by Kate Elliott
“But it was to see Genji!”
“I don’t care if it was to see the emperor himself!” David’s anger was very different from her father’s: It was clean and honest, and she felt bitterly ashamed of herself for bringing it to the surface. But she also felt put upon.
“It isn’t fair,” she muttered. “It’s not my fault.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
David threw up his hands in disgust. “Now you sound like your brother! Someone will bring you food later. Don’t leave this room.”
He left. Hands clenched, she sat on the cot and stared at the curtain that sealed her off from her freedom. It wasn’t fair. She had done nothing wrong. Then, chewing on her lower lip, she began to worry about Valentin. What if Vasil did find him? Except he wouldn’t. What about Evdokia and Anton? She hated to think of them back at the tent. It was very quiet outside, as if no one was in the caravansary. Daring much, she got up and peeked out the curtain, and indeed, no one was around. She thought about going out—she could always say she had to go relieve herself—but remembering the anger in David’s face, she sat back down. In the corner of the room, David’s nesh sponge lay on top of his modeller. Eye patches dangled in two neat rows from the sponge. She licked her lips. She could go visit Genji in nesh.
Voices sounded in the courtyard, and she started guiltily. Now she was acting like Valentin. It would be better to wait and ask David’s permission.
Hyacinth came in, smiled at her, and set a plate of vegetables and bread down on the chair. “Here’s somewhat to drink.” He handed her a flask of juice and sat next to her on the cot. “Yana, is it true that on Tau Ceti Tierce Helms Arundel, the cultural minister, tried to sleep with you?”
“He hung around after me. It’s happened before. I mean, not that anything happened, just that people hang around.”
Hyacinth touched her chin with two fingers and lifted her face so that he could look at her. He shook his head. “People don’t hang around you innocently, ma chere. Not that kind of people. Not the kind of people your father gets mixed up with.”
“Don’t say anything about him!”
He warded off her anger with a raised hand. “Let’s leave him out of it for the moment, then. I guess we all just ignored the signs because there wasn’t anything dramatic going on. But wouldn’t you say two children running away in the space of ten days is a bit theatrical?”
She hunched her shoulders against him.
“Yana, Yana, don’t go all Valentin on me. I went down to the catacombs last night, you know, and almost caught the little bastard.” He said the word affectionately. “I ran away from home when I was a kid.”
“You did?” She looked up at him, curious in spite of herself.
“Yeah. I always fought with my mom and dad was never around. The only one who ever loved me for myself was my grandmom. Huh.” He smiled wistfully. “I ran away to live with her when I was nine years old. Never saw my parents again except once a year at the legal hearing to consider my case, which lasted until I was sixteen. There was never any dispute, though. My mom never wanted me back, and my dad dissolved the partnership and went off to the asteroid belts in Three Rings system. But you don’t have a grandmother to run to.”
Ilyana said nothing.
“So maybe you’d better help us try to fix what you do have. Evdi is going to stay with Diana and Portia for a few days, and I’ve agreed to take Anton….”
“He didn’t used to be such a sneak and a whiner,” Yana blurted out. “Anton, I mean. But I don’t—”
“You don’t what?”
“I don’t like Anton much anymore, and I feel bad about that. It isn’t right that I don’t like him. He could be better, he could be likable, if he didn’t think he had to sneak and whine to get his way. He’s a dishonest little pig!” Embarrassed by her outburst, she got up and went over to the window.
“That’s better. Anton isn’t unsalvageable. I happened to go by his school about a month before we left London, and three of his tutors talked about what a good student he is, and how well and fairly he plays with the other children. So perhaps he’s only like that at home.”
“Oh, you must not have talked to M. Cauley, then. She doesn’t—”
“I didn’t consider M. Cauley a good character witness. Goddess Above, Yana, surely you realize that M. Cauley is infatuated with your father?”
Ilyana hadn’t realized that. “Why did you go by his school, anyway?” she demanded.
“I keep an eye out on you all. Just like Diana does, in her own way. And Yevgeni, as much as he is allowed,” he added sarcastically.
