Melsa squatted by the wagon door, listening, her body striped by the shafts of sunlight that fell through the cracks in the wood. Listening, always listening, and Manrie watched her and thought of the softness of her lips. Old lust, and not her own. She felt Cloedeya stir inside of her. He had licked honey off of those lips, had picked off a lemon pip that was stuck to them and put it in his mouth. He had swallowed it whole, wanting the honey that coated it and not the bitterness of its seed.
The wagon began moving again, and Melsa turned to the others. “They will wait until dark. They aren’t going to take us into the city. The Lady is waiting for us somewhere else.”
“Not the Lady,” Manrie corrected. “The former Lady.”
Melsa shrugged, as if it didn’t matter. “I would have liked to see Hasra,” Koenbahki said wistfully. Melsa was already turning back to her perch beside the door, trying to hear above the rattle of the wagon.
“They have taken discs from the pantry wagon, and they’ve sent rangers away with them.”
“Why?” Manrie asked.
“I don’t know. I only know that they’re doing it.”
“What happens when the Lady of Hasra is replaced?” Koenbahki asked. She was sitting in the corner, almost subsumed by a wide pillow, and Little Praeda was sitting in her lap. Big Praeda had found that pillow in Aediestuhn. She had carried it down the sloping streets, balancing it on her head and grinning beneath it. Her eyes had twinkled when she saw Cloedeya, and he had felt the flush of love crawl along his skin. He had just eaten a splayed sugar mouse, and its sweet and earthy taste was clinging to his tongue.
Manrie shook herself. Her skin prickled all of the time, now. She was always blushing. “The ladies? They’re supposed to go back to their previous lives,” she said. “But they usually only serve for five years. It would be hard to go back to your previous life, after doing something else for twenty-five. Especially if you thought that your work wasn’t completed.” Were these her thoughts, or Cloedeya’s? Cloedeya, who was always thoughtfully considering the people who surrounded him, trying to understand them. A philosopher whose arguments were food, who debated the world with kindness.
“Work, work, it’s so boring,” Little Praeda pouted in a singsong voice. “I want to play.”
Koenbahki whispered into her hair. “I do, too. I want to be out of this wagon. It smells from the hole.”
There was a hole cut into the floorboards at the rear of the wagon. It had a little hatch. They were leaving the hatch open. Its door had been stained by urine and feces, hanging down and jolting as it did as they squatted over it. Manrie had regarded the hatch, but it was too narrow for her to slide through. Little Praeda could fit through it, but they hadn’t asked her yet. What would she do, if she managed to get free?
Big Praeda, laying curled up in the corner, stirred drowsily. She had done little except sleep since Cloedeya had died. His ghost was continually prompting Manrie to move to her side, to place a hand on her forehead, to kiss her flushed cheek. She wasn’t ill. She had simply surrendered. She only sat up in the depths of night, when Little Praeda was asleep. That was when Manrie let the ghost out.
He wasn’t the first ghost to ride Manrie in the company of the people he had known in life. Taeslahbin had been known to the farmers, but they had thought that he was still alive. They had also known Lokeyn, of course. Known him without loving him. And the starving girl, Manrie supposed. Cloedeya was the first who could appear to those who actually mourned him, who wanted to see his spirit, who took comfort from it. When he stood before Melsa and Big Praeda, they reached for him, as if they could hold him. It was too much for Manrie. She went to the pillows and curled herself against Koenbahki or the little girl. She slept unhaunted.
The wagon shuddered and tilted. They were on a steep incline. They could hear the horse huffing loudly as it pulled. The angle increased, and they began to slide down the length of the wagon, towards the odious latrine hole. But the wagon walls were webbed with ropes for just this purpose, and they clung to them. Even Big Praeda roused herself enough to grab a rope near her head and loop her arm through it. Melsa gripped the side of the door, her fingers splayed within the crack, her face grim. Manrie pushed herself back against the pillows and hung on the web beside Koenbahki and Little Praeda.
The wagon came to a stop in this steep and dangerous position and dust fell through the chinks of light from the door. There were voices outside. Yoehnen’s, terse with anger. The Immortal’s. Calm. Even amused. “They’re going to let us out,” Melsa said.
