Silk fire, p.31
Silk Fire, page 31
INTERLUDE: AGE EIGHTEEN
The Kzagé Hotel, in the Palace of Ten Billion Swords
9th Verga, Year 84 Rarafashi
“I know your secret. Give me what I want or I’ll tell the world about the babies.”—note delivered to Vashathke Faraakshgé Dzaxashigé during his magisterial coronation parade
“Gender: female (most likely)”—medical report for Najadziri Faraajzgé Dzaxashigé, age 52
The worst night of my life, I spent outside the Kzagé Hotel’s wedding suite, on a cold floor shaped from dead Scholars’ swords, envying them the deaf twilight of wandering spirits. My dull ears couldn’t catch all sounds, but every laugh felt like a betrayal and every whimper tore me in two.
My fault. If I hadn’t given all my essence to Zega, I’d be strong enough to charge in and push his new wife off him. If I hadn’t given him all my essence, he never would have caught a Dzaxashigé’s attention.
The eighth bell tolled through a sky I couldn’t see, marking the day’s end. Then the first. The second. The sun would be rising, beyond steel walls, but I hadn’t seen it in years. I rested my cheek on cool metal, fighting sleep’s fog, chewing my lip bloody. If I couldn’t be in there with Zega, I would be awake when he emerged.
The third bell, high and swiftest in its peals, joined the low hum of the second. The fifth rattled like a broken drum. The eighth called the sweet lull of night’s zenith. They’re not supposed to all ring together. Shouts rose from below, rained from above. Footsteps clattered on steel. A river of sound poured through the Palace walls. My ears ached with the sense of broken time.
I didn’t move. Everything I cared about had broken when the architect dzaxa Najadziri had signed the marriage contract for my sweet Zegakadze.
Steel hinges creaked. Zega stumbled out, wrapped in a disheveled swan-feather wedding skirt. Eyes wild and arms hugged tight about his chest.
“How are you?” I reached for him, then hesitated. “I asked if I could serve the high table at the wedding feast, but only the brightest servants were allowed. I’m sorry. I wanted to be near you.
Zega threw his bright arms around me, pulling me so tight I feared he’d snap my spine. His salt-streaked cheeks held the delicate, even white of magnolia petals. His bright beauty recalled statues carved by Shaper hands: torso unblemished and lithe, nose a gentle bow, full lashes fluttering over sapphire eyes. Our reflections entwined in the steel of dead armies, and I couldn’t believe I was lucky enough to hold him. Myself, a plain, dull boy, hair in long tangles, yellow beard patchy, pimples down my cheeks and back, skirt worn to grey fringe. Smiling as the boy I loved kissed me hard enough to erase the world.
Fuck marriages, fuck customs, fuck traditions and gender roles. I had love. If the world wanted to take him from me, it could do so over my raging queer dead body.
“Get me out of here,” Zega whispered. I took his hand and led him down to the stables.
“What are you doing here, Zega?” said Ironwhite as we entered. She and the other raptor handlers sat around a table, faces downcast, a sharp alcohol tang rising from their cups. Light thinned on the tall, narrow steel walls. “Doesn’t your new wife want you with her?”
“Dzaxa Najadziri was too drunk last night to give orders,” Zega said. “I’ll see her enough when I move to her apartment.”
“We still have time,” I said. “Please. Let’s not talk of that yet.” I’d stay when he left, working for his mother in the Kzagé Hotel, as I had these past four years. Zega had taken me to Najadziri and told her he needed a male attendant. Her hungry eyes had crawled over my chest and face, leaving me guilty-glad when she’d declared my fate. No scheming dull will seduce essence from my innocent young husband under my roof. I’ll protect my family from his kind.
No one would guess the truth: I was so hapless in bed I’d never drawn essence from my boyfriend. His touch undid me, soothing my aches, siphoning my power into him. Love, not my greed, bound us. Feelings the dzaxa didn’t understand and yearned to destroy.
A breeding raptor, penned tight in a nesting cage, screeched like ripping metal. I winced. Zega, bright and vulnerable, clapped fists over his ears.
