“Tell me,” Orlo said, stepping back toward the mirror, “what you have learned about Bloodseeing so far.”
I twisted my hand, watching the candlelight play along the steel. “I’ve learned that the blood of the person to be seen is enough; that the seer requires no other tools.”
“What else?”
“That the words of invitation do not need to be spoken by the person to be seen, if that person is bleeding, or if they have just bled.”
“And who has spoken the words of invitation, when Laedon has cut himself?”
I glanced at Orlo. “You, of course.”
“Yes.” He was tracing circles on the mirror, just as he had on my knuckles. “But I do not have to. A seer does not need another speaker at all. Not if . . .?”
I looked from him to Laedon to the knife in my hand. “If . . . if I—the seer . . .”
My throat was dry, closing in on itself. It was late; I was probably hungry and definitely thirsty, but this did not matter. “If I cut him.”
Orlo did not nod or smile, and yet I took a step backward, as if a sudden wind had pushed at me. He said nothing, which meant I had to say more. I straightened my shoulders. “So this is what I will do. I will . . . cut him, and I will ask his Pattern to show itself to me.”
“And will you use tools?”
I knew immediately that I would. I felt taller, stronger, as if I had grown older just since coming up from the library; there was no need for restraint or reluctance.
“I will.” Not wax on water, though, nor bones, nor mirror. “Uja,” I said.
For a moment I thought he would refuse; he had refused until now, saying that Uja was another thing I was not quite ready for. But this time he nodded once, almost sharply, and said, “Know that it will be like nothing you have seen so far.” I nodded too, because he seemed to be waiting. “Very well. Go to Laedon, then, and choose where you will cut.”
I heard Orlo behind me as I walked to stand with the old man. The cabinet doors opened again; a glass lid came off a jar with a ringing sound; grain sifted. I heard these things and I heard my own breathing. Only Laedon was silent. He stood like a statue, gazing over my head, pretending I was not there. I looked at his face quickly, then only at the cloth bulk of his body. I would have to touch the cloth; I would have to touch his skin.
“You will not need to make a deep cut,” Orlo said, “and you should not, this first time.”
I swallowed. The fingers of my left hand closed around the material that lay against Laedon’s right arm. It was more ragged, and trailed more ends of thread, than the layers above it. It was a light, washed-out blue—like his eyes—with darker patches that must have been cooking stains. I eased the cloth up, gingerly at first—but I had to be faster and firmer, so I pressed my fingers into his skin and thrust until the material was up above his elbow. It stayed there, even when I took my hand away. It was easy because I was not looking at his face. I took his wrist and turned it and his whole arm turned, and it was just a thing; just something I was examining. Despite this detachment, I did think, Please the Pattern, I will not have to look anywhere else for a place to cut. . . . I did not. I saw the place, and looked back at Orlo. He was waiting, one hand in a glass jar that was resting on his hip. I nodded at him and he scooped, pulled his hand out. He crouched and drizzled the grain on the floor in front of him. “Uja likes rye best,” he said. He turned himself around until he had covered a large, circular space with grain.
Only now did I look at Uja. She was on her upper branch, her wings and beak tucked in against her body. I could not see whether her eyes were open.
“Come here.” Orlo was speaking to me but it was Laedon who obeyed him. He shuffled past me, to the edge of the rye circle. I followed. When I was beside him he shifted a bit, so that he was almost facing me.
Orlo used another of the keys at his neck to unlock Uja’s cage. (Is it strange that I never wanted to tell him she could get out on her own? Some premonition about my own Path that kept me quiet?) She hopped from branch to branch and sidled out the open door. Waddle-walked around the circle and stopped precisely where she had begun. Straightened her head, at last, and looked at me.
She does not know me, I thought wildly—but after a moment she blinked and I realized that she did. She was readying herself, half in her own Otherworld.
They were all waiting for me.
