The Silences of Home

by The Silences of Home (v5. 0) (epub)

  His instincts, restored and perhaps even keener, told him to remain concealed, told him to pause and consider how he would wound her best, now that she had twisted the threads of his plans. So he stayed there as she turned and walked slowly toward the stairs that would return her to the moonlit palace. He stayed there after that, so still that a sand rat drew very near and snuffled around his feet.

  When he finally did move, he ran. He ran along corridors and covered tower bridges until the doors he sought were before him. The four Queensguards there stepped toward him, arrows nocked to bowstrings.

  “Please,” Baldhron gasped, “I must see the Queen.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The day after Ladhra took him to the room with the deep fountain seemed like the longest Leish had yet passed as a captive. He tried to hear the song of his brother’s army, so that his thoughts would be appropriately occupied—but he could not. He had heard no selkesh blood below the city since he had left his people by the stinking pools. Maybe I cannot hear this song because we do not belong to this place, he thought, and imagining Mallesh’s fury distracted Leish for a time. He tried then to hear the fountain and the underground river that fed it, but these notes were difficult to concentrate on. Leish reached for a different song, fainter but possibly more compelling. When even the delicate, distant music of Nasranesh could not hold his attention, he curled up and tried only to sleep.

  The fountain chamber had looked different in the darkness. At first, weak and confused, he had not recognized it. But then Ladhra had led him past the thrones, and he had remembered them in grey daylight, and the sound of these fountains and channels that had seemed so loud as Dashran bled silently onto the stones. Leish had almost fled after he remembered this, even when she spoke and he realized what she was giving him—perhaps especially then. For how could he accept this gift from her when she had stood beside the Queen and watched Dashran die?

  The pool was quite deep. All his misery had fled as his skin and lungs breathed the water, which was somehow fresh and clean. It had taken him a long time to notice the bottom of the pool. He wove slowly down to it and looked at the layers of bones and bleached coral, and suddenly the water tasted foul. He had plucked up four shells for Ladhra, since they were the only beautiful dead things here, and he did want—Nasran help him—to give her something beautiful.

  I am thankful to her, he thought as they returned to his prison. I am strong again—and he had hated his need and his pleasure.

  Leish sat up with a groan. He touched a hand to the place where her head had rested and summoned again images of Dashran dying, and the selkesh—his friends, his cousins, his brother—swimming beneath the city. He waited for these images to restore—or, more accurately, engender—a feeling of purpose. This did not happen—for he also waited for her.

  As if she will return. I turned away from her. Even if she did return, I wouldn’t be able to explain this. She should never come here again. Soon my brother and Baldhron will end their waiting and attack, and either she or I will die. She should stay away.

  He was still awake at midnight when his door swung open. He rose as she entered, and because he could not explain to her in words she would understand, he crossed the floor and fell to his knees before her. She put her hands in his hair, and he wrapped his arms around her hips. She rocked him, so gently that at first he thought the motion was only his own body’s shaking. She raised him up until he stood against her, wound in her arms and her unbound hair and her breathing. After a time she eased herself away and tugged on his hands, and he smiled at her smile and went with her.

  This time she swam too. He surfaced after a brief, deep dive and saw her in the water, still clinging to the edge of the pool. He laughed and dove again, and she met him beneath. She clutched his waist and burrowed her head against his belly, and he drew her to the other side of the pool so quickly that she did not need a breath. He lifted her into the air and she spluttered, coughed, put her hands on either side of his jaw and pulled herself up to kiss him. When they drew apart, he watched her take a breath; then he took them both beneath again and found her mouth and her skin. She bit his lip when she needed air—so soon—and he let her slip from his arms. He saw her surface through the moonlit ripple of the water; saw her legs, which had kicked so frantically, go still. He saw her hands reach for the rim of the pool. He saw that she was not waiting for him or looking at him, and he took one last water-breath and kicked himself upward to find out why.

