The crowds in the chapel went down onto their knees in a clatter of armour and a sigh of heavy silk. A deep indrawn breath, held for a moment with the tension of breaking rain. And then a great roar: ‘All hail Marith Altrersyr, Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! King Marith! King Marith!’ White fire leaping and running the length of the blade, rushing like water, surging over Marith’s hands, gilding him, covering him, tracing the lines of his bones and his hair, his fingers clenched on the hilt of the sword, white fire pouring down his skin, alight and liquid, brilliant as the dawn sun. He stood looking at them, his people, still as the statue beside him that did not burn but sat dark and silent with its face so like his own. Thalia wondered, even, if he knew he burned.
He sheathed the sword. The fire faded. Smiled across at Thalia. Joy in his eyes. Look! Look! Look what I am! Look what I’ve done!
The court rose to their feet, hailing him again as king. ‘All hail Marith Altrersyr, Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! King Marith! King Marith!’ Out of the chapel in procession, down to the shore where the ships bobbed at anchor or were drawn up on the mud. Marith held Thalia’s arm, his eyes raised, not seeing. Somewhere far away, in the fire and the light. His hand was cold as cold metal. Behind them came the lords and ladies, breathless, still cheering his name. The soldiers followed, the servants, Malth Calien emptying of people, rushing out onto the mud flats where the ships waited, craning their necks to see the king. ‘All hail Marith Altrersyr, Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! King Marith! King Marith!’
A bonfire burned on the shoreline. Men had sat all night watching, guarding the fleet from the powers of sky and sea. Now in the glitter of morning Thalia saw long shadows curl around the masts. Ghost lights flickered out on the marshes, visible even in the light of day.
Marith stopped on the sand near the bonfire, the furthest running of the waves touching at his boots. Again, he drew the sword.
A horse was led up, richly harnessed with ornaments of gold. It stepped high and proudly, the smooth movements of its flanks like water curving over stones. At the last, as it came up to Marith, it realized. Its nostrils flared, snorting, rolling its eyes. Marith reached out his hand for it and it stilled again, sank down on its haunches before him, head bowed. The cut was gentle. Blood pumping out onto the sand, running into the sea. Silence. Then from a thousand throats a great wordless shout of triumph, swords clashing against shields.
When the horse was dead it was raised up on wooden spikes set in the water, the men cheering as they worked. ‘Amrath! Amrath and the Altrersyr! Victory to the king!’ Gulls and crows came immediately, shrieking. Death drawn. Death things, like the swords. The hot stink of the blood made Thalia tremble. Memory. Grief. Pride. So many had she killed, in her Temple, to bring death to the dying, life to those who needed to live. She could feel blood on her skin. The horse flopped on its spike, bleeding into the water, black against the silver-black sea. The tendrils of blood in the water were like the curls of Marith’s hair.
Trumpets sounded. The slow beat of drums. The men moved together, a churning mass on the shoreline, coloured tunics, coloured armour, the colours of their pennants. Iridescent beetles. Flowers blooming. Women dancing in swirls of cloth and gems. Trudging out to the ships, swords and shields and helmets, waiting faces, coming on in neat long lines beside the dead body of the luck horse, splashing out into the water boarding the black ships with their red gazing eyes and the water flowing with the tendrils of the horse’s blood, mud and silt rising with the smell of salt and salt-rot, the bright fresh light on the waves.
Servants helped Thalia up onto the ship. Her feet slipping on the wet planks. Wet heavy skirts pulling around her legs. Cold and vile, like clinging dead skin. On another ship they were loading horses, kicking out and neighing, making their grooms curse. Her own fear like the horses’ fear, even as Marith took her arm, smiled, called her queen. Blood on his hands that the seawater had not quite washed away. She could smell the fresh blood on him, over the scab filth of his cloak. Osen handed him a gold cup, he raised it, threw it out into the waves. It flashed in the sunlight, wine spilling out into the water with the blood.
‘May the sea not spite us! May the sky not spite us! Victory!’
The wordless cheer back at him. The clash of swords on shields.
We may be going to war, Thalia thought. Such an absurdity. To war! She had told him that she was going, she would not stay here in the marshes sitting and waiting for him. She had ridden away from the battle at Malth Salene, and men had died in pain for her. She had been the High Priestess of the Lord of Living and Dying, the holiest woman in the Sekemleth Empire. She would go now as the army of Amrath’s queen.
‘Do you think,’ she had asked him, ‘do you think that I am afraid?’
‘Of course not.’ He tried to smile. ‘But I am afraid, for you.’
‘You don’t need to be.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
He said, ‘It will all be well, anyway.’
On the shore men struggled with the barrel holding King Illyn’s corpse, loading it carefully onto the ship. The dead face still staring with its eyes and mouth open, shocked. It had all honours now, indeed, his father’s corpse. Kill him and curse him and bury him with gold and love.
The ships hung ready, troops lined up on the decks. Matrina and her women on the shore beside the dead horse. Wind-blown faces. Black mud on their fine skirts. From the king’s ship flew the deep red banner of the Altrersyr, white cloth soaked red with blood. Bright sails, swollen and hard with the wind. The ship juddered. Moving. Marith stood in the prow wide-eyed. Pink fever flush in his cheeks.
A great wild scream cut the air like a sword drawn. A shadow moving over them. An eagle. Black against the sun. It turned overhead, circling the fleet. Men’s eyes and the red painted eyes of the ships and the dead eyes of the sacrifice, watching it. Screams. Swooped low over the ships. High into the sky with the light flashing on its wings. Something fell from its talons, spiralling in the air, falling and twisting, landing at Marith’s feet. Soft crumple sound. The eagle screamed and was gone.
At Marith’s feet was a foal, new born, matted with blood and fluid, shimmering inside its caul.
A strange smell of birth and bloodshed. It twitched a moment, as though it were still alive.
‘The luck horse! The luck horse!’ Voices on the ship whispering, awed. Hands moving in signs of wonder, signs against great magic and god things. ‘The luck horse!’
Marith stared down at the pitiful body, up at the sky, his eyes straight unblinking into the sun. ‘The luck horse.’ He took Thalia’s hand. ‘You see it? You understand?’ The men on the ship bent to kneeling. Marith lifted the vile thing in his arms. ‘Raise it up! Raise it on the mast!’
They tied it above the sail, sailors scrambling upwards like lizards, treasuring the burden one carried bound to his back with long fine legs flopping like he had grown some fragile leprous wings. Still it shimmered, black and rainbowed in the sun. Thalia tried to turn her head away but the only other place to look was the body of the sacrificed horse on the shore. She thought: do I understand? Any of these things?
Under a banner of dead horses the fleet sailed fast across the bright water, red painted eyes staring hungrily ahead.
‘The isle of Third is a fine land,