by Sonia Lyris
The rabbit stew had been delicious.
When conversation after that meal turned to Arun slavers, Nidem defended them, explaining adamantly that they had never owned slaves. Never even been to Munasee, let alone Yarpin.
Now Nidem flashed her a final sign: Hurry! and left the eating hall.
Amarta took dirty plates to the kitchen, passing by Dirina laughing with Kosal. She felt oddly uneasy. At the waterway where she soaped dishes beside others she wondered if it were premonition.
She had not looked for the visions these last months, nor had they come to her unbidden. She was not pushing them away—she had learned not to do that from her escape in the Nesmar forest—but also she did not ask for them.
No, she decided after a time, her unease did not have the feel of that other sort of knowing, the future scratching like tiny beetles in the back of her head, slipping in through the cracks. It was more that time was passing, and they were some kind of happy here. The happier they were, the more it hurt to leave.
And surely they would have to leave.
But if not vision, then perhaps it was not even true. Nothing bad had happened. The hunter had not found them. No one had suffered from her visions.
Yet.
As soon as she felt she could leave the kitchen, she grabbed a lantern and ran to the washroom two levels down. There a crowd had gathered at the far end of the room, by the waterway. Nidem saw her and motioned her over, leading her close in. On the floor lay a boy, his head tilted back in one of the basins, Astru and another man kneeling over him.
“What—” Amarta whispered, but Nidem hushed her with hand squeezes.
The boy grinned at her, and with a shock she realized it was Darad, his hair dyed black.
“He goes on the out-trip next month,” Nidem said. “This is the first time for the dye, to test his hair to see how it takes. So—a ceremony, you see. He is more an adult today than yesterday.”
Was that pride in Nidem’s voice? Amarta looked at the other girl, and decided it was.
That the Emendi studied for this, she knew, but she hadn’t really understood how much it meant to them, this opportunity to leave Kusan for the world outside, even for a few days.
Darad sat up. The men surrounding him toweled his hair dry with a cloth already darkly stained.
“Enough,” said Astru, waving at the various watchers standing around. “The rest is for Darad only.”
Out in the corridor Nidem’s eyes were wide and bright, her look at Amarta intense. “I will go in the next out-group. The month after.”
“If you do well in the exams,” the elder Vatti said, standing nearby, running her hands through Nidem’s hair, inspecting it.
“Your tests are harder than Astru’s,” Nidem said. “That’s not fair.”
“Fair is what you take,” Vatti said. “You’ll be glad of the extra study if you ever get caught.”
“Why?” Amarta asked.
“Because what Arunkin do to blond girls they do not do to blond boys,” Vatti said.
“None of us have been caught out in years,” Nidem said. “A decade and more. Maybe we need less preparation for a few days outside to the market than you think.”
At this Vatti said nothing, but she signed, once, sharply, a sign that Amarta didn’t know, and walked away.
Nidem lost her smile.
“What?” Amarta asked her when Vatti had gone. “What did that mean?”
Nidem shook her head.
“Come on, tell me.”
Nidem looked subdued as her eyes traced around the empty hall and back to Amarta.
“It is the sign for ‘slave.’”
“You didn’t recognize me,” Darad said to her.
“No, not at first.”
“I’m going on the out-trip next month. I look like Arunkin now, don’t I?”
“Not your blue eyes.”
“We look down,” he said. “Part of the training. No one will notice. You worry too much.”
“Be careful,” she said, now suddenly truly worried.
He laughed. “I’ll be fine.”
Would he? She tried to foresee the out-trip to the market and back. Would Darad be sound through all that, and return unharmed?
“When were you last up in the gardens?” he asked. Without waiting for an answer he took her hand, pulling her along to the stairs and up the levels. A black and white ferret followed them curiously. Amarta didn’t much like going outside, despite being encouraged to see the sun regularly, despite how hidden the gardens were, nestled among high rocks. It reminded here that there was a world beyond Kusan. A world in which she was not safe.
“It’s spring,” he said. “You have to, now.”
“What? No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. And now that I have dark hair, you can’t argue with me.”
At this she laughed. “Watch me argue with you.”
“I will, and closely. Okay, you can argue, but I’ll win.” At that he stopped suddenly, putting the lantern behind himself while he pulled her close with the other hand. Before she quite realized it, he had kissed her on the lips. She felt herself warm all over.
“See? I’m winning the argument already,” he said, pulling her along to the gardens as if nothing unusual had happened. “Up we go, to see the sun.”
The kiss had left her wordless. At the end of the tunnel, the garden Keeper, a tall, slender man with a blond beard, nodded his permission to them to go out. The ferret following them jumped into his lap.
The two of them stepped outside, standing and blinking in the bright day. In the small, flat garden, tiny green seedlings poked up. They walked the small path under the blue sky and overhead sun.
Emendi caution told her she was safe here, that she would not be seen. But she felt exposed.
“Look at my hair, Amarta. Look closely. Can you tell?”
He looked as if he had always had dark hair. Even his eyebrows had been dyed.
