Chapter 14 – Sacred Plantings
The sacred bulls of Sachar Veche were well-known throughout the world.
Admittedly, the connection between bulls and the Sachar Vechan sun deity eluded most outsiders, but it made sense enough to the people there.
The sacred bulls lived lives of pampered luxury, fed only in the greenest pastures, the freshest hay, and—so it was said—water hauled from the spring of some associated demigod.
Their horns and hooves were capped with gold and crusted with jewels, and multiple times per year, they were brought forth to breed before cheering crowds during the many fertility rituals.
When they were too old for breeding, they retired to a golden pen in a golden stable to live out the rest of their lives. When they were too old to stand, they were strapped upright in huge, jeweled harnesses, to dangle until they died. It was a terrible omen if a sacred bull fell over.
Emperor Bastin Agnephus had always felt a curious kinship with these revered beasts.
Five years after his forced marriage to Esmene of House Melun, he had found a little peace.
It was the peace of work. The peace of having a plan, a goal, an objective toward which he was patiently plodding.
He could not say he was pleased with his life, not as long as that Melun woman still dwelled in Starfall, but there was some consolation in knowing it would not be forever.
The greater part of his plans involved extracting her from him like a rotten tooth.
But that was not the extent of his ambitions. Esmene was a symptom of a far greater problem, and his divorce was only the first step in ensuring that the House of Agnephus would never again be forced to sell its children.
“Wealth, power, and influence,” said Laud Ereguil, ticking them off on his fingers. With two young sons at home, Duke Ereguil would have preferred to stay in Rospalme, but had come to Segoile at his Emperor’s request. “My father always said they are not the same thing. Overlapping, but distinct.”
“All of the things that the House of Agnephus is lacking,” Bastin said sourly, waving away a servant as he topped off his own wineglass.
It took just as long to tell them to do it as to do it himself.
“But the first is currently the most ruinous. It seems unreasonable that the Court of Nobility might vote us into wars which the House of Agnephus must pay for, and then the Five Courts can reject any efforts to refill the Imperial coffers.”
“The Imperial Museum wasn’t a bad idea,” Laud offered.
That had been the brainstorm of one of Bastin’s secretaries, and they had been wrangling over the benefits of the proposal ever since.
“Power and influence may spring from such unlikely places. Displaying the treasures of the Emperor makes you appear benevolent and powerful, and the common folk of the capital would enjoy it. Better than letting it all sit in a vault.”
“Why not, when I am forbidden to sell it,” Bastin replied ungraciously. It had been a frustrating week.
“You might even enlist the Temple to guard them,” Laud added. “Theft from the Emperor is blasphemy.”
“Oh, they’re the worst thieves of all.” Bastin waved a hand. “They’ve taken to leasing their lands to local lords, so they can avoid paying taxes on its produce. Had I sufficient power or influence, I would use it to charge my Temple with cheating me of my wealth.”
“That’s a problem,” Laud acknowledged, with a glint of humor. No one lacked as much reverence for the Emperor as the Emperor himself. “But it might be you could use one problem to solve another. Even if the local lords are using the land, it’s still consecrated to you, isn’t it?”
“Yes…” Bastin brightened. “Making all its produce holy.”
“Which means all those sheep grazing your sacred land make sacred wool, sacred yarn, sacred cloth, and sacred lambs.” Laud slapped the arm of his chair, chortling.
“All of which must be handled with due ritual and piety by everyone from the spinner to the dyer to the weaver, then sold at an inflated price to a merchant—”
“—who must warehouse it separately from his common merchandise,” Bastin laughed. It would be ruinously expensive for all of them. “I don’t suppose anyone wants to start unraveling that string, do they?”
“Your Temple least of all,” agreed Laud, rubbing his hands together.
These were a little different than the games they had played when they were boys, but they enjoyed them nonetheless, and the two men sat up late into the night untangling this one.
Or more accurately, tying it into a more thorough knot to hang the lot of them.
There were so many ways in which his Agnephus ancestry was a double-edged sword.
Everyone in the Empire knew that there must be an Agnephus in Starfall.
Bastin’s sanctity was the sanctity of the realm.
