by Kate Elliott
“You left us to die in a tomb!” Amaya bursts into tears.
“I didn’t know!” he shouts.
Safarenwe wails.
Mother cries, “Give her to me!”
He crosses to her and she takes the baby from him. Takes a step back so he can’t touch her.
“Kiya—”
“You made your choice, Esladas. Now you will live with it. Please leave. Is Jessamy going with you?”
“No,” he says, speaking before I can.
The word startles her enough that she meets his gaze without enmity. Shared understanding passes between them like heat lightning, for the years of cooperation and love have molded their minds into one instrument when it comes to their children.
“I fear for her life if she remains within the palace,” he adds.
“Not for your own?”
“I am a soldier. I gave my life to Efea years ago. But I will not let them bury my daughter.”
“A poor choice of words,” remarks Maraya.
Polodos says, “Dearest, is it necessary to speak so harshly to your father?”
“Let her speak, Polodos, because she is not wrong,” says Father. “Kiya, before I go, may I see my son?”
Mother looks at me. A flicker of shame creases her brow, smoothed out so swiftly I almost miss it. She tips her head toward the net cradle, giving me permission.
When I halt by the cradle, Wenru makes a sour face that pulls a smile to my lips.
“I’m not happy to see you either,” I murmur.
Because Mother still hasn’t moved or spoken, I pick him up and march to Father.
“Here is the son you’ve long been praying for.”
My comment scratches a nerve. “I have never complained of my daughters, Jessamy.”
But he is a Patron man, born and bred, for whom the siring of a son is the most distinctive mark of manhood. Pride warms his face as he takes the baby from me. A son, at last. Yet after a pause his brows wrinkle in puzzlement as he and an exceedingly disgruntled Wenru engage in a far more adult stare-off than any person would expect from a baby barely half a year old.
Ro’s sister sticks her head through a gap in the curtain. She surveys our awkward stances and my flushed face with a smile tinged with malicious pleasure. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything. Polodos, I need help in here. More bread. Also, six people just came in asking for a pot of lentil stew.”
All throughout, unremarked, Cook has been grilling flat rounds of bread. Amaya hustles over and grabs the tray they are cooling on.
Father says, “My daughter does not serve strange men in a common inn—”
“I am no longer yours to command, Father! I will go about my life in my own way now.” With a defiantly theatrical toss of her head and a glance toward Denya, who is still hiding under the table, Amaya vanishes behind the curtain.
“Kiya, I thought we agreed—”
“Yes, we agreed, back when you were part of my household, Esladas. You are free to leave so my household may get back to work feeding ourselves and our customers.”
“I have an idea,” I say before Father can go on. “Send Wenru with Father. That would be fair, would it not? Mother keeps Safarenwe, and Father keeps Wenru.”
“Yes,” says Mother, so quick to grab for this chance that I am surprised, despite having warned her. “It would be best for Wenru to go with Esladas.”
Mother and Maraya exchange a knowing glance, and I realize that of course Mother has shared my suspicions with her other daughters.
Father holds the baby at arm’s length, scrutinizing the boy’s chubby little baby body for a secret deformity like Maraya’s clubfoot, which Patrons consider a stain upon the flesh, a mark of the gods’ disfavor. But Wenru glows with ruddy health. It is only the uncanny awareness in his gaze that curdles the natural affection a person ought to feel at the sight of him.
“How can I care for a child in my situation, without a wife to tend to my household?”
“You have a wife, Esladas. To my surprise, I feel a distinct sympathy for her situation since you have evidently forgotten your noble bride exists. By all reports she could nurse the child herself in another few months, if she can bring herself to allow mule lips to suckle from her pure Patron teats.”
I gasp. Never in my life have I heard Mother belittle another person; always she taught us girls that kindness heals.
Father also recoils from her biting words. “Be angry at me, Kiya. You have that right. But it lessens you to speak so disrespectfully of a woman who has suffered terrible harm. If circumstances were different, you would shelter her and be right to do so.”
