This is the twenty-sixth chapter of Wealthgiver, an alternate history serial romance about nationalism and cave-Thracians. For the back-of-the-book description and an index of chapters, click here. For the beginning, click here. For the previous chapter, click here.
Andrei gave up and sank into despair.
He endured the ride into the dark city. And the welcoming coterie of cultists. And the stew they insisted on serving him. They didn't even serve any wine to help him forget his situation. No alcohol for the avatar of Hades, not ever.
He held himself in stony silence through an interminable dinner. Did his hosts want to see their god-king enjoy himself. Who the hell did they think he was? Bacchus?
Kori spent the evening caressing, patting, and finally poking and prodding him.
"Say thank you," she hissed.
"Thank you," Andrei said, and was pleased with how hard he sounded.
"My Master is grim," said their host, this one a rope merchant.
"It is grim work that I do." Andrei didn't care whether he was acting or not. The conversation at the table was too loud, and the light from the oil-lamps hurt his eyes.
He rose from the cushions that surrounded the low table, leaving his bowl. "I think I'll go to bed." Or would they stop him from even that?
They didn't. The rope-maker's wife would sleep with her daughters in the women's room and the rope-maker himself, de facto mayor of the Thracians of Pazardjik, would sleep here with the dirty dishes. Andrei could summon up no gratitude. He could not even try.
At least he could blow out the damn lamps. And get some air into this bedroom. He put his knee on the couch and reached out to rattle the shutters. They refused to open.
A sharp click of her tongue, like a pen snapped in anger. Kori had let herself into the bedroom.
"If you try to escape again, I might not be able to stop them killing you."
Andrei grunted at her. Why should he bother to explain himself? Let her think what she wanted. Why wouldn't these shutters open?
Behind him, Kori breathed.
"You feel trapped."
Andrei's shoulders hunched. Somehow she had pitched her voice so it seemed to come from right behind his left ear. "A deep insight, prophetess! A man has no options, no escapes. Might he feel, perhaps, trapped? Either I'm killed by your people—"
"Or you save us!"
"Should you say that? Doesn't the darkness know itself?"
Low voices in the other bedroom. A child whined. Kori's feet shuffled on the carpet. "I did consider writing the words on your palms, but what would you have done if I had taken your hand? Pulled away? Struck out? I couldn't—"
She stopped, as if someone had seized her by the throat.
Andrei's hands went limp and fell away from the shutters. He could do nothing more than close his eyes and lean his forehead against the recalcitrant wood. He felt as if his heart had been scooped out. God, all he wanted to do was make her happy. Protect her from harm.
And what, Doctor, does she want?
That question was easy enough to answer. And yet, Andrei couldn't bring himself to do it. He couldn't promise he'd stay. His mouth refused to form the lie.
"Is this your character, Monsieur Voropayevski?" Andrei's ear pricked at the tears behind the smile in her voice. "You love a woman and throw her away? Because of her inconvenient family?"
Andrei turned toward her, blinking, heart thumping. Kori was beautiful in the dim room, a fluted silhouette, and she smelled of wood smoke and feminine sweat. He wanted to grab her and hold on, like a drunk who needs support. But it was she who demanded he hold her up. Her and her whole deranged nation.
"But they're forty thousand crazed cultists!"
"We! Not they. We are the Good. We have survived on our cunning for a thousand years. I am the first to admit that the priests' first plan was ill-chosen, but when you and I present our counter-proposal, they will recognize its merit."
"Recognize?" Andrei puffed out his cheeks. "Kori, I don't want to insult you or your…worshipers."
She maintained a cool silence until he gave up and said, "But! They think I'm the avatar of Hades! How intelligent can they be?"
The silence continued. Andrei suspected he was making an ever-greater ass of himself, but once you were at the bottom of a deep hole, why not keep digging? Yes, a positively Thracian attitude!
"All right," he said. "Tell me. Tell me how you plan to accomplish this." He reached the wall, turned and marched the other way, head down. "If we aren't blowing up heads of state in the name of the Hadean Empire, what are we doing?"
"A federal republic."
Andrei swung himself away from her. Turned back.
Kori rotated to track him. "No bombs, no assassinations. You will accompany me as I continue my traditional circle from Peshtera to Dorkovo and Batak, then back to Peshtera."
"All well and good, but—"
She held up her hand. "Wait, I'm not done. In each town we pass through, we will show you to the Good, show them Our Master, proclaim the rise of our nation up from the shadows."
"And?" Andrei brought himself up before her.
"And recruit them," said Kori. "The army they form will be small, but very loyal. It will be enough to secure a border around the Holy Mountain." She tilted her head, calculating. "Maybe just a few poisonings will be enough to clear out any enemies within that ring…Details." She met his eyes. "What do you think?"
For a moment, Andrei actually considered it. How could one kidnap forty thousand cave-Thracians?
Why, offer them a Good place.
Andrei folded his arms and turned away. "This is no kind of plan. It's a daydream."
"What do you want?" she asked. "Troop movements? Supply lines? We have experts who know how to make such things. What you and I are doing now is determining what to ask the experts."
"No, that's not what we're doing. We're looking for any reason not to," as he said the words, he felt the strength leave his body. "Give up." He put his face in his hands.
Other hands covered his.
Her fingers were cool on the backs of his hands. Andrei could have shaken them off, but he breathed instead. The darkness inside his eyelids swirled and pulsed.
