An age seemed to pass before Merwen remembered something, and she tore herself away. Outside the silkhouse the sun was setting, and liquid red dribbled down the waves. Merwen went straight to the tent where Siderite had stayed Unspoken for three weeks.
Merwen paused at the folds of the entrance. Inside, Siderite was sitting with his legs crossed and staring at a box full of jumping lightshapes. He blinked to see Merwen, and the box turned black.
Her tongue pressed back in her throat, but she made herself speak. “Come. You must share this.”
Siderite clumsily picked himself up, and the loose folds of his trousers wrinkled like Lystra’s skin against her bones. Merwen led him down to the chamber where Lystra and the others were healing.
When the Valan entered, footsteps and chattering ceased. Mirri paused with instruments in hand, her face puckered in a questioning frown. Others stared, and only Usha seemed too busy to notice.
“Our sisters are home at last,” Merwen told him.
A smile glowed on his face. “I share your joy,” Siderite said.
“Then share this also.” Merwen took him by the hand and led him across the chamber, passing the prone figures of weakened children wrapped in blankets. She nodded at the water-womb which enclosed her daughter. “Lystra. You remember Lystra?”
Expressions flitted across his cheeks and lips as if several people struggled inside. Then he wiped his hands back over his head, through the hair that surrounded a bald patch. “I’m sorry,” he said, averting his eyes.
“Why?” Merwen asked. “Why is this?”
All around, Sharers watched, fierce enough to pounce on the answer. Siderite reached out to touch Lystra’s shell, and hairs lifted on the back of his hand. His lips worked unsteadily. “Fear. They share fear of you, that is all.”
Soldiers feared Sharers, as Sharers feared them. Yet the sickness of the soldiers must magnify their fear and twist it into something beyond imagining. Only this pattern could begin to account for what Merwen saw.
Usha came forward and eyed Siderite critically. “What’s all this standing about when there’s work to be shared? Hurry up and draw out those enzymes with Mirri.” Usha was brisk and competent once more, as though this were just another load of refugees from the seaswallowers.
21
ON LENI-EL RAFT, Spinel was overjoyed to see the children back. They were amazed and even frightened to see him after they had heard he was dead. “No, I escaped,” he boasted. “I swam under all the way to Sayra-el,” which was only a slight exaggeration. “How did you get out?” he asked Mirri’s daughter.
“We stopped eating.” The girl’s voice was small, and her eyes huge and staring. She lay thin and listless in Mirri’s arms. Spinel’s excitement receded then. Still, he told himself, if only there were a few kids as brave as that back home, Chrysoport would be a different town, probably a free one.
To Nisi he said, “See, we’re winning. What kind of general is he, to let a bunch of kids get the better of him?”
Nisi stood at the water’s edge, as she often did, pensively watching the horizon, her mouth a dry chiseled slit. For some reason the return of the children alarmed her more than anything. “I can’t believe it’s the end, for Ral. What his next move is, I can’t say, but it will come.”
Chilled, Spinel went away in a thoughtful mood. Then everything was forgotten when two clickflies alit on his arm: “Lystra is home…”
He jumped and would have dashed off right away to Raia-el. But Lystra was injured, the clickflies said, too badly injured to see anyone. And besides, Merwen’s stonesick guests would only bar the door to him again. And Lystra would agree with them.
Spinel flicked the dark stone on his chest, and its sparkle pierced his eye. How easily he could swing it over his neck and toss it to the waves. It meant nothing practical now; he would never need a stonesign again. Yet for just that reason he clung to it, to the one last trace of his Valan self. He could not throw it away without throwing himself after.
Lystra could not have loved him without knowing what he was, a shaper of stone. Or could she have? Was that why she had rejected him, once she saw what he was?
He tried to teach a clickfly to send a love greeting, but it sounded awful no matter how he put it, and besides clickflies were too prolific to trust with something private. So every day he waited with his heart pounding to hear how Lystra was progressing, and whether she was out of her water-womb.
