by Sharon Shinn
“Such a challenge raising children with such a childlike man,” Beccan observed.
Rhan enveloped her in a bear hug and squeezed her so tightly she squealed. “But you managed to do a wonderful job anyway,” he said.
Finally someone else came over to join them, breaking up the intimate tableau. It was Taro, looking like he’d just spent the afternoon weeding the garden. “You’re here five minutes and already causing a commotion,” was his greeting.
Nelson handed Mally to Beccan and gave the torz prime a critical inspection. “I’m glad you thought it was worthwhile to dress up for us,” he said.
Taro laughed heartily. “I dress up for dinner at the palace and nowhere else.”
“Leah put some effort into her appearance,” Rhan said innocently. “She must have known we were coming.”
“Yes, because I always want to impress you, Rhan,” she snapped back. He merely grinned at her.
Taro waved everyone toward the table. “Come on, then. Let’s eat.”
Despite the fact that her bones buzzed with nervous energy and she was constantly squirming in her chair, Leah had a splendid time at the dinner party. Nelson was endlessly entertaining, Beccan and Rhan were almost as amusing, and it was clear that everybody in the room liked everybody else. Well, Leah and Rhan were edgy with each other. But the primes were obviously great friends, their wives enjoyed each other’s company, and Josetta was at ease with the whole lot of them. Rafe didn’t contribute much to the conversation, but his quick eyes darted from face to face as he listened closely and laughed along with the rest of them. It might have been the most relaxed meal Leah had had since she sailed back to Welce.
“Do you two have official business to discuss?” Josetta asked as they finished up with the course of sweets. “The rest of us can go somewhere else while you talk.”
“That’s an excellent plan,” Nelson approved.
The seven of them ended up in the room with the circular fountain. Most of them disposed themselves on various chairs and sofas in the middle of the room, but Mally sat down at the edge of the water and was instantly barefoot. Rhan settled next to her and started unlacing his own shoes.
Leah was watching them enviously when Mally glanced around the room. “Leah,” she said, holding her hand out. “Come sit with us.”
Everyone else looked carefully in the other direction while Leah swallowed her heart, stiffened her spine, and made her way to the fountain. Rhan smiled up at her lazily. His feet were already in the stream.
“You’d think the water would be cold, but it’s not,” he said. “Trust Zoe to put in a heated fountain. Because, of course, she’d want to go wading in it.”
“I’ll sit here, but I’m not getting in the water,” Leah said, dropping to the floor on the other side of Mally. “I put too much effort into trying to look elegant. I’m not going to ruin the effect.”
Rhan made an exaggerated bow. “You look magnificent no matter how you’re attired,” he said, “but suit yourself.”
“There’s a fish!” Mally cried, pointing at a slim golden shape wriggling past. “Maybe we could bring the reifarjin here if it ever gets lonely.”
“I think it eats other fish, so probably not,” Leah answered.
“Mally was telling me about your little pet the other day. It sounds quite fierce.”
“I like him,” Mally said.
“He’s exotic and strange,” Leah said. “But I like him, too.”
“So, Mally,” Rhan said. “Tell me what else you like about Leah’s shop. What should I look for if I go there?”
Mally obliged, talking about the striated rocks, the colorful scarves, the wooden boxes. Her voice slowed a couple of times and she paused to yawn, but then she kicked her feet in the water as if to wake herself up and continued in a slightly louder voice. Leah found herself smiling knowingly at Rhan over Mally’s dark braids.
“Are you getting sleepy?” she asked, bending down to get a better look at the little girl’s face.
“No,” Mally said instantly.
“We could sit on a couch. It might be more comfortable,” Rhan suggested.
“I like it here,” Mally insisted. As if afraid they might abandon her for soft cushions and dry flooring, she grabbed one of Leah’s hands and one of Rhan’s and held on tight. “You stay, too.”
Leah rearranged herself to relieve a slight strain in her back. “No one’s going anywhere,” she said.
“I feel like it’s the time to tell sweet stories in a soft voice,” Rhan said in low tones. “Soothing tales about bunnies and small children.”
“Do you know any stories like that?”
“I was hoping you did.”
Leah rolled her eyes. She’d never in her life tried to talk a child to sleep. But she would do anything to keep Mally nestled against her shoulder, her small hand curled trustingly around Leah’s fingers. “My father was an actor,” she said in a quiet singsong. “And there was a play his troupe would perform every year at Quinnelay changeday. It was about a little girl who left home to make her way in the world . . .”
It wasn’t, actually. It featured a grown woman who got bored with her husband’s lovemaking and snuck out of his house one afternoon to have a series of adventures. Leah thought she might be able to modify a few of the events to suit her audience. She’d just leave out the parts about the excessive alcohol and the foreign lovers.
Mally seemed to like it; at any rate, she grew increasingly still and listened without asking questions. Eventually, she rested her head so heavily against Leah’s arm that Leah peered down to see if her eyes were still open. Yes, but barely.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go sit on a couch?” Leah murmured.
“I like it here,” Mally repeated, this time through a yawn.
