Fire & Water
Ashe: Book Two
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TBCChapter Ten
Ashe wondered if Coll and Fallon would notice that she’d left the main hall. Probably not. No doubt they were too busy, chatting merrily and drinking too much wine. Ashe wondered what streak of insanity had driven her away from Betany and Caer Arianrhod where, she was now sure, she could have been both happy and at home. And while everyone else got on with their lives, she was standing in Janu’s room, her arms tied securely behind her back, waiting for the head priestess to what? Have her killed? That seemed the most likely option. Ashe’s personal truth was simple at that time. All she wanted was to set the Temple on fire, level it to the ground and then kill Murah. As aspirations went, they didn’t seem too hugely ambitious… Oh, Ashe, she thought: you fuck up like no-one else.
Whatever Ashe might expected of the leader’s room within the Temple, it was a million miles from what she faced. Forget rare simplicity, with nothing unnecessary or fondly decorative. She’d been wrong, too, to imagine an almost sacred dimness: moonlight fell into the room and in combination with the multitude of burning candles, the place was lit up like a bonfire. Costly hangings adorned the bed, which was central to the room, and the walls, where there was space among the other carvings and paintings. The finest and most expensive incense was burning merrily, and when Ashe looked down she saw that she was standing on a carpet that must have taken a few lifetimes to weave, the golden thread being interwoven with purple, yellow and blue. The carpet showed signs of wear, but then, so did she. A mirror hung on the wall opposite to the windows and in it Ashe saw herself – dishevelled and tired, eyes bright with pain – and shook her head at her own stupidity.
Left alone, she had had time to establish only that nothing local would do to cut the ropes that held her. She went to the window and decided that the ground was too fucking far away; there were no handholds at all. The door opened and Janu entered the room.
Ashe looked at the priestess’s set face and stiff stance, thought of Betany’s rather serene beauty, and wanted to kick herself. She had been missing Betany since the moment she’d left Caer Arianrhod, and could have howled out her fury and frustration at the wanderlust that had sent her out into the great unknown and now to what might well be her last day on earth. She sighed and said, “I knew the Word of the Red Temple was too good to be true. It’s all a farce, isn’t it? You and Murah run the place, profit from the offerings and – ”
“The Word of the Red Temple is real enough, Ashe. But, yes, Murah and I exercise a partnership of sorts. At present. It’s a business partnership that works very well.” Janu poured herself a cup of wine and drank it off.
“At present?” echoed Ashe. She frowned then understood. “I get it: every so often the management of the Temple passes from one priestess to another, is that right?”
“You’re smarter than you look.” Ashe grinned sardonically. “Yes. At present, as our reward for the management of the Red Temple, both inside and out, Murah and I enjoy the material offerings that are brought here. Be assured, Ashe, it’s not an easy role, nor one that can ever be accepted without a full appreciation of the demands attached. It’s no sledge-ride, Ashe.”
“What happens when you retire, then? Do you choose to leave?”
“Despite the extremes of power and possession enjoyed by Murah and me, there will come a day when we have fulfilled the Temple’s use of us. A day of omen: we will know it when it comes. And for when it does come, we have need of suitable replacements. Enjoyable as it may be, ours is a temporary power.”
“So when your lodgings here are wanted by someone else, you just smile and nod and go?” Ashe’s disgust at the fur cloak was still churning through her and her thoughts were less clear than usual. She could see that she might have been horribly brisk in dismissing the Red Temple as a hollow and worthless world, because – if she thought about it – she could imagine others who would happily take on the roles currently filled by Murah and Janu. She thought about Laure’s greedy eyes, of Calypso’s mad and burning ambition: she could – just about – imagine either of them taking on the running of the Red Temple.
Replacements. Yes. The most recent of whom were downstairs, drinking too much wine and eating too much food before being swept into positions of power and influence. Ashe’s head ached. She said the first thing that came to her mind. “What about the other apprentices? They’re not going to want to stay on here and be bossed about by their equals.”
