Teldaru laughed.
I ran my fingers over the hinge of jaw and up around the dome. I almost expected to feel knobs—scars from the War Hound’s shorn-off ears.
“You see?” Teldaru said, has hands gentle on mine. “Look how close we are—you are. Soon you too will be whole again.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
I used to begin some of these sections by describing the sky, or my thoughts about the words themselves. My thoughts about where I am, not where I was. I haven’t done this in a long time—partly because I no longer need to feel my way into the writing, and partly because I’ve been realizing something, and I’m afraid that if I let my quill stop moving across the page for too long, I’ll have to write of this something, too.
I’ve been concentrating so intently on the before and the now, but I’m beginning to see the after. It swims up at me, wobbly as an image in a dented copper mirror, but its edges are clear enough. And I’m terrified, looking at it, and excited too, and this only makes me more terrified.
But no more—for I won’t write of it. Not yet. I need to peer down at it a little longer.
So back I go, again.
Queen Zemiya, it was quickly decided, did not love her daughter.
“Jamenda says the princess cries and cries,” Leylen told me, “and the queen just stares out the window. Only the king tries to soothe the baby. And Jamenda says the queen has an island woman to nurse the child—and this is never done on Belakao.”
No one saw them, except for servants and the king. I heard my students muttering that the queen had gone mad, or even died, and Haldrin was so worried about Bantayo’s wrath that he was hiding it. I heard them say the child had died too. I heard them say the child had strange, distant eyes that saw nothing of this world. “Stop your gossiping,” I snapped at them. “They are both well. We will all see them soon.”
And we did a month later, at the baby’s naming feast. Winter had begun to give way to spring; on the night of the feast I smelled lycus blossoms as I was crossing the seers’ courtyard. I stopped and looked up into the trees and saw nothing but branches, bare and black, but still I smelled it: petals and green, somewhere close.
The Great Hall was streaked with late afternoon light. The copper plates on the lower tables shone; the silver ones on the dais table did too, and so did the jewels in Zemiya’s hair. There seemed to be hundreds of them—she was wreathed in colours that would have danced, if she had moved. She did not. She sat beside Haldrin and gazed at her plate. She did not look at him, or at the baby he held against his chest.
The baby was crying. Not crying—wailing, so piercingly that the sound rose above the clinking of metal and—later—the sonorous words of the poet, and—later yet—the music. I was glad of the noise, when I first sat down beside Zemiya, because I thought I would not have to speak to her, or to Teldaru, who was on my other side. But very quickly the squalling made me think of my own siblings, and hunger, and filth, and our mother, who had not cared for any of us. I leaned forward a bit to see past the queen. The baby was a tiny, round head whose black curls frothed beneath Haldrin’s chin, and a pair of clenched and waving fists that Haldrin caught in his own huge hand and kissed. He did not seem to mind the screeching. He cradled the lace-draped bundle effortlessly in one arm and beamed—except when he looked at Zemiya.
He pushed her plate closer to her and murmured words I could not hear. She picked at a piece of Belakaoan sandfish but did not eat. It was almost all Belakaoan food, tonight: fish and crab, soup made from some sort of dark green plant and swimming with spice that made my eyes water.
“All for her,” Teldaru whispered to me. “To make her smile.” He smiled, and touched my thigh lightly, under the table.
It was the dessert that finally pleased her: an array of fruit carved into the shapes of shells. She took a tiny yellow one (melon) between her thumb and forefinger and turned to Haldrin. I could not see her face, but I saw his; the relief on it was almost as stark as pain would have been.
He rose and raised his hand. He still held his daughter; her lacy dress trailed down nearly to his knees. She was snuffling now, her head flopping back and forth, seeking milk. Hurry, my King, I thought; you have only a few moments before she wails again.
“Pelor!” he called. A man standing by the Hall doors straightened as the diners fell silent. “This meal has pleased the queen and me. We would meet the cooks who prepared it—each of them, no matter how lowly. Bring them here to us now.”
