CHAPTER SEVEN

BY THE NAMELESS MAKER

The first blood spilled is often the easiest simply because it happens so fast. After that, the inevitability of death settles in, and you begin to weigh your options. How many more must die before you accomplish what you set out to do? Do you stop because too many are killed?

I don’t actually like killing. The thought is irresistible at times, but the act itself leaves me nauseous. A hard thing for people to understand and an even harder thing for me to accept. But then again, my father didn’t like killing, either, and he handled it well enough. He used to tell me it got easier, that you stopped thinking about it after the first few. I remember going over those words after I killed that innkeeper six years ago while I vomited my guts into a bucket. I remember thinking that if I was going to act like this every time, then maybe I didn’t belong on the throne. Maybe I was Oren-yaro by name alone.

I could, if I had to, mention every single death attributed to my name. Qun might be loath to believe it, but even Biala Chaen’s death had caused me many a sleepless night. I’ve never said these things out loud. I had been taught that things left unsaid do not get the chance to fester in your mind. Khine—nosy, persistent Khine—had seen it as a mask. And as Yeshin’s successor, I had thought to make the mask part of me, and so I said the things that needed to be heard and did the things that needed to be done. But wearing it hurt. I wanted to tear it from my face and break it under my heel.

We walked around the corner a street away from the temple, and saw nosy, persistent Khine following us from the shadows. He looked at Rai and Agos first before turning to me, a sheepish grin on his face. “I heard the fighting,” he said. “Thought it had to be you.”

“Hard to avoid it when you’re Yeshin’s daughter,” I replied. Just as it was hard to lie to him, to pretend everything was all right. I couldn’t even look into his eyes; I was afraid I would give too much away. To find myself in the presence of three men who claimed to love me seemed almost too cruel to consider. Troubles only a queen might ever have to worry about, some would say while rolling their eyes, as if love was a thing you could own and show off every chance you got. As if one alone wasn’t complication enough to damn me.

Khine gestured to us, and we followed him through the alleys. “I’ve got one pesky assassin still trailing me,” he said. “Thought I’d get rid of her hiding out with the priests and priestesses, but she’s good. She pretended to sell boiled quail eggs last night and if I hadn’t been really looking out for her she would’ve gotten me.” He showed me a thin slice along his neck. A sliver higher and it would’ve struck his jugular.

“We think Kaggawa’s sent them,” I said. “Where is she now?”

“I don’t know. Everywhere. Could be waiting for us in the sewers now for all I know. I feel a little better that you’re here, but…” He turned to Rai. “You look well. Did you take all your medicine?”

“You have my thanks for that, Lamang.”

“I assume Inzali is with you.”

“She was. She’s now finding a way to save our hides,” Rai replied.

“I hope it won’t get her killed.”

“I hope so, too,” Rai said.

Khine nodded. “You can explain everything to me along the way. In the meantime, watch out for the bitch.”

“Hey,” I said.

“You’d call her that, too, if she damn near took your head off,” he grumbled, rubbing his neck. “Sneaky bitch, slinking about trying to kill me…”

We walked as I told him everything from the last few days. He half listened, half stared at the streets. Eventually, he cleared his throat. “I’ve presented myself to your high priestess as a devotee from the empire, come to serve Kibouri all the way here. It’s a wonder no one’s asked me about prayers yet but—I’ve kept them at bay by pretending I don’t know Jinan. They’ve allowed me to stay inside the main compound until I can gather my bearings.”

“Why is this important?” Agos asked, a flicker of impatience on his brow.

“Because their main compound borders Old Oren-yaro,” Khine said. “It used to be part of the keep before your father granted it to their sect. There’s tunnels going from the crypts to Old Oren-yaro, which is supposed to be connected to Oka Shto. You’ll be able to sneak your son through there.”

I took a deep breath. “Old Oren-yaro is…my brothers’ tomb.”

“So I’ve heard,” Khine said.

“I’ve never been there. Not…inside.”

“Is that a problem?” Rai asked.

I shook my head, trying to focus. “I suppose it isn’t. But getting into the compound would be. They don’t just allow anyone to walk in, do they?”

“No,” Rai replied.

