Something of a holiday, rainfall. Not many people about in it other than to enjoy it. Commerce ground to a halt as street sellers rushed to get their goods under cover, shop owners pulled closed their shutters, shoppers and errand boys ran for shelter or threw back their heads to dance. A spice merchant swore and screamed as a sack of saffron overturned, tiny red threads floating like worms and the water swirling yellow. A litter lurched by, its canopy cascading water, the bearers’ hands slipping on its waxed poles. Two women squeaked and squealed and almost fell over on high jewelled shoes, while the man with them struggled to wrap a great bale of silk in his cloak. A merchant selling garlands laughed like a madman as his lovely paper offerings dissolved into mush on his brass tray.
And then it stopped again, and the sun came out, and the steam rose from the soaked ground. The sky was filled with birds and butterflies and everything blossomed, drinking up the water, sucking it up, holding on to it, eddies swirling in the corners of the streets, rivers rushing down steps and across courtyards depositing fallen leaves and crushed petals and dead animals and a thousand pieces of the detritus of the human world. Orhan watched them float together down the Street of Flowers. He waded through the dirty waters, his guards picking their way behind him. Three street children ran past shouting and the spray spattered his clothes. Waves, they made, as they ran. The youngest, a girl, turned to laugh at Orhan, soaked and bespattered with mud. A bag of sweetmeats drifted past, rocking on the water like a boat. She bent to pick it up, stared at Orhan in challenge and triumph, disappeared off down the street.
He walked on into the Grey Square where the Temple squatted in a pool of silver, its reflection staring back at it, wondering, lost in contemplation of itself and what it was and what it had been. Its knowledge of him beat off it like the rain.
Filthy and soaking with the smell of steam rising from his clothes, he went up the steps and through the high narrow door. The dark was the more terrible, for the lush smell of the world outside. Suddenly cut out, replaced by metal and stone and candle wax and fire. Blood. Under everything, always and forever, blood. The light burned his eyes as he stepped through into the Great Chamber. He knelt a moment before an altar. There was a hush, supplicants and priestesses looking at him, knowing who he was. Our saviour, some of they still thought of him. The man who saved the city from something, though no one quite seemed certain any more from what.
‘Please tell the Imperial Presence that the Lord of the Rising Sun is here to see him,’ Orhan commanded a priestess when she approached him. She nodded mutely. He stood and waited, pretending to ignore everyone around him, looking at the walls.
‘This way, My Lord,’ the priestess said. Orhan recognized her as one of those who had arranged the candles he had purchased. A young woman’s face beneath her mask, plump and bright-eyed. She directed him to a Temple slave who led him out of the Great Chamber through the small doorway in the east wall that he had often stared at wondering about as a child. Dark and narrow, like the main entrance. Another half-closed mouth. Life and death crushed at him, gnashing silent teeth. How can they stand it to live here? he thought. But they must be used to it, I suppose.
Beyond the dark were antechambers and offices and all the dull, fascinating bureaucracy of the place. Initiated into the secrets of its heart. A little courtyard to provide light and air, with a pool of blue water upon which lilies floated, its tiled floor gleaming, shiny with rain. A short, windowless corridor. A silver gilt door. The slave tapped and opened it and Orhan went in.
‘The Lord of the Rising Sun, My Lord.’
Tolneurn looked up from his desk. He was a short man, fat around his middle but with a thin face and thin hair; his neck looked too thick for his head. He stood and bowed low to Orhan.
‘Lord Emmereth.’
Orhan blinked, tried to draw his attention back to the office and the mundane things in hand. God’s knives, he was tired. On edge, his mind wandering.
The slave seated himself carefully in the corner, drew out paper and pen and inkstone. Tolneurn stood and waited. Orhan sat with a sigh.
‘The new High Priestess—’ he began.
‘Demerele is learning quickly. As one would expect. Though she still finds some aspects of her role … more difficult than others. She will learn, I am sure.’ Tolneurn smiled wearily. ‘The situation is not without precedent. The High Priestess Liseel died of deeping fever before her successor had even been born. The High Priestess Mar’—’ Tolneurn raised his eyes to Orhan a moment ‘—‘the High Priestess Mar fled the Temple in the company of a slave, leaving a girl of twelve to replace her. In both cases, the Temple managed and the world did not end.’ Tolneurn paused. ‘After six years here, it sometimes surprises me that such things have happened so rarely.’
You’ve been rehearsing this, haven’t you? Orhan thought. Marshalling your arguments, cueing up your lines. Refuse to make this easy for me, just to see me driven to say it. ‘Indeed. But she cried again, I’m told, after the last sacrifice. Worse than before.’
Tolneurn’s pale eyes flickered. ‘She’s a child of five.’
You bastard. Orhan took a deep breath. ‘She’s the High Priestess of the Lord of Living and Dying. She who brings death to the dying and life to those who wait to be born. People heard her. What do you think they are starting to say?’
‘She’s a child of five,’ Tolneurn said again.
Yes. Yes, she is. A child of five. ‘The city is unsettled enough as it is, with everything that has happened. We cannot afford for people to get alarmed by a child crying. Rumours will start. Have started already. Omens of misfortune. She must be controlled. The crying must stop.’ His voice sounded mercilessly in his ears. ‘Will stop, do you understand? Immediately.’
Tolneurn picked at things on his desk, looked at his hands. He said slowly, ‘If people are alarmed, if they see omens of misfortune … Let me be frank with you, My Lord. We had peace, as far as I am aware, before certain things occurred. We had a High Priestess, and her successor had just been chosen; there was nothing to concern us save the quality of the next grape harvest. I hear the things the people pray for, Lord Emmereth. Every day, I hear them. They do not ask for change. They do not ask for the great days of Empire returned. None of them, not even the High Lords. They do not ask for blood on the streets. If they believe in misfortunes, it is up to the Emperor to reassure them. We are concerned with life and death in this place, not the mundane frivolities that lie between. As the Emperor and the Palace and the Nithque have made abundantly and repeatedly clear. Omens of misfortune are your business, not ours.’