Points of Departure

by Patricia C. Wrede

  Thinking of that as I walked along the Cat River, heading for the Levar’s Park, I felt less pleased. If, for any reason, she would not take the cat, what could I say to her? I remembered that, whenever she saw me, she used to give me a sharp look, as if I had said something under my breath and she knew it was cheeky. I wonder now whether she knew, long before I thought of it, what I meant to do.

  The street was so quiet I could hear the clack and thud of the loom inside the house. Her azaleas were shiny and smug-looking. Mine had died last year. I knocked on the door. The loom stopped, and after a moment a shuffling and tapping came close, and she opened the door.

  She looked the same as she had when she gave me the kitten: brown and wrinkled, with very bright eyes, her white hair braided and wound around her head in the style Isobel called “snakes,” before she became so foolish that merely to hear the word sent her into a faint. Granny was not much smaller than I. She wore a robe of her own weaving; it had been on the loom when she gave me the kitten, unbleached cotton with an intricate border. I would have given a great deal to have woven it myself.

  “Are you a Benedicti, or a Casalena?” she asked, when, lost in thought, I did not greet her. She might have been asking whether I was a thief or merely a beggar. “Or are you pale from the heat?”

  When she looked at me, I remembered that I had told the maid to go away when she offered to dress my hair; that there was cat hair on my tunic and skirt; and that I had mended my left sandal by tossing the cracked wooden buckle into a drawer and replacing it with a gold one from a worn-out pair I had not liked to throw away. Well, at least she would think badly of my upbringing when I told her my name.

  “I’m Nerissa Benedicti.” She did not look welcoming, so I added, “I’ve come about my cat.”

  “I suppose you’d better come in before you do faint.”

  I followed her in and opened the basket. Floradazul, who has very good manners, did not jump out before she was invited, but made an inquiring noise. I wished she were less endearing.

  “Greetings, Floradazul,” said Granny Carry, smiling for the first time. Floradazul jumped straight into her lap and began her best purr. I could not tell whether I was more put out by that, or by Granny’s remembering the cat’s name when she had forgotten mine. Sometimes Floradazul’s judgment is not what it might be.

  At least she should be glad to live with Granny again.

  “Is she sick?” said Granny, rubbing her between the ears. “She doesn’t look it. Pregnant?”

  I was shocked, but hoped not to show it. “She’s very well. I want to give her back to you.”

  “Why, what’s this? Does she scratch your sisters?”

  “Serve them right if she did. She’s a very good cat; but I can’t do with a cat any more.”

  “And why not?”

  “I’m too busy.”

  She looked at me as if I were about to eat an azalea. Then I saw I ought to have said that Floradazul scratched my sisters; or that my parents didn’t like finding a pile of dead rats on the doorstep once or twice a week. In fact they did not, but I would never have given away the cat for any annoyance she was sensible enough to cause my family. And now Granny knew that. Yes, I was stupid.

  “She’s no trouble,” said Granny, “but you’re tired of her.”

  “Yes.”

  Floradazul chose this moment to jump to the floor and push the top of her head against my ankle. For the first time in her life, I ignored her. If I could treat my only friend like this, it would certainly be better to die.

  Granny seemed to agree with the basic sentiment, if not with the particulars. “Young woman,” she said, “one does not give a cat away. Ever.”

  “You gave her to me!”

  “She wasn’t mine. She lived in my house because her mother did. You accepted her; you took her home; you have lived with her these four years. This is your cat.”

  “But I can’t—”

  “You must. I certainly can’t take her back. She’d pine for you. And it would spoil you for life, letting you get away with giving a cat back. Murder and blackmail and marrying for money would be nothing to it.”

  I decided that she had gone mad, being so old, and living by herself with only a loom and some cats and azaleas. I could hardly leave my cat with a crazy woman. I got up, and Floradazul jumped into the basket, making a few remarks about my sudden haste.

  “I’m sorry to have taken your time.” I picked up the basket.

  “I’d have been sorrier to have taken your cat.” She stood up and saw me to the door.

  “Farewell,” I said politely.

  “Mend your ways,” she said, as if it were a common courtesy, and slammed the door.

  I felt bruised in my mind, and therefore tried not to use it. Not using it, I thought suddenly that I might leave the cat with Snake. I was halfway to the Tiger’s Eye already. It would be a long walk home, but later was always better for going home.

  I knew Snake’s name because I had heard an occasional customer, and later her assistant Thyan, call her by it. I had never spoken to her. Isobel tells me that when there were fewer children in the family, my mother used to take the elder girls there to buy gifts for our festivals. She says Snake was gracious but did not smile much, which is still true. Isobel (who was the best of us at listening on the stairs after she was supposed to be in bed, and who has kept it up the longest) also tells me that Snake is one of the Liavekan nobility. It is just like them to let someone of that class keep a shop.

  I have never bought anything at the Tiger’s Eye myself: not only are the prices high, but one must bargain down even to those, and bargaining is not a skill in which any of my family has been instructed. In the true kingdoms, no citizen would stoop to argue with a shopkeeper.