“Not unless you were a worshipper with explicit business to attend to,” Khine added. “Say, you’re planning a wedding—”

“I am not marrying him again,” I murmured distractedly.

“—or a funeral.”

I stared at Khine for a moment before turning to Rai. I tugged at his shirt collar. “How well-known are you over there?”

“I haven’t been here in years. The acolyte recognized me, but I don’t know who’s working up there anymore.” Rai coloured at the attention I was giving him. “What are you trying to get at?”

“If we shaved your beard and moustache, and passed you off for dead—”

He pulled away. “What?”

“Hold on,” Agos broke in. “We’re not actually going to kill him?”

“Of course not.”

“Rats.”

I smiled. “I’m wondering if there’s anyone in the temple who can recognize your, er, corpse. Maybe not. We want to pretend you’re someone else. An aron dar Ikessar—you’ve got the look, they’re not going to question it. A poor young man who died from…”

“Some kind of rat-borne disease?”

“What is it with the rats, Agos?”

“Saw too many in the sewers earlier. Can’t get them out of my mind now.” He shuddered.

I held a finger up. “Actually, that’s brilliant. It’ll stop them from looking too closely at you. An infectious disease. Loose bowels. Didn’t even have time to clean you up. Where can we get powder, Agos?”

“I am not letting you shave me,” Rai bristled.

“Just like you to focus on the details. Come now, it’s not like you’re going to be doing much of anything else.”

“I don’t understand,” Rai said. “You want me to pretend I’m dead?”

“Yes, we want you to pretend you’re dead. You’ve got to pay closer attention, Rai.”

He pursed his lips together. “This is insanity.”

“Rai, let’s be honest. You can’t act. We can’t dress you up in something and pretend you’re…what’s another way we can get in there, Lamang?”

“Confessing to some crime, maybe,” Khine said. “Someone who wants to be shut away for years in a vow of silence. I saw a few people come in and out like that in the past day. I think they lead them somewhere in the countryside.”

“And he’s already done that. If we have him there walking around and talking, he’ll give us away before we can blink.”

“I have my doubts as to whether he’ll make a good corpse, either,” Agos said, balling his hands into fists. “Maybe we shouldn’t take our chances.”

“Stop scaring him, Agos.”

“He does not scare me,” Rai grumbled.

I held up a hand. “Clean clothes. Flour, to make his face all white. A coffin.”

“Don’t forget the shit,” Khine said. “For the smell.”

Rai looked horrified.

“Where by Akaterru’s shiny tits do you expect me to find a coffin?” Agos thundered.

“Ask around, Agos. We have enough Kibouri worshippers in the city for someone to have set up shop. At worst, we’ll have to make do. A box, a cart, some rushes…” I trailed off, letting him fill in the blanks.

I heard Rai give a deep sigh. “You are making me regret my decision to assist you.”

Khine patted his shoulder. “Let’s start with the clean clothes.”

Khine went ahead to the compound, leaving us to carry on with our preparations for the fake funeral. Agos had found a coffin, surprisingly enough. A Kag had set up shop near an old friend’s house, and Kags asked fewer questions when confronted with a bag of coin—or in Agos’s case, credit. There were advantages to being honourably discharged as Captain of the Guard, and Agos still carried around the letter signed by General Ozo that allowed him whatever sort of assistance he needed in the city of Oren-yaro and beyond. He bragged about using the same letter to procure a rather nice rental house for his wife and children.

“Do you not want to see them, Agos?” I asked while we loaded up the cart. “We may not have the time when Thanh is with us.”

He paused. Out of all the men I knew, he was the easiest to read. “Better not to stir the pot,” he finally mumbled. “I made my choices a long time ago, Princess. Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for them, for what they were to me when I needed them. But when all is said and done, you know where I belong. It’s easier if they just take me for a drunken fool who ran off in the middle of the night and never returned. Hate and anger could be good. Wield them right, they’ll make them strong. Did it for me with my father, the bastard I never knew. Did well enough for myself.” He glanced at me, long enough that I found it unsettling.

“Your love is wasted on me,” I said.

He smirked. “Perhaps.” He turned to Rai’s figure in the distance. “But I’ve always known that.”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured.

