The Darkness That Comes Before

  I like this dream.

  Breathless, she brought her wrist to her lips, tasted the bitterness of perfumed oil.

  Fickle whore! Remember why you’re here!

  She turned her left hand to the fire, slowly, as though to dry it of sweat or dew, and watched the tattoo surface from the shadows between her tendons.

  This . . . this is what I am.

  An aging whore.

  And everybody knew what happened to old whores.

  Without warning, Sarcellus stepped from the darkness. He possessed, Esmenet had decided, a disturbing affinity to the night, as though he walked with rather than through it. And this despite his white Shrial vestments.

  He paused, stared at her wordlessly.

  “He doesn’t love you, you know. Not really.”

  She held his eyes across the firelight, breathed heavily. “Did you find him?”

  “Yes. He’s made camp with Conriyans . . . as you said.”

  Part of her found his reluctance endearing. “But where, Sarcellus?”

  “Near the Ancilline Gate.”

  She nodded, looked away nervously.

  “Have you asked yourself why, Esmi? If you owe me anything at all, you owe me this question . . .”

  Why him? Why Achamian?

  She had told him much about Akka, she realized. Too much.

  No man she’d ever met had been as inquisitive as Cutias Sarcellus—not even Achamian. His interest in her was nothing short of ravenous, as though he found her tawdry life as exotic as she found his. And why not? House Cutias was one of the greater Houses of the Congregate. For someone like Sarcellus, suckled on honey and meat, coddled by slaves, experiences such as hers were as distant as far-away Zeum.

  “Ever since I can remember,” he had confided to her, “I’ve been drawn to the vulgar, to the poor—to those who provide the fat upon which my kind lives.” He chuckled. “My father used to cane me for playing number-sticks with the field-slaves or for hiding in the scullery, trying to sneak peaks up skirts . . .”

  She smacked him playfully. “Men are dogs. The only difference is they sniff asses with their eyes.”

  He had laughed, exclaiming, “This! This is why I cherish your company so! To live a life like yours is one thing, but to be able to speak it, to share it, is another thing altogether. This is why I’m your devotee, Esmi. Your pupil.”

  How could she not be swept away? When she stared into his gorgeous eyes, with irises the brown of giving earth and whites like wetted pearls, she saw herself mirrored in a way she’d never dared imagine. She saw someone extraordinary, someone exalted rather than demeaned by her suffering.

  But now, watching him clench his fists in the firelight, she saw herself as cruel.

  “I told you,” she said carefully. “I love him.”

  Not you . . . Him.

  Esmenet could think of no two men more dissimilar than Achamian and Sarcellus. In some respects, the differences were obvious. The Knight-Commander was ruthless, impatient, intolerant. His judgements were instant and irrevocable, as though he made things right simply by declaring them right. His regrets were few, and never catastrophic.

  In other respects, however, the differences were more subtle—and more telling.

  Those first days after her rescue, Sarcellus had seemed utterly unfathomable to her. Though his anger was violent, expressed with the ardour of a child’s tantrum and the conviction of a prophet’s condemnation, he never begrudged those who angered him. Though he approached every obstacle as something to be crushed, even the inconsequential snags that filled his day-to-day administrative life, he was graceful rather than crude in his methods. Though his arrogance was feckless, he was never threatened by criticism and more able than most to laugh at his own folly.

  The man had seemed a paradox, at once reprehensible and beguiling. But then she realized: he was kjineta, a caste noble. Where suthenti, caste menials like herself and Achamian, feared others, themselves, seasons, famines, and so on, Sarcellus feared only particulars: that so-and-so might say such-and-such, that the rain might postpone the hunt. And this, she understood, changed everything. Achamian was perhaps every bit as temperamental as Sarcellus, but fear made his anger bitter, liable to spite and resentment. He could also be arrogant, but because of fear, it seemed shrill instead of reassuring, and it certainly did not brook contradiction.

