, something must be saved. Nobody else was doing anything. Lord Tardein the Nithque of the Asekemlene Emperor of the Sekemleth Empire of the city of Sorlost was hiding in the House of Breaking Waves stuffing a scarf into his mouth to smother his screams, a table against his bedroom door. Someone had to try to bring some kind of order. Keep them all from killing themselves.

  Orhan Emmereth and his wife and his son and all his household, for the last few sane people in Sorlost.

  “How soon will someone come for us, then?” said Gallus.

  Orhan sighed. “Soon, I should think. Cam will have to try to take some control back of something sometime, if he wants to stay alive himself.”

  “His son died,” said Gallus.

  “When? You should have told me.”

  “Only very recently, late last night or this morning. The boy crawled from his sick room trying join the people in the street. Died as they tried to get him back to bed.”

  “Go and burn the bodies,” Orhan said. “That needs doing. It has to be done. And get the girl’s body displayed.”

  “Yes, My Lord.” It was raining again. Orhan watched Gallus splashing across the Grey Square. He did not look at the men accompanying him.

  I hoped it would rain, Orhan thought.

  One of the pyres in the square flickered. The rain, trying its best to put it out. The smell was indescribable. Far, far worse than the smell of Tam Rhyl’s house when it burned. The square was so full of smoke it made Orhan’s eyes water. The faces of the soldiers tending the pyres were blank and hard and empty. Poisoned. Ruined. Sick unto death themselves.

  Shame, Orhan thought, looking at Gallus walking stiffly up the Temple steps, disappearing into the gaping dark. What it means to be a God is to live in constant grief and shame.

  Just let me die of deeping fever, oh God, Great Lord Tanis, Great Lord of Living and Dying. Be merciful. Let me die of deeping fever here now.

  Instead, one of the soldiers tending the nearest pyre approached him. Alyen, his name might be, one of the commanding officers in charge of these wretched men.

  “The fires aren’t burning properly, My Lord,” said Alyen. There was soot and blood on his white face. “They won’t burn in the rain, My Lord.” He shifted uncomfortably. His eyes staring respectfully hatefully at the ground. “The men … The men say the rain’s an omen. Unnatural. That Great Tanis is angry. They are afraid, My Lord.”

  “Pour more fuel on the bodies,” Orhan said. His voice sounded distant in his ears. Alyen looked deeply unhappy. Glanced over at the fires with pain in his eyes. Orhan sighed. “Tell the men the rain is Great Tanis weeping, that His city has come to this. The God mourns for the dead.”

  “Yes, My Lord.” Alyen went back to his fire, trying to march like a soldier man. Brisk false officer’s voice called to the man nearest him: “Fetch another couple of barrels of oil, Jal.”

  He was risking all the soldiers’ lives, ordering them to clear the bodies. Their bodies were sticky with blood. Filthy, stinking, alive with flies. Contagious: the raised heat of the diseased blood warmed the blood of the healthy, made them sick in turn. “The God will keep you healthy,” he kept repeating to them. “The God will reward you, for what you do. The God will keep you healthy. The Emperor is grateful. He is praying to Great Tanis for you even now.”

  “The Emperor’s dead,” someone muttered occasionally. “The God’s abandoned us.”

  Another squad of soldiers was coming back into the square from the Street of Flowers. The rain washing their spears clean. Their commander presented himself to Orhan. “My Lord. We’ve cleared the streets east of the square right up past the Gold Quarter. No one’s about now. And I’m to report that the Gate of the Evening is closed and guarded by ten men.”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  “If I may ask … how fares the Emperor, My Lord?”

  Orhan ran his hands through his hair. “The Emperor is pleased. He is grateful for all that you have done.”

  The Emperor must be a screaming mewling newborn baby, somewhere. Six, seven, eight hours old? Oh yes, he must be grateful. A newborn baby wouldn’t stand much chance if the city collapsed entirely in bloodshed and disease. It’s not lies, Orhan thought again. It’s not lies. None of this. It’s the truth, in that it’s the only way that we can go on.

  Gallus returned from the Great Temple. He looked even worse than he had when he went in.

  “It’s done,” said Gallus. “Or doing, anyway. I set five men to tend the fire. Another four are working with the priestesses trying to set things at least partly to rights in the Great Chamber. Another two cursed me and ran away.”

  “You should get something to eat,” said Orhan. “A rest.”

  “As you said, I don’t think I’ll ever rest again. Or be able to eat. I couldn’t find any copperstem in the Temple storerooms. Not the kind of thing they’d have thought they’d be likely to need.”

  “Never mind, then. We need to get her body set up on the steps outside. With a sign, if you wish. As soon as the Temple’s halfway in order, we should get it open. Get some of the great families in there saying prayers. I’ll send a note to Lady Amdelle. Remind me.”

  “My Lord … The Emperor’s supposed to be going to the Temple to pray for the city, My Lord.”

  Ah, God’s knives. He was. Desperately eager to do so at the earliest possible moment, his corpse had told Orhan so several times. Orhan rubbed his eyes, tried to think. “Find a kitchen servant in the palace, stick them in a big black coat and bring them here. We’ll have to announce the truth at some point. But not until after he’s come here and made a dedication and said his prayers. Offered his life to the God for the lives of his people.” His voice was coming out from somewhere else, somewhere he’d never been, not even that night at the beginning of all this when the demon came into the city at his command. Heard it droning on and on, saying things he couldn’t bear it to say. It was necessary. I did it because it was necessary. I did it to save us. I wanted to make things better. I wanted to help the world. “Kill the man once he’s back in the litter. Make sure no one can recognize his face.”

  Gallus looked up at Orhan, their eyes meeting. Wet with tears. It’s just the rain. Just the rain. “Yes, My Lord.”

  Gallus paused, looked around the square at the bonfires. “Why did this happen, My Lord?”

  Orh
an said slowly, “Because people are desperate, I imagine. The same reasons people usually have for desperate things.”

  “But … A woman killed her child, My Lord. And the crowd killed that … that young girl.”

  “She thought she was saving the city.” Orhan almost wanted to take Gallus’s hand. “Perhaps, Gallus, she loved her own life, or another’s, more than that of the child.” What would you kill, Gallus, he thought, if it kept you a little while longer alive? Answer me honestly. Really, truly, honestly, deep down.

  Gallus said, “You were about to give me back that letter. Tell me to put it back. Walk off.”

  The day wore on. The rain stopped again. The mud baked back to yellow dust and dog shit. The fig tree in the corner of the Grey Square shone verdant green. Pethe birds drank from a last shadowed puddle. Dogs slunk spittle-eyed looking for scraps. Orhan sat in the shade of the loggia giving orders, sending men out, watching the pyres slowly, slowly blaze up and burn down. Days, they would take. Days, hanging over the city in a fog of rancid smoke.