Janu beamed at Ashe. “You understand!” She sounded truly pleased. “I misjudged you, Ashe, you’re much smarter than I thought. But you’re not wholly smart, of course, because you haven’t understood it all.”
Ashe felt like a convalescent on their first day out of bed: far too weak to be standing. Her legs tried to be unsteady but she fought to maintain her stance. She was tired and dizzy and clear-headed and confused all at once. An inner voice mocked her. Yes, Ashe, just because it did not occur to you that the role of priestess would appeal to anyone it does not mean that Coll and Fallon won’t be entirely delighted when they find out for what they are intended. Power and wealth. Who would not want them? She would have smacked a hand to her forehead had her arms not been tied. She thought of Fallon, and wondered how the girl would do as a priestess. Probably quite well… All this and riches, too. Oh, fuck.
“How does it work, this division of yours? Murah gets everything below while you take possession of what’s above? Did the structure of the Temple’s autonomy just fracture one day, or was it always like this, with you two – or your predecessors, of course – accepting the offerings brought to the Temple and making up your own lives as you go along?”
“I said that you were smarter than I thought, Ashe, but I’m not sure that the Word of the Red Temple is something you’ll ever fully comprehend. In the short term we offer an education that is second to none, valuable teachings and educated apprentices who will take the Word out into the world.”
Ashe shook her head. “Please. No more lies. I think I understand now. I thought that you just appropriated for yourselves everything brought as an offering to the Temple, but now I see that the truth is less straightforward. What’s brought here – goods and people – you make use of both, right? And the reason that no-one can ever return to their home after their education is that they never do leave here. No-one apart from your successors, of course. Is that right?”
Janu smiled at her. “The Temple has an appetite that we must feed.”
“And without food it would starve and fail? Sounds like a fucking good idea to me.”
Janu said, “It’s not that simple. Oh, let me try to make it clear to you. The village from which I came swore by a song that I never could bear, but it says what is necessary simply enough. Can you bear to hear it?”
Ashe shrugged her shoulders. “I’m past the point of literary criticism,” she said, “if that’s what you’re worried about. Recite away.”
Janu’s expression was not friendly but she gave Ashe the verse all the same. She delivered the lines with a bitterness that had been years in the making:
“Death is not enough. Not just dying,
but the manner of dying might do it.
At the time of the blood moon, a wall of blood,
a world of blood.
At the time of the blood moon all
that will not survive the winter
are slaughtered and divided;
their blood to make puddings,
their skin to make boots, their flesh
to be cured and salted and stored,
hanging in the rafters.
Their fat will make candles by which their lives
will to go to illuminate
the many dark nights beyond.”
She paused and smiled at Ashe. “They used to speak that rhyme in my village, when I was a girl. I suppose you could say that the Word of the Red Temple does much the same. It just does it without any recourse to sanitized poetry.
“I’ll tell you this for nothing: life inside my home village was as simple and nauseatingly complete as its verse. If I knew who’d thought it up, I’d eat their heart. For years, Ashe, for years, I lived out a dull little life along with my family, doing nothing that was not sanctioned by the sterile and stifling confines of village life and the village Elders, damn their souls, the whole lot of them.
“When I heard about the Temple I… For the first time in my life I saw a reason for living. I honestly began to live. Until then I’d just kicked along in the traces, doing what I was told, being told that the life I had was as good as it got.
“Are you saying that someone in your village already knew about the Temple?”
“Not an inhabitant, a visitor. Visitors, I should say. A party on their way to the Temple were attacked by the mountain women.” She hesitated: Ashe’s expression had flickered, and a frown appeared on her face. Janu continued. “Mountain women killed most, ate most, and the remainder were found by the Elders of our village. It was the wrong time of year; food was short and the nights were endless, but we did what we could for them. I spent most of my time running errands but I heard them talking about the Temple and I determined that I would leave the village with them and find myself a better destiny.”
She broke off and looked hard at Ashe. “Is this very dull for you to hear? I thought you wanted to know.”