Laedon’s arm was as heavy as a fallen tree branch. It was not that he resisted me; he simply did not help. I lifted it, angled it until I saw the hollow of his elbow, and the green vein that bulged there (so fat, while the rest of his arm was sinew and bone). I raised my right hand. The knife trembled until I set its blade against him. I gazed at it there. I was trembling too, somewhere very deep; maybe this should not be now, not yet. . . . My eyes flickered up and found his. He was staring at me as he had that once in the kitchen, as he had done through windows and probably from other places I had not even noticed—and suddenly I was angry. The anger was formless and cold, and I felt nothing else. I tilted the knife and pushed its tip into Laedon’s flesh. One push, and I drew the knife back and let it fall, for I did not need it any more.
The blood welled. It looked like one drop, blooming, blooming; then it burst into a thinning, snaking line. This one line became many, which branched around forearm and fingers and dripped, one by one by one and soon all together, onto the grain.
I gazed from blood to bird. “Show me.” I did not know how I managed to speak—or even why I had, since I realized it was not necessary—but the words were clear and felt right. “Show me what will come, for him.”
Uja began to walk. Not her customary waddle, punctuated by ungainly flapping, but a graceful dance, dainty, lifted feet and wings opened, poised, tucked softly back again. She lowered her neck, every few paces, and plucked up a bit of rye. And there it was, so quickly: a path made by talons, tail and beak. A pattern edged in blood.
The vision came on gradually. I was expecting shock and speed and glaring colours, but for many long moments there seemed to be nothing at all. My eyes leapt from Uja’s marks to Laedon’s with anticipation that soon became impatience. Where? When? Why not already? Nothing was heightened or more vivid; in fact, the corners of the room were paling, quite gently. Nothing to see.
Nothing, creeping up walls and across the floor. A whiteness that is more than lack of colour; a whiteness that is no sight, no sound, no touch. It seeps over my feet and up my legs, and I remember my mother, devoured by black mist. I am disappearing, and this is not even really about me; where is Laedon? Where is the boy I have seen in so many other visions; where are the wolves, the eagles? Frost crystals reach for one another in my lungs, and join, and I try to lift my hands to clutch at my chest. My hands are there—I feel them—but they do not move. I am mired in the whiteness and there is no Path, no Pattern—nothing ahead or behind. Yigranzi, I think, because she rescued me before, when I was lost in Chenn’s Otherworld. Yigranzi pulled me out and away—but she is not here, and there is no here. The white is filling up my nostrils, clotting my throat. I will die, and I will never see the castle. One last attempt at movement, but my bones are white now, bare and fused to nothing. I scream silence and they shatter.
I was choking. I was pressed to the floor, facedown. There was so much pain that I almost, almost wished the nothingness back. So much noise, as well: Uja crooning, rye grains skittering, the cabinet doors opening or closing—all too close, swollen as the inside of my head was swollen. The one thing I had none of was sight.
Orlo picked me up. I felt the muscles of his arms and chest, and when he said my name I felt it too, like a drumbeat that was inside, not outside, me. He smelled like wine and salt. He carried me and I thought I would vomit from the up and down, up and down, but I did not. He laid me on my bed, which was horribly soft—fleshy, sinking. I thrashed once, twice, and he held my wrists. I felt his breath on my face.
“I’m blind,” I said, in a whisper or a shout—I couldn’t tell.
“Not for long. Here—drink this”—cool clay, water a new kind of agony, tracing down—“and then sleep.” His hands and breath were gone. The bed creaked as he stood. “You did well, Nola.”
Well? I thought. Well? I saw nothing—truly, nothing—and now every one of my bones is broken and I am as blind as Laedon—but as long as I did well (and you would know, of course), then fine, I will simply go to sleep. . . .
I did, somehow. And when I woke the next morning, my own bleeding had begun.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The brothel girls talked about it all the time. “Ohhh, it’s so awful; at the start I get headaches that make me vomit.” And: “Don’t bother looking for Mahelli. She’s in bed, and she’ll be there two more days—but at least the bleeding draught worked; she was afraid it hadn’t.” Or: “I wrap myself in hot cloths but it doesn’t help the pain.” I envied them their shared complaints even as I feared understanding them. I never expected my bleeding to begin as it did—so quietly that I did not notice.
