Ricardo Pinto - The Chosen

'You knew… the Wise… their drugs sustain me.'

'You mean, they keep you alive,' Carnelian snapped. His father was a man trapped in a slab of gold. Carnelian could not be angry with him. 'Please, Father, let me remove some of this…' His hand pointed up at the sunburst crown, the stiff slopes of the court robe.

His father frowned and Carnelian could see the protest forming on his lips, so he reached up, fitting his fingers up into the elaborate metallic folds. 'Not there,' his father sighed. 'Round the back…'

Carnelian skirted him and stood on his toes to reach, felt around, found the catches, pressed and was thrown back as the sunburst fell into his arms. He walked with it and leaned its disc against the wall. He returned to lift down the upper crown, the lower, the sunstone circlet with its jewelled beadcords, the ear flanges, until the long dome of his father's head was revealed. His father moved it from side to side, grimacing, releasing the tension in his neck.

'Aaah! That does feel better… thank you, my son.'

'Let me remove the robe.' Before his father could forbid him Carnelian had unhitched the shoulder pole with its cloaks. He unhooked the robe from the floor up. As its carapace came apart it released an odour of myrrhed sweat. Carnelian prised the suit open like two doors. His father's long narrow body was revealed in its underclothes, kneeling high upon enormous ranga that were attached to heavy belts. Carnelian squeezed into the robe, stooped and began to undo the shoes. As he worked he was bothered by a fetid, familiar smell. As he helped his father climb down he saw a raised area blushing red through the silk. When Carnelian leaned closer he could smell the rot of old blood. He groaned. 'It has not healed.'

The drug gives me strength but at a price. The wound remains open but it hardly bleeds at all.'

'And pain?'

His father shrugged. 'A little.' He smiled. 'From long companionship, it has become a friend.'

Carnelian felt a trembling of anger. 'The Wise… they are embalming you alive.'

'It was my choice. Without their drugs I would have become an invalid long ago.'

The wound will heal, then?'

His father rolled his hand. 'When I have time.' His face grew immeasurably sad. 'After the election.'

Carnelian tried not to see how much his father was resembling Crad. 'Something has happened.'

His father's yellowed eyes fell on him. 'I suppose the news will soon be widely known.'

Carnelian watched him, urging him to speak. 'Jaspar has betrayed us.' 'Jaspar…?'

'He has gone over to Ykoriana.' 'With his faction?'

'It is too early to tell… some will follow him.' He affected cheerfulness. 'I did not ask why you came here, my son.'

Carnelian looked up, saw his father's bleary look. It was the fear of continuing massacre in the coomb that made him speak. Tain is here.'

'Good, good. Has he come through the ordeals of the road and quarantine unscathed?'

'We are none of us unscathed, Father.'

'No, I suppose not.'

Tain brought with him terrible news.'

His father's eyebrows squeezed wrinkles into the top of his nose.

'Fey is dead.'

His father blinked at him, not understanding. 'Dead?'

'Your mother had her crucified.' Carnelian watched his father's face crumpling. He saw the tears oozing out. 'Father, don't,' he stuttered in Vulgate, horrified. He rushed to catch him in his arms and held him, feeling the racking in his body. 'Don't, don't cry,' he mumbled, touching with his lips the dry skin of his father's neck. 'I

… was… a fool.'

Carnelian could feel the words begin to rattle up from his father's chest. He squeezed harder but the words still escaped. 'We should never have returned. I have lost. I have lost it all.'

Carnelian pushed him away so that he could see his face. He forced himself to look on all the evidence of its ruin. 'It was my fault,' he said. 'My fault.'

His father looked at him with flickering red eyes. Carnelian stared back. His father's trembling had stopped. He seemed suddenly of stone. 'Your fault?' His voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else in the chamber.

'I killed her. I gave the Lady Urquentha the Seal.'

His father became flesh again. The Seal?' He looked as if it was the first time he had ever heard the word.

The coomb was not as you left it. Spinel had taken the Seal and forced the Lady Urquentha into the forbidden house.'

His father gave a slow nod and narrowed his eyes.

'She was trapped there like an animal.'

'And so you gave her the Seal to set her free?'

Carnelian grimaced. 'It was done as much from a dislike of Spinel.'

His father opened his hand. 'And so? It was your right, you are higher than he.'

'But Fey was crucified.'

His father looked down, his eyes unfocused. 'Why did my mother do this?'

'She believed that Fey had conspired against her with the second lineage.'

'And had she?'

'In a manner of speaking.'

Then my mother did what she had to.'

Carnelian gaped. 'Had to?'

'What Fey did was unforgivable.'

'But she did it for you, for us.'

'Nevertheless.'

'You mean she was only a slave.' His father's eyes flashed. 'She was my favourite sister. I trusted her… I loved her, even.' Carnelian slumped. Then why…?'

His father put his hand on Carnelian's shoulder. 'My son, when I chose exile, I knew that I was choosing suffering for many others apart from myself. I could not take all the household with me. Fey asked to be left behind. Even if her actions were carried out from love of me, she betrayed my mother. No servant, however loved, can be allowed to live after betraying one of the Chosen.'

'She knew,' said Carnelian, holding back tears. 'She knew and yet she said nothing. I made her put the Seal in the Lady's hands.'

'She was always brave.'

Carnelian felt a tear dribble down his face. 'She asked me to tell you that she had always loved you. I had forgotten.'

They stood for a long while sharing their misery. It occurred to Carnelian that it was not the news of Fey's death that had made his father cry. What then? The election. 'You believe the election lost,' he said at last.

His father rubbed his forehead. 'Yes.'

'Jaspar has taken with him many votes?'

His father's flapping hands were like the last leaves on a winter twig. 'If it were only that. Such a breach in our wall of votes we could hope to repair, but he also took with him much knowledge of how that wall was built. We are defenceless.'

'Surely you can do something.'

'Aurum has thrown his last daughter in to plug the breach, but the whole wall is fatally compromised.'

Carnelian turned to ice, remembering the threat Molochite had made to his father. He gritted his teeth. 'Rebuild it then.'

His father glared at him. 'Just like that. We have two days to build a second wall when it took almost a month of weary labour to build the first.'

'Surely fear of Ykoriana can be exploited. Will the Great not fear Jaspar triumphant more than you and Aurum? They have before their eyes evidence of how little he can be trusted.'

His father frowned.

‘I assume that the last wall was built carefully, with an attempt to minimize the concessions to the Great?' His father nodded.

'What will iron or high-blood brides matter to Nephron if his brother wins the Masks? Let him spend all the wealth of the House of the Masks if needs be to throw up another wall.'

Carnelian closed his mouth and saw that his father was thinking. He began shaking his head. 'It could not be done only with audiences. I would have to also go into the nave. I cannot be in two places at once.'

‘Send Aurum out into the nave while you remain in the Sun in Splendour.'

His father shook his head. 'Aurum has to be at my side to witness the agreements.'