“Yes—an old rusty brothel sign that had fallen and was lying in the street.” Teldaru stepped up beside me. He was shaking his head. “I had no desire to take her back to that neighbourhood, of course, but we were looking for a kind of plant I have only ever found in the lowtown markets.”
A brothel sign. I felt my flush drain away to pallor. A brothel, and Bardrem; a threat that Teldaru knew would still frighten me, after all these years. I would not be able to bear his triumph, so I kept my gaze on the king.
“Sit,” Haldrin said to me as he rose himself. He walked to the only empty chair and pulled it away from the table. “Rest here a little—unless you would like to go directly to your room?”
“She will stay,” Teldaru said. “These matters concern her, since she has seen what I have.”
Borl walked over to me, then, only a little unsteadily; he was already used to being blind. He laid his head in my lap. The king frowned again—at the gesture, and probably too at the blood that had dried and matted on the dog’s already dark fur.
“And what of Belakao, Master Teldaru?” said one of the other men, and Haldrin turned away from the dog and me and returned to his own seat.
“Lord Derris,” Teldaru said, “I thank you for reminding us of our purpose, here. I will tell you of my vision while Nola thinks on hers.”
I had seen Lord Derris before; he was the king’s cousin, and attended all the feasts and processions that I did. I had never heard him speak. He had a breathy rasp of a voice—from an arrow taken in the throat. I thought I saw the white-pink tip of a scar, below his beard. His eyes were blue, like Haldrin’s, but hard.
Teldaru walked over to the window. The sky was very dark, though I could not see any stars from here. “A volcano spilled its fire into the sea.” Even I went still, listening to him. “The water boiled and foamed and rose in waves that threatened to sweep toward land. Except that the land, too, rose. Trees and vines coiled down to the shore and out upon the ocean’s skin. Rocks tumbled and sank into a wall that wound its way beneath, toward the volcano. In this union of land and sea, the fire sank to smoke and the waves subsided and all the world was filled with stone and growing things.”
“A powerful vision,” the king said after a moment. It felt as if the room remembered to breathe, when he spoke. “But how do you know that it does not indicate that I am simply to forge a closer alliance with the new moabu?”
“No.” Teldaru’s hands were clenched around the windowsill; he was gazing out at the night. I thought, as I had before, He is beautiful. The thought was too quick, too fluid to stop. “It was a union, Haldrin. A joining of land and sea, stone and fire. It was you and Zemiya.”
“She is not young.”
“Forgive me, my king, but nor are you. But it will still be a fruitful union: I am sure of this.”
“Sarsenayans might not accept a Belakaoan queen.”
“Sarsenayans will be relieved to have a queen, and heirs to your throne. They do not understand why you have waited so long.”
King Haldrin picked up a quill. I noticed only now that the table was strewn with maps, some of their corners held down with books. He twirled the quill so that its curved end brushed a map—up and along the black arches of a mountain range, I saw.
“And why would Belakao give up one of its princesses?” Lord Derris said. The other three murmured in agreement.
Teldaru turned back to face the room. “She had no children with her first husband. She is a burden. She has no power except that to be gained by another marriage. And”—he walked to the table, nudged a book aside, traced a fingertip along what looked like the undulations of a shoreline—“as we already know, her brother the new moabu wants more from us than his father did.”
“His father was a reasonable man,” said someone I did not know.
“Ah,” Teldaru said, “but this Bantayo is not. He is not content with the treaties that bind our countries. He has made this clear from the moment his father died.”
“And now,” said yet another man, “he tells us that Lorselland is offering more.”
“But they will not offer him this.” Teldaru smiled. “Such a bond—it will go beyond any treaty imaginable. He would be a fool to refuse.”
“And what of me?” The king’s voice was mild, but the frown still wrinkled that place above his nose. “Tell me, Teldaru, since you are so certain: how should I feel about this?”
