The Judging Eye (51 page)

"Yes. Dragons know."

Achamian found himself speaking
against a queer reluctance, one that he confused with shyness at first. Some
time passed before he realized that it was in fact
shame
. He didn't want
to be like these unruly men, much less respect them. Even more, he didn't want
their trust or their admiration, things that both men had obviously granted him
days ago, given the way they had risked their lives for his lie.

"Tell me," Pokwas
said, staring with an interest that seemed almost threatening for its
intensity. "What happened to the Nonmen?" Whether it was the way he
steered his voice or the wariness in his eyes, Achamian knew that the
Sword-Dancer was every bit as worried about Cleric as he.

"I thought I already told
that story."

"He means what happened to
their
race
," Galian said. "Why have they dwindled so?"

A momentary flash of cruelty
passed through the old Wizard, not for them as men, but for their beliefs.
"You can look to your Tusk for that account," he said, taking peevish
relish in the word "your." "They're the
False Men
,
remember? Cursed of the Gods. Our ancient fathers destroyed many a Mansion as
great as this." In his soul's eye he could see them, the Prophets of the
Tusk, as stern and as spare as the words they would carve into ivory, leading
hide-clad savages through deep halls of glory, calling out in guttural tongues,
murdering those who had been their slavers.

"But I thought their back
had already been broken," Pokwas said. "That the Five Tribes came
upon them in their twilight."

"True."

"So what happened?"

"The Inchoroi came..."

"You mean the
Consult?" Galian asked.

Achamian stared at the man, not
quite stunned, but speechless all the same. That a mere scalper could mention
the Consult with the same familiarity as he might mention any great and obvious
nation seemed beyond belief. It was a sign, he realized, of just how profoundly
the world had changed during his exile. Before, when he still wore the robes of
a Mandate Schoolman, all the Three Seas had laughed at him and his dire
warnings of the Second Apocalypse. Golgotterath. The Consult. The Inchoroi.
These had been the names of his disgrace, utterances that assured the mockery
and condescension of any who might listen. But now...

Now they were
religion
...
The holy gospel of the Aspect-Emperor.

Kellhus.

"No," he said, feeling
that peculiar wariness when one crossed uncertain lines of knowing. "This
was before the Consult..."

And so he told them of the
millennial wars between the Nonmen and the Inchoroi. The two scalpers listened
with honest fascination, their eyes lost in the middle ground between the
telling and the glorious riot of the told. The first Wracu descending. The
first naked hordes of Sranc. The Nonmen Ishroi whipping their chariots into
screaming horizons...

Even Achamian found himself
curiously overawed. To speak of distant grounds and faraway peoples was one
thing, but to sit here, in the derelict halls of Cil-Aujas, speaking of the
ancient Nonmen...

Voices could stir more than the
living from slumber.

So instead of lingering in his
explanations as he might have otherwise, Achamian struck through the heart of
the matter, relating only what was essential: the treachery of Nin'janjin, the
Womb-Plague and the death of Hanalinqû, the doom slumbering in the bones of the
survivors' immortality. The two scalpers, it turned out, already knew many of
the details: Apparently Galian had studied for the Ministrate before, as he put
it, drink, hash, and whores had saved his soul.

Achamian laughed hard at that.

Every so often he glanced at
Mimara to make sure all was well. She sat like a cross-legged vase with Somandutta,
indulging the young caste-noble's vanity with questions about Nilnamesh. He
liked the man well enough, Achamian supposed. Somandutta seemed to be one of
those peculiar caste-nobles who managed to carry their sheltered upbringing
into adulthood: sociable to a fault, almost absurdly confident that others
meant him well. Were this Momemn, Invishi, or any other great city, Achamian
had no doubt he would be one of those dog-eager courtiers, one everyone would
dismiss with smiles rather than sneers.

"Do you know,"
the
caste-noble was saying,
"what my people say about women like you?"

Even still, the old Wizard
remained wary. He knew enough about scalpers to know they weren't easily known.
Their lives demanded too much from them.

"Tell me," Achamian
asked Galian directly. "Why do you do this? Hunting Sranc. It can't be for
the bounty, can it? I mean, as far as I can tell you all leave places like
Marrow as poor as you arrive rich..."

The former Columnary paused in
reflection. "For some, it is the money. Xonghis, for instance, leaves most
of his share with the Custom House—"

"He'll never spend
it," Pokwas interrupted.

"Why would you sa—?"
Achamian pressed.

But Galian was shaking his head.
"Your question, sorcerer, is not so wise. Scalpers scalp. Whores whore. We
never ask one another why. Never."

"We even have a
saying," Pokwas added in his resonant, accented voice. "'Leave it to
the slog.'"

Achamian smiled. "It all
comes back to the slog, does it?"

"Even kings," Galian
replied with a wink, "shod their feet."

The conversation turned to more
mundane fare after this. For a time, Achamian listened to the scalpers argue
over who was the true inheritor of the Ancient North's greatness, the Three
Seas or Zeüm. It was an old game, men taking pride over meaningless things,
passing time in good-natured rivalry. He thought of how strange it must be for
long-dead Cil-Aujas to hear the glory of small and petty words after so many
entombed ages, let alone to feel the polishing touch of light. Perhaps that was
why the entire company seemed to fall mute sooner than their weariness merited.
There was a greater effort in speaking overheard words, an effort that, though
infinitesimal, quickly accumulated. And this dark place, whether from the drowsing
edge of dreams or with ears pricked in malice, did listen.

The disappointment on
Somandutta's face was almost maudlin when Mimara abandoned him to rejoin her
"father."

