by J. E. Holmes
Noticing all those differences passed in a flash. It didn’t matter. These were people. They weren’t her people. And they were too far from Tithelk to know who she was. She nearly forgot she was ill. She nearly slipped off the cliff and fell down to them. How badly she wanted to see people, to rest comfortably among the safety of others. But would they even accept her? She was an outsider. Maybe they would think she was dangerous and try to kill or banish her.
Then she glanced at her hand, clutching the black bloodsword. Of course they would think she was dangerous! How stupid to think otherwise. Regardless, she needed to disguise the sword, make it look as ordinary as a sword-shaped object could look.
Shivering, she slipped off her cloak and wrapped the sword in it. Please don’t shred my only cloak, she begged it. Please please please. I need that.
She managed to wrap it so that none of the black weapon showed, and it didn’t cut through the fabric. Whispering prayers and thanks, she wrapped her satchel strap around the hilt and slung it off her shoulder. Then she moved along the edge of the cliff, looking for a way she could get down safely.
Eventually, after circumnavigating much of the small village, she found a rocky pathway. At this point she was certain someone from the village had seen her, but she didn’t look down to see. She was too focused on her footing.
Some small rocks slipped and clattered, noise breaking through tense silence. Still she didn’t look. The path leveled out, grew muddy, and she slogged through it, much more comfortable. When it turned rocky again, her mud-slicked boots held no traction on the stones. The stones clacked and slipped, and she fell forward, throwing her arms out in front of her and holding a shout of surprise at the top of her throat. Wet rocks dug into her palms. Her shoulder hit next, then her hip, and she rolled and slid to a stop.
A voice nearby said something she didn’t understand. A woman in a fur tunic and skirt, with long black hair, stepped carefully among the rocks toward Ediline. Once she was near, she settled down, repeated what she’d said, and offered a hand. When it was clear Ediline didn’t understand the words, the woman nodded, and she smiled. She was there to help.
Ediline almost broke down crying.
Instead, she looked at the outstretched hand, held up her own, wiped off the blood from her cut palm and mud on her sleeve and took the hand. The woman lifted Ediline to her feet.
“I, uh, thank you,” Ediline said. Then she remembered who she was, where she was. Even as the least important, least desired princess who’d ever been, she knew how to say a few common phrases in each of the most common languages. “Thank you,” she said again, this time in Saiyoen.
The woman seemed confused, then nodded knowingly. “It is not a problem,” she said. Ediline’s stomach sank. The woman spoke Saiyoen with as much difficulty as Ediline did. So that wasn’t the language she’d been speaking. Not that it would have mattered—Ediline would have only been able to say thank you, it is not a problem, hello, where is the bathroom?, and several words inappropriate in most contexts.
“Tithelken?” she asked hopefully. Maybe someone in the village would speak her language, or at least a few words of it. How did she say water? How did she tell the woman she was ill? Her nose would probably do that for her.
The woman shrugged and shook her head, brow furrowed in dismay. Yeah, Ediline felt that, too. But beneath it were relief that she hadn’t been killed or imprisoned and elation that she had found people. Talking only to herself and her belongings had grown old quickly.
The woman held Ediline’s hand and helped her down the path into the village. At the bottom of the trail, where the ground mercifully leveled out for good, three children, each one a full head shorter than the last, waited for the woman, their mother, Ediline guessed. The children stayed back and spoke politely to their mother as she and Ediline stepped into the village.
There were no more than two dozen buildings, fewer than eighty people. The woman stopped and turned around. Ediline and the children halted at the same time, with the same obedience.
Carefully, the woman looked Ediline up and down. Ediline was obviously foreign, though her mixed heritage likely made it difficult to identify where she was from. She was also taller than anyone in the village she had seen. Being inspected like this, from a polite distance but with an impolite level of intensity, made Ediline squirm. She also felt hot from her eyes to her chest, was dizzy and weak, and needed to lie down.
A moment passed, and the woman held a hand to her own neck. “Liu,” she said. Then she pointed to her children, each one in turn, starting with the tallest. A girl, a boy, and a girl. “Taena, Roi, Woitae.” A pause, and then she repeated the whole thing. “Liu, Taena, Roi, Woitae.”
Ediline nodded along and waited for her turn. Should she use a fake name? Her name wasn’t broadly-known, but eventually someone would recognize it, especially if news spread from Korv about the death of their king.
But she wouldn’t. As the ninthborn, it would have been so easy to give up, to hide, to just retreat away from everything, to hate herself and her name and her birth, and to shrivel and disappear and become something different. These things she had always vowed never to do. She had never been ashamed of being herself, and she wouldn’t start now that she’d actually done something to be proud of.
“Ediline,” she said. “Ediline.”
“Hello,” the woman said in Saiyoen. The children looked at her with puzzled faces, and she spoke aside to them in a hurried tone. They nodded their understanding when she finished, and they each took their turn trying to pronounce the foreign greeting.
