The Silences of Home

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

  “No, child, though it was a near thing. Those weakling water-men cost us the palace and many lives, but not mine.”

  “At least,” she had ventured, “the Queen was made to suffer. We can thank one of the water-men for this, anyway.” Baldhron had touched her then, suddenly empty of words. She trembled. He had been gentle with her, despite his need. She would be of no use to him if her fear grew too great for awe.

  She told him Lanara had arrived only two days before he had. She told him she had written a letter and left it at the Queenshouse in a basket of eggs. “My father would have done this if he had been alive to see this new queen. And it was good to do something after so many months of uncertainty.” Baldhron had praised her effusively, and her flush had made him almost unbearably restless. He needed more than this one insignificant, mostly unschooled follower—but they would come, later, after he had slain Lanara and begun to rebuild his own realm.

  He had watched the Queenshouse for days from a nearby rooftop, hardly sleeping. In the end he had been asleep, had woken to Predhanten’s hand on his back and the tremor of her voice. “She has left the house and evaded her guards. I heard it from a serving girl I know.” He had waited, sitting cross-legged on the shortest dock, had seen Lanara slip out from beside the furthest house. A slender, dark figure, but he knew her immediately.

  “Stay here,” he had said to Predhanten. “When it’s done I’ll return to you. We’ll have to leave quickly, with only what we carry now. . . .” Scrolls, in his case, stuffed into his belt. Not the scrolls he would have chosen for this confrontation—the ones about Lanara’s mother, which he had so longed to have ever since he had heard that Lanara was queen. Those scrolls had surely been destroyed with all the others after he had fled. He still could not think of this without a shudder. Beside the pages he had carried with him from Luhr was his knife. He had used it to hack off his beard, and Predhanten had found an old blunt razor for the stubble. He had bled copiously.

  Lanara had recognized him as quickly as he had her, even though she had only met him a few times. Her eyes had widened, and he had remembered Ladhra’s eyes when they had opened from sleep and seen Leish, with Baldhron behind, when she had realized that no guards would come to save her.

  “You were wronged,” Lanara said when Baldhron had finished with all the words he had prepared. She passed him the scrolls he had forced her to read despite their near-illegibility. The writing stick markings had smudged in the water beneath Luhr, and the paper had torn—but still he had thrust them at her, and she had seemed to read. “You were wronged, and so were countless others, by countless queens.”

  He lifted his knife, which had wavered downward a bit as he spoke. Tell her, he thought. Tell her of her own mother’s death—but he held these words back. They would be all the more powerful the longer he waited to speak them. “You seek to appease me,” he said instead. She was looking at him very steadily, without the fear that might have made her words a plea.

  “Appease you?” she repeated, and smiled again. “No—merely stating a truth. A truth like these others: you killed Ladhra on her bed, and then you fled, even as your followers, selkesh and scribe, died. Only a very few people in the Queensrealm are aware of these particular truths. I hope you’ve written them down somewhere, Baldhron, so that future generations will know of your prowess.”

  He lunged. He felt her draw in a breath and hold it as blood welled from the hollow of her throat. “And why don’t you tell your people about these things, Queen Lanara?” His ears were ringing: his own blood thundering like sea.

  “The deceptions that occurred before my reign will not be revealed.” Her voice hummed against his chest. “Events already written will not be changed. But I swear to you that no new fictions will be written while I live and rule.”

  He laughed as he had sometimes laughed to himself in the northern wasteland. “I see: you will be the first truth-telling queen in the history of this realm. You will inform your subjects of the murders you commit and the poverty you nurture.”

  “I will not need to, for there will be none.”

  He laughed again, giddy with scorn and the sight of her blood on his knife. “You fool. You poor little girl. How do you intend to create this perfect place?”

  She did not blink as she looked at him. Her face was so close to his that her lashes might have brushed his cheeks. “With you,” she said.

  The knife moved in his hand, though he did not feel himself doing this. Another dark trickle of blood appeared on her skin. “Me,” he said, attempting to keep his voice flat and his muscles still.

