as Mesema put a hand to her stomach. She knew that feeling: it was of a world shrinking. With Chief Tegrun dead Mesema became the daughter of nobody. The old men would urge Sarmin to take a second wife, the daughter or sister of someone important, and that woman’s children would take precedence over Pelar and Daveed both. Nessaket picked up Daveed and frowned. Like it or not, her baby’s fate was now entwined with Mesema’s.
And so it was business, not sympathy, that came first to her mouth. “Who would take your father’s place?” she asked. The Felt controlled the gateway to both the tradelands in the west and Yrkmir in the east, and if Mesema could provide a key her power was secure.
Mesema stood a bit straighter, understanding the importance of the question. “Banreh. Lame Banreh. He is the new chief.”
Nessaket knew nothing of this man-this voice and hands-whether he favoured Cerana, whether he was a man of war-not anything. She settled on the bed, preparing questions in her mind, but Mesema sat beside her, Pelar quiet in her arms, and fixed her sky-blue gaze on Nessaket. “Where did you go?”
The directness of the question surprised Nessaket. Just a moment ago the girl had been weeping. “I met the envoy and spoke of the peace.”
“You mean that you spoke against it.”
“I wonder why you speak for it. Your father, the lords, the army did not want peace. If you asked every person in the empire and the grasslands, you’d find the only people who ever wished for peace are yourself and Sarmin.”
The girl lifted her chin. “What of the wives and children of the soldiers? The people of the grasslands who are most at risk once our Riders leave?”
“Next you will plead for the sheep.” Nessaket gave the answer Arigu would have given.
“Perhaps I will.”
“And Banreh? Your new chief?”
Mesema fussed angrily with Pelar’s wrappings, her father forgotten for the moment. “What of him?”
“What does he think about the war?”
“I don’t know-but why do you worry about him and not the palace? Here are two sons; do you not worry about that?”
Nessaket was surprised by her insight. Did she guess the rest of it? The women in these halls had nothing to do except compete for Sarmin’s attention. He had not given it yet, but once he tired of Mesema he would notice them-dozens of fertile, young women at his disposal. And if two boys were too many, what about thirty?
Mesema spoke again. “Is my boy safe?”
“For now. And mine?”
“I would not hurt Sarmin’s brother!”
“Then we shall protect the children together.” A necessary alliance, for now.
That chin again. “How can I trust you? You didn’t protect your other children.”
Nessaket backed away as if the girl were a snake. When Tahal had ordered the death of all those boys, Nessaket had thought her life was over; Amile was dead, Sarmin locked away, and Beyon given over to rage for ever. She had watched Siri, the youngest wife, throw herself from the roof garden and wished she had the strength to do the same. She had no retort. She stood, mouth flapping like a fish’s, and Mesema’s expression softened. “I’m sorry. I speak without thinking, sometimes. Of course we will work together.”
Nessaket forced a smile. “Very good. We will support one another, you and I. Our children will be friends.”
“Yes. I would like that,” said the girl. Nessaket studied the girl’s honestlooking face. She was a mistake- Nessaket’s own mistake. She had tried to put the girl aside during Tuvaini’s brief reign, but somehow she remained; somehow she had caught Sarmin’s heart.
After Tahal died, Nessaket had been lost. But over time, she found purpose. She planned. She found Arigu and then Tuvaini, and she believed for a brief moment that everything might change, that she could be more than an Old Wife in a gilded hall. But Helmar and his patterns showed that to be no more than illusion, showed her that in truth her life had been shrinking since the day Beyon was born, since the day she provided Tahal with the only heir he needed. It grew even smaller with time and age; now it was no bigger than these soft rooms. But still she could protect Daveed. Still she could be the kind of mother she had not been for Amile.
She stood up and faced the girl, as her mother had faced her before her wedding-day. “The first thing you must learn is how to keep Sarmin’s attention, blessings upon him,” she said, “so let us begin there.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“Why couldn’t Demah go to Mirra?” Rushes didn’t like the dark temple of Herzu with its frightening, twisted statues, or the priests with their big muscles, black robes and ink-stained hands. She shivered to think of them moving through the dungeons, choosing inmates with a point or a glance, of how cold their grip must feel when they dragged a person from his cell. The presiding priest looked towards her now, his shadowed eyes filled with contempt, and she cringed away, imagining herself dissolving under that hard gaze, disappearing like one of those prisoners.
This was no place for a funeral. Herzu’s creed was struggle and torment; sorrow was a weakness here, and pity an insult.
Mina leaned towards her and answered her so quietly that Rushes held her breath to hear it. “She threw herself from the tower and insulted Mirra. That means Herzu gets her soul.”
But Demah had not killed herself. It was the Longing that killed her.
An acolyte carried a cage of doves to the foot of the gleaming statue. They cooed and fluttered against the bars as he put it down, a sound that brought a ghost of a memory into Rushes’ mind: fields, and sky. He lifted a small door at the top, grabbed a bird and handed it to the priest, who snapped its neck with such an economy of movement that Rushes barely took it in. Then the next, and the next, until a pile of feathered bodies, still and lifeless, covered the altar. Death. Murder, and death. She remembered Sahree’s room and how she said a woman had been murdered there. The old servant had spoken of her lost stone as if it could keep such disasters from happening. Rushes pinched her pocket. A luck stone would feel good there.
The other attendees began to stand; the ceremony was finished. Not a word had been spoken. They were silent as the Many without being joined. They were fragmented, desolate. The priest and the acolyte lifted Demah’s body, wrapped tightly in linens and rope, and carried her through a rear exit. Rushes wiped away a tear and joined Mina in the aisle, if one could call it that; if was more a path between statues, basins and chairs. Order was not Herzu’s realm. That belonged to Keleb.
“What will happen to her now?” With the Many, a person who died stayed within the Pattern. They continued; Demah had stopped.
“There is a slave cemetery, out beyond where they dump the offal and chamber pots.”
“There is?” Rushes had been out there many times, but didn“ t remember any graves. “Are we allowed to visit the stones?”
Mina snorted. “Only the best slaves get stones, the ones who work upstairs, weighing gold and holding quills. For us they dig a hole. Once there are ten of us in there, they cover it up and dig a new one.”
“She will lay in an open hole all year!” That was an offense to Mirra. All living things should return to the soil.
“No-only a week, maybe two. Think how many of us there are. We get old and die, or we’re whipped too hard, kill ourselves…” Mina stepped out into the corridor, into the light, and Rushes could see the trouble and sadness on her pretty face. “Anyway they put the prisoners in the same graves and that fills them quick enough.”
Rushes imagined Demah lying together for all time with a murderer or a thief. “No!”
“Get used to it. That’s where you’ll be. But it’s only your body.” Mina turned towards the kitchens. The funeral had been performed early-in the middle of the night, in fact-so as not to disturb those of the palace. Now they had
