The Habitation of the Blessed - Catherynne M. Valente [70]
“I think,” he began, his beak glittering gold in the glare of the sun, “that we ought to let him cast his chit in the Abir with us.”
“Why?” shouted Grisalba, trying to wrangle a slab of honeycomb from her sister, who had thought she was invited to a festival, and not a makeshift parliament. “He has not asked to.”
“And what if he drew the monarch’s piece?” said Hadulph, his red muzzle lifting in concern. “He would rule us. I cannot think that would go well.”
Fortunatus frowned, and the glare went out of his gold. “What if he did? Would it be worse than any of us? If Oro drew it, or Qaspiel? The Priest, at least, would not be partial—there are no other creatures like him among us, no faction for him to favor.” The gryphon cast his yellow eyes to the sand, speaking softly, “And he must be lonely. There is no one here for him, no one of his kind who understands his passion for the Ap-oss-el, no one to speak his trilled language and look him in the eye without reflecting their own strangeness back to him. A king has a thousand friends; he cannot be excluded from social events or sniffed at in disdain. I pity him—do you not?”
“If he stays, he will make us convert!” cried the sciopods, snapping their stockings in consternation. “He wants to make the al-Qasr into a church and we will all crawl around begging forgiveness for who knows what!”
Fortunatus shrugged his great, shaggy shoulders. “And when Gamaliel the Phoenix was queen, she called the al-Qasr an aerie, and set it aflame every hundred years. We rebuilt it, and called it what we pleased. This is the way of government. That is the way of the governed. How could John ask for more than Gamaliel did? Besides, the Lottery is a strange god, and he will likely end up a shoemaker or a lettuce-grocer. You cannot deny a man for what he might do, in circumstances that will almost certainly never occur.”
I held a long green canopy over my torso with both hands to keep out the sun; a pair of rooks alighted on it, and their weight dragged the warm cloth to my shoulders. I said nothing, but scowled and practiced my verbs silently.
Regno, regnas, regnat. Regnamus, regnatis, regnant.
I reign, you reign, he or she reigns over.
“He cannot take part in the Abir because he has not drunk from the Fountain,” I said loudly and clearly. Ignore me now, I thought, looking at his patchy, wretched head down there on the lower benches. Ignore that.
A murmur rippled among our folk, and Fortunatus appeared to honestly never have considered that point. He turned to John, who really needed new clothes; his habit looked worse than a cobweb.
“Are you willing to make the journey?” the gryphon said, his voice clarion in the amphitheater. “You would call it a sacrament. If you drink from the Fountain you would be wholly one of us, bound to our fortunes. You say life in your world is brief—would you reject eternity?”
John said nothing. Finally: “Life everlasting can come only through God. There is no life but in Christ. I cannot, Fortunatus. I can never repay your kindness to me, but that is too much. My God could never forgive me.”
“Then it’s settled,” I said, not bothering to hide the blade in my voice. “He will die in forty years or so. No need for an Abir.”
Fortunatus had no answer to that, but looked at me with grave, sorry eyes. We were not close in those days, not like Hadulph and I, or even Qaspiel. He thought me bitter and vicious, and perhaps I was.
Forgive me, husband. I love you now, but then you were so cruel to me.
“Wait,” called John, and held up his hands, still scarred and pink from the desert. Grisalba chewed a vanilla bean, bored. It jutted smartly out of her mouth. “Wait,” he said again. “I came here seeking the tomb of St. Thomas, and I have not found it. My memory is still sore, but I remember that. I wish to go out into the wilds of Pentexore and find it still—I cannot truly answer any question put to me until