Hey kids might not be a chapter next week depending on my exam schedule.
Chapter 10: Witch Hunt
A month from the funerals Atemu finally called up the old servants of Qazzadara's house for private interviews. Interrogations doubtlessly of older staff in the hopes that Yugi had no power to bribe their mouths shut.
Yugi had some trouble deciding if any of Atem's new voices posed a threat after scanning her memory with the descriptions her tiny spies brought her of them. She remembered only half of them with any certainty and of them she could not think, so far along, if they had ever seen anything which may have been of inferior importance to her but suspicious to them.
The fact she could not remember concerned her.
She tightened things, made sure she was very always with someone so as not to be seen sneaking about.
Two months on some of the fire had died but Atemu only seemed embittered. His haggard, uncomfortable, face was no more contented than it had been the night before the Queen's death and watching him covertly Yugi suspected that the worst of it might be passed. Like a first born of Egypt Yugi supposed she might've payed enough blood this time to be overlooked by the raging tempest of a vengeful god.
Had the King lost…?
Surely he hadn't found anything.
Yugi was sure, almost sure, as the palace accounts were inspected thoroughly and audited for discrepancies. Apparently a designer, a dress maker, Yugi bought the majority of her goods from had been asked to give records to the crown of her purchases. The kitchens had been scrutinized, her goldsmiths questioned…
Yugi did not think that there was anywhere left the King could look.
Had she forgotten something?
No.
No, surely not…
"He ought to get married again," the child, a long faced girl, remarked casually as they strolled.
"I'm surprised actually that the Great Lesser Council hasn't been summoned up to hassle him on the matter," Yugi shrugged mid stride.
The garden was beginning to dry and become brittle. It was at its most fragile, an array of golden hues, sinking towards the soil of the courtyard under the thickening heat. The monsoon season would hit them soon; overfill the rivers, drown everything, turn the crop fields into swamps and drown the gargling forests up and down the stretch of the central river.
She was weighing a flower sagging towards the greying grass, testing its resilience, hungry and observant lately for a chance to use some of her natural prowess. She wanted to direct herself to the very pursuits Atemu intended to burn her for.
It was dangerous the kind of longing Yugi felt to ply her native trade. It was unstoppable. She had, every season since before she was born, put herself to use those skills her mother had taught since the womb and was ever improving her talents. It was an erotic brand of wantonness she felt after the last two months of secrecy had rendered it too dangerous for Yugi to make a chant or draw a circle or consult a dream. Life seemed simpler when she could resort to her tried and tested methods of resolution with stolen bits of hair and whispers.
Had Yugi been able to put down the knife, the branch, the book, the song… everything that Atemu sensed in her and so detested. She considered without the craft she might've been happier or safer even. Yet Yugi never could truly let go and neither could her kin. Relatives of her's had boiled their skin down to ash before scathing crowds for the charge of witchcraft but still the clan carried on idling by. It just was. Every year it rained, sky too heavy to hold itself off, because it was too natural an urge to be ignored. In the same way Yugi couldn't abandon her sins. It would always rain and there would always be witches.
Yugi moaned, stirred violently in the night.
The sheets rumpled back from her the air twisting with that cold, clean, beach scent she built up round her to mask the darker odours. As she lurched the sheets were leaves, fallen and all around rustling, the distant aroma of her perfumes was blood congealing on the air and the room was dark as the woods of Deutschland and-
There was a scrape in the hall, a guard wandering down the passage, but startling, caught still half in a nightmare, Yugi heard the guttural growl of a wolf.
Panting she clasped the sheets, eyes wild.
Her mind rushed over like a wave crashing the surface of consciousness. She'd had such a dream… such a dream the likes of which….
A book sat forgotten on her bedside. She grasped for it clumsily and smacking the bound covers shut flicked the pages open again in her fingers.
She dragged her eyes down upon the first line and the first page that hooked her focus:
"-and the fire rose towards the sky, smoke blotting the sun, and all in the city wept moaning-"
Yugi snapped it shut.
Her heart gave a stutter and, arms prickling in the cold air, she slid herself from the bed fishing for her slipped blankets. Muttering bout bad omens and poor skies she went to find the window from which, at this point of the night, she could best spy the moon.
She leant against the glass, opened the panels to lean out over the sandstone sill, and heart thumping queasily cocked her head about.
No moon.
No moon?
She calculated over the cycle and concluded it must be the night of the new moon.
She swore.
Fishing across her tables Yugi found the pendant once belonging to Qazzadara's primary wife which Mahado had gifted her. She looped the chain round her neck twice before clasping it to make an almost noosed collar. She found her clothes, pushing up the lid of the nearest chest and tossing them on the bed, found water to wipe herself down and brushes and shoes though it couldn't have been more than four in the morning.
