The Darkness That Comes Before

  “No!” she exclaimed, pushing him back.

  “What?” He leaned against her elbows, searching for her mouth.

  She turned her face away. “Coin,” she breathed. False laugh. “No one eats for free.”

  “Ah, Sejenus! How much?”

  “Twelve talents,” she gasped. “Silver talents.”

  “A whore,” he hissed. “You’re a whore!”

  “I’m twelve silver talents . . .”

  The man hesitated. “Done.”

  He began digging through his purse, glanced at her as she nervously adjusted her gown.

  “What’s this?” he asked sharply. She followed his eyes to the back of her left hand.

  “Nothing.”

  “Really? I’m afraid I’ve seen this ‘nothing’ before. It’s a mockery of the tattoos borne by Gierric Priestesses, no? What they use in Sumna to brand their whores.”

  “So. What of it?”

  The man grinned. “I’ll give you twelve talents. Copper.”

  “Silver,” she said. Her voice sounded uncertain.

  “A bruised peach is a bruised peach, no matter how you dress it.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, feeling tears brim in her eyes.

  “What was that?”

  “Yes! Just hurry!”

  He fumbled coins from his purse. Esmenet glimpsed a halved silver slip through his fingers. She snatched the sweaty coppers. He hiked the front of her hasas and knifed into her. She climaxed almost immediately, blowing air through clenched teeth. She beat feebly at his shoulders with her monied fists. He continued to thrust, slow yet hard. Again and again, grunting a little louder each time.

  “Sweet Sejenus!” he hissed, his breath hot in her ear.

  She climaxed again, this time crying out. She could feel him shudder, feel the telltale thrust, deep, as though he hunted for her very centre.

  “By the God,” he gasped.

  He withdrew, pressed himself from her arms. He seemed to look through her. “By the God . . .” he repeated, differently this time. “What have I done?”

  Panting, she raised a hand to his cheek, but he stumbled backward, trying to smooth his kilt. She glimpsed a trail of wet stains, the shadow of his softening phallus.

  He could not look at her, so he looked away, toward the bright entrance of the alley. He began walking toward it, as though stunned.

  Leaning against the wall, she watched him find his composure, or a blank-faced version of it, in the sunlight. He disappeared, and she leaned her head back, breathing heavily, smoothing her hasas with clumsy hands. She swallowed. She could feel him run down her inner thigh, first hot, then cold, like a tear that runs to the chin.

  For the first time, it seemed, she could smell the stink of the alley. She saw the glint of his half-silver among withered, eyeless fish.

  She rolled her shoulder against the mud brick, looked to the bright agora. She dropped the coppers.

  She pinched shut her eyes, saw black seed smeared across her belly.

  Then she fled, truly alone.

  Hansa, Esmenet realized, had been crying. Her left eye looked as though it might soon swell shut. Eritga looked up from tending the fire. A red welt marred her face—from the spice-monger, Esmenet imagined—but she seemed unscathed otherwise. She grinned like a freckled jackal, lifting her invisible eyebrows and looking to the pavilion.

  Sarcellus was waiting for her inside, sitting in the gloom.

  “I missed you,” Sarcellus said.

  Despite his strange tone, Esmenet smiled. “And I you.”

  “Where have you been?”

  “Walking.”

  “Walking . . .” He snorted air through his nostrils. “Walking where?”

  “In the city. In the markets. What’s it to you?”

  He looked at her curiously. He seemed to be . . . smelling her.

  He jumped up, seized her wrist, and yanked her close—so fast that Esmenet gasped aloud.

  Staring at her, he reached down and grabbed the hem of her gown, began pulling it up. She stopped him just above her knee.

  “What are you doing, Sarcellus?”

  “I missed you. As I said.”

  “No. Not now. I have the stink of—”

  “Yes,” he said, prying her hands away. “Now.”

  He raised the linen folds, making an awning. He crouched, knees out like an ape.

  A shudder passed through her, but from terror or fury, she did not know. He lowered her hasas. Stood. Stared at her without expression. Then he smiled.

  Something about him reminded her of a scythe, as though his smile could cut wheat.

  “Who?” he asked.

  “Who what?”

