‘Easy there, My Lord King. Careful.’ Tal helped him up carefully. Propped him against the wall. Marith bent forward and coughed up a last trickle of vomit.
‘Heavy night, was it, My Lord King?’
Blinked, stared down the corridor. ‘There was … was …’
Tal helped him up the stairs towards his own chambers; he had hardly gone a few steps when Thalia was rushing down to him, her guard Brychan there beside her with his sword out. Pain in her face when she saw him.
‘Marith!’
‘It’s nothing. Nothing.’
Her foot slipped on a step, he cried out but Brychan caught her arm, then she was beside him.
‘It was nothing,’ said Tal.
Black sand gushed off him. When he looked there was no sand on the floor. Sand crunched in his mouth. He spat. Thalia looked shocked at his spit on the floor. Gleaming. Someone else spat, he thought, I saw a man spit green phlegm at my feet.
‘Have some water, Marith.’ A cup in his hands, heavy goldwork that heaved beneath his fingers. Itching, crawling, moving. He drank and gulped it down. Tasted so sweet. A grating feeling in his throat as he swallowed. Hair and gristle. Dirt stuck in his throat. His mouth was running with lice. He gagged, his hand over his mouth, don’t be sick here in front of her, my wife, do I want my wife to see that? The shame … once I didn’t want her to see my face, because she’d see it there, vomit and death, I’m human fucking vomit, filth like I’m choking down.
Thalia brought all the lamps in the room to burning. They were in their bedchamber. He couldn’t remember walking there. The green glass windows were black and hollow, black voids; the lamplight made the mage-glass stars in the ceiling faint and dull. The silver hangings on the bed moved, trembled: the warm air from the lamps, someone had told him, one of the maidservants. Her sweat in the lamplight, running down inside the neck of her dress … The leaves and flowers on the walls looked too real, like wax flowers. Obscenities like a swollen body. Draw his sword, hack them down to bits. The scabs on his left hand were diseased. The scar tissue alive with parasites. The scars on Thalia’s left arm were alive with parasites. The scars on her arm were crusted cracking infested with maggots. His throat was dry with dust.
‘You almost slipped,’ he said. ‘On the stairs.’
‘Brychan caught me.’ She put her hands over her belly. Her nightgown was very sheer, very fine silk, he could see the swell of the child growing there. No other child had grown this big in her womb. Blood smear things on her thighs. Clots of stinking blood. Pregnancy had made her breasts huge. Sweat on her, between her breasts, staining the sheer cloth. He felt sick. For a moment it seemed to him that her belly was swollen not with a child but with ash.
‘He’s safe,’ she said. ‘I was worried about you.’
‘He?’
She blinked. ‘Our son.’
‘You know? How can you know?’ I don’t want it to be a boy, he found he was thinking, not a boy, not another murderer, parricide, dead thing, rot thing like I am. Will it kill her, tearing itself out of her? Cut her up into shreds, laugh in her face, curse her, take her heart to pieces slowly over years and years? I don’t want a child. I don’t want a boy. I want it to die like the rest, before it can harm her or I can harm it. It struck him suddenly: it is not dangerous for the mother to lose a child in the first early months.
She said, ‘I … Of course I don’t know.’
Did I kill them? he thought. The other children? Kill them in her, will them dead, give her poison in her sleep? I cannot father a living child. One of your generals himself plots to destroy you! Conspires against you! What if one of them is poisoning her, killing our children?
‘Why do you call it “he”, then? As though you think it will live, as though you pretend it will live?’ A wound, a rotting wound inside her already infected and dead.
‘He will live.’ Her hands clutched over her belly, tight, so tight like she might crush it, smother it in the womb. She was lying, they both knew it, it would die soon, any day, any moment, like the rest, just let it live let it live.
‘Don’t call it “he”.’
‘I – I want—’ And it came to him sick and horrified that she did not want it to be a girl. Look at her, the former High Priestess of the Great Temple, sacred holy beloved chosen of god who was born and raised to kill children, men dreaming in hot sweat about her hands stabbing them. She doesn’t want to have a daughter any more than I want to have a son. A perfect clarity, as he coughed the black sand of human bodies from his lungs: we both want this child more than all we have in the world, the last hopeful thing left to us, the only reason for anything. A child, to build an empire for. A child, to show our happiness and love. And we both want it to die unborn.
He remembered, so clearly, kissing Ti’s pink screwed-up face, kissing Ti’s pink flailing fist.
‘He will live,’ Thalia said again. ‘We should not be talking about this, Marith. Not now. You’re frightened, angry,’ she said. ‘You need to calm, to sleep.’
‘I saw …’ I can’t tell you, he thought, not you, I can’t speak it, I can’t have the child, my son, he can’t hear. Black sand crunched between his teeth.
It was a nightmare brought on by drink and stupid songs, he thought the next morning. There had been grains of black sand in the bed, he had woken to feel them itching him. A scalding hot bath; he drank and spat water, drank and spat, drank and spat. He still could not speak of what he had seen.
He drank a cup of wine and his mouth felt cleaner. He was dressing when a message was brought that Alleen wanted to see him urgently. Thalia looked at him in fear and surprise.
‘What is it?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Show him in, then.’
Perhaps, he thought for a moment, he should see Alleen alone, without Thalia there.
‘Marith …’ Alleen was nervous. Excited, afraid. ‘Marith, I’ve someone here you need to see. Now.’
‘I … Bring him in, then.’ Should I tell Thalia to leave? he almost thought. He could hardly tell her to leave in front of Alleen and the guards prowling around.
What will I do, he thought, if it is coming now that she is the one betraying me? Or Osen? But I love her, and Osen is my best friend.
There was a young man waiting in the bedroom doorway. A servant, from the look of him … no, Marith looked closer, a soldier, unarmed and as frightened as Alleen was, but a soldier. Blood smell on him. Bronze and blood ground down onto him, marking him. The man was looking down at his feet, too afraid to look up.
‘Well?’
Gods, he needed a drink.
‘Speak,’ Alleen said.
We’ve been here before, and he’ll say … Not Thalia. Not Osen. Please. He’ll say it.
‘Lord Erith,’ the man said.
‘Valim Erith offered him gold,’ Alleen said, ‘to kill you. Gold and—’
‘Lord Erith gave me this.’ The man held up a dagger. Carefully, cautiously, between finger and thumb, hanging down like a live thing. Blue fire on the blade. A blue jewel in the hilt. Marith reached for it.
‘Careful!’ Alleen pulled his hand back away. ‘The blade is poisoned, he says.’
‘Poisoned.’ Marith took it, held it up to see the light move in the jewel. Pressed the very tip against his finger,