She dressed, she stuffed the brass baby spoon in her pocket, she wiped her face unable to best apply any kohl in such complete darkness and slumping in the seat nearest the dead fire curled up her legs.
The inertia lasted only seconds before she was driven to rise again, mad with the sense of some impending doom, fearing that thing which all her kin feared: fire.
She dug in her trunks and finding the oldest of her garments stripped and dressed again. The clothes had once been a gorgeous affair when Qazzadara had gifted the initial roll of fabric to fashion Yugi into something presentable for court but now time had faded the flowery embroidery the plum-blue ground to mellow half tones.
Yugi wrapped it on, found the plain leather slippers she wore riding and digging beneath the bed found the bag, the old bag, which had once contained all her known possessions in the wide world.
The best of what Yugi owned now was hidden.
The bag, regardless, she stuffed with those precautions of hers.
She sat till dawn when the servant came to wake her and found her fingers quivering against her lips gently as she sat still beside the fireplace. The servant stirred her effectively from her torpor, rousing her in such a way Yugi rather frightened the woman.
She licked her protruding bottom lip, half asleep sent the maid off, and applying the kohl finally in the diffused morning light could smell fresh water round her somewhere though the room was dry as bone.
When the sun turned from ivory to blistering gold she turned down the communal baths and took breakfast in her room and at her desk rested her temples into her palms unable to be distracted.
She picked up the book again but turning it over could not find that passage she had read but an hour or three ago.
Swallowing, heaving, Yugi drank a pitcher of water in the next hour she sat alone. Everything felt too hot, everything itched, ghost, phantom, fire seemed to lick her and Yugi had this strange awareness that all was wrong.
An hour or two after breakfast a boy snuck up the servant's passage for her.
"Milady!" The little one hissed sticking his head in.
"What?" Yugi bolted upright, beckoning. "What now?"
"The Sultan's called the council," the slave rushed, pushing up against Yugi's chair.
"Which one?" she demanded.
"The whole one!" The child awed. "All the men and all the wives!"
"What?" She wheezed, taking the squat little child by the arms. "Have they called up for me? Sent anyone for me?"
"No Milady!" The child yanked his head across side to side stupidly. "The King said this'll do or somethin', I couldn't make it all out his talking low n' so, and then he locked em up in the room with him!"
"Damn it." Yugi hissed.
"You! Boy!"
Atemu could not have been decidedly fouler within himself, furnace churning, legs tight to run and arms strong to swing out as he escaped the suffocation of the council chambers to the mellow whiteness of the arching halls.
A slave pivoted, sitting about on his heels scrubbing the floors most conveniently.
"Up and fetch the Gem Faher!"
His hand found his sword, grasped the hilt hard till the gilding dug into his bare palm and sighing through his teeth gave a pace across the doorway expectantly. The wives milled about, waiting with those sharp hungry eyes of theirs, as the men pottered off to greater business pretending not to be interested. Shoulders knitted, scowling, Atemu leant finally into the wood of the opened door to the council chambers.
It was ten minutes perhaps before the child came running, wheezing, back.
"Sh-she's not-" the child panted throatily, "-about Majesty."
"Not about?" Atemu snapped. "The devil does that mean?"
"Guards say she ain't left her room all morning Sire but she wouldn't answer and when we opened it she was being gone." The boy answered in a rush with his head down and his chest heaving. "We checked and the watchmen say she left to ride within the hour Majesty."
"Left to…?" Atemu's mind summersaulted sliding perfectly, knowingly, into place. Unable to help himself it all slipped out as the glass of his focus cracked; "that infernal bitch!"
Sesset, Mana'jet, the others milling about looked up sharply and biting his tongue Atemu did all he could not to swing out at the child.
"Get me a horse up!" He barked, rounding back upon the nearest clerk and guard. "Get the men to the docks! Get my brothers in!"
The child bolted, almost fell, and swearing Atemu had only taken half a step before the wives were up and upon him.
"What's all this?" Mana coughed.
"Your Lady has run," Atemu snapped at her, "as I should've suspected she has some damn way of disappearing and some little voices to spy for her and has vanished off!"
"Off?" Mana gawked.
There was a breath, a horrid silence and-
Sesset laughed, couldn't seem to contain it, and as if it were infectious from stark straight features Kuli twittered and then, lurching, collapsed into it as well with Kisara's help.
"By every god!" Mana made a breathless giggle. "Found yourself a right nasty spot haven't you?"
"What on earth are you simpering about?" He boomed.
