Pyrebound - 9.2
Author: theredsheep

Chapter 9.2 – Pyrebound

The stone Ensi still stood at one end of the pool in the plaza, raising his arms to the sky. On the far end, there was only a cracked chunk of rubble that might once have been a pair of knees, calves, and feet. The larger pieces of the kneeling Lugal had been swept away from the pavement, but nobody had had time to clear out the bits that fell in the pool yet. A good bit of his face had landed intact in the water, and stared up stupidly at the towering priest through the surface. It looked like the statue had exploded. Mana’s work, or one of the other young handmaidens’? Maybe even Shennai’s.

Soft footsteps scuffed the paving-stones behind him. “How’d he escape so quickly, anyhow? Wasn’t your old man watching him, since the bloom?”

“I don’t know, Ram,” Piridur answered. “It wasn’t my job to deal with the boys in the Temple.”

“They were young. But we didn’t rely mainly on physical restraint. Those boys never left the Temple, didn’t know their way around outside it, didn’t know how anything worked. Even if they ran, they’d have no idea where to run to. And then there’s the pull of the fire.”

“Yeah.” He moved on, past the pool. It was the night of dark dreams; they had the plaza to themselves. Piridur followed. “Was it stronger for him, then? Or is it?”

“How would I know? I’m only a soldier.”

He sounded defensive. He probably guessed, more than he let on, what they did to keep Karagi’s heirs safe and tame. The two of them were walking down the lane toward the Temple now, between the double lines of past ensis. Every one had a plaque at his feet with his name on it. “I’ll have a statue here, by the end of next kindling,” he said, feeling his chest tighten.

“It’s probably best not to think about it.”

Ram stopped in his tracks. “That’s not what I meant, Piridur. My statue. My face. My name. Is the statue going to say ‘Rammash im-Belemel’ at the bottom of it? Rammash the warlock, who burned down his own hearth, and murdered an ensi? The one you’ve had a warrant on?”

“Does that even matter, right now?”

“Yes, Piridur. It does. Because this is the future you’re asking me to make for you. It’s the only future I can have. Someday, sooner than I want, all that’s left of me will be one of these statues. Is it too much to ask, for that rock to have my real face and my real name? Is it?”

He continued walking. Piridur followed in silence for the better part of fifty feet before answering, “Nobody stops to look at these statues, you know. And many are missing. I’ve told you, a lot of ensis die in their beds. I know three or four have gone mad in my lifetime, and had to be put down. No memorials for them. The statues have always been lies.”

“That’s going to change. I know what the world looks like. I’m not going to live in your kennel. The people of Dul Karagi are going to know the name and face of the man who’s going to die for them.”

Piridur sighed. “We’ll see.”

Its master had fled, but Nusun the murrush still kept its endless vigil at the top of the stairs. Ram had been wondering just how they’d snuck out past it. He got his answer before they were even halfway up the steps. “The murrush is indwelt?”

“Yes. It’s part of his agreement with us. He stays in place and guards the Temple because our haranu keeps his stomach burning without food. Most pyres have a similar arrangement.”

“So it’s loyal to the Ensi, in the end. How did you threaten him with assassins? It’d never let any strange men past it, and the Temple’s only got one entrance.”

“Who says they were strange men? We bring food and water into the Temple every day.”

“Carried by acolytes.”

“The same acolytes who—“

“Took care of him? Yes. And some handmaidens. Only a few had direct contact with the lineage, and it wasn’t a pleasant job. One of the caretakers killed herself, a few blooms back.” They’d reached the top of the steps. “Nusun, we’ll need a guide with a light, please.”

The murrush obligingly lifted its head and let out a long, low moan into the night.

“If you aren’t prepared to deal with this now, Ram, I understand. I’ve told you, handling the Ensi is sometimes an ugly business.”

“Handling him. You make him sound like an animal.”

“Some of them nearly are. I’ve heard you can come close, and you’ve had a lot more to ground you than those boys.”

“Then why didn’t you do more to ‘ground’ them?”

“Because a healthy ensi’s even more dangerous than a sick one.” A handmaiden emerged from the shadows of the gate. “Pardon us for disturbing you so late, miss, but we’re on an urgent errand. The Painted Room, if you please.” The woman startled, and turned her veiled face towards Ram. “Quickly, please, miss. We’ve got a lot to see tonight, and my bed is already calling me.”

She bowed—with another, more furtive glance toward Ram—and led them into the Temple. A golden orb appeared in front of her before they were five steps in.

“If you’re so tired,” Ram said quietly to Piridur, “you can go home. I’ll look around the place myself, and come back to the Palace when I’m done.” In the meantime, he’d get a chance to talk things over privately with anyone he saw.

He was disappointed, but not surprised, when Piridur answered, “Duty comes first. I’ve been on more campaigns than I can count, Ram; I can handle being a little tired.” He was panting as he said it; the handmaiden was leading them up a series of stairways.

