Seventeen: Unveiling

Ra knelt before Shiva for an endless stretch of time until her bones seemed to turn to gelatin and she found herself drifting and dripping like liquid to the ground. She didn’t bother to pick herself up; there was no self to lift. She stared unblinking at the pillow of the coal-grimed floor. She couldn’t feel the cold of it. She felt nothing.

The powerful Meer moved at last, joining Ra on the ground and curling around her. Her arms stretched over Ra, and she pressed down upon Ra’s head, drawing her body tight and compact like a bud within the circle of her limbs.

“You are as you came into this world,” Shiva said into her ear. “Without encumbrance. Only the body, formed and unfilled. Renaissance prevaricates.”

Ra curled further into herself, and Shiva seemed to grow around her, enveloping her in a mass of sanguine warmth. The room had vanished. Shiva was all there was. Ra heard the beating of the ancient heart pounding strong and fierce in her ears. The rush of a current swelled in and around her, surging forth on the strength of the steady beats, receding in their absence. Existence, Shiva, was a body of liquid—vast, and dark, and fathomless. The fluid of existence coursed into Ra’s mouth, penetrated her, washing through her with the burn of acid. Her lungs filled involuntarily, breathing in at the merciless beckoning of instinct. The equally involuntary urge of her body to expel it, heaving, produced only liquid breath. The earth was silent but for these mechanistic sounds of circulation and aspiration.

Sometime later, the element in which Ra had been absorbed dissolved into the ingress of sound—a wail, a song. Ra lay as before against the coal woman’s floor, now wet and cold, and Shiva was lifting her, curled into her arms like a child. The great Meer crossed to the bed and brought Ra into it with her. She opened her cloak and was bare beneath it, breasts full and engorged. She pulled Ra to her chest and placed Ra’s mouth against her breast, and Ra took it, and her mouth filled with milk.

She lay curled in Shiva’s lap, drinking life from her. There was nothing else.

The Meerchild wept against its pallet, staining the straw, staining its pale hair. Its chest burned with longing as though the Meeric heart within it were full of fire and knives.

Madness trickled in the great Meer’s veins, trickled from the life-giving abundance of her breasts into the mouth of MeerRa. But even the madness wasn’t meant for the Meerchild. It would never receive that soothing balm. Its own Meeric essence was too weak within the anamnestic flow for the other Meer to notice it.

It was only the pearl, the Master’s cultured pearl, and here it would remain within the nacre of its glass shell.

The Meerchild opened its mouth against the pallet as it watched the images in the darkness, tasting the blood of its own tears as they dripped over its lips, and another sound breathed out of them. “Pearl.”

A tiny, silvery orb appeared on the pallet beside it. The Meerchild stared at it with dismay. It knew very well it wasn’t supposed to speak, but it hadn’t known why until now. To speak was to create. The child picked up the little ball and held it between its fingers. The pearl was the color of its hair. If the Master discovered it, he would drown the Meerchild in its water bucket. It had seen the vision in the glass when the Master thought of it with particular vehemence.

The Meerchild placed the pearl against its tongue and swallowed.

The Northern Lake lay frozen below them. Cree stood at the window wrapped in a heavy woolen blanket, contemplating the wisdom of this trip—or lack thereof. Ume had been stricken by the Hidden Folk’s story of a young orphaned Meer kept caged like an animal. She’d always been kindhearted, even hating to trap and kill animals for food on their travels, though she did what she had to. And she’d had a soft spot for children since her dream of becoming a mother had been dashed by Cree’s damaged plumbing.

Ume tried not to let her see it, but Cree had watched her in unguarded moments gazing at other mothers’ children with longing and sadness. There really hadn’t been any question once a child had been mentioned but that Ume would choose to go. And Cree hadn’t seen much of a choice at any rate. The Caretaker had saved her life, possibly even brought her back from death for all she knew—and had certainly done it not out of altruism, but to exact this favor from her and Ume. She owed the Hidden Folk, and she’d promised to show her gratitude in whatever way she could.

What they were going to do when they arrived in In’La, Cree had no idea. Break a child out of a cage in the middle of Ludtaht Alya? How on earth were they supposed to get anywhere near it? She clenched her fists at her sides, nails digging into her palms, knowing what the Hidden Folk expected—that Ume would sleep with Nesre and steal the key to the cage. Cree knew it wouldn’t be that easy, and the thought of Ume being touched again by that swine was almost more than she could bear.

