for him to heal; even now, the minor knife wound in his leg from the vendetta was still festering, so that daily he had to squeeze the pus from it and clean it out with seawater.
In a way, Ash didn’t mind further confinement in this black pit he had crawled into. Within his own depths he felt as if he deserved to be there, that he would gladly suffer an eternity of this desolation if it meant bringing Nico back from to the living. Beneath the oiled cloak, he could feel the small clay vial of ashes lying cold and dead against his chest.
CHAPTER TEN
A Matter of Diplomacy
‘The Holy Matriarch requests a moment of your time,’ cooed Guan, standing there with his twin sister, both watching him with their hooded, arrogant eyes.
Che gripped the open cabin door a little harder as they all swayed with the violent motions of the ship. All around them, the flagship groaned and complained against the buffeting of the heavy seas. The sister was studying him closely, and he stared back at her, her face as sharp and lean as her brother’s, her thin lips slightly parted on one side.
He held his forefinger up. One moment.
Che closed the Scripture of Lies in his hand, making sure they saw it first, then replaced it on his neatly made cot in plain sight. He stepped out into the passageway and followed them.
He was glad of a chance to stretch his legs, despite his usual sense of foreboding whenever he was summoned by the Matriarch. He hadn’t ventured out much these several days past, the weather being too poor for dallying out in the open. Today was the worst so far. The ship pitched so steeply from side to side they had to walk with their hands along the walls of the passageway to keep their balance.
One by one they stepped up onto the main deck and bent into the blasts of wind. A gust sent the sister stumbling sideways, tottering with outstretched hands before her brother tugged her by the sleeve back to his side. A wave crashed against the hull and threw a froth of water hissing over the decking, knocking over a few sailors so they went sliding amongst it in their rainslicks.
The three priests wiped their faces dry, and in a line made for the steps that zigzagged up the flank of the quarterdeck, where they started to haul themselves up.
‘A little choppy today!’ the sister, Swan, called back at him.
Guan looked back too, his expression cool.
The man hadn’t spoken with Che for some days now. Perhaps Guan had finally taken his hint about wanting to be left alone.
Still, there was a look in his eyes; something wounded in them. Not the reaction he would have expected if these twins really were Regulators in disguise. Perhaps he was simply being paranoid after all.
This is why I am without friendships, he thought.
At the door of General Romano’s cabin they passed a pair of Acolytes stationed as guards, sheltering as best they could beneath the tiny porch. Within, even over the din of the gale and the waves, the raised voice of Romano could be heard cutting through the laughter of his people. Like many, the young general had been revelling in drink and narcotics since the bad weather had confined them all to their quarters.
On the topmost floor, at the door to Sasheen’s private cabins, the three of them stood within the porch as the honour-guards searched them for weapons. The sister was last, and as she was carefully patted down Che noticed how her brother watched the process with a frown. She ignored his scrutiny, though, looked at Che instead with her features softened by a delicate smile.
Pretty, he thought, and glanced down at her body without subtlety, her wet robe clinging to it.
‘Clear,’ said the Acolyte as he finished, and his partner knocked on the door.
Heelas, Sasheen’s personal caretaker, beckoned them into the salon, where priests of the entourage lounged in a subdued silence. Heelas led the three of them across to the door of Sasheen’s private cabin and rapped a knuckle on it gently, then opened it and passed through without waiting for a response.
The moment Che entered the room he could feel it, the anger in the air. Sasheen sat on her great chair at the rear of the spacious cabin. She was wrapped in a fur coat over plain robes. Her chest was rising and falling quickly. Che noticed a broken wineglass at the foot of the wall, and drops of red wine amongst the shattered glass, running one way then the other as the floor pitched from side to side.
Around the Holy Matriarch were gathered those of her inner circle. Her old friend Sool was there, sitting by her side on a cushioned stool, turned half around so she could stare out through the windows at the ragged sea and clouds beyond. Klint the physician was as ruddy faced as always as he pulled absently on one of his piercings. Alarum, vaguely known to Che as a spymaster in the Elash, offered a congenial nod of the head, eyes keenly observing him. Lastly, Archgeneral Sparus, the Little Eagle, stood in the centre of the room as though he had just stopped pacing, one eye covered with an eyepatch, the other pinning Che in its glare.
Che ignored him and glanced around the room itself. His quick search took in the jar of Royal Milk bracketed on a table behind Sasheen, then stopped at the two bodyguards standing outside on the balcony, huddling beneath their hoods.
‘Diplomat,’ Sasheen declared with a rueful twist of her lips. She was intoxicated, he could see, though it was only obvious by her reddened cheeks and nose, for the Matriarch spoke with focus. ‘I have a task for you, Diplomat.’
Che bowed his head. ‘Matriarch,’ he said with false calm.
‘I need you to send a message to General Romano. As swiftly as you can manage it.’
Che stifled the beginnings of a smile. And so it begins.
‘And what is the tone of this message, Matriarch?’
‘A warning only,’ rumbled the Archgeneral Sparus with a glance to Sasheen. ‘His catamite lover should suffice.’
‘Make an example of him,’ drawled Sasheen. ‘A fitting one. Do you hear me?’
Another bow of his head. ‘Is that all?’
Sasheen pinched the bridge of her nose, not responding.
‘You may go,’ replied Sool.
The twin priests accompanied him back outside. Che hesitated in the shelter of the porch. He looked to the brother and was about to address him when he changed his mind, spoke to the sister instead.
‘Any notion as to what this is about?’
She looked amused by his directness. The brother shifted by her side, glanced to the two guards standing behind them.
‘Romano has been slandering the Holy Matriarch,’ Guan replied before she could speak. ‘In his chambers, intoxicated with his entourage.’
‘In what way?’
Swan leaned towards him, her piercings dripping water. ‘Her son,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s been slandering her son.’
Che blew an exasperated breath of air from his lips, understanding at last.
That afternoon they caught their first sight of Lagos, ill-fated island of the dead.
The bad weather finally settled down, as though it wished to strike a more solemn chord for the occasion; really it was only that they had sailed into the lee of the island. South they headed towards the harbourage of Chir, with the rest of the fleet tightening up around them. White cliffs rose along the coastline, and green slopes covered by grey flecks that were the famous Lagosian long-haired goats.
It seemed that every one of the thousand souls onboard the flagship now crowded along the rails. Che watched the Matriarch where she stood on the foredeck, flanked by her two generals and their entourages.
He studied the trio closely, curious as to how they must feel gazing upon green Lagos, that island of insurrection, its entire population so famously put to the torch. The Sixth Army, still stationed there, now due to become part of the Expeditionary Force, had been led by Archgeneral Sparus when they’d finally put down the rebellion. And it had been Sasheen herself who had given the order to kill the majority of the citizenry in retribution