This was a side of Hyacinth Ilyana had not expected: That, like an uncle in the jaran, he would keep a careful eye out on his nieces and nephews, awake to any problems that might crop up. She went back and sat down beside him on the couch.
“If you just stay here for a few days, and we can grab Valentin, then perhaps, just perhaps, we can smooth it all over and calm things down. But you know that Yomi is going to have to recommend a legal hearing for your family when we return to Earth, don’t you?”
“Papa won’t like that. Mama won’t do it, not if it’s khaja law.”
“I just mean some kind of counseling, Yana.”
She shrugged.
“I think Vasil can be brought to see that the tradeoff is worth it, family therapy of some kind. The alternative being, of course, bad publicity.”
She began to chew on her nails.
Hyacinth rested a hand on her hair. “Just stay here for now, all right?”
She nodded.
He sighed, stood, and left.
After a while, she remembered to eat. No one came to see her. It got dark, and the recessed lights brightened to give the tiny room a cheerful glow. She stroked them down until they gave off just enough illumination to mark the lines of the furniture and the pale square of the window.
Later, she heard her father’s voice.
“Where is Yana?”
She jumped to her feet and was at the curtain before she realized what she was doing. Her hand brushed the fabric, and its coarse folds woke her up.
Vasil had his expansive, wheedling voice turned on. “You were very fine in the scene yesterday, Diana. My, Portia looks delightful tonight. Here, Evdi, let me lift you up. Can you see the rings there, just above the roof?”
Ilyana cringed, slapping her hands over her ears, and went and huddled on the cot. Why had she never noticed before how false he sounded? She bit hard on her lip to stop from crying. Harder. A salty, hot taste trickled onto her tongue. She had drawn blood. Just like Valentin.
“I’ll go crazy if I stay in here all night alone,” she muttered to herself. No one came to see her. No one betrayed her hiding place to her father, who eventually went away. No one disturbed her. Two moons rose. It was quiet outside. If she slipped out by the back corridor, the watchers—presumably they had set sentries in the courtyard—would not see her. Or she could use the nesh.
Finally, she knelt down before the modeller and sealed the eye-patches down over her eyes, and gripped the sponge, and dove in.
Disoriented. The marble gateway of the Memory Palace stands before her, but the proportions are off. She is seeing them from another height, from another body. This is not her place. She twists sideways and comes to the glowing net of lines now familiar and steps through into the map room and walks, hurrying now, faster and faster, to the palace of time, but as she reaches the jewel courtyard a wind picks up and Genji says on the wind like a cloud of insects, “Do not come to me here. You must visit me in the true palace.” With a wrench like the slam of storm winds, Ilyana finds herself
walking out on the grass toward the rose wall. A scatter of lights approached her, a miniature fleet of glowing bugs. It was the barge, come to meet her. She got on, sank down onto the bench and let it take her out through the wall, the rain drumming onto the opaque roof above, drumming, lulling, loud as pans banging together but so constant th
at she dozed off to awaken to find the barge open, perfectly still, and she walked gingerly down the ramp and up the stairs and into the anteroom to the hall of monumental time. Shiva waited for her, alone in the immensity of the hall. Genji was not there.
She walked across the hall, her footsteps like the flutter of a bird’s wings in the hollow gulf of air.
Lord Shiva stood poised with his right foot balanced on the back of the dwarf Muyalaka, the Demon of Forgetfulness. He stared serenely into the air and a nascent smile touched his lips. Ilyana ventured closer. She could almost feel the heat of the ring of fire, the arch set with flames, that surrounded him. Except it was only a statue.
In his upper right hand he held the drum of creation whose rhythm brings the universe to life, and in the palm of his upper left hand a tongue of flame flickered. Ilyana started and stared at it, but when she looked straight at it, it was, like the statue, unmoving. By this flame would the universe be destroyed in the final conflagration, or at least, that was what she remembered from her report on the dance. She was close enough to touch him now. His lower right hand, palm out, puzzled her a moment until she remembered that it represented a gesture granting freedom from fear. She reached for it, suddenly wanting to touch his palm, to see if somehow that contact could bestow protection and peace oh her, but, reaching, her wrist brushed his wrist, of his lower left hand, which pointed down to his left foot.