  He slapped her. Not hard, but it seemed to sting all the more for it.

  “Who?”

  She said nothing, turned to the bedchamber.

  He grabbed her arm, yanked her violently around, raised his hand for another strike . . .

  Hesitated.

  “Was it Achamian?” he asked.

  Never, it seemed to Esmenet, had she hated a face more. She felt the spit gather between her lips and teeth.

  “Yes!” she hissed.

  Sarcellus lowered his hand, released her. For a moment he looked broken.

  “Forgive me, Esmi,” he said thickly.

  But for what, Sarcellus? For what?

  He embraced her—desperately. At first she remained stiff, but when he began sobbing, something within her broke. She relented, relaxed against the press of his arms, breathed deep his smell—myrrh, sweat, and leather. How could this man, so stern, more self-assured than any she had known, weep at striking someone like her? Treacherous. Adulterate. How could he—

  “I know you love him,” she heard him whisper. “I know . . .”

  But Esmenet was not so sure.

  The sorcerer joined Proyas at the appointed hour on a knoll overlooking the vast, squalid expanse of the Holy War. To the east, cupped within the far-flung walls and turrets of Momemn, the sun smouldered like a great coal, rising.

  Proyas closed his eyes, savoured the sun’s faint morning heat. On this day, he at once thought and prayed, everything changes. If the reports were true, then at long last the interminable debate of dogs and crows, crows and dogs, would be over. He would have his lion.

  He turned to Achamian. “Remarkable, isn’t it?”

  “What? The Holy War? Or this summons?”

  Proyas felt chastised by his tone and annoyed by his lack of deference. He had realized he needed Achamian while tossing on his cot hours earlier. At first, his pride had argued against it: his words of the previous week had been as final as words could be—“I do not want to see you again. Ever.” To repent them now that he needed the man seemed base, mercenary. But must he repent his words in order to break them?

  “Why the Holy War, of course,” he replied nonchalantly. “My scribes tell me that more than—”

  “I have an army of rumours to chase, Proyas,” the Schoolman said. “So please, dispense with the jnanic pleasantries and just tell me what you want.”

  Achamian was typically curt in the mornings. An effect of the Dreams, Proyas had always supposed. But there was something more in his tone, something too close to hatred.

  “The bitterness I can understand, Akka, but you will defer to my station. A covenant binds the School of Mandate to House Nersei, and if need be, I will invoke it.”

  Achamian looked at him searchingly. “Why, Prosha?” he asked, using the diminutive form of his name, as he had as his tutor. “Why are you doing this?”

  What could he tell him that he did not already know or could bear to hear? “It’s not your place to question me, Schoolman.”

  “All men, even princes, must answer to reason. One night you ban me from your presence forever, then scarcely a week afterward, you summon me, and I’m not to ask questions?”

  “I didn’t summon you!” Proyas cried. “I summoned a Mandate Schoolman under the auspices of the treaty my fath
er signed with your handlers. Either you abide by that treaty or you breach it. The choice is yours, Drusas Achamian.”

  Not today. He would not be drawn into the morass today! Not when everything was about to change . . . Maybe.

  But obviously Achamian had his own agenda. “You know,” he said, “I’ve thought over what you said that night. I’ve done little else.”

  “What of it?”

  Please, old tutor, leave this for another day!

  “There’s faith that knows itself as faith, Proyas, and there’s faith that confuses itself for knowledge. The first embraces uncertainty, acknowledges the mysteriousness of the God. It begets compassion and tolerance. Who can entirely condemn when they’re not entirely certain they’re in the right? But the second, Proyas, the second embraces certainty and only pays lip service to the God’s mystery. It begets intolerance, hatred, violence . . .”

  Proyas scowled. Why wouldn’t he relent? “And it begets, I imagine, students who repudiate their old teachers, hmm, Achamian?”

  The sorcerer nodded. “And Holy Wars . . .”

  Something in this reply unsettled Proyas, threatened to foment already restless fears. Only his years of study saved him from speechlessness.

  “Dwell in me,” he quoted, “and thou shalt find reprieve from uncertainty.” He fixed Achamian with a scornful look. “Submit, as the child submits to his father, and all doubts shall be conquered.”

