Empire of exiles, p.5
Empire of Exiles, page 5
“That’s interesting,” Quill said. He looked over at her, thoughtful. “That would have just happened when they painted it. The Salt Wall and everything.”
Yinii nodded. “The artists knew her. There’s records.”
Now Quill swallowed as if his throat were tight. “I can’t even imagine it. Having to face the changeling horde. Having to sacrifice myself like that, not knowing if it would make the difference.” He paused, then turned to her. “I have a friend, Karimo. He’s really smart and he’ll talk your ears off about the philosophy of law and the way it makes us sapients, really. But then you look at a moment like this, and… I don’t know. There’s not a law that stops this, but if you don’t have them anyway, what’s to say we don’t all act like changelings?”
It sent a trill of panic through Yinii. “I don’t know. I guess that’s why the Vigilant Kinship is around.”
He smiled at her. “Yeah that’s about what Karimo would say. All the orders—the Kinship, the Paremi, the Golden Oblates, the House of Wisdom, and all the others—if you could make saints of orders, that would be what Karimo believes. That’s what keeps us safe and whole and sure.” He looked up at the mural. “Is she in the chapel?”
“No,” Yinii said. “Saint Asla’s, um, in the Wall.”
Quill winced. “Oh right.”
“I’ve been to her shrine there,” Yinii said. “Twice. She’s…” Yinii set her fingers behind the amulet. “We have saints of the canyon, saints of the family, and then a saint for the self. Saint Asla is mine. She was from the same canyon as my family.”
Quill smiled. “She sort of looks like you there.” And Yinii flushed so suddenly, so deeply, that she could not remember how to make her mouth say “thank you” before he continued.
“Have you ever met a living saint?”
“There aren’t any right now,” she told him, but because he wasn’t Orozhandi, she added, “I did meet a human one if you meant that—a sorcerer? He was Ahkerfi of the Copper. He came to our town when I was a girl. He made me this one.” She reached up and laid one of her charms against her fingertips, a seven-petaled copper flower, tiny and intricate, that had bloomed out of the man’s fingertips with so little effort he hadn’t even blinked.
To the Orozhandi, being born with so much affinity magic was always a gift, these people always saints. But for other peoples, other places, they were isolated and treated as monsters, or leashed and made into weapons. Ahkerfi of the Copper had been a wanderer, never settling, all because he could speak to the copper and it would speak back.
“He called it a gentian,” Yinii said. “He didn’t seem mad. He didn’t talk a lot, but he was nice to me.”
Quill peered at the little flower, and Yinii realized he was suddenly very, very close. “That’s pretty,” he said. Yinii’s cheeks burned.
“I know that there are others,” she said, too fast. “Iosthe of the Wool, up in the mountains. Joodashir of the Salt is down somewhere on the coast, I think. And Fastreda of the Glass is in Arlabecca, of course—in the Imperial Prison. I’ve been in the lottery to meet her, but they take so few—”
A screech echoed off the painted vault of the ceiling and Yinii jerked her attention toward the far end of the building. To the hallway that led down to the bronze collections.
“I will tear your eyes out!” Zoifia’s voice howled from the far passage.
“Oh,” Yinii said. “We should… Do you want to see the corundum room or—”
“Sorcha! You can try!” a man’s voice bellowed back. Stavio, Yinii thought. Calling Zoifia “witch.” Oh no.
“Um,” she said, trying to think of paths to take, ways to rush Quill out of the way, where he wouldn’t see two of the archives’ specialists at their worst. “We should… not be… here.”
But it was too late: Amadea appeared at the mouth of the hallway, pushing Zoifia before her and holding Stavio behind, both at arm’s length. Zoifia’s blond curls seemed charged, ready to spit sparks, her muscles hard against the edges of her skin.
Stavio seemed less primed to explode, more unstoppable as he pressed forward. From the waist up, Stavio might have been mistaken for a handsome, well-muscled, and thick human, olive-skinned and crowned with shining black curls. But from the waist down, the Ashtabari bronze archivist’s body split into eight thick tentacles dappled green and brown. Which were twisting and snapping in an irritated fashion as he moved toward Zoifia.
