The Last Plutarch Page 2

  I’ve lost.

  The knowledge was indistinguishable from the physical pain. There was a sense of betrayal, a vast letdown. How could he be denied his destiny? Then there was only the intense pressure on his collar, the radiating pain, the tourney-attendants helping him out of the circle. Dominus and Reed appeared. Meric felt faint, but he still managed to catch his friend’s eye.

  Should’ve kept your distance.

  Dominus didn’t have to say it, and Meric was too angry to admit it. He’d come so far, been so close. When he saw they were moving him toward the Arena’s exit, he pulled back. His helpers urged him onward.

  “Wait–just wait!” he cried, cursing. The pain made him irritable.

  “Meric, you need a Priest,” Dominus said.

  “Not yet.”

  “Meric–”

  “Not yet!”

  She was coming.

  The Arena was enclosed by a solid roof. Suddenly the apex liquefied and shifted to form an opening. Down through the aperture beamed a shaft of white light. The crowd fell silent: a Plutarch was approaching.

  Descending with ethereal grace, Issenian, Queen of Beauty, appeared within the light. Meric’s eyes watered. His fingers clenched and unclenched. His chest ached with longing. Issenian was nude but for a vine of white flowers. Her golden hair was bound by a diamond crown. A holy radiance enveloped her. The curve of her bare thighs was hypnotizing.

  A foot above the ground, the Plutarch came to a halt. She walked through the air toward the First Bladesman. Hadric knelt. Slowly, he made the Sign of Fealty, pointing up with his right index finger laid against his forehead, then touching his heart, then returning the finger to his brow. The thick-armed veteran–who’d laughed while cutting down savages in the Wildlands; who’d known every fresh-faced beauty in the pillowhouses; who’d carved the names of dead companions into his left deltoid–this jaded mountain of a man wept like a child as he kissed the proffered hand of the goddess; as she detached a length of vine and formed it into a wreath of white flowers; as she placed the wreath upon his head. A Priest, head bowed, held out the ceremonial pauldron and silver cloak. Hadric already had three pauldrons squirreled away. The cloak was a different story. The cloak was passed from Champion to Champion and could be worn only during their reign.

  Issenian buckled the pauldron onto Hadric’s right shoulder, drew the cloak around him with a flutter, and clasped the brooch at his neck. The wetness on Hadric’s cheeks was reflected in the light of his upturned face as the Plutarch floated back into the heights of the Fog.

  It was too much for Meric–he should’ve been the one kneeling there. He should’ve felt that hand, that wreath, that cloak, that humility. Moaning, he collapsed into a thicket of arms.

  *

  They carried him to the Bathhouse. Meric was half-conscious as his supporters paused before the marble wall. Reed knelt in the prayer-circle and made the Sign of Fealty. The wall shifted and flowed like liquid. Meric’s helpers carried him inside.

  An eight foot statue of a Plutarch stood opposite the entrance: Abraxas, stern as Zeus. Four more statues were evenly spaced around the rotund room. The heads changed from day to day, morphing between the visages of prominent Plutarchs, though all carried an aura of stern disapproval. All but Dominus bowed their heads as they brought Meric to the black-marble bath inlaid into the floor. Meric shuddered as they cut away his padded clothing and lowered him into the holy water. The tourney-attendants told him to relax. Dominus and Reed told him he’d win next year. He heard them distantly, seeing Hadric kneel to steal his glory.

  The Priest appeared. No silver armbands, no canes, no status symbols for the holy man–only a plain black robe and a necklace bearing the pentagonal symbol of his order. He lit the five holy candles around the bath to drive away evil spirits. He removed his necklace and placed it in a niche on the pedestal beside the bath. He raised his hands, asked the Plutarchs to speak to God on Meric’s behalf, and recited a holy incantation, finishing with the Sign of Fealty.

  The water around Meric turned gray, then mother-of-pearl. It grew denser, hardening in places. Meric breathed deep as the holy liquid seeped queerly into his neck and shoulder.

  “Be still,” the Priest ordered.

