by Jane Kindred
Cillian didn’t bother to demand a retraction or to rail at Cree for what could be deemed an assault. He simply bowed to her, since one of them ought to play the gentleman, and walked away.
Chapter Eight
Ume kept to her apartments, pacing like a caged lioness but unable to bear the thought of going out. Everyone had become an adversary. If Cree wanted to apologize, Azhra knew where Ume lived. Cree’s absence spoke volumes.
From her terrace, the river was dark and brooding as the ashes and weeping willows shed their summer coats, yet lotuses floated in the pooling marsh water despite the lateness of the year. The Anamnesis was a winding body of contradictions, its color ever changing and its life ever flouting the seasons.
Azhra had dismissed her seventeen years as nothing, but Ume had lived a lifetime of experience in those insignificant years. The accomplishment in her art that had earned her these apartments was won through many days and nights of walking In’La’s pubs and alleys, offering what she had, inventing what she did not. If she lived in comparative luxury, each thread of silk, each velvet cushion, the smallest crystal bead or diamond chip she’d purchased with the gift of her flesh.
Perhaps it was understandable if she wasn’t anxious to expurgate the Meer from the temple and the city his ancestors had breathed into being—so the stories went, and so Ume had begun to believe. Out of touch with his creation, tucked away in his altar room and his studios as if he’d forgotten what it meant to be alive, MeerAlya had given all there was to the people of In’La. He had surely given pieces of himself. It was the very meaning of the ancient Deltan vet, the root of blessing—gift of flesh. Legend said the Meer had once been captured and devoured for their blessings. Were they still just captives in the temples they’d erected?
She might as well be one of them, trapped in the rooms she’d made, unable to stop what was coming. What good would any of it be if the Meerarchy fell? What good was a temple courtesan without a temple in which to offer the sacrament? And when had she become such a damned Meerist?
Ume was wearing a groove in her carpets and a groove in her mind, worrying the same thoughts endlessly. And all the while a canker was spreading in the Garden.
The blessing day arrived, and still Ume would not go out. Instead a carriage was sent from the temple to fetch her. Whatever her service to the Meer might bring about, there was no escaping this destiny.
Ume dressed with great care, guilt driving her to consider with each garment, each jewel, what the Meer desired. She chose a silk dyed brilliant rose, fine threads embroidered with tiny damselflies in the same hue, with a series of insets in the matte side of the fabric that rippled with each step like the great river in a spring wind. Sleeves that were a mere whisper of sheerest blush hung in a liquid drape from her fingertips, and a caul of pink glass beads covered her hair, with a piece of silver tatting for the veil. Her eyes she painted in flushed pink, with silver dust forming the Irises of Alya at the center of her lids. She finished with dark strokes of kohl and a pomegranate stain for her cheeks but left her lips pale. The carriage was kept waiting.
In silver slippers that laced up the ankle, Ume descended, pulling on a pair of long tatting gloves to match her veil. A crowd had gathered. The Meer had sent one of the infamous horseless carriages, huffing and shaking as it billowed steam.
When Ume alighted from it at the steps of the temple, she emerged through a delicate fog. Though it was already the fading edge of dusk, the masses who’d gathered to petition the blessings of the Meer still straggled from the temple—yet these same people demanding vetmas of him tonight meant to oust him from his home in the morning.
He was no longer on his dais, and Ume was led to a feast hall in the interior. The table was stunning. A tremendous length of ebony inlaid with silver, it was covered in food more abundant than she had ever seen—surely enough to feed the whole of In’La. MeerAlya sat at the head in a chair made of platinum, his naked body covered in luminous silver paint. His hair draped him so that he seemed to fade into the chair, and pale azure eyes peered out at her from a silvered idol like darts of gas flame.
“Maiden Sky.” He spoke so low she barely heard him. “Come. Kneel beside me.”
Ume obeyed, sinking to her knees with her head bowed at his elbow.
