by Sharon Shinn
“Power,” he had said, when he had identified the symbol by the murky light. He’d laughed. “It seems like such a heavy blessing for such a tiny creature!”
“Maybe it will suit her better when she is my age, or yours,” she’d replied. She dipped into the barrel again, not as deeply this time, and pulled up a second token. “And one for me,” she said. Her voice was wistful when she added, “Wealth. That would be nice.”
Navarr pressed a few quint-golds into her hand. Random blessings were supposed to be freely given, and most people refused payment for the service, but this girl quickly pocketed her bounty. “Did you pull a coin for yourself?” she wanted to know.
He nodded and showed her. “Change,” he said.
It was a coru trait. “Is your daughter born to a woman of blood, then?” she asked.
He was laughing again. “Yes, but this blessing is for me, I fear,” he said. “An infant in the house changes everything, don’t you think? I have been told that my life will never be the same.”
“I hope you come to love her,” the prostitute had said.
“I already do.”
Zoe had heard this story so often she could recite it along with her father by the time she was five years old. Her mother had never seemed quite as amused by the part where Navarr and a woman of the streets searched the city together for a temple, but that was the point of random blessings: You were not supposed to show caution or discrimination about the people you approached. You were supposed to rely on the people who had been sent to you by the unchoreographed currents of the universe. You were supposed to understand that wisdom could be imparted by anyone, no matter how unexpected, that everyone had a gift to bestow.
Zoe squirmed on her mat and turned over to try for a more comfortable position. Everyone had a gift to bestow; everyone had a lifespan to complete; the world would change whether you wished it to or not. These were among the immutable truths that she could not alter by weeping. She closed her eyes and finally managed to summon a haunted and unsatisfactory sleep.
It was still raining a couple of hours later when Zoe woke up. As a woman born to a coru mother, the trait of blood and water, Zoe had always liked rain. She loved its many moods—from gentle and romantic to wild and unrestrained—and she loved the fresh, newly washed scent it always left behind. As a practical matter, rain was a welcome visitor here in the village, refilling cisterns and replenishing underground aquifers. Zoe was not the only one who loved the rain.
She pushed herself to her feet and then stood there a moment, trying to decide what to do. Caring for her father had taken up almost every waking moment for the past quintile, especially during the final days of his illness. What would she do now that she did not need to make his food, coax him to eat, and clean away the messes his body produced? Whom would she speak to, now that that great restless mind had shut down? What purpose could she have to go on living?
Foolish thoughts. Her father would be distressed to think she considered her own existence so dependent on his. Zoe shook her head and forced herself to look around.
The kitchen was a mess. A long room with the cooking hearth tucked into the far right corner, it was so narrow that two people could barely pass each other to work. Next to the hearth were clustered all the implements used for cooking—the baking stones, the baskets and sealed crocks of ingredients, the pans and dishes. Near the far left corner of the room, Zoe had hung a gauzy purple curtain to create her own small private space. It held little more than a sleeping mat, a trunk of clothes, and a few useless but beloved treasures.
Now the mat was a tangle of bedsheets and discarded tunics Zoe had been too busy to wash. The kitchen held piles of dirty dishes and scraps of forgotten food. The floor had not been swept clean for days.
There was no purpose to Zoe’s life, not now, but at least she could put it back into some kind of order.
So for the next two hours she began the slow, methodical repair of the small house. She made a pile of all the items that needed washing; she put fresh linens on her own bed, which would be used again, and her father’s, which would not. She brought in a bucket of rainwater and scrubbed the kitchen, cleaned the dishes, wiped the floors, and even freshened up the kierten. She made the place habitable again, but it was hardly a home.
It was still raining at nightfall when Miela stepped in, careful not to track in mud. “I’ve cooked dinner and made up a bed for you in my daughter’s old room,” Miela said. The consummate tactician, Miela never bothered asking you to accede to her plans; she just told you what to do next. “Bring your nightclothes and come with me now.”
