No. A third and final time. Her own voice ringing in the obsidian chambers of her mind. Do not tempt the gods.
This is not a voice she can disobey.
So she nods. Advances, lunges with the dagger, pierces, pushes. His roaring voice breaks off, he drops his sword, falls. Blood, a great deal of it, running into the mud as Chaacmul’s sky pours water on them both.
She walks over, stands just north of him, his feet stretched away from her to the south. She kneels. She has never killed before. She has come close. She has wanted to kill, certainly, longed to water the thirsty earth with her enemies’ blood. But she has never released into the world the three spirits of any child of the gods.
She puts her dagger to his throat. Holds it steady. Draws it to the west. More blood. A sigh. Stillness.
She should say something, but no words come.
She stands, nods brusquely to the spectators, and walks in the rain toward her lover’s house.
From the private correspondence of Dominick Redstone, Chair of the College of Physic, to E— L—, Master of Physic, lecturer in Thelney Hall
No, Edward, my decision is final, and the fact that I even have to remind you of that—again—should be an indication of how pertinacious I find your repeated requests that Sparrow be allowed to return to the University. However urgently you miss thinking about his lips as you lecture—oh, yes, I know all about that; the two of you were so obvious about it that, frankly, I’m shocked Anthony stood for it at all—he has simply gone too far. There are accepted avenues of research. He knew very well what they were. And yet he chose to study poison. Poison, Ed. And not just any poison—no, he wanted to study a poison that doesn’t even exist. What a ridiculous name, “shadowroot.” If he wanted to spend time poking about in dusty archives, he should have done it on his own time and not subjected the rest of us to what he found, or thought he found, or—as I suspect is truly the case—pretended to find. No, Sparrow is not coming back.
This has been an annoying note to write; please don’t make me do it again. I have enough annoying notes to write as it is. Next is to Tremontaine about the examination committee matter. Gods, don’t you miss the days when the University was permitted to govern its own affairs?
* * *
Thank the good god, his wife was home at last, and he could make amends!
William took Diane’s hands as soon as she walked through the door. She was glowing with the very last of the storm. He kissed her, his lips hard against hers, kissed her again, more enthusiastically than was strictly sensible in front of the servants, and led her silently to the grand staircase of Tremontaine House. With a tilt of her head she granted him permission to accompany her, and as soon as he had shut the door to her sitting room behind him, he took her hands again and looked into her eyes, as blue as the sky after a summer storm.
“I dare not ask your forgiveness,” he said, trembling.
She flew into his arms. “Nor should you, William!” she cried. “It is I who must ask yours!” A rueful smile touched her lips. “What a miserable creature I was yesterday. In your position I don’t know that I would have come back at all, much less so soon.” She clutched the front of his coat, gave it a little shake. “Please, run to the Council at once, this instant, and tell them of what Rafe’s friend has discovered. It will revolutionize trade for the Land. Just think of it, Will! How spectacular it will be! My love, my love!” And she nestled her head against his broad chest and began to weep.
He held her tightly to him. Oh, oh, she was such a wonder! So gentle, after the cruelty with which he’d treated her—to think she could take the blame for their quarrel! He did not deserve such a wife, would never deserve such a wife, no matter how much good he did the City, the Land, or the world.
He touched the alabaster skin of her neck. “No, Diane. Simply—no. I was an impetuous fribble. Yes, we can release this information, if we decide after due consideration that it’s for the good of Tremontaine—”
She pulled away from him for a moment, shook her head fiercely. “Damn the good of Tremontaine!” Her smile was sun through showers. “Or so I heard a man much wiser than I say not long ago.”
He held her closer still for a time. Then he relaxed his embrace as with a tender hand he began to stroke her hair.
“Let’s leave it alone for today,” he murmured. “And perhaps for tomorrow, and the day after that. When I’ve calmed down enough to look at things reasonably, we’ll think carefully—very carefully—about all the implications.” He chuckled. “We’ll think. How silly I am. You’ll lead me through the implications, and I will follow a step behind you. You only want what is good for me, and for our land and our people, and I am a fool and an ingrate to question your judgment.”
