Buried Heart

by Kate Elliott

  “It hurts so much,” I whisper.

  “I know. Just take it one obstacle at a time.”

  I push her away, wiping my eyes. “When did you start using Fives comparisons?”

  “I use the language I must to get through to you. You really scared us, Jes.”

  She takes my hand and leads me to an airy room crammed with writing desks. Maraya is seated amid a squad of busy clerks, all copying. The crow boy stands at a table where his birds hop amid scrolls held flat; I think he’s practicing reading through their eyes.

  When Maraya sees me she gets up and waddles over before I can reach her, and she too crushes me against her or tries to, given her belly.

  “Are you ever going to have that baby?”

  “I’m glad to see you up and about, Jes.” She kisses my cheek.

  “We are going to the Ribbon Market,” adds Amaya in her chirpiest voice, the one that irritates me most.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask Maraya.

  “I’m having all the most important documents we took from the Inkos temple copied. Then no one can lose or hide them.”

  “I thought you would be studying to take the Archives exam.”

  “Maybe.” She leans against me and whispers, “But I’m thinking we must create our own Archives. Think of it. The magic the priests kept hidden is now ours to study and learn. Because I have to wonder how much of it was stolen from what our ancestors already knew.”

  “If you want it, it’s yours to uncover. I think it’s horrible.”

  She sees me hesitate and sets me at arm’s length. “What is it?”

  “Is there any way… I could see Father’s spider?”

  She and Amaya exchange frowning glances. “So many scouts left the army that they’ve had to start with fresh recruits. All the spiders are in training with the army.”

  I smile sadly. “That’s all right. It’s where he would have wanted to be.”

  She gives me a tender sisterly embrace and sends me and Amaya on our way.

  Not many customers browse the Ribbon Market although the merchandise of masks and ribbons hasn’t changed. Amaya tugs me impatiently along the stairs and aisles, not pausing to shop, for which I am thankful. Even so I am surprised when we halt by a stall and find Denya sitting on a pillow. She is embroidering on silk next to an Efean woman with a vaguely familiar face who embroiders as well, pausing now and again to give Denya pointers.

  Amaya gives Denya a kiss, and Denya gives me a shy smile.

  “How goes business, Honored Lady?” Amaya asks the Efean woman.

  “Not many sales but more people are coming by to look over our product, what with the new year coming up. Denya’s work is very good. She’s the most adept pupil I’ve ever had. I thank you for bringing her to me for instruction.”

  Amaya glows. I wonder if she will take up Ro’s offer. She has the gift for the stage, and no one to forbid it as improper for girls like us.

  The embroiderer goes on. “I hear at the new year there will be a mask procession down to the harbor, as some say was the tradition in the old days to welcome in the new moon and the rising sun. That will be good for business!” Her gaze flicks to me. A curl of disdain darkens her face, but she smooths it away as she smiles at Amaya again. Then I realize she is the woman who spit to insult me, that day so long ago when Kal followed me to the Ribbon Market to ask me where I trained for the Fives. I guess some things haven’t changed.

  A weight shifts in my heart.

  He isn’t dead. He kicked out of the barrel. He chose to live.

  “I can manage, knowing that,” I say aloud, and Amaya gives me a quizzical look. “He has to find his own way when for all his life he was told what path was ordained for him.”

  She takes my hand and studies me for the longest time, until I start shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably. “Let’s go buy some pancakes,” she says. “There’s a stall here that sells them wrapped around a paste of chopped almonds, dates, and cinnamon.”

  “That’s the best kind!”

  I’m so hungry I eat four and then I feel sick, but it’s the most wonderful feeling I’ve had in days. It’s ordinary.

  That evening I join the others for a household gathering in the private garden, the one time during the day when Mother can relax. She sits on a couch with Safarenwe in her lap. To my surprise Wenru is there too. He clutches the side of the couch, determined to stand.

  “What are you doing here?” I lean over to stick my face next to his.

