The Silences of Home

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

  Wollshenyllosh’s smile was kind, perhaps regretful, and he stiffened. “We will not intervene—not for the Queen and not for you. We leave our lakes and oceans only to come here, for our people are fascinated by the dryland goods we trade for, but we do not involve ourselves in the lives and disputes of others. No reward is worth the risk of never again breathing our home waters.”

  Mallesh felt the towers above him, and the sky whose stars were arrayed differently from the ones he knew. He trembled for a moment, and sensed the selkesh behind him trembling, and he forced anger from his confusion. “Why are you here, then?” he demanded, ignoring Baldhron’s swift, “Quietly, Mallesh!” Mallesh shook Baldhron’s hand away from his arm. “To awe us with the wisdom and morals of your people—to belittle and shame us yet again?”

  Wollshenyllosh gazed at him so evenly and for such a long, silent time that she did not need to speak her “No” aloud. “We will not fight with or for you,” she finally said, unclasping a bag attached to her seavine belt. The scales on her hand and forearm glittered as she moved. “But, as Baldhron requested, we will aid you in another way.”

  The key she drew from the bag was long and slender. She held it up by its notched end. Mallesh frowned at it, then at Baldhron, who was smiling and holding out his own hand.

  “Thank you,” Baldhron said after he had plucked it from her fingers. “You have done well. When next we meet I will make sure that you receive some form of compensation, even if you continue to insist that you do not desire it.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, “we will not meet again. I will soon return to my home waters—after my people and I see where your strokes lead you tonight.”

  She slipped away from them, and there was no flash of moonlight on scales to show where she had gone.

  Mallesh turned to Baldhron and spoke so that he would not begin to tremble again. “Give me the key. And show me the way to Leish, once we are inside.”

  Baldhron opened his mouth to reply, then closed it as an old woman shuffled by, peering, pursing her cracked lips. When she had passed, with several backward glances, Mallesh looked again at Baldhron. He was no longer holding the key.

  “Of course you wish to free your brother immediately,” he said. “It would be my first desire, if I were in your place. But think, Mallesh: he will be weak and sick. He would be a hindrance to us in the first lightning strike of battle. Safer to leave him where he is. We must continue with our plan: you take your men to the eastern towers, I take mine west, and we meet in the northern corridor to begin our assault on the next layer of towers. When we have successfully taken the palace, we will free Leish together.”

  Mallesh knew his men would expect him to protest. He should protest—he, the compassionate brother and leader. But he bowed his head as if resignation, and said, “You are right. He will be safer where he is, for now.” When his men began to whisper, he rounded on them and snapped, “Think of him—think only of his well-being,” and glared at them until they too bowed their heads.

  “Excellent,” Baldhron said. “Now—shall we go inside?”

  All the wells of the Queenscity swarmed with shadows. Scribes and selkesh climbed out into sandy squares, broad lanes, the fragrant, rustling spaces of enclosed courtyards. Some of the selkesh faltered when they stood in the open air again after so long, but the scribes urged them firmly on. In one courtyard a dog barked—but the garden was empty when its sleepy owner looked out upon it.

  Luhr slumbered as the shadows filled its streets. They flowed like countless river branchings, down to the southern wall with its great gate, across to the eastern wall, with its smaller one. They were swift and silent, seen by no one except some speechless drunkards, a madwoman who clapped at their passing, lovers half blind with need.

  The two Queensguards at the eastern gate were sitting with their backs against the wall. One was sleeping; the other was eating an end of bread, lifting it up to examine it after every bite. The bread made a small, muffled sound when it fell from his fingers. He made no sound, though his eyes widened above the dagger lodged in his throat, and he looked as though he would speak a question, or a curse. When a second dagger—held, not thrown—sank into the other guard’s chest, his eyes opened, blinked, fixed, and he breathed a whistling sigh.

  Four guards manned the main gates: one at the top of each watchtower and one in each of the tiny rooms below. The tower doors were unlocked and well oiled. The guards within were sitting on stools, looking out barred windows at the moonlit sand. One of them did not turn; the other did, and nearly had time to cry out. The guards above were leaning out over their sections of wall, talking about the dangers of the sandstorm season. They talked for two minutes, five; then they turned away from each other to pace along the walls, stretching and rubbing at their eyes, looking at nothing. Two daggers and two short arrows flew; one guard grunted and the other screamed, but no one in the sleeping city heard them.

  The Queensfolk homes at the palace’s western wall were quiet. Pentaran motioned some of his companions up the twisting staircases that led to the highest houses. When they had disappeared, he led the rest of his men to the houses midway up the cluster. He heard their breathing—the selkesh were especially loud, whistling and gurgling—and the patter of their bare feet on the clay, and his own heartbeat pounding above these other noises. He was certain that people would hear this and stream from their houses, but all was dark and motionless, sunk in the deep sleep that comes in the hours after midnight.

  He halted at a door and put his hand to its wood. He tasted bile in his throat and in his mouth and swallowed desperately until it dissolved. Now, before you vomit on the stairs—and he nodded once at his men and pushed the door open.

