Source

 Sylvia Kelso

Chapter 3

Iskarda.

24^th Day, 2^nd Spring Moon.

My lady Tellurith:

We have, as yet, no letter from you. I am certain that by this time, you are past Amberlight. I trust the voyage goes well. The weather here is fine. After considerable trouble, they have settled on limestone, from that third hill northward, for the pipeline bastions. There would have been worse trouble with the building, but some masons have turned up from downstream. Most likely Riversrun men. I am quite sure at least one is an intelligencer.

Oh, Tellurith. I cannot sustain it. I do not give a Quetzistani horse-peddler’s curse for anything else in Iskarda. I need your ear, your help, your counsel—Gods, I need you here for my own sake. Not a message, not a projection or an imagining. In the flesh.

Pitiful. A grown man, a lord of Riversend, squalling like a forsaken brat.

Well. I can lay it out, and find what counsel may be within myself.

You may or may not remember that last letter, where I told about Asaskian—hunting me. The quandary I found for myself But I did think I understood what she would come at next.

Ha. I never thought—never dreamed—of coming home to encounter Roskeran, with the news that I was moving quarters. That night.

“It’s too dank in that cellar room, so early in the spring.” Roskeran is a good enough fellow. Amberlight looks, a certain amount of authority, or at any rate, officiousness, reflected from his wife. “There’s a room free over at Zariah’s—”

I must have changed color. I, who have kept my aplomb before emperors. Lascivious emperors. I heard Roskeran spluttering about, All right? Rest a moment, Not so strong as you imagine, Asaskian was right . . .

My lady Tellurith, what could I have done? Appeal to Iatha? Bleat out before the House assembled that the eminence of Riversend was in open rout before a seventeen-year-old girl?

Perhaps it is a flaw, that I still have too much pride.

The new room is better. Drier, lighter, nearer the house’s centre; one of the cubbies off the old veranda, that I passed the first day.

Not three down from the Steward’s office step.

Can you imagine Antastes’ face, could he see his puissant renegade, cowering like the silliest bird in cover, lest the feet on the veranda after lights-out should stop at his own door?

I will confess my ignominy. The first night, I actually locked down the latch, wedging the clothes chest under it. I should have expected better. Of course she was not so crass, let be so dishonorable.

She waited a week, for a day that I left early, pleading headache. The River-lord knows, some of those scripts would blind a genuine scribe. So I had taken refuge, in the only refuge I had, when she tapped on the door.

I knew who it was. I knew to pretend sleep would only give her entry pretext. I got off the bed—there is no other place to sit—and called, “Come in.”

“I brought you a pain-easer.” She set a cup on the clothes-chest. “Caitha swears by it.”

Correct, open, legal. Requested from the House physician. How could I claim it had any other role?

I made proper noises. She listened, watching—holding me—in those great eyes. When I did not move to the cup, she took the two steps across the room.

“You work too hard,” she said, “Tanekhet.”

Could I have offered to take days off, requested other duties? Ha. If she had not found some way to—re-invest me—how could I so quickly admit defeat? Admit myself worsted, even without catching pneumonia in the rain?

She reached to adjust my shirt collar. Gods, I have felt less—cornered—by the old emperor.

I said, “It’s just a touch of eyestrain. Don’t let me waste the house-steward’s time.”

She looked up at me, full face, eighteen inches away. “Not wasted,” she said.

I could have found a riposte: pretended to faint, produced some pretext to leave, something should have occurred to me. Had that look not—

Because despite it all, she is a beautiful, a very desirable woman. Bending all her attention, expending all her effort, concealing nothing of her attempt to conquer me.

So her fingers closed on one collar lapel, and she slid her free hand up my other shoulder and only brutal evasions were left.

I pulled her hands down and said, “If you knew what I am, you would spit in my face.”

Her eyes got bigger. Liquid topaz, amber lakes. She said, “What are you?”

So you see there was cause, and defense, for my indiscretion. For the way I stood there, barefaced, and told her—told her—

I did look away. I could not watched the cesspool pour into those unsullied, undefended eyes. I looked at the floor, or the chest, or the pane of the half-boarded window; and recited it all, from the Emperor’s first advance to—

How I treated Alkhes.

