by Holly Lisle
Were these new people, these peknu, her friends?—or were they, like all the people she’d ever known (except her tagnu, she thought), just waiting for a chance to take away from her whatever little bit of goodness she got for herself?
She quit drumming and rested her face in her hands. How could she know what was right? How could she be sure she made the right choices? She had no answers.
* * *
Choufa sat in the swaying upper branches of the sharsha tree with several of the older girls. With their mottled green-on-tan skins, they blended into their surroundings like jungle snakes and hunting hovies; they lurked high in the treetops, imagining sending down deadly thunderbolts on the Silk People they hated.
The air was cool, the sun was setting—visible for a few moments under the heavy clouds, and the girls were as somnolent as the just-fed Keyu. Choufa swung her legs off the branch and chewed on a leaf stem.
Thedra, a much older girl, whose hair fell to her shoulders, and whose belly was round as a marshmelon, pointed down at a Silk Woman who walked on the dirt below them. “I can make her drop that basket,” Thedra said.
Choufa was surprised. “Really? By shouting at her?”
“No. Watch.” Thedra pointed one slim finger at the woman, and closed her eyes.
Choufa could suddenly “hear” Thedra, the same way she could hear the Keyu. The girl was telling the basket to fall, as the Keyu had told the jungle beasts to drive the peknu toward them. She seemed to be touching the Keyu with her mind—for a moment, she seemed to be one with the Keyu. Choufa “saw” how she did it and wondered if she could do the same.
And the basket fell. The fruits, gifts of the Keyu to their people, splatted into the dirt or rolled away in all directions—and the girls up in the branches laughed softly.
“Oh, that was good,” Maari said. “How did you do that?”
“She talked to the Keyu,” Choufa said. “Didn’t you hear her?”
“No.” Maari, a stocky girl with stubby black hair, shook her head. “That isn’t the thing I can do.”
Thedra said, “Most of the time, I wish I couldn’t talk to them, either.”
“Me, too.” Choufa wrinkled her nose. “They think awful things. They ate all those peknu—”
“Peknu,” Maari snorted. “It could have been worse. It could have been us.”
“It will be us,” Thedra said, her voice flat and hard. She grimaced and pressed her hand to her belly, and Choufa, fascinated, watched ripples roll across the tight-stretched skin.
“The baby—?” she asked.
“It kicks,” Thedra said.
“Leth put a baby in my belly,” Choufa offered.
Maari shook her head. “You haven’t been here long enough to be sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have to miss your bleeding to be sure—do you bleed yet?”
Choufa felt her stomach turn. “Do I do what?!” She thought of all the awful things that had happened to her—apparently there were a few she’d missed. “I don’t do that! I don’t want to, either.”
Thedra laughed. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the Silk People. You just have to do it before you can make a baby—so you probably don’t have one in your belly yet. It’s not so bad.” She looked down at her own round stomach and sighed. “I wish I hadn’t gotten one so fast. As soon as you have it, they take you away and feed you to the trees.”
Choufa bit her lip. “Are you sure?”
“I can hear the trees.”
“I didn’t believe the Silk People when they said they let us go after we had babies,” Choufa admitted. “What are you going to do?”
Thedra’s laugh was flat and lifeless. “What can I do? Tell the trees not to eat me? I think the reason they want us is because some of us can talk to them.”
“Why do they want me?” Maari asked. “I can’t talk to them.”
Thedra rocked on her branch, rubbing her fingers in round circles on her stomach. “I think I know,” she said slowly. “There is a—a kind of fuzzy feeling—I get from each of us sharsha. When I close my eyes and ‘look’ at one of us, I can see a sort of glow—and I can’t see it from any of the Silk People. I think the glow is what the trees want.”
“Oh!” Choufa shook her head in admiration. “How did you think of all of that?”
“I didn’t.” Thedra pressed her lips in a thin line. “My best friend, Larria, noticed the glow first. I think she was the best of all of us at seeing that.”
“Larria?” Choufa thought hard. “I haven’t met her yet.”
