by Shannon Page
“I … would rather not …”
“You’re really going to go through life now as that man without a name? If you’re no longer a fugitive, what’s the danger in telling me what you were called before all this began?”
“I guess … you’re right,” he said. “I’ll have to choose a name now.”
She could not believe he was so thick. In fact, she was quite sure he wasn’t. “You’re avoiding my question. I asked what you were called. After all we’ve been through, may I not know where you’re really from? How all this happened to you?”
“My lady, I know how this will sound, and I apologize. You are literally the last person in the world I would wish to offend, but … I’m not sure it would be helpful to tell you. Specifically.”
Sian gaped at him. “Well, now I really must know why.” She was too surprised to feel offended. “You said that night out on the beach that you had grown up in the slums, but that’s obviously not true. I have spent some time with people from the raft warrens, as you know, and you are not remotely like them.”
“Are you certain?” he replied. “Het is from the warrens. His father was a foreign sailor. Left his mother in the warrens before Het was even born.”
She had thought there could be no surprises left. “How would you know that?”
“We’ve spent a lot of time together here, these last few days. With little to do but talk. The temple took him as a child. For charity. They’ve educated him very well, but you can hear it in his speech still, if you listen.”
“But not in yours,” she said, moved nonetheless. “You’ve been here? All this time?”
“Where else had I to go?” He shrugged uncomfortably. “My task seems done as well, as I just told you. And … I do feel … both grateful, and a bit … responsible still. To you.”
“Then why won’t you —”
“Because I fear that it might cause you pain,” he cut her off in agitation. “And I have caused enough of that. To you especially.” He took a breath to calm himself, and turned to go back to his doubtless stone-cold kava at the table. “Some stories are best left behind.”
His past would cause her pain? How could he think she’d just sit still for that? “Have I ever told you how I was awakened to my gift of healing, sir?”
He looked up from his kava, as if she’d slapped him. “If you feel the need to mock me now … I guess you’d be entitled.” He looked away again, and raised his cup to drink.
“I have no desire to mock you,” Sian said. “But I’m wondering what you think could possibly cause me too much pain to deal with after all I’ve been through. And forgiven you for.”
His shoulders slumped. He set the kava down, staring at the table.
“I have forgiven you,” she said. “I understand now what it’s like to be used by a god. I harbor nothing but respect for you, young man. And the best of hopes for your relief from … whatever haunts you so. But it would be … gratifying to know that you trust me some as well. At least a little. You told me on the beach that night that you’d been beaten too. Harder and longer than I was. If you can’t tell me where you’re from, then may I know, at least, what was done to you?”
He released a bitter little laugh, and shook his head. “They are the same story, my lady.”
A story clearly eating him alive, whatever it was. “Then tell me,” she said softly. “And be free of it.”
He looked at her at last. “I swear to you, my lady. This had no bearing on why you were chosen. That was the god’s choice. Not my own. I swear it … on my father’s shrine. But … it made nothing easier for me that night.”
Her lips parted in surprise. Was there some reason after all that she had been chosen?
“To arouse your gift, the god used one of his own bones. And me.” Though he still stared at Sian, the priest was clearly seeing something else now. “To awaken me, he used your family.”
Sian felt her face slacken.
“My father was once a very highly placed employee in the household of Escotte Alkattha. Lord Alkattha had not yet been installed as Census Taker, but he was already an important man, and my father’s position was high enough that we too lived in relative luxury on Alkattha’s largess.” His eyes flickered toward her again. “You are right, in part, my lady. I enjoyed a very fine education growing up, and learned how to conduct myself in one of the finest homes in Alizar. Until I was fourteen.” His gaze softened again, once more focused on the past.
“My father did his job extremely well. He wasn’t just hard-working. He was intelligent, creative, and honest to a fault. He was also just naïve enough to think that these things had won him at least the begrudging respect of his employer. Foolishly presuming on that assumption, he dared to question, politely, a fairly petty household policy injurious to many of the servants, which resulted in excessively high turnover among them, as well as reduced morale and productivity, and to no recognizable gain for Alkattha. My father may have dared to press the point a bit too hard, believing that a man of such apparently high character would be persuaded by reason and elevated moral vision to listen.”
Sian closed her eyes, dreading to hear what her monstrous cousin had done to them. “What was this policy?” she asked.
“Something to do with household chain of command, I believe. Which positions were subservient to which others, how daily household questions and permissions were to be submitted, and to whom. I can’t remember more than that. I was very young, and not involved in any of it but the aftermath.” He sighed, and looked away again.
“Lord Alkattha was a rising star, of course, extremely conscious of his image in those days. To be corrected by an employee, however circumspectly … There were precedents at stake here. People watching. Evidently, he felt some example must be made. To prevent such subversive instincts from infecting others, not just of his household, but of our family’s class in general. Firing my father wasn’t near enough to serve …”
The priest fell silent, lost in what he was remembering for a time, then drew a deep breath and went on. “Your cousin used all his influence to make absolutely certain we were ruined. After we’d been kicked out of the house without a moment’s notice, allowed nothing but the clothes we wore, he had us spied upon. Every time my father — or my mother — tried to get a job of any kind, however lowly, Alkattha sent someone to inform the prospective employer how they would be punished if they hired us. Others in your family assisted him in this. That much I know.
