The Boy from Ilysies

by Pearl North

  But Siblea ignored her as well as the excited whispers of the gathered throng. “People of the Corvariate Citadel,” he proclaimed, “you forget yourselves. You are not animals, to fight one another and grovel on the ground for a few morsels of food. For shame! You are men! Citizens of the largest, most advanced city this side of the ocean. Do not let the Lit King take away all that you are! Set aside your differences. Join together to fight the usurper!”

  The crowd’s reaction was mixed. Some nodded in approval and shouted, “Yes! Death to the lits!” while others shook their heads and looked skeptical. The tall, thin merchant stepped forward from the crowd and said, “Respecting your honor, Censor, you have not been here these past many months. We did fight him, at first. He has many men on his side, and they will stop at nothing. They ride out of town and raid the villages, so the farmers have nothing to bring to market. And the crop this year is bad, too. In the city, those who oppose him are killed. I am sure”—the man looked about him at the others gathered around—“there are many here today who would oppose the Lit King if they could. But how?”

  Siblea nodded. “You speak well, sir. Those of us who have been redeemed are at fault. We should have returned to the city instead of focusing all of our efforts on the new community at the Libyrinth. If we had known what was taking place here, we would have come to your aid much sooner than this.”

  “Siblea! We can’t…What are you doing? Stop!” said Hilloa, but everyone ignored her.

  “But now I have returned,” said Siblea. “Those who have the stomach to fight the Lit King, and to put the citadel back to what it once was, follow me!” Siblea jumped down from the barrel and at last turned to Po and Hilloa. “See what you can get for the beer. I will take those who are willing back to the tavern, where we can plan our next move.”

  “Siblea, you can’t—” But he was gone before Hilloa could even finish her sentence. She and Po stood staring at each other in the midst of the rapidly depopulating marketplace.

  “Are they all following him back to the tavern?” asked Po. He thought of Ayma and her reaction should half the town arrive and demand beer.

  “No,” said Hilloa. “Most of them are just running away.”

  They managed to make a trade with a woman selling beets and pulse. She let them know she would have preferred grain or Ilysian currency, but she was eager to flee the site of Siblea’s impromptu uprising.

  “Look, Po, you take these back to the tavern, okay?” said Hilloa. “I think I’d better find Selene and let her know what’s going on.”

  17

  Siblea’s Revolution

  When Po got to the tavern, Siblea and six other men were in close conversation. Ayma was nowhere in sight.

  “He has a lot of followers in the city, mostly because people are afraid of him,” Ben, the dark-haired man from the market, was saying. “The uprising took everyone by surprise.”

  “It was brutal, Censor,” said the barley merchant.

  Po walked up to the table of men. “Where is Ayma?” he demanded.

  “The wench?” said Ben.

  Po leaned toward him. “What does that mean?”

  Siblea held up a restraining hand. “Ben means no disrespect. She must be in the back, Po. She was here when we came in.” Without taking a breath, he turned back to the other men. “But what about his fellow inmates? How many of them are still with him?”

  Po knew Siblea lied. Ben did offer Ayma disrespect, but he didn’t want to take the time now to confront him about it. Behind the bar was an archway. It led into a close, warm space with a stove, a sink, a counter, and a chair. Two of the walls were stone—the outer walls of the building. The ones adjacent to the bar were wood, their finish long ago peeled and many of the boards dried and cracked from the heat of the stove. At the far end of the room, between the stove and the wall was a little gap. Po saw one end of a pallet poking out from there. Ayma stood at the sink, washing mugs.

  At his footfalls she spun around. The wet tankard in her hand slipped free and crashed to the floor. For a moment, the look on her face was one of stark terror.

  Po backed up. “I’m sorry. I startled you.”

  Ayma blinked and took a deep breath. “You don’t have to apologize to me, sir.”

  It seemed an odd thing to say, but Po did not question her. He knelt and picked up the shards of the broken tankard. “Have you any glue to mend this with?”

