Tauren’s heart skipped ahead to the illicit meeting, leaving his breathless body to follow.
He twisted like an otter down reeking alleyways, keeping out of the pools of lantern light spilling over rain-slick cobblestones. In his head, he was already lowering his eyes from the challenge of her stare. He could hear her voice, welcoming.
‘Tauren,’ she would say. ‘Although you are an artisan and I’m the daughter of a warrior, the stars have brought us together for a purpose. I’ll tell your mother that you are mine, now. Will you accept the gift of my name?’
Leafless, silver-wrought trees glowed softly inside the constellation rotunda. Rough steps led to the wooden platform, perforated by the man-made trunks. The star-carved arches did not echo with the sound of footsteps.
There was nobody there.
Tauren stared at the rotunda for a while, feeling alert, his bristly beard prickling and his knees bent.
Confused and disappointed, he turned on his heel for home. Had Zadie’s mother found out? Had the drawbridge been raised in the chrysalis quarter? The fortune teller had told him that tonight’s events would alter his life irrevocably.
Now there were only a few hours left of the night.
Outside his workshop, he saw a shadow moving between the translucent paper of the window and the bright brazier of the ancestors’ shrine. He hesitated. Clients sometimes let themselves into his home. Sometimes they brought severed noses or ears, demanding that he immediately translate their trophies into assassin’s marks across their cheeks or bared shoulders. He was afraid of the Unnamed and wished they hadn’t taken so kindly to his art, adopting him so thoroughly that his legitimate customers, the Scythes of the East, were beginning to shy away.
It was not a client. Zadie stood at the brazier with her sheer gold and peacock blue robe opened to its warmth. She was barefoot, her breasts unbound. Tauren restrained his rising anger; had she come to seduce him, then? She would give her name to Tauren and he would be allowed to raise her children, or else he would give her nothing.
Objects in the room had been displaced. She had unrolled the leather tool cases across the bench tops. He could taste the bitterness of the inks on the air; she had unstoppered the bottles as though they were perfumes to be sampled.
‘I went to the rotunda,’ Tauren said.
‘It’s cold outside.’
‘Don’t toy with me, Zadie. Is there something you wish to ask me?’
‘Yes.’
Tauren’s stomach lurched. ‘Then ask me.’
She turned slowly, like a clay sculpture on a potter’s wheel. She did not close the front of her robe. Her face was determined. She ran her hands over her hips.
‘Colour my skin, Tauren. Give me the marks of having carried children. On my hips and on my breasts. They are going to war through the keyhole. I will be a Scythe for the West. My mother need not know.’
Tauren wanted to laugh at himself for his foolish dreams. She only cared for his skills. She didn’t care that he could be blinded for such a transgression.
‘If you want the marks,’ he said, ‘then marry me, Zadie. Only those who have created life are permitted to take it. There will still be war, when you have had your seven children. The keyhole is always open.’
His face flushed. He had lowered himself in the eyes of the Goddess beyond redemption just by asking, no matter that he followed the request with an onslaught of other words.
‘If you mark me,’ she said, ‘I will come back and marry you after I have taken the hands of the Tui King. None of those old women can defeat him but I can. I won’t wait. I won’t wait until I am weak and fat and pissing in my saddle. The Tui King insults the Goddess, Tauren. I must go now.’
Shock at her disrespect warred with acknowledgement of the truth. She would never be so strong, so bold, again. She looked like a lioness. Like the Goddess herself.
‘If you kill the Tui King,’ he said, ‘then your mother will certainly find out.’
She smiled. ‘Do I seem prideful to you, Tauren? I suppose I must. Do you think I will do this for personal glory?’
‘You are prideful, Zadie.’
‘My pride is in my people. I will do this for them. In the summer, I won the mountain races.’
Tauren swallowed his tongue. She was prideful but she did not lie. A woman in a pupil’s white veil had won the mountain races by a mile. She had been Scythe of neither East nor West. No tutor had stepped forward to claim her. She had not unveiled to accept the crimson scroll, which some took to mean she was a foreigner and did not know to go to the palace.
He sighed. ‘Goddess help me,’ he said. ‘I will prepare the inks.’
Nyne Binnet, General of the East, urged her horse forward.
The General of the West moved to meet her. They stood on the treacherous, soft bank of the river, a hundred paces downstream of the glacier’s terminal face. The tunnel through the ice that led to the northern countries could collapse at any time. Yet it always opened again.
