by Sharon Shinn
Taro rested a hand on the top of her head. “It is one of the things I like about you.” He looked at Leah. “Also, she never forgets anything you ever say.”
“But you didn’t answer me,” Natalie said. “Isn’t everybody already a person?”
“Yes,” Leah said, not sure how to explain. Her headache, which had abated somewhat during the interlude with Chandran, was returning full force. “But maybe some people wish they were different. For instance, if you’re someone who gets mad easily, maybe you want to be someone who can stay calm.”
“When I get mad, I want to hit people,” Natalie informed her. “But Taro says I shouldn’t.”
“When I get mad, I cry,” said Mally.
Josetta leaned her elbows on the table. “When something makes me mad, I go out and do something about it,” she said. “I try to fix things.”
Natalie liked that. “What things? How do you fix them?”
“Things that are unfair. For instance, if there’s a neighborhood in the southside where people can’t get fresh water, I have Zoe come in and help me build a well.”
“I’d like to be that kind of person,” Natalie decided. She looked at Leah. “What kind of person did you want to be?”
Goodness, you’re exhausting, Leah thought. No wonder Romelle wanted Natalie to come to the city for a few days. “Someone who was more sure of herself. Someone who made better choices. Someone who wasn’t afraid.”
It was clear Natalie didn’t think much of these goals. “Why did you decide to come back to Welce?”
Taro snorted. “Because Nelson Ardelay went and fetched her.”
“Is that why?” Natalie asked.
Leah was laughing at Taro. “He did show up and say he wanted to bring me home,” she admitted. “But I only came back because I was ready.”
“Are you glad you did?”
“I am.”
“Do you think you’ll go back to Malinqua?”
Unexpectedly, Mally turned in her lap and put her arms around Leah’s neck. “I think you should stay,” Mally said.
Leah drew her daughter closer, refusing to let the tears rise. She leaned over and whispered into Mally’s dark curls, “I think I should stay, too.”
• • •
Taro and Rafe went off together for a card game, while the women followed Natalie and Mally into the room with the indoor river. The two girls played happily in the water, tossing rocks, poking at fish, and making up games on the spot. Natalie was clearly the one in charge, ordering Mally to stand here or move there or stop splashing so much.
“She’s a little bossy,” Leah said as the women reclined lazily on the sofas. Leah didn’t know about Josetta and Virrie, but she could fall asleep right here. Long day. Long couple of days. Good days, though. Very. She had to hide a smile.
“A little bossy?” Virrie repeated. “She tries to tell everyone what to do, even Taro. Mally mostly goes along with her because Mally just likes to be included in whatever’s happening. But other times Mally has a will of her own. It’s funny to watch. Natalie will get so impatient and demand that Mally pay attention, and Mally just goes on doing whatever she’s decided to do.”
“How does Natalie behave with Odelia?” Josetta asked.
“Pretty much the way she behaves with everyone else,” Virrie said. “For a long time, we tried to keep Odelia separated from the others. We didn’t want Natalie to be confused—having two sisters, both called by the same name—so we thought it would be easier to keep them apart. But Natalie has a mind of her own, and she kept finding ways into Odelia’s quarters. And we’d find them playing together, Natalie ordering her about, and Odelia mostly ignoring her. But Odelia never seemed to mind having Natalie nearby. Other people would make her anxious, but not Natalie.” Virrie shrugged. “So now we let them be together whenever they want.”
“And Natalie doesn’t have any trouble telling the two girls apart?” Leah asked.
Before Virrie could answer, Natalie’s voice carried clearly across the room. “Odelia. Don’t put sticks in the water. I mean, Mally. Put them here.”
“As you see,” Virrie said with a faint smile. “I’m convinced she always knows which one is which, but for years we wouldn’t let her call Mally anything but Odelia, because we never knew when there might be other people around to hear. So now she slips up from time to time—as do all of us who have been around both girls since birth. But it’s getting easier to think of her as Mally.”
Josetta stirred on her couch. “I always wondered,” she said. “Is Mally short for something?”
“Mallarinda,” Leah said.
“That’s pretty.”
Leah leaned back against her cushions and tried to crush down the pain. The ache in her head, the ache in her heart. “I didn’t name her,” she said. “But I agreed when Taro suggested it.”
“That was his sister’s name—Leah’s mother, of course,” Virrie said softly. “Everybody called her Rinda. It was a way to honor her without making it obvious who Mally really was.”
“Has anybody ever figured it out?” Josetta asked.
“Nelson always knew,” Virrie said. “And Beccan, of course. I assume that Zoe and the other primes used their abilities to read blood and bone. But none of them said anything, and as far as I know, no one else ever learned the truth.”
“Not even Alys?” Josetta asked.
Leah pushed herself to a more upright position so she could stare at Josetta. “Why would Queen Alys be more likely to know than anyone else?”
“First, because she’s a troublemaker,” Virrie said.
“And second, because she knows other things Darien wishes she didn’t,” Josetta answered. “For instance, Romelle confided in her—in Alys! of all people!—the truth about Odelia’s condition. So Alys knew before anyone else in court that Odelia would never take the throne, and she started scheming immediately.”
