The Last Mortal Bond

23

When Adare had asked Kegellen to acquire a thief, she’d had a few vague ideas in mind. A good thief, she’d always believed, would be inconspicuous, forgettable, bland as a stone wall, a creature of quick fingers and old clothes. Not a tiny, naked bald man with a hand-wide tattoo of the moon inked across his smooth brown face.

Adare glanced at Kegellen, then over the woman’s shoulder, half waiting for some other, more suitable figure to slip in through the door. Over Nira’s strenuous objections, she had agreed to meet in a modest mansion up on Graves, one of the dozens of properties belonging to the Queen of the Streets; if the whole plan went straight to ’Shael, after all, Adare didn’t want anyone in the Dawn Palace remembering a parade of unsavory characters visiting her own chambers.

Kegellen’s house, like the woman herself, was all elegance: quiet courtyards ringed with marble colonnades, delicate fountains, fine rugs from Sia and Mo’ir, tropical flowers that must have required an army of gardeners to maintain. The woman’s taste in art leaned toward the erotic-sculptures of lithe young men twisting around their own muscled forms, Liran tapestries woven into scenes of pleasure and delight-but even the boldest pieces managed to be tasteful, restrained. It hardly looked like a den of thieves, but then, the naked man before her didn’t look like a thief.

Adare raised a brow. “This is him?”

“Indeed, Your Radiance! Indeed.” Kegellen made an elegant little flourish with her outstretched hand. “May I present to you Vasta Dhati, First Priest of the Sea of Knives.”

The man didn’t smile. He seemed to be looking at Adare and not looking at her, as though he were studying a portion of her forehead without realizing it was attached to a face.

“I wasn’t aware,” Adare said carefully, “that there was a priesthood associated with the Sea of Knives. Last I heard, the whole place was just a haven for pirates.”

Dhati didn’t blink, didn’t shift his gaze, but he made a quick hiss, so loud and unexpected Adare took half a step back.

Kegellen spread her hands apologetically. “Pirates. It is a regrettable word that our landbound world uses to describe his congregation.”

Adare blinked. “I asked for a thief who was good with climbing and ropes and you brought me a pirate priest of the Manjari?”

At the word pirate, Dhati hissed again. Then, without preamble, leapt into the air, folded his skinny legs beneath him mid-flight, and landed atop the table, ankles crossed onto the inside of his thighs in a way that made them look exceedingly likely to break. Adare stared.

“I think you will find Vasta Dhati’s skills quite satisfactory,” Kegellen said. “He has collaborated with me for quite some time.”

“How long?”

Kegellen turned to Dhati, who, after his brief display of acrobatics, seemed content to sit atop the table, eyes fixed before him.

“Seven years, I think it is now.”

“What about his flock?” Adare asked. “Back in the Sea of Knives?”

Kegellen spread her hands. “Regrettably, he is in exile.”

“Exile? Exiled by whom?”

The small priest seemed disinclined to do any talking on his own behalf, and so Adare had addressed the question to Kegellen. Before the woman could respond, however, Dhati raised a single finger, pointed it straight at the ceiling, and began speaking in a rapid patter so heavily accented Adare could barely understand.

“Apostates and blasphemers. Those of unsteady breath. A plague of the unsanctified. Clutchers of anchors and coastlines, traitors to the swell of the holy wave. They”-Dhati’s finger trembled here, and his eyes rose to the ceiling as though seeking confirmation from the huge chandelier-“will pay the full account on the day when I return.”

He made some complicated sign in the air with that single finger, as though to seal the words, then fell so silent he might never have spoken. He wasn’t even breathing hard. Adare stared. Despite his naked chest, it was hard to tell if the priest was breathing at all.

All right, she thought bleakly. So he’s insane.

“Can you climb?” Adare asked hesitantly. “Climb ropes?”

Dhati hissed again. It seemed to be his preferred mode of expression.

“He is the finest climber in Eridroa,” Kegellen replied for him. “Before he came to me, he lived an entire life in the rigging of his ship.”

“Great,” Adare replied. “But there’s no rigging inside Intarra’s Spear.”

“Dhati believes a man should be his own rope.”

