Misery's Child

by J Belinda Yandell

Marta suddenly crumbled to her knees, holding her head in both hands. Her breath came in short bursts and her eyes, blinded by pain, rolled up to Lillitha’s.

  “Stop it!” Marta gasped. “Whatever you’re doing, stop it, please—”

  “Then help me or before Oman I’ll keep pushing my pain into you until you are as mad as I am—”

  “All right! All right! I’ll do it!”

  Lillitha pulled the pain back into herself. With it she felt Marta’s hatred, so strong she nearly staggered.

  “You just understand one thing,” Marta panted as she began to undress. “I’m not doing this out of love or pity or even the pain you just inflicted on me. I’m doing it because if you don’t leave, I may kill you myself.”

  Marta met her sister’s eyes.

  “I hate you for this, Lilli. You remember that.”

  ***

  It was fate. Nothing else would explain it.

  She walked right past the sentinel outside her tent, past the dying campfires and through the gates of the encampment without anyone even sparing her a second glance. As she suspected, no one could fathom the idea of a consecrated shallana breda simply walking away.

  She took care to be quiet, though, listening to the sounds of distant voices carried on the breeze. Her heart pounded at her own audacity. Perhaps Marta was right and she was mad. She no longer cared. It calmed her somewhat to be alone in the warm night, unobserved, no eyes prying inside her head, no voices murmuring compliments or questions.

  She sank to her knees in the dewy grass and raised her head to the stars.

  Let me find Scearce, please. Yanna told me that love is never wrong, that by loving another we know Oman and life is reborn... Help me, Mother. I beg you.

  Marta had told her where to find Scearce, but again fate stepped in and made a search unnecessary. He’d been waiting outside the encampment as if he’d known she would come.

  “I’ve been sitting here every night,” he said, “just hoping to get a glimpse of you.”

  “Scearce? Oh, is it really you?” She thought she had no tears left, but water sprang to her eyes, only this time born of happiness as Scearce’s voice answered. She was lost all over again as he rained kisses on her cheeks and forehead.

  “Just one word from you,” he whispered, cupping her face in his hands. “Just one word and I’ll do whatever you ask. We can leave tonight and be halfway to Jeptalla before anyone even knows you’re gone.”

  “I’ll go to Jeptalla or the ends of the earth with you. I’ve loved you since I was seven summers, didn’t you know that?”

  She felt his happiness surging. Yes, yes! This was love. Let Oman and the cadia rot in their glowing island tomb of false light, she was alive and in love. His lips found hers in the darkness and it seemed as though she would melt where she stood.

  “Sweet mother, you taste like honey,” he breathed. “I could live the rest of my life on your kisses—”

  He kissed her again, parting her lips this time with his tongue. His hunger burned through her mouth and down into her belly, then further still into the part of her where life waited to be born. She pulled away, shaking.

  He was apologizing but she laid a finger gently on his lips. “We don’t have much time. Just tell me that you love me and that everything will be all right.”

  “Yes, yes...a thousand times yes! I love you, Lillitha. And I will make everything all right, even if I have to fight a thousand battles to make it so.”

  Neither of them realized just how true that promise would prove.

  Chapter 16: The Flight and the Beginning of the End

  First her mother was shaking her, asking the same question over and over again, as if Marta were not speaking any language she understood. Then her father appeared. Marta could have killed her sister after seeing the pain on her father’s face.

  “What do you mean, she has gone?” he kept saying. “Did someone steal her away?”

  She had to repeat the same thing, over and over. “Lillitha has gone with Prince Scearce. They say they will be married.”

  Damn Lillitha and her cadian tricks for leaving her behind to weather this storm! Oh, if only Ersala would stop weeping....

  Lendenican turned from the young sentinel she’d been berating and regarded Marta with frantic eyes.

  “You helped your sister sneak away in the dead of night?” Lendenican fairly quivered, with rage or fear Marta could not be sure. “Have you any idea what you have done?”

  “How could she do such a thing?” Ersala moaned. “How could she?”

  Marta merely stood surrounded by bewildered adults. She shifted from one foot to the other. She could not look at her father, who had sunk speechless onto a stool and seemed to be contemplating the dirt beneath his feet.

  “Take those robes off, child.” Cadia-dedre Osane pushed through the small crowd of onlookers who’d gathered outside the tent. She looked at Marta with the cold and unflinching eyes of a carrion bird. “Did you hear me? I said take those robes off now.”