  He gives me a side-eye so monstrously outraged that we girls all laugh, and Safarenwe joins in by clapping her hands.

  “I hate you,” he whispers in his strange little voice.

  “I hate you too,” I whisper back, and he gurgles like a little laugh.

  “Let him be,” says Mother in her mildest tone. “We are responsible for him. He’s content with his wet nurse, and I’ve made my peace with his unexpected arrangement of souls.”

  I settle at Mother’s feet as the household trades stories of their day, just as we used to in the old days: calm voices, laughter, affection. Maraya asks Polodos for his opinion of the meaning of an old Saroese word she’s never come across before. Amaya reads aloud lines from a comedy Ro-emnu is writing for her.

  “It’s just a small role to start, only thirty lines as the maidservant,” she says. “I need to get experience before I become the leading actress of the Lantern District.”

  “That will be your second play,” remarks Maraya without looking up from the papyrus she is squinting at in lamplight.

  In a low voice, I say, “I’m going to start training at Anise’s stable again.”

  “Of course, Jessamy. That’s a lovely idea.” Mother can’t hide the relief in her tone. “I’ll just go with you in the morning to sort everything out. I’m afraid I’ll have to insist that you are accompanied by trusted individuals, for a while anyway. They’ll stay out of your way.”

  “Mother!”

  But that night, for the first time since Father’s death and Kal’s staged execution, I sleep through to morning and have no bad dreams.

  35

  Two months later I run in the first trials of the new year, held in the City Fives Court in front of a packed audience with both the Protector and the Custodian in attendance. I run as Spider, wearing ordinary brown.

  The crowd is enlivened by the presence of the first graduating class of new recruits for the Efean army, and they cheer me lustily as I win my Challenger round.

  I wave my victor’s ribbon from the tower, reflecting that I need to up my game. Adversary training has been disrupted by the war, the siege, the number of Challengers and Illustrious who have left the country or joined the army, and people’s need to work at regular jobs because there is less money to be won. But once things settle into their usual routine the competition will ramp up again.

  I have to be ready.

  In the undercourt there’s no royal nectar on offer. Instead we are given hibiscus juice because it is in season. I’m so thirsty I drink two cups. The adversaries I defeated linger, and when I nod at them, they invite me to join them in the Lantern District that evening for a drink.

  I consider sneaking out but instead I tell Mother that I’m going, and I accept an escort of two guards dressed like regular people even though no one will be fooled. The Lantern District is alive with a festive crowd. It doesn’t look so much different from before except that there are a lot fewer people of Saroese ancestry. The ones who haven’t left seem just as happy to get drunk and celebrate as they ever did. There are new soldiers too, with their shaved short hair and the way they trawl in groups of four and six.

  “Hey! Spider!” My old friends Gira and Shorty charge out of a tavern catering to adversaries and drag me in to hoots and cheers of welcome. “Look what we found!”

  “Spider! Spider!” The tavern-goers bang fists and cups on the table until my ears hurt.

  About ten drinks appear at our table.

  “How
drunk do you want to get?” Gira chortles.

  I slide drinks to my guards, who politely take them aside and sit where they can keep an eye on me without having to listen to every word we say. Gira and Shorty kindly do not mention them.

  “Where’s Mis?” Gira asks.

  “She went into the army.”

  “No, really?”

  “Really. Where are you two training now?”

  “Up at the old Royal Stable. It’s been renamed Southwind Stable, and Lord Thynos—”

  Shorty elbows her. “It’s just ‘honored sir’ now. We don’t have to use those titles anymore.”

  “Anyway, he’s decided to become head trainer of his own stable. Said he was feeling too old to compete. Shorty is apprenticing with him as a trainer. You know, we could use a strong Challenger like you, Jes. That was a good run today.”

  “Your right wrist is weak, though,” says Shorty. “Did you injure it?”