  It had been some years since his last trip to a Bathhouse. He’d almost forgotten the oddness of it, the way the wound went cold and numb, the slow repair of the bone within. On Meric’s first Healing, when he’d broken a finger wrestling with Reed, he’d asked the Priest, “Why doesn’t God heal people faster?”

  His mother had made indignant sounds, but the Priest had only chuckled before answering.

  “A little time to heal lets us reflect on why we’ve been hurt.”

  God had always favored those injured on behalf of the Plutarchs. With others, it was not always so. When Meric was younger, there’d been a farmer, Timor, who’d spent all his free time in spirithouses. One day Timor had tumbled drunk down a flight of stairs, breaking an ankle. He’d limped to the nearest Bathhouse–but his prayers for entrance had gone unheeded. Timor had pleaded, begged, and cursed. He’d howled and cried. Yet still the Bathhouse door had not appeared. Plebians had gathered around him, asking what he’d done to offend the Plutarchs. Timor had been adamant: he’d done nothing. Refusing to leave, he’d slept outside the marble wall.

  For a day and a half, Timor had maintained his stubborn and painful vigil, offering ever more fervent denials of wrongdoing. He’d grown sober, hungry, thirsty, feverish. Only in a desperate hour had he broken down and confessed that he’d blasphemied against the Plutarchs in a spirithouse. Tears had streamed down his face. Confessions had spilled forth. He’d dragged himself to the Temple, refusing to be carried, and prayed for forgiveness. He’d made offerings of many personal possessions. He’d given up his meager store of ration tokens. Only then had he been admitted him into the holy waters of the Bathhouse.

  Meric closed his eyes and felt the pain in his shoulder lessen. Swallowing his bitterness, he thanked the Plutarchs for speaking on his behalf, for communicating his need to be healed. He promised he would not fail them again.

  Dominus was crouched beside the bath, watching Meric. Reed was talking to the Priest across the room. At sixteen, he still engaged strangers as though they were old friends. Dominus raised his eyebrows at Meric.

  “Shouldn’t have charged,” Meric said quietly.

  “You almost had him.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me to feint more?”

  Dominus laughed softly.

  “You made it further than me,” he said.

  “You had a bad match-up. Golus was fast as sin,” Meric said.

  “Yeah, well. If I’d won, I would’ve had to face Hadric next, and after I beat him, I would’ve had to put you out. You’d be bitter for a year, so I guess it’s all for the best.”

  Meric smiled slightly, closing his eyes and leaning his head back.

  “You’d need a Plutarch’s help to beat me,” he said softly.

  “Which one helps me win when we spar?” Dominus asked.

  “I think you’re confused about the meaning of the term ‘win.’”

  “I thought beating you bloody was winning. Is there another word you’d prefer?”

  “My mistake. It’s your memory at fault, not your words,” said Meric.

  “Oh, I see. We’ll have to consult Swan.”

  Meric opened his eyes and gave his friend a look.

  “Swan? She thinks an atomblade slices very thin bread,” he said.

  “True, but I bet she knows how many times a week you’re in a bad mood–and that’s how often I beat you.”

  “Dear Plutarchs, save Dominus from his delusions,” Meric prayed, sighing.

  *

  Reed, Meric, and Dominus left the Batthouse together. Friends, trainers, cousins, and fellow combatants had come to check on him, but they’d since drifted away. Meric’s collar bone was intact, though the Bathhouse hadn’t taken the ache from his muscles, nor the sting
from his pride. An offering would have to be made for his Healing–and then a second one, because he needed a gift for Swan. His tokens for the month had already gone to feeding his family. The offerings would have to be something personal.

  The Matron Adams was in the kitchen when they arrived. A small, inhumanly patient woman, she wore a single strand of bronze beads in her hair. The bronze was almost shameful for a woman her age. She’d had silver ones, and bangles as well, but she’d traded them to feed her children in the years after Meric’s father had died. The only one she hadn’t sold was the first he’d given her. With Meric and Reed both earning ration tokens, she could’ve purchased more beads since, or other status goods, but she’d lost her taste for such things.

