Garden of Madness (33 page)

“She cares for her family, Shadir. I would have it no other way.”

Amel’s voice. Speaking of her
.

Tia focused on the grayish stone column at her nose, traced spidery black cracks.

“Her family is a danger to our plans, Amel.”

“I will earn their loyalty once I am king. Allow them to remain in the palace, treat them well.”

Her heart expanded at these words. Her faith in him had not been misplaced. She leaned to her right, tried to glimpse the men within the Hall, saw only slivered fragments of their faces, flickering brazier light.

“Amel. I want you to listen.”

Shadir’s words, hypnotically smooth, raised a chill on her arms. She watched, her face pressed against the column, one uncovered eye trained on the men.

“I have protected you from birth, have I not?”

She heard no answer from Amel, perhaps because his back was to her.

“I have trained you in all that I know, given you secrets of power, opened the heavens to you.”

Shadir had drawn close to the younger mage, his face suspended a mere breath from Amel’s. Why did Amel not speak, not move?

“And now it is time, Amel. It is time for us to claim what we have so long labored to gain. The kingdom you deserve. And would you have those who are not of royal blood take it from you?”

She hung on Amel’s answer, waited through long moments of silence, all of her body tensed to hear the fate of her family, the outcome of her foolishness.

Amel’s voice, when it fell from his lips and drifted across the Hall to her ears, was the lifeless monotone pitch of man who obeyed and did not question.

“No one shall take it from me, Shadir. No one.”

Even from her half-obstructed place behind the column, she saw Shadir’s slow smile. “Good. Then we shall do what we must.”

Tia circled the stone column with one arm and clutched it to her chest to keep herself upright.

Amel answered, still half alive. “We shall do what we must.”

Enough
. She had heard enough.

Before the silent scream in her chest had a chance at betrayal, Tia escaped from hiding and ran. Ran with one hand pressed against her throat, her teeth clenched, anything to hold back the emotion that would swamp her, leave her as half alive as Amel on the floors of the palace corridor.

You are a fool, just as Mother knew
.

As always when life threatened to overwhelm, her instinct took her to the Gardens. She arrived at the top tier panting—with exertion, with fear, with her own stupidity. The lock gave way easily under her key, and she fell through the door, relieved to have made it here without shouting her frustration through the palace.

She picked her way through the darkness to her usual perch and lowered herself to the stone. The seven-tiered Gardens led downward like a staircase for the gods, leading to the city below. As if she could merely step from the lowest tier into the city streets, where families huddled around cook fires and mothers tucked their children into bed with whispered songs.

It was an illusion, however. That final step from the Garden’s lip would be deadly, and from her topmost perch she felt the distance keenly between herself and the rest of the world. A strange displacement, a misbelonging.

Tia allowed the night’s events to drop away for a moment. Focused on the wind’s rustle of the palms, on the gurgle of water as it flowed from the lift behind her downward through the tiers. On the primal smell of earth. She longed for a connection with all that was elemental and dug her hand into the rich, reddish soil. Traced the flow of aquamarine water nearby, breathed in the clear night air. Her heart settled. Lies and secrets were an anomaly, not the truth of all that was.

“Will you hear my prayers, Yahweh? The prayers of a foolish girl?” She waited, clutched at the peace He offered. “Show me the truth.”

Her father did not approach. Yes, Tia would call him
father
, now and always, for that is what he was. She saw him once or twice, rambling among the thick shrubbery farther down. Caught the glint of his eyes turned toward her. But he did not come. Had her visits become commonplace? Was it only animal curiosity that had brought him to her in times past, not some latent sense of affection? Perhaps Tia had been wrong about him, as she had been wrong about everything.

She drew her knees to her forehead, her body curled tight to ward off the chill and the truth. But the truth would not be dispelled.

I have destroyed my mother’s plan to keep us safe through marriage to the Medes. Amel is Shadir’s mouthpiece, Shadir’s instrument of destruction, and marriage to him will also destroy our family
. And the man to whom she wished to give herself could not be hers.