There were other things distracting me, of course. My pounding head, my aching muscles, the sunlight that made my returned vision ripple with tears. I lay in bed and wriggled my toes, flexed my fingers and my arms. I gazed around the room, hungry for images, even though my blindness had only been brief. Everything looked paler than usual, but there were no squiggly black lines, and the colours were right. Maybe I slept through the worst of it, I thought. After all, it was full day, and Orlo had brought me to Laedon just after dusk.
I was ravenous. There was a tray beside my bed; I saw this when I sat up, slowly and awkwardly, like a creaky old woman. Lemon water, rolls with raisins baked in, and pickled fish. The fish was the most delicious thing I thought I had ever tasted; when it was gone I lifted the plate and licked the vinegar off.
The food steadied me. When I had finished all of it, I sat and looked out at leaves and sky. The windows were open, and a warm breeze stirred my hair and the sleeves of my dress. A bit of outside, creeping through the iron bars.
Laedon, I thought. Now, with no hunger and very little discomfort to distract me, I remembered. It was like probing a bruise: round the edge and in, seeing where it might hurt. It should have hurt; I knew this, in daylight. Yigranzi never would have allowed me to draw blood for Otherseeing. She would have told me about Bloodseeing only to warn me against it. And yet, when I remembered how the knife had felt in my hand, and how Laedon’s blood had blossomed, I smiled. (It did not occur to me to check on him.)
When I finally stood up, I was briefly, sharply dizzy. I leaned on the bed until the feeling passed. Just as I was going to straighten again I saw a mark on the bed sheet. A dark smudge—brown, or dark, dark red. I wondered if I had had some of Laedon’s blood on me, and checked my hands, my feet. The smudge was in a strange place, though: right where I had been sitting. I twisted, grasped the bottom of my dress. The cloth was blue; the blood on it looked black.
I sat down again, hard.
Orlo was in a terrible mood that night. Maybe that’s why I didn’t say anything right away, even though I knew how important the news would be to him. I remember feeling a sense of weight, while I waited for him to arrive: embarrassment (which I hadn’t expected), and longing for Yigranzi. At some point after I’d folded several kitchen cloths and wadded them into my underclothes, I even thought of my mother. Perhaps she would have been moved by my new status; there might have been a bond. . . . This thought was quickly succeeded by a more rational one: she would likely have complained about all the extra washing and commanded me not to get myself with child until her own were out of swaddling clothes.
In any case, I wanted a woman’s presence. I went and sat by Uja, who did not come out of her cage. She stood motionless on the floor and blinked at me. “My bleeding has started.” Blink, blink. “It’s strange, isn’t it? That this happened right after I used a new kind of Bloodseeing?” Blink. “I miss Yigranzi. And I wish you could talk.” Uja made a low, tongue-rolling noise and I laughed a bit.
I did not see Laedon that day, and though I was mostly relieved, I also felt even lonelier. So maybe I would have blurted it out to Orlo the moment I saw him, despite my embarrassment. Maybe I would have, if he hadn’t swept in with all the force and fury of a thunderstorm.
“What are you doing in here? I’ve just spent five minutes looking for you.”
I was standing in the art room: an enormous chamber on the lower level that was filled with sculpture and paintings. (Standing, because I was afraid that my new, clean dress would also get stained, if I sat.) My hand was on a statue of a girl about my age, clad in a shift so thin she might have been wearing nothing. I liked to touch the folds of cloth; marble ripples that looked as if they would crumple like silk in my fist.
“I’m sorry—I—”
“No excuses; we’ve wasted enough time already. Upstairs.”
I had never seen him so angry before. He was very pale, but there were two streaks of scarlet along his cheekbones. His forehead shone with sweat.
I turned back, just before I stepped out the door. “Is it Prandel?” Perhaps if I get him to talk, I thought, he’ll calm down.
He stared at me as if I had spoken in another language. “Pran . . .?” Incomprehension. No understanding at all.
