by Sylvia Kelso
Made in Dhasdein. Almost the last remnant of the crown prince. The one absolute necessity, had he actually managed to escape.
He laughed again, another smothered concussion of breath. “Do you know, my—Chaeris? I was glad to have been sold, before the end. I was even glad for my, my stomach’s work. I made that squirming heap of lard pay for it, the chains, that hold.” He shuddered once, more eloquent than any words. “Even the whip. I reminded him, every time he was driven to distraction, that if he beat me, it would bring down his price.”
I bit my tongue on, And it was only the price’s counter-balance that saved your life.
“But to be sold . . . again.”
To a woman. Stripped again, no doubt, this time before a woman’s eyes. He did not have to put the loathing, the humiliation, into words.
“I thought. I did think—the only thing I could think was, If she keeps me, I could get away here. Find a boat, get back. I had to get back. I tried not to think, what might have happened to you, how far away you were. Oh, Dhe.”
I hugged him rib-squeezingly and said fiercely into his ear, “I was behind you. I didn’t ever stop following you. Whatever I had to do, I was going to get you back.”
Whatever I had to do. The shudder took me, uncontrollably: I had done whatever I had to do, and it was beyond any horror I ever conceived.
He leant his cheek to mine, and for all the husk of mistreatment, his voice came with a rouse of the crown prince’s authority. “Chaeris, tell me. What did you have to do?”
I stared out into the grey and white spume that was merging into darkened sky. Gildair was a brighter constellation, but human shelter, its comfort and sanctuary, still seemed very far away. Once he heard this confession, might he ever count me human again?
“Skall,” I said. And shut my eyes, and said it out in a piece, before I lost courage irredeemably.
“Rathi put me ashore, he said they’d wait, I wore Nouip’s cloak, I took Hvestang on my shoulder, I remembered Grithsperry. So I went up to find—Angrir.”
His shoulder twitched. He had had cause to learn that name.
“They were,” I took breath. “At the ceat.”
His breath came in hard, and his every muscle turned to stone.
“I tried to bargain. I would have bought you, I would have traded him every gem I, we, had left. But he played with me. And in the end. In the end—”
His silence, his muscles’ clench gave me the answer: I remember what he did, in the end. Yes. I do remember that.
“So I threw Verrith’s knife.”
I heard his grunt, loud as a foot-trip. He had seen us, at exercise on the River. He knew an Iskardan knife-thrower’s scope.
“The others came after me.” I had to get it over with. “I had one knife left, and Hvestang, it wasn’t enough. But Two, Two remembered how they woke the statue, at Cataract. She pulled the other knife and—the—the—she woke.”
Therkon had his own memories. Dhasdein’s history. I heard the breath hiss, as if I had hurt him, in his throat.
“Gods above, Chaeris.”
“I couldn’t—we had no other way. I d-didn’t . . .”
I didn’t want to do it, to remember is almost more than I can bear, if you think I am not human, how do you think I feel? I could not get out any of it. I clutched like a man drowning at the folds of sealskin cloak.
I heard his next breath suck in. Then he moved with the jerkiness of shock, and his other arm tried to come round me, to pull me right into his body’s refuge. His face bowed, but not with revulsion, into my hair. “Oh, Chaeris,” I heard him whisper, almost in the way I had whispered, Oh, Therkon. “Oh, my . . . Oh, Chaeris.”
Wind and sea-sound washed over us. Anfluga tacked again: Rathi must have been sailing purely by the wind’s feel on his cheek, for it was almost completely dark. Gildair’s lights had grown, strengthened, larger than planets now. We were round on the next tack before Therkon spoke.
Straightening only a little, not releasing me, but I could feel him staring out over the rail, onto the lightless sea.
“He.”
I did not have to ask which “he.” The one he would not scorn as a slaver, nor dismiss as a popinjay. The one who had taken more from him than pride.
“I kicked him,” he said softly, “the third day. At sea. He told me then. What they would do to me. When they had me ashore. When they were on—Skall.” He said it as if the very word burnt his throat. “He would not just whip me. Like a dog. Or chain me. Like a dog. We’ve a kennel for you, he said, on my island. Fit for an Outland cur. You’ll taste the pleasures of that a day or two. And then.”
