Читать книгу Bloodchild - Anna Stephens - Страница 12

Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

Red Gods’ temple, temple district, First Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

‘Sire, how may I serve?’

If Corvus resented having to trek through the city to the temple in order for her to ‘serve’ him, it didn’t show on his face. Nothing showed on Corvus’s face but what he wanted people to see.

She padded out of the shadows of the temple and watched him drink in the sight of her, the godblood adorning her skin, the marks and the wisdom they imparted painting her in truth and promise and hope. The blood of the Dark Lady, stained forever in swirls and sigils on Lanta’s body, tingling and whispering like the breath of a lover.

She curtseyed and he offered a stiff nod in return, declined wine or water or food. Annoyed, then, and straight to business. Lanta suppressed a sigh.

‘We have thousands of slaves and not enough food to feed them all,’ Corvus said. Lanta blinked. What did she care about stinking Rilporians? ‘You said we would offer a mass sacrifice to bring back the Bloody Mother, and yet there is still no date set for the ritual. May I know the reason for the delay, Blessed One?’

‘You think hungry slaves determine when a work as great as this will be carried out?’ she asked. ‘This is why you come to me, interrupt our devotions, our ritual-crafting?’ She stood in a swirl of skirts. ‘I don’t have time for this.’

‘Hungry slaves are rebellious slaves,’ Corvus said doggedly, staying her with his voice. ‘I have sent Fost to bring home the women and children from the mountains; soon the city will have even more mouths to feed. You told me to spare as many lives as possible for your great rite and there are two prison barracks bursting with angry, hungry soldiers and I cannot keep them alive indefinitely. Would you have me take bread from our young to give to them?’

‘I would have you do your job as king and sort out such matters. Do you need me to wipe your arse for you as well?’ She was tired and frustrated – the ritual they needed didn’t exist and she and high priest Gull had no previous lore to draw upon – but still, she shouldn’t have said it. The temperature in the room plummeted, chilled by the ice in Corvus’s expression.

Lanta inhaled through flared nostrils. ‘Sire, forgive my hasty words. I am very tired. I thought I had made myself clear – the slaves will be needed in the great rite that restores the Dark Lady to us in the body of your sister’s child.’

Corvus thumped the arm of his chair. ‘You want me to keep them alive until – when, Yule? Another half-year? Impossible!’

‘This is the richest country in Gilgoras, Sire. Are you telling me you cannot find enough grain to feed slaves a starvation diet? I need their bodies and blood and fear, not sleek muscles and healthy minds. They can be raving skeletons for all I care, just keep them alive.’

‘We trampled through most of the Wheat Lands during the siege. We have ruined half the crop.’ Corvus was standing too now, anger gleaming just below the frustration.

‘Then it is a good thing we only need to feed the half of the population that walks the Dark Path,’ Lanta snapped. ‘Sire, please. I don’t have time to come up with all the answers for you. Back in Eagle Height you made it clear that I should confine myself to spiritual matters while you dealt with the rest, and now you come here expecting me to magic bread out of the air and take control of those very matters you have excluded me from. I cannot. I will not.’

‘We will have a rebellion on our hands, Blessed One. Slaves and Mireces will die in that rebellion.’

Lanta gritted her teeth. ‘You swore that everything you did was for the glory of the gods. They need more than glory now; They need an act of faith so enormous that it returns the Dark Lady to us. All other considerations are as nothing in the face of that. What we are attempting has never been done and I will not have you jeopardise it. I will not, so I don’t care where you get it from, just find the food and keep my sacrifices alive until I need them.’

Corvus’s hand was squeezing the hilt of his dagger, but not in threat, she thought. ‘You ask too much.’

‘The gods always ask too much, Sire,’ she said softly. ‘And we always provide Them with what They demand. We are Mireces; sacrifice is in our blood.’

He had no answer to that, of course, as she’d known he wouldn’t. It furthered his frustration and added another crack in the bond that had united king and Blessed One thus far in their great conquest. Corvus stalked from the temple without another word, and when he was gone Gull detached himself from the shadows and joined her.

‘You are concerned?’ he asked.

‘He was the perfect king to lead us to victory – even a victory such as this, that cost us our Bloody Mother. But is he the king to rule Rilpor in the gods’ names? Is he the king who will do all that is necessary to see Them ascendant?’