The crowd began to mutter as soon as Pelor had gone. Lord Derris muttered too, on Teldaru’s other side. “Folly,” I heard him say. “Consorting with cooks and babies when there is work to be done with Lorselland and Belakao.” He bent so close to Teldaru that I could not hear any of the words he spoke after these.
Good, I thought as Teldaru twisted away from me. Now I will not have to speak to anyone.
“She was dead.” The queen spoke them softly, but her words brushed across my skin like fingertips. “And you brought her back.”
Yes. He taught me this. “No.”
“My sister has done this. I have watched her. Do not lie to me.”
I have to. “I did nothing but clear more mucus from her mouth.”
“The midwife did that. Why do you lie to me, Ispa Nola? Why do you lie all the time?”
I looked into her eyes—so dark, but not with Otherseeing. My heart thudded in my chest. I said nothing.
“If my sister was here,” the queen began, and then she sucked in her breath and bit her lower lip and was quiet, though she still gazed at me.
I shifted on my seat. Speak, I thought, with a useless, desperate surge of need; think of words that will be just true enough for her to hear—but the Hall doors opened and people began filing in and the king rose again.
“Welcome!” he cried. “Come here, up to me, so that we may speak to you.”
I counted them, as they approached—two short, squat men and one tall woman; two other women, also short and plump—but when I saw the sixth I stopped counting. A slender young man with light hair and a scar across his forehead, limping a ragged path through the rushes. His skin was ruddy and aglow with sweat.
The limp is from when Teldaru beat him, I thought, each word calm and clear. The sweat is from the kitchen. He took another shambling step, and raised his eyes, and I heard only white silence.
He looked straight at me. Not at the king or queen—at me, as if he had known exactly where I would be. He did not smile, but he looked triumphant.
“Good, good,” the king was saying to the first few cooks, who were arranging themselves before the dais. Bardrem was coming up behind them. He looked at me for one more step, and then his gaze slid to the man who was sitting beside me.
“Master Teldaru!” Haldrin said. “Which dish was most appealing to you?”
Teldaru glanced over his shoulder at the king. I watched him do this, and then I watched Bardrem—his eyes widening, his mouth falling open.
Now he knows, I thought. Orlo is not Orlo—he is the greatest Otherseer in Sarsenay—Bardrem finally knows, and he is not safe.
Teldaru shrugged. “The fish,” he said, and waved his hand at the cooks without looking at them. He bent again to Lord Derris.
“And moabe Zemiya—what was your preference? The fruit, yes? Who was responsible for this?”
No one spoke. The tall woman glanced behind her and cleared her throat. “Him, my King,” but Bardrem was limping away, back toward the double doors.
“You, there!” Haldrin cried, but Bardrem did not pause.
“He’s a strange one, sire,” the woman said. “Arrived not so long ago and won’t tell us where he’s from. But the shells were his idea.”
“And his name?”
The woman smiled. She was flushed too, from kitchen heat and probably from speaking at such length with the king.
“Bardo,” she said.
The king called out the name, and Bardrem hesitated with his hands on the door
handles. He looked over his shoulder at me for a moment that seemed endless, with something on his face that might have been fear or anger.
Teldaru was turning; I felt this, saw it at the edge of my vision. “Go,” I said to Bardrem silently, with my mouth and also with my eyes. He pulled the doors open and went out into the courtyard, where shadows were lengthening on the muddy ground.
“What was that about?” Teldaru said as a serving girl closed the doors.
“Nothing.” My voice was already trembling; I spoke only the one word.
“Hmph.” He picked up a sour melon piece that had been carved into a long, slender shell banded with crystallized sugar and put it in his mouth. I watched his cheeks hollow as he sucked; then I slumped back against my chair and closed my eyes.
“Ispa Nola.” The queen’s breath was hot on my cheek. “Why do you lie?”
The kitchens were hot, of course, but also quiet. It was morning—after the day’s first meal, before the second. Grasni and I used to come at this time, when we wanted to beg Dellena for sweets or drinks or soft, steaming bread.
