“BUT,” SAID TAL. “But Niranthos said—”
“Mother of Cities, Tal,” said Shuthmili. “Your idiot brother managed to get himself arrested. Making a deal with him was the only way to get him out alive.”
“What?” said Tal.
“They would have tortured him to death,” said Shuthmili. “I told him we’d let him live if he’d give us everything he knew about you.”
“Yeah. He sold me out. I got that much,” said Tal. He looked deeply wary, flat against the wall, as far from her as possible. There was a child pressed into a corner beside him. Shuthmili hadn’t expected that complication.
“He actually held out far longer than I had expected,” she said. “Cursing me and the Empress. Some quite imaginative blasphemies. I would have been impressed, but I could really only spin the farce out for so long before Cherenthisse got bored.”
Niranthos had never looked more like his brother than he had when spitting in defiance. He’d broken eventually, much to Shuthmili’s relief.
“He promised to sell you out, and we let him go home,” said Shuthmili. She hadn’t known Tal was still alive. The knowledge had felt like a cold knife between the ribs, but she was well used to ignoring that kind of wound by now.
“Why?” said Tal.
“I do my best to protect my clerks,” said Shuthmili. “After all, it’s so hard to find the staff these days.”
Tal look dazed. Eventually he managed: “But you—the things you’ve done—”
“Do you have any particular things in mind?” said Shuthmili.
Tal cast about for an example. “What about the Lemon Tree?” he said. “The old guy who used to run the Lemon Tree, the one with the pamphlets. You were there when they took him. People saw you there. They drowned him in the fountain.”
“Well, yes,” she said. “What is there to say? The God-Empress does not have a high tolerance for dissent. We were ordered to arrest the ringleaders and kill everyone else inside.”
Tal flinched.
“And yet when we got there, the place was almost empty and the propagandist’s family had somehow vanished,” she said.
“I don’t understand,” said Tal.
“Try,” she said. What had Oranna once said? Tal needs ideas broken down into digestible fragments.
“Niranthos was a saboteur,” she went on. “He fed the dissidents in Ringtown with information about the Thousand Eyes, their supply lines, their movements, their operations. You knew that, yes? He warned the proprietor of the Lemon Tree, and gave his family time to escape. All true?”
Tal crossed his arms and glared at her, which made him look much more like himself.
“Come on, Tal. Your brother is a diligent man, but would you call him a natural agitator? Do you think he did all this on his own? Where do you think he got his information?”
“You mean … from you?” he said.
She nodded. The relief of talking to somebody who knew her was too good, after so many years, but it was poison. She couldn’t tell him too much.
“People still died at the Lemon Tree,” said Tal.
“Yes. As I recall, four people were killed at the wineshop, and a further three were executed later. Seven in total. I do what I can to keep the butcher’s bill in the single digits.”
“Oh, good, that’s all right, then,” said Tal.
“I can’t do as much as I’d like,” she said. “I am already walking a fine line. First Commander Cherenthisse thinks of herself as the Empress’ watchdog. She dislikes me, and she is paying my wretched secretary to spy on me. I cannot slip even once.”
“Right,” said Tal. “Right.” He let out a long sigh. “Bloody hell, Shuthmili.”
“Tal,” piped up the child. “Do you know everybody?”
“This is Tsereg,” said Tal, after a moment, clearly feeling some explanation was needed. “They’re, er—”
“Your child?” Shuthmili tried.
“What? No!” said Tal, and “Gross!” said the child. Shuthmili didn’t think it was such an unreasonable suggestion. The child’s Oshaaru heritage was obvious, but their ears tapered to leaflike points, and their hair was almost as tightly curled as Tal’s.
“They’re travelling with me,” Tal managed eventually.
“You’re travelling with me,” said Tsereg. “I can’t believe you know Inquisitor Qanwa.”
Shuthmili did wonder who’d come up with that, originally. The worst of it was that she really did look like her aunt Zhiyouri. Seeing the old family bones in the mirror was still jarring.
“Shuthmili’s a friend,” said Tal.
Shuthmili ignored this. No use encouraging them to count on her. “Now, listen to me. Later this afternoon there will be a containment failure in one of the sealed wings of the palace.”
“You really think you can make that happen?” said Tal. He looked exhausted. He’d never been one to take things on trust, even before.
“I know I can,” said Shuthmili.
Shuthmili had become the world expert at manipulating the Citadel’s wards. She had spent weeks shaving away at the containment wards in the isolation wing, weakening them to the point that Vigil and Thurya Mishari could break through them. It had taken the Qarsazhi prisoners an embarrassingly long time to figure it out. Shuthmili couldn’t have risked speaking to them directly. She didn’t want the Inquisitorate knowing anything that would give them power over her.
“The guards will leave this corridor to deal with the breach,” said Shuthmili. “The locks on your cell will open. And you two will leave the Citadel by the way you got in, and go as far and as fast as you can from this place.”
“No, we won’t,” said Tsereg.