Her timing is always immaculate. She never spoke a word until I finished. I had sat down, at some stage. And put my head in my hands.  She put her own hand on my shoulder and said with purest compassion, “Oh, my dear. If only you’d been born in Amberlight.”

I did look up. I think my jaw dropped. Those lovely eyes were abrim. Sorrow and pity, ready to overflow.

“In a Tower,” she said, “you would have been safe.”

That may be how one feels a mortal stab: the heart-stop, the sinking in the belly, the spreading ice inside your chest.

She slid her palm down my cheek. Affection. Protectiveness. Cherishing.

“No man,” she said, “should have to suffer that.”

You know why I felt—what I felt. You should praise my address, because I managed to ask, quite temperately “You don’t approve of—Iskarda?”

She dropped her hand then, praise the River-lord. Instead she looked at me. I hope no seventeen-year-old ever gives me another look like that.

I stood up. The River-lord be my witness. When I said, “This is between us,” I meant what I said.

She assayed the truth of that. A small eternity, before she spoke.

“I know there were injustices. The River Quarter. The qherrique. But in Amberlight, men were safe. They had rules, they were protected. They didn’t run mad, fighting, killing, torturing—”  She looked up then, and her eyes were hot. “What we have now is only one step from Dhasdein.”

My face must have answered for  me, as it has not since I was a boy. She said, “Would you have found an emperor in Amberlight?”

I opened my mouth. She said, “Or an Alkhes?”

No, in Amberlight I would have been a gang-runner, or a dock-slave, or a whore. Or locked up for a woman’s plaything—if I had survived at all. It flew to the tip of my tongue and I bit it down so hard the blood-taste filled my mouth.

She has your women’s wits. She read it from my eyes, my face. She gave a tiny shrug, and began to turn away.

“Wait!” Marvel, Tellurith, at my revolutionary fidelity. I could have let her go, and known myself—my person—safe again. But it shot out like a very catapult bolt.

“Don’t you see this is neither Dhasdein nor Amberlight? Don’t you understand what Tellurith—that Tellurith is trying to make somewhere we can all be free—”

She turned right round and looked at me, full face. When she spoke, its very quiet was a dagger-point.

“Lord Tanekhet, I only wanted to be safe.”

#

Her case, her wishes—they are too understandable. She was House born. She has seen the fall of Amberlight. The end of a world where she and her sex were indeed safe. Secured, honored, as they can be—nowhere else.

And it was my own intelligencers who committed the second betrayal. Here. In the new world. Against Asaskian herself.

What if it is explicable, if men given unexpected freedom after long tyranny fell to outland poison: to repeating, Women are weaker than we are, they ruled us illegitimately, in the freedom they gifted us, why should we not take the license we want? What if the one still bears the tattooed “R” on his cheekbone? What if Zariah gave the other the dustiest answer of all? What if you, Tellurith, wept and blamed and punished yourself, because a keystone you had raised fell on innocents you never thought to ward? Because, in trying to end oppression, you were betrayed by the oppressed?

What is that to Asaskian, who bears that betrayal, and its aftermath, in her own mind and flesh?

What is it to her, then, that you—that I—that we, who have tried to bring a new world beyond dream, should find our own betrayal—not among the men, but among the women, the young women we must trust to carry the torch-flame on?

#

The day after Asaskian’s—disclosure—I pleaded sick in earnest. Not cowardice. I needed time to—recover. To use, however belatedly, what little I retain of wits.

The first questions were those of a Court intriguer, an intelligencer. Is Asaskian one case, or the tip of a faction’s iceberg? How far has this gone?

Intelligencer’s cautions came next: what ruse, what subtleties would gain my answers? And if unmasked by a counter-intelligencer, given the evidence of those old cyphers, how long would I live?

Twenty years as Head of Dhasdein’s intelligence have taught me the lethal properties of women in Amberlight. I see no change in Iskarda. And one must ask, if Asaskian is not alone, then who has joined her cause? What is their intent?

How long would I live, if such a faction included women like Darthis?

