Читать книгу The House of Sacrifice - Anna Spark Smith - Страница 12

The next morning they went out riding.

‘Are you sure it’s wise?’ Marith asked Thalia.

‘I rode here, didn’t I? I …’ She frowned. ‘I don’t want – I mean – it seems better, this time – but it could still – like before – and I – I don’t want …’

‘No. Yes. Of course.’ Had absolutely no idea what she was trying to say to him. Except that it hurt her. Saying it.

She had lost three pregnancies. Miscarried three times in the first few months. She was four months gone this time already, she said, you could see the swell of her belly through her dress if you knew to look. Waited to tell him, this time. Spare him false hope and grief. After three months, four months, the pregnancy becomes more certain, the wise women and the doctors all agreed on it.

‘The doctors say that I should keep myself strong.’ Her hand moving to her stomach, up to her throat, to the knife scars on her arm. ‘Last time, I … I didn’t go out at all. Didn’t ride. Barely walked, even. Rested in bed. You know. And—’

He grasped her hands. Kissed them. Deep luminous bronze skin. His own skin white as moonlight. Our children must have your skin, he had told her once, and your eyes, and my hair. ‘I know you did,’ he said. Don’t say it. This time it will be good and well, it will, it will, it must be. I am a king. A god. A peasant in a hovel can father a living child, if my father could father living children … I raise my sword and a thousand men lie dying. I close my eyes and stab my knife into a map and an army marches and a city falls. I can father a living child, if I can do that.

Tiny pink flailing fists … Such love.

He said, ‘Well … Come on, then. If you’re sure.’

But the riding was good, for both of them. The snow cold washing them both clean. Forget. They avoided the city, skirting out to the east towards the Ane Headland. The wind was blowing against them. Blowing the smell of smoke away. The ground rose smooth and open; thick grassland, good horse country. Thalia spurred her horse to a gallop. The wind blew back her hood, her hair whipping up. Like black bare branches. Like birds’ wings. The snow flew out from under the horse’s hooves; the sunlight caught it, made it sparkle, it looked like the waves of a churning sunlit sea. Marith raced his horse to catch her, shouting ‘Ha! Ha!’ as he went. His breath puffed out like a dragon. ‘Ha! Ha!’

Thalia pulled her horse to a standstill at the top of a high ridgeway. Marith stopped further down the slope, looking up at her outlined against the sky. The light was changing, clouds gathering, the light becoming flat and white and heavy, waiting for the snow. He trotted up to join her, looked down in delight at the plain spreading out before them like looking down into a pool. Thick with snow, untouched. And there, on the horizon, the dark line of the Sea of Tears, and what he could pretend in the blur of far distance were the fire mountains of Tarboran beyond. A farmstead with a copse of firs behind it, hawthorn hedgerows flushed red. Tiny black shapes that must be cattle. A beech tree in brilliant copper leaves. Thalia pointed and he saw a hawk holding absolutely still in the white air. The hawk dived. Fast as thinking. A dog barked somewhere below them, loud, another barked in reply. The cattle moved in their field. He thought he could see the hawk flying up again. Perhaps it will all be well, he thought. Different, this time, or the next time. Look at it there! A beautiful world. Waiting for me.

Thalia slid down from her horse.

Threw a snowball at him.

Marith laughed, threw one back, missed. Thalia retrieved it, threw it, it smacked into his shoulder and the snow stuck to his cloak. He gathered a handful of snow, tossed it up into the sky, aiming over the edge of the ridge into the world spread beneath. Tossed another handful over Thalia, showering down around her as he had showered her with gems the previous night. Snow on her face. She wrinkled her snow-covered nose. Pushed him over in the snow. Dropped snow right on his head.

‘Stop! Argh!’

‘Stop?’

‘Stop, oh my queen!’

She pulled him to his feet again. Furry with snow: he felt like a furry white bear.

‘I am absolutely bloody freezing now.’ So Thalia wrapped her arms around him. Her skin was warm as the summer sun. They looked together at the view before them, the white frozen world waiting. Our world, he thought. Beautiful for us together. And there is hope, still.

Marith said, ‘Don’t for gods’ sake tell anyone, but I much prefer it out here to Illyr. You can see why Amrath started out to conquer the world, when you look at Illyr.’

‘Oh, but Illyr’s beautiful. Everywhere in the world is beautiful.’ Strained voice. Joyful voice. Her nose wrinkled: ‘Apart from the Wastes.’

The sun broke through a gap in the clouds, a crack of light in the sky too bright to look at, so bright it was almost black. Like the cloud was the edge of the world, the light beyond a void pouring some other life in. She pointed. ‘Look! There’s the hawk again.’

Black against the white. Closer, now: they could see the frantic beating of its wings. On the top of the ridgeway they were almost at its eye level. Marith thought: I wonder if it can see us watching it? Could I call it to me, like I can call a dragon?

The hawk dived. He couldn’t see it land.

