“The Cishaurim have had your heart in their clutches, Xerius. Through you they have supped on the very marrow of the Empire. And you would let this—an offence like no other—go unpunished now, when the Gods have delivered to you the instrument of your vengeance? You’d still pull the Holy War up short? If you spare Shimeh, Xerius, you spare the Cishaurim.”
“Silence!” His scream pealed throughout the chamber.
Istriya laughed fiercely. “My naked son,” she said. “My poor … naked … son.”
Xerius leapt to his feet, shouldered past the circle of his slaves, his look wounded, quizzical.
“This isn’t like you, Mother. You were never one to cower before damnation. Is it because you grow old, hmm? Tell me, what’s it like to stand upon the precipice? To feel your womb wither, to watch the eyes of your lovers grow shy with hidden disgust …”
He’d struck from impulse and found vanity—the only way he knew to injure his mother.
But there was no bruise in her reply. “There comes a time, Xerius, when you care nothing for your spectators. The spectacles of beauty are like the baubles of ceremony—for the young, the stupid. The act, Xerius. The act makes mere ornament of all things. You’ll see.”
“Then why the cosmetics, Mother? Why have your body slaves truss you up like an old whore to the feast?”
She looked at him blankly. “Such a monstrous son …” she whispered.
“As monstrous as his mother,” Xerius added, laughing cruelly. “Tell me … Now that your debauched life is nearly spent, are you filled with regret Mother?”
Istriya looked away, across the steaming bath waters. “Regret is inevitable, Xerius.”
These words struck him. “Perhaps … perhaps it is,” he replied, moved for some reason to sudden pity. There had been a time when he and his mother had been … close. But Istriya could be intimate with only those she possessed. She no longer possessed him.
The thought of this touched Xerius. To lose such a godlike son …
“Always these savage exchanges, eh, Mother? I do repent them. I would have you know that much.” He looked at her pensively, chewed his bottom lip. “But speak of Shimeh again and I will put your platitude to the test. You will regret … Do you understand this?”
“I understand, Xerius.”
There was malice in her eyes when she met his gaze, but Xerius ignored it. A concession, any concession, was a triumph when dealing with the Empress.
Xerius studied the young girl instead, her taut breasts upswept like swallow’s wings, her soft weave of pubic hair. Aroused, he held out his hand and she came to him, reluctantly. He led her to a nearby couch and reclined, stretched out before her. “Do you know what to do child?” he asked.
She opened her lithe legs, straddled him. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Trembling, she lowered upon his member …
Xerius gasped. It was like sinking into a warm, unbroken peach. If the world harboured obscene things like the Cishaurim, it harboured also such sweet fruits.
The old Empress turned to leave.
“Will you not stay, Mother?” Xerius called, his voice thick. “Watch your son enjoy this gift of yours?”
Istriya hesitated. “No, Xerius.”
“But you will, Mother. The Emperor is difficult to please. You must instruct her.”
There was a pause, filled only by the girl’s whimper.
“But certainly, my son,” Istriya said at length, and walked grandly over to the couch. The rigid girl flinched when she grasped her hand and drew it down to Xerius’s scrotum. “Gently, child,” she cooed. “Shushh. No weeping …”
Xerius groaned and arched into her, laughed when she chirped in pain. He gazed into his mother’s painted face suspended over the girl’s shoulder, whiter even than the porcelain, Galeoth skin, and he burned with that old, illicit thrill. He felt a child again, careless. All was as it should be. The Gods were auspicious indeed …
“Tell me, Xerius,” his mother said huskily, “how was it that you discovered Skeaös?”
CHAPTER THREE
ASGILIOCH
The proposition “I am the centre” need never be uttered. It is the assumption upon which all certainty and all doubt turns.
—AJENCIS, THE THIRD ANALYTIC OF MEN
See your enemies content and your lovers melancholy.
—AINONI PROVERB
Early Summer, 4111 Year-of-the-Tusk, the fortress of Asgilioch
For the first time in living memory, an earthquake struck the Unaras Spur and the Inûnara Highlands. Hundreds of miles away the great bustling markets of Gielgath fell silent as wares swung on their hooks and mortar chipped down shivering walls. Mules kicked, their eyes rolling in fear. Dogs howled.