She laughed, relief bright in her voice, reached up, and took his face in her delicate hands. He leaned down and kissed her again, long, full, and moved his hand down from her head to her back. He inhaled deeply. She smelled of peaches and rain, and kindness.
“I thought—” she said, hesitant, “after yesterday, that you might not—that you would—”
“Shhh,” he said, put his finger to her lips, and drew her toward her bedchamber.
When they were finished, sprawled under the coverlet in each other’s arms, she rang for her maid.
Lucinda, entering almost immediately, gave a deferential curtsy and kept her eyes down. “Yes, mistress?”
“Chocolate. From the new supply.” William gazed at his wife as she spoke; he was unable to stop smiling.
“Of course.”
They said nothing while they waited for the chocolate, did nothing at all, in fact, other than to bask in happiness. “No, Lucinda,” said Diane when her maid returned and made as if to prepare the drink. “This evening I will prepare my husband’s chocolate myself.”
Another curtsy. “Of course, mistress.”
When Lucinda was gone, Diane stepped out of bed, put on a white linen gown, drooping lace at the collar and sleeves, and bent over the chocolate tray. God, William thought, even her back was beautiful! How on earth had he gotten so very, very lucky? She had sustained him for nigh on seventeen years, him and his house. No, he did not love her in the way that he loved Rafe. But the gratitude he felt for her was real, and, as the last of the sun pouring through the window set the dust motes to dancing in the air, that gratitude grew for a moment so powerful he almost wept.
“What,” he said, “is in that little pot?” He gestured with his chin toward an unfamiliar addition to the tray.
“I know you’ll think me silly, William,” she said, almost embarrassed, “but I’ve begun to take my chocolate with some of the spices the Traders add when they drink it. A foolish affectation, but it pleases me.”
“Then I hope,” he said, “that you will allow it to please me as well.” He felt a slight alarm flash across his face. “Not too much, mind you. I understand their version of chocolate to be rather full of fire.”
“It is an unusual flavor, and not quite what one expects. Since you request it, however, I will add the smallest pinch of spice.”
Uncapping a small box, she took a pinch of what it contained, flourished it at him, laughing, and added it to the fragrant brew. She bent over it for a few moments, whisking, then turned, shaming the carven table with her own elegance, and walked lightly over to the bed to present him with the steaming cup.
“This,” she said, “is chocolate so fine the Kinwiinik ordinarily keep it for themselves. But after our ball, they were gracious enough to send us a small supply. My lord husband, your chocolate.”
He took the cup from her warm hands, held it momentarily, brought it to his lips. It smelled rich and bitter. He blew on it to cool it. Swallowed. His wife had used exactly the right amount of spice: enough to lend the flavor an extraordinary depth but not so much as to do violence to his mouth.
And if out of his vision, while her back was turned, Diane had added another ingredient to his drink, the clear contents of a small vial
she had not obtained from the Kinwiinik—well, the chocolate flowed no less smoothly over his tongue for it, nor did her eyes, as he drank, shine upon him any less brightly.
Episode Eleven:
Go and Tell the
Morning Star
Alaya Dawn Johnson
Killing a man was easy. You took a knife, of Xanamwiinik steel or of good obsidian from the Coyoalco mines, and you pushed it with force and determination past skin and muscle and bone. You struck at the heart; you severed its spirit from the body; you let the precious liquid drain into gutters on stone streets very far from all you knew before, in a land where they did not know the gods or offer them sacrifice. You killed a man, then, with less ceremony than you used to kill turkeys at home, and you left him there, and you walked away.
Death was inevitable in the service. Kaab’s mother had told her so when young Kaab had first begun to understand the implications of her destiny. Those dedicated to it had to be brave and tempered, prepared at all times to send someone’s heart-spirit to pass through the houses beneath the earth, or to take that great journey themselves. Kaab had nearly vomited when she’d seen Citlali’s body, the side of her head dimpled and purple like a rotten squash, that last horrible night in Tultenco. Her uncle Ahkitan had had to drag her away.
