AFTER IT WAS all over, after the surviving citizens of Tlaanthothe had shambled down from the galleries, after everyone was assured that there would be no execution today, Shuthmili circled the Citadel alone, on dark wings. She had pulled Csorwe alive from the void, she knew that much, but in the noise and panic of the aftermath, she had vanished.
In the depths of the Citadel she spotted a certain courtyard garden, submerged in shadow by the eight floors of defunct balcony which loomed above it. The plants in the vases had long since withered away, and the flagstones and gravel paths were still and dusty with lack of use.
Sitting on a stone bench under a tree was a still figure with thick black hair and freckled grey arms.
Shuthmili landed on the gravel, planning to say something clever and effective, but found that before she could get out a single word, she had fallen to her knees.
“Forgive me,” she said, beyond all hope.
“All right,” said Csorwe, in mild surprise.
Shuthmili burst into tears.
Shuthmili had not allowed herself to imagine what it might be like to be in her arms again. She had known it couldn’t happen, so why torture herself? But if she had pictured anything, she would not have imagined lying in Csorwe’s lap in a desolate flower bed, weeping uncontrollably, with her wet and bloodshot face pressed to Csorwe’s thigh as she sobbed like a child.
After a while she sniffed and looked up. Csorwe was stroking her hair with hands that seemed as solid and real as anything. Shuthmili took one of them and kissed her fingertips and found nothing to suggest this was a trick.
Some time later, the two of them were sitting together on the stone bench, Shuthmili had managed to stop crying. Her eyes ached and her face felt swollen and the entire interior of her skull seemed to have been washed clean and empty. It was hard even to look at Csorwe without wanting to press her face against her and hide. Shuthmili found herself looking at her sideways, through her hair. She realised with some exasperation that she was shy.
“I thought you might have gone,” said Shuthmili. “Off into the desert somewhere.”
“I was going to go once it was all over,” said Csorwe with a kind of stiff nervousness that made Shuthmili want to giggle or possibly to start weeping again. “I’ve had enough of bad bargains. Seeing you, and it not being you, that was worse than never seeing you at all. Also, Zinandour was very, uh, charismatic, but I was pretty sure she was going to lock me in a tower. So I was going to take off once everything quietened down here.”
“You changed your mind?”
Csorwe had the decency to look a little embarrassed.
“I thought … you kept trying for fifteen years. Maybe I shouldn’t give up right away. And then I thought … well, why should I have to live without you?”
“Oh, my god, Csorwe, it’s been so long,” said Shuthmili, the weight of it only just hitting her, all fifteen years like individual blows to the rib cage. “It’s been so long, and I never thought I’d see you again, and—aren’t you still furious with me? About it all?”
Csorwe shrugged. “I guess I was for a bit. But hey, we’re both here and you’re alive and looking at me like that, so I don’t think there’s much point staying angry.” She put her hand over Shuthmili’s, as warm as it had ever been, the skin roughened by hard work. “I would’ve wanted you to live for yourself. You know how I feel about sacrifice.”
Shuthmili nodded, ashamed of herself, but at least it was a clean shame. She had the opportunity to do better.
“Anyway, it’s not like I’m not glad to be back,” said Csorwe, squeezing her hand. “And now it’s done. Nobody has to sacrifice themselves at all. We win.”
“So … you’re not bothered by all this.” Shuthmili waved at her torso, indicating the overlapping plates of exoskeleton which lapped around her.
“Not really,” said Csorwe. “It’s actually sort of…” She trailed off and grinned, her eyes bright with a kind of guileless slyness Shuthmili had missed very desperately.
“Not just the armour, you creep,” said Shuthmili. “I’m not what I was. I am Zinandour still.”
Divinity was at the heart of her being now, still and dark and unruffled, like a waveless lake.
“Hey, you’ve always been a goddess to me,” said Csorwe, her grin becoming gruesome, then fading. “No. I know. I don’t really know what it means. But … I think I want to learn. I’d like to try again.” She thought for a moment. “Also, if you’re Zinandour, it makes it a lot less awkward that I kissed her. You. Her.”
“Oh, don’t, I was dying for you to,” said Shuthmili, who remembered the kiss from several angles. “You have no idea—”
At this point Csorwe leant in and kissed her, softly, and whatever she had been about to say went from her mind altogether.
They kissed for a long time, a single point of warmth in the dead and chilly courtyard, and then Csorwe drew back, with such a tortured look of anxiety on her face that Shuthmili worried she had done something wrong.
“There is one thing,” said Csorwe. Shuthmili had been easing herself so gradually toward the idea that this might really be real, that it might all be all right in the end after all, that this hit her like a block of ice from a great height.
