Only after these two have passed do voices rise again into a roar of singing and acclamation as the Honored Protector and Custodian pass, wearing their masks and accompanied by the honored poet. After them walk the officials in their animal masks, the High Priest with a modest retinue, and carriages bearing the dames and elders of the new council.
I walk beside the litter in which lies my father, carried by firebird soldiers, and another litter bearing Maraya, who by now is too exhausted to walk. Tucked at her side, Wenru wears an almost comical frown as he studies the triumphant Efean faces and, with a pursing of his baby lips, examines his own brown arm and considers his change of fortune.
We are followed by the rumbling tramp of many footsteps and the lamentations of the Saroese prisoners, for they too are part of the procession. Escorted by the Firebird Guard, the highborn clans are departing to the West Harbor. But we’re not going that way, not yet.
In the center of the Square of the Moon and the Sun stands a great scaffold. Onto this pyre the litter and Father’s body are placed, and oil is poured over them. Inarsis lights a torch and Mother places it beside Father’s body. We retreat as the flames catch and leap. To my surprise a number of people hurry forward with shroud-wrapped bodies and place them on the pyre before the fire mounts so high that no one can come close. And they begin singing:
You are the breath that sparks life in us, the earth that fashions us, the sun whose rays illuminate us, the water that nourishes us. You are the heart to which we return.
I am beyond tears. I tug on Mother’s arm. “What is this? I’ve heard it before.”
“It is the Efean way to release departing souls back into the land to be reshaped and reborn. The Saroese priests banned our custom because they considered it savage and blasphemous, as if entombing women against their will is a badge of civilization.”
Her gaze moves inexorably to the forbidding wall of Eternity Temple.
“Are you sure of this, Kiya?” Inarsis asks softly. “Death might be a mercy.”
“I find I am not merciful enough to grant death to the man who willfully and maliciously destroyed my family and the lives of so many others.”
Our company is fewer in number now. The spiders stand guard over the pyre while the Lion Guard escorts our group through the now-empty Eternity Temple and into the City of the Dead. How silent the tombs lie, no worshippers bringing offerings of food and flowers, no priests sweeping the walkways. Embers and fragments of burning cloth rain down upon the tombs, blown by the wind. Kal does not look at me or at anyone, only at the royal tomb rising atop the central hill. Even among the dead the Saroese insist that rank be respected.
The royal tomb has been broken open. The oracle and her attendants who were placed inside with Kliatemnos and his innocent son months ago have been released, but a narrow gap remains, enough space to admit a single attendant shrouded with cloth over his head.
The shroud is pulled off and Lord Gargaron finally realizes what his fate is to be.
He twists and turns but cannot escape their grip as guards shove him into the tomb and hold him back with spears. He bawls out sounds like the braying of an animal, but there is no recourse against mortar and brick as the masons close up the gap.
Mother does not once look away. She holds his gaze with hers as she speaks.
“You mistook quiet joy and a calm smile for weakness. This is my answer to you.”
I twitch, wanting to gesture the kiss-off sign because I know he is looking and I know he is helpless to look away, but Mother grasps my hand and I let her have her victory. I would have just killed him and been done with it, and I see now that all along I have not understood Mother quite as well as I thought I did.
When the tomb is bricked up, and the last King Kliatemnos given his final attendant, Mother looks at Kal. He nods, face a mask of determination.
I break away, meaning to run to him, but he extends a hand, palm out, to halt me. He holds his head in the posture of the king who, sitting in procession, must be seen as beyond ordinary concerns because he is himself the repository of power, the gods-anointed sovereign who wields life and death.
“Come no closer,” he says to me in a cold voice. “This is my journey. Mine alone.”
“But Kal—”
“Jessamy. Return to me at once.” No one disobeys Mother when she uses that tone, not even me.
She gestures for me to get in the wagon. “This is his journey. None of us, not even you, can walk this path beside him.”
At the harbor the prisoners wait in long lines to board ships that will deliver them to one of the ports of old Saro. They have the clothes on their backs and their lives. The Garon household has become but one clan amid many. Stripped of their royal titles they must await their turn.
Mother takes pity and allows Kalliarkos a final farewell with his mother, but when Lady Adia collapses as he breaks out of her embrace for a final time, I am not sure we have shown her a kindness.
“You don’t have to do this, Kal,” Meno? says. “It doesn’t all fall on your shoulders. Beg for mercy.”
“No. One of us must stand as the goat who goes in place of the rest. I accept the burden. I never wanted this, and now I will be free of the scheming and fighting you and Grandmother are sure to start up all over again. Let me go.”
When Meno? begins to sob I see she does care for him and always has, however strangely she may have shown it.
Only Princess Berenise makes a good-bye without tears, allowing her grandson to kiss her aged hand as if he is a supplicant.
“Come along, Meno?,” she says, withdrawing her hand from Kal’s fingers and moving them toward the ship on which they’ll sail. “We are done here. Tell your mother to stop weeping. She is not too old to have another son, if she marries again soon. As you must, once you are delivered of this child. I have some prospects in mind.”
Only when they have embarked does the last Saroese king of Efea make his way to the pier where a separate harbor barge is moored. He’s accompanied by eight Efean soldiers to row the barge, and the honored poet. Before Mother or Inarsis can stop me, I jump on too, because there is a darkness in Kal’s eyes that terrifies me.
Ro grasps my elbow. “Jessamy, you coming along isn’t part of the plan.”
I shake him off, turn to Kal, and whisper the words I dare not say aloud lest anyone but the three of us hear.
“Ro was supposed to explain it to you. I thought it all through. You said yourself that only death will free you. So you have to be seen to die in order to be free to live. That’s the plan.”