Chapter 26
The palace where Genna lived was the largest in the City, visible from any point within it, but I’d never been inside. The forest of gilded columns that held up the green slate roof stretched high above our heads and as Taran and I slowly approached, I could finally appreciate its true size.
This late in the day I was limping badly, but that only gave me more time to gawk at the curtains of blossoms that hung down from a ceiling that vanished in the growing shadows.
Flowering plants had been trained to climb over every surface, and even the tiled floors were spread with a springy moss that wafted green musk with each step.
The only illumination came from blown-glass lamps set in iridescent clusters on the floor, and the under-lighting turned faces into masks.
Music and conversation spilled out into the evening from every direction; there were no walls to the palace, only pierced wooden screens that trellised more flowering plants, and alcoves created by drapes of golden fabric that twisted around the columns without any beginning or end.
Most places in the City felt empty, or at least under-full, but Genna’s palace was crowded and alive.
As soon as we stepped under the roof, Taran reached across his body to cover my face with his free hand, fingers spread to leave me only a tiny crack of vision.
“Eyes forward,” he said.
I thought he was making a joke about the scene.
It sounded like a large party was going on, a wilder one than Lixnea had hosted for the dark night of the Moon, because there was a rowdier edge to the laughter and a harder beat to the music that swirled around us.
The air smelled like floral perfume and warm bodies, but it wasn’t wholly unfamiliar to me.
“Stop it,” I complained, tossing my head to dislodge his palm. “I have been in temples of Genna before, you know.”
As the chief fertility goddess of the pantheon, her temples had murals that ranged from merely suggestive to quite explicit, and her rites could span the same spectrum.
Young acolytes of the Maiden had been advised not to look too closely at what was going on if Wesha’s service took us there.
We just delivered the babies; we didn’t need to know where they came from.
I’d looked anyway. So I was prepared.
“And you must have been so brave about it, my darling, but I’m sure you don’t want to see this.”
I made a noise of frustration. I was going to trip and get grass stains on my dress. “I’m a virgin because I was in a celibate order, not because I’m a prude.”
“You are all those things, and there’s nothing wrong with that; in fact, it gives me something to think about at night. But trust me on this, don’t look.”
I yanked at his wrist until Taran gave a shrug as though to say it was my funeral and took his hand off my eyes. After a moment, I wished he hadn’t.
The statues and mosaics visible through the moss were what I’d expected, and maybe some of the embraces I could just make out in shadowed corners. I’d known it was a party, with performers and drinking and dancing. I’d known that Genna’s followers were uninhibited.
But for every golden goblet of wine that brushed lips, for every hand that bent to strings or drums in music, there were lips that touched bare skin instead.
Hands that clutched at shoulders or thighs.
Heads bent not in conversation but in ecstasy.
Everywhere. In twos and threes and more, in shapes I recognized and some my mind reeled at.
As casually as an ordinary guest might accept a drink or attend to a singer’s performance.
I could still have pretended to be unfazed, even for the sheer scale of it…
but for the number of entangled bodies that were dressed or half-dressed in Genna’s saffron livery.
Mortal priests caught in immortal arms. Not just pouring the wine or making the music, as I’d expected, but pressed against vine-wrapped columns or into beds of loose cushions and flower petals.
“Oh,” I said, and the sadness in my voice made Taran look at me sharply.
I was tempted to hide my face in his shoulder, but if the peace-priests could bear this in their eternal service, I could stand to look. The immortals, for their part, probably wanted to be looked at if they were doing this in public.
We walked farther inside in mutual silence, though I was examining the faces of the priests for signs that they were fighting against their vows, and Taran’s attention was locked on mine.
“I did warn you,” Taran said after a few minutes.
“You…did.”
This is an orgy would have been a more helpful warning. But I did appreciate the effort.
Taran needlessly bent down to adjust my hand on his arm, although he was used to helping me balance at this point.
“Genna’s power isn’t as obvious as Diopater’s,” he said in a low pitch.
“But this is why she’s queen of the Stoneborn—they all come to her and set aside their little squabbles and rivalries while they’re here.
And she wins them over, makes them see things her way.