Adare blinked, looked from Kegellen to the self-proclaimed priest, then back again.

“I have no idea what that means.”

As if in answer, Dhati tipped his head abruptly back, his spine hinging perfectly at the neck until he was staring straight up at the ceiling. As Adare stared, he extended both hands before him, interlaced his fingers into a double fist, paused with his arms at their rigid full extent, and then, with a sound like a strangled, phlegmy roar, slammed the heels of his hands into his gut. The blow doubled him over. He remained in that position, motionless save for a wavelike rippling of his ribs.

“Is this…,” Adare began, looking over at Kegellen.

The woman smiled and raised a hand, pointing back at the priest with a brightly painted fingernail.

The small man bared his teeth as he straightened. They were crooked and yellow-brown, but there between them, caught between his right incisors, was a flash of bright red. Adare took it for blood at first, the product of that violent blow to the stomach, but after a moment Dhati reached between his teeth and took between his thumb and forefinger what turned out to be the end of a silken band. Adare watched, fascinated and repulsed, as the priest drew the silk out, hand over hand, length after length. It piled on the table before him, sodden and limp, coil after coil, until he finally pulled the last length free. When it was all out, he drew in a noisy breath, shuddered once, then shut his jaw.

“How long is that?” Adare asked.

“Ten times his height,” Kegellen replied, beaming. “Not a trick to enjoy over the dinner table, I’m afraid, but from time to time it has come in terribly useful.”

Adare looked from the red silk to the man, struggling to weigh the possibilities and the risks. Finally, she took a step to stand directly in his line of vision. He didn’t twitch, didn’t look at her, but she went ahead anyway.

“Did Kegellen explain what we need you to do? Did she explain the risks involved?”

Finally, the priest turned a dark, pitying eye on her. “The risk is what it is. I have been in prisons before, yes. And I have left them.”

“This isn’t just a prison,” Adare said. “It is the imperial dungeon inside Intarra’s Spear. To get you inside, you will be taken by the guards, accused of treason.”

He smiled. “Treason? I am the First Priest of the Sea of Knives. It is a post far above any petty emperor.”

“Right,” Adare said, unsure if this was part of the coming show, or the man’s actual belief. She suspected it was the latter. “So they’ll have no trouble believing the treason part. You will be hung inside a cell.”

“All the world beyond the Sea of Knives is a cell.”

“Yes. Well. This one will be smaller. And steel.”

“Steel is as smoke to me.”

“Still…”

“The only question,” Dhati went on, cutting straight through her words, “is one of price. Did the Priestess of the Streets explain to you my price?”

Adare cocked an eyebrow at the other woman. “The Priestess of the Streets?”

Kegellen spread her hands. “An honorific of his own invention. I make no claim to the divine, Your Radiance, I can assure you.”

“Did she explain the price?” Dhati asked once more.

“No,” Adare replied, shaking her head. “As a matter of fact, she didn’t.”

“When it is done,” the priest proclaimed, “I will require a fleet.”

Kegellen made a face, a sort of stretching of the lips that seemed to say, Sorry! You know how priests can be.

“A fleet,” Adare said, wondering if the man was joking. “A fleet of ships?”

No, she thought, studying his face. Not joking.

“A dozen should suffice.”

Adare shook her head. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking?”

“The First Priest of the Sea of Knives understands the value of a vessel better than any grubby hugger of land.”

“The council will notice if I start handing out ships. They will object. They will ask questions. I can give you gold.”

Dhati hissed again, even more violently this time. Adare could feel the tiny drops of spittle strike her face.

She glanced over at Kegellen.

The woman shrugged. “He doesn’t like gold. It sinks.”

“What need,” the man demanded, “does the First Priest of the Sea of Knives have for heavy metal clawed out of the earth?”

“Well,” Adare said slowly, drawing out the syllable as she made an effort to keep her temper in check, “you can use gold to buy ships.”

“I require ships.”

“Yes, but with the gold you can-” She stopped herself. Dhati was staring at her forehead again. Glaring at it, really. “One,” she said instead. “You can have one ship.”

Dhati made a face, as though he had suddenly smelled something foul. “One is not a dozen.”

