“I am sorry for you. I am sorry that you were once innocent and young, and that the Caliph used you for his ends. I am sorry that you have had to come such a long way, through such suffering and foul magic. I wish that you had been allowed to stay a tender of wiry goats in the sweet-breathed mountains. I wish that we had not heard your story. But you do not know Al-a-Nur simply because you once died at its hand. That you cannot comprehend the selflessness of Cveti-who-became-Ghyfran, or the pity, the love, she must have felt for you, to administer the last sacrament of her faith to a nonbeliever, tells me no more than that you are not fit to be the lowliest novice, let alone the Papess of our spiritual menagerie. You could never understand what we suffer for the sake of that beautiful garden of gods, or why we would incur this stain on our souls so that others may live free of sin. I am sorry, terribly sorry, that you have wagered so much for vengeance when all who harmed you are dead, and that you must fail now, before you could see the spires of the Twelve Towers catching the dawn light and spinning it into a fall of crystal. Before you could even begin what you must have planned all those years in your little vial. But we have sworn, and we are, if nothing else, obedient dogs.”
All this while, I and Balthazar had inched towards her, and when our brother stepped back, with tears in my eyes, I leapt and closed my teeth over her throat, but my jaws snapped on empty air. Ragnhild stood suddenly behind Balthazar, and she smiled sweetly, like a little child with a caramel.
It seemed to each of us that her face floated before ours in all its frigid beauty. It seemed to us that she bent her lips to our panting muzzles, and her breath smelled of bundles of violets clutched to the breasts of dead maidens, of gauze stretched over noble profiles and coins pressed into eye sockets. It seemed to us that she kissed our mouths, and our eyes clouded over with red and black, our bellies trembled and boiled in our skin. We were maddened, frenzy licked at our brains, we could not breathe for the blood screaming like blades sharpening inside us.
Ragnhild stood utterly still, a pale column against the wall as we spat and snarled, squaring off against each other. She inclined her head, ever so gently, towards Barnabas.
How can I tell you, little sister? How can I give words to what we did? We, who would not eat the slowest fox or hare! We, who loved each other as limbs of one body! How can I confess? How can I speak of it as though it were no more or less than any other act I have committed, as though it were not the greatest sin of my heart, of my tongue, of my teeth!
At the nod of her head we threw ourselves onto the smallest of us, onto Barnabas, our sweet brother, and devoured him leg by arm by torso, blood swirling rich and smoky in our mouths. We howled up from the ruin of his belly, not in mourning, but in hunger and delight. We snapped at each other, quarreling over the choicest bits. We were no more than dogs, though the hands that held him and the fists that punished his spine were those of men. Our minds fled from us, we exulted in his death.
And Ragnhild swept from the slaughter room without a sound, as though her feet did not touch the crystal floor.
BAGS SHOOK HIS HEAD MISERABLY.
“I can still taste him,” he whispered, barely giving breath to his words. “Taste his flesh, like ash and lye. We will never be clean of this. She let us leave the city unmolested—what else could she do to us? She had already ensorcelled us into betraying our faith and our brother, she had already made all our vows, our holy will, useless with a kiss. We are lost, and we cannot even say it was for the greater good—she lives, and danger still stalks the City like a cat in the grass.”
He held his hands out to me helplessly.
“She is coming, she is coming and she will madden us all. Poor Barnabas—he sits heavy in my belly and I will never hear him extol the sweetness of blueberries again.”
“She is coming, yes. And she does not want to destroy Al-a-Nur, she wants to best it. She wants to prove to the world that we are all liars and heretics and faithless grotesques. That she is holy and we are demons. That is why she let us go. We are her first victory,” Balthazar snapped, his voice bursting from behind me and startling both Bags and me.
Bartholomew sidled up to his brother and added in a thick voice: “However wretched her origins, she chose freely to continue her crimes against us from the moment she woke to this life. It is easy to forgive beautiful women, especially when they lay a sorrowful tale before you like a sugar-dusted meal. It does not mean they deserve forgiveness. We must tell Yashna that we have failed and accept punishment. And we must close the gates against the Apostate, for I do not doubt that she is, as you say, coming.”
Bags snuffled away his tears and turned his face from his brother. Shame radiated from his hunched body. When we broke camp in the morning, he leaned over my shoulder and whispered:
“There is a debt between us. If you have a grief that weighs on you, I will take it.”
