Dragonfly

by Sylvia Kelso

  “Do you know the word, Sthassamaer?”

  Nouip stared. Then her face went blank with shock.

  “Water.” It came out the barest whisper. “Black.”

  Ice blocked my throat. I was belowdecks on Aspis, trapped in the howling rocking gloom, the inky water sloshing, welling, rising, engulfing everything . . .

  My hands were clenched in Therkon’s shirt and I was trying to bury my head in his chest. His arm was tight and hard around me and he was saying fiercely, “Not like that!”

  Nouip answered beyond him, distant in more than space. “Ye asked what I knew.”

  “Yes, but—!”

  I almost literally felt him bite his tongue. He added dourly, “What else?”

  I sat up in time to see Nouip produce a quarter-shrug.

  “What everyone knows. There’s trouble, south. Storms, out of size, out of season, folk ship-wrecked, castaway, fled. Whole towns, whole ports ruined. Isles lost.” She met his eyes. “But that word, nay.”

  Two said, “You fit pieces. With the Sight, do those pieces fit?”

  Nouip twitched a little, but she met my eyes, too. “Aye.”

  The clear rich air breathed over us, the goat bells rang down hill. But the silence round me had opened like a well, and past, present, future were cascading into it. Not merely confirmed

  disasters and direction, but a Sight. A Sight to amplify disaster’s name.

  When Therkon spoke, his voice was steel. “We think that is who—or what—made the plan.”

  Suddenly I was shivering again, uncontrollably. Two said we had no choice. We had been driven or drawn here, willy-nilly, we would only be allowed to go one way from here, and that way . . .

  Blackness relinquished me, with a surface-breaking jerk. I clung to the bench, to Therkon, to the reeling, dancing daylight world. Anything to forget what Two had said.

  But I could not let them forget what Two had said.

  “Two—Two said—the plan—”

  Therkon’s arm clenched. But Nouip watched me in silence a moment. And then she said suddenly, “Have ye thought, that this may not all be so?”

  “The storm?” Therkon sounded bewildered as I felt. “The wind, the sea? They changed, at the worst moments. Two said, no human could do it. Two said, it wasn’t chance.”

  “Aye. T’was maybe something’s plan, that ye were storm-

  driven, on Sickle, and the ship lost. But that ye came ashore, ye two, and ye alone? How did ye manage that?”

  My heart rose suddenly, quivering in my throat. I could not tell if it was hope or fear. Beside me, Therkon was tense from head to toe. It was almost a whisper, when he spoke.

  “Our troublecrew. Chaeris’ people guessed there was a bay. Under the cliff. And the current. Before—the wreck—they put her overboard.”

  “His,” I said for him, “did the same.”

  Nouip looked from one to the other of us. “A What,” she said, “might rule wind and water. Could it foreguess living hearts?”

  A heart that would put another’s life before its own? So quickly, so unexpectedly, even that other might not guess?

  The sun had slid out from behind a cloud. Or the air had cleared, miraculously, from its midday haze. The sun was blinking through my tears, bright, shadow, bright. Could even a What have predicted Azo and Verrith?

  Therkon said, “Two, what do you think?”

  The world whited out. Came back. Two said, “Without more data, it is impossible to say if troublecrew’s action was expected. Or not.”

  They were staring at us, Nouip and Therkon both. It was Therkon who spoke.

  “So—it—might have planned the wreck. It might even have expected troublecrew.” He took a breath. “But even it might not have foreseen—that.”

  “That is so.”

  “Ye’re missing the point,” Nouip said crisply. “If t’was planned, for whichever end, it could only have intended one.”

  Therkon wheeled on her, his own wits sparking. “Either we were meant to go with the, the ship? Or not?”

  “Aye.”

  “So perhaps, the plan failed?”

  Two answered for us all. “Perhaps.”

  Therkon drew a great breath. “Then perhaps . . . Two was wrong?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Nouip gave a sudden little splutter of a laugh. “A canny oracle, to take misreading so quiet!” But Therkon was tense as a sight-hound with prey in view. Or a philosopher, a conclusion within touch.

