by Jane Kindred
Cree scowled. “For the time being, I suppose we have no choice.”
“We have knowledge we would share with you,” said the Recordkeeper. “There is more you do not know about the one who seeks to exploit the magic of those he envied.”
“Come. Sit with us at our table.” The Caretaker and the rest turned as one toward a corridor at the opposite end of the stone hall without waiting to see if Cree and Ume would follow.
Ume glanced at Cree as they started after them reluctantly, her eyes pained. Cree thought she must be worried about Nesre and the Meerhunters—and what else the Hidden Folk might have in mind for them—but her next words weren’t what Cree was expecting.
“The sapphire velvet,” she sighed. “I had such lovely plans for it.”
Fifteen: Corrosion
From a heavy sleep, Ra’s eyes opened, mind chaotic, the place unfamiliar. The roof overhead was flat and gray. Her hand gripping her chest reminded her of who she was in this life, no longer Meer of Rhyman. For a moment, she’d forgotten, and woken without pain. Still, she couldn’t recall the place she slept. She was unclothed, uncovered, and the sheet beneath her was—
“Meershivá!” Ra recoiled, pulling her legs away from a pool of blood that spread across the sheet, some of it still fresh.
“Relax, MeerRa.”
Ra squinted into the darkness to see MeerShiva, resplendent in shadow with her deep-hued hair glistening crimson as though it too were washed in blood. MeerShiva. Ra had come here to kill her and slept instead.
“What is this?” Ra trembled. “What have you done to me?”
“I’ve done nothing to you, child. You bleed. It’s what women do.”
What women do. Ra touched the blood beneath her and explored her as yet unpenetrated body with her fingers. It had come out of her, this blood. She menstruated.
“There’s so much,” said Ra, doubtful.
“Ah, this is your first blood,” observed MeerShiva with interest. “You bled while you slept, an entire menses.” She folded her hands in front of her. “You have been sleeping for eight days.”
“Eight—?” Ra felt light-headed. “You drugged me? Or necromanced me?”
“There was no need for that, MeerRa. I only facilitated what you desired. That is the way I know. I am of the old breed.” Shiva opened her hands, and a platter of breads and cakes seemed to flow from her palms. She was far more accomplished than Ra, who seemed to jerk things into being, not even needing to speak first to create. “Eat. Replenish.”
Ra’s stomach turned, and she shook her head. She hadn’t eaten since before the Heart of Winter, and the thought of food now made her ill.
Shiva frowned at her. “How long can you starve this body, MeerRa? This is your flesh, the same you lived in as Meer of Rhyman. It cannot be dreamed up like a sable cloak or a pair of boots.” Ra shivered at the Meer’s knowledge. “It is why the flesh must burn when life is ended. From dust to dust we create ourselves.”
“And who burned my flesh?” demanded Ra. “How am I here?”
A momentary glint of compassion traversed MeerShiva’s features. “That I cannot tell you, little one. I do not know everything.”
Ra looked shrewdly at the Meer. “What can you tell me, then?” Vetma ai MeerShiva. Ra had become the petitioner.
MeerShiva set the tray aside and spread her hands in front of her, as if fanning out divining cards before her on a cloth. “You want to know about the child.” Ra stared at the hands, unable to meet the probing green eyes. “You want to know about Mila.”
“Mila?” She’d thought Shiva meant to tell her what had become of RaNa.
“Mila na Ahr,” said Shiva. “The baby you tore from the arms of her mother.”
“I?” Ra closed her mouth. She had no defense of this statement. She had spoken. The child had come. Mila na Ahr. She shook her head. It was as though another child altogether had shared the temple with MeerRa, a child he hadn’t noticed.
“Do you want to know how it was for the mother?”
“No.” Ra crossed her arms over her chest as though blocking the knowledge. “No, MeerShiva. I can’t.”
But Shiva rose from her chair and came to the bed where Ra huddled cringing from her. Instead of grabbing Ra, she lifted the bloodstained sheet and tossed it over her. Ra flung out her arms in surprise, and as the blood on the sheet touched her, she felt a pain in her abdomen like a coil that contracted around her. She gave a cry of surprise, and the sundering pressure seized her once more.