In all the world, Ospret Far-Eyes had chosen this place to come and bestow his blessing and reveal his visions.
There was a strangely selective reverence for his descendants. Bastin was sacred in his body, in his blood, in his life. In many ways, he was like a chalice: an object of worship unmoored from the mundane world.
They were very careful of his safety. From the moment of his birth, he was protected.
He had been assigned his first personal guard when he learned to walk; when he learned to run, he got two.
Tasters sampled everything he ate. His chamberlain protected the sanctity of his personal chambers.
He had three clerics that did nothing but cycle through his private chapel in eight-hour shifts, filling every moment of every day with prayers for the safety of the Sacred Radiance, the Divinity, Beloved of Stars.
His person was sacrosanct. His opinions and will, however, were decidedly not.
It was something Bastin struggled to reconcile.
The history of the House of Agnephus was filled with many divine puppets and few assassinations.
No one needed to harm him if he could be kept weak.
It would be the work of his life to cut away those strings.
He would see that the House of Agnephus collected its due, that it grew influence in all the Five Courts, and by…
himself, he would bring his Temple to heel.
Otherwise, he might as well be one of those sacred bulls of Sachar Veche, groomed and grown to hump-backed glory, to breed and die in a golden pen.
But though Bastin had little reverence for his own divinity, he never dreamed that anyone else would dare to disregard it.
“Set it on the table,” he said one night to a servant who brought in a tray of wine and pastries, an evening snack.
Bastin did not entrust the running of his empire to secretaries.
He had dozens of reports to read with due skepticism, and most nights he worked well past midnight.
Pouring a glass of wine, he bit into one of the pastries, warm with apple and cinnamon.
Time passed. The level of wine in the bottle slowly fell, and after a little while, it seemed that he grew tired. Bastin blinked as the words on the page blurred and fumbled for his cup. His mouth was so dry.
“Husband.”
The word seemed to come from very far away. Bastin started, staggering to his feet as the Empress slipped through the doors of his chamber. How had she gotten there? Who had let her in? He had given strict orders…
“What…” he tried to say, and she moved quickly to support him as he stumbled backward and nearly fell. His knees kept buckling under him. “How—guards!”
“Oh, dear, are you unwell?” Esmene’s voice filled with concern as she helped him to his bed.
Everything was wavering and rippling around him, and by the time he realized where he was, she was already pushing him down on the bed.
Her hand caught his chin, forcing him to look up at her. “Are you dizzy?”
“…esss…poison…” he slurred. Colors streaked past his eyes, and he squeezed them shut, nauseated. “Call…my guards…”
“No. I don’t think I will,” she said serenely, and he felt her hands as if through a muffling layer of thick velvet, tugging him, touching him. Bewildered though he was, he still recognized Esmene Melun. She was not allowed to touch him. He did not want her to touch him. She should never touch him.
“St…stop.” His tongue felt thick in his mouth, his arms wooden as he tried to shove her away. She batted his hands aside as if he were a child.
“My, it does work on you,” she laughed, and he realized with horror that she had undone his belt and was unlacing his breeches. His eyes reeled up to her face, dizzy and disbelieving. The stars would see this. His eyes were the eyes of the stars.
“You…drugged me?” he whispered, trying to focus on her face. The motion of her silver hair blurred and streaked before his eyes, as if to conceal this terrible reality from him.
“Yes,” she said, and, grasping his jaw, poured something into his mouth.
His memory of that night would always be confused.
Whatever she had given him, it made it impossible to tell whether an hour had passed or a year, as if there had never been anything but this sickening whirl of fury and helplessness and unwanted pleasure.
Again and again, she brought him to orgasm, and it seemed he had barely sunk into a drugged stupor before she was shaking him awake to pour more of that vile concoction down his throat.
He choked. He tried to spit it out, but she fed it to him with her own lips, sealing his mouth so he had no choice but to swallow.
Was there an aphrodisiac? There must be, he had never wanted anything less.
But he couldn’t stop his body from rising, thrusting away like one of the sacred breeding bulls of Sachar Veche even as hot tears streaked down his cheeks.
There was a roaring in his ears like the screaming of a crowd, cheering, cheering…
He could not even control his tears.