This time, they would be the first to go through. The frigid, desolate valley was perfect for setting up an ambush, but the warriors of Muruka too often exhausted their supplies waiting for the Tui to emerge. Better to meet the Tui King in the woodlands on the other side.
Nyne accorded her Western counterpart the palm-to-heart of equals. Talatta was unveiled. Two crescent moon tattoos graced her leathery neck. Only a very cunning warrior could reach the top rank with five lives still in hand. It took some time to learn the art of disabling without taking a life. Of course, Tui men often fell on their recovered swords after the humiliation of being disarmed by a woman, but that couldn’t be helped. It didn’t count as a kill in the eyes of the Goddess.
‘Has your scout returned?’ Nyne asked.
‘Yes. She says the way is still too narrow to ride abreast. I will accord precedence to the East, if you wish.’
‘You are kind, but my scout turned back. Yours found the way through the ice maze. The honour must go to the West.’
Talatta smiled slyly.
‘My new scout has the sound of the East on her tongue, though she tries to conceal it. The fighting spirit is in her. She was confirmed only three months ago and yet her blade skills are unparalleled. Is your Scythe House full?’
Nyne, gripped by suspicion, said only, ‘I should like to meet her. If there is time.’
‘There is time,’ Talatta said, signalling to the grey-veiled Scythes gathered at the camp.
A dappled horse broke away from the others and charged towards the two generals. It stopped abruptly a short distance away and, guided by bare knees that protruded between fur-trimmed greaves and felt-padded leather skirt, the horse sank into an unlikely bow as the warrior placed both palms over the eye-slit of the veil.
Nyne’s heart sank. Disgrace and betrayal would follow the unveiling of this warrior. Nyne remembered the first human life she had taken, how blood had darkened the snow and Nyne had fallen from her horse, shuddering and shocked. But then she had seen a tiny baby in her mind’s eye, her firstborn, and the white sheets darkened with blood, and remembered that the gift of the Goddess was a life for a life, so that a woman’s soul might be free of stain.
‘Remove your veil, Zadie Binnet,’ Nyne said.
Disgrace and betrayal.
Zadie unveiled. Her eyes flashed fire.
‘Tell me what is going on, Goddess curse you,’ General Talatta demanded, glancing from one to the other.
‘This woman has never given birth,’ Nyne said, her words ringing like a gong in her ears.
Nyne’s raised fingers called her personal guard to her, even as the remainder of Talatta’s guard swarmed towards them.
‘Is this true?’ Talatta asked Zadie. ‘Would you have doomed me to be struck down by the Goddess?’
‘I serve the Goddess,’ Zadie said.
Nyne clouted her daughter across the cheek with the butt of her halberd.
‘Blasphemy,’ she snapped. The Goddess was not in Zadie. Her chest did not glow gently golden as Talatta’s did. It would be the Generals and not the foolish Scythes whose hearts would be stopped if the lifelaws were violated.
‘Arrest her,’ Nyne commanded. ‘Take her home.’
Tauren heard a tongueless bawl and pissed himself in the dark.
‘What did you do?’ he had asked only moments ago of the burly young man in the line behind him.
‘I took a woman against her will,’ the boy had replied. He had a hill accent and smelled sourly of cider. ‘She was a warrior. I thought shame would keep her quiet. But she told me physical weakness is not true weakness.’
Tauren knew it was true. The failure of the weaker sex was evident in the long line of men waiting to be cleansed.
‘What did you do?’ Tauren had asked the fat foodmaker in front of him.
‘I told my wife a lie,’ he said. ‘The Goddess will take my tongue. You?’
‘The Goddess will take my eyes,’ Tauren said, ‘for falsifying the marks of her domain.’
When asked about who had marked her, Zadie had not lied. She never lied.
‘Curse the Goddess,’ the boy said. ‘The women cannot make daughters without us. Let the Goddess take my seed. She is only punishing herself.’
The foodmaker had laughed.
‘Punishing herself? All the men of Muruka but one could be castrated and society would not suffer. It is women who are precious and this soon-to-be-blind artist alone would be ade-quate to serve them all. You don’t need seed to care for children.’
‘I have heard that the cleansing is painless,’ Tauren had said quietly. The men had gone silent.
Now, listening to the mewling of the foodmaker, Tauren knew that he had heard wrong.
‘Tauren Parek,’ the Scythe at the bottom step called.
Tauren stumbled up the staircase to the life chamber. Every sound echoed from the vast dome, including the gargles of the foodmaker as he was led away. Tauren’s legs refused to hold him, but two Scythes took his arms and led him forward.
