Garden of Embers: Beneath Devouring Eyes #2

Chapter 7, Part C

Domi stared up at Comitas from his uncomfortable chair in the tablinum, his heart hammering in his chest as the protocol handler's words echoed in his mind.

Six and Thirty Days. You must perform the Rite of Six and Thirty Days.

He shook his head hard. "No." His body felt tense and coiled, ready to spring up from his high-backed, stiff chair and stomp away from the office. Away from Comitas and duty.

Pursing her lips, the protocol handler studied him. She looked annoyed, and for a moment he wondered if she was still pissy about his Pullati workforce idea. She'd been so dismayed earlier that morning when he told her about his plan and informed her he intended to put Merula in charge of the project.

After a moment he realized it was not true irritation he saw. Lately, he had started to figure out that her face often looked all pinched and sour whenever she felt unsure about how to deal with him. Comitas didn't like when things were out of place, out of control, or beyond her understanding.

And though she cared about him in her stuffy way, Domi knew that at the end of the day that's what he was to her. A thing. Just one of the candles or mirrors in Radix's contraption, or a spoke in the wheel of royal government. A thing she must keep in its place and working the way it was supposed to function.

And right now that meant making him perform the Rite of Six and Thirty Days, and he just couldn't.

Comitas seemed to decide on how to deal with him. Domi saw it in her face as she sighed and relaxed her expression, allowing empathy to radiate past her cold and stern exterior. "Basilicus, I understand your feelings, but--"

Anger and the old, old hurt flared, a crimson sun seething in his chest. "No, you don't."

"I do, Basilicus. I--"

"Oh," he snapped, "did your parents abandon you on the streets, too?" He balled his hands into fists where they were supposed to be folded, prim and proper, in his lap. "Did they steal your magic and make you sick from birth? How can you possibly understand what that's like?"

Comitas closed her eyes. "Yes, Basilicus," she said, and something about her soft voice made him frown in unease. "It is true that no one stole my birthright." She shook her head and opened her eyes, looking down at him from where she stood, graceful and imposing, before him. "Nature itself deprived me of my diopetes. My parents gave me to the Pyrrhaei civil service rather than raise a sub-Lightless themselves. So while I have not suffered as you have suffered, I do understand some of what you are feeling, Basilicus."

Domi swallowed. If she was the abandoned Pyrrhaei kid of Promethidae, she should understand a little, then. So how could she expect this of him? "Then don't make me do this, Erus," he pleaded. "Someone else can honor her. I can't. I won't."

"You will, Basilicus," she said, voice crisp and firm. "It is protocol."

<>

Domi had never visited an eidolon pillar before. One month ago the only people he knew worth remembering when they died were all Pullati, and no Pullatus could afford to have an eidolon made.

He had done the Rite of Six and Thirty days though, far too many times. The most recent time had been at the end of last Germinating for his aunt, Cissos. Tooth rot had taken her, spreading infection from her mouth to her heart. But there had been many others over the years, Pullati dead of beatings, diabetes, freezing, hunger, bad teeth, bad falls, bad water, you name it.

Domi had never gone to an eidolon pillar for any of those Rites of Six and Thirty Days or the annual Rite of Remembrance since there were no eidolons to visit. Instead, he and his Ma talked to the Eternal Radiance, asking it the questions they could not ask the dead. And they talked to each other, sharing stories they could not coax from the deceased.