  Before I can answer, a commotion stirs at the tavern gate. Cursed if the poet doesn’t make an entrance as onto a stage, flanked by admiring girls and stalwart companions. He’s wearing a formal keldi that reaches his ankles but spoils the elegant effect by letting his vest gape open.

  “A song!” people cry. “Give us a song, Honored Poet!”

  He jumps up on top of a table and strikes a pose. His gaze arrows to me and he grins, knowing I know he must have seen me and followed me in here. I slap a hand over my face as he begins singing “The General’s Valiant Daughter.” The whole tavern joins in on the chorus. But I’m an adversary. Reputation is one of the Trees I must climb.

  So I stand and I wait it out, and when he finishes I open my arms with a flourish, a spider casting thread to the winds, and accept their acclamation. If I’m honest with myself, I have to admit that I like it.

  After the clamor dies down he comes over and, in the proper way, waits for me to greet him.

  “How’s the play coming?”

  “Which one? I’m a busy man, very productive.”

  “The comedy for Amaya.”

  He leans closer, lips a breath away from my ear. “I could write a play for you, Jessamy. One we can rehearse in private.”

  I shouldn’t, but I laugh anyway. “Your persistence is extraordinary, and it’s even growing on me. But I’m not…” The words I mean to say won’t come out.

  “You’re not ready?” he finishes for me with a wry smile.

  For weeks now I’ve allowed training to carry me from one day into the next. The Fives gives me focus. It keeps me moving. But it also means I don’t have to stop and examine my own heart.

  I let out a sharp breath. “I haven’t let go of him yet, Ro. That’s my truth.”

  “I’ll buy you a drink anyway.”

  “Actually, you and your friends can help me with these. I’m quite popular, you know.”

  As he is waving his entourage over, I spot a face I recognize at the gate.

  “I’ll be back,” I say over my shoulder as I weave through the crowd rather more slowly than I intend because people keep gesturing the kiss-off sign and I have to respond in kind. But I finally get close enough to call.

  “Dusty!”

  He turns. “Jes! I was looking for you. Word on the street said a spider came in here.”

  I hug him as I would a cousin and step back to examine his clothes. Instead of the usual keldi and vest he’s wearing linen trousers and a jacket cut in a soldier’s style. The scuff marks on the fabric have a familiar pattern. “Where have you been? By the wear on your clothes it looks like you’ve been training in a spider.”

  “I have. Mis sent me to find you.”

  “How is she?”

  “No longer a temporary sergeant. She’s been officially commissioned as a sergeant in the spider scouts.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. You’re serving as a scout as well?”

  “You mean even missing one eye and half-deaf in one ear? We lost almost all of the Saroese spider scouts. However many recruits signed up for training in the regular army, they didn’t get so many volunteers for the desert posting. I’m doing all right. Will you come?”

  I take my leave of Gira, Shorty, and Ro and his admirers, and I can’t help but notice how the young women effusively claim to be devastated that I’m leaving. I flash him the kiss-off sign as I go, and he blows me a kiss back.

  Dusty has a brisk walk and a way of turning his head to catch sounds on his impaired side.

  “You look good, Dusty. Tell me about training.”

  It’s a long walk across town to the East Gate. My two guards keep well back, and I’m not sure Dusty even notices them. He regales me with stories of rising at dawn and drilling all day and dropping exhausted onto a cot at dusk, for two months without a break. Of how half the recruits dropped out or transferred because they couldn’t get the hang of the spiders or found the eerie presence of the spark too disturbing.

  “We finished up with a ten-day march, got assigned into squads and our sergeants commissioned, and now we are headed out because if any place needs guarding it’s the Eastern Reaches and the desert crossing.”

  “You sound content, Dusty.”

  “I thought I was going to die when I was captured at Crags Fort. I wanted to die after what they did to me. But now I am a soldier in Efea’s army, and they’re dead or crawled home in defeat. So I can live with that for now. Here we are.”

  I thought maybe we were going all the way to the army camps outside town, but then I remember they were trashed by the enemy during the siege. Instead he shows me into a run-down boardinghouse of the kind common in this cheap part of town. This is the kind of place where Father first lived when he arrived in Saryenia as a young man.