“That isn’t my language, either,” Ediline said. Ugh, how could she convey that? How did one demonstrate an inability to speak a language when the other party also didn’t speak that language? Maybe if she demonstrated the breadth of her understanding of the language, it would be sufficiently confusing and get her point across. “Hello, where is the bathroom? Thank you, it is not a problem.” She glanced to the children. They didn’t understand. “Lords-damned, shit, bastard, penis, tits.”
Liu gaped, horrified. After a moment, the same horror sunk in for Ediline. That had been an impressively rude thing to do. Hadn’t she just reminded herself how inappropriate those words were? Embarrassment flooded her and brought one more important phrase back from her distant lessons. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Thank you?”
Liu’s horror dissipated, and she seemed to understand. “It is not a problem,” she said.
“Thank you.” She gestured at herself and again said, “Tithelk.” And she pointed in a direction she hoped was northwest. “Tithelk.”
Liu nodded. Then her eyes narrowed, and she lashed out with one hand. Ediline moved to block, but she stopped herself halfway. Liu’s hand came to rest on Ediline’s neck. Her eyes widened, and she spoke a flurry of words, of which Ediline understood zero.
A few other people began to approach, and Liu spoke to two of the men. One split off in a hurry, and the other walked toward one of the nearby buildings. Liu shoved Ediline in the direction of the second man, and shoved her again when she didn’t move to follow. Again and again she shoved until Ediline was hurrying to catch up with the man.
“Hello,” she said in Saiyoen. He didn’t say anything.
The man was younger than Liu and carefully groomed. He was handsome, even if it was nearly ruined by the severity of his expression. He had small eyes, and his brow was pulled down toward them in a V.
“Thank you,” she said in Saiyoen.
He paid no attention to her.
“Well, you’re rude,” she said in Tithelken.
He paid no attention to her. The validation of her statement, even though he hadn’t understood it and hadn’t meant to validate her, made her smile a little. Then she felt woozy, and sick in her stomach, and had to hold her arms out to steady herself.
The man took her arm and put it over his shoulder. He made the move with no tenderness, but it was not gruff, either. He p
ulled her to lean on him. She tried not to, but holding herself up was now a great strain of effort.
At the building, the man held her by the forearm and set a hand on her back. He guided her through the doorway. The interior was long and narrow, a line of beds along the righthand wall. She gulped down the fear that she was being pushed into some sort of orgiastic chamber but then realized it was a tiny hospital. There was a long table on the other side with stools and boxes and jars of herbs. He set her down on one of the beds, pushed gently on her shoulder until she reclined, then removed her boots. Until they were gone, she hadn’t realized how soaked through they were. She’d spent so long in the rain she hadn’t realized when parts of her stopped being wet and others remained so.
The man set her boots by her cot then opened a box on the counter. He pulled out a length of fabric and wrapped her feet together in it. The fabric was dry and warm. Immediately she felt a tiny bit better.
“Thank you,” she said again in Saiyoen.
He spoke a few words, and it sounded like an admonishment. It also sounded like Saiyoen. Then, he said, “I speak a little of your language,” and she understood it.
She sat straight up and couldn’t help but grin. “Tithelken! Liu didn’t know—”
He stomped over and pushed her until she reclined again. “Liu does not know what it is named,” he said, “but she knows I speak.” He paused. “Put your bag down.”
Her satchel. It was still at her side, the wrapped sword beneath it. Careful not to unwrap the sword and frighten him off, she removed the satchel strap from her shoulder and set it and the sword on the ground next to her bed.
“What is your name?” she said.
“You are young, but tall.”
“Thank you,” she said, hoping he comprehended her sarcasm, but then not really caring one way or the other. “My name is—” She stopped. If he knew her language, did he know the royal family? Did he know her father’s name, or her brother’s? Had he, like Jinnrey, heard the cruel children’s songs about her?
“Where did you learn Tithelken?” she said instead.
“I studied,” he said. “In Taibenai. To treat sick, I speak all languages.”
He sat on one of the stools, opened a few jars, and began to grind herbs. The potent smell carved through her clogged sense of smell and burned her nose.
“You’re a doctor,” she said. A real, professional doctor, who’d studied in a major Saiyoen city that Ediline had actually heard of. “Then why—?” She cut herself off. It would be too rude to ask. Why was he somewhere like this, if he had that kind of training? Why not go somewhere with more sick, and more money to be earned as thanks for his services?
“How old?”
“Seventeen,” she said.
“Menstruating?”
She jerked back. Lords, how long had it been? Maybe stress had caused her to skip a month. Or it could be right around the corner. They were always devious surprises for her. “No,” she said, “not at the moment.”
“Pregnant?”
“What?”
“Answer,” he pressed. “Pregnant?”
“No, I’m not. Couldn’t be.” It pained her to think of that night with Javras, betrayal and longing cutting into each other in a jumbled mess. But they had been careful, even in their passion.
The other man that Liu had sent away came into the small hospital then, and he handed water to her doctor. The doctor thanked him in the tongue they spoke here, and then mixed the herbs with water. Her tongue tried to recede down her throat just thinking about what it would taste like. Wet leaf paste. Lovely.
“I called you rude,” she realized aloud.
