‘You’ve lost me there, my darling.’
‘It’s like an unfinished book, but you can only get up to the third chapter and you must go back to the beginning, over and over. Look at the clouds.’ She pointed upwards. Overhead, the black clouds scudded restlessly across the jaundice sky. ‘I have seen those same clouds, a hundred thousand times. They pass over, drawn by a wind I can’t feel, and then they start all over again.’
‘Nanthema, how could you possibly tell?’
‘Believe me, Vin, with nothing to look at but the clouds, you soon get to recognise them. It’s like this place is someone’s memory, or a dream, and I am stuck inside.’
She stopped talking, and for a moment the only thing Vintage could hear was her own breathing. They were so deep within the Behemoth that even the sea was silent. A thought occurred to her.
‘So what are you looking at now? What does the chamber look like to you?’
Nanthema grinned, although there was little humour in it. ‘It looks like a great shard of crystal, with my dear Vintage sitting within it.’
‘Hmph.’ Vintage shook her head. ‘What is this thing, then? What is it to the Jure’lia? Why would they need such chambers at the heart of their vessels? What does it do?’
Nanthema smiled lopsidedly. ‘That’s my Vin, always two steps ahead. And what do you mean, chambers? Have you seen another like this?’
‘I have.’ Vintage did not want to describe what they had found in Esiah Godwort’s Behemoth wreck – it would be like admitting that Nanthema must stay trapped forever – so she spoke quickly before she could ask more questions. ‘What else can you tell me about it?’
In answer, Nanthema shifted closer to the crystal, bowing her head as though she were going to whisper in Vintage’s ear. ‘I hear voices in here sometimes.’ The Eboran woman swallowed hard, and Vintage realised that she was frightened. ‘You will now declare me a lunatic, I expect, but it’s true. Whispers carried on the wind, drifting . . .’ Nanthema’s eyes rolled back to the rocks behind her, and Vintage had to swallow down a surge of fright. What if she had been driven mad, after all? ‘I think this crystal and the memory it contains, Vin, are integral to the Jure’lia in some way. Something deep, in the bones of what they are. And there’s something else.’
Nanthema turned back, and now she looked very young indeed, her face that of a child waking from a nightmare. ‘Vintage, the Jure’lia never went away. They’re still here.’
Tor had never seen so many people in the Hall of Roots. The sight made him deeply uneasy for reasons he couldn’t quite pinpoint, but he kept an easy smile on his face as he moved among them. All of the diplomats were here, the minor royalty from far-off kingdoms, the representatives of a dozen republics, the men and women from less defined places, the traders and the merchants, eager to see what coin could be made from Ebora’s corpse, no doubt. Aldasair had introduced him to them all, rattling off names and honorifics and locations in a manner that quietly stunned Tor – his cousin had rarely been so collected – and the people he met eyed him curiously, no doubt fascinated to talk to another living artefact from this mausoleum.
Except that wasn’t quite the case. There were a handful of Eborans here too, the last haggard survivors of the crimson flux, flushed out of their rooms and hiding places to be here. Hestillion had insisted that they be seated separately, away from the sharp eyes of the humans, and they were clustered to the east of the room. There Tor saw faces he hadn’t seen in decades, the faces of people he had been sure were long dead. It was unsettling, like sharing air with the ghosts of your ancestors, and mostly they looked like they might die at any moment anyway; he saw skin turned dusty and broken, riddled with the tell-tale red cracks of the crimson flux, and on some faces, the simple signs of old age. He felt a mild trickle of disgust down the back of his throat. They should not be here. For their own health, he added silently to himself.
But of course, who could stop them? Today might see the resurrection of their god, and if Ygseril lived again, his sap would restore them all. Crimson flux would be banished, his scars would be healed, and Ebora would rise from the ashes.
He suddenly realised what was bothering him. He leaned over to speak directly into his sister’s ear.
‘Where are all the paintings? The sculptures and cabinets and so on?’
‘We have moved them.’ Hestillion had washed and brushed her hair and her skin was shining. She wore a white silk wrap over a pale blue dress, but there was a feverish energy about her that he did not like. Her eyes moved too often, and were too wet. Once, Ainsel had come down with a sweating sickness and Tor had moved into her rooms for a few days to nurse her. She had been outraged at first, horrified that he should see her in such a state, but he had insisted. Human illnesses were not the crimson flux, after all. At the height of the sickness she had been fidgety, would not stay in bed, and her eyes had had the same restless brightness of Hestillion’s. ‘The artworks are now stored in some of the outer rooms. We still have plenty of empty ones, after all.’
‘Hmm.’ Tor realised that deep in the back of his mind he had thought the strangers had stolen them. Just spirited away thousands of years’ worth of Eboran artefacts; hidden them under their tunics, perhaps. He pursed his lips. It seemed that Hestillion wasn’t the only one who was nervous.
‘Where is your human pet?’
Tor raised his eyebrows at that. ‘Noon is resting. How do you want to do this?’
Hestillion looked up, and Tor followed her gaze. Above them, the glass roof of the Hall of Roots was filled with bright sunlight. The dead branches of Ygseril hung there, as they ever did, and beyond that Tor could see the ghostly smudge that was the corpse moon.
‘We just do it,’ said Hestillion. ‘We’ve all waited long enough.’