I wasn’t in a position to judge Dombang’s finest establishments—I’d passed most of my childhood in the warren of toppling stilt shacks at the east end of the city, where the water was foulest—but I’d spent enough time in other cities later to see that Ela’s claim was more than plausible. A six-person band—two drummers, two flautists, and a pair of singers, the man in an open vest, the woman in ki-pan slit on both sides all the way to the hip—dominated the center of the deck. Their music was better than anything we’d heard on the long walk in: loud and excited, full of overflowing life, but still intricate, tight. A score of finely attired dancers moved through the quick steps of one of Dombang’s classics in the open space before them, while to either side the rest of the patrons kept time by clapping.
Bare-chested servingmen—hired, obviously, on the twin strengths of their grace and beauty—threaded their way through the crowd with wide trays held above their heads. Women in flowing, low-cut tops worked the bars at either end, spinning glasses in the torchlight, catching them behind their backs, pouring glittering liquor in graceful streams from tall bottles.
“When we left Rassambur,” Kossal said, “did you not hear me say that I’d prefer somewhere small, quiet, and dark?”
Ela pursed her lips, looked up into the star-studded night speculatively, then shook her head. “No. I didn’t hear you say that.”
“You understand,” Kossal ground out, “that I could give you to the god at any point. You would make a great offering.”
“You won’t.”
“That kind of certainty gets people killed.”
“I won’t be as pretty dead.”
“Quite the contrary. You will make a gorgeous corpse.”
“If you’re going to come for me,” Ela said, “you’d best do it soon. You’re not getting any faster as you get older.”
“I thought you said, just before we left Rassambur, that I was still young.”
Ela slid a hand around his waist, snugging him close for a moment. He didn’t resist as she leaned over to purr in his ear. “That was before we left Rassambur.”
Kossal glared at her hard, then pulled free. “I’m getting a room, then going to sleep.” He turned to me. “I suggest you do the same.”
“It’s not even midnight,” Ela exclaimed.
“You might be here on a whim,” he said to the priestess grimly, “but the girl has work to do tomorrow. Her Trial has already begun. It began the moment she put a knife through that miserable woman’s neck. Which means she has fourteen days to finish. A little less, now. Doesn’t leave many evenings for drinking and dancing.”
“I don’t know,” Ela replied, letting him go, twining her slender arm around my waist instead, “I’ve always found drinking and dancing have a way of clarifying the mind.”
Then, before I could object, she led me over a narrow bridge onto the deck of the inn, then to one of the tables nearest the music.
*
“So,” Ela said, leaning back in her chair, arching her back as she stretched her arms above her head. “Are you ever planning to tell me?”
A carafe of blown glass filled with plum wine sat on the table between us, the third of the night, this one still almost full. The priestess reached out, poured a measure into my glass, set it down, then licked the vessel’s beaded sweat from her fingers. She reminded me of a cat, deliberate and indifferent all at once.
“Tell you what?”
With a finger, she drew a slow circle in the air around us, as though to indicate the entire city. “Why we are here.”
I took a deep breath, started to talk, thought better of it, and took a sip from my wine instead.
“I understand,” Ela continued after a pause, “that you grew up here.”
I nodded carefully. The wine brimmed bright and hot inside me. The world seemed wide and tight all at the same time.
“And this is where,” she went on after a pause, “you made your first offerings to the god.”
I took another sip of the wine, felt the pink on my tongue, in my throat, then nodded again. “If you could call them offerings.”
“Every death is an offering.”
Over Ela’s shoulder, in the center of the emptying dance floor, a man and woman twined around each other. Her hands were everywhere, like something flowering from his body.
“It seemed like I’d have a better chance,” I said finally, “if I came back to somewhere I knew.”
“You mean to someone you knew,” she said, leaning in over the table as she spoke. Torchlight shifted over her brown skin until it seemed to glow.
“Everyone I knew from Dombang is dead,” I said. “I killed them before I left.”
Ela laughed. “Thorough girl. You’ll have to tell me the story sometime.”
I shook my head, surprised by the sudden iron in my voice when I replied. “No, I won’t.”
Our gazes snagged for a moment. Then I looked away.
“Maybe we should go to sleep.”
“Oh, undoubtedly!” Ela replied. “We should have gone to sleep hours ago, like Kossal.” She raised a finger, as though to forestall my response. “But we didn’t, and now we have an obligation.”
I blinked. “To?”
“To the wine, Pyrre! To the wine!” She laughed as she gestured to the carafe, the pink liquid so bright with refracted torchlight it might have been a lamp itself. I imagined that wine glowing inside me like a tiny moon.
“You keep pouring me wine because you think I’ll tell you a secret.”
The words came out slow and stupid. Ela smiled.
“Of course I do. I’ll confess—I love secrets almost as much as I love dresses.”
“What if I told you there was no reason that I chose Dombang? Or that I just wanted to see it one more time before you slide a knife into me?”
Ela kept her eyes locked on mine as she refilled her own glass. “Then I’d know that you were lying.”
“How?”
Her dark eyes were wine bright. “A lady doesn’t tell her secrets.”
“And yet you want me to tell mine.”
“You’re too young to be a lady.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And what about you? Can you be a lady if you’re already a priestess?”
“You wouldn’t believe how often I ask myself that very question.”
“And what,” I replied, “do you answer yourself?”
“Oh, I hardly think it’s for me to decide. According to Kossal I’m nothing more than a thorn in his side.”
I stared into my glass, trying to shove my thoughts into some kind of shape I might recognize. The singers had fallen silent, and the flautists, while the two drummers hammered out a brutal rhythm against the night.
“Do you really think he’d kill you?” I asked finally.
Ela pursed her lips reflectively. “He wouldn’t be much of a priest if he wouldn’t.”
“But he loves you.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. It doesn’t change the fact that we worship Ananshael, not Eira.”
Directly above us a pair of wooden shutters slammed open. High, wide laughter spilled out into the night. I caught a glimpse of a pair of hands, a pair of bare arms pulling the shutters closed, and the laughter was gone.
“But you don’t love him,” I said.