  “It doesn’t matter. There are many more tankards here than will ever be used again. You don’t have to do that—let me.”

  He stood, his hands full of pottery shards. “You want me to hand them to you? I’m afraid you’ll get cut.”

  She laughed and her smile reached her eyes. Shaking her head, she grabbed a pail and held it out for him. He dropped the broken pottery in it and turned to the sink. “You had a bad fright. Let me finish this.”

  As he began washing mugs, she stared at him, openmouthed, to all appearances dumbfounded.

  He paused in the washing. “Can I get you a beer? You seem…” Uncomfortable, he wanted to say, but felt that would be rude.

  “Why do you do my work for me?”

  Po didn’t know how to answer. “Do I do it poorly?”

  She shook her head.

  Po fetched her a beer and, since she remained in the kitchen, brought it to her there. “Here, please, make yourself comfortable.”

  Nonplussed, Ayma sat in the chair and allowed him to press the tankard of ale into her hands.

  Po washed and dried the mugs, and put them on the shelf behind the bar. He took the sacks of food back into the kitchen. “Hey, guess what? We have food! Beets and pulse, plenty for everyone, see?” Her eyes did light up at that. Then, a moment later, she looked worried again. “Will the others be staying?”

  “The others?” Po began scrubbing beets.

  “The men who are with Censor Siblea.”

  Po thought about that. In the back of his mind was the knowledge that Siblea was acting against Selene’s wishes, and at cross-purposes to the mission the Redeemer had given them. He wondered if he should do something about it. Yet it didn’t seem right to let people like Ayma suffer if they could help them. He decided it was best to wait for Selene and see what she thought should be done. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Ayma nodded thoughtfully and took a sip of beer. A line appeared between her eyebrows.

  Po remembered the way the one man had spoken of her. “Did one of them offer you insult?” he asked.

  Ayma appeared not to know what that meant. “Insult?”

  “Were any of them disrespectful to you?”

  One side of her mouth rose in a grin and she gave a brief, incredulous laugh. “You say the funniest things, sir.”

  He was missing something, and it was important. He could tell because the feeling had become very familiar in the past year, and since he’d met Ayma, he’d had it a lot. He turned to face the sink again. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and tried to forget about everything he knew. He turned and opened his eyes again, and tried to just see Ayma, as she was right now, and nothing more.

  A young woman just barely past girlhood, small, alone, and afraid, sat in a chair holding a mug of beer. She wasn’t drinking it. When she looked at him, there was both confusion and hope in her eyes. Outside the kitchen, the men’s voices became loud and angry. She flinched.

  Po dried his hands and knelt at her feet. “I won’t let them hurt you,” he said.

  She opened her mouth. “Do you mean it?”

  He nodded. He took the beer from her hands and she rested them on his shoulders. Her touch made him warm all the way through. This close, she smelled like hops and cinnamon. Her eyes were deep and dark, full of meaning that he could not comprehend. She bent her head and pressed her lips to his.

  The kiss was deep and soft. Their lips melded together, their tongues met. Po sighed and abandoned himself to sensory overload. Instantly he was aflame for her.

  “You take your time,”
she said, quite breathless, a few minutes later. “After your first night here, I thought you didn’t like me.”

  “I desire you very much,” he said, gasping.

  She grinned and sat forward, drawing his face down to her breasts. It was like falling into clouds. “You’ll let the others see that I am with you?”

  Po sat up. The sweet taste of their kiss had become sour. What he felt was real, but she—she had other reasons. This was the same as what had happened the other night, only now the coin for which she would enslave herself was his strength. With an effort he stood and backed away from her. “I won’t let anyone harm you. I told you, ma’am. You don’t have to do anything for that.”

  He looked away from the devastation in her face, but her words came to him anyway. “You give me food, you do my work, and you offer me your protection. And you take nothing in return. I want to believe you, but you’re too good to be true.”

  Sudden clarity seared Po. How would he feel if a woman offered him every benefit of consortship, but did not let him make love to her? Not only was Po making it impossible for Ayma to believe him, but he was probably hurting her feelings as well, making her feel unwanted.

