The Darkness that Comes Before (68 page)

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Authors: R. Scott Bakker

BOOK: The Darkness that Comes Before
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“He says . . . says such sweet things to give me comfort . . . He says that one of my seed will return, Seswatha. An
Anasûrimbor
will return—” The High King winced and shuddered. Spittle hissed through clenched teeth.
“—at the end of the world.”
Then the shining eyes of Anasûrimbor Celmomas II, White Lord of Trysë, High King of Kûniüri, grew slack and dull. The evening sun flashed then flickered out, and the gleaming bronze of the Norsirai host paled in the No-God’s twilight.
“Our King!” Achamian cried to the grim knights about him. “Our King is dead!”
 
She found herself wondering whether such games were common to the Kamposea Agora.
Her back was turned to him, but Esmenet could feel his appraising look. She ran fingers across a hanging sheaf of oregano, as though to see whether it had been properly dried. She leaned forward, knowing that her white linen gown, a traditional
hasas,
would crease along her buttocks and open along her side, gracing the stranger with a glimpse of her bare hip and her right breast. A hasas was little more than a long bolt of linen cut with an intricately embroidered collar and joined at the waist by a leather girdle. Though it was the garment of choice for free-wives on hot days, it was also popular among prostitutes—for the obvious reasons.
But she was no longer a prostitute. She was . . .
She no longer knew what she was.
Sarcellus’s Cepaloran body-slaves, Eritga and Hansa, had spotted the man as well. They giggled over the cinnamon, pretending to fuss over the length of the sticks. For not the first time this day, Esmenet found herself despising them, the way she had often found herself despising her competing neighbours in Sumna—particularly the young ones.
He watches me! Me!
He was an extraordinarily beautiful man: blond but clean-shaven, square-chested, and wearing only a blue linen kilt with gold tassels that stuck to his sweaty thighs. The network of blue tattoos along his arms meant he was an officer of some kind in the Emperor’s Eothic Guard. Other than that, Esmenet knew him not at all.
They had encountered one another only a short time earlier—she with Eritga and Hansa, he with three of his comrades. The crush had shoved her against him. He smelled of orange peels and salty skin. He was tall: her eyes scarcely reached his collarbone. Something about him made her think of strapping health. She looked up and, without knowing why, smiled at him in the shy yet knowing way that simultaneously protested modesty and promised abandon.
Afterward, flustered, excited, and dismayed, she had pulled Eritga and Hansa down a quiet byway peopled by strolling browsers and lined by spice stalls with their heaped flat baskets and curtains of drying herbs. Compared with the reeking crowds, the fragrances should have proven a welcome relief, but Esmenet had found herself mourning the stranger’s scent.
Now, his friends mysteriously absent, he loitered in the sun a short distance from them, watching them with unsettling candour.
Ignore him,
she thought, unable to shake the image of his hard stomach pressing against her.
“What are you doing?” she snapped at the two girls.
“Nothing,” Eritga said petulantly, her Sheyic heavily accented.
The sound of a stick snapping a trestle made all three of them jump. The old spice-monger, whose skin seemed stained the colour of his wares, stared at Eritga with outraged eyes. He brandished his stick, raising it to the flax awning.
“She is your mistress!” he cried.
The sunburned girl cringed. Hansa clutched her shoulders.
The spice-monger turned to Esmenet, raised a palm to his neck and lowered his right cheek—a caste merchant’s gesture of deference. He smiled at her approvingly.
Never in her life had she been so clean, so well-fed, or so well-dressed. Aside from her eyes and her hands, she looked, Esmenet knew, like the wife of some humble caste noble. Sarcellus had given her innumerable gifts: clothing, unguents, perfumes—but no jewellery.
Avoiding her eyes, Eritga stamped from the awning, confirming what Esmenet had known all along: the girl did not think herself Esmenet’s servant. Neither did Hansa, for that matter. At first Esmenet had thought it mere jealousy: the girls loved Sarcellus, she’d assumed, and dreamed, as enslaved girls do, of being more than simply bedded by their master. But Esmenet had begun to suspect that Sarcellus himself had a hand in their attitude. Whatever doubt she might have harboured had been dismissed this morning, when the two girls refused to allow her to leave the encampment on her own.
“Eritga!” Esmenet called. “Eritga!”
The girl glared at her, her hate naked now. She was so fair-haired she seemed browless in the sunlight.
“Go home!” Esmenet commanded. “Both of you!”
The girl sneered and spit onto the packed dust.
Esmenet took a threatening step forward. “Beat your freckled ass home,
slave,
before I—”
Another snap of the stick across the trestle. The spice-monger scurried from his stall and struck Eritga across the face. The girl fell, shrieking, while the vendor struck her again and again, crying curses in an unfamiliar tongue. Hansa pulled Eritga clear, then with the spice-monger still shouting and waving his stick, they fled down the alley.
“They go home now,” the man said to Esmenet, beaming with pride and pressing a pink tongue against the gaps in his teeth. “Fucking slaves,” he added, spitting over his left shoulder.
But Esmenet could only think,
I’m alone
.
She blinked at the tears threatening her eyes. “Thank you,” she said to the old man.
The gnarled face softened. “What you buy?” he asked gently. “Pepper? Garlic? I have very good garlic. I winter it very special way.”
