by Kate Elliott
“It’s unfair I’m not even allowed to go to the night market!”
“To do what, Amaya? We don’t have money to buy anything. If Lord Gargaron’s stewards catch sight of you on the street, we’ll be discovered.”
“Lord Gargaron and his stewards only saw me once, Maraya. I know I have the sort of pleasingly beauteous face that attracts notice, but it strikes even me as implausible that important Patron men would remember.” By the strength of Amaya’s wheedling I can hear she has recovered from her near death by poisoned candied almonds in the tomb. “I can’t breathe in here! It doesn’t even have to be the night market. I’ll hide my face beneath a shawl and walk down by the water and breathe fresh air and listen to the mellifluous cries of the wind-kissed birds who are allowed to fly free. Unlike me.”
“Do you have any idea how tedious you are, Amaya?”
“You have the heart of a fish! Cold and sluggish!” Amaya sobs as third-rate actresses do to show the depth and intensity of their scorned feelings. “This wretched compound might as well be my tomb if I can’t ever leave its walls.”
“Help me,” whispers Polodos with a look of such desperation that I giggle.
An abrupt silence follows my betraying laugh.
The curtain twitches as a person on the other side hooks it open just enough to peek through. I would know those lovely eyes anywhere.
I say, “Amaya, if you cut off all your hair, smear mud on your face, and wear a dirty canvas sack with a hole cut for your head, then you can safely go to the market without being recognized.”
With a shout of excitement, Amaya plunges into the room, flings herself upon me, and bursts into sobs while clutching me so tightly I have trouble breathing.
Maraya limps in, smiling. “Oh, Jes, I am so glad to see you! I was afraid it would be unsafe for you to visit us.”
They look just as they did back when we all lived well protected at home, only without the fashionable clothing, perfectly beribboned hair in the most up-to-date style, and fragrant oils and perfumes to hide the smell of sweat. Had we grown up without a successful Patron father who acknowledged us, girls like us might have lived in a place like this, scrambling to make a living and able to afford only cast-off dresses and mended muslin shawls for wrappings.
“How is Mother?” I ask into Amaya’s hair. When she hesitates I shove her to arm’s length, gripping her shoulders so hard she winces. “What’s wrong?”
“Jessamy? Is that you?” Mother appears at the curtain. She has to lean against the wall to hold herself up. She is as tall as I am, and the most beautiful person I know. But right now her dark brown complexion is sheeny with perspiration; her magnificent cloud of hair has been bound under a scarf; no earrings or jewelry ornament her, all the little gifts Father used to shower upon her. She coughs weakly. I rush over but Amaya bolts past me to reach her first.
“You shouldn’t be walking yet, Mother! You are supposed to stay in bed until every trace of bleeding stops.”
“What a scold you have become, Amaya,” says Mother in her gentle voice as she takes my hands as if she needs to reassure me. Her grip is so frail that I fear I might squeeze hard enough to shatter her without meaning to. “I am so glad you have come back, Jessamy. Is Bettany with you?”
Anguish chokes my voice until it comes out as a leaky squeak. “You must go back to bed, Mother. You were so sick. Here, let us help you.”
Amaya takes Mother’s other arm.
She sinks down onto the nearest bench. “I would like to see other walls just for a little while. I have not been out of that tiny room since we came here.”
Amaya and I sit on either side, snuggling close against her as we used to do when we were little. She has always been the warmth we relied on, but now her skin feels feverish. She’s lost a lot of flesh too, and she who always smelled sweet smells sour. Yet her breathing steadies as she holds us against her. She was always at her happiest when the man she loved and the children she cherishes were gathered around her in the calm household she supervised in her benevolent way.
Lord Gargaron ripped out her heart and threw it into the street like trash. He walled her and my sisters up in a tomb so he could swear to my father that he had not killed them, and yet make sure they would never be found. All this so my father could marry Menoë and help raise her tattered status while his future military victories secure glory and prestige for Garon Palace.
