“No,” she said, rising. “I know where to find drudge’s grays.”
* * *
Partisans and supplicants who approached Lun’s home that day were sometimes shocked, sometimes horrified, and often awed to see Eyre Isri Esthe, the erstwhile lady of the house, scrubbing the blood of her husband’s soldiers off the stairs. A defeat of sorts—Karnon Dae had taken the house but lost his quarry—turned to a display of power.
Esthe ignored their reactions. It took her a long time to finish her task. A lot of blood had washed over the white stairs, and she was not practiced in handling a scrub brush. Still, she attacked the job with perfectionist determination. Drudge’s grays had no hoods, but she did not deign to show any shame at having her scars stared at by so many.
As the light slanted from the west and dimmed to golden, the stairs gleamed. She gave herself this—she got them as clean as they had been when she had ruled the house, the day before.
Finally she set the brush down into the pail, her slender arms quivering with exhaustion. She felt eyes on her, but she did not return the gazes. Even in drudge’s gray, crouched on the stairs, she had dignity.
She turned and realized that Karnon Dae was there. All day, he had conducted business without pause, apparently unmindful of his new aristo drudge. Yet now he arrived just as she finished her task.
He looked down at her with eyes blacker than human pupils. Whites showed around his irises, but she knew the whites were just for show, not real sclera like humans possessed.
She did not rise but bowed her head, the correct manner of a drudge toward an aristo.
It was a strangely easy gesture for her to make. Karnon Dae wore his hair barbarously long like a prisoner, rather than shaved like an aristo. He had not been born of any aristo house, if indeed he had been born at all. As a neininki, even his corporeality was a mere technicality. But meeting him in the flesh—even if it only looked like flesh—she thought there had never been a more natural aristo than Karnon Dae.
It was the stage of the afternoon when shadows lay dark on the earth but the sky was still full of light, selectively illuminating open patches in gold. One beam hit the black-clad Karnon Dae, turning his gold hair to a coronet finer than any owned by Ben Tur Ibren.
“If I kill you now,” he said, his voice soft, “I will have given you no less than what you asked for.”
She said nothing, keeping her eyes still cast downward. Servants did not answer back when their masters made statements. She was aristo enough, still, to know how to play her role.
“Do you disagree?” Karnon asked her.
“No, Karnon Dae,” she said. “You have delayed my death by several hours, and I have served you. Delay it further, and I will serve you further.”
He placed his hand lightly on her bare head.
“Will you accept death from me?” Karnon Dae asked.
She was silent a moment. Her spirit silently railed against quiet death, as it had that morning; screamed against dying a drudge. But better a drudge treated honestly, whose tale would curdle her husband’s spirit when he heard it, than a wife cast aside with lies.
“I would prefer that you delay it longer,” she said at last. “But... it is a better death than I faced this morning.”
She looked up at him then, meeting his eyes like the aristo she was.
“Please remember that, Eyre Isri Esthe,” Karnon Dae said, taking his hand off her head and holding it out to her. “Because I always keep my word, and I have promised that you will die. But you will not die today.”
She took his hand. The strength and warmth of his grip surprised her. He helped her rise to her feet.
“Take off those grays,” he said. “You have convinced me of your resolve. There are others here who can scrub stairs.”
He bent and kissed her hand. He was gone again before she could react. It was the first time anyone had kissed her—almost the first time anyone had touched her—since the acid.
* * *
A moon later, Esthe stood in her lab, its metal surfaces covered in gas jets spurting blue and yellow fire and bowls brimming with acid.
In flame and glass-bound acid, she saw the future.
She saw Medea Station, the private rail station of her cousin Kal Ven Othek. Long strips of clear glass rounded in the corners and soldered between iron and steel supports filled the ceiling in symmetrical and streamlined patters. Through them beams of light shone down from the white sky to paint patterns on the floor. Aerodynamic train cars pinioned between cables whooshed in and out with a minimum of noise but a great deal of air. Drudges carried crates on and off, their shoulder-length hair tied back against the blowing air. The platform, raised high on pillars amid the tower peaks of Othek’s House, was cold and the wind biting. Fur-lined vests and muffs were everywhere among the people crowding on and off.
