There have, of course, been interruptions in our peace. When Ghyfran the Forgiving died, the Caliphate elevated an outsider, Ragnhild, First of Her Name, to the Papacy and installed her in Shadukiam, a city to the east, in an attempt to draw the wealth of Al-a-Nur to itself, and transfer the religious authority which has always resided in the Twelve Towers to that apostate city, where, by no great coincidence, the treasury of the Caliph was kept. This false Papess, called the Black, was a great crisis for the Towers, for the process by which a new Papess is chosen is a complex one, requiring the consent of all the sects of the City as well as the Papal Household. Ghyfran had died suddenly, and a successor had not been confirmed.
From the Tower of Hermaphrodites a candidate arose, and while the Black Papess became more and more entrenched in Shadukiam and the minds of the people, Al-a-Nur was as filled with chaos as a winter storm with lightning. All agreed that Presbyter Cveti was highly qualified and beloved, purity of soul echoing in every spoken word and graceful movement. Nevertheless, the appointment could not be agreed upon.
As must be obvious even to you, my child, the adherents within the Tower of the Hermaphrodites reveal themselves to be neither male nor female. There is no shame in this for them; it is simply their nature, and the nature of the cosmos as they conceive it. Though each was born a daughter or a son, they clothe themselves plainly, bind up their hair, and uncover the secret of their sex to no one. For them, the most divine of all things is the merging of opposites—of light and dark, of sacred and profane, of male and female. They believe that they are blessed so long as they maintain a balance, hanging like a human pendulum between two states, uniquely able to experience the world as both man and woman, and as neither. But the Papacy is a matriarchy, has always been thus, and to some, Cveti seemed to be a sacrilege, polluting the Holy Seat. If the Presbyter was male, it was unthinkable that he could claim the seat. If female, she must declare it before all, and preserve the law of the City. The conflagration of this debate engulfed the City in red flames.
Of course Cveti’s Tower had never held that highest of offices, and felt that any refusal to accept so illustrious a candidate was a boldfaced insult to their order. Many, such as the Tower of the Patricides, themselves an all-male sect, and the Draghi Celesti of the Tower of Ice and Iron, warrior-priests utterly loyal to the traditions of the City who hide their faces behind identical ivory serpent-masks, would not support any alteration to the laws of succession, partly out of fear that their own internal customs could then be altered. No one would dare set the precedent.
Cveti, who loved Al-a-Nur above all things, feared that in the roiling furor the Papacy would be destroyed in the hands of Ragnhild and the Caliphate before a decision could be made, and withdrew from consideration. Yet no other candidate was so worthy, so capable of battle or meditation with equal ease, or so well beloved among the Towers, as Cveti of the bell-deep voice. All agreed that in that time of crisis, only Cveti could lead them against Shadukiam. It was only the shape of hip and curve of lash which was in question, never the holiness of the Presbyter, nor sincerity of faith. The whole City was at a stalemate, and Ragnhild all the while consolidated her authority, growing fat as an engorged spider in the East.
And so it came to pass that Cveti appeared one morning in the Jade Pavilion, which spread out from the Papal Tower, shimmering green and white under the thin winter clouds. She had removed the ritual clothing of her Tower and donned a dress which closed her waist into a curve and flowed over her legs to trail its dark velvet over the jade floor of the courtyard. Her breasts, which had never seen the sun, rose smooth as new paper from the embroidered bodice. She had loosed the traditional seven knots from her hair and let it fall to her shoulders, straight as virtue. She had pulled rings onto her fingers and scented her skin, painted her lips and pulled silk slippers onto her feet. She needn’t have done it—her word as to her sex would have been enough—but all that finery was the extent of her humility, showing us all how far she would go to be what the City asked her to be.
She stood before the Tower as though before the hangman’s noose, tears streaming down her proud cheeks—yet her mouth never quivered as she knelt at the feet of the Papal Household and forswore the tenets of her faith, vowing thenceforward to serve only the Papal Tower, and never again to hide her nature; in all things she would serve the greater need of the City, emulating the line of Papesses which had come before her. With stunned tears springing to their own eyes the Household accepted her pledge, and the Towers, awed and humbled, confirmed Presbyter Cveti as the seventeenth Papess of Al-a-Nur. On the day of her ascension, Cveti went into the cavernous mausoleum beneath the Tower and kissed the coffin of her predecessor with great tenderness. She announced to all in those shadowy rooms that she would take the name of Ghyfran, the dead Papess, for her own.
