Pyrebound - 11.3

Chapter 11.3 – Pyrebound
“Their big plan won’t work,” Darun said as they walked down the stairs. “None of it. Dul Jatu’s not going to want another pyre here—it’d kill their business. They can’t sell any fresh mounts if nobody’s wearing out the old ones crossing the desert. Not to mention the protection racket.”

“Wouldn’t they see a lot more traffic, though, if there’s no desert there? They could sell all that livestock they’ve got on to the Teshalun market.” He knew nothing of business, but he knew that there would be plenty of people willing to pay for good beef like he’d had last night.

Darun stopped at the tunnel entrance. “Don’t get me wrong, it’d work out better for everybody in the long run if you could move stuff around without paying those pompous parasites to drag you through gates. As a blackband, I approve—screw them! But you’re talking about changing a lot of things, Ram. About a thousand people are making a lot of money with things as they are. They’ve got pull, and businessmen don’t like big, unpredictable changes.”

“Yeah.” He looked out at the desert. “I don’t see this turning into good pasture in three blooms, either.”

“Nah. But why should Shimrun care about that? He’s going to be dead. He’s honoring you by setting things up, croaking, then leaving you with the hard part, since you’re so healthy and all.”

“But you think we can do something here.”

“Maybe. I don’t have a good bead on those two yet, or the handmaidens. If they’re married to this stupid-ass plan, it could get tricky. But as a threat—you realize how badly it’d screw everything up, if he went through with this? Just the flood of refugees would be crazy, never mind dealing with the diplomatic mess. That’s some leverage, right there. You could be the reasonable alternative, or the guy who’s just crazy enough to do it. Depending on which angle we think will work better.”

“Yeah.” He could see the sense in it, and knew that this was the kind of scheming Darun did best, but it wasn’t something that came naturally or comfortably to him. Should he be nervous that he slept with a woman who could take such a cold view of the world, or grateful that she was on his side? “What’s Piridur’s next move? You said you had a good read on him.”

“Hmm. He wouldn’t want the pyre to look weak—but he can’t fix this on his own. He’s got no way of even finding us out here, and he’s wetting his pants trying to get this done fast. A silver says he’ll go to the Jatu authorities for help, and send a barque back to daddy asking what the hell he should do.”

“And Jatu? What do you think they’ll do?”

“Dunno; I’ve never met their lugal. If I were him, I’d squeeze Piridur by the balls for concessions before I did anything. Piridur’s helpless here. But I don’t know what he has to offer, except cash.”

“The guy at the hearth seemed pretty fired up about this last night.”

“Yeah, he was worried Shimrun would start snitching his cows next,” she said, waving the objection away. “And playing it up to make Piridur defensive. You know how bad Jushur looks here? ‘Derp, our Ensi ran away, and now he’s stealing your shit, sorry about that’? Pathetic. The people at Jazaral won’t give a damn about a couple of cows here and there, or even the bondservants, unless Shimrun really ramps up.”

“But what if he tells them—“

“That he wants to be neighbors? Yeah, that wouldn’t sell well. Let’s see if we can’t persuade Gelibara to keep that under wraps as long as we can. And stop stealing, while he’s at it. We can get money to just buy stock, if we need to, and give them a reason to like having us around. That should be obvious.”

“Get money? From who, Zasha?”

“We can fly, Ram. That little trick with stealing the tax assessment? Multiply it by ten. Better than letting Jushur use it, right?”

“Hmm. If we did it right, I suppose we might get Zasha to pitch in some too. He wanted me to make trouble, after all.” As long as he could do it without giving the man still more power over him.

She hugged him. “That’s the spirit! The way I see it, if we can convince Jazaral that we’re only having a spat with Jushur, they’ll be just tickled to play us off against each other. Lugals eat that up.”

“So do you,” he reminded her, and went inside. She didn’t follow.

Darun’s advice hadn’t worked out all that well in the past. The best you could say for her plans was that they didn’t go as catastrophically wrong as Shimrun’s. But then, in all fairness, Ram had never had much of a plan for his life to begin with. It was long past time to change that. I could use some help here, Yellow God.

Ram found the Ensi back in his cramped alcove, hacking and coughing as before, while his brothers and minders clustered around. The boys were both somewhere shy of ten, and distinctly homely. The larger of the two stood rigidly still, his upper body oddly bent over to one side; the other was hunched against the base of the rough wall, wrapped in a thick blanket. Ram hadn’t heard a word from either yet. Pimna was in her late thirties or early forties, with exactly the kind of frame a woman might earn lifting and moving disabled children for blooms on end. The look she gave him was hardly friendly.

Good thing he didn’t need her friendship. “Gelibara, does Jushur know what you’re planning here? Or that it’s possible to relocate the pyre?”

“That can wait, young man,” Pimna said, with a still deeper frown. “If you don’t mind, the Ensi is ill.”

