by Kate Elliott
“What does that mean?” he asks, sounding defensive.
“No person can rule justly if the laws and customs of a land are already corrupt. For one thing, you have to immediately end the custom of giving girls to the temple. Of burying women alive as oracles. You know it’s wrong.”
“Of course it is shameful to entomb living people. But it’s the tradition we’ve always had. People believe Efea thrives in part because secluded holy women pray for our well-being. The priests won’t alter the custom just because I ask them to.”
“Does the king have no power?”
“The king has the power to command the army, the queen controls the treasury, and the priests intercede with the gods and interpret their wishes. Maybe when the current High Priest dies I can appoint a man of my own choosing, one willing to institute small steps. And not just in the temples. General Esladas already agrees we must arm and train Efeans as well as Saroese. We can expand our troop strength quickly by allowing able men to become soldiers. I will not even be breaking with tradition but merely restoring a change first set in place by Kliatemnos the Fourth of blessed memory. That there is a precedent will make it easier to convince the royal council that such action is not only necessary to defeat the enemy but good for Efea.”
His tone grows more lively as he warms to the subject of reform.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about this. Of course the Seon priests and the council and bureaucrats will resist but with careful maneuvering it may eventually be possible to change the law to allow all people to marry as they wish. Even perhaps to allow Commoners to own businesses in the city rather than rent licenses from Patron owners. After I have established myself I can change a few of these laws by royal proclamation. Not too many too fast, of course, but—”
“How can you bear to let a single girl or woman remain in that prison for even one more day?”
“What prison?”
“Eternity Temple!”
“It is restrictive, it’s true. But it’s an honor for a family to dedicate a daughter to the temple—”
“Restrictive! An honor! Did you not see what I saw inside Eternity Temple? Could you not taste the misery in the air? Didn’t you hear Serenissima? What terrible things might they be doing to those caged, mistreated girls?”
“Jes! Don’t blaspheme the holy priests.”
“Holy? The High Priest must have colluded with Lord Gargaron to brick up my family in a tomb. They knew Mother was pregnant, that it was blasphemous to brick her up with the oracle. How can you call them holy when you have proof they aren’t?”
A claw rakes at my heart, tipped in blood and fury. It opens, traps spilling one into the next as words pour out of me.
“Dead kings and dead lords like Lord Ottonor walk to their tombs, propelled by a spark the holy priests have poured into the body. What if the girls condemned to the temple aren’t just raised to be buried alive as oracles and their attendants? What if some are sacrificed for the funeral rites? Their sparks forced into a dead man’s body for the sake of their ugly ceremony?” The instant I speak the words, I know in my gut it’s true; it’s the only explanation that makes sense. “The men who do this are monsters, Kal. Monsters!”
The darkness hides him from me. All I see is his shape along the bed and how he doesn’t move at all, as if he’s just absorbed a killing blow.
“Good Goat,” he whispers, and in his shocked tone I hear that he can’t dismiss the possibility that I’m right. “If the girls dedicated to the temple are killed and perhaps even abused while alive, that would explain how Uncle Gar is able to control the High Priest. He could have forced the High Priest to entomb your pregnant mother and your sisters by threatening to reveal whatever foul misdeeds go on.”
“Then it should be easy to end the tradition! Just tell the truth about it.”
“You don’t understand how this works. Every Patron in Efea will revile me for suggesting the Inkos priests are corrupt. Uncle Gar and my grandmother will undercut me by telling people I’m deluded and perhaps even insane. They’ll block me at every turn the instant they decide I’m not their puppet. It will take years of quiet work building my own alliances before I can have a hope of managing the smallest of these changes.”
My patience expires so fast it’s like a flame snuffed out. “If you don’t change things, Kal, then the Efeans will!”
“The Efeans? They can’t rule themselves, much less Efea. If they could, my ancestors wouldn’t have conquered them.”
“That’s what my father says. Do you also think Efeans are weak and incompetent?”
“No, that’s not what I mean! But these gauzy dreams have no more substance than a dawn mist that will dissipate under the harsh light of the sun. If Efeans try to rule themselves, then the Saroese from overseas will just attack again and again until a new Saroese king takes over.”
“Attack again and again? Like they already do, with your endless wars?”
“We have to defend our home.”
“The home you stole!”
“You don’t mean that.” Despite how close we sit, we no longer touch. The cautious delicacy in his tone lights a fire of anger in my heart. “Have you been listening to Ro-emnu?”
What Kal and I just shared was so sweet that the sweetness itself is the knife that cuts me. He doesn’t think of himself as the enemy, he doesn’t want to be the enemy, but he can’t let go of what his people took so long ago. To him it is just the natural way of things, the outcome the gods intended. I used to think that too, but I know better now.
I see the truth: he has always been my adversary on this court.
And I love him.
“You know what you mean to me, Kal.”
“Jes…” He shakes his head, warning me against speaking words I can’t take back.
“Hear me out.” How cold my voice sounds. But I have to make the break clean, because my heart is shattering. “I hate Serenissima for sacrificing her son for ambition. But even so—even so—you let her be imprisoned in that vile place—”
“My other choice was to kill her!”
