Chapter 63

Angharad went dressed in men’s clothes: hose and a doublet under a long coat with a tricorn pulled down as far as she could, her hair bundled up. There was no hiding the walking stick, but being let into Lord Gule of Bezan’s mansion through the servant entrance ought to keep most eyes off her.

As the ambassador of the Kingdom of Malan the older noble had been assigned large and luxurious quarters near the heart of the Collegium, the upper levels of the edifice a series of well-lit galleries of brass and glass that were as beautiful viewing from as viewed. Angharad, however, was not led to those salons and windows. Silent liveried servants bid her in then led her through empty kitchens and a well-stocked larder. At the end of it a heavy door needed unlocking and in the cold room beyond waited two men.

Lord Gule of Bezan was richly but comfortably dressed, in pale gray-and-orange silks with a hand on his sculpted cane – a length of smooth, polished sandalwood. That stick was likely worth as much as all the clothes on her back, Angharad idly thought. Lord Gule inclined his head in greeting, ushering her through the door with a simple gesture.

His attendant, stone-faced Jabulani, was seated on a stool with a slate and a stick of charcoal on his lap – an indication he was here as ufudu and not a servant, for none worth the name would have sat when their master stood.

“Lady Angharad,” Lord Gule said, putting his hearing horn to his ear. “I am pleased to see you again so soon.”

“And you, my lord,” she replied. “I know we discussed meeting anew after the feast, but…”

“But you cleverly made your way in using that orphanage opening,” the older man praised. “I take from your presence that you did find something.”

“The very device you sent me to look for,” she agreed.

“That remains to be seen,” Jabulani said, eyes unreadable. “I have questions. You will answer.”

Angharad swallowed her distaste at the lack of courtesy and curtly nodded.

“What pattern did the gilding display?” the ufudu asked.

She blinked. There had been no gilding, what did he – ah. He was trying to trap her, to verify if she had truly seen an infernal forge. Insulting, but the Lefthand House lived in a world without honor.

“There was none,” Angharad replied. “And this will be quicker if I describe the device instead of dance through your traps, so I shall.”

Lord Gule covered a yawn with his hand, or perhaps a smile. She described the infernal forge as well as she could from memory, the ufudu not interrupting, but it could not be so easy at that. He still asked further questions afterwards. Three, all traps, though this last one she might in truth have answered mistakenly had she not studied the device closely enough.

“The surface was so thickly covered with cryptoglyphs it almost seemed smooth from a distance,” she told the spy.

Jabulani slowly nodded, making a note on the slate. He then looked down on it, breathed in slowly and wiped it clean before exhaling.

“I am satisfied,” the ufudu said, rising to his feet. “Lord Gule, the matter is now entirely in your hands. I see no need for myself or the House to have further involvement.”

The older man nodded back pleasantly, and to her surprise Jabulani sketched the barest of bows when passing her on his way out of the room. Her brow rose, drawing the ambassador’s eye.

“Jabulani has a suspicious mind, as befitting a man of his duties, but he is not unreasonable,” Lord Gule laughed. “Infernal forges are rare and depictions of them almost as, so such a detailed description is unlikely to come from anything but your own eyes.”

“He did not ask where the hidden room is in the house,” she said.

Lord Gule snorted.

“Beneath it, no doubt, as are most in this rat’s warren of a capital,” he said. “Besides, we are…”

He paused, pawing at his silks and producing a golden watch whose ticking was nearly noiseless.

“Nearly running late,” Lord Gule finished. “He may have further questions for you, but a written account will be enough – and at a time where it will not delay us.”

She cocked her head to the side.

“Delay us, my lord?”

Lord Gule glanced at the servant still holding the door open and the man bowed before gesturing to someone out of sight. A young girl bearing a lantern offered them both a curtsy before stepping into the cold room, slipping past the izinduna and walking to the back wall to pull at what turned out to be a steel latch hidden behind stacked stalks of celery. Three latches slid to the side, one after the other, and then a door popped open. A hidden door, behind which lay stairs.

Again?