Zagros. Amel. Pedaiah. Three sons of kings. Three princes who would all have her. One as a means to peace, one as means to power, and the other—the other to set her free.

But he has set me free
. Or rather, his God had. Free from the oppression that had blanketed her for weeks, free from the unknowing worship of demons.

For so long Tia had sought to control her own destiny. Was it possible that her destiny was safer in the hands of Pedaiah’s sovereign God? Could she trust Him to keep them safe? Could she trust that even if they were not safe, they were in His hands?

It will take a mighty humbling on my part
.

But what rewards for such humility? The desperate need to grasp at the false security of position and possessions, this need would be replaced by the courage to risk everything, knowing she was held in the One God’s hand.

She lifted her head to the wine-dark sparkling sky and saw the truth. The full truth.

From her very birth Tia had longed to have purpose. To make a difference in her world, to have an impact. She had quenched the longing with inferior excitements and inconsequential rebellions. Because deeper than the longing lay fear. Fear that true risk would bring true loss, and without her security, she would be nothing.

But it was untrue. Without those things, she would be
more
herself.

Set free, Tia could change the world.

And freedom came only through the knowledge that she did not wield ultimate control. Someone greater, someone who
loved
, held her life in His hands.

Pedaiah’s first prayer over her whispered through the Garden’s cool breeze and became her own—spoken from within and without, for she could not have remembered each word.

Deliver me, Yahweh, from the snare of the enemy, from the poison of the evil one. Cover me with Your feathers, and under Your wings let me trust. Let Your truth be my shield. Let me not be afraid of the terror by night, nor of the arrow that flies by day, nor for the plague that walks in darkness, nor for the destruction that would steal my strength
.

She saw the king watching her from below, those empty eyes gleaming. But the peace that rushed into the empty places of her soul was like a cool drink and a warm fire all at once. The gentle embrace of a friend, the approving smile of a father. The call to fight a battle.

Glowing with this freedom, strengthened by its promise, Tia lifted a prayer of her own. “What then, Yahweh? Tell me how to rise up and risk. Tell me how to save my family.”

Let it all go
.

The words were as clear as the prayer. She reached with her heart for understanding.

Her luxuries. The palace. The kingdom. Let it all go.

We must flee
.

She comes again.

I watch. Watch her. Watch everywhere, that no harm will come to her. Prowl the night, listening, protecting.

She is mine to protect.

Some change is within my grasp.

My favorite places no longer satisfy.

The black roots, distasteful. The gray branches that would shield, scratch my skin.

Skin, dirt, beard. Nails. Not what they should be. Hate them.

I would be different. But I must choose.

I hear her, sounds with her mouth.

Words. They are words.

Yahweh
.

I know this word.

Most High. Master.

Even kings have a Master.

Must submit.

No, no, resist.

Submit.

CHAPTER 38

Tia found her mother in the darkness of the rooftop garden where Kaldu’s body had been found. Amytis leaned against the sandy stone wall, her back to Tia and her face to the desert. A scattering of crushed yellow petals drifted at her fingertips, like jewels in the moonlight.

Tia would speak to her about what they both knew of the future.

But first she would speak of the past.

“Mother.”

Amytis half turned, then resumed her gaze beyond the double city walls.
Is she weeping?

An unfamiliar pity swept Tia to her mother’s side. She joined her post at the wall and leaned her head against Amytis’s shoulder.

Amytis inclined her head and her cheek grazed Tia’s hair. Tia exhaled the resentment of years and soaked in this small sign of affection.

“Mother, I have been a fool, and you were right. Amel is not to be trusted, and I have interfered in your plans. Forgive me.”

Her repentance had grown between the Hanging Gardens and this rooftop, and if she had expected condemnation, she found instead a woman shattered by her own secrets and lies.

“You deserved so much more, Tia. In spite of everything, you deserved more.”

Tia turned Amytis to face her, studied the heavy tears sparkling on her dark lashes. “What grieves you?”

