by Sharon Lee
“Hey, you asleep over there, Syl Vor?” Jeff asked.
“No,” he said quickly, and leaned over Desi’s shoulder, the better to see the timeline on the shared screen. “When was the first tollbooth put in place?”
* * *
Rys tucked his crutch under his arm and swung down to the hearth, where the solitary figure sat on her rug, long silver hair loose on broad shoulders.
She looked up at his approach, black eyes reflecting firelight. Her face bore a long record of years, yet the furrows did not suggest weakness so much as the strength born of travails survived.
He bowed as well as he was able.
“Grandmother.”
Silain-luthia smiled.
“My child. How do you fare this day?”
“Under your care, I grow more well every morning.”
She cocked a sapient eye. “Excepting only those things which do not heal.”
Rys bowed his head.
“It was not in my mind to complain,” he said softly, and with complete truth. “You have saved my life—yourself, and the child, and my brother Udari—and if there are those hurts which do not heal, then at least I grow strong enough to bear them.”
This was somewhat optimistic. His physical health improved—certainly that. Between pipes, and long discussions that seemed to his untutored ears tangential, Udari and Pulka were designing a brace for his bad leg, based on Droi’s careful measurements. Soon, perhaps, he might walk again, and after a fashion, with only the very least bit of assistance from the crutch.
However much he looked forward to that event, yet he could not but worry that the gap in his memory—the very understanding of who he was and how he had come to be broken and bleeding his life out on the Bedel’s doorstep—remained. Clearly he had enemies, and until he knew them, he was vulnerable. Worse, his ignorance endangered, perhaps, those very persons to whom he owed his life.
“I wonder,” he said now to Silain-luthia, before she could question him more nearly, “if there is any task that awaits me this day.”
“I know of nothing such,” she said calmly. “Do you go again to the men’s camp?”
“If there is no duty-work before me,” he said firmly, well aware that Pulka would be horrified to hear him say it. Pulka, however, was not in debt to the Bedel, or to Silain. He was of the Bedel and between members of the kompani there could be no debt.
“Again I say that I know of nothing such, though I would ask you to tarry one moment, Rys, for an old woman’s question.”
“Certainly, grandmother. Ask and I shall answer to the best of my poor ability.”
She smiled slightly, raised her head and met his eyes like a hammer-blow.
“Are your wings strong enough to bear you?”
Shock chilled him even to his vocal cards. Udari had coached him, so that he understood this question to be both ritual and contract. Averring strong wings relinquished all rights a young man had to the hearth of his mother. Despite he had been urged most strongly to this action by Pulka, who was frankly horrified that a man should be put to such children’s work as shelling peas, Rys did not wish to leave Silain’s hearth. True enough that these last few days had found him most often in the so-called men’s camp, still he returned here, to Silain’s hearth, at the end of each long day, as he once had done to his own House…
Something stirred at that. Something from that shrouded place inside his head, where all his recent history hid.
Something…he recognized it as contempt. Self-contempt, that he, Rys Lin pen’Chala, should cling to this old and ignorant savage as if she were kin. He was Liaden. He was…
He was…
Pain shot through his head, sending Silain and her hearth spinning, waking nausea, so that he huddled against his crutch, striving to stay upright, and not to shame himself.
He was…
“Rys!”
A strong arm came ’round his waist, supporting him until the agony ebbed and he dared to open his eyes.
“Will you sit?” Silain asked him, and helped him to do so.
He sighed, and sought her face.
“You see that there is no strength at all in my wings,” he said, breathless. “The mere thought of leaving your care sends me to ground.”
Silain did not smile, though the hand that yet rested on his shoulder was kind and warm.
“What pain was that, grandson?”
“It seemed…a memory,” he told her slowly. “Slicing the inside of my skull.”
Silain sighed, but, “Healing,” she said, “is not always pain-free.”
He looked at her sharply. “This is healing, do you think?”
“I think that it may well be,” she answered. “It is the order of life that lesser wounds heal first.”
