‘Do you want him removed?’ Gull asked.
Lanta pursed her lips. ‘Not yet: we need stability, at least for now. Corvus understands the importance of keeping the slaves alive; despite his frustration here, he will not risk the great rite out of pettiness. But he needs aid, someone who can teach him what he needs to know, provide answers to the questions he doesn’t know how to ask.’
‘I may be able to help with some of the governance,’ Gull offered. ‘I was a silk merchant here in Rilporin for a decade. I understand trade, supply and demand.’
Lanta turned away from the door through which Corvus had exited. ‘Your offer is generous, but I need you here. Corvus will monopolise you if he thinks he can pass such things into your hands. But if there are others among the slaves who would suit …’
Gull nodded and left her, understanding her moods well enough, and Lanta wandered through what had once been the Dancer’s temple and was now sworn and blooded to Holy Gosfath and His absent Sister-Lover. Not dead. Absent. It was the only way she could bring herself to think about it despite the great work they were preparing, despite her every waking – and some dreaming – moments being dedicated to it.
She passed the godpool, sanctified now with the blood of scores of sacrifices so that the once-clear water was red-tinged and thick, clotted and reeking. It was unpleasant, but the last of the Light needed to be chased from this newly hallowed place. Besides, it served as a potent reminder to any slave who thought to raise the defiant eye to their betters.
As always, her footsteps led her outside and into the temple square, to the wooden, open-sided shelter that had been erected over the place where the Dark Lady had been taken from them, the ground still stained with Her divine blood, much as Lanta was herself. There was someone in the shrine, kneeling on the unmarked stone and staring fixedly at the black droplets just in front of him. He looked up at her approach, and scrambled to his feet.
‘Second Valan, forgive me. I had no wish to intrude on your prayers.’
He bowed, his eyes running hungrily over the marks on her skin. He wanted to touch them, as he wanted to touch the stains on the stone. He didn’t dare. ‘It is I who should beg forgiveness. If this place belongs to anyone, it belongs to you.’
Lanta sat on one of the benches circling the shrine and gestured for him to join her. ‘It belongs to us all, Second. You are welcome here whenever you wish, but if you are looking for Corvus, he has left.’
Valan was silent for a while. ‘I was not,’ he said. ‘I came here to pray for my family. Their journey is long and may be perilous, and Ede is only three.’ He met her eyes briefly and Lanta noted the flash of indecision. She gave him a reassuring smile. ‘I worry my daughters won’t remember me,’ he confessed in a rush. ‘What will they have been through while I was here fighting? What trials or sicknesses that I could not comfort? They might not even be alive now.’
Lanta was surprised. Valan rarely spoke of his family and she couldn’t even remember his consort’s name. Such open love was rare among Mireces men, such loyalty even rarer. ‘Their lives will have been what the gods decreed for them,’ she said. ‘Be at peace knowing that if they suffered, they did so to prove their devotion. But there is no saying they did,’ she added.
They sat in silence for a while longer. ‘You are a good man, Valan,’ Lanta said and he blinked in surprise. ‘I hope Corvus knows how lucky he is to have you as his second.’
‘The honour is mine,’ Valan said automatically. ‘My life to serve.’
‘Yes,’ Lanta said, examining him in light of the idea sitting fresh and a little shocking in her mind. ‘We are all put in Gilgoras to serve the gods and do Their will, whatever it may be.’ She stood and he rose with her. ‘I will pray for your family,’ she said and strode back towards the temple before he could respond.
Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus
Green Ridge, Southern Krike
They’d given the three of them a small house to sleep in, the Two-Eyed Man and his faithful companions. Or faithful companion, singular. Dom wasn’t sure he qualified. Dom wasn’t sure Crys and Ash would allow him to qualify, regardless of his own opinions on the matter.
As the sun went down, the others had gone to the town’s council house and Dom had stayed behind. He lay on the floor, head pillowed on a pile of blankets, and watched the flickers of orange light dancing among the roof beams and spiders’ webs. He’d managed to untie and retie the laces of his trousers eleven times, each one a victory against the memory of the crushing embarrassment at asking Ash – a man he’d once considered a brother and who now hated him – to help him in the first days after the loss of his hand.
But being able to take a piss unaided and being able to fight were two different things. Dom hadn’t managed to scavenge a weapon when they’d fled Rilporin, but he’d found a reasonably sharp knife in the kitchen that might break the skin of an enemy if they didn’t mind holding still for a while.
He snorted and spun the blade awkwardly in his fingers, his right hand so less nimble than the one he’d lost, and fumbled it so the hilt knocked against the stump of his arm and sent a bolt of lightning through the twisted nerves and flesh. He yelped at the pain, and then did it again because it felt, in some indefinable way, good, opening a well inside him he hadn’t realised was there and demanding he jump in.
Dom sat up. Holding his breath, he jabbed the tip of the knife into the scar tissue this time. More lightning, searing up his arm and into his heart until it seemed to skip in his chest and pump delight and darkness. A bead of blood formed along the knife tip and he stared at it with unblinking intensity, fascinated by the firelight reflected in miniature in the crimson. He pushed harder, a little deeper, more blood welling and with it relief. Purpose. All the promises he’d told himself and Crys – all the lies – fell away to reveal the red, sharp-toothed truth.
The words came of their own volition, words of power and ecstasy and glorious surrender. ‘Dark Lady, beautiful goddess of fear and death, accept this my offering. Holy Gosfath, Lord of War …’
And there He was, the God of Blood looming over Dom in the sudden echoing darkness of the Waystation between Gilgoras and the Afterworld. Dom’s breath stuttered, mingled longing and terror freezing his thoughts. How was he here? How had Gosfath summoned him with such ease, such swiftness? And for what?
Yet Gosfath ignored him, sitting in the flames of His own burning, wrists resting on His bent knees as He watched His own shadow writhe and dance across the cavern’s wall. Tongues of red fire licked His red skin; He paid it no more attention than He did Dom.
Dom took a stealthy step backwards, and then another, but however he’d arrived, that path was closed to him. He was here until Gosfath said otherwise. Trapped. Bladder clenching, Dom eased himself to his knees. ‘I am here, Lord.’ The god didn’t respond. ‘Holy Gosfath, Red Father, what is your will?’
Now He did move. The great horned head rose ponderously in his direction, and small black eyes, dancing fire reflected in their depths, met Dom’s. If the god recognised him as the murderer of His Sister-Lover, Dom had no doubt he’d be killed, slowly, over months or years, for Gosfath’s pleasure.
‘Gone.’
The word was so loud and huge, the meaning behind it so vast, that Dom struggled to process it. All the loss and hurt that filled Dom to the brim was as nothing; Gosfath’s pain would drown the spaces between the stars, His rage hotter than those distant points of light, His loss a winding-sheet black enough and big enough to cover the face of Gilgoras itself.
Gosfath raised both hands, palms up in an expression