Idol of Bone

by Jane Kindred

  He considered a moment. “The sugar mill, I guess. But it’s closed up for the winter.”

  Cree opened the breech and made sure it was loaded. “Tell me how to get there.”

  Ume gasped for air and coughed up water as Pike yanked her head up from under the freezing surface of the trough with a fist wrapped in her sodden hair.

  “We can do this all night,” said Pike. “But it’s growing tedious.”

  “Then maybe—” Ume’s teeth clenched together from the cold, and it was an effort to pry them open again. “Maybe you should ask me something I actually know!”

  Pike rolled her over onto her back, her bound hands pressing uncomfortably into the stone rim of the sluice, and Ume sucked in her breath as he twisted the point of his knife beneath her collarbone. “All right, then, how about something you can’t possibly not know the answer to.” He smiled down at her, turning the knife slowly back and forth with the tip of his finger. “Are the Meer impotent, as they say?”

  Ume blinked up at him, her breath still heaving in her breast as she tried to get enough air. “I can only answer for one,” she gasped. “And no, he was not. Not by a long shot.”

  Pike laughed and sat back on his haunches. “You almost make me forget you’re not a woman.”

  “I am a woman,” said Ume, her breath coming easier. “Whether you comprehend that or not is your own problem.”

  Pike waved a dismissive hand, his face once more serious. “You admit to committing treason with the Meer of In’La. Since you clearly found it satisfying, why should I believe you wouldn’t jump at the chance to commit it with the Meer of Rhyman?”

  “I never said I wouldn’t. I merely said I haven’t, because I’ve never met him. But that you presume he would offer me the opportunity is tremendously flattering.”

  Pike’s face darkened with anger, and he stood swiftly, hauling her up by the arm and pushing her toward the rear of the wheel housing. “You seem to be taking this far too lightly. I’ve been too easy on you.” He shoved her onto her knees before the axel and cut the rope that bound her hands, making her wrists feel as if needles had been thrust into them as the blood rushed back in. “Are you right-handed or left?” he snapped.

  “Left,” said Ume, flexing her fingers, too weary to try to figure out what he was up to.

  Pike grabbed her left arm and thrust it forward, her wrist between the spokes of the wheel, and jerked his head at his man. “Open the sluicegate. Let’s get this thing moving.” The wheel began to turn sluggishly in the half-frozen water as the gate opened, but it was enough that it was already twisting her arm in the socket as it drew her upward. “Admit to your involvement with this renegade Meer, and I’ll stop the wheel,” said Pike.

  Ume cried out, ready to tell him anything as the wheel dragged her up onto her toes, when the crack of a shotgun blast sounded loudly in the empty room behind her.

  “Stop the wheel—now—or I’ll open a sluicegate in your head.” Cree’s husky tenor had never sounded so sweet.

  Pike’s man evidently took her at her word, as the wheel slowed, and Ume, scrambling against the axel, managed to pull herself free as Pike let go of her. Pike swore, flipping his knife in his hand as he observed Cree holding the gun.

  “Guess the Meerhunters are a little behind the times,” said Cree with a smirk at his knife. “Move away from her.”

  Pike glanced at Ume as if he were considering sticking the knife in her and taking his chances at moving fast enough to evade the shotgun. Cree raised the gun to the level of his head.

  “She’s really a very good shot,” said Ume, straightening her twisted bodice. “I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

  Cree jerked the barrel of the gun toward the door. “Get the hell out of here. And leave the cart and horse. You’re walking back to town.”

  Pike sighed and sheathed his knife. “It’s been a pleasure, Maiden Sky, but I have no doubt I’ll have another opportunity to collect this bounty.” He opened his hands at his sides to show they were empty as he went around Cree to follow his man out, and Cree pivoted and tracked him with the barrel. “I’ll give your regards to Prelate Nesre.” Pike winked before turning his back and exiting the mill.

  Ume sucked in her breath at the name. Nesre was the client? Cree lowered the shotgun, and Ume ached at the look in her eyes she tried to hide.