“It’s been a long time, Mistress,” said Dellena now. She was old, like Mistress Ket, but with clear, bright eyes and hair pulled into such a tight knot that none escaped. She was sitting on a bench, shelling peas into a bowl. Too menial a task for her, I thought, but perhaps it calms her. A black and white kitten scampered around her feet, batting at the pods as she dropped them.
“I am just Nola, here,” I said.
“Nola used to steal from me sometimes. And she said rude things about my mutton stew. I’m pleased Mistress Nola is here instead. Though I’m not sure yet why she is.”
I twitched the folds of my dress—a dark blue one stitched with whorls of silver thread. I had thought it would make me feel strong and beautiful, but it did not; I felt ridiculous, like a child in her mother’s clothing. The hollows under my arms and along my spine were soaked with sweat.
“At the feast last night,” I began, and stopped. I pressed my lips together for a moment. “There was a man—Bardo. He left the Hall before the king could speak to him. I wanted—the king wanted—to make sure that this Bardo knew of our appreciation.”
There were only a few other people in this room with us; very young ones, servants, scrubbing hearthstones and tabletops and the insides of iron pots. No Bardrem, which had both disappointed and relieved me when I arrived.
Dellena frowned and smiled at the same time. “Bardo—yes—I heard of his flight from the Hall. It did not surprise me. He has little love for the company of others. He has been here since midwinter, but has made no friends that I know of.”
“And he will not say where he is from—one of the other cooks told us this last night.”
Dellena threw the last of the pods on the floor and clapped twice. A girl rushed over and knelt to sweep the pods into a bucket. The kitten swatted at her apron laces, rolling on its back and growling a tiny, fierce growl.
“He won’t say, no. When he first came he said only that he’d been a cook’s boy, once. I told him to cut potatoes and carve a duck—simple tests I give anyone who comes looking for a place here. He cut the potatoes into spirals so thin you could see through them, and arranged them on a platter with greens so that they looked like flowers.” She shrugged. “So he’s a cook now, not a cook’s boy—a more distinguished Path, but it doesn’t seem to make him happy.”
Because he’s a poet, I thought, and yet the Pattern always leads him back to kitchens.
“Could you take me to him, then?”
“He’ll be sleeping now. And he’ll likely not say a word, in any case.”
“Please.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, and opened her mouth as if she would say something. In the end, though, she simply rose—slowly, with a hand against the small of her back—and led me among the long, scarred tables to a narrow flight of stairs.
“His room’s the third from the end, with the wooden door. You’ll have to find your own way from here, for I can’t manage the stairs and I need all my girls for the next meal. Take care walking, for though I tell them all to keep their feet dry, they hardly ever listen.”
The stairs were slick: I imagined generations of feet coated in cooking fat or soapy water or sodden bits of vegetables and fruits. I walked slowly, even when I got to the bottom. I passed rooms like Jamenda and Selvey’s, except that one of these had a slatted wood door, not a curtain. The wood was smooth and speckled with holes. I traced one with a fingertip and bent to put my eye to it.
“Come in, Mistress Nola.”
He sounded far away, and tired. I waited for my flush to subside and then I pulled the door open.
He was standing, leaning one shoulder against the wall. His head was angled because the ceiling was too low for him. I remembered his tiny room at the brothel; the notes he’d leave for me on the pallet (like this one), when he knew I’d be looking for him; the blanket smudged with ink and snipped quill ends. This blanket had been pulled tight and straight over the pallet, and there was nothing on it, not even the marks of his body.
“You look terrible,” he said. He pursed his lips in what was almost a pout; above them, his eyes burned. My own lips parted, but he laughed and held up a hand. His slender fingers shook, a bit. The littlest one was crooked and looked swollen around the knuckles.
“No,” he said, “don’t bother speaking. You’ll only tell me why you can’t speak, anyway. No—let me—you look terrible, I was saying. Older. Sallow. Your cheeks are sunken, and your eyes too—but your eyes! So black, with those silver centres—an Otherseer’s eyes, except that yours look dead.”