I did not say, Go on. I could envisage, far too clearly, what that portal might unseal.
“When they pulled me out of the—kennel,” Therkon said very softly, “I knew I would die.”
He shifted his arm over me a little, as if to confirm I was still there.
“No more safeguards. No chances. Even if I chose—and I would have—to plead. He—Nothing would save me. I knew I would never find you. Rescue you. Know what happened to you. To you. Or to Dhasdein.”
I had no words at all.
“So I spat at them.” He was barely whispering. “And I prayed. To the River-lord. To Dhe. If it’s all in ruin, I besought them, my charge lost, both my charges, my life’s work, my mother’s life work, the whole Riverworld lost. If it’s all ruin, only let me die. As fast as I can.”
I could only tighten my handful of cloak until my very fingerbones cracked. And I had thought myself sorely overtried.
“I meant to jump. To bang my head on the gallows. They told me about the gallows. To strangle myself, to—but when they pulled me out, I was too cold, they were too quick.”
Now I could feel him trembling, a fine vibration that seemed to start in his very bones. His breath came in abrupt, fitful pants against my cheek.
“Then,” he said, “you came.”
He left me the dark to understand the fullness of that. Not merely his own survival, not merely the greatest of individual debts. Not merely rescue from torture and a prolonged, hideous death. But also the chance to redeem his honor. Recover the charge for whom he had pledged his life. And with it, a renewed hope for his greater charge.
For Dhasdein. For the Riverworld.
In silence Two rehearsed the rest. The price for us was great, almost as great as for those nine who lost their lives. But did this not go some way to redeem the debt?
Tears trembled on my lashes, blurring Gildair to a row of golden stars, more fitful and far blurrier than the torches that had burned for us along the imperial wall in Riversend. Tears of horror and sorrow and loss. Tears of a wormwood gratitude, such as Azo brought me on the tower of the Seaward fort. Yes, what you did was bitter, an eternal stain upon you, she too had said. But you did what you must.
Anfluga turned again, far more slowly this time, almost majestically. The lights were close upon us, I could make out the blocky silhouette of walls, perhaps a wharf. The shape of windows. The smell of smoke and tar and fish-guts, the sound of shipping, creaky planks, slap of ropes. Humankind waited for us. Warmth, perhaps some welcome. Even I need not despair of entering there.
In that slow rise of hope, the detail recurred with something near a slap. “The ring! What did you do with the ring? The imperial seal! You still had it, didn’t you, at Ve Pool? Mother save us, if Stokka or Thralli found that—!”
“I ate it,” said Dhasdein’s crown prince.
* * * *
By daylight, Gildair was blue. A steely, dark grey-blue in both tile and stone, thick-walled, stolid houses snugged in startlingly regular streets above the harbour in its short arms of bay. From my upstairs window, its solidity spoke an aplomb, a tempered endurance, equal to every storm the south could unleash.
It was also a town sophisticated as Jurrick, the c
onduit between Sandouin and the bigger islands of the further, the true South Isles, a town with merchants and craft shops, and inns, from overnight dormitories to hostelries doubtless fit for lords. But even a dockside tavern might have refused our custom, a handful of bedraggled seamen, me in my hard-used clothes, and Therkon fumbling like an animated scarecrow in Nouip’s cloak and Rathi’s spare boots: had not Gildair, like Ve Pool, been feeling hardship’s pinch.
“An’ now, lass. What think ye to do now?”
Rathi had out-paced sun and breakfast both. It was scudding bleakly outside. Last night, I had been unable to think past getting Therkon clean, dry, fed, his hurts salved, and into a bed, preferably all at once. I had hardly noticed a landlord happy to fill even a few bunks and a couple of dingy rooms, and a healer willing to stir abroad in wind and darkness at a stranger’s call.
A brisk, middle-aged, dark Archipelagan, he had seemed careful, if clinically detached. I had ached to hover, to tally the damage revealed and its repairs begun. But recalling that moment of rage and revelation on Skall’s hillside, once he set to work, I had heroically shut the door on them both.