  “Are you all right?” Cree’s jaw was still tight with determination. “Did they hurt you?”

  “I’m fine.” Ume brushed her hands down her bodice to her skirt. “But they’ve absolutely ruined my sapphire velvet.” She launched herself at Cree and threw her arms around her neck, and Cree wrapped an arm around her waist, holding her tight. “I thought you were dead,” Ume whispered against her cheek, voice cracking with emotion.

  “I thought so too,” Cree murmured into her hair. “In fact, I wasn’t sure I wasn’t until just now.” She kissed Ume with a hint of a sob in her throat.

  Ume pulled back after a moment, looking at the stain on the front of Cree’s coat as she gripped the lapels. “Gods, Cree. How did you not bleed to death?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s… Someone was there. I think.” Cree shrugged. “Anyway,” she sighed when Ume finally let go of her, “we’re going to have to leave Mole Downs.”

  “I know. I don’t care. It’s too cold here.”

  “I can’t believe the son of a bitch found us all the way out here at the end the damn world.” In an unconscious gesture, Cree put her hand to her empty womb—empty of the long-dead child.

  Eleven: Anamnesis

  Images swam in the Meerchild’s glass, but the Master wouldn’t be pleased if it drew these. They were from another time, a time before the end of the Meer. Its fingers itched to draw them.

  The pictures formed like the pieces of a puzzle being laid, edges touching one upon another while leaving the shapes of others unfilled. The knowledge that these were past instilled the child with an indefinable anxiety, knowing they were moments it could never touch or be a part of. But the pieces of this temporal puzzle fell into place like lotus blossoms carried on the great river, inevitable, unstoppable, careening toward their end in the cataract of the Expurgation.

  It was a chronicle of moments in the life of MeerRa, memories indelibly impressed upon the fabric of time and now recalled from the Meeric Anamnesis as if something had dislodged them:

  The infant handled puzzle blocks painted in gold runes between plump fingers, indifferent to their worth. Like everything else that was to be experienced, to be known in the small mind, they must be tasted. The pink gums worried the wooden corners of a block, moistened it with a light trickle of saliva that caught the light, and the sticky fingers released it. It was more accurate to say “released” than “thrown” or even “put down.” The hand hadn’t yet acquired the dexterity to take responsibility for such an action.

  The Meer watched from the shadows of the arch that defined this terrace, entranced by the delicate trail of silver that still moistened the block. Late evening sun through the courtside entrance lit this corner of the room with a mild copper glow, and the child, in a red abundance of draperies below her beaded collar, gilded and embroidered with precious stones, was a bright flame. The dark beginnings of curls cooled the effect above the padded cheeks—or perhaps they were coals not yet succumbing to the heat. The carpet too, beneath the child, was red vermilion, streaked throughout with fiery fibers of gold thread. It was a brief stop in the sun’s descent beyond the courtyard, a moment long enough to paint these details like a brilliant oil on the canvas of MeerRa’s memory.

  The child had tired of the blocks. When she looked up with dimpled brow for the caregiver and perceived herself alone, the bright visage crumpled from the top of her brow to the stubby chin in a piteous lament. Ra’s body moved forward of its own accord to the quickening of anxiety in his chest, but the woman assigned to watch over the child
was only folding diapers on the divan behind the baby.

  She rose at once and went to the child, lifting her up and clucking to her. “Now, there,” she murmured. “What’s all this fuss?” The child quieted, content that the caregiver was within sound of a cry.

  Ra drew back into the shadows, turning away from the open terrace to the cool passageway already dimming to stone blue in the dying light from the west. It was not for Ra to interfere in the affairs of the child. She was Meer, and was cared for by the most devoted temple servants. She was not his own.

  He watched RaNa from the coiling corridors of the temple, careful not to defy Meeric tradition, though this watching was, in fact, an indiscretion. His obligation was attentiveness to the petitions of the altar and not the spying on of children and maids, but he couldn’t remain unaware of her small presence in the cool, vaulted chambers that had once been occupied only by himself.

