That was the second time she’d said we don’t ask questions. She hadn’t even asked how he’d learned her language, or commented on his foreign looks or his unusual fellow travelers. Thiyo nodded decisively, and under the date, he wrote Thiyo, Alizhan, Ev, Henny, Ket.
“You and your friend will sleep in the men’s dormitory,” Pirkko said, indicating Ket with a tilt of her head. “The other three can follow me to the women’s dormitory.”
“Not much privacy, is there?” Thiyo said.
“Who needs privacy, if there is nothing to be ashamed of?” Pirkko said. She had a nice smile. Her hand brushed his as she took the quill from him. “Outsiders are sometimes surprised, but they shed their old ways quickly. A visit to the hot springs will do you good.”
“Hot springs?” Thiyo said. Hoi was dotted with thermal pools. He’d taken Ilyr to all his favorites, ones that required long hikes through the steamy, fern-dappled forest, with brilliant, pure turquoise water and no other visitors. Ilyr had been so shy about swimming naked the first time. He’d blushed all the way down to his navel. Adorable.
Ilyr had flushed pink the second time, too, but for different reasons.
That didn’t bear thinking about. Still, hot springs were a bit of good news. Thiyo had missed them. Perhaps they’d be good for Ev, since her newly healed wound had left her stiff and sore. Thiyo looked at Ev to see if she was considering this, but then he remembered she couldn’t understand the conversation.
“Of course,” Pirkko was saying. He needed to pay attention. “Estva was built to take advantage of the springs. They also provide us with rysuotavkasvi.”
“A plant you eat?” Thiyo guessed, after disassembling the word in his head.
Pirkko had promised not to ask questions, but Thiyo thought he saw one in the brief quirk of her eyebrow before she answered: “A plant that grows in the thermal vents, without sunlight, and the only food we don’t have to import from more Dayward climates. The Nalitzvan word for it is nightvine.”
Thiyo nodded his understanding, and then began to summarize the conversation in Laalvuri, which had been their common tongue throughout the journey. Pirkko didn’t move away from him or pretend not to listen, so Thiyo took care with his translation.
“They don’t care what we’ve done in the past. As long as we do our part and don’t cause any trouble, we can stay here and they’ll feed and shelter us,” he explained. With a pointed look at Alizhan, Henny, and Ket, he added, “On the other hand, it is very important to follow the rules. They won’t tolerate unnatural behavior.”
“Really? Because—” Alizhan stopped talking abruptly. She must have felt Thiyo’s surge of panic—Pirkko was standing right there listening, for Mah Yee’s sake. “Well, we don’t tolerate it either, of course. I mean, why even mention it to us, since we all behave naturally all the time anyway—” Alizhan broke off again, and not an instant too soon. Thiyo had been thinking stop stop stop as hard as he could.
“I’m very tired,” Ev said. Bless her. “Perhaps we could sleep a shift? Or eat something? Henny and Ket would like to rest before going home, too, I’m sure.”
“We’ll stay a few triads,” Henny said. “I’d like to see what life is like here, and I don’t mind working.”
From Pirkko’s expression, she’d understood the whole conversation, but she didn’t offer a response until Thiyo dutifully translated it into Estvan for her. Directing her answer to Henny, Ev, and Alizhan, she began to speak. Thiyo translated, “The women’s dormitories are down this corridor. Take the second right, and then another right. Choose your room based on sleep shift—you should be able to tell which rooms are getting ready to go to bed, even if you can’t read the signs outside the doors. Any unmarked bed is yours to claim.”
Pirkko turned back to Thiyo and Ket. She reached for Thiyo’s left hand. He blinked, but didn’t pull away. “I’ll show you to the men’s dormitory.”
His friends were a study in facial expressions: Ket went wide-eyed, Henny wore a close-lipped smile, Ev frowned, and Alizhan’s brow furrowed. No one said a word.
They split up with an agreement to meet back in the dining hall in a couple of hours when the bell rang for the next meal. He and Ket followed Pirkko down a long hall, through several turns, before arriving at the dormitory.
