The old priest looked at me like I’d just started drooling on the table. “What you should have done is continued your work instead of wasting time pining. There’s more to Ananshael’s Trial than the last lines.”
Before I could respond, one of the young servingmen approached. His name, I remembered vaguely, was Vet. Ela had lured him into her bed days earlier, but Ela wasn’t up yet—most days she slept until almost noon—and he gave me a sly smile, one that suggested he could keep a secret if I could. Kossal, predictably, shattered the mood.
“Bring me ta,” the older priest said, “and something to eat that doesn’t smell like fish.”
“At once,” Vet murmured, then turned to me. “And anything else for the lady?”
That confident smile suggested my list of options extended beyond the offerings of the kitchen.
I shook my head.
“Perhaps later,” he said, smiled again, then turned away.
I watched him as he threaded his way between the tables. It wasn’t hard to see what Ela liked about him. He was built like a statue, all square jaw and bare shoulders. He wore his vest open, like the rest of the serving staff, to show off a chest and stomach that looked carved out with a chisel. And that smile … somehow it managed to be mischievous and reassuring all at once. What would it be like, I wondered, to peel off that vest, to feel his hands roaming over my body? What would his voice sound like, murmured in my ear? Would it be possible to thread the discrete facts of attraction into something that felt like love? Someone could love him; I was certain of that, just as I was certain that that someone would never be me. For all that my life depended on it, I could not say why.
I turned back to Kossal.
“It doesn’t matter that I haven’t given anyone else to the god. None of that matters. If I fail at the last lines,” I concluded quietly, “I fail.”
“Sometimes the failure is the devotion.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Our bodies go,” he said, gesturing to himself. “Then our minds. Failure is what it means to be mortal.”
I shook my head. “No.”
Kossal didn’t reply. He watched me, both eyes open now, his pupils still, sharp-edged, absolute, as though they’d been cored from his irises with a knife. I shoved forward into his silence.
“You passed your Trial. Ela passed hers. No one told you to fail in the name of your devotion.”
“You were twenty years unborn when I faced my Trial,” the priest said, his voice quiet. “You have no idea what I was told.”
“I know you’re here,” I burst out. “I know that you survived.”
“Survival,” he said. “What does the Lord of the Grave want with our survival?”
I stared at him. “Then why are we doing this? Any of it? Why all the songs, the training, the Trials? Why don’t we just open our own throats and be done?”
It was a question, I realized suddenly, that had been rising in my chest for years, ever since I first arrived in Rassambur. I had never doubted Ananshael. The god’s mercy and justice were as obvious to me as the sky. I wanted nothing more than to serve such a lord, and yet there was something in the service I had always struggled to understand. My brothers and sisters gave thousands of souls to the god each year. More than that, they offered themselves in dozens of ways. Not a month went by without one of the faithful stepping from a precipice or sipping quietly from a poisoned cup. When the god calls, we say in Rassambur, listen. And yet, the whole process seemed somehow … inefficient. If Ananshael wanted us, and we wanted to give of ourselves, the simplest obeisance seemed suicide.
It was a paradox. We were expected to kill, to die with a heartfelt smile, but never to rush. I’d raised the question half a dozen times over the course of my years in Rassambur, without ever receiving a sensible reply. There seemed to be a hundred aphorisms and no actual answers, just inscrutable stuff like The wheat does not find the scythe. After a while I stopped asking. Rassambur was a beautiful place to be alive. The sun burned bright, the blue air blazed, I was both young and strong. Someday, I told myself, I would understand.
Suddenly, that looked a lot less likely.
I was going to die. When my time was up, either Ela or Kossal would open my veins and drain my blood out into one of Dombang’s canals, and I still didn’t understand the most basic thing about my faith.
“Every year we live,” I murmured, “every day—it’s just a delay, an abdication of faith. You’re right. Why am I even trying to survive?”
I stared down at the shifting water of the canal. It would be so easy to step over the railing, tumble forward, break the surface with a quick slap, then sink into the depths, let the current carry my body to the sea. I’d seen a drowned woman in Sia once, facedown in the shallows of the lake, white dress unfolding around her like the petals of a flower, arms spread as though she was flying. I’d never seen a body quite so beautiful.
“Survival,” Kossal said quietly, “is not life.”
I studied the old priest. “I don’t know what that means.”
“What is it we give to the god?”
“Our selves. Our lives.”
“And what kind of life do you want to give him? What kind of self?”
I tried to find some answer that might fit the question, failed.
“Why do you think, at my age, I’m still stomping all over this ’Kent-kissing continent? What do you think I’m doing in this miserable city?” He waved a hand at the canal and everything beyond. “The whole place smells like soup.”
I hesitated. “Ela says you’re doing it for her. Because you like to be around her.”
“For her? Because I enjoy being around her?”
“That’s what she said.”
The priest looked like he was going to spit. “That woman,” he ground out finally, “is a daily ordeal.”
“She’s the ordeal?” I was too confused to consider my words. “The whole way from Rassambur Ela was kind, cheerful, curious … while you’ve been what? An old bastard with a kidney stone. Every time we sit down, you look like someone pissed in your quey. The only time you stop scowling is when you’re playing your flute.”
“I play my flute,” Kossal said, “to keep from killing people I should not kill.”
I stared at him. “You mean Ela.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “Ela. Although you’re managing to elbow your way onto my list as well.”
“Which list is that?” I demanded. “Kill? Or Do Not Kill?”
His eyes narrowed beneath his bushy brows. Then, to my shock, he exploded into a long, rich laugh.
“There’s just the one list, kid,” he said finally.
I shook my head. “And that is?”
“The ones who matter. The ones who aren’t just scenery. The ones who turn survival into life.”
“Why would you want to kill them?”
He raised his bushy brows. “Because life, Pyrre—it’s a lot harder than survival.”
“And Ela makes you feel alive.”