“Do not punish me in this way. Heavenly gods, I pray you, Kalliarkos.”
She flings herself full length onto the ground at his feet. The distress on her face is not feigned. Dread chokes me because I’m sure something horrible is about to happen.
Kal’s tone remains set and unyielding. “It is a holy temple, Cousin, where girls and women devote their souls to prayer. A place of strict justice and rigid piety, it’s true, but it isn’t as if a woman who was once queen will be chosen as an oracle, if that’s what you fear.”
“I will do anything… anything… just don’t lock me up in there, I beg you.” Grabbing Kal’s sandaled feet, Serenissima kisses them repeatedly, a beggar groveling for a scrap of pity. “I beg you, Kalliarkos. Hideous things happen in there.”
“You will be protected by these walls and holy priests, Cousin. I am being merciful by safeguarding you here in the temple instead of letting you be torn to pieces by an angry mob.”
But what if you’re mistaken? What does Serenissima know that you don’t? I want to scream the words at him but Father softly taps a knuckle against the wood to remind me to stay still and silent, to not protest, to do nothing about the ugly scene unfolding before us.
Kal looks like a man contemplating a nest of dead, rotting adders he has to eat for his supper. He gestures toward the gate as if he can’t trust himself to speak.
After a glance at all the armed men, the High Priest kneels before him. “As you command, Your Gracious Majesty.”
Thus is Serenissima’s fate sealed.
Priests lift away a bar and swing open the inner gate. What I see is worse than I expected: a gloomy passageway into windowless darkness, nothing but stone walls and iron doors where girls are raised in night and solitude as if they have committed some atrocious crime, when all they have done is be born to Patron families who don’t cherish them. The very air breathes of despair and misery. It’s so dark.
“Please, Kalliarkos. Please show mercy to me. Don’t make me go in there. Please.”
Serenissima shudders with uncontrollable sobs of genuine terror. I hate her, of course I hate her. She callously handed her son over to be slaughtered. Yet even I am appalled. Even this is too much for me. Doesn’t Kal see how wrong it is?
“Father, can’t you stop this?”
“Quiet.” Father surveys the battlefield and its grim debris. “He’s showing her more mercy than she showed Meno? or her own son. The court will call him weak for imprisoning her instead of killing her outright, but once he defeats the invaders they’ll acclaim him as just and wise.”
“You heard what she said. Terrible things happen in there. Can’t you see it? Can’t you feel it? Don’t you understand?”
“It’s a holy temple.” He can’t see because his whole life he’s been told that the tombs are a sacred place, that the men running them are pious and just, that they would never harm the revered women dedicated to the inner sanctuary. “She’s playacting, anything for a chance to stab Kalliarkos in the back. She’ll be safe here until he has time to put her on trial before the Sun of Justice. Be patient.”
Kal stands in profile to me. I study the features I’ve come to know so intimately now turned into a cold, merciless mask. This is the lesson he has learned from Gargaron, from Nikonos, and from the dead king. From my own beloved father, the general who kept the Royal Army together to bring him to the royal city as victor. My father, who at this moment is blocking anyone from seeing me while keeping me silent.
Kal learned these lessons from all of them, and from Serenissima. He told me himself. The king sits atop a mountain of treasure. His army, and his actions, defend not the country but his power, which he’ll do anything—anything—to keep.
Tears stream down my face. It’s not that I’m weeping but that I am sick to be watching this unfold. He tried to get away, he asked me to escape with him, but I convinced him it was his duty to come here, because I thought this was the only way to save Efea.
I wanted to believe the people I loved would be better and stronger, that they wouldn’t succumb to the same justifications that allowed a holy priest to brick my mother into a tomb. I wanted to believe that Father wouldn’t be trapped by it. That Kal wouldn’t be forced to act as monstrously as the people who came before him, the ones who built this edifice stone by stone. I wanted to believe that the father I respect and the boy I love could recognize what is staring them in the face.
Watching Kal’s expression turn from one of distaste to one of self-loathing as he forces himself to witness Serenissima be dragged screaming and struggling into the passage, I finally have to admit I have run this trial utterly wrong. The path I chose doesn’t lead to a victory tower. Or at least, not to a victory I can live with.
12
Father and I arrive at the Least-Hill Inn late in the afternoon. He’s arranged for us to change out of palace garb and into our cleaned clothing from the march, and his firebird soldiers have found a less conspicuous carriage in which he can travel into the city. Another man would have waited for the business of unseating one set of rulers and installing a new pair to be completed before taking such a chance, but not Father, not when he hasn’t seen my mother since the day he abandoned her.
“Let me go in first,” I say, sure he will refuse.
He doesn’t reply. He is fussing with his hair, as short as it is, and smoothing out the fabric of his clothing so it isn’t mussed. I have never seen him act like a nervous youth going courting, but I take advantage of his hesitation and jump down to the street.
The door of the humble inn has gotten a paint job. Instead of having flaking, faded brown paint, it glistens with a depiction of a lush sycamore tree hung with goats’ horns like tiny cornucopias. I walk in to find the common room already half full of people off work for the day, a mix of foreign sailors and local Saryenians, Saroese and Efean, mingling as they laugh and chat. The floor has been set with new tiles. The walls have a fresh coat of whitewash enlivened by flowering trees that have been painted on either side of tripod lamps standing against the walls.
Polodos is serving a tray of drinks to a group of sailors, while a girl I recognize as Ro’s sister pours ale from a pitcher into the waiting cups of a trio of Efean men. When she worked for my family, her hair was shorn to the scalp to prevent lice but now it is growing out. She actually smiles at the men. She never smiled once that I saw in the year she worked for us, not that I ever bothered looking.
She sees me. Her smile flattens to a frown. People turn to look as I stride through the room.
“Doma…” Polodos looks alarmed. “How are you come here?”