Amberlight

by Sylvia Kelso

  “Do you remember, now, what you know about serif-juice?”

  “Used for interrogation. You pour it into cuts. A half-inch nick can burn like—molten lead. And it goes on burning. After eight or ten . . .”

  He rubs a hand sharply over his face. “What’s this to do with . . .”

  “The Thirteen want to question you. Telluir’s unfriends are convinced they could revive your memories. They wanted you from the start. Ever since you ran away I have been fighting tooth and claw to keep you out of the City’s hands; because they are convinced, now, that you are some vantage to the House. Every day without certainty of who and what you are increases the pressure. If they get you, the first thing they will use is serif-juice.”

  The sharp-cut face is ashen. But the wits remain.

  “So if you—if I—”

  “It would give me,” says Tellurith gently, “a much more plausible excuse.”

  “More plausible! They’ll think you’ve gone crazy—they’ll push twice as hard!”

  Tellurith shakes her head. “An infatuated Head is a known quantity. Much less dangerous than some secret gain to the House.”

  He opens his mouth and stops. His eyes narrow.

  “Because a Head—would still put the House first?”

  There is irony in her smile. More in his response.

  “Nice to know my worth.”

  Tellurith lets her eyes repeat the night’s offer. He stares at her; those wits, she is too sure, working through, deducing far too much.

  Then he shivers suddenly, painfully, and almost involuntarily backs a step. “Once I would have—once I could have—but after—” his throat jerks. “No. Not even for serif-juice. No.”

  * * * *

  Tellurith lets it go. Has to let it go, embroiled in a sudden fracas over Dinda’s embassy. Where the Thirteen’s special meet goes to old sores and profane insults, and finally, a vote.

  All too clearly she reads the faces when at the end of her impassioned refusal, Denara demands, “How does Telluir House vote?” And when Tellurith shouts, “Telluir House votes, NO!” Denara ends the deadlock by casting the president’s vote to supply the statuette.

  And giving the contract to Vannish House.

  “Not to worry, ’Rith.” Iatha is not mystified, far less showing a sign of reproach. Much worse; she is unwontedly, all but hysterically flippant. “Next thing we’ll have Shuya’s people up here, and after throwing the balance that badly she’ll have to give Verrain’s piece to us.”

  Appalling them both, when, not three days later, an embassy rides in, winter traveling from Assuana, the Verrain capital, with that very demand.

  Tellurith slams her fist into the window. Glass reverberates, Shia drops a liqueur decanter, Iatha almost leaps out of the lounging cushion.

  “Blight and blast!”

  Iatha glances over her shoulder. But Tellurith’s outland aberration is off with Azo and Verrith. On quasi-patrol.

  “If this is—what it looks—we can’t let it pass.”

  A coalition. Preparing, with new resources, for another onslaught on their power’s source.

  “But if—”

  Iatha stops. Tellurith spins around. The qherrique veins fluctuate, soft and customary and anomalous, in the warmly breathing wall.

  “If the rest is what we think—what in the Mother’s name can we say—out loud?”

  About a possible House’s treachery, still untraceable—before the hypothetical House?

  Iatha looks down at her hands, clamped around the wine-glass, and lets silence answer for her: You are Ruand. The decision—and the words—are yours.

  Tellurith draws breath. Sets her own glass down, delicately, on the abandoned table, and as she walks past, yanks Iatha’s hair.

  And says deliberately, “Well, Yath . . .. The risk is greater—here than there.”

  So Telluir House makes only a token objection when, after a positively rudimentary consultation, on her last day as president, Denara does exactly as Iatha has foreseen.

  Which at the Moon-meet brings a vociferous demand from Vannish, backed by Khuss, Winsat and Zanza, that Telluir hand over its outland prisoner as proof that collusion and bribery have not corrupted the Thirteen.

  * * * *

  “What’s the matter, Tel?”

  She comes to with a start. One evening in five home from a whirl of politicking, she has been tired enough to fall in the lounging cushion after dinner, set the little glass of thick brown liqueur aside and forget his presence in tracing her problems on the entwined qherrique. Beyond the window, the moon rides out of cloud-mist, an icy silver scimitar, slicing, dismembering, gone. The last winter moon. Nine days past full.

