Crown of Smoke Page 8

  And for what? A new martial force? Even if they are not formally educated, these people aren’t stupid. They know this does not bode well for their futures.

  The chanting crowd closes in around the Emperor’s men.

  Mobs burn like a krilmair oil fire. Once ignited, there’s no hope of controlling the flames.

  Whilst I have every sympathy for my fellow Aphorains, I have more important scents to trail. I’m also not particularly enamoured with the idea of witnessing an imperial tax collector torn limb from limb.

  I lean over to speak in the lead litter-bearer’s ear. “Try the tenth gate. Swiftly, now.”

  CHAPTER 6

  RAKEL

  For the best part of a moon, I’ve walked a loop around the Sanctuary in the early hours, checking that Lil has feed and fresh-raked sand to roll in, giving her a lunge around the stable yard so she doesn’t go stir-crazy. Today, as usual, I return via the outer wall so I can watch the sunrise over the grey and white of the mountains, the rose pinks of dawn making the ice-covered peaks blush.

  As the air warms, I catch the faint scent of smoke from the kitchen fires, the impossible mix of blooms drifting from the Sanctuary’s plantations.

  Smoke and flowers. A turn ago, I’d never have thought that combination could make me feel so far from home.

  I pace, wondering the same things over again. How we’ll find out who put Esarik up to triggering the Prince’s poison. When we’ll have a breakthrough with the cure for the Rot so we can cure Nisai’s father and mine, stop the spread through the Empire, and go back to some semblance of our normal lives.

  If there even is a normal after what we’ve lost.

  Who we’ve lost.

  As the sun rises, I light a stick of grief incense. This is my routine now. Letting tendrils of smoke drift with my thoughts of what could have been. The one time of day I don’t try to stop myself thinking of Ash.

  The Sanctuary begins to wake. The light coaxes the purrath tree blossoms open, and fat fuzzy bees appear to seek the sticky pollen. No wonder there are so many hives dotted around the terraces.

  A figure emerges from the door to the halls of living quarters. Nisai has taken to retrieving a handful of scrolls from the archive and studying them on the balcony ringing the Sanctuary. He waves away the green-robed Order member trailing after him. I’ve heard the Prince rant several times about the “shambolic state” of the archives. I guess he’s not loving being babysat by people he thinks can’t even keep scrolls in the right order.

  It’s probably a good thing the archives are a mess. Being out in the fresh air can’t hurt Nisai’s long-term recovery from the poison and the moons he spent indoors, unmoving.

  Remembering the poisoning brings up more thoughts of Ash. Of his sacrifice. It wrenches at me, but I try to remember that it wasn’t for nothing. The last of the incense smoke curls into the air. I send another prayer to Azered with it, that if our souls do linger after our bodies are gone, that Ash is at peace knowing Nisai is safe.

  It still feels strange, praying after not having done so since childhood, like a new pair of boots that is taking for ever to wear in.

  For what do I know of the gods? Until Ash transformed in the throne room of the palace in Ekasya, and then when I saw the darkness first swirl around Nisai when I gave him the true cure for the poison, I hadn’t believed in magic, let alone any supernatural sky friends. Because if I let myself believe in something like that, I also had to believe they’d turned their backs on me. And then I’d have to ask why. It was never a question I wanted to waste time on. Never a question I truly wanted answered.

  I huff an audible breath and start down the stone steps.

  With the Prince in clear sight, Barden and Kip pass the time sparring further around the balcony. Sometimes they’ll fight with weapons, but more often than not Kip teaches him lo daiyish, the barehanded combat of the Los Provincial Army. Barden’s a quick study, but he’s still only able to pin the tall Losian once every tenth bout or so. And even then I wonder if she’s letting him get the upper hand.

  Not today.

  Barden lunges, but Kip ducks under him. Quick as a sniff, she’s twisted behind and has him face down on the flagstones, his arm pulled so far up behind him he grunts in pain.

  “Yield,” he manages. “I yield.”