Before him, a ten-storey gilded statue of a seated woman regarded a smaller, life-size statue of a baby girl. The Goddess’ gaze was embodied in a bar of golden light that connected the eyes of the glowing woman to the navel of the child.
It was a spectacular piece of artwork, infused by the magic of the immortal bringer of life. Tauren wept at the beauty of the last thing he would ever see.
A priestess passed a bundle of straw through the shaft of light. When it came out the other side, the straw was transformed into a glowing golden spear.
‘On your knees, Tauren Parek,’ the priestess said.
Tauren obeyed.
‘Will the Goddess not forgive me?’ he whispered.
The priestess’ face was unreadable behind her blue veil.
‘She forgives all. She also ensures that the law cannot be broken a second time. Turn your eyes to the Goddess and do not look away.’
Tauren looked. He stifled a cry as she threaded a shell fishhook through his lips, gripping the taut line in her left hand to prevent him from pulling back.
Before she could put out his eyes with the glowing golden spear, Tauren heard a roar behind him. Women’s voices cried out. He couldn’t turn his head because of the fishhook, but he thought he recognised the smell of cider.
Huge, hairy hands seized the slender wrists of the priestess. She let go of the fishing line. The boy grappled the spear out of her grasp. He roared again, triumphantly, as he drove the spear into her chest, only to find that it had turned to straw.
The priestess stood calmly, unharmed. Scythes dragged the young man back. The priestess picked up the straw and passed it again through the gaze of the Goddess. It changed, not into a spear this time, but into a gleaming dagger.
‘It is the will of the Goddess,’ the priestess said to the boy. ‘I’m sorry. I would spare you if I could.’
She cut his throat. The Scythes carried him away.
Immediately, she removed her veil. Tauren saw there were six crescent moons tattooed on her graceful neck. She was smooth-cheeked with a dark braid coiled around the crown of her head. As she passed through the bar of light, a seventh crescent moon appeared in line above the other six.
She went to the foot of the statue and prostrated herself in front of it.
‘My service is over,’ she said. ‘You have decided it is time for me to be born again into the world. I will leave the temple at once.’
Tauren knelt, his lips throbbing. What about me? he wanted to shout, but the fishhook held him in terrible silence until one of the Scythes turned to him.
‘Another priestess will come,’ she said.
Nyne Binnet shifted irritably on her bed.
Feeble wails rose from the garden. Nyne sat up in bed and slid the window open. Summer heat, heavy with nectar, oozed through the crack.
The blind artist moved like a shadow along gravel paths past the flowering crab-apples. Cradling a lightly bundled baby, he sang a nonsense song about frogs and fireflies. The crying stopped. It began again.
The baby’s mother returned from the Scythe House every four hours to feed the child, but she’d left only a short while ago and would not be back again before dawn.
Nyne watched the weary father in silence. The garden was Nyne’s garden, a gift of the people, bestowed upon retirement in honour of her long service. It was supposed to bring her peace after decades of conflict.
But how could she find peace when she had failed to kill the Tui King? She had stretched out her halberd to take his right hand and a henchman had got in the way. The henchman had forced her to kill him, taking Nyne’s total kills to seven; forcing her to turn her horse and ride for the keyhole, gritting her teeth. Should she have killed him anyway? The Goddess would have stopped her heart, but in a good cause.
She shook her head. That was Zadie’s wrongheaded thinking. She was getting old and losing her wits. She had acted correctly, as the Goddess would have wished.
Only, now she was bored and alone, in a house with seven grandchildren and a son-in-law who was blind. Nyne prepared food. She scrubbed laundry. It was humiliating. It was men’s work. She should not have to do it, she who had been General of the East.
Tauren rocked the baby and hummed. Around him, willow fronds swayed.
Zadie led the charge.
The horses struggled in the soft, grey dust, but the King was there, his plate armour still bundled on a servant’s back.
All her life Zadie had waited. At last, her moment had come. He was there, the King of Tui, cut off from his reinforcements on the other side of the keyhole. She bore down on him where he stood knee-deep in glacial meltwater, hefting his greatsword.
He was a bull trapped in a corner, tossing his horns. And like a bull, he would have no precision, no finesse, only raw, useless power. His Kingdom was unenlightened. They had no Great Mistresses of the Halberd to teach their warriors to peel an opponent from their armour, which, no matter how cleverly made, had seams, buckles and straps. They had no techniques for attacking tendons and joints at the wrist, ankle, knee and elbow, deftly avoiding arteries and vital organs.