The touch paralyzed her. Genji’s skin had felt hard, shelllike. His, smooth bronze, was warm. Then, brought to life, unable to help herself, she ran her fingers down the fingers of his hand and drawn down by their texture touched his left foot, which was lifted gracefully across his body almost to waist height. Bracelets ringed his ankle, little bells, and she handled them with her fingers, each one separate, separated from, tinkling softly as she touched them, as if she was bringing, them to life. She traced his toes. Release, that was what the left foot symbolized. Every least detail symbolized something.
Standing so close, she could not help but stroke back to the bracelets, proceeding higher, up to his knee and around the curve of his leg. Clothed in a tiger skin draped round his loins, he wore otherwise only ornaments, bracelets, necklaces, and a sash tied around his waist, blown away from the body as by a sharp wind so that it touched the arch of fire. It rippled in the wind, colored now blue like the sky and now blue like deep water and now the pale golden waves of grass shorn by the wind.
It was not an ordinary wind. It caressed her face and then, increasing in strength, it began to press against her like the storm winds heralding a gale.
Lord Shiva raised up on his toes and stamped his heel down on the back of the dwarf, the first beat, the drum, and the sound beat on as his fingers tapped the drum contained within his hand. Flame leapt in his palm, springing for the arch of flame which swelled in the tearing wind to encompass the air and the hall. So brilliant it brought tears to her eyes. He moved, the graceful turn of a hand on the wrist, the sweep of a leg, and spun, once around, and as he turned his gaze brushed past her, and she staggered back from the force of that glance, like the searing touch of a beam of red fire.
Stamping his heels, he spun, his slender limbs flashing in the air, his bracelets winking in the light of a thousand, a million exploding suns as here on the dancing ground of the universe the worlds were annihilated by fire. The bells rang down the shattering of the halls of history and the world of time, shorn by the wind that buffeted her while she yet stood her ground and watched, with terror, with a sudden blinding passionate yearning, the dance of Shiva.
The world came apart around her.
“Not yet,” said Genji. “The Kali Yuga has not ended.”
Ilyana was falling, standing on nothing. Terrified, she grabbed for the sash. Substance respun itself under her feet and the hall came back into being around her like threads woven into a great rug, the age of iron. There stood Genji, in her sable robes, not four paces from her. There stood the arch of flame. There stood Shiva, still now.
But he was no longer a statue.
Genji looked at Ilyana. “You are not yet old enough to tamper with the order of the universe,” she said, scolding, gentle, possibly amused.
Shiva looked at Ilyana. His eyes—she met his eyes—his gaze struck her like the resounding clap of a giant bell, shuddering through her, and she threw a hand up to ward herself but she was split with blackness, shattering her.
And she woke, clapping a palm to her forehead as if following the rest of the movement to its appointed end. She had a monstrous headache.
She lay on David’s cot. The room was dark, but the merest hint of dawn traced the window. Someone hissed her name.
“Yana! Ilyana! Wake up. We’ve got him.”
No, she wanted to say. His glance will kill you. She was lying on David’s cot. She’d had a dream, or been in nesh. She struggled to get up, to roll off the couch.
Almost cried out loud. Tangled in and around her legs and waist was Shiva’s sash. Blue and deeper blue and gold. A wave of light-headedness swept her, so steep that she knew she was going to faint.
But she didn’t.
“Ilyana!” The whisper came again, more insistently, and the curtain stirred.
She clawed at the sash, bundling the fabric, as fine as spider’s silk, up into a ball and sticking it into the waistband of her skirt, hiding it. Staggered to her feet in time to fall forward into David, who came through the curtain and caught her and set her back on her feet again.
“Come,” he said in a low voice, evidently thinking she had just woken up.