So Zoe stuffed a few items in a bag and obediently followed Miela out into the wet night. Only when she felt the drops on her face did she realize she had been crying all afternoon. The tears were hot on her cheeks, but the rain was cool; it did not wash away any of her grief, only gave it a different temperature against her skin.
Miela worked with Zoe for the next two days to clean out the house. Zoe felt sometimes like a spinning doll set in motion by someone else’s hand. If Miela had not been there to animate her, Zoe thought she might not have moved at all. Grief shrouded her thoughts and muffled her mind. She felt utterly blank. She could not even summon the energy to consider how long this state would last.
Miela, by contrast, was a bundle of competent bustle. A large woman, with broad hands and a wild aureole of curly gray hair, Miela projected calm and purpose, and both were equally soothing. At the same time, Miela kept up a steady stream of conversation that helped Zoe tether her consciousness to the physical world. Miela never asked Zoe for an opinion; she simply stated her decisions.
“You will not need all these clothes of your father’s, so we will just set aside a few pieces for you to keep, and the rest we will give away . . . Once you are living here by yourself, you will want to rearrange the furniture. I will have Doman and one of my sons move the desk, and you’ll see how everything is opened up. You will move out of that corner in the kitchen. That will become a place for storage . . . Perhaps we will buy you fabric and you can begin to sew. You have some skill with a needle, I think, or you would if you practiced enough.”
Implicit in Miela’s words was the notion of a future, which would require Zoe to think, to act, to support herself. Zoe couldn’t imagine it, but she didn’t have the strength to protest.
“My cousin’s neighbor’s son, he’s about your age,” Miela went on, neatly folding a pile of Navarr’s trousers. “He has a house that’s way too big for a man alone! Doman and I will invite him for dinner one night and you can see if you like him.”
Miela had tried more than once to pair Zoe with some young man to whom she had a remote connection, but Zoe had never been much interested. Despite the love charm hanging from her bracelet, Zoe had never believed marriage and a settled existence were in her future. After a lifetime of conversation with her brilliant, erratic father, she could not imagine being satisfied with a simple man’s dull observations on crops and the weather, no matter how kindhearted he was or how ambitious. So perhaps she should consider becoming a professional seamstress, after all. She should start thinking about what activities would inform the rest of her life.
“And there’s a man in the next village—his wife died a year ago,” Miela went on. “Older than you, but you might like that. You’ve never really been a young girl, even when you first arrived here. You were wise as an old woman even when you were thirteen. So maybe a mature man would suit you better.”
Zoe didn’t answer and Miela opened her mouth to make another observation. Then she paused and turned toward the door as if listening to someone step into the kierten. At first, all Zoe heard was the endless thrumming of the rain, but then she caught the foreign noises above that familiar sound—heavy wheels, creaking wood, raised voices.
“A trader’s caravan, traveling in this kind of weather?” Miela asked. “I’d have expected them to stay safe and dry in whatever town they’d found last. Let’s go se
e what they have to offer.”
She started toward the door, then stopped to look around appraisingly. “If they’re looking for a place to bed down, this would not be a bad room to offer them,” she said. “You could ask for a little extra coin if you made a meal for them as well. The back of a wagon gets mighty soggy in wet weather.”
Zoe found the strength to protest. “I don’t want a lot of strangers sleeping in my house.”
“It might do you good,” Miela said. “Give you something else to think about.”
Zoe followed her through the kierten and out the front door, still protesting, but silently by now. If Miela thought Zoe should act as innkeeper for a group of itinerant merchants, innkeeper she would surely become.
But once they stepped outside into the chilly drizzle, it was clear this was no peddler’s wagon come to seek shelter for the night.
