17. 16
On my walk through the streets of Dytho back to the Eclipse, I took a left, winding through to the House of Love. My favourite square in the whole city.
I regretted not taking the gold.
I had to apologise to Ekris, though I wasn’t fully sure why. I shook my head as I weaved back to the House of Love. I hoped I could let him know that none of my thoughts had hampered my need for him. I was still pure, and I would still find my way back to him.
Without him, the city was nothing but thousands of strangers.
Without him, I had no skills, no purpose, and no friends.
Without him, I might as well have been fourteen again, my dusty boots swinging over the edge of a hay cart, riding towards a completely unknown and unprotected future.
Without him, I was back in my father’s house while he yelled about how worthless I was.
I doubted Talia would permit me to enter Ekris’ chamber again, or kneel at his altar, but there was at least a chance.
I whispered my prayers to him as I neared the square, hoping he might bestow a breath in my direction, or a cool caress.
I hadn’t spent long at the House of Pain, and it was only just past noon.
The sun beat down on my cloak, but I dared not take it off.
My skin was frail enough to the sun without exposing myself anymore, even if it was stifling beneath it.
The square was uncommonly busy.
Outside of festival days, the square would often be close to empty.
We would have those in prayer—two lovers might sit by the fountain's edge and flip a copper over their shoulder, knowing Ekris’ closeness and hoping for his blessing of virility—but it wasn’t a bustling space.
The agora was a good distance from any Pantheon House right on the harbour, and most of the footfall through Ekris’ square was people returning to their homestead from the agora or the amphitheatre.
Now, there were over a dozen people. Civilians, not devotees, staring at the House of Ekris.
Stranger, still, the door was open.
The front door of the House of Ekris, opened only to devotees and its paying patrons, lay open to the city. The sun bathed the tiles inside, showing a glimpse into a world that was not meant to be seen. I grimaced, looking at the group of people staring as if they were staring into my own bedroom.
Something was wrong.
I hurried to the throng, knowing my clothing and look gave away no indication of my being Ekrissian. Not that I was.
A woman watched my House with undisguised interest.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
She glanced at me, then back to the source of her intrigue. “The sunners found a body this morning. They just brought it in there.”
My veins ran cold. “A body?”
She nodded. “In the canal.”
Blood rushed in my ears. The sunners had found a dead body in the water. Why would they bring it to the House of Love? I knew the answer, but I didn’t let it sink in—I couldn’t—even as the woman beside me put her voice to it.
“It must be one of Ekris’ whores.” The woman sucked her teeth.
In a daze, I stepped forwards. Slowly, shuffling, as if still asleep. Then faster, until I was running up the steps of the House.
I ran inside the open door. Across the marble parquet, I saw two figures with their heads bowed, turning to look at me.
I turned instead to prevent this spectacle, and its dishonour on my House.
I held the heavy weight of the huge door and shoved, my breath coming fast as I pushed it until it sank into its frame.
The air winked out several candles melting on a nearby plinth.
Boots hit the stone floor behind me and a hand came down on my shoulder. “You can’t be—”
I spun on my heel to find Ben glaring down at me. I couldn’t even summon a single word.
He blinked as he recognised me, losing the harsh look. “Annie. What are you doing here?”
“Who is it?” I whispered.
I saw now that he had been crying, his eyes red-rimmed. He shook his head. “Annie.”
I jutted my chin. “Who died?”
Ben paused, and as he did, the second figure appeared behind him. Shorter and smaller in stature but many times more terrifying.
She pursed her lips. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“I know, Talia,” I said, the dread thickening the walls of my throat. “Please.”
Talia swept her keen dark eyes over me. My Leader for many years; the only person who could command me other than Ekris himself.
There were no tears in her eyes. But I knew her, and I could tell she was shaken; the vein in her forehead was more pronounced and she pulled her mouth closed as if she were eating something sour, or holding something back.
Then she nodded, and sighed. “It’s Jusia.”
I fell to my knees. The cold of the tiles sank into my bones.
It’s Jusia.
I had seen her only days ago. Our meeting had been awkward, by her admittance of seeing Robar, but I could not fathom she was anything but alive. She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t be.
Talia put her hand on my shoulder.
