Chapter 51

She supposed she should have expected who it would be shaking her awake the next morning while she slept off the drink and violence of the night before in the cold, crooked roots of a tree stump.

She rubbed her gummy eyes and saw Monshara standing above her. “You’re predictable, at least,” Monshara said. “You want to go in chains back to your Empress, or take a dog and walk in on your own two feet?”

Zezili gazed up at the rotten sky of Monshara’s world. “It was worth it,” she said.

“We’ll see,” Monshara said.

By the time Zezili was delivered back to her own world, put back into her proper clothes, and escorted back to Daorian by Monshara and two of her omajistas, Daorian was already wreathed in red, the color of mourning. Great red banners flanked the tower gates, the spires of the distant keep. The city people had put out red kerchiefs in their windows, hung them from the snow-heavy awnings of their shops. Zezili wondered who died. Then wondered if it was supposed to be her.

People knew her by her armor, the plaited skirt knotted with the hair of dajians, the image of Rhea holding a sword over a dead bear etched into the breastplate, outlined in flaking silver. Her helm had no plume, ending instead in a curve of metal like a snake’s tail. The people came out to see her, muttered about her on their doorsteps, pointed. Some saw her and hid. Two old women made a ward against evil as she passed. It told Zezili something of the Empress’s silent ambiguity regarding her station that they did not spit at Zezili or curse her. It helped that Monshara hadn’t bound her.

It was a small kindness, Zezili supposed.

The city waited on the Empress’s judgment.

Zezili reined her dog within the courtyard of the keep. Monshara and her omajistas slid off their bears. A kennel girl darted out from the warmth of the kennels and took the reins of Zezili’s dog without looking Zezili in the face.

Zezili reached up a hand to her dog’s ears and rubbed at the base of them. She pressed her cheek to his and pretended he was Dakar. She had lost her husband and her dog. She had betrayed her Empress. It was the end of all things.

The dog licked her face with his hot tongue. She pulled away only to find that she had gripped the hair of his collar in both hands. She slowly uncurled her fingers. She turned away and walked up the loop of the outdoor stair and into the foyer of the hold. She glanced back at Monshara. “I can get the rest of the way myself,” she said.

Monshara swept her hand forward. “You should have listened to me,” she said.

“I don’t listen to anybody,” Zezili said. “Not anymore.”

Saofi, the Empress’s secretary, was waiting for Zezili outside the audience chamber. She played with the eyeglass at the end of her chatelaine.

“She’s been expecting you,” Saofi said.

“You have too, no doubt,” Zezili said.

“Your fate and mine are linked,” Saofi said. “So yes, I have an interest in this outcome.”

At first, Zezili wasn’t sure what she meant. But of course, everyone knew about the purging of the dajian camps by now. The privately-owned dajians knew it was only a matter of time before the bloody swords came for them, too. And for me, Zezili thought. Us.

Saofi went inside the audience chamber to announce Zezili. Zezili felt oddly calm. She had been courting this day for some time.

The secretary reappeared. Her expression was blank. “She’ll see you,” Saofi said. Saofi gripped the outer handle and leaned back with all her weight, pulling the door wide.

A chandelier of crystal shards and flame flies hung from the ceiling. A purple carpet stretched the length of the hall to the raised dais at its end. Atop the dais sat the silver throne of eighteen hundred years of Dorinah rule, the throne usurped from the first Patron of Saiduan’s fiftieth son, constructed in the far north of that country two thousand years before by silversmiths whose like Zezili had never encountered.

The Empress did not sit on the throne but stood near it, surrounded by her enormous green-eyed cats, each as tall as Zezili’s shoulder. The sight of them sent a prickling up Zezili’s spine. The Empress herself was a tall, striking figure, slender, with knobby arms and legs that were often canted at awkward angles. Her face, neck, and hands were smeared in a bronzer that gave her the color of dark honey. A blotch of red marked her lips. Her black brows and brilliant yellow eyes were smudged in kohl, and her hair – most of it her own – added another foot to her already extraordinary height. She dressed in a pale white dress with bone corseting that gave her the figure of a stick insect. The elaborate hooping under her gown created a wall of material belling out from her narrow frame, a distance that would have to be crossed before one touched her.

Zezili squared her shoulders. She concentrated on the length of purple carpet, but as she walked, her gaze was drawn to the Empress’s cats. They sat quietly watching her, their faces as inscrutable as the Empress’s.

Zezili walked to within a yard of the cusp of the Empress’s belled white gown, stared at the hem, and got down on both knees before her. She took off her helm, set it beside her.

The cats wound closer. A dozen, more? She imagined them chewing on her body, saw claws rend flesh.

She bowed her head and moved the tangled mass of her hair, baring her neck. One of the big cats lay down beside her. Its tail caressed her legs.

A delicate hand alighted on the base of Zezili’s neck. The fingers were cold.

“I charged you,” the Empress said, her voice like a sigh.

“I did as you bid,” Zezili said. “All but one of the camps is cleansed, and I’m sure Monshara can take care of the last. I obeyed you in all things.”

“You darkened their way. You interfered,” the Empress said. Her fingers dug into Zezili’s hair. “Worse, you may have hurt my other plans.” She took her hand away and beckoned to the cat lolling beside Zezili.

Another of the cats hissed.

“I find myself uncertain what to make of you or do with you.” The Empress sat in her silver throne, the fantastic menagerie of beaten silver rods and spires twisted into grotesque faces.

“Perhaps this was my fault,” she said. “I expected pure obedience. Look at me.”

Zezili raised her gaze from the carpet. She did not know what she expected to see in the Empress’s face, but looking up, she saw an unchanged visage, unmarked by feeling, grief or fear or anger. The Empress was, as ever, a blank bronze canvas, with the long, regal neck and supple form of her kind, the startling eyes.

“I do have a platter for your head here.” She patted the silver throne. “But my cats are not hungry, they say.”

Zezili looked at the cats. They stared back at her.

“There is another use for you,” the Empress said. “One for my sisters patiently waiting for Oma’s rise. You see, the Tai Mora are not the only world brought closer now. Our alliance with the Tai Mora was for convenience only, until the world of my sisters was close enough to wake those of us left behind. I will charge you with the sacred task of preparing for their awakening. You will prepare your legion in the spring and travel to Tordin.”

“But… Empress… I thought I’d be feeding bugs in the dirt. I know what I did.” She wanted to say more; it bubbled up inside her, a mad anger she’d held back these months. “I can’t follow you any more. I’m not your slave.”

But the Empress continued as if Zezili had not spoken. “I will send mercenaries with you from the outer islands. Three thousand Sebastyn pike men, five hundred Jorian archers. You understand?”

Zezili stood. Her knees ached. Cold sweat had gathered along her spine. She had not expected she would be allowed to rise. She had not thought past kneeling upon the carpet.

“You know I can’t obey you any longer,” Zezili said.

“I know you think that,” the Empress said. Her tone was light.

The cats were uncurling from the floor. Zezili had never known such fear. But the fear of going back to her servitude was far worse.

“I cannot serve,” Zezili said. “Me, the dajians, the other Dorinahs. We’re all the same to you. I know that now.”

“I know you think you’ve turned your face from me,” the Empress said. “You think you’ve found some other path. But we’ll change your mind. You’ll know, when we are done, who it is you belong to.”