The Temple shone with candles, flames proud and tall and unwavering, smoke sweet as honey cakes. The priestesses sang for joy, where only a few days ago there was the heavy cloud of grief like vile air because of Ausa. Their voices rose in a great golden chant, the hymn to light and living, the song so beautiful it cannot be heard without weeping. I have done something so terrible to Ausa. I have seen the hour and the instrument of my death. But in the light and the singing and the glory I felt only happiness, great happiness like a warmth in my heart. There is no fear, there is no sorrow. There is life and there is dying, and we stand before them, lit by the sun.
After the ceremony, I went back to my bedroom, and sat for a long while alone. A servant brought me bread and cream and honey and I ate it gladly. Only a few days before I fast again, before the next killing time. It is one of the less sacred things I must tell Demmy, when she is older, that the High Priestess must enjoy eating when she can. These funny little things, like the trick of kneeling without leaving one’s legs numb, or how to keep awake and thoughtful in the long night preceding a sacrifice, in the burning light before the High Altar in the candle heat. Odd details that Caleste taught me, and I must pass on to Demmy in my turn.
I lay down in my bed and thought how strange it is, that down below in another little room another girl is lying, and in ten years from now I will be dead and she will be sleeping in this room for the first time. Still it does not concern me as I thought. All I feel is peace, and the golden singing, and the understanding that we are alive.
I will go and watch the children play again tomorrow and every day for the next ten years. I will eat bread and cream and honey and read old tales of princesses. I will wear the golden dress on feast days and be as beautiful as Manora, and inspire terrible poetry about my hair and my skin.
I will live, and live, and live.
Chapter Twenty-Five
They kept Marith shut up alone in his room all night and most of the following day.
The night was the worst. He screamed and pleaded with them, but no one came. He sat in the dark and stared at the wall. It would not surprise him if they came to kill him. It would not surprise him if he died. He felt the dark close in around him, pressing on him, a great weight stifling him, smothering him. Go away. Make everything go away. Make the world a good place. Oh please. Oh please. ‘Carin’, he cried out, but Carin would never come.
He awoke to shafts of bright sunlight streaming down on his face, and for a long time he lay still, uncertain as to where he was. The light moved slowly along the white wall; his eyes followed it, empty and tired. The door opened and Tobias came in with bread and water; he stared at it for a while then ate slowly, choking on the taste. His eyes hurt. His mind hurt. The light moved along the white wall, paler and weaker now. Wavering. Shadows began to grow and darkness to build in the sky. Things crawled across the walls, pressing on his skin. Good things. Things that hurt. He closed his eyes and opened them and the room was darker. The blades of light had faded away to ghosts.
The door opened again. Tobias came in.
‘Get up,’ Tobias said shortly. ‘Navala’s bringing a bath up for you. You get up, look presentable, explain to her you’ve been ill if she asks anything. Then you get washed and shaved and dressed and put this’ – he dumped Marith’s armour on the bed and covered it with the blanket – ‘on under your clothes. And then you come downstairs with a sweet smile on your face and do exactly what I tell you. Got it?’
Marith nodded slowly. He was going to go and kill people, he thought dully. Or get killed himself. He wasn’t sure he particularly cared which. Navala brought up hot water for him and he smiled at her sweetly and said in a soft voice that he’d been ill.
He came down the stairs into the common room clean and shining and beautiful, a well-dressed young lord with sad eyes. Alyet smiled at him as she passed. His face was raw and itchy like it was being eaten away beneath the bones of his skull. His hands shook so badly he had to hold them clenched.
The others were sitting at the table, tense. He joined them, feeling himself falling with every step he took. Tobias looked at him for a moment and then shoved a cup over to him. He gulped it down, almost weeping with relief.
Tobias said, ‘Okay. We need to go now. Ready?’ He followed them out slowly. Alyet waved at them as they went.
They walked through the dusk, long shadows falling around them. They passed two men in white silk fighting in silence, their shadows cast and recast in the torchlight, dancing on the walls. They passed a woman crouched in a doorway, her face a mass of sores. They passed a great red silk litter, lit from within, carried on the shoulders of dark-robed figures masked with hangman’s hoods.
They came at last to the walls of the palace, and they stopped a moment, and stared.
It was beautiful, in the strange, grotesque way of Sorlostian architecture. In the twilight dark it seemed to glow, the great domes and towers shimmering gold and silver, the white walls beneath like a full moon. It looked like the crests of waves, or snow falling. Birds wheeling in the sky. Coloured glass glittered across its surface, deep greens and blues and reds. Too beautiful and brilliant to be real. Like it would shatter if you touched it, or dissolve. Quicksilver poured from a jewelled cup, too bright, too liquid. The evening sun on clear water. A face reflected in tarnished bronze. Absurdly grand compared to his father’s stronghold, so fragile-looking, also, as if it had been built out of sea foam. But Malth Elelane had been made to be defensible, hard grey stone above hard grey water, cold. This place had no need to repel invaders, for no invaders had ever made it through Sorlost’s bronze walls.
His younger brother had been here. He’d come on a semi-official visit a few years ago, when he’d been the expendable one, the one no one cared about. Been received in the palace, knelt with just the right degree of near-respect before the great golden throne on which had sat what he had described as ‘a bored-looking man with a sour face’. Couldn’t remember a word of what they’d said to each other: the man’s birth family had been fishmongers in a city in the desert, for gods’ sake, what could he possibly have said that would be of interest to an Altrersyr? Tiothlyn had been more interested in the girls he’d met. Marith had envied the boy, at the time, that he’d been allowed to travel.
They approached the palace warily. No one around, no trouble so far. Too easy, thought Marith. Not right. Should be guards. People. But his head was pounding and he shook the thought away. He’d been thinking about home, he remembered. It would be nice to see it again, towers shining in the sun, reflecting back the swell of the sea at their feet. To sit before the fire in his bedchamber, listening to the crash of waves and the scream of seabirds. To ride down to the great wide expanse of Morr Bay and swim there. To lie on the warm sand afterwards and let Carin stroke his hair.
Tobias said, ‘Here we are, then.’
Marith blinked. Trying to remember. Get out of the memories. Here we are, then. Here.