The pair of them pulled all of Yinii’s nerves, as if the magic in her sensed the magic in them, swelling and rising, ready to surge. She tried to peer around the cloud of Zoifia’s hair, the thrash of Stavio’s tentacles—if she could see the color of their eyes, she might be able to guess how bad it was going to be. She stepped forward—aware that even as she was shielding Quill, she was moving toward the pull of their affinities.
“You think you’re clever?” Stavio shouted. “You think you can just sneak in when it’s supposed to be locked?”
“Me? You were the one trying the door! You were going after the Kirazzi requests. I caught you—you’re the sneak!”
“Neither of you was supposed to be anywhere near that door.” Amadea, caught between them, did not raise her voice. While her two charges looked disheveled, robes askew and faces flushed, Amadea was stern and unshaken, only a lock of her dark hair pulled loose over her face. “It doesn’t matter who was there first. It doesn’t matter why you were there. It doesn’t matter which of you wants the new request—you are both restricted from your workroom until the alignment ends.” She looked back over her shoulder at Stavio. “When was the last time I had to sequester you?”
Stavio drew back and Amadea’s hand dropped. The power that had been building up between the two bronze archivists ebbed a little. “Nobody needs to be sequestered,” he protested.
Zoifia shivered. “You can’t sequester me and not him.”
“Sorcha,” Stavio spat. “You’re the one acting like a demon got in her.”
Behind Yinii, Quill leaned closer. “Is that a big deal?” he whispered. “Sequestration?”
“Yeah,” Yinii answered.
Stavio startled as she spoke, his gaze sweeping over to Yinii and Quill. He scowled. “Hey, you think this is a Datongu melodrama? We’re not selling tickets.”
“No,” Quill said cheerfully. “I’m getting a tour.”
“Yinii,” Amadea said. “Why don’t you show Quill the rest of the murals from the north mezzanine, and I will meet you in your library.” She took Stavio by the arm, pulling him forward so the bronze archivists were on either side of her. “You two are going for a walk. With Tunuk. All of you need some air. Once around the square, if you please.”
The power ebbed more still, but Zoifia tossed her hair and made a face. “There’s bronze out in the world, you know? Loads of it. It’s not like I’m some smelter with only enough affinity to clean verdigris.”
“I’m well aware,” Amadea said, steering them toward the stairs. “I’m also well aware that unless you do need sequestration or you’ve suddenly become a sorcerer, you should be fine encountering bronze where it doesn’t fill an entire room.”
Yinii watched them go, tension unknotting from her shoulders. She let out a long breath and turned back to Quill, who was still watching Amadea leave.
“That seemed like it was about to go bad,” he said.
“Maybe,” Yinii admitted. “Probably not. Amadea had it under control. It’s just… how it is.” If you had come to the archives, your affinity was strong enough that your alignments might always go bad.
Quill considered her a moment. “I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but you looked like you were expecting a fight.”
Yinii thought back to other bronze alignments—she didn’t really understand what made different affinities behave differently, but metallic affinities always seemed to have fast, furious alignments full of fighting and dramatics. When gold and bronze synchronized, it was particularly bad in the southern wing.
“I mean,” she said, “that’s… possible. It’s difficult for them. But Amadea was there. Like I said, she’s who you want in a crisis.”
“Clearly,” Quill said. He looked down the stairs once more, then he smiled back at her. “All right, shall we continue the tour?”
By the time Quill left the Imperial Archives, all requests duly filled and filed, his head spinning with astonishing sights, the sun was edging below the spires of the city, making the light a thick and cozy sort of golden. The late-summer air had a fat humidity after the archives’ coolness, and it left Quill simmering with anticipation. He bought a paper cone of fried fish, silvery and slim as his fingers, and ate them as he forged a merry path through the city of Arlabecca to the home of Lord Obigen yula Manco, where he, Karimo, and Primate Lamberto would be staying.