Teldaru’s smile changed a little, softened, as if they were both younger, and alone. It made me prickle with cold or warmth; I was not sure which. “The Pattern is clear, Hal,” he said quietly. “It will be a Path of power and joy, for you and for your people.”
No! No: it will be twisted and terrible because he is making it, my king. . . . I pushed my chair back, still sitting, my arms braced on the edge of the table. Borl whined and settled back on his haunches.
“What are you doing?” My words hung among them, heavy as rain about to fall. Teldaru’s eyes narrowed. I thought of Bardrem and spoke again anyway, in a rush of desperation—around the truth, as close to it as I could get. “Why do you speak of such things? And why,” I continued, glancing at each of the other men, “do you believe them? Because he is the Great Master Otherseer? Because he is Teldaru—only that?”
“You are unwell,” Teldaru said swiftly, starting toward me. “Your wound—perhaps there is a fever starting.”
“Or perhaps it is the return of my madness? That madness that possessed me when I arrived here six years ago; I’m sure you all remember, for he made much of it.” The truth so close, and Haldrin’s keen, kind eyes on me once more, but this would be all, for Teldaru was wrapping his hand around my good arm and pulling, and I was up.
“Come, now; I will walk you back to your room and fetch Mistress Ket, and then”—to the king—“I will return and we will discuss how to put our proposal to Moabu Bantayo.”
Haldrin put the quill down with a sharp, snapping sound. He was no longer looking at me, though the others were, with distaste and discomfort and maybe a bit of awe. “I am glad that you have decided for me,” he said to Teldaru, “for there is not much time. We have only just learned—and it is why we met, tonight: he is on his way here.”
Teldaru’s fingers dug even more deeply into my skin and I flinched. His face hardly changed but I felt his surprise, and something else too, which trembled after the first pressure was gone. “Here,” he said steadily. “To Sarsenay.”
“To Lorselland as well,” said Lord Derris. “He is a new king assessing his allies. We must impress him.”
“We will.” Teldaru turned his black eyes to me and I looked into them, defiant and lost. “Won’t we, Nola?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Moabu Bantayo went to Lorselland first. It took him two months to arrive in Sarsenay, and by the time he did the capital city was a riot of banners and garlands and washed, shining stone. It had been nearly thirty years since a Belakaoan dignitary had visited. And this was the new king.
“The mo-a-bu,” Selera said with her lips pursed, as if she were tasting something sour.
“Now say ispa,” suggested Grasni.
We were sitting in one of the classrooms on the second floor of the school building. The room was shaded by the tree, which trailed its leaf-thick branches in the window, but the air was still smotheringly hot. Grasni and I were running with sweat; our dresses clung to us in dark, damp patches. Selera’s dress was dry. Her face and hair were dry. She was fanning herself languidly with a rolled-up scroll.
“Or just say moabu again,” Grasni said. “I could tell how much you enjoyed it.”
Selera scowled, and I laughed. Grasni did not look at me, but I did not mind: she was sitting near me, hadn’t risen to leave as soon as our students had. She was close.
“It’s an ugly language,” Selera declared. “And they’re ugly people. But there are so many of them living among us now; I suppose I should be accustomed to them.”
“As you’re accustomed t
o their jewels,” I said. “And their cloth.”
Grasni smiled a little. Selera raised her hand to her braid, which was wound with green ribbon studded with gems: amber, crimson and blue ones, polished but uncut, born in Belakaoan fire.
“I like their things, yes,” she said, rising, “but that doesn’t mean I have to like them.” She looked down at me with a little smile of her own. “And anyway,” she went on, “certain other people enjoy my ribbons too. Certain other people enjoy drawing them out of my hair one at a time.”
“How lovely for other people,” I said, as dryly as I could. I was thinking: Don’t leave. I wanted her to, of course, but then I would be alone with Grasni, and then she would leave, with some awkward word or glance, and—
“Girls.” Mistress Ket was in the open doorway, leaning heavily on her stick. She hardly ever came up the staircase, these days; we all gaped at her. “There has been word—Moabu Bantayo is close. A day away, perhaps, no more.”