  She has meant to dissemble, minimize. Fatigue, perversity—nothing to do with the line of his jaw against the qherrique’s half-light—makes her say baldly, “Trouble. With the Thirteen.”

  “About me.”

  Her nod brings a sharp quiet. Before he gets up, pacing to the outer door. Her eyes note the motion, almost clumsy, the tension that roughens his stride. Her mind, or something else, says maliciously, Let him suffer. I do.

  “If you’d let me do something—in the House.”

  “I offered you something in the House.”

  “Dammit, Tel, let me work with Zuri’s crew! That’s one thing I can do! They know I can, else why ask for me to train with them? For the gods’ sake, if I can train them, why can’t I work with them for real?”

  She looks up at him. Poised now, the slight lithe figure balanced and eager as a hawk. A weight settles on her heart.

  “I would make you troublecrew, and be delighted.” Each word feels heavy as a fistful of gold. “They refused. They don’t want an outlander,” she omits, man, “that nobody can be sure of, taken so far into the—trust of the House.”

  It is a measure of the hurt, she knows, that he says nothing at all.

  “I may be sure of your faith. They may be sure of it. But of your memory—can even the Mother be sure?”

  Silently, he turns away.

  “Alkhes,” suddenly she is angry, knowing, flowing with the fatigue, the pre-Dark testiness, “we could all be a blighted sight surer, if I had you in my bed.”

  She knows it a mistake before her lips close and can only silently curse. As he flinches physically and starts backing, his voice suddenly hoarse. “No—dammit, no!”

  * * * *

  It is Zuri who brings intelligencers’ confirmation of Tellurith’s own guess: that under the thrust of Vannish animosity and the unresolved threat of outland mystery, Telluir’s coalition has be­gun to crack. Jerish is wavering. Diaman, never strong-minded, is fading with Kuro’s age. Even Jura is dubious. And who can predict unquestioning, unreasoning loyalty from Zhee?

  When Zuri has gone, Tellurith walks out on the balcony. She is still propping the balustrade, watching vehicles move through the sunlit afternoon streets, when Iatha arrives.

  Having bent her elbows on the stone a while, she asks, “Cutter fixed?”

  “Charras. Third day into Alkho.”

  Charras is an old, accomplished hand. For a slab like this, they will need it. Iatha nods.

  And says, quietly, sliding the stiletto in, “’Rith, put him in the tower.”

  Tellurith turns round, very slowly. Trying not to burst into spontaneous flame.

  “Zuri says so. Ahio says so. We’ve all read the intelligence reports. It’s poisoning the Thirteen. It’s starting to poison the House. Not just troublecrew. The shapers are nervous. They’ll infect the power-shops, can’t keep them apart. Once that happens—won’t matter if you’re right or wrong, ’Rith. They’ll say it’s bad judgment. And you can’t head a House—with doubt.”

  Only Iatha could say this without going over the balustrade. She knows it. She stares, jaw out-thrust, into her Head’s
face.

  The noise of the city rises like water round them, percolating from the busy streets.

  “Thank you,” says Tellurith, too softly, “for your advice.”

  Iatha shuts her eyes a moment. “I’m sorry, ’Rith.” It is genuine pain. “I’m trying to do what’s best.”

  * * * *

  It is a long time before Tellurith goes inside. Down through the house, out, ignoring appointments, to the Shapers’ wing.

  Quira meets her just inside the door. An uncovenanted, unsolicited visit, but her aides and scribers are alert enough. As Quira rolls up with that old lazy stride, Tellurith nods, age-smoothed acknowledgement, to an ally who needs no other courtesy.

  And catches that flicker before the smile comes, quick as a fish’s passing in those chestnut eyes.

  Down the corridor, then; familiar smells, sounds, faces. To the silence of communion, the closeted flicker that signals, Cutting, under a shut door. The familiar snatches of conversation, who is at work, who finished yesterday, who just had fingers nipped.