“But you could put your head down on a pillow while you listen to me finish the story.”
“I can put my head down here,” Mally answered. And she crossed her arms—pulling Rhan’s hand all the way to Leah’s knee and Leah’s hand toward Rhan’s leg—and rested her head on top of her forearms. Her sigh was one of absolute contentment.
Leah stared down at the dark hair and was absolutely speechless. In the weave of hands and wrists, she could catch the rhythm of all three of their heartbeats, feel the specific and varying layers of heat rising from each of their bodies. She had never felt such a powerful, visceral connection with any other human beings.
We made this, she thought numbly. Rhan and I—we made her. We are joined in her body. And we can never separate those component parts again as long as we live.
She risked a look at Rhan, whose face was as serious as she’d ever seen it. He wasn’t watching her, though. He was gazing down at Mally with an expression of confusion and longing that was wholly familiar to Leah. She thought the very same emotions must be on her own face.
She glanced at the other people in the room, none of them near enough to have overheard any of their exchanges. Virrie and Josetta and Rafe were engaged in a lively debate and paying no attention to anyone else, but Beccan was staring their way, her face equally sober. She didn’t have to speak, didn’t have to shout her words across the cheerful room, but Leah could guess what she was thinking. Mine. The man and the girl, both mine. I made them.
Leah hadn’t expected this. Love—she’d thought she was prepared to feel that. Sorrow, at everything she’d missed so far. Eagerness, worry, hope, fear, determination—she’d figured she would run the gamut of emotions and maybe invent new ones. But she hadn’t expected to look at this child and feel this sense of unmoored wonder that anything she had ever done with her hands, with her body, had produced anything so profound as this. She hadn’t expected divinity.
THIRTEEN
Leah’s second nineday as a shopkeeper proceeded as briskly as the first, but she had her rhythm down now and each day w
ent a little more smoothly. Though sales continued to be strong, the crowds had fallen off enough that she and Chandran and Annova could each grab a break a couple of times a day, while still managing to keep stock replenished on an hourly basis. That meant Leah was locking up more quickly at the end of the day and having more free time at night.
She’d developed a rhythm for those early evenings, too. She and Chandran would walk to the Plaza of Women—or, on some of the increasingly colder days, take one of the transports—and wander around until they found a place that served food or drink. Leah never ate much on those outings, saving her appetite for dinner with Mally, but she looked forward to the hours spent alone with Chandran as her reward for the challenges of the day. They discussed shop business, of course, what was selling and what wasn’t, but they talked about themselves, too. They had begun telling each other stories about their childhoods and young adult years—adventures and misadventures that occurred before the great calamities that had sent each of them, ten years apart, into exile in Malinqua.
But they never mentioned the calamities themselves—the circumstances, the occurrences, the conversations, the miscalculations, the emotions. It was as if each of them had excised crucial years from their lives and spliced the remaining parts together into one imperfect whole. Such a feat should have made them both seem younger, Leah thought, but the opposite was true. Each of them carried those missing years around as if they had spanned twice the allotted days; each of them had been aged by events. Each of them had been broken.
But we both want to be whole again, Leah thought one night as they shared a bottle of wine and talked over the day. We’re both hoping to find a way to make the future erase the tragedies of the past.
During working hours, she rarely had time for such quiet, philosophical musings. While the crowds were smaller, the customers tended to be more demanding, and Leah often found herself waiting on some imperious matron from the Five Families who wanted Leah’s undivided attention while she considered every piece of merchandise in the shop.
Worse still were the customers who assumed their wealth and class entitled them to any special service they desired. Which was how Leah found herself, one chilly day, accompanying an insistent Dochenza couple back to their house so she could advise them on where exactly to position the blown glass figurines they’d purchased to ornament their kierten. After spending an hour with them, trying every possible arrangement for the delicate statuary, Leah needed to walk back to the shop just to clear her head.
Right as she was crossing the Plaza of Women, the sun came out, chasing away some of the chill, and she paused a moment to feel the lick of heat along her cheekbones. That was when she spotted two Karkan men standing a few feet away, looking frustrated and indecisive. She didn’t think she’d seen either one before, but they were expensively dressed and heavily bejeweled. Rich Karkans on the streets of Chialto. Surely they were connected to the prince.
Leah watched them a moment as they glared and argued, then she strode over and offered a cheerful smile. “You look lost,” she said in Coziquela. “Can I help you?”
One of the men shook his head, but the other smiled back. “We would appreciate that,” he said. “We had heard that there was a temple near the Plaza of Women, but we can’t find it.”
“It’s not far, but it’s not right here,” Leah said. “I can take you there, if you like.”
“We hate to trouble you,” said the surlier man, but again his companion smiled.
“That would be kind,” he said.
They fell in step beside her as she led the way. “I don’t recognize your accent,” she lied. “Are you visiting from somewhere else?”
“The Karkades,” the friendly one answered.
“Oh, that’s so far away!”
He laughed. “There are days that does seem true.”
“Are you enjoying yourself so far? Why do you want to see the temple?”