  But the alternative was to allow her to make of him something so abominable he had not even truly comprehended its existence until just now. He could not become that kind of man, not even to please a woman. “You don’t have to believe me.”

  In the main room, a door slammed. “Siblea, what in the Seven Hells do you think you’re doing?” It was Selene.

  “Uh-oh,” said one of the men. “In trouble with the missus?” Others laughed.

  Po went out through the archway to see what was going on. Ayma followed him. As they emerged from the kitchen, he took her hand. Let those men think that he was just like them, if it would protect her.

  Selene stood with Hilloa at her side and Baris and Jan behind her. They all faced Siblea and his compatriots. “We have a mission,” said Selene.

  Siblea did not stand. He simply spread his hands out to include all present and said, “Is not our first mission always the welfare of our fellow beings?”

  Selene took a deep breath. “And the best way to attend to that is to find the bloom so that we can make the land green and fertile for all. Have you forgotten the welfare of our fellow beings at the Libyrinth? In the villages we visited on our way here? There is more at stake here than your wounded pride in coming home and finding one of your own inmates in charge.”

  “Now please, don’t overreact, Selene. I see no reason why we cannot do both. Am I preventing you from seeking the rose?”

  “The rose?” said Herv.

  “The rose of Endymion.” Siblea spoke quickly, as if he wished not to answer at all.

  “The rose of Endymion? That old wives’ tale?” crowed the barley merchant. “Don’t tell me that’s the reason you’ve come here, Siblea.”

  “Does it matter why we came?” Siblea’s tone was suddenly sharp and the men, who had all been smiling and some of them laughing, sobered. Siblea turned to Selene with a very fake smile. “How was your search today anyway?”

  Po had never seen Selene so angry in all his life—not even when he had made the mistake about the bath. For a time, she stood. Po watched her nostrils flare. Suddenly she stepped forward and started grabbing tankards from the table. Po hurried to help her.

  “Hey, I wasn’t done with that, lady,” said Ben.

  “You are now,” said Selene. “Get out. All of you. This is not acceptable.”

  Ben guffawed and grabbed his tankard back from her. “Says who, you?”

  “That’s right. Siblea has been reckless. He’s endangering the safety of the chorus, and of this young woman who has bravely opened her home to us.”

  The men guffawed. “Oh yeah, she’s a real hero, she is.”

  “She opens her home to everybody, don’t you know that?”

  Po could not believe his ears or his eyes. “What do you men think you are doing?” he demanded. “What’s wrong with you? She’s telling you to leave.”

  Herv sprawled in his chair, holding his tankard in both hands. “We don’t want to leave.”

  “It’s not up to you.”

  “Oh no?”

  Selene tried to take his beer away from him again. “You must go.”

  Herv shoved Selene.

  Po, who had gone his entire life without ever seeing a man strike a woman, could not believe that it could look so ordinary. Selene stumbled backward. Po grabbed Herv around the neck, dragged him out of the chair, and kneed him in the stomach. Herv tried to get loose but Po pushed him to the floor, kicked him in the gut again and then straddled his chest, pinning his arms to the floor with his knees while he hit him in the face.

  “Po!”

  “Song and Silence! All right, we’ll go!”

  “Po! Stop!”

  He realized that the voices had been directed at him for some time. He looked up and saw everyone standing in a circle around him and Herv. The looks on their faces varied from appalled to frightened, to impressed. He looked at the barley merchant. “You men are going now.”

  The man nodded slowly. “Just let us take Herv with us.”

  Po got up but stayed close as the men carried their friend out of the tavern. When the door had shut behind them, he bolted it and returned to where Siblea stood beside the table, looking at him with the oddest expression on his face. Po stood close enough to smell Siblea’s sweat. He looked him in the eyes. “This is your fault, old man. You brought that man here and you let him disrespect Ayma and the Princess of Ilysies, and then…If I ever catch you letting a man get away with something like that again, I’ll kill you.”