  To the silences, the sudden, uncertain sentences, the effort with which they meet, or the involuntary aversions with which they dodge her eyes.

  Tellurith farewells Quira and heads across the court.

  When Sfina walks her out of the Power-shop, she nods in formal farewell, before she turns away.

  No need to take it further. Not for one whose ear is attuned to the assent, or the refusal, of qherrique.

  * * * *

  It is a longer time before Tellurith goes back inside. Her feet have taken her to the garden first. Childhood sanctum, adolescent pleasure, adult refuge place. Pacing among the brown, pruned rose-beds, along paths littered with hellien debris or paved with the redolent waste of pines. The wind in their boughs is an airborne ocean, familiar as the rumble of wind-mills as each surge tops Dragon Spur. Familiar as the House around her, the buildings and functions and people she has worn so long they have become fitted to her like an old, malleable coat.

  Presently she goes back upstairs. Tells Hanni to cancel her evening appointment. And sends a message to the troublecrew.

  “Tellurith?”

  He comes out to her on the balcony, above the glitter of city lights. A slight, dappled shadow in the zone between moonlight and qherrique, entering, warily as a predator, the one place in the apartment where a Head may be nominally alone.

  “You wanted me?”

  Without turning, Tellurith props both hands on the balustrade. Whatever she feels, it comes out quiet.

  “Alkhes. Have you—could you—think again?”

  She hears his indrawn breath. But the voice is quiet.

  “More trouble?”

  She nods. Gathers her voice. Turns about.

  “I can fight the Thirteen and hope to win. I am still fighting. Even though we are losing support. But I can’t fight my House as well.”

  The shadow goes tense.

  “My Craft-heads, my s’hurre . . . if they won’t back me, I have no choice.”

  He has grown very still. Now he lifts his head a little, with a curious suppling of bone and muscle that bizarrely suggests relief.

  “So it’s that one way?”

  She is a moment understanding. Then she nearly slaps his face.

  “Rot and gangrene you, do you think I’ll see anyone—anyone—who has my protection, turned off like a—a—rice-cropper’s pig?”

  It does not soothe her to hear the little choke of laughter before the slightly breathless, “No. No, I don’t. But if not that, Tel—then what?”

  Tellurith gestures. When Azo and Verrith melt out into the dusk he starts like a frightened beast. But they are already between him and the balustrade.

  “Alkhes, I can’t keep you here any longer. I can’t let you go. I won’t have you—removed. So . . . it has to be the tower.”

  His limbs give one small, involuntary jerk. She does not need light to know what is in his eyes.

  Iatha has threatened, Zuri has straitly forbidden it. In the flow of the moment, the qherrique says, Yes. Her own heart is almost impossible to deny.

  “Alkhes.” Close, too close, in striking range, so close she can feel his body heat, the touch of his breath. The sliding silk of that black hair under her fingers. Knowing herself wholly at the mercy of a killing strike, a ransom snatch, that her whole plan, her life, her House, her City can be destroyed. Here and now.

  This time he does not pull away. His face is a collection of shadows and angles, centered round the unfathomable eyes. He lets her touch him, and drop her hand. And step away again. Before he says softly, “No, Tel. Please.”

  “Alkhes . . . it’s too late.”

  “No.” A little louder. She can feel the rigidity of his throat. “Not that . . . I can’t . . .”

  I know you can’t, her heart cries. In that idleness, that frippery, you will be a clipped hawk, a smothered fire. Better if I cut your throat outright.

  “I’ll come and see you. There are visitors—”

  “Tel, no.” The finest vibration now, as fine as the tremor in his body. “I can’t.”

  She looks at him across eighteen inches of moonlit air. The river, the gulf between nations has never seemed so wide.

  “Then can you,” it echoes in her ears, “change your mind?”

  He puts both hands over his face. In the house shadow, a silent blur draws her eye. Zuri’s silhouette, unmistakable. With Iatha behind her. Reinforcements enough.

  “Alkhes?”

  Though her voice is gentle, he seems to shrink before he drops his hands. And something in the posture tells her before he speaks. Quietly now. Without protest. Without hope.

  “Can I—stay tonight?”