  Sheltered by his caste, Sarcellus had not, as the impoverished must, made fear the pivot of his passions. As a result he possessed an immovable self-assurance. He felt. He acted. He judged. The fear of being wrong that so characterized Achamian simply did not exist for Cutias Sarcellus. Where Achamian was ignorant of the answers, Sarcellus was ignorant of the questions. No certitude, she thought, could be greater.

  But Esmenet had not reckoned the consequences of her scrutiny. A troubling sense of intimacy followed upon her understanding.

  When his questions, his banter, even his lovemaking had made it clear he wanted more than peaches to sweeten the road to Momemn, she found herself secretly watching him with his men, daydreaming, wondering . . .

  Of course, she found many things about him intolerable. His dismissiveness. His capacity for cruelty. Despite his gallantry, he often spoke to her the way a herdsman would use his crook, continually correcting her when her thoughts strayed. But once she understood the origin of these tendencies, she began to see them more as traits belonging to his kind than as failings. What lions kill, she had thought, they do not murder. And what nobles take, they do not steal.

  She found herself feeling something she could not describe—at least not at first. Something she had never felt before. And she felt it more in his arms than anywhere else.

  Days passed before she understood.

  She felt safe.

  This had been no small revelation. Before realizing this, she had feared she was falling in love with Sarcellus. And for a short time, the love she bore Achamian had actually seemed a lie, the infatuation of a cloistered girl for a worldly man. While she marvelled at the comfort she felt in Sarcellus’s embrace, she found herself pondering the desperation of her feelings for Achamian. The one seemed right and the other wrong. Should not love feel right?

  No, she had realized. The Gods punished such love with horrors.

  With dead daughters.

  But she could not tell Sarcellus this. He would never understand—unlike Achamian.

  “You love him,” the Knight-Commander repeated dully. “That I believe, Esmi. That I accept . . . But does he love you? Can he love you?”

  She frowned. “Why couldn’t he?”

  “Because he’s a sorcerer. A Schoolman, for Sejenus’s sake!”

  “You think I care that he’s damned?”

  “No. Of course not,” he replied, softly, as though trying to be gentle with hard truths. “I say this, Esmi, because Schoolmen cannot love—Mandate Schoolmen least of all.”

  “Enough, Sarcellus. You know nothing of what you speak.”

  “Really?” he said, a pained sneer in his voice. “Tell me, what part do you play in his delusions, hmm?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re his tether, Esmi. He’s fastened on you because you bind him to what’s real. But if you go to him, cast away your life and go to him, you’ll simply be one of two ships at sea. Soon, very soon, you’ll lose sight of shore. His madness will engulf you. You’ll awaken to find his fingers about your throat, the name of someone long, long dead ringing in your—”

  “I said enough, Sarcellus!”

  He stared at her. “You believe him, don’t you?”

  “Believe what?”

  “All that madness they prattle about. The Consult. The Second Apocalypse.”

  Esmenet pursed her lips, said nothing. Where did this shame come from?

  He nodded slowly. “I see . . . No matter. I’ll not fault you for it. You’ve spent much time with him. But there’s one last thing I would have you consider.”

  Her eyes burned when
she blinked. “What?”

  “You do know that wives, even mistresses, are forbidden Mandate Schoolmen.”

  She felt cold, ached as though someone had pressed freezing iron against her heart. She cleared her throat. “Yes.”

  “So you know”—he licked his lips—“know the most you could ever be . . .”

  She looked at him with hate. “Is his whore, Sarcellus?”

  And what am I to you?

  He knelt before her, scooped her hands into his own. He tugged on them gently. “Sooner or later, he will be recalled, Esmi. He’ll be forced to leave you behind.”

  She looked to the fire. Tears traced burning lines across her cheeks.

  “I know.”

  On his knees, the Knight-Commander saw a tear lingering on her upper lip. A miniature replica of the fire glittered within it.

  He blinked, glimpsed himself fucking the mouth of her severed head.

  The thing called Sarcellus smiled.

  “But I press you,” he said. “I apologize, Esmi. I just want you to . . . to see. Not to suffer.”

  “No matter,” she said softly, avoiding his look. But her hands tightened about his own.