We ran that trial, Gargaron and I, and I defeated him although he doesn’t know it. This game won’t end until I’ve made sure he can never again harm anyone in my family.
“Hush, Jessamy.” Mother feels the harsh shift in my breathing. “Whatever troubles you, let it go. See how happy Maraya is.”
Maraya rests a hand on Polodos’s shoulder in an affectionate way that makes me smile despite the fierce anger I carry in my heart. Polodos is not a handsome man like Father or Kalliarkos. He has a gap between his front teeth, his ears are too big, his features are ordinary. But he is intelligent, cheerful, hardworking, and even-tempered, and most importantly he respects and admires Maraya so much that he overlooks her irregular parentage and the clubfoot for which any Patron man except my father would have smothered her at birth.
Suddenly I realize how right Lord Thynos and General Inarsis were to warn me against coming here. Now that I see Mother is not on the verge of dying, I know the risk outweighs my need for comfort.
“Let’s help you back to bed, Mother,” I say with a nod at Amaya.
Despite all her whining and wheedling and other annoying habits, Amaya has the strength of an ox and the stubbornness of a creeping fig vine that, once established, can never be eradicated. She and I guide Mother past the curtain. Behind lies a shabby courtyard lit by a single lantern. Cook stands over an open-air hearth, grilling flat rounds of bread. A lowborn Patron woman whom my mother rescued from abusive circumstances, Cook is so loyal she volunteered to be buried alive with my mother.
She squints, then recognizes me. “Doma Jessamy, I am sure you ought not to be visiting us.”
At once Mother says, “You must not risk yourself, Jessamy. If there is danger for you, then you must leave.”
“I’ll just see you settled and I’ll go,” I reassure her. She who carried us all for so many years can barely shuffle now. Yet her first concern is my safety.
Amaya steers us into a room scarcely bigger than an alcove. There is no bed, only a ragged mat unrolled on the floor where any snake or scorpion might crawl upon my mother. The air carries the stench of dried blood, rank sweat, and urine. Two humble baskets hang from the low ceiling. As we lower Mother to the mat, one of the baskets gurgles, and is answered by a startled infant wail from the other basket.
Amaya pulls the wailing baby from its bed and shoves it into my arms. “Here, walk him around outside a moment. He’s so fussy that he needs calming before he can nurse. He’s like me: feels trapped in these walls and wants to fly!”
I resist looking down at the crying baby in my arms until I am outside within the glow of the single lamp. The infant boy Wenru looks a little like me if you go by hair and complexion, but I think he looks a lot more like Amaya based on the fact that his mouth is open and squalling and his face scrunched up in distress.
A person might wish to console a helpless little infant if she didn’t know this baby had been stillborn. The baby Wenru died at birth. Who inhabits his body now I do not know.
“I’ll take him,” says Maraya with a fond smile but I whisk Wenru away to the end of the courtyard where the lamplight barely penetrates.
Here a gate lets onto an alley. I angle him so there is just enough light for him to see my face as I fix my stare on his infant eyes. His wail trembles and slackens as if he is suddenly unsure whether crying will get him what he wants. His rosebud mouth purses. He would be darling—so small and so sweet—if I weren’t absolutely sure a false shadow and self and spark have lodged within this body, taken it over for themselves.
Every body is born with fi
ve animating souls: A vital spark, the breath, which separates the living from the dead. A shadow, which hugs us during the day and wanders out on its own at night. A self, which is the distinct personality each creature has, that makes one person different from any other. A name, which includes a person’s lineage and grows over the years into a reputation the person builds through deeds and speech. A heart, which is the seat of wisdom, the flesh in which we live. The heart binds the five souls into one.
“Whoever you are, whatever souls reside within you now, I know you are not my brother Wenru because he is dead,” I say in a low, singsong voice, so anyone listening will think I am trying to soothe him. His cry hiccups into silence. Those eyes lock on mine with an alert, anxious look no newborn ever had. “If you can understand me, blink your eyes three times.”