  The Queen was standing there, so close that he could see the sheen of the pearls that held her shoes closed. Not sandals, he noted, numbly. Pale, white, soft things—shoes for a bedroom, for night and privacy. He moved his eyes from them, knowing he should not, knowing he must—but she was not looking at him.

  She spoke her daughter’s name, soft and low. Ladhra did not stir in the water beside him. Only when Galha called out over her shoulder did Ladhra move—abruptly, clumsily. She was looking where Galha had looked. She fumbled her way out of the fountain without shifting her gaze. Leish saw something in her face that made him want to bury himself among the ribcages and the hollow pores of coral at the bottom of the pool. But he rose up after her and straightened, dripping, on the stone, and saw the man who was standing between the thrones.

  “You,” Ladhra said, the word thin and vanishing as the water she had borne with her into the air. Baldhron inclined his head in a gesture that could almost have been one of humility or graciousness. She clenched her teeth, which had begun to chatter. “Why is he here?” she said, turning, looking at last into her mother’s face.

  “He informed me of—”

  “Yes,” Ladhra interrupted. Her bones seemed to be chattering now, grinding inside her skin. “Of course he did. But why did you allow him to come here with you?” She did not recognize Galha’s expression. She expected fury or indignation or at the very least disappointment, and she knew what forms these would take—but she saw none of them.

  “He is here,” the Queen said quietly, “because he cares more about this land than you do. You needed to see this.”

  Ladhra heard herself laugh. “Really. Really, Baldhron? Is this so?”

  He smiled and moved his head again. Silver light shivered from his eyes to the pitted flesh of his cheek. “It is as the Queen has said,” he replied evenly. Ladhra thought, Nara and I used to laugh at him. She thought too of the man who stood beside her, and wanted to scream, I’ve been such a fool, Nara, as if her voice would reach east, all the way to the sea.

  “There are two guards outside this chamber,” Galha said. “They will take you to your tower.”

  “And lock me in?” Ladhra said, cringing at her petulance but too cold and distant to repress it.

  “You know that I must,” Galha said, and these words trembled a bit. “Though it grieves me. It does grieve me, Ladhra.”

  Ladhra shook her head and half turned so that she would not have to see her mother’s eyes. She met Leish’s instead. “And Leish?” she asked, still looking at him. “What will you do to him?” The silence was so long that she glanced back at Galha.

  “Go now,” the Queen said, and Ladhra finally heard anger, finally saw it in her lips and the skin beside her eyes.

  “I am to blame,” Ladhra said. “Do not—”

  “Go,” said Galha.

  Ladhra walked past her mother, around the fountain, over the bridge that led to the thrones. Baldhron stepped back as if he were giving her room to pass. “My lady,” he murmured, and she ran the last few steps to the door, where the guards were waiting for her.

  “Tomorrow?” Mallesh repeated.

  “Yes.” Baldhron had already said this several times.

  They were all assembled—as many of them as would fit—in the largest chamber where they had met that first day. Mallesh had no idea how long ago that had been—one month, two, three? Would the fireblossoms have fallen yet around the gathering pool? The only thing he w
as certain of, as he looked at his men, was that they had been down here long enough to grow thin and pale and sick. Even this chamber, where the selkesh did not usually come, stank of them. Their own place was worse. When Baldhron had grimaced and demanded to know what the odour was and how to remove it, Mallesh had said, “It is our skin rotting. We need air as much as water—fresh air, not what is in these tunnels. To be rid of this smell we must go above.”

  “Well, then,” Baldhron had said, “I suppose we must learn to endure it.”

  But now, weeks later, Baldhron was saying something different. He was different: loud and flushed, gesticulating at the maps and weapons that hung from the stone walls. He declared that the plan had changed. Something had happened that would distract the Queen; she was no longer thinking about the selkesh army. This army would attack tomorrow.

  “But,” Mallesh said, groping for words through the aching of his head, innards, flesh, “you were so certain before that we had to wait. What is this thing that has happened?”

  He saw Baldhron’s flush deepen. “I cannot say exactly—just that it has to do with the Queen’s family. For the first time in years, she is concerned with something private that will keep her from noticing other things until it is too late.”

