Calvo came by as Sibba and Beliso carried the great pan away to the storeroom. There were no Sherank in sight. Pretending to inspect the vat, Calvo whispered urgently to us.
"It went well today. You'll be let in tomorrow without any questions—you must arrange to be the first crockers through the door. I'll set up a diversion first thing, while the guard is still counting the incomers. The cupboard will be pulled away from the wall, just far enough to let you get past it. I won't have time to say this tomorrow—the Lady bless you, Scion of Oballef, and guide you to her hiding place. Good luck!"
He strode off to scream at a pair of crockers across the room. Calla and I picked up the rags we had discarded serially through the day as the temperature in the scullery rose and slowly put them on. My hands were raw from the hot water and blistered from holding the scrubbing stone; my whole body was aching. From the way she moved, Calla was in a similar state.
We joined the pay queue, and received our two miserable tokens and our parcel apiece of cast-off food. I sniffed mine as we trudged down the rampart tunnel. "Porridge. Ecch. What did you get?"
"Mutton bones, I think. The paymaster must like me."
Which reminded me of Flax, the lecherous Koroskan, who, even as I thought of him, suddenly appeared in the plentiful flesh, standing just inside the street door and counting the scullions as they went out. When he saw Calla, he moved to block the door.
We stood stiffly in front of him, clutching our parcels. He reached out to lift Calla's unresisting hand. "A pity," he said softly, "for these shapely hands to get all rough and red in the scullery. We'll see what can be done, shall we? Goodbye for now, my flower."
Laughing deep in his throat, he stood aside to let us by.
* * *
19
WHEN WE GOT home, the kitchen was warm and steamy and full of people. Mysheba immediately put a large bowl of indeterminate stew in front of me. I pushed it aside after a mouthful or two; a vague gloom had been growing through all the weary trudge home, and my belly was full of it. On the other hand, Calla, Sibba and Beliso dug in heartily, chattering to the kitchen's resident mix of the clean and the street-dirty, Sibba with a small child on her lap, Calla performing between mouthfuls a faithful and well-received impression of fat Flax. I sat there for as long as I could stand it and then slipped out, unnoticed by any but Mysheba.
I tramped alone up the staircase, unbothered for once by the creaks and wood-groans and the abyss on my left. On the landing by the council chamber, I stopped for a moment and listened at the crack. Low voices—so Bekri was not alone. I banged on the door and Jebri opened up for me. I was in no spirit for Jebri.
Bekri was lying on his couch, covered with a blanket. Faruli was there, and Corri the Third Flamen and a few others, but I hardly noticed them. "Revered Bekri, I must talk with you," I said. "Alone," I added, with a perfunctory gesture of greeting to the others.
"My lord Tigrallef," Jebri began pompously, but Bekri cut him off.
"You heard the Scion, Jebri." His voice was noticeably weaker than when I'd seen him in the morning. When the others had gone, filing reluctantly out of the little door to the back staircase, Bekri hoisted himself painfully to a sitting position and pointed to the couch beside him. "So, Tig—what's so urgent?"
"Urgent? Nothing. I just wanted to talk with you. And without Jebri."
"Why? Jebri means well."
"I know. But he's a little too much like a Flamen-in-Exile. I couldn't bear it right now."
Bekri grinned asymmetrically. "I hear it went well in the Gilgard," he said. "I've been waiting for you and Calla to report."
"It went well enough. No dishes broken."
"And you talked to Calvo?"
I fingered the bruise on my cheek. "Several times."
"Very good, Tig. So—the end is approaching."
There was enough ambiguity in that to make me stop and think for a few seconds. Bekri meantime picked up a thin sheaf of papers from the floor by his couch and held them out to me. "Since you're here, you may as well look at this. Malviso's report on Lord Shree."
"What's in it?" I was too tired to decipher Malviso's cramped writing, interlined as it was with some sort of Sheranik proclamation. Paper was hard to come by in Gil.
"Oh, in most respects the usual history of a young Sherkin warlord. Born and raised in Iklankish; educated at the war-court. His father was Kekashr's youngest brother, who served in Gil during our beloved governor's first decade of rule—the commander at the third Malvi massacre, indeed. He'll be long remembered in Gil."
