Mother is my height, tall and well built, no lightweight even before the pregnancy. It takes all our bracing and grunted effort to lower her down. My Fives gloves rub along the rope. My hands ache from all the gripping. But determination feeds me. Cook follows, heavier yet. Fortunately Ro-emnu is exceedingly strong, packed with muscle. Afterward Coriander dashes back into the oracle’s chamber and returns with treasure stolen from the chest. I don’t care as long as we can get out.
Horns blare a cheerful tune, getting closer.
Ro-emnu and I lower Coriander down. Lamplight blurs the darkness below as she vanishes into an unseen passageway connected with the bottom of the shaft. Kalliarkos appears out of the passage, lit from the back, face in shadow as he looks up. He stands perhaps six body lengths below, the height of the tallest climbing post in Trees.
I think he smiles although shadows make it hard to see. A flash of sunlight could not have heartened me more. I grin even though I am sure he cannot make out my expression. All my tiredness spills away as if the sea has washed clean my flesh and spirit both.
“Jes.” The walls of the shaft magnify his whisper. “You come down next.”
But I’m still thinking, plotting, planning. “What about the oracle? Wouldn’t it be better for the last of us to close up the bier and go out the air shaft at night? So if anyone ever opens the tomb they won’t discover how we escaped?”
The sound of men singing temple hymns drifts through the slits in the walls. The High Priest approaches. I suddenly remember that the rope by which I descended the shaft is still wrapped around the exterior of the shaft up on the roof, in plain sight. All my joy and relief plunge into throat-curdling fear.
I turn to see Ro-emnu examining the oracle. The gag cuts cruelly into her mouth because Coriander tied it too tight. Her eyes have a glassy sheen, as if she were drugged with shadow-smoke. Did she give up struggling against her fate long ago, or has she always welcomed the tomb? Were she a young man I think Ro-emnu would kick her, but even a contemptuous person like him will not hit a frail crone.
He has a strong Efean face and a gaze that slices, like he is seeing beyond the mask every person must wear to disguise her secrets. “You and I have a decision to make, sullen schemer. Do you wish to force the oracle to eat the poisoned food so as to make it look as if it killed her? Or should we smother her?”
“She’s just a pathetic old woman.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “How Patron-bred you are. There is no such thing as a pathetic old woman, not among people who respect experience and wisdom. Only among your father’s people are such women discarded like trash. It’s shameful but no business of mine. All I see here is yet another Patron lady who would spit on me and have me beaten were I to get in her way on the street. We can’t leave her alive.”
“I guess killing is nothing to you. Your sister admitted you were arrested for murder.”
His grin mocks me and makes him look dangerous. “Is that what she said?”
Retreat always looks like weakness so I take a step forward. “Are you saying it isn’t true?”
Scorn curls his lips. “I did what they accuse me of, yes.”
I try not to notice how the oracle stares at us, mouth slack as we talk so casually about her death. The way she clutched my brother has torn my heart open. “This can’t be the only life she has known,” I say, winding a path through this maze because I must find a way to convince him. “Oracles are young. Look how old she is. I think she once had a baby who died. Don’t you wonder why she was locked away?”
He unties the gag and shakes her. “What is your story? What secrets do you know?”
“You cannot treat me so roughly! You are a lowly servant, no better than mud.” She jerks out of his grasp, staring at something behind me.
I turn as Kalliarkos pulls himself out of the shaft.
“What is going on, Jes? Can’t you hear the High Priest’s procession? You must have secured the rope to the air shaft to come down. Is it untied so they won’t see it?”
The oracle struggles to her knees, crawling toward him. “Kallos! My love! I thought they banished you! But you have come back. I knew you would not abandon me, my heart!”
Astonished by this outburst Kalliarkos steps full into the lamplight. He is as handsome as an actor in a tragic play pretending rapt wonderment at an extraordinary coincidence.
Her expression crumples, her weeping an incongruous dissonance across the priests’ harmonious singing. “You are not my beloved Kallos! Where is my baby that they stole from us?”