SHUTHMILI WAS WOKEN by the creak of a floorboard next door, in her study. Nobody else should have been in her chambers—she had managed to terrify the latest maidservant away—but she was pretty certain who it was.
She pulled on Csorwe’s coat over her nightdress and went to see. As expected, the body that no longer belonged entirely to Keleiros Lenarai was standing at the desk in her study.
“What brings you here?”
“The palace opens to me,” he said. “I’ve been exploring.” He had arranged Keleiros’ ringlets into a fetching cascade, which just happened to conceal the diadem, and outlined the boy’s eyes with his usual fine line of kohl. The eyes were as bright and open and friendly as ever. It was only the power of the imagination that added a knowing glint. For that matter, Shuthmili’s own eyes were the same undistinguished dark brown that they had always been.
“Well, I hope you’re doing a convincing job as Keleiros,” said Shuthmili. His features might be unchanged, but his posture was visibly different, relaxed and authoritative. She might not have noticed unless she’d been looking for it, but someone who knew Keleiros well might spot it.
“People aren’t very observant, really,” he said, shrugging. “But you’ve really made a name for yourself. I’ve only been here three days, and I’ve heard all about you. People fear you as much as the Empress.”
“I do my best,” she said. “Do sit down.”
Shuthmili’s study was built of the same intricate black fossil-stone as the rest of the Lignite Citadel, but the walls were hardly visible between the bookshelves that rose from floor to ceiling on every wall. There was a high narrow fireplace whose iron chimneypiece was in the shape of a cobra’s hood, and two deep leather armchairs.
She snapped her fingers and lit a fire in the grate. A languid blue flame sprang up halfheartedly, casting only a shadow of warmth. It was always cold in the Lignite Palace, regardless of the desert sun outside. The fossil-stone seemed to drink up light and heat and swallow them down.
Shuthmili boiled water and made tea and porridge. There was something unpleasantly vulnerable about cooking in front of him, but it would be worse to have to deal with him on an empty stomach.
“Ah, the tyranny of breakfast,” he said, as she set down the tray on the table between them. “You and Csorwe were well matched. Although that coat is too big for you.”
He was only probing her defences. She ignored him and ate her porridge. It was, as usual, grainy and slightly burnt.
“So,” he said, when they had eaten. “You want her back. The question is, what is left of her?”
Shuthmili nodded. Belthandros was not to be trusted. He was not her friend, not her colleague, not her ally. She had to keep that in mind. And yet, all these years with nobody else to share her plans …
“She is still there,” said Shuthmili.
“The mortal apparatus is not designed to sustain two minds,” Belthandros went on. “When a god possesses a mortal for any span of time, the weaker mind tends to waste away. Remove the parasite, and you are left with a shell. You know this, Shuthmili.”
“What about you?” said Shuthmili. “What about me? We’re both living proof that it doesn’t have to be true, not always.”
“Neither of us is possessed. True incarnation is an exchange between equals, brought about by consent and sacrifice. I cut out my beating heart and placed it in the Reliquary. No doubt you have given Zinandour something of equal value.”
Do you think so, my lady?
Zinandour preened distantly, emanating distaste. HIS HEART IS FIT ONLY TO BE EATEN, AND ONLY IF ONE WERE IN GREAT NEED. EVEN YOUR FEEBLE HUSK IS A MORE PROPER OFFERING.
Belthandros picked up his teacup, swirling loose the black tea leaves that had settled at the bottom.
“I don’t see how this is relevant to Csorwe,” said Shuthmili. “If you think there’s no hope, then just say so, but I don’t believe she’s gone. Even after she put on the Mantle, she was still there—I spoke to her, she tried to fight it. Do you think I should just give up?”
The alternative was more than Shuthmili could bear. Every moment she spent in the God-Empress’ presence, it was impossible not to look for signs. She had searched every word and every expression for some sign that Csorwe was still there. She didn’t know what was worse: that Csorwe might have lived through the past fifteen years with some conscious knowledge of what was being done with her body or that she might be gone altogether.
“I do not know,” he said, rather dreamily, as if ignorance was a pleasant novelty. “Csorwe survived the first fourteen years of her life in direct contact with the Unspoken One, and she is terribly stubborn when she chooses to be. Perhaps her mind is intact. Perhaps the God-Empress chose to preserve her. Or perhaps not. A mortal soul is like salt. In contact with the divine—in time—it dissolves.”