“And you are not the only thief in Annur,” Adare replied smoothly.

“There is only one First Priest of the Sea of Knives.”

“While I’m certain that’s true, I’m willing to make do.”

The small priest sucked in a tremendous breath. Adare stared as his chest expanded and expanded, to the point where it seemed likely to explode. He held it a moment, and then, with frightening energy, began to hyperventilate. His eyes bulged. His lips turned a strange shade of purple. Adare took a half step forward, wondering if the man were having a seizure, but Kegellen put a hand on her arm.

“He is thinking,” the woman murmured.

“He looks like he’s dying.”

“It is the way that he thinks.”

And then, as quickly as he had begun, he stopped, sat stock-still on the table.

“Three ships.”

Adare ran the numbers in her mind, considered the current deployment of the various fleets, reapportioned a few dozen vessels, then nodded slowly.

“Three ships.”

“It is a meager fleet,” Dhati said, “but am I not the First Priest of the Sea of Knives? It will suffice.”

When the small man finally left, striding through the open door without so much as a glance back or a farewell, Adare turned to Kegellen, shaking her head.

“You know some interesting people.”

The Unkillable Bitch smiled merrily. “I enjoy the company of unique souls.”

Adare nodded, then glanced toward the door where Dhati had disappeared. “And were you able to find the other one; the … woman we discussed?”

Kegellen nodded. “I suspect, regrettably, that you will find her less interesting than Dhati.”

“I certainly hope so. She’s supposed to be dead.”

“Hmm. Dead. Yes. Well, I hope that dying will be adequate. After all, we have two days to wait, and I understood you wanted the body to be fresh.”

* * *

It was obvious at a glance that the young woman wasn’t well. Though she leaned only lightly on the arm of the servant leading her into the room, her shoulders slumped, her hand trembled, and there was no missing the exhaustion in her short, uncertain stride.

So young, Adare thought, staring at the girl, and already dying.

That was the point, of course, but suddenly she felt sick, nauseated almost to the point of vomiting. She had ordered soldiers to their deaths, of course, sent them into battle dozens of times over, all along the northern front, signing their doom with a sweep of her pen. Every time, every battle, it felt awful. This was worse.

Adare had pored over reports of Triste’s atrocities in the Jasmine Court, scouring them for physical details. It would have been easier just to go see the woman in her cell, but if things went wrong-and there was a lot about the plan that could go very, very wrong-Adare didn’t want anyone remembering that she had visited the leach only days before. Which meant research in the imperial archives, a full night of reading the carefully compiled accounts from the day her brother returned to the Dawn Palace.

The most precise of them described “a young woman, staggeringly gorgeous despite her macabre appearance and the obvious perversion of her nature, a creature of the palest skin, the darkest hair, eyes of the deepest violet…”

The young woman Kegellen had found was pretty rather than beautiful, and her dark brown hair would have to be dyed. Otherwise, she seemed to fit the descriptions of Triste closely enough, although it was impossible to look at her, standing meekly just inside the door to the room, eyes downcast, hands clenched around the faded fabric of her dress, and imagine a vicious, murderous leach.

“Please sit down,” Adare said. “Is there anything that you’d like? Anything that would make you more comfortable? Water? Wine?”

A slave hovered by the door, waiting to race to Kegellen’s ample cellars, but the girl seemed not to have heard the question. She was staring at Adare in open amazement.

“You’re here,” she breathed. “Those eyes … You’re her. The Emperor. Intarra’s prophet.”

“Mailly did not believe,” Kegellen interjected, stepping forward gracefully, “that the Emperor of all Annur would have need of her.”

“Do they hurt?” the young woman asked, touching the corner of her own eye absently. Then, as though just now realizing what it meant to be confronted by those blazing irises, she let out a tiny cry, bowed her head, and dropped unsteadily to her knees. “Forgive me, Your Radiance,” she murmured to the bloodwood boards of Kegellen’s perfectly polished floor.

Feeling sickened all over again, Adare crossed to the kneeling woman. “Please,” she said, extending a hand. “Rise. We are alone here, among friends; there is no need for this formality.”

