Farlander

CHAPTER THIRTY

Rites of Passage His snoring woke her early that morning. The light was still grey in the crack between the curtains hanging over the one small window of the bedroom. The air of the room was still, and stank of sex. Reese lay there in the dimness, watching Los sleep: the thin creases on his cheek against the feather pillow, his boyish open pout as he breathed, his blond lashes. She considered waking him with a probing hand in his lap. Some love play to ease the tightness in her chest, the anxiety coursing in her blood. But she made no move.

Instead, Reese studied the beams of the ceiling, and tried to make sense of her dreams of her son until the room became infiltrated by the first warming tones of the sun. Then she rose in silence.

She opened the back door and let the cats into the kitchen, simply to fill the cottage with some life, and pretended annoyance as they curled around her bare ankles as she washed and prepared herself for the day ahead. Los had stopped snoring now that she was up and about. She picked up his discarded clothes, reeking of wine and fragrances and smoke, and went out to the yard and threw them in a wooden tub next to the big stone trough full of rainwater which she would use to wash them later.

Birds sang out their rich melodies above the dumb clucking of the chickens. From out of the east, the fan of daylight was spreading into the sky above the trees and the swathes of canegrass standing still in the breathless morning. Reese stood with one arm cocked and a fist on her hip, looking out over it all. She tried to think of nothing. She wished only to breathe in the soft clarity of the world as it rose from the memory of night, and with that clarity dispel the nameless sorrows that had come to her in the form of her dreaming. She felt tense, as though she would cry if only she would allow herself to.

Inside again, Reese busied herself with chores until she came to Nico's room. She opened the rickety door with its pale scratches at waist height, and glanced about her on the floor of the empty room for something to pick up or straighten out or put away, until she stopped, and put a fist to her hip again, and wondered what she was doing.

I have become like Cole's mother, she thought in annoyance. Banging my stick at the silent walls all night long, to scare away mice that no one else can hear or see any sign of.

Reese could not recall when she had last entered this room. She hadn't felt sure what to do with it since Nico had run off to live in the city, whether to leave it be and allow herself the hope that he might some day return to her, if only for a short visit, or whether to face a harsher reality, one that Los had been keen to impose on her since Nico had departed with the farlander – and now her own dreams too, it seemed – that her only son was gone, and gone for good.

The room was bare beyond the mere absence of Nico's belongings. It had never remained this clean and tidy when he had lived here, though he had, to his credit, been tidy enough. A few things of his still remained: his tin bird whistle on top of the windowsill, which he had lost long ago and she had found again after he had left; next to it some smooth, mottled pebbles from a streambed; his fishing rod and tackle propped in the corner, in their canvas wrapping. The bed was made as Nico himself had left it so long ago; the edges of the sheets tucked into the straw mattress, folded over the pillow.

Dust everywhere, though, she saw now as she looked long and proper.

Reese hurried out and filled a pail with water and vinegar and returned to her son's room and began to wipe everything clean. She worked until her forehead was greasy with sweat and the sun had risen above the line of trees visible through the watery window glass. Occasionally the urge to cry welled up in her again, and she would work all the harder until it had passed, her knees aching as she washed the creaking boards of the floor, her back complaining as she stretched to reach the beams of the low ceiling. She left the sweeping until last; on lifting Nico's few belongings to brush beneath them, she was sure to place them back precisely as they had been before.

At last Reese straightened up, wiping the damp curls away from her face with the back of her hand. She stood and scrutinized the polished surfaces until she was satisfied the room was properly clean.

The window faced her, now bright with sunlight.

Reese unlatched it and pushed open the frame, and stood back with her hands clasped together as though she was waiting for something to enter. A moment passed, and then a sudden breeze blew into the room, and Reese inhaled deep and long as the morning air caressed her face and filled her lungs from the bright world beyond.

'My son,' she whispered, as tears ran inexplicably down her face.

*

A body lay naked on the marble altar, its arms folded neatly on its chest. Its eyes were closed.