“Prandel,” I repeated. “Has he slipped away from you again?”
One more empty-eyed moment, and then Orlo raised his brows and let out his breath with a whuff of air. He sounded like Borl. “Prandel—of course . . . No. I lost his trail weeks ago.”
“Oh.” My voice was low with disappointment. “You didn’t tell me. You haven’t mentioned him in so long, but I thought that you were still looking.”
“I am still looking.” Words squeezed between his teeth. “Upstairs, Nola. Now.”
Despite the fact that I had no excruciating bleeding pains, I felt weak; I dragged myself up the staircase and into the lesson room. I needed Orlo to see my difficulty. I thought that he might ask me about it—that his concern for me would overcome his anger—but he only snapped, “What is wrong with you tonight, girl?” and strode past me in the corridor.
I leaned against the mirror. Answered his questions in one or two words. He bit at these questions, snarled them at me while Borl gazed at me with half-lidded eyes from the floor by Uja’s cage. There were so many questions. I was sagging, gripping the mirror’s edge; my legs felt like the fruit jellies Rudicol had made for special occasions.
Still, several hours had gone by when Orlo finally slammed his fist down on the gold and shouted, “Nola!” I stared at him as the word, and the metal, thrummed to silence. The cloths in my underthings had shifted and I could feel wetness between my pressed-together thighs. “If this is the best you can do,” Orlo said slowly, “you will never be ready for the castle.”
“There won’t be a castle, for me. You’ll never find Prandel. And I think you like me here; I’m your pet—only I don’t get to leave with you, as Borl does.” My voice was very high, and shaking. I remembered the girls saying that their bleeding made their anger and sadness more intense than usual. This idea comforted me for a moment, until I saw Orlo’s glower and his black, furious eyes and thought, And what is your excuse?
“How dare you?” They were nearly whispers, but his words struck me like blows—one, two, three, all in the belly. “After all I’ve done for you.”
My mother had said this. My mother, who had done nothing good for me until she sold me. And although Orlo had, in fact, given me much, much more than she had, my old anger was enough to give me strength.
“My bleeding started today.”
He gaped; another thing that should have been amusing but wasn’t. I stood taller.
“You . . .” He took a step toward me. Another. His eyes were briefly still. The scarlet on his cheeks seeped downward and I thought how beautiful he looked, aflame, quiet. Only he was not quiet for long.
“When today?” Yet another step. He was close now, but I did not move.
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“This morning. Or maybe during the night, but I only noticed in the morning.”
“And why did you not tell me immediately?”
I drew my shoulders back and tipped my head to look into his face. “Because you were in a foul temper the moment you walked in.”
“A foul . . .?” He took one more step and there was nowhere for me to go but back. My spine and shoulders were pressed against the door. “You know how long I have been waiting for this news.” His hands were on my shoulders, fingers digging. “You know—you ignorant, idiot girl.” He was shouting again, and shaking me. My head cracked against the wood and my ears began to ring and I could no longer hear his words—just a roar that enveloped me and fell as spittle on my skin.
He let me go, suddenly. I slid down the door to the ground, where I sat like a boneless thing. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, a few minutes later, Orlo was sitting next to me. Borl’s head was in his lap; he was stroking the dog between the ears, in large, slow circles.
“I’m sorry.” He hadn’t even glanced at me, and yet he seemed to know I had opened my eyes. “Nola . . .” His hand slipped from Borl to me and lay upturned on my left thigh. It was both so strong and so helpless that I put my own hand within it. His fingers curled to cover mine. I felt a rush of relief and desire. I wanted to touch the underside of his arm, and reach over to put my lips against his throat.
“Walk with me,” he said.
It was hotter outside than in, despite the darkness. The glass pebbles of the garden path were warm; I could feel them, even through my slippers.
The lycus blossoms were finally done blooming. They lay thick on the grass, and when Orlo led me off the path I tried to step on as many as I could. They changed colour when you touched them—bruising from white to purple—and released a gentle, sweet scent that could almost make you think they were still alive.
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