Shuthmili flinched, and realised too late that a small sound had escaped her throat, an inarticulate mew of distress.
There was a curious expression on Keleiros Lenarai’s face, like a machine that had discovered the concept of pity. “Shuthmili—are you sure that what you’re doing here is the best use of your time?” said Belthandros. “Fifteen years in service to the Empress? The fallacy of sunk costs is a terrible thing.”
She swallowed, twisting her hands together in her lap.
“Csorwe was dear to me, too, you know.” he said. She could tell he was trying to be gentle, but this still made her want to scream all over again. “She was my companion in exile. I would not willingly have let her go, but it is sometimes easier, in the long run, to recognise when something has slipped through your fingers.”
“It’s not the same thing at all,” said Shuthmili. “She was happy with me.”
“And you think you can get that back?” he said.
“No,” said Shuthmili. She knew she couldn’t. She’d never had any hope of that at all; those weren’t the terms of her deal with Zinandour. When Csorwe was saved, Shuthmili’s body would belong to the goddess altogether, and it would be her turn to dissolve.
“Thinking like this about mortals will break your heart, you know,” he said. “But you’ll come to see it. After three thousand years, no mortal seems all that extraordinary. There are only so many types. Beauty and courage and intelligence recur again and again, and they fade almost immediately. It’s a mistake to become too attached.”
Shuthmili laughed abruptly, surprising herself. “Listen to yourself. That is monstrous.”
“Well,” said Belthandros. He leant back in his chair. “We are monsters. You have a lot of laudable mortal feelings, and if you’re wise, you’ll squash them as quickly as you can. They’re maladaptive for your current situation.”
“You mean to say you think I should give up on Csorwe because pretty girls are a renewable resource?” said Shuthmili. “Fine—I don’t think you’re a monster, I think you’re an idiot.”
“I think you’re denying reality. Even if we do manage to bring her back—for however long—do you really think there is such a thing as a love eternal? I suppose there’s no point trying to warn you, though. It’s a hard lesson. If you try to hold on to mortal things, you will lose and lose and lose. Enjoy them, and let them go.”
“I suppose what I’m meant to take from this is that you’ve suffered nobly and learnt your lesson, but I don’t think you’d know a lesson if it slapped you in the face,” she said. “This explains so much about you. Is this why you treated Tal so badly?”
“I tried to give Talasseres what he wanted,” he said levelly. More level than Shuthmili was managing, which was embarrassing.
“And Oranna? Do you know how she died?”
He paused. “No.”
“The Thousand Eyes executed her,” said Shuthmili. She had a report on it somewhere. She had looked hard for both Tal and Oranna. She hadn’t found Tal until now, and it had been a kind of relief, to think that perhaps he’d been able to find his way out. But by the time she’d got word of Oranna, it was too late. “Beheaded,” she added, with a hot flash of cruelty, quite badly wanting to hurt him.
Immediately she felt grubby for using Oranna’s memory to wound. At the time of her death, Oranna had been no older than Shuthmili was now, though she had looked older. Much later, Shuthmili had seen what was left of her, laid out in two pieces in the morgue of the Blessed Awakening. Some part of her hadn’t believed it could actually be true until she’d seen her, even though Oranna herself had predicted she’d be dead within the year. Whatever had happened, the year hadn’t been kind to her. The familiar features and the new lines of suffering were all blurred by death into a uniform, slack blandness.
“That wasn’t how it should have been,” was all he said, and then looked up at Shuthmili, a gleam of vindictive malice in Keleiros’ bright eyes. “I suppose I should start wearing her clothes, then? I might live another three thousand years, should I spend all of them weeping?”
Shuthmili shook her head, a bitter smile twisting her features. “They both deserved much more than they got. And we both got much more than we deserved.”
Somehow this had been the right thing to say. Belthandros leant back, and the malignancy faded from his expression.
“I mean to redress the balance,” said Shuthmili. She didn’t intend to tell him anything about the fine detail of her deal with Zinandour. The less he knew the better. “Do you think you can help me, or not?”
Belthandros leant back in his chair, crossing Keleiros’ elegant ankles.
“As a matter of fact, I do. If we can persuade the God-Empress to remove the Mantle of her own volition—if you are right that there is some fragment of Csorwe’s personality remaining—that would give her the best possible chance to reassert herself.”
