by Jane Kindred
Azhra was quiet beside him.
“You’ve had a child,” he said after a bit. “May I ask why you still wear the veil?”
“Because it is my privilege. No man has unveiled me. I am not a married woman. The veil says my body is my own.”
“I wear the veil as well,” he confided. “When I’m in courtesan dress. I always wanted to, even as a small child.”
Azhra glanced at him. “I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to be a woman. You’re born to the ruling sex, yet you give up your power. I would give anything to be a man. I hate being a woman.” The depth of feeling with which she declared this saddened him.
“I have far more power as Ume than I do as Cillian. Ume is a truer expression of who I am. I feel like I’m faking it when I dress as a man.”
Azhra considered this, pulling her wrap closer as the breeze picked up. “And Cree—she seems to have more power, as well. I thought it was her access to masculine privilege. But maybe it’s something else. Maybe dressing that way feels truer for her.”
The wind had turned cold, and Cillian put his hands in his pockets with a shrug. “I don’t know why anyone else dresses against their sex. I only know why I do.”
Their paths were about to diverge, and Azhra paused. “Cillian, be careful of the Meer. His real magic is his power over you. He’ll consume you.”
“You weren’t a willing consort, Azhra. You said yourself you had no power. It’s not that way with MeerAlya. Your Meer took what he wanted from you. It’s only natural you’d hate him.”
Her dark blue eyes were depthless with longing as she shook her head. “I loved him.” Azhra turned away toward the market.
Chapter Seven
Before investigating the chaos still apparent in the Garden, Ume changed upstairs in her apartments, kicking off the masculine boots in favor of her black slippers and throwing on the red silk pants and a plain black tunic belted at the hip with a string of onyx teardrops. A red chiffon scarf, artfully draped and tucked into her chignon, served as a veil.
She made her way through the lingering crowds unnoticed; there were courtesans and streets girls enough that her presence was commonplace. A group of templars stood across the street from the Salver & Chalice speaking in hushed tones with their heads together. Nesre was not among them. Ume couldn’t afford to wait for him to seek her out. It was highly irregular for a courtesan to solicit a patron, but Ume had never shied from the irregular when it was called for.
With the lengths of her scarf drawn around her shoulders, she approached the templars, her arms crossed against the wind. Her reputation preceded her, and they bowed their respect and ceased their conversation.
“My lords.” She inclined her head. “The esteemed Templar Nesre asked me to meet him here, but in all the tumult we’ve missed each another. Could you possibly carry a message to him? Or do you know where I might find him?”
They exchanged glances of some significance.
An older templar took her arm and led her aside, his maroon robes marking him as a high-ranking priest, though not a member of the Court of Decisions. “Templar Nesre is leading the investigation into this regrettable event.” Ume was unable to keep her eyes from widening. “When I see him, I shall tell him you are seeking him. Where shall I say he may find you?”
“I’ll wait for him inside the Salver and Chalice.” Ume pressed his hand and gave him a demure smile from behind the sheer veil. “I appreciate your kindness. I wouldn’t want him to think I’d forgotten our engagement.”
“Of course, Maiden Sky.”
Inside the tavern, she ordered a pot of warm pepper tea to calm her nerves. As a well-respected courtesan, she had a personal booth and was able to sit in its darkness without disturbance until Nesre arrived, remarkably calm.
“My dear Maiden Sky.” He kissed her hand. “I had hoped to speak with you. In fact, I had thought to do so before now, but you seem to have been scarce.”
Ume curled her palms around her teacup, watching the steam make patterns on the liquid’s surface. “I have only lately left the Meer.”
“Indeed?” Nesre sat across from her and pulled the curtain closed. “He must be quite taken with you. You’ve shared his bed, then.”
“No, as a matter of fact. He sculpts me.”
He knit his brows. “Sketching and sculpting. Our Meer is a man of strange passions.”
Ume leaned toward him and spoke in a sharp whisper. “Nesre, what on earth is going on with this arrest?”