  “Then if Two can be wrong. If the plan may have failed. We have a choice.”

  A genuine choice. A will of our own. However strait the door, there was some play within it. If we had overset the plan once, we might do it again.

  Perhaps.

  Nouip was watching Therkon like a cat with a mouse. “I’ll ask ye again, then,” she said, softer than a cat’s tread. “What mean ye to do now?”

  Therkon’s eyes sprang back to her. For an instant I glimpsed again that dark, elegant deer, head poised, scenting the wood for traps.

  Then he drove both hands into his hair and shook his head fiercely. “Of your grace, my lady,” he said. “Give me a little time. A little space. I need to think.”

  * * * *

  “As if I don’t need to think at all!”

  Nouip courteously handed me another turnip. As I started carving with her oversized kitchen knife, she added mildly, “Chance he thinks he already knows, what you think.”

  “Oh.”

  Therkon would have gone barefoot up the hill, had she not commanded him into a pair of larger but shorter homespun trousers, and weirdly all-of-a-piece boots—“hunting shoes”—bidden him check her fish trap, and added bread and cheese to eat.

  Then she gave Two that craved tour of the house, and suffered the ensuing fusillade, yes, the outer garden grew vegetables, the bothy folded the goats who yielded meat and wool and milk, yes, her kin, “grandsons, the most,” farmed barley in her two little fields beyond the lake, whence came water and fish. The cat brought rabbits off the “moor” as well as mice. Yes, she wove her own cloth—“the loom’s back there.” Beyond the quern, the one place we did not go. “And now we’ll need to wash those clothes.”

  A giant’s toil. We hung them on the wall till late afternoon, then went out on the lake path, where Nouip’s storm-volume whistle raised the goats, meek as sheep between two broad, shaggy dogs. And behind them Therkon, face weary, somber but composed,

  carrying a pair of fish hung on a withy through the gills.

  “I beg your pardon, my lady,” he said, as the dogs sniffed his legs, but, I noted, neither hackled nor barked. “I would have cleaned them, but—”

  But he had no weapon. I thought about that, while I fossicked the herb-beds for fennel and dill, then watched Nouip gut the unscaled fish, coat them in mud, and fit them into the coals. Who, I burned to ask, taught you to cook without pot or pan?

  Peeled from their clay jackets, the fish accompanied the turnips, boiled complete with greens, and then a sweetener of last season’s hazel nuts. We did not talk until the end. But at last Therkon set his platter aside, and rose to stand across from me and Nouip at the hearth. In the fireglow I saw his jaw go tense.

  He said, “I have thought.”

  Nouip inclined her head like a priestess giving audience. I tried not to glower.

  “There were so many, so many paths to map. But the first step on them all: we must seek news of the others. And—Chaeris—was right. We must send word to Dhasdein.”

  He pushed a hand through his unbound hair. Almost silky again now, it fell like smoke on the pale buckskin shirt.

  “The lady Chaeris,” a hint of tired, wry smile, “has made it clear she will not bear the news herself. Even if it were safe.”

  Two said, “Against the plan would be unwise. For eithe
r or both.”

  “Yes.” I will not, his expression added, see more innocents drown for my sake.

  “So we go south.”

  I had thought my voice steady but Therkon gave me one piercing glance and said swiftly, “We send word north. A letter would be best, but—”

  Nouip said, “I can manage that.”

  “Goatskin,” she said, as we both gaped. “Oak-gall boiled with soot. Beeswax.” She meant, to take his ring as a seal. “A carrier to Hranhaven’ll come soon enough.”

  “My lady.” Therkon rallied. “That would be more than we could repay. But even if your folk could carry it to the port . . .”

  Who would carry it on, or pay its carriage over the sea?

  “T’will go,” she said.

  I could see Therkon meditate questions about means and costs, and courtesy silence them. “My lady. That would leave us free, yes. We can go to Grithsperry.”

  A last, forlorn but tormenting hope. My heart leapt at thought of Azo, dour and solid as the walls of Amberlight, stumping down some island quay.

  Two said, “For the main choice, that is irrelevant.”