“Why are the only two choices confining her in an unspeakable prison where girls live in darkness before they are bricked into tombs, or killing her? Why would she think it necessary and even acceptable to lead her son to the slaughter just to stay in power? How can Nikonos think it better to be beholden to foreigners so he can sit on a throne instead of next to it? Everything about this is wrong. It will always be wrong even if you institute tiny changes that, after all, are only made to benefit and solidify Saroese rule over a country your ancestors conquered. Your dynasty was founded on murder and treachery. You can never escape that.”
“You have been listening to Ro.”
“Don’t act as if you are jealous! I’ve never—”
“Never kissed him? Kissing is the least of it. I’ve seen the way Ro looks at you, and now you talk and talk about the poet’s justice and the poet’s history and the poet’s grievances, and you haven’t asked me a single thing about… me.” His voice chokes off, and he takes in a breath thick with emotion before speaking more hoarsely. “Not a single question about how I am doing now I am forced to take on the burden of king, which I never asked for, never wanted, and still don’t want. But I can’t refuse.”
“You can refuse.”
“I’m in the game now, and even if I tried to, they’d never let me leave. Surely you see that. Even you, with Ro’s words so intimate on your tongue that you might as well have—” He breaks off and presses a hand over his mouth as if appalled at the words that just burst from his lips. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.”
I grab my clothes off the bed. I can’t do this. I am going to cry and I hate crying, and I hate myself.
“I beg you, Your Gracious Majesty. Protect my father. Lord Gargaron will come to see him as a threat because you trust him and your sister respects him. That is all I ask.”
He catches in a breath, like I’ve punched him. “You’r
e using my kingly title. You’re ending it, aren’t you?”
I can’t get words out in answer, but it doesn’t matter. He’s not done stabbing me in the heart.
“It’s best this way. In the palace they’re already calling you ‘the king’s mule.’ Even my own guardsmen say it when they think I’m not listening, and it makes me sick to hear it, especially after I made it clear I never want that word used. The palace ladies are sharpening their knives to go for your throat the instant you’re vulnerable or alone. And I’m sure my uncle is already plotting to get back at you for saving your mother from right under his nose. I can’t be with you every moment of every day and night, no matter how much I want to.”
I try to say his name but it won’t come.
“So it is better to end it now, because I could not live with myself if I knew you’d been killed because of me. If I know you’re safe, I can endure the rest of it.” He speaks with the knell of finality. “Go. That is our royal command. Leave this city and never come back.”
There is nothing else to say, so I don’t try to say it. I bolt from the room and stagger to the door, where I dress hastily and clumsily. It’s like I am walking on all those sharpened knives as I descend the stairs. Guards in royal uniforms stand in the darkness of the ruined compound. They say nothing but I know exactly what they are thinking.
“May we go, Captain Helias?” My voice comes out in a snarl. My cheeks are hot and my hands are in fists.
“We must wait for His Gracious Majesty to depart first.”
The captain draws me out of sight so I don’t have to watch as the king exits the pavilion, but I hear every footfall as he walks away draped in a silence that shouts as loudly as an accusation.
When at last Helias and I make our way back through the ruined palace, he makes no attempt to engage me in conversation. His loyalty is to the king, and he must cover our tracks so no one knows His Gracious Majesty has visited a place where he is vulnerable. Kalliarkos can never be so vulnerable again, and I realize all at once that this tryst was his way of saying good-bye. He already knew it had to be over, because he wants me to survive.
My heart is so full of pain.
I walk to the wagon, with its palm-wood barrels for carrying wine and beer. I wonder if there is anything in them, a delivery yet to be made. Probably Helias recruited this wagon off the street, and of course as a Commoner the driver could not say no to a Patron officer whether or not he decides to pay the man. “Take me to the Warrens,” I say.
“General Esladas told me you will be departing Saryenia in advance of the expected arrival of the enemy army.”
“That’s right. I hope you will defend the king with all your might, Captain. The siege will be a dangerous—”
I break off, sensing an unexpected movement as I would on the Fives court, where I have to be aware of other adversaries. Just as I turn to see who has come up behind me, a sack is pulled over my head.
I try to twist free, then kick. A shoulder rams into me. I am thrown so hard to the ground that my voice is knocked right out of my throat. I can’t even cry out.
“Doma!” The Efean driver grunts, gurgles in pain, and his body thuds on the pavement.
Hands grope me with brisk efficiency, taking the knife Mother gave me and binding the coarse sackcloth against my mouth. It is all I can do to shift to breathing through my nose so as not to suffocate from sheer terror. I’m rolled onto my stomach. With a desperate surge of strength, I try to crawl out of their grasp, scraping my chin and belly. They wrench my arms behind my back and bind them. They truss my legs from knee to ankle. I’m gathered up like a sack of grain and slung onto the wagon.
My head bumps a hard edge. I smell the dregs of wine gone to vinegar. Next thing I know I am shoved headfirst into an empty barrel, crammed in with my knees up to my chest and my back pressed against wood. Through the gag I try to plead please please but the cloth is tied too tightly.
They hammer the lid into place.
