ZINANDOUR APPROACHED THE Citadel on dark wings, with Csorwe in her arms. She sensed Belthandros’ presence long before she saw him: a dull, unignorable throbbing like the heat in an infected wound. He must have sensed her too, because the bounds and wards of the Citadel opened to let them pass.
“He will expect our arrival,” she said.
“Good,” said Csorwe, muffled by the wind.
Zinandour landed first on the balcony of the Turret of the Hand, setting Csorwe down as gently as she could on the stone balustrade. Csorwe stretched, cracking her joints after the long flight.
“You will stay here,” said Zinandour. “I will handle Belthandros alone.”
Zinandour had little hope that Csorwe would agree to this, so it was a surprise when she simply nodded.
“Probably for the best,” she added. “Never been that good at lying to him.”
The great window of the throne room was open to the sky. Inside, Belthandros looked out over the cracked and mutated expanse of his city. Zinandour swooped through the window and landed in the throne room.
“Lady Zinandour,” he said, turning to face her. There was a film of good humour on his face, sheened over what she recognised, as if in a mirror, as a pit of deep and watchful cruelty. The white sunlight struck all his features into stark contrast, as if he were a statue on a mountaintop. He was sipping a glass of wine. This detail made Shuthmili shriek with wrath, at a frequency that made Zinandour’s skull itch.
She retracted her armour, let her wings fall away and disperse.
“I have reconsidered your offer,” she said. “I am here to accept it.”
“I thought you might be,” he said, brightly. “If you wanted to work for me, there was no need to kill so many of my people.”
She shrugged. “They die so easily.”
“I take it this change of heart is about Csorwe.”
She said nothing, which was all the response he needed.
“She is imprisoned in your old quarters?” he said. “Even I never tried to keep her against her will.”
“It is not your concern,” said Zinandour coldly.
“Just some friendly advice.”
(we could just kill him.)
IF ONLY IT WERE SO EASY.
(he will never trust us. he knows us for what we are. a byword for usurpation. a universal traitor.)
HIS TRUST IS WORTHLESS COINAGE. ALL HE HAS TO OFFER IS HIS BRIEF ATTENTION, AND WE WILL KEEP THAT LONG ENOUGH FOR CSORWE TO COMPLETE HER ERRAND.
If Belthandros admitted where he was keeping his prisoners, that would be useful too, but Zinandour was here mainly to provide a distraction.
Belthandros smiled, and said, “Join me for dinner, and we will discuss this. You should eat, before your vessel withers away altogether.”
There was some justice in this. Zinandour had not been able to shake off her disgust for mortal sustenance, so Shuthmili’s body was no longer slender but emaciated.
She followed him to a room where the table was set for two, as though he had known exactly where this was going. Dinner was a casserole of fish in some kind of glossy sauce. The smell of it made Zinandour’s mouth fill with unauthorised saliva.
(oh my god I am so hungry. eat something you monster.)
“This kind of thing does become habit over time,” he said, noticing her discomfort, and making it clear that he noticed it.
“Maintenance of the vessel?” she said. “I doubt that.”
“I hardly remember,” he said. “I’ve been incarnate for so long. No longer vessel and divinity, but all intermingled in one being. The same convergence will come to you in time, I imagine. And I like food and drink, so I suppose that helps,” he added, and smiled. The smile had a quality that made Zinandour’s hand twitch toward her fork, suddenly struck with a vision of driving it into his eye.
She speared a flake of fish instead, and ate it because Belthandros was watching her with all the curiosity merited by an unfamiliar insect. The food was no easier because she was braced for it: the wave of intense pleasure—overwhelming to the point of dizziness—and Shuthmili’s terrible hunger.
ALL THIS DEAD MATTER. THIS INDECENT BUSINESS OF TEETH AND TONGUES. HOW CAN YOU STAND IT?
(what would you rather? a live sheep snatched in your claws?)
YES, AND SWALLOWED WHOLE.
She choked down a whole fillet of fish and some plain boiled tubers and felt satisfaction radiate through Shuthmili’s treacherous limbs. Life as a dragon had really been a great deal simpler. Cold wind and scorched earth, the black salt sea and the clean and simple mind of a hunting beast, hot blood and clean bones. None of this wrangling.