“Nothing you need worry about, my dear. The girl has committed a crime for which I cannot charge her, and the Court of Decisions has a crime for which it needs a perpetrator. It works out nicely all round.” He gave her a dark smile. “Or would you rather hang?”
“I can’t let someone else hang in my place!”
Nesre sat back, once more perfectly composed, as if they were discussing the menu. “As I said, she is guilty of a serious crime, one for which hanging would be a mercy. You must leave all of this thinking to me. I am well trained to it. Meanwhile you do what you are trained to do, and all will be well.”
“What does that mean?”
Templar Nesre flicked his fingers against the curtain and glanced out to ensure they were alone. “I need you to engage in sexual congress with the Meer of In’La.”
“You need me to?”
“The people are restless under his rule. The time has come for the Meer to step down. The Meeric Age has ended.” Nesre refilled her cup from the pot of pepper tea, his placid face infuriating her. “Most of the templars are with me, but a few stubbornly hold to the old ways. And the old ways consist of the Meeric Code, so if it is broken…then they will be with me.” He gave her a patronizing smile. “You seem surprised, yet your newfound friends also share my view, do they not?” His eyes sparkled with amusement. “Of course I keep an eye on you. I cannot afford not to.”
Ume drew her hands away from the teacup as the porcelain radiated the boiling heat to her fingers. If Nesre knew of Cree and the expurgist movement, he knew of their meetings and their plans for protest. And he had done nothing to stop them.
She looked him in the eye. “One of them said Zedei was a spy. Was he yours?”
“The unfortunate Templar Zedei was, alas, not persuaded to my point of view. He did infiltrate your friends, but he meant to expose them before the time was right. He would have brought down the movement.”
“I didn’t kill him, did I?”
“Only I can swear for or against you, Maiden Sky. The word of a courtesan is not her currency.” Nesre stood and pulled the curtains aside. “I have it on good authority that your patron of late will be calling on you to attend him following the Autumnal Vetma. See to it that you share his bed. The testimony of your body will be needed. I believe your sex will sway those who are as yet unconvinced of our mutual friend’s depravity.” He kissed her on the cheek, and she sat motionless, too stunned to protest. “What I ask of you and what your friends ask of you are one and the same. You may not care to do it for me, though you are in my debt. Think of them instead.”
Less than a week remained before the annual autumn blessing, the sole occasion whereupon the common people were allowed to petition the Meer. Wealthy merchants and citizens of standing could come before him daily in petition, as long as they had sufficient gold, but for the annual blessings, gifts of any nature were accepted. Most people considered it a farce—who had ever seen the Meer bless anyone?—but few could resist the possibility that this time, this season might be the one when Alya would choose them. They lined up for days in advance: a ready-made assembly of the masses.
Ume hadn’t quite believed the expurgists would go through with it. To remove the Meer from the throne, from his temple—where was he to go? And what made them think he would leave? It wasn’t as if they could imprison him or force his hand. He would simply speak, and the prison doors would open.
She would have to attend the meeting of the League of Expurgists. This was
too crucial to take Nesre’s word for it. Cree had said the meetings weren’t usually held in her rooms, but she hadn’t specified where this one was to take place. Ume would have to find Azhra at the market.
It was just past midday as Ume threaded her way through the crowded marketplace, but there was no sign of Azhra among the clusters of older women with traditional head coverings and their maiden charges in the veil. A few hours had passed since they’d parted. Perhaps Azhra had already gone.
“Maiden Sky.” Azhra observed her from a fruit stand, a jute cord bag full of breadfruit tucked in her arms.
“Maiden Azhra.” Ume approached her. “How did you know me?”
“You have a distinct hair color.” Azhra shifted her bag. “And you’re quite conspicuous. Who else could you be but the soth’s most illustrious courtesan?”
Ume smiled and lowered her eyes. “I suppose that’s true. But I’m glad you did. I never would have found you on my own.”