The taciturn one turned his frown first on Leah, then his companion, but the second man answered anyway. “Just a ritual we like to observe when we visit new countries. Visit the shrines, make donations to the poor, offer some small thanks for the hospitality we’ve been given.”
“What a lovely thought!” Leah exclaimed. “I’ll have to remember that if I ever go traveling.”
The talkative one glanced over at her. “Is a temple the best place to make such a donation?”
Leah nodded. “Most of the tithes go to cover upkeep on the temples themselves, but you can leave bigger offerings as well, and the money will get distributed to various charities.”
He nodded. “Excellent.”
Once they arrived at the small stone temple, Leah escorted them inside, showed them the tithing box, explained how the blessings worked, and offered to choose coins for them. “Not today, thank you very much,” said the smiling man, pulling a small lumpy bag from his inner pocket. The contents were too thick to fit through the slot on the top of the box, so Leah pried up the lid and he settled the bag on the layer of coppers and quint-silvers already in place.
“Well, that’s done,” said his friend. “Now we have to get back.”
They parted ways outside the temple door, Leah claiming she had business on the other end of town. She watched them hike back toward the Plaza, arguing again, then she set off in the other direction. When she judged they were out of sight, she returned to the temple. Two women had entered while she wasn’t looking, so she had to sit patiently on the sweela bench, pretending to meditate, until they’d pulled their blessings and departed. Then she was back at the tithing box, pulling out the bag and peering inside.
And then staring.
Jewels. Of every color, every description. Some small and sparkling, even in the temple’s dim light; others larger, darker, glowing with a buried radiance. She couldn’t even calculate how much this treasure trove was worth, but it would be an astonishing sum. This was not just some thoughtful gesture, a token thanks for a host’s hospitality. This was a form of reparation.
Leah replaced the bag, closed the lid, and left the temple, moving slowly, so deep in thought she almost wandered off the path twice. She kept remembering one specific phrase Chandran had used to describe the Karkan philosophy. A woman who wants to cheat on her husband might buy him a very expensive gift to bank her forgiveness in advance. This was a very expensive gift from the Karkades to Welce. What did the Karkans expect to be atoning for? What could they possibly be planning to do that would require such a lavish apology? And was there any way to stop them?
• • •
Leah had no time to brood over the Karkan donation once she returned to the shop, because Annova was at the door, greeting her with relief.
“A customer has just arrived and she only wants to deal with you,” Annova said quietly. Leah brushed a hand through her hair, hoping it looked presentable, and glanced quickly around the shop to see if she could identify who had come calling.
In fact, there were two women browsing through the aisles, both finely dressed and reeking of money. One was tall, slender, and somewhat plain-featured, though her elaborate clothing and hairstyle added a great deal to her attractiveness. But it was the other woman who instantly caught Leah’s attention. She was shorter and small-boned, with a heart-shaped face and masses of gorgeous red hair. Of course Leah recognized her. She was the old king’s third wife, Corene’s mother, and Darien’s onetime lover: Alys.
Everyone knew the turbulent history of the sweela queen. Even when King Vernon was still alive, Alys had been notorious for her scheming, frequently creating scandals within the royal court. Corene’s relationship with her had always been strained, and Darien made no secret of the fact that he despised her. The only person Leah knew who actually liked her was Rhan—and Rhan had a taste for vagrants and miscreants, so that was hardly a recommendation.
Leah glided over to greet her. “Majesty,” she
said, bowing deeply. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here the moment you arrived.”
“Oh, are you Leah?” Alys replied in a light voice. “I have heard such things about your new place here. I couldn’t let another day go by without seeing it for myself.”
“I have gathered merchandise from across the kingdoms of the southern seas,” Leah said, the phrase coming out a little more pompously than she’d planned. “Are you interested in items from anywhere in particular? Are you looking for a scarf, a jewel, or some other accessory? Perhaps an exotic food or beverage?”
“I am open to all possibilities,” Alys replied, strolling slowly along the hunti display table and letting her fingers trail across the wooden boxes, the painted ceramic skulls. “Anything might catch my attention.”
“Then I can just let you wander at your leisure.”
“Oh, no, do accompany me and explain everything,” Alys said, smiling at her prettily. It was odd, Leah thought, the queen and her daughter looked very similar, yet Leah’s guess was that they were nothing alike. Corene could manage a regal, impassive bearing when she had to, but most of the time, she showed clearly what she was thinking or feeling; she could be impetuous, petulant, delightful, difficult, frightened, or fierce, all within the space of a few minutes. Alys looked like someone who would smile at you no matter what emotions raged behind her green eyes—and then slip a knife between your ribs the minute you weren’t looking. She’d still be smiling when she did it.
“Gladly,” Leah said. “Just tell me when I start to bore you.”
The queen followed so closely behind Leah that Leah could smell her cinnamon perfume and hear the faint clatter of her beaded bracelet. It was hardly a surprise that Alys was drawn to the prettiest and most expensive items on the tables. She wrapped shawls around her shoulders, held earrings up to her cheeks, and sniffed at every jar of perfume in the store.
“Is that for sale?” she asked, pointing to the reifarjin.