  The young Meer’s attendants were necessary in the early years, thus granted this extraordinary privilege of temporary lodging in the forbidden chambers. They went about their duties quietly, keeping RaNa largely out of view, for the Meer should not be disturbed with the mundane guidance of a child, despite its heritage. Ra had to content himself with observations from a distance, however brief—sometimes, while the child and her attendants slept, entering the nighttime stillness of the nursery to stand over the magnificent cradle in which the holy head rested.

  His own head was often heavy on these nocturnal wanderings. He had defied a millennium of sacred custom in sharing his seed with her common mother, and nearly a century of unwritten edicts against the procreation of the Meer. He couldn’t explain what had propelled him to such selfishness, and he worried this in his mind continually.

  The woman, Ahr, had seen him, rather than the god. He had been intrigued at first because she dared to meet his eyes, though it was against both religious and societal propriety. Those eyes alone among the crowd were asking nothing. Others repeated their supplications—grantmeohMeerRa-letmeohMeerRa-givemeohMeerRa—in a stream of meaningless, monotonous sibilations. In meditative concentration, he could focus on the individual entreaties, separating one from the whole, and use his acquired wisdom to choose which of these ought to be answered. The sound could be a breathtaking union of harmonic intonation, rising like a single-chord vibration on an ancient string, or the sound of insects chanting mysteriously in the heat, but on that day it had been a grating cacophony.

  He’d ridden annually through Rhyman, seated unmoving in the sacred meditative pose, for more years than he could remember. He didn’t know his own years, in fact. It hadn’t been material. The Meer aged differently than ordinary men, and Ra had been in his early adulthood far longer than this woman had been alive.

  What provoked him to rebellion, he couldn’t say. It must be considered a deliberate act that he ceased to listen to their supplications in meditative repose and took to watching them, both envying and despising their simple existence. They couldn’t see him within his curtained palanquin, positioned on his belly to peer through a narrow, sheer slip of silk that let in the light. They wouldn’t have thought to see eyes peering back at them, even if they might have strained and focused on that carefully arranged pleat—but she had seen him. She had met his eyes.

  Even from that distance, her eyes were something he might drown in, a color between blue and black: indigo ink. The eyes had followed him, expressionless, while her head, covered and cosseted with cloth, had remained still, slightly bowed, as though she too were praying, though he knew she was not.

  This procession through the streets of Rhyman was an annual benediction to the people. The Meer would be brought close to them—close, for this brief period, to the commoners instead of the upper castes who were allowed preferential places at the temple. This was the People’s Blessing and would be repeated for seven days, until the solstice came.

  Ra slid down to the litter’s floor again the following day, and again peered out, and at the same press of people in the road, the same turn in the procession, he saw the eyes. This time his gaze went to the cloth that protected the virgin’s face from shame. It sloped beneath the dark, intent eyes over the suggested shapes of nose and cheeks and mouth. Ra felt peculiar staring at these hinted features, vague dips and valleys in the cloth. His stomach tightened and his pulse quickened, and he felt a surge of anxiety, as though in peril.

  He hadn’t been looked at in this manner, as a man instead of an icon, by anyone that he could recall. She frightened him. It was as though he’d been invisible, a ghost who had become used to traveling among the living without notice, hiding in the body of a statue that was prized for its value in precious metal, but never perceived as part of the vessel itself. She was a medium who saw through to him, an entity for whom he was suddenly material.

  On the third day, Ra waited, sick with anticipation, for the litter to reach the place in the road where she’d been. When the indigo eyes perceived him, they were nearer than they’d been before. She’d managed to move forward in the ranks of petitioners. Instead of a yard away, she was in the throng that reached up for the benediction of the Meer, grasping at the tassels that they might have a fleeting touch of the holy, and bowing low to kiss the underside of the litter as it passed by. It was a chaos of bodies, each intent on his own petition and his own ardor for the embodiment of the Meeric religion.

  She stood among them, perhaps a foot away, not bowing or scrambling for a blessing by proxy, asking for nothing. And yet she asked for everything, asked the worst of him, by touching him with that lucid indigo. She exposed him. Ra felt torn from her gaze when the procession moved on.

