The Heart of the mirage

I shook my head, laughing. 'Temellin, put me down -! Who am I? Tell me, who is this Shirin?'

You are Shirin, my love! 1 thought you were dead! 1 remember crying when they told me -'

Over Temellin's shoulder I caught a glimpse of Garis's face. He wasn't rejoicing. He was filled with consternation, as though he were waiting for a calamity he knew was inevitable. I thought, He realises something Temellin doesn't. I pushed Temellin away. 'Garis,' I asked, 'who is Shirin?'

He blurted out the answer, knowing how I would feel, remembering as apparently Temellin did not. 'Shirin was – is – you are Temellin's little sister,' he said. 'You had the same parents.'

My world died in a crashing roar in my ears. I saw people opening and closing their mouths, speaking to me, but I could not hear them. I saw their joy become uncertainty as my shock registered with them. My revulsion spilled out all over the room. I saw Temellin's grin become a horrified mouthing. I destroyed his happiness with my unbridled reaction, with the warding-off gesture of my hands. I turned from him to Brand, walking into his arms, clutching at him, burying my face in his chest. I couldn't speak. I was choking on the bile and vomit rising in me.

Oh, Goddess, I thought. / have bedded my own brother.

Oh, Goddess, forgive me.

Oh, Goddess, now I knew- I loved this man. Ligea Gayed gave her heart without even knowing it. The Brotherhood Compeer fell in love with the enemy.

Goddess forgive me. I did not know. Bedded my brother. Fitting punishment for thinking myself immune to sentiment.

You stupid fool, Ligea.

Brand knew. He swung me away from Temellin's imploring hands, herded me out of that room,

somehow found his way through the labyrinth to the quietness of my own bedroom. When I lay down on my pallet, he chafed the coldness of my fingers, covered my shivering body with a blanket, gently stroked my face and hair. There was no triumph in him, no satisfaction. When I could not cry, when I shrivelled and froze inside, it was Brand who had tears in his eyes.

'Don't let him near me,' I whispered. 'I don't want to see him.'

'He won't come in here,' he promised, and he was as good as his word. Temellin came and was turned away.

When my trembling died, it was Brand who tried to offer consolation. 'It's not so bad, Ligea. You've never been one to worship the Goddess and her rules, so you can't think you have sinned -'

'Sinned? No. It's just – just the thought of doing such a thing,' I said finally. 'It's unnatural. And they think it so normal. Oh, Goddess, Brand. I wanted him so much. Just to look at him was enough to start the ache. And do you think I will feel any different now? I will always remember that; there will be part of me that will want him still… And yet the thought of his touch now – makes me sick. Physically ill.'

He looked at me, and heard what I didn't say. I had loved Temellin. He read it in my pain. 'Then let's go away from here,' he said at last. 'Back to Madrinya, if you must. Bring the legions here, raze the place to the ground, kill them all if that's the only way you can lay your ghosts.' He was pointing out what I couldn't do, of course, forcing me to clarity of thought.

I said, 'Damn you, Brand, you know I can't. Maybe that compeer bitch, Ligea of Tyr, could have done it, but she doesn't exist any more. He is my brother. My flesh and blood.' I turned my face to the wall. It was

¦BH-'

difficult to say the next words, to tell him what I had refused to think about since I had learned the truth of it under the Shiver Barrens. 'He is the father of my son.'

He was stilled with shock. 'You can't know that you -' he said after a long pause. 'You've known him only a matter of what, ten days? How could you know that you are -?'

'I know. Just as I know when people lie. I have a life growing in me, his son. His nephew.' I gave a bitter laugh. 'I shall be mother and aunt all in one.' I rolled off the pallet and went to stand at the window. I had known my pregnancy in one split second when I was inside the Shiver Barrens. The knowledge had suddenly been there in my body, in my mind. And more than just that, I'd known his gender. A boy, conceived the first day when I had been so overwhelmed by the attraction of a Magoria to a Magori that I had cast all sense and precautions away in exchange for pleasure. The Goddess Melete – or fate, or whatever you like to call it – had made me pay for that moment of fervid passion.

Doubtless the knowledge of the child, my son, should have been the source of joy, of wonderment. But what joy could there be when I learned of him just moments after I was shown a vile vision of death? A vision of a nameless baby ripped from his nameless mother's womb, to cause her demise – and for what? Some sick purpose of the Mirage Makers? What conclusion was I to derive from that, except the most obvious? And that was another thing I had spent days trying not to think about: I was being primed as a sacrifice, to supply an unborn child.

Yet now I wondered. Perhaps I had mistaken the meaning of the vision. Perhaps the Mirage Makers had

been telling me something slightly different: that the child was an abomination, seeded by a man who was his uncle as well as his father. That he had to be destroyed, even if it meant my death. Perhaps they didn't like sibling pairing any more than I did. Yet if that was the case, why my child and not, say, Jahan and Jessah's? They had children, I knew. Several of them. Why mine? Why me?

I covered my face with my hands, to hide my horror from Brand.

'Let's go back to Tyr, then,' he said. For once, his calm had deserted him. His face was ashen with shock. 'Tell Rathrox you failed. Resign. Live your own life.'

T cannot return to Tyrans. I would be accused of treason. No one leaves the Brotherhood without Rathrox's consent. No one walks away from an assignment without being punished for their dereliction of duty.'

He was disbelieving. 'Punished? Treason? You think they'd burn you?'

'Oh no. Burning is for non-citizens. Citizen traitors are crucified.'

'They wouldn't dare! You are Gayed's daughter. You are being melodramatic'

Goddess, I wished I were. I could already feel the nails being driven into my hands, see the blood dribbling down my arms, hear the coarse mockery of men like Hargen Bivius. I said, 'But there are other factors involved here, aren't there?'

We stared at one another while he considered what I meant. 'They set you up,' he said softly. 'The three of them. Korbus, Rathrox and Gayed. Your whole life was aimed at this moment. The moment you would be in a position to be an instrument of their revenge on Kardiastan.'

I nodded, nausea seeping through me like poison. Gayed. I'd thought he loved me… I forced myself to sound rational, reasoned, calm. 'If I fail here, and go home with the task unfinished, their revenge will extend to my downfall. There would be some trumped-up charge, to make my dereliction seem truly traitorous. Would they stop short of crucifixion, do you think? I don't think so. Anyway, at the very least, they will strip me of all I own, including my reputation and my respectability. My life wouldn't be worth ten sestus.' Tyr, I thought. I had loved that city once.

"Vortexdamn them.' His next words were said with an urgent passion. 'We can go somewhere else, then. Leave them all behind: Kardis, Tyranians, the Brotherhood, escape all of them. Build a life for yourself somewhere else. In Altan perhaps. Or even outside the boundaries of the Exaltarchy.'

'Yes. No. I don't know.'

'There's nothing here to hold you back.'

I was silent a long while, looking out of the window at the conglomeration of crazy buildings, now just curious shapes in the darkness. I said finally, 'It is his son too. He has a father's rights…'

I heard the faint expelling of his breath: a sigh, acknowledging his acceptance that there was no gain for him in my loss.

'Don't tell Temellin about this pregnancy, Brand. I'll tell him in my own way, in my own time.'