The Seer - eARC

by Sonia Lyris

  Dirina hissed. “Ama—”

  He shook his head, negating Dirina’s reprimand. “It’s good she asks, woman. Some things should be said aloud.” He fixed Amarta with his startling blue eyes. “I escaped my owner, is what I did. When I was recaptured, he brought out his axe. Smiled while he cut my arm.”

  “But . . .” Amarta trailed off, confused.

  He waved his stump slowly in the air for her to continue.

  Amarta felt herself warm again, wishing she’d stayed silent.

  “Go on, girl. Ask your question.”

  Everyone was watching her. No one was smiling. She swallowed, hoping she wasn’t blushing too redly. “Don’t slaves need hands?” she asked.

  He barked a loud laugh that seemed to echo off the cave walls, and then looked around the room, meeting the eyes of the others. When he looked back at Amarta, his eyes were dancing in dark amusement. “Some sorts of slaves need hands. Some don’t. It all depends on what kind of slaves they are. Me, I was used for—”

  “That’s enough.” Dirina said harshly.

  Startled, Amarta looked at her sister. “Diri?”

  “We don’t want to hear about it.”

  The man’s incredulous look matched Amarta’s. “Woman, this is the truth of the matter. We are all old enough to hear such truths. Why do you object?”

  “None of your business, man,” Dirina said, standing and grabbing up Pas from where he lay. Pas frowned furiously at being woken, his arms now wrapped around his mother’s neck, staring his displeasure at the room. Then Dirina grabbed Amarta’s hand and drew her along to the opening of the cave.

  “Diri,” Amarta whispered, resisting.

  “There are things it is better not to know. Yes?”

  Amarta thought about her visions. “Yes, of course, but—”

  “This is one of them.”

  Darad joined the three of them with a lantern.

  “I’ll take you to the sleeping room where the Teva are staying. You must be tired after your long journey.”

  Amarta abhorred his polite tone, ached for his teasing wit, and gave her sister a hard, resentful look.

  “Yes, we are,” Dirina answered Darad, ignoring the look. “Thank you.”

  That night and the next day, Dirina looked so tired and downcast that, as annoyed as she was, Amarta could not bring herself to say anything about the night before.

  In truth, it was not her sister’s fault that they had come here, that they had been forced to leave the farm, that they were on the run again. That was entirely Amarta’s doing.

  She would, she resolved, hold her tongue. Treat her sister kindly. It was the least she could do.

  After the first silent meal of the day was done, Amarta happily fed with more wonderful food, she listened as the Teva discussed what goods they would leave here for the Emendi and what they would take forward with them to market. They mentioned cured nightswine jerky, which she found reassuring. Darad had been telling the truth about that, at least.

  “Let me do something useful,” she begged Jolon when he had a moment. He smiled and brought her to a well-lit room that had a loom and hand-mending tools. “I saw what you and Dirina did with the rips in our wagon covering. I think you can help them.” The other Emendi sitting there knitting and working the loom made her quietly welcome.

  For hours she sat there, absorbed by the work, relaxing for the first time since she had arrived. She repaired one shirt’s torn seam, then another. She picked up a sock and darned it, then looked for more work.

  “There you are,” Darad said from the doorway. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

  She leapt up to follow him into the hall.

  “How is your ankle?” he asked.

  She had not even thought of it today. “I think it is all better,” she said with surprise.

  “Nakaccha is skillful.” Then he took her hand, leading her along the stone tunnels. She was suddenly, keenly aware of the warmth of his fingers on hers. It felt very good.

  “Have you lived here your whole life?” she asked to make conversation, to cover the awkward feeling suddenly coming over her.

  “Kusan-born, yes. My grandmother came here after she was blinded by her owner. He wanted her eyes.”

  “Her eyes?”

  “Gold flecks in the blue, you see. Some of us have them. Look.” He stopped suddenly and held up the lantern. She looked into his eyes, which gave her an odd and not unpleasant feeling in her stomach.

  Until she remembered why.

  “That’s awful.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, simply, taking her hand again, resuming their walk. “She was lucky to find Kusan at all, blind as she was. Brave. So brave.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You talk too much,” he said. But she could hear the smile in his voice that belied the words, and felt the squeeze of his hand.

  More minutes passed. They went from one tunnel to the next, and she wondered, though not very seriously, if he was going to lead her around in circles and leave her here in the dark. She quietly hummed the distress signal, and he laughed, squeezing her hand again, a reassurance.

  They entered a lamplit room lined with shelves of folded burlap where some ten children sat around at a table. Nidem was among them.

  A silent conversation between Darad and Nidem commenced. Amarta was sure he could have more effectively used both hands, but he insisted on keeping hold of hers. At this she felt a sweet sense of something she had not felt before. He wanted her there. It was almost like belonging.

  Then she met Nidem’s look. She looked away at an open chair, then back to Amarta again. As Amarta watched this repeat, she realized that it was a direction, an invitation. Darad drew her with him to two open seats.

  “It is a game,” Darad said softly, his the only voice in the room. “A silent one. You’ll learn. I’ll help you.”