Beneath the platform, Esthe saw a series of small storage rooms. In one, a portable iron stove warmed the air and a number of people rested on furs, cloaks, and blankets that had been draped across some crates to keep them off the cold floor. Ben Tur Ibren lounged on one, fiddling with the settings on some expensive gadget. Her husband Lun lay across another, his head in the beautiful Jane Lin Elle’s lap. Elle’s slender hands stroked his head. He looked relaxed.
They were among friends. When footsteps sounded outside the door, no one tensed. Ubn and Dern, their bodyguards, moved between the prince and the door, but nothing else changed. Elle’s hand continued its rhythmic stroking of Lun’s head.
The lock to the door sprang, but the bar was still in place.
“Let me in!” Othek’s voice, brusque and rough.
Ubn lifted the bar, one hand on his laser, and pulled open the door.
Othek stomped in. He looked unhappy. He addressed Lun.
“The most powerful scryer of our generation, and you left her behind for Dae’s people to find? Alive?” His voice was quiet, but he trembled with the effort of holding his temper in check.
“Esthe is still alive?” Ibren said.
“She couldn’t escape with us,” Lun said. “I left her another way out. Of all people, I thought Esthe would be strong enough to take it.”
Anger bubbled up, but Esthe forced it down, breathing deeply, not wanting to destroy her cousin Othek along with her husband. Lun felt what Lun felt. Lun thought what Lun thought. He would learn better eventually.
“Why hasn’t Dae killed her?” Lun said. “He said he would kill all of us—and he’s neininki.”
“He said he will kill her,” Othek said. “But he didn’t say when. Our enemy isn’t stupid enough to throw away the generation’s most powerful scryer. I wish I could say the same for my allies.”
“Watch your tone, Othek,” Ibren said. “Like Lun told you, we couldn’t take her with us.”
“I apologize, my prince,” Othek said. “But you should know that now Karnon Dae has a scryer again.” He was furious but holding it back in front of the prince.
“Esthe is aristo,” Ibren said. “She would not have betrayed us unless he broke her mind, and a broken mind cannot scry. He is trying to trick us into thinking he has a scryer. She is a shell, no more. It’s a tragedy, but not a threat.”
Ibren spoke with a thoughtless assurance bred into him by years of people agreeing with everything he said. Esthe remembered his confidence well. It amused her to hear it now.
“We have another problem in that case, my prince,” Othek said. “Because the scryers I have in my household both say that Esthe is scrying for Dae. I have found a third, illicitly trained, who says the same thing. So if Esthe cannot scry, neither can our own scryers.”
Othek was being diplomatic to avoid contradicting the prince. They all knew that if three separate scryers said Esthe was scrying for Karnon Dae, then she was.
“But—but why would she?” Lun said. “She’s an aristo! It was her scrying that told us that Dae intended to get rid the aristos, that unified the aristos against him. Why would she undo all that if he
hasn’t broken her mind?”
“I think you’ve forgotten that in addition to being an aristo, Esthe is a woman,” Othek said. “And the scryers tell me that Dae—”
The vision tore, the image of the men beneath Medea Station replaced by a vision of the rail station itself once more. It appeared empty, save for three scryers in the station standing with their backs to the empty rails,, all facing her.
She recognized Xue Dan Ayne, the daughter of a dead aristo named Vul, and Kosh La Vier, a consumptive aristo by-blow who Othek employed as a scryer. The third was a man who wore his hair half-shaved and half-long, the style of an anubis. She saw why Othek had said he was illicitly trained—to train one of such a bloodline was forbidden. Othek had stretched to find three to oppose her, three to force her into seeing themselves rather than the visions she sought.