They’d left Nalitzva with very little, but Thiyo had managed to acquire a small pack of clothing on their journey Nightward, which he set down on one of the empty bunks when they reached the dormitory. There were many identical rooms in the building, all long and narrow and bare, distinguished only by the sign on the outer door marking which shift the inhabitants typically slept. From the number of rooms, Thiyo estimated the dormitory housed about five hundred men. He hadn’t counted the buildings outside, but there were ten at most. Even if the dormitories were all full—and they weren’t—Estva hardly deserved to be called a city.
He didn’t plan to share that opinion with Pirkko.
“Are you going to meet her in the hot springs?” Ket asked quietly, once they were alone in the dormitory.
“What?”
“I catch a word in Estvan every now and then. She said something about hot springs. And she grabbed your hand. That was an invitation if I ever saw one,” Ket said.
Thiyo had been too distracted by his memories. As soon as Ket mentioned Pirkko’s behavior, it was obvious.
“You do… like women, right?” Ket said. “Henny says a man who’s as good at doing hair as you are has got to be queer. But from the way you looked at Henny, I thought you must like women, too, but I guess it could have been her—”
“I do,” Thiyo confirmed before Ket could get any more specific. “Like women, that is. But we probably shouldn’t talk about Henny’s qualities. And we should all keep our hands to ourselves.”
“The rules,” Ket surmised.
“Yes.” Thiyo was glad not to have to explain any further.
“Are they going to care about,” Ket started, and then glanced to either side as if someone might be listening.
“You being in the men’s dormitory?” Thiyo said quietly. He’d intuited the rest of the question even before Ket glanced pointedly downward. “As far as I can tell, that’s not against any of the rules. They seem pretty relaxed about everything except their particular definition of ‘unnatural behavior.’ But I’ll keep an eye out and make sure no one comes in while you change, if you want.”
“Just in case,” Ket said, agreeing. Then he added, “You never answered my question. About Pirkko. And whether you’re going to meet her in the hot springs.”
“Oh,” Thiyo said. He’d already forgotten the question. “No.”
Ket raised his eyebrows. He obviously considered the invitation tempting.
Thiyo’s own reaction took him by surprise. Pirkko was charming, in her own serious, dry, Nightward way. And under all those furs she was wearing, probably beautiful. And she just wanted to pass the time in an amusing way—an attitude much more in line with those of Thiyo’s homeland than Nalitzva. Her invitation to the hot springs should have appealed to him.
“There’s a rule about babies,” Thiyo said. “I don’t know if you caught that one. They need people to stay here, and both parents of any babies born here are required to stay for twenty years.”
Even as he said it, Thiyo knew that wasn’t the real reason he didn’t have any interest in the invitation. He knew how to entertain a partner in a way that couldn’t result in a child. But Pirkko had said “hot springs,” and his first thought had been Ilyr. Remembering happier times with Ilyr was like biting into a sweet fruit and having his mouth flooded with sour, rotten fluid.
Thiyo should want to wash it away. He should want to replace it with something else—a new taste, a different taste, any other taste—but instead, the rot had contaminated the very idea of eating. His stomach turned.
It was as though Thiyo hadn’t really had time to think about Ilyr, between the prison and the wedding and the fights. Absurd. He’d done no
thing but think about Ilyr. But before he’d been righteous, enraged, betrayed. He’d been full of fury and purpose. And now Thiyo was here, and Ilyr was there, and they’d never see each other again, and there was nothing to distract Thiyo from how very hollow and far from home that made him feel.
Thiyo sat down and was silent for such a long time that at some point, Ket simply patted him on the shoulder and left the room.
Thiyo wasn’t the only one in a daze when the five of them reconvened in the main hall for a meal two hours later. His companions stood together in a little cluster and gave the massive room bleary glances, enough to figure out that they didn’t need to do anything more than seat themselves at one of the long wooden tables in order to be served. They all sat down on two empty benches. Thiyo sat with Ev and Alizhan, and across the table from them, Henny slouched down next to Ket until her head was on his shoulder.
“Whatever they eat here, I hope they bring me a lot of it,” she said. When all five of them were together, they spoke Laalvuri, and while Henny and Ket hardly ever made mistakes in the language, they both had soft accents that Thiyo loved—a tendency to roll their r, to linger over vowels, and to take extra care in crisply pronouncing the last consonant of every word. They also both called him Diyo, as opposed to Ev and Alizhan, who could get his name almost right. It was a pleasure to listen to.