  He freed his fingers and gently clutched her knees. He thought of her cunny, pressed tight and greasy between her legs, and shivered with hunger. To simply be where the Architect had been! To thrust where he had thrusted. It at once humbled and engorged. To plunge into a furnace stoked by the Old Father!

  He pressed himself to his feet. “Come,” he said, turning to the pavilion.

  He saw blood and grunting rapture.

  “No, Sarcellus,” she said. “I must think.”

  He shrugged, smiled wanly. “When you can, then.”

  He looked to Eritga and Hansa, his two slave girls, and with a gesture bid them to keep watch. Then he left Esmenet and strode through the flaps of the Knight-Commander’s pavilion. He cackled under his breath, thinking of the things he would do to her. He hardened against his breeches; the limbs of his face shuddered in delectation. Such poetry he would cut into her!

  The lanterns burned low, cast an orange gloom through the pavilion’s study. He reclined on cushions set before a low table covered in scrolls. He ran his wrist down his flat stomach, clasped his cock’s aching length . . . Soon. Soon.

  “Ah, yes,” a small voice said. “The promise of release.” A breath, as though drawn through a reed. “I stand among your makers, and yet the genius of your manufacture still moves me to incredulity.”

  “Architect?” the thing called Sarcellus gasped. “Father? You would risk this? What if someone sees your mark?”

  “One bruise does not show among many.” There was a flutter of wings and a dry click as a crow alighted on the table. A bald human head rolled on its neck, as though working out kinks. “Any who sense me,” the palm-sized face explained, “will dismiss my mark. The Scarlet Schoolmen are everywhere.”

  “Is it time?” the thing called Sarcellus asked. “Has the time come?”

  A smile, no bigger than the curl of a toenail. “Soon, Maëngi. Soon.”

  A wing unfolded and reached out, drawing a line across Sarcellus’s chest. Sarcellus’s head snapped to the side; his limbs popped rigid. From his crotch to his extremities, rapture galloped across his skin. Searing rapture.

  “So she stays?” the Synthese asked. “She does not run to him?” The wingtip continued its lazy caresses.

  The thing called Sarcellus gasped. “For now . . .”

  “Has she mentioned her night with me? Told you anything?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “And yet she acts . . . open, as though she shares everything?”

  “Yesss, Old Father.”

  “As I suspected . . .” Tiny scowl. “She’s far more than the simple whore I took her to be, Maëngi. She’s a student of the game.” The scowl became a smile. “A twelve-talent whore after all . . .”

  “Should I—” Maëngi felt a deep pulse between his rectum and the root of his phallus. So close. “Sh-should I kill her?” He arched against the agonizing wingtip. Please! Father please!

  “No. She does not run to Drusas Achamian, which means something . . . Her life’s been too hard for her not to weigh loyalties against advantages. She may yet prove useful.”

  The wingtip withdrew, was folded into glossy black. Tiny lids closed then opened over glass-bead eyes.

  Maëngi drew a shuddering breath. Without thinking he cupped his phallus in his right hand, began rubbing its head with his thumb. “What of Atyersus,” he asked breathlessly. “Do they suspect anything?”

  “The Mandate know nothing. They merely send a fool on a fool’s errand.”

  He relaxed his grip, swallowed. “I’m no longer so sure Drusas Achamian is a fool, Old Father.”

  “Why?”

  “After delivering the Shriah’s message to Gotian, I met with Gaörtha—”

  The small face grimaced. “You met with him? Did I sanction this?”

  “N-no. But the whore asked me to find Achamian for her, and I knew Gaörtha had been assigned to watch him.”

  The small head bent from side to side.

  “I fear my patience fails me, Maëngi.”

  The thing called Sarcellus pressed sweaty palms down his vestments. “Drusas Achamian spotted Gaörtha following him.”

  “He what?”

  “In the Kamposea market . . . But the fool knows nothing, Old Father! Nothing. Gaörtha was able to shift skins.”

  The Synthese hopped to the mahogany lip of the table. Though it seemed as light as hollow bones and bundled papyrus, it bore the intimation of something immense, as if a leviathan rolled through waters at right angles to everywhere. Light bled from its eyes.

