Chapter 63 Sheuan
Sheuan
Langzu – inner Bian, the Sovereign’s castle
To Wensama Juitsi, Minister of Archives, I, the humble Minister of Trade, seek your help in swaying the Sovereign toward investigating the disappearance of trade items at the anchor.
We have all assumed there is no monster, but then what is causing the losses?
The Sovereign does not seem to think it worth the effort.
If you and I worked together, however, we might get Ashi Risho, the Minister of Austerity, on our side.
I know – she’s a tight-fisted, miserable woman, and no one likes her except perhaps the Sovereign. Which means we need her support.
For a span of twenty days after the aspect had left, the Sovereign kept mostly to himself.
Not that Sheuan minded. She went about her business and did her best to avoid her husband.
She knew that when they finally did talk, he’d be in a foul mood.
Who wouldn’t be? Kluehnn had upended all his plans in one fell swoop.
And as soon as the new godkiller cohorts arrived to be permanently stationed at the castle, the Sovereign would be as watched as Sheuan was now.
Perhaps he’d devise some clever plan – that seemed to be his way. He still had the support of the clans, though that support might fray when the godkillers descended on inner Bian. Anyone worth their weight could identify a power struggle, and they’d seek to find advantages in it.
The scent of rain was in the air by the time Sheuan returned to the castle from the workshop, her two enforcers in tow.
She let them follow her, unsure what her next move would be, where she should dig now.
It felt like she had all the pieces to this puzzle, but no matter which way she turned them, she couldn’t seem to quite make them fit together.
She climbed the ramp and felt the first patters of rainfall cold against her scalp. They needed the rain, but it also often occurred in sudden deluges, washing out the dried earth and flooding the crops. It wouldn’t necessarily make their lives any easier.
“Sheuan,” one of the guards said at the doors. “The Sovereign wishes to see you in his study.”
She shook herself from her thoughts and ducked inside the entryway.
She supposed she couldn’t avoid the man forever, and though she knew he’d be angry, she might as well get this over with.
Maybe he’d let something slip about her father.
Something she could use. For now, she’d settled on the idea that he’d known about the Sovereign’s worship of the elder gods.
It didn’t feel like the whole story.
She climbed the steps to the next floor, slightly annoyed that the enforcers followed her there as well.
Was she not to be given a moment’s peace, even in her own home?
Would she always be in this escalating arms race with them, with her finding ever more clever ways to escape notice while they increased their defenses?
It wasn’t exactly the life she’d hoped for.
She had to go to her mother, tell her exactly what she’d found in the warehouse.
And she’d put a letter in a safe place for Mull.
Assuming he was able to make it out of the den alive.
Probably she should leave another letter for someone in the royal clans, to be opened upon her death.
Maybe Nimao. At least then, someone else would know, and she could threaten to release the information widely if the Sovereign tried to have her executed.
She stepped into the Sovereign’s study, leaving the enforcers outside.
He was lingering by the window, watching the rain begin to fall past the overhang of the roof, drumming against the tiles – a silvered curtain between them and the lakebed.
If it rained for too long, it delayed the burning of bodies, left the southern side of the city dealing with the terrible stench of decaying flesh.
“You wanted to see me?”
His voice was sharp when he spoke to her, as she’d expected. “How did word get out about the filters, about what I was doing? How did Kluehnn know?”
She strode closer to him, to show him she was not afraid, that she had nothing to hide. “I didn’t tell anyone, if that’s what you’re asking.”
His hair was still dyed that ridiculous shade of black, the gold in his brown eyes dulled by the overcast sky. “I was careful.”
She stood only a pace away from him now, and still he didn’t look at her.
“You think I would tell someone, that I would bring Kluehnn down on our heads with my life on the line? Who would he have been more likely to punish? You, the ruler of this country? Or me, your wife from a dead clan, who was caught making the damned things. You wanted to distribute the filters as you saw fit, you let the clans jostle for favor, as you always do, and someone among them couldn’t keep their mouth shut.
It was your own sloppiness that caused this, not mine. ”
To her surprise, he stayed silent, his jaw clenching.
Was he still angry with her, or was he angry with himself?
She’d never seen him like this, defeat etched into the lines of his shoulders, the looseness of his hands.
Instinctively, she reached out, closing the distance between them.
She touched him as a wife would – a reassuring caress, her fingers against his cheek.
He caught her hand.
There was strength in his grip, far more than she’d expected. Without knowing exactly why, she tested her strength against his, knowing she’d grown stronger since the feathers had begun to sprout from her back.
She broke free, sliding a hand beneath his robe, pulling him in close.
He hated her, she could see it in his gold-flecked gaze. But hate was something more than indifference, and maybe it heated his skin the way it heated hers. She thrust her hand around his back, loosening his robe from the tightness of his belt. Her fingers brushed the scar.
The scar.
The altar flashed in her mind, the incense lit for the elder gods – all except Lithuas and Ayaz. It wasn’t an altar of worship, as she’d thought. It was an altar for the dead, to honor those who’d passed. But no incense lit for the living. Not for Lithuas, and not for Ayaz. The Cutter.
He’d carefully cut away at the clans, excising the elements he knew wouldn’t work for him, keeping the ones he knew would make him strong. He’d done such a good job of hiding in plain sight – until he’d reached a little too far. He’d gotten lucky, though. Kluehnn hadn’t recognized him.
The way Sheuan recognized him now. “It’s you,” was all she managed.
He seized her again, his grip firmer this time. He turned her about, hands rough, searching her, though she wasn’t sure for what. She tried to pull away again, unsuccessfully. “Ayaz.”
He shook her. “Don’t you dare. Do not say that name.”
Gods below, this was what her father had discovered.
The tablets with the descriptions of the gods, the scar he must have seen on the Sovereign’s back.
