by Tad Williams
As she pushed away from the pillar, aiming for the distant ladder, the boy wrapped his arms around her neck. She couldn't breathe, and she floundered until she managed to yank his arms down so they were across her collarbone. Qinnitan had gone four or five strokes and was beginning to find a rhythm that allowed her to keep Pigeon mostly on her back when she saw the first triangular fin cut the water in front of her. A moment later she saw a second. Her limbs seemed to grow cold and heavy.
Sea-wolves. Not the thick bodied, axhead sharks of the Xixian canals but something sleeker and longer, pale gray and as slender as a knife blade. For a moment she paddled in place, afraid to go forward and afraid to go back, but the fins were moving away from her instead of toward her. Qinnitan prayed that they were after some other quarry.
Within moments of the disappearance of the first two she saw several more moving in wide loops as though not so sure of their destination as the first pair. Bodies in the water, Qinnitan realized with a horrible pang, sailors from the Xixian ship, wounded and dead-men she had killed by setting the ship on fire.
She couldn't think about any of it, not about the sailors and soldiers, not about the sharks. Pigeon was clinging to her back and his arms were tightening around her neck again as he began to understand why she had stopped swimming. In another moment terror might steal away his resolve-he might let go or even begin to fight her. She had heard sailors on her voyage to Hierosol talk about the hopelessness of struggling with a frightened, drowning man. She began to swim again, as quickly as she could.
Something rough as tree bark brushed against her leg as a pale shape slipped past her. She gasped and swallowed some water, but the fin was moving away. It was only a small shark, not half her length. She thrashed forward, but she felt as though the strength was leaking out of her like grain from a burst sack. Where was that ladder? Qinnitan did not even know which direction she had been swimming. The planks were gone from above her head so she must be out from beneath the pier, but where was she?
Pigeon was sliding from her back again. She caught him with one hand, but it all seemed pointless, remote. They sank into the water and green darkness was all around. She clutched the child as tightly as she could and kicked hard with her last strength, but they barely seemed to move upward. At last, just when she felt she could hold her breath no longer her face broke the surface for an instant, but even the air she gulped did not bring life back to her legs and arms. She slipped back under, exhausted.
Something grabbed Qinnitan by the hair, yanking so hard and so unexpectedly that she opened her mouth and swallowed water again. A moment later light burst all around her and she felt her body strike or be struck by something heavy. A shark. A shark must have her. The end… but where was Pigeon…?
The weight of the boy fell on top of her. She was lying on something hard. A moment later Pigeon rolled away, coughing and gasping, but Qinnitan couldn't see anything except the watery mess she was vomiting up onto the planks of the pier.
Out of the water. They were out of the water.
Her stomach convulsed again but nothing more came out. She coughed and spat. A hand thumped her on the back and a little more water trickled out onto the wet boards. She was dimly aware of the smell of smoke and of people shouting and running not far away, but no one was near them except their rescuer. She reached out blindly until she found Pigeon. His skinny sides were heaving as he brought up his own bellyful of seawater but he was breathing. He was safe. She had saved him. Qinnitan let herself collapse onto her side. She could see a little of the sky now, gray-black with smoke, and the dim shape of their savior, the sun behind him so that he was only a dark shadow looming over them like a mountain, a benevolent god who had reached down a mighty hand and plucked them back into life. She tried to thank him, but she could force no words out of her burning, salt-scoured throat, so instead she lifted up her hand to touch his arm.
He knocked her hand aside. "Stupid little bitch." It was only after a moment that she realized he had spoken Xixian, her own language. Qinnitan threw up her hand to block the sunlight, dazzling even through the smoke.
Their rescuer was the nameless man, the autarch's stone-faced servant, but he was not stone-faced now: his features were twisted into a look of almost deranged fury.
"Do you see this?" He grabbed Pigeon's wrist and slammed the boy's hand down near Qinnitan's face so hard that although he was barely sensible, Pigeon still gasped in pain. The nameless man slapped the boy so hard that Pigeon's eyes fluttered open, then slowly widened in horror as he saw who had him. "Watch!"