Ghyfran II led a great army of Draghi Celesti in their thousand identical masks against Shadukiam, and sent the tongue and breasts of the Black Papess to the Caliphate in a silver box. While on campaign, it was noted by her generals that Ghyfran always bound her hair in seven knots before riding into battle. The rest of Ragnhild she yielded to the judgment of the Draghi, who left the apostate’s body fastened to the earth with golden chains at the precise center-point between Al-a-Nur and Shadukiam.
And for five hundred years, the Caliphate quelled its desire to interfere with the succession of the Holy Seat.
I WAS SLEEPY THEN, RESTING MY HEAD ON THE rough-hewn table and letting Bartholomew’s voice roll over me like gentle water over stones. But Al-a-Nur had risen up in me in all its colors, and I could feel a yearning for it turning and warming itself in my belly. All my sib lings had gone, I was ready—why should I not leave this wretched hut, where my mother’s eyes scalded my back wherever I walked?
“Take me with you,” I whispered, sitting up, my eyes suddenly bright and calculating as a hungry little cat in the snow. “Take me to Al-a-Nur, to the Chrysanthemum Tower and the green pools under the willow. I will become wise there, just like you, you’ll see!” I clutched his hand tightly, but seeing his startled expression, let the callused fingers fall back to our table.
Bags—for so I already called him in my heart—peered closely at me, his eyes narrowing to tiny moon-slivers in the red bleed of his fur. He looked to Bartholomew and whispered, “And the wolf shall lead her astray…”
“What?” I asked, straining to hear their suddenly hushed voices. But Bartholomew grinned hugely, his ponderous tongue hanging out of his mouth in a most friendly fashion.
“Nothing, my dear,” interrupted Balthazar, shaking his ice-colored fur, “just a bit of Scripture. The Book of Carrion, chapter twenty-eight, verse ten. If you are to come with us you will learn that and much more. Certainly we will have you—we cannot turn a seeker away by the laws of our Tower. But perhaps it is not solely our decision…?”
My mother’s ponderous back was turned to us, and it shook slightly with tears—sorrow or relief I could not tell—smothered as quickly as snow sliding from a pine bough to the frozen earth. I went to her, and put my hands on her shoulders, leaning my head against her warm skin.
“Go,” she spat hoarsely. “Just go. If the Stars wish us to meet again, they will fashion the path before your feet.” She shrugged me off and disappeared from the great-room with her heavy, lumbering gait. I began to pack food for myself and my new brothers—we would need bread for the journey south.
“YOU’RE NOT BORED, ARE YOU, LOVE?” SIGRID shifted on her bench, nets knotted over her hands like silver rings. The sun was well past noon, and the sickly light of the northern summer spilled over the windless water below the quay, thin as milk.
“Oh, no,” breathed Snow, her colorless lips spreading into something like a smile. “Don’t stop! Did you ever see the Twelve Towers? Did you meet the Papess? Was she very beautiful?”
“I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you put so many words together in the same place, girl. If you’re not careful, they’ll get togeth
er and have babies, and then we’ll never shut you up.”
Snow was stricken for a moment, then tore her eyes from Sigrid as though she had been caught staring through a shop window full of cakes, furiously tying her net with shivering fingers. Sigrid’s face became soft in all the places it had been hard. Her cheeks melted into a rough affection.
“Love, I’ve never been anyone’s mother; I don’t know how to talk to young or old. But don’t stop smiling just because I flap my mouth and say something that’s not dressed around the edges like a lace tablecloth. Thicken up and we’ll get along fine.”
They were quiet together for a while, listening to the creak and rock of the ships in port, the tightening of the wet ropes that tied them to the pier. Gulls cackled in their witch-reedy voices, swooping into the shallows for fat pink fish. Snow’s silvery hair was dark with damp, curling against her dress. At last, Sigrid began to speak again, neither pausing nor slowing in her work as she talked.