Selera gasped. “So the feast may be tomorrow!” She glanced at me. “I must find some particularly fine jewels for my hair.” As she passed Mistress Ket she bent and kissed the tangled, white hair at the top of her head.
Grasni stood. “As must I!” she said with fervour so false that I snorted.
“Shall I help?” I said. “You never have been any good at choosing colours that match.”
“No.” She spoke quickly. Blinked at me, ran the back of her hand across her sweat-sheened forehead. “Thank you, Nola, but no.” And then she was gone, as I had known she would be, and I did not have the courage to follow her.
In any case, there was someone else I needed to find.
Mistress Ket leaned heavily on my arm as we went down the stairs. When we reached the bottom she kept her hand where it was, squeezing a bit.
“It’s difficult for you,” she said. Her eyes were dark, dark grey—fading from the black they’d been when she was younger. For some the Othersight grew gentle; for some it disappeared. A very few, Yigranzi had told me once, were consumed by it and never saw with their own eyes again.
I thought, with a wave of relief, Now we’ll talk about it—about what Grasni saw when she looked at my Pattern. . . .
“For all three of you.”
I said, “What?” I sounded like a child.
Mistress Ket peered up at me. I wondered suddenly what it would feel like to lose the Othersight, to be blind to the Otherworld. No teachers had ever talked to us about this.
“You and Grasni and Selera are in a difficult place. You are no longer girls, yet you are not quite women, because we have kept you here too long—yes”—a tighter squeeze of my arm—“we have. Master Teldaru knows it too. You’ve just been so useful—such fine students, and good with the little ones, too. But now we’ve decided to give you postings, when this excitement with Belakao is over.” She smiled. Her two front teeth were a peculiar shade of purple-brown; we had mocked them, years ago, but not any more. “You will all be happier. Perhaps you will even find love, as I have not, as so many Otherseers do not. You are sweet girls.”
“Mistress Ket . . .” I put my hand over hers. “What about Grasni? She told you something a few months ago.” It was agonizingly close to the truth; I would not be able to say much else before the curse took the words away. “She did something for me, though we knew she should not, and—”
“No, Nola.” She was frowning now, clutching my arm even more tightly. “No. Master Teldaru has commanded me to speak of this to no one, not even to you. There are mysteries, and only he can understand them, and the rest of us must keep silence.”
“Of course,” I said, breathing around a suffocating weight that could have been laughter or tears. “That’s very true. And Master Teldaru . . . where do you think he is, now?” A clumsy way to ask, but she smiled again, probably relieved that I was no longer speaking of mysteries.
“He is in his rooms. It was he who sent me to you with the news—and soon he will be joining the king. There will be many preparations to make.”
“Yes,” I said, with pretend eagerness. “I will go to him—see if I can be of help.”
One more smile, and a pat. “Nola,” Mistress Ket said, “you’re a good girl.”
His rooms were in the keep. I knew precisely where—we all did—though I had never been there; never in six years, for he had always come to me. I wondered, as Borl and I walked through the trees, whether anyone other than the king had seen Teldaru’s rooms. Even Selera had not; I had asked her about this once and she had spluttered something about the sensual possibilities of the outdoors, and the ecstasy of waking in her own bed to his hands on her.
I had listened to the younger students whispering about what Master Teldaru’s rooms might look like. Statues of marble and gold (for he was known to enjoy sculpture). Strange musical instruments from far-off lands (for he had an ear for music). Golden cushions, golden washbasin and ewer, and an enormous golden mirror. No, I thought when I heard this, you will find that last item in a house in the city—that, and a bird whose colours would amaze you.
When we turned the corner that would bring us to his door, Borl began to whine. “Yes,” I said, “I know—you used to live here with him—it must be terrible to remember that.” He sat down in the middle of the corridor and turned his blind white eyes up to me. I scratched his ears and bent to run my hand under his muzzle. “I wish you would come with me—but very well. Wait here.” He lay down with his flank pressed against the wall. I stepped past him and rapped on the door.