All the inhabitants of the village had spilled out of their huts to stand in a ragged circle, staring at the vehicle that had arrived. It was the length of two ordinary wagons, made of a painted, polished wood that would not be out of place inside the king’s courtyard, and its six wheels were enormous. Windows set into the polished walls were covered with painted blue shutters, shut against the rain just now. At the front of the vehicle, where an ordinary wagon would have a bench for the driver and a hitch for a team of horses, there was only a small, enclosed chamber. Two men sat inside it, looking out through panels of glass.
There were no horses. It was impossible to imagine what had powered the conveyance down the roads.
Or perhaps not. A faint, unfamiliar odor emanated from the front of the vehicle, and a thin line of white smoke drifted between the small enclosed section and the huge back portion. Zoe’s father had loved to read reports of inventions being tested in Chialto, and he had been fascinated by the self-propelled vehicles that were fueled by compressed gasses. Surely this contraption was one of those.
“Why don’t they come out and tell us why they’re here?” Miela murmured to Zoe as they all stared at the two men sitting in their enclosed bubble. The men stared back but made no move to disembark.
Zoe was watching the central panel of the larger cabin, where a door opened up and folded downward, so that its top edge rested on the ground. A shallow set of steps marched down the lowered door, and down this makeshift stairway a man slowly descended.
He was a little more than medium height, with black hair cropped very tight to control a renegade curl. His face was long, thin, and pale; his eyes were a sharp and restless gray. Everything he wore was black—leather shoes, silk trousers, silk tunic, and an unadorned wool overrobe that swept all the way to his ankles.
He looked like a walking manifestation of wealth and power.
He set his expensively shod foot into the mud of the road without seeming to notice, and his expressive eyes flicked from face to face. Zoe, still a pace behind Miela, instinctively drew back to conceal herself behind the other woman’s ample form. Everyone else stood utterly motionless, utterly silent.
After considering the villagers for a moment, the man headed directly toward Doman. Zoe was impressed. That quickly he had assessed his entire audience and determined who might speak for the group.
He said, “My name is Darien Serlast, and I am looking for someone I believe lives in your village.”
At the name Serlast, Zoe caught her breath. There were five great families in the country of Welce—powerful clans that for generations had amassed wealth, consolidated property, and advised royalty. Depending on the generation, depending on the king, different clusters of the Five Families had risen to greater prominence or fallen to disgrace. The Serlasts—all of them hunti, all of them unyielding as wood and bone—had been among the favorites of the current king since before Zoe and her father fled Chialto.
The only person a Serlast could possibly be looking for was Navarr Ardelay.
“Too late,” Zoe whispered, so quietly not even Miela could hear. “He is already dead.” He could no longer be forgiven and reinstated, or condemned and executed. He was safe from the king’s wrath, out of reach of the king’s remorse.
Doman nodded gravely. He did not seem at all discomposed by the elegant visitor; he wore his usual somber dignity without unease. “Who are you looking for?”
Zoe braced herself to hear her father’s name, and so she did not immediately recognize the name Darien Serlast actually spoke.
“Zoe Ardelay.”
Slowly, as if she moved through a medium as sticky as mud, Miela turned to stare at Zoe. She even took a step sideways, so Zoe was no longer hidden by her body. Just as slowly, all the other villagers shifted in her direction, their eyes wide and blank, their faces slack. Only Doman did not bother to turn in her direction, but instead kept his gaze on the stranger’s face.
“What do you want with her?” Doman asked.
Darien Serlast’s restless gray eyes had noted where the crowd was staring, and now he, too, was focused on Zoe, standing alone and frozen in the muddy road. There was nothing at all to be read on his narrow face. “I must take her back to Chialto with me,” he said, “so she can marry the king.”
TWO
The conveyance traveled over the muddy, rocky road as if it were a length of silk passing over a piece of polished glass. Zoe supposed its elegant design included an incomparable suspension system invisible to the casual viewer.