“As to the great City, I did go, far to the south, out of the white waste-lands, across a scrub desert where there was no water, and through valleys where wine grapes grew big as plums. The dog-men never seemed to tire, and their red hoods kept out all manner of storm and sun-blisters, where I had only my little shift and a ragged old fur cloak…”
I WAS SOON QUITE FRIENDLY WITH THE BROTHERS—who, as it turned out, were literally brothers as well as fellow monks. They talked often of home, and of the other members of their litter who farmed their fields in peace and thought nothing of theology. Balthazar had the quickest tongue, often completing our sentences, as though he was impatient to hear the ends of them. Bartholomew was the most devout and kind; he shepherded me like a favorite lamb, teaching me from The Book of the Bough and The Book of Carrion (though never the meaning of the strange proverb uttered at the old home-table), though he welcomed me to choose from any of the Towers once we arrived—the variety of religion laid out before me would be as a table groaning with feast foods, he promised. Bags was our jester—he tickled me and taught me to wrestle, nipping me playfully if I let down my guard. It was not long before they were the only stars in my little sky.
The four of us kept to the roads, wherever they wound, and had food when it was plentiful—grapes and apples and occasionally soft cheese from a passing cart, but never meat, of course. The Cynocephaloi assured me that they were excellent hunters, with strong, lean human legs and jaws that could snap a bird out of the air before the song died in its warbling throat, but they would never do so. It was with terrible sadness that Bags brought me a skinny hare one evening when the desert spread out around us like a fallen dress, embroidered with sagebrush and dusty pebbles. The poor creature had dropped dead of the heat; Bags did not want to waste the meat, and I was famished. I had grown up devouring fox haunch and seal fat; the desert was unkind to my young limbs. With tears pooling in his yellow eyes, he laid the rabbit in my lap and closed its eyes as though the beast had been his brother.
“Death,” he whispered, his throat squeezing out words like blood from a deep wound. “We have seen so much death on this pilgrimage, death common as coats hung up in a hall. Four of us went out from the Chrysanthemum Tower, and four of us return—but not the same four! Do the gods mock us with numbers, tossing them at our hearts like jester’s balls? Do you know where we went, where we had gone before we came to your village? What our mission was? Al-a-Nur is the City of Light, yes, oh, yes, and the moon on her dozen towers is like water on my tongue after years of thirst! But she asks so much of us, so much is required to keep that light burning gold and blue!” He put his shaggy head in his hands, his sobs warped by the shape of his snout; the sound of his snorting, snarling grief was terrible to hear. “I can still smell his blood, his blood on my hands!”
I put aside the hare and tried to comfort him—Bags, who was always cheerful and full of jokes my mother would have whipped me for repeating, Bags, who had become my favorite of all the brothers, wept in my arms like an orphaned child. I could see the sullen fireflies of his brothers’ eyes gleaming some feet away, but I did not think they would come near. The Book of the Bough said: Grief is a private sacrament. Give it not to others as though it were a gift. He should not have wept in my lap at all—his brothers would not shame him by witnessing his lapse.
Bags looked up into my eyes and bit his tears into pieces. “Everything that was done was necessary, little sister, so that the City might live. But I have tasted a yielding throat in my jaws, and I cannot tell, I cannot tell: If one sins in order to preserve virtue—is this still sin? I am sorry, girl, you are not one of us, you will not be stained by my sorrow, you cannot be polluted by it. Let me give my grief to you, who are innocent of all these necessities, clean of all darkness. Let me tell you what my brothers and I did in the name of Al-a-Nur, the Anointed City. Let me tell you of the fourth whose place you hold…”
WHAT BARTHOLOMEW TOLD YOU WAS TRUE, ABOUT Ragnhild the Black, who called herself Papess five centuries ago and was slain by Ghyfran the Selfless. We know the tale better than any, for its continuation lay with us, when we set out from the Salmon Gate—the Gate that calls us home from our first steps into the wild, which re minds us of the river that gave us life, and to which we must return when our muzzles have grown bare.
The Caliphate, now the Fourth Caliphate, has always envied our autonomy, and hated the scrap of parchment with the hoofprint of the First Caliph stamped firmly on its cracked surface, assuring our freedom unto the end of days. Our City is rich beyond the dreams of royal bursars, and we are not tithed, we are not conscripted, we are beholden to no earthly law. After the death of Ragnhild, we had hoped that the time of their interference was finished, that their lesson had been etched deeply enough in blood that no children of our children would ever fear another apostasy.