The River-lord was kind. A packet came from Marbleport, a Dhasdein report, so I could totter from sick-bed to council-chamber. And when the discussion ended, luck left me with Verrith. Acting trouble-Head. So far as anything I recalled, utterly, unquestioningly loyal, to both you and the House.

So when we finished with Antastes’ punitive border-patrol in Quetzistan, and Verrith grumbled something about, “Never had this fuss in Amberlight,” I had the perfect opening to murmur, “So many of you must wish yourselves back there.”

Bless Verrith’s stout heart. She sat bolt upright and stared. And said straight out—the River-lord bless her bluntness too—“Huh! And where ‘ud you be then?”

I have learned some things from watching Sarth. With Verrith I can play the Amberlight man. I dropped my eyes and bent my head.

There was a pause. When she leant over to tap my hand’s back, her tone had utterly changed.

“Water, walls, Navy. Qherrique. Ha. All the walls in Riverslength wouldn’t get me back in there.”

I looked up. She snorted, word-shy troublecrew, and looked away in turn. But I have no doubt. If there is faction in Iskarda, Verrith is no part of it. And the troublecrew does not know.

#

With Darthis, such a gambit would have been suicide. I did see Iatha, and share concerns about the report, and fret over the need for a full council to soothe their foolish outland male.

Iatha is armed and armored in her troth to you. Reverse the world, put men as overlords and women their slaves. So long as you decreed it, my lady Tellurith, Iatha would shout and howl and protest. And then do as you asked.

Darthis I cannot read. A humbling admission, for one whose life has hung on reading power. I know, from my own intelligencers, that her vassalage has been unswerving as Iatha’s own. I did waylay her as the meeting broke up. I did murmur, with manly modesty, of a matter where I sorely needed advice.

She shot me a look under her brows. Gray-haired, massive, somnolent as a bear. She reminds me of my own father, at times.

“Mmf,” she said. “Private, huh?”

With a jerk of the chin that said, Accompany me.

We climbed the hill toward the women’s sacred retreat. More alarming than the way Darthis puffed on the ascent. At the boulders’ edge I did manage to mumble, “Should I be here—” and she speared me with a look across her shoulder point.

“Isn’t it what you want?”

She speaks in layers deeper than any courtier. Men in a woman’s place, men there by right, the new world I was seeking, was I not its viceroy, what hypocrisy was it to deny my right here now?

I took breath and walked, softly as possible, into the brilliant chartreuse shade of new hellien leaves, among the trouser-polished boulders, with the Riverworld laid out, a map of cloisonné and crystal, at our feet.

When we settled, I told her about Asaskian.

I have watched Iskardan men too. I can do the modest demeanor, the broken sentences, the silences, as well as her husband himself. What came out, if I do say so, was the picture of a reformed sinner abashed by his unworthiness of a unstained maiden’s pursuit. I did not even ask, as I would have given my right hand to do some evenings, lady Tellurith: What am I to do?

She sat silent for so long I actually started to sweat. And after the birds had come to disregard us, she said, “That might not be—so bad.”

I replied with utmost elegance. “Huh?”

She stared out onto the Riverworld, her massive chin in her more massive fist. I had the address to wait.

Until she turned about and scrutinized me from head to foot. Shook her head, as at a mystery of the gods, and said, “It’s probably what Tellurith wants.”

I jumped up. Though I did manage not to gabble, her eye held a certain glint.

“She must,” she said, “mean you for something more than making tally-marks.”

I know they talk about opening the blood between Telluir and Iskarda, Tellurith. But is that all you intended? Am I here to build a new world, merely as a man buys a stallion, for his breeding stock?

Darthis read my face as easily as Asaskian, and shrugged. “She’s Head.”

Hence her schemes are inscrutable, irresistible. Who would doubt, deny, dispute?

“It must distress you,” I said, “at times. All of you.”

Her eyes narrowed. I find no shame in confessing, lady Tellurith, that my heart beat up in my throat.

She said, quite flatly, “Yes.”

The wind had dropped. The birds had paused. I could have supposed some damnably officious god was underlining the moment’s significance.

“But you wish—you want—this new way.”