“It’s the bells,” Ironwhite said through grim lips. The back of my neck prickled. I knew before she spoke the news weighed heavy. “They play the mourning chimes. Sorry to ruin your special day, Zega, but the magistrate and her daughters are dead. Her apartment collapsed during a banquet.”
How sad, I thought, my heart not in it. The old magistrate meant nothing to me.
“The street’s crumbling,” grumbled a stableworker. “We’ve lost our magistrate. Now our dignity. Rarafashi’s appointed her husband to fill the empty seat. Vashathke will be crowned in a week. Her plaything, ruling the richest street in War?”
Vashathke. Magistrate of Victory Street. Something stirred in my breast, older than my love for Zega. My father. Enthroned. Magistrates ranked just below judges. As Rarafashi’s husband, he could shape policies through pillow-talk—but as a magistrate, he could make his own.
He already loved his new title better than me.
“I’ll need a new skirt for the coronation parade.” Ironwhite tossed me a bolt of yellow cloth. “And a fresh cover for my old fajix. Ranking servants will stand with the household. You’re not one, so don’t steal any fabric.”
I wouldn’t even have new clothes for my father’s coronation? Embers of my old, angry fire stirred to life. No. Anger is trouble and death. Zega’s all you need.
I collected the others’ measurements, and retreated with Zega to my little nook by the racing stables, where the walls rose higher than my dull eyes could see. Dark metal and narrow crannies, forged from the soft curves of melted chariots. I pricked my finger on a needle when I drew out my kit. Raptors howled at the blood-scent.
“I like you too.” I scratched the plumes of the nearest beast, yanking my fingers back as she snapped at me. The raptors were my closest and only friends at the Kzagé Hotel.
“Koré,” Zega whispered, breaking his uncharacteristic quiet. “I think I’m in danger. This accident…”
I wrapped cloth about my finger and took his hand. “It’s a shame about the magistrate, but Najadziri lives far from her suite. You’ll be safe from accidents when you move.”
He lowered his head. Pressed his lips to my ear, and whispered. “I don’t think it was an accident. I think Vashathke had her murdered. Najadziri told me terrible things last night. She knows your father. She’s… bedded him, and made a game of telling me how poorly I compared. They’ve plotted something together.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. From the wandering glint in Najadziri’s eye when she’d seen me, I knew she’d never be faithful. But it was one thing to cheat on your husband, and another to fling the truth at him, like his inadequacy had driven you to do it.
“She’s conceived a bastard with him. And she expects me to raise it.”
My jaw dropped. Ice, cool and wet, slid down my spine. Another bastard? Women did as they chose with seed left in their bodies, but conceiving without the surety of a husband’s essence store meant a financial risk. If Najadziri just wanted a child, she could have made one with Zega last night.
Zega paced across my nook, rumpled wedding skirt trailing in the dirt behind him. “She told me this like she expected me to be flattered. I’ll be stepfather to the most important child in War—a daughter, most likely, the tests said. She and Vashathke would rise together, and carry me behind them like a tugboat in a dreadnought’s wake. Like I’ve spent my life waiting for some dzaxa to lift me up and give me what I can’t earn myself.” Bitterness laced his words. “She’s an architect; she’d know how to make a collapse look accidental. She’s probably planning for her bastard to inherit Victory Street, since Vashathke’s legitimate children are all boys.”
“Whatever she’s done,” I said, “my father put the idea in her head. He would have asked her to conceive, as he asked my mother to make me.” I’d told Zega the story years ago, but confessing hadn’t drained the poison from the memory. He flooded me with essence, flattered me, and asked me to conceive a child. Why did my father want bastards? I’d been proof of his fertility—now well-established by his three sons with Rarafashi. His wife had slapped him when she saw me in the Prizeheron. Why deliberately provoke her?
Something screamed in the back of my dull brain.
“Is there a pattern in the women he lets bed him?” I said. “My mother. Najadziri. Rarafashi. Pale, short, with dark hair—Rarafashi’s was dark when she was younger.”
“It’s not about love,” Zega said. “Men like Vashathke have outgrown love. Maybe he’s punishing his wife. Seducing women who look like her, but younger, to give the knife an extra twist.”
Outgrown love. My heart shivered. He’d said it like he admired that. I hoped my dull ears had misheard.
