The House of Sacrifice Read online

  Kiana threw a flower at Osen. “War horse’s piss. I helped him choose it.”

  “Did that woman ever send a bottle of her good wine?” asked Thalia.

  “I don’t know.” Looked at Osen and Alleen. “Did she?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Marith.” Osen chucked Kiana’s flower at him and shoved over a plate of sweets.

  “I found a girl in Arunmen who can sing like a skylark,” said Alleen, “if anyone’s interested in hearing her sing?”

  “‘Sing like a skylark’?” said Kiana. “Cousin, really.”

  Thalia yawned. “I will go to bed, I think, Marith. I’m tired.” She was very tired, suddenly, the last few days, slept and ate a lot. But she looked well, her face was shining, it would be well, this time, surely, the doctors said that it was good that she was tired, because it showed that the baby was strong. It will live, it must live… he felt sickened, thinking of it, gulped down his drink, found himself looking away from her. My child. My child. I who killed my mother and my father and all of them, what will my child be if it lives?

  “Stay a bit longer, Marith,” said Osen. “This girl of Alleen’s can sing The Deed of the New King and The Revenge of the King Against Illyr like a skylark. The proper songs and the dirty versions.”

  “Her dirty version of The Revenge is… dirty,” said Alleen. “You have no idea.”

  Osen began to sing, “His big big sword thrusts hard and wide.”

  “I will certainly go to bed,” said Thalia.

  “I fear you may be wise, Thalia my queen,” said Osen. “Whole cities call him to thrust inside.”

  “Come to bed soon, Marith,” Thalia said as she left them. Her hand brushed his arm as she walked away. “Won’t you?” Pregnancy seemed to leave her insatiable. It made her flatulent, also. Slept and ate and farted and wanted to fuck. All the good things.

  “And she sings it completely straight-faced, too,” said Alleen. “A marvel.”

  Umm…? Oh. Yes. “Do I really want to hear a woman singing obscene songs about my triumphs?”

  “Of course you do,” said Alleen.

  “Do I really want to find myself humming it the next time I . . . ?”

  “Of course you do,” said Alleen. “And it makes me happy just thinking of it. Why else are we conquering all the world, wading through the blood of innocents, if not for people to make you the subject of obscene songs?”

  A loud click of metal as Kiana put her cup down. Alleen went white.

  “It’s no worse reason than some.” Try to laugh. Try to smile. Try to laugh. His face felt so hot. That feeling, that he had had when they were cheering him, singing his name outside the ruined wine shop, joy, bliss, wonder, but I felt shame, he thought, then, hearing them, and I feel shame thinking about it now, and thinking about a girl singing songs about me… My eternal fame, my glory, the songs of my triumphs… His face felt hot and red. Like it’s humiliating, that they praise me. Like they and I are both wrong, should be ashamed.

  My head hurts, he thought. I need to go to bed as well. I should have gone with Thalia just now.

  “I won’t have the girl summoned,” said Alleen. “I’m sorry, I don’t know where that came from. Stay and have another drink, don’t leave looking like that. Please.”

  “One drink.” It is no worse reason. He’s my friend, I…

  Osen and Alleen were singing something. Kiana was crying with laughter at it. He was singing it too. He was stumbling back to his chambers. It suddenly seemed to have got very late. The girl had sung like a skylark. Even Kiana had admitted as much. Kiana had smiled at Osen: it would be so good if she was to return Osen’s feelings. Make him happy to see it. Poor old Matrina, Osen’s wife. He had always rather liked Matrina. But Osen liked Kiana. Kiana didn’t seem to like Osen. I wonder if Matrina would like Kiana? he thought.

  “My Lord King!” his guardsman Tal shouted.

  He was blind. Felt like he was being buried in sand. Thrashed about, gods, it was sticky, coating him. Hands flailing. Filth, coming all over him. His skin burning. Itching. Filth coming up through his skin. He had seen a dog once all covered crawling with ticks and sores and lice, its skin its fur moving. His skin was crawling. Erupting. Rotting. He retched. Vomit filling his mouth, vomit and sand, and he tried to swallow it, he couldn’t swallow it, it burned at his lungs, felt it in his nostrils, his eyes bulging, his head going to burst, choking, trying to claw at his nose and mouth. I’m drowning. Gasping to breathe and there was nothing. His arms and legs trembled. Cold sweat pouring off him. Tore at himself he itched he was crawling his skin was crawling his skin erupting his throat erupting choked blocked crumbling he was choking, drowning, his skin, his throat blocked with filth.

