The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [51]
Fortunately, no palatinate had been in the area, and none of the other hemos in the vicinity tried to stop him from leaving. But surely there would be questions at the ostracon this evening, a visit by the palatinate to interrogate the senior kholic on duty.
He held his shirt up to his face, heart still pounding. At least the melancholy had stopped dripping; it clotted almost as soon as it touched the air.
With ghosts of Name of the Sun and Octavia following him, haunting him, he could only eat more buds. The alcohol had receded, but before the next wave of his high ramped up, he rested briefly on a patch of loose gravel, sitting under a downspout. Reaching out, he made a few lame attempts to remove a rotten and festering thing from the nearby curbside but ended up flinging it away when he saw the maggots beneath. He sniffed at his fingers, licked them, and rocked forward and back, hurting from head to toe.
When he glanced up, he saw the dungeon’s towers high over the rooftops. Shapes shuddered toward him, broke apart in the air. The castellan was locked up there. And, in the rooms beneath—rooms he had recently seen, but had not stepped into—dwelt his daughter, the chatelaine of Nowy Solum—
He was not a coward!
Nahid felt his mouth hanging open, dry, and he vomited suddenly, twice, into the gutter, leaving it there for one of his brothers or sisters to mop up.
He drifted past Kirk Gate and the teeming livestock markets, past the slaughter and the bleating and the flies, toward the river. He would find his way inside Jesthe again and return once he’d found his sister. The time of pranks was over. He would bring back Octavia where she belonged.
Grinding his teeth together, Nahid toyed with the buds remaining in his pocket. They were soft and damp. He passed under the overhanging homes of the Merchant Quarters, onto Red Cross Street, and from there into the city centrum.
Anu, the almighty power, trailed by ambassadors, hovered in all his fearsomeness over Pan Renik’s abandoned nest. Beyond the glow from his skin, even the firmament seemed pale by comparison. Ambassadors dove, momentarily lost in his light, then flickered away.
Anu was the size of five huts pushed together.
His roar shifted, lowered.
Hornblower watched fires burst from the mighty loins; along the great back, several sets of wings blurred with heat of their own. Staring up, the padre trembled. His heart thundered. He was close to expiring right there, on the main branch. He wanted to run but was afraid running might attract attention. Even if he tried to run, he doubted his legs would obey.
All other padres on this lip of the world—ironuser, leafjoiner, ropemaker, plus three or four junior leaders whose roles were not fully assigned yet—stood likewise trembling, no doubt in the same awed state.
They had expected the exile to be executed.
That had not happened.
Because Pan Renik jumped.
Now Anu, mighty and fearsome, had arrived.
Were all dreaded things about to come true? Anu—whom hornblower had spoken about so cavalierly his entire life, and whose name he had used so many times to achieve what he wanted, to get what he desired—was real, right here, and no doubt angry.
So easy had it been to interpret and shape words passed down from generation to generation, to visit girls, claiming the visits were on Anu’s behalf, to instruct people, to lead people, but in the power’s glow, hornblower now felt transparent and as mortal and flawed as anyone else in the settlement. Should he stammer an explanation? Beg for forgiveness?
What explanation could there possibly be?
Crazy Pan Renik had jumped into the clouds.
Anu’s hands brushed against the upper branches as