This time she had walked away on her own. That awful swordsman from Tremontaine House had died on her dagger’s blade, and her hands had not so much as trembled as she sheathed it and headed home. Her aunt Saabim and uncle Chuleb had commended her for efficiently eliminating the threat that the Tremontaine swordsman had represented. They were including her in discussions of what to do about the problem of the Duchess Tremontaine. Kaab should have been happy. She was beginning to redeem herself in the eyes of her family. She had a beautiful lover. The horrible weather had finally begun to warm to a bearable temperature. And she was happy. Surely she was.
But she couldn’t sleep. She lay on her mat with her eyes on the square of light that traveled across the ceiling as the waning moon traveled across the sky. She considered sneaking away through the west gate, past the guards who knew to expect cacao if they could be understanding about such things. She could wake Tess and they could make love and surely then she would be able to sleep. But she had many chores to do tomorrow, and if she stayed with Tess tonight, she would be in Riverside all morning, immoderately exhausting her head-spirit on sexual activities. No, her family came first, always. And it was of utmost importance that she continue her investigation of the Duchess Tremontaine.
It didn’t appear that Rafe had said anything to his merchant father about his and Micah’s discoveries about Kinwiinik navigation, but that didn’t mean that he hadn’t. In any case, knowing what she did about Rafe and his relationship with the Tremontaine duke, she felt quite sure that he had shared it with his lover. The Balam would need a great deal of information, a great deal of leverage, to successfully counteract any move Tremontaine might make based on their new navigational knowledge. And from what she knew of that dangerous woman, it was the duchess, not the duke, who was precisely the crack in the mortar to which they needed to apply pressure.
Not that her hunch had resulted in tangible benefits, as of yet. Which was why she had to be rested and awake with the dawn to interview the Lady Hemmynge. It was her only opportunity to speak with someone who had a firsthand connection with the duchess’s past.
She could not sacrifice that for a night with Tess, however beautiful. Perhaps, though, Tess could give her some insight about Lady Hemmynge, this dowager aunt of Tremontaine, and what questions Kaab should ask. Kaab squeezed her eyes shut and hugged her knees to her chest. The thought was too sweet. She wanted to linger on it like a calabash candy; she wanted to imagine herself with a lifetime of nights and days with Tess, telling her everything and hearing everything Tess had to say. But of course she couldn’t. Tess wasn’t part of the family, and as a woman, she could never marry into it, as Chuleb had done. Kaab simply didn’t have the freedom to share family matters with an outsider. Especially not with a foreigner.
Contemplating the hard limits of her newfound joy with Tess did not make her want to cry, of course. It was certainly not responsible for the exquisite sensitivity of her skin on the woven reed mat. The mat pricked and itched and exuded the scent of drying grass and burning mesquite, the smells of the desert where she had lain in the nights during their flight from Tultenco and stared up at the stars that would eventually guide her across the sea. The stars that Citlali had been named for.
A small shadow crossed the bar of light painting the ceiling. Something scratched the wood by the open window. Kaab jumped up and reached for her knife.
But what was crouched upon her windowsill was nothing that required a sharp edge. It was a possum, a thousand needle teeth bared and eyes like twin moons in the dark of her bedroom. Impossible—there were no possums in this foreign land. Kaab felt a fright so sharp it threatened to send her head-spirit fleeing. With effort, she fought to control her breathing, to retrieve the stillness that she used in her training with Applethorpe. The possum hissed and raised its tail.
“Xamanek guide me,” she whispered, forcing the words past a throat that seemed parched and sticky, coated in hot rubber. “Oh, Ekchuah, he who has dived, he who moves in the deep—” She choked. The thing before her tossed its head and released a series of small, breathy chirps. As if it was laughing. The way Citlali had laughed that one night when Kaab asked her if she was really a shape-changer, a nahual, like they said. Of course not, Citlali had answered, the way she said things she knew were lies and wanted Kaab to know as well. But if I were, I would be a possum, for they are small and fierce and see in the night.