  Kip stands, shaking her head in apparent disgust. “Riker’s rod, how many times do I have to say it? Brute force lands you in more trouble than it dodges. A rigid posture is a vulnerable posture. Easier to break.” She extends an arm corded with wiry strength and helps him up. “Think about trees. Those with supple branches survive the storm.”

  Barden waves his arms around in a terrible imitation of a rock fig blowing in the wind. “Stay bendy. Got it.”

  Kip shakes her head again, though this time it’s accompanied with a low, throaty chuckle. Seems Barden’s charm can even get through her defences.

  They square off for another round and I approach Nisai. We exchange a formal nod – bowing never got past the awkward stage for me, and Nisai didn’t remark on it when I stopped trying. I plop down on the last of the steps next to him.

  He gives me one of his lopsided smiles. “Come for the show?”

  “To see you, actually.” I gesture to his crutches. “Any better?”

  “I still can’t bear my own weight for long stretches without them, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Hmm. I would have thought he’d be getting more strength back in his legs by now if he was ever going to use them unaided again. But surviving an ancient magical poison like blackvein is no ordinary injury. It’s not like it can be compared to a sprain or a break.

  “I’m experiencing fewer cramps in the night, which is a blessing at least.”

  Experiencing. Trust Nisai to soften his own suffering for those around him. I’ve heard the stifled moans of pain drifting down the hall in the quiet of the dark hours.

  “Let me know if you need any more slumber tea. The more sleep you get, the quicker you’ll mend.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve done all the healing I ever will.”

  He pinches his nose between thumb and forefinger.

  “Still getting the headaches?”

  “It’s not so much the discomfort that plagues me.” He lifts his other hand from the scroll and it slowly curls back in on itself. “It’s just … hard to concentrate. Things aren’t taking root in my mind as easily as before. If you had told me a turn ago I’d have the chance to study even one of the ancient scrolls in the Order’s collection, I’d have been ecstatic, ready to bridge as many gaps in our knowledge of the Shadow Wars as possible, and of the subsequent centuries until the Empire’s founding. But now, the only gaps seem to be in my memory. I read something, and it’s gone the next day. Not even the faintest scent left behind.”

  He looks directly at me then, and his dark eyes shine with barely contained sorrow. “Sometimes I think my mind is even making things up. It thinks I read a scroll one day, and the next, it’s vanished from the shelves. Like it didn’t exist.”

  “Maybe someone just moved it? It’s not like they’re great at keeping house.”

  “Perhaps. But that doesn’t explain how the scrolls I know I did read…” He twirls his fingers in the air in the gesture for smoke. “Gone.”

  “Try not to be so hard on yourself. Time can be a great healer.” I get to my feet. “Though I’d better get to work before you-know-who sends someone looking for me.”

  The Magister was true to her word.

  For the first time, I have something I’ve coveted for as long as I can remember – a full, imperial-standard apparatus. It takes up a third of the bench that runs along one of the walls in the Sanctuary laboratories. All the benches run beneath windows looking out on to the terraced gardens at the heart of the complex. Partly for inspiration, but more importantly so any dangerous experiments can be ventilated at short notice.

  The Magister has been setting me small tasks eac
h day, their difficulty steadily increasing until she’s satisfied I won’t waste a single sniff of the most precious of all our supplies: dahkai. It feels like she’s running me through my paces in the same way Father checks the fitness of a horse he’s training. Maybe such a methodical bent was common ground for them.

  “What do you know of scentlore?” she asked at the beginning. “How much did Sephine teach you?”

  I shrugged, trying not to be distracted by one of the other Order members who had a flask of purple liquid at such a rapid boil it looked in danger of overflowing. “Essence of nothing mixed with an alembic of thin air. I wasn’t in her service long. She tended to keep my hands full of vessels needing to be scrubbed, and her laboratory locked.”