“I will work for you on one condition,” she said. “Csorwe is not to be harmed. You have my loyalty, provided I can keep her unharmed and undisturbed in my quarters.”
“I doubt she’ll agree to that,” he said. “She’s a stubborn creature. You’ll have to keep her asleep.”
“That, too, is not your concern.”
“I suppose I have no right to judge your tastes, but I do think there is something grotesque about clinging to a breathing corpse. Better to know when to quit.”
“Those are my terms, Belthandros.”
“Very well,” he said. “Then I agree.”
While Zinandour was gone, Csorwe got her measure of the Turret of the Hand.
Her footsteps plinked on the glassy floor, like water dropping into a bucket. Most of the Turret was empty. Dozens of narrow rooms, knotted together, their walls spiked with crystal like immense geodes. A sameness and darkness, like the world’s most boring labyrinth. The Chancellor’s Palace hadn’t been like this when she had called it home. Sethennai must have changed, or else this had always been in him, an immense and tiresome hollowness, thinly masked over.
She saved Shuthmili’s old quarters until last, as though delay might soften the blow of seeing where Shuthmili had worked and slept. It did not. Nobody else had moved into the Turret, and the signs of her presence were everywhere. Coffee stains on the desk. Long black hairs in a stray hairbrush. A stack of unread books on the bedside table. It all gave the impression that Shuthmili had just gone into another room and that if Csorwe searched long enough, she might find her.
Zinandour returned, closing her wings with a snap.
Csorwe caught her own expression in the mirror above the dressing table and composed herself, hoping the goddess had not seen the raw misery on her face.
“Belthandros is not so very careless with his secrets. I do not yet know where Talasseres or his ally are quartered.”
Csorwe nodded, still mostly distracted by the relics on the dressing table. Comb, hairpins, the little jar of lip rouge which seemed never to have actually been used.
“How long did she live here?” said Csorwe.
“Many years,” said Zinandour.
Csorwe picked up a vial of perfume and put it down again. “Surviving all that time … What did she want? What was her plan?”
“This is its successful accomplishment. You in your own body, and I in hers.”
“There had to be more to it than this,” said Csorwe.
“I would not know. She is gone.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Csorwe. She had stacked little specks of hope on each other, building a tower from grains of sand, remembering: Little parasite. Why won’t you be quiet? “I know you hear her. She fights you. You could stop fighting.”
“And return to the void?” said Zinandour. Her face was as still as ever, but her voice buzzed as though all along she had been a swarm of flies imitating mortal speech. The plates of her armour flared. “I will burn this world and all you love before I let the abyss take me again.”
“But there might be another way—if you didn’t have to go to the void, if you could stay with her?” said Csorwe, thinking of the way Zinandour had said her name, sometimes, about the boxes of polished agate and jars of strange moss she had found throughout the Pearl of Oblivion, about her coat kept lovingly safe in the wardrobe.
“Even at the point of death, all mortals cling to hope,” said Zinandour. Her armour stilled and smoothed again, her voice returning to normal. “Let it go, little sparrow. Hope is a cage.”
“This isn’t hope,” said Csorwe, although she knew it was, and as wishfully ill-founded as most people’s hopes. “I just don’t believe it. I can’t believe she’s gone.”
“What is so hard to believe?”
“I can’t believe she’d do this,” said Csorwe, with desperation. “Not deliberately. There must have been another plan, or she wouldn’t have done this to me.” To her shame, her voice caught, like tripping over a briar. These were thoughts she had carefully avoided thinking. She’d picked her way round them, leaving whole patches untrodden. Don’t hate me for this, and she couldn’t hate, but she could wonder. Why would Shuthmili leave her like this, if she knew what it was like?
Why should I have to be the one who lives? she thought.
“Oh, Csorwe,” said Zinandour. She reached out, brushing Csorwe’s cheek with the backs of her claws, smooth and cold as snow. Csorwe did not recoil. “I miss her too.”
There was a pause. Csorwe’s breath caught, frozen in her throat, and Zinandour kissed her, one spiked hand tangled ungently in her hair. Csorwe leant into it despite herself, just for a second, tasted the same spark of smoke on the point of the goddess’ tongue, and thought about dying by fire.
“No,” said Csorwe, pushing her back, both disgusted and reluctant, and all the more disgusted to find she was so reluctant. “It’s not you, you’re not her, I can’t.”