  HOW

  Roared through what passed for Maëngi’s soul.

  I HATE

  Shattering whatever thoughts, whatever passions he might call his own.

  THIS WORLD.

  Crushing even the unquenchable hunger, the all-encompassing ache . . .

  Eyes like twin Nails of Heaven. Laughter, wild with a thousand years of madness.

  SHOW ME, MAËNGI . . .

  Wings fanned before him, blotting the lanterns, leaving only a small white face against black, a frail mouthpiece for something terrible, mountainous.

  SHOW ME YOUR TRUE FACE.

  The thing called Sarcellus sensed the fist of his expression slacken then part . . .

  Like Esmenet’s legs.

  It was spring, and once again the networks of fields and groves surrounding Momemn were crowded by Inrithi, far better armed, and far more dangerous, than those who had perished in Gedea. Tidings of the slaughter on the Plains of Mengedda had hung like a pall for many days over the Holy War. “How could it be?” they asked. But the apprehension was quickly stifled by rumours of Calmemunis’s arrogance, by reports of his refusal to obey Maithanet’s summons. Defy Maithanet! They wondered at such folly, and the priests reminded them of the difficulty of the path, of the trials that would break them if they strayed.

  And there was much talk of the Emperor’s impious contest with the Great Names as well. With the exception of the Ainoni, all the Great Names had refused to sign the Indenture, and about the evening fires, there were many drunken debates as to what their leaders should do. Far and away most cursed the Emperor, and some few even suggested that the Holy War should storm Momemn and seize the supplies that would be needed to march. But some others took the Emperor’s side. What was the Indenture, they asked, but a mere scrap of paper? And look, they said, at the dividends of signing. Not only would the Men of the Tusk find themselves painlessly provisioned, they would be ensured the guidance of Ikurei Conphas as well, the greatest military intellect in generations. And if the destruction of the Vulgar Holy War was not evidence enough, what of the Shriah, who would neither force the Emperor to provision the Holy War nor force the Great Names to sign his Indenture? Why would Maithanet hesitate so, if he too did not fear the might of the heathen?


  But how could one fret when the very heavens shivered with their might? Such a congregation! Who could imagine that such potentates would take up the Tusk? And far more, besides. Priests, not merely of the Thousand Temples but from every Cult, representing every Aspect of God, had clambered from the beaches or wound down from the hills to take their place in the Holy War, singing hymns, clashing cymbals, making the air bitter with incense and the noise of adulation. Idols were anointed with oils and attar of rose, and the priestesses of Gierra made love to calloused warriors. Narcotics were reverently circulated and sipped, and the Shakers cried rapturously from the dust. Demons were cast out. The purification of the Holy War began.

  The Men of the Tusk would gather after the ceremonies, swap wild rumours or speculate about the degeneracy of the heathen. They would joke that Skaiyelt’s wife had to be more mannish than Chepheramunni, or that the Nansur were given to receiving one another up the ass, which was why they always marched in such tight formations. They would bully malingering slaves or howl at women carrying baskets of laundry up from the River Phayus. And out of habit, they would scowl at the strange groups of foreigners who endlessly prowled the encampment.

  So many . . . Such glory.

  PART IV:

  The Warrior

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE JIÜNATI STEPPE

  I have explained how Maithanet yoked the vast resources of the Thousand Temples to ensure the viability of the Holy War. I have described, in outline, the first steps taken by the Emperor to bind the Holy War to his imperial ambitions. I have attempted to reconstruct the initial reaction of the Cishaurim in Shimeh from their correspondence with the Padirajah in Nenciphon. And I have even mentioned the hated Consult, of whom I can at long last speak without fear of ridicule. I have spoken, in other words, almost exclusively of powerful factions and their impersonal ends. What of vengeance? What of hope? Against the frame of competing nations and warring faiths, how did these small passions come to rule the Holy War?

  —DRUSAS ACHAMIAN, COMPENDIUM OF THE FIRST HOLY WAR