  The Magister closed her eyes and sucked a breath between her teeth. Seems there’s a whole lot of frustration bubbling under the surface when it comes to her and Sephine. Or maybe it’s just barely contained impatience – the sense of urgency among her and the handful of other Order members I’ve seen her converse with over research notes and vials is as pungent as eucalyptus oil.

  “Perhaps best we start with principles, then.” She gave a flask full of blue-green liquid a swirl. “Scentlore, in its overarching, collective form, is a mix of empirical botany and a little alchemy, which is made possible from the remnants of magic that the gods left behind when they departed the mortal realm. That’s the most logical place to start.”

  “The gods?” About as far as you can get from logic, if you ask me.

  “Yes. Tell me what you know of them.”

  The blood felt like it was draining from my face. If this was a test, I was going to fail it. Memories of the perfume trials back in Aphorai City flashed through my mind. I couldn’t afford for this to go that way. I still don’t know how much of her heart the Magister left behind when she left Father and me. But I know my own heart. I’ve spent turns wishing it might be possible to cure Father, and here was my chance.

  The Magister watched me closely. “Be honest. I simply need to be aware of what knowledge you lack.”

  I breathed a little easier at the reassurance. “I know that Asmudtag was the first. The Primordial. That according to what the temple teaches, Asmudtag had six children, though they always count the twins Zir and Tro as one, so five, really.”

  She raised enquiring eyebrows.

  “And there’s also the Lost God, but that isn’t in the temple teachings.”

  “I asked what you know, not which beliefs you’ve heard that the temple sanctions. What else?” she asked, placing the flask of blue-green liquid into a shallow pot of water and lighting a flame beneath.

  “That … centuries and centuries ago, the Younger Gods are supposed to have walked the land among mortals. Now the temple prescribes a set of specific scents to supposedly reach their home in the sky if you want your prayers to be heard.”

  She nodded approval. “Sacred scents are indeed crucial to prayers. Not only to capture the attention of the gods, but to sustain them.”

  “Sustain? Are you saying prayers are like food?”

  “A somewhat abstract analogy, but yes.”

  Until these past few moons, I didn’t even believe the gods existed, so I just thought the different values on prayer scents was a way for the temple to squeeze more zigs out of believers. Rich people always thought they had the upper hand with the divine realm, at least that’s the way they act.

  At the thought, a chill passed through me. What if the rich really did have some sort of extra advantage when they sent their prayers to the sky? What if wearing dahkai perfume really does offer more than luck and makes doors open to a better future foreseen by Kaismap? If you’re literally helping keep a god alive, what kind of favours would your magic sky friend do for you?

  If it’s true, that would explain so much.

  “And your knowledge of sacred scents?” she asked.

  I gave myself an inward shake. “Zir and Tro are all about the waterways and, ah, new life.”

  The blood returned to my cheeks in a blush. “Sex” is for sure not the kind of topic anyone wants to talk to their elders about in detail. Especially a parent.

  “They favour waterlilies and the kigtai blossom that grows beside mountain streams,” I continued. “But then they’re also into violets and calamus, too. Guess twins get double the choices. And Esiku is the goddess of growth.” She’s also the mother goddess, but that’s not something I wanted to put between me and the Magister right then. “She’s into trees, apparently. Likes her sandalwood and cedar.” My voice hitched on the last word, so I hurry on. “Amber, too. The resin sort.”

  Cedar only make me think of Ash. How I used the essence to clear my mind, to keep me grounded, until I used it to oil his armour the night I watched over him after treating his wounds from the lion hunt. After that, he took to using it himself. Now I’ll always associate it with his loss. I’ve not thrown my personal supply out, but I don’t breathe it in public any more. Tears still follow.

  “Riker is into fresh things. Mint. Orange. Bergamot. They say the god of youth always lives in the now. And Azered is timeless. Labdanum. Thyme. Associated with the soul’s journey from this life to the next.” Truth be told, I never used to think about having a soul, let alone needing to have it guided to the sky. Surely you’d just go “up” until you arrive at your destination. Unless you’re destined for one of the hells, of course.

  “Very good. And Kaismap?”