14
The wagon’s jolt forward slams my head so hard against the side of the barrel that I actually begin to whimper like a wounded animal. I can’t move. I can’t move.
Please help anyone help please.
The gag bites into the corners of my mouth. Its coarse fibers stick in my throat and I am heaving up bile but it has nowhere to go. I’m going to choke on my own vomit. Even Kal didn’t grasp how quickly the people who hate me would strike. That his own captain would be complicit in an ugly palace plot. I should have known better than to think I could belong in a world in which I am nothing but trash to be carted away. I’m going to die. I’m going to die.
Terror explodes through my mind, gaining power as I fight bonds I cannot break.
Calm down. Calm down.
I imagine myself on a Fives court. I imagine spinning Rings, each one moving at a different speed, and how to time the rings’ turning so I leap from one to the next in that gap where the two face each other open on. I run the Fives in my mind as I often did while lying in bed at night, working over and over through the mazes of Pillars and across the moving stones of Rivers. I count my breaths in and I count my breaths out and I let the counting become my entire existence.
I am not here, my body battered ceaselessly against the sides of a barrel, caught in a trap I didn’t see coming. I am Spider, and I am running the trial of my life.
Eventually we stop. The barrel lifts, shifts, and slams down so hard that I black out.
When I surface again, I am upside down, head pressed at such an awkward angle against the bottom of the barrel that I think my neck will break. Frantic, I twist my body so my knees are braced in one place and my shoulders in another to ease the pressure. It takes every bit of concentration I have to hold this position, but during training, adversaries learn to endure long holds as they build strength. I will endure this. I will endure.
Just when I think I cannot hold any longer, the barrel is tipped onto its side and rolled down a ramp, turning over and over until I heave up convulsively against the foul-tasting cloth tied across my mouth.
By the time the barrel comes to a halt I am so dizzy that I hallucinate Serenissima being dragged into a lightless passage with the bloody corpse of her son draped as a curse over her shoulders. Women’s voices murmuring inside a bricked-up tomb whisper in my memory like snakes tangling. At least oracles can move their limbs. I will die in torment, full of the poisonous, stupid dream that I could fall in love with a prince and not pay a bitter price. That he could escape the grip of generations of Patrons fighting to keep their hold on power and treasure. That he wasn’t already one of them, living in the rarefied air of the palace-born, who need never see anything but what they want to see.
A crowbar scrapes and screeches. The lid pops, and the air around me changes, breathing salty and sour.
“Good Goat! What a stink!” It is the voice of Captain Neartos.
How is that possible? The surviving members of Garon Palace went north to Maldine.
Footsteps slap as a new person enters the space. A whiff of lavender touches my vomit-stained nostrils. Melding with the smell of my bile, the aroma makes me retch. Or maybe it is the sudden onset of fear. It can’t be him. He fled north with the rest of the household.
“Lord Gargaron, here she is.”
Dread fastens its teeth over my heart. How could I ever have thought I had beaten him?
“Ah, Jessamy. Here you are.” His tone reeks of satisfaction. “Let me explain how this is going to go. If you can hear me, tap your heels against the cask.”
The strength it takes me to consider refusing causes me to twitch.
“I can tell you’re awake. And I know you to be an intelligent girl. So if you want to get out of this barrel, tap your heels against the cask.”
I sloppily tap my heels on the barrel’s side. My knees knock the wood in the other direction because I overcompensate. More bruises.
“Very good. Now, tap your heels if you will obey me, make no attempt to
escape, and speak only when I give you permission.”
He’s taunting me. He knows it. I know it. I can’t fight any more, so again I tap my heels. The pain of moving has become so familiar that it squeezes only a few more tears out, if they are tears. Maybe I am too desiccated for tears. Maybe all I have left is the last drops of a nectar gone rancid.
“Excellent.” A man savoring a delicious meal might speak his approval of the food in the same tone with which he speaks to me. “I will give you a little time to think about what this means for you. Neartos, put the lid back on.”
I shriek against the grimy cloth, although all that comes out is a hoarse bleat. I try to kick the lid as it is hammered into place but I have no purchase and my legs have gone numb. The cask will crush me, suffocate me.
I must calm myself. I must.
Remember the steps into cat, the first animal in the menageries. Cats wake. They stretch. They consider their surroundings. They take their time. One slow inhalation and one slower and longer exhalation at a time, I keep myself and my pain stitched together; I don’t allow my five souls to scatter apart and break me into pieces.
A loud noise followed by a sharp tug alerts me.
I am dragged out of the barrel and rolled onto a floor. My legs unfold with such painful stabs in my hip joints that I start choking. The gag is untied and the sack yanked off my head.
Light from a swaying oil lamp assaults me. The floor rocks beneath me. Captain Neartos latches shut a door. I see a cheap copper basin, buckets slopping water over their brims, a sponge and a pumice stone, and a grimy-looking towel that might as well be the finest palace linen compared to what I’m wearing. There’s also a big covered pot that smells of mint and chamomile, and a dead man.
His slack, sparkless face is turned toward me. It is the Efean driver, throat cut.
I shut my eyes as a shudder wracks me.
I want to beg for release but I won’t. It’s the last dignity I have.