  The sound of metal. Voices cheered. A trumpet rang.

  Swords, he thought. Fighting. A vast battle, men fighting in their thousands in the hallway around him. A hundred thousand shining sword blades.

  Gasped, vomited up sand. On his knees, sand pouring out of his mouth. Great gouts of it, like the dragons pouring out fire. Breathing again. Gasping down air. His throat and lungs raw. Sand and vomit dripping from his nose and mouth.

  A shadow stood over him. A thing like a man. Dark, like a shadow, featureless, an outline of a man, like a man’s shadow in the half-light, and then it moved, poured itself back towards him, a thing like a man but all formed of black sand, crumbling away as it choked itself over him.

  He had seen such things in the ruins of his victories. The destruction of the body in a wave of dragon fire. Flesh and bone turned into black ash.

  Its hands reached again for him. Pouring towards his throat.

  Buried his hands in it. It came apart around him. Flowed over him. The faceless head pressed towards him. Its arms embraced him. Pouring itself into him.

  Threw his hands up over his face. Covered his mouth with his hands, bent down pressing his face into the stone floor. Hugging him to itself, kissing and devouring him. In his eyes. His ears. His mouth.

  Vengeance. Hiss of sand in the wind. Tried to squeeze his eyes closed, tried not to breathe. It clambered itself swarmed itself over him into him. Vengeance.

  A hand on his shoulder. He sat up.

  “Easy there, My Lord King. Careful.” Tal helped him up ­carefully. Propped him against the wall. Marith bent forward and coughed up a last trickle of vomit.

  “Heavy night, was it, My Lord King?”

  Blinked, stared down the corridor. “There was… was…”

  Tal helped him up the stairs towards his own chambers; he had hardly gone a few steps when Thalia was rushing down to him, her guard Brychan there beside her with his sword out. Pain in her face when she saw him.

  “Marith!”

  “It’s nothing. Nothing.”

  Her foot slipped on a step, he cried out but Brychan caught her arm, then she was beside him.

  “It was nothing,” said Tal.

  Black sand gushed off him. When he looked there was no sand on the floor. Sand crunched in his mouth. He spat. Thalia looked shocked at his spit on the floor. Gleaming. Someone else spat, he thought, I saw a man spit green phlegm at my feet.

  “Have some water, Marith.” A cup in his hands, heavy goldwork that heaved beneath his fingers. Itching, crawling, moving. He drank and gulped it down. Tasted so sweet. A grating feeling in his throat as he swallowed. Hair and gristle. Dirt stuck in his throat. His mouth was running with lice. He gagged, his hand over his mouth, don’t be sick here in front of her, my wife, do I want my wife to see that? The shame… once I didn’t want her to see my face, because she’d see it there, vomit and death, I’m human fucking vomit, filth like I’m choking down.

  Thalia brought all the lamps in the room to burning. They were in their bedchamber. He couldn’t remember walking there. The green glass windows were black and hollow, black voids; the lamplight made the mage-glass stars in the ceiling faint and dull. The silver hangings on the bed moved, trembled: the warm air from the lamps, some
one had told him, one of the maidservants. Her sweat in the lamplight, running down inside the neck of her dress… The leaves and flowers on the walls looked too real, like wax flowers. Obscenities like a swollen body. Draw his sword, hack them down to bits. The scabs on his left hand were diseased. The scar tissue alive with parasites. The scars on Thalia’s left arm were alive with parasites. The scars on her arm were crusted cracking infested with maggots. His throat was dry with dust.

  “You almost slipped,” he said. “On the stairs.”

  “Brychan caught me.” She put her hands over her belly. Her nightgown was very sheer, very fine silk, he could see the swell of the child growing there. No other child had grown this big in her womb. Blood smear things on her thighs. Clots of stinking blood. Pregnancy had made her breasts huge. Sweat on her, between her breasts, staining the sheer cloth. He felt sick. For a moment it seemed to him that her belly was swollen not with a child but with ash.

