by S. D. Tower
“No, unfortunately. It’s a terrible living, though, being a scribe. It’s not hard to do, but if I had to depend on it I'd starve. But Mother sends me money, so I get along.”
Tossi was well out of earshot. “Dilara,” I said, “I killed a man.”
For an instant, that watchful reserve evaporated. Her eyes widened and she exclaimed softly, “You didT
“Yes. But it was an accident. Sort of.” I told her what had happened. When I finished, she emitted a soft whistle and said, “Good for you. I'd have made sure of him after he hit the ground, though. Suppose he’d identified you later?”
“It was dark. He never got a good look at me.”
Dilara laughed. “Well, he certainly never will now. And here I find myself with the Moonlight Girl. But see how brave I am? I'm not afraid of you in the least.”
I laughed, and as I laughed, the palace bell sounded the fifth hour of the moming watch. Moments later the city’s timekeeper dmms took their cue from the bell, and a low mmble, like that of a distant army, quivered in the soft spring air.
“An hour till midday,” Dilara said. “I guess I’d better go. If I’m not on that lorcha when it sails, Tossi will box my ears.” “I suppose you must.” I feh very downcast, for our time together had sped so swiftly. My best friend was leaving me, and I didn’t know when or where I’d see her again. “Can you find your way? Shall we come with you to the port?”
She grinned, a flash of the old Dilara. “I can find my way from anywhere to anywhere. I just have to get my things from the hostel, and I’m off. Travel light and fast, that’s me.” She kissed me on both cheeks and went across the lawn to Tossi. They embraced, Dilara tumed on her heel, and vanished among the budding cherry trees. Tossi rejoined me in the pavilion.
“I’m sorry she had to leave so soon,” she said.
“So am I. I’m very glad you brought her with you. But you’re not in Istana about tin shipments.”
“No, I’m not. By the way. Mother’s extremely pleased with your work here. She’s had reports from Master Luasin, and commends you for your talent and for your diligence.” “I’m very gratified. Please tell her so, and give her my thanks.” After a pause I said, “Perin says I look a lot like the Surina. The one who just died.”
“Yes, Mother told me that, too, before I left. She noticed it herself a few years ago, she said. It’s a very useful resemblance.” She smiled. “You’ll be sure to catch the Sun Lord’s eye because of it.”
Excitement vibrated through me. “You mean—”
“Yes, I do. You’ll be going to Kuijain with the Elder Company this season.”
Even though I’d expected this, it was still a shock to hear it. “You’re surel Mother said so?”
“Yes. I brought her dispatch with me. Master Luasin has it by now.”
“Well, I do think I earned it,” I said. “So I’m to go to Kur-jain. What then?”
She told me. It took a while. When she finished, I stared for a long time at the gardens.
“Lale?” Tossi murmured after a while. “Say something.” A ringed pigeon was waddling around on the grass, pecking. I said, “I see now why she couldn’t trust anybody but you to come. I’m just trying to grasp it. I never imagined anything so . ..”
I found myself at a loss for words, an unfamiliar sensation. Tossi said, “Audacious?”
“That, yes.” I wondered if I ought to be frightened. I’d always known my work could be dangerous and that I might die in Mother’s service. But I wasn’t afraid; what I felt was nervousness mixed with excited anticipation. I owed Mother everything, and now I could begin to repay her for what she’d given me. And as Dilara had said. I’d be at the center of everything.
“You’ll do very well, Lale.” She took my hands and looked into my face. “You’re a fine actress. This is the greatest role you’ll ever play.”
I laughed. “A secret one. No applause from my audience.” “Except fi’om Mother. And from me. But, perhaps, if it all goes as it should, the world can someday know what you’ve done.”
“Maybe,” I said modestly. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?” She had to go soon after that, to attend to the tin business. I would not, she said, see her again before she left Istana. So I accompanied her to the prefecture’s main gate and we made our farewells, as would sisters who were fond of each other but now must go their separate ways.