I have just woken up, she said to herself, not sure whether she was speaking aloud, but he did not tell her to be quiet. He took her by one hand and tugged her outside, where they stood within the dim arch of the corridor and peered out into the courtyard. A frail figure knelt before the latticework within the gazebo. From this distance it was hard to make out details of his appearance, just that his clothes hung strangely on him, too loose.
She found her voice. “Did he just get here?”
“No. We decided it would be easier to get him into nesh and then—”
Ilyana winced and a sound of protest escaped her.
“I know, I know. I went in after him over an hour ago, but I couldn’t find him.”
“I could have told you that!”
“Shhh.”
“Why bother! Valentin can’t hear us where he is.”
“No, but it’s getting late, and other people—”
Other people. She had forgotten about other people. She had forgotten about everything. If she closed her eyes the whirling flash of the dance raged against the darkness, the nimbus of his hair swirling out like a crown that stretched in ribbons into space, his beautiful limbs like strokes of lightning splintering the universe.
She opened her eyes. All remained as it was, the thin figure entwined with the latticework, David’s steady breathing beside her, the slow bleeding of light into the night air, presaging dawn. Someone moved back by the gateway, and then another person scuttled down the corridor toward the toilets. Water splashed softly in the cistern.
“Why, look,” said a young woman’s voice. “There’s Valentin!”
“Oh, hell,” said David in an undertone.
A shadow detached itself from the gazebo—Hyacinth—and moved to stand protectively between Valentin and the betraying voice. Light rose. Valentin’s face was filthy, his hair was matted, and one of his sleeves was torn. His head lolled back, and he wore on his face the same half smile poised within serene majesty, like a mockery of Lord Shiva, like an echo. Fear seized Ilyana’s heart, fear for Valentin. Fear propelled her forward just as three more of the actors came out of the bathroom and stopped to gawk, just as a single figure strode purposefully in through the gateway from outside.
He was furious. He hated bad reviews. He hated looking bad, especially in front of an audience. She knew him. She knew exactly what he would do.
“Father! Don’t!” she cried, but it w
as too late.
Vasil shoved Hyacinth away and grabbed Valentin by the shoulders and pulled. Valentin’s fingers had a death grip on the lattice. The whole structure swayed, but Valentin did not let go. Could not, because he wasn’t truly with his body, but Ilyana knew that her father did not understand nesh.
Instead, Vasil got a look of stark fury on his face and yanked with his full strength. With a wrenching snap that echoed like thunder resounding in the sky above, the lattice broke off by Valentin’s knees. Sparks flew up and vanished in a spray of brilliant light into empty air.
Looking stunned, Vasil let go of his son. Eyes still shut, Valentin sagged down onto the tiled ground, fingers still clutching the sundered latticework. Then he began to twitch violently, and within an instant was in the throes of a full-fledged seizure. Ilyana and David reached him at the same time, and David held him down, getting kicked several times for his pains, while Ilyana pried his fingers off the lattice one by one. When the last one came free, scraped down to blood, Valentin ceased moving and just lay there, limp, like one dead.
“Oh, gods,” cried Ilyana, looking up at her father, glorious in the rising sun. “You’ve killed him.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Code of Law
FOR SIX DAYS THEY were left alone in the tower chamber. Food was brought to them—a pittance, bread and water—and once a day a servant took the chamber pot away and emptied it. Another servant brought wood up, just enough, if rationed properly, to get them through the day and evening. More than once the guards suggested to Jaelle what she might do with them to get a few scraps of meat or vegetables for herself; to her surprise, she refused. She was not sure why, only that it had something to do with the way Princess Katerina shared out the portion equally and ate her bread as if it were a feast.
Katerina wove, taught Jaelle to play khot, and in her turn learned the Yos language from Jaelle. She read the book of travels twice (it took Jaelle an entire afternoon to puzzle out five pages), and brooded over The Recitation, listening with the obsessed interest of a person who would go mad without something to focus on to Jaelle’s scathing denunciations of the apostasy of the northern church.