  “He’s safe,” she said. “I was worried about you.”

  “He?”

  She blinked. “Our son.”

  “You know? How can you know?” I don’t want it to be a boy, he found he was thinking, not a boy, not another murderer, parricide, dead thing, rot thing like I am. Will it kill her, tearing itself out of her? Cut her up into shreds, laugh in her face, curse her, take her heart to pieces slowly over years and years? I don’t want a child. I don’t want a boy. I want it to die like the rest, before it can harm her or I can harm it. It struck him suddenly: it is not dangerous for the mother to lose a child in the first early months.

  She said, “I… Of course I don’t know.”

  Did I kill them? he thought. The other children? Kill them in her, will them dead, give her poison in her sleep? I cannot father a living child. One of your generals himself plots to destroy you! Conspires against you! What if one of them is poisoning her, killing our children?

  “Why do you call it ‘he,’ then? As though you think it will live, as though you pretend it will live?” A wound, a rotting wound inside her already infected and dead.

  “He will live.” Her hands clutched over her belly, tight, so tight like she might crush it, smother it in the womb. She was lying, they both knew it, it would die soon, any day, any moment, like the rest, just let it live let it live.

  “Don’t call it ‘he.’”

  “I—I want—” And it came to him sick and horrified that she did not want it to be a girl. Look at her, the former High Priestess of the Great Temple, sacred holy beloved chosen of god who was born and raised to kill children, men dreaming in hot sweat about her hands stabbing them. She doesn’t want to have a daughter any more than I want to have a son. A perfect clarity, as he coughed the black sand of human bodies from his lungs: we both want this child more than all we have in the world, the last hopeful thing left to us, the only reason for anything. A child, to build an empire for. A child, to show our happiness and love. And we both want it to die unborn.

  He remembered, so clearly, kissing Ti’s pink screwed-up face, kissing Ti’s pink flailing fist.

  “He will live,” Thalia said again. “We should not be talking about this, Marith. Not now. You’re frightened, angry,” she said. “You need to calm, to sleep.”

  “I saw…” I can’t tell you, he thought, not you, I can’t speak it, I can’t have the child, my son, he can’t hear. Black sand crunched between his teeth.

  Chapter Eight

  It was a nightmare brought on by drink and stupid songs, he thought the next morning. There had been grains of black sand in the bed, he had woken to feel them itching him. A scalding hot bath; he drank and spat water, drank and spat, drank and spat. He still could not speak of what he had seen.

  He drank a cup of wine and his mouth felt cleaner. He was dressing when a message was brought that Alleen wanted to see him urgently. Thalia looked at him in fear and surprise.

  “What is it?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Show him in, then.”

  Perhaps, he thought for a moment, he should see Alleen alone, without Thalia there.

  “Marith…” Alleen was nervous. Excited, afraid. “Marith, I’ve someone here you need to see. Now.”

  “I… Bring him in, then.” Should I tell Thalia to leave? he almost thought. He could hardly tell her to leave in front of Alleen and the guards prowling around.

  What will I do, he thought, if it is coming now that she is the one betraying me? Or Osen? But I love her, and Osen is my best friend.

  There was a young man waiting in the bedroom doorway. A servant, from the look of him… no, Marith looked closer, a soldier, unarmed and as frightened as Alleen was, but a soldier. Blood smell on him. Bronze and blood ground down onto him, marking him. The man was looking down at his feet, too afraid to look up.

  “Well?”

  Gods, he needed a drink.

  “Speak,” Alleen said.

  We’ve been here before, and he’ll say… Not Thalia. Not Osen. Please. He’ll say it.

  “Lord Erith,” the man said.

  “Valim Erith offered him gold,” Alleen said, “to kill you. Gold and—”

  “Lord Erith gave me this.” The man held up a dagger. Carefully, cautiously, between finger and thumb, hanging down like a live thing. Blue fire on the blade. A blue jewel in the hilt. Marith reached for it.

  “Careful!” Alleen pulled his hand back away. “The blade is poisoned, he says.”

  “Poisoned.” Marith took it, held it up to see the light move in the jewel. Pressed the very tip against his finger, drawing out a single bead of red blood. Heard voices gasp and wince.