“Drink this.” He brought it to her but didn’t hand it to her. He put it right to her lips and tipped it back until she had to open her mouth and let the bitter stuff in. And she’d thought coffee had a taste like a frontal assault on her tongue. She wanted to spit but gulped the whole thing down, trying to get it off her tongue as quickly as possible.
He walked back to the counter when she was done and set the little clay bowl down.
Why hadn’t he said anything? “Do you know what I called you?”
“You said.”
“And you understand?”
He laughed and shook his head. “Yes.”
“I apologize.”
He waved a dismissive hand. Okay, he was rude, but it still wasn’t right to say it to his face. She felt childish for doing it just because he didn’t understand her. She stared down at her hands, scratched and bloody. Her clothes were muddy and crusty from a mix of rainwater, dirt, and her sweat. Her doctor noticed them, too. He tisked and went back to the cabinet, crouched and looked under it. She still felt dizzy, so she let her head rest back.
“Thank you,” she said, even though the doctor probably didn’t know why.
As a reply, she felt a soft weight thump against her lap. With some effort she lifted her head. The doctor had already returned to his workspace, but he’d laid some folded clothes on her lap. “Change, and we will wash your clothes. Then sleep. I come back later.”
“Wait,” she said. “My name is Ediline. What’s yours?”
He mixed another bowl of the herby disaster and set it on the counter directly across from her bed. “When you get up, drink.” He began to leave, and she felt red anger mix with the feverish heat already filling her head.
“Hey!”
He stopped.
Even ill, covered in dirt and blood, and in a foreign village where no one spoke her language, she was still a princess—and a princess of Presence, at that. She could summon it when she needed it, and she brought out her best booming voice, and she sat up and gave her best commanding stare. “Give me your name.”
His jaw went slack and a little off to one side. “Kuo,” he said.
“Thank you, Kuo,” she said. She settled back to the bed. The thin mattress and stiff pillow were a cushion of clouds compared to what she’d had since leaving Korv, and she smiled a satisfied smile when she closed her eyes.
— Chapter 17 —
“Every eighth year since the Fall of the Lords, on the eighth day of the eighth season, the people of Nerebek gather together to participate in a moment of silence eighty minutes long, lighting one candle every ten minutes for each of their beloved fallen Lords. They then take a ninth candle and crush it beneath the heels of their boots and scream profanity to break the silence.”
—Rituals and Traditions by Norm Undon, historian of Paar, 568
Medicine, though frequently tasting of the rotted undersides of tree stumps, was extremely effective. After four days in the village called Tailiet, Ediline was fully recovered, fully washed, in fully cleaned clothes, and had learned to speak a few words with the villagers. Kuo barely spoke with her, except to administer treatment or translate when she couldn’t communicate something she needed by gesturing. He was the only person in the village who spoke something besides the local language. She was given a small empty hut all to herself, and it made her think of her house back at Sladt. She was sick with guilt at leaving Marv. Still, the small hut was a place to sleep, and a place to hide the bloodsword. When she and it were separated, the bond she’d made strummed anxiety in her chest like a vibrating chord. She stayed away as much as possible, as much as she could bear, even if she had to verify it was still there several times a day.
She foraged in the jungle and hunted with the two women who were the hunters of the village. Though she could speak almost nothing of the language, she liked these two women a great deal. They were strong and quick, serious about their work, but they had an unshakable camaraderie, and they laughed together frequently. They were impressed by her hunting knife, even if it pained her a little to use it, thinking back on how she’d gotten it.
Ediline asked Kuo about them on the fifth day. “The two women I hunt with—”
“Rei and Miu,” he said. He felt her pulse, checked her forehead, then asked her to lift the back of her shirt. She did, and he
listened to her breathing, all with indifference. Just as before, he was not gruff or severe with her, just efficient. Maybe a little callous. But she didn’t mind.
“Yes, them,” she said. “They seem close.”
“They are paired.”
“Paired—are they married?”
He clicked his tongue and yanked down her shirt. That was a little gruff. “No,” he said sharply. “Not lovers—paired.”
“I heard you the first time.” She’d never seen them touch each other affectionately, or kiss, or call each other by pet names. They argued sometimes, but it was always resolved quickly. “I don’t know what paired means. Are they good friends?”
“Paired is more than friends,” he said. “Paired is like marriage, but not with sex.”
“I don’t—”
He sighed, exasperated. “In Saiyoe, even in Tailiet, two people can pair. They form a bond, and a contract. In the cities, the contracts are law. They are like a marriage. Share things, share lives. But not a bed.”
“A . . . friendship marriage.”
“A pair,” he corrected.
“That’s fascinating,” she said.
He sighed, now irritated. “We are not . . . how do you say? Thing you look at.”
“A spectacle?”
He inspected her eyes, one and then the other, then asked her to open her mouth wide and stick out her tongue. “Yes, a spectacle,” he said. “We are not a spectacle. We live our lives the way we live them, and you live your life the way you do.”
“I’m sorry if I offended you. I just didn’t know.”
He shook his head. “I am not offended, but someone else might be. You do a good time, not acting like an outsider to everyone. Most of the time.”
“Thanks, Kuo. I really appreciate you doing this for me. Everyone has been so—”