“Don’t be,” he replied, echoing words he had uttered a long time ago. His eyes twinkled. “I’m not.”

And with that, without even giving me a chance to reply, he strode up to call Rai. We reached the temple before evening, right before the last prayers for the day. The wind was drenched with moisture, a clear sign of an impending storm. Just as the priest acknowledged our cargo at the gates, peering down at Rai’s still form only for a moment before demanding we close the coffin, lightning cracked through the sky.

I cringed as the thunder rumbled right behind it, followed by drops of rain. I felt Agos’s hand on my shoulder. I reached up to touch his fingers slightly—a soft brush, so faint you could’ve imagined I was simply wiping the moisture off them—and wished, not for the first time, that I had more to give.

Khine met us at the gates. He’d warned them about our arrival, under the guise that we were old friends. We carted the coffin all the way to the garden, where we placed it under the pouring rain. A priest came by with a lantern and a leather-bound tome I vaguely recognized as the texts of Kibouri.

“What’s his name, eh?” the half-blind priest asked, prodding the coffin with the sort of toothless grin that didn’t belong around the dead. I recognized him from my time as queen, but thankfully, the opposite didn’t hold true—I think I had been too young the last time he was at the castle.

“R…ordan aron dar Ikessar,” I said. “Struck down just two days since we arrived in the city. We didn’t know where else to take him. They wanted to burn him. But his last wishes were to be taken back to the mountains someday, with a proper funeral in a coffin, not a jar. What else could we do?”

“I would’ve advised on the burning,” the priest said, crossing his arms. “It would help with the spread of the disease. Who knows if you’re both infected by now?”

“We’re not,” I replied.

“Did you handle the body properly?”

“Of course we did, old man.”

“Respect—” the priest started. He seemed to change his mind about lecturing me and shook his head. “I’ll tell them to get the crypt ready. You’ll want to perform the rites over him, I suppose. I’ll see if anyone can spare you the time.”

“I can do them myself, if you’ll just give me the prayer beads and one of your little booklets.”

He sniffed. “You’re Oren-yaro.”

“I’m not.”

“Do you know it’s a crime to the Nameless Maker to lie to a priest, child? I didn’t spend years in this city just to get fooled by an accent that reeks of it. No—you’ll just botch it. I think one of the younger priests may be able to do it.”

“The infection will spread,” I said. “We’ll have to open the coffin up ourselves. I don’t want my master’s wife finding out I killed an entire temple of priests, even if you are Kibouri.” I wrung my hands together.

The priest regarded me with a long look before giving a soft sigh. “Wait by the crypt.”

I nodded at Agos and Khine. We rolled the cart as far as the path would take it before dragging the coffin down. It banged on the ground, and I thought I heard Rai give a soft groan, which I covered up with a cough.

“Some dead man,” Agos murmured. “You should’ve just let me do it for real.”

“I can still hear you,” Rai hissed.

“Stop it, you two,” Khine added.

“Idiots,” I grumbled. I started to hum as I grabbed the end of the coffin. We slowly shuffled up to the crypt entrance. Various names were carved around the pillars, famous figures known for their contribution to the Kibouri religion. I noted that Rysaran the Uncrowned’s name was on there, which was surprising—I figured my father would’ve had the power to have it removed if he had wanted to. I traced my fingers around the one that said Thanh. It was about the first priest, not my son, but the name filled me with a rush of warmth, and my heart skipped a beat at the thought of seeing my son tonight.

I saw a silhouette in the distance. A young priest arrived, stepping lightly towards us. He smiled at me and then at Agos before thrusting the string of prayer beads and a leather-bound booklet into my hands. I glanced down at these items while he busied himself with unlocking the crypt doors.

“The rooster crows at midnight,” he said, just as he stepped away.

“What?” I asked.

But the priest was gone before he could answer my question. I turned to Agos, who shrugged.

“Who knows? Crazy bastards, these Kibouri worshippers.”