“You aren’t worried you might not like it?” Ev asked.
“Henny eats everything,” Ket said.
“You make me sound like an animal foraging in garbage,” Henny said.
Ket’s cheeks went pink. But he smiled, put an arm around Henny’s shoulders, and then said to Ev very solemnly, “Henny is enthusiastic about many different cuisines.”
The hall was bustling, which caused Thiyo to question his earlier estimate of Estva’s population. There must be more to the city than he’d seen. That was good news, because it meant there might be more quiet, out-of-the-way spaces to find. Unlike Pirkko and her Estvan compatriots, Thiyo did feel the need for privacy. His affair with the encoded text of A Natural History would be almost as exciting as whatever people got up to in the hot springs, he was sure. And the prospect of reading and deciphering something was considerably more appealing than intimacy, in that it didn’t make his insides twist and shrivel.
His parents had always wanted him to take his studies more seriously. Maybe someone should have broken his heart sooner.
Pirkko arrived, interrupting his morose thoughts. She sat down on the bench next to Alizhan and said “Hello,” in Estvan. “Don’t worry, the food will be here soon.”
“Thank you,” Thiyo said, and then translated for the others. Any further conversation among their group would have to pass through him.
“What kind of work would you like to do here?” Pirkko said. “We need people everywhere, but if you have special skills, we will try to put them to use.” She leaned toward the table, looking past Alizhan and Ev to meet Thiyo’s gaze. “You speak Estvan and Laalvuri. Can you read?”
“Yes,” he said, trying not to bristle with offense. She wasn’t calling him a savage. She was trying to offer him work he’d be suited to.
“There’s a press and a bookbindery,” Pirkko said. “I’ll put you there and they’ll train you. What about the others?”
“She’s asking where you want to work,” Thiyo explained.
“Medicine,” Henny said immediately. “It’s what I’m best at.”
It was also the domain where she’d be most tempted to break the rules and use her gift to soothe people’s pain, but Thiyo couldn’t say that out loud. He nodded.
“I’ll go with Henny,” Ket said. “I’m good at following instructions.”
“Is there an infirmary?” Thiyo asked Pirkko, who looked at Henny and Ket and nodded. “They’d like to work there. They can’t speak much Estvan, but they understand some.” Then he turned to Ev and Alizhan.
“Anywhere is fine with me,” Ev said. “Wherever it won’t matter that we can’t speak their language, and wherever they need the most help.”
Thiyo translated this to Pirkko, while Alizhan said, “I want to go with Ev.”
Pirkko didn’t wait for a translation. “The kitchens,” she said. “We always need the most help in the kitchens.”
Thiyo explained this. Ev nodded. Alizhan did nothing. She’d been withdrawn since they’d arrived. “Well, that’s settled,” he said to Pirkko, secretly hoping she might perceive it as the end of their conversation and leave them in peace. But she made herself comfortable, putting an elbow on the table and leaning in.
“I hope you like it here so far,” she said. “I’ll introduce you to the people you’ll be working with, if I see them. Oh, look, here’s our food!”
Two servers brought out plates stacked with thick slices of brown bread, hard yellow cheese, some little silvery smoked fish, and a pile of very dark cooked greens. It didn’t resemble the food Thiyo had become accustomed to at the palace, where the courses arrived in an excruciatingly complex and rigid order, or the simple, fresh food of his distant, sunny homeland. But he was too hungry to be particular, and when a fork and a knife were dropped on the table next to his plate, he picked them up and dug in.
A few minutes passed in silence while everyone ate.
Well, almost everyone.
“Alizhan,” Ev said in Laalvuri, turning toward her. “Are you alright?”
Alizhan hadn’t touched the food. She didn’t look as grey or as clammy as she normally did in crowds, though the racket of conversation and the clatter of plates and glasses hemmed them in on all sides. She scanned the room with narrowed eyes. Had she heard something? Was she worried?
“It’s so quiet,” Alizhan said.