"And Shree himself?"
"Said to be a good commander, in Sherkin terms. He won his first honours at the Lamne atrocity nine years ago. You know what that means."
"I know what they give honours for, yes. Anything else?"
Bekri mulled through the paper. "Served under Prince Srinank at the Calloon rebellion—honours; at that hideous temple siege in Tata, when the dissident clerics were wiped out—honours; with the imperial government in Brisian—more honours. Two years ago, he arrived in Gil as his uncle's right hand."
"Honours?"
"Not yet. Strange." He looked at me and pursed his lips thoughtfully. "He's hated, of course, but he seems to have committed no very notable cruelties while in Gil, only the usual ones. Here's an interesting item—his mother's a Gilwoman."
"What?"
"Malviso's marked it as a strong rumour from a usually reliable source. I should think it's true."
"Let me see." I scanned the crowded paper, found the passage. "I see. One of the good old families—not royal, though. There's no chance he's a Scion, thank the Lady. But Bekri, if he's really half a Gilman, how can he—" I hesitated.
"How can he help to oppress his mother's people?"
"Something like that."
Bekri spread his arms. "He was brought up as a Sherkin, Tig. Bloodlines aren't everything. We have good reason to know that."
"You mean me?"
"You?" Bekri puzzled over this for a moment, then chuckled. "No, that's not what I meant. You're not a typical Scion, but you're no disgrace to Oballef's line. Nor to your mother's—you have a fair helping of that good Satheli commercial sense, which is not a bad thing. I was thinking of someone else."
"Who?"
Bekri's smile slowly faded. He poured us each a measure of wine and then withdrew into his blanket like an old scarred tortoise. I shifted uncomfortably on my end of the couch; all at once Bekri looked older and sicker than I liked to see him. His one eye seemed to be fixed firmly on the past.
"Who?" I repeated.
"Did I ever tell you about Myshalla?" he asked abruptly. "My granddaughter, Mysheba's half-sister, the younger daughter of my son? A lovely girl, very bright and beautiful, utterly fearless. She was her father's pride, and mine—she had all the gaiety of the old Gil, and all the craft of the new. An extraordinary girl. Even now it hurts to remember what she became."
"What happened to her?"
"The Sherank captured her in a raid. A handful of others were killed, including my son, but Myshalla was taken. That made her the unlucky one."
"I understand," I said slowly. "But what does this have to do with—"
"Patience, Tig. I'll get to that. We overturned every stone in Gil to find out where she'd been taken. Not that we could have helped her; nobody was ever rescued from the Gilgard, but there was always a chance we could smuggle to her the means of her own merciful release."
I nodded sadly.
"As it happened, there was no trace of her, not so much as a word of where she might be from any of our sources, not for one whole year. She was not among the women kept for the troopers—if she had been, we'd have found out. She simply vanished. Then one day, long after we'd assumed she was dead, she was found wandering in the fields near Malvi, healthy, well-fed, richly dressed, but—not herself."
"Mad?"
"Not quite. She was sane enough to have escaped from the Sherank. But she was broken."
"How
did she escape?"
Bekri hesitated again. "It relates to a well-known peculiarity of the Sherank. A warlord's concubine is of rather less value than a good horse—a necessity, perhaps, since they are men and their women are not allowed to leave Sher, but nothing more than a tool for their ablutions, like a hairbrush, or a toothpry. Until—"
He stopped again, and hesitated for so long that I began to get impatient. "Until the concubine becomes pregnant," I finished for him out of my vast range of reading. The import of my own words hit me a second later.
"Exactly. At that point, the concubine becomes a wife, a Sherkint, the carrier of a warrior-caste Sherkin child, and too valuable to be anywhere but Sher. Myshalla was being carried to Malvi to take ship for Iklankish when she escaped. She was valuable."
"She was pregnant?"