As soon as word came that Lystra was out, Spinel set out for Raia-el. He let the glider squid race ahead at reckless speed, but when he reached the outer branches he released the squid and paddled in slowly, and slower yet when Merwen’s silkhouse appeared, its deep blue concave surfaces cupping the sky like webbed fingers. He pulled in the oars for a moment, and he touched the shallow scar on his ankle, reassuring himself that it was still there, that Lystra really had pulled him from the shockwraith once. Suddenly he needed Lystra so badly that it filled his skull and threatened to explode. Again his fingers strayed to the stone on his chest; but he clenched his fist around it until it dug into his palm. Spinel thought, I’ll only hate myself, and her too, if I give this up. I’m a Spirit Caller, and a stonecutter’s son. I will not deny my fathers.
He tied the boat to a branch, then walked up quickly, lightheaded, nearly stepping on the flat things sunning themselves before they slithered down the sides. Ahead, the silkhouse looked about the same as the last time, with the greener sections behind, above the reconstructed lifeshaping tunnels.
Someone was sitting on a low stool beside the doorhole, pulling seasilk between pronged cards and packing the fibers into bundles to be spun. Was she one of the stonesick ones? Spinel stopped. She held her head the way Lystra had, and her elbows swung and her chin nodded to her work, just as he remembered. But this could not be the Lystra he had known.
His mind flashed to the last hour they had shared alone, when he had asked something that she would not give. At that time, she had exuded physical strength, her shoulders and legs shaped by long swimming and wrestling with starworms. Now her limbs had wasted away by half; but the strength was still there, transmuted into something else, a presence that he feared to touch.
“Lystra?” His voice cracked. He glimpsed the scars all over her, even on her breasts. His anger flared, and he wished a soldier had been there so that he could have beaten him to a pulp. But the thought was gone, as soon as a spark on the sea. Lystra was here, now, alive. There was only that huge invisible wall that rose between them.
Spinel sat in front of her and tried to catch her look, as the cards grated past each other. In his ears his pulse drummed, louder than the waves at the water’s edge behind. “Lystra. I came back for you. I need you more than anything, and if you won’t listen, I won’t speak anymore, or eat anymore, or anything. Do you understand?”
The cards slowed and she laid them down. Lystra’s eyes lifted then, thrilling him with a touch of flame. Her gaze swept down his chest. Then she took up the cards and tossed them on top of the mounded seasilk, picked up the basket, and turned to the doorhole.
Spinel scrambled to his feet. “Lystra, you’ve got to share this. I gave up everything I could to come back here, but I can’t give up my starstone. It’s part of me…” Despairing, he called after her, “You said you loved me, didn’t you? Can’t you love all of what I am?”
The basket thudded, and fibers were strewn out. Lystra wheeled to face him, her eyes wide and dark. “And you? Could you ever love me, as I am?”
His tongue stuck; there was nothing that could begin to say what he felt. His arms went around her, and she held him as hard as ever. The rush of warmth was almost too much to bear, and Spinel thought he would faint from her nearness. He was sure now that Lystra was meant for him, no matter how “different” she was.
Yet now he was frightened, and he found himself shaking with hot tears that fell and rolled down Lystra’s back. Gently she cupped his forehead in her hand to look at him. Spinel said, “I�
�I don’t know what will happen to us. I don’t know if I can do what I have to, if—” He stopped and swallowed. “Nisi says the soldiers will come back.”
Lystra spoke in a voice he had never heard from her. “I learned two things, when I was held in stone. One is that all the stone of Valedon can’t touch the will of Shora. The other is that it would be far better for us all to pass Death’s threshold in a day than to share the death-hasteners’ sickness.” She paused. “But it will not happen. Because you are a Valan, and yet a Sharer with us. We will share healing, Spinel.”
22
FOR THE FIRST time in weeks, the general heard from Siderite. The scientist appeared on the viewing stage with the roof of his tent slanting behind him. His violet features were full of excitement. “General, I’m back to work again, full steam ahead! And what’s more, I’ve got the cure for the Purple Plague!”