“I do,” said Ashe, whose face was growing pale. It pained her to make the confession but she did so all the same: “It’s these ropes. I can’t think about anything but how much they hurt. I’m losing feeling in my fingers.”
Janu sighed, reached into her belt and removed a short knife which she used to cut the ropes. Ashe made a little sound and dropped to her knees, trying to withstand the rush of agony that had just replaced the earlier throbbing pain. She tried not to retch. “Go on,” she breathed. “What happened next? Did you leave the village with them? Did you reach the Temple?”
Janu did two things. She poured and drank more wine, and then she put an arm under Ashe’s elbow and eased her to her feet. A moment more and Janu took Ashe’s hands in hers and began a slow massage of digits and palms that might have been erotic had it been done by almost anyone else in the world. Janu worked the palms with a circular touch and then extended her work into Ashe’s wrists. She went no further than the forearms, but something confident and solid in her approach – even apart from the fact of it – made Ashe uneasy. This touch was not purely something of comfort; it was unwanted, useful but unpleasant. While it helped Ashe’s pain, it did something negative to her spirit. For a moment she puzzled over this last point – once the pain had dulled to an acceptable level – and then she understood: it was the arrogance of the touch that she minded. In such a fashion had Laure sometimes reached out to Ashe, when in the company of someone like Ruth. It was a touch that advertised ownership, and Ashe hated it. She said, “So? The Temple?”
“Of course I was told that I could not go. I was told that those who had survived the ministrations of the mountain women – you frown when I name them. Have you had dealings with them? – Oh, never mind. The winter was getting harder, day by day, and the visitors were making inroads into our stores. You remember our stores? The little verse? Well, the Elders felt that the visitors should be encouraged to leave, and they put them out of the village walls proper just before the coldest night of winter.” She looked at Ashe. “Do they experience that concept, where you come from? The coldest night?”
Ashe nodded. “Well, our visitors did not know what day it was, or what night was to follow. They were far from well and did not wholly understand our intentions. They were guided to the pass and left there. Those who had taken them out – in carts – left the carts behind and rode the horses back home. Then all went inside their cabins and waited.” Ashe fought to keep the disgust she felt from marking her face. “We waited, Ashe, for the coldest night to pass.”
Janu stopped her ministrations and gave Ashe a cup of wine for which Ashe was grateful, unwilling as she was to accept anything from anyone who formed part of the Red Temple; her throat was sore and her mouth had gone dry.
Janu recommenced her narration. She said, “I wanted to get out to them. I already had a map, taken from one of them, which showed the route to be taken to the Red Temple. No-one knew that it was in my possession. That night I waited inside, with my family, beside the fire. We had brought in fuel enough to keep off the worst ravages of the night, and when the morning came, we went back to take the carts.”
Ashe looked at Janu. She could see without any difficulty that picture: there would be the carts – if they hadn’t been used for fuel – and around them the bodies of the travellers. The cold would have fallen upon them from a height and there would be nothing they could do. Surely nothing… She said, “Did none of them survive?”
“I thought not. We didn’t find all the bodies, of course, but that was only to be expected: the wolves had come down.”
“And the mountain women,” said Ashe, softly. “And then?”
“We took what remained of the carts back to the village and left the bodies to the weather and the beasts. I kept secret the map and then one night I set out. No-one knew my intention. I had taken all that I needed and I had no desire to ever see my family again. If anyone came after me, I never saw them.”
Janu poured them both more wine. Ashe was glad to have her hands released. She could again move her fingers and accepted with relief the full wine cup that she could now hold. “What happened after that?”
“I reached the Red Temple. It was late and dark and I was desperate. They opened the gate to me and took me inside.”
“How fortunate,” said Ashe, “that the gate wasn’t opened by one of your guests.”
Janu’s expression was cold. “That came later. I was taken before the priestess and when I stood before her, I saw one of the others who had stayed within our village. She… She screamed and called me a monster. She related to the priestess what I had helped do. She said how I had contributed to the deaths of the other twenty.”
