Unquiet Land

by Sharon Shinn

  “To Leah’s,” she echoed. “May it always be successful, just not quite this successful.”

  “Surely some of today’s customers came simply for the novelty.”

  “And because the regent’s wife brought her friends and Corene’s sister brought her friends and because I myself have contacts among the Five Families,” Leah added. “But yes. Because people were curious and wanted to see what might be for sale in this new shop.”

  “Were you surprised by what people bought? What went differently than you expected?”

  They talked commerce for a while, debated retail strategies, and estimated how quickly she’d have to replenish her backup supplies. All the while they ate their food, drank their water, and watched each other by candlelight. Not much to be learned from Chandran’s face in such faint illumination. Truth to tell, there was never much to learn from Chandran’s face.

  “So tell me,” she finally said, when they’d each finished their last piece of bread, their last spoonful of compote. “Why are you here? I’m happy to see you—but I’m worried that your arrival signals a calamity in your life.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “A calamity that was a long time coming.”

  She sipped her water and waited, watching him collect his thoughts. The candlelight left his dark eyes enigmatic, his bearded face a mask. Or maybe that was just always how he looked.

  “I have lived in Malinqua for nearly fifteen years,” he said at last, speaking in slow, thoughtful tones. “You knew me as a merchant, but when I first arrived in Palminera, I had no thought of setting up a retail shop. I needed a job and I was good with horses, so I hired on at the large commercial stables down by the red tower.”

  “I know that place.”

  “Life is full of unexpected connections, so after I had worked in the stables for a year, a man who liked my way with his horses hired me for a post at the Great Market, in one of the horse trader’s stalls. While I was there, I became friendly with a family who owned a booth on the fourth floor. They were importers and had received a shipment from Cozique that baffled them. I was able to explain. I began to help out when they needed assistance in the booth. Gradually I became a full-time employee and then part owner.”

  “Was there a woman involved?” Leah asked. “I used to think you must have married into the business.”

  Chandran regarded her for a moment. “There was a woman who could have been involved,” he said. “But that interest waned when I explained that I had a wife.”

  “Ohhhhhh.” Leah didn’t know what to say. He’d never mentioned a wife. He’d never mentioned anybody. I’m an idiot, she thought. I’ve built him into some kind of romantic figure, and even though I knew half of it was my imagination, I never realized just how impossible that picture was. She felt her cheeks redden in the dark. Had he realized how she’d thought of him? How she hoped he’d think of her? She thought of all those letters she’d written him in the past few ninedays, pouring out her thoughts and her dreams, hinting at her desires. She could only be unutterably grateful that she had never sent them.

  “I did not mention that my wife was dead,” Chandran added. “I let her assume—let all of them assume—that we were merely estranged. The woman’s attentions were quickly engaged elsewhere, which was better for all of us.”

  Leah still felt flushed and embarrassed, though a little more cheerful upon learning that he was a widower. But that made her feel heartless, so she quickly said, “I’m sorry about your wife. That must have been very difficult.”

  “‘Difficult’ is hardly a big enough word to cover it,” he said quietly. “It has been fifteen years now, and I still think about her death.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again.

  “As I say, I continued to work for the family of merchants. When it became clear that the owner’s son was not interested in running the business after him, and neither was his daughter, or her new husband, my employer allowed me to systematically buy him out. I have been part owner, and then the owner, of the business for more than ten years. It has been a very good life.”

  Leah found herself leaning forward slightly. “So what happened? Why are you here now?”

  “A couple of ninedays ago, when I was working at the Great Market, I was recognized by someone I had not seen in fifteen years. He thought I did not see him, but I did. And I saw the look that crossed his face when he realized who I was. He did not approach me then, but I knew it was only a matter of time. And so I locked up my booth as I always do, and I went to my lodgings and gathered my things, and I went straight to the harbor and booked passage on the first boat I could find that was headed to Welce. I figured that as long as I was starting my life over, I might as well start it in a country where I knew at least one other human being.”

  “But—why—I don’t understand. Just because he recognized you—”

  “He is a member of my wife’s family,” Chandran said, as if that explained everything. “A cousin. And all of them hate me beyond reason.”

  “But why?” she said again, a little helplessly. He was telling his story, but in a very roundabout fashion, and she felt like she hadn’t even come close to the heart of the tale.

  “First, I must explain about my wife and her family,” Chandran said. “You have always known, I think, that I come originally from Cozique.”

  “I guessed you did,” she said. “You never actually said so.”

  “My father was a man of some wealth, who derived most of his money from trade. It has always been common among people of my station to marry for the good of the family. For connections.”

  Leah nodded. “It’s common among the Five Families in Chialto, too.”

  “My father wished for me to marry into the family of one of his trading partners in the Karkades. The woman he had selected was beautiful, fascinating, and full of charm. And I was young—barely twenty-two. I was dazzled. I believed I was in love. I was happy to marry her.”