“It sounds like he’s always ill, and it can’t wait long,” Ram retorted. “Piridur will know by now that I’m gone. We need to get ready for his next move.”

“You’d better start working on that, then,” said Pimna, turning back to the copper bowl. “In case you’ve forgotten, we didn’t invite you.”

Gelibara grimaced, but said over his master’s hacking, “I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to your question, Ram. We of the Temple didn’t speak with the men of the Palace very often, outside of business matters of mutual concern.”

“So nobody knows a damn thing. Great. Suppose he—“ A bright light flashed in front of his face, cutting him off.

“Suppose you two take this conversation elsewhere,” Pimna said firmly. “I have a very sick nephew to take care of.”

“A splendid idea,” Gelibara hurried to say, and bustled outside into the main room. “You’ll have to forgive Miss Pimna, Ram dear,” he murmured in passing. “She wasn’t exactly happy to come, and we’re having some difficulty bringing her around to our point of view.”

“Then why did you bring her in the first place?” Ram griped, following him out. Busu and his boys were still lugging out rocks by the apron-load. He wondered how terrible life in bondage had been, that they could work at such a miserable task with that kind of enthusiasm.

“She has taken care of the boys in the Temple for more than two kindlings, Ram. She is devoted to their care and well-being. And, since what happened after the bloom, she has nobody left to care for but the three we’ve got.”

“What happened after the bloom, anyhow?” Darun asked. She leaned against the rock wall next to the doorway outside, as if admiring the view. “Everything went to hell, we’ve got that much. How?”

“That’s … something of a delicate subject still, lamb. The memories are painful for all of us. I’d rather not get into that just yet, if you don’t mind.”

“But I do mind,” Ram said. “Because whatever happened then, it’s the reason why I spent the last several months running for my life. I don’t like working with people who cocked things up that badly, and not knowing the details. And if we’re talking about painful memories, I tried to go home and found my whole hearth flattened—because of your delicate subject.”

“But, Ram … that was the only way for him to keep his promise, don’t you see? Would you rather have let your parents be killed, or held hostage?”

“I’d rather you’d have played it straight with me from the start. But you can start to make up for it by telling me what I need to know now, instead of mincing around the subject.”

Gelibara sighed, and stepped outside onto the vestibule. “If you insist. It wasn’t … treachery, or anything like that. We were not knowingly betrayed. But you do know, don’t you, that the Ensi used to have more brothers than just the two?”

“Shennai said something like that.”

“Yes. Well. Our current lord was third in the succession, before the bloom. A young man named Telpish was ensi, while Mendurnengi was the first en. Both have, ah, passed on now. Because of, because of what … happened.”

“Which was?” Ram said, as gently as he could manage.

“There were, until recently, eight boys in the painted room. Denliki was the eldest, just turned fifteen. He was born healthy, but he’d struck his head somehow when he was five, and hadn’t been the same since. Days before the last bloom, it was decided to indwell Denliki, and make him fourth in line.”

“All right. And then?”

Gelibara trembled as he spoke: “Master Shimrun was against indwelling Denliki. There was, you see, nothing physically wrong with the boy. Nothing to keep him from living a long life. And of course having him indwelt would complicate his plans for you. The master persuaded Telpish, the ensi, to pretend. After the bloom, he claimed that he had indwelt Denliki, but nothing of the sort had happened. We, it was thought we, we would only have to maintain th-the charade for a, for a short time.”

“But you didn’t, huh?” said Darun.

“Denliki, poor boy, was too, too stupid to act. Telpish wasn’t much better. We, we felt compelled to inform him that he wasn’t really indwelt, in case he did something to, to endanger himself, b-but that only made him act guilty. One of the caretaker handmaidens g-grew suspicious, and … and decided on a simple test. W-without asking anyone.” He was crying now.

“And Denliki didn’t pass that test,” Ram concluded.

Gelibara hid his face in his hands, sobbing convulsively. Even Darun didn’t have anything clever to say. They both waited silently for the eunuch to recover his composure. It took the better part of a minute before he wiped his face with his grubby sleeve and said in a weak voice, “Telpish took it very badly, when he heard—he threw himself off the top tier of the Temple. The priesthood fell to Mendurnengi, the en, who took the whole burden just after learning that Denliki had … passed. The power was how he learned that his ensi was gone as well.

“It’s always a shock, receiving the full power—Master Shimrun can tell you more about that than I, I’m sure. I don’t know what he thought, perhaps that there was some sort of massacre. He had been one of our confidants, you see, and very ardent about the entire thing. His first act as Ensi was to force the handmaiden who’d killed Denliki to destroy herself. Then he had Miss Pimna kill Anmatuda, and one of the other acolytes. There’s no saying how far he might have gone if he hadn’t had one of his seizures just after.” His smile was bitter. “Which proves we had a reason, of sorts, for choosing him. I don’t know who killed Mendurnengi.”

