Chosen of the Changeling

by Greg Keyes

  Hezhi examined the figurine again. When she looked back up, she caught Ghan staring at her, a look of pure disgust on his face. She purpled, knowing what he was thinking. He would believe that his prediction was coming true, that all of his time with her would be wasted when she ran off with some “young fop.”

  Hezhi went back to shelving, trying to look very busy. Ghan was wrong if he thought that, wrong in many ways. First of all, Yen was no “fop.” He was thoughtful and intelligent, totally unlike the courtiers whom Ghan so hated. Second of all, he was not courting her and she was not interested in him. Such a thing wasn’t even conceivable; she was the daughter of the Chakunge. Of course, she had never told Yen that, and very tenuous nobility sometimes married younger daughters into the merchant class …

  But that was ridiculous. He was much older than she, and while political marriages could create such unions, they did not happen out of attraction. Such a good-looking young man as Yen was certainly not attracted to a twelve-year-old without visible breasts or hips. She had heard Tsem and some of the guards often enough, talking about what attracted men to women, and it didn’t seem to be wit or good manners.

  So Ghan was wrong, and he should know better. The more she thought about it, the more angry she got, and after Yen left, when it was nearly time to go, she marched up to his desk.

  “He isn’t courting me,” she hissed at him.

  Ghan looked up at her, his face registering puzzlement.

  “What?” he asked mildly.

  “I saw you look at us … at me.”

  The shadow of a smile fell across his hps. “I was angry because you were helping him,” he said. “I have no great love for the priesthood, and they sent him here.”

  “Oh,” she said, her voice suddenly very small.

  “But now that you mention it, you do seem to watch him a lot …” Ghan observed thoughtfully.

  “Well,” Hezhi said, perhaps a bit defensively, “he just seems brighter than most people who come in here.”

  “That’s true enough,” Ghan remarked dryly, “though that is by no means an endorsement.”

  “No, I guess it isn’t,” she replied.

  Ghan pursed his lips. “This Yen is not a bad sort, I suppose. The priesthood has always been a sore in my mouth, that’s all, and anyone connected with them …”

  “Like nobility?” Hezhi asked.

  Ghan stopped, stared at her for an instant. “I suppose I am too obvious,” he said. “One of these days I will go too far, and they will punish me.”

  “Ghan, I’ve never asked. What clan are you?”

  Ghan puffed out a breath and regarded her for a long moment

  “Yehd Hekes,” he said finally.

  Hezhi frowned. “Yehd Hekes?”

  “I don’t have to repeat myself.”

  “I thought all of you were …”

  Ghan rolled his eyes. “You know everything, don’t you? Yes, they were all banished—but me. I had only to renounce my claim to nobility—in writing, in blood. So actually, I have no clan. No clan at all.”

  “Why? Why did you stay? As I understand it they were given estates in the south.”

  “Estates? Oh, yes,” Ghan muttered. “A hundred leagues of cotton and not more than ten books made from it on the whole place. I couldn’t leave this, girl.”

  “I’m sorry. Sorry I asked.”

  Ghan took up a blotting rag, patted at the sweat standing out on his forehead. He pursed his lips again and then shrugged, composed again. “You ask questions. That’s what you do,” he said. “That’s not a bad thing.” He leaned toward her, his voice suddenly low, conspiratorial. “Just be very careful what questions you ask of whom. Very careful, Hezhi. Royal Blood is no protection against Royal Blood.” He settled back on his stool.

  “Now,” he said sternly, index finger extended. “I don’t want to see you flirting in here again. This is a library, not a court. Now go home. I want to lock up, go to my rooms, and pour a glass of wine.”

