The Judging Eye Read Free

he
exclaimed to Ajokli. They laughed together, child and idol, loud enough to blot
out the chorus of chanting voices.
     
    "They're all like
that," he explained. "All you have to do is pinch ."
     
    "Pinch what,
Kelmomas?" a rich, feminine voice asked from behind him. Mother.
     
    Another boy would have been
startled, even ashamed, to be surprised by his mother after doing such a thing,
but not Kelmomas. Despite the obscuring pillars and voices, he had known where
she was all along, following her prim footsteps (though he knew not how) in a
corner of his soul.
     
    "Are you done ?"
he exclaimed, whirling. Her body-slaves had painted her white, so that she
looked like statuary beneath the folds of her crimson gown. A girdle etched
with Kyranean motifs cinched her waist. A headdress of jade serpents framed her
cheeks and pressed order on her luxurious black hair. But even disguised like
this she seemed the world's most beautiful thing.
     
    "Quite done," the
Empress replied. She smiled and secretly rolled her eyes, letting him know that
she would much rather dote on her precocious son than languish in the company
of priests and ministers. So much of what she did, Kelmomas knew, she did for
the sake of appearances.
     
    Just like him—only not nearly so
well.
     
    "You prefer my company ,
don't you, Mommy?"
     
    He spoke this as a question even
though he knew the answer; it troubled her when he read aloud the movements of
her soul.
     
    Smiling, she bent and held out
her arms. He fell into her myrrh-scented embrace, breathed deep her
encompassing warmth. Her fingers combed through his unkempt hair, and he looked
up into her smiling gaze. Even so far from the candle-wheels she seemed to shine.
He pressed his cheek against the golden-plates of her girdle, held her so tight
that tears were squeezed from his eyes. Never was there such a beacon, it
seemed. Never was there such a sanctuary.
     
    Mommy...
     
    "Come," she said,
drawing him by the hand back through the pillared gallery. He followed, more
out of devotion than obedience. He glanced back for one last look at Ajokli,
saw with satisfaction that he still laughed at the little beetle scuttling in
circles at his feet.
     
    Hand in hand, they walked toward
the slots of white light. The singing had trailed into a gaggle of hushed
voices, and a deeper, more forbidding resonance had risen to take its place—one
that shivered through the very floor. Kelmomas paused, suddenly loath to leave
the Allosium's dust-and-stone quiet. His mother's arm was drawn out like a rope
behind her; their interlocked fingers broke apart.
     
    She turned. "Kel? What's
wrong, sweetling?"
     
    From where he stood a bar of
white sky framed her, reaching as high as any tree. She seemed little more than
smoke beneath it, something any draft could dissolve and carry away.
"Nothing," he lied.
     
    Mommy! Mommy!
     
    Kneeling before him, she licked
the pads of her fingers, which were palm-pink against the white painted across
the backs of her hands, and began fussing with his hair. Light twittered across
the filigree of her rings, flashing like some kind of code. Such a mess! her
grin said.
     
    "It's proper that you be
anxious," she said, distracted by her ministrations. She looked him square
in the eye, and he stared into the pith of her, past the paint and skin, past
the sheath of interlocking muscles, down to the radiant truth of her love.
     
    She would die for you, the
secret voice—the voice that had been within him always—whispered.
     
    "Your father," she
continued, "says that we need fear only when we lose our fear." She
ran her hand from his temple to his chin. "When we become too accustomed
to power and luxury."
     
    Father was forever saying
things.
     
    He smiled, looked down in
embarrassment, in the way that never failed to slow her pulse and quicken her
eyes. An adorable little son on the surface, even as he sneered beneath.
     
    Father.
     
    Hate him, the secret
voice said, but fear him