“Of her own volition?” said Shuthmili. “That can mean a lot of things. And if she notices we’re acting against her—”
“No need to get ahead of yourself,” said Belthandros. “I told you, I can help you.”
“Then where do we begin?”
“Well,” he said. “For one thing, I will need my body back.”
Shuthmili tucked her elbows in. It was a good thing that she had never been claustrophobic. Around her was a shimmering bubble of air and light that would hold for only as long as her concentration. Beyond that was solid glass and stone, glowing as the heat of the bubble melted it. Belthandros’ bubble was yards away, ahead and slightly below, twinkling dimly through the glass. It was a slow business, burrowing down through the fabric of the palace, never moving fast enough to risk detection by the God-Empress. The bubbles were a spell of Belthandros’ devising, and Shuthmili was determined not to show how difficult she had found it.
Zinandour disliked the confinement so much that for most of the descent she had managed nothing but a silent scream of hatred.
This does not help me focus, Shuthmili thought, for the third or fourth time. Drowning in molten glass would be an unpleasant way to die.
I WILL REVIVE YOUR BODY TO KILL YOU AGAIN IF YOU DO NOT RELEASE ME. YOU HAVE NEVER KNOWN SUFFERING UNTIL THIS DAY. LET ME GO OR I WILL RENDER YOU TO OIL AND ASH. I WILL NURTURE TEETH IN YOUR GUT. I WILL OPEN MOUTHS IN YOU TO DEVOUR YOUR ORGANS FROM WITHIN.
My Corruptor, this is hardly the time to flirt with me. We will be there in less than five minutes.
I WILL NEVER RETURN TO THE VOID! I WILL DIE FIRST! I WILL INVENT DEATH FOR MY KIND AND I WILL TEACH IT TO YOU!
Shuthmili rolled her eyes and focused on piloting the bubble, down through the glassy veins and flesh of the palace.
Belthandros had spent the past few days holed up in Shuthmili’s private training room, having given out some story about the Hand of the Empress needing Keleiros for a secret project. He had left it full of detritus: experimental doves, both living and dead; burnt-out candles; stacks of books; huge closely written sheets of paper. But there was a limit to what they could achieve through theory alone, and so it was time to pay a visit to the heart chamber.
The bubble breached the outer shell of the chamber and Shuthmili halted its descent, cooling it as rapidly as she dared. She was in effect standing on the lip of a pockmark set into a great domed ceiling.
Their magelights cut through ink-black darkness to reveal that the heart chamber was one huge round bubble, without doors or windows, sealed within a stratum of volcanic glass deep beneath the palace. Glass tubes and pipes grew everywhere from floor to ceiling, as though the place was haunted by the ghost of a pipe organ. Some of the tubes ran with clear or yellowish fluids, others with what was unmistakeably red Tlaanthothei blood. The thunder of a distant pulse could be heard, huge devices turning over in the depths of the palace.
Shuthmili had spent a lot of time setting up the heart chamber before the Empress sealed it. She knew that some of the glass pipes ran up through several levels of the palace to emerge in the throne room, and some connected to the jar containing Belthandros’ body.
Belthandros emerged from his own bubble a few yards away. He had made a pet of one of his experimental doves, a round and self-satisfied creature which liked to perch on his shoulder and eat seedcake from a silver dish. She fluttered after him out of the bubble and landed on his shoulder again as he descended.
“Oh good, I’m so glad you brought the bird,” said Shuthmili. She found the dove infuriating. It was such an obvious piece of ostentation to bring the wretched creature safely down here.
“I’m training her as my assistant,” said Belthandros. He clicked his tongue, peering at the pipes and valves.
“I don’t know why you want your body back so badly,” said Shuthmili. “I would have thought you’d be glad to trade in for a younger model.”
He laughed. “Keleiros Lenarai has a doting mother. I can’t get away from her. Not to mention the fiancée.”
“Don’t even think about it,” said Shuthmili. She hadn’t known about either the doting mother or the fiancée, but she didn’t have time to give in to pangs of guilt. She had work to do.
High above them, up in the throne room, Belthandros’ body was joined to the machinery of the Citadel by a number of fine tubes which grew from the jar like the bundle of veins and arteries which grow from the upper portion of the heart. These tubes emerged here in the heart chamber, a thick bundle of pipes which branched and divided, growing back into the floor like roots.
“Here we are,” said Shuthmili. She tapped one of the tubes, and it gave a bright, glassy tink! “Salt water, alchemical solutions, preservative.”
