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  It had now been over a year since Kirkus had last seen Sool in the flesh. As he faced her in the close press of the antechamber he saw her as though through the eyes of his own boyhood self, and wondered when they had lost that special connection that he had cherished secretly as a child. He assumed, perhaps, it had been since he and Lara had parted ways, but on deeper reflection he knew it to be much longer than that. Since he had grown up, he realized – when he no longer needed such people in his life as this kindly matron.

  I cast this women aside, Kirkus thought, as he gazed into her blue eyes, and she into his. And all the kindnesses she ever showed me.

  Kirkus raised his hands up to his chest and then held them outwards, in an acknowledgement of concession. The woman blinked in surprise.

  Beside him a clearing of a throat. It was Cinimon, high priest of the Monbarri sect – that cult within a cult who declared themselves inquisitors and defenders of the faith so fervently that they frightened all others. The man spoke in a voice like the shifting gravels of a flood stream, his expression all but unreadable behind the sagging burden of the many piercings that adorned his face.

  'It is true, then?' he asked of Sasheen. 'Mokabi thinks he can crack the Free Ports at last?'

  Sasheen tilted her head to consider the question. 'So he believes, though we have barely found time to look into his proposals yet.' She shot a glance at Sool. 'I meet with my generals soon to discuss the matter. You will, of course, be the first to hear of our findings.'

  'We have also the Zanzahar question to decide upon,' muttered little Bushrali from behind the rim of his goblet, High Priest of the Regulators, and clearly drunk already. 'This quibbling over grain and salt prices can lead to no advantage for us. If we do not lower our prices, and the Caliphate extends its safe waters two hundred laqs towards the Free Ports, as they threaten to do, then this war of attrition may become a war without end.'

  Cinimon shook his head, his heavy facial piercings clinking together as his black eyes shone from amongst within. The priest's arms and legs remained bare under his plain white cassock; they rippled with slivers of precious metals buried beneath the skin, slivers that ran like a host of snakes all the way down to his ankles and into his sandaled feet – as though, at any moment, they would break through the skin, and wriggle free on to the ground as living things. 'We should make our own demands of the Caliphate,' the priest grumbled. 'We should insist that they cease selling to the Free Ports the very grains we sell to them. It is altogether obscene. They no longer even try to hide the practice.'

  'Make such a demand and we risk an embargo,' whined Bushrali, pausing to place a hand over his wine-stained lips to cover a belch. 'And where would we be then, without a steady supply of black-powder?'

  'So be it, then,' interrupted Kirkus, intrigued enough at last to contribute to the discussion. 'Perhaps it is time we tested this monopoly of Zanzahar, and saw how long they survive without our grain. I have studied the figures as much as anyone has. I am not so certain they speak of only one outcome.'

  'Well spoken,' agreed Cinimon, and his mother too eyed him with interest, though said nothing.

  Bushrali showed his irritation by waving his goblet about, a slosh of red wine arcing across the marble floor like pearls of blood. 'The figures are accurate, young master. Our stockpiles of blackpowder would run dry long before Zanzahar would be forced to seek grain, salt and rice from elsewhere. You think they would allow things to be any other way? You think they ration us our supplies of black-powder simply because they do not like to trade it? They know to the nearest garan how much we have stockpiled throughout the Empire. They know how much we use each month against Bar-Khos and elsewhere. They even know when a store of our powder has become aged beyond use.

  'Who is it, do you think, my Regulators are working so hard to thwart? Rebels and heretics maybe? Aye, indeed so, for each week we pass hundreds of such traitors into the hands of Cinimon's Monbarri after we ourselves have finished with them. But I say this to you: at least half the reports I read concern the El-mud alone. The Night Wing has eyes and ears everywhere, and we have yet to find a way to neutralize them.'

  The man stopped as he noticed the glow of anger in Kirkus's eyes. He seemed at last to remember who he was addressing, for he suddenly flushed, his bald scalp deathly pale in contrast to his burning face, and glanced towards Sasheen and the two bodyguards that flanked her. The man bowed low. 'Forgive me,' he said to Kirkus. 'I seem to have drunk too much, and lecture a man as though he was still a boy.'

