Unholy War (41 page)

His hand dropped and he looked away. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said plaintively. ‘I don’t strike you. I don’t mistreat you or make you do impure things. I don’t use other women; I have been faithful to my wives. I admit you’re not my favourite, but you’re descended of Rimoni and Noories, for Kore’s sake! I am so far above you that only in such a time of madness could we ever meet.
Lessers do not reject their betters!
So tell me, how have I earned this … disobedience?’

She just looked at him, momentarily lost for words. Sol et Lune,
if that is what you think, how is mere reason ever going to change your mind?
She floundered for a few seconds – Rondian was only her third tongue, though she had some fluency, but the words she needed weren’t ones she’d used often, and when they did come, they tumbled out in a helpless, passionate rush. ‘Francis – I can’t
stand
you. You repulse me in ways I can’t articulate. I find you odious, loathsome … Frankly, I would rather lick the privy clean than be with you. I would rather die than have your baby.’

He stared, his mouth working slowly, like a child trying to read. His hand went up and down three times as his urge to slap her warred with whatever passed for honour in his self-image. Then his eyes narrowed as he grasped for some explanation he could accept. ‘Gyle … you and Gyle are—’

‘Oh, please! I hate Gurvon Gyle even more than I despise you! I would throw myself from my balcony before I let him so much as touch me.’ She dropped her arms to her sides, fighting for composure. ‘Francis, there is no one else and there’s no one to blame! Our marriage is a fraud – it always has been. Its sole function was to tie the kingdom together. We don’t need to see each other to do that, and we’d both be happier if we didn’t.’

He took that in with the most perplexed expression she’d ever seen. ‘But … my honour … I have needs …’

She sighed. ‘Francis, your court is full of settler women.’ She’d observed them from a distance, this invasion of pale-skinned, pale-haired men and women, crowding into the streets of
her
city, their thick foreign accents almost indecipherable, even though she knew the words. Every single one of them displayed a bizarre arrogance, as if the lowliest of them were somehow better than Javonesi of any class. ‘I’m sure you won’t want for company.’

He drew himself upright. ‘I am a Dorobon, descendant of the—’

‘Yes, yes,’ she interrupted tiredly.
I’m so sick of his ‘I am this, I am that’
, she thought. ‘Francis, I don’t care. I have needs too, but I’d rather they went untended than be with you. Your needs aren’t my problem. Please, just leave.’

‘I’ll close your Beggars’ Court.’

She was well ahead of him. ‘Gyle sanctioned it. Talk to him.’

He looked at her slyly. ‘But it’s a domestic matter. He hasn’t the right, you’ve said so yourself.’

Well, at least he took that on board
. ‘I will continue to go to my gardens and listen through the gate. Men have no right to enter the zenana uninvited, but I may do as I please there. What happens in the streets outside I cannot control.’
But good luck clearing them without a riot
.

He lifted his finger to make a point, seemed to lose his thread, then abruptly stiffened and backed away. ‘I will have you put aside. I will send you home.’

‘Excellent. I’ve been longing to see Forensa again.’

‘Your brother is my prisoner!’

‘He’s Gyle’s prisoner. Was there anything else?’

His face, which had gradually been returning to its normal pallor, went puce again. He stammered for a moment, then he whirled round and stormed away. The doors shook as he slammed them with a gesture, and then at last he was gone.

Cera sank to her knees in the middle of the floor and dropped her head. She was shaking so hard she could barely feel the stone beneath her.

Tarita edged forward. ‘My lady?’

She’d never felt so drained, so weak and so powerful all at once. She lifted her hands, and when Tarita took them, she pulled her into a kneeling embrace, hugging her as if she were her sister Solinde come back to life, all the while shaking and crying and laughing.

‘I told him! I told him! I really did it!’

Tarita’s whisper was fearful. ‘What will he do? My lady, we must leave! He’ll kill you!’

A Jhafi man would, if his wife spoke to him like that, and a Rimoni man too – or some would, the very worst of them. She’d heard too many such cases in the Beggars’ Court these last weeks. But everyone knew married couples who co-existed like strangers sharing the same house. Some were perfectly amicable, like that of Lord Theodyne and Lady Brita in Forensa; and there were others whose hostility was public knowledge, like Lord Jacop di Oseria of Riban; everyone knew how much he and his wife Veirana loathed each other. And yet these were not valid grounds for putting a wife aside: state marriages were made for more important reasons; mere likes and dislikes were no reason for annulment.

