Images of the horrors Akil had suffered coiled like snakes in my brain. My hopeless plan to enlist his help withered. I had no idea what to say to him, and was ashamed to talk with him. I wasn’t worthy. His short human life had been so awful.
Why did I persist in ignoring the truth? Gods, kings, and generals with their armies rule us all. It has always been so. Those who kick against their traces are made to suffer.
I started wondering about the concept of age. How did it apply to a resura? Akil had died when he was thirteen, eight years ago, and had chosen a human form that seemed to be perhaps nineteen or twenty years old. But was he still that frightened, degraded child inside? I would die within the year, at around sixteen or seventeen, we had estimated. Besides a bird, I had chosen to appear as a woman and as a boy. No, I recalled unhappily, a snake. A snake and two others. But would I remain a girl, at least on the inside?
My time would come soon now, and my nights were often interrupted by sudden, heart-pounding jolts when I was sure that Pada Josef was looming over me. But nothing was ever there. Just the lonely night clinging around me.
Little sleep and no appetite had made me nervous and hollow-eyed, and thinking of Eneko made it worse. Never did I picture him revealing a word against my Mama or Papa, despite whatever torture he might endure.
That shows what a fool I was.
But I had to believe in honour and valour, the ability of a man to withstand anything. Anything, for the sake of honour. If such higher instincts weren’t real, then what point was there in anything?
Was there an ultimate God above us, the King of Gods, watching our efforts? Applauding and encouraging them? My Pada had asked why, if such an all-powerful God existed, he couldn’t control the others.
Suddenly I found myself weeping. I couldn’t stop it, only sop up the tears with my shawl. No one was there to see or hear me, and I admit that I really didn’t try to stop. If I got rid of all the tears now, I wouldn’t disgrace myself later, when it would be very important to be brave.
*
My mother wasted a lot of money and influence trying to get Eneko freed. Or bought as a slave and shipped off to the new world across the Aetheopian Sea. Anything. But nothing worked.
“From what you’ve told me, the lad is strong and resourceful.” Grandfather stroked his beard nervously. We were effectively under house arrest, and since people knew we were out of favour, they had begun to shun us. Some of our staff had quit, and there was endless speculation about what might have caused our sudden drop in status.
The day came for the public trials. The travelling courts had been suspended, as Petru liked to mete out justice himself. Also, he suspected the official judges of conspiring against him, and many of them were now being judged. Petru had little interest in mercy.
We dressed in simple clothes, and ordered provisions for what would be a long, hot day. Our servants and guards carried food and water, for us and for themselves in the cheap seats up in the blazing sun, while Mama, Pada Josef and I crowded into a rented litter.
The stuffy, jouncing box stank of mouldy cushions and cat piss, the litter-bearers couldn’t get their steps in rhythm, and the floor was sticky. But we didn’t want to call attention to ourselves by arriving in our own much nicer Roman style sedan chairs. However, the inside was private and we could talk on the slow, nauseating trek.
It occurred to me that, should things go badly, I might never have another chance to be alone with my family. There was something I wanted to know.
“Mama,” I whispered, “Why is it—”
“Vara, speak up. I can’t hear you over the din.” We were passing along a side avenue near the physicians’ quarter, and it had got noisy. And even more smelly. The acrid tang of medicines being boiled and blended seeped through the privacy curtains, and I could hear the characteristic yelps and moans of someone getting a tooth pulled.
I leaned close to her ear. “Why are you still alive? You are da resu—why were you never made resura?”
Surprisingly, she smiled. She drew the hangings aside briefly to peep around, then shut them against a shaft of hot sunlight. When we passed into the shade of a building, it was as if night had fallen. We all put our heads together.
“I was a gift to your father’s family,” she said, her voice low. “Part of a plan hatched many years before. I was to belong to them, and to your father particularly, linked by the bond of marriage so that when he killed me I would be less likely to be snatched by a God.”
Aghast, I blurted, “Papa was to kill you?”
“Obviously he didn’t.” Again the smile. “The marriage went as planned; what was not anticipated was that we would fall in love. Like the Caliph in the tales of the One Thousand and One Nights, Jameel wanted just one more night with me. And I with him. The resura forms that had been chosen for me, and that I was locked into, he would not find so appealing… after one night came another, and another. And I became pregnant.”
Pada Josef, sagging in his corner, sighed and said, “I knew that you two would be trouble.”
“What? Me and Jameel?” Mama grunted. “Of course we were trouble. Like I said, love is for fools.”
