by Robin Hobb
‘And why am I here?’ he continued. He spoke very softly. I edged closer to the bars to hear his answer. ‘For speaking the truth. For doing my duty to the world. Come, child, I’m nothing to fear, and I think you need a friend. What’s your name, little one?’
I didn’t want to tell him. Instead I asked, ‘Why does no one speak to you?’
‘They’re afraid of me. Or, more exactly, they’re afraid of what they might hear. Afraid they might learn something that will trouble them.’
‘I can’t be in any more trouble.’
I meant my words one way. He took them another. ‘I think that is quite possibly true. Nor can I have any more trouble than I already do. So. Tell me your story, little one.’
I was quiet, thinking. I could not trust anyone. Anything I told him, he might tell others. Might that be useful?
‘They came to my house in the middle of a bright, snowy day. Right before Winterfest. To steal me. Because they thought I was the Unexpected Son. But I’m not.’
I tried to be so careful of what I told him but once I began to talk to him, words dropped from my mouth, often out of order or choked to a squeak by the tightness of my throat. I never put my hand in his but somehow he ended up holding both my dirty bare feet in his one big black hand.
I talked in circles, telling him part of the tale and then going back to explain Vindeliar and telling him of hiding Perseverance under my cloak, but he was probably dead anyway, and how they had stolen Shun with me, but she had escaped. I started shaking as I told him, and he gently pressed my feet and said nothing. Over and over, I insisted their taking me was a terrible mistake. And when my confused telling was all spilled in splattered tears and words, he said, ‘Poor little thing. You are not the Unexpected Son. I know, for I have met him—and his prophet.’
I grew very still. Was it a trick? But what he said next was even more frightening.
‘I dreamed you. You become possible the day the Beloved was pulled back from death, undoing so many, many dream prophecies. On that day, I knew something had torn through all the futures and replaced them with new possibilities. It terrified me. I had believed my days as a dream-prophet were well and truly spent. That my time was over, and I could return home. Then the dream of you came. Oh, I did not know it would be you, then. But I was shocked. And afraid of your coming.
‘I tried to make it less likely. As soon as Beloved and his Catalyst returned to me, as soon as I could, I persuaded them to part. I thought I had done enough to shift the world into a better path.’ The big hand closed briefly around my foot. ‘But when I began dreaming about you again, I knew it was too late. You existed. And by your existence, you created many possible divergences from the true Path.’
‘You dreamed of me?’ I wiped my wet face with my shirtfront.
‘I did.’
‘What did you dream?’
His hand went lax under my feet. I didn’t move them. His words came as slow as dripping honey. ‘I dreamed many dreams. Not always about you but futures that became possible when you existed. I dreamed of a wolf that unmasked a puppeteer. I dreamed of a scroll that unwrote itself. I dreamed of a man who shook planks off himself and became two dragons. I dreamed—’
‘I dreamed that one, too!’ I spoke before I considered if I should.
Silence, save for two other prisoners whispering down the corridor. ‘I’m not surprised. Though I am frightened.’
‘But why are those dreams me?’
He laughed softly. ‘I dreamed a whirlwind of fire, come to change everything. I reached out to take its hand. Do you know what happened?’
‘It burned you?’
‘No. It offered me its foot, instead. Its little bare foot.’
I snatched my feet back as if I were the one who had been burned. He laughed softly, very quietly. ‘Done is done, little one. I know you, now. I knew you would come. I did not expect you to be a child. So. Now will you tell me your name?’
I thought carefully. ‘My name is Bee.’
He said nothing. His hand was still there, open on the cell floor. I thought it must be very uncomfortable for him to lie on his floor and reach around to my cell like that.
‘If you dreamed about me, can you tell me what is going to happen to me?’
His stillness was like a curtain. The lamp in the corridor outside my cell was running out of oil. I did not have to see it to know how the flame danced on the end of the wick, sucking up the last of it. Finally, the dark rich voice spoke again. ‘Bee. Nothing happens to you. You happen to everything.’
Slowly he drew his hand back. He did not speak again that night.