‘You doubt his loyalty?’ Gull was surprised.

‘Never,’ Lanta responded instantly, and was a little surprised to find it was the truth. ‘I doubt his … ability. Corvus is a killer and a leader of men, but is he a governor? Can he provide for his people and keep the slaves in their places? When he killed King Liris, he took over an established and stable world. This one he is building from scratch and I don’t think he knows how. I don’t think he really wants to.’

‘He wants to go to war.’

Lanta rocked her head from side to side. ‘He knows war, but he knows subjugation too. Sending the East Rank rather than Mireces to occupy the towns and villages was a master stroke – it’s easier to give up your liberty to people who look and sound like you. But taxes and crops and laws? Where’s the glory and excitement in that?’

‘Do you want him removed?’ Gull asked.

Lanta pursed her lips. ‘Not yet: we need stability, at least for now. Corvus understands the importance of keeping the slaves alive; despite his frustration here, he will not risk the great rite out of pettiness. But he needs aid, someone who can teach him what he needs to know, provide answers to the questions he doesn’t know how to ask.’

‘I may be able to help with some of the governance,’ Gull offered. ‘I was a silk merchant here in Rilporin for a decade. I understand trade, supply and demand.’

Lanta turned away from the door through which Corvus had exited. ‘Your offer is generous, but I need you here. Corvus will monopolise you if he thinks he can pass such things into your hands. But if there are others among the slaves who would suit …’

Gull nodded and left her, understanding her moods well enough, and Lanta wandered through what had once been the Dancer’s temple and was now sworn and blooded to Holy Gosfath and His absent Sister-Lover. Not dead. Absent. It was the only way she could bring herself to think about it despite the great work they were preparing, despite her every waking – and some dreaming – moments being dedicated to it.

She passed the godpool, sanctified now with the blood of scores of sacrifices so that the once-clear water was red-tinged and thick, clotted and reeking. It was unpleasant, but the last of the Light needed to be chased from this newly hallowed place. Besides, it served as a potent reminder to any slave who thought to raise the defiant eye to their betters.

As always, her footsteps led her outside and into the temple square, to the wooden, open-sided shelter that had been erected over the place where the Dark Lady had been taken from them, the ground still stained with Her divine blood, much as Lanta was herself. There was someone in the shrine, kneeling on the unmarked stone and staring fixedly at the black droplets just in front of him. He looked up at her approach, and scrambled to his feet.

‘Second Valan, forgive me. I had no wish to intrude on your prayers.’

He bowed, his eyes running hungrily over the marks on her skin. He wanted to touch them, as he wanted to touch the stains on the stone. He didn’t dare. ‘It is I who should beg forgiveness. If this place belongs to anyone, it belongs to you.’

Lanta sat on one of the benches circling the shrine and gestured for him to join her. ‘It belongs to us all, Second. You are welcome here whenever you wish, but if you are looking for Corvus, he has left.’

Valan was silent for a while. ‘I was not,’ he said. ‘I came here to pray for my family. Their journey is long and may be perilous, and Ede is only three.’ He met her eyes briefly and Lanta noted the flash of indecision. She gave him a reassuring smile. ‘I worry my daughters won’t remember me,’ he confessed in a rush. ‘What will they have been through while I was here fighting? What trials or sicknesses that I could not comfort? They might not even be alive now.’

Lanta was surprised. Valan rarely spoke of his family and she couldn’t even remember his consort’s name. Such open love was rare among Mireces men, such loyalty even rarer. ‘Their lives will have been what the gods decreed for them,’ she said. ‘Be at peace knowing that if they suffered, they did so to prove their devotion. But there is no saying they did,’ she added.

They sat in silence for a while longer. ‘You are a good man, Valan,’ Lanta said and he blinked in surprise. ‘I hope Corvus knows how lucky he is to have you as his second.’

‘The honour is mine,’ Valan said automatically. ‘My life to serve.’

‘Yes,’ Lanta said, examining him in light of the idea sitting fresh and a little shocking in her mind. ‘We are all put in Gilgoras to serve the gods and do Their will, whatever it may be.’ She stood and he rose with her. ‘I will pray for your family,’ she said and strode back towards the temple before he could respond.