  By the fourth day, Ra was truly ill with disquietude. He shook with chills and fever as the litter plodded forward. He didn’t want to see her, couldn’t bear to be seen again by those eyes, but the thought of her not being there when the procession rounded the bend was terrifying. He dreaded and longed for the hour to move to their appointment.

  When he saw her, it was as before. She watched him from among the frenzy at the litter’s edge. Ra dropped his feverish cheek to the soft pillow that now felt like fire. He couldn’t look into her eyes again.

  But he was compelled, driven once more to seek her gaze on the following day. He was still ill, but he looked for her anxiously and met her eyes when they passed until he could no longer see her in the throng. He became afflicted with the obsession that he was a spirit, and once her eyes no longer saw him, he would cease to exist. Again the following day he subjected himself to the anxiety and hope that racked him, again feverish and cold in alternating currents. He was growing mad with the thought of the holiday’s end, thinking, This is the second to the last day that I will see her. Tomorrow will be the last.

  He was consumed with the idea of touching her, to make sure she herself was no phantom. He recognized the ache and hardness in loins he’d almost forgotten belonged to him. The Meer were thought not to feel this simple lust. His genitals were a mere dangle of flesh that had no meaning, were never to be used, vestigial. But he was no longer a flaccid god; she’d commanded him, and he had risen.

  The seventh eve was on him, the culmination of the people’s parade. MeerRa vomited in terror throughout the night. He could eat nothing they brought to him when the sun rose. He trembled, unsteady when they dressed him and lifted him into his place. The procession began, and Ra wept hot tears against his fever. His mind tormented him with its single purpose: This is the last day I will see her. Today is the last. The procession seemed to move too quickly, hurtling toward the bend in the road he dreaded, though it had seemed to crawl before.

  He was there, much too soon, and she was there, her eyes upon him for the final moment. He steeled himself against a fear that made his heart squeeze in on itself and his blood rise to a dangerous force against his veins, then slid his fingers beneath the sacred curtain, intending to steal a brush against her skin before she was gone. The
bowing and litter-worshipping throng about them was less interested in the flesh-and-blood Meer than in the symbol of their faith and their own frantic supplication. They took no notice of what went on at the corner of a curtain.

  He’d missed her. Bustled past, he could no longer see her, but she’d been just there: an inch away from him. He was in agony. This last moment had been too brief, and she was gone. Something brushed his fingers, and he tensed. It was another set of fingers. They lingered on his; the person was keeping pace beside the litter. Their possessor did not bend and press lips against the holy hand as a supplicant would. It must be she. Ra wove his fingers subtly between the others, and the friction of this flesh aroused him so that he nearly cried out. They would be parted in a moment. She couldn’t follow for long without drawing attention.

  The litter was jostled and careened on one rear post, and Ra heard the rebuke of the trailing templar priests behind him. The litter stopped. Amid the rumbling murmur of givemeohMeerRa-blessmeohMeerRa were the angry shouts of the templars and the litter-bearer’s anxious apologies. The cool fingers still crossed his. Ra’s heart lunged into his throat, and he swept back the curtain an entire inch in madness. He expected to see the jockeying crowd focused on him in awe, expected to be mobbed with importunities, but for this momentous second, all attention was on the unfortunate bearer who’d stumbled and dishonored the Meer.

  But she was there. She gripped his hand, eyes wide. Ra reached out and pulled her forward by the other hand as well, until she was within the curtained realm, head and shoulders inside. He couldn’t believe what he’d done. He’d condemned her to arrest by the templars. She was looking up at him, expectant, her heart pounding beneath a breast that rose and fell in suspended motion. He whisked her in, holding his breath as she scrambled lightly up. There was a moment where the litter-bearers shifted, sensing the difference, and Ra was stricken, waiting for the templars’ outcry, but it didn’t come. The offending litter-bearer had been sufficiently chastised, and the procession was beginning again—and this woman was inside.