“Y’r brither’ll hardly leave that bed today.”
Rathi was right in that.
“The healer’s coming back.”
The healer finished, there had still been a bath to organize, cooks fit to cater for a near invalid, Anfluga’s crew to wrestle into conceding that, no, they would not sail on in the dark, yes, I was going to pay for passage from Skall, and yes, that price would include their bed and board.
They had just dispersed, leaving me to stay abruptly watery knees against the hall stairpost, when the healer reappeared.
“The skipper tells me, ye’re in charge?” It had hovered between doubt and courtesy, a “lass,” or perhaps, “ma’am.” His face showed lines, even for middle-age, under the hanging lamp. “Y’r man’s clean, an’ I’ve seen to the rest. Ye’ll need salves, for a week or so. I’ll send some round?” I nodded and nodded, trying hard to summon suddenly elusive words. “He’s abed now. If they’ve thin soup, give him some, an’ a little bread. Not too much, at first! An’ he says,” suddenly he was eyeing me narrowly, “ye were hurt y’rself, a piece back. Ribs, was it? Cracked?”
“Ribs, yes. But they’re all right now.” His face was swinging slowly toward and away from me. “The soup’s heating. May I, can I go up?”
“He’s askin’ for ye.” He frowned. “But he was very firm. Made me promise I’d look at ye, as well.”
I had shut myself out, but he had not forgotten me. He had looked for me. Thought for me, with that infuriating, ire-melting Dhasdeini concern, even in his own distress.
I had bitten my lip hard, and shut my hand harder on the stairpost. And managed, “I had two good healers, on Phaerea. But thank you. I can go up?”
Now I bit my lip again, still staring outside, as Rathi’s boots shifted on the bare wooden floor. Too early, I wanted to exclaim, it’s too early for this, before the healer, before breakfast, before Therkon and I even have a chance to talk. Do you think I, alone, can decree what we’ll do now?
For some things, yes. I still had the gem pouch, and Therkon would not cavil at my sole decision there.
“I can pay the passages, both of them, but I may need a money-changer.” The healer’s reckoning waited, too. “Could Segil or someone escort—?”
“The whole crew’ll convoy ye, if ye choose, lass. But—”
“In a moment. That’s the door.”
Therkon had been sitting up, against what looked like half the inn’s pillows, when I tapped, bare minutes earlier. The nightshirt was probably from his own pack, its clean if now rumpled white a stark contrast to the dark veils of hair, combed but still loose over his shoulders, and the regular thicket of beard. It did match the hollow-eyed pallor of his face all too well.
I had known better than to try watching the night with him, just as I had known to bespeak my own room. I had officiated while he swallowed, almost reverently, his first mouthfuls of bread. Helped him spoon up soup. But when his eyelids began to sink, I had coaxed the sleeping-potion down him, and then, with what felt like tearing sinews, whispered a goodnight, and tiptoed out. If ghosts and nightmares plagued his rest, he would not want that further humiliation shared.
And if fatigue and relief had sunk me as swiftly, the memories had not stayed buried. Neither Therkon nor I had asked, Did you sleep well?
Now the door swung open. Helpfully, Rathi admitted the kitchen-maid. Unlike the White Grebe, the Lobster Pot readily served food upstairs. I did settle the tray myself over Therkon’s lap, and inspect the barley broth, exactly as the healer had ordered. Toasted bread came with it. When my own stomach rumbled, Therkon said sharply, “Sit down, Chaeris.”
The healer had said the same thing the night before. After a sharp stare, and a hand suddenly clamped under my elbow, while he sent a shout ringing down the rear passage. “Husvorth! Up here!”
Husvorth was the innkeeper, who brought bustle and exclamation and a hot, exquisitely poached cod fillet in his wake. Against both his and the healer’s protests—“Y’r forespent, lass! Take a moment for y’rself!”—I had gulped it in time to follow Therkon’s tray up the stairs.
