Sunset Mantle Read online

  The first blow struck high across the shoulders, with all the force that Mase could bring to bear. Cete stood, breathing hard. It hurt, but he had been hurt before. There was worse to come. The second hit the same spot, exactly. This one was harder to ignore. The third was worse, as was the fourth. After that, Cete stopped counting, fought to keep on his feet, fought to keep his screams from escaping, fought to keep from showing his fear and his agony.

  The intent of flogging was not death, but in the hands of a strong man, the myrtle rod could kill—had killed, would kill, was killing Cete. He had always known that he would die by violence, but he had never thought it would hurt so much—the sudden pain of being opened by an axe, the desperate choking of strangulation or a cut throat, the vomiting agonies of a stomach wound—not the steady gashing of a myrtle wand, not with the eyes of the populace upon him, not with that scar on his forehead.

  Another blow, and another, and another. All upon his shoulders, as the law demanded. His skin had been broken early on; they were cutting into meat—he was being sawed apart, stroke by stroke, and he had to stand and take it, his blood watering the dirt of the church’s courtyard. He looked across at Radan, and the captain general looked back, the ice in Radan’s eyes a match for the fire across Cete’s shoulders. He had chosen his enemy, and he had not chosen a man who lacked the stomach to see bloody work done.

  Another blow, no harder than the others had been, but no softer either. This one knocked him down to his knees. Was it twenty? Thirty? It didn’t matter; he wouldn’t live to see seventy. Cete struggled back to his feet, and the next blow knocked him down again. A third time, and he didn’t try to rise.

  Mase brought the rod down, and Cete coughed at the impact, blood spatting from his mouth. The pain was overwhelming, but it was less, somehow. Another blow, and it all seemed strangely distant. It was strange—if he had let the Antach choose mercy or disgrace, he would now be in the church, secure in the affections of the army, and warm. Another blow, which he scarcely felt at all.

  And then something was draped over his shoulders that was not a myrtle rod. It was soft, everywhere except where the rod had been striking, where it burned like fire. “Stand away, woman,” shouted Mase.

  Cete struggled. He could not rise, but he pushed his weight up to his elbows, tried to turn around. “And if the man who has been judged guilty cannot stand before his blows,” said Marelle, quoting the law, “let him go out with a partial count, for there is on him no judgment of death.”

  “He’ll take what I have for him,” said Mase. “It’s my decision—”

  If it was Marelle . . . Cete saw what had been thrown over his shoulders, and tried to shake it off. It was the sunset mantle, and he was bleeding into it. All else that had passed—his placement on the riverbank, the fight, the trial, all of it—it might not have been just, but it had all fit; it had all been part of a logical pattern. Blood on the mantle was wrong, wronger than his scarring, wronger than what Mase and Radan were doing.

  “A blind woman thinks she can see better than a soldier in arms!” shouted Radan, coming up from his seat for the first time, shaking in rage. Perhaps it did fit; Cete’s blood on Radan’s mantle, his stain on the glory that the general had commissioned. Still, he could not bear to see the mantle damaged; Cete struggled to take it off, but could not.

  “A blind woman can hear,” said Marelle. “But a soldier in arms sees what he is ordered to see!”

  The crowd had been silent, utterly silent since the verdict had been passed. Now murmurs were starting. “Go, then,” said Radan. “And take the rag with you. You shall not receive good silver for stained and damaged goods.”

  At that insult, something within Cete broke. There was law, and there was policy, and there was the fate of Reach Antach—they all said that he had to leave Radan be. But if he could have stood, he would have killed him. He tried, rose up to his knees, and fell again, his hands reaching for the axe he was not wearing. This was the madding, the true madding, but his body was too weak to hold it. Cete fell forward from his knees, back down, and all he knew as darkness took him was that Marelle was at his side.

  Chapter 4

  Cete woke in pain. He was lying on his stomach, and his shoulders burned where he had been struck. There was blood on the sheets beneath him, blood on his pillow from the cut in his forehead. That had not hurt until he remembered it. When he did, it hurt far worse than his back.