Of course the Sovereign would have framed him for this, would have gotten rid of him as quickly as possible.
A brief ache of grief for what could have been, if only her father hadn’t been so recklessly clever.
The way she’d been.
Ayaz’s hands found her back, stilled. His fingers traced the outlines of feathers, the strange bones that pressed against her skin.
Without another word, he took her by the wrist and dragged her toward the door.
“Where are we going?” Her voice was oddly steady, though her mind could only settle on the executioner’s block, the sharpness of a blade against her neck.
The enforcers moved to follow them, but he waved them back. “No. Stay at your posts.”
She tried again to break free when they reached the first floor, but his grip was like iron.
One of the elder gods. How could she not have known?
He’d not reacted to her like anyone she’d ever encountered.
So many missed opportunities, ways to find this out without exposing herself.
To settle into the darkness, unseen, ready to pounce.
He took the set of stairs to the windowless lower level, where the servants stored curing meats and root vegetables.
It was dark down here, and for a moment she considered screaming.
What exactly would that accomplish, though?
Who would come running to help her? Absolutely no one.
How painfully obvious to her now, that she’d wrenched herself free from the grasp of her mother and her clan only to land herself in a place where she had no support. She’d leapt, but she’d leapt too far.
He passed the root cellar and went to a locked door.
So quickly Sheuan wasn’t sure what she was seeing, he broke the lock, seized the lantern from next to the door, and pushed his way inside.
The space was vast and quiet, the floor beneath her feet rough and damp.
The floorboards above creaked as a servant passed through the main hall.
The godkillers had dusted off the altar at one end of the unfinished room. Near the altar was a pit. They drew closer and she could see the mark of claws, as though it had been freshly dug. Was this where he would murder her?
When she craned her neck to see how deep the pit was, all she could make out was a cloud of black smoke.
“Do the filters work? Do they work as you promised?” the Sovereign hissed at her.
The golden rings in his eyes glinted. He set the lantern on the ground and took one of the filters from his pocket.
He’d kept one on his person. He pulled her in close, deftly pulling the filter over her nose and mouth, cinching the strap tight. “Do they protect against restoration?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice muted and frightened to her own ears.
There’d been no way to test it. Theoretically, Mull had said it would work. Theoretically.
She felt his hand at her back, between the itching pinfeathers. The shove took the breath from her lungs, and she fell into the hole.
The hole in the Queen’s nave in Kashan had been shallow.
As in Kashan, she didn’t fall far. She stumbled to her knees, the smoke stinging her eyes.
This time, sensation didn’t leave her. She stood surrounded by the swirling smoke, and each breath she took was clear of it.
She could feel her hands, her fingers against her palms, the strange coolness of the smoke against her skin.
What would he do with the results of this experiment?
Did he have the means to help restoration along?
If he saw restoration as a way of cutting away what he didn’t want, to further his personal ambitions, then he needed the filters.
He needed them to work. She thought of the letter from Mull, still in her pocket.
She had a choice. She could preserve herself, as she’d thought she wanted to.
She’d been the blade that had protected her family from ruin, and when she’d proposed to the Sovereign, she’d thought she was done protecting others.
Her mother had pushed her into that position without ever taking a moment to find out who Sheuan was or what she wanted.
But not wanting to be the blade that kept her family in power – it didn’t mean she cared for no one. In spite of everything, all her failures, the way she’d fumbled her way through these schemes, she still loved her mother, her family, Mull.
Rasha.
She could save herself, or she could protect others, finding a way back into a community. One she’d chosen. And wouldn’t this be the ultimate trick? Manipulating a god? Sheuan felt her lips curve into a smile as she lifted the filter and breathed in the smoke.
Everything faded into pain. Bones lengthened and re-formed, flesh moved to accommodate new shapes. She had no mind; she was only a body, and that body was on fire.
She came back to awareness with her hand gripping the side of the hole. She watched, as though from a distance, as her other hand met the first, and she pulled herself up and out. The filter was still on her face; she’d at least had the presence of mind not to tear it off.
“You lied to me!” Ayaz was screaming. “You lied!”
She was calmer than she’d expected to be, her body still aching.
She twitched and found black-feathered wings at her shoulders, a band of white on the undersides.
The air inside the filter still smelled faintly of smoke, tinged with ink and star anise.
She pulled it from her face, letting it rest against her collarbone.
“I didn’t lie. I told you it would theoretically work.
I’m not my cousin. We had no way to test it until just now. ”
She flexed one wing, trying to stretch out the new muscles. She wouldn’t be able to sneak through the city anymore. What would someone like Nimao think of her now? Oh, he’d probably find this development even more attractive, knowing him. “There’s only one thing we can do.”
Ayaz ran his hands through his hair, and she watched the withering of his expression as all his carefully laid plans fell apart.
“I don’t know what that is.” Strangely, she felt no awe of him.
Now that she knew who he was, she thought she understood him a little.
An elder god, living among mortals, convinced of his superiority and yet alone.
Desperately alone. No matter how solitary he might have been in the past, there was still comfort in knowing others like you were out and about in the world.
Instead, his kind was hunted. He’d watched the fall of his people and the rise of Kluehnn and the godkillers. What a terrible thing to live through.
And now that she’d broken him down, it was time to build him back up.
She pulled Mull’s letter from his pocket, noting that her hands did not have claws.
Her fingers looked the same as they had before.
She’d have to get a glimpse in the mirror at some point, to see exactly what had changed.
Ayaz didn’t take the letter from her hand, so she seized his wrist, pressed the parchment into his palm.
“There is an army of the gods, gathering. With restoration delayed, and Kluehnn distracted by the Unanointed, they’ve had the chance to regroup. You’re Ayaz. You’re one of the elder gods.
“Lead them.”