Mother kisses the top of Safarenwe’s head as if to comfort herself. “This is more painful even than I had imagined. Please go, Esladas.”
She hands Safarenwe to Maraya and goes to the hearth, seeking refuge in work.
Cook wipes her hands on a cloth and puts an arm around Mother for a brief embrace before she grabs her tongs to flip a burning piece of flatbread. The sight of their friendship makes Father stare, for he never spoke to Cook beyond bland politeness; she belonged to the other part of the house where he never walked, a place where two women might reach beyond a world that means to divide them and discover loyalty and trust.
Father blinks rapidly. He tries to get out a word, but he cannot speak. Patron men do not weep.
I love him so much, even though he is wrong about so many things and may never know it. I draw him aside to explain about his son.
“There is magic in Efea. You know how the crow priests pull sparks from dying soldiers and place them into the spiders.”
“It’s a powerful gift to be allowed to serve even after death.”
“Your son was stillborn.”
“Stillborn? But he’s here, and alive.”
“I held his lifeless body in my arms in the tomb. It was much later, during the rescue, that he opened his eyes. At first I thought he must have been so weak we just thought he was dead, but now I think the magic beneath the tombs brought some other spark and self to live in his body. He’s just pretending to be an infant. He can understand everything we say, can’t you, Wenru?”
Belatedly, Wenru kicks his legs and smiles a toothless smile as if to say he is nothing but a harmless baby.
Father isn’t really listening. His gaze has already slid away to Mother, although she keeps her back to him.
“How can I convince her to forgive me?” he asks me in a low voice. “I didn’t know Gargaron meant to kill her, to imprison her in a tomb.”
The forlorn words shred my heart because I don’t know if I will ever see him again. Because I don’t see how this can have a good ending.
Because I fear what it means for Kal and me.
I say, “You didn’t want to know. If I hadn’t been valuable to Gargaron as an adversary, I would have been entombed with them. While you—the hero of Efea, married to the new queen, your child the heir to the throne—would sadly reflect that the family you cared for had departed Efea to make a new life.” The truth has risen to the brim of me and it cascades in an unstoppable rush. If he cannot hear me, then I can never forgive him, and I want to forgive him. “You would have believed the lies Gargaron told you, Father. And we would be dead.”
He doesn’t answer. Maybe there is no answer for him.
Instead he settles Wenru on his hip and kisses me on the brow, as he has always done. “Stay away from the palace, Jessamy. In fact, you should all leave Saryenia before Lord Gargaron returns.”
Then my father walks out of the courtyard, and this time I do not go with him.
13
I keep expecting him to return, to push aside the curtain, to proclaim, “Kiya, I love you more than life itself and even more than my ambition!” and for Mother to say, “I forgive you, Esladas, for I understand you were forced into an impossible choice and did what you thought best for us, and now it will all be as it was before.”
But with each breath I take in and with each breat
h I exhale, he does not reappear. Mother busies herself beside Cook. She makes not a single sound; she just works. I can’t bear standing around so I help Denya out from under the table and offer her an encouraging smile, however false it feels.
Amaya hurries back into the courtyard. Seeing Denya’s expression, she clasps her close and murmurs, “My father never hit us like yours hit you. You’re free of that, my sweet. We are free.”
Denya glances around the shabby courtyard. Her gaze rests longest on Cook, the only other woman of full Saroese ancestry here. As she clings to Amaya she doesn’t look sure she is actually free, not surrounded by people like us.
“Are you going to leave Saryenia?” I ask Mother.
She rests her head against mine, arm around me, and her presence comforts me just enough that I can wipe my eyes.
“Polodos will keep the inn open for a few more days so nothing looks out of the ordinary but the rest of us will be leaving at dawn,” Mother says. “Your father is right. We must not be here when Lord Gargaron returns to Saryenia, as he will soon.”