She’s the real ruler in the Summerlands. ”
I made a faint noise of unamused understanding. What was a lightning bolt compared to the allure of a really good party? If eternity ever stretched too long, there would still be the novelty of some new embrace in a corner of Genna’s palace. Maybe everything else fell into routine.
“You sound like you approve,” I whispered.
“It’s better than Diopater’s method of solving problems, don’t you think?”
I didn’t answer, instead considering a knot of revelers who stumbled almost naked toward a woman who was giving a giggling toast to a small crowd while wearing only a lopsided wreath of orange blossoms.
Didn’t these people—and most of them were immortals, minor herding gods and flower spirits, but still people—know there was going to be a war?
Couldn’t they see the smoke on the Mountain?
Didn’t they see the empty spaces in the City, feel the ground thinning and the Summerlands shrinking?
This wasn’t real peace, this was pretending.
They ought to put their clothes on and find the weapons they put down after the last time Death attacked.
But that wasn’t what I found painful about the scene.
This wasn’t what Genna’s cult was supposed to be for.
Hiwa ter Genna had expected to spend her life judging inheritance disputes and matchmaking for merchants’ daughters.
If anyone had ever suggested she’d keep the peace naked, on her knees, she might have questioned those principles of nonviolence.
Hiwa came and told me the first time she’d kissed a boy—also the first time she’d kissed a girl. She’d looked happier than anyone here tonight.
“I’m sure they’d rather do this than the laundry or the cooking,” Taran added, nodding at a peace-priest who was teasingly braiding a violet into the beard of a green-skinned immortal.
The man didn’t look unwilling, but if Genna had commanded him to be here and entertain her guests, he probably wasn’t allowed to frown.
“Are you? Sure?”
It wasn’t an accusation, but Taran still fell silent.
He wasn’t sure.
“Genna’s priests have to obey her,” I said softly. “Even if she asks them if they want this—how free are they to say no?”
If I thought about it that way, what was going on here was just as monstrous as what had been done to Smenos’s priests. Smenos had used his priests’ bodies once, for sacrifice. Genna used them over and over.
After another moment of stormy reflection, Taran tilted his face down to me, dark eyebrows lowered. “Do you want me to quit asking you, then?”
That hadn’t been the point I was making, and he looked so concerned that I answered quickly.
“No, I don’t mind.”
That was a less-than-full-hearted endorsement, less than the full truth, and my vows twisted uneasily until I amended my words. “No, I mean…I don’t want you to stop asking me.”
There was nothing stopping me from saying no to Taran. And I still wanted, someday, to be able to say yes.
He relaxed at my reassurance, began to nod at people he knew, but the further my mind traveled down this road, the worse it got.
“Did anyone ever ask you?” I said when he noticed that my face was still grim.
I couldn’t look at these beautiful, ageless creatures without imagining a small, raven-haired boy living in this palace with no other children.
Later bound to Genna’s will just as much as her priests.
Lixnea had called Genna’s service hard—I had a good idea of how he’d spent it.
“I don’t remember.”
Certainly true, but not the real answer. He didn’t know.
He sighed and tossed his head back when my expression hardened. “Please, please, Iona, do not start something tonight. No fires, no rebellions, no accusations. I don’t need you to feel sorry for me, much less defend me three hundred years after the fact.”
“I would have though. Defended you. Someone should have.”
The look Taran gave me in response was equal parts dismayed and tender, but when I stuck my chin out stubbornly, he ran a featherlight touch over my hand where it rested on his arm, his fingertips lingering on the empty spot where his ring used to be.
“I know,” he said, and I couldn’t help but hear an echo in that of all the times he’d ever said he loved me.
The center of the palace was lower than the rest of the structure and open to the night sky above. From the oculus, a curtain of water fell from rooftop cisterns and created an audience chamber whose walls were made of mist, the droplets and sound separating us from the crowd of revelers.
I smelled standing water before my feet found it, the carpet of moss giving way to a thick layer of water lilies in pink and white.
It soaked the hem of my dress and slowed our approach, but gave me time to assess the reclining figure on an island of woven reeds, surrounded by a half circle of kneeling peace-priests.