The door opened and light flooded in. Manrie blinked rapidly, the sudden brightness filling her eyes with tears. Cloedeya inquired and she agreed. He slipped from her consciousness, but she could feel the thread of his understanding, could watch through his eyes as he slipped past the ranger at the door and floated over the narrow road. There was a rock wall to one side of it, and a sheer drop to the other. The Immortal had dismounted, and was in the pantry wagon, rummaging among the food. Cloedeya’s spirit felt the violation and went there. The Immortal was making a small pile of belongings beside the door. The saddlebag was there, and the stack of spirit stones. There was a ham, a sack of jerky, a sack of dried apricots. Cloedeya had carefully set those apricots on a board, and turned them in the sun over the course of several days. The Immortal was peering at a jar of pickled eggs, holding it up and turning it in the light, as if to ascertain that the eggs were still good. His face ballooned grotesquely through the glass.
He saw Cloedeya’s ghost and smiled. “She’s let you out, it seems,” he said in that calm, rather sad, self-assured voice. “No doubt you’re looking at my choices and thinking that there’s nothing you could cook from them. There won’t be any opportunities to cook on our journey. But I imagine that we’ll have to eat. I am sorry that we’ll have to leave so much of your collection. I am tempted by the okubrahchi. What would happen if I made the girl eat it, while I ate a piece of it myself? She would be easier to control. But she has you, of course. Would you feel its effects? Or would you fight me for control of her? Never mind. We don’t have time for such experiments.”
Yoehnen appeared at the door. He saw Cloedeya’s ghost and went pale. “I thought they couldn’t come out during daylight.”
“It’s very dark in this wagon,” the Immortal said placidly. “But you’re right. This is unusual. I would speculate that the problem is with us. That the ghosts are always here, and we see them best at night because night exposes us to all of our fears. In daylight we can ignore them. But it’s only a speculation. The good Lady may provide some insight.”
Yoehnen grunted. “We need to move if we hope to get into position before dusk.”
“Yes,” the Immortal sighed. “Bring the party from the wagon. They can carry the supplies for us.”
Big Praeda barely woke up. She stood in the narrow road and the Immortal placed the pack that he had brought from the homestead on her shoulders. Manrie hated that pack. She had stared at it on the trek from Haerahiz’s house, sensing a betrayal. It seemed like an alien presence, like a parasite that had latched itself to Taeyaho’s back, and now latched itself to Big Praeda. She herself was made to carry a basket, and she balanced it on her head. Koenbahki did the same with her basket, and it barely moved as Koenbahki walked, one hand negligently raised to steady it, her beautiful hips saying softly, creating a dance of balance. Melsa was given the saddle bag. It swung across one shoulder, and Little Praeda gripped her free arm.
They walked as the sun set behind the hills and the smudge of mountains far to the west. Manrie sent the ghost up over the sheer wall to their right and it stood on a spur of rock and looked down on Hasra. The city was built on terraces, and they descended in widening steps from the Door. It looked tentative and haphazard, despite its antiquity. As if the generations had advanced from their huddle beside the Door with great timidity, daring to move down one ledge of rock at a time but always looking backwards, towards the entrance into the world. Manrie had seen it before, but never from this angle. She saw the road that wound through the foothills to the wall, and traced its passage through the city as it splintered into smaller streets. There was the Sangrahalaya, crawling up the side of the city, wrapped in its own flat walls, mimicking the structure of Hasra but separate from it. Lights were being lit in its many windows. As the city climbed the cliff, the houses grew smaller and more densely packed together. There were open spaces where other cave entrances had been found. The entrance to the Grave of Swords stood bare and unadorned on the fifth terrace. The entrance to the Chasm of Baths was on the second terrace.
Someone was shouting. She had stumbled and scattered dry oat cakes over the road. The Immortal had turned her to face him and was studying her closely. “Are you spying through the eyes of your ghost?” he asked. Then he turned his head and called. “The seer cannot be made to carry anything. Her spirit won’t let her be a pack horse. Sinfaeya, you will have to carry her burden.”
The ranger came pacing back to them. She had a long stick which she was using to tap the ground. A habit she had gained in the Gaendolin Hills, as she tapped for tombs. “Why me?” she asked. “I’m occupied.”
“You are not. There are no hidden caves beneath this path. Or if there are, they don’t concern us. Tap again when we go through the door. For now, put this basket on your head.”
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His voice was always light. He commanded with a tone of friendship, of jocularity. As if he were inviting you to play a kind of game. As if he knew some secret, and you would know it, too, if you would just do what he told you to. But all his words were a lie. They were all spoken falsely through Taeyaho’s stolen mouth. He turned away. He was carrying a heavy pack, and the edge of a spirit stone peeked from the flap.
Back to walking, and the sun was setting. The ghost was on the ridge above, and it saw how their path would turn and come out onto a little trail and arrive on the highest plateau. They were sneaking around Hasra, heading for the Door. Their numbers were depleted. Some of the rangers were missing. Manrie reclaimed her own eyes and glanced at Melsa, and saw that Melsa had noted this, too. Their eyes met and Manrie nodded. She slipped back into the ghost’s consciousness and sent him down into the city. Down towards the Dome House, where the new Lady of Hasra presided.