There is no telling what happened behind her face. Something did happen. Because it seemed forever, before she turned and gazed out over the Riverworld again. And I heard vision, and vision’s disbelief, and the touch of that vision on a mind that knows it could never conceive of it, but is wooed and enthralled till it can only follow, wondering, in vision’s wake. When she answered, with a note that went deeper than surprise.

“Yes.”

So, lady Tellurith. There is no faction of traditionalists—no faction broad enough to be dangerous—in Telluir House.

#

I was grateful then, twice grateful, for your festival. “Your” festival in good truth, I understand. Spring Thanksgiving. Founded in thanks for more than the return of spring. And for the third time running, I am told, it was a fine clear day, with a young moon and an exquisitely lucid night. I will say this for Iskarda: nothing in Riversend—in all Dhasdein—can rival the purity of its air, or the beauty of its nights. Starlight, moonlight, unadulterated by human illumination, unstained by city smoke.

You may be astonished, but I appreciated the festival too. Certainly, it is no great spectacle, and set at the bridge-point of spring and winter, its provender is as motley as the celebrants’ festival gear. Assuredly, folk-dancing to a village consort is a far cry from entertainment by the foremost artists of Riversend. Nevertheless—

It is truly merrymaking: a gaiety, a sparkle, that I—have rarely seen. And if I did not brew beer or help make barrel-butt festival cakes, they let me haul cups to the village square, and Roskeran gave me a cloth to wield, down among your kitchen-folk. And when the dancing began. . .

Tellurith, this is past embarrassing. Am I, the cynosure and bored spectator of the Empire’s adulation, to confess myself charmed by a sufficiency of partners at a village festival?

But it was the first time I have felt . . . welcome. The first time I felt, however remotely, as if I were at home. As if I might belong.

Was it relief or panic then, when the hand out-held to draw me into my fourth dance became Asaskian’s?

Luckily it was a circle dance, both simple and fast, with energetic partner changes. Except that its finale deposits you, inexorably, by the partner you started with.

Whereupon—I swear, by her foreknowledge—the musicians announced a break, and as we emptied the dancing floor, her hand slid under my arm. “Fetha’s made savory pancakes,” she said, demure at my elbow. “If you don’t try them, after spending all that time in Shia’s kitchen, he’ll be devastated.”

And—I could laugh, lady Tellurith, at how expertly she echoes my own machinations—it was she who ate them with me, propped on the fountain rim at the top of the square, looking out over the torch-painted crowd.

Spring festival is not, I gather, the license of Midsummer, of which the men’s hints and passing words have told me more than enough. But there were sufficient couples sliding into the darkness, sufficiently close at her back, to make a diversion pressing necessity.

“So,” I said, leaping inelegantly headlong, “you want to go back to Amberlight.”

She chewed her mouthful, waving to a friend, catching a worshipful boy’s eye with a fleeting smile. Set the plate on her knee. Said, “I don’t want impossibilities.”

“You would wish—would like—to rebuild Amberlight here?”

She turned a little. The melting look had gone along with the sway against my arm. This was a House-steward’s stare worthy of Iatha herself.

“Are you calling me a traitor?”

“Gods forbid!” She had ambushed me that time. “Why should you think—”

“To go back—now—would be to go against the Ruand. Against the House.”

With an inflection that said clearer than any avowal, my House is my folk. My folk are me. We cannot exist apart.

“I beg your pardon.” It was truth: to the marrow of my bones. “I have been too long in the empire, I think. And in power. To see any sort of—reluctance—disaffection—is to—”

“To set you hunting traitors and expecting factions to overthrow the emperor?” Now the irony was open. “Was that why you talked to Darthis?”

She set the plate aside. She had not moved, but the space between us was rivers wide.

“After your folk,” she said it without inflection, “destroyed our city, we all had a choice. We all knew, when we pledged ourselves to follow the Ruand, that we would be giving up the qherrique. And everything the qherrique stood for. Including—peace. Safety. The towers.”

She stood up. The torchlight caught her profile as she stared down at me, fine and clear-cut as the edge of a blade.

“But we made the choice. And whatever we may feel about it—there’s no going back.”

#

Iskarda

3^rd Day, 3^rd Spring Moon.

My dearest lady Tellurith . . .