Quill paused beneath a loping red line of an aqueduct so ornate that he craved a name for it, and thought of the way everything in the archives seemed to have a name, a story, a place. After the drama with the bronze archivists, he had learned the details of mural after mural as he walked, Yinii rattling off names and facts as sure as a Paremi advocate in court. After Yinii’s library, Amadea had pointed out the sorting facilities down below the first floor, overlooked by the mezzanines, packed with enough treasures he could have understood losing a mammoth. He had met more than a few archivists, including the ones who would be handling the requests, and while Amadea traded forms and permissions, stanched gossip and reminded more than one of them that it did not matter about the flail or the Kirazzis, they had jobs to do—while all that happened, Quill had considered adorned skulls and trays of rubies and more.
For all Karimo’s advice to keep his eyes on the task, Quill had enjoyed himself immensely, and it was only now, walking along, thinking of all the things he would tell Karimo about the archives and the archivists, that he began to think about the Kirazzis’ involvement. About the oddity of the bronzes. About Ibramo Kirazzi.
He thought of Amadea, and how she had asked about the consort-prince so crisply—so cold it had to be personal, he thought, and what was personal with the empress’s husband if you were an archivist? But then he thought of how she’d raced after Zoifia, how Yinii had said everything was fine if Amadea had her, and then how Yinii had spoken of the spiral, like it was the sort of trauma you shut your whole self against the memory of. Whatever secrets or scandals were lurking there, having someone you trusted with something as frightening as that seemed an excellent trade.
An Orozhandi man sat on the street corner, shaking a pot with a few coins in the bottom. He wore the threadbare uniform of one of the wall-walkers, the Blessed Order of the Saints of Salt and Iron. Soldiers who guarded the Wall that sealed the Empire of Semilla off from the wider world and the threat of the changelings. One horn was broken, and his crutch leaned against the wall beside him. In the gloom, his third eye hung blearily open.
Behind him, a Kuali man in hose and an embroidered tunic leaned against the wall of a building, his rust-colored veil draped around a long-stemmed pipe. The sword at his belt was marked with alternating white and blue triangles—another retired wall-walker. He studied Quill carefully over the veil.
Quill dug the change from his purse and added it to the pot. “A good evening to you both, brothers.”
“To you as well, and thank you, kind brother,” the Orozhandi man said with a salute. “Saints guide you. You know where you’re headed?”
“I do, thank you,” Quill said. He paused. “Can I ask you something? Can you tell me how to say ‘I had a nice time with you’ in Orozhandi?”
The man’s eyebrows rose. “Depends. Who are you saying it to?”
“A girl I met.” He smiled. “Pretty girl I met.”
“Hmph. Best you don’t, then. Her family might not like her running off with a darkblind boy, you know? Mine wasn’t keen on it, and here I am.”
“I’m not running off with her,” Quill assured him with a laugh. “I only just met her. She was explaining some art to me.”
“Mm-hmm. Said much the same.”
“You think that was it?” the Kuali man said.
The Orozhandi man sighed and looked skyward. “Mighta been the sandsmut.” He squinted at Quill. “All right. You tell your girl, ‘Ada-aada, shilukundeh essetii teshi naashishet.’ The day before today, I took pleasure in the word you and I had.”
Quill brightened. “Ada-aada, shilukundeh essetii teshi naashishet.” He repeated it several times, adjusting to the Orozhandi’s corrections. He took out his notebook and a bit of lead and wrote out an approximation. “Thank you, I—”
Another man came out of the gloom, swooping close to the beggars and Quill to drop a pair of gold coins in the pan. Quill stepped aside, surprised—and stopped.
The man’s gaze caught his.
He was Khirazji, dark-skinned and dark-haired, with a lean dog trotting at his heel, sleek and sharp-faced. A plum cape over his shoulders, a feathered hat low on his brow… a black mask covering his face, revealing only his piercing eyes. Only the imperial family wore masks, especially full masks like this one. There was only one Khirazji man in the imperial family.
The consort-prince, Ibramo Kirazzi.
It was not a strange thing to see the consort-prince in the golden mask of imperial authority, nor in a green mask of personal affairs. But even if you saw him in the black mask, you were to carry on as if you hadn’t—the black mask was for secrecy, for privacy and invisibility.
The man nodded once at Quill, as if they’d agreed without words not to speak of it, before stalking off into the night.
“Do you know that man?” he asked the two beggars.