“You won’t.” Thedra looked away. “They fed her to the damned trees. I heard them do it.”
Choufa saw the tears that glittered down the other girl’s cheeks. “There has to be some way we can get out of here,” she said. “There just has to be.”
“No one ever has before.”
“Well, I’m going to find a way,” Choufa said. “That’s what I’m going to be best at.”
Thedra looked back at the younger girl. Her eyes gleamed with tears waiting to fall. “If you do, Choufa—” She paused, and looked down at her swollen belly and pressed her lips together.
Choufa waited, but the other girl remained silent. “What?” she finally asked.
“Do it soon. That’s all. Just do it soon.”
* * *
Roba saw the two of them halfway down the street waiting for her at the main entrance to the indoor market. Thirk scowled. His arms crossed tightly over his chest, except when he gave in to quick outbursts of visible temper and pounded on the market’s doorframe. Kirgen stood as far from Thirk as he could, pretending not to know him.
Oh, no, she thought. What now?
They spotted her walking toward them in the deepening gloom and both charged into the thin drizzle to meet her.
“Praniksonne’s been here and gone,” Thirk snarled, “and took every great saje and scholar he could lay finger to with him.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Roba told him, but he ignored her.
“They transported in yesterday morning—yesterday morning!—picked up supplies and a convoy of flying carpets and took off before the sun was even fully up. He had Telrondsonne with him, and Mards from Dumforst—both of the Ralledine Bendee’s—Craysonne—gods, the list reads like a dream guest list for the Sajerie’s Condrene Awards.” Thirk’s fist smacked into the open palm of his other hand as he talked, over and over again. “That robe-kissing Tethjan bush-saje in the market nearly bepissed himself telling me about it. He wasn’t invited. He wasn’t mighty enough.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Roba said again.
“By the cursed bell of Conclave, woman, it does matter! How can it not matter? He has every brilliant mind in or out of Ariss drooling over his expedition—and who do we have on ours? The three of us. How can we get any respect with an expedition like that?”
Roba smiled, feeling very like the cat who gobbled the goldfish. “Praniksonne lied,” she said. “He stole the tablet and led ‘the most brilliant minds in or out of Ariss’ on a giant snark hunt. When they find out, they’ll have his hide for shoeleather.”
Kirgen gasped. “You jest!” he whispered.
Thirk gaped. “It can’t be. He had the tablet. He confirmed our theories.”
Roba sauntered. She swaggered. She wished she could think of a particularly noxious way of rubbing Thirk’s nose in her discovery. She decided blunt was best. “I found the people who found the tablet. They are setting out for the true ruins of a First Folk city in the morning. We’re invited.”
“How—how—?!” Thirk stuttered to a halt.
“The kids who found the tablet are living with my old roommate and her husband—who just happens to be a wearer of the Infinite Eye.” How’s that for important? she thought. “I told her I was traveling with two sajes. She said if we pack our own supplies, and the two of you help transport the trade payment for the kids once we get there, all three of us can go along.”
Al
l the way to Medwind’s house, Roba couldn’t help but notice that Thirk kept repeating, “Praniksonne lied. Praniksonne lied.” He varied that with, “His credibility is gone—hayh!”
Nokar met them at the door, and Kirgen, an expression of disbelief on his face, said, “Sir! I was led to believe you’d died in the war! I haven’t seen you since—well, since the swamp.”
Roba stared at her young lover, startled. Nokar apparently recognized Kirgen, too, for he pounded the younger saje gleefully on the shoulder. “Kirgen, lad!—you look better than the last time I saw you! Then you had mud to your ears and were sure as death the world was about to end.”
“We all thought so at the time, sir.”
“Didn’t we? But I didn’t die. I got proposed to instead—a lifetime of celibacy, and I get proposed to by the most gorgeous dying woman I’ve ever seen—when I’m almost too old to enjoy the sensation.” He waggled his bushy eyebrows and cackled. “But not quite. Not quite, boy. And she’s a good Hoos girl into the bargain. You know about Hoos girls, don’t you, boy?”
