“Staunch,” Serdic agreed. “Greetings, Jaele.”
“Greetings,” she said, and thought that the skin of his cheeks was so white-smooth that it would bruise at a touch.
“Serdic,” Annial began, “we require about two armfuls of the small ones, the ones not yet completely ripe.” Jaele watched Annial’s fingers skimming the fruit, lingering, curling somehow in their brittle case of skin. Then she turned and found Serdic gazing at her. He glanced away at once, flushing, and she felt a tightness in her chest, as if she had drawn a breath she could not let out again.
“. . . but this one is too soft and smells too sweet. Hania used to chide me for bringing these home, they are impossible to peel. . . .”
She was acutely aware of the water like veins on her hands, the folds of cloak damp against her legs. His head was bent now, his own long fingers picking at the fruit.
“Thank you, Serdic—that one is perfect. Now I think we are finished. And my, what foolishness: I have forgotten the herbs I usually bring as payment. Jaele or little Ilario will have to deliver them to you tomorrow. I am too old for such rigour.”
He looked up again and said, “That will be fine,” as he and Jaele smiled at each other.
That night the moon blazed through vanishing rain, and she lay on her side tracing the stones and river of Fane. He is beautiful, so pale and smiling, she thought, and was certain, and shivered with strength.
The next day was cold, and the boards of the dock were slick and snapped with frost. She stood for a time gazing at the boats and the fall of the waves. Her arms were full of Annial’s bitter wet herbs, piled there with a “Go now, and repay my charming friend Serdic,” and a knowing smile.
She found the fruit market without effort. Serdic and Tylla’s open chamber was thronged with people. She hovered just inside the doorway and watched him. His head was uncovered today; black hair spilled over his face, and he tucked it behind his ears as he bent to lift the sourfruit. One by one the buyers passed her, obscuring him, until she was the only one left and he was looking at her.
“Greetings, Serdic,” she said. She stepped forward. “And Tylla.” The girl nodded at her, grinning. “Here are the herbs Annial promised you.” She dropped a few strands and Serdic knelt with her and they laughed, their breath streaming white.
“Thank you, Jaele,” he said when he had put the herbs in a basket. “Thank you.” He paused. “I am repeating myself.” They all laughed, so easily, into the air that was now spinning slow, fat snow. “Will you stay?” he asked quickly, and flushed again. The snow melted against his cheeks. “Stay and help us. If you wish. If Tylla wishes,” he added hastily, and his sister put her hands on her hips.
“Serdic,” she said in a low, rough voice, “I wish for nothing but your happiness.” She glanced at Jaele and her eyes glinted a chuckle—like other eyes, another sister smiling.
Jaele stayed. She sat on a stool, counting coins and sorting shells, flowers, bread—everything that was exchanged for fruit. Serdic was beside her, crouching and stretching and smiling at those who called his name. He spoke to her now and then as Tylla busied herself paces away.
“Do you live in Fane?”
“No. I come from a harbour—a beach. To the west and south of here.”
“Your family is still there?”
“No. They are dead.”
He turned to her and said quietly, “I am sorry. I did not mean to upset you.”
Jaele shook her head and did not look at him. “And your family?” she asked after a moment.
“Up the coast, in a smaller town. Tylla and I live here until the sourfruit trees stop bearing—then we return home.”
“And when do the trees stop?” She was surprised at her dread of “soon.”
“After the ice begins forming. Not long now. Winter is beautiful in our town: the icemounts pass so close, and the sky shines at night. Fane is never so beautiful.”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m waiting for the spring. Then I will continue my journey.”
“Journey?” he asked.
She said only “Yes,” and he was silent.
“Have you met Ilario?”
“Oh yes. He is. . . .” She held up her hands, and Serdic laughed.
“I know—he and Annial both. You are lucky to have found them.”
At midday they ate bread and cold seagreen. Jaele tasted nothing but felt the stiff, porous edges of the bread and the crisp seagreen spines.
