by Tad Williams
Qinnitan had been living in the Seclusion too long not to see that something was troubling Luian, and it was strange for her to suggest the Scented Garden, which was on the opposite side of the Seclusion, when it would have been much easier to stroll in the Garden of Queen Sodan. “I suppose I can bear a walk, yes. Are you certain? You must have things to do . . .”
“I can think of nothing more important than helping you feel better, my little dear one. Come.”
The Scented Garden was warmer than the halls of the Seclusion, but the canopies atop its high walls kept it cool enough to be bearable and its airs were very sweet and pleasant, suffused with myrtle and forest roses and snake-leaf: after a short while Qinnitan began to feel a little stronger. As they walked, Luian spouted a litany of petty complaints and irritations in a breathless voice that made her seem far younger than she was. She was more sharp-tongued with her servants than usual, too, so savage in her scolding of one of the Tuanis when the girl bumped her elbow that several other people in the garden, wives and servants, looked up, and the usually expressionless slave girl curled her lip above her teeth, as though she were about to snarl or even bite.
“Oh, I’ve just remembered,” Luian said suddenly. “I left my nicest shawl in that little retiring room here yesterday—there, in the corner.” She pointed to a shadowed doorway far back between two rows of boxwood hedges. “But I’m so hot, I think I’ll just sit down on this bench. Will you be a dear and get it for me, Qinnitan? It’s rose-colored. You can’t miss it.”
Qinnitan hesitated. There was something strange about Luian’s face. She suddenly felt frightened. “Your shawl . . . ?”
“Yes. Go get it, please. In there.” She pointed again.
“You left it . . . ?” Luian almost never came to this garden, and it was famously warm. Why bring a shawl here?
Luian leaned close and said, in a strangled whisper, “Just go and get it, you silly little bitch!”
Qinnitan jumped up, startled and more fearful than ever. “Of course.”
As she approached the dark doorway, she could not help slowing her footsteps, listening for the breath of a hidden assassin behind the hedges. But why would Luian resort to something so crude? Unless it was the autarch himself who had decided it had all been a mistake, that Qinnitan was not the one he wanted. Perhaps the mute giant Mokor, his infamous chief strangler, was waiting for her inside the doorway. Or perhaps she wasn’t important enough and her death would be effected instead by someone like the so-called gardener, Tanyssa. Qinnitan looked back, but Luian was looking in another direction entirely, talking rapidly and a little too loudly with her slaves.
Her nerves now stretched tight as lute strings, Qinnitan let out a muffled shriek when the man stepped from the shadows.
“Quiet! I believe you are looking for this,” he said, holding out a shawl woven of fine silk. “Do not forget it when you go out again.”
“Jeddin!” She threw her hand over her mouth. “What are you doing here?” A whole man in the Seclusion—what would happen to him if they were caught? What would happen to her?
The Leopard captain quickly and easily moved between her and the door, cutting off her escape. She looked frantically around the small, dark room. There was nothing much in it but a low table and some cushions, and no other way out.
“I wished to see you. I wished to . . . speak with you.” Jeddin stepped up and caught her hand in his wide fingers, pulled her deeper into the room. Her heart was beating so quickly she could scarcely take a breath, but she could not entirely ignore the strength of his grip or the way it made her feel. If he wished, he could throw her over one of his broad shoulders and carry her away and there would be nothing she could do.
Except scream, of course, but who could guess what she would earn for herself if she did?
“Come, I will not keep you long,” he said. “I have put my life in your hands by coming here, Mistress. Surely you will not begrudge me a few moments.”
He was looking at her so searchingly, so intently, that she found she could not meet his eye. She felt hot and feverish again. Could this all be some mad dream? Could the priest’s elixir have driven her mad? Still, Jeddin looked disturbingly solid, huge and handsome as a temple carving. “What do you want with me?”
“What I cannot have, I know.” He let go of her hand, made his own into a fist. “I . . . I cannot stop thinking of you, Qinnitan. My heart will not rest. You haunt my dreams, even. I drop things, I forget things . . .”