"Feel your lungs rising and falling," she said. "Feel your heart beating between them. The weight of your spine on your hips, your hips on your legs, your feet on the floor. The floor is part of the house, and the house rests upon the Earth. Your kingdom."
The words echoed in his head: your kingdom.
Andrei pulled away. "You're the prophetess. You tell me we both won't just be killed."
Kori did close her eyes, as if peering inward. Her brows bunched. "I've never spoken as a vessel of Persephone to someone who lacks faith."
Andrei turned up his palms. "I have nothing to give."
Your life, Doctor.
Andrei wanted to put his face back in her hands. To run away. To vanish into a pit in the earth. He lurched to his face. "I can't be here. I have to—" Escape, but he couldn't. Find a route to survival, but there wasn't one. Stop feeling like this at least! Find peace.
Soon enough.
"Will you swear you won't try to escape again?" Again that trick with throwing her voice. Kori didn't speak loudly, but her heard her more clearly than he could hear his own thoughts.
Andrei put his hand to his left ear. "I swear that I know I'll be killed if I try."
"Oh!"
He left Kori there in the room. Let her have the last word. The last noise, anyway.
But now what? Andrei found himself in the receiving room, which connected the four bedrooms on the east and west sides of this floor. The women and children in those rooms had all gone quiet, either sleeping or listening. The door on the southern side would lead out to the wide balcony that wrapped around three sides of this house. It let in a faint, damp draft.
Outside, dogs barked. Some neighbor raised his voice. Andrei smelled the smoke and rain. The muscles of his face hurt.
He could not go on feeling this way, It was as if his core had been removed. As if he was already dead.
But what other feelings were appropriate to the situation? He was as good as dead. Federations. Empires. Nonsense!
Andrei's mind spun and snapped like a weasel in a cage. But the room was cool and dark. He found himself remembering the Moss Pool. That was strange because this room with its parquet and chandelier wasn't anything like the cavern under the mountain. Even stranger, the memory was sweet. At the time he'd been confused and angry and frightened for his life. Now though, Andrei wished he were back there, with the Earth protecting him.
He turned from the door. In the gloom he could just make out the stairs that lead down.
The house, of course, had a pagan shrine in its basement. Echoes revealed a small, square space with rough walls and an irregularity that might have been a pair of carved figures sculpted into a clay altar. The smell of damp stone was oddly comforting now. Familiar.
Andrei sat on the plush carpet, as echo-less as a bottomless pit, facing the altar.
He closed his eyes, which made no difference in this room. Tried to breathe. To think. Or stop thinking.
It wasn't a choice between death here with the cave-Thracians or happy life with Kori somewhere else. It was a choice between death here with Kori and her cave-Thracians and death without Kori somewhere else. Death when he was hunted down and smashed like a scuttling cockroach or…
Death as a king, as a god, as Kori's man.
Andrei's face tightened again, but this time as a cold, grim, smile.
It's only a matter of time, Doctor. I promise you.
Andrei wiped his hand across his face. "Won't you stop this?" he asked himself. He was sick of secrets. Let the darkness hear his voice if it wanted. "You give me these ironic little jokes instead of," he swallowed, "helping me!"
Help? The echoes sounded pitiful. Andrei felt his mouth twist in distaste. The Master of the House does not help. He welcomes.
What was this that he was doing? What was the voice that answered his questions?
Answer the first question, Doctor, and you will find that the second no longer matters.
Andrei tilted his head upward so his face was aimed at the sky. He had never enjoyed religious conversations. His grandmother and nurses had used God and the devil as stories to scare him into doing whatever it was they wanted him to do. The priests he'd met went through the motions of rituals without seeming to understand them, or else spoke far too much of hatred. Hatred of sin. Hatred of the devil. His brother slurped that stuff up like porridge, but to Andrei, it had always seemed like an excuse.
Do I feel like an excuse to you?
Andrei rubbed his mouth. What was that he felt? Contempt? How dare this figment of Andrei's imagination find him pitiable? Who the hell was some knot of superstition to tell Andrei that he hadn't done enough?
"I've been sentenced to death," said Andrei. "I've been poisoned, kidnapped, chased around in the dark. I've walked down one end of Europe and up the other. I've been married in some blasphemous pagan ceremony. I wasn't allowed to escape, I wasn't allowed to take my wife to safety. How should I feel?"
Confusion. Frustration. Fear. Anger at Kori. Sadness. That was sadness. Andrei's belly rose and fell with his breathing. The muscles of his face relaxed. He hadn't known they'd been tight. Now, he felt like the mouth of a drawstring bag when it's opened.
Andrei leaned forward so his elbows sank into the carpet and his spine ached. Tears ran down his cheeks, although he was unaware of it. There was no escape. No Swiss chalet for him or his tidy family. No happy life across the sea. Those gifts were not given to Andrei Trifonovich.
How you should feel, Doctor, is grateful. Few men are given such a fate as yours.
"What?" Andrei gasped, forehead against the floor. "What fate?"
The echo hissed like water on stones. Bessia. Bessia and Death. Greatness, then oblivion.
"Ha." Andrei's back heaved. "Ha." He rolled over onto his side, his back. He stretched, flinging out his arms and legs, staring into the echoes coming off the ceiling. "That's no sort of choice at all! I join your host either way."
It is lucky, Doctor, that we share a sense of humor.
Andrei wiped his hand down his face, and gathered himself up to stand.
"All right," he told himself, "let's get some sleep, Doctor. You'll need it."
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Next: Chapter 27: Bessia