by Col Buchanan
‘This is why, when the order first seized Q’os in the Longest Night, it disposed of the girl-queen and the old political parties of nobles, yet still maintained its democratic assembly. And this is why the citizens of the heartland and the Middle Empire vote for the High Priest of their city, and those lesser administrators of their districts, in an act which we call the hand of complicity, the hand that allows the people a small say in the governing of their own lives, or at least the appearance of it. This is the secret of our success, though it is hardly a secret. This is what allows us to rule so efficiently.’
Ché’s lips twisted at that. He knew it took more than the two-handed way for Mann to maintain its grip on the known world. He was a Diplomat after all, part of the third hand, the hidden way. As were the Élash, those spies and blackmailers and plotters of coups and counter-coups. As were the Regulators, the secret police; those who watched the masses for signs of dissent or organization, and who claimed everything a crime that ran contrary to the ways of Mann.
He noticed that Deajit too was smiling as he listened. For an instant Ché felt the vaguest of connections with the man. Perhaps he was also involved in the third hand. For the first time he wondered what he had done to deserve such a fate as this, for his handler had said nothing save what needed to be done.
But then Deajit turned and stepped towards the doorway, and it was time.
Ché took a step forwards so that the priest brushed past his arm. In a flash, Ché grabbed the man’s wrist and spun him around so that they faced each other. A look of shock crossed the priest’s blunt features.
Without warning, Ché planted his lips against those of Deajit, smearing them together in a harsh kiss.
The priest shoved himself backwards with an angry gasp. He glared at Ché, and from the wrist he was still gripping Ché felt a shudder run through his body. ‘You should not betray the trust of your friends so freely,’ Ché told him quietly, as instructed, and released his grip. His own heart was beating fast.
Deajit wiped his lips with the back of a hand and retreated from the room with a single glance cast back at Ché.
For several moments he waited as those around him nervously avoided his eye. He turned his back on them, and took another vial from his pocket, and emptied some of the black liquid into a cupped palm. He washed his lips clean then rubbed his hands too. With the last of it he rinsed his mouth then spat it onto the floor.
In the corridor outside, Deajit was nowhere to be seen.
Like that, he cast the priest from his mind entirely, as though the young man was already dead.
Boom, boom, boom.
The Acolyte lowered her gloved fist from the massive iron door of the Storm Chamber, and stepped back to leave Ché standing alone as it swung open.
Confronting Ché stood an old priest that he did not recognize. He’d heard that the previous portal attendant had been executed for mistakenly allowing the Rōshun into the Storm Chamber during their recent breach of the tower. It was said that the long crawl over the Crocodile had been his fate, and then the slow press of the Iron Mountain.
With a moment’s hesitation, Ché stepped through the threshold into the chamber within.
The Storm Chamber was much the same as the last time he had been summoned here, all of – what – one month, two months ago? He couldn’t recall. He’d found that his linear memory of time had become oddly scattered since his return from his diplomatic mission against the Rōshun, as though he no longer wished to remember the order of his everyday life. The chamber was empty tonight, though every lamp glowed with a bright, sputtering flame within a shade of green glass.
‘The Holy Matriarch will be with you shortly,’ declared the old priest, and then he bowed and retreated into a room next to the entranceway. Ché folded his hands within the sleeves of his robe, and there he waited.
The pulsegland had slowed to the pace of his own heart now.
Through the windows that wrapped the circular space, he could see Holy Matriarch Sasheen standing outside on the balcony amongst a small gathering of priests; a tall woman, wearing an uncharacteristic plain white robe, staring out over the rail at the black skies of Q’os as they conversed, their voices muted to murmurs by the thickness of the glass.
Coals crackled in the stone fireplace in the middle of the room, the smoke drawn up through an iron chimney that disappeared through the floor of the bedrooms above it. Next to the fireplace stood another map of the Empire, the same in fact that had stood there during his previous visit: a sheet of paper pinned to a wooden easel, printed with black ink, still marked with the rough pencil strokes denoting proposed movements of fleets for the forthcoming invasion of the Mercian Free Ports. A semicircle of leather armchairs faced this cosy space; elsewhere in the room were other chairs, and long settles covered in throws of fur, and low tables with bowls containing fruits, burning incense, pools of liquid narcotics.