After she left I returned to the veranda and my book, but although I stared at its pages I did not see them. Visions of a glorious future danced before my eyes, for I was profoundly excited at what lay before me. When younger. I’d imagined being written down in the histories, like Maylane, and now it might actually happen. And perhaps I’d appear not only in the histories. Great poets might write about me, and High Theater dramatists portray my triumphs. It was one of the things I’d longed for, this fame, and now Mother had put it within my reach. Once I was in Kuijain I had merely to grasp it, and I had every intention of doing exactly that.
Fourteen
The Elder Company and I reached Kuijain early in the month of New Leaf, after a journey of four days. Including Master Luasin, there were thirteen of us: Perin and Radam the male and female leads, plus the two second leads and the pair of supporting actors. Filling out the company were the musicians Guyal and Yoshin, and the married couple who worked as stagers. And finally there were Eshin and I, the two lucky students who had won apprenticeships in the Elder Company.
We loaded the wagons onto river lorchas at Istana, but we took no horses with us, since we were to remain in Kurjain all summer and wouldn’t need them. Then we set out on the first leg of our journey, gliding with sail and current down the Pearl to the city of Sutkagin, where we would take the Short Canal toward Kuijain.
Soon after we set out, I asked Perin the question that had been on my mind for days. We were leaning on the rail, watching the river fishermen bob about in their skaffies. Along the shore, herons and yellow stilts stalked among the reeds.
“What’s he like?” I asked. “The Sun Lord, I mean. You’ve met him.”
“Ah.” Her face grew thoughtful. “You could certainly say he’s well-favored. A strong face, straight back, broad shoulders. He’d make a good lead actor, especially in paint. But he’s not as tall as I thought he’d be. In fact, I don’t think he’s much taller than you. Maybe a thumb’s breadth, if that. But. ..”
“But what?” I prompted.
“It’s odd, but even when he’s in a throng, where the men are taller than he is, he still stands out. It’s almost as if he’s the only one you can see. I’m not sure why that is. You know how a compass needle moves, always pointing south? It’s like that. As though he’s the south, and everybody else is a needle.”
“Really?” I said, startled at her fervor. Perin’s observations on men were normally flippant, sardonic, or disillusioned. I’d never heard her speak of one this way, and I decided that she’d been beguiled by the Sun Lord; perhaps she was even infatuated. Powerful men had that effect on many women, and I was a little disappointed to find Perin among them. I had imagined she’d be more clearheaded. Of course, I told myself smugly, I was in no danger of having my head tumed. My eyes were wide open, and I’d keep them that way. Terem Rathai would never make me tum pink, as Perin had just done.
“It’s hard to describe,” she said weakly, and we left it at that.
From Sutkagin we were to follow the Short Canal north to Kuijain. I had missed seeing Sutkagin on my previous river journey, but I now discovered that I’d missed little, for the city was no more interesting than Dimn, except for a vast pink rock rising out of the earth, with the mins of an enormous shrine to the Bee Goddess on its summit. In the old days the shrine had been a great attraction; people came from all over Durdane to see it and to visit the humming bee caves in the rose-tinted cliffs below.
However, Exile raiders had destroyed both shrine and city during the Year of the Five Emperors; they also bumed out the bee caves and killed or drove away all the
bees. The city was later rebuilt, but it was thought that the shrine could not be restored until bees retumed to the caves. Sadly, they never did, so the shrine remained a ruin. I wanted to see it anyway, but moving wagons around by boat is expensive, and Master Luasin wouldn’t allow any time for sightseeing. He had everything transshipped from the lorchas onto five canal slippers as soon as we arrived in Sutkagin, and before I knew it we were on our way to Kuijain.
He had assigned me to the women’s bunk wagon with Perin, Imela, and Harekin, who were the second female lead and the supporting actress, respectively. (The lady stager and her husband bunked in with the musicians.) Imela was the oldest of us, quite plain, and usually played dowager roles. I liked her, but I didn’t care much for Harekin. She was a fine talent, but she had a supercilious streak and paid as little attention to me as she could. Also, she snored.