I must confess myself entirely bemused. I understood you a House-head, which means ruler as well as diplomat. I did not think you sowed revolution broadcast in your wake—

I am babbling like an idiot. Ruand, House-head, lady Tellurith, I am babbling because the word has just come up from Marbleport, Iskarda has flown to council and out again, and the entire—House—is still reeling where it sits.

Since Tez’s message informed us that this morning they spoke a convoy out of Amberlight. Bearing the three House-heads, Damas, Eutharie and Ciruil, with some of their folk and a good deal of dunnage, over the border to Verrain.

Tellurith—what in the name of the River’s gods assembled, have you done?

#

Well. The rest of the tale has flown in now, this time from Amberlight itself. One of Verrith’s conceits, to establish a signal-site along what they all call, “that bloody-minded cart-track,” which leads north across the Kora. The signal-catcher rode the rest, in a pelter I can more than understand.

They are calling it the Lovers’ Revolution, Tellurith. Do you know that?

And I know the names: or one of the names.

Let me at least attempt to get this orderly. Tellurith, we have had no direct word from you, but news of your doings at Amberlight had already come up from Marbleport. Garbled gossip, Tez’s gloss remarked, though electrifying enough. Apparently there was—confusion—or some sort of parley when you first arrived. And then the chief House-head, I understand that is—was—Jerish  House—received some portent, the entire city turned out to welcome you, and nine days later you set sail. With a full-scale departure ceremony, and the blessing of the City and the Mother and anyone or everyone else.

However garbled, I will admit I found this something of a relief. Verrith and Iatha have looked like gargoyles for weeks, but I never expected trouble at Amberlight. A few days negotiations, at most. It is pleasing to be proven right. And some solace to my hounded self-esteem, when they glower at my face, which doubtless says with some complacence, I told you so.

As for the rest . . .

It began, the Kora message says, in a wood-carver’s shop, in River Quarter, just off Main Quay. Where the House’s tax-collectors called as usual, and some of the folk disputed both their tallies and their rights. And dispute swelled to a considerable affray. During which the tax-people called for troublecrew: whereupon the Quarter section rose up with wood-carvers’ tools and frying pans and paving stones and beat the lot of them from the field, if not to a pulp.

The pulp is rumor, says the signaler. The names of the ring-leaders are beyond all doubt.

Dhanissa, a girl from a Telluir Uphill clan, and her cousin-kin and partner, one Ferrias.

Who did not merely claim that the toll was unjust, and then that it was unwarranted, but refused to pay it, and summoned help to see the refusal made good. After which, at the enemy’s rout, the entire Quarter went up in flames.

The signaler says it was flames more than once, in very earnest truth, when they came to hands among the business quarter shops. She supplies as background that Amberlight has been like a hive ready to swarm this year and more, that unrest has grown furiously over the winter, when the slum folk went short, and worse with every punitive stoppering of discontent practiced by the heads of House.

And anger at their harshness has been fuelled for months by whispers that they are not only unjust, they no longer have any right. That the Houses and their supremacy were founded on the qherrique. And the qherrique is gone.

A tureen well and truly simmering. But what did you throw in, Tellurith?

Dhanissa, I don’t even remember her. Young, Iatha says, and Verrith adds that she ran the signal-station down on the Marbleport road: sent there in sickness from Ahio’s house. So far as I can tell, less than seventeen years old.

 How did she raise and lead an entire city quarter, a whole city in a day’s length, how did she know what to do, where to go, what to say? What vision guided her, what dream, what, what—

Was—is this the doing of the qherrique?

If that is so, then indeed, Tellurith, I glimpse a new world I never dreamed. And I tell you without equivocation that I am afraid.

#

One presumes that I can gather wits to assemble the rest. That the “rising” moved out and up from River Quarter, and before the House knew it, the young avengers were in their court-yard, waving myrtle boughs and calling for an end to tyranny. For change, and revolution, and “a people’s government.”

Grant your House-heads this, they could set a sail when the wind changed. Although the signaler claims half their troublecrew had already deserted them. She has some astonishing tale of portents and omens in the House itself, connected to you in person. Evidently half the Uphill folk were, like River Quarter, already falling away.