The streets were mostly empty. They had the same disregarded feeling as the streets of Libreigia. As if the spirits had infected the inhabitants with a kind of indifference, so that trash drifted against the walls like snow. Excrement was left laying on the ground, shards of broken pottery were unswept, food left to rot where it had fallen. The doors of the houses were closed, the windows shuttered. But light streamed from the Dome House.
Katemzani Plaesahlet Restraed Daturi, the new Lady of Hasra, was seated on a gilt stool beside the large bowl that was used for sortition. Its inside had been painted gold and reflected the light from the lanterns that hung under the domed ceiling. There were seven other women seated on stools around her, and three men. She was reading a scroll and frowning. She was a broad woman, and ugly, but her cheeks were spanned with brown freckles that gave a kind of fascination to her face. She looked up from her scroll and saw Cloedeya’s ghost.
She dropped the scroll and stood, and the stool fell to the floor behind her. Faces turned. Katemzani Plaesahlet Restraed put a hand to her chest and said, “You, too, Cloedeya? You have gone to join the ancestors?”
He couldn’t answer, of course, and Manrie couldn’t speak through him. But he turned and gazed back out the open door, up the winding road, towards the Door of Hasra. Manrie willed him to step towards the door, to lead the way. There was a swish of silk as the people rose and made to follow him. A few steps out into the night, and the Lady of Hasra was at his side, and guards were appearing to walk beside her. The sun dribbled its last light across the cliff, and left a blue smudge of darkness on the walls of the houses.
Then Cloedeya’s attention was tugged by something to the east. He turned off the road, and Manrie felt the connection between them begin to wither. She grasped at it but couldn’t hold it. There were other spirits in the streets now, and they, too, were turning. Her vision of the street was growing dim, as if Cloedeya was slowly closing his eyes. She felt his fascination. There was a spirit stone somewhere to the east. And another behind him, to the south, hidden beside the town gates. Another to the west, somewhere high in an attic. The ghosts were going towards them, and the doors of the houses were opening as people emerged, curious and amazed, following the spirits that haunted them.
Manrie was almost entirely in her own body. She gave a little cry and looked around her. Her friends were strung out in a single line along the trail, and there was a guard of rangers behind and before them. She could see yellow and silver light leaking from the edge of the spirit stone that peeked from the Immortal’s pack. He was ahead of her, near the front of the procession. She ran forward. “Step aside, Melsa,” she hissed, and slid past her and Little Praeda. Koenbahki called out to her as she went by. The Immortal was turning. She threw herself at him and pried the silver and yellow stone from his pack. He tripped and fell away from her. She was straightening and screaming Cloedeya’s name, holding the glowing stone high above her head.
And he returned to her. He was suddenly there, drawn away from all distractions, and she experienced his presence as an act of love. He was remembering a meal he had cooked for the curator of the Sangrahalaya. Poor Slaeterin Moesebai, who had been imprisoned in the cages beyond the cataract. Slaeterin was younger in Cloedeya’s memory, and a greedy eater, clearing his bowl within minutes and looking up with a sly smile, a sheen of yellow sauce still clinging to his lips. Manrie was so relieved to have Cloedeya back that she lost herself in the memory, and wasn’t aware of the blow that the Immortal struck her.
Someone was calling her name. Cloedeya was remembering a grove of fruit trees at the base of Mount Chahnapaeya. Golden fruit with three pits, and a small white vole sleeping in each pit. The voles had shaken themselves awake and stalked off with comic dignity, traversing the landscape of Cloedeya’s hand. Big Praeda had tried to collect them in a basket, but they attacked each other savagely and the basket was stained with their blood. The fruit had to be cleaned carefully to get their white hairs off of it. It tasted of rain water and yellowed paper, and they never picked it again.
Manrie blinked and found herself looking into Koenbahki’s eyes. Koenbahki was holding Manrie’s face between her palms, and her fingers were hot against her cheeks. “You’re here,” she said, studying Manrie’s expression.
“Yes,” Manrie whispered, and another voice said, “Bring her to me.”
It was a voice from a memory. Not Cloedeya’s memory, but her own. A vast cave, and the carapace of an enormous insect, reflecting the light of many lanterns. A voice that was full of keen interest and surprised delight. “See how the nineteenth leg dangles from the back,” it said in Manrie’s memory. “Make sure you include that in your drawing.”
