That seed of all growth, the ageless queen, reclined on cushions in the center of the bed, her lower half covered by blankets. As always, Utuk’ku wore mourning colors—gown and gloves and hooded cloak of icy white—but the eyes that stared at him from the holes in her shining mask were as dark as the emptiness between stars.
She was staring at him, Viyeki abruptly realized—and he was staring back at the Mother of the People. Horrified by this accidental effrontery, he pressed his forehead against the tiles once more. “I offer the Garden a thousand thanks every day that you have returned to us, Majesty.”
An ivory mantis in a cage on the queen’s nightstand turned its head at Viyeki’s sudden movement, then resumed cleaning itself. The silence stretched. At last he looked up, stilling the urge to blurt out more praise and more thanks, because that would suggest weakness or guilt, both bad things to show before the queen. At last Utuk’ku nodded, a tiny dip of the head that was the first movement he had seen from her. Her words, when they came, were not spoken from her mouth, but leaped directly into his thoughts like molten metal poured into his ears, abrupt, shocking, and painful.
“When you walk long enough in the wastelands of sleep,” the queen said, “you discover that the stars are eyes.”
Viyeki had no idea what her words meant. “Yes, O Mother of All.”
“The queen is still not entirely well after her long sleep, Magister Viyeki.” Akhenabi’s harsh voice sounded more amused than anything else, but as always with Eldest, whether the queen, the Lord of Song, or one of their shrinking number of peers from the earliest years after arriving here from the Garden, it was impossible to guess what was hidden by the masks they all wore. Where the queen’s features were forever hidden behind smooth silver, Akhenabi concealed his face behind a wrinkled, nearly translucent tissue of pale leather covered all over with tiny, silvery runes, the whole stitched directly to the Lord of Song’s own skin at the sides, mouth, and the holes for the eyes. Whispered rumors said his mask had been the living face of one of Akhenabi’s rivals. “With the help of my Singers, the Mother of the People is recovering swiftly from her great exertions in the War of Return, may she live forever in glory,” Akhenabi continued. “But the welfare of our race cannot wait for the queen’s full health, so neither will she. She wishes me to speak to you about the projects your Builders have begun in the lower levels.”
“I am honored to make my report to our beloved monarch,” Viyeki said with a small revival of confidence: if the queen wanted to know about his work, perhaps this was not his day to be punished after all. “As High Magister Akhenabi can confirm, Great Queen, we are expanding the city on Nakkiga’s lower levels to make room for all the new slaves and halfblood workers.” He spoke with a certain satisfaction: he and his order had worked hard for their queen and their people during her long sleep. “Two hundred of my Builders lead the effort, commanding a thousand mortals and almost half that number of Tinukeda’ya—carry-men, delvers, and others. We will finish in time for Drukhi’s Day.”
“Enough,” said Akhenabi abruptly. “All this detail is meaningless, because the queen commands the work to stop now.”
For a moment, Viyeki could draw no breath. “But . . . but we—!” he began.
“Do you dispute with the queen, Magister?”
“I . . . no, never! I would not dream of it,” he said, struggling to find words. “But so much work has already been done!”
“That is unimportant, Magister Viyeki,” declared the Lord of Song. “The Mother of All has different employment in mind for you and your Order.”
Viyeki watched his most important undertaking as High Magister, the greatest source of his pride, crumble away in a moment, as though some foolish apprentice had struck at the wrong flaw in a stone facing. “Of course,” he said after a pause to collect his startled thoughts. “Our lives are hers, always.”
“Queen Utuk’ku is pleased to hear that,” said Akhenabi. “Because while our monarch was deep in the keta-yi’indra, some of her nobles made decisions that are rightly reserved to the Mother of All alone. Rebuilding the old city outside the mountain gates, for instance. Or taking mortals as concubines simply to create more children—more halfblood children!”
Viyeki felt an icy fist close on his heart.