At least the Meerhunters had been put off their trail. The Hidden Folk had let them travel under the hill—which seemed to be more a state of mind than a physical place—to exit far to the east of where they’d entered. Here at the southern tip of the great Northern Lake, the Anamnesis began. Keeping to the northern highway close to the river would mean more little towns like this one along the way, and less sleeping outdoors in makeshift tents.

The Hidden Folk had given them fresh supplies and clothing, and even horses. They could disappear with them, go to the northern coast, but she knew Ume would never do it. The child—the Hidden Folk didn’t know whether it was a girl or a boy—had no one else. Ume would never abandon it.

“What are you doing?” Ume murmured from the bed. “Come keep me warm.”

Cree relaxed her hands and turned, smothering her worry. Right now, they were together. “Sorry, love.” She snuggled back under the covers. “Just watching the moonlight on the ice. It’s crazy beautiful.” She ran her thumb over Ume’s bottom lip, staring down at the catlike amber eyes almost glittering in the darkness in the honey-toned skin, the once infamous tawny-port tresses spread across the pillow like the burst of a fallen star across the horizon. “Like you.”

Ume shivered and wrapped herself around Cree, naked beneath the covers. “Okay,” she whispered. “That worked. I’m warm.”

Cree scrambled to undress just enough beneath the covers to take Ume inside her, knees digging into the mattress as she straddled the narrow hips, her ankles crossed in the tangle of fabric, and breasts bared to press against the warm skin. Ume was her girl, and she wasn’t going to let anyone take her away.

She buried her face against Ume’s neck, nipping at her as Ume moaned and crooned with pleasure, moving faster inside Cree. She loved the noises Ume made. Along with the position her tangled clothes had forced her into, they drove Cree to a swift and bone-shattering climax, and she closed her mouth over Ume’s panting breath to muffle her own loud outcry as Ume fucked her faster, shivering with delight.

Ume pulled Cree’s hair just a bit with her fingers curled at either side of her head, lifting Cree away from her mouth as Cree’s wail died down. “Shouldn’t travel alone boy,” she growled at her with a grin, hearkening back to their aborted game of highwaymen, and then spilled into her with a throaty shout.

Cree relaxed against her with a contented sigh, not wanting to be separated. “Yes, sir,” she murmured. “Thank you for teaching me a lesson.”

Ume slapped her ass beneath the covers. “Now who’s the minx, minx?”

It was agony to leave the warm bed before dawn, but with Pike and his Meerhunters looking for them, they couldn’t afford to linger. The empty highway had a cold blue cast of shadow on it even after the sun rose, wisely avoided by other travelers who’d had the sense to stay in bed. For the next fortnight, they pushed themselves and the horses, riding as far as they could in a day before finding an inn or making camp for the night, trying to keep ahead of Pike. There was little energy or desire for much more than a kiss by the time they crawled beneath the covers.

Fatigue and Cree’s growing sense of dread the closer they got to the Delta made her ill-tempered. The dwindling snow cover and the disappearing ice on the Anamnesis meant it was imminent. The morning they set out from a roadside inn to find the temperature mild and the river flowing, she was particularly moody, snapping at Ume over nothing when they stopped to the rest the horses and eat the hard sausage and apples they’d packed at the inn.

Still dressed like a boy—she’d never quite had the build to look like a man—with her hair tucked up under her cap, Ume’s expression was equally testy as she paused in closing her saddlebag. “Did I do something to you? Why are you in such a foul mood?”

Cree shrugged as she bit into the crisp apple, knowing she was being an ass.

“If you didn’t want to accept the task—”

“It’s not that,” Cree said around her bite and shook her head, taking time to think while she finished chewing. “We can’t leave that poor child to be used by Nesre. I just—I hate knowing you have to go near him.”

Ume’s eyes got that sad look that meant she was dwelling on what had happened to Cree so many years ago. “I’m sorry. I wish there were another way to accomplish it, but the Hidden Folk knew what they were doing in manipulating us. No one else could get as close to him as I can.”

“I know.” Cree sighed. “I know.”

Ume sucked at the corner of her lip. “Actually, I don’t think you do. Not completely.”

Cree frowned. “What do you mean?”

“There’s only one way I’m going to get that close, and the Hidden Folk knew it.”

Cree clutched the apple in her fist, a spark of alarm in her chest. “Ume, what are you talking about?”

“The Meerhunters will catch up to us shortly. And you have to let them take me.”