Considering the severity of the wounds he bore, that were healed as well as they might be, that was sobering indeed.
“Now!” Silain said briskly, releasing him and pulling her shawl closer ’round her shoulders. “I had not meant to mock you, Rys brother of Udari. There is no need to strain your wings; when you are ready, you will fly. You have a son’s place at this hearth, for as long as your heart desires.”
She tipped her head and considered him.
“Does this ease you?”
“Grandmother,” he said, truthfully, as relief that Pulka would doubtless decry as unmanly washed through him, “it eases, and gladdens, me.”
“Sweet bird. Tell me, are you still afraid of dragons?”
His blood chilled, and he bowed his head, drawing a deep breath, waiting… But there came no half-memory or flash of pain to inform him.
“I am,” he said. “The thing makes no sense, and yet…Droi…” He let the sentence go, seeing no way to untangle his fears into orderly sentences.
Silain, however, merely nodded.
“Droi Sees truly, grandson, but the strain of Seeing such things as she does has made her telling of them…unreliable. This is not malice, nor a weakness of will. It is no failing of courage, to fear the terrible. Know, for your own protection, that Droi does sometimes strike out. Be gentle, if she strikes at you.”
“Yes, grandmother.”
“That is well, then. And now, if my eyes do not lie, here comes your brother.”
He glanced over his shoulder, and there in truth came Udari, who stopped at Rys’ side and placed a hand upon his shoulder.
“Luthia.”
“Udari of the Bedel.”
“Brother, do you accompany me today?”
“I do,” Rys said, and shifted his crutch, but Udari’s hand was there and he took it, allowing himself to be pulled gently upright.
“Care well for your brother,” Silain said to Udari.
“Luthia, I will. A man is fortunate in such a brother, and I will keep him as the treasure he is.”
“Well said, and no less than man or woman expects from Udari. My blessing upon you both. Rys, remember what I have taught you.”
“Yes, grandmother,” he said, and again gave the small stiff bow the crutch allowed him. “My thanks,” he said, his voice suddenly rough, knowing it was not the custom, and yet, he must speak, or his heart would burst. “Silain. My thanks.”
She lifted a hand to trace a sign in the air. He heard Udari draw a sharp breath, felt the other man’s fingers tighten where they rested on his shoulder.
“I will return,” he said to Silain. “As can and may.”
* * *
The sky frowned on the City Above, and the great gusts of wind had teeth.
“Rain before mid-noon,” Kezzi heard one gadje say to another as she and Malda walked past the corner where they stood.
“Long’s it ain’t snow,” the second gadje answered, basket balanced against her hip.
Kezzi cast a thoughtful glance in the direction of the basket, which was half-full of tubers. Roasted, and with a little bit of salt sprinkled over, the tubers tempted Rys’ appetite, which was not robust, even now that he was well.
Sil
ain said, because he was so much smaller than a man of the Bedel, Rys required less to sustain himself. Kezzi herself was of the opinion that Rys would grow, if not to Pulka’s height and breadth, than at least to Udari’s, if only he would eat.
The gadje with the basket passed on, and Kezzi let her go, tubers intact. She would, she promised herself, take some food Rys favored back with her. Just now, though, she had an errand of her own.
Droi had said that it was time for her to begin tracing out the designs and making her own deck of cards. Vylet had agreed, and had given a packet of stiff paper tied with a blue ribbon. It was a rich gift, even to a sister, and it had been given to Vylet herself by her sweetheart, Zand. Kezzi wondered if that meant Vylet had after all put his blanket into the darkness beyond her hearth, as Silain had counseled her. It would, Kezzi thought, be just like Vylet to weep and refuse Silain’s counsel, only to quietly accept it a few days later, and as if it were her own idea.
Still, Kezzi thought, walking head up among the hurrying gadje, she needed colors, and that was her purpose today.
Kezzi turned the corner, Malda at her heels, thinking of having her own deck, and the colors she would—
“Hey, there, Anna, good-morning! And Rascal, too!”