The litter wobbled as the bearers negotiated a turn, and the light within it changed again. The baby she bore must have been my brother, the one who died.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen. I’m sure I was being fed potions to prevent it… they didn’t work. Perhaps our love was stronger than their plans. But what a dreadful fuss was made… I was beaten and given abortive, but the baby stuck tight and was born, and lived for six months. He was malformed, sickly… his death was a mercy. But your father bartered a lot of money and influence to keep me alive for that half year… and during that time I became pregnant again. With you. I admit I was secretly very pleased. But that time, Jameel was beaten too.”
“Why did being pregnant make a difference?”
“Because no one could know if the unborn child was da resu or human. If human, it would be a dreadful sin to kill the innocent babe—Jameel’s offspring—along with the mother. If da resu… I don’t think anyone knew what might happen. An undeveloped soul, completely unformed and malleable… it has been said that such a new, untarnished soul is powerful, controllable only by a Great God. If joined in power with its resura mother…” She shook her head. “We did not want to risk the consequences. So yet again we waited for the birth of a child.”
I sat with my hands jammed between my knees, gnawing the insides of my cheeks.
Leaning close in that swaying box, she stroked my hair. “That child was you. Your father and I decided that, no matter what anyone might do to us, we wanted our lives to be our own. At least until you grew up.”
“And now I am grown up.”
“Yes. The time has flown. It has been dangerous, and has led us into many deceptions and schemes that came to nothing. You were barely dry when we left his parents’ house in Córdoba and fled to this country, under the protection of my family, who had started to regret their bargain. My father, though he had brokered the deal, was willing to accept my return, and wait for another time to fulfill the bargain. The political situation that had seemed so urgent had changed, and for several years the world was peaceful. It was decided to wait and harvest two fully-trained resura at a later date.” Her face hardened, and I wondered what secrets she knew, and which of those were secrets no longer. “But Jameel and I have had our lives and our love… and now we must accept the fate that has been ours all along.”
I felt a surge of anger. Had my mother given up already? “But it won’t be your proper fate! Papa isn’t here. You might be taken by that pig, Petru!”
“Hush.” She jerked her chin. “He will never take me, or you.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
She looked away and didn’t answer.
Our futures rushed toward us, dark as storm clouds.
The litter stopped and we bumped to the ground. It was time to enter the coliseum.
Perpignan’s coliseum is built to hold many thousands of spectators, and has extensive underground passages, cages and holding chambers, and all sorts of machinery to put on shows. Pada Josef told me that he once saw the huge, ancient coliseum in Rome flooded with water to stage a sea battle, but that was long ago during an outburst of generosity by a certain sub-consul whose head later rested on a pike for all the money he had squandered. Rome, hugely indebted to Egypt and clinging to the tattered dignity of age, quickly reverted to its program of austerity. And since the Huns proclaimed to despise the excesses of previous empires, true spectacles anywhere these days were few and far between.
Petru hadn’t wasted any gold on today’s event. We could tell that it was to be short and brutal. We found our seats at the north end, in the area reserved for our class, and our servants quickly spread out cushions, placed jugs of wine and water for us, and left us. There was no sign of Eneko, though several other men, and a woman, were on display in a ragged, sorry line, and two more were hustled in as we watched. A couple of crosses lay on the sanded floor, ropes and tackle at the ready.
The seats were perhaps one quarter filled with an assortment of citizens. Acrobats and animal-trainers were displaying their talents out on the sand until the real show started, and vendors were circulating among the spectators with trays of food and drink for sale, but no one was paying much attention to them. People talked of war, and of their sons who had been conscripted. Some were proud and boastful. Others kept their mouths shut and merely looked worried and sick.
The air was electric, as if a storm was brewing. People were becoming short tempered, swatting at flies and snarling at one another. Demanding that the executions begin. I looked up at the sky, and there they were: the Gods. Why did they reveal themselves to me? What did I have that they wanted? A soul. What was that worth?
They were as eager for a spectacle as the howling men and women here on Earth. Stirring things, adding heat to the pot. Or perhaps it was only thunderclouds I saw above us.
I looked down, feeling flat and angry. I wanted to smash something.
Suddenly Petru entered his box, which was just below us, and began to peer around him, checking for faces. When he saw ours, there as ordered, his head jerked a bit as if one of his flies had bitten him. He stared for a moment, then looked away.
