All true. All quite correct. He’d worked that out for himself, in the dark, trying to sleep, listening for the sound of an assassin’s knife. If March had killed him, he would be some kind of Imperial hero, tragic and mourned, the Emperor clinging on to his wise words. The very absurdity of the attempt instead made him look ridiculous. He’d squirmed himself, talking about it. As thought it was a failure on his part. As though it was somehow embarrassing. Listen to this man, oh people of the Sekemleth Empire! Pay more in taxes! Stamp out corruption! Build up the army and feed the poor! He has a plan to make us great again! It will all be worth it! It will! Just ignore the fact that he can’t walk down the street without his own bodyguards being magically burned to death!
What was that I said? thought Orhan. That one child’s life is worth half a hundred other lives? That it would be different if it were my own child?
Darath said: ‘So, we go after him then?’
Ah, God’s knives, thought Orhan. What has become of us? ‘We’ll have to, I suppose.’
‘Poison? A quick knife while he sleeps? Poison would be easiest, surely?’
What has become of us? Orhan thought. What we did was supposed to be the end of it. A change, a remaking of Empire. A good thing. Now it’s begun, and it will just go on and on and more and more people will die until everything has slipped away into bloodshed.
You knew this would happen in the end, he thought. Just hoped otherwise.
‘Poison,’ he said.
Darath astonished him then by saying, ‘What about Elis’s wedding?’
‘Elis’s wedding?’ God’s knives. It would have to go ahead. Everybody pretend everything’s all right with the world. Elis’s wedding, Bil’s child …
‘So does March die before the event, or after it?’
Orhan thought suddenly that he was going to be sick. How have we come to this? How have we come to this? What have I done? It all just happened, so easily.
‘After. It will have to be after. Tie things together before pushing everything apart again. If I live that long … If March doesn’t try to again …’ He felt the blood rush to his face. It hadn’t been like this, before, plotting the death of an Emperor and all his servants. All they’d known of death was stories, and the white-clad men in the Court of the Fountain, empty and ready to die. Abstractions dying behind a curtain, a beautiful woman with blood-red hands. His own father dying, sick with fever, stinking, sweating, everyone relieved that it was so quick at the end. But once you had seen, it was so full of shame.
Darath said, ‘I’ll handle it.’ He squeezed Orhan’s hand. ‘Don’t think about it. You’ll just wake up one morning and it’ll be done.’
‘Don’t use anything too nasty.’
‘I’ll handle it, I said.’ A nasty gleam shone in Darath’s eyes, like the way he’d looked at Orhan after they’d broken up the last time, meeting at a party with a pretty thing in a diamond collar on his arm. I broke his heart, Orhan thought. I took him back and got him stabbed in the gut. And now this, because I’m too high and mighty to do it myself.
He pulled on a jacket to cover the sore red burns on his arm. ‘Let’s go to the Temple, then.’
Chapter Fifty-Four
A thaler bought an awful lot of candles. The Great Chamber of the Temple blazed with them, gold on the bronze walls. Even the black stone of the floor was golden. Orhan’s skin, and Darath’s, and the light reflected in Darath’s dark eyes. They ran over the altars, the wall sconces, the floor, serried ranks of flame. Perfumed with cloves and cinnamon and rose, the smell of sun and warmth and living in the old symbolism of the body’s senses. The most expensive candles possible. But still, a thaler bought an awful lot of candles. The heat made Orhan’s eyes water; he could see Darath was sweating.
The High Priestess knelt before the High Altar. Her hair hung over her face, her hands were raised to her mouth. She looked so tiny. So fragile. Orhan stared at her until Darath shoved him away. One life.
‘She’s fine,’ Darath whispered to him. ‘It’s what she does. Was born to do. Stop.’
She did draw the red lot, thought Orhan. If the God hadn’t wanted her … The God chose her. Just as the God spared me. Another priestess came up to the girl, said something to her. She moved her head, replied something, got up and walked away. He caught a glimpse of her face, pale and pinched with big eyes. It will be all right, Orhan tried to tell himself. And if it isn’t … One more life, he thought. What’s one more? The Treasury ledgers were terrible but he had some hope of improving them. Made some changes already. More to come. The letter to the Immish High Council had been answered almost respectfully. He’d had a very good idea about including better houses for the destitute and starving poor when rebuilding some of the streets damaged in the uproar. Listen to this man, oh people of the Sekemleth Empire! He has a plan to make us great again! It will all be worth it! It will!
Tam was dead. March was going to die. If March didn’t kill him and Darath first. What was one more life? Hers, or March’s, or his own? The city might yet be made better. And others might yet have better lives.
Human skin and honey. It sickens you, but it’s what’s needed to go on.
Other worshippers stared at them. Stared more when Orhan handed over a gleaming gold coin, voiced his desire to make offering in a loud, clear tone that carried around the muffled silence of the chamber, echoing on bronze and stone. The priestesses milled about him gasping and mouthing platitudes. Murmurs all around them: rumours of what had happened last night would be everywhere. So outré. So … bizarre. Louder, bolder murmurs when he explained that he had been saved from death at the hands of an assassin only by the great mercy of the God who smiled down on him. Darath smiled at him: you’re learning, Orhan. Showmanship is all.
In the golden light, so bright there were no shadows, Orhan knelt down before a small altar and prayed. ‘Great Lord Tanis, I come before You, to ask Your blessing of my life.’ A rational man. But a thankful one. It’s good, he thought, even with what I’ve done, it’s good being alive.
‘We live. We die. For these things, we are grateful,’ Darath repeated beside him. The scent of the candles was so strong, spice and flowers and the sweet honey of the wax. So he had knelt here before, with Bil, giving thanks for her child. So he had sat and given thanks for the life of the man he’d tried to kill. Strange and strange again, all the ways of the world. God forgave him, it seemed. Or did not altogether despise him, anyway. The first time since that night that he had set foot in the Temple without shuddering. The golden light danced around him, the movements of the worshippers making the candle flames flicker. A young woman heavily pregnant, a young man with the scars of the knife, an old couple with thin shaking hands like the branches of a dead tree. Priestesses, masked in silver and lapis, shapeless as rain clouds in their grey robes. He’d killed several of those.
No, not killed. Killed suggested action, danger, personal involvement, playing a role. Better to say he’d ordered several of them dead. More callous put that way, and more true.