  Something in his voice made Leah sit up straighter. Just a few moments ago, he had said he was still not recovered from his wife’s death, so she had pictured him heartbroken, inconsolable, bravely hiding grief behind a stoic mask. But she sensed that a different picture was about to emerge.

  “Both of our families wished for us to live in the Karkades, and I was willing to do so,” Chandran continued. “But I found their customs strange. They were—I believe I mentioned this in a letter to you—a people of extremes. Capable of great kindness and great cruelty. More than that. They relished cruelty—they embraced it. Because they believed they could erase the most heinous act by doing something equally magnificent to balance it out. Most people will not do truly awful things because they fear the consequences—the wrath of an angry mob or the castigation of a righteous god or the measured punishment of a respected legal system. These deterrents keep them somewhat in check.

  “But the Karkans have no such fears. They do what they want, no matter how brutal or selfish it might be, because they have already accepted that they must atone. Sometimes they atone beforehand. A woman who wants to cheat on her husband, for instance, might buy him a very expensive gift before she ever strays, and they both understand this means that she has banked her forgiveness in advance. I had a difficult time understanding this particular form of moral barter.”

  “I can see why,” Leah said. “But it seems like a system that would only work for the very rich.”

  “Certainly, it was among the wealthy that you would see the greatest excesses,” Chandran admitted. “But the attitude prevailed at every level of society. There was a story about a woman who lived in the most impoverished section of town. She threw her infant son from a bridge one afternoon because she could not stand the sound of his crying. What redemption can there be for a woman who kills her own child? Later, she took in the children left fatherless when her brother died, and she raised them to be fine, strong men
and women, sacrificing everything to keep them warm and fed. The children knew why she was so generous to them. Everyone knew. It was accepted that she had expiated her first unforgivable sin.”

  “I would find it a difficult system in which to operate,” Leah admitted.

  “As did I. And yet the Karkades are a beautiful place, and I had a beautiful wife, and I had quite a lot of money, and life seemed very good. My wife was—she had an incredible delicacy of complexion. Skin so white, with the faintest flush along the cheekbones, and the loveliest, most elegant hands. I used to be afraid to touch her sometimes, she looked so fragile, so perfect. I did not want my clumsy fingers to leave behind a bruise. When she slept at night, her face was so innocent it looked like it belonged to a child.

  “There was a town nearby—a dreadful place—the wretched spot where they consigned anyone who had been touched by one particular disease. It was hereditary and incurable, and those who contracted it died a lingering and painful death. Most of the philanthropists of the day would throw money that way, funding research into possible cures and paying for nurses and physicians who would treat the ill. But my wife would go there, several times every quintile, and minister to the sick. She would bring food that she herself had cooked in our kitchens. She would take their fevered hands in hers, she would bathe them in cool water. She became attached to the members of one particular family, and she was there beside every single one of them when they died. She paid for every funeral. There were seven of them, I believe. Maybe eight. All dead now.”

  It was an act of staggering generosity, but Leah was starting to feel her lungs tighten up. If a woman would do something so benevolent, so selfless, for so many, what great sins might she commit without fear of condemnation? “I suppose,” she said, speaking carefully, “this was only one side of her personality.”

  Chandran nodded. “You have perceived the drift of my tale. For the first two years that we were married, I saw only Dederra’s sweet side. Her goodness. I thought she had escaped the Karkan taint—that she was perfect and pure. It turned out not to be so.” He gazed for a moment at the dregs of keerza leaves in his cup. “I cannot imagine any circumstances for the rest of my life that will ever leave me so disillusioned,” he said at last.

  “Did she— What did she do?” Leah asked.

  Chandran stared at his cup a while longer, then lifted his eyes to hers. “Terrible things,” he said. “Unspeakable.”

  “You won’t tell me if I ask?” she said, pressing a little.

  He shook his head. “I do not want you to entertain those images in your head. I wish I did not have to live with them.” He gave her a serious look. “I realize this means you might not believe her actions were as monstrous as I claim.”

  “I believe you,” she said instantly.

  “I am grateful for that.”

  “So these terrible things . . . Had she been doing them all along, or did she start after she had—had banked her forgiveness in advance?”

  “I am not sure when she began indulging in this particular vice, but within a few years of our marriage, she was completely in its thrall. I would even say she was out of control.”

  “What did you do?”

  “At first, I went to her family members, thinking that by speaking of her behavior publicly I might shame her out of repeating it. But they were indifferent—her siblings, her parents, her cousins. They said, ‘Yes, but she has already atoned.’ They said, ‘Oh, that is not so shocking. Do you want to know what this other fellow did?’ They were unmoved.

  “I was distraught. I wrote my own family—not sharing the details, not explaining what I had learned, merely saying that Dederra and I had found we were ill-suited after all and I planned to petition to dissolve the marriage. Divorce is not impossible in Cozique, though there are many inconvenient legal details, and my parents were deeply unhappy that I planned to sever this connection. But I was adamant. I filed the necessary papers and waited in the Karkades until the decree came through.”