  “Valim Erith gave it to you? To kill me? You swear this?”

  “Valim Erith gave it to me, My Lord King, I swear it.”

  “On your own life?”

  “On my own life, My Lord King.”

  “Why you?” Thalia asked. “Who are you?”

  A long, stuttering, gasping noise. The poor man. Wretched man, brought to this. He’s nobody, Thalia, Marith thought. Some poor man doing as Valim Erith ordered him.

  “Speak,” Alleen said harshly.

  “My name is Kalth, My Lord King, I am an Islands man, My Lord King, I’ve been a soldier under Lord Erith since you were crowned king at Malth Elelane, I’ve fought in every one of your battles since you sailed to Ith, I’ve fought and survived them all.” There was so much pride in his voice as he said that; his pride filled the room with warmth. “My brother died at Balkash. My lover died here in Arunmen, on the first day of the siege. Perhaps I… I said some things I didn’t mean, after he died, mourning him. He… It took him five days to die. So I was angry, and perhaps I said things… I’m sorry. But Lord Erith—I served him, my family have served the Eriths as soldiers and servants for a hundred years, he himself was a guest at my sister’s wedding, but I would not do it, My Lord King, not what he asked me to do.”

  “He came to me this morning,” said Alleen. “He was supposed to do it last night. He hid, came to me instead.” Alleen rubbed his eyes. “A hangover and four hours’ sleep. Curse Valim.”

  Thalia said, “Can we trust him? This man?”

  Alleen said, “Look at him. He has no reason to lie, I think.”

  Thalia looked thoughtful. Marith rubbed at his own eyes, “Have Valim brought in, then. And fetch Osen here.” Valim: yes, it made sense to him, he could see it; Valim whom he had known since he was a child, bright in his bright armour, his hard face, a proud young man in King Illyn’s hall. Not a friend. A friend of his father’s.

  Valim Erith was brought in shaking his head, chained, guards all around him. His eyes bulged when he saw Kalth. But he did not speak.

  “You conspired to kill me.” It was not a question. Managed to keep the question out of his voice. He remembered Valim Erith from when he was a child. A stern, cold man. He had always known that beneath the cold Valim Erith was weak.

  “Why?” What do I expect, Marith thought, that he’ll say anything more than anyone else eve
r does? The same old same old things, the same words, the Altrersyr are vile and poison and hateful and should be wiped off the face of the world and I, I alone will manage it…

  “Where did you get the knife?” Osen asked Valim.

  Valim said in a whisper, “It’s not mine. I have never seen it before.”

  “Your man has told us everything, Valim,” Thalia said, “stop lying.”

  Marith held the knife up close to Valim’s face. “Was it you the prisoner was talking about? One of my generals, betraying me. You.” Brought the knife so close to Valim’s face.

  In the eyes. His own eyes itched and burned.

  In the eyes. The blue jewel in the knife handle, blue as Thalia’s eyes. Is that some joke?

  “Are you killing my children?” he shouted at Valim. “Are you making my children die in the womb? What are you giving her, to make it happen?”

  In the eyes. So close to the eyes. His own face, reflected there. The knife, reflected there.

  Thalia moaned in pain at that.

  “Are you conspiring against me? Are you?”

  Kill him. Kill all of them.

  I don’t want the child to live. Thalia doesn’t want the child to live. Thank him.

  Valim said, “No. Marith. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.” A flood of filth coming out of his mouth. Puking out his lies.

  “Stop it,” Marith almost screamed at him. All the voices, so many, his own: no don’t do this please please no please. “No no no no no. Marith, no,” Valim screamed.

  Alleen said, “You cannot possibly have thought Arunmen would be able to defeat us.”

  “You were the one who brought the Arunmenese ringleader in to judgement,” said Osen. “Gods, you snake.”

  “No,” Valim whispered. “No.” He stared at Marith, pleading. Stared at the knife. His body slumped. “I followed you, I loved you, I… You are my king, Marith… My son died for you… Marith!” His voice rose again screaming. “It wasn’t me! You cannot believe this! You are my king! Always! Always!” Scrabbled towards Marith, chains rattling stupidly. Dead body on a gibbet. “Always!”