  A few days later, she started bleeding again. She had cramps beforehand, and the experience was generally unpleasant, but the fever and sickness did not return. She was also depressed; Qey informed her that this was normal, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. She also knew that her depression was not so simple as Qey might think. The return of her bleeding brought all of the questions she had—which now seemed so close to being answered—back to mock her, to frighten her. Her most terrible fear was that the priests would somehow know and return to examine her again. Though she still did not actually understand what they were trying to determine, a persistent logic—one that dated to D’en’s disappearance—argued that she was in danger each time the priests examined her. She thought, now and then, about questioning someone who was not a servant, who might not have been Forbidden. Her sister, for instance, or her mother. Unfortunately, that seemed too dangerous, both to herself and to whomever she spoke with. Instead, she just thought a lot—and that depressed her. Once she even found herself standing on the roof of the Great Hall, contemplating the flagstones far below, as she had when she was younger. The temptation to jump was not very great, though she remembered that it once had been. It seemed like a long time since thoughts of suicide had crowded about in her head. Once they had seemed very real, insistent. But since her quest for D’en began, she rarely had time to indulge herself in such moods. For nearly three years she had devoted almost every waking moment to her inquiry, and perhaps that had saved her. It felt almost good now to stare down at the tiny people below, to think of a short, hurried flight to join them, of oblivion and peace. Nostalgic, indulgent, a waste of time, yet somehow satisfying. She did not jump, of course, and even Tsem—whom she knew was somewhere near, despite her halfhearted attempt to escape him for a moment—even Tsem did not seriously believe she would kill herself. It was just a game, a fantasy she had outgrown.

  But still an option, she reminded herself. An alternative to D’en’s fate, should it prove to be her own and as terrible as she imagined it. Rather fly from the roof than suffer passively whatever the priests might consign her to.

  Tsem began going home a bit ahead of her, to make sure that the priests were not waiting for her again. It became their standard practice, her in the shadows of an abandoned hall, Tsem looking in and then coming back out to stretch if things inside were normal. It made her feel a bit better; at least she could decide whether she would submit to the demeaning, disgusting ritual again. She also began preparing for another trip beneath the palace. She squirreled away a bit of rope, made sure the lantern had oil in, got Tsem to find her some “suitable” clothes. Nothing he brought back satisfied until he returned with a little boy’s work clothes from the docks: long pants spotted and gummed with tar and a matching shirt. They fit well enough, they were easy to move in, and they would protect her from abrasions and so forth. Nothing worn by the nobility would do that, since men and women both tended to wear skirts, kilts, or gowns. Hezhi would never have even thought of pants—very odd clothing, twin tubes made to cover the legs loosely—had it not been for Yen. Eager to know more about her gift, she had checked the index under “Mang” and found a small but fairly thorough treatise on them. They wore these “pants” because they were better suited to life in the saddle than anything that exposed the leg. Indeed, the word in Nholish for “pants” had been borrowed from Mang, she discovered.

  She tried the clothes on at night, after Qey was asleep. Bad enough that she had involved Tsem in her madness, she would not have Qey know of it. They felt very odd on, snug in places clothing should not be snug. She tried to imagine herself astride a horse, the same wild expression on her face that the little horsewoman bore. She ended by giggling at herself, doffing the clothes and hiding them beneath her mattress, and going to sleep.

  She dreamed, of course, the same dreams of forest. But in this one, for the first time, she saw a man. He was very strange in appearance, pale as linen, his hair a peculiar, impossible shade of brown. His eyes we
re stranger yet, gray, like the River in very early morning. She wondered if he was some sort of River-man, filled up with water. Her feeling that she had done something wrong redoubled, and for an instant, in her dream, she was standing in the Leng Hall, drinking the sacred water from the fountain, wishing for some hero to come and save her …

  “I was sick,” she found herself explaining to someone. “I didn’t mean it.”

  “Well,” a voice answered. “Now he is awake.” And then she was, too, sweating in her bedclothes. It took her a long while to get back to sleep.

  The next morning she rose, cross. She spoke barely a word to Qey or Tsem, set out for the library more than a little later than she wanted to. It was Wezh’s misfortune that he chose that morning to meet her outside of the archive hall.

  She clenched her teeth when she saw him, leaning against the wall, his lips moving.

  “Probably reminding himself to breathe,” she muttered to Tsem.

  “The princess isn’t feeling very nice this morning,” Tsem observed from the corner of his mouth.