It was etched to the depth, it would seem, of five hundred years, and no more.
After the death of Ghyfran XII—Ghyfran has become a favorite name of the Papess line, though the wolf of my heart mourns the loss, stillborn, of a long line of clear-eyed priestesses called Cveti—our current Blessed Papess, Yashna the Wise, was confirmed with no great controversy and all due ceremony. The Papal Tower gleamed in its deep hues as always, and its silver glittered as it had the day the nails first tasted the wood. There was no issue of succession. She was of the Tower of the Dead, which has given us many solemn and temperate Papesses. They are suited to it; the dead give nothing so much and so well as perspective. Yet the Caliphate chose this barely noticeable interregnum to interfere a second time, and under the Rose Dome of Shadukiam, the Apostate was born again like a black-mouthed calf.
And worse, she took the name of her predecessor—once more there was a Ragnhild with a diadem on her brow. She had sent men to retrieve the golden manacles that held the first false Papess to the earth between cities, left there as a monument to remind the Caliphate that Al-a-Nur was never again to be superseded by a filthy banking metropolis. It was said that the new Ragnhild wore them day and night, the broken chains hanging delicately from her slender wrists, that ancient gold glowering against her skin. It was said that her hair was precisely that shade of gold, that her eyes were so black that they seemed to have no pupils. It was said that she would not even call herself Ragnhild II, but believed herself to be that murdered Papess reborn, and ever wore the deep violet gown in which those unfortunate bones had finally been interred. Its grave-tatters showed her ghost-pale skin in many places, an indecency no true Papess of the Tower would have allowed.
One late evening last summer, when the blue of the sky was deeper than any sea, my brothers and I were called from the singing blossoms of the Chrysanthemum Tower to an audience with Yashna. We went, I and my three brothers—for Barnabas was the fourth of our number who stood before Yashna and heard her crow-song voice. His fur was perfectly black, without the patches of brown Bartholomew inherited from our strong-hipped mother. He was the strongest of us, and the youngest.
The Papal presence, in sim
ple gray robes and unadorned diadem, soothed the image of the wraith-Papess from our troubled hearts. She is not a young woman, our Mother Yashna; her deep brown skin is folded and creased as a beloved book. When she reached out her hand to touch our bent and reverent heads, her palm was warm and dry as a desert stone after twilight has fallen.
“My sons, listen well to me, for our City is once again besieged. I am not a Ghyfran”—at this she smiled a weary smile that turned up the corners of her mouth like the horns of the moon—“I am not even a Cveti. There is nothing in my body to give to Al-a-Nur. I am a crone; I accept this. I cannot lead an army against Shadukiam, and even if I could ride at its head, we have been so long at peace that I fear the Draghi are not what they were. They train and pray and know nothing of true war. No, this time we cannot simply crush the Black Papess under the weight of our Towers. It is a time for stealth and for cunning—and these things I can give with both hands. I have chosen you because you will not be suspected; the Scarlet Hoods have ever prohibited violence of any kind, and no one would think to question your tranquil spirits. Nevertheless, I must ask you to break your vows, as immaculate Cveti once did, in service of the lifeblood of the Twelve Towers. I am sending you from the river and familiar waters; I am sending you from the sixteen-pointed chrysanthemum. You must go east, and kill the Black Papess.”
Oh, sister, I would like to tell you we were shocked, that we agreed only out of duty—but the truth is that words such as “kill” had little meaning for us who had grown up through the cycles of the opening and closing of flowers, who had never eaten animal flesh or struck another creature in anger. We agreed because it was Yashna who asked it, we agreed because it was Yashna who told us we would be forgiven, because we wanted to wear the holy, secret name of Cveti sewn into our chests, because we wanted to be the saviors of our City, which was the deepest heart of our hearts. We thought nothing of Ragnhild, and nothing of the task. We eagerly swore ourselves, and kissed her withered hand, which smelled so sweetly of sandalwood and rustling scrolls. There was no shadow of guilt in us as we departed, as we heard the soprano echo of the Salmon Gate closing behind us.