The Orozhandi laughed again and took one of the gold coins from the pot. “I know I like him very well.”
“Black mask means you don’t see him,” the Kuali said. “Those are the rules.”
“Blasted mask taboos,” the Orozhandi sniffed. “I see what I see.”
Quill bade the men good night and continued on, along the red-painted aqueduct glowing in the last of the sunlight, unsettled but unable to say quite why. The Kirazzi requests were irregular, but they were innocuous. And even if they were something more, no one requesting them was Redolfo Kirazzi, back from the grave. No one was Ibramo Kirazzi, stalking through the night not to be noticed yet unable to be ignored. No one was making whatever sort of trouble the archivists feared and Primate Lamberto avoided naming.
When Quill came to Lord Obigen’s house, no one was waiting at the door. He knocked, several times, and then several times again, to no avail. Lights blazed through the windows, but it was strangely quiet. He wondered if he ought to let himself in and knocked again.
He thought of Ibramo Kirazzi and tried to put him out of mind.
A scream rang out, chased by a chorus of more screams. Quill did not wait, but pushed through the door, into the long hallway, and then into the great room beside it, now filled with people, all staring down at two bodies lying on the floor.
There was Lord Obigen, his dip-dyed shawl soaked with blood, his eyes no longer shining but flooded red. Beside him lay an elderly Orozhandi woman, crawling away, hand pressed to a bloody forehead. Blood pooled around them both, so much blood.
People were screaming, shouting at Quill to go, to get the vigilants, to do something. Primate Lamberto, clutching his bloody shoulder, shouting at Quill to leave, to go, to run.
Quill could not move. He couldn’t look away from the killer, still standing over the bodies: Brother Karimo, staring at the knife in his bloody hand as if he couldn’t fathom where it had come from. He met Quill’s eyes a moment, still baffled, still blank.
“Karimo!” Quill shouted. “Stop!”
Grief flickered in Karimo’s pale gaze, but he only turned to face the screaming party, knife held high.
“Those who sow deception,” Karimo called tearfully, “must reap only death.” And to a renewed chorus of shrieks, he drew the knife across his own throat, spraying blood everywhere.
CHAPTER THREE
Richa Langyun, of the Kinship of Vigilant Mother Ayemi, stood in the Imperial Archives’ entrance hall well after midnight beside a shivering Paremi, turning over the facts of a massacre and wondering if he could catch the owner of the noodle stall on the other side of the Kinship Hall before she shut down for the night.
He’d been up since dawn, on his feet most of the day—running after two robberies, the investigation of a Borsyan street gang, and a small fire in a wine bar—but when he’d returned to the Kinship Hall at the end of his shift, the Paremi boy had shown up, pale and shaking, with bloody hands, and all Richa’s thoughts of supper and sleep had fled. He’d sent cadets for fresher vigilants and gone with the Paremi—Quill—along with two more vigilants he’d caught on the way out the door.
He could have sent Quill on. He could have stepped aside and let him continue into the hall, find the vigilants on duty. But Richa hadn’t been thinking about any of that. He’d seen the look of horror in the boy’s face—a look held in by determination and grief and fear—and just run.
Beside him in the entrance hall, Quill had his arms wrapped around himself as if he were holding in his guts, mouth a pinch, eyes bruised with fatigue and something worse. Poor kid. It was a hard thing, the first time someone you cared for turned into something ugly, something dangerous—like getting the rug yanked out from under your feet just as you were getting your balance, he recalled.
The bodies of Karimo del Nanova and Obigen yula Manco had been removed to the Kinship Hall’s mortuary rooms. Dolitha ul-Benturan and Primate Lamberto had been carried off by the hospitalers to the House of Wisdom for surgery and care.
Which had left Quill, desperately trying to get his feet back under him.
“If she doesn’t come,” Richa said gently, “do you want to go back to the chapter house?”
Quill shook his head tightly. “I can’t.”
Richa turned back to the doors, determined to keep a light touch. Quill was still shaken—who wouldn’t be?—but at least he’d stopped insisting that Karimo couldn’t have done this. At least nine witnesses, knife in the good brother’s hand, blood all over him, confession out of his own mouth, and there’s no way he would ever have done something like this.