The child was coming.
Ra rolled onto her side in confusion, gripping the bed, unable to push the sheet away. The pain was unbearable. It rode her in waves that began before their precursors ended. She cried out in a long and desperate sob at each apex of this misery. The intensity of the thunder in her body left her half-unconscious between the agonizing summits, and then another crescendo dragged her up into her body so that she tried to leap from herself to flee the pain.
“Nearly there, girl.”
Ahr looked up into the old woman’s face, unrecognizable. Why was this stranger in her house? Why couldn’t she escape this horrible torment? What was—? She screamed, a blood-draining howl of agony and fear as the pain possessed her once more, before she lay sobbing and weak.
“No more,” begged Ahr. “No more.”
The midwife patted her hand. “I’m afraid there’s no way out but through the door, my dear. Now this time bear down. Your baby’s coming.”
The child distended her, forcing her apart, but the pain was less. She obeyed the midwife’s commands to push and felt the body slowly sliding inside her. She was so tired. She’d been woken by the nagging start of labor in the early hours of a day that she was sure had come and gone. She went for the midwife in the evening, and—what day had that been? She wasn’t sure.
The infant quit her body at last and burst into the room with a loud complaint, and Ahr collapsed among the bloodied sheets, succumbing to the darkness.
When she awoke, a child was in her arms, soft and delicate and observing her with a look of wonder.
“Mi la,” she breathed, the Deltan words for wonderment.
Ahr walked about the room with the baby when the midwife had gone, kissing the dark down of the pliant head, and touching the remarkable pinks of her fingers and toes. She twirled her about, held to her chest. She was in love.
The baby’s soft, insistent mouth at her breast was astonishing. When the milk let down, Ahr wept from the delight of it. She woke the baby often just to look at her, curling their bodies together in the unit of mother and child, as though Mila had never left her body. Ahr lounged entire days, watching Mila’s lopsided mouth curve into itself as she slept and listening for the gentle susurrus of her breath. Mila was her universe, her meaning, her kin. She couldn’t imagine how she’d existed before Mila, what purpose there could have been to life. Mila was life, and Ahr had given it to her.
The knock came at the door as she was nursing, Mila half-asleep at her breast and kneading gently with her fists. It had been three weeks since Ahr had passed through the darkness into the light of Mila. She’d forgotten the world.
She rose sleepily with Mila against her to see who’d come to pay their respects, not caring that her bodice hung open and her mothering breasts were poised splendidly in the open air. Who could care? She was the queen of all creation, the earth expelled from her loins.
Her smile faltered as she drew the door open and observed the assembly of templar priests, and then her heart began to batter her chest. “No,” she moaned, shaking her head. They had come from the temple, from the lair of the god, and their eyes lusted after Mila: a goddess who might spin golden thread from her tongue with a word.
She curved herself about the baby and turned from the door, but they overtook her, thrusting her arms behind her back and pulling Mila from the damp nipple as sh
e woke with a startled cry. She was passed away from Ahr through the hands of the waiting templars until Ahr couldn’t see her. Ahr struggled, desperate and wailing, with the man who held her. The temple entourage spilled out into the rain-damp street, and Ahr was released, and Mila had disappeared among them.
She tried to run out after them, barefoot in the midst of winter, and bare-breasted, but the templars flung her back into the house and onto the floor, slamming the door on her cries. She stared at the boards of the floor in shock, watching the blue-white milk of Mila’s last meal run along the cracks as though her breasts were weeping. She was stunned, murdered, unable to rise.
MeerShiva lifted the sheet from Ra where she’d tumbled to the floor of the dark cell. Ra raised her head, her palms braced beside her, and looked about with a start. She sprang up and burst past Shiva to the door, but Shiva was beside her, catching her in her fearfully strong arms.
“Mi la!” shrieked Ra, still trying to reach the door. “Mila!”
