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Lord Saluuk glared at him, color throbbing in his throat. One moment became many, but it finally came: “Forgive me, honored one. I have offended you and your House.”
Meoraq’s head canted further. “And the father who pissed me out?” he prompted blackly.
Lord Saluuk’s spines ticced. Breathing hard, all but stinking of hate, Lord Saluuk knelt. One knee first, then both, and then he bent to touch his head to the floor and turn his naked palm up beside Meoraq’s boot. “Forgive.” He managed this time to say it without hissing, although the effort clearly came at a high price. “It is Saluuk Tzugul before you, son of Ulhathev, son of Shagoth, son of all my fathers before him. I am my House and the bloodline of my fathers and I have offended. I bend before you, Uyane. Forgive me.”
Meoraq grunted and stepped back. He did not make an answer, but then, the law demanded that pardon be asked of him, not that he give it.
“You are perhaps too quick to remove evidence from this tribunal, Lord Saluuk,” said one of the judges after a moment. “An impression could yet be made of the girl’s scar and compared to those men of your household whom you suspect—”
“She’s gone to Ga
“Forgive, lord, but it is the matter of who put a Sheulek’s mark upon her that concerns me.”
Saluuk continued to glare at Meoraq for a breath or two, but then slid his cold stare up at the tribune wall.
“The girl’s corruption may be a sin,” said the judge, “but the forging of that mark is a crime. If these witnesses you bring before us can truly account for every hour of the girl’s life, then one of them surely aided in her deceit. She did not bite her own shoulder.”
The other tribune judges grunted solemn agreement. The spectators eyed one another and whispered.
“I will hold interrogations,” Saluuk said at last, visibly struggling with his temper. “I will find the man responsible and send him over the wall with his lying poke.”
Meoraq frowned. It was customary to exile those who had been corrupted beyond redeeming—giving to Ga
And he was not alone, for one of the lesser judges hesitantly said, “Would it not be better to place the girl in Temple custody until her guilt is proved?”
“Her guilt,” Saluuk hissed, “is biting at her teat! I will not be dishonored in my own House!”
As all the judges bowed, Meoraq said, “You have been too long within walls if you can think to preserve the honor of your bloodline only by exterminating it.”
Saluuk’s neck stiffened, the marks of his anger visibly throbbing in time with his heart. “If she ca
“Honored one,” said the high judge reprovingly. “Your opinion is not asked. You stand acquitted and your part in this tribunal is done.”
Truth, and if he could not get clear of Lord Saluuk’s presence, he knew it would end in violence regardless of all the training in the world. Meoraq bent his neck briefly and received the bows and salutes of all those who shared the hall with him. The high judge beckoned to an usher and Meoraq left, feeling Saluuk Tzugul’s eyes burning on his back all the way out into the hall.
* * *
The Halls of Judgment were empty enough to echo beneath Meoraq’s feet. The sound worked on him like the hammers of a headache, adding to his black mood instead of easing it. A bad business, Saluuk, and he could have handled it better but it should have waited until the morning. He had always been too eager to see blood spilled after a battle and he knew it.
‘I thank You, Father, for Your temperance and restraining hand,’ Meoraq thought sourly. ‘Without which, I would surely have slaughtered a man with much disgrace and deep satisfaction.’
Sheul did not receive his prayer.
“I do thank You,” Meoraq said again, aloud this time, and with the proper gravity. The usher did not look around; a Sheulek speaking to God could hardly be a singular occurrence. “O my Father, I am ashamed that I require Your hand upon my heart to hold me from brawling, even with so low a man as the steward of Saluuk. Ga
It would shock him, actually, but it was also disturbingly easy to visualize. Lord Saluuk learning of his daughter’s pregnancy and, knowing Ga
There were men in the world who actually envied a Sheulek the liberty to take whatever woman Sheul moved him to take, not realizing that so many of those women were sired by men like Arug or Saluuk, that the women themselves were largely forgettable, and that years of exposure to all of Ga
Meoraq walked, lost in brooding thoughts of co
A white-cowled priest stood before the eternal fires, his hood pulled low over his eyes. His robes were richly trimmed, the hem weighted with gold plates and cut to glide just above the floor rather than pick up even a trace of dirt. Each finger was armored to the tip with delicate bands of fine metal. His color was so heavily crusted with jewels, it was a wonder he could breathe. He did not bother to acknowledge Meoraq, although he had surely heard him enter.
“You wished to speak with me?” said Meoraq after a few calming breaths. He would have liked to demand that he be shown a Sheulek’s proper respect and damn well be left alone, but he’d indulged in enough shameful behavior for one night. He would show his divine Father repentance with patience and respect, even if it was a damned inconvenience.
The priest turned, pushing back his hood to get a better look at him. “Sheulek,” he said, eyeing his sabks. “You are Uyane Meoraq of Xeqor?”
Obviously. How many other Sheuleks do you have in your damned city tonight?
‘Forgive me, O my Father, and give me patience,’ Meoraq thought. He said, politely, “I am.”
“I am Exarch Ylsathoc Hirut.”
Meoraq waited.
The exarch frowned, clearly a
I am a Sheulek and I go where I fucking well will.
‘Forgive me, O my Father, and give me patience.’ “It is my duty to attend Sheul’s judgments before attending to my own personal audiences,” Meoraq said.
“I see. So be it. At least you are here now. I had begun to think you had forgotten this stop upon your circuit, although I can easily see why you would. Sheul the All-Father surely knows that it is only my love for Him that holds me in this pisspot, but then, I was born in Gedai and know better how a city ought to be. You, now…” The exarch cast a disapproving look back at him over his shoulder. “Where have you been?”
Engaged in the duties I am sworn to and the privileges I am owed, one of which may include putting a knife in that eye if you roll it at me again.
‘Forgive me, O my Father, and give me patience.’ “I was detained at Xheoth.”
Ylsathoc grunted, then turned all the way around. He held out a long, pale object which Meoraq actually needed in his hands before he recognized it as a thigh bone.
Its meaning stabbed into him like a knife’s blade. And twisted.
“Your father is dead,” said the exarch without further preamble. “Sheul has named you steward of House Uyane. Xeqor awaits her champion.”
4
The exarch wanted to read him the oaths immediately, but Meoraq refused to hear them. He was given the use of the temple’s finest room for his bedchamber that night, but he didn’t use it save as a place to store his pack. He went instead to the i
The holy smiths of Xi’Tothax executed their craft well; his father’s thigh bone had been expertly cut and carved to make the hilt which the reforged blade so perfectly fit. It was not quite the knife he remembered hanging from his father’s neck, but he was proud to carry it, as proud as he was reticent to claim it.
His feelings had no bearing on the matter. In accordance with the law, it was his own, and unless it passed to the hand of one of his brothers before the turning of the year, it would be his forever. Or at least until his death, when it would be broken, the hilted half burnt with him upon his pyre and the edge sent onward to his future son. This was House Uyane, ever-changing and eternal as this knife, and he should be honored to take his place in that endless line.
He should be.
And yet…
Meoraq knelt, sleepless, for all the hours of the night as priests and other residents of the temple district came and went. He made all the appropriate prayers, but he didn’t feel the bereavement he felt he’d ought to and the psalms tasted of lies in his mouth. Eventually, he gave them up and fell silent, although he remained bent before the fires, brooding.