  “But the guards,” Mallesh said, thinking more clearly now because there was something wrong with Baldhron’s words, and the voice with which he spoke them. “You told us the palace on Queenswrit Eve would be quiet, hardly guarded—but that is not so now, even if the Queen is distracted, as you say. Why—”

  “Listen,” Baldhron interrupted, and the muttering that had risen with Mallesh’s words subsided. “My scribes have spent these months feeding you, teaching you about the palace and the realm and the use of real weapons. You are ready. But if you do not wish to join us, after all our efforts to aid you, we will do this thing alone.” Now it was the scribes who murmured. Baldhron swept his gaze over their ranks until they were silent again. “I have led you this far with as much wisdom as I have. My first plan was promising—but the mark of a great leader is his ability and willingness to change his strategy, if such a change will lead to a better outcome. I ask you to trust me as you have until now. If you cannot, we will bid you farewell and carry out the attack ourselves.”

  Leish, Mallesh thought, and wondered with a tired, bruised pang how many of the other selkesh were thinking this. Leish would have known what to do and say. He would have led, in his quiet way, even though leading had never been a thing he had wanted. May Nasran wash me with forgiveness, Mallesh thought, for I am glad he is not here, and I have hoped for his death, yet he is the only one who could help me now.

  “And if we do join you tomorrow,” Mallesh said, “and the attack fails, what then? For as you know,” he continued quickly when Baldhron glared down at him from his place on the bridge, “a great leader should consider all possible outcomes.”

  Baldhron cleared his throat. “Yes. Of course, yes. If . . . such a thing transpired, we would use these tunnels to reach the Sarhenna River. This river and its tributaries would lead us swiftly into wild places where we would not be found. From these places we could escape the realm.”

  Mallesh nodded, as others did. Even if Baldhron had only now formulated this plan, as his voice and manner suggested, it was a good one. Though I will not flee, Mallesh thought. If I do not conquer here, I will die here.

  “If you want to speak to your people,” Baldhron said, “we will await you in—”

  “No,” Mallesh said, straightening his cramped, weak limbs beneath the water. “We do not need to discuss this. It has been our desire since we arrived to attack this city. You convinced us to delay, now you command us to proceed. We will do so. It is what we longed for even before we left the shores of our own land.”

  He watched his men shift and smile. He saw their exhaustion and their hunger smooth away a bit as they rose up from the pool to grasp the swords and straight daggers and axes the scribes had taught them to use. They already carried their own hooked knives, honed and hidden against their chests. They all looked at Mallesh, their oozing, stinking skin aglow almost as the metal was.

  Mallesh also rose and took up his sword. He faced Baldhron across the water. “Tomorrow,” he said.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “The palace is shaped like a flower. Imagine rings of towers instead of petals, each ring, each tower, guarded. The centre is the Queenstower. We will have to work our way from the outer layer in. Years ago there were wells within the palace as well as outside it, but this Queen’s mother constructed a different system of pipes that would bring water to the fountains and kitchens of the palace. These pipes are too narrow for us to use. So we will send men here, to the western wall where the Queensfolk houses are, and here, to the back entrance by the palace crypts. Mallesh and I will lead a larger contingent through the marketplace to the main doors. There are always people about in the marketplace, even at night—we will have to be quiet and careful. While we do this, other groups will surface in the wells nearest the city wall, which has two gates. The guards here always face the desert. Our men will remain at the gates while the rest of us do our work inside the palace. Be silent and swift, wherever you are. Use the moon’s light, but be wary of it. Distract and ambush if you come upon a large group of guards or some that appear very alert. Surprise and shock will carry us into the palace, ring by ring, until we reach the Queen. By the time we do this, there will be no one left within to come to her aid.

  “You know your groups. Make ready now. We move together, two hours after midnight.”