However it came, I had imagined any change would have to be enforced, pebble by pebble, in blood. But the pre-eminent Head—is it Damas? abdicated, if that is the word, that very night. They bargained for goods and chattels and income and those who wanted to leave with them, and your young visionary—your gods’ messenger—let them go. They loaded the ships next morning. So now, if you can credit it, there is a people’s commune, drawn from the city’s every Quarter, ruling Amberlight.

And with the women, men.

Six hundred years of House-rule. Five hundred years of matriarchy. Overthrown.

You must forgive me if I am still rubbing my eyes and walking about blinking at things. We do not make revolutions so easily in Dhasdein.

I wish passionately that I could go to Amberlight. No intelligencer, even with a pact of amity, can ask the things I want to ask. How did she do it? How did she imagine it? How did she know which way to go?

Was she—was she hearing it, the way you have said you could?

Tellurith—has it come back?

As well ask answers of the passing wind. She is there, burning like a lighthouse torch, a beacon of liberty in Amberlight. You are somewhere on the River: the gods know if you have actually heard what you left in your wake. Or have time to consider it. In some ways, I pray you will not have time to consider it.

Because that will mean the news is behind you still when you reach Cataract.

And what Cataract might do, confronted with word of a neighboring regime’s overthrow, with the instigators of that revolution in their own anchorage, I cannot bring myself to think.

#

Any other River news is worthless until we can read the backwash from this boulder in their midst. Of Iskarda itself . . .

Of I myself . . .

After such upheaval, you may credit I was more than ready to swarm out of my own danger-zone. But when I announced to Hanni this morning, “I think I could handle a quarry-shift tomorrow,” she asked, “Have you finished the cypher work?”

“The cyphers are broken. It would be better if it were done by someone—ah—less outland—”

She looked up from the tally-column and said without hesitation, “No.”

Picture me then, lady Tellurith, slinking and scrying for time to reach my cubby-hole with the steward away. Picture me, like a fox with every bolthole shut, hunting frantically for some other lair. Regard me snared by Iatha with an armful of cypher sheets in the office-door and all but hurled back inside. “Take them out of here? Are you losing your mind!”

And, yes, my first visitor was Asaskian.

Who stood in the doorway till mere manners forced up my head. Held my eyes, with that flower-innocent, lake-deep stare. And said, “I’m sorry, Tanekhet.”

I did have some defenses left. I murmured, as with an empress, “It was a misunderstanding. No person of courtesy would mention it again.”

She smiled. A sunrise crammed in a moment, a rainbow’s lifespan across her face. And came straight up to lay her arm across me, hand caressing my neck, voice a whisper of happiness.

“Oh,” she said, “then it’s all right.”

What was I to do? Leap out of reach like an unbroken horse? Squirm and splutter, “Lady Asaskian—please—”

She let go. She was smiling, all the way to those eyes’ depths. “I’m sorry.” Sorry? She was radiant. She tapped a finger on the cypher pages. “I can wait.”

After that, the bed-clothes were my only retreat.

The stratagem worked with Saari. It worked with the old emperor. Asaaskian gave me one day’s grace. One mid-morning visit was abbreviated, thank the River-lord, by her own work. When she swooped in that afternoon and settled with every sign of loving intent on the bedside, I found a sudden necessity to throw up.

It was good excuse to miss supper. And breakfast. Next morning, it fetched Caitha herself.

Unlike the physician who gulled Saari, I do not give her a living. Nor is she the emperor’s healer, to feel pity above any bribe. “Hmm,” she said, shaking her head. “Unless it’s some lie-low plague from Riversend—so far as I can tell, lord Tanekhet, you’re in perfect health.”

Asaskian was standing behind her. With such concern in those eyes, such transparent love and trust—

At least I did not have to watch the understanding come, and then the contempt. At least I could manage to mutter, “No-one’s ever found anything. I have a day or two of dizziness—feeling sick—then it goes.”

So there will be no hiding in a sick-room here.

You may well ask, Why demur at all? A young woman, beautiful, desirable, masterful enough to court me, enamored enough to ignore my outland blood, my age, my past, a young woman other men have literally died for, begging to share my bed. Dhe’s eyes, what courtier would think twice?

