Chapter XVII Half a Soul
XVII
Half a Soul
The great hall had no dais upon which the bride and bridegroom could kneel and be raised above their gathered guests.
Rather, on either side of the aisle, there were four square depressions in the stone, like garden plots, and several pews within them.
Eight plots in total, for each of the seven houses, and one at the front for the royal family and its attendants.
Arranged within their distinct depressions, every house made a showing, except for one.
There was Hartwig of the House of Lungs, a handsome man who dressed in brocade of garish colors, his cloak, showing each shade of the rainbow, fanned out behind and beside him, filling every seat in his plot.
The hair on his head was gray, but there was gold in his mouth: a grille that latticed his white-toothed smile.
There was a ruby in each ear, and it was said that his most delicate part had also been pierced and studded with gems, but Agnes was not given to know if this was true.
There was Amycus, Master of Bones, who was of such slight stature that his seat had to be padded so that he could watch the ceremony.
Evidently his attendants had anticipated this problem and brought with them a number of fatly stuffed silken pillows.
Perched upon them, black hair combed flat, his face round and uncannily free of the furrows and blotches of age, he had a doll-like prettiness and looked closer to a child than a man.
However, his age showed in the way his voice had withered to no more than a croaking whisper, and so he muttered into the ear of the raven that sat ever-presently upon his shoulder.
The raven, a clever creature, then squawked out its master’s words.
The House of Hearts made the fairest showing, Lord Rabanus and his wife both wearing vestments of rosy pink.
They sat shoulder-to-shoulder, occasionally dipping their heads to whisper to each other.
They had been wed for longer than Agnes had been alive and the lady had given her lord four children, but the coy smiles they exchanged were those of a courting couple, fresh and flushing in their love.
Love? A marriage for love was rarer than an ivory tusk.
The Master of Flesh, Vauquelin, did not himself appear, but he avoided terribly offending etiquette by sending his most valuable son in his stead.
His heir had also arrived bearing the most generous of wedding gifts, two creaky chests bursting with gold.
This had pleased King Nicephorus enormously, and Agnes suspected he would indeed have been happier to see the pews filled with piles of gold rather than human guests.
The House of Eyes had the plot behind the king.
Thrasamund was leaning forward, his words moistening the skin below the king’s ear.
To Agnes’s surprise, Nicephorus appeared to be listening quite intently, nodding every now and then, even occasionally deigning to grumble back.
Agnes could not imagine what Thrasamund could be saying to evoke such enthusiasm, other than oily flattery.
Was this a particular defect in Nicephorus, or was there something about the condition of being king that made one vulnerable to the world’s toadies?
His power has grown as soft as his flesh, Adele-Blanche had said.
Across the aisle was the empty plot where her grandmother would have sat.
The effect of seeing it, utterly devoid of life, was more poignant than Agnes had expected.
As she hefted the enormous train down the aisle, trying to match Marozia’s measured steps, she was looking toward that empty plot rather than the bridegroom and the Exarch ahead.
It made her realize, truly, the fruitfulness of the laws imposed by Seraph to conquer death.
The desecration left not even a shallow grave behind, an absence that could still impose itself upon the world.
In the otherworldly theater behind Agnes’s eyelids, a ghost flowered up.
She wore all black, with a netted veil that hid her face, but the end of the white braid, like a boar-bristle brush, peeked out from beneath the macabre attire.
Adele-Blanche’s pale impression turned, raised one crooked hand, and beckoned Agnes to her side.
Marozia settled herself before the Exarch, throwing back her shoulders beneath the avian adornments.
Agnes let the train drop, golden cloth spilling from her hands like honey wine.
The eyes of aristocrats were upon her. She had to remove herself from their line of sight, but where?
On one side, her grandmother’s ghost floated fractions of an inch above the stone bench.
On the other, Nicephorus the Sluggard regarded her with his limpid, unreadable eyes.
Their power crushed her in, like an insect between clumsy hands. The force of life and the force of death. In the end, it was Marozia who made the choice for her, turning around and hissing between clenched teeth, “Go on. Sit beside the king.”