Ashe watched her, saw the blend of anger and pleasure flicker across that face, and said, “I’m sorry… I’m just being slow on the uptake. You left them out in the cold. How could any one of them survive? You took the horses.”
Janu wouldn’t look at Ashe. “She told me that she had succumbed to the cold and collapsed. She must have been the first to fall but not… the first to die. She woke to find herself beneath the bodies of the others. Everyone else was dead.” Ashe shivered.
“The priestess asked me if the accusations were true. I had no choice but to answer her. She asked me about my village and I told her everything. I told her of the endless round of meaningless activities, of the narrow minds and lack of ambition that had stunted my people.” Ashe raised her eyebrows and drank more wine. “She listened to me and when I had finished my story she called in the woman who had accused me.” The atmosphere within the room had grown cold and strange and Ashe shivered. “We stood there, before her, for what felt like hours. Then she told my accuser that my punishment would be to remain at the Red Temple and to serve it with all my might. She said that when the next winter came, and the coldest night, I would be tied up and put outside to die as the others had done. She said that my flesh would be eaten by the wolves and my bones would be scattered to the corners of the world. The other nodded her agreement, and kicked me as she left the room.”
The air was colder still. Ashe could visualise the scene: the pale, thin-faced rebel who had let the others die, who had stolen a map and tried to find a new life. Janu said, “I remember her kicking me. The pain meant nothing. The threats meant nothing and yet I didn’t understand why that should be. Then I looked into the eyes of the priestess and she said to me: would you let her die? On the coldest night of the year, could you force her out into the cold, knowing that she would not last to morning? And I looked up at her and said: yes. She said: would you smile as you did so? And again I said yes. Then she asked me if I could cut another’s throat and watch them bleed, and I looked deep inside myself and I told her, yes, I could.”
The fire was dying. Perhaps, like Ashe, it was being drawn down into despair by Janu’s recitation. “I knew that I could cut a throat. I never had done, but I knew I was capable of it. Then she smiled at me and told me that one day I would sit in her seat, and rule over the Red Temple. My life proper began that day.”
Through teeth that she was fighting not to let chatter, Ashe said, “The other girl. What happened to her?”
“You don’t want to know.” No, thought Ashe. I don’t think I do.
“And you became the priestess.”
“It took time. I had to learn and to grow, but it was within three years of my arrival there that I saw the old priestess leave, and dressed myself, for the first time, in my new robes.”
“And now you live here and profit from it.” Ashe scowled. “Is that all there is to it? Just an endless process by which people are tricked and robbed and…” she broke off. “What happens to all the apprentices? Do they really learn from here before going out into the world to enrich it?”
“Of course they don’t. We can’t let them go. We can’t keep them. So they are put to a useful service. Don’t you know the answer to that one? They go to feed the Temple. Tonight’s feast was – ” she broke off and smiled at Ashe. “You didn’t eat at supper, did you, Ashe?” She quoted the lines a second time:
“Their blood to make puddings,
their skin to make boots, their flesh
to be cured and salted and stored,
up among the rafters."
“Do you have some internal guide, perhaps? Or a protective entity that watches over you? You had the opportunity to damn yourself, Ashe, but you didn’t eat with us. Hell, even Hero joined us for supper, so to speak.”
It was like the revelation of the karg fur. Ashe bolted for the open window, leant out and vomited. The wine she had drunk burned her throat and her eyes were blind with tears.
She fell back into the room. She said, “Us? Oh, Gods, Janu! Coll? Fallon? They’re children! How could you let them – ” But the door opened and her two friends stood there.
Janu smiled at the visitors and said, “They’ve come a long way, Ashe, and naturally they had both worked up quite an appetite. It will take some hard work on their part before they can step into Murah’s place, and into mine, but all their lives they’ve been headed toward fulfilling this particular destiny.”
Fallon said, “Sorry, Ashe. I couldn’t tell you.” She looked at Coll. “Mind you, some people managed to keep the news of their own destiny closer still.” She looked extremely proud of herself.
