Suten turned away from the crowd, his golden mask still shining like the sun above.
“How did you know?” Ren asked, awed. It was clear that Suten had known what would happen. The Ray was the only one who wasn’t cowed by the sun’s failure to darken. Even the soldiers were staring up at the sun, waiting for it to dim.
“How did you know?” Ren asked again.
“Patience,” said Suten. “There is a way to predict the yearly eclipse, an instrument that simulates the motions of the earth and the moon. I knew the sun would fail to bow this year, and so I prepared for it. Follow me.”
The noise from the now rioting crowd faded behind them as the Ray led Ren along a tight corridor, Oren and the soldiers still close behind. Through a priest’s chamber and down a narrow stairway they went, passing a row of soldiers spiky with weapons, before walking through a pair of heavy iron gates. This second journey was much longer than the first, and soon Suten dismissed the guards, all except Oren Thrako and one of his priors.
They stopped in a circular room with a heavy door on the far wall.
“What is this?” Ren glanced from Suten to the Prior Master, realization dawning on his face. “You are setting me free—aren’t you?”
“Well, of course. You are outside the Priory,” Suten said. “A ransom doesn’t leave Tolemy’s house unless it’s time for him to replace his father.”
“My father is dead then.” It was not a question. Ren swallowed twice, his insides knotted with fear.
“Not quite yet,” Suten said. “Oren will guide you through the Hollows, it’s the only way to avoid the rioters. At the gates to the underground you will find an escort assembled by the city guard, who will take you safely to Harwen.” Suten placed a silver ring with an eld skull ornament on Ren’s finger. He told Ren that the ring had belonged to Arko and would prove that Ren was the heir of Harkana. Arko had placed the ring in an imperial soldier’s hand ten years prior. Oren offered a cloak and Suten handed him a pair of scrolls. “Give this to Arko for me.”
“To Arko?” Ren asked. Suten’s words made no sense. “My father isn’t dead?” If Arko was alive, why had Suten set him free? And why had Suten called him to witness the Devouring?
As if in answer to his question, Suten offered a final message: “Tell your king that at long last, the emperor demands his tribute. The sun has failed to bow and the people will require a sacrifice. We return his heir, but Arko Hark-Wadi, the king of Harkana, is owed to the emperor.”
10
When the sun refused to darken, when the light would not bow to the emperor and bring blessings to the populace, Sarra stood in the Protector’s Tower and watched Amen Saad gawk at the sky. He was not a believer, neither priest nor pilgrim, but he was afraid. The Mother Priestess saw it in his eyes. He had not once thought to question the Devouring. The sky turned black once a year just as the tides rose and fell and the harvests came and went—these were the rhythms of the world. But now those rhythms had faltered. For Saad, for the people of Solus, the sun was out of alignment, its axis drifting, unhinged. The world was out of balance and the empire was to blame.
Or so the people think. Sarra knew better of course. She had known the sky would not darken. In the bowels of the Ata’Sol, there stood a curious device that predicted the exact hour of the annual eclipse. That morning, the mechanism had predicted this exact event—that there would be no eclipse. There was a second device in the Empyreal Domain, but the Ray had made no announcement and no one else knew the truth of the day, so she had chosen to act on what she’d learned.
Even now there was worry on the Protector’s face, worry in his tightly clutched fists as he leaned over the low wall, watching as the crowds overturned carts and ripped banners, smashing urns and overturning braziers. Thousands of angry men, women, and children lifted oil lamps and cast them onto carts and rooftops, tearing spears away from soldiers, and stealing oil from shops. Fire rippled through the crowded city. Smoke drifted from rooftop to rooftop, spreading like their rage. “Attend to the rioters,” Saad ordered.
Soldiers bolted from the tower, beating a path through the crowds, calling to the city guard, hurrying toward the distant courtyard where the false Mother stood on the Shroud Wall, where the emperor stood behind his veiled window. The shadow of Tolemy, the god-emperor of the Soleri, retreated from the screen, but the white-robed girl, Sarra’s surrogate, continued her vigil, The Book of the Last Day of the Year held before her in trembling hands by an acolyte. The priestess read the prayer, the solemn vigil, the words that were spoken each year at the Devouring. That was my duty, thought Sarra.
Now the rioters crowded at the base of that Shroud Wall, pushing aside a cadre of well-armed soldiers, men holding shields as wide as their shoulders and spears twice their height. The rioters scaled the narrow stair, climbing to the place where Sarra’s proxy stood, hands raised, reading from the book. The mob engulfed the narrow walk, their bodies sweeping over the balcony like waves tumbling over rocks, washing away the soldiers, drowning the white robes of her priestess.
Sarra gripped the rail.
On the wall, the girl who wore Sarra’s robe ceased her praying. The boy who held The Book of the Last Day of the Year faltered, and the ancient manuscript, the tome from which the words had been read for millennia, fell from his hands. Fumbling for the book, the boy lost his balance and plummeted from the balcony. For a moment, Sarra thought Garia would follow the boy. The white-robed priestess teetered at the balcony’s edge, the rioters surrounding her.
One tugged at her robe. She whirled, trying to free herself, moving desperately to avoid the pilgrim’s hold, to find shelter, an exit—a way to escape the encircling rioters, but there was none. There was no escape. She had sent Garia to stand among the crowds while she was safe in the Protector’s Tower, sheltered from the riots, from everyone except Saad himself.
The rioters took Garia.
The men who had once been pilgrims stripped her bare, naked in front of the city.
Sarra turned to Saad. Her eyes flashed with victory, her calm face a contrast to the churning violence and shouts from the crowd. “The wall was not safe for the Mother Priestess,” she said, nodding slightly, tilting her head toward the crowds and indicating the place where the rioters had finished their work, where the body of the girl who was once Garia Asni lay like an urn dropped upon the stones, broken and scattered. In truth, Sarra had not been certain what would happen to the priestess who stood upon the wall, but she’d guessed it would not be good.
“The second death,” muttered Saad.
Sarra bowed her head. The girl was not simply dead. The crowd had given her the second death, the end from which there was no afterlife. A dismembered corpse, a body torn apart, could never enter the next life.