Stands a Shadow (60 page)

‘You see, I watch as they crash against the shore and fizzle out to nothing. The end of their journey; the end of their existence. And it becomes clear to me, in those moments, how their end is what makes them complete. It’s what gives them meaning, what gives their life form. What would that be, if they simply surged around the oceans of the world without ever ceasing? What is creation without destruction? Something bland and uniform and unchanging. Something truly dead.’

Meer leaned back and breathed deeply, as though returning to himself. He looked once more at Ash with his vibrant eyes, surveyed his expression to see how much Ash comprehended.

He seemed to decide that it was not enough.

‘I will tell you something,’ Meer said. ‘In the end, death is a gift of life. I know: it’s a hard thing to appreciate when you lose those you love so fiercely. But without death we would not be living. Those you have lost would not have lived at all.’

Ash moved to squat in front of the fire, his back to the monk now. They were fine sentiments, these words of Meer. Yet they were still only that: words and ideas. They did not dispel his suffering.

‘I will tell you this also. Call it an advance for all the stories you will tell me of Honshu.

‘When I visited the Isles of Sky, I saw how the people lived. They are almost immortal there, did you know that? They have ways of sustaining life, even of cheating death itself. But I thought, ultimately, their longevity brought them much harm. They seemed inhuman to me. Even with all their miracles and wonders, they lived in great boredom and listlessness. Worse, much worse – they could no longer see the poetry in the world around them, so buried in themselves had they become.’

Ash turned around slowly, a single eyebrow raised in disbelief. ‘The Isles of Sky?’

‘It’s true.’

‘I thought only the longtraders of Zanzahar knew the way.’

Meer shrugged. ‘Maybe when you tell me of Honshu, I will tell you more of my own tales. How does that sound?’

Ash opened his mouth, closed it again with a snap of teeth.

Meer was wrong about sharing his burdens. He felt even worse now than he had only a few moments before. He groaned as he staggered to his feet and threw the longcoat over his shoulders.

‘Thank you, again,’ Ash said, and left for the comfort of his room and a long hot soak in a tub.

The regulars were talking of the war the next afternoon when Ash finally rose from his bed, and stuffed some of the leaves into his mouth, and went downstairs to find himself a drink.

Against the bar he sat on a stool with a half-finished bottle of Cheem Fire, and played a game of ylang with Samanda, the dark Alhazii woman he had seen on his first night here, and who turned out to be the proprietor’s wife. Lars, the proprietor, seemed much infatuated with his young wife. He rarely complained at the fact that she refused to do any form of work about the inn.

‘I sleep with you, that is work enough,’ she replied the one time he bordered on criticism, and he lowered his eyes, and skulked away, muttering.

Ash scratched the bites from the bedbugs and listened to the gossip of the men around the room. They were talking of the latest rumours, of how the Matriarch had died from the wounds she had gained in the battle of Chey-Wes.

Ash longed for it to be true. He barely listened as they went on to describe how the imperial invaders were fighting now amongst themselves; how the defence of the Shield was going badly, how Kharnost’s Wall was about to fall.

Ash lost the game of ylang, his mind no longer on it. Drunk and in need of a walk, he excused himself and took his bottle with him and went outside. Dead leaves covered the pathways, piled in drifts against buildings, making for treacherous walking. The wind was jagged with cold today. It felt as though winter was arriving early.

Near the edge of the Shoals, close to the waves, he spotted Meer the monk sitting beneath a raised lean-to close to the sea, with a group of children gathered around him. Ash stopped, and lowered his bottle of Cheem Fire to watch.

The monk was holding up a slate and a stick of chalk. He was teaching the children how to read, and they were laughing, making a game of it.

Ash felt a semblance of peace as he gazed at the scene. He walked a few steps further onto the rocks and hunkered down with his bottle, still within earshot of the group, just out of reach of the hissing spray of the waves.

A fishing boat was out there in the heavy swell, struggling towards the harbour, its sails flapping in tatters and its crew straining with oars against the current. A hard business, thought Ash.

He settled into himself. Thoughts fluttered like falling leaves, glimpsed then gone.

A flake of snow ensnared itself in his eyelashes. He blinked it away and looked up at the clouds. More snow began to tumble down.

‘Look, children, snow!’ he heard the monk exclaim from behind.

The children instantly forgot their lessons and chased him over the rocks, overjoyed at the flakes of ice floating from the sky.

The wind felt cold on Ash’s teeth as he smiled.

The monk approached him as dusk was falling, a long fishing pole in his hand.

‘You look hungry, my sad friend.’

Ash’s stomach made an audible noise in reply.

‘Follow me. We’ll catch some fish and enjoy a supper together.’

He agreed, and together they found a flat spot next to the lapping water as the stars emerged, slowly populating the night sky with their shingle of light. Meer cast his line as far out as he could, then hummed a tune as they waited.

‘I thought the monks of Khos did not eat the flesh of fish,’ Ash said after a while, drawing his gaze from the eastern sky, where constellations were rising.

Meer drew in the line slowly, then tossed the hook, weight and float back out into the water. He sat down again.

A minute passed before he spoke. ‘I have a confession to make. I’m not really a monk.’

Ash saw that he was serious.

‘You’ve heard of fake monks before?’

‘Of course. Since the war only monks may beg for coin.’

The monk who was not a monk exhaled loudly. ‘I find it a useful way to live, whenever I’m here. It suits me best.’

‘So why tell me this?’

‘Because it’s no secret. If anyone asks me directly I tell them. And most people here don’t care what you are. I’ve helped them when I could, unlike a great many of the monks you’ll find on this island, locked away in their high sanctuaries. I must tell you. Even in my few months at the monastery, I thought most of them were more concerned with dogma and politics than in the Way.’