The snow stopped falling. Jaele and Tylla rubbed the sourfruit until they glistened, then dried them in their cloaks. “Oh,” Tylla said as something fell glinting from the cloth, “I meant to give you this to put with the rest of the payment”—and she dropped a brooch into Jaele’s palm.
For a long, long moment Jaele could not speak. At last she said, “When—who gave you this?”
Tylla turned to her, frowning. “A man—he came before you did today. What is wrong?”
“It—” Jaele said, and breathed over the tightness of tears. “This was my mother’s. My mother’s brooch.” She closed her eyes and held it to her cheek: cool bronze, slender lines that were fishing net, a single raised ruby that was a fishing boat. “Oh Reddac”—Lyalla blushing, wordless, as Jaele and Elic gaped at her. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Reddac said eagerly. “I had it made by a jeweller in town—you have so few pretty things. Do not dare reprimand me for its cost,” he went on as Lyalla opened her mouth. “It is not important. Put it on. . . .” “Someday it will be yours,” Lyalla said later to Jaele. And now, in a crumbling stone chamber in Fane, it was. Jaele held it to her cheek.
“Jaele?” Serdic touched her shoulder and she opened her eyes.
“The man who killed my mother gave this to you,” she said, and her voice surprised her with steadiness. Tylla and Serdic looked at each other.
“The tall one who seemed ill,” he said slowly. “I remember him, of course: I told him this was too valuable, but he pressed it into my hand. I gave him a bag of sourfruit and tried again to return the brooch to him, but he turned and left. He was limping. His hands were wrapped in strips of cloth—I thought he must be cold.”
Jaele swallowed and clenched her fingers to white around the brooch. “He took it from our hut before—after—I don’t know when, I wasn’t seeing clearly. . . .”
“I will go with you to Ilario and Annial’s,” Serdic said.
“No,” Jaele said, “I am fine, truly”—but when she stood, her legs shook and she had to lean against the wall behind her.
He walked with her, touching her elbow lightly. They went down through the narrow streets and she watched her feet on the cobbles. She could not look up—would have had to reach for, shrink from, every face. He is still here; he is still watching.
“Thank you,” she said to Serdic when he had led her to the house.
“Do you want me to come in?” he asked, and she said, “No. I just want to sleep for a bit.” Then she slipped inside, without turning back—for she felt eyes upon her, as she had in the desert: eyes burning with hatred fever thirst.
She climbed the creaking stairs and lay curled on the bed, her mother’s brooch sharp and warm in her cupped hands.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Fear turned, with sleep, to desperation. In the days after finding her mother’s brooch, Jaele walked the streets again, searching, yearning to turn and look into the Sea Raider’s face. She walked with the dagger thrust into her belt, her hand on the metal, beneath her cloak. She traced all the paths of the town: its markets and lanes, the weaving quarter, the outer edges where stone and wood crumbled into snow-dusted earth. Often she returned to the house only when dawn was touching the sea. Her iben-sight showed her different places at night: empty markets where wind stirred cloth, and dogs snarled over scraps of food; arched doorways where children huddled together in hole-thin cloaks; taverns where people sang, their voices seeping li
ke ocean fog beneath doors and around windows. She did not see him.
When she woke each morning, she looked from her window at the water, straining to see a shadow moving below the surface. She thought, Surely he will not be able to stay much longer—surely he will not wait for spring? Her vision blurred as she looked and looked and saw nothing but far shifting grey.
Her daylight steps always took her back to the sourfruit chamber. She did not tell Tylla and Serdic anything more, and they did not press her; only shook their heads, day after day, when she asked them if he had returned. She sank into silence there, and in the house where she went only to sleep. Annial left trays of food outside her bedroom door. Once she spoke. “Jaele? Are you there? I have not seen you in days—we are all worried, sweetlet—please come out. Whenever you are ready, of course. I will wait for you in the kitchen.”
“Thank you,” Jaele said, her voice thick with exhaustion. “I will come down soon, but now I must rest. . . .” She did not see or hear Ilario.