In a single movement as swift as a serpent's strike the man pulled a long, broad knife out of his waistband and snapped it down on the boy's hand with a meaty thok like the sound of her mother cutting fish heads on the family table. Blood sprayed in Qinnitan's face, and the tips of three of Pigeon's fingers bounced away. The boy shrieked, a wordless noise so horrid that Qinnitan screamed too, helpless and disbelieving.
"Next time it will be his whole hand-and his nose!" The nameless man slapped Qinnitan so hard that she thought he had broken her jaw. As Pigeon rolled on the planks, gurgling and clutching his ruined hand, red wetness drizzling onto the dock, their captor pulled a cloth from his pocket and tied it roughly but tightly around Pigeon's fingers to slow the bleeding.
"Now get up, you little dung flies, and no more noise or playing up from either of you." He jerked Qinnitan onto her feet, then kicked at the whimpering Pigeon until the child staggered upright, his face gray with pain. "Because of you two, we have to find another boat."
"I never expected to be king."
Pinimmon Vash stiffened in surprise and fright at these words. He hadn't thought to hear anyone talking at all, let alone making such a unique declaration.
It was Olin's voice, of course-but to whom could the northern king possibly be speaking? The autarch was still in bed in his cabin, yet the foreigner was speaking as though to Sulepis himself. Vash's skin went cold: if he had failed to note and plan for the autarch's movements correctly then many of the things the paramount minister did each day (and especially what he was doing this very moment) were little more than elaborate forms of suicide.
Terror swept through Vash like a sudden fever. He scrambled back from the hole he had selected for eavesdropping, looking wildly from side to side although he was clearly the only person in the small locker. Fool! he chided himself-what was happening on the other side of the spyhole was all that mattered. Was Olin Eddon really talking to Sulepis? How could Vash have miscalculated? Only moments ago he had delivered the parchment bearing his morning report to the autarch's cabin and had been informed by the body slaves that the Golden One was still asleep.
He could hear Olin again. "It was not that I was unsuited for it, or afraid of the responsibility," the northerner was saying, " just that I did not imagine it would happen. My father Ustin was as healthy as a bull, my brother Lorick, the heir, was only two years older than me, and I had always been sickly, prone to fevers and to long, bedridden weeks. The physicians told my father and mother I would likely not survive to see twenty years. It was a weakness of the blood, they said-one to which many of my line had been prey… had been…"
Olin hesitated for so long that at last Vash moved back to the spyhole again to try to make sense of things. The discovery of this locker had been fortuitous-it was much less exposed than his previous eavesdropping spot-but it was hard on his old bones to force himself into the narrow space, and it would be almost impossible to get out of it quickly if he heard someone coming. Still, he had decided it would be worth it, especially if it helped him understand what the autarch was planning. Those who let Sulepis surprise them seldom lived long-or happily.
But if I was wrong and Sulepis finds me here, this locker will be no more than an upright coffin.
Vash still could see nothing from his angle, including to whom if anyone the northerner spoke, so he took his eye away and put his ear against the hole instead. He would bring a dark cloth nex
t time to cover the inside of the hole-if he lived. That would make it less likely anyone would notice his presence.
"In any case," King Olin at last continued, "my illness and the health of my father and brother made it unlikely I would ever sit the throne. Instead of just tilting and hunting and other active sports, my youth was also spent with books, in the company of historians and philosophers. Not that there is anything wrong with learning to defend yourself! I made sure my own children would at least be able to acquit themselves well in a fight."
Who was he talking to? Surely the autarch would never stay silent so long. Could it be Panhyssir, the high priest? Vash felt a fizz of helpless jealousy at the thought. Or perhaps it was the antipolemarch Dumin Hauyuz, the commander of the soldiers aboard and the highest ranking military man in the autarch's party. It had to be one of them-certainly the king of a foreign nation would not speak so openly to anyone else.
