We found a Ghosting that hadn’t suffered the penance. We cut out their tongue before they could tell the truth. They were only seven years of age, but my guild’s purpose is to hide the truth and not bare it.
Sylah swallowed and continued.
I have fired the auditor who missed their birth on the register and have increased a sweep of all villas in Nar-Ruta to ensure every Ghosting is found and maimed, as is the way. To protect the truth.
Sylah swallowed and thought of Hassa. She had missed her meeting with her but searched for her in the Keep every chance she got. The girl seemed to be a part-time servant, because whenever she asked another Ghosting, they weren’t sure where she was.
Sylah kept reading. She read until the bath water went cold, though she didn’t notice. There was nothing else of note until she got to the end. In the final pages, one sentence stood out to her. She read it over and over again, her lips moving.
One of my masters of truth attended to a report in a small fishing village in Ood-Rahabe. A boat arrived from the mainland, though decimated by the sea and the tidewind; only one messenger survived. We killed her and killed those who had seen her.
A messenger, from the mainland.
Sylah lurched forward, bath water splashing over the sides of the tub onto the tiled floor.
“Skies above, Anoor was right. Anoor was fucking right.”
Sylah turned the page of the journal, but there were only two sentences left of the entry.
We left the Ghostings who saw the messenger alive. We need servants as much as silence, and they provide both.
Sylah reached for her towel.
It was time to find Hassa.
—
Anoor was in her mother’s chambers. Like the rest of the wardens’ rooms in the Keep, they overlooked the gardens.
There were few things Anoor had inherited from her adoptive mother. She didn’t have her skill for physical exercise, her presence, nor her affinity for leadership, but she had gotten one thing: her taste for opulence. A fountain adorned the foyer, filled with fat carp and blooming lily pads. Each chandelier was made of intricate glass art, shining runelight across the room. Despite the lavishness, it didn’t feel lived in. Maybe the oil paintings of famous battles that lined the walls sucked out all the warmth. Red and blue blood warring in rebellions of the past. Incense floated around the empty space in between the frames, like fog on a battlefield.
Anoor searched for any presence of her father in the room’s design. There was none, like her adoptive father had never existed. Anoor had hazy memories of the man who raised her in her early years. A man with a beard that tickled and eyes that laughed. Fragments and feelings merged into the soft strokes of an oil painting in her mind. Love. He was the only person ever to love Anoor.
The battlefield saw an end to that. A scythe through the throat from a plantation uprising in the coastal north of the empire, one of the few that had gained real traction in recent years. It had been fourteen years since Ahmed died.
“Anoor, how lovely to see you.” Rasa was one of Uka’s two chiefs of chambers. She reminded Anoor of a palm frond, the leaves of her hair fanning out around her stick figure. Her mother’s rooms sprawled up the expanse of the west of the Keep, and it required a small armada to navigate its smooth running.
“Hi, Rasa.”
“I’m afraid your mother’s been called to an urgent meeting this morning. She won’t be long. Your grandmother is due presently.”
“That’s okay, I will wait for her in her living room.”
“Please, do go right ahead. You do know the way?”
Of course she knew the way, it was her family home. “Yes, thank you, I can guide myself.”
As she walked toward her mother’s living room, it became apparent that Rasa had no intention of letting Anoor walk around the chambers by herself. Rasa followed ten handspans behind. They walked down the wide corridor toward the formal lounge. Anoor paused in the doorway of her old bedroom.
It was exactly the same. Untouched. Not because of sentiment, Anoor was sure, but as a threat that she could end up back there should her mother wish it. The room was bare but for the small oil painting beside the bed: the image of the babe among a field of blue daises. Anoor shuddered. It was of Uka’s true child, the Ember who had been stolen.
Anoor had examined that painting her whole life, and though it hadn’t aged like she had, its immortality faded. Once the babe’s gray eyes haunted her nightmares; now it collected dust in the recess of her memories.
An involuntary shiver racked her body. She disguised it as a cough and carried on.
The double doors in front of her were open, the smell of lilies making her instinctively recoil. They were her mother’s favorite flower, and the scent clung to the nightmares in Anoor’s mind. They were everywhere, blooming from vases and potted in gold planters. White, so white they made her eyes hurt to look at them. Each flower had its pollen painstakingly removed. Of course her mother wouldn’t want them to stain her white carpet.
Anoor perched herself on the edge of the brown eru leather sofa. Her muted outfit of pale yellow for once blended in with the soft colors of the room. This wasn’t what she had planned to wear. She was going to wear an emerald blazer with panels of lace and green silk that fell to her waist above wide-legged pantaloons that matched. Her tailor worked on the combination for over six mooncycles. The earrings were Anoor’s idea; they matched the tassels around the edge of the sleeves but dipped farther to the shoulders. They were perfect.