  She gave her boys a hopeful smile as they entered. Meric avoided eye contact, and she knew at once the outcome of the fight. Across from her sat Swan. Meric hadn’t planned on seeing her until later that night. He should’ve expected her though. Swan knew the tourney was important to him, even if she was sometimes comically ignorant about the process of fighting in it. She would’ve come to the Arena to watch, had it not been unseemly for women to attend such events.

  The demon Anwa Babi had stolen Meric’s first memory of Swan–that was how long they’d known each other. Their mothers were friends, and since childhood, he’d been aware of a vague communal intention for Swan and himself to marry. He’d thought nothing of it until they were fourteen, when a physical attraction had developed almost overnight. Though he was bold in other matters, it had been another nine months before he’d risked kissing her, and they were sixteen before they’d shyly shed their clothes in a hidden corner of a strawberry field.

  They kept it quiet, if not entirely secret. There was no risk of children–Swan’s womb-regulator wouldn’t be removed until her marriage proposal was blessed by a Plutarch. Still, there was a general taboo against such intimate fraternization, and Meric felt ashamed afterwards, like he was letting down the Plutarchs. It was that shame he’d felt in the moments before his Healing. He’d wondered if he’d have to confess at the Temple first, like Timor with his blasphemy. Fortunately his offenses were not so deep. If their relationship was a taboo, it was one quietly broken by teens all over Panchaea.

  Meric intended to legitimize the relationship with an actual proposal. Putting the terms together and obtaining a Plutarch’s blessing would take time and tokens and rare goods, however. A Promissory Gift to Swan was the first major step, an open declaration of his intentions. During the tourney, he’d decided he’d take that step as soon as the fighting was over.

  Swan’s dark eyes regarded Meric from the kitchen table, her black hair pulled back, a handful of beads enmeshed. She had a quiet, serene self-possession. Rarely did it falter. Perceiving the fight’s outcome, just as Meric’s mother had, she gave him a sympathetic hug.

  “Was the fight very long?” Swan asked. The Healing had taken several hours.

  “Long and skillful,” Dominus said before Meric could answer, squeezing past to inspect the food in the heatery. “Lots of fuss afterwards. Meric wanted to leave but I made him stay. Reed too. Apologies, Matron Adams.”

  Meric glanced at him. As boys, they’d trained in the ethics of Numanor. Lying to one’s elders was a blatant violation. Dominus would have a lot to atone for if he ever confessed at the Temple. Reed’s eyebrows went up, but he held his tongue. Best not to worry their mother with the details.

  “I’m just glad you two are okay. Someone dies every year in those tournaments. Remember when that poor Reynolds boy broke his neck? Thank the Plutarchs neither of you broke anything,” the Matron said.

  “Yes, thank the Plutarchs,” Dominus said, winking at Meric behind her back.

  “Sit down, have some beefpod.”

  Dominus and Swan stayed for dinner. It would cost extra rations, but his friends would make up for it if they ran short later in the month. Dominus and Reed talked during the meal. Meric ate in silence. Dominus was less careful with his words than Meric would’ve liked. He used phrases that were vaguely disrespectful to the Plutarchs, and even though Meric was aware of the origin of his friend’s bitterness, his speech needled Meric’s fierce loyalty. Not to mention the potential hazards. Nothing good ever came of talking bad about those who Spoke to the Fog.

  After dinner, Meric walked Swan to the door.

  “Meet me behind the hill at noon the day after tomorrow,” she whispered. Meric’s heart skipped a beat. It had been a while since their last tryst.

  “I do love the taste of strawberries,” he said.

  Swan flashed a secretive smile before slipping into the Fog.

  CHAPTER 3

  Meric’s family’s home was on the edge of Panchaea, packed into a row of identical houses bordering the blackberry orchards. Orchards ringed the outer Fog, occupying much of the already limited land. To save space, each house was vertically oriented, the tiny rooms stacked like pancakes: kitchen, livinghall, washroom, and bedrooms. The oldest were given the highest bedrooms–to be closer to the Plutarchs. Ladders connected the levels.

  Meric and Reed had worked in the same orchard since they were children. Their fingers were stained with a permanent purplish tinge. Meric had loved blackberries as a child. Since then the taste had grown too familiar. Somehow Reed had never tired of it. He tended to sneak more from the vines than was proper–prompting a scolding from Meric.

