PRIORESS CWEREN LAY in a crevice beneath the Iron Hill and knew that she was dying. The prison-fortress where she had spent the last fourteen years of her life was on fire.
All over the plain, new towers sprouted like mushrooms, and one of them had pierced the jagged bulk of the prison all the way through, and stuck there. Both prison and tower, wedged firmly together, were burning steadily despite the heavy rain. Cweren herself had crawled into a sheltered place to die.
Well, Cweren thought, I always intended to get out. I just meant to make it a little bit further.
She was in considerable pain, but she had long experience of simply putting the pain somewhere else. All form took shape in emptiness, and that included her own form, and any pain and indignity it might suffer.
At least she was out of the rain, and warm. Warmer than she’d been in years, even this far from the fire. The Iron Hill shed sparks like clouds of midges from a core of flame. Yes, if she had to die so far from home, it was pleasant at least to see the prison burn.
Then a shape emerged from the smoke, a single seedpod picked out by the lightning.
It was a small two-canopy cutter. Two people in it. That’s dangerous, thought Cweren distantly. They’re flying towards the fire.
It grew closer and closer and landed somewhere Cweren could not see. It was hard for her to turn her head. Two people got out. She could hear them talking to each other, but not what they said.
One of them knelt beside her, taking Cweren’s hands in their own.
“Prioress Cweren,” said a small voice.
“Tsereg,” said Cweren. She reached out to touch the top of the child’s head with a trembling hand. She had not thought to see Oranna’s child again. And yet there was a rightness, that Tsereg should be here to witness her death as Cweren had witnessed Oranna’s.
“What happened, Prioress?” said Tsereg. “Where is everyone? What happened to Tsurai and Narwe and—”
“We tried to escape when the prison broke,” said Cweren. It was hard to speak. Her throat was parched and she had to shunt her words carefully into place. “It was no good. The Thousand Eyes caught up to us. They took the others to the Citadel, and left me as I am. Child, what has happened? We knew nothing until the disaster came.”
Tsereg explained what they could. Cweren found herself wishing she could offer the child some kind of comfort or consolation, which was strange, since this had not been her business in life. A darkness clouded her vision. There was something she should tell them. Something to do with Oranna.
“Then she is dead? The false God-Empress?” said Cweren.
“Yes,” said Tsereg. “I was there. I helped.”
Cweren shut her eyes for a moment as a tremor of pain ran through her. What should she feel? Pride, relief, triumph? No, overwhelmingly what she felt was guilt. That this child had done what she herself could not, and that Cweren had nothing to offer them in return but loss.
“Then we are avenged,” said Cweren, “and the will of the Unspoken is done.”
Was this really the best she could manage? What was it she had been meaning to say? Tsereg had kept them all alive inside the Iron Hill, by their very existence. Feeding Tsereg, teaching them, raising them as one of the faithful, all that had been the thing sustaining everyone’s hope. Cweren did not know how to explain it.
“Your mother,” Cweren went on, “I knew your mother—we were friends—” No, that wasn’t it.
“I know, Prioress,” said Tsereg gently.
“No, no,” said Cweren, impatient with herself. Darkness swirled around her. Despite the heat of the fire, she was starting to be cold. “She told me—she told me—you need to know—”
“Let’s get you out of here, ma’am,” said Tsereg.
The chill deepened, as though the forest of northern Oshaar had lived in her all this time. That was a good thought. Death might mean going home after all. “Listen, Tsereg—that which is without end—”
“Can we lift you—Tal, could we lift her?”
“No. Listen to me,” said Cweren, mustering as much force as she could, and she felt for a moment as if she were really Prioress of the House of Silence once more. “You need to know what you are. Go home. Go to the Shrine.”
“But it’s all gone,” said Tsereg. Cweren herself had seen the House burn, shackled among the rest of the faithful as the Thousand Eyes had marched them aboard their ship.
“Of course,” Cweren managed. “By unmaking is emptiness perfected. Go home. You’ll see.”
“We need to get you to a doctor,” said Tsereg.
Tsereg did not look much like their mother, and never had, but the luminous determination in their small face was all Oranna. Ever hopeful, ever confident that all would come good.
Maybe they were right.
No wonder Oranna had left the House of Silence. It had been nothing to do with Cweren at all. The creed of the Unspoken was the endless fading, the world that slipped away like water, like dust, and could never be held. But perhaps—perhaps—
Cweren said no more. Tsereg sat there with her, holding her hand.
Tal stood a little way off, and could not help wincing every time the burning ruin creaked. It was all going to collapse eventually, and Tal did not want to be there when it did. Still, Tsereg deserved at least to say their goodbyes.
“All things that are lost come into my keeping,” said Tsereg softly, and made a gesture Tal had seen Csorwe perform sometimes, the tips of three fingers pressed to the lips. They touched the Prioress’ forehead and got back to their feet.
The two of them sailed away in silence. It would have been better if Tsereg had cried properly. They just stared at Tal, the usual flinty glare dull with grief, as though something in them had finally burnt out.
“I could have got her out,” said Tsereg, when it was no longer visible. “At least her. They were all meant to get away. This is—”
“If you’re going to say this is my fault,” said Tal, “just give me a moment to scream into a bag first. Sethennai did this, and the snakes.”
“If I hadn’t believed Keleiros—” they said.