“Tell me,” she said.
“I mean—I’m mortal, still, after all of this. I don’t know how old I am now, but I’m going to keep getting older.”
“I think we’re both about forty,” said Shuthmili, although the ungauntleted hand on her lap looked as featureless and waxy as that of a dead child. “Oh, Csorwe, as if I mind—”
“No, it’s not just that,” said Csorwe. “I’ll die one day. Not for a long time, I hope. But it’ll happen, and you’ll still be immortal, and—and can you live with that?”
“Yes,” said Shuthmili, but once again she remembered Belthandros saying you will lose and lose and lose, and it must have shown in her face, because Csorwe did not look convinced.
“Can you?” said Csorwe. “I’ve been pretty reconciled since I was about ten, but will you be all right with it? You’ll go on and live?”
“My love,” she said. “I hate it. I can’t stand it. But what else can I do? To love is to live a mortal life, I think, knowing that things can’t be kept or fixed. Knowing that you’re always already in the shadow. I know that now, and I will know it forever. But if you think that it’s enough to make me doubt, for a second, if you think I wouldn’t rather have the time with you—what else would I do, Csorwe, send you away? Dear god, if you’ll still have me after all of this, I’d have to be a bigger fool than I knew.” She came up short, wondering if after all this hadn’t somehow been Csorwe’s way of letting her down gently. “I mean—will you? Still have me?”
Csorwe closed her eyes and smiled, a sweet and quiet smile which was all that Shuthmili had imagined in the worst times of the past fifteen years. “I will,” she said.
Shuthmili let out a ragged breath. “After all that I’ve done, I can’t really think I deserve this,” she said. She had meant it as a joke, of sorts, but the ripple of uneasiness in her voice was obvious even to her. “It seems so unfair. That I should get what I want.”
“Why? Do you regret it?” said Csorwe. She leant back, looking up at the sky, and put an arm round her shoulders. “Trying to get me back?”
Shuthmili leant against her. Her hair smelled like earth after rain. “Not really,” she said. Despite it all. Not now they were here, together.
“Ah, my girl, you see,” said Csorwe. “If there ever comes a day when anyone gets what they deserve … then I would still get you, and you would still get me.”
It had all been over so quickly, in the end, that the Blessed Awakening had never left the city, and now all its passengers were back in the Citadel. There were a few surviving Followers of the Unspoken Name among them, and Tal was amused by the spectacle of his mother entertaining three priestesses of the Unspoken, all nibbling dry crackers in an abandoned tea salon. The priestesses combed and braided Tsereg’s hair and quizzed them about their exploits in a way that they clearly found embarrassing and gratifying in equal parts.
The days went on. It was, as Tal had reflected before, strange that this always happened. Everyone needed food and a place to sleep, and it turned out it was now his job to make sure they got them. Sometimes he saw Csorwe and Shuthmili hiding out in some dark corner, sharing rations and talking softly. He didn’t get a chance to talk to Csorwe alone until some days later.
“Weird to be back,” he said.
“Yup,” said Csorwe, coming to lean on the balustrade beside him. They were on the balcony of a white tower, looking out over the grand ruins of Tlaanthothe.
In the square below, Tal’s staff were putting up bunting. Having staff had come as a shock to him, and he still had his doubts about the party, but perhaps they had the right idea. Over the past few days, a few other survivors had begun to filter out, learning that Sethennai’s power was broken and the snakes were gone, and all of them seemed to be in need of a good meal.
“Nice job, Chancellor Charossa.”
“I’m not the bloody Chancellor,” said Tal, grinning.
“I bet your mum’s really stoked,” said Csorwe.
“Fuck off,” said Tal. “It’s so stupid. The duelling thing, I mean, as if you really want a Chancellor who’s only good at fighting. As soon as everything gets sorted out, there’ll be someone better to do it. I don’t want it. I don’t want to be like—anyway, there are ships coming back from Grey Hook, at least, when everyone’s back they’ll pick someone else. And we’ll have something to eat other than fucking raisins, I hope.”
“Uh-huh,” said Csorwe.
“In the meantime I have to figure out what to do with all the snakes, though. Fun. Lots of people want them all dead.”
The Thousand Eyes had surrendered and given up their swords as soon as they understood what had happened to Cherenthisse and their goddess. Tal had seen them, standing around in the empty ballroom which had been designated as a holding cell, looking at nothing. There was a bleak, dreary hopelessness to them all that he found uncomfortably familiar.
“Can’t say I really want to kick things off by executing a bunch of people,” he said. “The snakes say they want to go back to Saar-in-Tachthyr, to restore the place.”
