“Mandate Schoolman?” Eleäzaras said. “You mean Drusas Achamian?”
Skalateas swallowed. “You know him? We Mysunsai no longer bother with the Mandate. Does your Eminence maint—”
“Do you wish to sell knowledge, Skalateas, or trade it?”
The Mysunsai smiled nervously. “Sell it, of course.”
“So then what happened next?”
“The Mandati confirmed my determination, and the Emperor accused him of lying as well. As I said, the Emperor was … was …”
“Overwrought.”
“Yes. Even more so at this point. But the Mandati, Achamian, also seemed agitated. They argued—”
“Argued?” For some reason that didn’t surprise Eleäzaras. “About what?”
The Mysunsai shook his head. “I can’t remember. Something about fear, I think. Then the Prime Counsel began speaking to the Mandati—in some language I’ve never heard. He recognized him.”
“Recognized? Are you sure?”
“Utterly … Skeaös, or whatever it was, recognized Drusas Achamian. Then he—it—began shaking. We just stood gaping. Then it wrenched its chains from the wall … Freed itself!”
“Did Drusas Achamian assist him?”
“No. He was as horrified as the rest of us—if not more so. In the uproar, it killed two or three men—I’ve never seen anything move so fast! That was when the Saik intervened, burned him … Now that I think about it, burned him over the Mandati’s objections. The man was wroth.”
“Achamian tried to intercede?”
“To the point of sheltering the Prime Counsel with his own body.”
“You’re certain about that?”
“Absolutely. I’ll never forget because that was when the Prime Counsel’s face … That was when his face … unpeeled.”
“Unpeeled …”
“Or unfolded … Its face just … just opened, like fingers but … I know of no other way to describe it.”
“Like fingers?”
This can’t be! He lies!
“You doubt me. You mustn’t, your Eminence! This spy was a double, a mimic without the Mark! And that means he must be an artifact of the Psûkhe. The Cishaurim. It means they have spies you cannot see.”
Numbness spilled like water from Eleäzaras’s chest to his limbs. I’ve wagered my School.
“But their Art is too crude …”
Skalateas looked curiously heartened. “Nevertheless, it’s the only explanation. They’ve found some way of creating perfect spies … Think! How long have they owned the Emperor’s ear? The Emperor! Who knows how many …” He paused, apparently wary of speaking too close to the heart of the matter. “But this is why I rode so hard to find you. To warn you.”
Eleäzaras’s mouth had become very dry. He tried to swallow. “You must stay with us, of course, so that we can … interview you, further.”
The man’s face had become the very picture of dread. “I’m af-afraid that won’t be possible, y-your Eminence. I’m expected back at the Imperial Court.”
Eleäzaras clasped his hands to conceal the tremors. “You work for the Scarlet Spires, now, Skalateas. Your contract with House Ikurei is dissolved.”
“Ah, y-your Eminence, as much as I abase myself before your glory and power—I am your slave!—I fear that Mysunsai contracts cannot be dissolved by fiat. N-not even yours. S-so if I c-could coll-collect my-my …”
“Ah yes, your fee.” Eleäzaras stared hard at the Mysunsai, smiled with deceptive mildness. Poor fool. To think he’d underestimated the value of his information. This was worth far more than gold. Far more.
The Mysunsai’s face had gone blank. “I suppose I could delay my departure.”
“You sup—”
At that point, Eleäzaras almost died. The man had started his Cant the instant of Eleäzaras’s reply, purchasing a heartbeat’s advantage—almost enough.
Lightning cut the air, skipped and thundered across the Grandmaster’s reflexive Wards. Momentarily blinded, Eleäzaras tipped back in his chair and tumbled across the carpeted ground. He was singing before he found his knees.
The air danced with hammering lights. Flurries of burning sparrows …
The fool cried out, sputtered as best he could, trying to reinforce his Wards. But for Hanumanu Eleäzaras, the Grandmaster of the Scarlet Spires, he was little more than a child’s riddle, easily solved. Bird after fiery bird swept into him. Immolation after immolation, battering his Wards to ruin. Then chains flashed from corners of empty air, piercing limbs and shoulders, crossing as though looped between a child’s fingers, until the man hung suspended. Threaded.