I speak in Efean. The baby’s gaze remains fixed on me as if he is trying to figure out what my words mean. After a pause I repeat myself in Saroese.
His little face wrinkles up as if in prelude to a squall.
Instead he blinks once, twice, then a third time.
My whole body tenses.
Whatever self bides inside this infant, it does not understand Efean, only Saroese.
I go on in Saroese.
“I understand you are confused. You now reside in the body of an infant boy. My mother is a good woman. Respect her, and she will care for you. Do otherwise, and I will throw you out on the street. Do you understand? You are tiny and helpless and cannot crawl or talk. If anyone besides me discovers you are an abomination, they will smother you. But I am giving you this chance to live because my mother’s heart is already so weary and I do not want her to mourn her dead son all over again.”
His arms and legs stir beneath the linen he is wrapped in. His tiny lips open as he says “Aaaa,” and he mewls just as if he wants to speak but can’t figure out how.
“You got him to quiet down quickly,” says Maraya, coming up beside me and whisking him out of my arms. She brushes fingers over his downy head and smiles in an adoring way that almost makes me forget he is no infant. “He’s usually so fussy, poor little flea.”
“I am sure he’ll be less fussy from now on,” I say in Saroese as I press a finger against his cheek. He moves his head to look at me and, with a sigh, shifts his attention back to Maraya. “What do you know about magic, Merry?” I ask, using her pet name.
She’s rocking him in her arms, not even looking at me, only at his sweet little face. “Only the Saroese priests are allowed to study magic.”
“But we saw magic in the buried ruins beneath the City of the Dead. What were those sparks? The shadows? The pool that shimmered with a substance I can’t explain?”
“The mineral phosphorous gleams in water. Shadows move when we shift lantern-light around them. As for the sparks, they might have been spark-bugs.…”
“You don’t believe that. You felt the magic.”
The baby has gone quiet, as if listening, but she doesn’t notice. With a frown furrowing her brow, she shakes her head at me.
“Even if it’s true, what can we do about it, Jes?”
“I don’t know. It just seems like you’re the one to investigate it, the way you’ve studied so hard for the Archives exam. There must be some knowledge of magic buried in the Archives. I know you would love to search for it.”
She looks away to hide her expression from me, but her flat tone gives her away. “With Father gone and us pretending to be dead, I have no hope of ever taking the Archives exam. It’s going to be hard enough just to survive. Polodos spent most of the money Father gave us to buy this inn, sight unseen, and you see how run-down it is. We can’t afford to stock drinks and food for customers. How will we eat once our money runs out?”
“I’ll give you all my earnings, I promise you.”
With a wry smile she turns back and pats my arm. Of the four of us girls she is the one who can never stay mad for long. “I know you will do everything you can, Jes. But meanwhile I’m here and you’re not, and my first duty must be to care for Mother, the babies, and Polodos.”
Amaya appears in the door with another bundle in her arms. “Here, Jes, I thought you would want to hold Safarenwe too.”
I abandon Maraya and hurry over to gather my infant sister, Wenru’s younger twin, into my arms. She is as precious as myrrh, born in a tomb and meant never to see the heavenly sky or the glimmering sea. Her perfect little mouth roots as for food, and she mewls hungrily.
Mother says, “Bring her to me, Jessamy.”
I kneel and help position the baby as Mother lies on her side to nurse. Lying down, Mother looks less exhausted. She examines me with her usual quiet scrutiny.
By her steady gaze I can see that her five souls rest firmly in her body, no longer at risk of coming unmoored. She is weak, but all of her is here: Her spark. Her shadow. Her name. Her sense of her self that seems somehow doubled in strength even though the man to whom she devoted more than half her life abandoned her. Her capacious heart.
As the baby suckles, Mother rests dry fingers on my hand. Always her first thought is to comfort others.
“Your strength and determination are precious gifts, Jessamy. We wouldn’t be here without you, for your sisters tell me you never faltered as you brought us all out of that terrible place.”
“The oracle’s tomb was terrible, it’s true. But there was more to the journey than getting out of the tomb itself. How much do you remember?”