The corpse had been ritually cleansed by the grim, silent priests of the Mortarus, the secretive death cult of the Mannian order. For an hour they had carefully sponged the body with cloths bleached white by the bile of living sand eels – the same bile that had whitened their priestly robes, their stiff masks, the banners of Mann that hung on the high walls around them. In the silence of the Temple the bright cloths had been dipped into a bowl of blood-warm water, the ripples disturbing the fresh petals drifting around the brim, the cloths raised dripping into the air and throttled almost dry in fists. With a hiss of ritual words the priests had then drawn the cloths across the lifeless skin.

When this work was complete, and the priests of the Mortarus departed in a shuffling procession of chants and rustling robes, a scent of wild lotus lingered about the corpse, and the wound across its neck had been stitched, a black line barely noticeable beneath their skilful applications of paste and powder. They had been unable to do anything about the expression fixed to the corpse's face though.

It was this that Sasheen was finding most difficult to bear.

'What are your commands, Matriarch?' came a soft voice from behind her.

The priest Heelas, Sasheen's personal caretaker, stood a dozen feet from the altar with his head bowed. He kept his eyes fixed on the marble floor, as though unwilling to look at the kneeling form of his Matriarch, or at her mother perched on a wooden stool by her side.

Sasheen did not hear him, though the echoes of his voice lingered, finally whispering their way through her grief.

'What?' she said, in a distant voice.

'You called for me, Matriarch.'

Sasheen wiped a hand across her eyes and, for a moment, her vision cleared. She took in the still form of her son as though for the first time, a mere husk now, empty and bereft of meaning. Only for a moment could she look into his face fixed in a strangled contortion of horror.

Something stirred within her. Her back could be seen to stiffen.

'Stop everything,' she said in a cold whisper.

'Everything, Matriarch?'

'Everything,' she repeated, and there was a rising force to her words, a hard strength that contradicted the weakness of her tears. 'The ports and bridges. All transportation. Fountains. Temples. Entertainments. Business… If a mere beggar reaches out for money, have his hands removed. I want it all to stop, do you hear me?'

Sasheen inhaled a shuddering breath, scenting the lotus in the air. 'My son is dead,' she said, 'and they shall show their respect.'

Caretaker Heelas clenched his hands together, and allowed a few heartbeats to pass before speaking. 'What of the Augere, Matriarch?' he asked carefully.

She had forgotten about the forthcoming week of celebrations.

'Yes,' Sasheen said darkly. 'That, too, all of it. We shall commemorate the Augere at a more fitting time.'

The caretaker's silence was one of stunned astonishment. He remained composed, however, and bowed his flushed head low.

'Is that… all?'

'All? No, it is not all, Heelas. I want this city torn apart. I want these people found and brought to me alive. Explain to Bushrali that if his Regulators do not accomplish what I ask of them, he will find himself beginning a new career – as a eunuch in one of our Sentiate harems. Is that clear?'

'Perfectly, Matriarch.'

'Then go.'

The man left with uncharacteristic haste.

Sasheen's fists were shaking, she discovered. She clenched them tight.

'Calm yourself, child. Calm yourself.'

Matriarch Sasheen turned on her mother. 'Calm myself? My son lies dead and you tell me to calm myself? I should have you dragged from here and burned alive for those words.'

The old crone sat on a simple wooden seat, her translucent hands folded together. 'If it would make you feel any better, my dearest, then order it so.'

For the space of a heartbeat Sasheen truly considered it.

Her hand dropped limply to her side. She turned back to her son, lying on the altar within an arm's reach before her, his final resting place before he was interred in the dry vaults of the Hypermorum.

Sasheen spotted something lying on his chest. She reached for it, her long nails hovering for a moment. Delicately, she plucked something from the bare skin, catching one of the wispy hairs on his chest as she did so. She inspected her fingertip. An eyelash.

It trembled against her breath, fluttered free, falling from sight.

My son is dead, she thought.

Sasheen had never known pain like this before. It was a kind of madness, like that lurching of the stomach when you realized you had forgotten something vital, but it was much too late to correct it – except that sensation was now prolonged and constant, so that it consumed her every waking moment, and every sleeping one too; a screeching, tearing, animal terror that threatened to choke her if she did not release it in some way.

A wetness tickled her palms: her nails digging hard enough into her flesh to draw blood.

'Soothe yourself, child,' came the old crone's voice once more from her side. 'You are the Matriarch. You are the highest example of Mann. You cannot afford to be seen this way.'