  “I know these two,” Baldhron whispered to Mallesh. They were standing behind a wooden stage draped in canvas and dyed linen. Mallesh glanced around the post nearest him at the two Queensguards who stood straight and silent on either side of the palace doors. “They were lovers,” Baldhron went on. Mallesh heard a smile in his voice. “She has recently cast him off for another. We’ll take her first. I’ll walk up to them, leaving space for a clear shot. One of my men will use a bow and arrow on her. I’ll order another to shoot him as he’s turning to her.”

  He knows them, Mallesh thought as Baldhron murmured to the scribes. These are his own people. He sheathed the sword Baldhron had commanded him to use once they were inside the palace. He shrugged the cloak off his shoulder so that his spearhead caught the light. As if this had been a pre-arranged signal, the selkesh approached. Baldhron conferred with his men, and Mallesh spoke to his quickly, tersely. He saw that Baldhron had not noticed this, and made sure that he still did not notice when Mallesh and another selkesh stepped out past the stage. They stood close together and drew back their arms. Their spears had already found their marks by the time Baldhron lunged out of the darkness.

  “You fool!” he hissed. Mallesh felt spittle on his face but could not wipe at it; his shoulders were pinned by Baldhron’s knees. The ground was hard and cool beneath his head, and Mallesh nearly smiled with the joy of feeling it there. “I told you what we would do—”

  “What you would do,” Mallesh said, and felt all the months of his confinement sloughing away like an ocean eel’s skin, leaving everything, from eyeballs to toenails, translucent with newness and strength. “It was an overly complicated plan. Two of them, and us with our spears—this was the better way.”

  Baldhron pushed himself up, so roughly that Mallesh knew there would be bruises on his chest and shoulders. “They could have seen you,” Baldhron said. “They could have dodged your throwing sticks and screamed for help.”

  “They did not,” Mallesh said, easing himself away from the ground without wincing. “They did not expect to see us—so they did not see us until our spears were in them. We selkesh have hunted creatures in water, huge, limber creatures that plunge and twist, yet we hunt them with our spears and haul th
eir bodies onto our shore. This was not such a hunt.”

  “And you are not dealing with sea animals now!” Baldhron spat. Scribes and selkesh were beginning to emerge from behind the stage, two or three at a time, their eyes wide. “You hunt people now—and you have no idea—”

  “Baldhron,” Mallesh said, hearing his own voice as if from far away, as if he were drunk or ill—though his head was clear and his limbs were coiled with power. “You are upset that I took this action without telling you. Maybe you are angry that the first Queensblood was spilled by selkesh. But remember: you are aiding us. That is the way of it.”

  The men had all gathered now. Baldhron’s eyes darted to them, and to the unguarded doors that were so close. His chest heaved as a drylander’s might, if he had been diving. “Indeed,” he said after a moment, not looking at Mallesh. “We are giving aid to you in this place that only we know. Do not act without my agreement or knowledge again. Do not, Mallesh.”

  He did turn then, and Mallesh met his gaze, allowed his head to lower just a bit. He could hear the palace; he was near and strong and no longer concerned with the pride that had tormented him when Baldhron had given orders beneath the city. “Very well,” he said.

  Baldhron nodded once. “Retrieve your spears, then,” he said. His voice sounded different, thinner, the words pressed by air. “We must go in now, before anyone passes by here. We have already lingered too long.”

  “Very well,” Mallesh said again, and heard his laughter ring like waves against the city’s song.

  TWENTY-SIX

  “Did you hear something?”

  “Hmm? No. You were probably half asleep again. I tell you, you’ve been dozing every few minutes since midnight.”

  “It’s the baby. He used to be wakeful at night and sleepy during the day, but now he’s older, he’s awake in the day too, when I used to sleep.”

  “Ask for a few nights away, then—just enough to get yourself rested. And anyway, he’ll change. Mine did, though I admit it seemed . . . What? What’s—”

  They were green and brown, like creatures risen from the earth of the Queenswood after the rains—like the trees themselves, so tall. There were others among them, these ones familiar. All of their mouths were open, but they made no sound—just ran and raised their arms and loosed their wood and metal before she could get her own arrow nocked. Her bow clattered against the stone by her feet. She heard this, and a grunt from the man beside her. She saw him pitch forward, though not clearly; her eyes were full of mist that would not blink away, and now scarlet like the mourning ribbon the Queen wore in her hair when she grieved for someone lost. Me? the woman thought, and fell.

  The child should have been asleep. His grandmother would flog him if she found him here—but she slept longer and longer each night; and he was twelve now, old enough to come and go a bit without her knowledge. And anyway, he was pursuing his passion: the stars, the pictures they made, the shadows on the face of the moon, the luminous trails that sprayed across the darkness like the path of a giant sand snail.

  He bent to scratch a notation on his skymap. It was getting bigger and bigger all the time; soon he would have trouble hiding it in his bedchamber. His grandmother would flog him for this too. Parchment and writing sticks should only be used for scribes’ tasks—this is what she thought, what she had told him since he could remember. He was to be a scribe, as his mother had been. He went to his lessons and concentrated and was praised by his teachers—but only here did he feel joy.