Skalateas screamed.
Javreh charged into the room, weapons drawn, only to halt, horror-stricken, before the spectacle of the Mysunsai. Eleäzaras barked at them to leave.
He glimpsed his Master of Spies, Iyokus, fighting his way past the retreating warrior-slaves. The chanv addict fairly tumbled across the carpets, his red-irised eyes wide, his bruised lips agog. Eleäzaras couldn’t recall seeing such passion in the man’s expression—at least not since the Cishaurim’s fateful attack ten years before …
Their declaration of war.
“Eli!” Iyokus cried, staring at Skalateas’s impaled and writhing form. “What’s this?”
The Grandmaster absently stamped at a small fire burning on the carpets. “A gift to you, old friend. Another enigma for you to interpret. Another threat …”
“Threat?” the man cried. “What’s the meaning of this, Eli? What’s happened here?”
Eleäzaras studied the screaming Mysunsai—a scholar distracted by his work.
What do I do?
“That Mandate Schoolman,” Eleäzaras snapped, turning to Iyokus. “Where’s he now?”
“Marching with Proyas—or so I assume … Eli? Tell me—”
“Drusas Achamian must be brought to me,” Eleäzaras continued. “Brought to me or killed.”
Iyokus’s expression darkened.
“Something like that requires time … planning … He’s a Mandate Schoolman, Eli! Not to mention the risk of reprisals … What, do we war against both the Cishaurim and the Mandate? Either way, nothing will be done until I know what’s going on. It is my right!”
Eleäzaras studied the man, matched his unsettling gaze. For perhaps the first time he felt comforted rather than chilled by his translucent skin. Iyokus? It has to be you, doesn’t it?
“This must seem,” he said, “irrational …”
“Indeed. Mad even.”
“Trust me, old friend. It’s not. Need makes all things rational.”
“Why this evasion?” Iyokus cried.
“Patience …” Eleäzaras replied, gathering with his wind the dignity which behooved a Grandmaster. This was an occasion for control. Calculation. “First you must humour my madness, Iyokus … And then let me recount the grounds that make it sane. First you must let me handle your face.”
“And why’s that?” the man asked. Astonishment.
From what seemed a distant place, Skalateas wailed.
“I must know that there are bones beneath … Proper bones.”
For the first time since leaving Momemn, Achamian found himself alone with the evening fire. Proyas was hosting a temple fete for the other Great Names, and everyone save the sorcerer and the slaves had been invited. So Achamian had decided to host a celebration of his own. He drank to the sun, which leaned against the shoulders of the Unaras Spur, to Asgilioch and her broken towers, and to the encamped Holy War, her innumerable fires glittering in the dusk. He drank until his head drooped before the flames, until his thoughts became a slurry of arguments, pleas, and regrets.
Telling Kellhus about his dilemma, he now knew, had been rash.
Two weeks had passed since his confession. During this time, the Conriyan contingent had abandoned the stone of the Sogian Way for the scrub and sandy slopes of the Inûnara Highlands. He had walked with Kellhus much as before, answering his questions, ponderin
g his remarks—and wondering, always wondering, at the heart and intellect of the man. On the surface, everything was the same, save the lack of a road to follow. But beneath, everything had changed.
He’d thought sharing would ease his burden, that honesty would absolve his shame. How could he be such a fool, thinking that the secrecy of his dilemma had caused his anguish, rather than the dilemma? If anything, secrecy had been a balm. Now every time he and Kellhus exchanged glances, Achamian saw his anguish reflected and reproduced, until at times it seemed he couldn’t breathe. Far from lessening his burden, he’d doubled it.
“What,” Kellhus had subsequently asked, “will the Mandate do if you tell them?”
“Take you to Atyersus. Confine you. Interrogate you … Now that they know the Consult runs amok, they’ll do anything to exercise the semblance of control. For that reason alone, they’d never let you go.”
“Then you mustn’t tell them, Akka!” There had been an anger and an anxiousness to these words, a cross desperation that reminded him of Inrau.