  Therkon gave me a look more indignant than shocked. And then, at my confusion, began setting out, colder than the hatchet man, what Two meant.

  “Yes, to go back will be as dangerous for one as for two of us. To the travelers, to those they travel with. Iskarda will not wish to hazard the lady Chaeris. Dhasdein will wish to recall me.”

  He looked past me into the fire and it made his eyes glint like stone.

  “But we are here. At our foe’s behest, but far further south than we could otherwise have come. What advantages—it—also vantages us.”

  He looked straight at me. “And in what resources we do have, it may find a double edge.”

  Two. Me. He had always considered us as among his, Dhasdein’s, our resources. But we might be what the enemy deemed a resource as well.

  Far away, Nouip spoke. The words were lost in black water, welling up around me, deep, deep water, the bilge of Aspis’ lower decks, the depths of ocean, of abysses beyond ocean, and it was not merely depth but an awareness, sentient, deliberate. Seeking, drawing, wanting.

  Wanting me.

  “Chaeris! Chaeris!”

  Therkon had me in both arms this time, clamped against him, squeezed all but breathless as the black cracked open and I could breathe, gasp, pant and try not to sob aloud.

  “Chaeris.”

  I got my head up, eyes swimming in the firelight. Almost

  finger by finger, he set me back a little. Let me go.

  “My—You will not go back. I know that. But you could stay here. My lady Nouip would,” I felt him lift his head and her nod in response, “would care for you. You could be—I could know you safe.”

  Safe, Two echoed, and ran before me the projections and calculations, the map of islands and ocean and irrefutable deductions, tightening like the meshes of a net. Safe ashore, safe from the sea.

  Safe for how long? Safe for those around me, if what ravaged the Archipelago was looking firstly for me?

  Safe here while others were where?

  I sniffed hard and said, “Will you stay?”

  The fire muttered in tiny sub-audible clucks. I could hear the silence beyond the stone walls, with their illusory safety. The black water, listening.

  Therkon lifted his head and his jaw set so he suddenly looked ten years older. Twenty years sterner. Not a prince, not a philosopher. Perhaps not a warrior. The images that Two ran past me were halo-ed in story, legend, myth. Faces of hero-kings who, in threat and battle, did not hold back from fighting. From death. From sacrifice.

  He said quite quietly, “I do not know what resources I will have. Or what the enemy plans. Or what I can do against it. I only know, that every other choice is impossible. For the sake of Dhasdein. And the River. And the Archipelago. Whatever anyone else does, I cannot rest here. Alone or companied. I must go on. And do what I can.”

  I said, “Then I’m going too.”

  The hush fractured as suddenly as if peat had fallen in the fire. Nouip must have moved. I know I did. Beyond the quern a dog roused and shook itself in its sleep. Then Nouip stood up and came round the hearth.

  “Aye,” she said. Therkon looked up, startled, and this time she bent her head as to a king.

  “Dhasdein.” It was a title, I belatedly realized. “An I read the weave right, ye say true. For us in the Isles, as for the Empire. Not twice in a twelvemonth do I See as I have with ye. If t’is ye the enemy seeks, has called: then t’is ye are our hopes as well.”

  She spoke quietly, yet my skin chilled and my hair rose as to the cry of trumpets. She means both of us, I realized. She spoke to him, but she had used the plural. Always, for the two of us, she used, “ye.”

  Nouip turned on her heel and went with a decisive sweep of skirt to the front wall and the great wooden kists atop which Therkon had slept.

  * * * *

  “Chaeris’ gear is well enough, but best go no further in the Isles, Dhasdein, in that cloak.” The Empire’s own uniform, I understood, in color as in cut. She opened hasps, lifting the lid on a sweep of darkness, a throat-clutching scent of cedar and beast and perhaps, sea. A glitter, a clatter and clink.

  “My lady,” Therkon said in something like awe. “This is too much—”

  “What’s in keeper’s hold and Seer’s view is mine to give.” She measured it against him: an ankle-length cloak of some short fur, fluid as silk, glistening like water itself. “T’is fitting, that ye garb against Sea-banes in a sark o’ the sea.”