"What else? They wanted her back—her child was a Sherkin, and the father must have been very highly placed, judging by the fuss they made. They turned the island upside-down looking for her. Many Gilmen died, also the guard who had been careless enough to let her escape—the only time a Sherkin enjoyed the Gilman's Pleasure from the inside, as it were. That execution was more happily attended than most. Naturally, there was no question of giving Myshalla up."
"Naturally," I echoed.
"The poor girl's mind was broken; she would tell us nothing of where she'd been, or what had happened to her, or who the child's father was. Oh, there was the odd flash of the old Myshalla, especially in the months after the child was born, and we had high hopes for her at times; but the damage was too deep. She lived on for six years, her own ghost, withdrawing further from us every day, even from her own child. One day she simply lay down and died—murdered by the Sherank just as surely as if they'd hacked her to death in the first place, like the others. But at least we had Calla."
"Calla." I repeated. I don't know why I hadn't seen it coming.
"Yes. Like Lord Shree, she's the child of a Sherkin and a Gilwoman. But unlike Shree, Calla was raised as one of us. If Myshalla had not escaped on the way to Malvi, Calla would be a proper Sherkint now, far off in Iklankish, and I'd never have known my great-granddaughter. If Lord Shree's mother had escaped, he could well be a Flamen now, or a shull-merchant in the marketplace, or dead of starvation, or taken in the levy. It's strange how the world works out."
"Very strange." After a thoughtful pause, I added, "And Calla knows all this?"
Bekri spread his arms. "Of course she knows."
"That she's half-Sherkint?"
"Hardly that, my lord," Bekri protested gently. "Whoever her father was, she's a Gilwoman."
"You know what I meant," I said, mentally beating myself.
"Yes, of course. It was a fair question. There must be many Sherank in the Gilgard with Gillish blood in their veins as well as on their hands. Many concubines have sailed to Sher over the years."
"Was your granddaughter the only one to escape?"
"Apart from those who died—may their bones bring forth flowers." Bekri poured us both another beaker of wine and became businesslike. "Enough of that. Today was a great and historic day—we should drink to your final success!"
"Or pray for it." But I lifted my beaker and drank. We discussed the morrow then, contingency plans, the between-ways, the upper palace, the finer points of skulking; after a while Jebri poked his head in and clucked to find us still sitting over the wine. Calla did not appear and I was not sure I wanted her to, yet. I needed time to absorb the idea of her parentage. At last I bade the Flamens good night and dragged myself off to my little bedchamber.
I lay on top of the pallet fully clothed, grappling with a strange suspension of my powers of belief. It was not credible that I would rise in the morning hoping to change the world by nightfall; impossible that the grand slow wheel of history could be reversed in a single day; incredible that, after seventy-two years, this very night could be Gil's last under the barbed heel of Sher.
You presume too much, said my inner voice; not Gil's last night of bondage, more likely your last night of life. That, alas, was all too believable. I rose and went to the window again, to look down on the sleeping city. Not one of my people down there, packed into sorry hovels or squalid tenement rooms, expected tomorrow to be any different: the sun would rise on the Sherank and set on the Sherank, and life would go on as hungrily as usual. If I failed, they would never know it. A few ripples, an old man's disappointment, another Scion taking his turn at failure and at death. Yes, that was depressing enough to be plausible.
A hand touched the small of my back.
"Good Lady in Gil!" I leapt maybe half my own height.
"Jumpy, aren't you?" said Calla behind me.
"I didn't hear you come in." Slowly, my heart climbed down out of my throat.
Calla leaned comfortably against the sill beside me. "So what were you thinking about?"
"I was wondering whether an event can validly be described as anticlimactic before it happens, or if you have to wait until afterwards."
She stared at me for a moment, then sighed. "Oh, Tigrallef. What utter rubbish. I had hoped for something better."
"I'm not feeling witty tonight."
"That's obvious," she sniffed, "but I didn't ask you to be witty."
"All right. What was I supposed to say?"
"That you were thinking about me."
Doom receded a step or two. "You mean, longing for you to come?"
"Yes, that would do."
"Pining for your caress?"
"A bit too direct." She was smiling again.