This is where they made it to, Ché suddenly thought. This is how far the R shun made it when they tried again. Right here to Kirkus, her son.
He could hardly picture it. The Rōshun, one of them a farlander by all accounts, striding through this very room in search of their victim, their route marked by a trail of dead and wounded leading all the way down to the lowest floor of the Temple of Whispers. He doubted if even Shebec would never have made it this far – Shebec, his old Rōshun master, more skilled than any other save for one.
Ash, he thought with an intuitive certainty. It had to be Ash.
But then Ché considered it. Was it even possible? Ash would be in his sixties by now if he still lived at all. Could he have managed something like this at such and age?
Whoever it had been, Ché could not help but admire them. He had always been drawn to ventures of risk and audacity, and he found a sly smile creeping onto his face. The Temple of Whispers breached by an army of rats, of all things, and three Rōshun intent on vendetta.
Without warning, deep laughter bubbled in his chest, and he stopped it only by biting his inner cheek until the sensation passed. Ché cleared his throat and composed himself.
The map on the easel drew his eye towards it.
Another venture of audacity that – a sea invasion of Khos no less. Ché glanced through the windows once more at the gathered priests, then found himself stepping up to the map for a closer inspection.
It had been modified with various additions since last he had seen it, though the main details remained the same. Two arrows swept south-east across the sea of the Midèrēs to range along the islands of the Free Ports; two diversionary fleets, both of which had departed the week before to engage the fleets of the Free Ports, hoping to lure any defending squadrons away from Khos. Next to these, in fine pencil marks, were scratched fleet sizes, travel times, other notations. Question marks abounded.
A third arrow ran from the capital of Q’os to trace a sea-course to the far eastern island of Lagos, with more numbers and queries scrawled alongside it. Then, from Lagos, a fourth arrow swept down to Khos – the First Expeditionary Force, the invasion of Khos itself.
He was near-lost in studying the details when Ché realized – with a sudden start – that he wasn’t alone in the room.
He glanced across to an armchair so hooded and deep that he’d failed to notice the creature that sat within it; Kira, mother to the Holy Matriarch of Mann. The ancient crone was asleep, it seemed, her ancient hands folded across the white cloth of her robe. Ché released his breath and peered closer. Glimmers could be seen from beneath her eyelids, two slivers of eyes.
Was she watching him? Had she seen his stifled laughter?
Ché felt the hairs rise on his arms. He was as shocked by his lack of perception as he was by her sly observation of him.
Kira dul Dubois: one of the participants in the Longest Night fifty years before. Rumoured to have been a lover of Nihilis himself; rumoured even to have been involved in his death six years into his reign as the first Holy Patriarch. It was like being in the s
ights of a silversnake.
Slowly, he stepped back from the map, hoping as well to move beyond her line of vision. He cleared his throat as he resumed his position in the centre of the floor, and refused to look at the old woman again.
At last the glass doors to the balcony slid open and the priests began to file through the room. A few cast furtive glances in his direction as they left; he recognized one of them as a priest from the sect of commerce, the Frelasé. Behind them came Bushrali himself. Ché had expected the man to be dead by now after failing to uncover the Rōshun hiding in the city. But no, after much political manoeuvring to save his skin, here he was, still alive, still even the head of the Regulators. Perhaps the rumours were true, then; that he held a blackmail dossier on every High Priest of Q’os.
Still, the man had not entirely escaped punishment, Ché saw. He’d been fitted with a Q’os Necklace, an iron collar sealed around his neck, fixed to a length of chain that ended with a small cannon-ball, which he cradled in his arm as he stepped past. He would be expected to wear the necklace for the rest of his life.