“All this, just to sustain my body?”
“The God-Empress likes her trophies,” said Shuthmili.
“So I see,” said Belthandros, looking around.
There were larger glass bubbles in among the tubes, like fruit swelling on some unearthly tree. Some of them were bigger than Shuthmili. Most of them contained the discarded results of the Empress’ experiments: slippery, half-living things, which followed Belthandros with their great eyes as he moved down the walkway.
A WRETCHED BLASPHEMY, said Zinandour.
“So this is the great work…” said Belthandros. “If this is as far as she got, I think Echentyr is still some way off,” he added, leaning in to look at one bubble. The inhabitant, a foetal amphibian thing, reached for him with pale webbed fingers. It seemed a miserable existence, sealed alone here in the heart chamber, kept alive only by magic, but the Empress never threw away anything that might be of use.
“This was as far as she had got ten years ago,” said Shuthmili. “This one was from the marshes of Tsortanapan,” she added. “Conquered by the Thousand Eyes and destroyed by the curse a few centuries later. The God-Empress told me they had beautiful singing voices.”
Like songbirds, she remembered, unwillingly.
“Bringing back the old order of things will solve nothing,” said Belthandros. “Even if the God-Empress succeeds in resurrecting Echentyr, she will not find what she looks for.” He gave her a double-edged smile, which she ignored.
It took quite some time before Shuthmili found what she was looking for, a huge glass amphora shaped something like a hanging flower bud, filled with red liquid.
“Here we are. This is your blood.”
“Goodness, is it?” said Belthandros, looking up at it with mild interest. “I’m sure it could be anybody’s blood.”
“Your body was exsanguinated fifteen years ago, and the Empress keeps the stuff here,” said Shuthmili, ignoring him.
She set about reconnecting the amphora to the jar systems. Belthandros watched thoughtfully.
“So tell me,” she said. “When are we going to do this? The God-Empress never leaves her throne room, and it’s unbelievably hard to distract her.”
“What about the Feast of Midsummer?”
“Don’t mock me, Belthandros. A glass tank of blood is so breakable.”
The Midsummer Feast was still celebrated every year in the Citadel, although rather than honouring the Siren, it now commemorated the destruction of Echentyr. Every year it struck Shuthmili as a worse and more gruesome charade.
All the usual tedious parades and sacrifices, with Cherenthisse at the head in her full regalia. All the most important families of Tlaanthothe-That-Was were also invited to celebrate the Feast at the God-Empress’ table. Shuthmili suspected that the families selected their representatives by short straw. The God-Empress’ presence was at its most malignant during the Feast. Watching five hundred mortal dignitaries struggling to maintain composure as they wept blood into their goblets was never an edifying spectacle. This year Shuthmili meant to arrange for extra handkerchiefs.
“I’ve always thought that if you’re going to steal something, it’s a bad idea to do it specifically on the night when a few hundred delegates are going to be in the throne room looking directly at it,” said Shuthmili.
She gave a vicious twist to the nearest dial and stepped back as the tube began to fill with blood, siphoning out of the glass tank.
“No. They will be looking directly at the God-Empress. And she will be occupied by whatever tiresome ceremonial rigmarole she has devised for the occasion. If she never leaves, our only option is to act while she’s distracted.”
“And afterward? I want Csorwe safe and out of the palace. That’s my only condition.”
“Once I have my body back,” he said. “That’s my only condition. Can you arrange for me to attend the party?”
“The Lenaraii have already selected their representative,” said Shuthmili. She’d seen their elderly patriarch at previous feasts. “It would look odd for Keleiros to suddenly receive an invitation.”
“Can’t you bring a guest?” said Belthandros. “It wouldn’t look that odd for you to favour your pretty secretary.”
Shuthmili made an involuntary noise of disgust. “I doubt it’ll win me any favours with the doting mother or the fiancée,” she said.
She did not, personally, give a damn whether Belthandros got his body back, but at least if he did, then Keleiros would be off the hook. She really did not want to do the stupid boy any more injury than she had already.
She adjusted another dial. The blood was flowing freely now. If she had done her job properly, it would be pumped back into the veins of the body in the jar, but she wouldn’t be able to see for certain whether it had worked until the next time she was in the throne room.
“I’ll get you an invitation,” she said, “but if we get caught…”
“Oh, no need to worry on that front,” said Belthandros. “I never get caught.”