Our wagon was chained down in the slipper’s midships, and for convenience we slept in it. During the day we sat on the forward hatch in the sunshine and watched the landscapes of Bethiya glide by. This was the south of the Sun Lord’s realm, rolling green farmland broken by conical hills, with the canal winding among them like a blue and silver road. The hills had been terraced long ago, and on these were emerald lines of young wheat and barley. Down on the flatland lay more grain fields, as well as vineyards and orchards of peach, plum, cherry, and pear. These were in full bloom, so that we traveled between banks of pink and white clouds, as if the sky had descended to earth. Their fragrances vied with the weedy damp scents of the canal and of the marsh marigolds and purple mud roses that grew along its banks.
Our slippers each had a pair of masts, so that the crew could use the wind if they were out on a big river like the Pearl. But on the narrow waters of a canal, the boats were hauled by enormous horses that lumbered along a towpath. The tow master rode on his beast’s back to guide it, but he never had much to do, the animals being so placid. Where there was no towpath, as when the canal went through a town or village, the tow master unhitched the horse and took it on ahead. Then the slipper’s crew put their long sculling sweeps over the stem and worked the vessel along until we came up with the towpath again.
This happened several times, since there were four sizable market towns on the canal between Sutkagin and Kuijain, and as many villages. All were in better repair than any I’d seen elsewhere, except in Chiran and Istana, and I noticed few of the walled manors that betrayed the holdings of rich magnates. This puzzled me. We’d studied Bethiya at school, but it was mostly the dynastic history of the Sun Lords, and I’d assumed that there were great landowners in his realm, just as there were everywhere else. I asked Perin about it, since she’d spent a lot of time in Bethiya over the past seven years.
“Well,” she said, “it’s like this. In the Despotates, the rich magnates have been gobbling up the farmers’ lands since the days of the Warring Emperors, because there’s nobody to stop them, except rival magnates and perhaps their Despot. But even a Despot can’t always curb them. You have to remember that the great lords have armed retainers—a lot of them sometimes—and if enough of them combine against a Despot, they can give him no end of trouble. So he has to be careful about giving them offense.”
“I see,” I said politely, though I already knew this. “But why aren’t there more of the big manors here?”
“Because the Sun Lords have been powerful enough to hold on to some of the old ways,” she said. “Bethiya has its magnates, but they’re fewer and weaker than in the south, so more farmers still own their land. But I don’t think the Sun Lords have done this because they love the farmers. They’ve done it to keep the magnates down, so as to secure their place as mlers. Also because free farmers make better soldiers, or so I’ve been told.”
This I understood. For about a day I’d been wondering if the Sun Lords, and this Sun Lord in particular, were more concerned for their people’s welfare than I’d been led to believe. But Perin’s words told me that Terem Rathai and his predecessors thought only of their own power, just as Mother had taught us.
Still, as we made our way up the canal, I didn’t see any abandoned villages. Nor was there any sign of banditry, because each market town had a castella garrisoned by a detachment of the Sun Lord’s cavalry. At two of these towns we went ashore to eat in a chophouse that catered to canal travelers, and I noted that the local people appeared well fed and clothed and that there were few beggars. Bethiya, at least this part of it, looked better than I had expected.
It wasn’t only the towns that were in good condition. At a place called Three Rise Locks, our boats descended to the level of the canal’s northern leg, and as the crews maneuvered us through the lock gates, I thought of Riversong and the silted-up canal near it. And later that evening, while we were on our way back to the boats after eating supper, a cavalry squad from the castella clattered past. I knew from the Heron Guard what quality fighting men looked like, and these were as good as any I’d seen.
The next moming we set out on the final stretch of our journey. I sat with the other women on the foredeck as the slipper glided through the thin pearly mist that hung over the water, and thought about what lay before me. My task had been much on my mind ever since Tossi told me about it, although nobody could have guessed this from my behavior. But even if my fellow students had noticed my occasional preoccupation, how could they have imagined what lay behind it—that by autunm I must be the Sun Lord’s lover, to live under his roof and know his every thought?