  Lendenican began to babble but the dedre waved her away. Osane pushed Marta behind the changing screen that stood in a corner of the small tent.

  “Impossible,” Ersala was saying in a low voice, as if arguing with herself. “Impossible...how could she?”

  “My lady,” she heard her father address the dedre. “What do we do? Can she...just change her mind like this? Is it allowed?”

  Marta stripped. She was only too happy to take off the wretched burlang and wimple. She tossed them to the ground, then stepped on them once for good measure.

  “Vidor Rowle, I do not know,” the dedre spoke. “Someone send for King Tullus. You there, go find him. Hurry!”

  Her discarded dress from the day before was still draped over the screen. She put it on again with a sinking heart. That Lillitha should have taken her new dress and left her with this rag was the last straw. Angry tears streamed down her face as the dedre stepped behind the screen.

  “Tears will do no good now.”

  Marta tossed her head, tilting her chin forward. Her blood boiled at the idea that Osane had mistaken her tears for anything but impotent anger. She held her tongue and met the woman’s eyes.

  Osane’s expression softened, almost imperceptibly.

  “You and your sister were not close,” she said lowly. “Were you?”

  “In the normal sense of the word, no, not at all. I hate her. I’ve always hated her.”

  “Yet you helped her escape.”

  “Escape? You say that as if she was a prisoner.” Marta couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice. “I thought cadia had to come of their own free will.”

  Osane’s lips tightened but she nodded stiffly, as if conceding the point.

  “Nonetheless, she has abandoned her duty and you have assisted her in that venture.”

  “I had no choice,” Marta said sullenly. She could hear voices outside the tent beginning to rise, along with the voices of her own parents on the other side of the screen. “You of all people should understand. You and all your cadian magic. I hate all of you.”

  “So I see. I think I’m beginning to understand. Lillitha was extremely empathic and I can feel a similar talent in you. Was she really so afraid of being shallana breda that she would throw it all away?”

  At least the dedre was speaking to her as an adult, not screaming questions at her as if she were some child. She nodded and swallowed hard.

  “She was terrified. I could feel it. She said she’d rather die than join with the shallan and I was afraid that she might...”

  Shouts rang out in the rising buzz of noise outside the tent. Marta followed Osane as the dedre hurried toward the commotion.

  Rowle and King Tullus stood in the center of a growing mob. A small bald man shouted louder than the rest. Marta vaguely remembered him from the ceremony. He had been beside Shallan Varden. Heavy golden rings glittered as he waved his hands about.

  “This is blasphemy! She is the chosen bride of the s
hallan and your son has stolen her away—”

  “Sweet Mother,” Osane sighed. “How did he get here so fast?”

  “My son has stolen nothing!” Tullus’ voice was thunderous. “How dare you!”

  “My other daughter says Lilli went of her own free will,” Rowle yelled, towering over the little man with the elaborate robes. “Please, we can discuss this like reasonable men—”

  Osane waded into their midst, pleading for everyone to stop shouting. Marta saw her draw along side the little man and put her hand on his arm. He shook it off.

  “This is not the place for this,” the dedre was saying. “We need privacy, not a public shouting match—”

  The crowds around them were growing thicker. Fear thumped in Marta’s stomach as she looked at the faces. Some were filled with uncertainty but even more were tight with outrage.

  “It’s the Jeptallan’s fault,” a male voice shouted. “They’ve always thought they were too good for the rest of us!”

  “What witchcraft does your family use, old man,” another voice rang, “to sire only sons, never a daughter for the consecratia?”

  Marta couldn’t hear Tullus’ answer. She could only see the old man’s ferocious glare and gesturing arms.

  “The same witchcraft his son used, no doubt, to seduce the shallana breda!”

  The hairs along the back of her neck prickled; she could feel the hate and mistrust swelling like a storm cloud, black and monstrous. The tension was thick enough to smell, noxious as a rotting corpse, and her stomach roiled violently. She wanted to go to Osane, beg her to stop this before it was too late. But people were crowding in front of her, pushing her farther and farther away from where her father stood looking humiliated and cornered beside his oldest friend.