Or had his captivity simply driven the man mad-was Olin talking to himself?
"Many people were wrong, of course," the northerner said. "My illness has not shortened my life-at least not so far. My father did live a long time, but collapsed in apoplexy when he heard that my brother Lorick had fallen from his horse while hunting and was not expected to survive. My father did not regain his senses, but he did not die, either. As it turned out, neither of those strong men would die easily.
"It was a black time for my mother and little better for me. My father had never had as much time for me as for Lorick, but that was as it should have been, because my brother was being prepared to rule-who could have guessed the gods had such tricks in mind? But my father had been kind to me in his way, and now I had to watch them both clinging to life, unable to pull themselves out of the half-death in which they were immersed.
"My father died first. There was a party in court-led by the Tollys, the most powerful family after ours-who wanted to crown Lorick even as he lay senseless and dying, and then Lindon Tolly would rule in his name. My youngest brother Hardis was already married to one of the Tolly women, so they wished only to keep me off the throne long enough to find some way to put Hardis on in my place when Lorick at last succumbed to his injury. We had just enough allies in the court to resist this, but only barely. Southmarch lived in stalemate for almost a year.
"Hardis was young and easily led, and maybe even jealous of his older brothers, but I do not believe he understood that Lindon's plans to put him on the throne would have required my death. Hardis was no fool, but I'm sure it was easier for him not to wonder why the Tollys made so much of him. Or perhaps he simply felt sure, as everyone else had all my life, that I would not live to manhood.
"As it happened, I outlived them all. My poor brother Hardis died ten years ago of a fever after having spent his life more or less a prisoner of the Tollys, although he always pretended he was happy in Summerfield Court and had no wish to see his old home. Poor Hardis.
"Back in the year of succession, Lorick died at last and the puppet show ended, but not without several times almost tearing the kingdom apart. I was crowned and the Tollys had to be content with keeping what power they had.
"Curse my foolishness! I should have routed them out like a hive of wasps. I saw the danger of your country to Eion long before any of my fellow monarchs, starting with this autarch's cruel father, but I did not see the dangers in my own house."
There, thought Vash, relieved but still bewildered, and took his first full breath in some time. Clearly the man wasn't speaking to Sulepis himself-but what else could he be doing? Had the autarch given Olin a secretary? Was the foreign king dictating a letter to his family?
The northerner's voice rose. "And that is what I hate even more than the Tollys' treachery-my own stupidity. I left enemies behind me when I departed and then, even worse, I allowed myself to be tricked and imprisoned by that swine Hesper of Jellon. All of this may have cost our family the throne we have held for centuries, but it has cost me far more than that… it cost me my oldest son, my brave Kendrick, and perhaps my other two children as well." His voice became halting. "Ah, sweet Zoria and all her oracles-may the gods rain curses down on those who helped me to betray myself and my kingdom!"
For long moments after that Olin did not speak, but even without seeing the man Vash could tell he had only fallen silent, not gone away.
"I tried to prepare all my children to rule so that they would not find themselves surprised and unready as I had been, should the gods decide to set any one of them on the throne. And I loved them all, as a father should, even if I perhaps did not love them all equally.
"They were the last thing I had of my wife Meriel. She suffered greatly giving birth to the twins and did not recover, becoming weaker and weaker until she passed a month later. It tore my heart out of my breast. I banished the physician who attended her even though it was not his fault, but I could not bear to see the man's face when my dear wife was dead. She had been the one thing that made me think perhaps my own poisoned blood could be saved. When Kendrick was born, so fat and fit and laughing, it seemed that her sweetness had undone the sour strain of my lineage.
"I was a fool.
