The Power and the Glory

Book 2 Chapter XVII: Abi Beyond

Author's Note: Death and the Emperor crossover ahead! Also, spot the Voyage of the Dawn Treader reference :D

Like the pain of a bad wound, the effect of a deep shock takes some while to be felt. When a child is told, for the first time in his life, that a person he has known is dead, although he does not disbelieve it, he may well fail to comprehend it and later ask--perhaps more than once--where the dead person is and when he is coming back. -- Richard Adams, Watership Down

Siarvin carried Ilaran's body back to the palace. Abi trailed silently behind. Ilaran's blood still dripped on the ground. She stared blankly at the spots of red. Her earlier nausea had completely disappeared. All that remained was an all-consuming numbness. There was no grief or horror or even shock. The events of the last few minutes seemed like a nightmare she'd wake up from soon.

The guards were nowhere to be seen at the palace gate. Lights and cheerful voices in the guardhouse suggested they were all staying inside out of the cold.

It was strange how the mind focused on trivial things during or after a crisis. The guards and their carelessness were the first things to break through Abi's shock. She felt much more angry at them than at anything else that had happened. Tears of rage stung her eyes. She couldn't even tell what she was crying for -- Ilaran, who she'd barely known but who she'd indirectly killed? The corpse she'd dragged out of its dreamless slumber, turned into a weapon, then destroyed for misunderstanding her orders yet believing it was doing exactly what she'd told it to? Herself, for all the mistakes she'd made that had led to this?

Through the grey haze that shrouded the world she saw a figure ahead. As she drew closer she realised it was Irímé. He stared in wide-eyed horror at the scene before him.

"Oh gods, what happened?"

"The assassin stabbed him," Siarvin said shortly. It was the first time he'd spoken since he found Abi and Ilaran. When he first saw Ilaran's body he'd made a sound somewhere between a sob and a wail hastily cut off. That sound followed by his grim silence had somehow been worse than any amount of shouting or accusations.

Abi flinched. It hadn't occurred to her until now that Siarvin didn't know how Ilaran had actually died. How would he? He saw the dead assassin with a blood-stained knife beside her. He saw Ilaran covered in blood. He saw Abi still trying futilely to save Ilaran's life. He did not see the walking corpse, because Abi had already destroyed it.

Hard on the heels of that thought came an equally depressing one. She would have to tell him the truth. It wasn't fair to let him blame someone else, even an assassin, for what she had done.

"Keep Shizuki out of the way," Siarvin told Irímé.

Irímé nodded. All the colour had drained from his face and his eyes were as wide as dinner-plates. He turned and fled into the palace without a word.

Siarvin carried Ilaran through the front door and into the room on the left. Abi followed like a lost puppy. Again and again she tried to gather the courage to speak. Again and again her words turned to ash and choked her before she could open her mouth.

The room on the left turned out to be a bedroom. Everything about it looked as if Ilaran had just stepped out for a short time and would be back at any minute. A coat was draped over the back of a chair. A sewing kit, of all things, sat on the desk. A chess-board that had apparently been abandoned in the middle of a game stood in front of a small table. The table itself was decorated with a plaque written in a foreign language and a candle.

A half-finished letter lay on the bedside table. Abi glanced at it without really meaning to. The last line read, Tell the servants to prepare for my return within the next month. A sudden tightness in her chest suggested her ribs were trying to contract around her lungs. Someone would have to add a post-script to that letter. A post-script that would make the last line bitterly, horribly ironic.