At the most inglorious level, there are the consequences in Iskarda. Darthis might raise an eyebrow and talk about blood-lines, but Zariah? More reputably, what if this did blow the House apart?

And there is Sarth.

Who was ready to kill for her, after that attempt at rape. Who loves her like a daughter—more than a daughter, perhaps. Who has tolerated my attachment to Tellurith, my foisting myself into his house, my treatment of Alkhes.

Whom he loves for himself, as much as for Tellurith.

Who would without a moment’s thought have put a knife in my ribs or seen me over-side before he let me near Iskarda, were it not for his marriage-partners’ decisions: their choices.

If I put a hand on Asaskian, in or out of wedlock, with or without her consent, once Sarth learned of it—how long would I live?

Besides—

#

Which god requited me that cowardice, with such malice, such speed, so opportunely immediate—so—

Dhe. I am fluttering and squawking like a half-beheaded fowl.

Dhe help me. I think—I think, lady Tellurith, I have done worse than half-behead myself. I think I have—

Broken my heart.

Ludicrous, that such banality hides physical truth. The stopped breath, the rending, as if bone or sinew tore inside you, the broken rib, that pangs every time you think, somewhere between memory and flesh—as if humans carried a china Shirran vase between the lungs, and it is cracked to bits.

Pathetic. Ludicrous. Ridiculous.

The truth.

Well. I will have to tell you some time. Some—formal—notification. It may, perhaps, search the wound, however cruelly, if I write it down here first.

#

Asaskian—came into my room. My work-room, the malicious god had so much mercy. Mid-afternoon, the worst time. Mornings, she is mostly outside. I had contrived evasions for midday: consult Hanni, discuss things with Iatha. Mid-afternoon, though, Heads and counsel folk are busy or absent, I am tired, open to temptation, and I have to do the work sometime, I must finish these thrice-blasphemed cyphers before something worse—

No. There can be nothing worse.

So then. Mid-afternoon, and myself stupidly attentive to a tricky passage, so she was there before I realized. Her hand on my neck, her warmth against my shoulder, her murmured, “Are you feeling tired?”

And I was tired. With concentration and—apprehension—my back was aching. And I was so tired of running, and—

I put the pen down, and leant back on my stool. And when she set both hands on my shoulders, and began to work her fingers into the neck muscles, I thought, what can it matter, just this once? So I let my head lie against her, and shut my eyes . . .

And the outer door resounded to a brusque rap, a quick stride crossed the office and a crisp voice demanded, “Tanekhet?”

It is branded on my memory deeper than a lightning strike. Asaskian and I, in a pose worse than coupling itself: a pose that spoke affection, closeness, the trust of a long-term connection, the kindnesses of marriage itself—the door open under her hand, the bristling half-grown hair and sharp nose and slitted Amberlight eyes and upright Navy carriage—

Tez.

I have retrieved myriad Court disasters. I could only sit. Feeling the blade disembowel me, as her face changed—as she—

As she turned on her heel and walked away.

Now at last I have to confess. The real centre I have fenced around and fenced around, the real reason I have withstood Asaskian, the real cause you have to flay me for the trouble my prick has caused, lady Tellurith. Dhe’s eyes, if my past is to be revenged on me, could there be a prettier way than this?

That I, who have tortured men and broken women’s hearts, from my wives to the most temporary flirt, should now—should now —

I ought to have known. To have realized, from the way my flesh clings to her darts. Fourteen tailors and a perfumier. Catch pneumonia chopping our firewood in the rain. Alkhes cut me twice as deep and twice as often, and I do not recall a word he said.

And from the way the images last. Tez on that filthy sampan, hefting a frying pan, pale and crop-headed from her own prison-cell, and those eyes dagger-points, ready to stab what menaced her Ruand, and die. Tez slashing at me across the jewel-heap, the morning you let me plead my case. Tez on the freighter deck, sniffing weather, her slim, sinewy figure tense. Tez in the mud and blood that last dreadful morning, a half-naked white-faced scarecrow with her eyes full of tears, beating Alkhes with a broken branch..