Startled out of the world of What Might Be, she froze, and in that moment felt a hand drop, not ungently, on her shoulder, trapping her.
She took a breath, thought a prayer for wisdom, and looked up into a gadje’s broad brown face.
Among the Bedel it was said that all gadje looked alike—a joke of the kompani. And even were it not a joke, Kezzi thought, she defied anyone to say that this gadje looked like anyone else.
“Mike Golden,” she said sternly, striving to produce a frown as fierce of one of Droi’s fiercest. “Let me go.”
“And have you go peltin’ off like you did last time? I might look stupid, but I know enough to come in outta the snow.”
Kezzi forced herself to stand patiently beneath the man’s hand. Let him think her meek and obedient; she could play at that. And when he moved his hand…
“Where’s your ma?” he asked.
She considered him. “At home.”
He nodded gravely. “She know you’re on the roam?”
“I have an errand.”
“Which I’m meant to hear as yes,” he said cheerfully. “OK, Anna, let’s go.”
His hand moved, not to release her, but to grip her shoulder more firmly.
“Go where?”
“School,” he said, as if the word meant something.
“I don’t—”
“Boss Conrad’s orders,” Mike Golden interrupted her. “If any of the Patrol—which I am on account of being Boss Nova’s ’hand, see?—If any of the Patrol sees a youth at risk, then they’re supposed to either take ’em to school, or to jail.” He tipped his head. “That youth at risk? That’s how they talk where Boss Conrad’s from. What it means is, a kid who’s about to commit mischief, like maybe stealing something out of a shop.”
“I have stolen nothing,” Kezzi told him with dignity.
“Today, you ain’t,” Mike Golden said. “Precision counts. Last time we talked, though, you’d nipped a bag o’flour from the grocer—he showed me where you took it from, after you run off. I had to make it good with ’im, ’cause I said I would, so now you owe me.”
That was gadje foolishness. The Bedel did not owe.
“I did not agree to that bargain.”
Her voice was not quite so bold as she would have wished; in fact, it trembled somewhat. School might be a strange word, but jail? There were tales told about jail. Bedel had died in jail—caged, denied luthia, headman, and the solace of the kompani. Died with only their own prayers to ease them into the World Beyond…
Kezzi swallowed. Malda—perhaps he smelled her fear. He barked, sharply, once. The man looked down, and suddenly all her fear was for Malda, who had been used as an object of sport, beaten and broken by gadje, and left crying in the street.
“Don’t hurt him!” she cried, twisting hard against the man’s hand.
She surprised him, but not enough. He shifted his balance, and put his free hand on her other shoulder.
“I’m not going to hurt him,” he said roughly. “Anna, look at me.”
For a moment, she stared grimly at his chin, then raised her eyes to his.
He nodded seriously. “I’m not gonna hurt your dog. Or you. What I am gonna do is ask you to do is come on down to school and give it a try.”
“No,” she said, frowning.
“How else you gonna make it square between us?” Mike Golden asked, his brown eyes bright with interest.
She opened her mouth to tell him not to be stupid—and then did not speak. For it came to her that she did owe Mike Golden, and the sort of debt that the Bedel did acknowledge. The last time they had met, he had let her go; he had not raised the alarm, or set the other gadje after her.
“How long,” she asked, “is this school?”
“Just today, then you go on home and come back tomorrow,” he answered, and Kezzi’s heart lifted.
One day—less! Only what was left of this day—and maybe not even that, if she was fortunate, or clever.
“There’s stories,” the man was saying. “Lunch. Lessons, too, but I got word from a friend that even the lessons are interesting.”
“I will come to this school,” Kezzi said, and smiled up at him as Vylet had taught her. “And Rascal, too.”