“Did you think I received you in the cold room to keep the hams company?” the ambassador drily asked.

Ancestors, she thought. Did every mansion in this misbegotten capital have a hidden passage of some sort? The lantern girl took the lead, gliding down the stairs as Angharad and Lord Gule followed. The older noble was in a fine mood, and a talkative one.

“Under the late Archeleans there was a craze of hidden rooms in the Collegium and the southwestern ward, which at the time was where most nobles dwelled,” Lord Gule told her. “They fell out of favor during the Ataxia, as they became the favored tool of assassins to enter mansions.”

Ah. Yes, that would tamp down on the enthusiasm some.

“But not this one?” she asked.

“It leads only to what I suspect was a room dedicated to concubinage,” Lord Gule said, “so they never bothered. Digging a passage from there to the tunnels beneath the city took my staff several months.”

No doubt more out of the need for discretion than physical difficulty, Angharad mused. The room at the bottom of the stairs was much as advertised, essentially a large bedroom though it currently stripped of any furniture. It also displayed with a gaping hole in a Tratheke brass wall, the presumed path forward.

Through there the lantern girl led them through a cramped tunnel angled slightly downwards, dug through stone and emerging into an underground passage not unlike a hallway. For five minutes they walked through the dark, until they emerged what should be… west of the mansion, at a guess, but far below? Water must be close, for there was a sense of dampness to the cool here.

Her suspicions proved correct, as at the end of the hall a smokeless lamp hung over a narrow canal of dark water. An even narrower boat waited there, tied to a ring of steel nailed into the ground. It had two seats and a paddle waiting across them. Angharad’s eyes strayed to a crate under the lamp, on which two brown hooded cloaks and two pairs of deerskin gloves were neatly folded.

“I took the liberty to prepare clothing for you as well,” Lord Gule informed her. “Though I’m afraid I will have to prevail on you to bring us to our destination.”

Angharad silently inclined her head, smothering her excitement. Hoods and gloves? There were only so many reasons for Gule to seek to hide their faces and hands. The cloak was of fine make and the gloves delightfully soft. Angharad stepped onto the boat first, taking the paddle, and watched as the servant girl helped the ambassador down onto the other seat before passing him the lantern and withdrawing.

“Forward,” Lord Gule instructed her. “Ours is the easiest of all the routes, a straight line to the shrine.”

There was a faint current to the water, headed the same way they were, so Angharad hardly needed to do a thing to propel them across the water. A droplet splashed on her face revealed, to her surprise, that the wet was not cold but lukewarm. Odd, given the coolness down here. The islet of light cast by the lantern felt fragile, but Lord Gule’s continuing volubility propped it up.

“The ceremony we are to attend takes place every lunar month – the Coral Moon, that is,” he specified. “While the red crescent can no longer be seen from Asphodel, it was above the island during much of the Second Empire and it is believed that in a century and a half it will begin to journey back towards Tratheke.”

Angharad nodded as if she had understood. She had never heard of the Coral Moon, and the few moons she was familiar with were much closer to Malan. Save for the Leviathan’s Tear, anyhow, which was the guiding light for sailing journeys to the western lands if you knew how to see it – which precious few save the captains of Malan did.

“Am I to take from the hoods that initiates keep their faces hidden even from each other?” she asked.

“To some degree,” Lord Gule replied. “The most prominent among the cult have long been guessed at, including myself, and to lead or openly participate in the ceremony one must reveal their face. The small nobles and officials clutch their secrets, but it is difficult to rise to prominence without ceding some hints.”

“So there are ranks,” Angharad probed. “Means to rise.”

“Not yet initiated and already so ambitious,” the ambassador teased, but he sounded pleased.

Angharad dipped her head, feigning abashment, but he only chuckled.

“Most of the society are mere pawns,” Lord Gule said, “and know nothing of the mysteries save a few signs to recognize each other and the promise of power to come. Your attendance to the ceremony will make of you an initiate, one who glimpsed the powers wielded but works under a head of the cult.”

A pause.

“I am one such head, and you will naturally be employed at my discretion.”