“What?” Realgar started from his chair. “Get back here with it, immediately.”
“Oh, no, sir. I can’t leave now; I’d lose my credibility. Even talking with you—” Siderite leaned off to the side as if looking for eavesdroppers. “You’re still ‘Unspoken,’ you know. But I’ll leave samples in the pack for the helicopter to pick up.”
“Hold on, there. Where did you get this ‘cure,’ and how do you know it’s not some trick? You haven’t ‘cured’ yourself, I see.”
“I don’t intend to. I want to stay as native as I can, while I’m here. I worked out the cure with Usha, and we know it works because—well, breathmicrobe biochemistry is well studied, to keep natural mutations in hand, and to maximize oxygen efficiency—”
“All right, send it back.” Realgar allowed himself a smile. “If it works, I’ll recommend a medal for you.”
Siderite said, “There’s something else you could do for me that would immensely aid my work in the long run.”
“Yes?” Realgar keyed his monitor for a memorandum.
“Pull all your troops out, now. Just let my work go on.”
Stung though he was, Realgar thought carefully before replying. “Siderite, how long will they help you, once my troops are gone?”
“As long as I’m here. I’m an apprentice lifeshaper, remember? In fact, as soon as that damned helicopter stops buzzing around, they’ll let me share a selfname with the Gathering.”
“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.” A “selfname” was what Berenice had taken, before she went off the deep end and caused that dreadful scene with Talion.
Siderite sat up straight. “General, I am a loyal subject of the Patriarch and of Valedon. I have an exemplary record at the Palace, if I may say so. In any event, with or without soldiers on my back, you have no choice but to trust my work.”
That was true. Still, Siderite had his weaknesses: Usha, for instance; he had grown quite partial to her. Yes, Siderite could still be controlled. “Pull out, you say. That’s easier said than done.”
“Is it?” Siderite was relaxed again. “You’re in command. Why can’t you just declare you’ve won and go home?”
Realgar laughed shortly and felt better than he had in weeks. “Stick to science, Siderite, and get that plague cure over here.” He signed off, then alerted Nathan that the cure was on its way. Good news at last, he thought, with immense relief.
The whole picture was changed now. And the more he thought it over, the more sense he saw in Siderite’s suggestion. Of course the Guard would not pull out completely; a token force would remain, with all the satellites, to keep an eye on things. With the plague cured by the natives themselves, Realgar could say in effect that the natives had capitulated. As for lunar developers and their native problems, that was none of his concern. In the end Talion would decide, and while Talion liked to keep the support of the great Houses, he detested costly inconclusive campaigns.
Realgar told Jade what was on his mind. To his surprise, Jade was quick to agree. “I’m all for it, sir. I said from the first we didn’t belong in this cursed swamp.” But her gaze was absent, and Realgar knew what she was thinking. The natives would remain, especially Protector Merwen, unyielding, unscathed, uncracked.
“Jade, what else could we do here?”
“Look at it this way. Would you war with cockroaches according to the Law? No, you’d hire an exterminator. Catfish aren’t human; they’re vermin, and that’s how to treat them, if only the High Protector gets up his nerve.”
“And if Malachite so orders.” Malachite wanted something else, and there had to be a way to get it, to break the Sharer will. Realgar would never find it now.
Jade shrugged. “A few loose ends, before we go. Remember that Valan-killing virus I heard about? Well, they canned it, not because the children went home, but because clickflies swarmed from all over to oppose it. Shocked as schoolmarms, they sounded. If it was just a ruse, somebody sure took it seriously.”
“A charade, that’s all.” Realgar wished he felt as sure as he sounded.
“This other item from the clickflies looks more promising. There’s a possible Valan traitor living among the catfish.”
“A Valan traitor?”
“Could explain a lot, couldn’t it? No wonder they know how to make so much trouble.”
“You mean Siderite?”
“No, sir. A nominal Sharer who has lived here for some time. Her name I translate, appropriately enough, as ‘Nisi the Traitor.’”
