Chapter 37
Finally, Rincun.
Five days on the road, rotating through their drivers so that there was no pause. Five days, the window to the carriage caked with dirt because they passed rural dwellers who decided to hurl mud patties at the traveling noble from San-Er.
Venus was surprised when they rode into West Capital and found it in good shape.
The province is quiet. The rain doesn’t fall at the same intensity as it does in San-Er, but when it comes down, it’s sleet scattering in front of the horses.
The freeze has lifted off Rincun, yet its residue clings to the cracked roads, the frost on the village houses.
Venus and her attendants did not stop at the yamen first. She was told she needed to act in a way that seemed separate from Calla Tuoleimi’s war, so the carriage proceeded ahead, into the borderlands first. Their drivers stayed parked at the base of the mountains.
Venus, with five palace girls, started her climb.
The path has started to level out. The terrain hums faintly, but when Venus tries to pinpoint where exactly it’s coming from, she fails to trace it.
Through all the time she has spent sitting in the carriage, she has considered whether this might be a joint effort by Calla and the Crescents to get rid of her.
Some ritualistic execution. A quick death is too kind for the lineage she comes from.
She needs to be lured into the borderlands and torn apart by wild animals hiding in the snow.
Surely Calla would not do that to her. She is not kind, but she is practical.
Venus tugs her jacket tighter. She wishes she were dressed more warmly.
Snow has soaked into her shoes. Snow sticks to the edges of her trousers.
She can’t get the incessant humming out of her ears.
At one point in time, the kingdom believed that the borderlands granted entry into the heavenly plane.
This was where all the old gods went when they disappeared from the mortal world.
“There’s the next flag,” one of her attendants calls. The path up to the palace in the mountains has been marked indeed. It is easy to follow the small yellow flags planted in the ground.
It wasn’t long up the incline before they started to encounter the bodies too.
Blue and half-buried in the snow, shoved off to the side to keep the path clear, and to remind them that they were proceeding in the correct direction.
There were many casualties during Rincun’s freeze. During the search for the divine crown.
They veer to the right, following the path as it bends.
The better part of an hour passes in the cold.
Huffing, puffing, staying in single file to avoid skidding on the gravel.
At a certain point, Venus finds herself frowning, reaching out to cup some snow off the side of the mountain.
Why is it so clean on the path? Nobody uses this passage up to the abandoned palace.
The villagers in Rincun are afraid of the mountains.
Where is the buildup, then? Where are the dirty layers that have packed one atop the other with each bout of snowfall?
“Councilmember,” an attendant huffs behind her, “shouldn’t we be there already?”
“I don’t know,” Venus says.
She keeps shuffling forward. She doesn’t have a choice in the matter. She isn’t welcome in San-Er; she isn’t welcome in Rincun.
Venus doesn’t see the gate when it appears to the left. One of her attendants has to get her attention, yelling, “Look!”
They all halt on the path, turning. The slope teeters lower, leveling into a short ditch before rising again to show a plain wooden arch. It’s sovereign ground, inscribed with archaic Talinese characters that Venus cannot read.
Beyond it: the stacks of bodies.
There’s a gasp from one of the attendants.
The rest of them keep their composure. Venus knows it’s rude that she hasn’t learned any of their names across the journey.
But each time she considers making conversation she remembers the overturned carriage when it pushed into San-Er.
She sees the cavity blown into Councilmember Rehanou’s chest.
The mountains are dead quiet as Venus leads the charge, pushing the back of her hand into her nose to hide her disgust. Her legs sink knee-deep into the snow.
It is no longer the occasional corpse appearing along their path, but hundreds of them, piled before the palace to form a semicircle, disappearing on either side of the perimeter.
There is no avoiding it. In order to approach the palace, Venus wades right up to the bodies and, wincing, picks her way between two of them.
“Come on,” she calls. “I’ve cleared the way.”
The appearance of the palace worsens the humming in her ears.
The mountains alone offered a light ambient sound, but as Venus nears the plain white turrets, it heightens to a sharp peal.
When she climbs the steps toward the entrance, she walks as though in a dream, barely perceiving her attendants rushing by, pushing into the vestibule and getting started.
They carry burlap sacks and oversized bags.
Ready to pluck offerings.