“We have seen your death, Eyre Isri Esthe,” Ayne said.
“You think you are prepared for death, but you will not be prepared for this one.” This from the anubis.
“When every living member of your family is dead, he will abandon you as your husband abandoned you. He will choose a path you cannot follow,” Vier said.
“But he will not leave you the choice Eyr Eth Lun left you. He will use you and kill you.” Ayne spoke again, taking her turn.
“He will kill you.”
“He will kill you.”
“Show me, then!” Esthe said. “If it’s true, then prove it.”
The vision of the rail station dissolved again, this time for good, leaving her staring into the naked blue flame of her burner.
She knew why they did not show her own death. They lacked the power to make her scry it.
But that didn’t mean they were lying. It would be difficult to check without accidentally viewing the underlying truth—her death. She was cornered.
* * *
She wrestled with the temptation to see her death. To see if she would be betrayed once more. But how could she be betrayed again? Karnon Dae had promised her nothing—absolutely nothing—except death. And that was all Othek’s scryers promised as well. What was she going to do, live?
All she wanted from Karnon Dae, he had already sworn to do—defeat her husband’s prince and kill her husband. And Karnon Dae could not break his promises without breaking himself.
She sat and thought and then scryed out Karnon Nameless Dae. She looked for him alone, so there would be no risk of seeing herself die in the vision.
He was sitting at his desk in her house, looking at a map of rail lines and roads and rivers and skyways. The maps were translucent, set to the same scale and layered one atop the other. Their edges were lit, and together they illuminated all the means at his disposal to move armies.
He looked up and, impossible as it was for one who himself was not scrying, met her gaze.
“Esthe,” he said, after a moment. “I always know when I am watched. I am two floors above you and five minutes ahead. Come and see me.”
Esthe gasped, and the vision broke.
She sat and waited five minutes before she got up to go see him. She did not want to arrive early and tell him that she would be watching. That would create a dull explanation for his prescience. If he really could tell, every time, who was watching and where they were watching and when they were watching—it would be wondrous. Wondrous the way little had been, ever since her infant scryer powers spelled a vision of bubbling skin and a barren womb.
It took her another minute to reach his office. He was waiting for her. He had set aside the maps and poured two glasses of flavorless distilled liquor. Hers sat, clear and harmless-looking as water, on the edge of his desk.
“Esthe,” he said, “why are you scrying me and not my enemies?”
She felt a frisson of fear. It gave her a certain grim pleasure to ignore it. She was well-practiced at conquering fear.
“Lately, whenever I scry out your enemies, I see only my family members, no one else,” she said. “The remaining scryers all unify against me, luring me to forbidden visions. It may be that I cannot serve you any longer and must die.”
She would be damned, as well as dead, if a scryer—especially a mere anubis—could scry her a death for which she was not prepared. She wanted to live to be a widow. She wanted to live to see Lun regret abandoning her. But even if she did not see it, she was sure it would happen. That was enough.
“Othek, your cousin, is the one who has unified the scryers against you, isn’t he?” Dae asked. “I know that he is hiding your husband and the prince now.”
She said nothing. Perhaps Dae would become angry and torture her. Perhaps that was the death for which she was not prepared.
She let her fingers rest on her shot glass of liquor, but she did not let herself drink it yet.
“You still won’t tell me what you scry about Othek, even though he is working against you?” Dae said. “You helping me will ultimately lead to his death anyway, you realize.”
“I will serve you in any way, except against my family,” she said. “If I am useless to you now, I will accept my sentence.”
Karnon Dae smiled and lifted his glass.
“Drink your drink,” he said, drinking his own.
She tossed hers back. It tasted like water in her mouth but burned like fire going down. It had been a long time since she had drunk liquor.
It crossed her mind that there would be a certain poetry to killing her with the very poison her husband had left behind. But, ruthless as he was, Karnon Dae was not sadistic. There was no suspicious aftertaste, no pain driving her to her knees.