So Agnes did. Adele-Blanche’s ghost withered into empty air. Agnes wondered if she was the only one of the wedding’s attendees who understood the significance of this: Finally, the better part of a century after Berengar’s conquest, the House of Teeth had been anatomized.
But this epiphany did not rest upon Agnes for long; the gravity of the impending ceremony stole away its force. Instead, her gaze was drawn upward, toward Marozia, the Exarch—and Liuprand.
Liuprand wore a doublet of white, braided through with gold, and gilded epaulets that fixed a white cape to his shoulders.
Next to Marozia’s marvelous dress, it was not an especially grand outfit, but his very presence was so luminous that standing beside each other they looked like two winking stars, part of their own private constellation.
It flooded her again, that noxious, treasonous feeling.
When Agnes swallowed, she tasted its bile.
And when she could no longer bear to look, she lowered her gaze to her own hands, fisted in her skirts, and the pearl ring that gleamed softly among the folds of pale fabric.
Still she could not figure out its significance.
It was not gaudy enough for anyone else to notice; the mystery was hers alone to contend with.
He had not managed to wrest speech from her, but if Liuprand had intended to invade her mind, he had succeeded.
Agnes lifted her head again when the Exarch began to speak. He was a small, hunched man with eyes that resembled two spills of sour milk, and his voice was, shockingly, full of hate.
“In Seraph, it is believed that God divides every soul in two, and upon birth, each of his vessels is gifted with half a soul. With only half a soul, one lives half a life, and spends all one’s days seeking one’s matched half.
One searches in sleeping, in waking, and especially in dreaming.
Once one’s search has ended and the two souls have been joined, nothing may keep them apart.
It is more binding than any treaty, more supreme than any law; it exceeds any power that might be exercised in the mortal world.
If ever this bond is threatened, there is no limit to the violence one may enact to restore it, and if ever it is severed, there is no end to the brutality one might wreak as vengeance.
This is God’s holiest promise: In death, these souls will be united forever and ever as one. ”
The royal plot was situated behind Marozia, and Agnes could not see her face.
But she watched Liuprand closely. All through this oration, his expression did not shift.
He did not look at Marozia; rather, he kept his eyes on the Exarch, his jaw set in a nervy way, some private rancor filling the air between him and the priest.
“They keep up this farce, you know. In Seraph.”
Agnes whipped her head around. King Nicephorus had leaned over, his lips mere inches from her ear.
“This soul nonsense,” he went on in a gruff whisper.
“Here on Drepane, they are just words…but in Seraph, they are as real as the food that fills your mouth. There is a rite—one man may duel another to the death if he feels this bond threatened. It is the law above the law. A law of God, superseding the law of man.”
Agnes tried to shift away from him as he spoke; he was so close to her ear that she felt the muggy warmth of his breath. But already she was near the end of the pew.
“What a relief it is to live on this godless island,” Nicephorus said, “where marriage is only ink and paper, and all the rest is fucking.”
And then his hand was on her thigh, crumpling the fabric of her dress. His fingers were enormous, swollen between the rings that had been jammed on painfully, the tips so pink they were like boils ready to burst.
Agnes could not move; she dared not even draw breath.
Encouraged by her lack of protest, Nicephorus moved his hand higher, fingers scrabbling in the silk to keep his grip tight.
In this, he hardly seemed sluggardly at all—as Liuprand and Marozia spoke their vows and knelt for the Exarch’s blessing, the king worked himself over in the pews, one hand fondling Agnes’s thigh.
“Bleeding traitors,” Nicephorus panted as he rubbed himself fiercely. “He should be named Master of Stabbed Backs.”
With his chin, the king gestured over Agnes’s shoulder.
She turned, the nape of her neck still damp with the king’s breath.
It was only then that she realized the plot of the House of Blood was empty.
All that occupied it was a wedding gift: a single bottle of wine, set upright on the pew, like an accusatory finger jabbed at the obstructed sky.