“Citlali?”
The creature froze. Their gazes met for a moment that could have swallowed Kaab’s souls.
“Citlali,” she repeated, “I’m sorry. I never—I didn’t mean—”
She couldn’t continue. The possum stayed for the space of one indrawn breath and then turned with the fluidity of liquid cinnabar and jumped from the ledge.
Kaab ran to the window. What sort of possum could jump from a height such as this? Was it hurt? But though she stared for quite a long time at the ground below, the night was quiet, and she saw no further sign of it.
* * *
At that precise moment, Diane, Duchess Tremontaine, lay alone and awake in the deep of a night that seemed to have been abandoned by any blessing of sleep. She was clad in a nightdress of ivory silk, embroidered in the style of Uru at the sleeves in a cheery blue thread that had faded to silver gray over time. Her husband had presented it to his young bride during their nuptial tour of Tremontaine lands. They had been spending the night in one of the minor holdings, a dairy and supposed country retreat in the North. Diane had felt agitated and jumpy for the whole three days they passed in that damp little manor. She had finally told her husband that she was so grateful to have fled the North to marry him, she would be happy to never return there again in her life. And so William, noting her distress and discomfort in the damp chill of the great bedroom, had presented her with this bridal gift earlier than planned. He had not removed it as they made love, she remembered. He had pushed it up and let the soft, slippery folds of it catch in the small of her back and underarms. He had begun to love her then. And perhaps even she, so young and adrift and new in her role as duchess, had loved him, too, as a rescued dog loves its new master.
The pleasure, the soft and fragrant new love of those days had faded, much as had the blue embroidery of her nightdress. She was a different person than she had been then. She was a stronger person, and a smarter one. Perhaps she was not better, but better was not a luxury that the duchess had been able to afford for a very long time.
In the hallway outside the duchess’s chambers, William paced restlessly on the thick carpet. He muttered constantly to himself, a stream of description, explanation, and justification that was a grotesque parody of his normal analytical habits. Instead of documenting
and theorizing on the natural world, he was attempting to reason his way through an imaginary one.
“But if the sky has been eaten by green fire . . . The gods, then, must exist as an inverse to the universal principle of the unity of things as proposed by Simeon . . . Why, of course, we humans have always had three legs. However could we balance on two?”
And so on. The clouding of his mind worsened at night. Five days after she had begun administering the contents of that dangerous packet from Riverside, some society wags were already wondering if something was not quite right with the Duke Tremontaine. Soon, Diane judged, his infirmity would become common knowledge and she could take the necessary steps. It would not do to rush the process, or for his descent to seem too overly precipitous. He still had his moments of lucidity and a disquieting ability to recognize his madness even while he lost his ability to escape from it. This intermediate stage was vexing, perhaps, and carried its own small risk here in the City, but it was necessary.
If only he would keep to his chambers. If only he would let her sleep. If only he would get on with this business of going mad somewhere she did not have to hear him and remember.
Seventeen years. She had been sixteen when they wed. So very young. She had come to him with nothing but the bloody clothes on her back, the lone survivor of an attack by a vicious highwayman as she traveled with her trousseau. They had never spent more than a few days apart ever since.
Something rattled the window. A breeze, thought Diane, and turned on her side in the middle of the wide bed. It came again. A series of raps, sharp and deliberate. She sat up and placed her neat white hands on the counterpane of a rough silk nearly the same shade. She considered calling for Reynald but then remembered that the swordsman had vanished nearly a week before and was probably dead.
It was a crow at her window, in any case. Not a human intruder, as she had feared. A large crow so black it seemed she could only see its outline by the reflection of the moonlight on its inky feathers. Even its eyes were black, like twin wells. She could see herself in them: a small figure in white, drowning in the middle of an even bigger white bed. Her heart began to pound. Her fingers bunched against the counterpane. She had no voice to call for a servant and did not know what she would say even if she could.
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