mere absence of sound. It can settle on a scene despite, say, the thin wail of a woman weeping. Even the laboured breathing of someone in severe pain does little to disturb such stillness. This silence is a calm, black pool of quiet. It is the sound of shock.
Noetos remembered all too well what such silence sounded like. He had experienced it in the Summer Palace, in the aftermath of the slaughter of the Neherian gentry. It was a stunned disbelief at what had happened coupled with an expectation that he would soon wake up to find nothing of the sort had occurred. But, of course, it had.
No waking from this nightmare.
He watched from a distance as his travelling companions stared at each other, eyes wide, saying nothing. When finally they began to move, it was in slow motion, hands fluttering with the need to do something but not knowing what. The fisherman had been nothing but an observer of the events leading to a man’s castration and the violent death of the one who had wielded the knife, but he could help now with restoring calm. Guidance, order and leadership were what were needed. He made his way towards the tight knot of people, ready to assist.
“He is gone.” The one-eyed priest’s voice was a ripple of sound breaking the deep silence as though a pebble had been dropped in a pool.
“Yes,” said Duon, looking up, his hand on Dryman’s unmoving chest. “He’s gone, all praise to the gods.” This was followed by a grimace, no doubt as he realised anew just whom he was praising.
Noetos strode across the sandy floor of the enclosure, and his two children followed him. Three piles made up of enormous slabs of rock were the only interruption to the smooth floor, apart from the figures gathered around the dead, the injured and the maimed. And a smaller rock soaked in blood.
The thought came to him that of the three groups drawn together in the contention of the gods, his had fared the worst. Gawl and Dagla were dead. Of the miners, only Tumar and Seren remained. The Fossan fishermen Sautea and Mustar were still with him, but they had come north because of Arathé, not him, and might well leave at any moment. Omiy the alchemist had betrayed him, Bregor had left him and Noetos had not succeeded in getting Cylene to join him. True, the Amaqi had just been reduced from four to three with the death of Dryman, but that had been their only loss. If you don’t count the loss of thirty thousand soldiers, he reminded himself. Even I haven’t failed that spectacularly.
The Falthans had done best. All eight remained alive, though Stella had apparently lost an arm—she used some form of magic to disguise this, but it was only intermittently effective—and the priest an eye. They haven’t had whirlwinds and Neherians to cope with. He frowned. But now we all have to deal with angry gods and mysterious voices in people’s heads, as well as blood and death delivered by human hands.
“I didn’t mean the mercenary,” Conal snapped. “The Most High, the Father, he is gone. I have my own voice back again. And I won’t be using it to praise any gods, that’s for certain.”
“What is it like, priest?” Heredrew asked him, his voice deceptively gentle. “What does it feel like being forced to do the bidding of the Most High? Do I detect anger, friend? Unhappiness at being made the mouthpiece of a god?”
Conal scowled and turned away. No doubt the continuation of some irrelevant debate, Noetos thought. Some people would argue at a graveside. More important than any argument were the three figures at the centre of the gathering: the dead mercenary, who had been some sort of avatar for one of the gods; the maimed servant, who lay on his back, his breath rasping; and the grieving cosmographer.
It was this last person Noetos made towards. Lenares always made him uncomfortable with her uncanny way of seeing things, her facility with numbers, and her lack of the simple social graces that kept people from hurting each other unintentionally. And in that last, hypocrite, how is she different from you? She was unpredictable, and Noetos was not the only one who found her difficult, he was sure. He was able to overcome his reluctance and approach her not because of some kindness of heart, but because of his regard for Cylene, her twin. The sister Lenares hadn’t