A Bloom in the North
Page 29
"Benih said only some of them died," I said finally when Kaduin's stare became intolerable. "Most of them are probably in the empire's labor camps right now... which means they'll still be alive when we get back. We have to see if you're right about finding better ruins in the north. If there are records there we could use to save our people, we have to go. And for that we need Roika. I doubt the Jokka aboard will sail us north without him."
"They might not if we leave him behind," Kaduin said. "But if we kill him outright, they might give in to the inevitable. And then the others would be safe. We could solve all our problems."
I stopped, straightened. Looked at him, ears flat.
"Well?" Kaduin demanded. "Am I wrong? One hit with one of your throwing claws, ke eperu, and the Stone Moon would fall!"
"No," I said. "No, it wouldn't, Kaduin. Haven't you been listening to the stories our refugees bring? The Stone Moon ministry is large. If we kill Roika, we'll merely put a new Stone Moon emperor on his seat... one convinced that his enemies are willing to assassinate him. Do you want to rid Ke Bakil of a tyrant only to replace him with another whose paranoia is justified by actual facts?"
Kaduin looked away, braided tail twitching angrily.
"Kaduin," I said, my fatigue welling to the surface. "Kaduin, I don't like it either. But there's something I want more than his death, and so should you."
He glared at me, then slung his pack over his shoulder. I hadn't noticed until then that there were tears streaking his chin. "I'll be outside," he said and left.
I let my head fall until it rested on the bags, and that's where I was when Keshul said behind me, "Ke anadi. I grieve for your loss."
"Honored Oracle," I said without lifting my head. "Did you know?"
"That he would find your settlement?" he said. "You know as well as I do that it was a matter of time."
"I don't know if I can do this," I said.
I felt the chill of him advancing before I felt his hand on my shoulder. "Thenet. I'm not in the habit of doing this, but... will a promise give you strength for the task?"
I looked up. He was crouching beside me and in the umber gloom of the tent he glowed, a faint, milky light thrown off his impossible moon-shell skin. On his chest, shoulder and ribs there were gouges that gathered shadows, but not the brown ones that riddled everything else in the tent... his were lavender, as if he stood beneath a permanent star-strewn night. In all the weeks I'd known Keshul I'd not heard him tell a fortune, speak a portent, bruit his otherworldly knowledge. He'd acted with a supreme confidence in all he did, but then, so did Roika. Keshul did very little at all to stress his right to speak in the name of a god, and I who had believed in the gods all my life had been prepared to be skeptical.
But it had never seemed to matter to him whether I believed he was the Void's avatar. That more than anything had convinced me.
"A promise," I repeated, wary.
"I know," he said with a faint smile. "It's a risky thing to request of a diviner. Shall I go on anyway?"
"All right," I said, the words slow off my tongue.
His eyes remained close and considering, but my reflection drained from their surfaces. I saw stars in them instead. "Go on that ship, Thenet. When you come back, Ke Bakil will be free."
I choked on a gasp, my body trembling under his cold hand. To add hope to the conflict in my heart... it was almost more than I could bear.
Keshul released me. The stars in his eyes became more mundane, the reflections of the rare metal buckles on our packs, the glint of light thrown into the tent through a flap that shivered in the wind.
"Is it true?" I whispered.
Keshul rested his open palm against his brow, touched it to his groin and then his heart. "By the gods, I vow." He smiled with a hint of tooth. "And I don't do that often."
I drew in a shaky breath. "All right, honored Oracle. I'll do my duty." I squared my shoulders and finished, "And thank you. For not telling him."
Keshul said, quiet, "It's for you to tell him... if you want to. I wouldn't blame you for deciding against it." He lifted the tent flap and said to my back, "We'll be waiting for you when you return." And then the flap swung shut, its breeze cooling my spine.