  “Yes,” Lanara said. “You, as my consort-scribe.”

  Baldhron took a step back. The knife dipped, stayed down. Leish thought, She’s taken him by surprise, and now she can strike—but she did not stir. Long moments passed and she only gazed at Baldhron, her arms and back flat against the cliff side.

  “A feeble attempt, Lanara.” The wind warped Baldhron’s words, but Leish saw them on his lips and understood. “Though I now appreciate the extent of your desperation. To even pretend to propose such a thing must be intolerable to you.”

  “Worse than intolerable, since I pretend nothing. You will be my consort-scribe. You will be party to every decision I make and every action I take.” She pressed her lips together. Leish licked his own; he tasted salt. Dive, he thought again.

  “You will inform your network of scribes of your new role. You will tell them that I will make appropriate reparations for whatever losses they can prove to have suffered because of a queen. You will tell them I will meet with them and employ them, should this be of benefit to my realm. You will tell them to give me all the illicit documents they may have regarding the Queensrealm.”

  She struggled for breath after she had spoken; Leish saw the heaving of her chest before he looked back at Baldhron. “An impressive speech,” he said. “Truly. I must force myself to remember that you despise me, and that you are Queen Lanara. If I was fool enough to accept your terms, how long would it be before you had me killed? Would you wait until we reached the foot of the path?”

  “I’ve told you,” Lanara said clearly, despite the wind and her own ragged breathing, “that I intend to act with honour, unlike those who went before me. You mistake this desire for deception because deception is all you’ve ever known, or practiced. It may be that nothing will sway you. But I swear on the soul of my dearest friend that I am not deceiving you now. My offer is a true one.”

  Leish took a step toward them. He waited for them to turn, but they did not. Another step: Baldhron’s words sounded much more distinct than they had before.

  “Well. Well, well. Consort-scribe Baldhron and Queen Lanara, hmm?” He smiled and slid his knife back into his belt. “Not as delectable as Queen Ladhra would have been, but you’ll do.”

  Leish ran.

  Baldhron’s eyes went dark. He gasped and his lungs burned; he tore at cloth and flesh he could not see. “Lying bitch!” he tried to scream, and he heaved his body up against the one that pinned him. A Queensguard, maybe several—he would pull them all down with him when he died. Them and Lanara, who was crying out words he could not understand. His assailant raked his cheek with nails, tugged his hair back until the darkness in his eyes was washed with tears. His voice returned, and he bellowed. He blinked and saw the man above him just as Lanara’s words hardened in his ears.

  “Leish! Leish, no! Let him go!”

  The water-man’s face remained above Baldhron’s, and his webbed fingers dug deeper bruises into his neck. Lanara appeared over Leish’s right shoulder. “Step back,” she said. “Now.” The fingers lifted, and the face, and Baldhron twisted so that his head no longer hung into the space above the sea.

  “Let me kill him.” The water-man’s voice shook, as it had so many times in the tunnels beneath Luhr. “Or let me watch you do it. Lanara!”—a shout, which sounded more like a sound his brother Mallesh wou
ld have made. Baldhron rubbed at his bruises steadily, as if he thought he would live to see them shade purple, then yellow-brown.

  “No.” Her eyes were very bright—with tears, perhaps, though Baldhron could not be sure since her face was bent toward Leish. “He will serve me. He must. Only his presence will force me to be the queen Ladhra would have wanted to be.”

  Baldhron’s relief was so great that he could not move, not even when Lanara crouched beside him. “But there are two further conditions,” she said, looking at Baldhron but speaking to Leish. “He will never say Ladhra’s name again, and he will never touch me, either in lust or in anger. If he violates either of these conditions, he will die.”

  Baldhron heaved himself up so that he was sitting facing her. “How, then,” he said, each word stronger, louder, “will we get you an heir?”

  He was sure now that he saw tears. “Leish,” she said in a voice that belied them, “go now, quickly, before I allow you to kill him after all.”

