The Tower of Living and Dying

And there’s nothing to say to that. Orhan looked at Darath and Darath looked at Orhan.

They sat and looked at each other. Wind smashing on the shutters. Flickering candlelight.

‘You really think people aren’t going to guess?’

‘It’s heat flux,’ said Darath.

‘You could at least act like you’re surprised.’

‘There’s nothing particularly surprising about a man getting heat flux in this heat.’

‘Does it matter what people think?’ said Orhan. ‘Nothing can be proved.’ Darath shot him a look that was part confusion, part sneer. Why are you pretending you did it, Orhan my love? his face said. Just to be even more superior and make me feel even more ashamed? Orhan made a movement with his lips, turned his head away. Why am I pretending I did it? But in the end which is more shameful: killing someone, or asking my lover to kill someone for me because I’m a better person than him and too good to do it myself?

I’m the thing at the centre of this, he thought. The knife. But I’m only trying to build a better world. Make things safe. Make us good again.

And so does Marian Gyste compare love to the storm that is the soul of those few who suffer damnation. Raging heat and noise and madness, not for them the cool eternity of death. Not for me. God lives in His house of waters; Tam and March are dead and gone and damp rot. We who live: we’re the ones who’ll burn.

‘He got to see one of his daughters married,’ said Darath. ‘It would have been very sad if he’d sickened before that.’

‘Is that supposed to be a consolation?’

‘Oh come on, Celyse. You know how this works. Such things were done once without anyone raising an eyebrow. Them or us. You know that.’

‘Them or us because my brother was stupid enough to start this.’

Orhan said, ‘Them or us because things would have gone to pieces in fire if I hadn’t. Them or us to save Sorlost.’

Celyse opened her mouth, closed it again. Wind smashing against the shutters. Hot dry storm without rain or relief. The sky outside would be so dark now like the death of the sun. Sand clouds black-golden like Darath’s hair.

Celyse laughed. ‘My dear fastidious brother. Even you can’t keep your hands clean any longer. You killed people so you could get power. That’s all you did. Kill people. For power.’

Darath laughed.

A tap on the door and Bil came in, heavy and tired and her scars standing out on her face. The heat still sickened her, she spent long hours floating in the cool bathing chamber where her body blurred into the oily water. The skin on her hands was wrinkled, odd white.

‘News,’ she said. ‘March Verneth is sick. Heat flux, they say, or that Lord Emmereth poisoned him at Leada’s wedding feast.’

Celyse clapped her hands to her mouth.

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