We dragged the coffin all the way into the tomb. Agos shut the doors, dropping the bar in place. Khine draped a chain around it to ensure the locking mechanism wouldn’t work from the outside. “They’ll leave us alone the whole night if we’re lucky,” I said as I cranked the coffin open. “Damn Kibouri rites take hours, from what I remember. Not that I’ve ever had to do them myself, thank the gods. I’d sooner stab my eyes out.” I set the lid aside. Rai gingerly stepped out, wiping his face.

“I hope the escape plan doesn’t involve this again,” he said wryly.

I grinned at him. “And here I was starting to enjoy your silence as a dead man.”

He didn’t look amused. “Has anyone ever told you how inappropriately morbid your jokes are?”

“It’s unbecoming for a queen…yes, so you’ve said lots of times.”

Agos pulled out shovels from the bottom of the coffin and handed them to me and Khine. He took out a pickaxe for himself. “I know you hate lightning, but it’s a good thing we’ll have that to drown out the noise.”

“Since when did you hate lightning?” Rai asked.

“There’s lots of things you don’t know about me, Rai.”

“So it seems.”

“I really should admit to you that I’ve always found it entertaining to irritate you.”

“I’ve always known that.”

Agos cleared his throat. “I thought we were digging.”

We reached the far end of the tunnel. I pulled up the lantern, noting the rows of stone likenesses that marked the tombs.

“That’s a lot of Kibouri worshippers,” Khine commented. “I’m surprised. I thought, since the Ikessars favoured Kibouri, and the Oren-yaro hated the Ikessars…”

“It’s strange to me, too,” I said. I glanced at Rai. “Do you know,” I found myself saying, “that my father hated your mother so much that he never referred to her by name? At least, not in passing.”

“I am aware of that as well,” Rai replied.

“He called her the Hag. The Hag Princess. The Ikessar Witch. And a few other names I won’t utter out of respect for these dead, who must’ve supported her at one time or another.” I made a small, exaggerated bow.

“His hatred is one of the reasons I was not allowed to leave the Citadel until his death. My mother never fully trusted him.”

“A wise woman,” I said. I watched Agos press his hands on the wall, tapping it. “I’m surprised he allowed this temple to exist at all. You would think he’d just outright ban the worship of the Nameless Maker in his own city.”

“I never really knew him, my lady. You are perhaps the best judge of his character.”

I snorted. “No, I’m not. If I was, I could’ve figured out this whole Zarojo thing from the beginning.”

I stood up just as Agos gave a small sound of exclamation. He was still tapping the wall. “Hollow. You hear that?” He lifted the pickaxe and struck it. The tip plunged into soft dirt.

I held the lantern while he dug into the wall, breaking out chunks of loose clay. When he had uncovered enough, Khine and I stepped in to help him out with our shovels. Sweat gathered around my neck as I dug. Minutes passed.

“Let me take over,” Rai said.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “You’ll get calluses on those soft Ikessar palms. They won’t press quite right together in prayer.”

He glared as he pulled his sleeves up.

“Scrawny arms,” Agos whistled. “She’s got more muscle than you.”

Rai coloured. “Let’s just get this over with.” He grabbed the shovel and got to work.

The hole in the wall got larger, the pile of soil behind us higher. I wondered where Thanh was and what he would be doing at this time of the day. It was too late for his studies. By now, he would’ve probably had dinner and was somewhere in the libraries or in his room with a book. I regarded the men in front of me. They had fallen into a rhythm, their faces tightened from the physical strain. Neither paused longer than to wipe their brow or catch a breath.

All this effort for one child. Rai was right in that at the very least, Thanh was loved. It wasn’t perfect—nothing ever was. But it became clear, more than ever, why we had to get him away from this. Perhaps we could live with what we created, but my child deserved a better world than this. And perhaps deserved wasn’t quite the right word, but I at least owed it to him to make it right after everything I had done.

“There she goes,” Agos said, stepping back. There was a creak as the last of the soil caved in, revealing a long, narrow tunnel.

The path was dark and dusty, but there was a fresh intake of air coming from somewhere, which stopped it from becoming too muggy. It smelled of the rain, too—when I held the lantern up high, I could see the flames dancing.

From one tomb, into another. We found ourselves standing in the courtyard of Old Oren-yaro, among the ghosts that still haunt Jin-Sayeng to this very day.