  His next thought was of Marelle. She had saved his life, what was left of it. She had saved his life, but the general of the Reach had called her blind in the face of the congregation, and she had admitted it. She had saved the life of an outcast, at the cost of being cast out herself.

  By the light coming in through the window, the sun was setting, but it was not yet down. Cete pulled himself from the bed, wincing at the pain in his back, at the sticky flow of blood where wounds pulled back open. The room tilted and swirled around him as he stood. He nearly fell as he took one step, another.

  He gritted his teeth against the pain. The door was four steps away; if he had a cane, he could have managed it. He fell, down to one knee, struggled back up. Three more steps. Two.

  “You can’t,” said Marelle, from somewhere behind him. He hadn’t seen her when he first saw the mantle. He hadn’t seen her amidst the congregation at the courtyard of the church, he hadn’t seen her in her house. She was blind, and he could see, but somehow she always seemed to be close to him, without him realizing.

  “Have to,” grunted back Cete. “Not married. Can’t have you prosecuted as a whore.”

  “He wouldn’t,” said Marelle. “Radan Termith is no fool. If he pushes too hard, he’ll be stoned in the street, and the people of the Reach will leave to join the tribes. It’s not what the Termith want, and it’s not what he wants.”

  “Not him,” said Cete, staggering forward, getting hold of the doorpost. “A hanger-on. Someone who thinks it’d make Radan happy.”

  Outside, he could see more of the house he had been in. It wasn’t Marelle’s house in the city; the blind, those suffering from cholera or leprosy, and all others who were cast out of the congregation had to live outside the walls. But it was a fine stone house, with a broad-timbered roof, and an orchard.

  The orchard fence was a high one; more than shoulder high on a man, which meant that it would count as inside her house in the eyes of the law. Cete pulled himself up to standing. Marelle came out of the door behind him, tucked herself in under his arm, taking some of his weight, giving him balance.

  “It’s unlikely,” she said, as they walked towards the fence’s gate.

  “You’ll not suffer more on my account,” said Cete.

  Marelle gave a snort at that. “Also unlikely,” she replied, but said nothing else until Cete was beyond the gate, with the sun still above the western hills.

  “You’ll wait here?” she asked, and Cete nodded.

  Marelle returned to her house, came back with blankets and a stone jug filled with water, and left them with Cete. “It’s as safe a house as there is, beyond the wall,” she said, “and my neighbors will watch over you until I return. You’ll stay here?”

  Cete wanted to ask where she was going, what they could do, but the walk had emptied him out. He nodded, made no argument as she draped a blanket over him, and watched as she strode away, her steps confident and her back straight.

  His back hurt too much for him to fall completely asleep, but Cete drifted in and out of consciousness. It had been a hot day, but the cold came on with the sunset, so he appreciated the blanket. The sunset was a fine one, all pinks and reds, and the nightjars and bats came out of the shadows to hawk at moths and mosquitoes.

  There were two other houses up the slope, between Marelle’s house and the wall, and three more farther down. None of them were quite so fine as hers, but each had high walls surrounding their orchards, and they all were strongly built. They clustered near the southwestern gate of the city, sheltered by a steep drop-off
to the west, and the guard fort on the southern route. It would be safe to sleep there—as safe as anywhere a man could sleep beneath the sky, outside the gates.

  These were things he had to consider, as an outcast. The wound on his forehead hurt enough that he could not ignore it, but even without the pain, Cete doubted it would ever be far from his mind. It was like a missing limb. It was like a missing soul. But while he was no longer a fighting man, he was still alive, and it was good to be alive, to see a sunset, to drink water, cold and sweet, from a stone jar.

  After the sun set, and the valley below was glazed over with the cold moonlight, Marelle returned, two men and a woman coming up behind her. “Are you well?” she asked, kneeling beside him.