Now the voice was speaking in the present, and Manrie was seized roughly and thrust before it. She looked into the haughty eyes of Katemzan Prahmpara Droegee Daturi. “Objects speak to you,” she said softly, and those eyes went wide.
“Quiet,” the former Lady of Hasra hissed. She was naked. Her hair was uncombed. Her face was unwashed, and streaked with dust. A strong musk perfumed the air around her. “We will begin our journey in a moment. But first you must tell me. Did Das Draebeye discover what he was looking for?”
“I have already told you that he didn’t,” the Immortal said languidly from the shadows.
“But I sent him the nineteenth leg. Surely it made the markings.”
“He died before it reached him,” the Immortal said. “Perhaps it will be brought back to Hasra.”
Katemzan winced. “I tell you that this may be the wrong cave. The insect was found far to the west. It was making markings there. How do we know that it didn’t create a door there, a means of escape?”
“Katemzan,” the Immortal said patiently, “this is the door we came from. We already know that it’s a portal. And it doesn’t matter what the insects did. The girl can open a door with the spirit stones.”
“A door to death,” the ex-Lady Daturi said, and shuddered.
“A door through death,” the Immortal said patiently. He stepped to Katemzan’s side, appearing in Manrie’s vision. “Don’t be afraid. The girl has walked through that door and come back.”
“Master, I feel them,” Katemzan said. “I have sat here now for many days. I thought that I would be free within my own mind. I brought nothing with me. Not even clothing. Nothing could talk to me. But the ancestors…they reach out to me. Can’t you feel their thoughts brush your mind?”
The Immortal sighed softly. He turned Katemzan into his embrace and held her against his chest. Her naked back quivered, like the shivering of a newly hatched bird. The Immortal stroked her hair. He raised his face and looked at Yoehnen. “She is much changed,” he said.
Yoehnen fidgeted with the pommel of his sword. “We all have moments of doubt.”
“Do you?” the Immortal asked in a light voice.
“How can we not? Who has ever seen the Previous World?”
“I have seen it,” the Immortal said. “Katemzan, my Katemzan,” he whispered into the naked woman’s hair, “when the ancestors whisper to you, do they not tell you of the Previous World?”
A shiver ran up her body. “What if nothing speaks to me, there?”
He held her at arms length. “Dear one, are you saying that you don’t want to go?”
“I can’t. I can’t walk into the darkness. The stones are so silent. Only the ancestors speak.”
The Immortal looked at Yoehnen. “And you? Will you also forsake the Previous World?”
“No, Master,” Yoehnen said. His hand twitched on the pommel of his sword. “No. There is no purpose left for us in this place. The rangers are disbanded. We have enemies in the city below.”
The Immortal nodded. He kissed the top of Katemzan’s head. “Guard the way for us, dear one.”
She began to sob. It wracked her whole body, and released a cloud of dust from her dirty hair. The last rays of sunlight were touching the cliff edge. She pushed herself away from the Immortal and stood, looking about as if she had lost something. She took a few faltering steps towards the edge of the cliff. Manrie drew closer to Melsa and Little Praeda. Koenbahki still had the basket on her head, and its long shadow made a woven pattern on the ground. Katemzan Prahmpara Droegee Daturi stepped into it as if she were stepping into a net. She looked down, then turned her head.
“That basket speaks of potatoes, and shaking in the shadows of a wagon, and of the hands that wove it,” she said. She turned back to the cliff edge and took another step. She stood, balanced, staring down at the city and the lit windows of the Sangrahalaya. “I hear it. The city. The cups and saucers. The wagon wheels. The paper and the ink. All of the things we’ve made. I hear it. I was wrong to seek silence. They whisper to me. They tell me of their lives. And no one else knows. No one knows how beautiful they are.”
She raised her head to the sky and then stepped off the cliff. Little Praeda screamed, and Yoehnen rushed to the edge, as if he could catch her. He stood, staring down into the shadows of the plateau below. When he spoke, his voice was low and grief-stricken. “I served her for twenty years. I believed in her vision. All she wanted was to protect people. I will never understand why they rejected us. Why they wanted the monsters.”
“They have become inured to the horrors of this world,” the Immortal said softly. “If we find a way through, we will return, and bring them home with us.”
But Katemzan Prahmpara Droegee Daturi’s ghost was rising beside the cliff. She hung in the air, staring at the Immortal’s pack, drawn by the spirit stones. Manrie felt fury rise up inside of her. The naked ghost seemed so lost, so vulnerable. Manrie reached out a hand to it, and it noticed her, turned and regarded her with frightened eyes. She whispered to it, and it fell forward into her consciousness, as if it were falling into her arms.