  Baldhron had said more, Mallesh was sure of this, but he could not remember. He was amazed, in fact, that he had remembered as much as he had. The singing of the city’s stone and sand and water was so loud that he felt feverish. It will pass. The thought took shape slowly. He gripped it and clung, and the singing seemed to ebb. It is so powerful because I am finally above. Soon I will be accustomed to this new place, and my strength will return.

  He dug his bare toes against the packed sand of the marketplace and lifted his face to the sky, carefully, so that the nausea he had felt when he first did this would not strike him again. He was still a bit dizzy: the stars spun as they flickered, and the darkness among them spiralled like an ocean waterspout. And there were the towers as well, which seemed to curve in toward each other as if the wind that high was so fierce that it bent the stone. Mallesh raised his arms up, spread his fingers apart, blinked at them and at the sky and palace behind them. He was heavy with desire.

  “Mallesh,” Baldhron said, “come—it is time.”

  Mallesh and Baldhron led their forty scribes and selkesh among the odd structures of the marketplace. These forty would hang back, at the main doors; only the leaders would step up to the guards there, who might be perplexed or curious or even suspicious, immediately before they died. Mallesh fingered his spear, concealed beneath a cloak given him by Baldhron when they reached the outside. No metal clanked or gleamed as they moved, and the few folk who were awake at this hour simply nodded at them. “A large group of friends,” Baldhron had said, “walking without haste or apparent direction, disturbing no one. This is how we will appear to anyone who sees us.”

  “The doors are just around this turn,” Baldhron murmured now. Mallesh swallowed. His throat was already dry, though the cloth beneath his cloak was still damp from his swim to the well shaft. As if he sensed Mallesh’s thirst, Baldhron said, “Would you like to drink one more time before we proceed? There is a fountain just here. . . .”

  Mallesh drank deeply, head down, eyes closed. When he straightened to allow his men to drink as well, there was a yllosh-woman standing with Baldhron.

  “Wait,” Baldhron said, raising his hand to silence the noise that was rising in Mallesh’s throat. “Do not act in haste—remember my counsel.”

  Despite the sound in his own head like a whirring of starmoth wings, Mallesh heard a low growl from his m
en. “We have no time to waste on yllosh scum,” he hissed. “We go now, before I do this one harm.”

  Baldhron took a step toward him. “Listen to me. This is Wollshenyllosh, the fish . . . yllosh-person who witnessed your brother’s capture and Dashran’s murder. The same one who has acted as translator for Leish and the Queen these past few months.”

  Mallesh glanced at Wollshenyllosh. She was looking at him steadily. He could find no mockery or malice in her eyes, though he wanted to. The noise of his hatred receded a bit, making room for thought. Baldhron is not surprised to see her. Why do we linger here, when he was so eager to begin? “And what,” Mallesh said, “does she herself say of these things she has seen and done?”

  Wollshenyllosh was silent for a moment. Mallesh heard the song of the city again, and closer sounds, like windbells and creaking wood and distant voices laughing.

  “It is true,” she said at last, “that the quarrels of our people are ancient and strong—but they are between us. When drylanders intervene in our affairs, we are not happy. For although we are not friends, we are kin.”

  Mallesh felt splinters beneath his nails and loosened his hold on his spear.

  “So when this Queen killed your man—even though he had tried to attack one of ours—we were displeased. And your brother Leish, I have discovered, is brave. And,” she added after a short pause, “we know where you and your people have been this past while. We have known almost since your arrival—but we have not informed anyone. Though we could have, perhaps for great reward. This is what I say to you.”

  Mallesh closed his eyes as a surge of dizziness rocked him. When it had mostly subsided, he cleared his throat, tried to think as Leish would. “I see,” Mallesh said in the most confident tone he could muster at such low volume and with such sickness in his gut. “And I thank you for your discretion.” His tongue felt heavy against his teeth. He had been prepared to scream and draw blood with spear and knife, not to attempt diplomacy with a yllosh-woman who knew, who had known all along. . . . “If, then, you are so impressed by my brother’s character and so annoyed at this Queen, why not aid us in what we are about to do? There might be reward in this as well.” He thrust the words from his mouth as if he were trying not to taste them.