“Where will we go?” I ask plaintively, thinking of Kal.
“We will go to the Warrens for now, to the Heart Tavern,” says Mother. “I have some work to do for Inarsis.”
I don’t like the sound of that, but fortunately before I can say something stupid, Polodos pokes his head through the doorway.
“Doma Jessamy, we could use help in the front room. Evening is our busiest time.”
All the customers are talking about the new king and how the East Saroese soldiers have been rounded up and imprisoned in warehouses in the Grain Market or on East Saroese ships that have been impounded and placed under guard in the harbor. An official enters the inn, offering to pay generous grain rations for laborers willing to work overnight and through tomorrow to reinforce weak spots in the city walls. Everyone knows an enemy army is marching toward Saryenia, that they are about two days away. The new king will not surrender, so the city must prepare for a siege.
Among themselves the Patron men whisper, “Which king shall we support? Nikonos or Kalliarkos?”
The Commoner men say nothing of kings. They take the offer of grain rations and go to work on the walls.
Late in the evening as the last two tables of customers sing songs from popular plays and drunkenly tell Amaya she is the prettiest girl in all of Saryenia, a man enters. He’s dressed in worn clothes like any impoverished laborer and has the hesitant manner of a fellow looking for friends in a strange place.
He stares at Amaya for a little too long, with a gaze that is a little too intense, then takes a step toward me. “Doma Jessamy?”
“Captain Helias?” Then I realize what his presence here must mean—that Kal must have sent him with a message or even a summons—and the tray slips from my suddenly numb fingers. I’m quick; I grab it as it drops and only a single mug lands on the floor.
Amaya swoops in, batting her eyes at him while she gestures at me to go out the back; she thinks she’s helping me escape an unwanted admirer. “I have not seen you here before, Domon. May I offer you a cool drink?” she says in a voice that would slay a thousand lovesick men.
He’s so flustered he forgets his pretense of being a laborer and offers the polite bow that men of the highborn Patron class give as a courtesy to pretty women of their own kind. Amaya has always looked more Saroese than Efean. “Excuse me. I am here upon an errand.”
His gaze shifts to me.
I shouldn’t go but I know I am going to. I have to see Kal. I have to.
I wipe my hands and go to the back.
“Mother, I am going out.”
What she sees in my face I can’t know but she frowns and grasps my hands.
“This is foolishness, Jessamy. I know you are infatuated with the prince. The attention of a handsome young man who walks astride the world because all must bow before him is a heady drink. But it is poison.”
“I’m going.”
“Of course you are. It is just like you. I am glad you came to tell me rather than sneaking off. Take a knife.”
My sisters hug me, and I grouchily say, “It’s not as if I’m not coming back.”
“Don’t come back here. No place in the Saroese parts of the city are safe for us now.” She rests gentle fingers on my cheek and gazes into my eyes, seeing what mothers see who love their children enough to let them make their own lives and their own mistakes. “You will find us in the courtyard where the Mother of All offers Her bounty to Her people. I will wait for you there, beloved daughter.”
With a kiss, she releases me.
In a delivery wagon filled with barrels I am taken to Garon Palace. At Helias’s order, the Efean driver waits beside the wagon as the captain and I enter the compound.
The ruins of the palace make jagged shadows as we pick our way past its toppled gates. Charred debris crunches beneath our feet. The festival pavilion lies like a shattered skeleton, pillars toppled.
“This way, Doma.” The captain escorts me to the foot of the stairs leading up to the only private pavilion spared destruction. The others have been eaten away by flames, stairs smashed, roofs caved in, support pillars gouged with ax marks. When I climb the steps and go inside, I am surprised that although all the gold-inlaid furniture and gold-threaded carpets in the audience room are gone, the paintings of hunting and war remain untouched, as if no one had the heart to deface an artist’s exquisite work.
