Hen stepped back so they could see his tabard. “We need to get up to the walls.”
The eyes took him in, then Kass, then the guard grunted. His face disappeared, and the door swung open. “Stairs in the back.”
Hen didn’t know the man, so he simply nodded and let Kass give all the thanks. He was better at it anyhow. They climbed the spiral staircase, past the first and second level barracks and to the armory on the third. Past racks of swords and dusty crossbows, Hen unbarred and opened the door. He poked his head out first, and two guards looked up from their sheltered coal fire in a corner of the wall. “It’s not time, yet, is it?” one of them asked.
Hen emerged onto the wall with Kass in tow. “No. Just here to have a look at the river,” he told them.
When they saw his tabard they relaxed back down next to their fire. It wasn’t windy today, but it could cut like a knife in winter when it was; the fire mostly served as a gathering point. Too bad he didn’t know either of the guards, but that happened less and less as he grew older. The kids at the Academy that hadn’t gone on to train to take charges had ended up in posts like this, watchers or on simple patrols. The ones he’d known had either climbed higher by now or washed out entirely.
“Do either of you have a spyglass?” Kass asked.
One of them fumbled with his belt before producing a leather tube for Kass’s inspection. “Careful with it, though. Belongs to the captain.”
“I will be,” came Kass’s solemn reply.
“It’s a sad sight, through that,” the other guard said, shaking her head.
Kass exchanged a dark look with Hen, then thanked the guards as they went on their way. The wall was about five feet thick in most spots, and the ledges were a straight drop on the inside and crenelated on the outside. It made Hen’s knees weak, but Kass loved to be up high. The closer to the sky, the closer to heaven.
“It’s such a beautiful green,” Kass said almost to himself as he paused to lean against a crenellation with one hip. “It’s a shame it holds so much darkness.”
Hen, whose main impulse at that point was to take Kass’s arm to keep him from going over the edge while lollygagging, glanced out at the endless clump of green that was the dark forest. It was pretty, from this distance, he guessed. The Stone City was all hard angles and limewash, so the blue of the sky against the deep emerald of the treetops made for an interesting contrast. But all Hen could think of when he saw it was what lurked within it: chaos, disorder, and a hunger to consume everything the City had built over centuries of civilization. He repressed a shiver.
“Do you think it can be saved? Once there are enough gods in heaven?” Kass wondered.
“It’s more important what you think about such things,” Hendrik reminded him.
“I’m not sure it is,” Kass said quietly. Then he frowned. “The river used to be right here, didn’t it?”
Hen frowned and focused over the wall. There was an indentation in the slope of the land some distance from the wall, and what looked like a reflection of sunlight on water here and there. But it was patchy, brown, and not at all like what he remembered.
Kass pressed the spyglass to his right eye, closing his left. “I don’t understand. It’s already rained five times this spring; why is it so dry?” A breeze lifted his curling hair off the back of his neck, of a sudden.
Hen coughed at the sudden smell, like rotten eggs.
Kass’s nose wrinkled. “What in the fiery hells is—is that something dead?”
Hen shook his head. He’d smelled death before, even if he’d never inflicted it himself. In the mine camps where they sent criminals before they went underground for good, in the Ag District where they slaughtered animals. This was different; it seemed to burn his nostrils, like a hot pepper but terrible. “It’s foul,” he decided, “whatever it is. Sewer runoff, maybe?” It had to go somewhere, and though he was fairly certain the City’s underground water tunnels ran straight to the ocean off the northern wall, maybe something had gone wrong?
Kass was swinging the spyglass this way and that. “I can’t see anything strange. Just that the river looks kind of muddy and puddly more than like a river.”
“Maybe that’s what rivers smell like when they get poisoned and start to dry up?” Hen guessed. “Or maybe the forest people are using it for a sewer?” Savages. Everything they touched turned to disorder. And now it was just the walls between them and the City, with the river in shambles like this. Hen had no idea what the consequences could be, but he had no doubt they were dire.
“They wouldn’t,” Kass said unconvincingly.
“Why not? It gets rid of their shit and it ruins our water,” he pointed out.