  * * * *

  Zuri and Iatha are equally suspicious, equally outraged. It takes all Tellurith’s authority, and an oath from the prisoner, on the name of all his gods, that he will keep faith, not try to suicide, to escape, or some other nameless ruse, and even then, the surety that Azo or Verrith will be with him from that moment, before they consider consent. But Tellurith cannot find it in herself to deny him. If he has to go, then let it not be tonight.

  If he has some ruse in mind, it is laid very deep. He does not argue. Does not attempt wild spectacles like a leap from the balcony or a dash for a kitchen knife. Just goes in that silence that pangs like a bruise on Tellurith’s heart. Inside, to the lesser prison, under his warders’ eyes.

  Tellurith heads for her workroom. Where she stays till it is possible, with a measure of syrup, to imagine sleep.

  The main rooms are deserted, twilit by darkened qherrique, the house sunk in midnight quiet. Shia too has gone. No lights show down the corridor, from guards’ or prisoner’s rooms. Stupefied with fatigue and misery, Tellurith gropes out of her clothes. Perhaps she will not need the syrup after all. Dreamily as a sleep-walker, she gets into a robe. Begins to undo her hair.

  At the door, in her vision’s edge, a shadow moves. She spins about, whipping up the hair-brush. And stops.

  “Tel?”

  Tiny as a whisper. Strangled by the noose of memory. Defeat. Coerced distress.

  “I’m here.”

  CHAPTER V

  He is a shadow on her threshold, a slight uncertain shape. His eyes swallow her. Enormous, condensed velvet night. Far more enormous than usual. Even when he is afraid.

  Painted. Their darkness, their size accentuated by House men’s skill, though rarely exercised on such raw material. And the cheek­bones modeled with that subtle drama only expertly used cosmetics can achieve. Now she is closer, there is a tantalizing whiff of musk.

  Mingled with henna. The black hair glistens, inviting, begging a touch. Neck-length, it is too short for the usual heavy, curled ringlets. The wing falls across his brow, but the rest is caught, a glint of jeweled combs, behind his ears.
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  And in House men’s fashion he is bare to the waist, skin subtly oiled to give luster without grease. Highlighting the slight muscles to which the qherrique glow adds a fabulous tinge of gold.

  It is gold. Tower extravagance. Dusted round his nipples, picking out his collar-bones, a faint but unmistakable mist. Deepening the contrast with the trousers, men’s House trousers, loose and banded below the knee to bare the calves, black silk fluid as oil, molding the lines of narrow, elegant hips. Some disengaged part of her mind says flippantly, I never knew he could look so good.

  Then he swallows. And all the tower’s armor cannot mask the blankness of the huge eyes, the stiffness of the unconsciously parted lips.

  “Oh, Mother . . . Come here.”

  He takes one step and balks. She holds out both hands.

  He shivers. Swallows again. Then he is over the threshold and jammed against her, head buried between her neck and shoulder, clutching for dear life.

  She hears his heart slam, heavy, plunging beats. The skin under her palms is gooseflesh, chill as ice. Instinctively her hands move, reassuring, calming, giving warmth. Saying, as her words so often have, I am here. I understand. It’s all right.

  At what point the tremors ease, who can tell? Any more than when reassurance becomes exploration, comfort a caress.

  The skin texture under her fingers has smoothed. Her hands follow the flex of shoulders down the inward curve, shallower than a woman’s, into the small of the back and out to loins rising, hard-ridged, under shifting silk. Against his neck, her lips taste salt and henna-wash and musk and separate, teasing strands of hair. Her arms measure the shape and size of him. Realizing, possessing the territory of desire.

  Presently, very lightly, she runs her tongue around the inner whorl of his ear.

  He jumps. Pulls his head up. She strokes the nape of his neck. Works her hand, as she has so often wanted, into his hair. Eases out the combs.

  Rests her head, lightly, in the hollow of his throat.

  When she does not move again, she feels his heartbeat pick up. The shake of his breath. And then the all-but-subdued tremor with which, slowly, delicately as a surgeon, he unlocks his hands from the small of her back.