“Are you well?” Tregarro said.
“I am perfect,” she said, and it was true apart from the one unsettled echo. What does bring you? She had answered that, hadn’t she? She’d understood the prophecy. But the echo of the question remained. That was strange. Why did it remain?
“We can wait if you like,” Tregarro said.
“There’s nothing to wait for,” she said as she opened her eyes. He gave her his hand. She rose to her feet. There was a scar on his thumb too, wide and pale and ropey as the ones on his face. He was a beautiful man, in his way. She was grateful that he had been here to stand by her and the brotherhood.
The rite itself felt like images of itself drawn on onionskin and laid one atop another. In all the history of the brotherhood, there had never been anyone who performed the ritual three times. Her first, failed attempt the night that Byrn a Sal had taken his crown, then the actual redemption of Kithamar, after they’d recovered the blade and the boy, and now this third and final time.
Souls faded. Even now, with the child’s body still warm, the thread would be falling from the world. She had saved it before. She would save it again now. She took the blade and drew in her own blood the deathmark she’d only just bestowed. It darkened. It burned. The cold smoke that came with the attention of the dead complicated the air. She shivered and told herself it was only the chill of the passing winter. Or joy at the approaching transformation. She cleaned the blade with a cloth that had never been touched by sunlight. She dipped the silver into a basin of river water. Anticipation lifted the hair on her arms and neck.
She crossed the deathmark with the letters of her own name. Herself, her life, all that she was or had been, written in water. After the last line, she put down the blade and placed her palms flat on the altar. The stone bit her skin like ice.
For a fraction of a breath, she was afraid it had failed. She almost called out to Tregarro. But only almost. The cold smoke that wasn’t smoke thickened, billowing into the air from no place. Or from a place that no living eyes had seen. She’d never been aware of this before. She felt as though she were falling from a great height, and the smoke was a vast and turbulent sea waiting to receive her.
Something moved in that sea. At first, she couldn’t make out its form. And then she could.
The question was answered. She understood what was bringing her to the palace. She saw what she had spent a lifetime serving, and the sense of betrayal was deeper than seas or skies. Her regret was instantaneous, complete, horrified. She tried to turn back, willing herself into the flesh she’d already half abandoned. She tried to scream.
The thing that called itself Kithamar, the thing that had eaten its rotting way through generations of her ancestors, caught her in grey-white teeth. It shook its vast head like a terrier killing a rat, and the thin, bright connection of herself to herself, already made tenuous by years of grooming and effort, snapped.
Andomaka Chaalat, great lady of the city and high priest of the Daris Brotherhood, didn’t die. It wasn’t so gentle as that.
Tregarro watched as she made the deathmark, drawing it in her own blood, and at once, it darkened and smoked. If anything, the effect was faster and more violent than before, as if the blood might catch fire. A sign, he guessed, that Ausai’s spirit was close. She cleaned the blade, and perversely, he felt the urge to tip over the little basin of water. Ruin the rite. But it was only a moment’s perversity, and it passed. She drew her name in water. The deathmark spat. She put down the blade, leaning forward with both palms flat against the altar. Something shook, but the candle flames didn’t waver.
Andomaka shifted forward with a little cough like a gasp. She straightened, and she stood. The laugh that came from her throat was as familiar as his own voice. But it wasn’t her.
“Oh, it is good to have that done with,” she said, then stretched. On the floor, the dark cloth had slipped off the dead boy’s face. Andomaka stepped over, looking down at the corpse with something like compassion in her eyes. “I would have been beautiful in that one, given a few more years. Such a waste. We’ll want that burned and the bones ground down.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Lady,” Andomaka said. “Your lord is now your lady, after all. Kithamar has become a woman again.”
“Yes,” Tregarro said. “Of course. My apologies.”
“It’s always an odd transition. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a body like this. It will be a pleasant change,” she said, and sat on the altar as the boy had so often done. “We’ll want to put the blade someplace much safer than last time. With any luck, we won’t need it again for a very long while, but I’m not too proud to learn from my mistakes. I don’t want to do this all again a few decades from now.”
“Of course.”
Andomaka rubbed her arm idly, as if she were feeling the cloth sleeve of a new jacket. “And with this behind us, I think we can turn to the other work at hand. My nephew and his daughter…” Andomaka stopped, shook her head, and laughed again. “My cousins. Byrn a Sal and Elaine. And also Saffa and our unwelcome visitor.”
Tregarro took up the knife, wiping away the last clinging drops of water with the ritual cloth. His throat felt thick, and he wasn’t sure why. He hoped he wasn’t getting ill. If Andomaka noticed, she didn’t say anything.
“Saffa’s girl,” she said. “She was Inlisc with a Longhill slant to her vowels. We have some of those in our coin box, don’t we?”
“A few, yes,” Tregarro said.
“Well, gather up our hired knives, Tregarro, my friend. It’s time we sliced off some loose threads.”
PART THREE
SPRING STORMS
Violence is the nature of the world. Peace is the pause between blows.
—From “Aunt Thorn and the King of Crows,” a traditional Inlisc folktale
I don’t know,” Alys said to no one for what had to have been the thousandth time at least. “He didn’t tell me that he was doing it. We found the place together. The plan was to go in, the both of us. But Ullin’s Ullin. Sometimes he changes the plan. I guess he went in without me.”
Her room was silent apart from the distant rumble of carts in the street and a man’s muffled laughter that came through the wall. Alys shifted on her mattress, trying to find a position of comfort. She couldn’t.
“The girl that was with him?” she said, answering the question no one there had asked. “I wasn’t sure there was one. Anything could have happened to her. You’ll have to ask him.”
And could they? If anyone could haul the dead up out of their graves, it was Andomaka. If Ullin rose from his own ashes, she didn’t think he’d likely cover for her.
It would have been so much better just to have done it. A few swings of her club, and the girl’s brains would have been ready for a sausage casing. Alys would be dreaming at ease instead of worrying at a story that she wouldn’t have believed if she’d heard it. Only she wouldn’t have been. That was the hell of it. She’d have been losing the same sleep for different reasons.
“I don’t know,” she said again. “I don’t know what happened.” And then, to Andomaka or Ullin or Darro, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”