“What?” Ev said, and Thiyo couldn’t blame her. It was hard to hear in the mess hall.
“It’s quiet,” Alizhan repeated, and Ev and Thiyo shared a look. That kind of quiet. A kind only Alizhan could perceive. “I hear them sometimes, when they’re loud,” she said, looking at Thiyo, Henny, and Ket, “but I can really only hear you, Ev.”
“Perhaps we should go somewhere else,” Thiyo suggested, aware of Pirkko sitting so close to them while they discussed how Alizhan was breaking one of Estva’s few rules. Pirkko still hadn’t revealed how much Laalvuri she understood. If she knew they were talking about magic, Thiyo didn’t want to find out the hard way.
But if Alizhan couldn’t sense anyone in the room but Ev… Thiyo chewed his lip in thought. Anyone with a gift would protect their mind by instinct, although his own instincts weren’t worth much, as Alizhan already knew. And that instinctive protection wasn’t impenetrable for anyone. Training could strengthen it. Training could also help people without gifts, but since magic was forbidden in Estva, how would they have managed to train this many people? Why would anyone be motivated to protect themselves if there was nothing to protect themselves from?
Ev would have to train herself at some point, and Thiyo sympathized with her. He’d never had the patience and dedication necessary to maintain control at all times—it was so much less glamorous and dazzling than what he could do with words—and besides, his thoughts were usually delightful. Anyone who could read his mind was welcome to admire whatever they found.
“God,” Alizhan muttered.
Thiyo ignored her. She’d given him a riddle to work out and he was still sorting through it. Presumably, Henny and Ket possessed the same instinct Thiyo did for keeping “quiet,” as Alizhan called it. So it made sense that she rarely heard them. Earlier, when Pirkko had told them the rule against “unnatural behavior,” Alizhan had said “Really? Because—” and then stopped herself. Now Thiyo could guess the end of that sentence. Pirkko could shield her thoughts from Alizhan. Alizhan suspected Pirkko might be engaging in some “unnatural behavior” of her own.
But Pirkko was just one person. There must be five hundred people in the room. They couldn’t all be gifted. Could they?
“I thought you liked quiet,” Ev said lightl
y. “I thought you wished everywhere was quiet.”
“I’ve never been anywhere quiet, not really,” Alizhan said. And then she hugged herself, rubbing her upper arms. She was obviously unsettled.
Pirkko misinterpreted her gesture as simple shivering, and she laughed and reached over to slap Alizhan on the back and sling an arm over her shoulders. “Cold, little one? It’s nothing some meat on your bones won’t fix!”
Pirkko indicated Alizhan’s untouched plate with her free hand.
Alizhan sat wide-eyed, stick-straight, and stock-still, as if Pirkko had just draped a deadly snake over her shoulders instead of an arm. Thiyo translated what Pirkko had just said, but he doubted that Alizhan heard a word of it.
Breathe, he thought, because he couldn’t say it out loud. Alizhan was wearing layers and layers of clothing, and Pirkko was blank, besides. Unlike Henny and Ket, Pirkko didn’t know what Alizhan could do, and thus she had no reason to be afraid. Unlike Ev, Pirkko wasn’t simmering with powerful longing. She was neutral. Harmless. Nothing was happening, and nothing was going to happen. It was just a touch.
“She’s a vegetarian,” Thiyo explained to Pirkko, hoping to allay some of the awkwardness of Alizhan’s frozen reaction.
“Ah, yes,” Pirkko said. “I forgot. Laalvuri don’t eat meat. Not even fish. Well, there’s plenty of other things to eat. You won’t go hungry here!”
Slowly, Alizhan nodded and began to breathe again. “Yes,” she said. But Thiyo didn’t miss the look of relief on Alizhan’s face when Pirkko stopped touching her.
22
Rules Are Rules
ALIZHAN CHOPPED VICIOUSLY AT THE pile of greens on her cutting board. They’d been limp and bitter at the meal last shift, and she didn’t think her novice cooking skills would improve them for the next meal. This strange new green whose Estvan name she couldn’t remember or pronounce, Thiyo had called it nightvine. It was Alizhan’s job to wash it, stem it, chop it, and boil it into submission.
Nightvine Page 18