Sasheen shrugged off the withered hand that settled on her shoulder.

'He was my son. My only child.'

'He was weak.'

The words hit her like a slap.

'Daughter,' soothed the old woman. Her tone might have been mistaken for an apology though it was not. 'Come, sit with me a moment.'

Sasheen glanced about the chamber. No one was in sight, save for the Acolyte guards posted at the distant entrance. All of them had their backs turned to her.

Sasheen shuffled across to sit before her mother.

'I cherished him too,' said the old woman. 'He was my grandson, my own blood. But it isn't Kirkus you grieve for, Sasheen. He died swiftly, and no longer does he suffer. You grieve only for yourself.'

Sasheen looked down at her clenched hands. She could not pry apart her fingers.

The old woman scowled. 'You must adapt to this loss, my child. Even a wild animal grieves for the death of its young. But like any animal, you must adapt and move on. You can bear another child, still. Rest assured, this grief is a passing weakness. You must hold fast to who you are.

'My son was not weak.'

'But he was, Sasheen, he was. How else could he have fallen without even a struggle? We pampered him, you and I. All these years we thought we were teaching him strength, when in truth he was merely learning how to hide from us his own deficiencies. If we had not been so blinded by our affection for him, we would have seen that – perhaps corrected it.' She held up a palm before Sasheen could protest. 'We must take from this lesson what we can. We have each become pampered in our own ways, daughter. We are rulers of the world, after all. But for our own sakes we must consider this as a warning. We are surrounded by enemies every moment that we breathe, and we will fall to them in the same way, to the knife, to the poison, if we fail to show them our fortitude. You wish to fall like your son, hmn?'

A silence, Sasheen's eyes staring at the floor.

'No, I thought not. So I will make a suggestion. We shall inform Cinimon of a new purging – for ourselves, for the order at large. We will cleanse the flaws from ourselves, and at the same time rid the order of those who do not deserve to follow the calling of Mann. Perhaps, in its own way, it will help you through this loss.'

Sasheen blinked, barely seeing at all. 'Perhaps,' she answered in a small voice, and it was a release, in a small way, to relinquish her will to that of her mother, even if it was only for the moment. 'Perhaps,' she breathed again, as she folded herself on to the cool floor of stone, and wept.

The old woman rose. She wore a heavy cloak over her robes, and paused for a moment as she removed it. With stiff limbs she knelt next to her daughter, as though intending to offer comfort. Instead, she lay the cloak across her daughter's head and body, so that she resembled nothing more than a shuddering mound on the floor.

The old woman frowned.

*

It was four in the morning, according to the bell that chimed from the Mannian temple at the southern end of the great square. On cue, a patrol of city guards marched into the plaza, wielding shuttered lanterns and long, studded clubs. Their captain scanned the area for signs of disturbance, but no one was in sight in Punishment Square at this hour of curfew. All was quiet save for the distant barking of a dog.

A shadow drew further back into an alley. It waited until the patrol had passed. A movement followed: a hand motioning for someone to come forward. Together, two forms loosed themselves from the murk and padded silently into the square.

They rushed across the marble flagstones in bare feet, barely making a sound. At the very centre they paused, looked up to take in the horror that hung there – the burnt corpse of a young man nailed to a scaffold. A wooden board hung about his neck. It was branded with a single word, though it was too dark to make out now. They already knew what it said.

Rshun.

Quickly, one of the figures hoisted the other on to the scaffold. The climber set to work with a knife. The body dropped an inch. With a moment's more work it fell free and crashed roughly to the ground.

'Damn it!' hissed Aleas, still balancing on the scaffolding. 'Could you not have caught him?'

Serese looked up from the corpse, her face twisted in a grimace. In a whisper she said, 'This is a little difficult for me, all right?'

'Fine,' replied Aleas, swinging back to the ground. 'And it's the easiest thing for me.' He stooped and pulled free the board from about its neck, then wrapped the body in thick sacking. With a grunt, he hoisted it on to his shoulder.

Quickly, they hurried from the square.

*

Patrols were everywhere. A curfew had been declared, no one to be allowed on the streets after midnight. Earlier, they had heard talk of the ports being sealed. No one was being allowed to leave the city.