For a moment it was like looking into the mirror again. Zinandour looked equally disgusted with herself, and equally miserable about having to stop.
“How do you live like this?” said the goddess. Her hand was still in Csorwe’s hair, a weight on the back of her neck. “Trapped here on this earth, inextricable from this flesh, wanting what you cannot have, bleeding and weeping. I would take it back.”
“Then take it back,” said Csorwe. Her voice sounded as ragged as Zinandour’s, as raw as the ache in her chest. “Let her go. Please.”
Zinandour stared down at her for a moment longer, her dark eyes sparking with intensity, her lips slightly parted. Csorwe found that if Zinandour had kissed her she would not have pushed her away a second time. It was grotesque.
“Not for you,” said the goddess. “I will not. I dare not. Not even for her.”
Csorwe buried her face in both her hands with a miserable huff of frustration.
“Fine,” she said, after a pause. “Forget it, then, if this is what you want to be. We’ll get Tal, and I’ll go.”
(how clever I thought I was.)
(justifying every atrocity with the knowledge that I was working towards my own annihilation, and would not have to live with what I have done.)
(forcing her to endure, alone, because we could not stand it. such utter selfishness. the one person we have ever loved, and we would have made her suffer to spare our feelings.)
WE? OUR FEELINGS? YOU CONFUSE YOURSELF.
(is it really so hard to acknowledge that Csorwe is right?)
(we could find another way. we do not have to live like this. she showed me another way before.)
I DO NOT FOLLOW YOU, NOR DO I WISH TO.
(all things are devoured, and give rise to new flesh. all flesh rots, and small creatures feed upon it.)
ALL WORLDS DIE, AND NEW SUBSTANCE RISES FROM THEIR REMAINS. THIS IS OUR DOCTRINE. I NEED NO REMINDING. SPEAK PLAINLY.
(change is of our being. only the void is unchanging. you are clinging to the old order of our existence out of fear.)
FEAR IS A STRANGER TO ME. I AM NO MORTAL, WHO WEEPS AND WAILS. I HAVE NO FEAR. YOU ARE THE ONE WHO FEARS.
(you are proud, Zinandour, and I am very good at lying to myself, and I think it’s time to drop the pretence that “you” and “I” mean anything to us. fifteen years mingled in the same skull, and you think either of us is intact? you are a part of me, Zinandour. I am a part of you. your voice in my head is my own. my failings are yours and yours are mine. Belthandros was right about that much. we are a true incarnation. I am Zinandour. you are Shuthmili. there is no untangling us. we are one.)
And in the end, it was not so very difficult to accept.
They folded away the dragon’s wings. The wind and the sea would wait. They would still be there when the task was done.
Yes. We have all the time in the world to become a minor shipping hazard once this is over.
Csorwe was resting in the other room. All she had asked was to be left alone for a while. This was painful, but if they could not comply with such a small request, then they did not deserve Csorwe’s trust even if she offered it.
Before they could dwell too much, there was a thunderous knock at the door.
Standing in the corridor was First Commander Cherenthisse, looking even cleaner and shinier and more vicious than usual.
Oh, wonderful.
“You’re back,” said Cherenthisse.
“First Commander—” they said, in Shuthmili’s iciest manner.
“Listen, Shuthmili,” said Cherenthisse. “I don’t like you. You don’t like me. But you’re going to listen to me, for once.” She sounded somewhat martyred, as usual, but there was a new, feverish intensity which made Shuthmili and Zinandour suspect this conversation was going to go on for a thousand years.
“I know you were the saboteur,” said Cherenthisse. “I know you have no love for our overlord. And nor do I. But I have no experience of conspiracy. Of—of mutiny.”
“Excuse me?”
They could not imagine what Cherenthisse’s idea of mutiny might be. Possibly an unauthorised requisition for more sticks with which to beat herself.
“The Thousand Eyes already have control of the Blessed Awakening,” said Cherenthisse. “We are going to evacuate as much of the mortal population as we can. Talasseres wanted me to tell you he needs your help. If you can interrupt what I’m sure is important work.” Her eyes tracked over the disarrayed study. Then she smiled. It was a very weird smile, friendly and a little self-deprecating. They had never seen anything like it on her. “Surely you do not like the God-Emperor any better than I do. And Tal said something about how many times he saved Csorwe’s life, and—”
“Ah. Yes, I’ve heard that one.”