I resumed packing, trying not to think. Not about the settlement destroyed and scattered. Not about the hope that all these deaths, all the suffering might mean something in the end. And very definitely not about the male with whom I was about to embark on a voyage I couldn't make without him, and the anadi who remained between us even in her absence. Particularly in her absence.
As I turned toward the tent flap I came face to face with Seper, who was entering. I stopped, then forced myself to keep moving, to shrug the eperu's pack off my shoulder and hand it over. Seper received it and then embraced me... and I allowed myself the luxury of leaning against it. Neither of us was good at this. I had never been comfortable with my weaknesses, but Dlane had seen them so effortlessly I had lost the habit of hiding them from her. Once she was gone... and then there had been so many people to be strong for.
After the revelation of the true legacy of Roika's violence became incontrovertible, Ilushet, strong, serene Ilushet, had been inconsolable. Had blamed itself for not rescuing me, despite knowing the impossibility of it. And its grief had been nothing to Barit's, who compounded it with an awkwardness around me that left us both uncomfortable in one another's presence. Of my intimates left from het Narel, only Seper had accepted the consequences of that night, perhaps because it too had lived through House Edze's attentions: it had its own guilt to carry and had no shoulders left to bear any on my behalf. It was Seper who'd brought me cloths to wrap my chest; Seper who'd helped me with the bleeding as my body changed; Seper who'd asked me how I wanted to be addressed rather than stumbling through any number of embarrassing alternatives.
I had told it, truthfully, that it should call me "friend."
"Thenet," it said against my braided mane. "Oh, Thenet. The settlement."
I closed my eyes and inhaled the scent of it, like the spice of grasses off the plains. "That's the second time Edze has taken something from us," I said, exhausted.
"When will he be called to account for his crimes?" Seper asked, stepping back from me.
I thought of the blood I'd spilled in het Narel and said, "What we do will come back to us in the end."
"Let it be so," Seper said. "Are you ready? Kaduin's already aboard, the avatar escorted him up. The ship will be leaving within the hour."
"Let's go," I said. I did not say I was ready because I didn't think I ever would be.
I had loved the ocean once, its vastness, the unfathomable world beneath its heaving surface, the gloss of its waves with their salty lace edges. But when it became complicit in the destruction of my beloved and my life, all its magic dissipated. I had spent several days waiting for Roika and the susurrus had chafed at my ears, reminding me constantly of the Birthwell and the beginning of the end of my life. Waking every day to the taste of it in the air and the sound of it in my ears had been profoundly alienating, and Roika's Jokka had aggravated my feelings with the creation they'd set afloat on the ocean's back: a ship, they called it, not a boat, a thing large enough for a hundred people, surmounted by unlikely canvas sails that reminded me of the ones that had shaded Ilushet's caravan wagons. This vessel was so large the eperu built a pier to reach it, for it could not easily come to shore, and I often stared down that narrow walkway that led to an abrupt end, like an unfinished sentence I had forgotten how to speak.
This vessel, Keshul told me, had been put together based on the stories in ancient records and refined by the bitter experience of several years. But they'd succeeded in recreating the ocean-going vessels of our forebears, and in their last journey they'd sighted land before turning back and heading home to tell the emperor. Three months, they'd reported. Three months we would spend on the emperor's ship, avoiding his company. Once we reached land we could go our separate ways, he to whatever had moved him to
the north, and I and mine to seek the ruins that could illumine the story Kaduin had found on a rare intact wall in the grasslands... one that had told of an affliction that had felled the breeders for lack of... what? We knew not.
We prayed we would find out.
It was late summer but the wind off the waves was cool and whipped my cloak and tail around my legs. I drew the fabric closer at my breast, squinting up at the height of the vessel moored at its end of the pier. There was a ramp leading to the deck and Seper ascended that precarious bridge without incident or challenge.