“And third, because she and Rhan are close friends,” Virrie said. Her voice was compassionate, since she knew Leah would flinch at the sound of his name, but she spoke up anyway. “He may have told her at some point. Although, if he did, she’s never found a way to use that information for her own benefit.”
“And it can’t matter anymore,” Leah said. “So, even if she knows, there’s no harm done.”
Josetta was watching her. “Unless you don’t want anyone else to know that Mally’s your daughter.”
Leah turned her head to watch the two girls. They were squatting on either side of the little river and skipping a stone back and forth across the placid water. “I want everyone to know,” she said. “As soon as I think it’s right for Mally.”
Virrie said, “I think that day will come very soon.”
TWENTY-TWO
They scheduled the party for firstday and spent the entire day getting ready for it. “Just a small group,” Virrie said. “Maybe forty or fifty people. Still, I think we need more chairs.”
Taro managed to stay out of sight while the women arranged furniture and consulted with the cooks, but Rafe was always available to move heavy objects or hold up an end of a decorative rope of greenery.
“You like parties,” Leah said to him in an accusing voice. She’d already confided that she was experiencing low-grade terror at the thought of interacting with so many people at once.
Rafe laughed. “I like being around people. I like trying to figure out what a man is thinking or how to put a woman at ease.”
“You should be the torz one, then.”
“Well, it will certainly be a torz sort of gathering.”
It certainly would. More than half would be Frothens by blood or marriage. Most of them were people Leah had known fairly well five years ago—cousins and second cousins and assorted aunts and uncles—though Taro’s sons were all significantly older than she was and she’d never been close to
them or their children. Josetta and Virrie had also invited a host of sweela folks—Nelson and his entire family, down to Kurtis’s children—as well as Darien, Zoe, and a handful of other court perennials. Leah was already worried about trying to keep all the names straight, though Josetta told her not to even bother.
“Just say, ‘It’s so good to see you again, what have you been doing lately?’ and they’ll be happy to talk about themselves,” said the princess.
“No they won’t, they’ll ask me what I’ve been doing, and I don’t know what to say!”
“Tell them you were in Malinqua conducting business for Darien and you’re not supposed to talk about it,” Josetta advised. “That solves everything.”
Leah laughed. “You are so much more devious than you appear to be.”
“Lifelong training. So have you invited Chandran to attend?”
“No, and I’m not going to.”
“Then maybe one night during the next nineday,” Josetta suggested. “Please? Because I need to go spend time at the shelter, but I’d like to meet him before I go.”
“Come by the shop.”
“You need to bring him here,” Josetta said. “So he can see your real life.”
Leah let her eyes wander around the room with its high ceilings and beautiful proportions and great bundles of scented flowers set out in advance of the festivities. “I don’t think this is my real life,” she said.
Natalie and Mally came running through, squealing and chasing each other, then disappeared into a hallway. Down another hallway floated Virrie’s voice, raised in a question, and Rafe’s quick reply. The front door opened and they heard Taro in the kierten, calling out for one of the servants. Josetta raised her eyebrows as if to say, You see?
“It’s part of your life,” Josetta said. “Or at least the people are. You have to figure out how to bring all of the parts together in one whole.”
“I know. I’m not sure how, though.”
Josetta nodded. “I’m still working on that myself.”
• • •
The evening was long, chaotic, and overwhelming, but Leah had to admit later that she sort of enjoyed herself. Almost. Generally speaking, the Five Families weren’t particularly demonstrative; they were more likely to nod or bow in greeting than touch a person’s hand as the Karkans did. But that reserve didn’t hold for anyone with torz blood, and a hug was the standard opening gambit. Leah was surprised at how many times she was actually happy to see a familiar face, how much pleasure she felt when aunts and cousins threw their arms around her. Each kiss on the cheek was like a droplet of water falling on parched ground; under the patting hands and the warm embraces she felt herself turn from a rough-edged flinty lump of stone to a patch of mixed earth flowering into spring.
Even Rhan’s presence didn’t bother her—brought her, she had to confess, the slightest bit of pleasure. “You look like a little girl who’s been run over by a parade on Quinnahunti changeday,” he informed her as he brought her a glass of fruited water and stood beside her to contemplate the crowd. “Dazed but happy.”
She laughed and gratefully gulped down half the glass. “Happy might be too strong a word, but it’s a pretty incredible group,” she said. “Hard not to like everybody.”
He sipped at his own drink, which was wine instead of water, and watched her closely. “Have you decided yet? When you’re going to tell the truth about Mally?”
Not even that question filled her with guilt and panic. Maybe she was too glutted with affection at the moment to have room for anxiety. “It seems like there’s no reason to keep the secret anymore,” she said. “But I have to tell Mally first. She has to have time to adjust to the notion.”
“Should I be there when you tell her?”
She hadn’t expected that offer, and she tilted her head to survey him. “Do you want to be?”
He lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “I want her to know. I want to be more to her than I am now.” He exhaled on a laugh. “But I admit I’m a little afraid of the conversation.”
“Then let me tell her about me first. And then, if she wants to know, you. Then you can come over and the three of us can talk.”
“Like a family,” he said.
“We’re not a family,” she said, the words coming out so easily and so painlessly that she wondered how long they had been curled there, under her tongue, awaiting the chance to be heard. “We’re connected—we always will be—but we’re not a family.”
“To me connection is family,” he said. “And family is much wider and more complicated than I used to realize. We’re just not a household.”
“All right,” she said, laughing. “I’ll accept that.”
Before she knew what he intended, he bent down and kissed her on the cheek. “Good,” he said. “Let me know when you tell her. Make it soon.”
He slipped away and she stood there a moment, waiting to be slammed by the old despair, but it didn’t come. Instead, she lifted a hand to her cheek to touch the spot where he’d kissed her, and all she felt was peace.
“Well, I don’t think you should be flirting with Rhan,” Josetta said from behind her. Leah turned with a smile.
“We were just talking. It’s nice to be able to do that casually without wanting to go somewhere afterward to cry.”
“Are you having a good time?”
“Much better than I thought I would. Though I’ve lost track of the number of people who asked if I was going to the regatta on changeday.”
“It’s a lot of fun,” Josetta said. “Unless you almost drown.”
Leah laughed. “I imagine that would make it a little less delightful!”
“Mally would probably enjoy it,” Josetta said. “Taro doesn’t usually come to town for the event, so I’m not sure she’s ever been to one.”
“She seemed to do well—didn’t she?—I kept being swept off by Frothen relatives, so I didn’t have much chance to monitor her.”
“Taro took her around and introduced her to everybody,” Josetta said. “A lot of people were still saying, ‘Is that Odelia?’ and anytime someone called her Odelia, she would answer. And then Natalie would say, ‘Her name is Mally.’ So I think it was a little confusing, but everyone made her feel welcome. She seemed to have fun. She and Natalie and about six other children all ended up in the river room for most of the night.”
“So I guess we count the evening as a success.”
Josetta laughed. “I guess we do. By the way, I came looking for you because Darien wants to talk to you. Come on. He’s in his old study down the hall.”
The study was the one room in the house that most of the current occupants avoided; it still had such a strong sense of Darien’s presence that it didn’t encourage relaxation. Its central feature was an enormous desk that had made Leah feel like a child the one time she sat behind it. Anyone else would have been swallowed by its size, but she was pretty sure that Darien always managed to command the room whenever he was seated there.
This evening he was standing beside the desk when Josetta ushered her in. He nodded at them and said, “It’s been a most enjoyable evening, thanks for inviting me. I have to leave soon, but I have one commission to carry out before I go.” He pulled an envelope out of a pocket and handed it to Leah. It was made of a thick, rough paper that was folded and smudged as if it had been in transit for a very long time.
She took it with some bewilderment. “What is this?”
“A letter that came to me at the palace, addressed to Corene. You can imagine how pleased I am to be acting as postal courier these days for my daughter and all her friends.”
She grinned at that comment but she was still confused. “If it’s for Corene, why are you giving it to me?”
“Because she told me that if any letters arrived from exotic locations, I should show them to you before forwarding them
on.”
“That’s so unfair,” Josetta said. “She writes Darien all the time and I’ve only gotten two notes from her.”
Leah was turning the envelope over in her hand. “‘Exotic locations’?” she repeated. But there it was, on the back, the stamp of a port city far west of Cozique, and the letter A drawn in a painstakingly beautiful script. Leah felt her heart stop.
“It’s from Alette?” she whispered.
“That’s my assumption.”
“Who is Alette?” Josetta wanted to know. “Is that the Dhonshon princess you told me about?”
Clumsily, hastily, trying not to rip the paper, Leah pried open the envelope and unfolded the letter inside. It was brief, written in a precise, flowing hand.
My dearest Corene,
It is with great gladness I am able to inform you that Cheelio and I have made it about halfway to our destination. We have had many adventures along the way, and indeed at first it seemed unlikely that we would make it out of Palminera harbor, but we won our way to freedom. The voyage has been very long, and we are still some ninedays from Yorramol, but we feel confident that we will make it safely there. We have fallen in with a group of Dhonshon natives who have made their homes in Yorramol and who are returning there after a long visit to my homeland. They assure me that Yorramol is much more colonized than I had expected and that we will be welcomed by the other Dhonshons who have fled my father’s regime. There is so much more I have to tell you, but a ship captain is leaving for Welce within the hour, and I am determined that this letter will go with him. Please share my news with Liramelli, Melissande, Leah, and Teyta, all of whom generously risked themselves for someone so insignificant as me. I do not have words to express my gratitude.
Know that I will always keep all of you faithfully in my heart.
Alette
Leah was almost crying by the end of the letter, she was so happy. Josetta put her arm around Leah’s shoulders. “Is it bad news?” she asked.
“No—no—the best news,” Leah said. “I told you how Alette needed to escape from her father—”