  He had not brought a lantern with him tonight; the moon was full, and his house was the highest of all the Queensfolk houses by the palace. The brightness of the moon made it difficult for him to see the stars surrounding it, but he would wait, and the moon would set, and he would look at its neighbour stars then, if he wasn’t too tired. For now he peered at other, farther stars, and sketched their positions on his map, which had small round sections for every hour of the night.

  At two hours past midnight he heard noises among the houses below him. His own house was silent. He was so relieved by this that his limbs felt like water for a moment. He leaned out over his flat roof and tried to blink away the dazzle the moon had left in his eyes. He saw dark shapes running up the staircase; it was the scuffing of their feet that he had heard. He looked at them for a few breaths, then crawled all the way back to where his roof met the palace. He should not be awake. He should not be here now—but surely these men were not coming to find him?

  He closed his eyes when he heard the slight squeak of his door. Perhaps they were here for him; perhaps they were going to talk to his grandmother before they came up. He whimpered and hugged himself and his skymap, even though he knew he should probably be running or hiding or doing some other clever thing to avoid detection.

  Long minutes passed without further disturbance. He was straining so hard to hear that his ears felt the silence, like a cloud that muffled and breathed at the same time. Nothing, nothing—then the creaky door again and the scuffing footsteps. He crushed the skymap against him and waited for someone to vault up onto the roof—but no one did, and the footsteps moved away.

  When he was sure that they were gone, he slid back toward the edge of the roof. The men—he saw them clearly this time, though some looked much too tall to be Queensmen—were on the landing below his, pushing open the door to that house. He saw other men on the landing below that. Men everywhere, dark as insects, scuttling in and out of houses with flashing steel. He had been moon-blind before; he had not seen these weapons.

  His door gaped. He slipped inside. A short time later he slipped out again. He was crying, holding a kitchen knife that dipped and wove as if he were drawing a star pattern on the air. He stood and wiped his cheeks with the back of his free hand. He saw that the men were far below him now. He put the knife between his teeth and climbed, hand under hand, foot under foot, down the long, straight palace wall that supported the cluster of houses. He climbed carefully but quickly. When he reached the sand, most of the men were still above him. He removed the knife from his mouth and turned—and looked up into the face of someone he knew.

  “P-Pentaran,” he stammered. One of his teachers—here, now, holding a blade as those other men were. Pentaran staring down at him, his mouth agape; Pentaran about to say something. The child cried out and sprang forward. He ran through the shadows toward the palace doors, faster than fountain water or the arc of a dying star.

  “You are an artist,” the female Queensguard said just before she took another short, noisy sip from her soup bowl. “I can’t imagine why no woman has yet forced you into marriage.” Her four companions chuckled. “Is that eastern redspice I taste? Or pepperflower?”

  “Neither,” replied the burly guard who was the chef. “And I’ll never tell. Unless, that is, you’d like to marry me?”

  Though there were only five of them in the stone vastness of the kitchen, their laughter sounded loud and full. They were sitting cross-legged on top of the broad wooden counter that hours ago had been scrubbed and swept clean of the day’s food. They had coaxed the fire back to life and, after much preparation, set the soup over it. The soup’s scent was like their laughter: large and nearly living in this cold, darkened chamber.

  “Must be off,” one of the men sighed.

  “Nonsense!” cried another. “You’ve only had one bowl of soup and two cups of wine! And our watch only ended an hour ago.”

  “One more cup,” the woman insisted, pouring, spilling red droplets onto the wood.

  “No—I really should go,” the man insisted, pushing the cup back toward her. “There’ve been too many nights like this, recently. I need to sleep.

  “Poor wee dear needs his rest,” she trilled as the man slid off the counter and walked over to the wall where all of their bows were leaning. He slung his bow over his shoulder and turned to scowl at them; they were calling mock-aggrieved entreaties, holding out their arms. When he disappeared
up the short staircase that led to the corridor, they dissolved again into laughter.

  There was a long moment of silence, after the laughter. Then, from just outside the door, came a short, twisting scream. The Queensguards leapt down—cups and bowls tipped, fell, rocked—and ran for their bows and the stairs.

  The corridor seethed with men. Lizard-men—by the First, what were they?—and Queensfolk, all of whom turned from the body on the floor when the door crashed open. The Queensguards fumbled for their daggers, which until now had only been drawn in pretend battles, or to subdue drunken palace intruders or adolescents who stole in from the city to prove their mettle to their friends. The guards parried, mostly, until the woman sprang forward and slit a lizard-man’s chest from right to left. When he faltered, she jumped up and sank her knife into his neck. He was so tall that she had to wait for him to fall before she could retrieve her blade, through gouts of blood and the last bucking of his limbs. But then there was someone else standing in his place. She rubbed the blood from her eyes and readied her dagger, then gaped at him.

  “Nalhent?” she said, and he fell back a pace, his own dagger shaking in his hand. “Nalhent!” she cried. He took another step back, his mouth working soundlessly. A lizard-man pushed past him, thrust a hooked knife into her and wrenched it, deeper and around, until she fell.