Meer glanced at Ash then, sideways, as though trying to read his reaction. ‘Besides, as soon as spring arrives, I’ll be leaving again to travel abroad.’

‘But I have heard them talk in the Perch of how you keep a vigil in the shrine every day, meditating deeply.’

‘
Pah
. They call it what they wish to call it. In the shrine I merely sit and watch the world turning.’

Ash saw the irony in that. In the native tongue of Honshu, the meditative act of
chachen
meant simply to sit in stillness.

He watched the man and pondered.

‘I was coming to see you later,’ Meer admitted. ‘I’ve been talking with some friends in the city. Concerning your situation.’

‘
You have been doing what
?’

‘I can get you to Cheem, if you want it.’

‘Oh? And I suppose we are flying, like a leaf on the wind?’

Meer showed him one of his quick, boyish smiles. ‘I have a friend who owns a boat.’

Ash’s expression clearly said it all.

‘It’s true,’ Meer chirped.

‘And tell me. Why would you go to all that trouble, simply for an old farlander like me?’

‘Because we’d want to come along with you. To Sato.’

Ash’s hand reached for his sword, though it grasped at nothing. He had left his weapon back in his room.

‘Who are you?’ he asked coolly. ‘How do you know of Sato?’

The man shrugged and held out his hands in a gesture of openness. ‘I am who I say I am. And a little more. All you need to know, in this moment here and now, is that I’m a friend to you, Ash. And that I have certain other friends. People who would dearly wish to have words with the R
ō
shun order.’

‘There is no more R
ō
shun order.’

‘Why not? Because the Imperials attacked it? Yes, we have already spoken to several of your agents in the Free Ports. They all said the same as you. Still, there might be survivors left in Cheem. If there are, we would like to make them an offer.’

Ash was on his feet now, though he could not recall standing.

‘You are with the Few?’

A modest twitch of the head.

‘Trust me – we only wish to talk with your people. And in return, I may just be willing to help you.’

‘Help me? With what?’

Meer stepped forward to set a hand on his shoulder. He looked Ash straight in the eye.

‘With your loss, my friend.’

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

The Bunker

Deep beneath the Temple of Whispers, old Kira, mother of Sasheen, stepped from an elevator into an underground tunnel lit by gaslights, and saw that all but one of the carriages had already departed.

She boarded the remaining one, the carriage sitting there with its wheels on the rails and the driver diligently avoiding her eye, the team of zels sniffing and snorting in impatience. With a hard tug on the cord she rang the bell, and the driver, a slave with a complexion made pasty white from lack of sunlight, lashed his whip across the backs of the zels, and they were away.

Deep within her own her own heart, a fierce fire was burning. With the bland concrete walls flowing past her, and the harshness of the lights interspersed with identical lengths of gloom, she stoked it with memories of her daughter, and her grandson too, young Kirkus, both of them gone now.

It had been Kira, in her capacity as a handler within the Section, who had given the order to the Diplomat Ché concerning what was to be done in the event that Sasheen was captured, or ran from battle. An order that had needed to be given, as it always had been when a Matriarch or Patriarch had taken to the field; an order she had been commanded to pass on herself.

And now it had come to pass. Her daughter lay dead, poisoned by a Diplomat’s bullet.

Oh, Sasheen
, she thought, and couldn’t help the grip of loss that seized her thin frame.

Her direct bloodline would end with her own passing. Others within the family of Dubois, her half-sister Velma and her get, would take the helm of the family’s falling fortunes.

Her thoughts turned to the Diplomat still at large in Khos, the one who had clearly shot her daughter through the neck. Ché, the young man with his R
ō
shun ways. A deserter, if the vague report from the twins was in any way accurate.

Kira wondered how utterly she could destroy him.

It felt like hours, rocking from side to side as the carriage rolled along the endless track of rails, always downwards towards a never-changing vanishing point. Time to linger on things, to allow her emotions to slowly ebb into numbness and her mind into random thoughts.

She was jolted as the carriage came to a halt, and saw that they had arrived at their destination. The air was stale here, so deep beneath the catacombs of the Hypermorum.

Kira stepped out and walked to the heavy iron door in the wall. Even as she approached, a priest stepped out from a cubicle to open it. He bowed low as she stepped through the raised threshold into the small chamber within, which was cylindrical, its sides glassy smooth, so that she felt as if she was standing in a bottle. Another round iron door plugged the end of it.

Darkness, as the light slowly faded to nothing. A hiss as a fine spray covered her, smelling of pine trees and the sea.

‘Your pass, please,’ came a voice from all around her.

‘Eight-six-oh-four-nine-nine-one.’

The inner door cracked opened. Kira stepped through into the light beyond.

The bunker was a tomb for all those who had been buried there alive; the iron doors were there to keep them in as much as others out.

The priests and slaves who lived down here would never see the sky again. Some had volunteered for this half existence, but for most there had been little choice in it. The dry, filtered air that fluttered through its rooms held an atmosphere of hopes abandoned and desires forever repressed. Quiet chatter came from the pools and salons and cages of the harem. Silence from the libraries and map rooms. Singing, even, from a boy standing naked on a pedestal in a marbled hallway, his words a celebration of the jealousy of lovers.

Kira stood beneath the strips of gaslights that made it as bright as day in there, surrounded by friezes on the leather-faced walls of forest hunting scenes. It smelled of dampness in the waiting chamber, and of decay, even with the fresh scents on her clothing and skin.