A scribe began to read out a list of names and crimes. The usual. Thieves, an adulterous woman, two brothers who had apparently conspired to kill their own father (and failed, for the old fool was there begging for their lives), several tax evaders. A whole row of whimpering blasphemers, their bodies covered in red, seeping S-shaped brands. Still no Eneko.
My eyes stung with sweat. Punishments were pronounced and meted out quickly, and the guilty were dragged off, either mercifully dead, or alive but bleeding. Two of the tax evaders turned out to be high-ranking officials, charged also with spying and treachery. Their status was rewarded as they were hoisted up on the crosses, there to hang gasping and twitching as the crowd jeered.
If after two days they were still alive, they would be cut down and allowed to go free. As paupers. Their wives and children wailed and rent their hair. The air had the familiar burning trash smell, and I knew that if I looked up, I’d see vast faces in the clouds. Open, grinning mouths that perhaps were holes into the next world.
A break was called. Petru and his attendants vanished into the building, and fresh sand was raked over the blood on the ground. The clouds grew lower and darker, and even those who would normally relish today’s events were looking sick and beaten. Some tried to leave, but somehow couldn’t; they hurried to the exit points, but then turned and trudged back to their seats, looking baffled and scared.
Mother eyed her father with concern. He had been coughing more lately, and today, in this heat and horror, looked near death.
His eyes were closed and he began to rock slowly from side to side. I watched him, alarmed, as he began to groan, a deep, frightening sound. “Pada, are you all right?”
Mama grabbed my shoulder. “Look! Petru’s coming back.”
I realized my cheeks were wet with tears, and quickly wiped them dry. Petru prowled into his ornate box and stood looking down into the arena.
Grandfather was bent over now, muttering into his knees, but I couldn’t spare him attention. Not now.
A line of guards marched in, followed by an oxcart pulling a sturdy metal cage. Within the cage was a man, whose chest was cloaked all in red. At first I thought it was a scarlet apron. I was wrong.
It was blood. The man was Eneko Saratxaga.
I recognized him only by his black, curling hair, as his body was much too thin, marked with cuts and bruises. A soldier prodded him out of the cage, and he fell to his knees on the sand. He tried to get up, but was thrust down at spear point.
His tongue had been cut out. I knew this from the way he choked and spat and bowed his head to clear his throat. Grovelling on the ground like an animal.
Suddenly I found myself crumpled on the stone floor of our tier of the arena, black sparkles obscuring my vision, the cloud faces dripping close. Mama hauled me upright and pinched me mercilessly. “Get up! This is no time to faint!” Tears were streaming down her cheeks, darkening the folds of the veil across her face, and she was muttering curses. I leaned against her, my ears ringing strangely and my nostrils full of that burning stink.
Pada Josef suddenly shot upright as if stung. His eyes rolled back and he began to speak. “The warp is torn. The weft rots. The blood, the blood…” He grabbed his head and whined like a dog. “Everywhere… Oh Sisters, spare our land…”
Petru turned slowly and gave us a Medusa look. Mama pushed her father down and clapped a hand over his mouth. Petru lifted his lip in a little smile. The blood rushed back to my head and my thoughts cleared and narrowed. If I had brought my dagger I would have launched myself straight for him. Watch him grovel and bleed, cut out his tongue.
Suddenly he hoisted himself over the balcony’s edge and dropped to the arena floor. He strode across the sand to Eneko, dagger in hand.
Eneko spat blood and tried to lift himself upright, but was too weak and broken. Petru took him by the hair, bent his head back and with two quick stabs put his eyes out.
The crowd roared its approval, and an echoing thunder came from the sky. Mother and I stood side by side as straight as we could, gazing upon Eneko Saratxaga, he of the sparkling eyes and glib tongue. I heard his laugh and felt again his warm breath on the palm of my hand. Instead of a blinded wreck I saw the lithe, flirting boy of that warm summer evening in the mountains.
Gone, gone forever. My vision started to close in again and I swayed, but Mama wouldn’t let me fall.
The hot wind came again, driving the arena’s dust up my nostrils. It held the blood and tears of all the poor destroyed souls who had suffered and died here. I could do nothing for Eneko but pity him. Beg his forgiveness for being part of the family that used him and then watched him die.
Petru began to speak. “A man with no eyes can spy no more.” A pause. A few ragged cheers greeted his words.
“A man with no tongue can spill no secrets.”
Both crosses were already occupied. Eneko wore no chains, and he still had his hands and feet. I knew then what Petru was going to do with Eneko.
He was going to set him free.