“And the Second Apocalypse. What about that?”
“But are you sure? Sure enough to wager an entire life?”
A life for the world. Or the world for a life.
“You don’t understand! The stakes, Kellhus! Think of what’s at stake!”
“How,” Kellhus had replied, “can I think of anything else?”
The Cultic priestesses of Yatwer, Achamian had once heard, always dragged two victims—usually spring lambs—to the sacrificial altar, one to pass under the knife, the other to witness the sacred passage. In this way, every beast thrown upon the altar always knew, in its dim way, what was about to happen. For the Yatwerians, ritual wasn’t enough: the transformation of casual slaughter into true sacrifice required recognition. One lamb for ten bulls, a priestess had told him once, as though she possessed the calculus to measure such things.
One lamb for ten bulls. At the time, Achamian had laughed. Now he understood.
Before the dilemma had overwhelmed in a harried, flinching way, like some secret perversion. But now that Kellhus knew, it simply overwhelmed. Before Achamian could find respite, from time to time, in the man’s remarkable company. He could pretend to be a simple teacher. But now, the dilemma had become something between them, something always there whether Achamian averted his eyes or not. There was no more pretending, no more “forgetting.” Only the knife of inaction.
And wine. Sweet unwatered wine.
When they’d arrived at half-ruined Asgilioch, Achamian began, more out of desperation than anything else, teaching Kellhus algebra, geometry, and logic. What better way to impose clarity on soul-bruising confusion, certainty on rib-gnawing doubt? While the others watched from nearby, laughing, scratching their heads, or in the Scylvendi’s case, glowering, Achamian and Kellhus spent hours scratching proofs across the bare earth. Within days the Prince of Atrithau was improvising new axioms, discovering theorems and formulae that Achamian had never imagined possible, let alone encountered in the classic texts. Kellhus even proved to him—proved!—that the logic of Ajencis as laid out in The Syllogistics was preceded by a more basic logic, one which used relations between entire sentences rather than subjects and predicates. Two thousand years of comprehension and insight overturned by the strokes of a stick across dust!
“How?” he’d cried. “How?”
Kellhus shrugged. “This is simply what I see.”
He’s here, Achamian had thought absurdly, but he doesn’t stand beside me … If all men saw from where they stood, then Kellhus stood somewhere else—that much was undeniable. But did he stand beyond the pale of Drusas Achamian’s judgement?
Ah, the question. More drink was required.
Achamian rooted through his satchel, his only fireside companion, and withdrew the map he’d sketched—so long ago it now seemed—while journeying from Sumna to Momemn. He held it to the firelight, blinked several bleary times. All of them, every name scratched in black, was connected, except for
ANASÛRIMBOR KELLHUS
Relations. Like arithmetic or logic it all came down to relations. Achamian had inked those relations he knew without a doubt, such as the link between the Consult and the Emperor, and even those he simply assumed or feared, such as that between Maithanet and Inrau. Ink lines: one for the Consult infiltration of the Imperial Court, another for Inrau’s murder, another for the Scarlet Spires’ war against the Cishaurim, another for the Holy War’s reconquest of Shimeh, and so on. Ink lines for relations. A thin skeleton of black.
But where did Kellhus fit? Where?
Achamian suddenly cackled, resisted the urge to throw the parchment into the fire. Smoke. Wasn’t that what relations were in truth? Not ink, but smoke. Hard to see and impossible to grasp. And wasn’t that the problem? The problem with everything?
The thought of smoke brought Achamian to his feet. He swayed for a moment, then bent to retrieve his satchel. Again he debated tossing the map into the flames, but thought better of it—he was a veteran of many drunken blunders—and stuffed the parchment back with his things.
With his satchel and Xinemus’s wineskin slung over opposite shoulders, he stumbled off into the darkness, laughing to himself and thinking, Yes, smoke … I need smoke. Hashish.
Why not? The world was about to end.
As the sun set behind the Unaras Spur, each point of firelight became a circle of illumination, until the encampment became gold coins scattered across black cloth. Among the first to arrive, the Conriyans had pitched their pavilions on the heights immediately below Asgilioch and its ready supply of water. As a result Achamian travelled down, always down, into what seemed an ever darker and more raucous underworld.
