Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) (44 page)

It was Shade. Only he didn’t look much like Shade. His face looked gaunt and solemn, as though years had passed since they had seen each other last, not days. Shadows lay under his eyes as he dragged her away from the circle.

“Do you have a death wish? Let me go.” Nora struggled to get out of his firm grip.

“Keep walking. You can’t help her, Nora,” he said grimly, tugging her farther. “This isn’t the Temple of the Wind.”

“I can’t just stand by and do nothing.” Nora ripped her arm away from him and shoved him. He grabbed her wrist as she moved toward the circle pressed in the tight space before the gates and hauled her back. Nora stumbled into his arms, and in a short scuffle, managed to stamp on his foot and slap his face.

“Hey.” A guard came ambling by, a spear in his hand. “Need help?”

Shade forced himself to echo the guard’s laughter.

“This is just foreplay. She likes it rough,” he said, shuffling Nora through the final ring of men as the guard joined the crowd.

“What are you doing?” she whispered through clenched teeth.

“Saving your ungrateful ass. Just keep walking. Please.”

He shoved her against the stone wall as more men came by, pressing his body against hers so tightly a carving ground into the small of Nora’s back. As she opened her mouth to protest, his lips smashed against hers in a fierce, wet kiss. She pushed back as his hands groped her breasts.

“Play along, stupid,” Shade hissed into her ear as he necked her. “They won’t go for the chanters, but right now every other woman is just meat. We need to get you out of here fast.”

“But they’ll rape that poor woman to her death.”

“And there’s nothing you can do, Nora. Nothing. Come on. We’ll get you home.”

Shade was playing that they were both overcome by lust, putting up a show for the passersby that this girl was already taken. As they made out in small nooks along their way, though, the pretense confused Nora’s drink-addled body, so she gave up and fell into it, her mouth smudged with salty tears, hands shaking.

“Touch me,” she moaned and pulled him closer. “Gods, Shade, hold me tight.”

She bit deep into his lower lip, hearing him moan as he ground her against a wooden door.

“We’re here,” he said hoarsely.

“Oh, yes, we are.” She ran a hand through his blond hair, grabbing a fistful.

The door opened behind them suddenly and Nora fell back, Shade landing on top of her, squashing the air from her lungs with a badly placed elbow. As she struggled for breath, she looked up to see what idiot had opened the door.

Dark eyes shone down at her. For the first time in a long time, Diaz was home.

I
f Diaz had yelled at
her, it would have made things easier, Nora thought as she followed the guards silently through the deserted throne room, passing through the veils into a small chamber. His grave silence and vague sense of disappointment had irritated her more. Both he and Shade had agreed that Nora should not spend the night alone with a mob outside. So Shade had left, and Diaz had taken a seat at the small table in their rooms as though he hadn’t been gone. It made her so mad she felt like stomping over and slapping him, but instead she lay down on the bed and pretended to sleep, stomach churning. She knew he wasn’t staying to protect her, but to check she didn’t run out and kill those men.
Don’t do something stupid, Nora. Wait until the morning, Nora.
She clenched her teeth tight and kept her eyes closed.

It was morning now, and she had called for an audience with Suranna. Guards had come to pick her up. The room she was in was lit by golden lampstands. It looked like a prop room, an anteroom to the throne room. The only thing that seemed misplaced was the huge four-poster bed and, above it, attached to the ceiling, an equally enormous copper mirror that reflected the light and, on occasion, whatever happened in the bed.

Beyond the bed was a door. A common wooden door. In the black heart of Shinar, with its veils and curtains and open spaces in the most private of settings, finding a door with a lock felt like something special. Beyond the door was a long corridor stretching out to the left and right. Servants scurried about, carrying golden pitchers or tablets of food. Whenever they passed them, the servants curtsied quickly or bowed but never stopped whatever it was they were doing.

Of course, Nora mused, the best magic was worked unseen. To encompass so many desires, much must happen off-scene, hidden from the theatrical spectacle. Here in long corridors, the wheels and cogs turned day by day to make everything else seem to run effortlessly. Food and drink, comfort, laundry, light, basic sanitation, heating—if you dazzled them enough, they’d believe you to be a sorceress, a seeress, a goddess even. Suranna, the goddess of efficiency.

They went down another corridor to the right, then down a flight of stairs. Nora looked over her shoulder as the guards led her ever deeper into the secrets of Shinar. She told herself she could still find her way back on her own, if she had to. It wouldn’t be easy, but she’d manage after a while. They finally stopped and opened a black door, indistinguishable from the myriad of other doors they had passed along the way.

Beyond was another black room. It was nearly empty except for a large rectangular shape on a pedestal in the middle of the room. The guards shut the door behind Nora and she was alone with what looked like a silver pea pod, a long round coffin. Nora had asked to see Suranna, had demanded an audience. She had been led here, to a complete anticlimax. Lacking an immediate target, her fury defused somewhat. After looking around, Nora stepped closer to inspect the coffin.

If the thing was made of metal, she thought, it was a metal she didn’t recognize. It seemed to be formed from one block, as though poured, perfectly smooth to the touch. No welts, no carvings, just one pure slab of metal.

“You wanted to speak?”

Nora jumped in surprise.

Suranna had entered, standing wrapped in nothing but a loose linen towel. It seemed she had appeared out of nowhere. But having walked through miles of corridors to get here, Nora didn’t believe the queen had conjured herself from thin air. Rather, there was probably a passageway behind where she stood, shrouded with black veils. Divert the attention from your hands and any old card trick seemed like magic. It was all deception. Smoke and mirrors. Nora nearly laughed, but then she remembered why she had come.