But in Asgilioch, the southern bulwark of the peoples of the Kyranae Plains since time immemorial, men were knocked to their knees, walls swayed like palm fronds, and the ancient citadel of Ruöm, which had survived the Kings of Shigek, the dragons of Tsurumah, and no less than three Fanim Jihads, collapsed in a mighty column of dust. As the survivors pulled bodies from the debris, they found themselves grieving the stone more than the flesh. “Hard-hearted Ruöm!” they cried out in disbelief. “The High Bull of Asgilioch has fallen!” For many in the Empire, Ruöm was a totem. Not since the days of Ingusharotep II, the ancient God-King of Shigek, had the citadel of Asgilioch been destroyed—the last time the South ever conquered the peoples of the Kyranae Plains.
The first Men of the Tusk, a troop of hard-riding Galeoth horsemen under Coithus Saubon’s nephew, Athjeäri, arrived four days following. To their dismay, they found Asgilioch in partial ruin, and her battered garrison convinced of the Holy War’s doom. Nersei Proyas and his Conriyans arrived the day after, to be followed two days after that by Ikurei Conphas and his Imperial Columns, as well as the Shrial Knights under Incheiri Gotian. Where Proyas had taken the Sogian Way along the southern coast, then marched cross-country through the Inûnara Highlands, Conphas and Gotian had taken the so-called “Forbidden Road”—built by the Nansur to allow the quick deployment of their Columns between the Fanim and Scylvendi frontiers. Of those Great Names who struck through the heart of the province, Coithus Saubon and his Galeoth were the first to arrive—almost a full week after Conphas. Gothyelk and his Tydonni appeared shortly after, followed by Skaiyelt and his grim Thunyeri.
Of the Ainoni nothing was known, save that from the outset their host, perhaps hampered by its ponderous size or by the Scarlet Spires and their vast baggage trains, had trouble making half the daily distance of the other contingents. So the greater portion of the Holy War made camp on the barren slopes beneath Asgilioch’s ramparts and waited, trading rumours and premonitions of disaster. To the sentries posted on Asgilioch’s walls, they looked like a migrating nation—like something from the Tusk.
When it became apparent that days, perhaps weeks, might pass before the Ainoni joined them, Nersei Proyas called a Council of the Great and Lesser Names. Given the size of the assembly, they were forced to gather in Asgilioch’s inner bailey, beneath the debris heaped about Ruöm’s broken foundations. The Great Names took their places about a salvaged trestle table, while the others, dressed in the finery of a dozen nations, sat across the rubble slopes, making an amphitheatre of the ruin. They fairly shimmered in the bright sunlight.
They spent most of the morning observing the proper rituals and sacrifices: this was the first full Council since marching from Momemn. The afternoon they spent quarrelling, for the most part debating whether Ruöm’s destruction portended catastrophe or nothing at all. Saubon claimed that the Holy War should break camp immediately, seize the passes of the Southron Gates, and march into Gedea. “This place oppresses us!” he cried, gesturing to the tiers of ruin. “We slumber and stir in the shadow of dread!” Ruöm, he insisted, was a Nansur superstition—a “shibboleth of the perfumed and the weak-hearted.” The longer the Holy War loitered beneath its ruin, the more it would become their superstition.
If many saw sense in t
hese arguments, many others saw madness. Without the Scarlet Spires, Ikurei Conphas reminded the Galeoth Prince, the Holy War would be at the mercy of the Cishaurim. “According to my uncle’s spies, Skauras has assembled all the Grandees of Shigek and awaits us in Gedea. Who’s to say the Cishaurim aren’t waiting with him?” Proyas and his Scylvendi adviser, Cnaiür urs Skiötha, agreed: to march without the Ainoni was errant foolishness. But no amount of argument, it seemed, could sway Saubon and his confederates.
The sun smouldered over the western turrets, and they’d agreed on nothing save the obvious, such as dispatching riders to locate the Ainoni, or sending Athjeäri into Gedea to gather intelligence. Otherwise it seemed certain the Holy War, so recently reunited, would fracture once again. Proyas had fallen silent, his face buried in his hands. Only Conphas continued to argue with Saubon, if trading embittered insults could be called such.