  The water-man stood and stepped off the path, to the crumbling edge of rock beyond it. “I do not understand,” he said, craning back to look at her. “You spoke of honour. There would be honour in this man’s death. The kind you speak of has no meaning to me.”

  “I know. And I’m sure I’ll agree with you often, as time passes. But believe me, Leish: Ladhra would approve. If she knew everything I know, she would.”

  Leish turned his eyes from Lanara to Baldhron. He can’t believe her, Baldhron thought. He still sees Ladhra’s chamber, and her blood. He shuddered. He himself remembered only snatches of this—fragments of her voice and flesh tearing, and then the tolling of the Queensbell that had sent him flying away from her. He held the water-man’s gaze, allowed himself a small smile of the sort he would cultivate in the palace. Leish licked his lower lip and bit down, so hard that Baldhron nearly flinched. Then he was gone.

  Baldhron had leaned out over the cliff before he realized he wanted to. He watched the water-man’s descent. He thought, with a quickening of envy and fear that made him forget for an instant all that had just transpired, How does he dive in such a gentle arc, and head-first? Surely he’ll break his neck? He watched the water close over Leish and froth just briefly. He watched the line his surfacing head made, white and straight in the moonlight. He watched the head vanish beneath and the line fold among waves. Nothing moved, after that, on the surface of the sea.

  Lanara did not speak when Baldhron pushed himself away from the edge and rose to stand before her. She did not speak as she went back down the path. He walked very close behind her, each pace carrying him away from the squalid cave of his childhood and from the tunnels where he had hidden as a man. He would soon write a message to be distributed to all of his followers, of power to be wielded from the innermost tower of the palace. The words waited for him. For now he listened only to the ocean and his footsteps sounding with Lanara’s on the stone.

  He was still slightly behind her when they came to the Queenshouse doors. Predhanten would be watching, he knew. He straightened his back, smiled as he studied Lanara’s hair and shoulders.

  “My Queen?” Malhan’s voice, though it trembled as Baldhron had never heard it do before. He raised his eyes and saw him, standing before the open doors with four Queensguards flanking him.

  “I was lost in the city,” Lanara said. “Queensman Baldhron found me.” Malhan gaped, made a low, trailing gesture with his right hand. “I think we will drink that wine now,” she continued, “you and Baldhron and I. Have it uncorked and poured in my study.”

  Malhan slid his gaze away from Lanara’s. Baldhron’s smile was gentle, beneficent. He inclined his head a bit, heard the gathering crowd murmur. Then he stepped past them all, into the Queenshouse.

  FORTY-NINE

  I, Baldhron, son of Yednanya, take up this writing stick with a feeling of great humility and greater honour. Even though I have not yet been formally installed as consort-scribe, I am also no longer a student; this is therefore the first entry I have made in the service of the Queensrealm in my new role. I eagerly anticipate the day when former consort-scribe Malhan (who has already set out for Luhr) will present me with the writing implements he himself used, and with the fresh parchment that I shall write upon. This day seems distant yet, for Queen Lanara will linger for another week in Fane, and after that several more weeks will pass before we reach Luhr again. In the meantime, I will record, informally, the events of her days, and ponder the import of the post she has bestowed upon me.

  She heard him writing. She thought she could almost tell which letters he was making from the sounds that came through the wall. She tried to push her bed away from this wall. When she could not manage this alone, she called for Predhanten. The girl helped her, as silent and shrinking as she had been in the days since Baldhron had brought her to the Queenshouse. “Thank you,” Lanara said to this child who had always admired Baldhron and always hated the Queen. Predhanten’s darting eyes stilled for a moment on Lanara’s face, and Lanara smiled at her just a bit. “You may return to your bed now.” Predhanten’s eyes slid away again. She did not make the sign of the arrowhead before she left, and Lanara did not command her to. She wanted to cry instead, “Wait! Let me tell you about how I too was hurt. Let me show you that we are the same”—but of course she did not. It would be too hasty; it would diminish, not strengthen, her in Predhanten’s eyes. So Lanara was silent as she watched the door close.