"Oh Atemu it should serve you right!" She laughed, cackling. "She's got you for a good chase! Chase you ought to give her considering it all! All your spying and accusing has scared her off into the wilds and you should've having known better!"
"I will drag her back here by her hair for this!" He seethed, crackling as he hit the top of his own voice, malice echoing up and down the hall.
The wives were in hysterics, inconsolable, collapsing into cackles against each other like a horde of hags.
"Off with you then!" Kisara laughed. "After her! Take the hunting dogs!"
"You are all of you damn cads!"
Yugi had a way of riding that favoured the clear straight, dashing ahead, with her thighs tight against the saddle, her head down and her elbows tucked up against herself. She was accustomed to the bouncing gait of a gallop and the breathlessness of a jump and darting along the river between the cows and the peasants ran ahead under the rising sun creeping towards its zenith.
The c old, teal, West was not an option if a witch hunt was afoot. The boats may not take her with what she had on her and the best of what she had was hidden still waiting to be sent for. Waiting by the docks over the night, by which point Yugi suspected Atemu would be on her trail, was madness: Popes had been caught and killed attempting to flee nations so. There was nothing on the continent but a whole plague of denizen gypsies and throngs of witch burners much more zealous than the Sultan. However likewise crossing the river, waiting for the cataracts to flood or drain, failed to appeal to her.
She took the highway that sat dirty, long and empty stretching towards the forests and the mountains and the mottled deserts where lions died among mangroves. She knew a route and with a little licking at the wind she suspected she might find what she wanted in the wilderness.
The horse heaved and as the hour drained from one to two she was forced to wipe her brow under the folds shielding her face and her head. The horse began to stagger stubbornly, not quite responding, and feeling the hot heave of it under her as the sun reached its burning point Yugi was forced to pull back from driving the beast onward.
In another quarter of an hour or so at her traveller's pace the road she trod along tightened and broadened flexing in tense contractions of sparse to heavy vegetation.
The poor stead trotted weakly round the narrow bend up against the river bank where a few snoring crocodiles rolled their bellies in the mud waiting for a stray hoof or foot and as Yugi came about into a new clear expanse the road was open before her. It undulated down slightly and as she dipped into the valley and cocked her head towards the inland expanse she found it.
The temple of Eshu situated itself in a valley just before the desert that led to Juras where Mahado was taking his tutelage under the magic men. In the monsoon season the temple ground floor flooded quite purposefully its lower levels consumed by pools as shamans in the upper storeys prayed out the whole rainy season with their horded stocks and charitable donations. It was a quiet kind of life living there waiting to shelter the brave traveller who might make a pilgrimage there during the thickest parts of the rains to please the river god.
Atemu did not consider it intently. He knew of it and as they passed he had some inclination to stop but he was focused upon cutting off the roads into the desert for he believed if the Gem Faher did not try to buck offshore then she would take to Mahado's protection across the desert.
However the afternoon turned quiet. The sun fell in fractions and licking his teeth inside his mouth waiting on the road with his men Atemu thought upon it again. Perhaps, perhaps…
"Zarzak, Falker!" He rallied. "Come with me and leave the rest here."
"Where to dear brother?" Falker teased, grinning. "Are we to inspect all the snake holes and warrens?"
"We are to check the wretch has not sought cover within the temple of Eshu," Atemu barked though they were all of them still too amused to take any heed of him.
The valley sloped in beautifully, thick grass souring to rusted brown but still soft as the horses trampled it underfoot, and as they approached the low walls the ponds flanking them shimmered clear up to the sky.
The shamans, the priests of the Easts, sat about the low walls by the grand entrance. In little clusters they read to each other, sat like lotuses praying under their shrouds on the cool tiles under the veranda, and sung guttural, masculine, hymns just within the darkness of the arch.
Atemu dismounted, his brothers followed, and noticing them several of the shamans sat briskly up to come and take their horses from them.
"May we offer you water noble sir?"
"I am king of the river and I come to see the Head Priest."
They bowed, they exalted and hunching very low asked him to come in from the heat and set his feet up while they fetched the Head Priest from the sanctuary.
Falker and Zarzak lay back in their seats, drank deep from wine bought with generous alms made to the temple, and laughing were utterly unconcerned by this rather wild turn of events. To them it was an amusement, something they would have some larking youth at court write a song about so they could remind Atemu of it in years to come when they were all drunk. To them this chase was exciting, afternoon entertainment, and stiff from it all, embarrassed, Atemu was quick to turn the Head Priest into a quietened chamber.
The old Shaman consented, took him aside, and bowing it seemed upon every exhale he tilted towards Atemu.