“I think I can guess a lot of the rest,” Ram said. Not that he wanted to try. He’d said eight boys were alive at the bloom. Now there were two. Somehow or other, five more children had died. They would have been helpless idiots and cripples, not even indwelt. No, he didn’t want the details.

“Yes, I believe you could.”

“So … Shimrun only stayed alive after that because I was on the loose?”

“Correct. You were discovered by accident, of course, as part of a general purge of everyone under suspicion. I barely survived myself; I don’t think I would have, if Anmatuda lived. But it was all terribly confused, and by the time they got around to suspecting me—because of you—our current lord had recovered from his assumption of power. He put a stop to it by threatening a purge of his own, and those of us who survived were forced to listen.”

“And that’s how it was,” Shimrun said, coming out of the tunnel behind them, “for two months. I told Nusun to bar the Temple to anyone but handmaidens and known acolytes, and set Pimna and your sister to watch us. The surviving minders—two acolytes, not counting Gelibara—we locked in a storage room. I set Shunnar to making life difficult for Jushur. She’s good at that.”

“I know. Was there ever any plan to find and help me?” Ram asked.

“How? With who? Shunnar was our only weapon against the Lugal. We needed her there. The girls are only girls, and conspicuous. Pimna wouldn’t have gone if I’d asked, and she was the only one I could trust to watch my brothers.”

“So that’s all you did for two months?” Darun scoffed. “Were you hoping the old lady would snuff all the flamekeepers, if you just waited long enough? When you could control every spirit in the pyre?”

“That is … not a road I wanted to take.”

“Yeah, because they’ve spent two kindlings teaching you to be a cowardly little pissant. That’s why you needed Ram; there wasn’t a single real man in that whole mountain of bricks. Why don’t you just cut your balls off, and save your life? I don’t think your buddy’s going to make them grow back, even if they are tiny.”

Ram put a hand on her shoulder. “Darun. Stop. I wouldn’t have done that either. Ruling by force, I mean.” He turned to Shimrun. “You can’t control more than one haranu at a time, can you?”

“Sort of. It’s like juggling. I can only concentrate on so much.”

“And I hear they’re all scared of it.” His right hand slapped his face. “Ow! Cut that out, dammit!”

Shimrun’s chuckle sounded more like a wheeze. “How does that make you feel? Of course they’re scared of it, Ram. Nobody wants to be a puppet. Better me than them.”

“There’s got to be somewhere in between,” Ram said, trying not to show his temper. His face and hand were both tingling. “Some way that isn’t all fucked up like that.” If there wasn’t, was any of this worth fighting for?

Shimrun shook his head. “Ram, can you balance your sword on two fingers?”

“Sure.” He drew Beshi and, after a moment’s fiddling, he found the right point, near the hilt. “Easy.”

“How long could you keep doing that? Thirty seconds? A minute? An hour?”

“Not an hour,” he said. He sheathed the sword again. “Where are you going with this?”

“Not an hour,” Shimrun repeated. “Because you have to keep working at it constantly. Both ends naturally want to fall. That’s an Ensi’s dilemma. Will he be the puppet, or the puppeteer?”

“So you’re trying to be puppeteer now?”

“No. I want to try to balance. We can keep it up for a while. But I … have no illusions. It will fail, sooner or later. It always does. There’s too much pull, in both directions.”

“And you know this how?” Darun said. “From the evil lying bastards who raised you, or the brainless idiot boogum in your head?”

“The second, more or less. Ram, you’ve lived with a spirit for … some time now. You know what it wants, don’t you?”

“I do.” More or less.

“Imagine that … but bigger. Scaled up. The ensi in command. The handmaidens … aren’t supposed to be celibate. That came later. Time was, the ensi was a lord with … a dozen brides. And thirty children. A huge family, all born indwelt. The eldest dies, but there are always plenty more.” He gave Darun a sly look. �How do you like that?”

Ram’s haranu purred inside him. But Darun said, “Sounds to me like a demented little man’s fantasy.”

“It might have been,” Shimrun said. “It’s not stable. The ens always want more. Everyone wants the power, nobody wants to pay. None of them want to work, and they’re always … skimming new girls off the commoners. Castrating the boys, putting them to work. The men get impatient, steal each others’ women, kill each other for a chance at the top. Then go mad when they get there. The Lugal always wins back. In the end.”

“But how do you even know all this?” Ram protested. “Haranuu don’t have minds, or memories! Mine didn’t even know who you were.”

“They don’t have memories, no. We—the ensis—keep the past for them. It isn’t perfect. It fades, gets vague with time. Sometimes there are … interruptions, when the line fails. But I can remember … in outlines … the lives of men who died centuries ago.” He turned his eyes away from Ram to look out at the horizon. “However, it seems we now we have … more urgent problems.”

Strange spirits were approaching from the southwest.