“Why the babies, then?” Gifts from unwitting women who thought they could master my father if they gave him this one thing. Vashathke wanted more than children. He’d killed to be crowned magistrate. His wants knew no limit. Darkness ran through his veins and mine.
He wouldn’t stop at Victory Street. He’d set his eyes on a bigger throne.
“It wasn’t Rarafashi’s husbands who failed,” I whispered. “It’s her. Rarafashi is infertile.”
With no close female relatives to inherit her store and throne, Rarafashi’s legacy would be cast in shadow if the dzaxa fought to succeed her. She needed a daughter—no. She needed a female infant to pass as her own. A plump woman with a loose stomach, the judge could easily feign pregnancy. Vashathke’s genes ran strong. A child with his face, lifted in the judge’s arms… who would question that child’s rights? He wanted my mother silenced, not just because of me, but because she could figure out what he and Rarafashi planned. He’s silenced every other woman he’s seduced.
Vashathke had given the judge three sons. But no daughters. What happens to the girls? My stomach twisted. Dead babies. Dead sisters. His own children sacrifice to his ambition. Rarafashi had bought herself children, but not a clear heir. The succession would be disputed.
A husband—and a magistrate—would be favored to ascend.
I told Zega my theory. “He’s a monster,” I whispered. “He’s murdered his lovers and babies—murdered everyone in the magistrate’s apartment last night—to open his path to the judgeship.”
“He had no choice,” Zega said. “You’re lucky to be dull and poor, Koré. People only take things from you. When you’re pretty and rich, they tear out your soul.”
You made me dull and poor. But saying that would offend him. “Vashathke tore out his own soul. There’s a choice between being a monster and being devoured by one.”
“Easy for you to say. You made that choice years ago, when you ran to me with a dead guard trainee’s blood on your face. You’re already a monster.”
I winced. “But you’re not.” The truth dawned on me, with sickening, dull slowness. I’d need to break my heart for him. “You and Najadziri must leave Victory Street, or my father will kill her and the baby, if it’s a girl. Go to Shadowcoin. Hire smugglers to take you to the Scholarly District, or further if you must.”
“And leave you?” Something broke in his voice. “It’s one thing to move apartments within the Palace. It’s another to cross a world. I’ll never see you again.”
“It’s the only way,” I choked. “For your family.”
“They forced this family on me!” He pulled me into his arms. His lips danced like lightning up my neck, over my cheek. His fists bunched in my long, unkempt hair. “I love you. I choose you.”
He loves me. Essence leapt from my skin, flooding him. My palms went coarse and dry where they clutched his back. My vision swam, blurry and unfocused. I didn’t care. I’d give him every piece of me he could carry, because when he left I’d have nothing at all.
“You’ll need this.” I slid from his arms, dug under my rag pillow, and drew out a scallop-shell-engraved baton. “This was my mother’s. I want it to protect you when you—” I cut off. I was crying too hard to breathe.
Zega snatched the baton and squeezed my shoulder. His brown curls flopped over his face. I wanted to touch them. I didn’t dare move, for fear the moment would turn to smoke around us. “I won’t give you up because of Najadziri’s mistake.”
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “I understand. She’s your wife. This is how it works.”
“This isn’t how it works for every man.” He cupped my chin in his hands. Fingers tight on the rough scraps of my beard. “And I’m not like every man. Be brave for me, Koré, and I’ll be bloody for you.”
In a bright flash of motion, he vanished up the hall.
Vashathke’s coronation parade took days climbing Victory Street. Rarafashi crowned her husband on the Palace steps; his speech never alluded to the fact he was the fourth male magistrate in War’s history. While the family and high servants watched, I mended raptor harnesses and chewed my lip bloody.
But when music rose from the corridor outside, I couldn’t stay hidden. Mine was the life he’d created and shattered to reach this day. I crept out to join his moment, which I also belonged to.
The trumpets and drums played soft Warmwater jazz. Lilies poured off the magistrate’s reja. A canopy of white feathers shaded him, rising about his platinum lace spire crown.
I pushed, past servants and other watching dulls, to the front of the crowd. The new magistrate’s eyes drew me: a scarlet as shocking as the gems of his crown. My eyes.