  With a combination of eye flickers and blinks and hand signs, they taught her the game, which turned out to be about moving each other from seat to seat with eyes and signs and rules that became clear to her as they played.

  Before she knew it, she was smiling. And now she did feel as if she belonged.

  Finally Darad let her hand go, but she was engrossed enough in the game that she hardly noticed.

  The next day and the next the two of them helped in the kitchen, cleaning and preparing vegetables, and then set about to help mend clothes.

  Every now and then she saw Dirina smile. So unusual, Amarta realized. Both of them were starting to relax, to breathe more easily. At meals Darad sat by her, teaching her more signs.

  At the evening meal of the third day, the annoying and ever-present Nidem broke in between his instruction, interrupting with her hands. Resentment flashed through Amarta, so it took her a moment to realize that Nidem was telling the very joke that she’d made the day Amarta arrived, when they were first introduced. That she was telling it now for Amarta’s benefit, repeating it slowly, making sure that Amarta understood.

  Then the three of them laughed, soundlessly, together, and Amarta felt a joy she had never felt before.

  She realized she hadn’t thought about her hunter since she had arrived.

  “Somewhere safe,” Jolon had said. Maybe he was right.

  On the fourth day at Kusan, Amarta was using the washroom for her own clothes, soaping at the lowest of the waterfall basins carved in the stone, rinsing upstream in successive basins. She had wrung out her shirt, then Dirina’s as well, and hung them to dry on lines strung across an opening overhead that brought in dry air from the outside.

  She sat on a low bench for a time and watched the Emendi across the room in their wash work.

  Jolon sat next to her. At their feet was a small puddle of water that had gathered during her washing. Very softly, so that only she could hear, he motioned to it and said, “Is it in such water that you see the future, Amarta?”

  Amarta kept her eyes on the puddle at her feet in which the lamps aroun
d the room reflected, points of light in dark water. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “We keep it to ourselves, Mara and I, but we guess it is so. Is it magery?”

  “No,” she said sharply, realizing her answer for the admission it was, then pressed her lips tightly together.

  He brushed her shoulder. “I hear your words. That does not mean I believe them. No one else knows, and we keep secrets well.”

  She would say no more about it, she resolved. Not a word.

  “I am also here to say good-bye,” he said.

  “What?” Amarta scrambled to her feet. He stood with her.

  “We continue our journey south, to deliver the goods we have come to trade and sell.”

  “We can be ready in minutes. We—.”

  “No. We do not take you with us. Stay here. The Emendi have no more desire to be found than you do.”

  “They won’t let us stay without you.”

  “They will. You work hard. They see this. We have spoken for you.”

  Spoken for them? Vouched for strangers they had known mere days? Jolon and Mara could not know what they had saved her from, but until this moment, it had not occurred to her how much they had risked in bringing them here.

  But to be left here?

  Her mind raced. She thought of Darad, of laughing with him. With Nidem. “Jolon, you have been so good to us. Why?”

  He made a thoughtful sound, then drew a large circle in the air with a forefinger and jabbed at a point along the circumference. “Today you need something, so we give it to you.” His finger continued along the circle, stopping at another point along the arc. “Another day you give something to someone who does not have what you do. That other, perhaps”—his finger traveled further and stopped.—“gives to another. And then”—his finger went back to the first spot—“who can say? It is a better place, the world, when we give what we can. But there is another reason.”

  “What?”

  His face turned sad. “Long ago,” he said, “a force came to Otevan, bearing weapons, claiming our lands. Before blood was shed, we showed them what we and the shaota do together. Not in challenge, but in display, you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “They saw the wisdom of having us by their side. So we fought with Arunkel and helped them take the lands, one hill after another.” His eyes narrowed, the ends of his mouth turned down. “We sold ourselves for freedom. For some of us, it is a great sorrow and a sharp shame that our ancestors did this.”

  “But you had to, or—”

  “Yes, it seemed so. But if we had all faced the invader as one? It cannot be known.” He sighed. “Now we have a debt. To those who come to us in need, we give what we can.”

  “But it wasn’t your decision. It was your ancestors’. How is it your debt?”

  “What affects one Teva affects all. With you and your sister it is the same, yes?”

  She hadn’t thought about it that way, but now she could see it was so: Amarta’s visions caused Dirina and Pas to suffer. “But if you leave us here—”

  “We come back to Kusan next year. If you wish to leave then, perhaps we can take you. Yes?”

  “We’ll be here,” Amarta said, but even as she said it, the words echoed hollowly. She pushed away the tickle of vision that wanted to deny her words. No; they would stay or go as they decided.

  Jolon gestured to the puddle below them. “I have heard this is how the future is seen, in still water. It is not so?”

  Amarta thought of those who had come to her across the years with dead rabbits and birds. “No. Nor thrown sticks, nor animal entrails.”

  “Then—since no blood or water is needed, will you tell me something of what is to come?”

  She owed the Teva a debt, greater than they knew, but to foresee now felt like she was bringing her curse here into the tunnels, where she had the last few days felt safe and more.

  Amarta glanced at the rest of the hall to be sure no one was listening. “I will,” she said, a soft whisper.