Mailly stared at the hand, but made no move to take it. After a long pause, she rose unsteadily to her feet, slowly, as though she were lifting a great weight on her shoulders, then stood swaying, pale, her breath feeble between her lips.

She’s got a case of the Weeping Sleep, poor thing, Kegellen had explained before the girl arrived. She’s fought it for more than a year, but she’s losing now. Losing fast.

“Please,” Adare said again, gesturing to the empty chair. “How can we make you more comfortable?”

Mailly stared about her as though perplexed, then crossed to the chair, half sitting, half collapsing into it. When she finally looked back at Adare, she shook her head in disbelief.

“It’s real,” she murmured. “The Emperor and everything … it’s all real.”

Adare took a seat across the table, and Kegellen, after a murmured conversation with her servant, joined them as well. She had traded her white paper fan for a vermillion one, each of the wooden ribs stitched with fine gold thread. For a while, the only sound was its soft flutter.

“So,” Adare began, choosing her words carefully. “I understand Kegellen has told you what … we need. And what I can offer in return.”

The girl kept staring at her, her blue eyes wide as moons. The wrong color, Adare thought. Though it shouldn’t matter when this is done.

“Mailly?” Adare asked.

Mailly took a shuddering breath, as though she’d been jolted from some waking dream. “Will it hurt?”

The simplicity of the question hit Adare like a slap. She had lived so long with misinformation, double meanings, and outright lies-her own and those of everyone around her-that it was easy to forget that some people just asked their questions, then believed the answers they were given. She felt a sudden knife-sharp desire to live in such a world, to cut away all the dizzying layers of her own schemes, to spend even a few days telling the naked truth, hearing it told.

She started to say yes, half opened her mouth, then shut it again slowly.

Do you love the truth enough, she wondered bleakly, to let it kill Sanlitun?

If Adare was going to free Triste, she needed this girl. Mailly had agreed to the meeting, but if she knew what was coming, if she understood the full truth of it, she could still walk away. She would, probably.

The sages and philosophers had a hundred metaphors for life: it was a path or a mountain, a voyage or a blooming flower, a harvest or a year with all the changing seasons. To Adare, however, life had always seemed like a simple series of trades. One woman could not have everything. She could sleep late only if she traded away the morning hours. Could trade an alliance with the Manjari for the goodwill of the Federated Cities. Trade a daughter’s vengeance for a unified empire. Some trades were trivial, some so vast it was impossible to truly grasp the stakes, but there was always a trade. Pretending otherwise was folly.

When Adare didn’t speak, Mailly turned to Kegellen. “Will it hurt?” she asked again.

The larger woman waved away the notion with her fan. “No. Of course not. A little sleepiness, a little trouble-”

“Yes,” Adare said, cutting her off. “It will hurt horribly.”

She prayed silently even as she spoke: Please, please, Lady of Light, please let her still agree. Please say I have not traded away a chance to save my son.

Slowly, Mailly turned back to her, lip quivering. She tried to take a half sip of her water, but was trembling too badly to hold the glass.

Kegellen pursed her lips. “Well. I suppose there may be some pain.”

“First you will blister,” Adare said, forcing out the awful truth. “On your palms and all over your face. They will form quickly and painfully. Then they will burn until they break. Then they will bleed. So will your eyes and throat.”

Mailly was openly shaking now. “Is there no other way?” she asked. “No easier way.”

There were, of course. Of the dozens of poisons couched inside il Tornja’s lacquered box, ayamaya-the poison was named after the small Manjari spider from which it was extracted-was the worst. It was also the only one that would ravage the girl’s face badly enough to obscure the truth, to hide who she really was. There was no point in leaving a body in Triste’s cage if the guards could tell at a glance it wasn’t Triste.

“No way that will work,” Adare replied.

“It’s possible,” Kegellen suggested smoothly, “that your experience may be … more moderate than the Emperor suggests.”

Adare shook her head again. She tried to imagine Mailly as an infant, but could see only Sanlitun’s tiny features, his wide burning eyes. “It will not be moderate, but it will be short.”

“How long,” the girl asked, “from when I drink it until … until I die?”

“Half a day. Maybe a little more or less.”

“And my little brother?” Mailly asked. “My mother? You’ll take care of them? You’ll give them the money you promised?”