She had not found the Sea Raider during her first days in Fane; she did not find him now. Desperation dulled slowly. She began to walk without seeking out every face, and she took the dagger from her belt and left it in her room. She slept long and deeply. She thought, I will find him here, later—or in his own land. And if it is there, I will take my revenge on all of them, as Galha did. She felt patience settling, gentle and thick as snow.
“Serdic,” she said one day as they sat in the sourfruit chamber, “I have been meaning to ask—where do you and Tylla live, while you’re in Fane?”
He flushed again. “I could do better than tell you: I could show you. Would you like to join us for dinner tonight?”
She nodded. Tylla also smiled at her, as she gathered the day’s unsold sourfruit into a red bag. “You needn’t wait for me,” she said to Serdic, and grinned. “Go on ahead. I’ll meet you at home.” She waved over her shoulder as she left, and Serdic said hastily, “Every day, she takes the rest of the fruit down to Lorim, and he gives her his leftover mang.” He cleared his throat. “We make juice with it.”
They were standing quite close together in the empty room; Jaele could see the shadows of his eyelashes. She said, “I’ll come home with you. For a meal. . . . You already said that,” she added, and laughed.
She followed him, her snowy footprints small in his—through the sky-roofed rooms, over the bridge with its wooden fish, down winding steps and along a narrow ledge. He glanced at her and they spoke words that were so vivid yet would not be remembered, and they laughed. Until, only spray’s height away from the river, there was a steep wall and a jagged stone door with a handle, round and braided with rust.
Jaele looked back at the ledge and the distant steps, then down into the foaming river. “This is your door?” she cried, her voice swallowed by booming, and he nodded.
“Of course,” he shouted, “there is another door. Much safer and quieter, leading into a street. I like this one more.” He smiled and brushed a strand of hair away from his eyes. Then he tugged at the ring and the door opened.
The air was dark and heavy with damp and the scent of sourfruit. “Be careful,” he called, and she felt herself sinking, reaching until her fingers touched old, smooth bark.
The trees rose around her, with roots that arched—some as tall as her waist—and twisted back again to the earth, and boughs that grew high from the trunks and wove together in a stillness of tiny red leaves. Lanterns hung from some of the branches; fire danced and slid over the leaves like wind. Sourfruit dangled below the crimson. She stretched up and brushed one, small and yellow, not yet speckled.
The river was a muted throbbing now. Her voice seemed quiet. “Tell me about the trees.”
They walked together among the roots and he said, “They grow without sunlight, almost without air. They need only water, which oozes up from the river and perhaps even from the ocean: sometimes I think the earth here smells of salt. This is an ancient grove. The walls were built in Queen Dalhan’s time, and the first trees were growing long before that, in what was then a cave by the sea.”
There was something she desperately wanted to hold—his voice, his head lowered and raised, his arm lifted to touch a lantern or a branch. But not him: more herself, and the windless, earthy calm.
“My grandmother discovered this place when she was a girl. Her parents had a house on the street above. One day she found a small door in the floor of the cold-building. There were worn, dusty steps down to what is now our kitchen, and a path to the grove, which was thick with dead and rotting sourfruit and fallen trunks. Now it is our livelihood, but also nearly sacred. We leave it only for the winter, when the trees do not bear fruit. I will live here until my children are old enough to tend the trees. My future children.” He stopped walking and ran his fingers through his hair. “I am certainly talking too much,” he said, and she laughed again, so easily.
“No. Tell me about your future children.”
They walked on, and he said, “Ah well, I don’t know. They may be thin and verbose, as I am. Tylla’s will no doubt be strapping warriors, even if there are no wars. But these children are only shadows yet.” He turned to his right and led her out of the trees; they passed from earth to stone.
“And this is the kitchen,” he declared as Jaele gawked.
This was another place of air and colour, shocking after darkness—like the earth silga forge, the blue chamber beneath the sand, Kepeer’s kitchen. Perhaps your own dark space will someday be flooded and filled, as these others were.