She did not hide her surprise.

“You stand high in the ranks.”

“Not so high as you think,” Lord Gule warned her. “The five heads hold great sway, but ours is a power earthly. We have authority because of means and influence, because we are needed for the advancement of the society’s schemes. That is, I fear, temporary authority. The true power lies with the priesthood, the officiants of the spirit, and their master who founded the cult and still leads it.”

Angharad hid her thrill. At last, progress! Learning the identity of that master as well as that of the mentioned five heads should see the Thirteenth’s contract to the throne discharged. There was finally a clear path out of the mire.

“He is known as the Ecclesiast,” the ambassador added, perhaps anticipating the question. “I met him only once and do not know his true name, for pains were taken to hide his identity.”

Even a title, now. The Ecclesiast. She almost rolled her eyes at the pretentiousness.

“Will he be in attendance?” Angharad asked.

“Such rites are beneath him,” Lord Gule scoffed. “His acolytes attend in his stead, priests one and all – though their priesthood is by virtue of the spirit’s favor and not genuine virtue. None I have seen would be fit to serve the Sleeping God.”

Though she did not turn, Angharad could feel the weight of his eyes on her back.

“I expect you will recognize some of those attending and perhaps be recognized by them in turn, despite our precautions,” the izinduna said. “Discretion will be paramount in this matter.”

She nodded silently.

“Good,” Lord Gule muttered. “We are nearly there, so mind your hood.”

Angharad saw nothing that separated the dark stretch of canal she was guiding them through from any other, but there must have been some mark for the older man proved right: the canal abruptly ended, leading into some kind of large underground reservoir. At its heart was an island, as if a cluster of basalt had grown out of the water like a mushroom, and atop that rocky shore stood a worn shrine.

It had neither doors nor walls, steps roughly hewn into the basalt leading up to driftwood columns holding up a large, thick square roof that seemed made up entirely of broken wood. Masts, oars and spears, shattered prows and painted idols. Dull, warm lamps were strewn all over the shore and inside the shrine. They cast the shadows of the small boats moored by the dozen and of the quiet assembly standing within the shrine. At least three dozen were there, in hooded cloaks ranging from vivid red to a gray so dark it came close to infringing on the rights of the Watch regarding black cloaks.

Angharad guided her boat to one of the empty stretches on the shore, wincing as she got onto the stone with uncertain legs. She was passed her walking stick by Lord Gule and leaned on it long enough to tie the boat to a thick figurehead of bronze and help the older noble onto the shore. They were late in the coming, she saw, but not the last: there were two more boats out in the water, torchlight heralding their approach.

As Lord Gule began the walk to the shrine, she lingered a moment to take a sniff of the air. Frowning she knelt by the shore, angling herself to hide her hand within her cloak while she took off a glove and dipped a finger in the water before bringing to her nose. It truly was salt water; she was not going mad. Was this place somehow connected to the Trebian Sea? She had been wondering where all the water of the Tratheke canals came from, given that no river fed the city.

Angharad put the glove back on and pushed herself up. Her eyes went to the driftwood shrine, and she wondered if there might not be another explanation for the waters here turning from fresh to salt. Powerful spirits, the elders of their kind, could change the world around them merely by being. The Golden Ram does not have such power, she thought. It did not even at its height. So who is it that rules here?

She followed behind Lord Gule, standing in his shadow as a retainer would, but under the hood her gaze swept the place. It was only a moment before she entered the shrine that she noticed it – a bit of pale in the roof of broken wood, easily mistaken for one of the painted idols.

A skull. A human skull, and now that she knew what to look for she saw others. Scattered bones among ruined wood, at least several men’s worth. She shivered and forced herself to follow Lord Gule without further delay, for already some hooded faces had turned her way. She came to stand by the izinduna’s side, among a line of quietly murmuring figures all facing the heart of the shrine: a polished stone floor, at the heart of which forged chains held down a single prisoner.

And that prisoner was not a man.