Tez in the council-room, those two or three times she has come up from Marbleport. The cut of those copper eyes, the inflection of that Navy officer’s voice, the bristle of corkscrew-curly bronze hair, the angle of cheek as she reads a line again, the hand, scarred and muscled almost like a man’s, planted on the dispatch. Dhe’s eyes, I who have passed thirty years of Court beauties unscathed, I who have Asaskian’s beauty available at a word, I who—

I did not realize, when I began this dream, lady Tellurith. Did not understand that new worlds are not spun from air. They are built, with grief and pain and wholesale demolition, from the rubble of the old. Down to the builder’s self.

This is another foundation I never plumbed before: that I was not proof against beauties from my own integrity—such as may be left. I was proof because—

Because the great and disdainful Lord Tanekhet’s weakness, then and now, is those who are not beautiful at all.

In this abyss of demolishment, that must be the unkindest cut.

I cannot credit that I have sat here, in the depths of misery, and written that.

And had to laugh.

At my indignation, my pomposity, my—arrogance—that can count my choice of women a shame—because it lacks in taste.

Gods, what further indignity will You wreak on me, before this ends?

#

Well. I am aware of your position, lady Tellurith. I can predict your reaction without the slightest doubt. Tez is ex-Navy, the old guard of Amberlight. Tez is your intelligence head and marble factor, a vital part of the House.

Tez is your daughter. By marriage tie, the dearest marriage tie, Sarth’s child. And your daughter in good earnest now. The House-head’s proclaimed heir.

I am Outland, a House irrelevance, probably twice her age, with a past to shock Kasterian martyrs. You know it all.

And she snaps every time I call her, “Lady,” she despises me as an Outland fribble who might at best be dangerously treacherous: even yesterday she would never have considered—

Why do I not go now and slit my throat?

#

Oh, gods, if this is from the gods—is my undoing to be not a tragedy but a farce?

So. As you see, lady Tellurith, I did not act the tragedy hero. I did not even manage a seemly fit of the vapours or a manly pose of silence shuttering a nobly broken heart. No, I was still sitting in that, that thrice-be-blasted room, with my jaw on my chest and my life in shards around my feet, when Asaskian took me by the shoulders and turned me about.

And said, “My dear, I am so sorry. Let me make it up.”

I think I simply stared.

She took a deep breath. “I’ve destroyed your reputation. We—” a wave of her hands that said it all, what Tez thought, how I had compromised her, the reaction of the House—

No. I have it wrong again. She thought she had compromised me.

And I could not—Tellurith, I could not! say to her, “It’s not my reputation”—Gods, my reputation!—“that you’ve lost.”

I dropped my eyes and mumbled, probably some Court commonplace. But I felt her fingers stiffen. I heard her take in her breath.

“Tanekhet.” She sounded like Alkhes commanding a death charge. “Will you marry me?”

Is this the gods’ revenge on me, who at the worst extremities of Court, parents’ deaths, imperial harassment, three marriages, was never entirely confounded before?

“Our clan is a very good line. We are cousin-crossed to the old Head, Tellurith’s mother. Our children would be among the best-founded in the House. There’s not a line here that wouldn’t—that isn’t looking to join with us.”

She meant, with her. She had begun with her advantages, not as boast, I understand now, but because it is the Amberlight dower-promise. Marriage’s solid base.

She touched my cheek.

“And—if we were married, I’d look after you. You’d have a good room, decent clothes, I’d make sure you didn’t wear yourself out over these stupid—I’d see people respected you!”

Passion, compassion, love and partisanship. Everything an aging villain could dream of: all he had no right to claim. I will freely confess, lady Tellurith, I was gagged by tears.

“Poor love.”

She put her arms around me. To be gifted with all that, unreservedly, undeservedly. Oh, Gods. Indeed, I have my own again.

I must have said something. Some platitude, passing for manly modesty. Because she did let me go. And it must have been some intelligible version of, “I am too much honored, give me time to think.” Because she put her hand under my chin, and looked deep in my eyes, and smiled. And kissed me, lighter than a butterfly’s breath, and said, “Of course. I don’t want to rush you. That wouldn’t be right either. Take as long,” with those eyes waking to radiance, “as you like.”

May all the gods help me, lady Tellurith. If only there were some way I could truly ask you.

What am I to do?