Serdic’s kitchen was a cavern. Rough, crystal-limned walls rose to a roof that glittered violet, green, golden cascades of stalactites. There were ovens like Annial’s, set deep in the walls; tables—stone blossoming from stone—like flat-topped, frozen waterfalls; crooked footholds that crawled along the walls and ended as cushioned niches, some dizzyingly high, all lit with lanterns. Serdic darted up one of these precarious stairways and knelt, looking down at her. “It is lovely and spacious up here,” he called. “Would you join me?”
She climbed up and pulled herself onto the ledge. The cushion was the colour of dark wine.
They sat so that their legs swung over the edge. Once or twice their knees touched. From their height Jaele could see the silent red leaves of the sourfruit grove.
“This is a dark cavern,” she said, “but it seems so open, as if you could fly. Perhaps to the sea, and beyond.”
He said, “Your journey,” and even though it was not a question, she replied, “Yes.”
She felt him turn to her; there was a breath of gentle scent—maybe his hair. “But across the sea is the Raiders’ Land. Although I’m sure you know this.”
She laughed softly. “A foolish quest, and my father and mother would not have approved. They always counselled against rage and revenge, said these were best left to stories. Though it was easy for them to say such things, when our life was so safe, So happy. My brother. . . .” She remembered Elic whispering, “We are both brave.” Tears stung her eyes but did not fall; her vision blurred so that lanternlight and crystal veins and stalactites were one.
Serdic said, “That man was a Sea Raider, wasn’t he? I couldn’t tell: he had wrapped his hands in cloth and I couldn’t see his fingers. So . . . he is trying to get back to his land, and you will follow him there and confront him.”
“Or,” she said, “I may yet find him here, in Fane. Our paths have been so entwined.” She paused. “I did not speak of him,” she continued, “because at first it was so terrible, knowing he’d been there with you. And then I simply did not want to.” She made a low sound that was almost a chuckle. “But it does not seem to have mattered that I did not tell you. You apparently know me so well, already, that you do not need to ask me questions.”
“Your brother?” Jaele glanced at him, and he smiled. “This is a question. What did your brother think about revenge?”
She smiled as well.
“He was young. Of course he thought revenge was noble and glorious, all those stories. . . . He would have come with me. He would have cursed them as Galha did.” She almost asked Serdic then, almost said, “I am alone—will you come with me? You and Tylla?” But she did not want to speak the words in this place of warmth and shining. She kicked her heels against the rock until he put a hand on her knee.
She lowered her fingers slowly, carefully, to his. His skin was translucent-soft, as she had imagined; she stroked it, fingertips to wrist, and heard him catch his breath. She kissed his neck, just below his jaw, and he slid his own lips over hers. She watched him: the veins on eyelids that fluttered, hair fallen dark along his cheekbone. He looks lost, she thought as his hand fumbled through her hair.
Tylla chuckled in the kitchen below, and Jaele and Serdic drew apart, laughing and flushing, and descended. He touched her lightly—on neck, cheek, hair—as he and his sister prepared their dinner of seagreen and fish. Jaele’s flesh seemed prickled and scarlet; she was coiled, watching him.
They spoke and ate and drank wine from huge glazed goblets, and she was vast, her skin looming up toward the crystal and the invisible sky. Then they were among the trees, the two of them alone, kissing and clinging, falling sometimes to thrust against the trunks. Later they lay together on a mat of thick cloth, set atop a wide, level tangle of roots. The leaves blurred above his straining naked shoulders; she arched against him and heard herself groan. Sounds and motions that were not hers—and in the slick stilling of their bodies she began to cry.
“Jaele?” he said, smoothing the hair from her forehead, and she rolled away, covering herself with arms and knees.
“I’m sorry,” she said. His hand was motionless on her hip. When her breath had steadied, and with her face still hidden from him, she spoke. “I shouldn’t have. There is—was—someone, and I left him, but it’s so close. I didn’t really realize until you. . . .” She dragged her wrist under her nose. “I’m so sorry. I will leave.”
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