  Kirkus, continued to glare, enjoying watching the little man squirm. It was Cinimon who finally broke the silence amongst them.

  'I would think, Bushrali, you should be the last to admit to such a deficit in your capacities.'

  'I do not water the truth like some,' he retorted. In a more measured voice, he addressed Kirkus once more. 'These desert men of Zanzahar have been making an art out of shadow-play and intelligence for a thousand years now. You cannot hope to dupe them for long. The agents of the El-mud are the true reason for Zanzahar's monopoly. We could not even commit to an invasion of the Caliphate without their knowing it. To talk of such things, even here in this room full of only the most loyal, is to say too much.'

  'Which is why it is merely talk,' interrupted Sasheen herself, smoothly. 'We have no intentions for Zanzahar, either now or ever.' And she sounded sincere in her words, though even then Kirkus could see that his mother was not entirely telling the whole truth. His grunt of disbelief drew a flash of warning from her eyes. He quickly hid his smile by taking another bite of the parmadio.

  'Maybe you forget the history lessons I was so ardent in having schooled into you?' she reproached him. 'How Markesh fell when they brought an embargo down on their heads, for seeking out the Isles of Sky and its sources of blackpowder for themselves?'

  He knew the history well, but he would not rise to the bait. He continued chewing, and watched his mother as she watched him.

  'Without cannon, their enemies devoured them over the course of a decade. You should remember this, my son. Markesh was hardly weak. Their merchant empire was so influential that even now all of the Miders shares their common tongue of Trade. If not for them, we would all still be using iron tubs for cannon, and hollow sticks for rifles. And still, they fell. You really think we are so immune from such a fate?'

  'We are Mann. They were not.'

  'We are Mann, yes. But we are not invulnerable. Perhaps, during your recent cull, you should have remembered that also, hmm?'

  She said no more, not in front of the others, at least.

  Kirkus tossed the core of the parmadio to a passing slave, wiped his hands on his robe. He said nothing more as the conversation turned to different topics.

  His mother had been livid upon his return, angry to the point of striking him, when she had found out how he had slain the wearer of a seal during his cull.

  'You think they will not try to reach him, even here?' Sasheen had yelled at his grandmother.

  'We have contingencies against that, if they do,' he had heard his grandmother reply through the heavy door he listened at. 'Calm yourself, child. We did not rise so high by fearing the likes of the Rshun. Such worrying is a weakness. You must purge yourself of it.'

  Kirkus himself had experienced no such worries at first. The Cull had transformed him, in some way. His normal everyday arrogance had settled into something deeper instead, so that he had felt a rightness in every action he performed, whether small or consequential. He knew, with every touch of his fingers, that he had taken life with these same hands. He had bent his will to the task, and it had not been so difficult after all. At long last, Kirkus had experienced a brief taste of the divine flesh.

  On his arrival home at the Temple after their grand progress, he had half expected Lara to be waiting there to see this new-grown man standing before her, and for her to come rushing into his open arms in a deeply satisfying display of regret and tears. The very last thing he had expected had
been a continuation of their old hostility.

  After this freshest blow of rejection, Kirkus had found himself becoming increasingly reclusive in his personal chambers, turning his other friends away more times than not. He began to dwell on the image of the seal hanging about the dead girl's neck. Stories came unbidden of the Rshun, of the impossible myths that surrounded them. He found eddies of fear often rippling in his stomach, till his new-found sense of power began to diminish.

  There would be other culls, and purges too. He would feel that power again, and practise the wearing of it until he became it entirely. But still, he felt that gnawing worry as he lay awake at nights, listening to the closing of distant doors, the silences that were not silences at all but a cacophony of sounds too subtle for him to hear.

  Kirkus looked down at his hands and felt the tacky sweat of them. His nostrils seemed clogged with the dust of the arena outside, borne within.

  I must wash, he thought.