Then Anasûrimbor Kellhus, the impoverished Prince of Atrithau, stood from his place among those watching and cried, “You mistake the meaning of what you see, all of you! The loss of Ruöm is no accident, but neither is it a curse!”
Saubon laughed, shouting, “Ruöm is a talisman against the heathen, is it not?”
“Yes,” the Prince of Atrithau replied. “So long as the citadel stood, we could turn back. But now … Don’t you see? Just beyond these mountains, men congregate in the tabernacles of the False Prophet. We stand upon the heathen’s shore. The heathen’s shore!”
He paused, looked at each Great Name in turn.
“Without Ruöm there’s no turning back … The God has burned our ships.”
Afterward it was decided: the Holy War would await the Ainoni and the Scarlet Spires.
Far from Asgilioch, in the centremost chamber of his great tent, Eleäzaras, Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires, reclined in his chair, the one luxury he’d allowed himself for this mad journey. Beneath him, his body slaves washed his feet in steaming water. Three tripods illuminated the surrounding gloom. Smoke curled through the interior, casting shadows that resembled water-stained script along the bellied canvas.
The journey hadn’t been as hard as he’d feared—thus far. Nevertheless, evenings such as this always seemed to occasion an almost shameful relief. At first he’d thought it was his age: more than twenty years had passed since his last journey abroad. Weary bones, he would think, watching his people labouring in evening light hoisting tent and pavilion to the very horizon. Weary old bones.
But when he recalled those years spent hiking from mission to mission, city to city, he realized that what he suffered now had nothing to do with weariness. He could remember lying beside his fire beneath the stars, no grand pavilion overhead, no silk pillows kissing his cheek, only hard ground and the humming exhaustion that comes when a traveller falls completely still. That had been weariness. But this? Borne on litters, surrounded by dozens of bare-chested slaves …
The relief he experienced every evening, he realized, had nothing to do with fatigue, and everything to do with standing still …
Which was to say, with Shimeh.
Great decisions, he reflected, were measured by their finality as much as by their consequences. Sometimes he could feel it like a palpable thing: the path not taken, that fork in history where the Scarlet Spires repudiated Maithanet’s outrageous offer and watched the Holy War from afar. It didn’t exist and yet it lingered, the way a night of passion might linger in the entreating look of a slave. He saw it everywhere: in nervous silences, in exchanged glances, in Iyokus’s unrelenting cynicism, in General Setpanares’s scowl. And it seemed to mock him with promise—just as the path he now walked mocked him with threat.
To join a Holy War! Eleäzaras dealt in unrealities; it was his trade. But the unreality of this, the Scarlet Spires here, was well nigh indigestible. The thought of it spawned ironies, not the ironies that cultured men—the Ainoni in particular—savoured, but rather the ironies that reproduced themselves endlessly, that reduced all determination to shaking indecision.
Add to this the accumulation of complications: the House Ikurei plotting with the heathen; the Mandate playing some arcane Gnostic game every single Spires agent in Sumna uncovered and executed—even though they seemed secure enough before the Scarlet Spires set foot in the Empire. Even Maithanet, the Great Shriah of the Thousand Temples, worked some dark angle.
Small wonder Shimeh oppressed him. Small wonder each night seemed a respite.
Eleäzaras sighed as Myaza, his new favourite, kneaded his right foot with warmed oil.
No matter, he told himself. Regret is the opiate of fools.
He leaned his head back, watched the girl work through his eyelashes. “Myaza,” he said softly, grinning at her modest smile. “Mmmyassssaaa …”
“Hanamanu Eleäzarassss,” she sighed in turn—daring wench! The other slaves gasped in shock, then broke into giggles. Such a bad girl! Eleäzaras thought. He leaned forward to scoop her into his arms. But the sight of a black-gowned Usher kneeling on the carpets halted him.
Someone wished to see him—obviously. Probably General Setpanares with more complaints about the host’s sloth—which were really complaints about the Scarlet Spires’ sloth. So the Ainoni would be the last to reach Asgilioch. What did it matter? Let them wait.
“What is it?” he snapped.
The young man raised his face. “A petitioner has come, Grandmaster.”
“At this hour? Who?”
