by Pearl North
Was that why she hadn’t killed him outright?
Po watched Thela as she read correspondence. She sighed and set a letter down beside her on the couch. She took up the pen. “The Shenashian ambassador of trade has lifted the tariff on barley exports,” she wrote.
From where Po sat he could see through the archway into the yard. Lightning suddenly flickered across the sky outside. It was a clear, warm day. Yet for an instant the sky went black. A split second later, everything was normal again. Had he imagined it? He looked at Thela. She sat with her back to the doorway and seemed not to have noticed. She picked the letter up again and read it and smiled. “That’s better.” She turned to the next letter in her stack of correspondence.
* * *
Later that day Thela left his bower and Ymin Ykobos came to tend him.
“You never should have done that to her,” she said under her breath as she fed him. “I’m not sure how you did it. When I discovered it, I was so shocked I simply reacted. Of course, I would have been duty bound to tell her the truth anyway.” Her gaze fell on bandaged hands. “You were a great adept,” she said. “It’s too bad.”
“What, you mean they won’t heal?”
“Well, they’ll heal, eventually. But without intervention it’s very unlikely they’ll ever be as strong as they were, and as for channeling energy in kinesthetic trance…” She shook her head.
“Without intervention? But you’re an adept. You can intervene! Please!”
Ymin gave him a stricken look. “I can’t. She’s forbidden it.”
“She’s taking kinesiology from me.” The realization sent a jet of hot agony through his heart. Suddenly the desire to hurt Thela overwhelmed him. He wanted to kill her—for his friends and for his hands. But as long as she had the pen, there was little anyone could do against her. “You must try to take the pen away from her,” Po told Ymin.
“The pen?”
“You don’t know of it? She has a pen. It looks like a wand in the shape of a flower. It’s very dangerous. Anything written with it becomes true,” he said.
Ymin smiled at him and pushed the hair back from his forehead. “Ease can make one imagine all sorts of things,” she said.
“No. It’s true. It’s real! You haven’t seen it? Ask Mab. Mab knows.” That was a risk, but it was important that Ymin believe him. She was the only person he had access to who might be willing and able to take it from Thela.
“Mab?”
“Thela’s spy.”
“That old rumor? Oh, Po. The Ease has the better of you. Everyone knows that’s a myth. Thela has no spies.”
Was she joking? Everyone knew Thela had spies. Po stared at Ymin and she looked back at him with absolute sincerity. Uh-oh. Thela had changed that, too. What else had she written while he was asleep?
“You’ll have to be careful. You may need allies,” he told her. “I’ll do what I can but gather those you trust and those who are critical of Thela. The sooner the better, before she—”
“Critical of Thela?” said Ymin. “Who would be critical of Thela?”
When Ymin left, Po forced himself to get out of bed. He went outside and lay on his back in the grass. He stared up at the blue sky, at infinity. If he could take flight, like the wing, he’d be free. He closed his eyes and pretended to soar high above the plain, looking down on it in all its many shades of tan and gray. When had he begun to love the plain and its emptiness?
Of course it was empty no more, tan and gray no more. It was as green and lush as Ilysies now. Or so Thela had written. Were there ever unintended consequences to her decrees? He had no way of knowing.
Suddenly daylight flickered to night and then back to day again. That had happened a couple of times in the past few days. It worried him. He thought it might have to do with how much Thela was using the pen. It seemed impossible that something so powerful could not cause unintended consequences.
In The Book of the Night Endymion had told Iscarion he needed to “refresh” this world. And Hilloa had that theory of dimensions and pocket universes—the sticks in the bag. They could be anything, she’d said.
What if this world was not a terraformed asteroid, but a whole pocket dimension? And what if the “sticks” of this dimension, the forces that gave it space and time, were stories? Perhaps the world became barren because it needed more stories. And perhaps Thela using the pen to edit the “stories” that were already here was further weakening the fabric of existence.
At the moment the land was prosperous, but what would happen if these odd day-to-night shifts continued, or worsened? If the pen had caused them, then maybe there was a way to use the pen to fix them.