"How may we honour your Majesty this fine day?" He supposed. "We have not been expecting such a visit."
"I come searching out a…" Atemu struggled for a word turning his crop over in his hand and twisting the leather audibly. "Has anyone come seeking sanctuary this morning? T'would be a woman: young, white and in our style of dress, very noble, eloquent."
He didn't bother further with the details of the description. The Gem Faher was so stark, so obvious, even this aging man who seemed to hobble upon one foot would notice and remember. There was no need to go into the slenderness of Yugi's wrists or the taunt quality of her shoulders though Atemu knew every detail of her shadow as a lion knew every stride of a gazelle.
"Yes Majesty," the Shaman remarked, gently surprised. "The child's not some fiend is she Sire?"
"No," Atemu sighed though it pained him to do so, "but I must be presented with her. She's to come home."
"Yes, of course," the Head Priest stood a little straighter narrowly meeting Atemu's shoulder with the top of his head. "I know I need not remind your noble Majesty of the sacred tenants of sanctuary. The protection of the gods is a very tender, very special, thing after all and sovereigns are not creatures of brute force by the gods mercy."
"Yes, so indeed," Atemu muttered agreeably but stiffened at the subtle, courtier's, threat. "You will take me to her then?"
Yugi had put up the horse, had taken a seat within a fine, quiet, atrium and glancing between the sky and the pool of lilied water had cooled her feet to the ankles in the pond. A bead or two of sweat ran down her neck between her shoulder blades but she found herself contented that she would be safe here to rest the night.
She folded her leg across her knee, hooking one over the other, and knew from here she could have her things snuck to her and safer passage out of the country bought eventually. Converted Moor or not she doubted the Sultan was rogue enough to drag her out of a public temple by her hair.
She was surprised however when, startled from her mediations, she found the Head Priest leading the King in by the elbow with a doting servant's humility. Atemu had found her more quickly than she had expected; the hound had a good nose for hunting it so seemed.
"May I chaperon your Majesty's conversation?" The Head Priest offered on behalf of Yugi's engendered chastity and virtue.
"No kind Sir," Atemu dismissed, "you may leave us."
The Shaman, dark as a nut or a seed and just as shrivelled, bowed but made no secret of doing the same for Yugi. The Gem Faher dipped to him, gave a thankful tilt of the chin but did not watch the little man leave as Atemu took the first step forward.
"Tis blasphemy to force me out of here Majesty," Yugi reminded as he approached, "but I suppose you've come to read me charges and make threats?"
"No."
"No?" Yugi snorted.
"No. I am not," Atemu stressed, "here to haul you wailing to judgement and the fire."
"Of course," Yugi crooned utterly unconvinced, hooking her arms over each other.
"While, I assure you, I have scoured every avenue I can find nothing to convict you on." He narrowed, turning about in that restless, ambling, way of his all gait in his hips and his shoulders as he flared his nostrils. "Which I am sure you are not at all surprised by given you seem to know everything that occurs in my house before I do."
He cocked his chin, pacing still, and snorting Yugi sighed her aside.
"Perceptiveness is not the same as wickedness."
"And cleverness if not the same as spies." The King scathed.
Yugi took her breath, puffing up, and in the same motion Atemu came to a rather cornered kind of pause. It was, it seemed, as if Yugi's presence was a beating at him turning that wild temper of his savage till rumpled up like he was Yugi could've mistaken the King in his riding gear for a beast upon the savannahs.
"Regardless," Atemu spat, "that's not the point. If I burnt all your co-conspirators I'd have no kingdom."
"Then what is?" Yugi twisted her heel in the stone with an absent motion of her eyes down and up.
"The council will want me to remarry, everyone will want me to remarry," he answered. "I will not however until I am good and ready but that being the case I might as well recruit your wickedness to my cause if I am forced to have you in my home."
"Ha!" Yugi scoffed unable to hold it back. It stung to laugh so suddenly at him and his insult.
"You're nigh unshakable when you've got your nose down for something," Atemu drove home the point angrily, "so if any man can harness that beastliness to the plough the fields why shouldn't I? My father had much better luck at the business of it when he did however short lived happiness is in your company!"
"If all you've come for is to insult me then Sir I might as well have never left this morning!"
"You ought not have!" Atemu slammed, hand slapping the hilt of his sword in a reflex action till the fingers tightened round it and Yugi's glance sharpened towards it. "It would've saved me all the business of chasing you the very laughing stock of my kin!"
"You do quite enough to make yourself a laughing stock raging as you do!" Yugi's screech echoed round the atrium as she stood.