“He seemed very certain it would mean something to you,” said Cherenthisse, raising a golden eyebrow.
“He would,” they said. “There is no need to convince me. I will do this.”
Once Cherenthisse had told them all she knew, they were left to think. Tal’s gambit might have made more of an impact if he hadn’t brought it up every other week when they lived on Cricket Station, often in an attempt to make Csorwe do his laundry.
The sudden memory of those days was a blow that knocked the air from their lungs. Gone, and impossible ever to reclaim. As far distant as their other memories, of scourging the hillsides of Qarsazh with dragonfire and glorying in the screams of the dying.
What should we call ourselves? they thought. Those days are gone, and we are some new thing. Who should we be? Zinandour is only a title, something the Qarsazhi saddled us with. Then again, we have not set foot within the Qanwa house since the episode of the cherry tree, so perhaps we should not give much weight to what they named their daughter.
Before they could dwell on it much longer, Csorwe emerged from behind the door where she had, of course, been listening.
“I’m going to look for Tal,” she said. Her posture said clearly that she was prepared to fight for this, and that she expected Zinandour to try and stop her. What a monstrous thing it had been to try and keep her caged.
“Yes,” they said. Csorwe looked a little taken aback.
“I can’t just sit here and wait,” she said.
“I know,” they said. “What would you call me, Csorwe? If I were mortal.”
“How do you mean?” said Csorwe, clearly only half listening. “You’d better get the kid from the vault. We can’t give Sethennai time to counter.”
“I was about to suggest the same thing,” they said, and couldn’t help adding, “Be careful.”
After the night he spent with Belthandros, Tal had been moved to a better guest room, closer to the Glass Archive. Somewhat to his relief, Belthandros seemed to have forgotten about him immediately. Tal felt like a game piece which had been put out of play, dropped back in some felt-lined box to wait in agonised boredom. He hadn’t heard anything from Cherenthisse. The new room had a canopy bed and a well-stocked liquor cabinet, but the door was still locked, and the narrow window looked down over several storeys of spikes.
Still, it was the first time Tal had been in a jail cell with an open bar, and after a self-respecting interval, he poured himself a large glass of resin wine from the choicest bottle in the cabinet.
Doesn’t he know I’m a fighty drunk? he thought, and then sat staring at the wall, having accidentally brought himself up sharp against the implications of that.
He tipped the wine quietly out of the window. Just because someone dangled a dumb idea in your reach, you didn’t have to grab it right away.
There was a muffled spluttering noise outside the window, as of somebody trying to keep quiet despite having had a glass of wine emptied in their face.
He peered out. Clinging to a cornice, shaking resin wine out of her hair, was Csorwe.
“It’s you,” he said.
She blinked up at him, lost for words. Tal, too, took a moment to recover his presence of mind.
“Lucky it wasn’t piss,” he said.
Csorwe’s face did that twitch that meant she was trying not to go bug-eyed with outrage. Then she laughed awkwardly, swarmed up onto the windowsill with an ease he could now only dream of, and wriggled through into the room.
“Nice beard,” she said, then put her head on one side. “No, you know, it suits you.”
She looked older too, though not quite as lean and lined and weary as Tal knew he did.
“What, being old?” he said.
“You used to say you were going to die young and look hot at your funeral,” she said. “Glad you didn’t.”
“I’ve aged like a fine wine,” he said. “You look like somebody’s mum.”
“Should’ve let you die in here, you prick,” she said, to complete the formalities. Then, to Tal’s immense shock, she wrapped her arms around him, holding him tight to her chest. His ears fluttered with surprise, and then he went still. Despite it all, they were both still alive, and she had come back for him.
She let go and he stumbled back, dusting off his jacket, as they both remembered that they weren’t friends and didn’t hug.
“Where’s your sword?” he said. “Is that a poker?”
“No, I’m just pleased to see you,” said Csorwe.
“Don’t tell Shuthmili,” said Tal, and then noted the obvious discomfort and uncertainty on her face. Once this would have been the most exquisite of sweetmeats to him, an oddly painful memory.