“Well, then speak,” the queen said, letting the towel slip from her shoulders.

“The woman.” Nora came straight to the point. “Why did you sentence her to death?”

“I did not.” Suranna shrugged and stepped closer. Nora held her ground, lifting her chin. “The god Shinar demanded her death. I am nothing but his servant girl. May I?”

She reached past Nora without waiting for an answer and pressed her hand against the metal slab. It cracked open soundlessly where before there had been no seam. The top part drifted to the side and hovered there, a foot above the ground. Nora stepped back instinctively. An orange light pulsed forth from the insides of the…thing. Suranna smiled like a cat before a dish of cream and dipped her hand into a milky liquid. She raised it high for Nora to see, and the white ran sluggishly from her fingers down her forearm.

“Come closer and take a look.”

“What is it?”

“My bath. Care to join me?” Suranna laughed at Nora’s face. She carefully lowered herself into the milk—if it was milk—and started to sponge herself off.

“The woman.” Nora cleared her throat, becoming aware that she had been staring at Suranna’s breasts for a while. They were full and firm and gravity had no hold on them. It was hypnotizing to watch the milk run between them, pearling off the smooth skin. The Great Mother, indeed. “Why did she have to die? What did she do to deserve such a death? What about her baby?”

“Do you think I’m a monster?”

Nora swallowed down her reply and chose a more tactful approach. “I don’t know what you are.”
But it’s not human,
she added in her mind.

Suranna laughed quietly. She raised her finger, signaling Nora to wait. Then she lay back and submerged herself under the milk, or whatever it actually was. The texture seemed to be viscous, like cake batter, but not as sticky, oozing off her body as she rose again. She wiped her face.

“Did you come through the corridors on your way here?” she asked Nora as she stepped out of the bathtub, reaching for the towel.

“Er…yes.”

“Every level of the temple is connected through these back corridors. They are the most direct route to any room for quick maintenance or help, should any be required. There are small intimate rooms for two, maybe three, but also large halls, depending on the need, and all are interconnected. Thus the structure of the temple resembles the structure of our society. We are all interconnected and interdependent. We all stand by each other, and though each of us may have a different role or import, all are equal before the face of Shinar.”

“You stole her baby to sacrifice it to your god and then did nothing as she was raped to death. Doesn’t seem equal from where I’m standing.”

“Every society has its rules. Rules that one must live by. You know this, Nora. If you do not live according to the society’s rules, if you do not fit, then you are quickly cast out, and when you are cast out, the rules that bind everyone else do not apply to you anymore.” Nora remained silent, thinking of her home village, thinking of the many refugees at the Temple of the Wind and the rounds she had gone on with Master Cumi. Rules, yeah, she knew those too well.

Suranna continued, wrapping herself in her towel once more. “Here we have but one set of rules. The safety of my girls must always come first, not only their immediate safety when together with a customer, but also their long-term safety. Here they are not cast out when they become old or too sick to work. We take care of each other. We work together, not as competitors. But thinking long term also means that population control must be a priority. A necessity. We live in an oasis in the middle of a harsh desert. If every girl were to become pregnant as often as she wanted, very soon none of us would be able to stay here, live our lives to the standard we have become accustomed to. Thus weighs the greater good of all. And so our laws are quite simple in this regard. If a girl becomes pregnant here, she has many choices. She can choose to abort the child or give birth to it. If she desires to give birth, then she must decide whether she wants to keep her child. If she does, she is free to collect her wages and leave Shinar at any time before the baby is born. But she must leave. Many cattle farms and settlements owe their prosperity to the choice of a girl to raise her family outside the gates of Shinar.”

Nora thought of the matriarch with the gold wig. She thought of the little bighead statues lining the way through the ravines. “And if she chooses to stay?”

“Then the child becomes our child. Every life born here is a gift of Shinar. It is born of the mother but then brought to me as high priestess of the god. And I then commune with the god over the fate of the child, whether it should pass through the fire and reside with the god, or if it may stay here with us and become part of our society.”

“Like Shade?”

“Brisin is a beautiful son of Shinar, and our god graciously chose to bring him back to us once more as a most beloved son.”

Nora snorted. “Yeah, like it wasn’t cold calculation on your part to keep Bashan’s bastard alive. To influence the heir of the Kandarin Empire, your powerful next-door neighbor.”

“I see you still lack faith.” Suranna’s eyes were slits, but she spoke calmly, slowly, as though reasoning with a child.

“You sacrifice newborn babies by throwing them into the fire. The new mother is raped to death with everyone’s consent just because she chose to keep her child here. So, yeah, I lack your kind of faith.”

“Every society must sacrifice. By choosing to keep her child, she was working in direct defiance of our laws for peaceful living together. She stole from all of us, stole our child, stole the god’s child. A life for a life.”

“But it’s wrong.”

“Your mother lived by the same rules.” Suranna shrugged.

Nora opened her mouth to retort; Mother Sara would never hurt a child. She had saved the twins from certain death and raised them as her own despite the stigma they carried. But then she realized Suranna wasn’t talking about Mother Sara and shut her mouth dumbly.

Suranna smiled and stepped closer. “No. Really? You never wondered where your real mother came from?”

She touched Nora’s face. The scarred side began to tingle as though it had been numb and was now waking. Nora touched her cheek and scratched at the healed cuts.

“I’ve seen you when you were still being woven in your mother’s belly,” Suranna whispered, her golden eyes soft. “This is your home, Noraya. This is your destiny, Child of Shinar. Stay with me. Stay by my side and together we will rise as free daughters, casting off the tyranny of men and placing them under our heels. The likes of Bashan will never do us harm. They will serve us, or they will die by the hand of our living god.”