* * *
Events was just over, and Ms. Taylor had them standing to follow a list of commands she called out in the melant’i of “Simon.” Syl Vor theorized that Simon had been the school’s exercise-master, called away now to other duties, and leaving Ms. Taylor to fulfill his. He wasn’t quite able to settle in his own mind whether the sets of commands were original with the exercise-master, or current with Ms. Taylor. Whichever, they were very silly. In fact, Tansy and Kaleb laughed outright at the various directions to raise your left foot and bounce on your right, or pat your head and rub your belly, or—
“Simon says, turn around as fast as you can!” Ms. Taylor said sharply.
Syl Vor gasped, hearing an echo of Grand-aunt’s voice in that sharp command, and turned every bit as quickly as he could—and there was Kaleb, staggering as he spun, shouting laughter.
Syl Vor pulled in his shoulders and twisted.
Kaleb yelled, “Watch it!” and jumped for the space behind Delia’s chair, which was where Syl Vor had been going, and he twisted again, Kaleb bumped the chair, knocking it into Syl Vor’s knee. He over-balanced, chairs screeched across the floor, kids yelled, and he fell, barely managing to tuck up so he didn’t hurt himself.
Much.
“Don’t the Boss teach you not to fall over chairs?” That was Rudy.
“Who’d thought such a little kid could make such a big mess outta Simon Says?” That was Peter.
“Kaleb! You OK?” And Tansy.
Syl Vor, curled on the floor, sighed, and took stock, which the training tapes, and Grandfather and Grand-aunt, and Quin and Padi had all told him that he must do, once he had time.
He’d hit his elbow hard when he fell, which was his own fault for not tucking fast enough; and his knee hurt where the chair had banged into it. Beyond that…
“Syl Vor,” Ms. Taylor said, softly. He felt her stroke his hair. Horrified, he opened his eyes and saw her knees on the floor in front of him. “You OK, honey?”
He took a breath. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and wriggled into a sitting position, out from under her touch. She wasn’t kin. She had no—He swallowed, and looked down, deliberately reviewing the calming exercise. The bracelet had slipped down over his hand. He pushed it back up under the sleeve of his sweater.
“I’m all right,” he said, looking firmly into Ms. Taylor’s face.
“What happened?” she asked.
“Fell over his own feet,” Rudy said.
Ms. Taylor looked over Syl Vor’s head, frowni
ng darkly. “I am speaking with Syl Vor,” she said sharply.
There was a short silence, then Rudy muttered, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Syl Vor, what happened?” Ms. Taylor repeated.
Surely, she’d seen what had happened, he thought crankily. And then thought that she might not have, because she had everybody to watch, and during the Simon game she tended to watch Peter and Rudy; Tansy, Kaleb, and Arn.
“I turned as fast as I could,” he said, carefully, “and s-saw that I might…bump Kaleb, and so I tried…” He bit his lip, unsure of how much he needed to say, and not wanting to seem to place blame on Kaleb.
“You tried to miss him and that put you off-balance,” Ms. Taylor finished, and Syl Vor felt relief. She did understand, then.
“Can you stand up?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and did so, then stood looking down into her face, which wore a startled expression. She was his elder, so he offered her his hand, politely, heard Rudy laugh, and Peter snicker, and saw Ms. Taylor’s lips thin.
She put her hand in his and rose, hardly using his support at all.
“That was very courteous, Syl Vor, thank you.”
She looked around, and nodded briskly.
“All right, everyone, put things in order, then back to your seats! Geography next!”
* * *
Mike Golden kept a firm grip on her shoulder as they walked toward the school. Kezzi kept a sharp eye out for another of the kompani, but saw no one she could signal.
“Here we go,” the man said, steering her toward three scrubbed stone steps, and a bright red door at the top, with a handsome knocker made out of good Bedel blackwork, in the shape of a goat-footed man playing the short pipes.
Kezzi stumbled, seeing that knocker, for she remembered Pulka laughing at Rafin over his care of work that was destined to adorn the gadje house of love, until Rafin had growled at him to shut up, or go away, and in either case leave him in peace.
This, Kezzi thought, was bad, and now that she knew what school was, she almost thought that she might prefer jail. But no. There were stories she had dreamed, that told of escape from such houses as this. It could be done. And she had an ally.