  “No worse,” he said, struggling to regain his feet. He had lain down before the congregation during his beating; damned if he’d do that again.

  Cete had not been in Reach Antach long, and it was hard to recognize faces in the moonlight, when he usually saw them in the sun. But there could be no mistaking the gold and silver threads in the mantle, or the white hair of Lemist Irimin, scholar-priest of the Irimin school, made ghostly by the moonlight.

  “Priest Irimin,” choked out Cete. “I did not—”

  “It is not customary for weddings to be conducted after nightfall,” said Lemist. “But this is a matter of custom, not law. When the situation demands a late wedding, it may be conducted, and it is valid.”

  Cete looked over to Marelle, who colored, but gave no other sign of embarrassment. “I knew that I could not remain within the walls forever,” she said. “So I laid away what I could, built a refuge. It is yours if you will have it, Cete.”

  He had been a hero in the morning, a prisoner before judges at noon, then a dead man, and now . . . now he was offered something so precious he had not allowed himself to think on it. “This is not just to escape the—”

  “No,” said Marelle.

  “I will cause you sorrow, Marelle,” said Cete.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “And you’ll be hurt again because of me.”

  “Yes,” she replied again.

  “But if you will have me, I will give you my whole heart.”

  “Yes,” said Marelle. “I know. That’s why the priest is here, and the witnesses.” The light was not good, but Cete could see the corner of her mouth quirked up in a smile, hear the warmth in her voice.

  The witnesses came forward, draped Cete in a white mantle and anointed his forehead with olive oil mixed with myrrh and rockrose, just below the cut Mase had made. Cete had seen both of these men; one was a younger cousin of the Antach, the other a scholar who sat near Lemist during the services.

  “Have you a wedding gift?” asked Lemist as Cete drew close, to see Marelle with her hair tied up with a bride’s ribbons.

  Without thinking and for a second time, Cete unhooked the clasp of his merit chain and offered it to Marelle. This time, she took it from his hand and, fumbling only slightly, put it around her hips, looping the excess twice before the clasp would close.

  It was as short a ceremony as was allowed by law; Cete was too weak for anything longer. They swore the three oaths, and said the three prayers, had their wrists bound together by the priest, and had the strand cut by the witnesses. Then Lemist said a prayer for them, and the witnesses affirmed that all had been done according to the law, and then the priest and the witnesses left, headed back into the safety of the walls.

  Cete looked over to Marelle. The mantle was damp with blood against his shoulders, and the night had grown cold. She was looking slightly to the side of where he was standing, a small and strange smile across her lips. Cete was off his balance, and not because of his wounds. It was impossible that he was married, impossible that he was alive, and married to Marelle, with the wedding oil mingling with the blood on his forehead, the strands of the marriage cord tucked into the belt of his mantle.

  “Are there any further reasons why you’ll not come into your house?” she asked.

  “My house,” said Cete, slowly.

  “Unless there is a divorce, or you die,” said Marelle, “it’s as much yours as it is mine.”

  Cete picked up the blankets she had brought out, and the stone water jug, and found himself light-headed. He reached out, took hold of her by her shoulder, and allowed the blind woman to lead him home.

  It was warmer inside, and darker. Cete followed Marelle to the bed, the one he had slept on after she had rescued him. Light-headed again, and worse. He dropped the blankets, convulsed, vomited on the floor. Marelle knelt beside him, her arm strong enough to support the weight of his chest as Cete’s strength left him.

  “Too much of the wedding wine, too many of the wedding meats,” she said. “You shouldn’t indulge so freely, husband mine.”

  Cete shivered, gave another gasping retch. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Probably not how you saw your wedding night.”

  “No,” said Marelle. “But then, there are times that life gives you more than you expect.” She helped Cete back into the bed, changed the dressings on his back. He fell asleep to the sound of her scraping clean the beaten earth of the floor.

