Death and the Emperor

Book 2 Chapter XIV: The Murder

THAT'S MORTALS FOR YOU, Death continued. THEY'VE ONLY GOT A FEW YEARS IN THIS WORLD AND THEY SPEND THEM ALL IN MAKING THINGS COMPLICATED FOR THEMSELVES. FASCINATING. -- Terry Pratchett, Mort

The dance ended. Kilan realised he had been holding Death's hand so tightly that it must have hurt her -- if she was mortal. She stepped back, staring at him silently with some indefinable emotion in her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

Then she had disappeared, and Kilan was left frozen in place. A cold knowledge of impending doom hung over him. He looked around at the party-goers milling around. Which one of them was the murderer? Which one was his victim?

A large clock hung over the doorway. Its hands indicated that the time was twenty minutes to midnight.

~~~~

Qihadal was not enjoying the ball. She hated having to dance -- or rather lumber awkwardly around the room -- with complete strangers, she hated everyone staring at her as if she was some sort of curiosity, and she hated having to talk to people who she suspected were privately laughing at her not-yet-fluent Carannish.

Could she not be allowed to leave early? Did she have to suffer through hours and hours of this?

She sat out most of the dances, excusing herself on the grounds of her condition making it awkward for her. That wasn't the only reason, but it was certainly a reason.

Her pregnancy was now obvious, even with loose clothing. She could feel the child move almost every hour. There were times when she could almost forget the circumstances of its conception, when she planned its future. Sometimes, when she was in a relatively good mood, she imagined killing her father and all her half-brothers, and putting this child on the throne of Malish.

But then there were times when she hated its very existence, when she would claw her own abdomen open and rip the child from her womb if she could. On those days she locked herself in her room, screamed at the top of her lungs, and beat her hands bloody against the walls.

If Tinuviel knew what she was doing on those days, he never mentioned it. He had asked her once if she wanted to see a mind doctor -- at least, that was the impression she got from what he said. She had turned him down coldly. She might be furious and sometimes despairing, but she wasn't mad just yet.

Around her, Carannish aristocrats laughed and talked and danced as if they hadn't a care in the world. Qihadal felt more alone in the middle of that glittering crowd than she would have felt in the middle of a wilderness.

A flash of red and gold among the crowd caught her eye. She looked up. Her blood ran cold.

Tinuviel was dancing with Death in the midst of all those people.

Qihadal's first thought was shock. What was that creature doing here? Why did no one seem to have noticed her? Next came anger. Did Tinuviel not fear someone realising what he was dancing with? Did he not care?

She was not exactly jealous. She knew perfectly well that they were married in name only, and that -- insane though the idea seemed -- Tinuviel was already married to Death. There was nothing shocking to her about a man having more than one wife. It was the rule rather than the exception for a Malishese man to have three or more wives. Her own father had over sixty wives, and almost as many concubines. So this disordered state of affairs seemed perfectly normal to Qihadal. What was not perfectly normal was the identity of Tinuviel's other wife.

Humans did not marry gods. That was plain common sense. Untold misery followed when they did. And whether or not Death was a goddess, the same rule applied.