Amytis blinked, releasing a tiny shower. “I have tried, Daughter. The gods know I have tried, all these years, to give you the love you needed. But I could not, and in the end, your father—the king— loved you all the more for it, and I believed it would be enough.”

Tia still held her arms and slid her hands to grasp her mother’s, warm and smooth. “I understand. When you look at me, you are reminded of your mistake, and that is difficult.”

Amytis tilted her head, a flicker of confusion in her eyes. “Mistake?”

Tia dropped her face, ashamed to speak of something so personal. But she was finished with secrets. “Your—unfaithfulness—to the king.”

Amytis’s hands convulsed on hers. Tia winced at the iron grip and lifted her head.

“Is that what he told you, Tia? That I had been unfaithful?” Her eyes had turned to fire, the tears like sparks.

Tia opened her mouth to speak, but no sound emerged.

Amytis made a little noise in her throat, an angry snarl of injustice, and peered into the darkness. “Why should I be surprised? Why should I have expected Shadir to speak truth?”

“What is the truth?”
How many times have I asked that question?
And yet tonight, Tia knew she would hear it at last.

Amytis released Tia’s hands and placed her fingertips along the edge of the stone wall, retreating into her own memory.

“I was not unfaithful to the king, Tia. I was—forced.”

Tia fell back, heat flooding her limbs.

Who is your father?
Zagros’s question pounded like a drumbeat in her head.

“Raped? By whom?”

She huffed a tiny, bitter laugh. “Shadir.”

Tia gripped the wall as the sky spun. “Shadir is my father?”

She would deny it. There would be some mistake.

“Yes.”

“But, how—why—he has remained in the palace all these years! Why did the king not have him executed?”

“Because I lied.” Amytis’s lip quivered, and Tia pulled her close, until their arms were clasped and they stood eye to eye.

“Shadir threatened me—after. Threatened your sisters, who were tiny babes at the time. He had so much power, I knew he would hurt them.”

“But Father knew?”

“He discovered me. I had fought back, fought hard. There were bruises, injuries.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That a slave had forced himself on me.” Her breath caught on this, and the tears welled and spilled. “He had the slave executed, Tia.” Sobs broke her voice. “An innocent man, killed because of my lies.”

Tia pulled her mother to herself, head on her shoulder, and Amytis clutched her so fiercely Tia could feel her desperation to be forgiven seeping into her own body.

“When I learned I was with child, both of them knew. The king had left me to my chambers for weeks, so it was clear to him. I tried to lie to Shadir, but he has the knowledge of the gods, and somehow he always knew. All these years I have feared he would reveal the truth. I have lived as though he were attacking me still.”

“Why did you not simply rid yourself of me?” Tia had to ask the question. Before Tia’s birth her mother could have found an asû to help. After her birth it would have been the king’s prerogative to expose her on the riverbanks.

Amytis paused in her confession, lifted her tear-flooded face, and Tia sensed that perhaps this had been her desire.

“I considered it. I will not lie. But only before your birth. Once I held you in my arms, it never entered my mind.”

Tia smiled through her own tears.

“But as you grew, you were so—so unruly, so defiant. I feared you would turn evil, like Shadir. I did all I could to confine you, to subdue you.”

Tia exhaled a little laugh. “I did not make it easy.”

“No, you did not. And every bit of fire you displayed only made the king love you more.” Amytis wrapped her hands around Tia’s. “He was a good man, Tia. Loved me in spite of my defilement, and loved you best because of it.” She touched Tia’s cheek with her fingers. “He would tell me often how much you looked like me, how you were becoming so beautiful, just like your mother. Hoping to erase the knowledge of your birth.”

Tia mirrored her mother’s touch, tracing her own wet cheek with her hand. “I always hoped that it was true, that I was as beautiful as my mother.”

“You have a beauty that shines from deep within. I see that now. The fire I feared in you, it is what makes you alive, fearless, what makes you a better woman than I shall ever be.”

Her words fell on Tia like a warm anointing, and she bowed her head, breathed the scented air, and soaked in the precious words.