The Usher hesitated. “A magi of the Mysunsai School, Grandmaster. One Skalateas.”
Mysunsai? Whores—all of them. “What does he want?” Eleäzaras asked.
Something churned in his gut. More complications.
“He wouldn’t say specifically,” the Usher replied. “He says only that he’s ridden hard from Momemn to speak with you on a matter of great urgency.”
“Panderer,” Eleäzaras spat. “Whore. Delay him momentarily, then send him in.”
After the man withdrew, Eleäzaras had his body slaves dry his feet and bind his sandals. He then dismissed them. As the last slave hastened out, the man called Skalateas was escorted in by two armoured Javreh.
“Leave us,” Eleäzaras said to the warrior-slaves. They bowed low, then also withdrew.
From his seat, he studied the mercenary, who was clean shaven in the Nansur fashion, dressed in the humble garments of a traveller: leggings, a plain brown smock, and leather sandals. He seemed to tremble, as well he should. He stood before no less than the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires.
“This is most impertinent, my mercenary brother,” Eleäzaras said. “There are channels for this kind of transaction.”
“Begging your pardon, Grandmaster, but there are no channels for what I have to … to trade.” In a rush he added, “I’m-I’m a White-Sash Peralogue of the Mysunsai Order, Grandmaster, contracted to the Imperial Family as an Auditor. The Emperor uses me, from time to time, to confirm certain determinations made by his Imperial Saik …”
Eleäzaras digested this, decided to be accommodating. “Continue.”
“Sh-should we, ah … ah …”
“Should we what?”
“Should we discuss the fee?”
A caste-menial, of course—suthenti. No appreciation of the game. But jnan, as the Ainoni were fond of saying, brooked no consent. If one man played, everyone played.
Rather than reply, Eleäzaras studied his long, painted nails, polished them absently against his breast. He looked up as though caught in a small indiscretion, then studied the fool like one burdened by determinations of life and death.
The conjunction of silence and scrutiny nearly undid the man. He clasped his shaking hands before him.
“F-forgive m-my eagerness, Grandmaster,” Skalateas stammered, falling to his knees. “So often are knowledge and greed … spurs to each other.”
Well done. The man was not utterly devoid of wit.
“Spurs indeed,” Eleäzaras said. “But perhaps you should let me decide which rides which.”
r /> “Of course, Grandmaster … But …”
“But nothing, whore. Out with it.”
“Of course, Grandmaster,” he said again. “It’s the Fanim sorcerer-priests—the Cishaurim … Th-they have a new kind of spy.”
The dramatics were forgotten. Eleäzaras leaned forward.
“Tell me more.”
“F-forgive me, Grandmaster,” the man blurted. “B-but I would be paid before speaking any further!”
A fool after all. Time was ever the scholar’s most precious commodity. Whore or not, the man should have known that. Eleäzaras sighed, then spoke the first impossible word. His mouth and eyes burned as bright as phosphor.
“No!” Skalateas cried. “Please! I’ll speak! There’s no need …”
Eleäzaras paused, though his arcane muttering continued to echo, as though thrown by walls not found in this world. The silence, when it did come, felt absolute.
“On-on the eve b-before the Holy War marched from Momemn,” the man began, “I was summoned to the Catacombs to observe what was supposed to be, they said, the interrogation of a spy. Apparently the Emperor’s Prime Counsel—”
“Skeaös?” Eleäzaras exclaimed. “A spy?”
The Mysunsai hesitated, licked his lips. “Not Skeaös … Someone masquerading as him. Or something …”
Eleäzaras nodded. “You have my attention, Skalateas.”
“The Emperor himself was present at the interrogation. He demanded, quite stridently, that I contradict the findings of the Saik, that I tell him sorcery was involved … The Prime Counsel was—as you know—an old man, and yet he’d apparently killed or maimed several members of the Eothic Guard during his arrest—with his bare hands, they said. The Emperor was, well … overwrought.”
“So what did you see, Auditor? Did you see the Mark?”
“No. Nothing. He was unbruised. There was no sorcery whatsoever involved. But when I said as much to the Emperor, he accused me of conspiring with the Saik to overthrow him. Then the Mandate Schoolman arrived—escorted by Ikurei Conphas no—”