23
IT WAS THE season when waterfire should have filled the sea at night, as phosphorescent diatoms multiplied in the wake of the seaswallowers. Instead, there was only a tinge of green light in the waves for a night or two. As if to make up the lack, Merwen dreamed night after night her own cryptic version of the fire that consumed water and sky alike.
Their daughters were home safe, that was the main thing. Even Lystra was recovering faster than Merwen expected: a week under one roof together, and already they had fallen into their first quarrel.
“Mother, what’s the matter with you? Was it I who brought Spinel here in the first place? It was smooth swimming, so long as he kept his place like a sandturtle for the children to play with; but as soon as we get serious, you tread water.”
Merwen clapped her hands to her head. “Lystra, how can you say such things?”
“I’m furious, that’s how.” A smile wavered on her lips. “I always say things like that when I’m furious.”
“Will you go on earning your name forever?”
“Don’t you name me, Mother. If you’ve outgrown your own name, why don’t you choose another?”
Merwen said nothing. Lystra fidgeted from one foot to the other, and her toes curled around knobby seams where the torn webbing was knitting back. “All right, I’m sorry.” Lystra’s voice fell. “I just want to stay here awhile with—with the family. I was alone so long in that place.”
“I know, and I want you here too,” Merwen said. “I wish you could stay here always, and Spinel also. You can’t know what a joy it is for me to see you both happy together.”
Lystra spread her hands helplessly. “Then why do you ask us to leave?”
“For one thing, you and I will always quarrel under the same roof.” The truth tasted bitter, but was better out.
“Only when you ask crazy things, Mother.”
“Lystra, you know how hard it is for our stonesick sisters to face Spinel with the stone. It’s a starstone, and I know why he kept it, and I’m gladder than I can say. But Ishma—”
“Well, it’s high time our sisters stopped running away from themselves. They will never be free until they face it.”
Very angry now, Merwen kept her voice to a low monotone. “There are more kinds of courage than that of swimming to the soldier-place. What courage does it take for a stonesick one simply to live through each day normally? How soon you’ve forgotten.”
“I have not forgotten!” Lystra shouted. “How could I, when I was just as sick as Rilwen?” She drew back and went on more quietly. “I fought harder, that’s all. Through
work, and through hatred. I shared more hate with stonetraders than anything, until Spinel came. When Rilwen died, I nearly died with her; but afterward, it was easier, without her example to drag me down. And Spinel helped me then.”
“Do you think I don’t know all this?”
Lystra shuddered. “I suppose you do. What you don’t know is that in the soldier-place I spent three months totally surrounded by stone. It was so dark I never really knew what the place looked like. It was like hanging alone in space, without even stars. And in the end, for me, stone was just that—just nothing at all.” Lystra paused for breath, and the drone of a helicopter was heard outside. “So you see, Mother, we can’t hide anymore, especially from ourselves. I know I sound crazy, but certain things have to be said.”
“I’m used to you. I’ve shared your life for twenty years.”
“And I’ve lived with you for those years, Mother.”
They smiled then and hugged each other. Still, Merwen knew, nothing was changed. Lystra was right, but her stonesick sisters were right, too.
Outside, the helicopter rumbled louder, until it sounded like a pair of raft trunks knocking together very fast. It was not for Siderite; it was too close.
Merwen met Lystra’s eyes and squeezed her hand once. Without a word they both stepped outside to stand before their door. Merwen recognized the soldiers by now, the ones who always came when Realgar wished to see her. She was so relieved that it was not Lystra they came for that she went herself to meet them at the helicopter.
“Go with Shora, Mother,” Lystra said to show she was not afraid. “When you return, we’ll have supper waiting for you.”
As usual, Merwen was hunched into the floor of the helicopter, and she fought to keep her stomach settled. Even so, she wondered if this might be a good time to begin sharing speech again. The Gathering should properly decide, but she could listen and consider whether the Valan wordweaver might be ready to share a gesture of goodwill.
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