“No, but—”
He brought himself very close to her. For a moment she thought he might kiss her again. His blue eyes were on hers, searching. She felt herself warm again.
“Where did you come from, Amarta?” he asked. “And will you go back there?”
“No, no. This is our home now.”
He stroked her face with his fingertips, the touch sending chills down her spine. She wanted him to never stop. “But your eyes,” she finished.
He laughed lightly and petted her head slowly. It was the most marvelous sensation she’d ever felt.
“You worry so much. Trust me, we know what we’re doing. We’ve been doing this a very long time. Truly, I will be fine.”
He was right, she decided at last. As the days and weeks leading up to him leaving on the out-trip went by, she looked into the future as often as she could. There was something odd coming, something to do with Darad, but it was after he got back. He would return safe and sound. She was reassured.
Amarta could give every one of their kisses a name. “First kiss” or “washroom kiss” or “the tossing-ferrets-joke kiss.” Sometimes she named them for what he said before or after. A simple, “Hey, dark-hair” or “There, I think you won that argument after all,” or “You taste sweet.”
When she was not sneaking off somewhere alone with him, she replayed every word he said. She felt as if she were floating. While she ached to tell someone, she knew it would not be Dirina, who, she was somehow sure, would not quite approve, despite that Amarta was pretty certain she was doing something similar when she snuck off in the night with Kosal.
Nidem, though, she might tell. She wasn’t sure she would approve, so for a time she stayed silent, but finally she could bear it no longer and whispered to the girl all that had happened, and how she felt. Nidem seemed uncertain for a moment, then nodded.
“It is good that you keep it secret, though,” she said. “Some would not be so happy to see Emendi and Arunkin close. I am pleased for your joy, Ama.”
Maybe, Amar
ta thought, this really was their home now.
The day of the out-trip arrived. Amarta went to see them off at the staging area, the same entranceway through which they had first come with the Teva, which she now knew had stables to one side and another huge room for wagons off to the other.
A tencount of Emendi loaded barrels and sacks onto the wagon, then water and food for the three days out and back. Astru and Vatti stood by, directing.
Darad came to her and took her hand, drawing her close. Then, despite all those standing near and watching, he kissed her again, longer than ever before, as if to make a point. As he drew back, Astru and Vatti looked on with unreadable expressions.
Well, it was no secret now.
Then, with one last look at her, he said, “I’ll be back for more.” He squeezed her hand one last time and smiled.
The huge stones were rolled back from the cave entrance and the wagons set out into the sunlight, carthorse hitched. From the front of the wagon, Darad waved at her as they went.
A handful of days. Practically no time at all. She was not worried; vision had told her he would come back whole. She waved back.
Some seven days later, right on schedule, Darad came back. The group was well, returning with sacks of grain, dried fruits, seeds and nuts, bolts of burlap. Even some casks of wine. There were celebrations that night.
But something had changed. From the moment he returned, Darad acted as if the last kiss and all the kisses before had never occurred. She tried to catch him alone, to ask him what had happened, but somehow he was always busy, always walking away or talking to someone else. The next day and the next she tried again.
In despair she went to Nidem.
“He doesn’t want to talk to you,” Nidem told her.
Her stomach went leaden. “But why not?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He won’t tell me.” Seeing Amarta’s expression, she did not even make it into a joke.
“Did someone tell him not to? Because I’m not Emendi?”
“Maybe that,” Nidem said, nodding slowly. “But just as likely it is that he is fickle.”
“But . . .” He had said things to her, things that did not go away so fast. “I said or did something to upset him, perhaps?” Her throat hurt. Her chest was tight.
“He went out into the world, Ama. It is not easy for us to do that, to be in the day, all day. To see the freedom your kind has so easily, that we can never have. Sometimes it changes us. Perhaps it changed him.”
“That much? I don’t believe it.”
Surprising Amarta, Nidem took her in a hug and held her a long moment, then pulled back to look into her eyes. “You are not the first to be bruised by Darad’s changing affections. He is a fickle boy. Someday he will be a fickle man. Be glad you discovered so early, so easily.”
It didn’t feel easy at all. She shook her head wordlessly.
“It will get better in time, Ama. Your heart will heal. Trust me on this.”
She did not believe it. She felt ripped apart.
Darad’s inexplicable cold distance continued. Finally she gave up trying to reach him, throwing herself into all the work that was possible to do in Kusan, from sewing to cleaning to leatherwork. The harder the work, the more demanding, the more she preferred it. She even volunteered to go to the bat caves to collected guano, a job always in need of doing.
Be useful, she told herself. Busy enough to keep away the painful thoughts.
One night she woke crying, and realized that the ache she felt for her dead parents, for leaving Enana and her sons, and the tearing pain she now felt for Darad were all kin to each other.
It had not occurred to her before that she could lose someone and still have them be so close by.
At meals Darad sat with another group, no longer inviting her to his table, no longer coming to hers. His hands flew with humor, his silent laugh and smile tugging at her emotions even now, just watching him. It felt as she imagined a knife through her chest must feel.