How long had it been since she was last alone? Since that village months ago, she realized, where Sarcellus had rescued her from being stoned. She shuddered, suddenly feeling horribly on her own. She hid her tattoo in the palm of her right hand.
From the day Sarcellus had saved her, she had not once been alone. Not truly. Since she’d arrived in the Holy War, Eritga and Hansa had been ever-present. And Sarcellus himself had somehow managed to spend a great deal of his time with her. In fact, he’d been remarkably attentive, given the selfishness that seemed to characterize so much of his life otherwise. He’d indulged her on many occasions, taking her here, to the Kamposea Agora, several times, bringing her to worship at the Cmiral, spending an entire afternoon with her in the Temple of Xothei, laughing as she marvelled at its great dome and listening as she explained how the Ceneians had built it in near antiquity.
He had even toured the Imperial Precincts with her, teasing her for gawking as they walked in the cool shadow of the Andiamine Heights.
But he had never left her alone. Why?
Was he afraid she’d seek out Achamian? It struck her as a silly fear.
She went cold.
They were watching Akka.
They!
He had to be told!
But then why did she hide from him? Why did she dread the thought of bumping into him each time she left the encampment? Whenever she glimpsed someone who resembled him, she would instantly look away, afraid that if she did not, she might
make
whoever it was into Achamian. That he would see her, punish her with a questioning frown. Stop her heart with an anguished look . . .
“What you buy?” the spice-monger was repeating, his face now troubled.
She looked at him blankly, thinking,
I have no money
. But then why had she come to the agora?
Then she remembered the man, the Eothic Guardsman watching her. She glanced across the alley and saw him waiting, staring at her keenly.
So beautiful . . .
Her breath tightened. She felt heat flush her thighs.
This time she did not look away.
What do you want?
He looked at her intently, lingering for that heartbeat that sealed all unspoken assignations. He tilted his head slightly, looked to the far end of the market then back.
She looked away, nervous, a fluttering in her chest.
“Thank you,” she mumbled to the spice-monger. He flapped his arms in disgust as she turned away. Numb, she began walking in the direction the stranger had indicated.
She could see him in her periphery, following her through a shadowy screen of people. He kept his distance, but it seemed he already pressed his sweaty chest against her back, his narrow hips against her buttocks, moving, whispering in her ear. She struggled for breath, walked faster, as though pursued.
I want this!
They found themselves among emptied paddocks, surrounded by the smell of sacrificial livestock. The outer compounds of the temple-complex loomed above them. Somehow, without speaking, they closed upon one another in the gloom of an adjacent alley.
This time he smelled of sunburned skin. His kiss was crushing, vicious even. She sobbed, pressed her tongue deep into his mouth, felt the knife’s edge of his teeth.
“Ah, yes,” he nearly cried. “So sweet!” He clutched her left breast. His other hand jostled with her gown, skidded up along the inside of her thighs.
“No!” she exclaimed, pushing him back.
“What?” He leaned against her elbows, searching for her mouth.
She turned her face away. “Coin,” she breathed. False laugh. “No one eats for free.”
“Ah, Sejenus! How much?”
“Twelve talents,” she gasped. “
Silver
talents.”
“A whore,” he hissed. “You’re a
whore!
”
“I’m twelve silver talents . . .”
The man hesitated. “Done.”
He began digging through his purse, glanced at her as she nervously adjusted her gown.
“What’s this?” he asked sharply. She followed his eyes to the back of her left hand.
“Nothing.”
“Really? I’m afraid I’ve seen this ‘nothing’ before. It’s a mockery of the tattoos borne by Gierric Priestesses, no? What they use in Sumna to brand their whores.”
“So. What of it?”
The man grinned. “I’ll give you twelve talents. Copper.”
“Silver,” she said. Her voice sounded uncertain.
“A bruised peach is a bruised peach, no matter how you dress it.”
“Yes,” she whispered, feeling tears brim in her eyes.
“What was that?”
“Yes! Just hurry!”
He fumbled coins from his purse. Esmenet glimpsed a halved silver slip through his fingers. She snatched the sweaty coppers. He hiked the front of her hasas and knifed into her. She climaxed almost immediately, blowing air through clenched teeth. She beat feebly at his shoulders with her monied fists. He continued to thrust, slow yet hard. Again and again, grunting a little louder each time.
“Sweet Sejenus!” he hissed, his breath hot in her ear.
She climaxed again, this time crying out. She could feel him shudder, feel the telltale thrust, deep, as though he hunted for her very centre.
“By the God,” he gasped.
He withdrew, pressed himself from her arms. He seemed to look through her. “By the God . . .” he repeated, differently this time. “What have I done?”
Panting, she raised a hand to his cheek, but he stumbled backward, trying to smooth his kilt. She glimpsed a trail of wet stains, the shadow of his softening phallus.
He could not look at her, so he looked away, toward the bright entrance of the alley. He began walking toward it, as though stunned.
Leaning against the wall, she watched him find his composure, or a blank-faced version of it, in the sunlight. He disappeared, and she leaned her head back, breathing heavily, smoothing her hasas with clumsy hands. She swallowed. She could feel him run down her inner thigh, first hot, then cold, like a tear that runs to the chin.
For the first time, it seemed, she could smell the stink of the alley. She saw the glint of his half-silver among withered, eyeless fish.

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