‘You’ve known him for a few days,’ said Rate. ‘Fucked him a few times. And he’s really not quite what you think he is. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Come and sit down and have some fish.’
The fire and the dark and the power in her. She braced herself, closed her eyes, summoned up her strength. She had defeated armed men in her Temple. She was the knife of God, the holiest woman in Irlast. She had no fear of them. She could destroy them. There was nobody in all the world she need fear. She understood that, looking at them, two men who thought they could harm her, she, she who was the Chosen of the God. She had kept life and death balanced. The most powerful woman in the world.
The campfire flickered. Darkness growing around them. Tobias’s face looked strained. Rate whimpered and took a step back. Fear in the air, alive, licking at them. Thalia raised her hands.
The campfire flickered. She sat down.
She was in the midst of a wilderness. She’d die anyway, or worse, without them. All kinds of power lay in her. But she had absolutely no idea how to survive in the wilds.
‘Clever girl,’ said Tobias.
Thalia stared at him. He paled. Looked away.
‘I want to see him.’
‘Not a good idea,’ said Rate.
‘I want to see him. Now.’ The High Priestess of Great Tanis. Rate and Tobias nodded, led her round to the wagon. She noticed Tobias kept his hand on the hilt of his sword.
Marith sat slumped, propped up against the canvas of the wall, his hands bound behind his back. His eyes were open, staring blankly at things she could not see. His mouth moved silently, shaping the same meaningless sound over and over. Spittle trickled over his lips.
‘Hatha,’ Rate said. ‘I wouldn’t waste your breath trying to talk to him. The amount he’s taken, he wouldn’t understand a word you were saying. Tobias did try to warn you. Really not worth you caring about, see?’
Thalia bent down beside her lover. Hopeless. His face did not respond, not even a flicker of his eyes. Cautiously, she reached out and touched him. He didn’t move. ‘Marith,’ she whispered. No response. ‘Marith.’ Louder. Nothing.
‘Told you it wasn’t a good idea,’ said Rate. ‘The fish is getting cold. Come and eat.’
‘I—’ The way his face had shone, looking at her. The way he’d been so afraid of her, then smiled, then laughed in her arms.
Marith made a mumbling sound. Spittle trickled down his face.
No, she thought. She certainly didn’t need to stay with him.
She went back and sat down by the campfire and ate fish with Rate and Tobias. His presence blazed behind her in the wagon, grating on her mind. They felt it too, she saw, jumping at shadows every time the fire crackled, their eyes sliding away reluctant to look at her. Stinking of guilt.
That night, she dreamed again of herself and Marith crowned in silver, seated on golden thrones. A beautiful dream. Woke groggy and frightened, to hear Rate and Tobias still awake, talking about him.
‘… could just kill him,’ Rate was saying.
‘Oh, I’m tempted, lad. Very tempted indeed.’ The fire crackled and she missed whatever else Tobias said.
‘… pay to do it for us,’ Tobias was saying when she could hear clearly again. ‘Feels … cleaner, don’t you think?’
‘More profitable, that means, then, does it?’
A kind of sigh. ‘Yeah. That too.’
‘So how much?’
‘Ten talents. She gave me two already, when I met her in Sorlost.’
‘Gods, Tobias. There anyone in your life you’ve not screwed over for coin?’
‘Coin never stabbed a man in the back, Rate, lad. Or the front or the gut or the head, come to that. It wasn’t a definite thing, anyway. Just … if things went one way and not another, be good to know where she was and how to contact her. That we might be coming this way. Take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves to you screaming and obviously wealthy. Find out who they are, where they’re lodged. Let them know you might be interested in discussing certain things. Very pleased, she was, thinking of ways to kill him, once she’d got over the shock of him being alive.’
Thalia curled up tighter, tried not to hear them. Guilt. Guilt. Shame. He had been their prisoner all the time, then, she thought.
The next morning Rate and Tobias smiled at her like nothing had happened, and spoke to her kindly and cheerfully, and she helped with the horses and preparing breakfast, and they rode on. Silence from the wagon. Just don’t look, she thought. Don’t look. The sunlight was golden on the grasslands, the trees were bronze and green and gold. Rate found some ripe plums and gave her one, it was sweet and tart and the juice ran down her chin. A herd of deer ran on ahead of them. Tobias pointed out a kestrel on the wing.
PART THREE
THE LIGHT OF THE SUN
Chapter Forty-Two
It was raining in Sorlost.
Rain was a rare occurrence. A beautiful thing. The smell of it rolled off the ground, sweet and heavy, exhilarating. Dust and ashes were churned into thick black mud, richly fertile, staining the city’s stones. Dust into earth. Growing things. Children splashed naked in the puddles, shrieking. The corpses of drowned vermin floated on the water. Everything clean.
Lord Tanis lives in a palace soaked with water, whose gardens smell always of damp and growth. But we men must live in the dry places. Until it rains, and we think we see, for a moment, what it must mean to be God. Or so Maran Gyste had once written, anyway. But he wasn’t half as good a poet as everyone said.
At the edge of the Court of the Fountain, Orhan stood in the rain. It always made him think of his childhood, watching the children dance in it. The brilliance of the memories. The scent of it, evoking pain like prodding a sore tooth. Raindrops bounced off the marble of the fountain, beating down the jets of water. The paving stones ran a thumb’s height deep with water pitted like hammered tin. A lake, shining where a city had been drowned. The whores and hatha addicts and beggars picked through it as carefully as wading birds, fishing for treasures, rainwater streaming off them and all the colours of their clothes and skin running and blurring and staining the ground.