“In fact, Her Majesty was astonished to discover all that had changed during her yi’indra,” Akhenabi went on, his voice carefully pitched to show his contempt for any who would try to alter the queen’s will. “Things never done since the Eight Ships landed had been ordered in her name while she slept! Yes, Magister, our queen is unhappy—very unhappy—especially with any nobles who made these decisions while claiming the good of all as their reason, but in fact to benefit their own bodily lust and greed.”
Of course the Lord of Song himself had been involved in every decision he now recited; but Akhenabi had not lived to be the queen’s oldest and most powerful courtier by taking the blame for mistakes.
Viyeki was beginning to believe his execution might be the purpose of the audience after all. So does Akhenabi intend to sacrifice me to preserve his own life, with Tzoja his unwitting excuse? But if I am given to the Hamakha torturers, I know things about the Lord of Song himself that Akhenabi might not wish the queen to hear. Could he only be warning me, then? Might he even be reminding me—the thought was bizarre but compelling—that we have common cause, a need to protect each other’s secrets now the queen is awake? In the midst of so much strangeness, this seemed perhaps the oddest idea of all, that Viyeki might be forced into permanent alliance with the Lord of Song. His old master Yaarike had been right—there was no stranger mistress than power.
“Thus, Magister,” said Akhenabi sharply, “you can see why with so many other unwanted changes revealed to our beloved mistress upon her awakening, the queen does not wish to see her Order of Builders laboring for the greater comfort of slaves. Our race will not dwindle without them or the halfbreeds that treacherous nobles have forced upon us. The only thing our beloved queen has not decided is whether some of these mistakes were honest ones or whether they were all attacks on her sovereignty. Do you grasp this, High Magister?”
“Of course,” Viyeki said. “I am grateful that she has shared her thoughts with an object as humble as myself.”
“Good. And the queen wishes you to summon back those Builders who are working to shore up the old walls as well. All your order will be given new labors.”
This was even more surprising than ending the expansion of the slave quarters. The old walls and their guard towers were some of Nakkiga’s best defenses against the mortals, and all of them were badly in need of repair.
“I am not certain I understand,” he said carefully. “Do we speak of the walls around Greater Nakkiga, the walls that surround our old city and territory outside the mountain? Because while the queen slept, the murdering Northmen won their way to our very doorstep precisely because those walls were in disrepair, but now we have almost made them safe again.”
“You waste time just as your workers waste efforts on those useless walls, Builder.” Akhenabi pronounced the order’s name with scorn. “The queen says we no longer need to protect ourselves from the mortals.”
Viyeki was astonished. “We . . . we do not?”
“No.” The Singer’s voice grew harsher. “Soon the mortals will need to protect themselves from us instead. The most recent War of Return is not over. But this audience nearly is.” Akhenabi spread his gloved hands in a signal that demanded attention, but Viyeki was so stunned by his words that he could not have spoken if he wished. “The queen commands that all building in the lower levels and at the outer walls of Nakkiga must stop. You will see to that personally, Magister Viyeki. Later you will receive word of what new works your order will undertake. Is that understood?”
It did not appear he was going to die, or at least not at this moment, but beyond that Viyeki could scarcely grasp what he had just been told. Was this a plot of Akhenabi’s to snatch even more power? Did the magician only pass along the queen’s wishes—did Utuk’ku truly mean to go to war with the mortals again?—or did he somehow press his own ideas in her name? Akhenabi was subtle beyond Viyeki’s understanding, but surely the Lord of Song knew how hopeless such a war would be. Even with the new generation of halfbreed warriors, the Hikeda’ya were still vastly outnumbered by the Northmen on their borders, let alone the rest of the mortals in all their ugly, wasp’s-nest cities scattered across the known world.
“I understand,” was all he said out loud. “I will do whatever my queen wishes, as always, and I thank her and the sacred Garden for her confidence in me.”
“One last thing that our beloved Mother of All wishes to make clear,” declared the master of the Singers. “From now on the queen commands that all mortal breeding-women will be kept in the lower level pens with the rest of the slaves unless needed, and then returned there afterward. Do you hear this, High Magister?”