“Well, ah—not from experience—”
“Take my advice—you ever get the chance to marry a Hoos girl, you take it. What they don’t know, you aren’t interested in anyway.”
Thirk looked like someone had walked up behind him and hit him on the head with a paving stone. “You know him?” he asked Kirgen.
“We were in the war together—”
“We were all in the war,” Thirk said stiffly.
Nokar said, “Even so, but this boy and I were in the war together. But come on back. You’re just in time for nondes. We have hovie stew and a mess of heathen foods a man with my digestion shouldn’t even have to look at. Hummph! Hovie stew!” he snorted. “As if scaly, six-limbed fliers could be fit food for human consumption!”
Nokar set off down the breezeway at a remarkable clip, and the three of them chased after him.
Roba found herself wondering what part Kirgen had played in the war, to be friendly with someone of such rank and importance as Nokar. She wouldn’t ask again—she always had the feeling his memories were ones he would have been happier without. But curiosity was eating her.
They marched into the dining room. She was last through the doors. She saw all the people she’d encountered earlier—Medwind, the three Wen kids—and two more she didn’t recognize. The first was a tall, lovely young woman with long brown hair and freckles, who wore Kareen peasant garb as if it were the robes of a Council great. She was cutting meat for a fiery red-headed child of perhaps two or three, who had stopped herself in mid-tantrum to stare at the newcomers. The Kareen woman looked over at them, as well—began to smile politely—and froze.
She was staring at Kirgen, and Roba felt a sudden surge of jealous possessiveness.
The girl said, “Kirgen?”
He nodded, and Roba noticed how pale he looked. “Faia?” he whispered. And tipping his head toward the little girl, he asked, “Who—?”
“Kirtha,” the girl named Faia said.
Roba felt her world beginning to tilt. Kirtha was the feminine of Kirgen. The child looked just like him. Still, it might all be coincidence.
But Kirgen couldn’t be satisfied to leave well enough alone. He asked Faia, “Ours?”
And the woman nodded.
The information blindsided Roba. Like his old war stories, Kirgen had kept any stories of previous lovers strictly to himself. Roba had considered his youth and his association with the sajery, and the long hours he spent in study, and had come to the conclusion that he might not have had any previous loves.
Which was apparently as nearsighted of me as assuming he didn’t do much in the war because he never talked about it.
She stared at the woman and the child and Kirgen, who was looking from one to the other of them without ever turning his eyes to her. Her heart felt as if it were about to burst.
Yes. His child. Their child. And where does that leave me?
Roba stepped back, so that she could lean against the wall without being too obvious. She felt sick. She wished she could leave the room, but that was a childish reaction. She was beyond such behavior. She found no satisfaction in the fact that most of the people in the room, including Kirgen, looked as surprised as she felt.
It was the disaster with Janth all over again. She’d loved him with all her heart at fifteen and been sure he was in love with her, too—until he ran off with the healer’s daughter. In retaliation, she ran off to join a bunch of lonely celibate women in the Daane University magerie.
While she was off in the cold southern wastes, someone had changed all the rules. She came back to Ariss to find she was free to seek love again.
And like a fool, I did, she thought. I ran out, and found myself another handsome young Janth. And now I’m going to get my fool heart broken all over again.
Well, that’s what I get for loving him.
* * *
The atmosphere around the nondes table was tense enough to give Medwind indigestion. She’d seen Roba with Kirgen when they walked through the door and had realized the same man Faia identified as Kirtha’s father was also Roba’s lover. She could feel trouble brewing, though she was unsure where the outburst would come from or when it would come. The suspense made the fried hovie in her stomach slide around perilously until she regretted even tasting it. She watched the interplay of glances and glares between Kirgen, Faia, and Roba, by turns morbidly fascinated and appalled—and she waited.
Kirgen had seated himself across from Faia and Kirtha. Faia occupied herself feeding the little girl, who didn’t want or need to be fed—the hill-girl didn’t eat anything herself.