His gaze flickered past me. Washing by. Not for a heartbeat did he stop to see his son.
In his wake, cheering spectators drifted back to their lives. I remained, alone, among petals and broken plumes.
He’s getting away with it. Vashathke had destroyed my mother and countless others. His evil would steal Zega from my side. He’d rule in luxury while I dwelt loveless in shadows. Knowledge, unwanted and aching, coiled through my bones: I was powerless to expose and punish him. He’d won the game between us.
He’d already ground me down to nothing.
No. Revelation unfurled in me, a flower stretching toward the sun. He hasn’t won yet. Twice he’d tried to destroy me. I still lived.
I didn’t have to stay dull. I didn’t have to stay in the Kzagé Hotel, especially with Zega leaving. I could brighten. Move forward. Fight for my mother, my family, and my love. For myself. Myself. A word beautiful and taboo. I have a self. I can choose things for me. My soul, guilty and blood-soaked, reached to me like a firefighter’s hand through smoke. I will bring my father down. I will do the justice the law denies. And I will do it because I want it done.
Instead of afternoon chores, I ran to Zega’s suite.
“Koré!” He lowered his book as I burst through the entry curtains, sliding off his bed, still dressed for the parade. “I have good news—”
“I need my essence back.” I slid through the maze of moving boxes and took his hands, alive with the anger inside me. “I’ll punish Vashathke for what he’s done to us. I’ll stop him from becoming judge. But I can only do it bright.”
“Vashathke isn’t your concern. You don’t need essence. You have me to take care of you.” He kissed my cheek. “Smile, lay down, and let me talk.”
He couldn’t care for me from across the world. I needed this gift. Couldn’t he see this wasn’t about us as a couple, but me as a person?
A soft scraping irritation whittled itself from the burning scraps of me. “I listen when you talk about your dreams. Now I’ve a dream. I need power to claim it.” I tried pulling on a flirtatious smile. Would it work from a dull face? “I know I’m bad in bed. But could you please tithe me a little essence?”
“You don’t need your essence back. It’s all taken care of. I spoke to Vashathke at the coronation banquet. I told him I’d discovered his plot, and we made a deal. I’ll keep Najadziri from bragging about bedding him. I’ll bring her to him when she’s ready to give birth. When he’s finished with her, he’ll make me the captain of his personal guard. I’ll stay in the Palace. I’ll be free of her. Free for you.”
“You’ll kill her,” I said softly.
“I’ll escape her. For you.”
“For me?” My voice grew cold. “What if I asked for essence, not because I needed it, but because I also wanted to shine. For me. Would you do that for me?”
“Don’t give me that line. If I’m to enter Vashathke’s inner circle, I’ll need every drop I can get. I’m not of Dzaxashigé blood. I can’t let them look at me and see an imposter.”
“But you’ll let them look at me and see a dull they can hurt without consequence?” My voice rose, loosened by the shift in my world. I wanted something. I’d chosen a path because I wanted to choose it, because there was joy in the act of choosing. If he loved me, wouldn’t he be glad for my happiness? “I didn’t ask you to become a monster for me. Only to help me have a life of my own. Are you doing this all for me, Zega, or for you?”
“Stop being so selfish. Do you want my wife to hurt me?” A whine crept into his voice. A sound a child might make when snatching up their favorite toy. “You shouldn’t deny me. You’re part of me.”
“I’m my own. I love you, but I’m my own, and I’m asking for my essence.”
“And I’m saying no.” His blue eyes—lovely as the noon sky, shining with the light he’d taken from me—went flat and cold. “You can’t have your baton back either. So don’t ask.”
A soul can die in a moment. It doesn’t make a sound. The world doesn’t dim as it dwindles. And War doesn’t notice its passing. It skips over the dull men with empty eyes.
This is what love is worth. Love that tales and movies praise, love like devouring fire. Four years I’d given Zega. Every secret of my past, every forbidden longing. My beauty, dreams and strength—I hadn’t wanted what I’d surrendered, but I’d needed it to survive. Zega had known that. He’d manipulated me to take it. He’d loved me, but he hadn’t cared.
So I didn’t care when I went to Najadziri’s hotel room.