He was breathing hard. I thought of the tent where we had stood, the last time we found each other, the men on the other side calling, “Master Bardremzo!” when he smacked the cloth. My fear at the force of his anger; my joy at the solid, living presence of him. I felt the same things now. I wanted to touch him—wanted to smile, at least.
What I did was say, “They told me you hardly talk at all.” I did not expect him to smile, or to unclench his other hand, but I hoped he would. He shook his head and his mouth twisted, and I said quickly, “I don’t mean to make light of anything, Bardrem, but I’m so happy—I was certain you were dead.” Stupid girl, I thought as he pushed himself away from the wall and took a limping step toward me. You stupid, stupid girl.
“I nearly was.” He thrust the words through his teeth. “The birds were already circling. If someone hadn’t found me there by the Hill, I would have been carrion. Because he—” Bardrem drew a hand across his forehead, over the wrinkle of scar. “Because of him. Because of you, somehow. It was you I came here for, of course. I didn’t want to, for a long time, but I kept hearing about you: Mistress Nola had a vision on Ranior’s Pathday; Mistress Nola is young and beautiful and will someday eclipse the Master himself . . . I told myself I didn’t have any desire to see this Mistress Nola, but I did, and so I came back. When I was well enough. And I’ve been here since, not looking for you yet, because I knew I’d found you. But now I’ve found him too. Orlo.” He laughed again. “I should have known him all those years ago, at the brothel. Should have glimpsed Master Teldaru in some procession—and I loitered outside the castle walls enough, when I was a boy. But I never did see him. Not then, and not these past few months. And when I learned the king had called for us last night, I thought only that the Pattern had arranged for me to see you at last, and for you to see me.”
“And you did,” I said, as he took another step. He was very close. I could have touched his cheekbone, or held his little finger and stroked its bumps and bends. “You saw me, and—”
“—I saw him, and as soon as I did, everything changed. I’m grateful. Because you aren’t the reason for anything, any more. He is.”
“No,” I said quickly, “you don’t understand—you mustn’t do anything; you should go, now.”
He frowned, and I couldn’t help it: I thought of the boy, scuffing his boot in the dried
mud of Yigranzi’s courtyard. “You said that the last time, before the king’s marriage. So you were telling me to run away because of Teldaru—warning me without telling me why. Are you so ashamed of whatever you’re doing with him that you cannot tell the truth?”
“Bardrem,” I said, low and harsh, “you almost have it; you are close”—I was holding his hand, kneading it—“but if you get any nearer I will never be as I was when I was a girl—I will be changed. . . .”
“So it’s yourself you fear for, after all.” He shrugged. “You are already changed. Go, Nola. Leave.” He was free of my hands and I was small, shrinking away from his disgust and my own.
“No,” I said, but I did leave, stumbling and slipping up the steps.
I was more composed when I walked again into the kitchen. I had learned this—to be poised, because anything else would elicit gossip or questions I could not answer, even if I wanted to.
“Well?” Dellena said as I passed. “How was Bardo? Was he gracious, at least?”
“He called me Mistress Nola,” I said, smiling a rictus smile, and then I was away into the morning.
CHAPTER FORTY
The day after I spoke to Bardrem the city was in flames again. Moabu Bantayo had decided to trade only with Lorselland, Lord Derris told me—weeks ago, he added, glaring at me as if I should have known (which I should have). And last night the richest Belakaoan merchant in the city had been murdered by his stable boy, who had, under questioning, revealed that a group of Sarsenayan merchants had paid him gold to do it, and promised him more when it was done. The boy was now in a cell; before they could join him, several of the Sarsenayan merchants had died at the hands of their own Belakaoan servants. Hours after this, Sarsenay was burning.
“King Bantayo is a fool if he thinks our people will suffer indignity quietly,” Lord Derris rasped.
“Not quietly, no,” Haldrin said, leaning forward at the library table, “but with murder and fire? Surely we are more civilized than this.”
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