“The reason why you only see your family,” Dae said, pouring them a second round, “is because you have helped me kill all my other enemies—those on this world, anyway. There aren’t any left, except the ones who are hiding with your excessively numerous relations.”
He drank his second shot.
“The fact that your relatives linger in your visions suggests that you keep your word not to harm them,” he said, putting the glass down. “Your refusal to betray them is why they will no doubt continue to pester me for some time.”
He poured himself a third shot. She eyed her second one dubiously, knowing it was powerful stuff. He was a neininki. He could taste the liquor—could probably taste nuances humans missed—but it would not make him drunk.
“For sheltering Prince Ibren, Kal Ven Othek is a dead man,” Dae continued. “If you keep scrying after Lun, you’ll see Othek dead. You need not—Othek’s death will happen with or without you.”
Esthe took her second shot. A memory gripped her—a youthful vision she had dismissed as incompetence or a dream—of herself drinking in a room with an alien idol, golden and black. She had not known then what neininki were.
“Othek’s daughter Kale Liri Lisle is going to marry Ibren,” Dae said. “My former scryer saw it. She will swear to be Ibren’s until death parts them. Her name will change to Bene Liri Lisle.”
Esthe took a third shot he poured, and she felt it hit warmer than the others. She was drunk. She could not scry drunk. The servants had never carried liquor to her side of the table, not since she was nineteen.
“My former scryer,” Dae said, “died of an aneurysm—bleeding in her brain. My followers assure me that you scryed it. The question is, did you murder her or merely witness her death?”
“I wanted to see her die,” Esthe said. Such a strange experience, being drunk. It made her more aware of his beauty—painfully aware. He had no body—wept no tears, bled no blood, spilled no seed—but that hardly mattered when she could see a body, hear a voice, want a man, even if he wasn’t really a man. “I wanted to make her see herself die. I knew scrying for it might make it happen. I am not innocent.”
“Your morality is not exactly my concern,” he said. “Not being a moral creature myself.”
Some said neininki were demons, forced to honesty by the gods.
“Tell me,” he said, pouring her a fourth shot, “do you believe a scryer has p
ower over what occurs? Is the future the future whether you look or not? Does scrying merely reveal things, or does it make them happen?”
“My teacher told me that it changed things,” Esthe said. “But he wanted scryers seen as powerful. Without the ability to change things, we are impotent—omens and harbingers, fearful only in terms of what we represent, not in ourselves.”
“What do you think?”
She shrugged. Her fingers wrapped around the glass. She was a little frightened of what she might reveal if that fourth shot began to course through her blood.
“It’s a philosophical question,” she said. “Like most philosophical questions, it is what it is whether I agree or disagree. But I err on the side of believing that I can change things. I proceed cautiously.”
“And how does one proceed cautiously when viewing the future?”
“I don’t scry when I am frightened, for fear of seeing my fears come to pass. I don’t scry when I am angry, less my anger bring blood and ruin on the future. I don’t scry when my mind is muddled—the reasons are obvious.” She took the fourth shot. It spread through her like warmth. “Most of all, I don’t scry when I am in the midst of a run of misfortune, because the taint of my misfortune will spread to everything I touch.”
“Yet your scrying redoubled after you were scarred,” he said. He stood up, and his golden fingers brushed her face. She held herself still by an effort of will, but she wanted to flinch. It hurt her to have something so beautiful as his fingers touch something so ugly as her scars.
“It was a relief,” she said. A moment later, she was surprised to have been so honest with him. “I knew it was coming. I have always been afraid that I made it happen—though it might have happened anyway. Fate could be fate and scrying just a lens that catches its forward reflections. But every night my husband and I spent together, I worried would be the last night. I felt responsible for destroying our happiness. When at last I was burned, I was ready for it. I’d already mourned my beauty—I mourned it before it was gone.”
“Isri,” he said, using her middle name, the intimate one, running his fingers down her face again, “it isn’t gone.”
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