They had slept side by side
since she had joined the company, but somehow, this night, they ended up laying
face to face as well—a position that Achamian thought uncomfortably intimate
but didn't seem to trouble Mimara at all. It reminded him of her mother,
Esmenet, how the habits of prostitution had coloured so much of what she said and
did. Wearing her nakedness the thoughtless way a smith might wear a leather
apron. Talking cocks and congress the way masons might discuss trowels and
arches.

So many calluses where he had
only tender skin.

"Everything..." she
said in a wistful tone. Her eyes seemed to track the passage of ghosts.

"Everything what?"

"The walls... The ceilings.
Everywhere
, limbs and people cut out of stone—images atop images...
Think of the toil!"

"It wasn't always such. The
Wolf Gate is an example of how they once adorned their cities. It was only when
they began forgetting that they turned to this... this... excess. These are
their annals, the accounting of their deeds—great and small."

"Then why not simply paint
murals the way we do?"

Achamian found himself approving
of this question—another long-dead habit, tingling back to life. "Nonmen
can't see paintings," he said with an old man's shrug.

A frowning smile. Despite the
anger that always seemed to roll about the nethers of her expression, her
skeptical looks always managed to promise a fair accounting.

"It's true," Achamian
said. "Paintings are naught but gibberish to their eyes. The Nonmen may
resemble us, Mimara, but they are far more different than you can
imagine."

"You make them sound
frightening."

An old warmth touched him then,
one that he had almost forgotten: the feeling of carrying another, not with
arms or love or even hope, but with
knowledge
. Knowledge that made wise
and kept safe.

"At last," he said,
closing eyes that smiled. "She listens."

He felt her fingers press his
shoulder, as though to poke in friendly rebuke but really just to confirm.
Something swelled through him then, something that demanded he keep his eyes
shut in the pretence of sleep.

He had been lonely, he realized.
Lonely.

These past twenty years...

***

"A place where my line can
outlive me," the High-King said.

Seswatha frowned in good-natured
dismissal. "You have no need to fear..." Achamian leaned back in his
chair, forced his thoughts from the conundrum facing him on the benjuka plate
between them. Most of the private rooms in the King-Temple Annexes were little
more than slots between walls of cyclopean brick, and Celmomas's study was no
exception. The towering scroll-racks only added to the cloistered air.
"Our foe has no hope against the Ordeal you have assembled. Think.
Nimeric... Even Nil'giccas marches."

The names seemed to relax his
old friend.

"Ishuäl," Celmomas
said, smiling at his own wit—or lack of it. He reached for his chalice of apple
mead. "That's what I call it."

Seswatha shook his head.
"Is it stocked with beer or with concubines?"

"Seeds," Celmomas
replied, his eyes smiling over the rim of his cup. The golden wolf's head
braided into the centre of his beard seemed to glower from beneath his wrist.

"Seeds?"

The High-King's demeanour
faltered. There was always such an aura of care about him, at least when it
came to the little things, like making sure he replaced his cup on the same
ring of condensation.

He could be so reckless
otherwise.

"For the longest
time," he said, "I refused to believe you. And now that I
believe..."

"Yes?"

Celmomas had a long face, one
that suited the dynastic glory of his name. Solemn. Nimble yet strong-jawed.
But it was too given to expressions of melancholy, especially in rooms where
the gloom lay heavy. He laughed as much as the next man, Seswatha supposed, but
the looks that inevitably followed—eyes slack with quiet sorrow, lips drawn
into a pent line—always seemed more primitive somehow, closer to the native
tenor of his heart.

"Nothing..." the
High-King said with a release of old and weary air. "Just premonitions."

Seswatha studied him with new
concern. "The premonitions of kings are never to be taken lightly. You
know that much, old friend."

"Which is why I have built
a ref—"

The creak of bronze hinges. They
both yanked their gazes to the shadows that concealed the entrance. The fires
pulled and twirled in the tripods set to either side of the game-table.
Achamian heard the scuff of little feet, then suddenly Nau-Cayûti hurtled into
his father's arms and lap.

"Whoopa!" Celmomas
cried. "What warrior leaps blindly into the arms of his foe?"

The boy chortled in the grinding
way of children fending fingers that tickle. "You're not my
foe
,
Da!"

"Wait till you get
older!"

Nau-Cayûti grinned with clenched
teeth, struggled against his father's ringed hand, growling as much as
laughing. The boy surprised him by jerking and twisting like a summer pike,
clutched his white-woollen robe in an effort to brace his feet on his father's
thighs. Celmomas pulled back, nearly toppled in his chair.

Achamian roared with laughter.
"A
wolf
, my King! The boy's a wolf! You better hope he's never your
enemy!"

"Cayû-Cayû!" the
High-King cried, holding his hands out in surrender.

"What's this?" the young
Prince asked, fumbling in the interior pockets of his father's robe. With a
little grunt, he pulled a golden tube into the wobbling light. A scroll-case,
cast in the likeness of twining vines.

"For me?" he gasped at
his grinning father.

"Nay," Celmomas
replied with mock gravity. "It's a great and powerful secret." The
High-King's look found Seswatha past the boy's flaxen curls. Nau-Cayûti turned
as well, so that both faces—the one innocent, the other careworn—hung
motionless in the pale light.

"It's for your uncle
Seswa," the High-King said.

Nau-Cayûti clutched the golden
tube to his breast, more in a delighted than a covetous way. "Can I give
it to him, Da?" he cried.
"Please?"

Celmomas nodded in chuckling
assent, but a gleam of seriousness lingered in his gaze. The Prince bounced
from his father's lap, made both men start in alarm when he almost bowled into
one of the tripods, then he was leaning against Seswatha's knee, beaming with
pride. He held out the scroll-case in hands too small not to be clumsy, saying,
"Tell me, Uncle Seswa. Tell-me-tell-me! Who's
Mimara
?"