The Golden Ram, for what else could this be, was aptly named: a great horned sheep with a golden mane, twice the size of a warhorse. But though the sight of that spirit out in the wilds would have been a fearsome thing, down here in the ancient shrine it was… Sad, almost. It was bound in chains of forged silver and deep glinting spikes were driven deep into its sides, but Angharad could see it had been sick even before that.

The spirit was malformed, with a leg that ended in a stump and another shriveled like a twig. Its coat had the luster of gold, but rivulets of rust-like ichor dripped down from its wounds and peeled away both coat and skin with them. Its large, curved horns were fully formed but a wound had clipped one and broken it, showing they were hollow inside. Like empty shells.

The Golden Ram barely breathed; its eyes closed as it lay on the stone floor marked with a mess of overlapping circles that all surrounded it. Boundaries, she remembered from her Theology class. They would not stop it walking it out, were it healthy, but they would muddle and diffuse its power.

“It is no pretty sight, I will grant,” Lord Gule murmured, leaning her way.

“I have never before seen a spirit so misshapen,” Angharad replied as quietly. “Is it… healthy?”

She got an incredulous look from the ambassador and coughed into her fist.

“Beyond the obvious wounds,” she elaborated.

“Ah,” Lord Gule said. “Well caught. The spirit did not come to be in a proper way, I am told. Our fellows caught it as a middling thing, granting small boons and barebones contracts, and used the properties of the local aether to force it to manifest physically.”

They made cattle to bleed, Angharad thought, keeping her disgust off her face even under the hood. It was one thing for a Redeemer like Lord Gule to be indifferent at the sight before him, but that was not the faith she kept to. Evil done onto spirits was still evil, for all that their nature was not that of men.

“The society keeps to a greater patron,” she probed.

Lord Gule smiled approvingly.

“You will see soon enough,” he whispered back. “The taste of health we gave you is the least of it.”

He then gestured for silence, however, as the last attending had arrived. The last three figures hurried up the stairs under the silent disapproving stares of most everyone else, their body language embarrassed even under the cloaks. It appeared that even in murderous spirit cults punctuality was expected, Angharad amusedly thought. With the last finding a place in one of the rows facing the inside of the shrine, a hush fell over the assembly and even whispers died out.

The line of becloaked cultists in the back of the shrine parted to allow through another figure, one that did not hide her face and had Angharad stiffening in surprise. While the usual flattering dress and stylings had been traded for a simple cloth robe and sculpted bronze bracelets, there was no mistaking that face and figure.

“You who stand in the hall of the Odyssean,” Lady Doukas spoke in a resonant voice, “kneel.”

It took a heartbeat for Angharad to adjust to the sight of the flirtatious lady Tristan had caught having a tryst in a closet during a banquet with the solemn priestess now standing before her. Long enough that Lord Gule tugged at her cloak and she hastily knelt by his side, leaning on her cane. Only when all had knelt did Lady Doukas speak again.

“The Cunning King receives your submission,” she announced. “All may rise.”

Angharad swallowed a grunt of pain as she did, having leant on her knees a little too much today. Still, there was no helping it. She had already learned much and the ceremony had yet to even begin. Sleeping God, Lady Doukas? The noblewoman had been one of the suspects on the original list, it was true, but Angharad had all but dismissed her. The admittedly handsome older woman seemed a lot more interested in bedding young men than anything conspirational.

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Less so now, simply dressed but with a dim sense of power rolling off her in waves. It caught the eye almost like a naked flame, beckoning and searing all at once.

“We gather here beneath the lights of Tratheke to remember the original truth of Asphodel,” Lady Doukas said. “That which was forged in death can only through death be preserved.”

Only through death, around half the assembly echoed. Lord Gule did not, the way he stood beneath his cloak hinting at a certain distaste for the ritual. A Redeemer like him, Angharad thought, would find this entire affair to smack a little too much of religion. Spirits could be bargained with, but they should never be worshipped. In this, they shared opinion.

“There are none in this land who can resist the might of the Odyssean,” the priestess, for that was what she must be, told the assembly. “Behold before you the Golden Ram, a god chained and bled. Behold now the blade of the Cunning King, and how it carves even the divine.”