‘He won’t,’ she said, regaining her confidence. ‘He may be a stupid ass, but he’s an honourable ass. You’ll see.’

*

The next months proved her right: Francis did not press her, nor did he seek to end the marriage. He still had her sit with him at state occasions, though he never showed her public affection either. She picked up second-hand news of Portia, how she fared, how her pregnancy was progressing, but no letters came. And she watched the city change as the settlers clustered into the area they renamed ‘Oldchurch’, fanning out around a Sollan shrine they’d re-consecrated to Kore – the shrine where she and Francis and Portia had been married. But Oldchurch did not deal easily with the rest of the city; it quickly became a gated enclave, guarded at all times. Tarita told her the Jhafi described it as ‘a boil filling with white pus’.

And still the crowds came to her Beggars’ Court, their numbers unchecked.

The most wonderful thing was the sense of freedom she’d gained by her outburst. Though she’d lain with Francis only one week a month, whilst she was fertile, the sense of emancipation, of not having to put herself through that ordeal, was liberating. Knowing she no longer had to put up with the physical indignity, or run the risk of having to bear his child, made her feel like she was master of her own body and soul. She might still be a prisoner in a cage surrounded by enemies on every side, but she was at least free to follow her own pursuits.

I just wish Portia were here … or someone …

She’d always prized intellectual pursuits above physical ones, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have needs too.
Just like Francis …
But she would never have admitted that to him. To have finally sampled love’s fruit only to have it snatched away was cruel, a form of torture, but she was becoming resigned to losing Portia. The silence between them spoke volumes. She imagined the Dorobon baby inside Portia colonising her, driving her steadily away.
How could I ever compete with the miracle of motherhood?

At her worst she took to sly glances at Tarita, who was pretty and sweet and unashamedly worldly, but even had she been that way inclined, she was only a maid and the gulf between them was too great. They had more familiarity than most mistress-and-servant relationships, but to go so far would be out of the question. She too had her pride.
Just like Francis …
Anyway, Tarita had a lover now, a man of Mustaq al’Madhi’s gang; from time to time, if pressed, she would mention him, coyly. He sounded raffish and dangerous, not someone Cera would have liked, but he’d clearly turned Tarita’s head.

So she set her heart aside and buried herself in her self-appointed tasks, taking pleasure in good verdicts and sound decisions, enjoying the increasing rapture of the crowds outside the zenana gates. She was relieved that Francis and Gyle stayed away, and Staria’s legion had indeed marched east to the Rift Forts; the only one Rondian she saw regularly was ‘Olivia Dorobon’. who had taken to watching the Beggars’ Court from her balcony. ‘Olivia’ had apparently been confined to her rooms – by Francis or by Gyle, no one could say whom – and what little Cera glimpsed of her was a shattered face, wet with tears, eyes fixed on her. Some days the shapeshifter’s presence felt like a dagger poised over her heart; other times she pitied the wretch.

If I told Francis who his sister really was, what would he do?

In the end she decided to say nothing. But the threat of Coin’s presence made her increasingly uneasy as the days and weeks passed.

*

Akhira, the onset of midsummer, began with a series of storms that came rolling out of the northwest, bringing stinging sands and swirling winds and leaving a coating of brown grit on every surface. The heat rose steadily after that, as did the human stench of the city. Cera began each morning on her balcony, sipping coffee. This was a rare day in which she had nothing special to do. The Royal Court was in recess, and Francis was off riding with his court, Gyle included. The Legate seemed to be trying to charm his way back into Francis’ affections, which worried Cera; Francis was stupidity itself when it came to flattery and fun.

There was no Beggars’ Court today, and she had to admit to being relieved. She felt too emotionally battered to deal with another long, harrowing day of hearing about the horrific things that people could do to others.