TWENTY-FIVE
* * *
Bribes
Our informants have indicated that a large shipment of excellent quality jade and turquoise, both raw and worked, is being amassed at Kerl Bay on the Reden Peninsula. Another ship there is loading excellent hardwood timbers.
In the past six months, three luriks have dreamed about a great storm. Two dreamed of ships broken and wrecked on the rock as clouds parted to reveal a quarter moon.
While we remain uncertain of the exact month of the storm, three luriks felt this event to be close in the future paths.
It is the opinion of this collator that if a ship were stationed in Skalen Cove near the Harke Rocks, following the storm there might be excellent scavenging. It might be a good idea to have on such a vessel the sort of sailors who could deal with those who might dispute ownership of such a valuable cargo as well. Even if our vessel must remain at the ready for six months, the profit would still be substantial.
Report to the Four from Collator Jens of the Seventh Rank
How could I have slept so heavily? I awoke to a woman nudging me. She had pushed the toe of her sandalled foot under the barred door and was poking me with it. ‘Move away, please. I will slide your porridge in.’ Her voice was low and neutral. Sunlight washed lace patterns on the floor. Shells. Flowers.
I sat up and for a time nothing made sense. Then I remembered. Dwalia beaten bloody, and me in a cell. And in the night, a friend? I stood up and pressed my face against the bars, trying to see into the next cell. All I could see was slightly more of the corridor.
The woman who had wakened me had brown hair and eyes. She wore a simple garment of pale blue, sleeveless and sashed at the waist. It stopped at her knees, and on her feet she had simple leather sandals. She stooped and set her tray on the floor, took a bowl of porridge from it and slid the bowl under the barred door. Plain beige porridge in a white bowl. No cream, no honey, no berries. No Withywoods, no clatter of cooking and waiting for my father to come. Just plain porridge with a wooden spoon stuck in it. I tried to be grateful as I ate it. It tasted of nothing. When the woman came back to take the bowl, I asked her, ‘May I have water to wash myself?’
She looked puzzled at my request. ‘I wasn’t told to give you any.’
‘Can you ask permission to give me some?’
Her eyebrows rose almost to her hairline. ‘Of course not!’
The dark rich voice from the night before spoke. ‘She cannot do anything except what she is told to do.’
‘That isn’t true!’ the woman exclaimed, and then clapped both hands over her mouth. She stooped and hastily piled my bowl onto the waiting tray and hurried off so quickly that the dishes jounced noisily on the tray.
‘You scared her,’ I said.
‘She scares herself. They all do.’
I was distracted by the sound of the door opening at the end of the walkway. I pressed my cheek hard to the bars and saw the Four enter one at a time. They were not dressed as grandly today, but still they wore their colours. Four soldiers followed them. Symphe was in a loose red gown. It had no sleeves and fell from her shoulders to her feet in folds, interrupted only by a scarlet belt that cinched it at her waist. Fellowdy was in a long yellow tunic and trousers that barely reached his knees. Some of Coultrie’s cosmetics had flaked onto his green vest as if he had just come in from a s
nowfall. Capra’s attire surprised me. She wore what looked to me like a blue shirt with loose flowing sleeves. If she had trousers on at all, they were shorter than the shirt was long. Her bared legs were sturdy but as pale as a fish’s belly. She wore sandals of brown leather that slapped against her feet as she walked. I had never seen anyone so attired, and I stared at her when she stood outside my cage.
‘Unlock,’ Symphe announced, and offered an elaborate fob to the guard. The man took it, then stepped forward and inserted an oddly shaped key into the bar that closed my door and turned it. One after another, each of the other three guards received a key and turned it in the lock. When all four keys had been turned and were standing in the bar, Capra stepped forward and slid the bar aside. ‘You will come with me,’ she told me as I stepped out of the cell. She spoke to the other three as the guards retrieved the keys and restored them to each owner. ‘I will return her here at the beginning of the third watch. You will meet me here then with your key-guards.’ She looked down at me. ‘Will you obey me and stay by my side, or must I leash you?’