Lady Doukas gestured at cultists behind her and a pair carried forward a cushion on which rested the aforementioned blade. Angharad had expected a cutlass, the kind of pirate lord the likes of which Odyssean had been in life might wield, but instead what was brought into the light of lamps was a sickle. Bronze, with a dull handle but a gleaming curved blade.

She frowned. Since when was the sickle a symbol of the Odyssean? Much less one without any ornaments. Maryam had spoken gemstone eyes and the ancient spirit’s hoard of treasures, but never of such a plain blade.

“Let the daring step forward,” Lady Doukas called out, “and wield their ambition as a blade. Let the worthy come into the gaze of the Odyssean. Who will answer the call?”

There was heartbeat of hesitation, then a silhouette stepped out of the row to Angharad’s left. Another two had begun to move, but just a breath too late. The figure in a roughspun cloak of wool took two steps towards the smiling priestess, whose smile broadened when the man pulled back his hood and revealed his face to the entire assembly. Angharad breathed in sharply.

“I will,” Lord Cleon Eirenos replied.

Her heart clenched. She had hoped, even knowing now that his contracted patron was the spirit worshipped by the cult, that he would not be part of this. But the chance had always been slight.

“Honored be Cleon Eirenos,” Lady Doukas said, smiling in something like triumph. “He who stands young among you, but long in the care of the Cunning King. Never before has he asked favor, only giving faithful service.”

Honored be, the crowd sang back. The hooded attendant stepped up to Lord Cleon, offering up the sickle, and the young lord deftly took up the blade from the cushion. Cleon Eirenos was a huntsman, Angharad knew, and skilled with a blade. She did not believe him a cruel man by nature and when he moved it was with care and precision.

It still left an ugly taste in the mouth watching him cut into the helpless spirit’s side.

The Golden Ram’s flesh parted without resistance and the sickle’s blade came away red. After Cleon drew away Lady Doukas knelt by the bound spirit with a wooden cup and captured the fat, rusty droplets that bled. The Ram never even stirred. The priestess then raised the cup for all to see, smiling ecstatically.

“Cleon Eirenos cut a god for his ambition,” Lady Doukas said, “and the god bled. Name now the price of the ichor, honored Cleon.”

The young lord’s face hardened.

“The life of Theofania Varochas, of the Meda’s Rock Varochas,” he coldly said. “I grant my share to the Odyssean, that he may share this death with me.”

Angharad tensed, for in the moment that followed wind billowed sharply across the temple. Lamps flickered, and on the air was the faint sound of screams and clashing arms. Only instead of the clean, burning scent of salt Angharad caught something like… rot? A sickly-sweet reek, and also a whiff of the smell of wet earth. She had to keep her hood in place with a gloved hand, and when she could spare attention again she saw that the sickle in Cleon’s hand was now bare of red and half the ichor in the cup was gone.

“The price was accepted,” Lady Doukas announced. “Death will find your enemy.”

The crowd exhaled, Angharad among them, and Cleon set the sickle back down on the cushion. He kept his hood down, as if disdainful of secrecy, and returned to the side. Lady Doukas launched into a sermon exalting the might and virtues of the Odyssean, but Angharad felt too sick in the stomach to listen. Never before had he asked favor, Lady Doukas had claimed.

Was this on her head? This ceremony appeared to be some kind of… death ritual, sacrificing ichor to the Odyssean to buy the death of one’s enemies in what could not be called anything but a form of murder. Yet Cleon, who must have known of this for years, had never before made such a sacrifice. Was it because of the humiliation Angharad had allowed to be inflicted on herself at the Eirenos manor?

She had known he felt trapped by his unwanted suitor, by the way the neighboring nobles were hemming him in, but to ask for that girl’s head was… She had attacked him first, Angharad reminded herself. Not by wielding a blade at him, but it was no less an attack to chase away all his potential matches and try to impose herself as a wife. It had all begun long before any Tredegar knew this isle, years ago.