Beloved of the Sun
by Ann Leckie
I knelt on a woven mat. The room was dark, the walls barely visible. A low fire burned on the packed-earth floor. Human heads circled the fire, eyes shadowed, dark mouths open as though they were about to speak or scream. The fire flared up momentarily, and I saw they were round clay pots, the faces molded and painted on.
Across the fire from me sat a man in leggings and linen shirt, his face strong-boned and sharp, long black hair pulled back. Behind him sat a large, dark bird on a perch.
“She sees,” said a voice like wind through an empty jar. “She hears. She may or may not understand what she hears. But her mind seems to receive speech as words, not merely sounds.”
“But she doesn’t speak,” said the man. “Is there damage?”
My gaze dropped to the mat. The low fire made shadows waver in its surface.
“Possibly,” said the windy voice. “According to witnesses she was underwater for at least ten minutes.”
“Probably longer,” said the man. “And she wasn’t dead?”
A tiny fragment of shadow crept out of a valley in the grass mat, wavered, grew large and then small again. An ant. It crept towards my hand, that I had placed on the mat to steady myself. Or had I? I had no memory of coming here, of kneeling down.
“The cold saved her,” said the windy voice. I thought it belonged to one of the clay heads.
“We could torture her, to make her speak,” said the man. “But it might not work, and it would defeat the purpose. The sacrifice must be without perceptible flaw, and she would almost certainly be damaged in the process.”
The ant, having labored across the mat, set one delicate leg on the base of my thumb, then another.
“What threatens me?” asked the bird suddenly, in a grating, screaming voice. It flapped its wings. “Who threatens me?”
“Nothing threatens you, Lord Sun,” replied a chorus of airy voices. “No one opposes you.”
“Well,” said the man after a moment. “She’s damaged, so we can’t use her. Get up, Itet.” Silence. He stood, walked around the fire, took my arm—not the side with the ant, which was now halfway to my wrist—and pulled me up, turned me around, and led me out through a door into daylight, bitter cold.
The ground in front of us sloped away into white. Far below more white, a flat expanse of it, tracked with paths, and farther off high, square, flat-topped hills and low, snow covered houses, and trees. Nothing in the landscape was familiar to me, but I felt neither surprise nor curiosity.
The tops of the trees were below our feet. Curving around the horizon to the right, a river rushed and foamed.
We walked down steps to a terrace, still high, where a dozen women stood, wrapped in furs against the cold, hair braided and pinned with bone and iridescent shell. Except one—her hands were bound, her hair loose and ragged. When we drew near, the others knelt in the snow, but she stood and stared.
The man loosed my arm, raised a hand. He held a long pin, like the ones in the bowed heads before us, dark wood inlaid with shell. “This was in Itet’s hand when they pulled her out of the water,” said the man. The staring woman didn’t answer. “I have seen it in your hair before, Eritiri. Itet was chosen to be sacrificed this year. And you were not. Did you think, if she was dead, you could win her place?
“I would have liked to make you watch her sacrificed, before your execution. But you have succeeded in that much, at least—she is ineligible.” A twitch of the woman’s mouth, the beginning of a bitter smile. “As for you, your body will be cast on the trash heap, a sacrifice for nothing and no one, like any common criminal.” The woman’s mouth trembled, and a tear formed and rolled down her cheek.
“Hondjetat, it will be you,” said the man, and one of the kneeling women started, head coming up and then quickly down again. She was very pretty, with a wide, round face and large, dark eyes. I shivered, wondering why I had to stand out in the cold. I wanted very much to be warm again. “All of you,” said the man. “Go home.”
Which was all very well, but I had no idea where that was.
Home, it turned out, was on top of another of those square, flat hills. The house was the same size as the building with the bird and the heads, but the fire was higher and brighter. A small crowd of girls in brown and blue wool dresses, blankets around their shoulders, stared from the back of the house, and six older women, similarly dressed, sat on a bench along the wall.
We stood just inside the door for three breaths. No one asked what had happened, or where the woman was who we had left on that high terrace. Then one of the older women asked, “Is she still the one?” Her pinned and braided hair was graying, her wide forehead creased slightly. Her face, with its wide jaw and jutting nose, was striking.
The woman holding my arm seated me on a cushion near the fire and set a blanket over my lap. “She’s damaged,” said the one who had held my arm, her voice expressionless. “He said it was Hondjetat now.” An itch below my shoulder blade made me think of the ant again.
The woman who had startled on the terrace sniffled. “I was never good enough. I don’t deserve it, it should be Itet.”
“This is no time for foolishness, Hondjetat,” said the older woman, clearly in charge here. “Or misplaced guilt. It wasn’t you who injured Itet.”
Then the ant crawled around the side of my ear, and a tiny, quiet voice said, You are Itet.
Was I Itet? Everyone had been saying so, but the name didn’t seem familiar. You are Itet, the ant said again. And Eritiri tried to kill you. But she failed.
Someone set a spindle in my hands, and it seemed I knew what to do with it. Some things you knew but have forgotten, the ant whispered. Some things you never knew.
There are many gods, but all share this one characteristic—their words must be truth. If a god says what is already true, it spends no power. If a god says what is currently untrue, its speaking must make those words truth. If making that truth takes more power than a god has, that god will be drained, injured, even possibly killed. This is true of every god, from the smallest, least significant, to the most powerful. Anything a god utters is a binding promise. Gods are therefore generally careful with their words.
Women bustled in and out of the house—there seemed to be thirty or forty of them living here. No one spoke to me directly except the ant.
Gods feed on prayers and sacrifices. The more extreme and elaborate the ritual, the more power accrues to the god. Someone pulled the spindle out of my hands and put a bowl of gruel in its place. The other women took their own bowls and sat around the fire on cushions embroidered with flowers and animals, or along the walls.
“It’s so cold outside,” said one woman, after we had eaten. “Let’s have hazelnuts, and stories. Can we, Essferend?”
“We already did,” protested Hondjetat.
“That was for Itet,” someone said. The older woman—Essferend—gestured assent. No one had spoken about the condemned woman all day. A girl hopped up, ran to the back of the house, returned with a skirt full of nuts.
“In those days,” said Essferend after a while. “In the days before the earth, there was the Sun. We know this to be true, because the Lord Sun, the god himself, has said it.”
No, sighed the ant, but the man working for him has. The sharp-faced man in the linen shirt, I realized. And unlike gods, men can lie with impunity.
“He made the people, and every good thing for their well-being and enjoyment. He shone unceasingly on the whole world. He said one day, ‘I will make other gods, to assist me in blessing the people.’ He made Crane and Heron, Snake and Lizard, Antelope and Wolf, Sparrow and Hummingbird, Fox and Shrew, Aurochs and Boar, Owl and Vulture, Squirrel and Mouse. Ant.”