This is where they made it to, Che suddenly thought. This is how far the R shun made it when they tried again. Right here to Kirkus, her son.
He could hardly picture it. The Roshun, one of them a farlander by all accounts, striding through this very room in search of their victim, their route marked by a trail of dead and wounded leading all the way down to the lowest floor of the Temple of Whispers. He doubted if even Shebec would never have made it this far – Shebec, his old Roshun master, more skilled than any other save for one.
Ash, he thought with an intuitive certainty. It had to be Ash.
But then Che considered it. Was it even possible? Ash would be in his sixties by now if he still lived at all. Could he have managed something like this at such and age?
Whoever it had been, Che could not help but admire them. He had always been drawn to ventures of risk and audacity, and he found a sly smile creeping onto his face. The Temple of Whispers breached by an army of rats, of all things, and three Roshun intent on vendetta.
Without warning, deep laughter bubbled in his chest, and he stopped it only by biting his inner cheek until the sensation passed. Che cleared his throat and composed himself.
The map on the easel drew his eye towards it.
Another venture of audacity that – a sea invasion of Khos no less. Che glanced through the windows once more at the gathered priests, then found himself stepping up to the map for a closer inspection.
It had been modified with various additions since last he had seen it, though the main details remained the same. Two arrows swept south-east across the sea of the Mideres to range along the islands of the Free Ports; two diversionary fleets, both of which had departed the week before to engage the fleets of the Free Ports, hoping to lure any defending squadrons away from Khos. Next to these, in fine pencil marks, were scratched fleet sizes, travel times, other notations. Question marks abounded.
A third arrow ran from the capital of Q’os to trace a sea-course to the far eastern island of Lagos, with more numbers and queries scrawled alongside it. Then, from Lagos, a fourth arrow swept down to Khos – the First Expeditionary Force, the invasion of Khos itself.
He was near-lost in studying the details when Che realized – with a sudden start – that he wasn’t alone in the room.
He glanced across to an armchair so hooded and deep that he’d failed to notice the creature that sat within it; Kira, mother to the Holy Matriarch of Mann. The ancient crone was asleep, it seemed, her ancient hands folded across the white cloth of her robe. Che released his breath and peered closer. Glimmers could be seen from beneath her eyelids, two slivers of eyes.
Was she watching him? Had she seen his stifled laughter?
Che felt the hairs rise on his arms. He was as shocked by his lack of perception as he was by her sly observation of him.
Kira dul Dubois: one of the participants in the Longest Night fifty years before. Rumoured to have been a lover of Nihilis himself; rumoured even to have been involved in his death six years into his reign as the first Holy Patriarch. It was like being in the sights of a silversnake.
Slowly, he stepped back from the map, hoping as well to move beyond her line of vision. He cleared his throat as he resumed his position in the centre of the floor, and refused to look at the old woman again.
At last the glass doors to the balcony slid open and the priests began to file through the room. A few cast furtive glances in his direction as they left; he recognized one of them as a priest from the sect of commerce, the Frelase. Behind them came Bushrali himself. Che had expected the man to be dead by now after failing to uncover the Roshun hiding in the city. But no, after much political manoeuvring to save his skin, here he was, still alive, still even the head of the Regulators. Perhaps the rumours were true, then; that he held a blackmail dossier on every High Priest of Q’os.
Still, the man had not entirely escaped punishment, Che saw. He’d been fitted with a Q’os Necklace, an iron collar sealed around his neck, fixed to a length of chain that ended with a small cannon-ball, which he cradled in his arm as he stepped past. He would be expected to wear the necklace for the rest of his life.
Only Sasheen and a single bodyguard remained outside, the woman lost, it seemed, in her thoughts. Che felt a draught pressing against his cheek through the open doorway, though he could only faintly hear the city beyond, unusually silent in these recent weeks of enforced mourning. When Sasheen turned and stepped inside the Storm Chamber, she was holding the bridge of her nose between thumb and forefinger as though burdened with a headache. Her bodyguard remained outside, slowly patrolling around the balcony. She approached a stand of steaming bowls and bent to inhale from one. With a gasp she straightened, her face flushing.
Sasheen’s eyes flared for a moment when she saw her Diplomat waiting there for her. She moved past to the fire with her hands held out for warmth.
‘Is it done?’ she asked with her back to him.
‘Yes, Matriarch.’
‘Then sit. Warm yourself.’
He wasn’t cold but he did as instructed anyway, choosing a leather settle before the fire. He maintained an upright pose, his hands folded, breathing deeply, resisting the urge to scratch at his neck. After a moment, the Holy Matriarch left the burning coals and sat down beside him, close enough for their knees to touch.
He could smell the scent of mulled wine on her breath, and realized she was drunk.
The leather of the settle creaked as she folded one long leg across the other, her robe parting along a slit to show the soft cream of her thigh. Compared to her usual attire, the robe was a plain affair, but still it was smaller than it needed to be, so that the cotton stretched tightly over her curves. Below its hem, the nails of her bare feet were painted a vivid red.
‘Bushrali tells me they will not come for me, for killing their apprentice.’
‘The Roshun?’ ventured Che.
Her eyes narrowed in annoyance. Do not play coy with me.
Che shook his head. ‘It’s unlikely. The apprentice wasn’t wearing a seal. It’s only on behalf of seal-bearers that they seek vendetta.’
She considered his words; glanced across to the sleeping form of her mother before she next spoke. He noticed then the red welts on the side of her neck, running down beneath the collar of her robe. They looked like the heat tracks left behind after a Purging.
‘But this will be personal to them,’ she ventured. ‘A public humiliation. A murder of one of their young.’
She considers this now, Che reflected. Long after the act is done .
‘No, they don’t think in such terms. They have a code of sorts. Vendetta is a matter of natural justice for them, or at least a simple matter of cause and effect. They abhor revenge, though. To seek vendetta for their own personal reasons would go against their own creed in every way I can think of.’
‘I see,’ she said, and her tone was one of lightness, perhaps amused by the idea of such a principle. ‘Bushrali said much the same himself. I wanted to hear it from you too: someone who has lived with them, and been one of them.’
Che could not help but look away at that moment, even though he knew it would betray his sudden discomfort. He almost jumped as he felt her hand pat his leg. Che met the Matriarch’s chocolate-dark eyes, and saw something different in them this time, a softness.
Sasheen smiled.