Alya placed his hand upon her head. “You are the only pleasure in this day. I must consume the supplication of Soth In’La. It is almost more than I can bear.”
“All this?” Ume looked up, certain he must be joking, but there was no smile in his eyes.
“Beyond human endurance, to be sure, my little Maiden.” He sighed, stroking her cheek. “I would rather you not see this. Templar Hrithke will take you to my chambers before he departs for the evening.”
Ume turned to Hrithke, who stepped in and led her away. “Departs? Where are you going? What if he needs you?”
“The Meer must partake of the gifts in isolation. His servants must not be present. I will sleep in the courtyard with the rest of his guard to keep watch on the temple.”
“Does he always partake of them?” Her stomach turned at the thought of the table full of food. “Every gift of his petitioners?”
“Only the gifts of the common. The daily offerings the templars manage for him to maintain the temple and the soth.” He paused near a domed room shrouded in steam, reflections leaping on the silver tiles of its ceiling. “You may look for him here later, near midnight.”
The room was occupied only by a large sunken pool, heated from some source beneath the water. A warm, heady perfume rose from the surface, where hundreds of delicate silver candles floated.
“What about me? He will not be in isolation if I am with him.”
Templar Hrithke delivered her to the arch of Alya’s bedchamber and gave her a sober bow. “You are the gift of an anonymous supplicant. He cannot refuse.”
She sat on the curtain-shrouded bed, her heart aching with guilt and shame. She had allowed Nesre to manipulate her and send her to the Meer like a gift of poison. Only now was she beginning to understand. The templars kept the Meer from the people as much as the people from the Meer. They prevented his subjects from seeing his true vetmas and “managed” his daily offerings. They were not servants. They were keepers.
The only light in the small, warrenlike bedchamber was a lamp that burned without flame, a glowing filament inside a ball of glass. On the vanity beside it lay a gold tray containing toiletries such as any appearance-minded person might have, though these were captured in mysterious bottles of wildly colored blown glass, so thin she expected them to snap at a breath. He had a basin and pitcher for washing, and his privy, though grand and tiled in gold, was no different from any man’s. He ate and bathed and used the privy just like anyone else.
But when he spoke, the fabric of the world, and even life itself, was changed. Did that make him a god? Did it make him a devil that men thought so? He did not make human life, as far as Ume knew, but even ordinary lives regenerated in the elements between, the embers of the funeral pyre dissolving into gases that filled the lungs and made life anew. Perhaps, in that, they were all gods. The Meer only knew it better.
She waited until the clocks chimed the third quarter before midnight before returning to the bath Hrithke had shown her. The floating candles still burned in the humid, rose-infused air, their lights reflected in the water like stars in the sky.
“You rival them.”
Ume turned at the words, the rose silk rippling at her ankles, and curtsied to the painted being at the entrance. There was no longer anything human about him.
“My liege.” She bowed her head.
He took her hand and drew her with him. “I must meditate upon the vetma to be granted. You may sit with me if you like.” MeerAlya led her to a gray marble bench and sat before her, facing the pool in the lotus pose of meditation. “The lights represent the elements of desire.” His voice was like honey. “The water is imagination, the unformed, waiting to give desire shape. In thei
r conjunction, the spirit of life rises as steam and smoke. It is there I see what must be granted, the vetma most desired.”
The Meer remained motionless for the turn of an hour. Not even the rise and fall of his breathing was apparent to show he was alive. Then, in stillness deep enough to hear the gentle hiss of steam rising from the pool, he spoke a single word: “Quietus.”
He rose and swept Ume into his arms with frightening strength. “These vetmas take much from me. They will drain me of my power. But not yet. I have one offering left to partake of.” He carried her to his bed.
Ume had never trembled before a patron, but she trembled now as the Meer unhooked her veil. He knelt over her, straddling her, and released the clasps of her garment one by one. She closed her eyes as his painted fingers slipped against her skin. He laid her bare to the waist and kissed her flesh, starting at the throat and moving downward, pausing to suck at the tight peaks of her nipples before he moved to her belly, his tongue drawing a line beneath it.