Atemu hissed, tangibly, grinding his teeth together very inclined in that instant to strike out in violence. Though, typically, Yugi found that for all his posturing the man was more rabblerouser than true brawler. He had his father's melancholy fussing but none of his aptitude to fly into slashes at an abrupt change of the wind.
"They're insisting you still as a marriage candidate," Atemu grunted, "with a score of well-constructed lawyer's reasons to barricade against me. Given marriage is evidently not about pleasure but business I appear laughably naïve in my resistance to that hardened fact."
"This, Sir," Yugi snapped, "had best not be your proposal."
"I am afraid you will find it is," he rounded back on her eyes flashing, "because if I am compelled by god, kith and kin the least I find that will console is the knowledge that such a union will make you equally miserable."
He came very close, striding in as if he might bite and raising her shoulders Yugi would remain impenetrable in the face of the lashings of the syllables.
"And what if I should not agree to it?"
"Then you are mad," Atemu smirked, "because if I claim to surrender to having you they will hound you. Because if you refuse you sign off the eventual loss of your power and another opportunity for me oust you. Because if you say no then you forfeit the one position which will make you utterly immovable and me utterly wretched."
"Oh but we will both be wretched."
"And both pleased by it."
Yugi's hand rose, index and middle fingers rubbing against her thumb as it came to brush her bottom lip and her eyes were diverted by the flowing scrawl of the mural coated wall scrapping off around them.
There had never been another place Yugi wished to set down roots and call her own home. There had never been such a place that would have her so established. The rains, the river, the monsoons… the whole imagery of it, Yugi's inevitable cycling of witchcraft and guilt was circling round her in her head and spanning the walls. The Temple of Eshu, temple of the River God, was fitting…
It was a prospect unheard of at Yugi's birth but then again the mermaid, witch, Melusina made herself Queen of France so the legend went.
Oh it wasn't about the man, these things never were, but the chance to have the home hers, the chance to have the power she already held rightfully hers, the chance to have her surrogate kin her in-laws, to preside over a whole two or three generations of decisions, the chance to be safe…
"How am I to be sure you're not lying?" Yugi cautioned herself, regarding the King.
"Because," Atemu warned lilting over it almost lustily, "if I had enough evidence to damn you I would pull you out of here kicking and screaming and not care which gods saw."
"So romantic," she scoffed tartly.
The Lady Anzu flittered, suddenly, into Yugi's thoughts and lowering her hands she regarded the walls with a greater sense of mysticism. Would she want this? She was abhorred by what she perceived as savagery but so willing to sacrifice as she had always been Yugi wondered if she would've allowed this. Was this respectful to her? Hate the sultan Yugi did but inside her was the funniest respect for the woman.
"This is…" Yugi frowned, sighed, shook her head unable to do anything but gaze off to the wall. "This is so you can grieve her longer, yes?"
"That's nothing to you." Atemu snapped in a shocked kind of bitterness that didn't ring very loud just very hollow, very empty, very sad.
"What would she have liked?" Yugi supposed more to herself watching the roll of a wave across the wall. The signs were here for her, things for her to pick up that had fallen so graciously in her lap but she wasn't sure if she wanted the bounty.
"Oh don't talk about her," he begged harshly, "it's easier to find myself if I can hate you the same as I ever did at least."
"Hate me then," Yugi shrugged flippantly, utterly disinterested in him.
"Then marry me," Atemu ordered.
"Heh," she laughed despite herself, "a sadist truly."
"You will find all men are."
"Yes, you call it honour," she sighed. "Fine then, have it, marry me and mourn if it will make you content. Pick your wars with me, scream, favour others and reject me openly and I will promise to hate you and keep things as they are. But," Yugi warned turning back to him, "gather yourself up eventually because you will need a second wife."
"Oh?" Atemu snorted lazily, folding his arms to sigh away, caught like Yugi had been by the light playing off the walls.
"I'll give you a good fight, hold off the council even, take care of things, but I won't give you any children." She answered coolly. "To you I'm barren. You'll get no sons by me. I'll serve you up to that, loyally, but at that gate I'd rather die than pass over the threshold."
Atemu paused, something seemed to cross his face as Yugi turned to it and glancing down the Sultan truly, deeply, considered something before he looked back to the other's face. He was settled, cold as he had ever been, and inhaling softly he let his shoulders drop and his hands fall back by his sides. He never did answer but Yugi didn't suppose he had to. To Atemu the idea was doubtless reprehensible, outrageous, disgusting.
Next Time: blood from god knows where makes its way onto Atemu's sheets, compromises are made for the sake of appearances and very suddenly Atemu begins to frighten himself.