I smiled back, reached out and traced the smooth arch of her cheek with one finger. Fine, high bones—perhaps a heritage from her unknown father? I searched her face in the dim light, finding nothing in it to suggest Sher, nothing specific that had changed from the last time I looked; except that (and this took me by surprise) every line and curve and hollow in it was now of stunning significance, a marvel and a revelation, as if I'd suddenly recognized in her features the template for everything beautiful in the world. I caught my breath. "You're lovely," I said.
"Not bad, Tig, you're catching on."
I didn't answer. I started to kiss those lines and curves and hollows, seeking each of them out, one by one. Calla slid her arms around me. My resident critic was silent; all thoughts of doom and the morning to come spun away on a wild internal whirlwind. For the second time in my life, I reflected that the romancers were right to make a fuss about this kind of thing. A moment later, I stopped thinking at all.
* * *
20
"WAKE UP, TIG."
"Why?" I liked things as they were. Calla's body was nestled along the full length of mine like a silk-lined warming bottle with delightful attachments and her hair spilled across my chest. I had been half-awake for some time, holding Calla as she slept, also holding myself quite still, as if any small movement would launch us down the cliffside on whose brink we were teetering, the cliffside of the day's dread eventualities. Mysheba shook my shoulder gently, but hard enough to jar Calla awake and precipitate the plunge. Calla rolled away from me and stretched. Mysheba tactfully vanished.
Calla sat up and stretched again. I put my hand out to pull her back, but she slapped it away. "Come on, Scion, we have a full day ahead of us. Where's the tray? Pass me my beaker, will you?"
I sat up reluctantly, wincing as the cold air struck my bare shoulders. "I wish you'd put me to bed more," I grumbled, handing her a beaker of broth, "and get me up less."
"We'll talk about it another time." She gulped the broth down—I assume people like Calla have cast-iron gullets—and was pulling her clothes on before I'd taken more than a few sips.
"Is it going to be like this every morning?" I asked.
"I sincerely hope not. Hurry up."
I lay back again and pulled the covers up warmly over my shoulders. "You know, I liked you better when you were sleeping. I watched your face for hours, and you looked beautiful and placid, and you didn't once tell me wh
at to do. Why can't you be like that when you're awake?"
"You should have been sleeping, not looking at me." A smelly wad of clothing hit me in the face. "Get dressed, Tig, remember what Calvo said. We have to be first in line. You haven't forgotten what today is, have you?"
I shut my eyes. No, I hadn't forgotten, I just wanted to defer thinking about it. I opened my eyes in time to see Calla disappearing through the curtain. Sighing heavily, I threw the cover off and started to dress.
There was no farewell blessing this time. The only Flamen in the council chamber was Jebri, talking to Calla in a low voice when I emerged. Sibba and Beliso were rubbing dirt into each other's faces by the door, and broke off to rub some into mine. As they finished, Jebri left, with a hasty sidelong glance in my direction, and Calla strode over.
"Almost ready? Good. Let's get going." Her voice was as calm as if we were setting off on a jaunt to the market. I glanced around.
"Where's Bekri? No blessing today?"
"That was yesterday," Calla said.
"Yesterday we were going out to wash crockery. Today—"
"He's not well," she broke in flatly. "Anyway, how many blessings do you need? You hate ceremonies, and so do I. Let's go." She led the way.
We proceeded down the stairs into the dark, pre-dawn street. There was no sense that anything of significance was happening. Could history really be made with so little drama? It was hard to believe, almost as hard as the singular and perplexing fact that Calla had spent the last two nights in my bed. I mulled over that as we trudged past the statue of the Lady; once might have been pity or aberration or even temporary insanity, but twice could imply that she really liked me. At that, I smiled to myself like a simpleton.
It was at this moment that I suddenly thought of a much more reasonable explanation. I stopped short. The others didn't, so I ran to catch up, my heart thumping. Already, that small awful doubt was growing into a large and equally awful conviction, and I had to know the truth before the question choked me. I grabbed Calla's arm and hissed into her ear, "The last two nights, Calla—were they part of your assignment?"
Gil Trilogy 1: Lady in Gil Page 14