  Chapter 5

  Cete did not sleep well that night. When he moved, either the scars burned, or he felt the unfamiliar weight and warmth of sharing a bed with a woman, a thing he had not done since his exile from the Hainst. As a result, he remained in bed half asleep and half awake until well into the morning, when a visitor came to Marelle’s house.

  He had seen her before, sitting among the scholars, but he did not know her by name. She was small and slight, but walked with a professional assurance, her hair in widow’s braids.

  “Blessings to the married,” she said, as she came in. “I hear that the wounds opened during the ceremony.”

  “Before, during, after,” said Marelle, acidly.

  “I see,” she said, coming over to where Cete lay. “If I could have a look?”

  Cete pulled his shirt back slowly, wincing as the dried blood pulled loose from his skin. First the priest, with witnesses of high standing, then the Reach’s doctor. There was no law that said that those who had been scarred on their foreheads were to be shunned, but they usually were. It seemed that in his case, things had reversed—if he had not been scarred, a junior scholar might have blessed his marriage, and a butcher or carpenter might have tried to set his wounds.

  “Mm,” said the doctor. “It is better than it looks; a weaker man would have been flayed to the bone with those strokes, but there was enough muscle there to cushion him. The blood flow seems healthy; it is clotting well, and your pulse remains strong despite what you have lost. I will again sew closed the wounds that have opened. It will hurt.”

  The doctor said the healing prayers, another thing not usually done for outcasts, and set to work. It did hurt, but not badly enough to matter. Marelle sat beside them, holding Cete’s hand in her own; from how hard she grasped, it seemed like she was the one being sewn together. As the doctor worked, Cete considered what it all meant, and what he should do next.

  “When you are done,” he said, “will I be well enough to attend the afternoon services?”

  The doctor paused in her work, considered, and then her needle flew again. “It would be pushing things,” she replied, which was true in more than a medical sense. Outcasts were permitted to conduct business within the walls during the sunlight hours, to live within the walls during times of siege and other calamity, and to attend services with the congregation, but there were few who wore his scar who availed themselves of those privileges. The last in particular was done by few who were cast out for any reason, permanent or temporary—they had been removed from the community of God, their voice had been silenced in the choir. Outcasts who chose to pray did so on their own, concealed in the closet, or during the midnight hours.

  “Give yourself a day, or perhaps two, to heal,” she said. “After that, I see no reason to distance yourself from the congregation.”
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br />   Cete swallowed back a yelp as the doctor pulled the needle through his flesh another time, tied off a knot. More dabbing with the blood-soaked towel, another blessing, touching the wound with an apricot twig wrapped round with hyssop. Marelle did not move throughout the procedure. She showed no fear of the blood, nothing but a tightening of her hand when the needle bit particularly deep.

  “If the wounds show signs of festering,” said the doctor, turning away from Cete and talking to Marelle, “change his bed so that it aligns with the door, and have him wear red or blue clothing, but never black or green. Also, he must not eat too much raw food, and should have greens and pomegranate with his meal, if there are any to be had. There will be some bleeding, but not too much—the wounds have already started to knit. To speed the healing, he should sleep as much as he can.”

  “Of course,” she said. “Thank you.”

  The doctor gave a brief, awkward bob of her head, and left.

  “Radan might let us be, if you don’t push,” said Marelle.

  “If you want, I will not go to the church,” said Cete. As soon as the doctor had started her work, Cete had started to think about pressing his feud against Radan Termith, and had not stopped to think about what Marelle would want.

  Marelle was silent for a long time, her body still, next to his. “I suppose it is the role of a wife to urge caution, to try to convince you to give up fighting, to remain at home and to live to die in bed. Is that what you expect of me?”

  Cete was silent just as long. That was what was expected of the wife of a fighting man, just as Marelle had said. The men in the ranks were supposed to leave behind women who wept at them to stay, who needed lies and cajoling before letting their men march out to war, and who cared less for war and honor than for home and hearth.

  “Marelle,” he said, finally. “I do not wish you to be anything other than what you are.”