  He turned to make his excuses to leave, but saw the priest Heelas approach from the entrance leading to the imperial stand, the man shrouded in the lace hangings for a moment as he passed through a haze of sunlight into the antechamber within. 'Holy Lady,' announced his mother's caretaker with a bow. 'The people call for you.'

  The chatter in the room fell silent. Indeed, the sound of the crowd had now risen to a percussive chant that Kirkus could feel in his stomach.

  'Then let us go and please them,' said Sasheen, her smile brightening in an instant.

  Kirkus wiped his hands against his robe again, and sighed as he followed her outside, the high priests trailing behind them.

  At the appearance of Sasheen, a hundred thousand voices roared approval from the stands of the vast arena. She raised a hand aloft to acknowledge them, and for a moment Kirkus forgot his personal grumbles as he felt a rush of excitement rising within him.

  It was cooler in the imperial stand reserved for the Holy Matriarch and her high priests, the sky above it cloudless and bright. On the sandy floor of the Shay Madi arena, a host of naked men and women huddled together in chains, looking like the refugees from some natural devastation. They were heretics from around the Empire, caught in the act of practising the old religions – a furtive sign made to one of the spirit gods, a prayer to the Great Fool – and informed on by a neighbour or even by their kin.

  Their ranks included the poor, too; the homeless and the crippled, those who could barely fend for themselves let alone thrive. These were people seen as failures in the eyes of Mann, parasites and carrion all, as far from the divine flesh as they could be.

  One by one, they were being branded by white-cassocked members of the Monbarri, Cinimon's dour inquisitors, their heavy piercings hanging darkly in the sunlight. Some would be sent from here to the salt pans of the High Char, to serve out the rest of their short lives in heavy labour. But most would become slaves within the Empire's cities, as manual labourers or even sex workers. The useless would serve as sport for the crowd's entertainment here on the arena floor.

  The work of branding quickly ceased, now that Sasheen stood with both arms held aloft. The Monbarri stood ready with their loops of rope and smoking irons, sweating from their exertions, and waiting for her spoken words. The crowds fell to silence around them.

  Sasheen called out in a high clear voice that rebounded around the other stands of the arena. She told the crowds what they wished to hear most from their Holy Matriarch: how, in their devotions, they were all of Mann together; how in their loyalty they had built this great empire as one. They were the victors in life, she declared, for they had helped spread the true faith, and when death came to take them they would all be victors still.

  All of it nonsense, Kirkus knew, as he gazed out over the herded masses; though still he swelled with pride in the force of the moment. His gaze dropped to the arena floor, and hungered after the white flanks of the naked women huddled in a flock at its centre, each stood facing inwards as though to hide her shame and to shield her eyes from their surroundings. Kirkus could hear their exhausted sobbing, and in the distance, the shrill cry of gulls in the bay of the First Harbour.

  His mother suddenly gripped his wrist, startling him as she jerked it into the air and shouted his name out to the crowds. Another roar sounded.

  Kirkus felt a moistness in his eyes. The soft sting of goosebumps upon his flesh. He was filled once more with Mann, with a sense of his own self-importance.

  His divinity.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Inshasha 'Have you informed Master Ash of this?' Aleas asked him.

  Nico, a pitchfork in his hand, tipped a scattering of dung into a bucket and shook his head. 'I have not seen him since.'

  'Perhaps it's better he does not know,' responded Aleas, with a pitchfork in his own hand, as he stood in a spear of sunlight cast through the open doors of the stable where they had both been sent by Olson, the monastery disciplinarian, due to a poor performance of their kitchen cleaning duties the previous evening.

  Around them the stalls were empty, the mules and the few zel owned by the monastery out grazing in the lower slopes. Their task here was to gather dung for use as fuel. Aleas yawned, as tired as Nico from their previous night spent out in the open, while the apprentices served their regular turns at sentinel duty. 'It would only antagonize the two of them even further. My master was playing with you, Nico, but I did warn you what might happen. It could have been worse.'

  'But I only talked with her… and for a moment.'