Coll blushed but managed a slight smile. Ashe felt her body chill. It wasn’t a simple response to the vomiting: it was the simple horror of the world in which she was standing.
Ashe had no awareness of the tears that were dripping steadily down her face and onto her leather shirt. “Everything that you said!” She stared stupidly at Fallon. “This dream you had, this ambition. Was it all for nothing?”
Coll stepped forward. “You are too obsessed by the practicalities, Ashe.” Her tone was admonishing and patronising both. Ashe had a brief recollection of the punch she’d thrown and embraced it. “The Word of the Red Temple goes far beyond everything you have ever met or thought of. We serve the Red Temple because it is from the Red Temple that the future will come.” Her eyes blazed with the light of the zealot. “Soon..” She looked at Janu and Fallon for encouragement and seemed to see it in their faces, “soon the Temple will be satiated and then the world will change.”
“The Temple will be fed again,” said Janu, happily. “Ashe, did you ever stop to wonder what the Word itself might be?”
“Uh, I was thinking rudeness,” said Ashe, stupidly, thinking back. “Or plain fucking insanity. But I’m guessing that’s not it.”
“It’s so easy, Ashe. Even you can surely see it.” Coll was rapidly becoming unbearable. “The Red Temple. It’s red for a reason.”
And then even Ashe did see. She said, numbly, “Blood. The word of the Temple is blood.” She echoed Janu’s earlier spoken words: “A wall of blood, a world of blood. Oh, Gods.”
Fallon joined in. “The land will be drowned. The rivers and the sea will all run red.” She sounded delighted by the prospect.
“And the lips of the earth will fold back like cut flesh.” Ashe fought her gag reflex. “And when the seas run red, out of the Temple will come the beast. And the beast will devour the world.”
“What gives the beast life?” Ashe was still standing.
“It is not simply bodies that feed the Red Temple. The multitude of souls that it has absorbed will go to breathe life into the beast. The Red Temple is the womb from which the beast will be born.”
Ashe said, simply, “Oh, fuck.” Then, “Why give the beast life at all?”
“That is our purpose. That is the reason we were born. The beast is the reason for the Red Temple. It has to have somewhere safe in which to grow. When souls enough and blood enough have fed the beast, it will break free.” Janu smiled indulgently at Coll and Fallon.
“You’re all awaiting the arrival of the beast.” Ashe remembered her dream or vision, and the sight of that skinless, unfinished horror digging its way out of the earth, jaws open, fangs dark and jagged. Now she could appreciate better the imagery. Janu grinned at her, very white teeth showing. “Uh, humour me, please: what is the beast intended to do?”
“It will eat up the earth in twelve mouthfuls. It will eat the rivers and the sea: it will inhale the wind; it will poison the earth and it will absorb the fire. It will devour the Guardians and it will not be appeased until they all are gone. In every town and village the inheritors of the Red Temple will make their sacrifices, and those sacrifices will be terrible indeed, but they will none of them assuage the hunger of the beast.” She paused and grinned at Ashe. “I suppose you think I’m mad,” she said.
Ashe said, “Oh, fuck it, yes.” Then she shook her head. “No. I can’t over-simplify you by saying that you’re mad. You serve a concept I can’t bring myself to visualise.” Oh, but she could, couldn’t she? That wall of blood with the beast’s eyes blazing through it like two suns. And who the fuck were the Guardians and why weren’t they taking better care of the earth? “What happens then?”
For the first time Janu hesitated. She looked at Ashe. “After the beast has eaten the earth? Who knows?”
Ashe said, stupidly: “This is crazy. You’d do all this to bring about the arrival of the beast without knowing to what end you’ll be working? I’m assuming that you and all the other members of the Red Temple don’t mind dying. Unless, of course, there’s space for you in the time that comes afterwards.”