Thalia said, ‘Do you remember the hawk in the desert? I’d never seen a hawk before. And the eagles, dancing around the peak of Calen Mon. I’d never seen an eagle before, either. Or a mountain. Or the snow.’ She smiled. Kissed him. Wrapped herself around him. Warm as the summer sun. ‘All those things, we have.’

‘All the world,’ Marith said. ‘All the world, I promised I’d show you. All the wonders. And our children. The world will be for them. Heaped up for them.’

On and on. Over and over. Pressing forwards to the end.

‘We will announce soon that you are pregnant.’ He was King of All Irlast. Of course he could father a child that would live.

Thalia laughed. ‘I should think everyone in our army knows already. I see the faces of my servant women every time they come to change my sheets. The way they stare at my stomach when I dress. It’s the only thing that seems to interest them.’

Had to think about this. ‘Yes … Well … Anyway … But … Yes. Yes. We’ll announce it soon. The army: gods, they’ll rejoice! And when it’s born! It’s lucky for a baby to be born at Sunreturn. Well-omened.’

‘Is it?’ She said, ‘The doctors said after Sunreturn, Marith.’

‘Oh. Yes. Well … Yanis Stansel’s youngest son was born at Sunreturn, always complained everyone forgot his birthday. I’m sure it’s just as lucky for a baby to be born in the spring.’

She said, ‘We’re marching south, Marith. By the time the baby is born we’ll be in the south. Where there won’t be a winter or a spring.’

‘So … maybe we’ll march north again.’ It should be born in Ethalden, perhaps, he thought. Or Malth Elelane. A king’s palace for a king’s heir. It would be nice, he thought, to go home for a while. Show his child the places of his own childhood. Sit in the hall of his ancestors, watching his children play on the floor with the dogs in the warmth of the hearthfire.

I will take her back to Malth Elelane, he thought. Go home. One day. I didn’t want to go back home at all once and now here I am, king. It cannot be so very hard to go back there now. All I need to do is give an order to march north. All I need to do, he thought, is turn my horse now to ride north. Come with me now, Thalia. We’ll ride away home to live in peace. You want that, too, I think. Do you? Raise our child in peace.

It was beginning to snow again. He began to worry suddenly that the cold … She has lost three pregnancies already. His mother had died in childbed. Take care of her and the child.

‘She must not die!’ he had screamed to the doctors, the first time she miscarried. ‘If she dies, I will kill you.’

‘It is not uncommon, My Lord King, for a woman to miscarry in the first few months. There is little danger to the mother, this early. A tragedy, but not a dangerous thing, in these early months.’ Just a lump of blood. Like a woman stabbed with a sword thrust. So three times now he had wept tears of relief. But it was snowing, and she must be looked after, though she was smiling with pleasure at the snow. Put her head back, stuck out her tongue to catch the snowflakes.

‘We should go back, Thalia.’

She looked out over the frozen landscape. ‘I suppose we should. I could stand here forever.’ She sighed, laughed, put her hands on his wet snow-crusted cloak. ‘You’re getting cold?’

‘The horses,’ he said with dignity, ‘are getting cold.’

They rode back through the ruins of Arunmen. Thalia wanted to see. Always, she wanted to see.

‘I need to remember,’ she said. ‘I am not ashamed of it: they fought us, they lost. Such is the way of things. Some draw the red lot, some draw the black or the white. But … I should remember. See it for myself.’

The city was a desolation, black rubble, the great obsidian walls tumbled down. Pools of blood, frozen, black and hard like the stone, the whole city glazed in blood. Fires still burning, dragon fire so hot the very stones were cracked open, holes in the earth where the fury of the fighting had devoured itself. Bodies in the rubble, under ice and ash and snowfall, dead faces masked in snow, rimed in blood. Burned. Dismembered. Hacked up and swallowed and spat out. Marith steered the horses carefully away from the ruined temple. Fragments of yellow paint. Around the palace, a new city of the Army of Amrath was forming: soldiers’ tents, cookfires, canteens, workshops. A smithy was working: Marith heard again the ring of the hammer, breathed in the hot metal scent. A hiss that was molten bronze being poured. A boy in a scarlet jacket embroidered with seed pearls, gold at his neck and waist and ankles, his face running with hatha sores, touting offering himself for one iron piece. A pedlar shouting his wares: ‘Tea and soap! Salt and honey! Spices! Herbs! Lucky charms!’ Two women washing clothes in a silver bowl that must once have graced a lord’s table. Plump glossy children in fur and satin, playing snowballs in the ruins of a nobleman’s great house. One of them hit another straight on, got snow all over her coat, and Marith laughed.

Some enterprising person had got a tavern back open. The front wall and the roof had been completely demolished; they’d made the best of it by setting up a fire for mulled wine and laying out some brightly coloured rugs; rigged up the remains of a soldier’s campaign tent to keep off the snow. It all looked very charming. Marith nodded at Thalia, they dismounted and tethered the horses, wandered up.