She shook her head, really frightened now. “No. No, that is . . .” She took a step toward him and then thought better of it—his arms had risen as if to pull her toward him, and she knew that more than his strength would make it hard to break away again. “This is all madness, Jeddin . . . Captain. Even if . . . if we forget why I am here in the Seclusion, who has brought me here . . .” She froze at a noise from outside, but it was just two of the younger wives shrieking with laughter as they played some game. “Even if we forget that, you scarcely know me. You have seen me twice . . . !”
“No, Mistress, no. I saw you every day that I was a child and you were a child. When we were children together. You were the only one who was kind to me.” The look on his face was so serious that it would have been comical if she had not been in terror for her life. “I know it is wrong, but I cannot bear to think that you will . . . that you are for . . . for him.”
She shook her head at this blasphemy, wanting only to be far away. There was something about the young Leopard chieftain that made her heart ache, made her want to comfort him, and there was no question she felt something for him that went beyond that, but she could not push away her growing fright. Each moment that passed she felt more like the quarry of some ruthless hunting pack. “All that will happen is that we will both be killed. Whatever you think, Jeddin, you scarcely know me.”
“Call me Jin, as you once did.”
“No! We were just children. You followed my brothers. They were cruel to you, perhaps, but I was no better. I was a girl, a shy girl. I said nothing to any of my brother’s friends to stop them.”
“You were kind. You liked me.”
She let out a murmured groan of frustration and anguish. “Jeddin! You must go away and never do this again!”
“Do you love him?”
“Who? You mean the . . . ?” She moved closer, so close she could feel his breath on her face. She put a hand on his broad chest to keep him from trying to embrace her. “Of course I don’t,” she said quietly. “I am nothing to our master, less than nothing—a chair, a rug, a bowl in which to clean his hands. But I would not steal a washing bowl from him, and neither would you. If you try to steal me, we’ll both be killed.” She took a breath. “I do care for you, Jeddin, at least a little.”
The anxious lines on his forehead disappeared. “Then there is hope. There is reason to live.”
“Quiet! You did not hear me out. I care for you, and in another life perhaps it could be more, but I don’t wish to die for any man. Do you understand? Go away. Never even think of me again.” She tried to pull away, but he caught her now in a grip she could not have broken in a thousand years. “Let go!” she whispered, looking in panic toward the doorway. “They will be wondering where I’ve gone.”
“Luian will distract them a while longer.” He leaned forward until she almost whimpered from the size and closeness of him. “You do not love him.”
“Let me go!”
“Ssshh. I am not long for this place. My enemies want to throw me down.”
“Enemies?”
“I am a peasant who became chieftain of the autarch’s own guards. The paramount minister Vash hates me. I amuse the Golden One—he calls me his rough watchdog and laughs when I use the wrong words—but Pinimmon Vash and the others wish to see my head on a spike. I could kill any one of them with my bare hands, but in this palace it is the gazelles that rule, not the leopards.”
“Then why are you giving them this chance to destroy you? Th
is is beyond foolishness—you’ll murder us both.”
“No. I will think of something. We will be together.” His eyes went distant and Qinnitan’s speeding heart bumped and seemed to miss a beat. In that moment he looked nearly as mad as the autarch. “We will be together,” he said again.
She took advantage of his distraction and yanked her wrist out of his grasp, then backed hurriedly toward the doorway. “Go away, Jeddin! Don’t be a fool!”
His eyes were suddenly shiny with tears. “Stop,” he said. “Don’t forget.” He threw her the rose-colored shawl. “I will come to you one night.”
Qinnitan almost choked. “You will do no such thing!” She turned and hurried out the door, back into the heavy air of the Scented Garden.
“Are you mad, too?” she whispered to Luian as she handed her the shawl. A few of the other wives were watching her, but with what she prayed was no more than a bored interest in the comings and goings of a fellow prisoner. “We will all be executed! Tortured!”