  Despite the late hour people are bustling around, stuffing gear into canvas bags and polishing short swords and oiling harnesses. They’re a mix of men and women, mostly Efean but with a few Saroese and a random foreigner sprinkled among them. It’s so odd to see soldiers walking around so casually who look so much like me. It might take me a while to get used to it but I like the thought that I will.

  “Jes! Just in time.” Mis strides up.

  I thump her as hard as I can on the shoulder. “Excuse me, Sergeant. I’m sorry I’m late, Sergeant. Whatever did you do to deserve this, Sergeant?”

  “Performed too well, so I’m told. It’s my adversary reflexes.” She grins. “They had to elevate a few people to official command ranks, even me.”

  “You’re not nearly bossy enough yet. I could get you lessons with Maraya.”

  “We’re being posted to the desert forts for six months, so I’m sure I’ll get better at it. But listen, Jes…” She scratches her forehead and gets a funny look on her face, like I’ve caught a disease and no one has had the courage to tell me yet. “I didn’t mean to be party to keeping this from you, but—”

  That’s when I see Father’s spider, with its distinctive dent. It’s drawn up in proper resting configuration beside a gate that opens onto an inner courtyard where more spiders squat in the shadows. Traceries of light flash and fade on the brass surfaces like hope and pain. So much anger floods me that I start shaking.

  “So that’s why my family has all been so cagey when I ask about the spiders. They made it seem like you were already gone off to the desert. They didn’t want me to know the new scouts were training right here. They hid it from me!”

  That’s when I see him.

  He’s standing in the deeper shadow cast by the looming spider, and his back is to me, but of course I would recognize those shoulders anywhere.

  Someone calls, “Sergeant Kallos!”

  He turns into the illumination of the courtyard lamps.

  My legs give out. It happens so fast Mis and Dusty can’t catch me, and I don’t even feel the transition. First I’m standing. Then I’m sitting on the ground and my tailbone is throbbing and someone’s strong arm is pulling me up.

  “Jes?”

  I open my mouth. Close it. Words flee like s
hadows at midday.

  “You fainted.”

  I touch his face. He’s real. The same lips. The same eyes except for bruising around the right. He studies me with the familiar wrinkle of concern on his brow.

  “I thought you were going to yell at me,” he adds.

  “I will. I just need to catch my breath.”

  He helps me up. Mis opens a door into a cramped barracks room where a couple of Efean soldiers are stretched out on their cots. They look up as we come in.

  “You need us to leave, Sergeant?” says one with a laugh, then subsides as the other kicks him.

  I think Kal is going to let me sit on one of the cots but he’s headed for an inner room that’s slightly wider than its narrow bed, with just enough extra space to stow a storage chest at one end. In this bare closet I sink onto the bed while he lights a lamp. My souls are so jumbled that I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing.

  “Not the reunion I was imagining,” he says, gesturing to the mudbrick walls and the mudbrick floor and the curtain for a door. There’s not even a side table with a basin and pitcher for washing. They must all wash together, in the trough outside.

  He’s wearing a keldi and vest. His kit is packed away except for his spider scout gear, folded neatly on the bed. They’re marching out in the morning.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I say.

  He folds his hands behind his back at parade rest, feet braced apart. “I do have to do this. I was never trained to do anything else. I have to earn my own way now.”

  “How is it you’ve already made sergeant, then?”

  His grin peeps out. He’s honestly embarrassed. “I couldn’t disguise that I had experience as a spider scout and as a commander.”

  “Don’t they know who you really are?”

  “Kallos is a good name to hide behind, as Ro taught me. The truth is so unbelievable it’s easier for people to accept the lie. It’s helped that Mis and Dusty have had my back since the first day, said they knew me when we were fledglings training together.”

  “Someone punched you. Have you been fighting? Usually you have the knack of settling fights before they start.”