Geffn came to the small province of In’La, four days downriver of the teeming capital of Rhyman, and pondered how to find Bank Street without speaking Deltan. He followed the river, distracted by the strange inventions of the province on the roads above him: tall, bi-wheeled cycles and long, low carriages that belched a thick steam into the air, entirely mechanically propelled. The buildings grew more densely packed and the population thinned, and he saw that he was coming to the edge of an area of industry, closed up and incarcerating its crews within dark, chimney-topped buildings until the brief midday exodus for food. He’d been fascinated by travelers’ tales of electricity, but he didn’t envy this so-called seat of civilization, where the “comforts” of society seemed more like voluntary imprisonment.

He turned back on the bank and observed the long, narrow street that followed the river, as he did. Bank Street. Of course. It was the riverbank Ahr had meant. But how he would discover this “coal woman”, he didn’t know. He climbed the bank to the street and followed it from end to end for several hours in frustration, wishing the bastard Ahr had given him more specifics.

Near sundown, he counted the Deltan money in his pockets. He’d have to find an inn and try again in the morning. Perhaps he could try to ask the innkeeper where to purchase coal, find some way of conveying it to him, even if he had to draw him a picture. As he dragged himself toward the row of storefronts and places of commerce, a figure shuffled past him: an old woman, bent and dirty, and carrying a bucket of black stone.

Geffn couldn’t believe his luck. He turned to follow her, but somehow she’d gotten far ahead of him, disappearing into the crowd retreating from the industrial district toward town. He pursued her and saw her again, emerging on the far side of the road beneath the shadow of an overgrown tangle of trees scraping the paved path. She disappeared into the recesses of an indistinct building, and he ran across the street and grasped the grate where she entered. It was unlocked. He jumped down into the basement, wondering how the old woman could manage the descent. A dim light glowed within the interior cell, and a door was standing open, as if she were waiting for him.

In the smoky haze from the coal woman’s fire as he entered cautiously, he saw two women seated in the corner. He stared at the first, unable to take his eyes away. She was a majestic creature, long-limbed, bare-armed, and nearly brutal in her beauty, with hair of a curious hue between sable and red wine. The gleaming tresses surrounded both her and the body of the woman who sat before her: Ra. Or—perhaps not. This woman was naked and rested her head on the other’s bosom, her own mane of black subsumed by the hair of the other. Only the ripe-olive eyes made him certain it was Ra. Her face was unrecognizable. Even without the dark stripes of some terrible attack marring her cheeks, she was different, older—or younger—he wasn’t sure.

“My…god,” he managed.

The majestic woman spoke. “This man is known to you?”

Geffn wasn’t sure if she spoke in Mole, or if he suddenly understood this bit of cadent Deltan.

Ra stirred and looked at him. “Yes, MeerShiva. He is one of the mound dwellers of Haethfalt.”

“Time to go home, then.”

Ra climbed up from the protection of abundant hair. When she stood, he saw that she was drawn and thin, on the verge of starvation.

MeerShiva read his dismay. “She will not eat. Only a little milk. It may sustain her for a time.” She rose and touched Ra’s shoulders, and a dark skein of wool seemed to unroll from her fingertips, clothing Ra in a long, straight dress like the one she’d sewn herself—but this dress lay against her form to reveal the lack of it, a funeral shroud.

His insides twisted. She came close to him, and he put his fingertips lightly on the gashes at her cheek. “What happened to your face?”

“I struck her,” said MeerShiva, and he didn’t dare ask more.

Ra lowered her head, and Geffn thought she was trying to hide the wounds, but she was bowing to the Meer.

“That part of your quest is ended, child,” said the Meer. “Leave expurgation to the past.”

“Yes, MeerShiva.” Ra didn’t lift her head until the splendid woman came to her.

“And as for the remainder of your quest, there is something I can give you. In the beggars’ graveyard outside Rhyman, you will find what you seek.”

Ra looked up at her, the gaunt face twisting with emotion. Whatever the Meer had given her with this information, it clearly meant something vital to Ra.

“I’ll take care of her,” Geffn promised. “We’ll go to the graveyard if you like, Ra, on our way home.”

“Yes,” said MeerShiva. “Take care. But you will not take care of Ra. This woman has the power to crush your skull between her fingers—or bring down the whole of Rhyman should she choose to believe it.”

They stayed the night at the inn he’d seen earlier. Ra didn’t speak as they lay together of necessity in the overstuffed bed. He dared to wrap his arms around her while they slept, aching at the slight feel of her body. In the morning, she permitted him to hold her, his arms crossed over her chest and hugging her spooned to his body while she stared at the white square of the window. He bowed his head to her hair while she lay shrouded in thought.