Luian did not look at her, but her face was mottled with red underneath the heavy face paint. “You do not understand.”
“Understand? What is there to understand? You are . . .”
“I am only one of the Favored. He is the chief of the autarch’s Leopards. He could have me arrested and killed on almost any pretext he chose—who would believe the word of a fat castrate in women’s clothes over the master of the Golden One’s muskets?”
“Jeddin wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“He would indeed—he said so. He told me he would.”
Qinnitan was shocked. “He thinks he is in love,” she said at last. “People do mad things when they feel that way.”
“Yes.” Luian faced her now, and there were tears in the Favored’s long-lashed eyes. One had made a track down the powder of her cheek. “Yes, you silly little girl, they do.”
25
Mirrors, Missing and Found
THE WEEPING OF ANCIENT WOMEN:
Gray as the egrets of the Hither Shore
Lost as a wind from the old, dark land
Frightened yet fierce
—from The Bonefall Oracles
CHERT HAD ALREADY SAT DOWN on the bench to rest his tired legs when he realized Opal had not followed him in, but was still standing in the doorway, peering out into Wedge Road. “What is it, my dear?”
“Flint. He’s not with you?”
He frowned. “Why would he be with me? I left him home with you because he’s such a distraction where we’re working right now—won’t stay with me because he doesn’t like it there, but won’t stay where I tell him aboveground either . . .” He felt a clutch in his chest. “You mean he’s gone?”
“I don’t know! Yes! He went with me to Lower Ore Street. Then, when I came back, he was playing beside the road, piling up stones and making those walls and tunnels and whatnot he likes so much—the dust that comes in on that boy!” Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, and I don’t know—I went out to call him in to eat, hours ago, and he was gone. I’ve been up and down the roads, down to the guildhall—I even went to the Salt Pool and asked little Boulder if he’d been there. Nobody’s seen him at all!”
He got himself up despite his aching legs and hurried to put his arms around her. “There, my old darling, there. I’m sure he’s just up to some pranks—he is a boy, after all, and a very independent lad at that, the Earth Elders know. He’ll be back before our evening meal is over, you’ll see.”
“Evening meal!” she almost shrieked. “You old fool, do you think I’ve had time to prepare an evening meal? I’ve been hurrying all around town the length of the afternoon with my heart aching, trying to find that boy. There is no evening meal!” Sobbing out loud now, she turned and stumbled back toward their bed and wrapped herself in a blanket so all that could be seen was a shuddering lump.
Chert was troubled, too, but he couldn’t help feeling that Opal was getting a bit ahead of things. Flint would not be the first boy in Funderling Town—or the last—to wander off on some childish quest and lose track of time. It had only been a short while ago he had disappeared during the prince regent’s funeral. If he wasn’t back by bedtime, they could start fretting in earnest. In the meantime, though, Chert had put in a long day and his stomach felt shrunken and empty as a dried leather sack.
He halfheartedly examined the larder. “Ah, look, we have greatroots in!” he said loud enough for Opal to hear. “A bit of cooking and those would go down a treat.” She didn’t answer. He picked through the other roots and various tubers. Some were looking a bit whiskery. “Perhaps I’ll just have a bit of bread and some cheese.”
“There isn’t any bread.” The lump under the blanket shifted. It did not sound like a happy lump. “I was going to go back out and get the afternoon’s baking, but . . . but . . .”
“Ah, yes, of course,” Chert said hurriedly. “Never fear. Still, it’s a shame about the greatroots. A bit of cooking . . .”
“If you want them cooked, cook them yourself. If you know how.”