I looked up at her. “Can I see her?”
She grimaced. “I don’t think you want to.”
“I have to.”
Talia stared at me, and I was certain she would cast me straight back outside.
To my surprise she squeezed my shoulder. “Come with me. Quickly now.”
Then she marched down the corridor, her polished leather boots shining as they clattered across the stone. I scrambled to my feet, knowing this woman hated tardiness more than most human conditions, perhaps even death.
She led us to the kitchen, which surprised me until I realised that I had no idea where I would store a body, had one just appeared at my door step. A body. Gods, it was too awful to even think about. Jusia couldn’t ever just be a body.
The kitchen staff were long gone, and the room was much quieter for it. The door further along the left-hand wall to the cold room lay open, propped by a bag of flour. It was never open, and I concluded that was our destination. The cold room. I shuddered.
The only person in the room, a sunner, leant against the table. When Talia entered, he straightened. “Who is this?”
“Family of the deceased,” Talia said, her tone impossible to argue with. “Give her five minutes.”
The sunner looked at me, then back to Talia.
“We have some questions for you, Leader,” the sunner said. He was older than the one I’d spoken to a week ago. Forty, at a guess. He looked excited. Not every day… I shook my head. I couldn’t complete the thought. Not now.
Talia nodded as she passed him, barely pausing. “Yes, I imagine you do.”
He held his hat in his hands, trying to look stern but clearly wrong-footed by the situation, or the place he found himself in. “Will you come with us to the prison?”
I followed her as she tutted over her shoulder, striding for the cold room. “Certainly not. Imagine the scene that will create.”
“But our orders—”
Talia raised two fingers, and he fell quiet. “You and your colleague can follow me to my office in ten minutes.”
She reached the doorway and turned, gesturing for me to go in. She herself didn’t step inside. Whatever view she had already had of Jusia, it was enough. My legs were heavy as I approached the door. Part of me hoped it wasn’t her. That everyone was wrong.
But it would be, I knew it would be. Talia had seen us in every state; she had seen enough of us to identify us by a thigh alone.
I walked in.
Another sunner stood against the shelves, looking faintly green.
I wasn’t hit with any sensation of coldness in the air, but my face drained of colour regardless.
The pile of moon-white flesh sat on a table at the back of the room.
At its foot and under its surface, all its usual holdings of salt, meat, fish, and more, sat in bags and barrels and trays.
My nose wrinkled at the horrible combination of the smells of a slaughterhouse and the sight of a friend.
She lay with her face to the ceiling, and I realised I had never even looked at the ceiling in this room, and now it was all she could see. There was a small crack in the corner.
Her skin was always as pale as anything, but now, in the starkness of her presentation, it looked luminescent. She was entirely naked. Her hair was not dry at the roots. These were all of the statements I made to myself, categorising the normal and the neutral. The things that I could believe.
The rest I only saw, and couldn’t think more on: the bloating of her skin, the bruising and cuts around her ankles, her blue lips, and the wide and endless stare in those golden eyes.
It was her. I knew it would be.
I stood still in the doorway. Seconds had passed only, and yet I looked back at Talia, ready to flee already. But I had to know something. “Did she do this to herself? To join with him?”
When an Ekrissian died, their souls joined his eternal harem in the Ten, at his side to give pleasure to him and the other Gods forever more.
It wasn’t unheard of for devotees of Ekris to hurry along that process.
In fact, it was quite rare for an Ekrissian to live past forty.
Whatever the truth of it, we all knew that our souls would be younger, our bodies more virile and better to serve, were we younger at the point of immersing ourselves in his court.
But I hadn’t heard Jusia talk this way yet. I couldn’t fathom she would have drowned herself. That was the House of the Sea’s way, not ours. If we had a way, it was poison.
Talia shook her head, and the small hope that at least this had been her choice, crumbled into increasing horror.
Only now, only in this moment, did I first reflect on the connection. Another devotee. Another woman. Was this the same person who had taken Seera and Saskia?
My former Leader’s face was locked in a cold expression. “You should look at her back.” She gestured with a swirling finger to the sunner in the room. “Flip her.”
“Is that wise, Leader?” he replied, at the same time as I whispered:
“Her back?”