Csorwe shrugged. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I’ve really spent my life trying not to think about this shit. My mother thinks they’re planning something,” said Tal. “Someone usually is. I’d rather let them go and plan something a long way away than keep them in the palace. Anyway, I’m not going to kill them. Feel kind of sorry for them. And Cherenthisse … We couldn’t have done this without her, in the end.”
“Is it going to be weird, staying here?”
The sun was setting on the distant horizon, glazing the city’s impossible crenellations with a light so brilliantly pink-and-gold it looked like something you could eat.
“In Sethennai’s city?” said Tal. “Sure. But you know. We’re going to do a better job than he did, so he can go to hell.”
“How did it happen, in the end?”
“Easier than I thought,” said Tal.
“Where is he now?” said Csorwe.
“Gone,” said Tal. At some point during the chaos of the first day, before anyone had managed to get him safely locked away, the man who had been Belthandros Sethennai had vanished. Tal was trying not to think about it more than necessary. Sethennai had lost his patron. Without magic, there was nothing he could do. He was just an old man who would eventually die. “Probably should have killed the fucker, but I felt kind of sorry for him in the end too,” he added.
The door opened and one of the guards showed in Tal’s mother, who had somehow preserved full court dress through the whole of Belthandros’ final disastrous reign.
“Tal, there you are,” she said. “I wanted to tell you—”
“Look what a mess you’ve made?” said Tal. “Or is it you should have let your brother have a go?” Even a well done, Talasseres, would have left a sour taste in his mouth, somehow.
“No,” said Niranthe. “I wanted to tell you—well, I’m sorry.”
Her lips thinned, her ears twitched, and she put her arms round him. Tal didn’t remember the last time this had happened. Her head only came up to his collarbone.
“Yeah, I’m sorry too,” said Tal. It didn’t really cover it—the collective personal failings of the Charossa family had been Tlaanthothe’s major export for years—but it felt surprisingly good.
She let him go and they broke apart with obvious relief on both sides.
“Also, I have been the Citadel’s chief administrator for some time now,” she added, “so I am here to help, and so is Niranthos. There is a lot of work to be done.”
Tal couldn’t quite bear to tell his mother that he planned to abdicate as soon as he possibly could.
“Oh, good,” he said instead. “Meetings of the Logistics Committee. Can’t wait.”
Niranthe left, and almost at once another door was thrown open in the room behind them. Tsereg swirled inside, dressed for the party in the worst thing they’d been able to find, a pink and green footman’s uniform that had been lurking in a cupboard. They wore a wreath of white roses on their head, which had slipped to one side and shed a few petals into their hair.
“Tal, if someone finds some fireworks, are they allowed to let them off?” they said.
“Someone?” said Tal. “Er—I don’t think so.” The people of Ringtown and the Citadel had been terrified for years; it didn’t seem like a good idea. “Are your priestesses coming to the party?” he added, knowing that the only way to head off a long debate was to distract them.
“I’ve just been talking to the new Prioress,” said Tsereg, beaming. “She came all the way here to see me.”
“And?”
“I appeared to her in my full aspect and was like, thanks very much, but I’ve had plenty of Chosen Brides at this point and don’t need any more, so please to fucking stop with that.”
In the corner, Csorwe gave a snort of laughter and then covered her mouth with her hands. Tsereg winked at her.
“Oh,” said Tal. “Good. What’s your full aspect?”
“It’s amazing, you’d love it,” said Tsereg, leaning back against the balustrade with their hands in the pockets of the hideous footman’s coat. “I think she was very impressed. And then I said, ‘Did you know that almost the whole of the House of Silence library is in the archive here?’ and she basically swooned, and I was all, ‘Why don’t you take it all home and make the old place new again?’ and she swooned some more, and I think they’ll do it. It’s what my mother would have wanted, don’t you think? And Prioress Cweren?”
Tal tried to say something. Csorwe was still doubled over the balustrade trying not to laugh.
“But to cut a long story short, they are coming to the party,” said Tsereg. They grinned at him and swirled out again, and Tal thought that it was strange it had taken him so long in life to figure out what it was like to love another person, and how different it was than what he’d imagined.
“They’re great, actually,” said Csorwe.
“Yeah, they’re a treasure,” said Tal.
The party was not recalled as one of history’s greatest. They were tired, and the years of terror were hard to shake off, but the light in the square was the only light in all the desert that night.
In the deep wilds of the north, there is a Shrine cut into the mountainside.
Deep within the sacred mountain, surrounded by the saints and heroes of whom she is the last and greatest, Oranna rests, and sees all things.
She sees the Pearl of Oblivion, as it has ever been.