It was usually Ume who gave oral pleasure to her patrons, but the Meer took her in his mouth and drew a startled cry from her, teasing at first, then tasting and devouring. Ume, customarily demure and silent, found sound unbidden in her throat at the strength of his throat upon her. As her climax built, she writhed and tried to pull away, but MeerAlya demanded all of her.
His eyes were hungry and feral as he lifted his head and kissed her fervently on the mouth, letting her taste the salty musk of her release. Dizzy with need, she clutched at him, begging him to enter her. MeerAlya tossed her garments to the floor and pressed her onto her stomach in the luxurious velvet and down of his bedding, nipping at her neck and shoulders like a wild thing.
“Oil of Shiva,” he murmured, the only time he spoke, and warm oil trickled from his hands as it was conjured. He smoothed it over Ume’s skin and on his paint-slick erection.
His penetration struck her like a lightning bolt, his motion sending electric ripples of sensation to the tips of her fingers and toes and through every hair on her head. MeerAlya took the beaded headdress from her and dug his fingers beneath the chignon, pulling her up to meet his mouth as he thrust deep inside her flesh. The oil of ancient MeerShiva and the silver greased paint slipped between their bodies, his embraces painting her with it. She was cocooned within his hair, moaning and crying his name against his fingers where they stroked her face while he drove himself into her again and again, insatiable. She wasn’t certain whether he never climaxed or simply remained erect after he had.
Ume reached arousal again, and her second climax with MeerAlya inside her was like an explosion of light inside her head, filling her with contradictory sensations. She thought she might die of his thrusting; she was sure she would die if he stopped.
Alya turned her throat to him and bit, drawing a trickle of blood that made her head swim with vertigo. He licked the blood from her throat, driving his strong thighs against hers as the blood incensed him further. Her body went limp, surrendering to his will, lost in his fevered passion.
At last he stilled and rested his cheek against her shoulder.
Ume murmured his name as an imprecation—“meeralyá, meeralyá, mi la!”—the ancient Deltan gasp of astonishment trembling on her tongue.
Alya separated himself from her and cradled her, his arms crossed over her chest as though he would hold her to him forever. “I have never received such a wonderful offering.” He kissed her nape. “Your body is a vetma more divine than any I could grant.” Moisture touched her skin where his cheek pressed her shoulder. He was weeping.
“My liege.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “I must confess something.” She couldn’t bear the deceit of her offering any longer.
“I know, Ume. I have seen it.”
“Seen it?” She raised her head, and when Alya lifted his, Ume let out a sharp cry. Tears of blood flowed from his eyes. “Meeralyá! Your eyes!”
“The Meer weep differently.” He closed his hand around hers as she touched his cheek in awe. “Sorrow is but a loss of the essence of life, and in Meer it manifests with the draining of the fluid of vitality.” He pressed her fingertips to his lips.
“You said you’d seen it.”
“In the flow of dreams and desires, the Meeric Anamnesis.” He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand; his face was so beautiful, she too wanted to weep. “I have seen the people’s petition, and they will have it.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“You have done nothing but bless me, Ume. The winds of time have brought this change. Old ways must abdicate before the new, just as convention must concede before innovation.” He motioned toward the incandescent lamp. “I once spoke light into being. Now any man can invoke it with a touch.”
“They don’t believe,” said Ume. “They don’t understand what you can do.”
“Hush, my snow plum. It doesn’t matter.” He kissed her, staining her cheek with his tears. “I must rest now.” His voice was growing weak. “Hrithke will take you home in the morning before they come.”
“MeerAlya?” But he was already asleep, his body utterly relaxed. She closed her eyes, enveloped in his arms—the safest place she would ever be.
Ume slept in the warmth of his embrace, a deep, profound sleep alive with dreams of unrivaled pleasure, until a sound like a rumble of distant thunder disturbed her peace.
Alya’s hair was tangled around her like reeds floating in the Anamnesis, making it impossible to move.