Kass handed him the spyglass, shaking his head. “Whatever it is, we’ll get to the bottom of it. That’s for certain.”
*
The week before inheritance was a solemn time for the Children of the Blood. The masters took the six who were scheduled to receive their inheritance aside every morning to recite the Prayer over them and then for mandatory silent meditation. Their guards, stone-faced but chins high with pride, stood outside the classroom for hours on end, swords at their hips, waiting for their charges to emerge.
Hen practiced a kind of meditation in those long hours, too. He cleared his mind of all thoughts, noticing what arose and then obliterating it, unless it was a thought about Kass’s joy in his destiny. The more he practiced, the easier it got to push aside his own feelings, which he could deal with later; and the more ashamed he became that he’d admitted them to Piret. She’d always looked up to him, and now he’d let her see that he wasn’t the ideal guard at all. That he’d let it go too far. That he’d thought only of himself when he’d heard about Kass’s upcoming inheritance.
If she cared, she hid it well. She stood beside Hen throughout the day, a faint smile on her face, and occasionally shot him an encouraging glance. Perhaps it had been good for her to see his weakness? Maybe it had cured her envy of how easy things looked, for him and Kass, to know there was pain in it too?
Hen hated the idea of being pitied. But Piret wasn’t the pitying kind. Ruthlessly pragmatic, rather. Or, as she liked to say, brutally honest.
In the afternoons, Kass attended some of the masters’ sessions at the creche to assist, and Hen found other guards to drill with and mock duel. Physical activity was easier than standing around, and after a morning of nothing but listening to the murmuring of the Prayer, hitting something and getting hit felt good. He wore down his opponents one by one, and, when he’d gone through all the willing takers, he instructed some of the younger guards who wanted to learn better technique.
By dinner, he was always exhausted. Back in their cell, they’d bathe and talk quietly about the day, never about the future. Then they’d go to bed and tangle up, kissing until they were breathless, rubbing off on each others’ bellies or between their legs or anything else that meant they didn’t have to allow an inch of empty space to come between their bodies.
Those were the only times Hen let his mind run wild. The times when he allowed himself to be desperate for the slide of Kass’s skin against his, for the taste of his mouth, for the sensation of his hair between Hen’s fingers, or the sudden rush of Kass’s hot cum against his belly.
On the last night, when they were both finished and cleaned up and resting in each others’ arms, Kass whispered into his ear, “I love you, Hendrik. I always will.”
And instead of telling him not to be so childish, Hendrik hid his face in the pillow so Kass wouldn’t see his eyes overflowing. It was preemptive grief, yes, partly. But worse than that: Hen didn’t want to hear Kass say he loved him. He wanted to hear him say: “I wish I could stay with you.” Even though they both knew he couldn’t.
He wanted to matter.
Chapter 7: Great See, Stone City
As the procession from the Complex entered the See, priests lined the central aisle to bow their heads before them. Elvi, Ilya, Agar, Kertu, Kaspar, and Lyla in their white linen ceremonial garb led the way, two by two, with their guards following in the same order. Hendrik kept his eyes on Kass’s dark head, glinting in the flickering light from elaborate, golden chandeliers dangling from massive chains looped through hooks in the vaulted ceiling. The pews were empty on either side, which made the cavernous stone space feel bigger than usual somehow.
A flash of movement caught Hen’s attention, and his hand moved instinctively for the hilt of his sword—but it wasn’t there. He’d left it in the vestibule with the other guards’ weapons, since they weren’t allowed to be part of such a sacred ceremony. When Hen flicked his gaze to the source of the movement, he caught a priest’s eye. She nodded and he wondered why her face was so familiar. He nodded in reply.
None of the other priests, their only audience, looked him or any of the guards or their charges in the face. They kept their eyes down reverently as the little procession streamed past. When they reached the altar, the priests leading them split, one going right and one left, and the Children of the Blood followed in turn, then the guards. Hendrik was the last to follow the head priest through the left-hand door into a small, opulently decorated room he’d never been allowed to see before in his life. The priest directed the Children of the Blood to sit on a plush, red couch. They sank into it deeply as they obeyed, smiling and whispering to each other with excitement.