I took a step and rested my foot there, flexing my toes. If Keshul was right, this act would lead to the end of my journey. Since Dlane's death I had done nothing but work toward her dream of a Ke Bakil that treated justly with all its people, no matter their sex. The sanctuary I'd built—and lost—had not been self-sustaining, despite the struggles we'd undergone to create it. And I... I was weary, weary of laboring on without her, weary of turning to her and discovering her missing, of staying up because some part of me was waiting for her return. Many days I woke without faith that I would see her aims achieved before I died, and those days were better than the ones where I woke feeling broken because she wasn't lying beside me.
I closed my eyes and walked up the ramp to the ship. The only way left was forward.
The ship had a name: Fedre, "Endurance." This, one of the eperu ship-handlers told me, was because it was the fourth such ship they'd built in their efforts to recreate the art, and it was the only one to have survived. The emodo who'd designed all the ships had christened it themselves, and everyone referred to the ship as one might a neuter, as a sacred it.
The crew was comprised of almost a hundred Jokka, twenty emodo and the remainder eperu, for the work of hauling in the great sails or positioning them to catch the wind was taxing. And if there was no wind there were oars stowed below, and no one could work them for the durations needed but the eperu. I was given a tour by the same eperu who'd explained the name to me; there were narrow caverns beneath the floor of the ship where people slept and stored the great kegs of water and food and supplies that long journeys required. The water of the sea could be drunk for short periods of time and was even healthful, but over longer periods freshwater was a necessity. There were fishing nets and hunting spears for the eperu who'd become adept at diving for water prey, tethered by the waist to the ship so the currents wouldn't bear them away. I found the whole matter as mysterious as the sea that had inspired it and could well imagine why it had taken years for these determined Jokka to pioneer the innovations needed to make it possible. I could even feel a memory of wonder that they had accomplished so much.
Kaduin was standing at the ship's rail looking out over the waves as the crew made ready to depart. When he heard my footsteps, he glanced behind him, wary; seeing me, his ears flicked forward and his shoulders eased. "Ke Thenet."
"Kaduin," I said. "Were you expecting your father?"
"Yes," he said, wrinkling his nose. He glanced at me. "Do you think I should talk to him?"
"Do you want to?" I asked, joining him at the rail.
"No," he said. "We have nothing to discuss, he and I. We've made our choices."
I thought of Dlane, who'd dismissed Roika's dream of uniting the Jokka and bettering their situation as an emodo's fancies. I thought of my settlement burning. Who had died? Who had lived? The eperu and the emodo who'd been enslaved... they would manage. But our anadi, accustomed to sunlight and freedom and the right to choose their course... they would not do so well in the underground prisons of the empire. Would they make House Reña's choice? And if so, would there be anyone to help them enact it?
"I suppose we have," I said.
He rested a hand over mine on the rail and there we watched the waves shift, slapping against the high wall of the vessel.
Seper joined us later. "We have been assigned quarters and I have put our bags in them. The emperor is aboard... they are casting off. We'll go out with the tide."
"I guess we're committed now," Kaduin murmured.
"Three months," I said.
"Three months on the ship," Seper said. "Who knows how long once we reach land? We may walk weeks before finding what we need."
Kaduin's ears flattened. "Gods protect us from that. We can't wait much longer. The Jokka can't."
"We'll find what we need," I said, and not because Keshul had promised it to me... but because I couldn't bear the possibility that we wouldn't. After everything we'd gone through, to fail would be too cruel for the gods to countenance.
"Would you like to see where they've put us?" Seper asked.
"I'll go," Kaduin said. "The pattern in the waves is hypnotizing me." He smiled with a quirk he'd had as a child and never lost. "Too much longer and I might walk over the edge."
"By all means, then," I said, "Go."
I stayed, though; watched the crew go about their inexplicable errands and attempted to puzzle out the reasons for their actions. And then the great ship shivered and without warning we were adrift... adrift and then gliding, the breeze combing my mane back from my face, chilling the gold earring. I tasted the sea spray, the salt in the wind, and shuddered.