  “God of foresight. Dahkai is reserved for the most important prayers, but most people have to settle for purrath blossom as a substitute.”

  She nodded. “Indeed. And though that is the crux of the temple’s programme for the everyday person, here, we operate outside of that paradigm.”

  “Like the Scent Keepers.”

  “The Scent Keepers are elected from within our ranks. They play a pivotal role in our efforts to maintain balance across the Empire, mitigating between the temple and the sources of secular power – the Emperor together with each province’s Eraz. When the Younger Gods left the world, it was indeed part of a sacred covenant to ensure we never saw destruction again on the scale of the Shadow Wars. At the same time, Asmudtag granted the Scent Keepers a boon of their own.”

  She used a pair of long, patina-stained tongs to remove the flask from the heat and hold it up to the candlelight. The liquid had turned from bright blue-green to almost black. A sickly-sweet aroma of too-ripe fruit wafted towards me. I knew that smell. I used it to heal Nisai of the last of the poison.

  “That’s…”

  “The elixir of the Scent Keepers. It allows a limited kind of alchemy. Channelling the will of Asmudtag to move or absorb or alter a particular substance or energy, but never to destroy it. The first Asmudtagians, earnest to ensure peace across the Empire, sought a way to see into the future to avoid another devastating war. They believed the answer was in dahkai, that the flower would hold a remnant of the god Kaismap’s foresight. But when the Order used the Asmudtagian elixir to try to harness the plant’s properties, the will of Asmudtag sought balance. Instead of gaining scrying powers, it granted the ability to see the future in another way.”

  I thought back to Sephine, the only Scent Keeper I’d seen before arriving at the Sanctuary. And during that time, she never seemed to age. Back at the Library of the Lost, the Chronicler had spoken about this. “It made them long lived.”

  “Very good. Unfortunately, it also had another consequence. One that would balance out the turns of life the users of the elixir would now have. It would take lives from others. It’s how Sephine and I came to be convinced dahkai was key to our research.”

  “I don’t see the connection?” But my stomach began to feel more and more unsettled. I swallow, tasting acid.

  “We believe it was the Order’s folly, its hubris, that brought the Affliction into being. Asmudtag is balance. Asmudtag is all, light and dark. Without the consequence, the covenant of the Younger Gods would have been broken.”

&n
bsp; “You mean… The Order created the Rot?”

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  I leaned over the bench and opened the window, desperate for some fresh air. Out on the balcony overlooking the inner core of the Sanctuary, two patients from the next sector were sat at a carved stone table, a shnik-shnik board between them. They were talking, smiling as they moved the pieces around, and yet one cradled a bandaged arm, the other stretched out a footless leg in the sun. All because this so-called Order wanted to play games with the gods.

  “You paint yourself as all holy and high, the answer to the prayers of the poor and weak, and you created something that is killing thousands of people. You’re … you’re the worst of them.”

  “It didn’t kill thousands to start with.” Her tone was patronizing, like explaining something as obvious as scat stinking. Then she sighed and rubbed the spot between her eyebrows. “The Affliction is a result of an inadvertent failing of the Order, yes. But it wasn’t me personally who brought the contagion into being. I was not alive then. I was not the catalyst. I have, however, dedicated my life towards a solution. You know this better than anyone. You know what we gave up to be here.”

  We. She thinks of her and me as we now. Could I ever believe that’s true? Maybe a small part of me already does, however much the rest of me screams denial.

  “I tell you this because you’ll begin working with dahkai soon. It would be a futile waste of your abilities for you not to have all of the information. Very few who aren’t ordained have been entrusted with this knowledge in the past. Very few indeed. But I trust you.”

  I suddenly felt the weight of the conversation. It was heavy, but the heft was somehow gratifying. Like lugging a full harvest of citrus fruit, knowing that with careful treatment and handling, it could lead to some of the finest essential oil.

  “I’d ask you to keep this knowledge to yourself, my daughter.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “You’re ashamed.”