The key-guard who attended her held up for my inspection a chain and collar. I looked from it to Capra. ‘I will obey you,’ I lied.
‘Good. Come along, then.’ The others stepped out of our way and I followed on Capra’s heels, her guard behind me. I longed to peer into the cell next to mine but her guard herded me quickly past. I had only the briefest glimpse of a black man sitting on a bunk, his head bowed.
Behind us, I heard Symphe say to Coultrie and Fellowdy, ‘I do not approve of this. It is true, the girl may be nothing at all. She may not even have White bloodlines. I have heard that folk from the mountains in the far north are sometimes as pale as true Whites. But what if Dwalia spoke true and somehow she is the Unexpected Son from the dreams? Why should Capra have the first opportunity to speak with her?’
‘Because you all agreed to it!’ Capra called sharply over her shoulder. To me, she said, ‘Don’t dawdle.’ I did not feel that we fled, but we certainly left their company as swiftly as we could. Few of the cells we passed were occupied. The prisoners sat sedately on their beds, doing nothing. As if she heard my unvoiced question, Capra said, ‘They are not evil. Simply wilful. We put them here to correct them. They will become useful, and then they will be allowed to rejoin their fellows. Or … they won’t.’ She did not say what else would befall them if they did not become useful.
For a white-haired old woman she moved very quickly as we descended the same steps I had climbed the day before. Down we went, until we reached the ground floor. When we emerged in the main corridor, she swiftly led me off in a different direction. We passed chambers with their doors open, and I glimpsed windows that looked out onto a lovely garden. Soon enough, we entered a room with statuary and cushioned benches. Beyond it was a garden with a large pool in the middle. We crossed swiftly through it, and I felt almost dizzied by the heady fragrance of the trees in bloom. There was a shady portico along the front of a long wall with a series of doors in it. She opened one. I smelled a sharp scent on the cloud of steam that rolled out.
‘Go wash yourself. Your hair, your feet, all of you. You will find garments on a bench there. After you have dried yourself, put them on and come out. Do not be slow, but be thorough. You stink.’
She delivered her command and her judgment in an impersonal tone. The prospect of warm water made me swift to obey her. I entered and was glad to close the door behind me. Light came into the room from high windows. My hope that there might be another exit was quickly dashed. In the room was a bench with the promised clean garments and some sandals beneath it, and a drying cloth. There was a pot of something soft like pudding. I dipped my fingers into it and rubbed them together. Soap, I surmised, scented with some sharp herb. A low tub of smoothed and polished stone held steaming water. There was nothing else in the room.
I stripped hastily with many a backward glance at the door. I rolled my dirty garments around my precious candle and set it carefully on the bench before I stepped down into the tub. It was far deeper than I had expected. The water was almost too hot and came up to my chin when I sat down. For a moment, it was all I could do just to sit there. I leaned back and let myself sink completely under the water. When I came up, I saw that pale brown rivulets of dirty water were coming from my hair. I was not surprised but I was still embarrassed. I helped myself to a handful of the soap and stood up to scrub myself with it. After a bit of hesitation, I rubbed it through my hair as well, and then rinsed myself in the now greyish water.
I had not been naked since my time with Trader Akriel, and the fading browns and greens of various bruises still showed on my hips and shins. My toenails were cracked and rub as I might some dirt remained caught in them. The skin of my hands had been roughened by the various tasks I’d done for Dwalia, the hands of a servant, not a high-born Buck girl. I knew a moment of shame that I had not known before that the kitchen girls’ chapped hands were evidence of the sort of work that had never been expected of me. So often I had cursed the events that had taken me away from my comfortable life, and now I had a little jolt of realization. How would it have been to be born a slave or a servant, to know that the abuse I’d suffered was to be my daily life?
I put on the garments and felt oddly naked in them. They were loose and the trousers came barely to my knees, but the sleeves of the blouse fell past my wrists. The fabric of both garments was light and a pale rose in colour. There was no way to carry the candle inside my new shirt. The sandals were a mystery but I finally strapped them to my feet. Beneath the clothing, I found a comb. The water had put my hair into tight curls, but I did my best to make it tidy. I folded the drying cloths and looked for a way to drain the grey bathwater but didn’t find one. It shamed me that someone would see how dirty I’d been. I steeled myself, tucked my worn garments, with the candle inside them, under my arm and left the bath.