  Hezhi tried to ignore Wezh, but he actually interposed himself, grinning his vacuous little grin.

  “Good morning, Princess,” he remarked brightly. “You look radiant this morning.”

  “Well, so do you,” Hezhi answered, surveying his jaunty red hat, felted orange vest, and flower-stippled kilt. “Positively lovely.”

  “Thank you,” he said, pretending to wave her compliment off. “I wonder if I could speak with you for just a moment. Ah, alone,” he finished, eyeing Tsem significantly.

  Hezhi sighed. “Could you give us a moment, Tsem?”

  The half Giant shrugged his massive shoulders and moved off down the hall a short distance.

  “My father—” Wezh began, stopped to dab his lips with a kerchief. “My father asked me to invite you to our rooms for dinner this evening,” he said.

  Hezhi blinked at him. “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” she replied, trying to be polite.

  “Oh,” Wezh said, a little perplexed frown on his face. “My man went to see your nurse—what’s her name, Hay?—anyway, she said you should be free.”

  Hezhi trembled with sudden fury. This idiot had sent someone to talk to Qey? He had conspired to see her? She was suddenly sick to death of people arranging her life, planning it, plotting about it. It was as if something broke loose inside her, something red and hot scrambling up her from her gut and into her tongue.

  “Darken your mouth!” she hissed. “Leave me alone, do you hear? Do you hear?” She felt a sort of shudder run along her bones, and though her clenched fists never left her sides, she had a sudden dizzying sensation that felt almost as if she had reached out and slapped the little fool. The most startling thing was that Wezh reacted exactly as if he had been slapped. He reeled into the wall, his eyes suddenly glazed, unfocused. Spit drooled down his chin.

  “Leave me alone!” she repeated. Wezh sagged against the plastered stone, almost fell, and then suddenly ran, unsteadily at first but then with great enthusiasm. In an instant he was out of sight.

  Hezhi stood there, astonished. Her body seemed to hum, to vibrate for just a bit longer, and then it was quiet, normal. But she had just done something, she knew. She had done something to Wezh, something more than simply yell at him.

  She caught a motion from the corner of her eye and half turned.

  Tsem was goggling at her, and so was Yen, who must have just come around the corner. Yen averted his staring eyes, then looked back at her.

  “What did you say to him?” he asked.

  “I …” Hezhi looked back up the corridor, the way Wezh had run. “I guess it was the way I said it,” she concluded.

  X

  The Heart of Water

  Hezhi nudged Tsem with her toe; somewhere outside in the night a peacock called, half threat, half plaintive complaint.

  “Tsem,” she hissed. “I’m going.”

  The dark bulk rolled over, and large, sleepy eyes caught a ray of moonlight. “I thought we were done with this fumbling around in the darkness, Princess,” he grumbled.

  “Quiet. I don’t want to wake Qey.”

  “I wish you could extend me the same courtesy,” Tsem groused further. He rose, mountainous in the dark.

  “I have everything right here,” she assured him. “Just get dressed.”

  Tsem nodded and groped around a bit behind his bed. She couldn’t make him out clearly, but the rustle of fabric suggested that he was complying with her command. When he stood up, she handed him the bundle in her hands. “Keep that upright,” she warned. “The lantern is in there.”

  Tsem didn’t answer, but shuffled quietly toward the door.

  Once outside, he unpacked the lantern and lit it; it would be madness to try to trace even these familiar halls in total darkness. There were no fancy skylights or stained glass here in the old wing. The night sky entered this part of the palace only through the roofless courtyards, and the illumination of star- and moonlight did not diffuse far into the plastered halls.

  Tsem’s face appeared suddenly in the lamplight, thickened with shadows into the bust of some ancient monster. The monster grimaced and bared its teeth, and it took an instant or two for Hezhi to recognize the expression as a smile.

  “Well, don’t you look fine,” Tsem whispered, squinting at her.

  “I thought I would change before we went,” she answered back.

  Tsem nodded. “Well, you wanted to look like a boat caulker, and so you do.”