As for me, I am no longer sure how I felt about being the principal character in Mother’s great drama. So many terrible things happened because of it that an abyss gapes between my present self and the girl I then was. Indeed, I do not know if the feelings I now recollect are really the ones I experienced on that spring moming, although I can see myself clearly enough, that young woman sitting on the slipper’s foredeck, floating along the canal toward her future. But as for how I felt about it.. .
Was I repelled at becoming the intimate companion of a man I considered a tyrant? I don’t remember any deep revulsion. But all that tumed out so differently from what I expected that I may have been more repelled than I now believe I was. Not that such reluctance would have affected my ability to play the part; I could simulate any emotion I needed to, regardless of my real inclinations. I suppose I thought it would be no worse than an arranged marriage. Those were common enough, and women survived them.
But was I fearful at the risk I was running? I was a spy, and if I were found out, the Sun Lord’s inquisitors would torment me until I revealed all I knew. If I were taken, therefore, I must find a way to kill myself. I’d asked Tossi if I could carry poison, but she’d said I should not, that for my security I must possess absolutely nothing incriminating. So I would be left to choose among several less dignified and more painful means of doing away with myself.
But I don’t remember being afraid. I’d never scared easily, and I’d never let uncertainty keep me from doing something I felt I should do. If I were that sort of person. I’d never have walked out of Riversong. I knew my fate if I were exposed, but I was utterly confident that my enemies wouldn’t detect me. How could they, since I’d been trained by Nilang and Master Aa, the world’s best teachers of the spy’s art?
But most of all. Mother had set me a great challenge, and I wanted to meet it. I suppose I imagined my future as a vast stage production, a high drama of adventure and heroism. If I were ultimately caught and had to kill myself, the audience would weep or applaud, but then they would all go home, and we actors would take off our costumes and paint and repair to the nearest wine shop. I didn’t actually believe the play could end with a real death—mine—and so, as the final day of our journey passed, I did as Mistress Ipip had taught me, and composed myself to ignore such forebodings.
North of Three Rise Locks, the canal wound among hills covered with woodlots, orchards, vineyards, and pastures dotted with sheep and cattle. There were also many plantations of clover for the
Bee Goddess’s special bees, the ones that weave the soft nests from which gossamin is made. The big domed hives where the bees worked speckled the landscapes for miles.
It was not until the fourth hour of the sun watch that we finally left the rolling country behind. The canal abmptly curved around the flank of a hill, and there, a mile away across the green coastal lowlands, lay the sea’s warm blue glimmer and the domes and roofs of Kuijain. Above them rose the slender shafts of firewatch towers, topped by steep conical roofs. I counted ten of them; I’d never seen a place that needed so many.
Perin had tried to describe the city to me, but that first sight of it left me speechless, for the Sun Lord’s capital was unlike any other city in Durdane and perhaps in the world. It stood where the Jacinth River met the sea in a myriad of channels and lagoons, and it was on the banks of these waterways that Kuijain was built. Thus its thoroughfares were canals instead of streets, and people and goods got around in boats.
I watched in fascination as we approached. Though three of the islands rose higher than the others, and were crowned by fortifications, it had no walls. I asked one of the slipper’s crewmen why not, and he told me it was because Kuijain didn’t need any. The harbors could be closed against an enemy fleet by vast iron chains and timber booms, and land attackers would first have to fight their way across the broad outer canals, and then cope with the maze of waterways inside the city.
That made it a tough nut to crack, which was why Kuijain had suffered so little damage during the wars that led up to the Partition. Because it had remained almost untouched, and because it was not only the Sun Lord’s capital but also boasted the finest harbor on the northwest coast, it had become the richest and greatest city in Bethiya. Its wealth was built on trade; the Jacinth River connected it to the most populous inland regions of the realm, and the Short Canal could carry all manner of goods between its deep-sea port and the river ports of the Pearl. The Sun Lord’s census takers counted some two hundred thousand people within its boundaries, but there may have been even more than that.