He walked and stumbled, exploring the shadowy arteries between pavilions. He passed many others: groups carousing from camp to camp, drunks searching for latrines, slaves on errands, even a Gilgallic priest chanting and swinging the carcass of a hawk from a leather string. From time to time he slowed, stared at the ruddy faces crowded about each fire, laughed at their antics or pondered their scowls. He watched them strut and posture, beat their breasts and bellow at the mountains. Soon they would descend upon the heathen. Soon they would close with their hated foe. “The God has burned our ships!” Achamian heard one bare-chested Galeoth roar, first in Sheyic, then in his native tongue. “Wossen het Votta grefearsa!”
Periodically he paused to search the darkness behind him. Old habit.
After a time he found himself weary and nearly out of wine. He’d trusted Fate, Anagkë, to take him to the camp-followers; she was, after all, called “the Whore.” But as with everything else, she’d led him astray—the fucking whore. He began daring the light to find directions.
“Wrong way, friend,” an older man missing his front teeth told him at one camp. “Only mules rutting here. Oxen and mules.”
“Good …” Achamian said, clutching his groin in the familiar Tydonni manner, “at least the proportions will be right.” The old man and his comrades burst into laughter. Achamian winked and tipped back his wineskin.
“Then that way,” some wit called from the fire, pointing to the darkness beyond. “I hope your ass has deep pockets!”
Achamian coughed wine from his nose, then spent several moments bent over, hacking. The general merriment this caused won him a place by their fire. An inveterate traveller, Achamian was accustomed to the company of warlike strangers, and for a time he enjoyed their companionship, their wine, and his own anonymity. But when their questions became too pointed, he thanked them and took his leave.
Drawn by the throb of drums, Achamian crossed a portion of the camp that seemed deserted, then quite without warning found himself in the precincts of the camp-followers. Suddenly all the activity seemed concentrated between the fires. With every step he bumped some shoulder, pressed some back. In some places, he pressed through crowds in almost total darkness, with only heads, shoulders, and the odd face frosted by the Nail of Heaven’s pale light. In
others, torches had been hammered into the earth, either for musicians, merchants, or leather-panelled brothels. Several avenues even boasted hanging lanterns. He saw young Men of the Tusk—no more than boys, really—vomiting from too much drink. He saw ten-year-old girls drawing thick-waisted warriors behind curtained canopies. He even glimpsed a boy wearing smeared cosmetics, who watched with fearful promise as man after man passed. He saw craftsmen manning stalls, walked past more than a few impromptu smithies. Beneath the rambling canopies of an opium den, he saw men twitch as though beset by flies. He passed the gilded pavilions of the Cults: Gilgaöl, Yatwer, Momas, Ajokli, even elusive Onkis, who’d been Inrau’s passion, as well as innumerable others. He waved away the ever-present beggars and laughed at the adepts who pressed clay blessing-tablets into his hands.
For tracts of his journey, Achamian saw no tents at all, only rough shelters improvised from sticks, twine, and painted leather, or in some cases, a simple mat. While wandering one alley, Achamian saw no less than a dozen couples, male and female or male and male, rutting in plain view. Once he paused to watch an improbably beautiful Norsirai girl gasp between the exertions of two men, only to be accosted by a black-toothed man with a stick, demanding coin. Afterward he watched an ancient, tattooed hermit try to force himself on a fat drab. He saw black-skinned Zeumi harlots dancing in their strange, puppet-limbed manner and dressed in gaudy gowns of false silk—caricatures of the ornate elegance that so characterized their faraway land.
The first woman found him more than the other way around. As he walked through a particularly gloomy alley between canvas shanties, he heard a rattle, then felt small hands groping for his groin from behind. When he turned and embraced her, she seemed shapely enough, though he could see little of her face in the dark. She was already rubbing his manhood through his robe, murmuring, “Jusht a copper, Lord. Jusht a copper for your sheed …” He could sense her sour smile. “Two coppersh for my peach. Do you want my peach?”