“That’s the benefit of being an ordinary maiden in the Delta.” Azhra began to mill through the market once more with Ume beside her. “The only one, so far as I can see. It’s easy for me to gather information. People don’t see me.”
“And did you gather any?”
“I overheard a group of street girls in the square below the temple while I ate my lunch. They were skeptical of Persa’s involvement, either with the crime or the movement. But the murdered templar was a patron of hers on several occasions.”
“I thought Zea was sure she was an expurgist.” Ume fingered a bolt of emerald silk as they browsed.
“She may have attended a few meetings, but the other girls viewed it as something of a joke. The templars appear to believe otherwise.”
“The templars?” Ume dropped the cloth and looked at Azhra.
“There are a number who have been secretly attending meetings. The movement is growing among them. And they believe it was Persa who was spying on them.”
At last it made sense. Both Zedei and Persa had been opposed to the expurgation, and Nesre had made certain they were out of the way. Ume debated whether to tell Azhra of her own entanglement. It could mean trouble for her if it got back to Nesre.
Azhra paused to haggle over a blue-glazed bowl. “Why were you looking for me?”
“I wanted to attend the meeting this evening, and I didn’t know where it was.”
“That’s easy.” Azhra set down the bowl as the merchant named an extravagant price. “A copper alyani and no more,” she insisted. “Look around you, Ume. There are bills posted everywhere.”
The merchant feigned outrage at Azhra’s offer of less than half what the bowl was worth. After all, he had a dozen mouths to feed and an ailing wife. Ume glanced at the posts around the tent. Pieces of parchment clung to them, announcing An Evening of Meeric Poetry. Upstairs, Riverdock Public Tavern, at Dusk.
“Works like a Meeric charm.” Azhra tucked her bowl, bought for two coppers, on top of the breadfruit. “What Deltan in his right mind would accidentally wander into that?”
Azhra came up to Ume’s apartments to wait for her to change. It was probably wiser for Cillian to attend than Ume.
“What lovely rooms you have.” She wandered through the parlor where Ume entertained when a patron preferred not to use his own quarters. “So this is how the courtesans live.” Her words had an edge of bitterness.
“It took me many years to earn them.” Ume spoke from the bath chamber as she scrubbed the smudges of kohl from her eyes.
“Many years?” Azhra appeared in the doorway. “Ume, you’re seventeen.”
Ume loosened the ties at her shoulders. “Five years feels like a lot to me.” When she dropped the tunic over her bare legs onto the ground, Azhra stepped back with a slight gasp of dismay.
“I’m sorry.” Ume grabbed a towel to cover herself. “I suppose it’s disconcerting to see the illusion shattered right in front of you.”
Azhra shook her head, cheeks pink over the hem of her veil. “It’s not that. I…I’ve only ever seen one man naked.”
“I thought you were a courtesan once.”
“No. Just a girl who found herself in the arms of a Meer.” Her eyes were solemn. “A very dangerous place to be, Ume. Don’t forget that.”
At dusk they walked downriver to the pub, receiving polite smiles and nods from passersby as if they took them for a couple in courting. The upstairs room was packed with people from every caste. Cillian recognized a templar or two out of ceremonial dress.
“Cillian!” Cree waved them over with a pleased smile and gave him a masculine kiss of greeting on each cheek. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
She made space for them on the rag-weave rug she shared with Sylus and Dehr, who looked up with a brief acknowledgment from their game of jack-stones. Sylus’s glance was noticeably briefer, as if to avoid trouble with Dehr.
Cillian spoke low at Cree’s ear. “There are templars here.”
“Spies?”
“I don’t think so.” Azhra answered before he could, arranging her skirt around her ankles. “I think our message is finally being heard. They’re no more happy living under tyranny than the people are.” She shared what she’d heard in the marketplace, and Cree pondered the news.
“I heard something myself.” Cillian spoke reluctantly. “I understand things are moving more quickly than I realized. Is it true the expurgists plan to move against Alya after the Autumnal Vetma?”
“I haven’t heard that.” Cree looked to Azhra, who shook her head.