  The Schoolman stared back for a sour moment. Then he nodded with the wry disgust of one who’d known all along the mawkish manner of his undoing. Even Proyas could feel it: the sense that by quoting scripture, he’d resorted to little more than a shoddy trick. But why? How could the Latter Prophet’s own voice, the First and Final Word, sound so . . . so . . .

  He found the pity he saw in his old teacher’s eyes unbearable.

  “Do not dare judge me,” Proyas grated.

  “Why have you summoned me, Proyas?” Achamian asked wearily. “What do you want?”

  The Conriyan Prince gathered his thoughts with a deep breath. Despite his efforts to the contrary, he’d allowed Achamian to distract him with the muck of petty matters. No more.

  Today would be the day. It had to be.

  “Last night I received word from Zin’s nephew, Iryssas. He’s found someone of interest.”

  “Who?”

  “A Scylvendi.”

  Now there was a name that gnawed children’s hearts.

  Achamian looked at him narrowly but otherwise seemed unimpressed. “Iryssas left only a week or so ago. How could he find a Scylvendi so near Momemn?”

  “It seems this Scylvendi was on his way to join the Holy War.”

  Achamian looked perplexed. Proyas remembered the first time he ever saw that look: as a youth, playing benjuka with him beneath the temple elms in his father’s garden. How he had exulted.

  This time the expression was fleeting. “Some kind of hoax?” Achamian asked.

  “I don’t know what to think, old tutor, which is why I’ve summoned you.”

  “It must be a lie,” Achamian declared. “Scylvendi don’t join Inrithi Holy Wars. We’re little more than—” He halted. “But why would you summon me here?” he asked with an air of pondering aloud. “Unless . . .”

  Proyas smiled. “I expect Iryssas shortly. His courier thought he could be at most only a few hours ahead of the Majordomo’s party. I sent Xinemus out to bring them here.”

  The Schoolman glanced at the dawn in their periphery—a great crimson sclera about a golden iris. “He travels through the night?”

  “When they found the man and his companions, they were being pursued by the Emperor’s Kidruhil. Apparently Iryssas thought it prudent to return as quickly as possible. It seems the Scylvendi has made some rather provocative claims.”

  Achamian held out his hand, as though to ward away excessive details. “Companions?”

  “A man and a woman. I know nothing more, save that neither is Scylvendi and the man says he’s a prince.”

  “And just what claims has this Scylvendi made?”

  Proyas paused to swallow away the tremors that threatened his voice. “He claims to know the Fanim manner of war. He claims to have defeated them on the field of battle. And he offers his wisdom to the Holy War.”

  At last Achamian understood. The agitation. The impatience for his own concerns. Proyas had seen what benjuka players called the kut’ma, or the “hidden move.” He hoped to use this Scylvendi, whoever he was, both to gall and to defeat the Emperor. Despite himself, Achamian smiled. Even after so many hard words, he could not help sharing something of his old student’s excitement.

  “So he claims to be your kut’ma,” he said.

  “Is what he says possible, Akka? Have the Scylvendi warred against the Fanim?”

  “The southern tribes commonly raid Gedea and Shigek. When I was stationed in Shimeh, there was—”

  “You’ve been to Shimeh?” Proyas blurted.

  Achamian scowled. Like most teachers, he despised interruptions. “I’ve been many places, Proyas.”

  Because of the Consult. When one did not know where to look, one had to look everywhere.

  “I apologize, Akka. It’s just that . . .” Proyas trailed, as though mystified.

  The Prince, Achamian knew, had transformed Shimeh into the summit of a holy mountain, a destination that required warring thousands to achieve. The idea that a blasphemer might just step from a boat . . .

  “At the time,” Achamian continued, “there was a great uproar about the Scylvendi. The Cishaurim had sent twenty of their own to Shigek to join a punitive expedition the Padirajah was preparing to send into the Steppe. Neither the Padirajah’s army nor the Cishaurim were ever heard from again.”

  “The Scylvendi massacred them.”

  Achamian nodded. “So, yes, it’s quite possible your Scylvendi has warred against and overcome the Fanim. It’s even possible he has wisdom to share. But why would he share it with us? With Inrithi? That’s the question.”