Only Sasheen and a single bodyguard remained outside, the woman lost, it seemed, in her thoughts. Ché felt a draught pressing against his cheek through the open doorway, though he could only faintly hear the city beyond, unusually silent in these recent weeks of enforced mourning. When Sasheen turned and stepped inside the Storm Chamber, she was holding the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger as though burdened with a headache. Her bodyguard remained outside, slowly patrolling around the balcony. She approached a stand of steaming bowls and bent to inhale from one. With a gasp she straightened, her face flushing.
Sasheen’s eyes flared for a moment when she saw her Diplomat waiting there for her. She moved past to the fire with her hands held out for warmth.
‘Is it done?’ she asked with her back to him.
‘Yes, Matriarch.’
‘Then sit. Warm yourself.’
He wasn’t cold but he did as instructed anyway, choosing a leather settle before the fire. He maintained an upright pose, his hands folded, breathing deeply, resisting the urge to scratch at his neck. After a moment, the Holy Matriarch left the burning coals and sat down beside him, close enough for their knees to touch.
He could smell the scent of mulled wine on her breath, and realized she was drunk.
The leather of the settle creaked as she folded one long leg across the other, her robe parting along a slit to show the soft cream of her thigh. Compared to her usual attire, the robe was a plain affair, but still it was smaller than it needed to be, so that the cotton stretched tightly over her curves. Below its hem, the nails of her bare feet were painted a vivid red.
‘Bushrali tells me they will not come for me, for killing their apprentice.’
‘The Rōshun?’ ventured Ché.
Her eyes narrowed in annoyance. Do not play coy with me.
Ché shook his head. ‘It’s unlikely. The apprentice wasn’t wearing a seal. It’s only on behalf of seal-bearers that they seek vendetta.’
She considered his words; glanced across to the sleeping form of her mother before she next spoke. He noticed then the red welts on the side of her neck, running down beneath the collar of her robe. They looked like the heat tracks left behind after a Purging.
‘But this will be personal to them,’ she ventured. ‘A public humiliation. A murder of one of their young.’
She considers this now, Ché reflected. Long after the act is done.
‘No, they don’t think in such terms. They have a code of sorts. Vendetta is a matter of natural justice for them, or at least a simple matter of cause and effect. They abhor revenge, though. To seek vendetta for their own personal reasons would go against their own creed in every way I can think of.’
‘I see,’ she said, and her tone was one of lightness, perhaps amused by the idea of such a principle. ‘Bushrali said much the same himself. I wanted to hear it from you too: someone who has lived with them, and been one of them.’
Ché could not help but look away at that moment, even though he knew it would betray his sudden discomfort. He almost jumped as he felt her hand pat his leg. Ché met the Matriarch’s chocolate-dark eyes, and saw something different in them this time, a softness.
Sasheen smiled.
‘Guanaro!’ she called out to the room. ‘Is it time for breakfast yet?’
The old priest in attendance emerged from the side chamber next to the door. He nodded and went back inside, where Ché could hear gruff orders being given, and the clatter of chopping boards and cupboard doors being opened and shut.
‘Some buttered sandshrimps, perhaps!’ she hollered after him.
Sasheen settled back, watching the fire in the hearth before them. Her hand restlessly stroked the leather arm of the settle. ‘I have not given you my thanks yet,’ came her quiet voice.
‘Matriarch?’
‘You performed a great service in leading us to the home of the Rōshun. You proved your loyalty to me, and to the order. That’s why I requested you as my personal Diplomat in this,’ she waved her hand towards the map, ‘scheme of ours. You understand?’
Ché offered a shake of his head, and watched her turn to regard him.
‘I go forth to war on one of the riskiest ventures we have ever attempted. Once I leave this sanctum I will be as vulnerable as any other. Not only from the enemy, but from our own people. General Romano for instance. He would pluck out my eyes given half the chance. So,’ and she smiled once more, a tight fleeting thing, like a confession, ‘I will need those around me who I can trust with my life, who I can be certain will follow my commands. Who can get a job done without qualms.’
‘I see,’ replied Ché.