“It came from a high-level templar. He’s an avowed supporter of the movement, but he may be a spy.”
“Or you could be the spy.” Azhra’s piercing indigo gaze settled on his.
Cree glared. “Enough, Azhra. He’s not.”
“But he might warn the Meer.” This charge Cree did not immediately repudiate.
“What good would that do me?” asked Cillian. “If the whole of In’La is rising against him, I can hardly stem the tide. It would be like standing with the reeds against the river. I’d drown just the same.”
“You would,” Azhra assured him. Another veiled threat.
“All the same.” Cillian’s folded arms matched Azhra’s stubborn stance. “I still don’t see how he’ll be persuaded to abdicate. He’ll use his magic.”
Azhra’s laughter was loud as a speaker appeared at the podium and the murmur of voices ceased.
After a long speech that laid at MeerAlya’s feet the increasing number of beggars in the streets, the high prices of grain and coal and the heavy tariffs on river-shipped goods, the speaker confirmed Cillian’s report. A march was planned on the temple the morning afterward to demand Alya step down. Key members of the priesthood, he claimed, would lead the way into the temple to show they stood with the people against the Meer.
The announcement prompted a rumble of disbelief.
“The templars serve the Meer,” someone shouted. “They have never stood with the people!”
One of the plain-clothed templars rose and turned to the crowd. “We are standing with the people even now.”
The dissenters were shocked into silence.
“Templar Garius.” Cillian spoke in spite of himself, shaking off Cree’s cautioning grip as he stood to confront the startled templar. “Can you explain how you plan to remove MeerAlya from the temple? What if he refuses? How will you bind his magic?”
Cree tugged at his pant leg, hissing his name amid an undercurrent of angry whispers.
Garius addressed him with a withering look. “The power of the Meer is largely exaggerated. Any he may have is at its most depleted by the excess to which he is prone following a public vetma. The wealth of the people is laid at his feet in exchange for a promise of his favor to some gullible petitioner. For that one empty promise to bless the breeding of goats in the coming season, or to ensure an ample harvest a year hence, the gluttonous Meer receives offerings enough to fill the altar room.”
Garius paused to shudder
. “If you saw how he sates his appetites, indulging in debauchery in the name of a vetma, you would be ill. It is the ultimate expression of his disdain for the people of In’La, a singular example of the parasitic hold the Meer have upon the entire Delta. We will confront him in the stupor induced by his gorging and drinking and escort him from the temple to his exile. When he has recovered his strength, he will see the people have rejected him. There will be no point in his return. He cannot stand against us all.”
Afterward in the pub, Cree turned on Cillian when Dehr and Sylus had slipped away to the bar for drinks. “What the hell is wrong with you? You sounded like a Meerist, invoking the magic of the Meer before the entire expurgist assembly!” Beside her, Azhra remained silent.
Cillian would not be chastised for his opinion. “I think you’re all being fools.”
“Oh, we’re fools now!” Cree blinked back angry tears as Zea and Jin approached with the sleeping Edme. “And you, standing alone with the Devil of In’La, what do you think you are?”
“I am not standing with him—”
“No, you’re lying with him. Your position is bought and paid for.”
The words of caution died on his tongue. They were courting certain violence; with the templars involved, the straightforwardness of the planned action could not be assumed. And they were underestimating MeerAlya. None of them understood that the Meer’s magic was no metaphor, no mere symbol for the office as an enticement to worship. There was plenty wrong with the Meeric system. Nothing had convinced him of the inherent sovereignty of the Meer, and the problems of the soth might rightly be laid at his doorstep. Yet there was much more to this ancient system than they understood. MeerAlya was more than a man.
But Cree had crossed a line. There was no excuse for her disagreement with him to be expressed as abuse to his caste. What they disagreed on no longer mattered, and he was sure she was beyond understanding him. The others avoided his eyes, yet no one spoke against her. Not even Azhra, whose eyes were downcast behind the protection of the veil.