Zadie didn’t want her horse to be hit by the heavy sword. In the instant before she dismounted and rolled, Zadie realised the King was not yet fully grown and his chain sat heavily on a child’s shoulders.
She waited for his two-handed swing before turning nimbly inside his extended arm, stabbing with her dagger at the pale wrist exposed between mail and gauntlet.
He cried out in a thin, high-pitched voice. The sword fell from his hand. Zadie saw the colour of the blood and cursed, even as she brought her halberd up behind him, cutting deeply into the backs of his knees. The wrist wound was perhaps fatal, if it could not be staunched.
She dropped to her haunches beside him in the river bed, sheathed her dagger and seized his wrist.
He babbled in a foreign tongue.
Zadie was forced to her feet to defend herself from a pair of Tui knights. While she fought them, she could not spare any attention for the King. Once they had been disarmed and hamstrung, she found the King’s head lolling, the river water red.
She pulled off his helmet to help him breathe. He looked so much like her eldest son, Etmes, that for a moment she could not breathe. His face paled, his dark eyes glazed with pain.
He was just a boy child and what was he doing in battle? Were there no women in Tui to come and fight in his place? Why did his mother not defend him? He should have been safe at home, laughing with the other boys and picking almonds.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered to the dying King. ‘The Goddess promised a hundred years of peace would follow your death. There will be no more killing, now, you see?’
His lips were blue.
‘Peace,’ Talatta said behind her. ‘It is a mighty gift to your people. You will be honoured, Zadie Binnet. Your life and the lives of your family will be made sacrosanct.’
Zadie wanted to laugh hysterically. She had thought she was killing the King of Tui for the good of others, but it turned out that she had done it for herself. To save herself. Because she could not face another battlefield. She could not strike again, knowing what she now knew.
Zadie clutched the boy to her breast, the breast that had once nurtured new life, and wept in the knowledge that she, like all the others, was an impostor, without the power to restore what she had taken.
Tauren Binnet worked by touch.
It had been more than a decade since he had drawn on a Scythe’s skin, but his fingers hadn’t forgotten how to shape a crescent moon.
Zadie’s pulse was slow. The pain did not seem to touch her. Long ago, when he had worked false stretch marks into her skin, she had shrieked and cursed him from start to finish. Since returning from battle, she was changed.
He hesitated, needle in hand.
‘The lands awarded to you,’ Tauren said. ‘Will you give them to Rosa? The fighting spirit is in her. She has inherited all of your talents. The war is over, but she will make a fine scholar, estate manager and games champion.’
‘I will give them to Etmes,’ Zadie murmured. ‘He will make a fine artisan.’
Tauren was alarmed by the thought. Etmes would already have great difficulty finding a woman to give him her name. He could not be wed to somebody below him in station. The woman must always be stronger, more educated and wealthier. Adding a dowry of a thousand cultivated squares might mean he would never find a wife.
Then again, perhaps without children to raise he could be amongst the great artisans in the peaceful century to come.
‘I cannot guess at your thoughts, my wife,’ Tauren said.
‘I am thinking of the King of Tui.’
He completed the crescent in silence. ‘It is finished.’
‘Thank you.’ She paused. ‘You are a good husband, Tauren. Although you are an artisan and I am a warrior, the stars have brought us together for a purpose.’
Tauren, who could no longer see the stars, remembered the constellation-carved arches of the rotunda, a creation so beautiful that the silver glow of the Consort had entered into it, protecting it from the elements even though it had been fashioned by the lowly, brutish hands of a man.
There had been temples to the Consort, a long time ago, before his silver light had been swallowed by the gold of the Goddess. It came to him, then, what his wife intended. Excitement and fear prickled at the back of his neck.
‘I will never forgive you,’ he said, ‘if my son is blinded.’
‘I will protect him,’ Zadie answered. ‘We are untouchable, because of what I have done.’
She was prideful but she did not lie. Tauren drew a deep breath laced with the smells of jasmine and nightshade. She had not moved from her prone position on the table. Tauren kissed her between her bare shoulder blades.
He heard a bell ring. It was Zadie’s mother, the old General, ringing for her tea. Etmes and the other boys would already be sleeping. Tauren would not wake them just for this.
His hand lightly traced the wall as he walked towards the kitchen. He filled the kettle and put it over the coals. There was only very little honey left in the dipper.
He would have to send Etmes to the market in the morning, before breakfast. Tauren would be lowered in the eyes of the Goddess if there was no honey for his wife’s tea.