It hangs above its distant sea, perpetually catching the shell-pink light of dawn. The mistress of that place is a gaunt creature who casts a winged shadow on the water, but there is also a mortal woman who tends the garden terraces.
These days the Dragon of Qarsazh seems to spend a great deal of time in the garden herself. As Oranna well knows, the gods are ageless, not changeless, and in general they do what they want.
The passing years have salted Csorwe’s hair with strands of white. Today she is picking strawberries, a basket of them propped against her hip.
“Stop feeding them to me, or we won’t have enough for the others,” says Shuthmili.
Csorwe is momentarily silenced by the indescribable vision of Shuthmili in full divine aspect, holding a strawberry between two talons, looking suspicious of it. She gestures wordlessly at the strawberry patch, which extends down several terraces, every one of them carpeted with red fruit and white flowers. Shuthmili smiles.
“I’m only giving you the really good ones,” said Csorwe. “Tal doesn’t deserve them.”
Oranna sees the temple at Saar-in-Tachthyr, where the Thousand Eyes have built a monument of white marble at the centre of the great atrium, without statue or ornament, only an epitaph that reads Cherenthisse—First in Honour.
She sees the black sand of the Speechless Sea, the ruins of the Citadel, and among them the city of Tlaanthothe born again, like a flowering aloe. Six years after its liberation, there is water flowing in the fountains again, and students chattering in the squares like jackdaws, and in the resurrected Chancellor’s Palace, Talasseres Charossa peers at himself in the hallway mirror, pulling at the lines on his brow with a fingertip.
In theory, these days, the Chancellor is a purely ceremonial figure, whose job is to stand around at public festivals and look important. In practice, as usual, things don’t go Tal’s way. As well as his crow’s feet he also has the newspapers to think about, and what the new parliament will think about his mother’s latest proposal on public education, and whether he can really afford to take the day off, and whether the new housekeeper will remember to feed the cats, and what exactly Marteleos Kathoira meant about having tea together sometime.
“Yeah, you look ancient. One foot in the grave,” says Tsereg, elbowing past him toward the front door. They are not much taller, but much broader and stronger, with both tusks gleaming like sickles. They wear a gold ring in their nose, their hair is tied back with a scarf of yellow silk, and they look like a healthy gorse tree.
If Oranna still had a heart, it might have tightened in her chest. As it is, she glances away for a moment, as though the vision is too vivid to tolerate. The darkness of the Shrine laps around her, eternally forgiving.
“Not too late to write you out of my will before I peg out,” says Tal.
“Get a grip, Tal, you’re, what, sixty, max.”
“I’m forty-six!”
“Whatever, I’m a million years old and you’re making us late for dinner,” says Tsereg.
Oranna sees what has become of the ruin below the Shrine. After six years the House of Silence is not even a quarter of the way toward being rebuilt. The old tower is wrapped in scaffolding. The little priestesses have a long road ahead of them, and whatever they make will be nothing like the original. This, she thinks, is for the best.
“I don’t think tea is especially ambiguous,” says Shuthmili.
“People want to have tea with me all the time,” says Tal drearily.
“Keep it to yourself,” says Csorwe.
The room is warm with candlelight and the glow of several bottles of wine. Tsereg is half asleep at the table with their head propped on their elbow and a plate of discarded strawberry leaves before them.
“You should have a holiday. Maybe here,” says Csorwe. “Nobody else knows where it is. Bring Martenos.”
“Marteleos, and I told you it’s nothing, he just wants to harass me about library funding.”
“Fine, come on your own,” she says. “Swimming’s good.”
“Yeah, thanks but no thanks, not with you two making big eyes at each other all the time.”
The fact is that he does not want to intrude on their happiness. More to the point, he loves Tlaanthothe, whatever its demands. He never thought he’d be the kind of person who could get excited about a new water filtration system. The worst thing is that his family is so proud of him.
“Actually,” says Shuthmili, and she catches Csorwe’s eye in the exact way he meant. “If you did want to take a holiday sometime, the Pearl would be free for you—”
“You’re leaving?” says Tal.
“For a bit,” says Csorwe. “Lots to see. The Maze is a big place. We never finished travelling.”
“What, you’re going for good?” The idea of them being gone is jarring, as though he had imagined they would be there forever.
“Nothing’s for good. We’ll be back.”
Oranna sees an old man walking some distant road, with a staff in one hand and a pack on his back. His beard is longer, and the hem of his patched coat flutters in the wind. She wonders for a moment, and thinks, Well, let him go.
Oranna knows all the seasons that slip past, and all that are yet to come, and that none can last forever. What is saved is saved only for a moment. All voices sound in silence, but before the echoes die away, their sound is sweet.