Therkon’s own expression now warned against further dispute. I sat on the bedside stool and purloined half the bread. A moment before he had been muttering about razors and rubbing at his jaw. Now I pointed magisterially at the spoon, and with a tiny smile that retorted, For the moment, you have the tiller, he began to eat.
Rathi watched in silence. But however villainous his looks, Therkon was rapidly reclaiming the crown prince: he took three mouthfuls, set the spoon down, looked straight in Rathi’s face, and said, “Sir, I have much to thank you for.”
Rathi grunted and shifted his feet again. In a moment he said gruffly, “T’ passage was paid.”
“But not the rest.”
“Aye, well. None’d leave the lass to that.”
Therkon’s mouth crimped. I could see him thinking, You saved us, and I could do nothing. I, who imperiled us both. Whatever gratitude he assuredly felt had Dhasdeini self-esteem to balance it. Not to mention imperial pride.
Beyond the pretext for curtains, the sky had darkened. Now a sudden squall tapped against the casement’s tiny panes. In Gildair they burned bright whale oil in the lamps, however sparingly, and even a dockside inn filled its windows with glass.
Rathi was staring intently in that grey light: so an Isle skipper might evaluate a fellow man, and one he felt no obligation to respect, but something suddenly recalled that fleeting expression of the night before. Yet why should Rathi conceivably covet a rescued slave, an Outland enigma? Any more than a girl, at best an Outland curiosity, at worst a witch, with a ‘companion’ whose menace he had seen for himself?
Soup forgotten, Therkon was staring back. What are you? that look riposted: the prince, the imperial leader assessing a tool, an ally, a resource. Who are you? demanded the man behind the masks. Who are you, to have helped, comforted, been trusted by my Chaeris?
Because it was possessiveness, if not open warning, in that stare. Even, I realized, something near to jealousy.
“Ye’re no’,” Rathi said slowly, “much alike.”
Therkon turned a wrist. The prince’s gesture: a point I decline to explain. “And what are your plans, now?”
For all the snub, he had known better than to add, After you are paid. Rathi’s look noted both points. What he said was, “An’ ye don’t sound alike.”
“We were raised apart.” Therkon looked down his nose as if he had never left Riversend.
“Aye?” Rathi raised his own brows. “But ye know about the lass’s ‘companion’?”
Therkon put the spoon right down. The stare chilled from prince to hatchet man.
“No affair o’ mine?” Rathi looked half amused. “Ye t
ake a fine toplofty tone when ye’ve a mind to it. No wonder ye stirred yon hoodie crow on Skall. Si’thee, prince.” It was pure Isles irony, but Therkon winced. “T’was the lass followed ye, an’ found ye, an’ broke ye out o’ that. An’ t’was Anfluga brought ye off. I’m no’ sure I’d do it again. But the lass. Ye’ve taken fine care for her so far. Is there any space, in y’r plans now, for her?”
Therkon sat up with such a jerk the soup spilt, but the manifold injustices gagged him the split second that let me get in first.
“He does take care for me, he has taken care for me! I’m the troublecrew, I should take care for him!” I swung on Therkon, spurting words that had waited weeks to be said. “I was stupid on the cliff, Two said it was quicker, the chimney, I thought, it’ll just waste time to stop for the rope—What you did might have been wrong, but it began with my fault!”
He was almost as confounded as Rathi. He literally blinked. Then his eyes went black and hard as dagger-points and he said, “Are you sure?”
The question I had asked myself in the street at Ve Pool. Had I fallen by chance, or the consequence of my own choice? Or at the choice of someone—something—else?
I could feel the blood drain out of my face. Rain tapped and whispered at the window and black water was rising round me, touching, groping, reaching for my lungs, my breath, my throat . . .
“Chaeris!”
Therkon had lunged for my wrist. The yank threw me almost across the bed, the soup spilt definitively. “Chaeris!”
I managed to sit up. To nod, to gasp, to gulp wordlessly. I’m here.
He let go. His face looked hard as mine felt, stiffened onto the bone. I could feel Rathi staring. The air around us fairly vibrated. Doubt, suspicion, multiple tensions. More than a little fear.