Shuthmili gave them a sharp look. It did not have the desired effect.
“We won’t!” said Tsereg. “We’ve only just got here!”
“Tsereg…” said Tal, warningly.
“What? Why?” said Tsereg. “If she’s your friend, she should help us!”
“I am helping you,” said Shuthmili. “I can’t make you run. But I suggest you take the chance to save yourselves, because you won’t get another one. Every time a ward fails, Cherenthisse has another chance to ask herself why my work is so unreliable, and I can only misdirect Keleiros for so long. If you get caught again, I am not going to help you.”
Tsereg gave her a hard look. “Why not? Doesn’t sound like you like the snakes much.”
“Fifteen years of painstaking work—” said Shuthmili, and bit her tongue. Explaining herself to Tal was one thing. Justifying her actions to a strange child was another.
“Yeah? On what?” Tsereg folded their arms. “You’re as bad as Tal! Oh, years of sitting around in the snake mansion and only doing a little bit of torture, so hard for you! None of you want to take responsibility!”
“For what?” said Shuthmili, not liking the sound of this at all.
“Dealing with the God-Empress. Getting rid of her once and for all,” said Tsereg.
“No,” said Shuthmili flatly.
Tal winced, and Tsereg opened their mouth again. Shuthmili raised a hand, and they fell silent at once.
“I think it’s best for all of us that I assume that was a joke,” said Shuthmili. “You understand that if I thought you were being serious, I would have to act on it.”
“I knew it!” said Tsereg. “You’re on her side really.”
“I suppose so,” said Shuthmili. “I’d prefer that the two of you don’t throw your lives away, but I will die before letting anybody harm the God-Empress.”
“Tsereg, you don’t—I’ll explain later,” said Tal. There was some murky disappointment in his eyes. As if he’d really hoped Tsereg might win her over. “Do you really think—” he said, and cut himself off.
Tal Charossa exercising tact was one of life’s true rarities, but Shuthmili was in no mood to enjoy it.
“That it’s what Csorwe would want?” she said. “No. Of course not. Csorwe saved me once from a life in service to tyranny. But she is no longer with us, and I am selfish.” She brushed a strand of hair back behind her ear, steadying herself. “And one thing I’m pretty certain she would not want is for you to be executed. When the door opens, you two need to do as I tell you and run.”
“I was going to say, do you really think you can help her?” said Tal.
“Nothing has worked yet,” she said. “But I haven’t tried everything. If there’s even a chance—do you really mean to tell me you’d ever stop trying?”
Back in her quarters, Shuthmili rinsed her face in freezing water and gave herself a reproachful look in the mirror. Her goddess looked back at her with her own eyes.
A FRUITLESS ENCOUNTER,said Zinandour.
Oh, there you are, said Shuthmili. I was beginning to think you had left me in peace.
RESPECTLESS INSECT, said Zinandour, not without fondness.
What was fruitless about it?
YOU SWIM IN FUTILITY AS A LEECH IN MUD. WORSE THAN FUTILE TO SACRIFICE OUR SECRETS TO A NONENTITY. IN YOUR SENTIMENT YOU HAND HIM A WEAPON TO DESTROY YOU. SUCH WISHFUL TRUST.
Tal won’t sell me out, said Shuthmili, with more certainty than she felt.
Shuthmili felt Zinandour’s presence as a physical weight, cold heavy coils nestled like a basket of eels in the base of her brain and at the back of her throat. When the goddess was thinking, she could feel them shifting.
YOU HAVE CHANGED. WHY SHOULD NOT HE?
I saved his life, said Shuthmili.
ANOTHER PIECE OF FUTILITY. MERCY COSTS.
Mercy pays, said Shuthmili.
IT DOES NOT. THEIR GRATITUDE IS THE VERY WORST OF YOUR SOFTHEARTEDNESS.
I don’t know why you’re upset. It’s not as though I told Tal about you.
Zinandour hissed in grudging approval. There was nothing which Zinandour, goddess of hidden things and things decaying, enjoyed as much as a terrible secret, and what more terrible secret than the promises they had made to one another?
Shuthmili sent for Keleiros Lenarai and ate a hasty dinner, tearing apart an entire loaf of bread and shoving it into her mouth in handfuls. She was hungrier than ever these days. The Devouring Fire was no joke. By the time Keleiros arrived, there was nothing left but crumbs.
Shuthmili tolerated Keleiros for a variety of reasons. Partly because it was always good to be able to feed Cherenthisse false information in a way she wouldn’t question. Partly because if she acknowledged he was a spy, she would have to kill him, and that would be a frustrating waste. Mostly because he was good at his job and not very scared of her. Her secretaries were always convinced that the Hand of the Empress was going to eat their hearts to slake her dark lusts. Sometimes they thought there might be something to gain by making themselves available for prompt slaking. Keleiros had figured out early on that her real dark lust was to be left alone.
“I need you to accompany me on a brief expedition out of the Citadel this evening,” she said.