Daylight had grown stronger and the morning was warmer than many a noon in Buck. Capra looked me up and down, with her gaze lingering on my bruised legs. ‘Leave those rags. Just drop them. A servant will dispose of them.’
I froze. Then, without a word, I reached into the bundle, and drew out the halves of my broken candle. I let my clothing fall. Capra scowled at me. ‘What’s that you’re carrying?’
‘A candle that my mother made.’ I didn’t show it to her.
‘Leave it.’
‘No.’ I lifted my eyes and met her gaze. Her eyes were peculiar. Today they seemed not pale-blue or grey, but a sort of dirtied white. They were hard to look at, but I didn’t break my stare.
She tilted her head to look at me. ‘How many candles do you have?’
I didn’t want to tell her, yet I could not say why. ‘It was one. It broke into two.’
‘One candle,’ she said quietly. ‘That’s interesting. But only one. Not like the candles in the dream.’ She said this as if hoping to provoke a reaction.
I did not let my face change. But abruptly, the day shimmered around me. I looked up at Capra and it seemed as if light spiked out from her in myriad directions. So many paths leading from her. From this moment, yes, but more than that. She was like the beggar, who was also the Fool. My father’s Beloved. I had no words for what I sensed about her. Like a crossroads, I thought, where one could go off in a different direction. I looked away from her, wondering how much time had passed while I had been caught in that moment. None, it seemed, when she spoke.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Carry them with you. It’s your nuisance to deal with.’ Yet from her voice, I did not feel she conceded to me so much as added the candle to my list of wrong-doing. Her guard’s expression suggested that I had been foolishly wilful. He was one of the men who had wielded the whips that ate Dwalia’s flesh. I set my teeth to keep my jaw from quivering at that memory.
‘Follow,’ Capra said. ‘You will be staying here with us, so I will show you the grounds. Later we will decide what you are to be here. Perhaps a student? Perhaps a scholar
? Maybe just a servant.’ She smiled at me, a thin stretching of her lips. ‘Maybe a breeder. Or a slave to be sold. There are so many ways you might like to be useful.’
I did not think I would like any of them but I said nothing. I walked behind her, her guard next to me. The sandal straps bit into my feet but I gritted my teeth and walked on. She took me back inside, and I was grateful that the sun no longer beat down on my head. I did not realize how I had squinted against the glare of white light on white stone until we were indoors again.
She did not hurry but she did not pause. On the main floor, I was shown a room where five pale children were learning to write and being assisted by scribes in green robes. Each child had a scribe sitting by him, assisting him to guide his pen. The pale children looked very young, no older than three years. But if they were like me, I judged they were older than they looked.
We traversed a long, gently curving corridor and went up grand marble stairs to the second floor. ‘Here we welcome those who come to share our wisdom.’ She told me this as she opened the door to a room panelled all in rich wood and deeply carpeted. There was a grand table surrounded by carved chairs in the centre, and on it a decanter of some liquor and some tiny glasses.
In the next room six young Whites were at a table. Servants waited behind them. ‘Last night, they dreamed,’ Capra said quietly. ‘They will write down what they dreamed. Then the scribing servants will make copies, and each copy will be sorted into a category and placed with others similar to it. Perhaps they dreamed of candles. Or an acorn bobbing in a stream. Or the dream where one seizes a bee, and is surrounded by a hundred stinging bees.’ Her voice dropped. ‘Or of the Unexpected Son.’ She turned and looked down at me. Her smile stretched her lips flat. ‘Or a Destroyer. Over the last year, the occurrence of dreams about the Destroyer have greatly increased. That tells us that something happened, something we did not expect. Some event has made it more likely that a Destroyer exists and will come to us.’ She stretched her lips again. ‘Have you ever dreamed of the Destroyer?’