Chert was sadly chewing a piece of raw greatroot—he had not realized how much more bitter they tasted if they had not been boiled in beet sugar—and beginning to admit to himself that the boy was not coming back for his evening meal. Not that a raw root and a piece of hard cheese was particularly worth coming back for, but Chert couldn’t deny that the pang of disquiet was growing inside him; although his mug of ale had helped to wash down the fibrous root and remove a little of the worst of the throbbing of his legs and back, it had not gone very far toward soothing his mind. He had been out into Wedge Road several times. The dimmer stonelights were lit for evening and the streets were nearly empty as families finished their suppers and prepared for the night. The children must all be in bed now. The other children.
He decided to take a lamp and go out looking.
Could the boy have gone into one of the unfinished tunnels, he wondered, been caught by a slide in one of the side corridors where the bracing was less than adequate? But what would he be doing in such a place? Chert let his mind run across other possibilities, some happier and others much more frightening. Could he have gone home with another child? Flint was so unworldly in some ways that Chert could easily imagine he would forget to send word of where he was, let alone ask permission, but he had never really made friends with any of the Funderling children, even those in nearby houses who were of his own age. Where else? Down in the excavations where Chert had been working, near the Eddon family tomb? Certainly there were treacherous spots there, but Flint had made it clear he hated the place, and in any case how could Chert have missed him?
The Rooftoppers—the little people. Perhaps the boy had gone to see them and either stayed or not been able to get back before dark. Unbidden, a horrid vision came to him, of the boy fallen from a roof and lying helpless in some shadowy, unvisited courtyard. He put the greatroot down, sickened.
But where else could he be?
“Chert!” Opal shouted from the bedchamber. “Chert, come here!”
He wished she did not sound frightened. Suddenly, he didn’t want to walk through the door and see what she had found. But he did.
Opal had not found anything—in fact, rather the reverse. “It’s gone!” she said, pointing at the boy’s pallet, at the blanket and shirt lying across it in twisted coils like weary ghosts. “His bag. With that . . . that little mirror in it. It’s gone.” Opal turned to him, eyes big with fear. “He never puts it on anymore, never wears it—it’s always here! Why isn’t it here now?” Her face suddenly grew slack, as though she had aged five years in a matter of moments. “He’s gone away, hasn’t he? He’s gone away for good and so he took it with him.”
Chert could think of nothing to say—or, in any case, nothing that would make either of them feel better.
“By the gods, Toby, are you falling asleep again? You’ve jogged the glass!”
The young man stood up quickly, raising his hands in the air to show that he couldn’t possi
bly have done such a thing; his look of wounded honor suggested that he was always awake and at his best in the midnight hours and that Chaven was being needlessly cruel to suggest otherwise. “But, Master Chaven . . .”
“Never mind. I expect you to be a man of science and I suppose that is asking too much.”
“But I want to be! I listen! I do everything you say!”
The physician sighed. It was not really the lad’s fault. Chaven had put too much stock in the recommendation of his friend, Euan Dogsend, who was the most learned man in Blueshore but perhaps not its best judge of character. The young man worked hard . . . for his age . . . but he was distracted and touchy at the best of times, and worst of all, although he was by no means stupid, he seemed to have an unquestioning pattern of mind.
It is like trying to make my dear mistress Kloe pursue friendship with the mice and rats.
Still, the young man was standing right there with his face screwed up in a look of furious attention, so Chaven tried again. “See, the perspective glass must not move once we have found the spot we seek. Leotrodos down in Perikal says that the new star is in Kossope. Once we have set the eye of our glass on Kossope, we must tighten the housing so that it does not move—thus, we can make measurements, not just tonight, but other nights. And we most certainly must not lean on the perspective glass while we are making those measurements!”
“But the sky is full of stars,” said Toby. “Why is it so important to measure this one?”
Chaven closed his eyes for a moment. “Because Leotrodos says he has found a new star. A new star has not been seen in hundreds of years—perhaps even thousands, since the methods of the ancients are sometimes obscure and thus open to question. More importantly, it raises many doubts about the shape of the heavens.” The boy’s puzzled look told him all he needed to know. “Because if the heavens are fixed, as the astrologers of the Trigonate so loudly tell us, yet there is a new star in the sky, where did it come from?”