  I haunted the Tiger’s Eye when I was younger, pretending to look at the merchandise, and looking at Snake. I can hardly remember, now, what fascination she held for me. There was a time when I wished earnestly to be a Liavekan, and perhaps she is the sort of Liavekan I wished to be, in her slender, dark, solemn looks and her conduct, if not in her occupation. I do remember the deadly jealousy that gripped me when Thyan came, although considerable thought never produced a clear idea of what, exactly, I was jealous of. I did not want to be a Tichenese bond-servant; I did not want to work in a shop, being pleasant to strangers, or even being acerbic with them in a way they could not dispute; I did not want to work with beautiful things. Servitude is disgraceful, and trade vulgar; I am afraid of strangers; and beautiful things are afraid of me, knowing that, having once come into my hands, they are not long for this world.

  The Tiger’s Eye, as always, was shockingly cool and instantly overwhelming. In truth, Snake’s shop is spacious. But I feel there, always, as though the merest breath could knock something priceless into rubble.

  I felt this more strongly with a basket of cat on my arm. I looked around. Snake was not there. Thyan, behind the counter, was eyeing the basket, so I went up to her. I thought her raisin-colored skin and springy hair very peculiar when she first came, but they look more natural among the Liavekans than my flour face and hair like old butter.

  “Do you think I could leave this here while I look?” I said.

  “I was hoping you’d ask,” she said. “Will it fit under the window?”

  I set it down, and propped up the lid. Floradazul put her nose out and looked inquisitive.

  “Rikiki’s nuts!” said Thyan, violently. I looked to see what I had broken, but she was staring at the cat.

  “It’s all right, she won’t jump out unless she’s asked,” I said, but a feeling of vast defeat had settled on me. No one can own a cat and a shop full of breakables. I had been mad to come here. In my disappointment, feeling nothing mattered, I found my tongue loosened.

  “I’m sorry, I should have thought just to measure her neck with a piece of string. But she’s quite safe.”

  Thyan was still staring, now at me, so I plunged on. “You do sell collars for
cats?”

  “I think they’re for monkeys,” said Thyan, “but we might find one that would do. What color did you have in mind? What is she—blue and cream, with green eyes. Green, do you think?”

  I was impressed that she knew the proper words for the colors of cats. Most people would have said “gray and white.” But I only said, “Yes, and simple, so she won’t catch it on something and choke herself.”

  Thyan led me to the back of the store.

  “Do people ever bring their monkeys to be fitted?” I asked her. I could not seem to keep quiet. Perhaps I was afraid she would ask me something.

  “Thank all the gods they don’t,” she said over her shoulder. “People who own monkeys delight in mess.”

  She opened a carved wooden box about the size of a cradle, and began taking out collars. They came in every color, and most of them were gaudy with jewels and bangles and bells.

  Thyan grinned at me. “You see?” she said.

  “No bells, either, I think.” I got down and helped her rummage. After considerable giggling and exclaiming, which ought to have disgusted me by its similarity to the behavior of my sisters, we found a green leather collar with three opals and a plain silver buckle.

  “That,” said Thyan, dropping it into my palm and beginning to pile the other collars back into their box, “is probably the mistaken work of some apprentice who hasn’t learned how to attach these abominable bangles.”

  “Well, the stitching is perfectly regular. How much is it?”

  “A half-levar.”

  “Thyan,” I said, forgetting myself entirely, “those are opals.”

  “My dear Mistress Benedicti,” she said, “they are not good opals. The shape is wrong.”

  “Well,” I said, furious for forgetting my manners and calling her by her name when she had not even told it to me, “you should know.” Then I thought, we are bargaining backwards; it is I who must denigrate the collar and make her lower the price. Are we both mad?

  “It will be a little more,” Thyan said, slamming the box shut and taking the collar to the front of the shop, “if I have to exercise my rare skills and bore another hole in it. This looks a little large for a cat.”

  She held her hand out to Floradazul, who was sitting bolt upright in the basket with her nose quivering. I wondered if there were mice in the store. Thyan, I noticed, held her hand properly below the cat’s head. Floradazul sniffed briefly and rubbed the side of her head against Thyan’s first finger. Thyan held the collar out and let her sniff that, too. It was a great pity I could not give her the cat; she knew just how to treat them.

  “But then, this is a large cat,” said Thyan, fastening the collar. Floradazul twisted her head around several times, trying to see what was around her neck, and then gave up the attempt as lacking dignity.

  I felt in the pocket of my skirt for the money I had saved to join Deleon when he sent me word, and then brought along to give Granny to help pay for the cat’s board. I counted out half a levar in coppers and half-coppers.

  “Lovely,” said Thyan, “we never have enough coppers.”

  I thought that if I told her my given name, it would not have been so rude to call her by hers; but that took more courage than I had.

  “Thank you very much,” I said, and picked up the basket.

  “You’re both welcome here any day,” she said, and turned to deal with two young boys who seemed torn between buying their mother a bracelet and wrestling among the Tichenese glassware. I went out into the blazing afternoon.

  I came home with a headache and the beginnings of a sunburn. The usual dull weight of hopelessness was back, and seemed heavier for having been away.

