'Yes,' he said, drawing his shoulders back to stand tall. 'Enough.'
The sky darkened. The reek of dust and death tumbled through the air. The Nonman reached for the leather pouch where it lay against his bare hip.
Yes! something cried within the old Wizard, something that leaned forward with his own shoulders, flooded his mouth with his own spit. An affirming urgency.
Yes! This is all that matters. The worries will go away. They. Will. Go. Away. And if not, clarity will come-yes! Clarity. Clarity will come, the clarity needed to honestly consider these questions. Come. Come, old man! Out of the muck!
Animal spirits inhabit every soul, which is why a man could attend to one thing while remaining vigilant for another, why he could converse with his neighbour while lusting after his wife. In that moment, Cleric was all that existed. Incariol, wild and dark and, yes, even holy. The word upon which creation's own prayer seemed to turn. The Nail of Heaven gleamed across his scalp, a crown that only the Hundred could bestow. And it was as proper as it was inevitable, for he ruled the way the moon ruled the tides, the way the sun ruled the fields…
Absolute. As a father among his children.
One by one he ministered to the sitting scalpers, and Achamian watched, leaning in envy and anticipation. There is closeness in ritual. There is touch. There is an intimacy that approached coupling, an iron faith that the nearing hands would not strike or throttle. Achamian watched the near-naked form loom above Mimara beside him, watched her raise her lips in eager acquiescence. The blackened finger slipped along the chute of her tongue, pressed deep into her mouth. She went rigid, pulled her shoulders back in bliss. For the first time he noticed the bow of her belly…
Pregnant? Was she pregnant? But…
Yes! his soul's voice cried. Simplicity! You need simplicity to honestly ponder complications!
Cleric loomed over him, his shoulders brushing the violet clouds, his face blank with inhuman serenity. Achamian watched his finger, still glistening with Mimara's saliva, dip into the fox-mouth opening of his pouch. A delicious moment, magical in the way of small miracles, the little pins from which all life hangs. He watched the finger reappear, tip blackened as with soot… ashes…
Cu'jara Cinmoi.
Mimara… pregnant?
Who? Who are you?
Yes! Honesty. Simplicity! Raise your lips-yes!
The finger rose before him, its tip a tingling black. The old Wizard bent back his face, opened his mouth…
'The next time you come before me,' the hated voice called out over fawning masses, 'you will kneel, Drusas Achamian…'
Kellhus.
A coldness smoked through Achamian. The finger hesitated. He raised his eyes to the Nonman's black- glittering gaze.
Kellhus. The Aspect-Emperor.
'No,' the old Wizard said. 'No more.'
She falls asleep troubled by the wordless uproar of the evening. Her own half-hearted attempt to refuse the Qirri the previous week had occasioned little more than curiosity, it seemed to her. Who knew a women's fickle ways? But when the Wizard had refused, a strange species of alarm had gripped the company. Dread prickled the silence. She could sense the scalpers watching at angles to their eyes. Wariness quickened their movements as they went about otherwise thoughtless tasks. The Captain, especially, possessed the air of waiting.
'Akka…' she whispered in the dark. 'Something is wrong.'
'Many things are wrong,' he replied, his voice clipped, his eyes fogged with turmoil.
He was at war, she realized.
'I've been a drunkard before,' he muttered-but not to her, it seemed. 'I've even hung from the hooks of the poppy…' Momentary clarity sparked in his eyes. 'The burden that Mandate Schoolmen bear… Many of us are compelled to seek low pleasures.'
At war with the earthly residue of Cu'jara Cinmoi.
Her fear is a novelty to her, so long have her passions slipped into oblivion at the merest distraction. She struggles to keep hold of it, but she is too weary. She drifts into unsettled sleep.
She dreams of Cil-Aujas, of white throngs scratching through the black. She dreams that she runs with them, the Sranc, chasing her own waifish figure ever deeper into the earth.
A cry awakens her, grunts and earth-scuffing struggle.
She blinks, sucks waking air. The sounds are near-very near.
Dawn rims a blackened world. Two figures crouch over the Wizard… The Captain and Cleric.
What?
The Wizard kicks and pedals.
'What are you doing?' she asks with bleary curiosity. No one acknowledges her. The Wizard gags, jerks, and struggles like a landed fish.
'What are you doing!' she cries.
Heedless, she scrambles to her feet, throws herself across the Nonman's hunched back. He shrugs her away. 'Hold her!' the Captain barks at shadows standing in the dark. Calloused hands clamp about her wrists: Galian, restraining her from behind. 'There, pretty!' he grunts, dragging her back. He twists her arms against the small of her back, thrusts her to her knees. She hears herself howling in fury. 'No! Nooooo!' All she can see of the Wizard is his legs kicking. Crude laughter slouches from the dark-Sarl. A hand closes about the back of her neck. Her face is slammed into the dust, the wiry remains of weeds. Other hands seize the waist of her breeches. She knows what comes next.
But the Captain has turned from the struggling Wizard, sees what has happened to her. He flies to his feet, savagely kicks one of her unseen assailants. Stabs another-she sees Wonard stumble kicking to the dust. The hands vanish and she finds herself on all fours.
'Touch her,' Lord Kosoter grates to the unseen shadows behind her, 'and your soul is forfeit!'
She glimpses Wonard convulsing, puking blood into his beard. She scrambles forward with an instinct borne of desperation. She seizes Squirrel from her meagre belongings, draws it retreating, trips over the beehive carcass of a Sranc.
Dawn is but a corona of slate and blue across the horizon. The night sky rises black and infinite, oblivion littered with countless stars. The scalpers are naught but hunched shadows, their heads and their shoulders stuck in pale starlight. They approach her, wary and weaponless.
Achamian screams.
'Nooo!' she shrieks. 'Stop this! Stop!'
The Captain draws his blade. The rasp draws chills across her skin. He strides toward her as if she were nothing more than wood to kindle. Light soaks the horizon behind him, renders him black. She can see the murderous glint of his eyes beneath his hood of wild hair. They seem to glow for the black lines tattooed about them.
'What are you doing?' she cries. 'What madness is this?' Her voice cuts the back of her throat, such is her terror. This is how it happens, she realizes. The brothel taught her as much, but she has forgotten in all the intervening years. Your doom always outruns you. You grow complacent, fat in the company of peace, then awaken to find all safety, all hope, overthrown.
The air is windless, chill. Lord Kosoter lunges at her. He hacks with a violence that notches her blade, wrenches her wrists. She retreats. She is quick enough, skilled enough to parry his strikes. She is trained. He sweeps and swings his broadsword, brings it clanking down. His caste-noble braid swings like sodden rope.
With a kind of wonder she realizes that he isn't trying to kill her. The future towers dark and shrieking in her soul's eye. Images of torment and violation, of brutalities only scalpers could commit.
Her cries become a wail. She throws herself at him, fighting the way her brothers have taught her, nimble and light, pitting craft against strength. He grunts in surprise, swatting at Squirrel. He relinquishes a single step, a hoary shadow thrown onto its heels.