  “It’s not like they’ll miss a few berries!” Reed would say.

  “They belong to the Plutarchs,” Meric would insist.

  “I don’t see them tending the vines.”

  “You listen too much to Dominus. It’s our duty to serve God’s Chosen. It’s our honor to grow their food.”

  The brothers mostly got along, but there was a stark difference in their attitudes. Meric was serious, almost severe. He rarely laughed. Reed floated casually through life. Even their appearances were in contrast, with Meric’s pale-blue eyes and Reed’s muddy brown ones; Meric’s rigid jaw-line and Reed’s round face.

  The morning after the tourney, both brothers were in the fields. The Fog tended to scatter what light it didn’t block. At sunrise, Panchaea was suffused with a rosy glow–even more so in the orchards, on the edge of the city. Meric was too preoccupied to notice. His collar was sore, and his muscles ached.

  How amazing it would’ve been to have felt Issenian drape her silver cloak around his shoulders. Swan was beautiful, but Issenian was a goddess. A brush of her marble-smooth skin would’ve left Meric trembling. Missing that was a bitter pill, even aside from losing the tourney and the title of First Bladesman. Something deep inside him was desperate for recognition from the Plutarchs. He was destined to become something, and anyone with silver eyes should’ve been able to see it–if he could only catch their attention.

  Neighbors were out in the fields to east and west. Dominus would be growing beefpods not far out of sight, and Swan would be spraying strawberries further around the curve. A tenth of the tokens they earned were given back to the Plutarchs; the rest were used for food and goods. Or just food, more often. Rarely was anything left over.

  Blackberry vines needed constant pruning for the fruit to grow. Frequent watering and soil treatments helped. The work was too familiar to be called “interesting,” but Meric took a certain pride in it. His vine-rows grew more berries than any of his neighbors. When he noticed a few yellowing leaf-tips near the far end of Reed’s rows, he chided his brother on keeping too little iron in the soil.

  “Worry about your own rows,” Reed said.

  The Fog was thinnest along the edges of Panchaea, but it still absorbed some of the light, leaving the orchards struggling for nutrients. The soil had to be kept in ideal condition. The plants would’ve done better beyond the perimeter-wall, but that was out of the question.

  Meric wiped his brow, looking north. Beyond the Fog, large birds wheeled and dove. A grassy kilometer-wide clearing surrounded Panchaea. The trees defining its edge marked the start of the Wildl
ands. Swan loved those trees, despite only ever glimpsing them distantly from her bedroom window. Meric couldn’t understand why. Thoughts of what lay beyond the Fog made him uneasy.

  Grandpa Gareth, the aged veteran who sat outside the spirithouse on Market Ave, had told Meric how the sky in the Wildlands reached unspeakable heights; how a vast blue ceiling covered the world; how there were fires in the ceiling at night, which Gareth postulated were the campsites of demons or lost spirits.

  “White puffs be drifting up high too. I thought at first they be holding palaces, and the Plutarchs be travelling outside Panchaea, but everybody knows God don’t let the Fog into the Wildlands,” Gareth had said.

  According to the Priests, God had seeded the Wildlands with savages to test the faithful and remind them of their place. Gareth claimed he’d seen their leader once, a barbarian named Trajan.

  “Skin as red as blood. Teeth like black daggers…”

  Other veterans derided Grandpa Gareth. Nevertheless, rumors and possibilities had filled Meric’s head in lieu of facts, and if he ever needed a reminder of the very real dangers that lurked in the Wildlands, he had only to look for the long-barreled turrets mounted at regular intervals atop the perimeter-wall.

  *

  Meric was choosing offerings in his room after work when Dominus arrived.

  “Surely, not that one,” Dominus said, indicating the foot-tall statue in Meric’s hand. It was a statue of Ovus and Khosivus locked in combat. Ovus, the mythical Plebian, was done up in gold. Khosivus–the winged demon, captain of Ozymandias–was onyx. Meric had received the statue on Giving Day when he was twelve.