Everyone recognized them, of course, so they walked through a sea of prostrate bodies, more and more people running to kneel, to be in his presence, to see him through half-closed eyes. Voices ran like seawater: ‘The king! The king! Amrath Reborn! Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! The king! The king!’ Someone starting a song of praise for him.

Bliss.

Blush rising in his face from sheer delight at it. He laughed with joy.

They sat down on the bright pretty rugs, the woman running the place rushed over with cups of hot spiced wine, a dish of keleth seeds, a dish of cakes. The cups were enamelled silver, yellow garlands around a scene of fighting birds. Very finely done, actually: he’d guess not from the tavern but looted from somewhere in the east and lugged halfway across Irlast. The wine was delicious, thick and golden. Also looted. The cakes were stale and dry as sand.

The tavern woman prostrated herself flat on her face in the snow. ‘I am honoured beyond all honour. My Lord King, My Lady Queen, I kneel at your feet, I am your slave. Take the cups, the plates, everything here in this tavern, our gifts, our token of our love for you.’

Beyond bliss. Ah, such a good thing, to be loved like this. He smiled down at the tavern woman, told her to get up, kissed her hand. Drained his cup, waved over a passing soldier: ‘Take this cup back to the palace. Have Lord Durith summoned, tell him to send a dozen gold cups to this woman in place of this one she has kindly given me.’ The woman went pink with astonishment. Tears in her eyes. Thalia laughed with delight.

‘My Lord King. My Lord King. Thank you. Thank you.’

‘I’ll take a bottle of this wine, too, then, if I may?’ Marith said, smiling at the tavern woman. ‘It’s better than the wine they served my court last night.’

More laughter. The woman said, a look of great daring in her face, ‘I need the wine, My Lord King, for my customers, who must have higher standards in drink than your court.’

Ha! ‘They do. They do. Anyone in Irlast has higher standards than my court.’

He settled himself further back on the rugs, stretching himself leaning against Thalia. Ate another stale cake. The tavern woman poured him another drink in a new cup. She was wearing a ring on every finger; they clinked musically against the glass of the bottle. She had silver earrings that jingled, her dress was green velvet. She was positively fat.

Raised a toast to her. ‘I’ll buy a bottle for a hundred thalers. Make you a lady of my court.’

‘But I’ll make far more than a hundred thalers, My Lord King, telling my customers they’re drinking wine I refused to sell to the Ansikanderakesis Amrakane the joy of the world the King of All Irlast.’

Gods, she was good. He got up and bowed to her. ‘Like the wine, you’re too fine for my court. I’ll give you a hundred thalers anyway.’

‘And I’ll give you another bottle of this wine for free, My Lord King.’ Her earrings rattled, she looked at Thalia sitting in her thick fur cloak. ‘And, if I may, if I may be so bold, My Lady Queen …’

Oh ho. Marith tensed, Thalia tensed, relaxed both together, smiling at each other, squeezed hands. The whole army knows. The tavern woman went into the back of her shop, Marith ate a third stale cake in the time she was gone.

Thalia whispered, ‘A horrible itchy baby’s dress? A blanket? A pair of absurdly tiny booties?’

‘A blanket. Hand-knitted. Shush. You’re being cruel.’

‘And you’re getting cake crumbs on my cloak. How can you eat them, anyway? They must have been baked last week.’

‘Amrath lived rough with his army …’ Wiped crumbs from the white fur, leaving a yellowy smudge. Whoops. Maybe she wouldn’t notice. He tried surreptitiously to pick at the mess. ‘Anyway, shush, she’s coming back.’

‘A blanket,’ Thalia whispered. ‘Dark red. With a sword pattern on it.’

He almost choked crumbs over her. ‘Shush!’

The woman returned smiling. Didn’t look like she was carrying a blanket … She held out a branch of white flowers to Thalia. ‘The tree behind the tavern here flowered this morning, My Lady Queen. All out of season – the dragon fire, we thought maybe, My Lady Queen, the heat. But here. Perhaps it flowered for you.’

‘Thank you.’ Thalia bent to sniff the flowers’ sweet perfume. ‘Thank you very much.’ They finished the wine, Thalia made a face of mock terror at Marith that they’d be offered another plate of cakes. When they had ridden away out of earshot they both burst out laughing. The sun rises, the sun sets, and not everyone in the world thinks only of tiny booties and baby blankets.

‘But the flowers are very beautiful,’ said Thalia. ‘How strange, that the tree flowered in the snow. Do you think it was really the dragon fire?’

‘It’s wintersweet blossom. It’s meant to be in flower now.’ He was beginning to feel rather sleepy after all the wine and cakes. ‘That’s what it does. Hence the name.’

Thalia looked down at the branch, which she had woven into her horse’s reins. ‘It’s still beautiful. We should plant it in the gardens at Ethalden.’ Looking down at the flowers, she noticed where he’d got crumbs rubbed into her cloak. ‘What’s this? My new cloak … Oh, Marith. Cake crumbs.’

He looked at her belly. ‘Get used to it. I had to have cake crumbs cut out of my hair once.’