Page 31

Chapter 31

Malo and I exited Ana’s quarters and tarried for a moment, both of us troubled by her words. So lost was I in my thoughts that I hardly noticed Malo’s wardens waiting for her in the street. They approached her uncertainly, seeking news, I guessed.

“Is she mad?” Malo asked me. “For I resent her for pouring such wild suggestions into my mind, and then asking me to sleep!”

“She is mad,” I conceded. “But…not often wrong.”

She shook her head. “My dress uniform…by hell, my dress uniform? Do you know how unthinkable such a thing is for we wardens? We are accustomed to the wild, and little else!”

“I would get used to it. I suspect we shall soon be taking part in many unthinkable things.”

“Fucking hell,” said Malo. “I will do your immunis’s tasks, and then I shall find company less gloomy than you, Kol!” She stormed over to her wardens and rattled off a few angry lines of Pithian to them. A few of them swept down the street toward the scribe-hawk roosts, while the rest broke up, most of them following Malo toward a nearby sotbar.

“She did say to rest !” I called after her.

Malo flapped a hand at me. “I did not ask for your comment!” she snapped.

I smoked my pipe and watched them go, bemused, yet one warden lingered, watching me.

Sabudara approached me slowly, her footsteps careful, her expression somber, her eyes studying me carefully.

I raised my pipe to her. “Good evening,” I said.

“Whole?” Sabudara asked. “Healthy?”

“Healthy enough, I suppose.”

Her green gaze darted to Ana’s door, then back to my face, and she took a step closer. “That was,” she said in her stilted standard, “hard talk you had?”

“We have no other kind these days, it seems.”

We stared at one another for a moment.

“Much trouble, then,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “Much.”

She took yet another step forward. I noticed a bright, reckless look in her eye. “Company?” she asked.

I studied her, tempted but uncertain. “Oh. I…don’t know,” I said.

“No?”

“No. I have seen many horrors in the past hours, Sabudara, and many of them cling close to me. And I am weary beyond words.”

She rolled her eyes very slightly— He cannot really imagine I could translate that —and took another step forward. “Company—yes?” she asked. “Or no?”

I sighed and looked her over once more. Her face was smooth and bright in the blue of the mai-lamps, and much cleaner than I recalled: a likely side effect of all the Apoths’ cleansings, I supposed, for my own skin was softer and more fragrant than it’d been in many months.

Ana had told me to rest, true. But, really, a shame to waste such soft, aromatic skin.

I glanced back at my closed door and imagined my empty, silent rooms waiting for me. I did not often yearn for female company in this fashion, but Sabudara was a lovely thing, and far lovelier than what a night of stifling silence offered, especially with all the awful things now boiling in my head.

I opened the door to my rooms and stepped aside. She smirked, cocked an eyebrow, and strode inside without another word.

—

I dreamed that night that I walked the jungles, the canopies high and whispering above me, the starlight cold and shivering. I came to a mirrored pool of black water and saw a fluttering green column arise from its middle, the waters rippling as it climbed into the sky; then it halted, and its emerald skin unfolded like a flower, and I beheld within a figure in pale dress, clad in a white, skull-like helm. They turned to me and beckoned, calling me forward into the waters. I took a step, feeling the cold slosh of the lake against my ankle…

Then I heard the bells and awoke.

So deep had my dreaming been, and so abrupt my waking, that it took me a moment to orient myself. I lay naked across my mossbed, which was soaking with sweat; Sabudara lay next to me, her bare back pressed to my belly, my arm cast across her side. I had no idea where my clothes and boots were, nor my bedsheets—and I had no idea where the sound of bells was coming from, or indeed if I was dreaming still.

I raised my head from the bed, listening. The sound was no dream: there truly were bells, their tolling low and deep and rich.

“Eh?” I croaked.

Sabudara awoke beside me, coughed, and cried out something in Pithian—“ Ghati? Ki uha ghati hana? ” Then she sat up, parted from me—there was a wet click as I was unmoored from her—and leapt from the bed. Then she went to the window and threw open the shutters, apparently indifferent to her nudity.

“ Nia, nia, ” she said softly.

I rose from the bed. Though I knew little Pithian, I knew nia meant no.

“What is that?” I asked. “Are those tocsins?”

She did not answer. I clambered to my feet and realized they were not tocsin bells: not the pure, high, silvery sounds that cried out warning in the imperial cantons. These were much deeper, enormous bells whose tolling was so resonant it shook my bones.

