Free The Devil's Garden by Jane Kindred Page B

summer coats, yet lotuses floated in the pooling marsh water despite the lateness of the year. The Anamnesis was a winding body of contradictions, its color ever changing and its life ever flouting the seasons.
    Azhra had dismissed her seventeen years as nothing, but Ume had lived a lifetime of experience in those insignificant years. The accomplishment in her art that had earned her these apartments was won through many days and nights of walking In’La’s pubs and alleys, offering what she had, inventing what she did not. If she lived in comparative luxury, each thread of silk, each velvet cushion, the smallest crystal bead or diamond chip she’d purchased with the gift of her flesh.
    Perhaps it was understandable if she wasn’t anxious to expurgate the Meer from the temple and the city his ancestors had breathed into being—so the stories went, and so Ume had begun to believe. Out of touch with his creation, tucked away in his altar room and his studios as if he’d forgotten what it meant to be alive, MeerAlya had given all there was to the people of In’La. He had surely given pieces of himself. It was the very meaning of the ancient Deltan vet, the root of blessing— gift of flesh. Legend said the Meer had once been captured and devoured for their blessings. Were they still just captives in the temples they’d erected?
    She might as well be one of them, trapped in the rooms she’d made, unable to stop what was coming. What good would any of it be if the Meerarchy fell? What good was a temple courtesan without a temple in which to offer the sacrament? And when had she become such a damned Meerist?
    Ume was wearing a groove in her carpets and a groove in her mind, worrying the same thoughts endlessly. And all the while a canker was spreading in the Garden.
     
    The blessing day arrived, and still Ume would not go out. Instead a carriage was sent from the temple to fetch her. Whatever her service to the Meer might bring about, there was no escaping this destiny.
    Ume dressed with great care, guilt driving her to consider with each garment, each jewel, what the Meer desired. She chose a silk dyed brilliant rose, fine threads embroidered with tiny damselflies in the same hue, with a series of insets in the matte side of the fabric that rippled with each step like the great river in a spring wind. Sleeves that were a mere whisper of sheerest blush hung in a liquid drape from her fingertips, and a caul of pink glass beads covered her hair, with a piece of silver tatting for the veil. Her eyes she painted in flushed pink, with silver dust forming the Irises of Alya at the center of her lids. She finished with dark strokes of kohl and a pomegranate stain for her cheeks but left her lips pale. The carriage was kept waiting.
    In silver slippers that laced up the ankle, Ume descended, pulling on a pair of long tatting gloves to match her veil. A crowd had gathered. The Meer had sent one of the infamous horseless carriages, huffing and shaking as it billowed steam.
    When Ume alighted from it at the steps of the temple, she emerged through a delicate fog. Though it was already the fading edge of dusk, the masses who’d gathered to petition the blessings of the Meer still straggled from the temple—yet these same people demanding vetmas of him tonight meant to oust him from his home in the morning.
    He was no longer on his dais, and Ume was led to a feast hall in the interior. The table was stunning. A tremendous length of ebony inlaid with silver, it was covered in food more abundant than she had ever seen—surely enough to feed the whole of In’La. MeerAlya sat at the head in a chair made of platinum, his naked body covered in luminous silver paint. His hair draped him so that he seemed to fade into the chair, and pale azure eyes peered out at her from a silvered idol like darts of gas flame.
    “Maiden Sky.” He spoke so low she barely heard him. “Come. Kneel beside me.”
    Ume obeyed, sinking to her knees with her