If so, it was the vehicle’s only invisible luxury. Once Darien Serlast had handed her up the carpeted steps, she had found herself inside a small chamber whose opulence rivaled anything Zoe could remember from the houses she had visited in Chialto. The floor was covered with a profusion of gaily colored rugs, and the whole space was stuffed with plush furniture layered with pillows and cushions and embroidered blankets. Real crystal was displayed in glass cabinets; wall sconces burned with flickering fire, fed by oil or some other fuel. Despite the outside chill, the interior of the coach was warm, rich with incense, and sybaritically comfortable.
Zoe had scarcely said a word since Darien Serlast had installed her inside the coach. She had scarcely said a word since he had pronounced her name and all the villagers had gasped, and Doman had said, “Zoe does not leave this place unless she agrees to go with you.” She had not been able to articulate to him how much she appreciated his gesture even as she recognized that it was useless. Darien Serlast was the king’s ambassador and a man of wood; not even Doman would be able to stand against him.
Besides, Miela was appraising her with wide, thoughtful eyes and nodding her head. Miela was afraid of no one—not a king, certainly not a Serlast—but she had already decided Zoe needed drastic change to break through her lethargy and grief. “Zoe wants to go,” Miela had said. “She needs to go.”
“She has no choice in the matter,” Darien Serlast had replied. He was so supremely confident that he didn’t even seem arrogant; he could have been discussing something as absolute as the arrangement of the stars in the night skies. “The king has sent for her and she must come.”
“If she agrees to go,” Doman repeated stubbornly.
Zoe didn’t waste time speculating what sort of retribution this powerful man could bring to anyone who tried to thwart him. “I agree to go,” she said in a faint voice, but everybody heard her.
“Good,” Darien Serlast said briskly. “Get into the coach.”
Even Miela protested at that. “She must gather her things! She must set her house to rights! She will not be able to leave for a day at least!”
Darien did not even bother to look annoyed. “She may gather what she needs,” he said. “We leave within the hour.”
After all, the few things Zoe needed could be gathered up in five minutes; what took time was saying goodbye. Miela and a few of the other women accompanied her back to the house, where Zoe packed what she wanted. Some changes of clothing. Two small journals in her father’s hand. A few loose copper and quint-silver pieces that might come in handy on her journey. The warm, colorful, densel
y patterned shawl that had been her mother’s, hung with cheap metal and glass charms that chimed merrily together and covered the clinking sound of the gold coins sewn into the border.
“You and Doman can do what you want with the rest of the furniture,” Zoe said to Miela as they stepped out of kierten and closed the door behind them. “You will know who needs the clothing and the cooking pots.”
“I can’t believe you’re to marry the king!” one of the other village women exclaimed.
“But I thought the king already had a wife,” piped up a young girl.
“He has four,” Zoe said.
The girl stared. “But then how can you marry him?”
Miela hushed her. “He’s the king. He’s different,” she said. “He may have as many wives as he likes.”
“And why would he want to marry Zoe?”
There was a conspicuous silence; the question had obviously vexed everyone. What did these people know of the politics, the shifting alliances of power in Chialto? Zoe glanced down at the girl, a thin, scrappy blonde with huge brown eyes. “Because my father used to be a very important man,” she said gently. “It is quite possible King Vernon has been looking for him the entire time that we lived here.”
Her mouth forming a soundless O, the girl stared back at Zoe. But even Miela seemed startled at that news. Oh, she had always known that Navarr Ardelay was a great man who had fallen on hard times. But clearly she had not given much thought to just how great he was or how far he had fallen.
“Will you be safe, then, in your new life at the palace?” Miela asked, seeming for the first time to wonder if it was a good idea to thrust Zoe into a new and glamorous existence. It might be better, after all, to mourn in obscurity.
“I suppose I will,” Zoe said, her voice indifferent. To be honest, she didn’t care. She could live here and grieve, or make her home at the palace and grieve; it simply didn’t matter. Wherever she was, her life would be bounded by insurmountable pain. “I don’t think you need to worry.”