He sat down on the bed and waved Csorwe into an armchair, wondering madly whether he ought to offer her a drink. She smiled at him, which was extremely fucking weird, and not only because the last time he’d seen her she’d been the God-Empress. Not a fake smile but a sad one. She’d clung to him as if she expected him to turn into smoke, and the smile had the same bone-weary desperation. He tried to smile back at her, and she grimaced.
“What’s happened to Shuthmili?” he said, expecting the worst. Tal knew better than most that people could just die, that you rarely got a chance for a farewell, but it never stopped being a shock.
“She’s … It’s complicated,” said Csorwe. “She made a deal. With her god. She’s not her anymore. She’s like what Belthandros is now.”
Tal really didn’t know what to say to that, so it was just as well Csorwe went on.
“It doesn’t matter. She’s helping us. She’s up in the vault looking for Tsereg, and then we’re getting out of here.”
“Where to?” said Tal.
Csorwe shrugged, a shadow of her old dismissive stubbornness coming over her face to conceal an uncertainty. “Sh—Zinandour has a place. We could maybe hide out there for a bit—”
“And then?” said Tal.
“I’ll sort something,” she said.
“There’s nowhere,” he said. “Sethennai and his god, they’ve wrecked everything. This used to be my town. And nobody’s going to do anything. Shit’s just going to keep getting worse. Even if we can get away, even if Cherenthisse can get people out, there’s nowhere to go.”
He and Tsereg had seen the way the Citadel was growing, digesting forests and farmland, small towns and country estates as it went. It now looked as though someone had copied the map of Tlaanthothe a hundred times, rushing and twisting it as they went, and pasted it down haphazardly and moved on to copy again, and again. Tal had mixed feelings about his hometown, but he had never wished to see it turn cancerous.
Csorwe nodded. “So what, you want me to leave you here? You’re giving up?”
He shook his head. “Why do you think me and Tsereg came back here in the first place? I’m going to kill him.”
No need to explain who he was talking about.
“What did you say to me, way back?” Tal went on. “He’s just a person.”
“He’s a god,” said Csorwe.
“He’s a dick,” said Tal. “Don’t tell me you’re still defending him. You know the snakes burnt the House of Silence?”
Csorwe nodded sharply, which could have meant either that she knew, or that she wouldn’t admit he’d surprised her.
“I’m not defending him. You really think there’s something we can do?”
“I’ve got an idea,” said Tal. “I want to make sure Tsereg’s out of it first.”
“Who is Tsereg, anyway?” said Csorwe.
Tal laughed, and gave her as straight an answer as he could, hoping it wouldn’t plunge her into some sort of religious crisis, because that was really more than he knew how to deal with.
To judge from Csorwe’s expression, she was receiving this news about as well as Tal had, back in the cave.
“A vessel of the Unspoken. Sethennai’s kid,” she said, as though trying to remember the words of a riddle. “Well. Guess I missed more than I thought.”
“Tsereg’s all right,” said Tal, feeling he ought to stand up for them.
“Who—?”
“Oranna,” said Tal.
“Right. Of course,” said Csorwe, staring into the middle distance. “Both of them, huh. I guess Oranna always did know what she wanted.”
“Do you think she cared about Tsereg?” he said. “I mean, even a little bit.”
It wasn’t what he’d meant to say, but he’d found himself thinking about this more than he wanted to since their visit to the Shrine, as though it really made any difference to anything. “It just seems like something she would do. Have a kid, and then die, and leave them alone with this burden.”
“Yeah, it’s all pretty Unspoken,” said Csorwe. “What’s Tsereg think about it?”
“You can guess. Oranna was amazing and had a brilliant plan for them, and it was all meant to happen this way.”
“I don’t blame them. Sometimes you have to think that,” she said eventually.
“Just like us and Sethennai, you mean?” he said.
“Sure,” said Csorwe, but Tal saw, as clearly as he’d ever seen anything about her, that she was thinking of Shuthmili and her goddess. “You know what Sethennai said to me once? If there ever comes a day when anyone faces justice, you and I had better hope we’re both far away.”
“Yeah, that sounds like him,” said Tal, rolling his eyes.
“I don’t want that,” said Csorwe. She looked brighter somehow, as though something tying her down had come loose. “When the day comes, I want to be right there. Tell me about your idea.”