I smiled as brightly as I was able and lied. “I am too young to carry suffering on my back like a pauper’s pack.”
He nodded distractedly. “Then I will repay my debt when you have grown.”
It was only two days later that we saw the gleam of Al-a-Nur flare in the distance like the birth of a dozen stars. My breath caught itself in a net of wonder, and the Salmon Gate rose up finally before me, silver and quartz, carved fish leaping with eyes of onyx, metallic waves brushing their delicate fins. I had come home, to the truest home of my deep bones.
The rings of the City were thronging with monks and priests of all kinds, each wearing costumes that clearly held some meaning for them, but that to me were simply bright splashes of color and patterns wriggling like merry snakes over the fine fabrics. Many sat in small groups, bent over a circular game board and loudly cheering each player’s move.
“That is Lo Shen, little love,” Bartholomew said, “our sacred Game. It is prayer as well as a Game—the object is to defeat the opposite player’s God, surrounding that chief piece with involved patterns of the lesser pieces. The entire City plays at one level or another. It is very complex, but you will learn.”
The brothers, though their errand was urgent, seemed to drag themselves through the sparkling city, reluctant to reach its center. Instead, they guided me through its streets, inching closer to the innermost Tower with each step. As ever, they buried their sorrow in the cairns of their wolf hearts, and behaved as happily as the rest of the Anointed City.
The markets were manned by men and women dressed in vivid yellow garments, clasped at the shoulders with a fabulous crest: a golden rooster wrestling a peacock encrusted with bright blue stones. With each sale, which only occurred after extensive and enthusiastic haggling, they bowed deeply and anointed the head of the buyer with water—they were, I learned, the merchant-monks of the Coral Tower. Balthazar explained that the exchange of goods was for them a ritual honoring their chief goddess, Ge-Sai, Star-of-Gold, who in the first days gave birth to all the precious things of the world. Each coin they earn brings the children of Ge-Sai together under the eyes of their mother. The rooster and peacock represent finery for its own sake struggling with finery for the sake of the world—for the peacock’s pride is its functionless beauty, while the rooster crows up the sun each day, and his feathers echo the colors of hi
s charge.
Through the streets, whose smells and raucous sounds seemed like an endless carnival, strode the Draghi Celesti, masked in ivory serpent-faces, priests and priestesses of the Tower of Ice and Iron, guardians of the city. Their uniforms were silver and blue, over-tunics emblazoned with a curling winged snake which extended from shoulder to ankle. They were not belligerent, but seemed as merry as any of the Lo Shen players, joking and sparring in the streets. They consulted with the rather plump women of the Tower of the Nine Yarrow Stalks, who were every one of them Oracles of great skill. Bags snickered that they were so fat because they were expert extispicers, readers of entrails—a great deal of meat was left over after each ritual, and as they believed waste to be a sin, the women were forced to have a great many feasts.
As we ventured into the interior of the city, I saw the home of my companions, the Chrysanthemum Tower, thrusting up through the earth like a living thing. Indeed, it was entirely hidden in a vast cloak of chrysanthemums, yellow and red and orange, all crowding together like flames licking at a new branch. But at the door, guarded by two impeccably groomed Cynocephaloi brandishing garden shears—for it was necessary to prune the flowers from the door each hour, so eager were the blossoms to engulf the stone—Bartholomew, Bags, and Balthazar stopped and turned solemnly to me. Bags knelt and smiled his toothy smile.
“It is unlawful for those who have not committed their lives to the Tower to enter. If you wish to live in Al-a-Nur, you must choose a Tower—naturally, we hope you will choose ours, but we cannot guide your decision.”
“On the bright side,” Bartholomew added cheerfully, “you are somewhat limited. You have not the training to be an Oracle, nor a Draghi. They require entrance in early childhood—you would not pass the first of their tests. You cannot join the Tower of Patricides—”
“Why not?” I protested.
“You are not male. The Patricides are separated into father and son dyads. The father raises his son in the traditions of the Tower, and when the son arrives at the age of Enlightenment, he kills his father—who is normally quite elderly by the time his son is ready to perform the rites. The son then grows to have his own children by women from outside the order, and the cycle continues.”
“That’s barbaric!” I cried, disgusted. My own father had died when I was an infant, and my fury leapt up as quickly as a pheasant bursting from the grass.