“When my family had been reduced to living in a bamboo lean-to down in Hell’s Arch, he finally called his spies away. But even then, if he happened to hear that my father had found employment as a charcoal hauler, or a boat scraper, he made whatever effort was required to see him dismissed, even from that.” The priest’s eyes flickered toward Sian again. “He didn’t live five years, my lady. My mother made it eight. She died four years ago, just after my sister, of grief as much as anything, I think. I am all that’s left.” He shrugged. “And then the god washed up. I was among the first to rush down to the beach that day, and beg my portion of the meat.”
He drew another very long, deep breath, and stood to go look out a window at the sunlit sea. “There are many ways one may be beaten. I was beaten physically on any number of occasions during those years. Sometimes into stupor. That’s how life is lived in such places. Such beatings were the least injurious of my torments.
“There is a great deal more, that I beg you not to make me recite, my lady.” He turned to gaze at her again. “I do not attempt to justify — with this tale, or by any other means — what I agreed to do to you that night. I was convinced, not compelled, to do as the god asked. I still am not sure what I should have done. Not in my heart. I know that you’ve forgiven me. I know that in my body, as you will remember, I believe. That was a very great gift, my lady. I will never know how to tell you all you changed in me that night. For that, I am forever grateful. But your forgiveness does not make it all right to have been the one
wielding the whip. Even for that hour. Not for me. This, I still hold against the god. And perhaps, against myself.
“That is why I’ve told you what you wished to know. If there is more that I can do, just name it, and I will. But I beg you, do not share this tale with anyone. Whatever I may become now, let me be it free of the shadow that was cast over my family. The man who cast it is gone at last, it seems. At least, I pray so. Let the memory be gone as well.”
“I will tell no one,” said Sian. “I … am sorry, for whatever that is worth.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for. That’s why I didn’t wish to tell you. I don’t want you feeling blamed.” He looked down, pale and drawn. “Or further used. By me. I knew you were related to the Alkatthas. But the god who urged that act upon me had already taught me to loath the self-consuming hunger for revenge. Through several years of beatings. Mostly self-inflicted as I tried, over and over, to satisfy my anger, rather than to set it down.”
“I know,” she told him. “And I believe you. Can you set it down now? Now that I know?”
He gazed at her a long time before saying, “Perhaps …”
“I will keep your secret, but I will not forget,” she said. “I am your witness now.”
“Thank you, my lady … For this as well. You have not lost your wisdom.”
There was a knock upon the door behind him. The priest smiled sadly at Sian. “That will be the happier surprise Het promised, I imagine. At long last.”
He went to pull the door open, and Reikos stuck his head inside, grinning as he saw her looking back. “Am I interrupting anything of import?” he asked in his stilted, foreign way, though his accent had diminished greatly these past few weeks.
“No. I was just leaving,” said the priest. “Rest well, Our Lady. I will try to do the same now.” He clapped Reikos on the shoulder as they passed each other. “Make her happy.”
“Konstantin,” she sighed, relieved that she’d been right. “Come here. I need you. I need someone to hold. Someone without painful secrets to reveal.”
He closed the door, and came to sit down on the edge of her broad mattress, looking at her in concern. “Have these fools been telling you unhappy things?”
“They aren’t fools, but yes, they have. You don’t have painful secrets, do you? Are your crew all right? Your ship? I never even got to ask you, before I left.”
“All my secrets are happy ones,” he assured her with a smile. “But what have all these men who aren’t fools been telling you?”
“Pino,” she said, feeling her eyes grow hot and moist again.
“Ah. Yes. Pino.” Reikos nodded. “I am sorry, Sian. I … I should have —”
“No. You shouldn’t have,” she said fiercely. “Not everything is yours to fix — or to command, Captain.” She sighed. “None of us can keep the world from happening. Whatever way it wants to. You might have been dead now too, if you’d been anywhere except … wherever it was you ended up. Where was that?” She patted the mattress at her side, raising a fresh cloud of lavender scent. “Get in here, and tell me all these happy secrets.”
“In there?” He managed to look both intrigued and scandalized. “What if someone should come in?”
“The Factora knows about us. And I’m sure Arouf’s complained to everybody else in Alizar by now, so who is left to be dismayed by the discovery that we are lovers?” She gave him a sly smile. “And I said nothing about taking off your clothes.”
“No?” Reikos offered her a tragic look. “Then, what is the —”
“Don’t,” she warned him, giving him the sort of look she’d used to give him all the time. Before the war. “Don’t say something stupid like that. I wish to be held, Reikos. Just held. You must have run across this sort of thing before. Somewhere.”
He smiled at her, and climbed under the covers in his clothes.
“Now, tell me,” she said, as he put his arms around her, and she snuggled close. “What happened that night?”
“Well, to be as brief as it is possible, we wrecked Fair Passage on a reef. She’s lying on the bottom somewhere not too far northeast of here. Three of my crew were injured rather badly, including Kyrios, who broke half a dozen ribs.”
