Ykoriana sat back. 'Have you forgotten the offer I made you long ago? My quarrel was never with the child.'
'Perhaps I misjudged you.'
'It is too late for apologies, Sardian, too late for regrets.'
'Is it too late for him to know his mother's sister?'
Ykoriana turned her mask away. 'Have him speak that I might hear his voice.'
Suth urged his son forward. Carnelian obeyed him and found himself staring up at the Dowager Empress in her widow's robes.
‘Speak then… nephew,' she said.
Carnelian licked his lips. 'Celestial… I do not know what it is that you wish me to say.'
The Dowager Empress's mask nodded. 'Perhaps there is something of her in your voice. Sardian, does he look like Azurea?'
'Very much.'
A sound of footfalls was coming up behind them. Carnelian turned to see a pillar of green jewel fire sweeping towards them from out of the dark. He saw the mask floating high above and the horned crowns.
'Celestial, I did not expect…' he heard his father say, then Suth bowed his sun-crowned head as the Jade Lord swept past trailing a quetzal-feathered cloak.
Carnelian knelt watching the cloak slide past. The faces of the Sapients had turned towards the Jade Lord. With his staff, one of them ratded out a rhythm on the floor. The Jade Lord loomed above the Sapient. Carnelian imagined he could feel his hot anger. The homunculi were streaming back. As they folded into their masters' embraces, they began to mutter, first one then another until all had murmured the word 'Molochite'. The Sapients bowed and then opened their fence to let the Jade Lord through. He climbed the steps towards the Dowager Empress, who put out a hand that he caught and folded in his own. Carnelian watched their hands flow in each other's lasciviously and saw that the homunculi were watching too, murmuring, relaying every touch back to the hands at their throats.
'Jade Lord Molochite, I was talking to the Regent,' his father said.
'Well, now you can talk to us both who shall soon be wed.'
'Does the Regent wish that I should speak before her son and the Wise? What I came to say would be better said to her alone.'
Ykoriana leaned towards the youth who said, 'It matters naught to me. Say what you came to say in the hearing of my son, and of the Wise too.'
Suth glanced down at Carnelian. He lifted both his staves and brought them down again with a clack.
Then, Celestial, you force me to speak as He-who-goes-before.'
Molochite stood beside his mother, holding her hand like a child. 'Well, get on with it.'
'When I wear the Pomegranate Ring I am become merely the lens through which the Clave focuses its will. I am acting in a similar capacity for your other son.
Nephron bade me say to you that should you cease your opposition to his election he would give you thereafter such freedoms as you have been deprived of. I stand here witness to his blood oath.'
Again the Dowager Empress threw back her crowned head and laughed like a girl. 'What gift is it to a bird to open its cage once it has forgotten the freedom of the sky? Besides, even the Twins cannot give me back my sight.'
‘Sacrilege, Celestial, you come close to sacrilege,' shrilled one of the homunculi.
She laughed again, then looked at Suth. 'Still, you and Aurum have built about me a wall of votes that I can see no way to breach.'
Molochite tore his hand out of hers and came to the edge of the dais to look down. 'By my burning blood, Suth, I swear that when I become God Emperor, I shall bend all my power to pursuing your House to ruin.'
Carnelian felt his hackles rising.
Ykoriana's hand let go of the youth's chain and reached up to tug upon Molochite's sleeve. He turned the malice of his eyeslits on her. For moments, Carnelian was convinced that he would strike his mother, but then he moved back to stand by her side. She stroked his hand.
'It is Aurum who is its architect. Once the election is over I intend to retire to my coomb to live in quiet retreat with my son. I am not your enemy.'
'Perhaps that is so, Sardian.'
Carnelian watched the three masks looking at each other.
Ykoriana's was the first to turn away. 'But I will not abandon my beloved. Several days have yet to pass before the House of the Masks and the Great meet in the Chamber of the Three Lands, and only then will this be decided. Until that time, my son and I are content enough to leave our fates entirely in the hands of the Chosen.'
'I will take this answer back to Nephron. Be certain, Celestial, I shall do what can be done in urging him to free you, notwithstanding your response.'
'Until the election, then. But lest your faction should become too proud, My-Lord-who-goes-before, remember that even the sun is bound by earth and sky.'
Suth's mask looked at her a while. 'I shall remember.'
Ykoriana terminated the audience with her hand.
Suth bowed his sunburst head. Syblings appeared to relieve him of his staves and he turned away. Carnelian walked beside him all the way back to the Iron Door where the Hanuses awaited them. The syblings bowed but when their head came up their eyes, living and stone, lingered gluttonously on Carnelian's face. It was only with the closing of the door that Carnelian was free of them.
In the gloom of the Sun in Splendour the Ichorians lowered his father's dull fire to the ground. Carnelian stared at him. The journey back down the Approach had been even harder than the climb. Somehow his father had avoided falling. Somehow he had managed each one of the myriad steps. But when they reached the waiting Ichorians and the dais, his father stopped and would move no more till Carnelian had begun to think that he had died and only the stiff robe kept him upright still. At last, he had had to have him carried onto the dais. There, the knees of his ranga had bent, though Carnelian had no way of knowing whether it was his father who had knelt or simply that his ranga had collapsed. All the way back, blinded by the throng, deafened by the storming shawms, Carnelian had had to follow fearing that at any moment his father would topple to the ground.
Now they were alone in the Sun in Splendour, Carnelian found the courage to step up onto the dais. Each step he took made his father tremble. He stopped when he was standing very close. With his father kneeling, and him on his ranga, they were of a height.
'Father?' he said.
It seemed quite natural that the huge, golden puppet should make no response. Carnelian became desperate to look inside to know if the suit had become his father's sarcophagus. He reached out to run his fingers down the edges of his father's sun-eyed mask. Finding the bands, he followed these back over ears that seemed to be made of leather. His fingers traced the bands into narrow channels that burrowed round into the sculptural mass of his crowns. His fingers came together at a knot. They struggled to undo it, then carefully removed the mask. He stifled a cry as he exposed the closed eyes. The face had the texture of weeping wax. He moaned as he stroked it. He thought the sighing was his own till he saw a quiver in the pale lips.
'Father, O Father?'
'So… tired,' said the lips.
Carnelian kissed him. 'We'll soon get you to bed.'
He carefully replaced the mask and walked away with many glances back. He raged through the tunnel into the chamber of doors, scattering Ichorians. He demanded that they go and find their commander and then went to his father's apartments and dug out House Suth attendants. He had them in tow when he met the grand-cohort commander. He had the man send for a Sapient from the Domain of Immortality and made him remove all his Ichorians between the Sun in Splendour and his father's chambers. When the commander hesitated, Carnelian said, 'He is dying,' in such chill tones that the man immediately did his bidding.
With some of his people, Carnelian returned to the Sun in Splendour where, towering over them, he directed them as they freed his father. He watched as they disassembled his sunburst crown and opened the shell of his robe. He shouted at them to be careful as they lifted the sagging body down from the huge ranga. He had
