Carnelian yielded to the pressure from Jaspar's arm. The Master lifted up an icy hand and ran it down the green-brown thigh of the metal youth. These are exquisite pieces. Can you see, it is a single casting?' He reached above the crucified man's agony to the metal face hovering over him. 'Have you ever seen such a beatific expression? Scandalously, the whole set has not been used for years.' Jaspar ran his finger along under the man's bloodless forearm. He held his finger up to show Carnelian its red. 'See, the channel carries the blood away so that there is no spillage…' He pointed to where a bowl was set into the bronze youth's foot. '… and collects it there. From whence it may be fed to the avatar.'
Jaspar pointed to the altar on which Carnelian could see many such bowls. Carnelian turned his back on it all but was unable to free himself from the odours of blood and excrement and sweaty fear that the incense could not mask. He saw the people kneeling, staring at the crucifixion, the cross of their dragonfly tattoos a sinister reflection of its shape, their eyes like wounds dribbling tears, the noses of the children painting mucus down to their quivering lips.
'Why do they watch this?' Carnelian said, horrified.
Jaspar sniffed his orchid. 'Because if they do not, they themselves shall end up on the frame.'
'How could all these poor creatures be responsible?'
Malice cooled Jaspar's eyes to ice. They are all responsible. How can my House make claim to leadership among the Great when it cannot control its own slaves? Before any of their filthy hands should be raised against me, I would nip all their arms off at the shoulder.'
Carnelian took a deep breath. 'My father too was struck with a knife, Jaspar, but was it really the barbarian's hand wielding it?'
Jaspar turned to stone. 'What you suggest… is inconceivable.'
That is what you said on the road, and yet my father bled.'
'But here… within the Sacred Wall… it is simply inconceivable.'
'My Lord seems to have forgotten to whom he attributed the death of the Lady Flama Ykoria, who died not only within the wall, but in the Labyrinth itself.'
Jaspar crushed the orchid and let it drop from his hand like a broken butterfly.
'How many of your people have you crucified?'
'Many,' Jaspar waved his hand, 'notwithstanding the cost.'
'And have you found even a whisper of a conspiracy or of rebellion?'
Jaspar regarded him. 'Under excruciation they confess to all the fanciful plots their animal minds can conceive, but none have rung true… so far.'
'What will you believe once you are left only with limbless slaves, my Lord?'
'Is this all you came to tell me, my Lord?' Jaspar's voice sounded flat, emotionless.
'I had hoped that you might intend to take your father's pre-eminent place among the Great.'
And if I did? signed Jaspar.
Then you would be going to the Labyrinth?
All the other Ruling Lords are there.
Could you take me with you?
To join your father?' asked Jaspar.
Carnelian nodded.
'You ask me to break the Law, my Lord.'
'It is not so great a sin, cousin. You could pass me off as one of your kin.'
'An outrageous request, Carnelian, although one is heartened that at last your machinations are acquiring a Chosen hue.' Jaspar looked away, thinking. Carnelian could hear the blood dripping into the bowls. 'Perhaps I will accede to your request, although one can hardly see why you felt the need to manufacture these elaborate notions of conspiracy.'
'But I believe-' Carnelian began, but was distracted by a clamour of bells and moaning that came wafting down the stair. Jaspar looked up towards it.
'One will give the matter some thought. But now my father begins his journey to the Plain of Thrones. One's decisions will be made there. If my cousin wishes, he could form part of the sombre procession.'
'I would be honoured to attend the funeral,' Carnelian said.
Jaspar turned back to look at him. 'Funeral?' 'I thought…'
'Do you really imagine that the entombment of a Ruling Lord of the Great is an occasion that can be organized in a few days? The Houses have to be invited, the grave goods prepared, and' – he gave Carnelian a patronizing smile – 'it is customary to have the body embalmed. You would not have the vessel of my father's blood drying to dust like the cadaver of some slave, would you?'
Carnelian lifted his hands in apology. 'I meant no offence.'
Jaspar made a dismissive gesture. Before he could turn away, Carnelian reached out and touched his arm. 'Perhaps in view of what I have said, cousin, you might consider putting an end to this torture.'
Jaspar jerked his arm free. 'You presume too much, my Lord. This is a lesson that I will brand deep into the memory of my slaves. Since his guardsmen did not care to die to save his life, they will die so that my father's ghost might sup on their blood as he descends into the Underworld.'
The moans and pealing grew deafening. Carnelian fidgeted as he looked up the steps. The idols of the avatars leered down at the crucifixion frames standing beside their altars. A procession was coming down the steps between them. Sapients, horned and wearing the moon's face, drifted hand in hand with their homunculi. Behind came ammonites chiming heart-stone bells or waving moaning silver mouths aloft on poles.
Carnelian was forced to move aside, to draw closer to the tortured man. Water oozing in his mouth anticipated vomit. He closed his eyes and prayed that he would not retch. His mask was a gag, but if he threw it off it would bring even more death and mutilation to the household Imago.
A heavy waft of stale incense made him open his eyes. The Sapients were upon him, their bead-crusted purple samite swinging like plates of armour. Each carried a staff capped with a manikin of green-rusted copper crowned with a scything crescent moon.
My Lords of the Domain Immortality, Jaspar signed, then bowed.
The Sapients worked their staves backwards and forwards like levers as they slid past. The moaning was like a peopled gale. Carnelian saw the silver-faced ammonites striking their stone bells, compelling his heart to their dirgeful rhythm. Floating between them was a slab of ice like smoky quartz. Upon this a Master lay, reeking of myrrh, encased in a green robe as stiff as a box, the cloth darkening where it sucked up meltwater. The robe was spangled with tiny spirals that might have been the heads of nails hammered through into the flesh. On the chest lay an annulus of mirror obsidian in token of the Dark Water over which the dead cross to the Underworld. The gold mask was a face in which the world slid reflected, like the memories of the dead man's life. The ammonites leaned in towards each other gripping their burden with blue hands.
Jaspar moved in to Carnelian and forced him to retreat until he could feel the cross's arm digging into his back. He shuddered, feeling the pain tremoring the frame. A Chosen woman, her face sagging yellowed marble, stopped to allow Jaspar his place behind his father's bier. Carnelian was glad she did not look to question his own presence there. More than a dozen scarlet Masters followed, some throwing frowns at him as they passed.
Carnelian was hoping for a place at the end of the procession but the Imago guardsmen bringing up the rear, resplendent in azure-feathered cuirasses, heads hanging, waited for him to join the other Masters. As he hesitated, one of the guardsmen looked up as if waking from sleep. Gashes that had been cut down from each of his eyes were weeping tears of blood.
Several kharon boats were waiting at the quay, the sun gleaming on their bony curves. Guardsmen knelt and cried their blood onto the stone. Jaspar's brother came towards them, his hands signing, Why does he come with us?
'Because I will it,' said Jaspar and motioned for Carnelian to stand beside him.
The eyeslits of Jaspar's brother's mask turned to stare at Carnelian, who looked away to see the bier being presented like a table to a ferryman standing in one of the boats. The creature did not look like a man at all as he inclined his bone-crowned head, arms extending to lift the dead Master's huge and pallid hand. He removed a ring from a finger, returned the hand to the bier, then stepped aside. The Sapients and their homunculi were already standing on the deck. Under their instruction, the bier was loaded onto the boat.
First Jaspar and then his brother gave rings to the ferryman and stepped aboard. Carnelian pulled a jade