  Lanara lay on her side in bed. She could no longer hear Baldhron writing, but she was dizzy with words.

  My Queen, the uprising near Blenniquant City is worsening. Queen Galha had assured us of some sort of intercession, though she was not able to specify, before her untimely death, what this was to be. I entreat you, who have inherited her knowledge and wisdom, to guide us. . . .

  Queen Lanara, there is a crisis approaching here, and we, your servants in the far Queensrealm, request your aid. . . .

  . . . trade with these people is no longer tenable. I realize that this would affect the wealth of the realm, but I, and my Queensfolk companions here, can see no other way. . . .

  She rolled onto her back. The light from the guttering fire in the hearth made shadows on the ceiling. She watched them, and they seemed to twine with the words, the endless rolls of parchment, the sounds that she could still hear, after all, from beyond the wall. Her dry eyes stung with lack of sleep and tears. “Fool,” she whispered, this sound louder than all the others. Fool, to think that you’ll be able to mend everything with good faith and kindness. . . .

  Malhan would advise her when she returned to Luhr. He would surely be calmer by then. “You’re a headstrong, naïve girl, exactly as your mother was!” he had cried. Lanara had drawn back from him so sharply that the Brallentan wine had trembled in the three goblets that sat behind her on the desk. “She suffered for these qualities, and so will you, and there will be great peril in this for all Queensfolk. You may well undo all that your predecessors have done. I love this realm—I have told you this before. I love this realm, and this the only thing that will keep me here—love and fear. I never expected you to cause me such fear, Lanara. Perhaps I’ve made an irredeemable mistake with you.” He had not mentioned Ladhra or Baldhron. He had not needed to: they had been there in his quavering voice and pinched mouth, and in his eyes, which seemed to have retreated into black-smudged flesh. She had not met his gaze then; she had been shaking with shame and shock, and hatred of the man behind her, who should have died at her hand, with no one to see or know it. But she would meet Malhan’s eyes when she next saw him, when she would be more accustomed to her decision. She would ask him, calmly, to tell her about her mother, and she would ask him for his help, in the wood-lined study that was now hers.

  She sat up so quickly that her already aching head began to throb. She would not allow herself to sleep. She knew what would find her if she did: Ladhra’s smile; Leish’s eyes before he dived; Baldhron stepping out from beh
ind a tree in the Queenswood; water like jewels in Galha’s hair . . . These images had woken her before. She could thrust them away in the sunlight, but they were too vivid behind closed eyelids. Even now, awake in the night, they flickered beneath everything else.

  I’ll leave. I’ll go to Nellyn. The relief she felt thinking this was so exquisite that she imagined more (darkness was kind to all imaginings that would wither in the day). She would evade her own guards, disguise herself, take a boat upriver, walk if she had to. She would find him on the bank by the red clay huts. They would not be able to stay: Malhan would look for her there. So they would go north, past Bektha and Gammuz, and she would bear children with blue-tinged skin. . . .

  Today the Queen went into the city, accompanied by her serving girl Predhanten, four Queensguards, and myself. Her people cheered her as she passed, and she spoke to many. Her desire is to be a queen who knows her subjects and is known by them; a queen who spends her time among them on their streets rather than above them in her towers. She is already much beloved for this, which gives her great pleasure.

  Near the end of our walk, as the crowd was thinning, we came upon two girls standing at the mouth of a covered walkway. They were silent as the Queen approached, and when she spoke to them, they answered her with wide-eyed eagerness. This meeting seemed to be of particular significance to the Queen.

  They were twelve, Lanara thought, or maybe thirteen—tall girls whose limbs were still unaccustomed to their length. She noticed the two immediately, even though they were standing in shadow. Their eyes widened as she stepped toward them, and the black-haired one reached out to clutch the other’s arm.

  “Greetings,” Lanara said. She smiled, and they smiled back at her.