She relaxed her hold on the gates that barred the memory of that awful dream and let it slide into her mind. “Janu, I think I know your beast, and I think too that I know what comes next. It will devour the world as you say. It will eat and eat until nothing remains. Now I understand why you live out here in the coldest regions: it’s not just because you fit here, in a place of sterility. It’s because you need the cold. If the sun only moved a little closer to us, your Temple walls would melt, and the beast would sink back without taking a single breath.” She drew a breath herself. “If I thought I could do it, I’d try to move the sun myself.”
Janu smiled at Fallon and Coll, and let them go. They both saluted her on their way from the room. Ashe heard the sound of their confident feet marching on the cold stone of the passageway outside. Janu turned to Ashe with a second smile. She said, “You aren’t interested in knowing what’ll happen to you?” She moved towards Ashe and stood too close to her. The infringement of Ashe’s personal space – the only thing she had left – rankled, and her mind, fresh from the horrors of the Red Temple, decided to take her on a trip elsewhere.
When Laure had first kissed Ashe, and pulled her close, saying with an off-hand ease, “I have to do this”, she had no idea of knowing that she was the first person to get so physically close to Ashe since Cora had died in Ashe’s arms, coughing out her heart’s blood, her last moments frenzied and desperate. It was a harsh comparison and one that Ashe tried to thrust from her mind. She wanted to concentrate on Laure’s kiss, an embrace she’d been dreaming of for weeks and weeks and toward which she could never have made a single step unasked. By then Cora was years dead, and Ashe had been immersed in Lammoran ways ever since. She had mislaid the memory of much of her early life, so dazzled was she by Lascar and its beauty, and the palace and its princess. She had gradually allowed what she wanted to be eclipsed by what Laure demanded, and in the process the spiritual side of her nature had been starved. Everything that happened in Ashe’s love affair with Laure was there because the princess had willed it. What went to make up Ashe had been eroded by years of use.
When Cora had died, speaking words that Ashe did not understand and which she could not later recall to mind, the guards had had to knock Ashe out to break her hold on Cora’s body. Their roughness, which seemed to be the only option left to them, sent Ashe on a downward spiral. The guards were not to know that their force would make Ashe wary of physical contact. For a very long time she could hardly bear to shake hands. When she had overcome that barrier it had been because Laure had taken Ashe to her bed for the first time.
Now Janu closed the tiny distance that separated them and put her hands around Ashe’s wrists. She touched her with that same blend of confidence and arrogance, and it made Ashe’s skin crawl.
In the closing months of her relationship with the princess, Ashe had become aware of a huge shift in feeling: Laure was often cold and distant with her, no matter how physically close they might be, and often were. Indeed, their nights together had become progressively more athletic and demanding. And those nights had left scars in their wake. Ashe had not been smart enough, or informed enough, to understand that the new force that had drove Laure’s passions was in fact fury disguised as lust. Since the date of Laure’s return from Mercia, Ashe was being held accountable for not being Calypso. That was not all: to Laure’s mind Ashe stood as a direct obstacle between herself and everything she wanted. As a result, Calypso had awoken a hunger in Laure that the princess had attempted to satisfy by fucking Ashe until she bled.
In the weeks that preceded her unexceptional arrival at the Word of the Red Temple, Ashe had had opportunity to consider the past. Looking back on the miserable time that had preceded her eviction – she could see it no other way – from Lascar, Ashe perceived herself more and more as someone whose destiny lay in the hands of other people. Oh, fuck that, she might as well have been owned. The Lammorans might have nice terms for it, like companion, but Ashe knew what she had been. She had been seduced by the charms of face and figure, and held in place for the following years by the stupid, mindless belief that Laure loved her.
Ashe suspected that Cairo – who had been, after all, the most straightforward person she had ever met – had seen Laure’s feeling for her as exactly what it was. She might have wanted to point out to Ashe that her love – intense and honest and ultimately unwanted – meant comparatively little to the princess, but she never had. Cairo had never wanted to hurt Ashe. And besides, perhaps she – in common with Ashe – had thought that with a promotion to consort, the inequalities in the relationship might be ironed out. In those bitter-sweet days, Ashe had never even considered a future that did not include the princess.