“These are your happy secrets?” Sian exclaimed, then realized she wasn’t being very sympathetic. He’d only been there trying to help her, after all. “I’m very sorry, Konstantin. How did she get wrecked?”
“Running from Sergeant Ennias, as it turned out.”
“Why were you running from the sergeant?”
“A very good question, to which I still have not any very good answer, I’m afraid.”
None of this was at all what she’d been hoping for. “Are your men recovering, I hope?”
“Oh, they’ll be a while healing,” he said. “Unless you wish to come, when you’re feeling better, of course, and speed things for them — not that I would ask you to. Not after all you’ve been through.”
“Well, that’s for the best,” she said a little sadly. “Because my gift is gone, love. I cannot heal a cockroach now.”
“Why is that a problem? Who wants a cockroach healed?” She was not sure, but he … seemed to think the question serious. “What do you mean, your gift is gone?”
“I mean, I can no longer heal. At all. After I healed Konrad … The gift did not come back with me from … wherever I have been.”
He stared at her. “Oh, Sian … I am so sorry. No one told me.”
“No one knew until just now. And don’t be, Reikos. I am sorry I can’t heal Kyrios and the others, but … I do not want to be a saint.” She gazed into his eyes, and leaned up just far enough to kiss him, lightly on the cheek. “I hope that is all right with you?”
“Oh … yes,” he said, then smiled lasciviously. “I am not wanting you to be a saint, my love. Or — and I hope this is not too honest — to share you with the world that way.”
She smiled back. “Your men will heal, though. Won’t they?”
“Oh yes, I’m sure they will. And they are very happy anyway. I doubt they mind such broken bones at all.”
“Why not?”
“They are all captains now, my love.” His grin was like a little sunrise. “Each with his own ship! I think those who did not wait for me are much sorrier men today.”
“They’re all getting ships?” she asked, struggling up onto one arm to better see if he was joking. “Of their own?” He nodded happily. “From whom?”
“From me. And from the new Factora’s father-in-law, of course. The Alkatthas are all shipping moguls, Sian. Surely, you must know this. And very happy with me, at the moment.”
Sian gaped in delight. “The Factora’s giving them all ships? Oh, Konstantin! That is … wonderful news! What has she given you?”
“The ships I gave my men,” said Reikos. “They are from her, really, I suppose, more than from me or Lord Alkattha. It is hard to say. Everybody is so happy and is wanting to say thank you.” He shrugged. “The ships are from them all, I guess.”
“So, you have a new ship too?”
He shook his head, still smiling at her.
“Then …” She wondered when he had become … quite this generous. He was a very good man, of course. She would not have loved him otherwise. But he had always been more than shrewd enough at business too. “How … will you get a new ship? Or a new crew, for that matter?”
“My love, don’t you see? The owner of an entire shipping fleet does not need to go to sea himself. Look at how these cousins of yours live. You do not see them swabbing decks or out cleaning brine off of the sheets in miserable weather for months on end. They stay here. In grand houses like this!”
“You own a fleet?”
“My crew still work for me,” he said, looking so pleased with himself that she could not help but giggle. “Did I not make that clear? Finding crews for all my ships will be their problem now, not mine. I have had enough of life on the sea, Sian. I am going to stay ashore now. Here. With you
, if you will have me. That is my new world.”
She arrived this time, not with a flotilla of armed and decorated ships, but in a small sloop shared by no one but Ennias and the boatman who had sailed them here. There were no fierce paints and gleaming gold regalia now. Her hair had been restored to its natural blonde and gray, and she wore no cosmetic mask at all. She was done with faces not her own. Alizar would know her real face from now on. Her dress today was just a simple black silk robe. Not the blazing sun. Not the might of Alizar. She was a slender shadow now, a sliver of the night, passing unnoticed through a world dreaming its own dreams, oblivious, around her.
The contrast might have been laughable, if there’d been any laughter left inside her. She had her son back, and was deeply grateful. Every day. But there was no laughter even there. Someday, she hoped. But not yet. He had come back to her a sweet but strangely silent boy, to find his father dead, his home destroyed. His uncle … mad, and in a prison. For attempting to poison him, among other crimes. Very little laughter there at all.
Arian had made every effort to help Konrad absorb these truths as gently and as sensitively as possible. But there’d been no way to keep them from him without lying altogether. Which she found she could no longer do — to him, or anybody else now. There had been so many lies. They had poisoned so much more than just her son. She could not abide deception now. Neither in herself, nor in others. The truth. She hungered for it, desperately. Would not — could not feel secure until she felt she had it. Which was, in part, why she had come this morning, to see Aros.
Only two men met her at the nearly empty docks this time. Het helped her from the boat, while his secretary, Linget, helped Ennias and the boatman to secure the little craft. Then, all but the boatmen turned and headed for a temple entrance carved into the cliff nearby.
“Have you seen him yet this morning?” Arian asked as they walked up and up a torch-lit stairway, carved out deep inside the living stone, Ennias and Het’s secretary close behind.
“I have,” said Het. “He seems calm. The medications we’ve administered appear to be effective. His state of agitation diminishes daily. There is almost never any screaming anymore.”