She did not seem entirely satisfied by his response. Sasheen turned to fix herself a hazii stick from a table next to the settle. ‘I’ve given the general order. We leave with the fleet for Lagos on the morning after next, to join with the Sixth Army in Lagos.’
Ché felt a little flutter of anticipation in his chest. For an instant, he looked at her with the cold eyes of a murderer, hearing the rasping voice of one of his handlers in his mind, telling him what he must do should the Matriarch show weakness or be exposed to the possibility of capture during the campaign.
‘You will miss the Augere then,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Sasheen acknowledged, searching for a match as she spoke. ‘All those hours of tedium parading myself to the chattel.’
Smoothly, Ché rose and crossed to the fire, feeling her eyes tracking him. He lit one of the rushes standing in a clay pot on the hearth, brought the burning end of it back to Sasheen, who was indeed watching him with amused interest.
She placed her fingers against his hand to steady the tip of the rush. Her kohl-rimmed eyes flickered up to meet his own, her lips pursed softly around the end of the hazii stick. He felt a pulse in his thighs, his groin.
Stop it you fool. You know she is this way. Using her charms with those she must rely upon.
He settled himself amongst a cloud of hazii smoke, whilst Sasheen turned back to the door of the side chamber, perhaps drawn by the smell of frying butter. ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked him. ‘I did not bother to ask you.’
The thought of sharing a meal with her, here in this chamber at the top of the world, filled him with a sudden discomfort. ‘No, thank you. I’ve eaten already.’
Sasheen studied him for a lingering moment. She looked at her bare leg and then back to his face. Her hand on the arm of the settle stopped moving; it slapped once, lightly, against the leather. ‘You heard, I’m sure, that we caught up with Lucian at last. The Élash snatched him from Prince Suneed’s court in Ta’if.’
‘Yes. I heard.’
She rose with a soft rustle of her robe and padded across the rug to another table next to the fire. A large, round glass jar sat alone on the tabletop, filled nearly to the brim with a white liquid. There came a sound of glass scraping against glass as she unscrewed the lid wi
th care. Sasheen rolled her right sleeve up to her elbow; leaned forward and took a sniff of the substance within.
‘Royal Milk,’ she said, without taking her eyes from it. Ché blinked. He’d never seen the Milk before, only knew of its existence, the excretions of a queen Cree from the land of the Great Hush, renowned for its powers of vitality.
The wealth of a small kingdom lay inside that single jar alone.
Even from here, he could smell the liquid over the sweetness of the frying butter and sandshrimps. It was an unpleasant scent, like bile. With care, Sasheen dipped her hand into the white liquid within. She grasped something and began to pull it out; a handful of matted hair.
A scalp, Ché thought . . . but then the rest of it followed: a forehead, a pair of closed eyes, a nose, a mouth fixed in a grimace, a dripping chin, a roughly hewn neck. She held this apparition over the jar as the white liquid ran from the severed head and her own hand like quicksilver.
It was the severed head of a middle-aged man, Ché could see as the Milk flowed clear from it. Dark hair turned grey at the temples. A wide full mouth, a long nose, sharp cheekbones and brows.
As the last drop dripped clear of it, Sasheen swung the head over the table and settled it by its ragged neck on the dark surface of tiq.
The face flinched in pain or surprise. Ché stiffened where he sat, his wide-eyed stare fixed on the thing before him. The Matriarch backed away from the head as its eyes flickered open, blinking to clear them, bloodshot and tormented. White Milk spilled from the corners of its lips as it saw Sasheen and glared.
‘Hello, Lucian,’ she said to the thing.
The head closed its lips, seemed to swallow a mouthful of air.
‘Sasheen,’ the man croaked in a strange, wet voice, almost belching the word.
Ché’s eyes darted to the Matriarch then back to the head. It was Lucian all right. Sasheen’s one-time famous lover and general, one of the first of the Lagosian nobility to join the ranks of Mann when the island had first fallen to the Empire – before he had betrayed her, by leading the Lagos rebellion in fighting once more for independence.