“Ra.” The Meer held her so that she couldn’t move her head. “You are Ra, not Ahr. You are not her mother.”
Ra jerked against her, but Shiva’s solid hands held firm. Mila. Mila na Ahr.
“Ai, no,” she moaned, her resistance draining from her like Ahr’s wasted milk. She slipped down between Shiva’s hands to the floor. She was Ra, and she had done this to Ahr, whom she loved. She’d done it to Mila—RaNa. She was on her knees before MeerShiva, devoid even of tears to shed, though she’d used them so liberally before. She bowed her head, unable to hold it up any longer.
The Meerchild bowed before the dark glass as if it too were before MeerShiva. It had drawn none of what it saw in this latest vision. In the arms of the mother, in the cries of the infant, it had suddenly begun to understand what it lacked. It was as if the dangerous Meer had opened a window and let the Meerchild see into it, to know what it was.
This small room with its pallet and paper was not how a loved child lived. The infant in the vision had a name—two names, each lovingly expressed. The Meerchild had no name. It didn’t know whether it was a male child or a female. It had been neutered at birth. If it had a mother or a father, it didn’t remember them. It had always been here, had always belonged to the Master.
MeerRa had come to In’La, and the child had drawn her in eager anticipation, but she hadn’t come for the Meerchild. She had come in search of her own.
Sixteen: Remonstration
The rustic-lodge appearance where they’d come under the hill gave way to a stunning feast hall. Still made of stone, its scale was vast, with clusters of massive pillars rising to a vaulted ceiling overhead. If it was truly under a hill, the hill was immense.
As they assembled about a stunning table and high-backed chairs of the same stone, Ume admired the sweeping gowns the Hidden Folk wore, regardless of sex. They reminded her of the style she’d worn in her Garden heyday in In’La, light and gauzy fabrics whose sheer abundance, draped in waves and folds, made them luxurious and decadent, and seemingly a hybrid of robe, tunic, and gown all at once, with what appeared to be loose, flowing pants beneath them. Though they wore no other adornments, they had given great care to the display of their hair—some with topknots and long falls, while others wore it in a multitude of braids, and some who simply let it hang down their backs or over their shoulders decorated with a series of intricate knots.
One of them moved about the table filling goblets with a pale violet liquid, and Ume lifted hers to sip, but Cree put a hand on her wrist and frowned. “I’m not sure it’s wise to accept food or drink from the Hidden Folk,” she whispered in Ume’s ear.
The Caretaker smiled indulgently in Cree’s direction. “Do not fear to partake of what we offer. There is no enchantment. Such tales are mortal myth. I assure you, we have no desire for you to remain under the hill. No offense intended.”
Cree’s eyes narrowed. “None taken, I’m sure.” She let go of Ume’s wrist and lifted her goblet to her lips with a dubious look into it before she drank.
Ume tasted hers, trying to place the scent and flavor of something like flowers or grass. Clover blossom? It was the closest she could come. It had a slight, burning heat as it went down, but didn’t taste of alcohol.
At the head of the table sat a regal-looking man who reminded Ume a bit of Alya in the bright interest in his eyes. He was the only one at the table who wasn’t drinking, long ghostly white fingers pressed together before him. “We welcome you to our table,” he said at last. “I am the Host. As the Recordkeeper and the Chamberlain have indicated, our people have a vested interest in the affairs of the world beyond the hill that we had all but abdicated. The event you call the Expurgation woke us. It was a level of virulence we had not anticipated.”
Cree was staring down at her drink, swirling it in the goblet. She’d been an active member of the Expurgist movement. In the end, nearly everyone had. And yet they’d all been somewhat stunned when it came to pass. Cree’s comrades had wanted the removal of the Meer from rule, and hadn’t recognized that the only way to effect it was genocide. The templars had known.
The Host was watching Cree. “We understand that you took part in this event,” he said dispassionately. “That, however, is not why you are here. We are not interested in casting blame, merely in preventing further corruption of our gift.”