  He could see that Siblea believed him.

  He turned and found Selene standing there. The look that passed between them was one of recognition. They were both exiles now. He looked down. His hands were bloody. The back of his throat tasted like iron and his face was hot. He thought of Herv’s wife, his mother, his sisters—all those lives ruined. But no, that wasn’t right. They didn’t do that here. Here, no one would be punished. Po wasn’t sure which was worse. If only he’d been able to stop it from ever happening in the first place; but he hadn’t, and now…He was so afraid.

  “Po.”

  At the first touch of Selene’s hands on his shoulders, the pressure inside him burst. The sound that escaped from him was like a skull cracking, and then, a world falling into the sea.

  “Come here.”

  She guided him to a chair, then sat beside him and drew him to her, nestling his face in the crook of her neck. She put her arms around him and held him close. Here was all that was left of everything he had always known, and he fell into it in the vain hope that he might never have to leave.

  Ayma watched the big guy, Po, tremble as he sobbed onto the shoulder of the Ilysian woman, Selene. The others—Jan, Baris, and Hilloa—seemed as embarrassed as they should be. They hovered at the far end of the bar, not looking at him or each other or her. The censor had gone out. Ayma sidled up to the girl, Hilloa. She nudged her and nodded to Po. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Hilloa gave her a sharp look. “Nothing. It’s complicated. He’s upset.”

  Ayma widened her eyes. “I guess so, but why? He took the other guy apart.” She took another covert glance at those big shoulders of his. He was really something. The way he’d gone after that man was amazing. If she could figure out how to get him to fall for her, she’d have it made. But that was a fool’s dream. Despite the way he treated her, despite that kiss and all the other things he did for her, he knew what she really was and he’d made it clear he wasn’t about to forget.

  “He’s Ilysian. Do you know what that is?” said Baris.

  Baris now—she could work something out with him. She should. She was being stupid, letting her heart tell her what to do. Baris knew exactly what she was, but he wouldn’t care as long as he got what he wanted. And then, when these people left the citadel again, maybe he�
�d let her come along.

  “It’s a country,” said Ayma. “Where the women are in charge, right? Is that why that Selene lady tried to tell Siblea’s men what to do?”

  “Sort of. Anyway, the thing you need to know is, the very worst thing that can happen, as far as an Ilysian man is concerned, is for him to strike a woman.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. The guy is killed, like right away, even if it’s just a little thing, like that shove just now. But there’s more. All of his male relatives are killed, too. And the women in his family…They’re branded. So they can’t have husbands.”

  Ayma stared at him, then turned back to Hilloa. “He’s teasing us.”

  But Hilloa shook her head and looked very serious. “No, it’s true.” Baris gave her a surprised glance and she shrugged. “I was listening to you guys the night he told you.”

  Did this Hilloa like Po, too? She was pretty. In fact, she and Ayma looked a lot alike. How was Ayma going to compete with her if she wanted Po for herself?

  But Ayma forgot all that speculation when Po raised his face from Selene’s shoulder. Her breath stopped when she saw his face, so naked and raw from crying. And he looked at Selene with such tenderness, such gratitude and admiration. She kissed his forehead, and he closed his eyes, as if he were receiving a benediction from Yammon himself. The moment, the image, caught inside her and became a small, new thing, too full of shattering implication to bear examining. Though she could not think on it, she felt it through and through, and she knew she would carry it with her for the rest of her life.

  The evening meal was subdued, if more plentiful than Ayma had had in recent memory. Baris, Hilloa, and Jan clearly did not know what to say to Po. They avoided looking at him. Po himself was withdrawn. He seemed heartbroken, for reasons she could not fathom despite Baris’s explanation. And Selene was taut and contained, clearly still furious with Censor Siblea.

  The atmosphere made the beets and pulse ball up in her stomach in an uncomfortable way. It was the first decent meal she’d had in weeks. At last, in an effort to dispel some of the tension in the room, she said, “So you truly seek Endymion’s rose?”