“Hey,” someone said.
Po opened his eyes, squinting in the sun. Careful not to use his hands, he rolled onto his side and pushed himself up with one elbow.
A dark shape stood on the other side of the latticed brick wall—Myr.
“Hey,” Po said in return.
There was a scraping sound and Myr’s dark head appeared over the top of the wall. Po’s heart raced. That was all he needed now, an attack by a jealous male. He struggled to his feet. It was awkward, not using his hands. Everything was awkward.
He managed to gain his feet and he started backing away. Until he noticed that Myr was not coming after him. He sat on top of the wall watching Po, a frown on his face. “What happened to you?” he asked Po. “I heard you screaming the other night.”
Po took a deep breath, and decided to tell Myr everything. He couldn’t handle being alone anymore. He needed a friend, even if it was another male. He opened his mouth. “Queen Thela—” he said, but that was as far as he got. The words, held inside for so long, all tried to rush out of him at once and he choked. Heat rushed to his face and he struggled for breath. His own sob sounded harsh and raw in his ears. His vision wavered as scalding tears overflowed them and ran down his face.
He couldn’t see. He heard Myr land in the yard, and his footsteps. Po rubbed his face in the crook of his elbow to clear his vision.
Myr stood a few paces away, staring and looking uncertain.
Pain, rage, and grief made Po reckless. “If you want to kill me, here’s your big chance.” He lifted his bandaged hands. “I can’t stop you.”
Myr looked from his face to his hands and then back again. “What happened?” he repeated.
Po swallowed the knot in his throat and managed to say, “She made me break them.”
“She? You mean Queen Thela?”
He nodded. He was past words now. The look of horror on Myr’s face, the act of speaking of what had happened all brought the reality back to him more vividly, somehow, than the constant ache of his broken bones and the sight of his bandaged hands.
And his friends. His best friends, who’d come to rescue him, were gone. Gone where? Just gone. Don’t think about that.
“Oh,” said Myr. He stepped closer and rested a hand on Po’s shoulder, lightly, like a bird that might fly away again at any moment. “I’m sorry.”
Po swallowed more tears and forced speech from his raw throat. “Why should you care? You should be glad. This is a big opportunity for you.”
“No,” said Myr. “She’s still obsessed with you. I haven’t seen her in days. Not since you sent her to me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t deny it. I heard you tell her to visit me. And she did, to make you happy. She loves you.”
Po could not support the naivety of Myr’s words. He sank to the ground under their weight, and Myr sat with him. He rested his hand on Po’s shoulder again and squeezed.
“I hate her,” said Po.
“Well she loves you, though it may not benefit you.” He nodded to Po’s hands, which were lying in his lap, useless. “She really made you break them yourself?”
Po nodded. Tears rolled down his face. “Finger by finger.”
Myr said nothing for a moment. He moved his hand to Po’s other shoulder and pulled Po ag
ainst him. “That’s horrible. How did you manage to obey?”
“I had no choice. She has this pen.” An idea came to him. “It’s very dangerous. It’s a device of the Ancients. Anything she writes with it comes true. She wrote me br-breaking m-my f-f-f—”
“Shh,” said Myr. “You don’t have to say it.”
Po let himself sink against Myr. In some ways this was the most incredible thing that had happened to him so far. He was accepting comfort from another male.
But he didn’t have to pretend anything with Myr. And since Po would love nothing better than for Thela to forget he even existed, he wasn’t in competition with Myr anymore.
And Myr seemed to sense this. For the better part of an hour, they simply sat together. Clouds rolled in from the east and the yard cooled. Po shivered.
“Come on,” said Myr, standing. He helped Po up by the elbows and guided him inside. He helped Po down onto the couch and fetched a cup of water, which he held to Po’s mouth. Po drank gratefully.
It was so odd, being tended to by another male. It was completely outside Po’s frame of reference. What was it like for Myr? “This is weird,” he said, when he’d finished drinking and Myr had set the cup aside.
