The Quartered Sea (27 page)

Come, lose yourself in us.

Eyes wet with more than rain, Benedikt staggered backward until his back pressed hard against the surrounding rock. The sudden pain of sharp edges scraping over bare skin brought him a little distance and he realized that even a gratitude would not keep the kigh away for long. He had to move away from the sea before he gave in and became a part of it.

Chapter Eight

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"KOHUNLICH Quilax, the old boat master, saw the Benedikt by the sea, gracious one." Eyes focused on the wall over the tul's head, the guard gripped her pike with white knuckles. When the tul was this angry, it made very little difference who was to blame. "He said the warrior of Tulpayotee headed south, along the shore."

"He saw? He said?" Eyes narrowed, the tul paced slowly around behind her. His hands were empty, but the skin between her shoulder blades itched regardless. "He saw the warrior of Tulpayotee heading south, and he did nothing?"

"Yes, gracious one."

"Your Five went after him?" He stood beside her now, leaning close enough that she could feel his breath hot on her shoulder and smell the cinnamon he'd had rubbed into his hair.

"Yes, gracious one." As the Five's Second, it had been her responsibility to report back to the tul.
You work your way up from nothing, and then you're in the wrong place at the wrong time
. Starving on the house periphery with her siblings had never looked so good.

"Rejoin them." The pause held her in place; he clearly wasn't finished. "On your way, kill the boat master."

"Yes, gracious one." Relief made her almost light-headed as she spun about and hurried from the room. Death would walk House Kohunlich until the warrior of Tulpayotee was found, and every step it walked with someone else meant there was one less chance that it would walk with her.

"Gracious one, the boat master has served you, and your father before you, faithfully all his life." The priest spread his hands imploringly. "To die for failing you is one thing, but to be denied the final rites…" His voice trailed off at the expression on the tul's face.

A weighted silence settled.

And lengthened.

"Your position allows you a great deal of license, Ooman." The tul's voice pinned the priest's title to the silence. "It would be safest if you did not presume more influence than you have."

Even the oldest, most faded tattoos stood out in bold relief against the sudden paling of Ooman Xhai's skin. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and said finally, "Your pardon, gracious one."

"And now you." Tul Altun ignored the apology and moved slowly across to the kneeling figure before the dais. "What do I do about you?"

A line of blood still dribbling from one corner of his mouth where the tul's ring had split his lip, Xhojee stared mutely at the floor.

"You were with me when Benedikt left." The backs of two fingers stroked a bruised cheek. "You returned to me immediately after you found him gone." The hand slipped under the younger man's chin and lifted his head. "It's very difficult to find fault with you, but Benedikt is still missing and fault, after all, must… be… found." With each of the last three words, the tul's grip tightened until his fingertips drove into the soft flesh of Xhojee's throat.

Found…

Xhojee clawed at the tul's wrist and gasped out his suspicions. Released, he sagged forward, desperately sucking in air. He could barely hear the tul snapping out orders through the roar of blood in his ears, and surely it was the pounding of his heart he felt not the vibrations of a hundred feet running for the tiny cove where Benedikt had washed ashore.

"Someone besides the boatmaster must have seen him." Moving out onto the terrace, the tul savagely ripped a feather from his hair and began methodically stripping it to the shaft. "He didn't fly from his room to the shore. There may be more shadows than people in this house, but the halls are never entirely empty unless I order it so. And I didn't." He flung the shaft aside, spun on his heel and reentered the room, glaring over Xhojee's back at the priest. "I want to know who was in the halls with him."

"It is a large house, gracious one," Ooman Xhai protested. "The house master may not know
exactly
where anyone is."

"She'll find out, then, or she'll be joining the boat master on the shore."

"Gracious one…"

Tul Altun ignored him. Robe billowing out behind, he strode to the dais and threw himself down into the cushions. "If I lose Benedikt, I lose Becan and Campeche and my best opportunity to gain power before the change. Remember, Ooman, your position wanes with mine. Have we had any luck in poisoning my sister's brat?"

"No, gracious one. But a son of your own…"

"And has a woman of high enough house announced her willingness to carry that son? No. What woman would align herself with the Kohunlich-tul right before the change when he controls so little and the Kohunlich-xaan has a son of her own she'd like to ensure inherits? Without Benedikt, I won't live to see the first festival after the change."

