To Tobias’s intense relief, Rate returned just after midday with clothes, fresh bread, dried meat and raisins, and a lot of news.
‘The gates are open. The main ones, the Gate of Dust and the Gate of the Evening, anyway. Lots of soldiers around, but I don’t think they’re looking for people, just on edge generally. I spoke to a few people while I was shopping: nobody’s quite sure what happened but the general view seems to be that the Immish attempted some kind of armed attack. The Emperor is said to be alive: or, at least, nobody’s saying he’s dead. A couple of the nobles started skirmishing but that all seems to have faded out too. Several Immish families got it in the neck, though. Mob went through and torched a couple of Immish merchants’ houses and shops. ‘‘Death to the murdering foreigners’’, usual sort of thing. The Street of the Money-lenders was quite badly hit. Several of the blokes lynched there may not actually have been Immish, in the bright light of a new day and all, but you know how these things can go. The big thing they’re all talking about is that their Great Temple was desecrated. Very unlucky, obviously. Several of the priestesses are dead. Including the High Priestess. The one who … you know … children and everything …’
‘Good riddance,’ said Alxine with a shudder. ‘Hardly a great loss to the world.’
‘Oh, they’re all terribly upset. Some of them seem to believe their dead will stop dying if the High Priestess isn’t around to, um, encourage things along. Point out enough people must have died in the last few days to rather obviously disprove that, and they just look at you funny. Point out people not dying sounds quite good too and they get really antsy and start muttering under their breath.’
‘First rule of success in our line of work is not to bate the locals, Rate,’ said Alxine. ‘Especially not when you’ve just butchered half their government.’
Curious. More than curious. ‘Odd thing to happen the same night, don’t you think? Unless …’ Tobias frowned. ‘Do they say who did it?’
‘They seem quite convinced it was the Immish. Got a couple of dead Immish blokes they’re waving around with their heads chopped off.’ Rate looked up suddenly. ‘Fuck. We did it?’
Alxine whistled. ‘Nobody mentioned that. Thank all the gods Skie didn’t give us that to do. I wouldn’t have gone in there for any money.’
Which is presumably why he didn’t tell anyone, Tobias thought. Far less risky in practice, killing a load of women, but … Hired soldiers could combine profane rationality with a superstition that would cripple most hedge witches. He’d probably have thought twice about doing it, if he’d been asked. So Skie had taken a couple of particularly unlucky buggers and done it himself. And been unlucky himself, hopefully.
‘Well, they certainly got value for money out of us lot,’ Tobias said.
Have a quick lunch of odds and ends left in the house larder and then just try and get out. The city was alive with fear; the air was seething around them, there was a smell of smoke and burning, ash from the palace was still blowing on the wind. Small knots of armed men occasionally marched past, staring at them suspiciously as men out walking in a group, but asking no questions. People hurried about their tasks with wary faces. In the smaller streets children played hesitantly, unsure why their parents were afraid but feeling it and responding to it in kind. Even the street whores and the hatha addicts kept silent and resentful in the shadows, frightened and sullen that this trouble had come and disturbed their painful little lives.
They skirted wide round the Great Temple, agreeing without speaking that it was not worth going too close. Soldiers do not believe in gods until they do something to offend them. A place best avoided at the best of times by those not born in the Empire, the Temple. Decorated now by Skie’s head.
The streets became busier as they neared the gate. People were moving towards it with bundles, foreigners, Immish especially, frightened for what had happened, trying to get away. It’s all over now, Marith wanted to shout. There’s not much point you leaving now, is there? Everything’s settling down again and you can just get on with your lives. The Emperor’s on his throne and the city is saved from chaos. I know: the man walking next to me made me leave him there.
In a narrow street leading down to the Gate of Dust, they stopped for a moment, sitting to rest on a carved bench outside a wine shop with shuttered windows and a broken door. The roofs of the buildings almost met above them, reducing the sky to a thin high ribbon, shining colourless bright. The air was soft and cool with a smell of stone. It is a beautiful city, Marith thought, looking around him at the carved flowers decorating the building opposite. Alxine was tired out already, his face pale and sweaty; he was struggling to keep going. If he was anyone else, Marith thought, Tobias would have killed him by now and had done with it. Should have let him do it in the palace and saved Alxine several days of pain. Tobias looked drawn and weary too. Only Rate seemed even half alive.
A movement, a flash of something golden and shining, made Marith stand up and step away from the other men. A woman was pressed up against the wall of a narrow alleyway across the street, four men in a circle around her, leering at her, one holding a knife. Nothing to concern himself with, except that the woman was rather more attractive than most. He almost turned away again.
And then the woman raised her face towards him, and he almost fell to his knees in the street.
Light. A light in her, a light radiating out of her, that shone in Marith’s face and almost blinded him with its warmth. The sun rising. The sun on bright water. The sun through green leaves. Stabbed in his heart and his mind. Brought tears into his eyes and made his body tremble. The air screamed around him, hateful and cold.
Living and dying. Fear and pain.
Joy. Desire. Forgiveness. Love.
Marith stepped towards her. The four men turned, shouting at him. He came towards them and even though his eyes never left the woman’s face something in him made them run from him. Then suddenly he was alone with her in the lip of a filthy alleyway, the light pouring from her, her face filling his vision with light.
She almost fell into his arms, weeping. The light died out of her face and he saw that she was exhausted, her clothes dirty and torn. Her skin was dark rich brown, like sweet chestnuts, her hair long and black as night. Her eyes as she stared at him were brilliant deep twilight blue. The blue of oceans and storms at evening. The blue of the sky before dawn. The blue of weeping, and of joy.
Emmna therelen, mesereth meterelethem
Isthereuneth lei
Isthereuneth hethelenmei lei.
Interethne memestheone memkabest
Sesesmen hethelenmei lei.
In the midst of the desert,
You came to me like water,
Your face gazing, like water.