Che felt the hairs rise on his arms. He was as shocked by his lack of perception as he was by her sly observation of him.
Kira dul Dubois: one of the participants in the Longest Night fifty years before. Rumoured to have been a lover of Nihilis himself; rumoured even to have been involved in his death six years into his reign as the first Holy Patriarch. It was like being in the sights of a silversnake.
Slowly, he stepped back from the map, hoping as well to move beyond her line of vision. He cleared his throat as he resumed his position in the centre of the floor, and refused to look at the old woman again.
At last the glass doors to the balcony slid open and the priests began to file through the room. A few cast furtive glances in his direction as they left; he recognized one of them as a priest from the sect of commerce, the Frelase. Behind them came Bushrali himself. Che had expected the man to be dead by now after failing to uncover the Roshun hiding in the city. But no, after much political manoeuvring to save his skin, here he was, still alive, still even the head of the Regulators. Perhaps the rumours were true, then; that he held a blackmail dossier on every High Priest of Q’os.
Still, the man had not entirely escaped punishment, Che saw. He’d been fitted with a Q’os Necklace, an iron collar sealed around his neck, fixed to a length of chain that ended with a small cannon-ball, which he cradled in his arm as he stepped past. He would be expected to wear the necklace for the rest of his life.
Only Sasheen and a single bodyguard remained outside, the woman lost, it seemed, in her thoughts. Che felt a draught pressing against his cheek through the open doorway, though he could only faintly hear the city beyond, unusually silent in these recent weeks of enforced mourning. When Sasheen turned and stepped inside the Storm Chamber, she was holding the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger as though burdened with a headache. Her bodyguard remained outside, slowly patrolling around the balcony. She approached a stand of steaming bowls and bent to inhale from one. With a gasp she straightened, her face flushing.
Sasheen’s eyes flared for a moment when she saw her Diplomat waiting there for her. She moved past to the fire with her hands held out for warmth.
‘Is it done?’ she asked with her back to him.
‘Yes, Matriarch.’
‘Then sit. Warm yourself.’
He wasn’t cold but he did as instructed anyway, choosing a leather settle before the fire. He maintained an upright pose, his hands folded, breathing deeply, resisting the urge to scratch at his neck. After a moment, the Holy Matriarch left the burning coals and sat down beside him, close enough for their knees to touch.
He could smell the scent of mulled wine on her breath, and realized she was drunk.
The leather of the settle creaked as she folded one long leg across the other, her robe parting along a slit to show the soft cream of her thigh. Compared to her usual attire, the robe was a plain affair, but still it was smaller than it needed to be, so that the cotton stretched tightly over her curves. Below its hem, the nails of her bare feet were painted a vivid red.
‘Bushrali tells me they will not come for me, for killing their apprentice.’
‘The Roshun?’ ventured Che.
Her eyes narrowed in annoyance. Do not play coy with me.
Che shook his head. ‘It’s unlikely. The apprentice wasn’t wearing a seal. It’s only on behalf of seal-bearers that they seek vendetta.’
She considered his words; glanced across to the sleeping form of her mother before she next spoke. He noticed then the red welts on the side of her neck, running down beneath the collar of her robe. They looked like the heat tracks left behind after a Purging.
‘But this will be personal to them,’ she ventured. ‘A public humiliation. A murder of one of their young.’
She considers this now, Che reflected. Long after the act is done .
‘No, they don’t think in such terms. They have a code of sorts. Vendetta is a matter of natural justice for them, or at least a simple matter of cause and effect. They abhor revenge, though. To seek vendetta for their own personal reasons would go against their own creed in every way I can think of.’
‘I see,’ she said, and her tone was one of lightness, perhaps amused by the idea of such a principle. ‘Bushrali said much the same himself. I wanted to hear it from you too: someone who has lived with them, and been one of them.’
Che could not help but look away at that moment, even though he knew it would betray his sudden discomfort. He almost jumped as he felt her hand pat his leg. Che met the Matriarch’s chocolate-dark eyes, and saw something different in them this time, a softness.
Sasheen smiled.
‘Guanaro!’ she called out to the room. ‘Is it time for breakfast yet?’
The old priest in attendance emerged from the side chamber next to the door. He nodded and went back inside, where Che could hear gruff orders being given, and the clatter of chopping boards and cupboard doors being opened and shut.
‘Some buttered sandshrimps, perhaps!’ she hollered after him.
Sasheen settled back, watching the fire in the hearth before them. Her hand restlessly stroked the leather arm of the settle. ‘I have not given you my thanks yet,’ came her quiet voice.
‘Matriarch?’
‘You performed a great service in leading us to the home of the Roshun. You proved your loyalty to me, and to the order. That’s why I requested you as my personal Diplomat in this,’ she waved her hand towards the map, ‘scheme of ours. You understand?’
Che offered a shake of his head, and watched her turn to regard him.
‘I go forth to war on one of the riskiest ventures we have ever attempted. Once I leave this sanctum I will be as vulnerable as any other. Not only from the enemy, but from our own people. General Romano for instance. He would pluck out my eyes given half the chance. So,’ and she smiled once more, a tight fleeting thing, like a confession, ‘I will need those around me who I can trust with my life, who I can be certain will follow my commands. Who can get a job done without qualms.’
‘I see,’ replied Che.
She did not seem entirely satisfied by his response. Sasheen turned to fix herself a hazii stick from a table next to the settle. ‘I’ve given the general order. We leave with the fleet for Lagos on the morning after next, to join with the Sixth Army in Lagos.’
Che felt a little flutter of anticipation in his chest. For an instant, he looked at her with the cold eyes of a murderer, hearing the rasping voice of one of his handlers in his mind, telling him what he must do should the Matriarch show weakness or be exposed to the possibility of capture during the campaign.
‘You will miss the Augere then,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Sasheen acknowledged, searching for a match as she spoke. ‘All those hours of tedium parading myself to the chattel.’
Smoothly, Che rose and crossed to the fire, feeling her eyes tracking him. He lit one of the rushes standing in a clay pot on the hearth, brought the burning end of it back to Sasheen, who was indeed watching him with amused interest.
She placed her fingers against his hand to steady the tip of the rush. Her kohl-rimmed eyes flickered up to meet his own, her lips pursed softly around the end of the hazii stick. He felt a pulse in his thighs, his groin.
Stop it you fool. You know she is this way. Using her charms with those she must rely upon.
He settled himself amongst a cloud of hazii smoke, whilst Sasheen turned back to the door of the side chamber, perhaps drawn by the smell of frying butter. ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked him. ‘I did not bother to ask you.’
The thought of sharing a meal with her, here in this chamber at the top of the world, filled him with a sudden discomfort. ‘No, thank you. I’ve eaten already.’
Sasheen studied him for a lingering moment. She looked at her bare leg and then back to his face. Her hand on the arm of the settle stopped moving; it slapped once, lightly, against the leather. ‘You heard, I’m sure, that we caught up with Lucian at last. The Elash snatched him from Prince Suneed’s court in Ta’if.’
‘Yes. I heard.’
She rose with a soft rustle of her robe and padded across the rug to another table next to the fire. A large, round glass jar sat alone on the tabletop, filled nearly to the brim with a white liquid. There came a sound of glass