"Quite a thing they've done, isn't it," Roika said behind me.
My shoulders tightened and I looked down. He outraged me, I hated him, I feared him... and he was a part of me. He was necessary. He had wanted me at his side. Emodo—the Void—without which the Trinity is incomplete... yes, and the Trifold as well. I touched the pendant at my neck.
And then I realized what he'd said. "That they've done?" I repeated, turning to look at him.
He snorted, a thick sound in his nose, and took Kaduin's place at the rail. "You expect me to take credit for their work? Don't be ridiculous, Thenet. I have done many bad things in my life, but I am not solely composed of flaws." He lifted his face to the wind, closing his eyes. Behind us I heard the bark of commands from the Jokka at work on the deck, but they seemed distant. What was very close was the sight of his face... of the hollows under his cheekbones, the too-sharp angle of his jaw, the fatigue I saw in the lines leading from his eyes. When he opened them, the metal-dark gray I remembered was clouded with pale blood. From what, I wondered... too many worries? Too little sleep? "Keshul said you were seeking a secret in the north. What is it?"
"And I should tell you?" I asked. "Why? So you can sabotage my attempt?"
He sighed. "I suppose I deserve your mistrust."
"Yes?" I said, amazed. "Did you think otherwise?"
"I'd hoped otherwise, I admit," he said. "But tell me, Thenet. Have you not approved of some of what I've accomplished?"
I looked away.
"I promised to build roads," he said. "I built them. I promised food, and there is no more famine... indeed, there is surplus in our warehouses. I promised fresh water, and cities as far south as het Serean have enough for gardens. The forests are receding, but imperial ministers are replanting them in better locations. There are couriers for mail and messages. Trade is flourishing. We have irrigation now, and granaries, aqueducts and ships. We have money that everyone trusts. There are even children again. Would you complain of my results?"
"No," I said, because it was not in me to deny them. I had once wanted what Roika promised. Still wanted. But: "Your methods are appalling."
"I know," he said, surprising me. "But they work."
"They work now," I said. "But they're unsustainable."
"I know that too," he said. "Why else do you think I'm going north?"
My eyes narrowed. "You're going north to find a better way?"
"Yes," he said. "I have no idea what it is, but our ancestors lived there, Thenet. Maybe it's better there."
"And if it's not?" I asked.
"Then I'll hope that your mission is more successful than mine," he said. "And if it is..." He smiled without humor. "Then yes, I will help you implement whatever solution you find."
"In your own way," I guessed.
I did not want to feel pity for the male who'd destroyed House Reña and my second attempt at a home on the plains. "You still chose to walk it."
"Yes," he said. "I did. I won't deny that. You chose a road yourself, Thenet. Can you tell me it's made you happy? More importantly, can you tell me what it's done for the Jokka? Can you say you've done as much for them as I have?"
I flattened my ears against my skull... but I said nothing.
He smiled but there was no happiness in it. "In some things you haven't changed at all, ke eperu. You're still honest about your ambivalence, honest in a way I could have used when I was building the empire. We could have made something very good together. Maybe it would have been better than the Stone Moon. But we'll never know now." He glanced at the earring I still wore. "You don't want to tell me why you're going north... all right. I won't ask. And I'll avoid you for the voyage. We can go our separate ways once we land."
He left me there, stunned. At the concession, at the graciousness of it... and of his admiration for my candor. He had changed in the years since we'd joined battle in het Narel.
And so had I.
Ke eperu, he'd called me. But I was anadi now... because of him.
The area below the deck was divided into chambers, most of which were accessed from the deck by trap doors and ladders. Our quarters were among those chambers. I watched the horizon long past sunset; when my cheeks had grown chafed from the constant wind, I left the rail and asked one of the crew to lead me to our room. When I carefully climbed down the stairs I found Kaduin and Seper already inside, sitting on cots that had been fastened to hooks on the walls.