Chapter 45 Sheuan
Sheuan
Langzu – inner Bian
During Ayaz and Barexi’s infamous disagreement over the mortals they were curating, Ayaz could have killed Barexi when he crept into his room at night.
Only a god can kill another god, if they do so with intention.
But Ayaz, when he made those thousand cuts and scattered the pieces of Barexi’s body, only intended to teach him a lesson.
Given the fact that the first thing Barexi did upon reassembling himself was to interrupt Ayaz’s plans within the Aqqilan Empire by assisting a doctor in finding a cure for the nettlepox plague, the lesson Barexi was left with may not have been the one Ayaz intended.
It did not escape Sheuan that if the Sovereign hadn’t found her, she’d be in a plain outfit in inner Bian, able to move through and around the rioters without drawing their attention. And now here she was, trapped in the middle of a bevy of the Sovereign’s special enforcers, very clearly a target.
The Sovereign seized the arm of the nearest enforcer, a woman with broad shoulders and close-clipped black hair. “We need to clear a path.”
She hesitated, her gaze darting to Sheuan. “Sovereign, we don’t have—”
“Never mind that. Do as I’ve asked.”
The woman’s lip firmed up and she nodded, her hand dipping into a pouch at her side. She lifted something to her mouth. A faint glow, and then it was gone. She’d swallowed it.
Sheuan observed all this, absolutely mystified.
The enforcer strode toward the rioters at the mouth of the alley as the other enforcers shifted, focusing on the flanking group.
One against all those men and women? Sheuan counted four, probably one or two more behind them. It was hard to see in the dark and over the Sovereign’s shoulder.
An odd-smelling breeze brushed past Sheuan’s ear.
She caught a faint whiff of ink, of star anise.
And then something happened to the woman.
The blue of her jacketed arms was encased in darkness.
It happened so quickly that Sheuan couldn’t be sure exactly what was occurring.
One moment the woman moved toward the rioters, pulling her sword free.
In the next, she was casting them aside as though they were wooden puppets.
Each stroke of her sword sent a rioter flying back.
One, two, three, four, five. They barely had time to react or regroup.
If they’d put up a fight at all, Sheuan hadn’t seen it.
So it seemed the magic the Sovereign used to pull information from others wasn’t the only magic he possessed.
She’d heard the hesitation – was this just not a magic he used that often? Was it too obvious? Too scarce?
But then the way was clear, and the enforcers behind them carried them on, one of them gripping Sheuan’s upper arm.
The streets beyond were a haze of panic; she couldn’t tell who was running from something and who was running toward something.
The faint light of a fire limned the rooftops to the west.
“This way,” one of the enforcers said. Two more turns, and the castle rose above them. Enforcers stood in formation at the base of the ramp leading up to it, guarding the only way in. They flowed to the side as soon as they saw her and the Sovereign, re-forming as soon as they’d passed up the ramp.
“I should have expected this.” The Sovereign’s voice was low and cutting. “I’ll have to move quickly. My enforcers are highly specialized fighters,” he said to her as they swept into the entrance hall.
She slipped a hand around his arm before he could leave her. Was that all the explanation he was going to give? Please. As though she’d believe that what they’d done could only be attributed to skill. “Thank you. For getting us out of there.” Only a gentle pressure, hoping for more.
He looked down at her fingers. “I have to talk to my Minister of Arms. Make sure this riot is put down quickly.”
She tried not to let her annoyance show. “Of course. Can I do anything to help? Re-evaluate the rations? It may be time to release more of our stores. We should look to the cause, try to stem the problem there.”
He waved a hand as he strode down the hall. “Yes. Fine.”
She didn’t dare glare daggers at his back, not when there were still others in the hall.
The rations were tight these days. There’d been a fire in the farms to the west, and it had wiped out a good deal of their crops, including some mature fruit trees.
They had extra grain stores. Sheuan already knew that if they released the stores to bring rations back to what they’d been, the entire supply would only last a couple months.
But maybe that would be enough to tide them over until restoration finally came. She went to her rooms, drew up the order. She’d pass it to the Sovereign’s desk for review.
And then she went to the window, watching the fires glow, the sounds of shouts and fighting now faded away. It would be hard to put out the flames. They’d try, but it would probably burn out a few buildings before they managed.
She woke with her cheek pressed to the windowsill, one arm sore from where she’d splayed it above her head. The scent of smoke and petrichor filled the air. She had vague memories of hearing the patter of rain, feeling a drop or two of wetness on the top of her head.
Bian looked so different by day. Smoke still wisped above some buildings, but she could see the wet cobbles of the street.
It had rained a little in the night, no doubt helping the efforts to put out the fires.
The whole night before swam through her mind, one scene flashing after the next.
The Sovereign was smuggling god gems. His special enforcers were eating them.
The gems gave them some sort of magic. The Sovereign had an altar to the old gods, and cells for holding prisoners.
She had no doubt this was where he interrogated people before execution.
Her own father had likely been held there, at least briefly.
The thought made her shiver. She was so close – to both answers and her own death.
All she had to do was to slip up once, and she’d be facing the cold stone of the executioner’s block.
She’d come close twice the night before, and had she been only a little less clever, a little less lucky, it would have been over.
There was one more place she could keep digging.
Quickly, she changed out of the worker’s clothes and wiped the dust from her face and hair. It wasn’t as good as a bath, but time was everything. She slipped on one of her finer dresses, a sleeveless light blue silk with a high collar and a flowing skirt.
Two enforcers stood outside her door. Fine. It didn’t matter to her. “I’m going into the city.”
Before they could make any protest, she strode down the hall and to the stairs.
She passed through the Sovereign’s main hall, the one where he held his parties, the glassy eyes of strange, dead animals staring at her as she passed.
Her gaze caught on his chair, the one he sat in to hear petitioners.
Dark wood, carved with the elder gods. The only evidence of the elder gods in the entire castle, one that was permitted by society because the chair was a valuable antique, said to pre-date the Shattering.
One of the enforcers darted forward and wedged his way between her and the main doors before she could reach them. He bowed his head. “It may still be dangerous out there.”
“And I have the workshop to attend to and someone to visit. Surely there will be no danger with you by my side.”
She reached past him and pushed her way out onto the ramp.
The modest house she’d purchased for her mother lay just inside inner Bian, nestled near the wall separating the two parts of the city.
The gates had been closed, she noticed. Someone could make their way into inner Bian by walking into the dried lakebed, but they’d be spotted quickly in that empty, rocky expanse.
Again one of her enforcers tried to stop her, bowing his head several times, as though that might soften her determination. “This is not the house of a noble or royal clan. There is no seal on the door.”
“Nor is it a physician, nor a merchant. This is the house where my mother lives, and though she may now be clanless, there was a riot in our city last night. Would you truly stop me from checking on her well-being?”
The Sovereign would likely see it as a weakness, this visit, something that should be dissuaded and punished, but Sheuan didn’t care. She knocked sharply on the door and waited. Footsteps sounded from inside.
Her mother opened the door, hair drawn back into a tight, neat bun. She was dressed cleanly, though the cloth was of middling quality; a few stitches on the embroidery had clearly come loose at some point and then been snipped clean, leaving an empty space behind.
Some silly part of Sheuan wanted to throw herself into her mother’s arms, completely disregarding the fact that her mother might feel the pinfeathers on her back, or the strange bones that pressed beneath.
It was a silly thought. There was perhaps only a slight chance that her mother would even open her arms, and the whole thing was likely to end in some sort of awkward half-embrace, with her mother’s hands limp at her thighs.
She smiled ruefully at the thought and inclined her head – her mother was a venerable elder, after all. “May I come in?”