“MeerAlya.” She shook his arm.
The thunder grew closer—angry voices rising in the courtyard. He was immovable, as if he’d been drugged. Both Garius and Alya had spoken of an expenditure of vitality that left him powerless following such a vetma. There was no stirring him.
The clamor of voices swelled into the passages of the temple, advancing through the corridors. Nesre had brought them to see the evidence of their Meer’s perfidy instead of bringing her to testify before the Court of Decisions. The testimony of her body. He had meant it literally.
Ume tried to disentangle herself and sit up, but the templars were upon them before she could wrest her limbs from beneath Alya’s.
“It’s true!” A templar gave the cry as their ranks swelled through the arch. Nesre was not among them. “He’s bedding a courtesan!”
The templar grasped the Meer by the forelocks, and MeerAlya’s eyes rolled half-open to the whites. “Sotted on his gluttony while the people go hungry!”
“He’s not drunk—” A dull thud cut off her words. The blow had come so swiftly, she wasn’t certain what had happened. Then another fist struck with a blow to her mouth. She fell against Alya, red dripping onto the white sheets streaked with silver paint. Ume stared at the blood and touched her lip. It didn’t feel like hers. A strange numbness had taken her over. They were pulling Alya away from her.
“No!” Ume scrambled to her knees to grab for him, as if she could hold him safe beside her against the fury of these men.
“He’s with a boy!” someone shouted.
A pair of templars pulled the Meer to his feet, and he swayed between them with his head lolling against his chest. Another templar grabbed for her. She knew him. She knew them all. She fought him, scrambling back against the wall and kicking out, but another of her former patrons clutched her hair and slammed her head into the stone.
The room spun, her vision blurring as she tried to crawl across the mattress. Where was Alya? Someone grabbed her legs and yanked her onto the floor, smashing her cheek against the tile. Pain radiated through the bone. The numbness was gone.
Ume screamed as the templar wound his fist in her hair and forced her, scrabbling on her knees, into the corridor. She tried to pry his fingers away, but he twisted the hank at her scalp.
“Please. I’m a courtesan!” Surely they would respect the embodiment of sacred desire.
“You’re a boy,” he snarled and jerked her forward, dragging her through the halls of the temple.
Ahea
d, at the central arch, Alya staggered in the grip of his templars as they propelled him onto the steps before the waiting mob.
The templar dragging her yanked her up by the hair and thrust her forward as she scrambled to her feet. “This is how the Meer respects his own precepts! See how he spends the wealth of his coffers after gorging himself on the fruits of the labor of the people of In’La! He violates the laws of the Delta consorting with a common boy!”
“I’m a courtesan!” Ume gasped again, but he struck her, the back of his hand stinging against the cut on her lip.
Amid the shouting, Alya raised his head, and his eyes wavered open, vague consciousness rising at last. He focused on Ume with a puzzled smile, his senses completely uncomprehending.
“Ume’La…” He took an unsteady step toward her and lifted his hand to touch her face just as the templar beside him moved with a sudden swing. The iron club struck Alya full force.
Ume opened her mouth to shout, moving too slowly as in a dream. The club made a horrible, thick noise against his skull, and something spattered her face. The side of his head lay open, crushed, and they were beating him, the crowd in the courtyard shouting in a frenzy as others ran forward and pulled him from the steps to dash what remained of his skull against the stone. Ume’s scream was too late.
“Meeralyá!”
Men with rage in their eyes wrenched her from the steps, slamming their fists into her no matter which way she turned. She stumbled, and someone shoved her into the rocks beside the lotus-strewn path. Fierce hands held her down with fingers gouging her flesh, and someone climbed on top of her, spitting and hurling epithets as he pushed her face into the ground. She tasted blood and dirt.
“Let her go!” A second group scuffled with the first, pulling her assailant off, and more grabbing hands yanked her up. Her rescuers tore her from the crowd, and she stumbled with them, reeling and speechless and covered in blood.