  “I need no advice on dressing from you,” she replied loftily. “And we should go, before you have to explain to some soldier why you sneaked a little peasant girl into the palace.”

  “Never fear,” Tsem replied. “They would never take you for a girl.”

  “Huh. Go!”

  They threaded through the deserted halls. Hezhi knew where the guards would be, and fortunately they did not have to pass near any. Most, of course, were patrolling the roof, since that was the only sensible way a thief or assassin could break in from the city—should one manage to scale the palace wall, that is, no small feat in itself. Padding softly past a second and then a third suite of apartments, they came at last to the point she had marked on her map. Each major suite—such as her own—had its own courtyard and fountain to provide fresh water. Suites were arranged into compounds—there were seven suites in hers—and most compounds were built generally around a still larger courtyard. These larger courtyards were slightly downhill from the suites, so that waste water could flow through stone trenches to the “sink,” a large opening in the center of the yard. Housekeepers brought other things to throw into the sink by hand: kitchen garbage, the contents of toilets, and so on. Hezhi’s map showed the sink emptying into the sewers, where the sacred water recirculated, eventually to rejoin the River.

  “Princess,” Tsem began to protest, but she hissed him into silence.

  “It’s the best way,” she explained.

  “I shudder to think what the worst might be,” Tsem glumly retorted.

  “Hush. I’m a princess, and I’m going into it.”

  “Not if I don’t let you,” Tsem replied, a bit of the iron he was named for in his voice.

  “Tsem. We have to do this. I have to know what the priests plan for me, and you can’t tell me. So I have to see. Unless you know a better way, this is what we are going to do. Or I’ll do it alone, if need be, one night while you’re asleep. I thought our bargain was still good, or I wouldn’t have awakened you.”

  Tsem was silent for a moment. “It’s still good,” he admitted.

  “Then who goes first?”

  “I will. What shall we fasten the rope to?”

  “I thought of that,” she replied proudly. She held up a poker stolen from near Qey’s stove. “We’ll tie the rope in the middle of this, brace it over the sink. Then we can pull it in after us, so no one will know.”

  “And does your plan explain how we’ll get back up?”

&nb
sp; Hezhi shrugged. “Throw it back up until it catches again.”

  Tsem sighed. “That will make a lot of noise. What if someone comes to investigate?”

  “Then they do.”

  “Princess, you will not be the one flayed alive in the Great Hall.”

  “I’ll tell them I thought some of my jewelry was thrown down here, accidentally, that I made you go after it. That should sound like something a princess might do.”

  Tsem heaved another sigh. “Unfortunately, it does,” he agreed. “Hand me that thing.” He passed her the lamp in trade.

  The waste-water trenches were flagged over in the courtyard itself, and they entered the drain just below the level of the yard. The sink, however, had a raised wall around it, to prevent young children from falling in. After placing the poker across the width of the opening, Tsem pulled himself up onto the wall, then, with another dubious glance at the forged iron, swung himself over the lip. Hezhi watched his head disappear, then leaned over the edge of the sink, holding the lantern out to give Tsem light to see by. She noticed that he didn’t much trust the rope; he was descending more by bracing himself against the walls of the sink than by lowering himself. His body more or less blocked the shaft; she couldn’t see around him to his eventual destination, though she had of course looked down it in the daytime. It hadn’t seemed that deep then, but now Tsem seemed to be going down and down. As if night conspired with darkness to make the depth more profound.

  Finally she heard a pair of splashes, and Tsem looked up, huge white teeth gleaming orange in the lamplight. “Lower the lantern.” His voice floated up.

  She grimaced. She hadn’t thought of that. Impatiently she pulled up the rope, tied the lantern to it, and then lowered it back down to Tsem. She glanced around anxiously, worried that someone might have noticed them by now, but she saw no one in the faint moonlight. She climbed up onto the lip of the sink. Light flickered up from below. It was a weird sight, the deep, yellow hole with Tsem’s shadowed face at the bottom of it. Taking a deep breath and a hold on the rope, she let her weight drag her over the edge.