Roba looked miserable sitting beside the too-talkative saje who was her department head. When prodded, the mage delivered a few one-word comments on scholarship and the search for First Folk artifacts and, with a wince, Delmuirie. She played with her food, but Medwind suspected she swallowed nothing but her tears.
Kirgen stayed silent throughout the meal, and Medwind noticed he ate little. She suspected his stomach was probably in the same shape as hers. She could just imagine long days and nights in the company of these same people, and weeks of sitting to table together playing out the same delightful mealtime rituals.
I ought to be back down to my fighting weight in no time, she decided. On the other hand, it doesn’t look like the added mouths are going to require many more supplies than we needed before. She wished fervently that she hadn’t invited Roba and her associates on the trip.
When Kirgen finished not eating, he sat, fumbling with his dinner knife. He started to speak several times, but faltered. Finally he blurted out, “Have you—um, both of you—been well?”
Faia traced spirals in her remaining food with the point of her knife. Thirk and Nokar’s noisy discussion of library politics at Faulea, drifting from the other end of the table, covered the awkward silence. Finally, the girl said, “It is hard sometimes, but my friends help.” She looked up at him and smiled carefully. “We have enough to eat, a place to sleep, and I have work I can do—we are both well.”
He smiled back, but when his glance drifted from Faia to Kirtha, the smile faltered. “I didn’t know.” He stared down at his hands. “I wish I’d known.”
“I am sorry. I did not know myself until after the war—until after I left the city. Then, I did not dare try to find you, and I was not sure you would even want to know.” Faia sighed. “Nokar told me to the best of his knowledge you had survived the war—I thought perhaps some day I could risk going back to the city to show her to you. But I am not truly welcome there—you understand?”
He nodded. Medwind watched him and noted that he could not take his eyes off his daughter’s face. “She’s very beautiful,” the young saje said softly. “She looks like you.”
Faia blushed and laughed. “Your red hair, your freckles, your brown eyes, and she looks like me? Hardly.”
At the other end of the table, Nokar bellowed, “You don’t mean that tw
ittering ass Virven Sharsonne is up for the head librarian position?!”
Thirk laughed. “Practically uncontested. He’s claiming he was your heir apparent—and after Timmesonne tried to launch an open-to-the-public policy, the reactionaries are willing to believe him.”
“Virven’s a ninny.”
Kirtha yawned, and Faia turned her attention to the child. “Sleep-time, Kirthchie.”
“Not sleepy!” Kirtha protested.
“Ha! That is what you always say.” She scooped the little girl into her arms and rose. “I plead pardon.” She excused herself and headed for the room she and Kirtha shared, then stopped in the doorway. “But maybe your da would like to help put you in bed tonight?” Her face was a picture of doubt, and her eyes focused on Kirgen.
The young man gave her an uncertain smile. “Could I?”
“Of course.”
Kirgen made his own excuses and disappeared into the breezeway after her.
Medwind returned her attention to the other guests. Roba sat at the far end of the table, her face a mask of indifference. Her eyes, though, glittered suspiciously bright.
Thirk, next to her, sighed. “Isn’t it wonderful,” he said, “that the two of them have found each other after all this time. Ah, young love.” He elbowed Roba. “Not the sort of thing you and I are ever going to have to worry about again, is it?”
Medwind gritted her teeth and wondered if the man was always so insensitive—or so blind.
Roba handled it better than the Hoos woman expected. “Apparently not,” her old friend said stiffly. “Apparently not.”
Conversation shifted to the expedition that would start in the morning. The Wen kids, Medwind noted, looked unhappy to be including anyone else in the trip to their city. Nokar had introduced the Ariss scholars to the Wen children, and both Seven-Fingered Fat Girl and Dog Nose had been cold and aloof.
The Hoos woman thought she understood. The Wen kids found the city, and decided it would make a good home for them. According to the stories they told Medwind, their own parents had thrown them out to fend for themselves in the dangerous jungle. They’d seen friends die, and spent years unwanted by anyone. A place that was theirs alone must have seemed like a haven—and Medwind and her colleagues were crowding that haven.