"No. Why would you." His lip curled. "My sister gained control of our father when I was too young to prevent it. He adored her and never realized that she'd added up the years the Tulparax had ruled and had decided she'd better start preparing for the change. She poisoned him slowly, protecting him from my attempts to end his life before all the power of the tul was lost. When I finally managed to have him killed, the bons came to me, but that was all. I could do little more than keep myself alive. Benedikt gave me hope." He stared at nothing for a moment, then brought his gaze down to meet Xhojee's. "It is far worse to lose hope than to have never had it."

Xhojee had no memory of the last tul. He'd still been in the children's compound when the Kohunlich-xaan had taken her father away. His hair had barely begun to grow when the bons returned and his apprenticeship had begun. The distant image of Tul Altun had represented power and splendor for all of his life that mattered. To be brought, as he had been, to the attention of the tul, was the dream of every karjen in the house.

To discover that the power of life and death over every man, woman, and child in the compound and the surrounding lands was no power at all left Xhojee's thoughts reeling. "Perhaps," he began, faltered under the lack of interest in the tul's dark eyes, and forced himself to start again. "Perhaps Benedikt will be found at the cove, gracious one."

"Perhaps he has returned to Tulpayotee," Ooman Xhai offered gloomily.

"But he's…" Xhojee's voice trailed off as he realized that the priest truly believed Benedikt had been what the tul declared him. He glanced over at the tul and found himself coloring under the heat of a bitter smile.

He wasn't at the cove.

"He was there, gracious one. We found the marks of his sandals; but he wasn't alone. There were other sandal marks, normal sized, sunk deep into the sand behind his."

"Sunk deep?"

"Yes, gracious one. As though the man was heavier."

The tul stared at his hands, not really seeing them. He couldn't return to the life he had before. Not because he'd breached his own security in going to Becan and Campeche; they were lesser houses, even he could handle them.
No, I've begun to move forward. I can't go back
.

Decision made, he surged to his feet and was viciously amused to see discipline hold as the guard who'd brought him the news jerked but remained in place.

"Empty the temple," he snarled as he swept from the room, "I want everything with a godmark in that cove. Tulpayotee has returned in strength after the storm, and I want answers."

The black sand all but steamed under the heat of the noon sun. Sorquizic had withdrawn from the land, and there was room enough for the five senior priests and the twelve junior priests to crowd together in front of the flat rock designated as the altar. The temple workers, each bearing a single god-mark on their shaved heads, perched around on the rocks and stood knee-deep in the sea. Tul Altun, his many braids clubbed back and secured with a length of golden wire, watched impatiently from the highest of the surrounding ledges.

As the priests chanted cleansing prayers, Ooman Xhai laid out the symbols of Tulpayotee—the rayed disk of gold, the triangular dagger, and the bowl of dried corn. Beside them, he set what they had of Benedikt—a few hairs from his bedding and an unwashed sawrap. Here, in the place where Benedikt had been found and then lost again, it would probably be enough.

The cleansing prayer ended.

Ooman Xhai raised his hands. Each of the junior priests began beating out the measure of the god on the small drums hung around their necks. The senior priests chanted the evocation.

Sunlight poured down onto the altar. Shaped by the high priest, it took on the form of a young man in his prime. The voices of the priests low and urgent, they created a background rhythm that would hold the image of their god in place.

Scooping up the dagger in his right hand, the high priest extended his left over the bowl of corn and pierced the fleshy mound of his thumb. The image of Tulpayotee watched as one large drop of blood fell into the bowl.

Ask
, it commanded, outlines shimmering.

Ooman Xhai raised his head so that he could stare directly into the sun. "Where is your warrior called Benedikt?"

In a caravan.

"Where is the caravan?" he asked, outstretched hand beginning to tremble, breathing beginning to quicken. He could see nothing but golden fire.

On the causeway to Atixlan
. The shimmer grew more pronounced.

Eyes burning, his entire body shaking, lips pulled back off his teeth, he managed to suck in enough air for one last question. "Who commands the caravan?"