us,’ Bil said slowly, bowing her head. Orhan hesitated then took her hand. They walked across the room, their footsteps ringing on the hard floor. A well-dressed young woman kneeling before a small side altar turned and looked at them.
The Lord of the Rising Sun seen publicly holding hands with his wife in the Great Temple. The news would be around the gossip-mongers of the city in the time it took to light a flame.
They approached the High Altar. It was closed off from the rest of the room by a bar of iron that glowed red in the light. Behind this, the High Priestess knelt in prayer. Her black hair hung down around her face, veiling her from prying eyes. A night and a day, she must kneel there, before the evening’s sacrifice. She was still as something carved from stone, the only decorated thing in the Temple. Her eyes fixed on a single lamp that burned deep red like a pool of blood. She looked very small and slight, bent on her knees before the great monolith of the altar stone.
Just visible behind the High Altar was the curtained entrance to the room beyond. The room one did not speak of. The room in which a child would already be lying, waiting to die.
Orhan turned away. Don’t look. It is necessary. But don’t look. God’s great hunger for lives was a mystery of which he and most other educated men did not speak. As a boy he had thought briefly of volunteering, as all children briefly did. The greatest and most sacred choice, his teacher had told him. But he had known, even then, that to choose it would have been somehow wrong, that his teacher and parents would have been outraged if he did. The greatest and most sacred choice, unless someone you knew made it, when it became something else. Something shameful, although he still could not quite say why. A bad thing.
Death is a bad thing. What a profound man you are, Orhan Emmereth.
A young priestess bustled up to them, smiling. ‘My Lord, My Lady,’ she said sweetly, ‘are you looking for something? Would you like to see someone?’
‘Yes.’ Orhan fidgeted. They were here now. No going back. ‘My wife and I, we would like … My wife is newly with child. We would like to make a prayer and an offering, and seek a blessing.’ He pitched his voice clear. Loud.
The priestess smiled more broadly. Happiness in her eyes. ‘It is an auspicious day for it,’ she said, glancing towards the High Altar, and the kneeling figure, and the curtained doorway beyond. ‘I will fetch one of the senior priestesses.’ She slipped away, returned a few moments later with another priestess.
‘My Lord Emmereth. Helase tells me that you have great joy to make known to our Lord.’ Bil flushed with pride and happiness at her words. ‘Come.’ The woman indicated a low altar to the left of the great iron bar, topped with three yellow candles, two almost burned down to stubs, one new and tall. ‘Kneel.’
Orhan knelt uncomfortably on the cold floor, helping Bil down. She moved awkwardly in her heavy dress. The old priestess held out a candle to Bil.
‘Place it on the altar.’
Bil contemplated the altar for a moment before placing the candle carefully at the very centre.
The priestess said slowly and loudly, ‘Great Lord Tanis. These two come before You, to ask Your blessing of the child they bear. Grant that it will live and die, as all things must live and die. Grant that it will know sorrow, and pain, and happiness, and love. Grant that it will endure Your blessing and Your curse. Grant that it will be alive, as we are alive in You. Dear Lord, Great Tanis Who Rules All Things, from the fear of life and the fear of death, release us.’
‘Dear Lord, Great Tanis Who Rules All Things, from the fear of life and the fear of death, release us,’ Bil repeated, her voice shaking.
‘Place your hands on the candle,’ the priestess instructed. Bil glanced at Orhan, then reached out and placed the palm of her right hand on it, fingers pointing up towards the unlit wick. Hesitantly, Orhan did likewise. Bil’s skin was rough and warm beneath his. Whorls and twists of scar tissue, like the molten wax on the altar.
‘Good. Now remove them again, and ask for His blessing.’
Bil bowed her head, her lips moving silently. Her hands folded over her stomach.
The candle flickered into flame, bright and beautiful, its light dancing on the bronze wall.
‘I hear we should congratulate you.’ Darath Vorley gave Orhan a lazy smile as he slid into his seat. The Temple business had gone on rather longer than he’d expected and he was slightly late. The assembled High Lords of the Sekemleth Empire turned to him irritably and shifted round slightly to make more room. The power and brilliance of an Imperial meeting: eight backstabbing men in various states of ignorance, boredom or general decay gathered round a slightly too small table in a room that hadn’t been redecorated in nigh on a century.
‘Congratulate him?’ echoed Cammor Tardein. Always quick on the uptake, that one.
‘Lady Emmereth is with child,’ Darath said. ‘Or did you want to break the joyous news yourself, Orhan? I’m terribly sorry for stealing your thunder if so. But you did announce it in such a very public manner this morning.’
‘Congratulations,’ said Holt Amdelle stiffly. ‘And I’m sure my wife will be equally delighted.’ Oh, come on, thought Orhan wearily. Don’t pretend you didn’t both know. Your spies are so good, you probably knew before I did. You probably knew before Bil did. Celyse’s questions at the Verneth party: nothing wrong, I trust?
‘Quite an achievement,’ said Elis Vorley. ‘A most unexpected piece of good news, I must say.’
‘That was rather cheap, brother dear,’ said Darath. Smiled elegantly at Orhan. ‘We all knew Orhan had it in him. And his wife is after all so dedicated to the family name.’
Lord Aviced ground his teeth and muttered something, his face scarlet. Orhan shot him an embarrassed glance. You married her to me. No need to look quite so shocked. But it smarted, still, that they should mock so openly.
They were interrupted by the crash of metal on the doors of the room. A rich strained voice calling them to worship: ‘The Emperor! All kneel for the Ever Living Emperor! Avert your eyes and kneel and be thankful! We live and we die! The Emperor comes! The Emperor comes!’ The High Lords of the Sekemleth Empire got carefully to their feet and assumed kneeling positions on the floor around the table. Small but aching differentiations of rank in the postures they adopted: Lord Emmereth and Lord Verneth knelt upright, heads bowed but bodies erect. The Lords Vorley were crouched lower, Lord Aviced so low his grey hair almost brushed the floor. The minute graduations of status in the high families, mapped out in a man’s closeness to the dirt on the Emperor’s marble floors.
The Emperor entered slowly, a youngish man with a heavy face and a heavy stomach, dressed in black that drained the colour from his skin. He was not a handsome man, and knew it. He was not a clever man, and knew that too. The thin band of yellow silk round his forehead dominated him but improved his looks. ‘The Emperor! The Emperor comes! Kneel and be thankful! The Emperor comes!’ Nodded to his lords and gestured absently for them to rise. They did so slowly, elegantly, a subtlety in their manner, as if they simply happened to be rising at that moment, not because their Emperor had commanded it. Whether the Emperor noticed this or not was uncertain. Probably not. So the great lords of the Sekemleth Empire had risen for centuries, before the fishmonger or stable hand or innkeep’s