  Aleas stretched his back, the bones of his spine cracking. 'Of course you did,' he said. 'And let me guess. When my master came across you both, just talking, you were likely standing close to her, with your tongue hanging loose, your eyes fixed on her pumps, and your prick as stiff as my little finger beneath your robe. A man like Baracha, where his daughter is concerned… he will notice these things.' And Aleas feigned a solemn raising of his eyebrows, and turned to find more fodder for his pitchfork.

  Nico lent him a hand, in the form of a scoopful of dung tipped over his head.

  'What did you to that for? I'll have to wash this shit off now!'

  'Sorry, my little finger must have slipped.'

  The young man scowled, wiping at the fresh smears on his robe. He in turn, swung a load of dung at Nico, but Nico blocked most of it with his pitchfork.

  At that, they were suddenly duelling.

  It was hardly serious: a pretend fight almost, having switched their weapons around so as to aim them shaft first. They were grinning to begin with but, as they hacked and stabbed at each other, pressing forward or falling back, the in-overturn of it grew into something more competitive.

  Even when using a simple pitchfork, Aleas was a finer swordsman than Nico by a factor of at least ten. Nico improvised, however, as he had learned to do while living rough on the streets of Bar-Khos. He threw a wet lump of dung at Aleas, so that the young Mannian tried to dodge it, and since Nico had been anticipating this response, and Aleas merely reacting, Nico was able to follow it up with a strike aimed at his rival's head. Except, in his enthusiasm and lack of ability, Nico swung his weapon much too hard and much too wildly, catching Aleas on the mouth and splitting his top lip open, so that blood swelled from the gash.

  'I'm sorry!' Nico held up his free hand.

  'Sorry?' Aleas spun and ducked and, out of this blurring motion, launched a sweeping one-handed lunge at Nico, cracking him smartly across the side of his skull.

  Nico staggered back, his head ringing.

  Now it was Aleas who held up a hand, before he cast his pitchfork to the straw-covered floor and flopped down next to it. He dabbed a finger to his wounded lip, his wry smile only increasing the flow of blood 'Not too hard, I hope?' he inquired, with a double tap to the side of his head.

  Nico collapsed to the floor too, out of breath. Dust motes danced in the sunlight between them, settling slowly as the two apprentices regained their breath.

  'Have they always been this way?' Nico ask
ed.

  'Who?'

  'Master Ash and Baracha, of course'

  Aleas sucked on his lower lip for a moment. 'The older hands would say so. But, myself, I believe it got worse after Masheen. It is mostly my master's fault. He cannot tolerate being bested by anyone.'

  'Ash bested him?' The surprise was clear in Nico's voice. He thought of Ash with his thin frame and ageing skin, his frequent headaches; he thought of Baracha practicing with his blade, the man massive and quick.

  'Not in that sense.' Aleas shrugged, leaned to one side, and spat blood. 'Ash had the temerity to rescue my master, when he could not rescue himself.'

  'What? Well, tell me more!'

  'Make yourself comfortable. It's a long story.'

  *

  Six years ago, shortly before Aleas had arrived here to begin his training, Baracha had run into the kind of trouble that every Rshun in the field dreads most of all. He had been caught.

  Baracha had been committed to a vendetta in Masheen. Or, more precisely, in the mountainous country known as Greater Masheen, which surrounded that great eastern city on the delta of the Aral river, where the ice-melts from the High Pash ranges drained themselves, languid and wide, into the Miders.

  Baracha had been there to kill the 'Sun King', a man claiming to be the living incarnation of Ras, their sun deity and, incredibly, had gained credence among the mountain people there, who were as devoutly superstitious as all eastern peoples, if not more so.

  They held to a prophecy in those parts: that when the mountain should fall, and crush the World Serpent coiled in its lair within the mountain's rocky heart, a god would appear in human form from the lands of the rising sun, and walk amongst them to herald a new age of enlightenment. Even with the subjugation of their native religion by the Mannian Empire – which had, several decades ago, annexed Masheen as the furthest province of their eastern conquests – the local people's belief in this prophecy remained prevalent.