But with knowledge came the ability to remember the past for what it had been, a series of inequalities that made her face burn. In the latter part of their relationship, Laure had enjoyed embarrassing Ashe. In company with someone like Ruth – sycophantic to the last – Laure might reach out and stroke one of Ashe’s breasts as they swelled gently beneath her shirt. Or she might make some remark about what they’d done the night before. No. Ashe strove to be honest: it had invariably been what Laure had done to her. There was had been no equality. What if Ashe had employed the same casual reporting? Would she have made it to the end of the day? Probably not.
And now Janu was treating her the same fucking way. Ashe thought: why do I keep meeting maniacs? Does something in me draw them here? Is it something I might un-learn? Janu released Ashe’s hands and began to fold back the long sleeves of Ashe’s shirt. When she hesitated, and turned away, Ashe wondered if she’d seen the scars there. Janu did not comment. To Ashe’s huge relief the woman turned away from her and filled two cups with wine. Ashe’s hands could now hold a cup, but she waited to Janu to drink before she did, just in case the wine was poisoned..
“Those marks on your arms,” said Janu, thoughtfully, “are very unusual. How far do they reach?” Ashe scowled. The world was about to be drowned in blood and Janu was curious about her physical attributes. Ashe didn’t bother replying.
Janu grinned at Ashe. Yes. The arrogance was still there, and that air of being wholly in charge of the situation. Ashe supposed that Janu was. After all, there would be guards outside the door, there was no other means of exiting from the rooms. Ashe was trapped. She tried to withdraw into herself as she’d done all that time ago, when after Cora’s death she’d been taken to the palace. Janu began to pace the floor. She went back and forwards from just before the door to the end of the broad and ornate bed. Ashe said, softly, and without considering what she was about to suggest: “You could just let me go.”
Then Janu walked up to Ashe and took Ashe’s chin in one hand. She looked deep into the black eyes and saw there something she did not expect. There was no fear, only a kind of resignation. Ashe was an anomaly. Janu said, thoughtfully, “How could I possibly do that? You’d be the ruin of our entire belief system.”
Ashe laughed, honestly amused. For an instant that humour drove away the sense of sickness and disgust that had threatened to overwhelm her. The laughter broke Janu’s mood of contemplation, too. Enough prevarication: hers was a temporary madness; the sooner Ashe was gone, the better. And as she couldn’t keep her, and couldn’t let her go, with all that she now knew about the Temple, Janu decided to finish Ashe off herself. Turning, she tugged free of her belt the short knife they had liberated from Ashe. A short knife with a single jewel set in the hilt. A good knife, and sharp. Amusingly appropriate to use Ashe’s own knife on her.
Without another thought she swung round, the blade being directed towards Ashe’s heart.
The knife with the jewelled handle had been a present from to Ashe from Betany. Everything Ashe now owned – bar the comfortable old Lammoran boots from which she would not be parted – had been given her by Betany, and every good spell that could be invoked had been passed over the knife’s finely-hammered blade, and it was not in the nature of the blade to harm its owner. Ashe had no knowledge of this, nor did Janu. But it didn’t really matter: when Janu reached out her left hand to pull Ashe toward her and onto the blade, Ashe ducked her head and jolted forward. The top of her head connected solemnly with the bridge of Janu’s nose. The sound made was dull and solid.
Tears of pain flooded Janu’s eyes. Before she could scream for the guards, Ashe punched her. The blood had long since returned to her arms and the blow was hard enough to be almost profound. The force of the blow was born out of desperation and it sent Janu over backwards and onto the floor, where the back of her head collided the stone floor. A second dull thud and then Janu was lying silently on the floor, empty and dead.
Ashe tiptoed over to the door and slid the bolts home. Then she knelt beside Janu’s body and felt for a pulse. None. Ashe thought: the room of temptation; I thought I was due to pass through that one tomorrow. I guess I failed, too, because there was something I wanted. And Janu? Did she fall prey, too? It’s too much for me and besides, what the fuck is Murah going to say when she finds out what’s happened?