  “Those who we meet in Perripur, can we trust them?”

  Amarta took a deep breath. As she let it out, she cast her mind into the open space that was the future.

  Perripur, he said.

  A world of green and brown. Air wet and warm, full of scent. Walking and more walking. A dark-skinned woman by her side.

  No, no—not for herself. For Jolon and Mara. She reached out a hand to Jolon’s arm, to help her focus. She saw the inked scars that circled his forearm and hesitated.

  “Yes,” Jolon said, offering his arm forward for her examination.

  “What are those?” Amarta asked of the circles around his arm.

  “We call them limisatae. Life-doors we pass through. Our first shaota. The first mate. The first child.” He met Amarta’s eyes, and she saw for a moment a flicker of something she could not name. “A life taken to keep our people whole. That is limisatae as well.”

  “What are yours for?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “It is for me. Not about the telling, but the being.”

  Not about the telling.

  That she could understand.

  “Do you have a life-door to mark, Amarta?”

  She thought of Enana. Of her parents. Of the attack she had thwarted in the forest. Had any of it changed her as his three marks must have changed him? “I don’t think so.”

  “In time, perhaps.” He took her hand and wrapped her fingers around his forearm. “Will you tell now? Those we meet in Perripur? How much caution? How much trust?”

  With her fingers on his arm, she reached into his future.

  Faint smells of flowers, spice, smoke, fish. A collection of people standing in a circle. Voices.

  “This is your first meeting with them?”

  “It is.”

  A knife separated links of heavy twine; a roughspun pouch opened. A deep-throated woman’s voice, another language. Words, back and forth. Dark faces turning away, smirking. Secrets.

  Amarta opened her eyes to the dark and drip of the cave, the images already fading, the meaning sorting itself out in her mind. Trust was too big a word for this meeting, too wide a river to cross. “I think you will offer them a lot. Too much?”

  She closed her eyes again, tried to find the place in time where she had seen the dark faces, to see if another outcome might change their expression. It was hard to hold, hard to see.

  The same faces, different expressions. Fewer bags.

  “Keep back more of what you brought to trade. The bags of . . .” She tried to remember what she’d seen. “Rocks? See what they offer for a smaller set first.”

  “Then we will know what the rest is worth. I see. Thank you for that good counsel.” He clasped her shoulder and gave her a gentle smile. “Amarta, if hundreds of Emendi are safe here, you might be, too. Kusan has stood for centuries. You are safer here than anywhere in the world.”

  Could he be right? Here in the dark, underground, might she be safe from the hunter who pursued above?

  “Now I must ask another thing of you,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Nidem was not wrong to doubt us, bringing you here. The Emendi are safe only as long as Kusan is also secret. We have trusted you very much.”

  “We are grateful. We—”

  “Yes, this I know. But Amarta, whatever it is you run from, do not bring it here.”

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The first thing Innel did when he returned to the palace from Arteni was find a bath. Caked in dirt, blood, and the ever-present dust of Arteni’s grain mills, he stripped off his clothes and kicked them away from the tub, lowered his aching body into the hot and salted soaking water.

  “Burn them,” he told Srel.

  Srel made a sound intended to convey acquiescence but which Innel knew really wasn’t. Coming from deep poverty, Srel was incapable of disposing of anything that could possibly be reclaimed or repaired. But Innel
wouldn’t see the clothes again, and that was enough.

  As for Cern and her father, well, this time they could both wait. He would be clean and fed before he faced either of them.

  “Is she still marrying me?” he asked Srel bluntly.

  Another sound, this time thoughtful. “The wedding plans were put on hold when you left, ser.”

  Disappointing but not unexpected. The campaign had taken the three months he’d anticipated and then some, but if the slog of dirt and blood, the tedious meetings and hurried executions had earned him a promotion, it would be worth it.

  Colonel, most likely, he thought. General would be far better, of course, but it would be a stretch. Still, if the king wanted it for him and pushed, it was possible. He wondered what the other generals, decades his senior, born to the Houses or royals, would think of the king promoting him that far, that fast.

  “She has shown no favor toward anyone else, ser.”

  The other men of the Cohort were his only competition now. That she was seeing none of them was good news.

  “And my reports to the king?” From the field, sent by Cahlen’s birds.

  “I am told he read them very closely.”

  Carefully written to achieve that very end. When the Cohort had been taught by minstrels and versifiers how best to fashion a story, Innel and his brother had paid keen attention. Thus Innel’s reports were more than factual; each started with a triumph, however minor, and ended with an uncertainty, the pattern intended to make the king eager to read the next dispatch describing how Innel sev Restarn was taking Arteni in the king’s name.

  The people of Arteni had been astounded at the force that had been called down on them for attempting to sell grain outside their contract. They had at first presented some optimistic resistance that Innel crushed with heavily armored cavalry that crashed through the rusted iron gates. The line of millers and farmers, holding pitchforks and scythes, had broken fast. Those who had not run had died quickly.

  Those who had run had also died, but more slowly.

  After that it had been a matter of rounding up the troublemakers and giving them the choice between providing names and being hung with the next morning’s executions.