A single lamp burns on the balcony. Its glow illuminates his face. All the sweet, easy confidence has vanished. In its place he looks grief-stricken, his eyes dark with lack of sleep, his forehead wrinkled with manifold concerns, his lips tight with the look of a man bracing himself for bad news.
The king of Efea speaks no word as I cross the empty room. I don’t mean to go straight to him, to take the lamp out of his hand and set it on the floor, to pull him into my arms. But that is exactly what I do. Everything in my mind crashes into oblivion as my heart and my body embrace what they desire.
He holds me so tightly I can barely breathe. “Jes. I thought you wouldn’t come.”
I don’t answer because I can’t speak. Once words start they will not stop, and I do not want to hear what I am going to have to say.
Not yet.
He sweeps me up into his arms and carries me through the open doors into the bedchamber. The bed stands in the center, the only object left in the room. He pushes aside the draped netting. His manner is as solemn and desperate as my own, none of the laughter and wrestling and endearing awkwardness of our other times. Because the lamp has been left on the balcony, we are left in the shadow of each other, communicating by sighs, by the touch of lips and the pressure of hands.
The heart has its own speech. That is the only language and light that we need.
Yet eventually this physical conversation comes to an end. We lie in a restless silence that grows ever more tangled and uncomfortable as our sweat cools and our kisses cease. These are the hours when shadows slip free from the bodies that house them and prowl in search of satisfaction. I cannot see my own shadow. It’s too dark over here where I am.
“Why is this bed still here when everything else of value was stripped from the pavilion?” Although I whisper, the sound of my voice makes me wince as if I were shouting, alerting the entire city that I’m here, where I’m not meant to be.
He shrugs, the movement shifting my head as it rests against his shoulder. “I wondered the same thing. I can only suppose it was a signal from the people of Saryenia that they respect my person enough to leave this one thing alone.”
“Yours is the only pavilion that wasn’t burned by the mob.”
“Besides my uncle Thynos, I am the only person in Garon Palace who hasn’t been reviled in public at one time or another. Or at least not yet,” he adds with a curt laugh. “I am sure there will be plenty of opportunity now.”
“Do you fear the people of Saryenia will not accept your sister as queen because of all the rumors about
her?” Bitterness sours my tone. She is on her way here now to become queen and to claim my father as her husband.
“Gossip is the least of our worries.” Kal’s fingers squeeze my arm. “The allied army of East Saro and Saro-Urok is about to lay siege to Saryenia. We could all still die. So Menoë must stay far away. She and the rest of the family will continue on to Maldine.”
“What is in Maldine?”
“Extensive lands and a safe harbor. If Uncle Thynos has made a marriage alliance with West Saro, as we hope, then he will bring a fleet with soldiers there.”
“But you are staying here in Saryenia.”
“Yes. It is my duty and responsibility to lead the defense of the city. The king must protect his people, must he not?”
How can I possibly answer when I can hear the constriction in his voice?
His heartbeat has slowed to a lazy, exhausted pulse, but he keeps tracing circles on my skin like the spinning Rings of his agitated thoughts.
So softly I can barely hear him, he says, “This is what you wanted for me.”
I sit up, pushing away. “It’s not what I wanted for you!”
“No, you’re right. It is the choice we both made. We cannot leave Efea to the cruel mercies of Nikonos and Serenissima and their greedy allies.”
“What if there is another way?” I ask.
“What other way? Let Nikonos rule? He hasn’t the patience to act with wisdom and prudence. If he is king the foreigners will conquer us as soon as they can safely rid themselves of him. They’ll place their own prince and a new dynasty upon the throne, probably with Serenissima’s connivance. Only Menoë and I can save Efea.”
The memory of Eternity Temple, and the dim passageway down which a screaming Serenissima was dragged, just like so many generations of Patron girls, rises as a sickening roar in my head. I can’t bear to think of how Kal watched her be carried away, sobbing, into a sunless tomb and did nothing to stop it, thinking it an act of justice.
“You can’t save the tree if the roots are already diseased.”