  “Their hatred of us runs that deep?”

  Achamian glimpsed a howling rush of Scylvendi lancers galloping into the fire and thunder of Seswatha’s voice. An image from the Dreams.

  He blinked. “Does a Momic Priest hate the bull whose throat he cuts? No. For the Scylvendi, remember, the whole world is a sacrificial altar, and we’re simply the ritual victims. We’re beneath their contempt, which is what makes this so extraordinary. A Scylvendi joining the Holy War? It’s like . . . like—”

  “Like entering the sacrificial pens,” Proyas finished in a dismayed tone, “and striking bargains with the beasts.”

  “Exactly.”

  The Crown Prince pursed his lips, looked out over the encampment, searching, Achamian supposed, for a sign of his dashed hopes. Never before had he seen Proyas like this—even as a child. He looked so . . . fragile.

  Are things so desperate? What are you afraid you’ll lose?

  “But of course,” Achamian added in a conciliatory manner, “after Conphas’s victory at Kiyuth, things might have changed on the Steppe. Drastically, perhaps.” Why did he always cater to him so?

  Proyas glanced at him sidelong, hooked his lips in a sardonic grin. He returned his gaze to the tangled sweep of tents, pavilions, and alleyways before them, then said, “I’m not so wretched yet, old—” He paused, squinting. “There!” he exclaimed, pointing to nothing obvious that Achamian could see. “Zin comes. We’ll see whether this Scylvendi is my kut’ma or no soon enough.”

  From despair to eagerness in the bat of an eye. He’ll make a dangerous king, Achamian involuntarily thought. That is, if he survived the Holy War.

  Achamian swallowed, tasted dust on his teeth. Habit, especially when combined with dread, made it easy to ignore the future. But this was something he could not do. With so many warlike men gathered in one place, something catastrophic simply had to follow. This was a law as inexorable as any in Ajencis’s logic. The more he remembered it, the more prep
ared he would be when the time came.

  Somewhere, someday, thousands of the thousands about me will lie dead.

  The nagging question, the one he found morbid to the point of sickness and yet felt compelled to ask, was, Who? Who will die? Someone must.

  Me?

  Finally his eyes sorted Xinemus and his mounted party from the encampment’s confusion. The man looked haggard, as could be expected, given that his Prince had sent him out in the dead of night. His square-bearded face was turned toward them. Achamian was certain that he stared at him rather than Proyas.

  Will you die, old friend?

  “Do you see him?” Proyas asked.

  At first Achamian thought he referred to Xinemus, but then he saw the Scylvendi, also on horseback, speaking to a wild-haired Iryssas. The sight chilled him.

  Proyas had been watching him, as though keen to gauge his reaction. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “It’s just been—” Achamian caught his breath.

  “Been what?”

  So long . . . Two thousand years, in fact, since he’d last seen a Scylvendi.

  “During the Apocalypse . . .” he began, then trailed in hesitation. Why did he always grow so shy when he spoke of these things, these real things? “During the Apocalypse, the Scylvendi joined the No-God. They brought down Kyraneas, sacked Mehtsonc, and laid siege to Sumna shortly after Seswatha had fled there—”

  “You mean ‘here,’” Proyas said.

  Achamian looked at the man quizzically.

  “After Seswatha fled here,” Proyas explained, “where ancient Kyraneas once stood.”

  “Y-yes . . . Here.” This was ancient Kyranean soil upon which he stood. Here—only buried as though beneath layers. Seswatha had even passed through Momemn once, though it was called Monemora then and was little more than a town. And that, Achamian realized, was the source of his disquiet. Ordinarily, he had little trouble keeping the two ages, the present and the apocalyptic, apart. But this Scylvendi . . . It was as though he bore ancient calamities upon his brow.

  Achamian studied the nearing figure, the thick arms, banded by scars, the brutal face with eyes that saw only dead foes. Another man, as filthy and as travel-worn as the Scylvendi but with the blond hair and beard of a Norsirai, rode close behind. He spoke to a woman, also flaxen-haired, who swayed precariously in her saddle. Achamian pondered them for a moment—the woman looked injured—but found his attention inexorably drawn back to the Scylvendi.