  The hood was trimmed in long pewter-colored fur, probably, Two thought, wolf. The front had leather ties, but the throat

  fastened with a great brooch of interlaced gold, at its center a

  hazian’s sullen fire. When it showed among the fur Therkon began to protest in earnest. Nouip simply shook her head.

  “Chance this will make ye a way where dry clothes cannot. Will ye cheapen the Isles, when River and Empire have already staked so high?”

  Making grace of necessity, Therkon gave way. Looked past the cloak as she laid it down, and caught his breath.

  “Aye.” Nouip picked the sheath up, its dull silver tracery snagging at the fire. Interlaced stylized snakes and gripping beasts, wolves perhaps, even one of the seals that had gifted us its “sark.”

  “This comes to me by blood as well as place.” The hilt glowed dully cream. Ivory, I realized, once sea beasts’ weapons, walrus and sea lion, now dark with use and age. She drew the blade slowly from its sheath.

  “The name is Hvestang.” She sighted dispassionately down the suave, darkly gleaming length of steel, with a ribbon of serpents beaten from tang almost to tip. “Sharp-tongue. For that it puts an end to dispute.”

  “My lady, I can not take—!”

  “Say me not, Nay, Dhasdein. The maid’s steel comes from her own folk. But you,” her eyes lifted and her voice changed. “You will have use for this.”

  The fire fluttered. I saw Therkon swallow. Then, mutely, he reached out and received the sword as he would any treasure, reverently, across both hands.

  Chapter VIII

  Entering Grithsperry was like crossing into another world: stone houses, but square, worked stone blocks, straight rooflines of grey slate or dark red tile, never a sign of thatch. No fortifications, just whitewashed house-walls lining narrow paven streets threaded above a milky blue bowl of bay, with shipping busy at its quays. But for the sea beyond, it could have been some middle-sized town in Riversrun.

  When we paused atop the last bare rolling hill brow, I said what had burnt in my mind ever since we left Nouip’s house.

  “Do you think we really were Under the Hill?”

  Therkon shifted Hvestang’s belt on his hip. He was still over-careful, though he had borne it the
re the last two days, over empty uplands, on footpaths, through way-stops, never letting it out of reach.

  In a moment he said, “It was like a saga. The wise man, wise woman, who helps the benighted hero.” His mouth-corner curved before I could retaliate. “Heroes. Shelters them. Feeds them. Gives them,” his hand shifted a little, “cunning weapons. Advice.”

  We had slept the night in a rough stone hut, and taken care to bar its door. “There are wolves,” Nouip had warned us, “all over the moors.” It was why she folded her goats and kept her dogs in at night. And if I had babbled of scree-folk while we walked, at Two’s demand he had told me Delta sagas in return.

  “So do you really think . . .”

  Therkon surveyed Grithsperry again. Then he remarked, judiciously, “She did have a latrine.”

  “She what? Oh!”

  I was still laughing when we reached the town.

  I might have been afraid, approaching the sea for the first time since Evva beach. The window-boxes, bright with royal gold and purple crocuses, might have stabbed me to the heart with recollection of Iskarda. Both were lost amid Two’s frenzy to catch every passing detail, and then the appalling realization that here, now, with Deoren gone, out from under Nouip’s shield, I was all that could serve for Therkon’s troublecrew.

  A low blow won the tussle when he wanted to deposit me at the first decent inn. “Deoren would know: I should be looking after you!” If our two days’ solitary travel had dispelled all constraint, it had also won Deoren my true sympathy. At least my mother dared to train me as both guarded and guard: Therkon knew the principles, but all too often he strayed like a sheep, staring at the shaggy ponies trotting in one-horse carts, the homespun skirts and wide-legged trews and peculiar knitted brimless hats, the people pale as Nouip or darker than either of us. Not to mention the market’s riot of new turnips, dry apples, pens of hairy little black cows, and sounders of invincibly ignorant pigs.

  About then the fragile sunlight dulled with a now familiar speed. We donned our cloaks. In a regular deluge I shepherded Therkon through bollards and net-mounds and stalls of emphatically stinking fresh fish, onto the actual quay.