Then she heard a sound from above, of someone beginning to cry, and glancing up, she saw a strand of rope briefly drop from the balcony above before being hauled back up. A table shifted, something making it creak. The sobbing was heavy, starting deep in the abdomen and discharging in big wet gulps. A voice begged Kore for release; the tone was strange, but she knew at once who it was and what was going on.

She ran, and within half a minute she was pushing her way into Olivia’s suite. The room was untidy, strewn with clothes for both genders, including outfits she recognised, some Olivia’s and some Symone’s.

The weeping came from behind the curtains that concealed the balcony. She called out, ‘Coin!’ and heard a strangled cry in response as she wrenched the curtains aside to find a rope tied to a lamp-hook in the roof and a noose looped about the neck of the androgynous being standing on a small table, poised to spring over the rail.

‘No!’ she shouted, ‘Coin –
stop
!’

The shapeshifter turned her head. Her true face, boyish with thin ginger hair, was streaked in tears. ‘Go away!’

Cera stopped, scared into motionlessness.
If she’s set it right she’ll break her neck … If not she’ll take two or three minutes to asphyxiate … Unless survival instincts take over and she uses the gnosis to save herself.

The coolly rational part of her brain asked,
Do I care?

But the anguish on the face of the strange being tore into her and she put aside their last conversation and focused on trying to calm the stricken shapechanger.
She didn’t kill Solinde. She’s not entirely evil – and now she needs help.
‘Please, Coin – you don’t have to do this,’ she said urgently.

‘I heard them talk,’ Coin whispered.

‘Heard who?’

‘Gyle and my mother – they talk once a week, and he never told me.’

Her mother? Who’s she in all this?
‘What about?’ she asked, then instantly regretted it, as Coin’s mind was clearly taken back to the anguish that had driven her to this.

‘Everything.’ Coin choked on the words. ‘You …
Me
.’

If I get this wrong she’ll jump
. ‘What people say about you doesn’t matter, Coin.’

The shapeshifter ignored her. ‘Gyle told her that I was becoming a liability.’

‘Gyle lies all the time.’

‘And my mother …’ Coin started sobbing again, a heart-wrenching sound. ‘She s-s-said, “
S-s-she’s always been a l-l-liability
.” ’

Cera winced.
Sol et Lune
. Just when she thought Gyle and his cronies had reached the bottom of their heartlessness, they revealed new depths. ‘Coin, your mother might have been trying to hide her true feelings from Gyle – if they move in the same circles, personal ties are dangerous.’

‘N-n-no one moves in the same circles as m-m-my m-m-m-mother.’

Cera blinked.
Who in Hel is her mother?
It was becoming more and more imperative that she get the shapeshifter down. She was only a lunge away, but she doubted she could hold on if Coin did decide to jump. It was going to have to be Coin’s decision.

‘She still might not have meant what she said.’

Coin glanced back miserably. ‘I s-s-suppose.’

With that acknowledgment, a tiny amount of immediate peril drained from the tableau.

Cera stared at the shapeshifter, unable to not do so. Coin’s body-shape was all wrong, even obscured as it was by the nightshirt. The shoulders were too wide and the legs too muscular for womanhood, but the shape was still more feminine than masculine. Her forehead was long, her chin weak and her hair thin, and her expression was utterly miserable.

‘If you do this, Gyle wins, not you.’

Coin sagged a little. ‘Do you want to see how repulsive I am in my real form?’

‘We are what we are,’ Cera replied, unable to think of anything more profound.

‘You have no idea what you’re saying.’

Cera forced herself to be dispassionate. ‘As I understand it, you can look like anyone.’

‘Yes, for a while – but I’m still me, underneath.’ The self-loathing rose again in her voice. ‘A monster not even my mother can love.’

‘If your mother cannot see through the body to what is inside, then she is the one who is the monster.’

‘My soul is as warped as my body,’ Coin went on. ‘I’m a
murderer
. I’ve
killed
people, just to please Mother. Or Gurvon.’

I know – including Portia’s brother
… The temptation to walk away returned, but Cera stayed. ‘You thought you were doing the right thing. Now you know better.’ She reached out slowly. ‘Killing yourself won’t make it right, you know.’

‘Only one person has ever treated me as a human and not been repulsed by what I am.’ Coin looked at Cera with anguished eyes. ‘Your sister.’