“I was worried,” he said after a bit. “I thought you’d perished in the storm. When it cleared, I went looking for you. I found Jak at Mound Ahr. They were together…comforting one another.”

“Yes, Ahr needs comfort.”

“They were lovers, Ra. They didn’t notice or care that you were out in the storm.”

She turned halfway and looked up at him. “Jak and Ahr?” She seemed to contemplate it with curiosity. “That will be good for Ahr.” She breathed slowly in his arms as if coming to life. “Do you know who I am?”

“I think I do.”

“Ah, Geffn.” She shook her head. “You cannot know.”

In’La was the last place in the world Cree had ever wanted to see. Alya’s “magic” was everywhere—in the steam-driven coaches and bi-wheeled conveyances that clogged the streets, in the glass lamps burning invisible gases that lit the street corners after dark, and in dozens of odd little clockwork gadgets being sold in the Market. Novelties, mostly, it seemed, but a few looked to have practical uses. The Meer’s legacy lived on, though his people had despised him.

Cree tried to shut out the memory of Alya being struck across the face by an iron bar in the hand of a templar, and Ume, dragged naked onto the temple steps, splattered in his blood and brain matter. Cree’s part in the Expurgation sickened her, but that her own misguided hatred had nearly gotten Ume killed was something she’d never quite forgiven herself for.

Ume had tried to tell her that the templars were using them, Nesre chief among them. But because of her bitterness toward the ruling class and her arrogance in the wisdom of her own beliefs, Cree had refused to listen. She’d said terrible things to Ume in the days before the uprising. And somehow, Ume had forgiven her and come back to her, after everything.

It had taken all Cree had in her not to pull the trigger while she waited in the brush to let Pike capture Ume on the road to Soth Rhyman. She knew Ume was right. It was the only way. But it was killing her to think of Ume being returned to the temple. Cree barely remembered the time she’d spent there; Nesre had kept her drugged much of the time in his hospital wing, prescribing odd tinctures and remedies to “cure” her of her “mental illness”. But she knew it had been months. Long enough, after all, for her to realize she was carrying a child…and to lose it.

Cree shivered, pulling up the collar of her coat against the wind, though the breeze was fairly mild, as she wove through the crowds to an inn on Lower Bank Street. She’d chosen an area she hadn’t frequented when she lived here, but she wasn’t taking any chances on someone recognizing her. Tipping the bill of her hat lower over her eyes, she ducked her head and entered the inn, nearly stumbling into a couple coming out.

“Sorry,” she said gruffly, eyes averted, but something made her turn as the woman passed her, and she gasped at the appearance of vicious marks on her cheeks beneath a dark hood. Both of them eyed each other with a kind of panic, and then the couple slipped away. Apparently, Cree wasn’t the only one who’d come to hide out in the southbank.

The Meerchild still produced nothing. Nesre was growing tired of its petulance. He’d brought the child extra treats—berries and cream poured over the usual porridge, and a bag of pistachio nuts—but changed his mind when the child steadfastly ignored his efforts to coax it out of its melancholy. He took both the bowl of porridge and the little cloth bag away with him, leaving the child staring after him with a forlorn expression. The child would eat when it drew again.

As he walked swiftly back toward his private office, a messenger approached announcing the Meerhunter, Pike. Nesre scowled. He’d heard nothing from Pike since he’d let Ume Sky slip from his clutches. He had a great deal of nerve showing his face in In’La.

“Send him in.” Nesre entered the receiving room and dropped heavily into his throne, his mood already spoiled by the difficult child now doubly so at the reminder of Pike’s failure. Short of arriving with Ra’s head in his fist, the Meerhunter had become worse than useless to him.

“Your Excellency.” Pike bowed with an artful flourish as he entered, as though he were cock of the walk.

“You have sixty seconds to explain why I shouldn’t have you whipped and pilloried.”

Pike straightened with an amused smile and gestured behind him. Two of his hired men entered—with a peasant between them, some boy Pike had inexplicably brought to Nesre’s receiving room. The peasant gave him a hard stare out of a pair of amber eyes that could belong to none other than the wayward Ume Sky. Nesre straightened, his mood considerably improved.

“Cillian Rede.” His lip twitched with amusement, knowing how Ume hated to be addressed by the name she was born to. “As I live and breathe.”

“For the moment,” sneered Ume, as if she could ever be in a position to threaten him.

Pike was waiting expectantly.

“Well done, Pike. You’ve managed to complete at least one small task I gave you.” Nesre nodded to the steward. “Pay him the bounty.” He rose and gestured to Ume as he turned toward his quarters. “Follow me, Mr. Rede.” The Court of In’La was well guarded. There was no chance that Ume would escape.