It took over an hour to track their way across Q'os to the industrial areas on its south-eastern coastline, where they were to meet with Master Ash and Baracha. It was mostly wasteland here. Vast warehouses lay slumped beneath the faint light of the stars, sinister in a way that reminded them of the dark entrances to caves. Aleas and Serese avoided these structures by crossing a strip of marshland, at times wading up to their knees through cold, sucking water. Beyond, they struggled up the face of a dune stained with soot.

The night sea shone before them with scuffs of luminescence. A breeze blew against their faces, salted and fresh. Aleas panted for breath, the weight of Nico's body now a burden he could barely continue with. Serese did not offer to help him.

Together they descended the other side of the dune, and made their way down into a secluded cove that was all but hidden from sight. Baracha sat there by a small fire, chewing tarweed and nursing the bandaged stump of his left arm. He lifted his blade with the other as they approached.

'It's only us,' said Aleas, and his master relaxed and returned the blade to his lap.

A dark recumbent form shifted to acknowledge them: Ash, lying on the sand on the other side of the fire, head resting on his pack. He grunted, forcing himself to sit up.

They had spent the day gathering driftwood into a pile on the sand of the little cove – or at least Aleas and Serese had, for the two Rshun were barely fit to stand. With care, Aleas now lay Nico's body on top of the pile, a few sea-smoothed logs tumbling loose. Ash limped over as he did so. Clumsily, the old farlander began to yank off the sacking.

'I think perhaps it's better left alone,' suggested Aleas, placing a hand on Ash's shoulder. Ash shrugged free of his grasp. He only stopped when the body was uncovered and he could gaze down on it by the light of the fire.

The old man drew in a sharp breath. He swayed for a moment, enough for Aleas to steady him.

Gently, Ash's fingers dabbed at the blackened flesh. They brushed against the end of the crossbow bolt buried in the boy's chest. Ash did not move for many minutes.

Baracha stumbled over with a burning length of wood. Without ceremony he stuffed it into the inner depths of the pile, twisted it as though stoking an already lit fire. The pyre began to smoke. They stepped back from it and after a time caught sight of the first sparkle of flame.

Baracha picked up a handful of sand. He cast it on to the newborn flames, reciting words beneath his breath. Aleas comforted Serese; both cried freely now, for the first time that day. The flames crackled higher, twisting through the crisscrossing of logs to take hold of the body on top. Colours danced amongst them: vivid blues and yellows and greens from the sea minerals that caked the wood. Fat spat from the pyre. A smell of burning meat came with a shift of the breeze.

After a while the pyre collapsed into itself, consuming Nico.

In the distance, far out to sea, the sun's first light leaked into the predawn sky. Shadows shafted across the horizon as the castings of unseen clouds.

Ash recited something in the farlander tongue. He repeated it in Trade, perhaps for the benefit of his young apprentice.

His eyes, though in shadow, were alive with two pinpricks of flame. He declaimed: 'Even though this world is but a dewdrop… even so… even so.'

*

Ash had instructed them to obtain a clay jar wrapped in leather to hold the ashes. Wearily, but with much presence, he raked the grey dust until it lay in a flat bed across the scorched sand. He paused. For a moment, he watched particles of dust playing in the remnants of heat.

For his mother, he thought, as he scooped ashes into the jar with the aid of the stick. Portions of bone lay scattered amongst it, and he scooped the smallest pieces up too. Once it was full, he stoppered it, and lay it carefully in his canvas pack.

He had a smaller jar too, a clay vial really, the length and thickness of a thumb, to which was fixed a loop of leather twine. Into this he scraped some more of the burnt remains and plugged it with its wooden stopper. He slung it around his neck, so that it hung there against his chest like a seal. It felt warm against his skin.

In standing up, a sudden pain flashed through his skull. Ash swayed. Someone was talking to him, though he could not see the owner of the voice. He teetered backwards, fell.

Sprawled on the ground, barely breathing, hands tugged at him. A voice asked if he was all right, could he hear them? The pain stabbed again, deeper than ever. Ash gritted his teeth, cried out in the harsh farlander tongue. And then unconsciousness took him.