Caenis, who had laboured to tutor him on the Order’s history, with only marginal success in the end but still he cherished the lessons. During his ordeal in the pits he had occupied the time between combats by delving into memory, attempting to recall Caenis’s many stories, knowing they somehow kept him anchored in the Order, kept him a brother and not a slave.
“The Aspect and I were brothers once,” he told Merial. “I learned much from him.”
“As did I. He was my master, y’see. We’d meet in secret, whenever the Order could spare him. He taught me so much, the Faith, the mysteries . . .” She raised her gaze once more. “The stars.”
He touched his hand to hers for a second. “I grieve for your loss, sister.”
“I told my husband,” she said as he turned away, “about Lady Reva, and everything else.”
“Did you divine anything regarding the queen’s intentions?”
“Only that they are unchanged.” She turned to the city spread out before them, fires flickering amidst the many ruined buildings, the pyres still burning beyond the walls. “On to Volar,” she murmured.
• • •
“Who were they?”
He stands in the street outside the baker’s shop, looking down at the girl and her mother once more.
“How can you be here?” he asks.
She moves into view, wearing the face he remembers, the face she wore when they killed together. “You dream, I dream.” She nods at the mother and child. “Did you know them?”
He sees then that the face is not truly the same, the cruelty, the madness not quite gone, but diminished, as if this shared dream somehow strips away much of her waking self.
“No. They died when the city fell.”
“Always so intent on drowning in guilt, beloved.” She moves closer, stepping over the corpses that carpet the street to cast an incurious glance over the lifeless mother and daughter. “It’s always the way with wars. Battles rage and the small people die.”
An old, long-stoked anger builds in his breast. “Small people?”
“Yes my love, the small people.” Her voice carries a note of weary impatience, like a tutor lecturing a child on an oft-forgotten lesson. “The weak, the petty, the narrow of mind and purpose. Those, in fact, who are not like us.”
His rage builds, stirring words he had longed to utter during their journey of murder, unchecked now by any binding. “You are a pestilence,” he tells her. “A blight upon the world, soon to be wiped away.”
Her face betrays no anger as she looks up, only a faint smile, her gaze sad but also rich in knowledge, reminding him of just how old she is, how many corpses she has seen. “No, I am the only woman you will ever love.”
He finds himself drawing away, though also unable to take his eyes from her face. “I know you feel it,” she says, following as he retreats. “However deep you bury it, however much rage you stir to drown it. You saw the future we could have shared, we were meant to share.”
“A vile illusion,” he says in a whisper.
“Our child will never be born,” she says, implacable now. “But we will make another, heir to a dynasty so great . . .”