Sabudara cursed under her beath, then swatted angrily at me as I tried to draw a sheet about her and veil her body. “ Murakha! ” she spat. “ Ki tusim suna sakahde ho? ”

“What?” I said.

“ Bairana! Bairana mara latha! ” she snarled. Such was her agitation that what little imperial standard she knew seemed lost to her.

Yet I paused, for I knew that last word.

“ Latha? ” I said. “Corpse? Dead?”

She nodded.

“Someone’s dead? This bairana ?”

Another nod. “ Bairana. ” She gestured to her head, miming a crown atop her brow. “King. The king!”

I stared at her, then glanced west out the window, though I could not see much of the hills beyond.

“The…the king is dead?” I said faintly.

“ Haim, ” said Sabudara. “Yes! The king!”

“The king of Yarrow is dead? That’s what those bells mean?”

“Yes! Yes!” cried Sabudara. Then she jumped into her trousers, tossed on her shirt and cloak, and then, without another word, sprinted out the door with her boots hanging from her hand.

I gazed after her, my mind all awhirl, before realizing she had left the door open, and I was still unclothed. With a gasp, I leapt over and slammed it shut.

—

After I’d stumbled into my own shirt and trousers and boots, I darted outside. I intended to knock on Ana’s door but saw that the street was filled with folk staring west, murmuring as they watched something in the distance. I joined them, squinting in the morning sun.

Black smoke plumed high from the High City in the west: not the smoke of a wildfire but an intentional smoke, like that of a bonfire or signal.

Or mourning smoke, maybe. Which meant, perhaps, that the king was truly dead.

My mind churned, and images of the oathcoin and the poison burbled up within my memories.

“Oh, hell,” I whispered.

I recrossed the street and knocked on Ana’s door, heard her customary, singing “Come!” and slipped inside.

“Ma’am!” I said breathlessly. “Ma’am, those bells! I…It seems there may be news tha—”

I entered her main room, saw Ana sitting on the bed, and stopped.

Ana had never cared much for grooming or dress. Indeed, she changed garments so rarely that I’d come to believe she often forgot she wore clothes at all. Yet the person sitting on the bed before me was arrayed in a stunningly precise expression of imperial dress uniform code: her blue dress coat was buttoned to her chin, her skirts were smooth and properly arranged, and her pale white hair was pulled back in a taut, severe bun, punctured by a golden-headed hairpin. There was no sign of food or fluid about her lips; indeed, the only signs of her usual madness were the red blindfold about her eyes—of course—and her heralds, which I noticed were arranged in an alternating pattern of small and large, and thus went against Iyalet code.

“Yes?” demanded Ana. “What about these damned bells, Din?”

I attempted to recover. “Ma’am, ah…I have been told that those bells possibly signify that—”

“That the king of Yarrow,” she snapped, “is dead as a fucking boiled scallop?”

“I…How did you—”

“I assume you gleaned this rather insightful bit of cultural information,” she hissed, “from the Pithian girl who fucked you halfway across the room and back last night—yes? Despite my very strict and clear orders that you rest ?”

The tolling bells seemed to dampen somewhat. “Ah,” I said. “Well, ma’am…”

“I not only heard every thump,” growled Ana, “but I am sure everyone up and down the street did as well! Perhaps we should have charged bypassers a half talint for the show! I mean, titan’s taint, Din! I don’t even know why I bother giving orders anymore, as all the imperial ears about me seem incapable of listening! Have you at least assembled your dress uniform, as I requested?”

I blinked blearily. Though I recalled wearing my dress cap last evening, it had not been related to the preparations of my uniform.

“You…you asked us to prepare our uniforms,” I said, “because you had already anticipated the next murder.”

“I would have thought that fucking obvious!” thundered Ana. “We knew Pyktis had produced poison, there in his den! We knew he had an oathcoin, suggesting he’d been to the High City before! And we knew he’d likely seen the smokes in the jungle and would know that we’d found his macabre little display! Thus, he has begun the next bit of his game! And though I was not certain whom he would choose to attack, I had a reasonable expectation of where it might occur, and how we might have to array ourselves to move within that celebrated space!” She sighed. “Though to find now that it may be the king himself slain…well, I will say this about Pyktis—the fucker does not lack ambition! Now, damn it, get dressed, boy, and quickly! For I suspect we must go to question some courtly folk, and that damned soon!”