The Unholy Consult (Aspect-Emperor #4)

How could she not be so obviously … broken …

She glares up into Serwa’s face, struck yet again by the heinous profundity of the witch’s Mark—as deep as any sorcerer of rank despite her tender years. A peevish instinct clamours for the Eye to open so she might see her younger sister’s damnation … and she recoils in horror from the thought.

Was any family ever so deranged, so insanely convoluted, as the Anas?rimbor?

She glimpses the bones of the Whalemothers, vertebrae in the dust, ribs heaped like broken bows.

Mimara suddenly laughs, not in any shrill, defensive way, but in the manner of those stumbling across glaring absurdities hiding in plain site. Why bandy words with D?nyain? She surprises her witch-sister, brushes past and throws herself into the warlike mob beyond. Perhaps it isn’t such a curse being the sole weed in the garden, the one soul broken. There is nothing they can do, no harm they could inflict, that she hasn’t already endured—short of killing her.

And that, she knows, the God will not allow.

She answers to a higher power.

Heedless, Mimara barges through a gallery of masculine shock, of towering, warlike Men, unwashed and armoured, making way agog. They yield, it seems, as much to her pregnancy as to her paternity or sex, astounded by the sight of something so bound to hearth and home, to the hidden world of bullied or cherished wives, arising here, in the fearsome shadow of Golgotterath.

Serwa cries out and curses close behind. She seizes Mimara’s shoulder just as she pushes clear the intervening caste-nobles, into the circuit of her step-father’s light. The Swayali Grandmistress tries to spin her about, but Mimara resists …

Together, they bear witness to a scene chiselled from Scripture. Lords and Schoolmen watch, some solemn and rapt, others cracking for passion, and still others singing, their heads back, their mouths merry pits in unruly beards. Her step-father floats cross-legged within their circle, illuminated from all angles, draping folds of the purest white, a plate of luminous gold shining behind his mane. A young Kidruhil officer, Norsirai, kneels before him, about to clutch and kiss the Imperial knee. And Kelmomas moves from his place beside his sire … so fast as to scarce be seen …

Gazes turn in singing faces. A knife is plucked from nowhere, agleam with reflected light. A leap … unnatural for any human child.

Kelmomas lands with his back to his handiwork, immediately before Mimara and Serwa, his stance impeccable, the blade now missing from his hand.

Mimara catches the boy’s gaze, even as the kneeling Norsirai jerks and sways behind him.

Murder … is Mimara’s singular thought. Serwa cries out with real horror, bolting past their littlest brother to the slumping Kidruhil officer. Shouts of alarm and dismay swallow the booming hymn. She glimpses the pommel jutting from the youth’s temple the instant before her sister obscures the mortal image. Kelmomas turns to follow the astonished line of her gaze.

She knows Serwa loves the man …

Then, impossibly, he is standing before her, the Holy Aspect-Emperor of the Three Seas. Her Mother’s all-powerful husband, close enough to touch, and as always, taller than she remembered. He holds Kelmomas kicking and squirming beneath one arm. “He was an assassin!” the little boy is shrieking. “Father! Father!”

And in her soul she screams, Open! Open! You must open!

But the Eye refuses to listen. It is as stubborn as she.

And her step-father’s mortal blue eyes see … before waxing sudden, shining white.

Sorcerous muttering sets claws upon every surface, visible and invisible.

Lightning brilliance. And the Holy Aspect-Emperor is gone, leaving her blinking at the chaotic convergence of Men surging forward, the Lords of the Ordeal.

“Breathe!”

Her sister’s shout?

Mother clasps her shoulders, crying out, staring at her feet.

“Mimara? Mimara?”

She looks down, craning to see past her belly, sees her shins and calves glistening, the dust soaked black. Only then does she feel the flush of heat and wet across her thighs and feet.

The first of the pangs strike, the clench and cramp of things too deep to be her own. It was too early!

She grunts in shock, cries out.

Proyas is dead.

Her mother has her.

Her mother has her.



Sorweel topples. The earth bruises his cheek. Blood spills as if from his ear.

Life is famine. To draw breath is to starve for want of past and future … to suffocate.

He twitches prostrate across the rugs. The Lords of the Ordeal cry out astonished. He glimpses the Triple-Crescent Pouch through the trample of booted feet, sees it kicked into stamping obscurity, back into the nowhere from whence it came. He struggles to raise his cheek, but his head is an iron anvil.

To witness the rotting of instants and nothing else. To be the decay of presence, the forever failing light.

He has always burned as he burns now. The onlookers rush forward, a congregation of concerned shadows. Through fire, the beautiful witch watches him appalled. Serwa. She cradles his head upon her lap, coos reassurance, commands …

“Breathe.”

The Mother is bounty … birth …

“He is dead, Pri—”

“Breathe!”

The Mother is the bearer of all …

“Breathe, Horse-King!”

Warm arms. A cradle of sunlight. Fields whisk endless and nubile green. The earth aches for monstrous fertility.

“Sorweel!”

A feminine humming …

“You must breathe!”

Rising horrific from his bones.

Shush.

Shush, Sorwa, my Sweet.

Set aside the hammer of your heart … the kite of your breath …

Cease your work … your play …

I have you, Sweetling.

Doze in my holy arms.





CHAPTER

THIRTEEN


The Occlusion


To spy your enemy from afar is to spy the very thing he is blind to: his place in the greater scheme. To spy yourself from afar is to live in perpetual fear.

—DOMILLI, Rudiments





Early Autumn, 20 New Imperial Year (4123, Year-of-the-Tusk), Golgotterath.

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