“I am sorry to say I do not recall much, only that I was carried through darkness for some way. At the end when I thought my body and heart had failed me I was touched by a presence that poured new strength into me. Was that you?”
“It wasn’t me. But I can’t explain what we saw. Hasn’t Maraya said anything to you?”
“No.” Her gentle smile is as heartening as an affectionate embrace. “You know how your sisters coddle me. What did we see?”
Maybe I shouldn’t burden her with my questions, but Mother has always been the one person we can tell anything.
“The Patrons built their tombs on top of an ancient compound that reminded me a little of a huge Fives court. Do you know anything about that?”
“You know that I came to Saryenia from a distant village when I was sixteen, so I’ve always been a bit of an outsider in the city. I never heard any stories of a complex buried beneath the City of the Dead.”
I lean closer, for although only she and I are in the room, I somehow fear the oracles and the priests will overhear the forbidden words I am about to speak. “What’s buried ought to be lifeless, don’t you think? But life stirs there with a still-beating heart. As we made our way through the ruins, sparks like tiny stars poured through us. Shadows with the shapes of animals tried to swallow us. And then you stopped breathing, Mother.” My hand tightens on hers as the thought of how close we came to losing her chokes me, but we didn’t lose her, so my heart opens and I can speak. “A light flowed out of a glowing pool and revived you. What can such things be if not magic?”
She shuts her eyes. Her lips move, words so faint that if I had not heard her speak them when she was delirious in the tomb I would not know them now.
“The land is the Mother of All. She gave birth to the five souls that bind us. The souls arise from the land.”
“But the priests and the law condemn the old religion. Commoners can be imprisoned just for speaking of it. Even Father said the old traditions that ruled Efea before the Patrons came were nothing but superstitious nonsense better lost and forgotten.”
A tear trickles down her face as she murmurs, “He is what his upbringing made him. Patrons have always looked upon the land they conquered with a certain contempt even as they claim to love and treasure it.”
“Father was never contemptuous of you!” Yet I falter as her gaze tracks to meet mine, a darkness there I’ve never before seen. How much do I really know about my parents? Tremulously I stammer, “W-was he?”
“He is a good man, Jessamy.
Never doubt that. I would not have stayed with him otherwise.” Her voice drifts, and I almost feel she is talking more to herself than to me. “You may think your father was overly strict with you, but when I consider the stories he told me about how girls and women had to behave in the town where he grew up, he was bold in how he encouraged each of you. He stayed loyal to us for far longer than another man of his birth would have. But when he was finally forced to choose, he could not shake loose from his heritage.”
She squeezes shut her eyes, struggling not to weep, and I want to embrace her, to tell her it will be all right. But I can’t lie: we both know it will never be the same for her again.
The baby sighs, letting loose of the breast, and at once Mother opens her eyes and indicates that I should burp Safarenwe and then return her to snuggle against Mother’s chest. Through half-closed eyes she smiles tenderly at the tiny infant and then at me.
“Is a Fives stable the right place, Jessamy? Is it what you truly want?”
“Yes, it really is, Mother.”
“Polodos says you won a trial at Esladas’s victory games at the Royal Fives Court. Was your father there to see it?”
“Yes.”
“He will have been proud of you, Jessamy. He always saw a great deal of himself in you.”
I hitch closer and rest my head on her hip. Her smile deepens, and her eyes close more restfully this time. After a bit I think she has fallen asleep, but abruptly she whispers, “And Bettany? She is well too?”
“Of course.”
The lie curdles in my stomach like rotted food. Her eyes open as she hears the catch in my voice. I have to think quickly before she starts to question me. Sitting up, I shake coins out of my bag.
“I’m sorry this is all I could bring you today of my winnings. Most of the money was placed into a holding account, and I can only withdraw a little at a time lest I make Lord Gargaron suspicious. My plan is to bring you some every week on Rest Day, and to pretend I’ve spent it on food and drink and the theater.”