  The household was in an uproar. All my sisters were crying in the hall; Marigand had come with her husband so she could cry with them. Her husband and my father and brothers were talking furiously in the parlor. The maid and the cook were wailing in the kitchen. My mother was sitting in the parlor, looking as she had when Isobel refused to marry Hanil Casalena: as angry as it is possible for someone to look who refuses either to frown or to throw things. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that though all the things my mother has taught my sisters, and has tried to teach me, make a girl insufferably silly, my mother is not in the least silly herself. If she had not tried to make me so, I might be fond of her.

  Floradazul leaped out of the basket the moment I opened it, and streaked up the stairs to my room, to be out of the tumult. I would have liked to follow her. I went out to the courtyard and found Cinnamon, who does errands for the cook and the maid when he is not learning carpentry from his master. He refuses either to tell anyone his Tichenese name or to choose a Liavekan one, so he is called for the color of his eyes. He always knows what is happening, although it doesn’t do to let him know you think so.

  “What is the matter with them?” I asked him.

  “All the pale ones have gone back overseas,” he said.

  “Well, we haven’t.”

  “You and the Casalenas. The new King pardoned everyone else, but not your father, because your father killed his father; and not the Casalenas, because your sister married one.”

  He looked at me to see how I would take it, but he did not seem altogether pleased with his news.

  “Thank you, Cinnamon,” I said, having been taught to be polite to servants, and I went back into the house and upstairs. Floradazul was washing herself, but chirruped at me as I came in. I felt as though someone had told me that water was no longer wet. My father had been the leader of the exiles. That they would so much as consider a pardon that did not include him—that they would consider any pardon rather than waiting until they could bring sufficient force to establish themselves in the thrones and council of Acrivain—was impossible. This was also the first I had heard of my father having killed the old King. It did not make me like him any better.

  “Well,” I said to Floradazul, “that was the last dream.”

  She yawned at me as if to say she had thought very little of it all along. I wondered what I had meant, and then I knew. Returning to Acrivain, had we accomplished it soon, might have been an escape. My mother’s rule might have been less oppressive, my father’s prejudices more harmonious, my family’s foolishness almost sensible, in their proper setting. There might even have been some young man who had manners but had not, in his boyhood, thrown kittens into rivers.

  Well, I would never meet him now. I found the scrap of paper Verdialos had given me, and went out by the back way.

  • • •

  The Green priests have a house rather than a temple, in the extreme northeastern tip of the Old Town on the Avenue of Five Mice. Verdialos says the name refers not to actual mice, but to some political satire wherein five officials of the old Green Temple were likened to mice.

  The House of Responsible Life is large and square, three-storied, and plastered a pale green half grown-over with ivy. It takes up the entire eastern side of the block between Neglectful Street and the Street of Thwarted Desire. It has many small doors, but at the middle of the block a double wooden one stood open, so I went up the three green steps and inside.

  It felt, that first time, like a warehouse, or some similar place where business is done with a great deal of mathematics.

  Two young Liavekan women, perhaps a year or two older than I, sat at a table to the left of the door. One of them wore a green robe, and the other an exceedingly immodest green tunic. They looked at me unsmiling, but with a sort of welcome.

  “Good death to you,” said the immodest one. “May we answer your questions?”

  “Good death to you,” I said, suppressing a foolish urge to say, “and the sooner the better.” This first greeting felt strange on my tongue. “My name is Nerissa Benedicti, and I’ve come to see Verdialos.”

  “He’s waiting for you,” said the modest one, “behind the fifth door to your right.”

  I did not like what she said—whether she meant that he had been waiting since he met m
e on the bridge, or that he had known when I was coming. He never would tell me which, if either, was the case. When I told him he had too great a sense of fun for a confirmed suicide, he promised me that once my death was determined, I would have one myself.

  At that first meeting, as at all the others, he gave me tea and honey-cakes and melons the Green priests had grown themselves. Once he made it clear to me that it was my duty, however painful, to tell him all about my family and myself, I found it much pleasanter than anyone would have imagined. Well, anyone besides Jehane, I suppose. She will talk to anybody about anything; I once heard her telling Cinnamon what she remembered about Deleon. She got most of it wrong.

  I had hoped Verdialos would offer to take the cat himself, or say he knew an old woman with five cats who would gladly take another. But he only sat there nodding and grimacing and running his hands through his shaggy hair while I told him of everything I had tried and thought of. He was not impressed, either. He seemed to think anybody would have done the same thing, tramping all over Liavek in the heat and talking to strangers.

  “So I don’t know what to do,” I told him at last.

  “I will tell you this much,” he said. “You are made for this order. I have never heard of someone starting so young.”

  “Perhaps all the rest of them succeeded,” I said.

  “Ah, but that is why you are made for this order. You were not content merely with success. We can give you success with honor and elegance.”

  “As soon as I provide for the cat.”

  “That is true.”

  “Well, then, I must leave it to luck.” This is an Acrivannish saying, which means “leave it to chance.” But in Liavek, luck means magic. Verdialos leaned forward and spilled his tea.

  “Nerissa, have you invested your luck?”

  “No. Holy Sir, what if I were to invest it in the cat? Then I would die when she did!”