Myr smiled a little crookedly. “Yeah.” He sat down in the chair beside the couch. “But I heard you. I was up all night that night. I don’t care if you’re my rival—nobody deserves that.” His eyes grew wide.
“Do you realize what you just said?” asked Po.
Myr opened his mouth, paused, then closed it again. He stared out the archway into the yard. “Not until I said it, but … you did me a good turn when you didn’t have to, and … I won’t take it back. It’s true.”
“Do you believe me about the pen?”
Myr stared at him, fear and speculation in his eyes. “Is there anything else I can do for you? Are you hungry? Do you need … anything?”
“The pen is real.”
Myr’s larynx bobbed. “Strange things have been happening.”
Po nodded.
“Mynae is gone.”
Po didn’t say anything. He just kept staring at Myr.
“She displeased Thela when she gave a private performance for Alys Memnon. Now no one knows where she is. It’s like she’s just vanished.”
“With the pen she can do that and much more,” said Po. “Have you noticed the weather lately?”
“The lighting?”
“I think it’s a side effect somehow. She’s using the pen a lot. It happens when she’s written several things in a row with it.”
“What else has she written?” asked Myr.
“There’s been so much. Remember when the river flooded?”
“I heard about it in practice.”
“That was one of the mistakes.”
“And the rabbits?”
“That, too.”
Myr took a deep breath and sat back. Po watched him. He stared at nothing, picking at a loose thread on the hem of his tunic.
“She’s not just a threat to others,” said Po. “It’s only a matter of time before she comes to harm herself. But you can protect her.”
Myr met Po’s eyes. His gaze burned with thwarted intensity. Good. He’d hit a nerve. “For her sake, you must steal the pen.”
A fine sheen of sweat stood out on Myr’s brow. He looked like a rabbit caught in a trap. Had Po moved too soon?
“And do what with it?” he asked.
“Take a boat out past the breakers and drop it into the ocean.”
Myr stared at Po in silence. Po held his gaze. “And when she discovers that it’s gone?”
His heart pounded. “We’ll make it look like it was me.”
“She’ll kill you.”
He shrugged.
Myr’s eyes grew bright. He turned from Po and rested his head in his hands. “I don’t like this,” he said, his voice thick. “I’m just her consort. I’m just supposed to keep up my appearance and please the queen in bed. This is … I shouldn’t have to deal with this.”
“I know,” said Po.
Myr whirled on him. “Is this what you learned at the Libyrinth?”
Po opened his mouth but Myr cut him off. “If this is liberation, you can keep it!” He stood and strode toward the door. “I don’t want to deal with this.” He left.
17
Conspiracy
Po decided that if Ymin Ykobos wouldn’t heal his hands, he’d try to do it himself.
It took him days of concentration just to get past the pain and enter kinesthetic trance. He’d never tried to do this on himself before. Would it even work?
He bit through one end of a bandage and slowly unwrapped it using his mouth to pull the gauze away. He tried not to move his fingers but that was almost impossible. With every shift, hot spikes of pain drilled through the general ache and brought tears to his eyes.
But that wasn’t as bad as the sight of his mangled hand. The fingers were swollen, the joints bruised a deep purple. He closed his eyes and started unwrapping his other hand.
He had blessedly little recollection of breaking the fingers of his left hand. It had been even worse, of course, because he’d had to do it with the broken fingers of his right. He kept passing out, but Thela revived him. Near the end, he was eager to finish, simply so he could stop.
Now Po placed the palms of his misshapen hands together, and breathed. It was not like the visions he had when attuning himself to others. It was … He experienced himself—his energy pathways, his breath and blood and the electrical impulses of his nervous system—from the inside. It was like being caught in the rushing current of a stream, swept away through the twists and turns and eddies of his body and mind’s functioning.
It was all in constant motion, too swift for him to touch, observe, or manipulate. It wasn’t going to work.
Po tried to withdraw to normal consciousness, but he couldn’t do that, either. He was caught in the stream of his own being and he couldn’t get his head above water. He was drowning.