Adare nodded. “I will.”

“Because I won’t be there,” the girl said, shaking her head, scrubbing the tears from her cheeks. “To take care of them.”

Kegellen stepped forward, placed a wide hand delicately on the girl’s shoulder. “Death is never easy, child, but you are already dying. We are offering you a way to provide for the people you love, even after Ananshael has taken you.”

“But fifty golden suns?” Mailly said, hope and disbelief warring in her eyes. “Fifty whole suns?”

The figure made Adare want to cry. Until that moment, she hadn’t known the details of the offer Kegellen had made to the girl. She had just assumed she would have the coin-even in wartime, even with Annur falling to pieces all around her-to meet the girl’s demands. A thousand suns, maybe? Five thousand? Vasta Dhati had required three fucking ships, after all. That the girl would sell herself for so little, that she should prize so highly fifty miserable suns-it seemed like a crime, somehow.

“We can afford more,” Adare said.

“Mailly and I have spoken already,” Kegellen interjected, “and agreed-”

“Five thousand suns.”

Mailly stared, her skepticism carved across her face.

“Five thousand … For what? What do I have to do … for that?”

She was shaking again, caught in the grip of some imagined horror too vast to comprehend.

“Nothing more,” Adare replied. “Just this.”

Kegellen looked over at Adare, raised her brows, opened her mouth as though to object, then thought better of it and shaped her lips into a smile.

“Imagine your mother’s delight,” she purred. “Just think what this can do for your brother.”

The woman sounded so sincere that Adare was genuinely surprised later, after Mailly had left, to find her shaking her head.

“Five thousand suns,” Kegellen mused. She raised a beaded glass of Si’ite white to her lips, savored a sip, then set it down. “It strikes me as … excessive.”

Adare stiffened. “It’s not your coin.”

“No!” Kegellen said, laughing. “It’s most certainly not! Were it my coin, I would have bargained her down from fifty to twenty-five.”

“You say that like you’re proud of it.”

“Pride,” the woman replied, running her tongue over her lips. “It is a thing for women who have fought less hard than I have to survive.”

Adare stared. “You’re just as rich as I am. Maybe more, for all I know.”

“And not, I assure you, Your Radiance, as a result of giving away whole piles of gold to dying girls for … continuing to die.”

“It’s for her family.”

“I understand,” Kegellen said, nodding.

“You told me yourself they’re desperately poor. That you pulled Mailly straight out of some tavern in the Perfumed Quarter.”

“They are,” Kegellen said. “I did.”

“Well, they can buy a mansion with five thousand suns. A small mansion with the slaves to take care of it.”

“Another family in a mansion.” Kegellen raised her brows sardonically. “How wonderful. And, oh yes, more slaves. I’m sure that they will be delighted with the gift, Your Radiance. As will the slaves.”

Adare felt raked over by her own amazement.

“This is a mansion,” she said, stabbing a finger straight up at the chandelier. “It must be worth at least five thousand suns. And I’ve stumbled over a dozen slaves since the moment I came in.”

Kegellen nodded. “It is a comfortable life I have carved out for myself.”

“And you don’t think Mailly’s family deserves the same?”

“I’ve found deserve to be an especially slippery word.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe it’s just that my old brain is too slow.”

“Do you think you deserve all this?”

Kegellen held her belly as she laughed, a long, rich sound. “Of course not. Everything I have, I stole!”

“Well, Mailly’s family isn’t stealing anything. I’m giving it to them.”

“Such largesse,” Kegellen murmured. “A truly imperial gesture.”

Adare narrowed her eyes. “If you want to say something, say it.”

“Forgive me, Your Radiance,” the woman said, spreading her hands in supplication, “I meant no offense.”

“Oh, fuck the offense, Kegellen.”

The Unkillable Bitch watched her over the rim of her wine flute, then nodded. “It is only this: you can pull Mailly’s mother out of the quarter, you can set her up as a merchant, a lady, a queen, but don’t delude yourself. All gold comes from somewhere.”

“Meaning what?”

“The coin you’re so eager to give away was held by other hands before yours. For you to give it so freely, you had to seize it first.”