“But . . . Akhenabi was asleep!” The idea that his master had planned this with the Lord of Song was the most disturbing thing he had heard.
“So it was told to all Nakkiga. It made his work—our work—easier. But he was not the only one who took part in the plan. Again, why do you think I pushed you away, made it clear that you were not privy to my inmost counsels? Because that inner circle was myself, Akhenabi, and Marshal Muyare.”
“The marshal? Sunoku’s own relative conspired against her?” Viyeki let the hand holding the blade fall back into his lap. He had thought himself a cynic, but now was revealed as childishly naive. “Her own clansman wished our greatest general dead?”
“If our people could also be saved, yes,” Yaarike said. “Few reach the highest circles in Nakkiga if they are crippled by too much sentiment, and Muyare knew it was only a matter of time until she supplanted him. But Muyare’s price for joining the conspiracy was that Akhenabi and I had to agree to support Suno’ku’s plan to rebuild our people through interbreeding with slaves. Muyare saw the wisdom in growing a new army, so there will be half-mortals in the houses of our nobles one day soon—half-mortals in the orders themselves.”
“So you all joined together to murder her?”
“I did not want to, but it was Akhenabi’s price, and if he was willing to gamble with the survival of our people, I was not. As I said, I hoped Suno’ku would only be exiled—that she would become a prisoner of the mortals, along with those who accompanied her. I did not lie when I said she was the best of us. It grieves me still that she was the last casualty of the war against the Northmen.”
“This is serpent-talk—truth and lies mixed.” Viyeki felt something like a storm boiling inside him now. How simple it would be to end all the confusion, all the disillusionment, with one swift thrust of the knife into his own breast. “Do you tell me you and all the others admired your victim?”
“I cannot speak for Muyare. As for Akhenabi, no. He saw only a rival for power, one who could best his reign of fear with something more genuine—the belief of the people.”
“And yet you helped him kill her.”
“As I said, I admired her, but I also saw her for what she would become—the end of our race. I did not want her dead, but I did want her gone from Nakkiga.”
The tip of the blade had actually pierced the cloth and pricked the skin of his chest; Viyeki could feel the pain like a tiny star burning a mere hand’s-breadth from his heart. But as much as he wanted an end to the agony of his thoughts, he wanted answers more. “I do not understand you, Yaarike.”
“Suno’ku was the heart of what was lost, but made flesh—one who believed the old truths with all her spirit, and could make them real to others by the force of her own belief. But the old truths, I fear, are no longer true, Viyeki-tza. That is why the next generation will require different minds, different truths. General Suno’ku, in the burning purity of her heart, would never have given up the struggle against the mortals. She would have waited only until we had bred enough new soldiers to be fit for war again, then led our people into first one disastrous fight against the swarming mortals, then another. Again and again, until nothing of our people and our orginal bloodline was left.” Yaarike reached out his hand and gently touched Viyeki’s where it held the dagger. “Do you not understand? I have chosen you because you always look at and consider what the others do not, my young pupil. I said once that you could see around corners. Look ahead now. Let your heart tell you if I am wrong or not. Let your heart tell you if what I did was wrong for our people. If your answer is different than mine, then I was wrong about you—wrong about everything—and you must denounce me.”
Viyeki closed his eyes. How could the deepest wishes of his people be wrong? How could Suno’ku, that bright, brave flame, have been a danger? One might as easily say that the queen herself had betrayed them. “You are far wiser than I am, Master, but you cannot change me with words. I have already made my peace with death before I came here today,” he said. “Like our Sacrifices, I am dead already.”
A sudden movement; the magister, moving more quickly than Viyeki could have supposed, knocked the witchwood knife from his hand and sent it clattering to the floor. “By the Garden and all who escaped it, we do not need more Sacrifices!” Yaarike put a hand on him again, his grip surprisingly strong for his great age, holding Viyeki in the chair when he would have scrambled after the fallen blade. “Listen. We have always had Sacrifices and they have always done their duty without question. But in the days and years ahead, we need something different. We need Builders.”
Yaarike straightened up, then bent and retrieved the knife, placing it on the table before Viyeki with a deliberateness that was almost like ritual. “Here. It is yours. But do not hasten to end yourself. Think first and think carefully. Suno’ku and Akhenabi and Marshal Muyare—all of them are what we have always been. Even I am too old to change, though I can see the consequences. No, if you choose to live, it will be left to you and those still to come to find a new way, so that our people can survive in this world and still honor the Garden and those who have gone before.”
Viyeki could only stare at the knife. His master’s voice seemed to come from a long way away.
“I am leaving now,” Yaarike said. “Back to my house and my servants and my family, to return here tomorrow and continue with rebuilding our Nakkiga. If you choose to live, you may also choose to denounce me. So be it. My crime is greater than any punishment the palace could devise, so whatever happens, be assured I am already my own torturer. The loss of a family jewel, however precious, is nothing to that. As for you, Viyeki-tza . . . what you will become is still an unanswered question.” And then, surprisingly, Yaarike bowed with the deep courtesy given from one of high standing to an equal before turning and walking toward the door.
Viyeki sat in the chair, staring at the knife. Enough time passed that it became clear no guards had been summoned, that his master had done just as he had said he would. But Viyeki, his thoughts now weary, dull, and bruised like over-disciplined slaves, did not know what to do next. He had come to the order-house prepared to die. But what if he did not? How could he live each day from now on knowing that all he had thought simple and true was instead as tangled and foul as the roots of a rotting tree?
The lamp burned down until only a flicker lit the room, and still he sat.
When he walked through the front door, his wife and the servants were waiting. When Khimabu saw him she made a gesture of respect that had both fright and anger in it. “Husband! I feared something had happened to you!”
“Nothing has happened to me.” He walked past her and placed the wrapped snow rose dagger back in its box upon the fireplace mantel. “Nothing is different. Nothing will change.” But as he said it, he knew it was not true. Whatever might follow from this moment, everything had changed.
“I thought you might have been hurt or even killed in some accident,” she said, but her tone suggested that she was almost disappointed that nothing had happened to be worth so much worrying.
He shook his head. He had left the house empty, a man who thought himself already dead. Now he was something else—a man who, as his master had said, could see around corners. A man who could think about the days still to come.
“Do not make a few hours of absence sound so dreadful, my wife,” he said, and stood patiently while the servants hurried to remove his robes. “What terrible things could happen to me? I will get up tomorrow like all days, and go to work for my master and my people. After all, I am no Sacrifice, am I? No, I am a Builder.”
Aerling, busy as always with his grisly task, scarcely looked up when Porto asked permission to leave the camp and bid Endri goodbye. Porto could scarcely remember the last time Aerling had put down the giant’s head. He had removed its flesh and cleaned the skull with rock dust and snow until it almost gleamed, even in the dull northern light. It seemed a strange way to honor fallen comrades, but since he had been in the north, Porto had seen the same look Aerling wore on many other faces and had learned not to ask. If he had possessed a mirror, he suspected he would have seen it on his own face as well.