The Painted Room was somewhere near the summit of the Temple, that much he could tell; they were very close to the fire itself, and felt distinctly warm, when the lady stood aside and bowed, sweeping her arms to the doorway. She sent her light in after them, expanding it a touch so they could see more of the place—but stayed outside herself.

It wasn’t a very impressive room. Large, yes; it stretched on so far in every direction that the handmaiden’s light barely lit the corners. But the ceiling was low, the air stale, and all of it poorly kept. There was grime on the floors. A faint hint of old urine clung to the place, overlaid with any number of other smells, not all familiar but none of them pleasant. Part of it might have been blood, and Ram couldn’t shake the sensation that that low roof was going to come down and crush him at any moment. Aside from the pillars holding it up, the room looked to be empty.

Ram turned to look at the walls flanking the door—the only ones he could see clearly. They were covered in bright, simple murals, in a style so crude he imagined even he might do better, with a little practice. Moreover, the paint was old and faded, with patches bald or flaking here and there. It took a moment just to recognize the subject: handmaidens creating light to shine down on farmland. They were grossly out of proportion, towering over the bondsmen tending the fields, but all the figures had equally flat and stupid smiles on their faces.

“I thought you could afford to pay a lot to keep an ensi happy?”

“We could, yes,” Piridur said, standing beside him to look at the brutish art. “With you, we would. For them, we didn’t.”

“What was this place for, though? The rookery was less depressing.”

“It’s a nursery. A place to rear Karagi’s line.”

“They raised kids in this hole?”

“For the first kindling or so of their lives, I think. They stayed in this room until they were found ready to indwell.”

“There aren’t any windows, even! Did they at least let them out, sometimes?”

“No. Not at this stage. Why would they? Karagi’s heirs didn’t need to see the outside world, or know anything about it. They lived to die, Ram. That was their only purpose.”

He looked back at the handmaiden, still hovering outside the room. “And everyone was okay with that?”

“It was better than every alternative they had. It’s been a long, long time since an ensi held real power, Ram, and there aren’t any good records of those days. But we remember enough that we don’t want to go back to them.”

Ram started walking along the wall, looking up at more of the ugly paintings as the floating light drifted past them. The next one had acolytes teaching little boys to write. Were those the boys they kept here? It didn’t sound like they’d want them literate. “I’m not letting you keep my children here.”

“We don’t expect you to have any children, Ram. Few ensis sire families; the official lineages are fabricated. Karagi’s bloodline died out a long time ago. Every one of those statues outside was adopted, just like you.”

The next mural had men and women holding hands and dancing in a ring. “Adopted from where?”

“I don’t know, Ram. I’ve heard they raided the gien, from time to time, when they couldn’t find a suitable male infant.”

“The gien. They used reshmarked children?” Like Mana?

“Or just unwanted. I think a lot of them were sickly. It didn’t matter. The pyre wouldn’t let them die, and we didn’t need or want a strong young man like you.”

A family sitting down and eating dinner together. Still with those same big smiles. “So, what happened to Karagi’s line? Did you kill them all off, replace them with people you could control?”

“There might not have been a line at all, Ram. You said it yourself: you don’t want us raising your children here. Would anyone? Do you want to have a son, and burn before you see him become a man, and know he’ll burn after?”

The words hit home, and Ram had to stop and steady himself against a wall, as he had in the Garden last night. But there was no Darun here to wrap her arms around him, only a bad picture of two men playing at tiles, an ugly spectacle rapidly blurring out of his vision. He missed those arms, more than he’d have ever thought he would.

“Why doesn’t he kill you?” he whispered.

“Why doesn’t Shimrun kill you?” he choked out. “He has the power. I would kill you. I would kill every one of you, for doing this to me, if I could. Who wouldn’t?”

“He wouldn’t. Because we’ve taught him not to. That’s the point, the whole point of all this. We’re not reshki, Ram. We don’t go out of our way to be cruel. But that pyre outside, and the hearths around it? All those tens of thousands of people? They’re only alive because of what happens in this room. Every pyre in the Dominion does things the same way.”

Which, he guessed, was what all these paintings were here for. Letting those little boys know what they’d be dying for. “Every pyre?”

“As far as I know, yes. Because it’s all we’ve got. If you can come up with a better way of keeping the human race alive, Ram, I’d be happy to hear it. As it is, someone has to die every ten blooms, and nobody’s volunteering.”

“Volunteer, you mean?”

“Yeah, you. The guy who keeps talking about his duty. How seriously would you take it?” He smiled a twisted smile at the next picture on the wall. A beleaguered little force of flamekeepers and handmaidens stood bravely against a vast army of reshki, shabti, bazuu, and moonchildren, with a few still more fantastic bugbears behind them. The militia, of course, were nowhere in sight. “Are you ready to die for Dul Karagi?”