Nesre unhooked the tie on the heavy curtain at the arch of his private rooms and let it fall as Ume entered. It had seemed blasphemous, despite the just destruction of the Meer, to add doors to the priceless structures built of Meeric imagining, but privacy was a greater consideration for a real man, so he’d installed the curtain as a concession to modesty.

He circled the former courtesan slowly, taking in her rough appearance from weeks on the run and measuring the toll the years had taken on her. He had to conclude she’d hardly changed at all, only grown more elegant, truly a woman despite the misfortune of birth. Nesre pulled off her knit cap and let the infamous tawny hair tumble down about her shoulders—a bit the worse for travel, but still stunning. The palms of her hands bore faint marks of reddish brown flourishes, as though she still painted on the henna tattoos of the courtesan after all this time.

“So I hear you’ve found yourself another sacred patron.”

“As I told your man Pike repeatedly—while he was burning me with the tip of a red-hot knife and trying to drown me—I’ve done no such thing. This Meer you imagine to be haunting the highland waste is, if he exists, unknown to me.”

“And yet you just happen to show up in the same part of the world as this renaissanced Meer.”

“Renaissanced?” She actually looked surprised. “Is that even possible?”

Nesre regarded her. “With the Meer, apparently, anything is possible.” He shook his head, bemused. “You really have no idea. The fugitive is MeerRa of Rhyman.”

Ume’s eyes widened. “Oh.” She exhaled the word as if something had clicked in her head that had been eluding her.

“Oh?”

She pressed the fingers of one graceful hand against her lips a moment, as if to stop the word belatedly from escaping, and then sighed with resignation. “We saw Azhra in Mole Downs.”

Nesre’s brow furrowed. “Azhra?”

“The former consort of MeerRa.”

“Ah. The mother of MeerRaNa: the ‘Maiden’ Ahr.” He lifted Ume’s chin, his fingers resting intimately beneath it. “Another who used the title liberally.” Nesre smiled. “Curious, indeed.”

They traveled upriver toward Rhyman on foot along the far bank of the Anamnesis to avoid curious eyes and slept among the yellow reeds, but Geffn couldn’t persuade Ra to eat. Though he attempted it each time they rested, offering her the fruit and bread he carried with him, she regarded him sadly, as though she were sorry for him.

It took them eight days to reach the traffic of the capital. Ra was a wraith when they arrived at the sprawling edges of its splendor. He pleaded with her to eat, and she appeased him with swallowing half a crust of bread. The beggars’ graveyard was here on the far bank also—symbolically as well as physically separated from the hallowed ground of Rhyman. They waited until sunset to climb the bank to the humble portal formed of iron and reed, too unprotected to risk during daylight.

Ra moved among the rows of unmarked graves and others marked with crude wooden posts, the holding place for those Deltans who had either no faith in reincarnation or no money for proper cinerary rites. From the portal, he watched her, a ghost that might have risen from the mist among them. She studied each marker not so weatherworn it couldn’t be read.

Beneath a lightning-scarred tree, she stopped and bent down to clear away the moss from a grave that held a stone instead of the painted beggar’s post. He could see her wounded face in the moonlight, her lips moving as she read the name. Then she sank down and stretched her body across the grave, putting her head upon the stone. He held himself back.

With a sickening lurch, the earth seemed to move, and Geffn stumbled against the portal in horror as he saw Ra had somehow plunged her arms into the solid earth and was reaching into the domain of the dead. He picked himself up and ran over the graves to her, but already, through some Meeric magic, she’d laid open the plot. He covered his mouth, holding back his gorge as she exposed the remains that lay there. It was mostly skeleton and dust, a small body of a child with a terrible cleft in its skull. Ra traced the contours of the broken face with her fingers.

“Not enough of her to burn,” she said. “Gone.”

Geffn looked away from the corpse and read the inscription on the stone: Mene Mi La; Mila na Ahr.

“My wonder.” Ra read for him. “Mila, daughter of Ahr.” She paused. “No, not my wonder—my horror.”

“Daughter of Ahr.” He studied her ravaged face. “Yours also?”

“Yes.” Ra turned back to the small body. So that had been their connection. He felt a pang of jealousy toward Ahr, for whom he already harbored an enormous debt of it.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing what else to say. Ra was turning the dry fingers in her hands. “Please, Ra. Let her rest.” He was alarmed at her morbidness. “Put the earth back.”

“Her ring,” said Ra. “Someone’s taken her ring.”