As it turned out, there was no gold in the rooms through which Teldaru led me. Three rooms: one with a plain wooden table and two chairs, another with a narrow bed and washstand, and a third (which I glimpsed through a half-open door) with a floor tiled in brown and white, and a low, square tub built into the floor. A private bathing room—and I imagined him there, washing blood from his body as candlelight flickered over his hair, his skin, his midnight eyes.
“Teldaru.” I spoke suddenly, to force the image away. He motioned me to one of the chairs. I sat, wishing that Borl were at my feet. I glanced out the window and saw the courtyard trees and the ribbon of path and, quite clearly, the window and door of my own small room.
“Do you have some sort of magnifying lens?” I asked lightly. “So that you can see straight in to my bed?”
“A fine idea,” Teldaru said. I had not expected him to reply; I shifted on my chair and hoped he would not notice my flush.
“Oh, Nola.” His eyes on me; just the hint of a smile. “What I could show you, in that narrow bed of yours.”
“So why don’t you?” I said, too quickly to stop myself. “Why haven’t you, when you claim to have wanted me for so long? Or do you only want young girls? Though,” I finished in a sickening rush, “that would not explain Selera.”
His chair creaked as he leaned back. I stared out the window, seeing nothing.
“Really remarkable things,” he said at last, slowly, “take time.”
“Ah”—looking back at him—“so you may yet honour me with your attentions. How reassuring.” Enough, I thought. Nola—enough.
“What did you really come here to ask me, Mistress?”
I laughed breathlessly. “It doesn’t matter. All I can do is talk around what I want to say.”
“As you tried to do in Haldrin’s study, in front of all those people. Tell me,” he said, leaning forward now, “how did it feel to make a fool of yourself in front of all those people? In front of the King of Sarsenay?”
I leaned forward too. “Belakao,” I said. The curse stirred in my belly with just this one word. “Moabu Bantayo. Zemiya. Tell me exactly what you mean to do.”
He chuckled. “Do you truly believe you deserve this information, after all the betrayals you’ve attempted? Truly, Nola? It is as if you do not want me to lift the curse.”
I flinched, and spoke again before he could. “It wouldn’t make any difference, telling me. I can’t tell anyone else, and I won’t try, beca
use no, I did not enjoy humiliating myself in front of the king, and yes, I do want you to help me, someday. And surely,” I added in a low voice, “surely you long to tell someone of your plans.”
He was no longer smiling. “My plans,” he said at last, “continue to grow and change. There are so many Paths, and the Pattern is vaster than I have ever seen it, and all I know for certain is that we must draw the Belakaoans close, as I said to you before. We must draw them close before we break them.”
I squirmed in my chair, because I knew that every word I intended to speak would feel like a stone in my throat. “You hate Zemiya and Neluja,” I said. “But why do you hate Haldrin too?”
Teldaru snorted. “I do not hate him. I feel nothing for him—I never did, even when we were boys. ‘How handsome the prince is—and he’ll be even handsomer when he’s king.’ People feared me and fawned over him—but even then I thought of him as little as a horse does the fly that sits on its flank.”
I wanted to say, Indeed? So why do you seek to usurp him and lay waste to his land? “If that is so,” I said instead, “why do you make these plans?”
I thought he might smile, but he did not—he rose and gazed out the window. I watched his jaw work, as if he were tasting his words before speaking them. “Hal is a small man—a king only by accident of birth. He does not deserve Sarsenay.”
“And you, who were born in a tavern, do?”
He turned his head slowly. I straightened, beneath his gaze. “It is a tale often told, in the lower city,” I said quietly. “The little boy, son of no one, who became the Great Master Teldaru.”
“I know the tale,” he said, also quietly. “I know, too, that little boys who are sons of no one never become kings. Our world would have to change, for this to be the case. And that is what I, the great Master Teldaru of lowtown tales, will do—what we will do, my Nola. Together we will change the world.”
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