‘I was. Fine … I’m tired … Can we just stay here for a while?’ He frowns a little, his voice confused. ‘I don’t seem to be able to see any more.’
‘You really should be able to handle it better, you know. What with the divine blood and all.’
The dark-haired boy rolls over, rests his head in the fair-haired boy’s lap. ‘I don’t want to be able to handle it better. I don’t want to have divine blood.’ He sighs as the fair-haired boy begins to stroke his forehead with smooth white hands. ‘I just want … I don’t know what I want. You know what I want. To make everything go away.’
‘Everything?’ The fair-haired boy smiles down at him. Holds the bottle to the dark-haired boy’s lips. ‘This helps, though, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ The dark-haired boy sighs again, drinks again, reaches out to hold the fair-haired boy’s hand. ‘It helps.’
He lies for a while in silence, a sad smile on his face. The fair-haired boy watches him with pale, wide eyes.
‘When I’m king,’ the dark-haired boy says slowly at last, his voice very far away, drifting into sleep, ‘when I’m king, I’ll probably have to stop sleeping in the gutter. Kings very seldom sleep in the gutter, you know.’
The fair-haired boy laughs. ‘Aralbarneth the Good did. Dressed as a beggar.’
A long, possibly thoughtful pause. ‘That was to understand the cares of his people. Not because he was dead drunk.’
‘Well, you’re not likely to end up being known as “the Good” anyway, are you?’
‘I’m not?’
The fair-haired boy strokes his friend’s hair again, smoothing the dark curls, gently touching the flushed face. ‘No.’
The dark-haired boy sits up again, drains the bottle and throws it across the street. It shatters in a shower of glass, spilling dregs of an oily liquid dark as blood. ‘You’re probably right.’ He curls himself closer into the fair-haired boy’s lap. ‘It does help. Thank you.’
‘For you, anything,’ the fair-haired boy says. He bends over to kiss the dark-haired boy’s cheek. ‘We can go out again tomorrow, if you like. Other things I can think of, that might help more.’
The dark-haired boy nods, half-asleep. His eyes are red rimmed and impossibly weary. ‘That would be nice,’ he says dreamily, clutching the fair-haired boy’s hand.
The fair-haired boy runs his fingers through the dark-haired boy’s shining curls. ‘Anything,’ he says again.
Chapter Eighteen
I am the High Priestess of Great Tanis the Lord of Living and Dying. The centre and meaning of my life is to kill for the God. For a thousand thousand years, the people of the Sekemleth Empire have offered themselves up to death beneath the knife.
The people of Tarboran built vast tombs to their dead, as high as watchtowers, gilded and carved and fragrant with cedar wood. The money they must have spent, the time they must have laboured! A rich man’s tomb was planned for him from the day he was born. Imagine it, going every day to supervise the construction of your own burial place, taking pride in it as the greatest achievement of your life. Looking forward to dying so that you can be buried and dead. And then the fire came down upon Tarboran, and the tombs were burnt, and all the gold and glory lost. No one remembers their names, now, the tomb builders.
The people of Immier and Caltath, by contrast, feared death so intently and so absurdly that their kings became determined they should not die, and had themselves declared living gods who would rule forever. And, indeed, they did not die. But not dying is not a pleasant thing, in the end, and their rule was terrible, for they had no fear and no longing and no hope. And the people feared death the more, when they saw their kings living on and on without end, while they died. Immier fell in ruin, its king raving mad, its people mad likewise. They say plants grew up in the streets and the fields blackened with weeds, while the people sat in their houses praying for immortality. Caltath was taken by the sea, drowned by floods in the course of a single night. Its king alone survived, clinging to the very tip of the highest mountain, now an island in a churning sea. Some say he sits there still, immortal king of a barren rock.
Amrath wanted to kill the world. His banners were made of skin and bone. His watchword was ‘death’. He mortared His fortresses with the blood of His enemies. He killed the people of His own cities, in the end. Then He died and there was no one left to bury Him, and the wild beasts gnawed His bones.
We are not like that. This is Sorlost, greatest of cities, that was old before Tarboran built her tombs, before the Godkings were even born. We live and we die. Not one without the other. Death is as natural as life, we say, and as great a blessing. No light without darkness. No joy without pain. Life is a glory. Death is a sweet release.
We lie, of course.
Chapter Nineteen
He’d missed Darath.
Three years, it had been. They’d sat and talked for a long time, after. Like they’d used to. Darath’s golden-black hair had some grey around the temples that hadn’t been there before, no longer quite the perfect creature he’d been. Only three years.
Starting something up again was a bad idea. Starting something up again now was a very bad idea. But Darath was right: nothing got a man’s blood up like the prospect of someone else’s imminent death. He and Darath understood each other. Fitted each other. Might even say they loved each other.
Bil would be upset. She’d been happier since things had fallen apart the last time. It must have been hard for her; Orhan wasn’t callous enough not to realize that, nor not to feel guilty about it. She’d known, when she married him, but the difference between knowing and seeing had perhaps been greater than she’d realized. There had been evenings when the tension had leached into the walls.