Tal shook his head. “Trust me. He was going to do what he was going to do. You couldn’t have stopped this.”
“You don’t understand,” said Tsereg.
“Pretty normal to feel like it’s your fault,” he said. “But sometimes things don’t work out. People die, and it’s the fucking worst, but it’s not—”
“I was Chosen,” said Tsereg, hitting the capital C hard enough to crack its skull. “It was my job to make sure this didn’t happen. It’s the only thing I was ever supposed to do.”
“Tsereg—”
“I was meant to die back there in the Citadel, and the others were meant to live,” they said. “I knew it was going to happen. I was fine with it.”
This was every bit as fucked up as the first time Tal had heard it.
“So, what, you actually think if you’d died fighting the Empress that this wouldn’t have happened?” he said.
They faced him, glaring. “How do you think I’m alive? The only reason I survived the Iron Hill is because everyone covered for me. I always got food and medicine even when the others didn’t.”
“It’s not like you asked for it,” said Tal. “You were a little kid—”
They stared at him. “Why would that matter? They kept me alive to save them, and I failed. So don’t tell me this isn’t my fault.”
Tal clenched his fists on the wheel of the cutter and swallowed his outrage.
“People do this all the time, you know,” he said. “Make you believe you owe them something just by existing. It’s not fair, Tsereg! Why should you get Chosen? Not like you get to fucking choose.”
“My mother—”
“Yeah, actually, whatever they’ve told you about her, I think they lied to you,” he said. “I knew Oranna. I didn’t like her. But she didn’t act like she was doing you this huge favour by kicking you in the nuts. She was honest about what you were getting into. More or less. Most of the time, anyway.”
“Why would they lie to me?” said Tsereg, equally angry. “They wouldn’t. They didn’t need to. And now they’re all dead, all my friends, so fuck you.”
“She said they were taken to the Citadel—”
“Yeah, and what just happened to the Citadel?” said Tsereg.
“Some of them might have got away,” said Tal, though he didn’t have much hope.
Tsereg slammed a fist against the inner hull of the cutter and swore. “It’s not fair! It wasn’t going to be like this! We won! I did everything I was meant to do!”
They buried their head in their hands and screamed silently into them. Tal reached out cautiously to pat their shoulder, but they threw him off, curled into a tight knot of anguish.
When they spoke again, it was in a disturbingly flat, even tone, with an iron self-control which seemed alien to them.
“Do you know Belthandros Sethennai very well, Tal?” they said.
He blinked, taken aback. “I—uh—I used to work for him.”
“But do you know much about what he’s like?” they said.
“What’s brought this on?” said Tal, unease prickling at him.
“He’s my father,” said Tsereg, just like that.
“You knew?” said Tal. He had been agonising about when to tell them. It was obvious that they needed to know, at least so they’d understand why the Thousand Eyes were chasing them, but there did not seem to be a good moment.
“It’s in the book,” said Tsereg, as if that were obvious. “Didn’t mean much to me to begin with, just a bunch of stuff about if you meet him, don’t even think about trusting him, but I figured he was dead so it didn’t matter. But now—knowing he was Keleiros, and knowing he’s got a fragment of Iriskavaal inside him—I mean, if there’s some mystery about me, about what I am, it doesn’t take a genius, does it.”
“No,” said Tal. “Even I figured it out. He thinks you’re … part of what he is. That you’re another fragment, somehow. Like you’ve inherited it from him.”
“So I’ve been on the snake side all along. Yeah,” said Tsereg. They weren’t looking at him. Their face was half hidden behind their hair. “Cweren knew all along. I wonder if they all knew. And they never said anything.”
Of course they hadn’t, Tal thought bitterly, because it would have thrown off their whole story about how Tsereg was the Chosen whatever and destined to die young.
“Listen,” he said. “We don’t have to do what she told you.”
“I’m not a coward,” said Tsereg.
“Nothing wrong with wanting to live,” said Tal. “Fuck ’em. This time we both have a choice. If you just want to get out of here, we can, even if you are part snake, who cares? They don’t own you. Nobody does.”
He had his doubts about how long they could run from the Thousand Eyes, but he wasn’t going to throw Tsereg under the wheels of anyone else’s plan. Maybe there was a world out there that the God-Empress hadn’t touched. He could try and send Tsereg to school, find some wizard who was prepared to teach them, find some kind of job to pay for all that.
Sethennai had taken so much from them both. They deserved a chance to make their own way. He braced himself for his usual attempt at not thinking too much about Sethennai. Usually this took a lot of effort and felt like poking himself repeatedly in the eye.
But now … Well, it still hurt, and he wished he hadn’t been taken in by Keleiros, but there was no clamour of inner opinion burbling about how this was Tal’s fault for asking too much or being too stupid, fretting about what Sethennai thought of him now, weighing and measuring how much he was worth and whether he had done well. It didn’t matter. It was over. He was done.
He expected another snap from Tsereg, another flat denial. Instead they rested their head on their folded hands and looked at him curiously.
“It wasn’t an accident, you know, whatever it is I am,” they said. “My mother meant it all to happen. Me getting born and everything.” They rolled their eyes, embarrassed. “I want to know for certain. Then we can run, maybe. But I want to know first. We have to go to the Shrine.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Tal. “I just hope you know the way.”