Suddenly a tree branch dipped into the river just ahead. Po grabbed for it. The black tide of pain that flooded him forced the remaining air from his lungs but a second later he was out of the trance, lying on his back in his bed, gasping.
Ymin Ykobos looked down at him, her eyes wild. “What in the name of the Mother are you doing?” She held his hands apart by the wrists. Her look of horror only deepened as she took in the bandages scattered on the bed. “You did this yourself?”
He nodded.
“Mother.” She placed his hands gently on his chest and rubbed her face. “Why?”
Wasn’t it obvious? “If you’re forbidden to heal my hands, I thought perhaps I could do it myself.”
“But you know how dangerous that is.”
“I’ve done a few things with kinesiology no one’s supposed to be able to do. I thought maybe I could do this, too. I knew it was a risk, but if it would return to me the use of my hands, it would be worth it.”
“The use of your hands?”
“As an adept.”
“It means that much to you?”
“Of course.”
Ymin sighed. “But you’re a consort of the queen! The whole reason your mother apprenticed you to me in the first place was because she feared you would not be chosen by a good woman. But now you have secured for yourself the best consortship any male could hope for. What more could you want?”
“What more? How about a wife who doesn’t force me to break my own hands?”
Ymin reddened. “Well, that was extreme. But you betrayed her! And did she execute you for your crime, or cast you aside? No. She kept you.”
“I don’t want to be kept. I’m an adept. I want to heal. Just because I’m a male doesn’t mean I’m only good for fucking and siring. But none of that makes any difference now, because if Thela keeps on with what she’s doing she’ll destroy us all anyway.”
Ymin sighed. “Shh. Try to calm down, Po. You’re being hysterical. Here.” She t
ook a packet of powder from the pocket of her robe and stirred the contents into a cup of water. “Drink this. You need to relax. And I have to rewrap your hands, so it’ll be just as well if you can sleep through that.”
Po hesitated. He didn’t want the Ease. He wanted to keep arguing with Ymin. But at the same time, he was so tired, and his hands hurt so much.… He nodded and let her put the cup to his lips. He drank and slept.
* * *
“I heard what you said to Adept Ykobos,” said Myr. It was later that day, or maybe the next, Po wasn’t sure. “Do you really believe that?”
Po was still groggy from the Ease Ymin had given him. It had been a healthy dose. “Believe what?”
“That you can be an adept even though you’re a male.”
Po wanted to either laugh or cry. He decided to laugh. “Yeah, I do.”
Myr frowned. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. Not you. Don’t get pissed. It’s just … Oh, Goddess…” Tears won in the end anyway and for a little while, Po couldn’t speak. “Being male doesn’t make you stupid, Myr,” he said, when he was able. “We’re not really all that different from women.”
“How can you say that?”
“Yes, we’re different, obviously, but we’re all human. We’re more alike than we are different. That’s what I mean.”
“But we’re so emotional, it overpowers our thinking. Everybody knows that.”
“Maybe we’re like that because everybody expects us to be like that. I’ve met men from other places and they’re not like we are. If they can be different, so can we, if we want to be.”
“I’m proud of who I am,” said Myr. He sounded a little defensive.
* * *
That night a great wail went up all over the city, and perhaps beyond. It sounded as if all of Ilysies cried out in anguish. Nearer, within the palace, Po heard people running, shouting—more screams and cries. What had Thela done now?
It was late. Ymin Ykobos had fed and bathed Po and he lay in bed. Hours passed and an unearthly silence fell. Po was thirsty. A ewer with a straw sat on a table beside the bower.
Sitting up without using your hands was awkward. He lay there wondering if it was worth the effort. He heard footsteps. He strained his neck to raise his head, half hoping and half fearing it was Thela. It wasn’t. In the dim light from the stars outside, Po saw a shadow enter the room. But not from the door; from the garden. It was Myr. Po lay his head back down. “Myr,” he whispered. Relief that he still lived poured through him like fresh, cool water.