  Leah was slightly confused. “So you are divorced then. You said your wife was dead.”

  “Yes,” Chandran said. His voice sounded muffled, as if he was projecting it through his folded hands, or as if the thought of the words he had to say made him almost too exhausted to speak. “She died before the divorce was finalized.”

  “So she knew you were leaving her.”

  “She did, and she thought it was amusing that I would abandon her for such a reason. We were still sharing a house—if I had simply walked out, I would have lost all claim to the fortune we had amassed between us as our families continued their trade arrangements. But my belongings were packed. I had purchased my tickets for the journey home to Cozique. I was merely waiting for a single final paper to be signed.”

  Leah’s stomach was in knots. She wished she hadn’t eaten quite so much of the delicious meal. She was filled with dread. “So then—what happened?”

  “I found evidence of something she had done—inside our own house. I confronted her, and she laughed. She said, ‘Just think what I will be capable of after you are gone.’”

  Chandran looked at Leah, his eyes deep pools of darkness. “So I killed her. And then I sailed for Malinqua.”

  TEN

  For the longest time, Leah couldn’t move. Her body had ossified to startled stone; she was a statue of shock and horror. She did not feel the air enter or leave her lungs. Her fingers, spread on the table, could detect no texture of wood or cloth against their skin. The shop was filled with a roaring silence that pressed against her ears, blocking out any sounds of the surrounding night.

  They were alone in this place. No one in the entire city knew that Chandran was in Chialto—no one even knew who Chandran was. He was taller than Leah by at least five inches, heavier by more than seventy pounds. She could snatch at the knife strapped to her ankle, the assorted cutlery spread across the table, but the odds were still against her. He could strangle her or fall on her body and suffocate her, and she would be virtually defenseless.

  It would not be the first time he had tried to kill her.

  It would not be the first time he had killed a woman.

  Leah stared at him and he stared back at her, and she could read nothing in his face at all.

  After a long moment, with a nod, he looked away. “So,” he said. “As I always thought. It is not an action for which it is possible to seek forgiveness. Circumstances do not ameliorate the sin.”

  Moving slowly—perhaps so he did not frighten her into flight—Chandran pushed himself away from the table and drew himself up to his imposing height. “I will return to the harbor at dawn and book passage somewhere else,” he said. “You need not fear hearing from me again.”

  He had crossed the floor and laid a hand on the doorknob before Leah was able to speak. “Wait,” she said. Her voice scraped against her throat as the word fought its way out.

  He paused and bowed his head, but did not turn around to face her. “There does not appear to be much point in waiting,” he said.

  Leah forced herself to stand, though her legs wobbled and she had to keep a hand on the table to maintain her balance. “Why did you come here tonight? Why did you come to Welce? Why did you want to see me?”

  Slowly, still leaving a hand on the doorknob, he shifted his body around so he could see her. “Because the one thing in the past fifteen years that has brought me anything approximating joy has been meeting you,” he said deliberately. “I thought I should see if I could recapture that emotion before I gave up on it forever.”

  She felt steady enough now to walk in his direction, though she came to a halt a few feet away. Just out of reach of a blow from his hand. “And why did you tell me the story about your wife? I never would have learned it on my own. You knew it would terrify me. So why tell me?”

  “Because I never again want to attempt to build a life that has
a lie at the core.”

  “I’ve missed you,” she said. “So much.”

  “I cannot tell you how much I have missed you.”

  “But this frightens me.”

  “It would frighten anyone, I think.”

  “I don’t know—I don’t know what to tell you next. I don’t know what to think.”

  “You do not have to think. I have already decided. I will leave Welce in the morning.”

  “No.”

  She blurted out the word without thinking. She could hardly say she’d thought the situation through. But . . . “No,” she said again. “Give me time to absorb it. Give me time to—to understand it. Don’t leave yet.”

  “Fear does not make a better foundation for a relationship than secrecy,” Chandran replied.

  “It doesn’t,” Leah said. “But maybe after I’ve thought about it, I won’t be afraid.”

  He looked undecided. “And maybe you will. But you will be afraid to even mention the word ‘fear’ to me.”

  She couldn’t help smiling in the near-dark. “I have some resources at my disposal,” she said. “If I asked him for protection, the regent would give me a dozen soldiers to shield me from your violence.”

  “If you could predict when I would grow violent,” Chandran pointed out. “Which you could not.”

  “We could add other safeguards,” Leah said. “I could agree to see you only in public places. No more of this”—she swept a hand out to indicate the soft lighting in the shadowed store—“kind of setting,” she ended lamely.

  “That might do,” he said. “For a time, at least. Until you decide, one way or another, if I can be trusted.” He dropped his hand from the doorknob and turned to fully face her, though he did not step any closer. “Until you become convinced, absolutely and unwaveringly certain, that I will never do you any harm.”

  Leah tried for another smile, though it was rueful. “Unless I do something so dreadful that I deserve to be put to death.”