"She was lovely, of course, my Meriel, but not simply because her skin was milky and her lips were red, as the bards would have it. There were many other women in the March Kingdoms that might have been called more beautiful, and it would take a poet, which I am not, to tell you what exactly it was that made her so fair, but it was something in her eyes. All her life, until the moment those eyes last closed upon this world, she had the look of a child. Not innocent, not foolish or simple, but straight-straight as an arrow's flight. She looked out at the world without judging, or at least without hurrying to judgement. She could not flatter but she was always kind. She did not lie, but neither did she speak rash truth when it would bring pain for no reason…"
Again Olin paused. For the first time Vash was listening with real interest: the foreigner spoke well, as a king should. Some of the autarchs Vash had served had liked poetry, but none of them had spoken it or written it with any facility. In his younger years, the paramount minister himself had occasionally written a few lines, but no one had ever seen them.
"In fact," Olin continued, "Meriel was what I often thought a goddess might be like, if that goddess was kindhearted, for she was not above the pain of others. Ah, that she should have been taken from the world instead of me, with my tainted heritage and my doting self-regard! When she died the castle put on mourning and would not take it off, every servant and every courtier. That is true. They had to be told by the priests after a year had passed to doff their mourning clothes, that to mourn beyond the official time was to insult the gods! Can you imagine? We all loved her. The worst thing that ever happened to my children, far worse than us losing the throne or even Kendrick's death, was that they did not know their mother, the sweetest woman who ever lived. I thought I did not deserve her-I could not believe that she could be mine.
"She was not, of course. The gods reminded me of that… as they are wont to do."
Olin laughed then, a sound so painful that even Vash (who had heard the shrieking, pleading ends of dozens of men's lives, many of those executed at his own orders) had to fight the urge to stop his ears with his hands.
"I do not know what I mean to say," the king began again at last. "I started out to tell about my family. It has been nearly a year since I have seen them. Kendrick is dead, likely at the hands of the Tollys, but perhaps killed by some other. My brave son-he wanted only to do what was right. He would grow so angry when others broke the rules, even his younger brother and sister! They would play at hide-and-seek with him, then hide somewhere they had promised not to go and laugh at him when he found out. He could never make himself play the way they did, but instead would try to convince them that when the rules were broken the game was spoiled. Kendrick would have been a fine king-with my other son as his chancellor, perhaps, to remind him not to trust others to obey the rules just because Kendrick himse
lf did. Because Barrick, if he still lives, may the gods protect him, lives in a very different world.
"Barrick was always troubled, always querulous, but after the first time the affliction struck-my affliction, passed down to him like the waters of a fouled river-he ceased to trust in the goodness of Fate entirely. And who could blame him? When he was young the sickness took the same course as it did in me. He would fall to the floor in fits of rage, choking, trembling, scarcely able to breathe, and struggle so that two strong men were needed to check him even though he was but a child. I grieved, of course, that I had brought this curse into his life, but I felt I could teach him how I had survived, the way I locked myself away when I felt the fits coming upon me. But then his sickness changed and found a different path.
"In Barrick, it became something that no longer made him rage and flail like a madman, but instead which slowly poisoned him on the inside. His view of the world became darker and darker, as when an eclipsing moon divides the earth from the sun. In my foolishness I thought at first that when his outward fits stopped it meant that he was getting better-that he was somehow fighting off the curse that had so polluted my life. I was wrong, but by the time I understood that, he had crawled so far into the shadows that I could no longer reach him. He was witty, clever, yet so crippled by my own poisoned blood that I think only his love for his sister kept him alive.
"For he did love her, and Briony loved him. They were twins-did I say that?-and their hearts beat as one from the moment they came into the world, born in the same hour. Perhaps that had something to do with their mother's death. Ah, gods, I no longer know! It has been so long, yet the pain feels as fresh as when I cut myself with my shaving blade yester morning.
"And here is another shameful confession-I loved Briony most of all. No, let me say love, not loved-please, may the gods grant that she lives! I loved Kendrick's honor and kindness and his dutiful nature, and I loved him because he was my firstborn. I love Barrick despite all the pain I gave him and he gave me… but I love Briony with such comfort and certainty that I cannot express it. She contains all that is best in me, and much of what was excellent in her mother. To think that such a powerful love should have failed her so completely-that I should have failed all of them so utterly…"