She expected Nidem and the others she had befriended to sit with him, and they did, clustering tightly around him as they had before. Like moths to a lantern, how he drew people to him, making the world bright and full of warmth.
But only when the light was on you. Now that it was not, she felt a desolate chill.
A few days later at the meal, to her surprise, Nidem sat down next to her.
Fickle as a child, Nidem signed, gesturing toward Darad.
Amarta’s spirits rose.
You are no child. she signed back enthusiastically. Nor fickle.
Friends last longer than pretty boys, Nidem quipped. They laughed silently together.
Across the room, Darad’s gaze flickered to them, then away again when she looked back.
Good. Let him wonder what they were saying about him. Let him wonder where his favorite cousin had gone to.
To her continued surprise, Nidem sat with her again the next day, and the next, then began bringing her along to gatherings after meals.
When Amarta saw Darad, as she must now and then, it still hurt, but perhaps a little less today than yesterday. He spoke to her occasionally, when he had to, a word or two, but it was cool and told her nothing.
Whatever she had done to push him away remained a mystery.
Bit by bit she felt herself heal. Nidem was right, though it seemed to Amarta that the girl’s companionship had helped make the prediction true.
Dirina, on the other hand, shone like a buttercup in the sun in the constant company of Kosal. Pas, too, was happily learning words and signs, charming the Emendi with his fast grin and sweet disposition.
Truly, they could not complain. They were warm. They had more than enough to eat. They slept on beds. One fickle boy did not change that.
Most of all, they were safe.
Or so she told herself, firmly and repeatedly, when she woke from snatches of dreams of fire and smoke, keening cries from the dark recesses of tunnels. Only dreams, she told herself, again and again, and nearly believed it. Until the day the flashes came to her when she was awake.
Arunkin soldiers, torches in hand, striding the corridors of Kusan.
No, that was impossible. Kusan had held fast and hidden for centuries. What could change that?
She knew the answer: she could change that. As she had changed the lives of others.
Hands grabbed the Emendi by hair and arms, dragged them up the levels, out into the sunlight.
No, no, no. It could not be.
She stood by the door to the gardens. The keeper nodded his permission for her to go out. There in the sunlight, blinking at the brightness, pushing away the memory of the last time she was here with Darad, she tried to think.
Around her small green plants were bright and tall, red and yellow buds starting to swell.
Amarta, do not bring it here.
She closed her eyes, the sun hot and red through her eyelids, and pushed herself to follow the trail of the horrific images.
Outside Kusan, soldiers hauled weeping Emendi into wagons. One grabbed at Ksava’s long, ropy hair. Another plucked strands from her baby’s head. They laughed, holding Ksava, pulling her baby away. Ksava howled. The baby wailed.
Amarta bent her over the seedlings, forehead to the ground, sobbing.
“No, no! Not to crush the seedlings!” The keeper knelt down next to her, lifting her hands and head gently off the young plants. He looked into her eyes. “Perhaps you’ve had enough sun for now.”
Wordlessly she nodded and went back inside to the dark halls.
Certainty settled inside her: Kusan would be invaded. If she did not do something, the Emendi would all be made into slaves.
She took her lantern and descended the stairs, one level and then the next, down the full nine levels, to the opening of the caverns where Darad had so long ago warned her to never go alone, where Nidem had taken her to watch the rabbit hunt. For a time she sat at the edge of the opening to the cavern, listening to the sounds o
f the night forest, owls calling, rodents scrabbling, and distant sounds that might be brush trod by huge nightswine.
If she climbed down the rope ladder and walked into the deepest part of the forest, where the nightswine ran, if she gave herself over to them to rend and tear and eat, would Kusan then be safe? If she were the cause of the trouble, could she save Kusan with her life?
The truth was that she did not want to die to save Kusan, not even if it were the only way.
But if it were . . . ?
Perhaps they could leave, she and Dirina and Pas. Let the city fall, if fall it must. Knowing the threat existed, knowing this horror was coming, did that make her responsible for fixing it?
Do not bring it here.
I won’t. I promise.
But maybe the invasion wasn’t about her at all. Maybe the Arunkin soldiers had been coming all along, and she being here was only a coincidence.
She knew better. It was her doing. All her denial would not change that.
Brave. She must be brave.
She turned her thoughts to the night forest, imagining her own death. Would it save the city?
She put the question in her mind but held the answer firmly at bay while she filled out the image of what it would be like to go step by step into the vast caverns, down into the night forest with the tall, black trees and their spindly, pale leaves, the white lichen dripping down in thick strands. To call loudly in the dark for the nightswine to come.
To let them come. To stand as they ran at her. To die wretchedly. Painfully. Alone.
Because if she were not truly willing, there was no point to asking the future for an answer. That was what children did: ask questions they did not really want answers to, make grand gestures that were only for show.
Make promises they wouldn’t keep.
When she was as sure as she could be that she would do this awful thing if the answer were yes—when her breath came hard, heart pounded, and she was as sickened by her imaginings of her own violent death as she could make herself be—she threw the question into that place inside her where the future breathed back.