“Your gift?” Ume flinched as every head turned toward her.
The Host addressed her patiently. “The pool of knowledge into which the Meer look belongs to us. As the Anamnesis flows from the great Northern Lake, so the vision of the Meer flows from us. They are but tributaries of our wisdom and our art.” He clasped his hands together, the only sign of any emotion. “When the thoughts of the Meer were silenced, we were disquieted but believed their chapter in this world to be closed. But now this—man…”
As the Host paused with distaste, Ume supplied the name. “Nesre.”
He inclined his head. “The same. This Nesre possesses something that does not belong to him. He sees into the pool of knowledge.”
“Forgive me,” said Cree. “But what does that have to do with us? He may think Ume knows this escaped Meer, but she doesn’t. She can tell him no more than she’s told you. We’d like nothing better than to stay as far as possible away from the Delta and…Nesre.” The word emerged through Cree’s clenched teeth.
Ume wanted to stop this conversation, to stop Cree from reliving those months that were written in the furrows of her brow and the tightness of her jaw—and in the hollow bitterness that hid in the depths of her chestnut eyes. Ume had reason enough to hate Nesre for what he’d done in manipulating her into betraying Alya. Nesre himself had once been a patron of hers, all the while plotting to exploit her gifts to entrap the Meer into breaking the edict against carnal knowledge of his subjects.
But what Nesre had done to Cree was unforgiveable. As Ume and Cree had attempted to slip quietly out of In’La and the Delta several months after the Expurgation, they’d been apprehended in Rhyman, charged with gender impersonation, and returned to In’La. Nesre, newly elected prelate of the soth, had promised to pardon them both if Ume resumed her place as his personal courtesan. When she refused, he’d locked Cree away, saying she was mentally unfit and needed to be treated.
“What it has to do with you,” said the Host, interrupting Ume’s dark thoughts, “is that we would like you to retrieve what Nesre has stolen.”
“Us?” Ume gaped at the Hidden Folk watching them expectantly. “How would we be able to get anything away from Nesre? He’d have us arrested on sight.”
“But you have a history with this person, do you not?” asked the Caretaker. “He was also…a patron?”
Ume pressed her lips together without answering, and Cree spoke instead.
“Ume isn’t going anywhere near that bastard ever again. Neither of us is. I’m sorry, but we are not the people to do your dirty work. Why not ju
st go get it yourselves?”
“We do not interfere in the affairs of mortals,” said the Caretaker.
“You interfered in mine.”
“An act we felt was necessary and one for which you have spoken a desire to give us something in thanks. This is what we ask.”
Cree faltered. “I—just why did you feel it was necessary?”
“You are Ume Sky’s companion, and she is our link to what is stolen.” The Caretaker’s expression said there was more to it than that, but she wouldn’t be revealing anything further.
“And just what did he steal, anyway?”
The Host pressed his fingers together once more, as if in thought, before answering, “A child.”
The ghost of a girl Ahr hadn’t known filled his thoughts now, as if the words MeerShiva had once spoken were whispered again into his ear: “You will not ask after RaNa-Mila, but I will tell you of her. She grew up empty and longed for her mother. She was taken from your breast the way all Meer are taken from those who give them life.”
Ahr hadn’t expected to see the young Meeress on the steps on the morning of the Expurgation. She’d put the child out of her mind while the plans for deposing the Meer coalesced. RaNa wasn’t the object of the Expurgation. She was irrelevant. A catalyst, perhaps, for the discontent to reach its boiling point, but not the people’s oppressor. Not the tyrant. And RaNa was not her child. Her child was gone. Ahr had come to put an end to Ra.
The templars had revealed themselves among their fellow Expurgists in the days leading up to the crime, swearing their allegiance to the cause and promising immunity to all involved. Though she’d been careful to keep her identity private, even using an assumed name in her work with the League of Expurgists, the templars knew her and made her a kind of symbol of the movement in the end. It was one of the reasons she’d longed to disappear, to no longer be the woman who had brought down the Meer. In the end, everyone had known her face.