“Certainly, ma’am,” said Keleiros. “Shall I request a pilot?”
“No,” said Shuthmili. “This is a private matter for the Empress. I prefer to keep it to my own staff. I’ll fly the cutter myself.”
That was calculated to pique his interest, and she saw his eyes brighten. He would be glad of something good to tell Cherenthisse. Shuthmili hadn’t given him anything substantial for a while.
She sent Keleiros to prepare for departure, and while he was gone, she opened the warded panel at the back of her wardrobe.
Inside were the fruits of the last fifteen years. All together, they looked pitifully meagre. She removed a small collection of private books and papers.
At the back of the niche was a jewellery box containing a thin bronze diadem. Shuthmili had salvaged it from a three-thousand-year-old shipwreck. Retrieving it without Cherenthisse’s knowledge had been one of her earliest struggles. Its surface was now a patchwork of old Echentyri magic and sigils of Shuthmili’s own invention.
Beside it was a lead-lined casket, which had itself taken Shuthmili and Zinandour years to prepare: it was heartwood from the true deeps, inlaid with gold and bone and pearls, sealed with wax and cord. Shuthmili would not risk opening that casket until the moment of need.
She took the casket and the jewellery box. Behind them, in a small leather pouch, was an even greater treasure. Shuthmili left that where it was.
STILL TRYING FOR YOUR FOOL’S ERRAND IN THE AERIAL VAULT, THEN?
Surely you don’t expect me to become less of a fool at this point, said Shuthmili. Their plan to access the Empress’ aerial vault had been over a decade in the making, and she knew Zinandour’s mockery was a facade.
IT DOES SEEM TOO LATE TO HOPE.
Vigil told me what I wanted to know. Folding space is a Quincuriate specialism.
IT IS A PERVERSION OF MY GIFTS.
It’s what we need to get into the vault. You know how this works, Zinandour. You cooperate with me, and eventually we both get what we want.
AID AND OBEDIENCE ARE NOT IN MY NATURE. DIVINITIES DO NOT “COOPERATE.”
So I’ve learned, my Corruptor. The God-Empress has forbidden us to enter the vault. I would have thought that alone would have you scratching at the door to get in.
TRUE. SHE CONCEALS BY NATURE. SHE IS REPLETE WITH SECRETS, said Zinandour, with the air of one resisting the temptation of a small sweetmeat.
When Csorwe lives again, you will have full control of this vessel, said Shuthmili. You will have your true incarnation, and all the secrets of this accursed palace will be yours for the taking.
I WILL REND THIS CITADEL TO DUST. I WILL FLAY THE CITIZENS TO RAGS. WHEN ALL THIS WORLD IS A WASTELAND, I WILL CAST DOWN FAITHLESS QARSAZH AND EAT THE MARROW FROM ITS BONES. I WILL MAKE ALL THE WORLDS MY DOMINION, AND ALL SHALL FEAR ME ALONE.
Of course. That was our deal, my lady.
Tal sat in the cell feeling as though the universe had slapped him in the face.
“I know what you’re going to say,” said Tsereg at last. Their eyes glowed like hot coals in the darkness of the cell. “You’re going to say, Tsereg, we really should do what she says—”
“No,” said Tal. He rose to his feet. The shock had passed, and now some unexpected fury bubbled up in him. “Csorwe wouldn’t want you to be executed—screw you, of course she would, she’d love it, how do you know?”
Tsereg raised one beetly eyebrow at him.
He loped the six feet to the other side of the cell and back again. Restlessness crackled in all his limbs. “Think you can tell me what to do. Can’t fucking tell me Csorwe would run away. Fuck you,” he muttered.
He went on pacing, waiting for the rage to die down so he could come to his senses and do the smart thing. The smart thing would be to run for his life, whether Tsereg agreed to go with him or not. The smart thing would be to let go of this stage of his life like a lizard dropping its tail to get out of a trap, to find work in some dreary desert town and go on the way he always had, bored and alone and alive. He might live a long time like that. He might get to be properly old, and the Thousand Eyes might forget about him, and one day he’d die quietly of pneumonia and that would be the end of that, and the world would go on just the same, with the God-Empress piloting Csorwe’s shell around and Shuthmili crawling after her like the universe’s saddest spider.
“Shit,” he said, coming to a stop.
“What?” said Tsereg.
“Let’s do it,” he said. “Let’s assassinate the bloody God-Empress.”
Tsereg gave a sigh of mock relief. He didn’t miss the flicker of real relief, though, or the way they bobbed up and down in their seat like a small grey balloon trying to free itself.
Just as Shuthmili had promised, a few hours later, there came the sound of a distant alarm, and the bolts of the cell slid back of their own accord. The door swung open, revealing a dark and silent corridor. Tsereg and Tal exchanged a silent glance.
“Really hope you weren’t making it up about this stupid book. Or about having a plan,” he said.
They flashed him a row of pointy little teeth. “I always have a plan,” they said. “Just, sometimes I make it up as I go along.”