Venus clamps her hands over her ears. The palace is eerily empty—she isn’t sure what they’re going to retrieve, what might qualify as valuable for the yamen so the officials in Rincun buy their excuse. Murals on the walls can’t come off; the icy stone floors will not be easily destroyed.
“I’m stepping out,” Venus calls. “I’ll have a look around the perimeter.”
None of her attendants respond. Or maybe they do. Maybe she can’t hear it over this horrible whining.
She feels that first thump in her chest, and Venus scrambles to exit the threshold of the palace.
A gag presses at the back of her throat.
Distance from the palace doesn’t help—the putrid stench of its qi follows her out.
While Venus walks the perimeter, keeping deep, even breaths, the feeling clings to her shoulders. Her eyes feel hot.
Glass fragments. She peers up, finding a broken window. She calls, “Hello?” and one of her attendants leans out from the open sill.
“I’m searching the throne room, Councilmember!” she reports.
“All right,” Venus replies. “Continue.”
The attendant disappears. Beyond the back of the palace, it is a blanket of white. Dips and valleys, as far as Venus’s eye can see.
She turns. The whining changes pitch. She shouts in frustration, and a pulse beats from her chest—a flare of light, a quick snap that could be brushed away as merely a thunderstorm in the distance.
The sound goes away. Overhead, the attendant calls from the throne room, “Councilmember, is everything all right?” but Venus’s attention has moved on.
There’s something tucked in the slopes behind the palace. A dark roof, peeking just into view from where she stands.
“Keep collecting!” Venus calls up. “I’m going to have a look over there.”
She’s moving quickly, wading through the snow with new vigor.
The roof is farther than she had thought, the mountains warping her gauge on proximity.
Venus is out of breath by the time she’s gingerly sliding against the slope to get closer to her discovery.
Beneath the cover of snow, its eaves and walls are a shade of deep red.
It’s a temple.
“Hey!” she yells. Her voice booms across the mountain, echoing to the open windows of the palace. “Bring your bags here once you’re done!”
The temple is derelict. Its decorative edges have rotted, the corners collapsed or missing. Venus approaches the door, scanning for a good place to open it, but there is no handle. Carefully, she slots her fingers against its side. She tugs.
Nothing moves. She tries again. The hinges creak, offering a small opening before the door gets stuck again.
It isn’t enough for Venus to squeeze through.
She pulls hard. Once. Twice. Bit by bit, the door scrapes black lines into the frozen ground, and then Venus finally pushes herself into the temple.
She breathes out. Rubs her hands along her arms, trying to soothe the goose bumps rising underneath her sleeves.
The temple interior resembles those that still remain in San-Er. Artwork of the pantheon decorates the ceiling. Despite the clouds, enough gloomy daylight streams through the small vents at the top of the temple to offer illumination.
Venus inches forward, inspecting the shrines that line the walls. Their incense sticks have long crusted over, the sand pots stiffened with time. Surprisingly, the figurines of each respective immortal appear undamaged. The ceramic stays sturdy. The paint has held.
Venus keeps walking. She pays every shrine an equal amount of attention, almost afraid of the consequences if she happens to neglect one.
Many appear human. But many do not. The old gods often took the appearance of animals when they came down to earth.
Venus’s education didn’t cover the kingdom’s former religiosity in explicit detail, but there would be sporadic references in their textbooks and stories.
Gods with snouts, gods with wings, gods who had two crow feet, perching on the moon.
One of the figurines even resembles a plant more than anything else.
Venus turns her attention to the front. Up ahead, the largest shrine is dedicated to the temple’s patron god. Its primary object of worship. At the center of the shrine, there stands a small humanoid figurine. A young, androgynous god—black hair cropped at the waist, eyes blindfolded.
“Councilmember?” someone calls outside.
“In here!” Venus replies.
There’s a prayer mat at the feet of the young god. It’s worn enough to bear markings, two darker indents where someone must have frequently kneeled.
Wind blows in through the open door, flapping the prayer mat at one of its corners. Outside, she hears once more, “Councilmember, where did you go?”
“Right here,” Venus replies. “Follow my voice.”
She crouches down, brushing the prayer mat lightly. When the wind lifted it, she thought she had seen…