He stopped walking; he didn’t need to see any more of the hideous pictures. “You answered that quickly, Piridur. Quick and easy. Because you know it will never happen. You’ll never have to suffer for any of this. All you have to do is put on a brave face and tell lies while somebody else throws little kids on a fire.”

“They’re not children. Shimrun is older than you. And, if we’re throwing accusations, it’s not hard for someone in your position to claim he could do better. Every hearthless in the desert is sure he could run the pyres better than we can, because he’s never had to try. Shimrun and his partisans didn’t tell you what was going on. Would you still have cooperated with them, if you knew what it meant?”

“Hell, no. I thought I was signing up to get rid of people like you.”

“People like Kamenrag, you mean. Or his grandfather. People you hated anyway. Instead you got this, the real problem of managing a pyre. You didn’t ‘sign up’ for that. Why should I?”

“Because you’re supposed to be responsible for it. You have the power, so you pay the price.”

Piridur laughed. “Ram, all those people outside think there’s a family in here that’s been willingly killing off a member every ten blooms for countless generations. Not much less gruesome than the truth, if you think about it. But everyone accepted it, because it was their job. Now you’re telling me the same thing. I’m responsible for it, so I’m the one who dies. Why? Because my family’s rich? But I’ve been offering you just that, a short but comfortable life, and you look at me like I’ve offered to buy your mother. When you aren’t calling me a liar.”

Ram looked away, to the corner of the room. There were a lot of black and sooty smudges on the floor. It still smelled like char; whatever had been set on fire there, it had happened recently. Destroying evidence? “Do they give you people lessons in arguing everything in circles?”

“Yes, as it happens. Logic, rhetoric, philosophy. All part of a good education.”

“Whatever. Let’s just go. I’m not going to learn anything else here.”

“To where? I can take you to the areas reserved for older, indwelt boys, if you like.”

“No. I’ve seen enough. Just get us out of here.”

“As you wish,” he said, and motioned for the handmaiden.

Ram let him take the lead on the way out, and said nothing to him the whole time. He shoved his way past Piridur as soon as he saw moonlight, so he could walk back by himself.

They’d been given rooms in the Palace itself, part of a whole wing set aside for unexpected dignitaries. Darun was sitting up on the bed when he came in, hugging her knees and staring at the wall. She’d said she was tired, and probably was, but nobody ever wanted to turn in early on this night. Ram kicked off his boots, sat next to her, and put an arm around her waist.

She leaned into the embrace, but neither of them said a word for a long time. At last he whispered in her ear, “Let’s die young together, you and me. It’ll be fun.”

She pulled away, ever so slightly, to give him a puzzled look.

“That’s what you said last night. Did you mean it?”

She settled back in. “I don’t know. It had been a while, you know? It sounded good at the time.”

It was just the kind of answer he’d expected. “You didn’t mean it,” he said, kissing her on the forehead. “But that’s okay.”

“If you mean you’ve got the itch now, Ram, I hate to break it to you, but tonight’s not the—“

“It’s okay,” he went on over her, “because you never mean anything. And I always hated you for it. You know that? But I was wrong. It turns out everyone else is the same way. It’s how the whole world runs. At least you’re an honest liar.”

“Glad you’re finally figuring that out.”

“I’m never going to get married, Darun. I’m never going to have a family of my own. Nobody wants to marry a dead man.” It was better not to ask why she’d wanted him last night. Ram could think of several explanations, but none of them were flattering. He took a deep breath. “I can’t have a wife, and you don’t want a husband. Will you stay with me anyway?”

“Thirteen blooms is one hell of a long time, Ram.”

“It seems pretty short to me. But I know you won’t be tied down. Stay as long as you’re willing. I just … don’t want to be alone, is all. You’re all I’ve got left.” And vice versa, though he wouldn’t say it.

She clapped her hands. “You want me to be your mistress! Awesome!”

Ram put his hand to his face. “Not the word I would have chosen.”

“Too late now. You know, I always wanted to be a mistress. Tir was, for a while, but then she went and married him, like an idiot. That was when she got fat.”

He let go of her and lay down. “This seems like a good time to turn in.”

“Oh, come on. You were cool with me being your fake mistress for like half a bloom, and you weren’t even getting anything out of it. What kind of swag does an ensi’s girl get, anyhow?”

“I’ll be sure to ask Piridur tomorrow. Go to sleep.”

“If I’m going to be the official kept woman of Dul Karagi, we should let people know. Should I write the letter to your mom for you? I have good handwriting.”

He rolled over, and put a pillow over his head.

As he’d expected, he slept easily; with the fire so close, and his spirit mature, the white sun meant nothing to him. When he woke again in the small hours to the sound of weeping, he turned back without a word, and held her tight until the nightmare passed. He would be groggy in the morning, and she likely wouldn’t remember. It was still nice, to know that he had the power to make anything better at all.