  Marta had expected outrage from the cadia and the bene, but the ugliness of the crowd’s reaction stunned her. Then again, she had never been one of the faithful, had never understood all the praying and fasting on holy days. Now her lack of understanding came fully home to her and she shuddered. These were the same people who’d stood for hours in the scorching heat just to get a look at the shallana breda as she passed by, people to whom religion was a very real and sacred thing. Some of them had traveled for weeks by foot just to see the Chosen One anointed. And it was the most faithful who had gathered in the encampment this morning to see their new shallana breda come forth to her calling only to find that hope stolen from them.

  Marta spotted the same old woman who’d fallen on her knees before Lillitha days before and begged for her blessing, as if her sister had the power to heal her twisted body. The old woman’s weathered face was contorted with the outrage of someone who’d been robbed of her most precious possession.

  She never saw who struck the first blow, only heard the terrible scrape of a sword being unsheathed and the flash of early morning sun on its blade.

  “Father!” she screamed.

  She lunged forward but the press of bodies shoved her to the ground. Screams of anger and terror rang out, ugly shouts of unintelligible words. Feet stepped on her and over her as she crawled under the shifting sea of legs as best she could. A heavy boot came down on top of her hand and she screamed again, this time in pain as she heard the bones breaking.

  When she gained her feet again, she could see nothing but a swarm of angry bodies, all converging on the spot where she’d last seen her father and Tullus.

  The clash of metal rang out again and again, more than one weapon singing now. It was unclear just who was fighting whom in the confusion. She saw a man stagger toward her with blood running down his face and another man coming after him with a long wooden pike, murder in his eyes. She jerked away as the bleeding man fell again practically at her feet.

  Some of the women were running now, screaming, clutching children to them in blind panic. Others had picked up stones and were hurling them in every direction. She strained to find her mother and father in the crowd and instead saw Osane shoving people aside as she struggled towards her.

  “Come with me,” she yelled, grabbing Marta’s hand and pulling her away.

  “My father! I want to find my father!”

  “You can’t help him, you can only get yourself killed—Lord General Bastrop! Over here!”

  Marta nearly wept with relief. Lord General Bastrop and his troops would stop this madness.

  “Sweet Mother, what has happened!” His horse was skittish, dancing around as men, women and children stumbled past him. “Osane, what’s going on?”

  “Find Rowle and Tullus,” she screamed, still holding tight to Marta’s hand. “This mob has gone mad! And find Paglia! He’s the one who started all this—”

  He nodded curtly, then tugged at the reins. The horse wheeled and galloped into the thick of the fray.

  “We must get out of here,” Osane shouted.

  With one last look over her shoulder, Marta allowed the dedre to pull her away from the crowd toward Omana Teret.

  ***

  The cadia who cleaned and bound her hand did not speak. Marta was glad of her silence. She left Marta with a bowl of water, a towel and a sponge, along with a clean burlang.

  Her swollen hand made undressing difficult. With her good left hand, she bathed herself clumsily while listening closely for any approaching footsteps. She hurried, glad to be rid of the dirt but nervous about being naked in so strange a place.

  She ducked into the burlang and kicked her own dress into the corner. She would be happy never to see that rag again. It had been torn when she fell, probably beyond repair.

  The noise in the streets had lessened. From the window of the dedre’s private chambers she could see the Guardians galloping through the streets. She could also see three separate fires raging, one of them near the consecratia encampment.

  This was all Lillitha’s fault but she found it hard to summon up much real anger towards her sister. What she’d seen this morning was too overwhelming to comprehend. Who would have imagined that such a battle would break out just because one girl had run away?

  The door opened and Osane came into the room. The dedre was covered in dust, her eyes red and face streaked with dirt.

  “My father?”

  It was the dedre’s hesitation that answered her. Before she could speak, Marta sank to the floor.

  “Oh, my poor father!”

  Osane knelt and tried to put an arm around her. Marta shook her off and glared up at her.

  “They killed him, didn’t they? All because of Lillitha and your silly god. They killed him!”

  “Yes. He’s dead. When the crowd fell upon King Tullus, your father drew his sword in his defense. Both of them are dead.”

  “And my mother?”

  “Alive and here in the palace, being tended to as you are. I think they had to give her a sedative. You should go and see her.”

  Impossible. Her father was dead. Her handsome, vital father was dead.

  “No,” she said in a stony voice, “no, I don’t want to see my mother. I want out of this place, I’m going to find my sister and tear her heart out—”

  “You still don’t understand, do you? You can’t go out there; it’s too dangerous. The Guardians are ordering people back into their houses but there are still four or five different mobs roaming the streets. Oman only knows what they’d do if they found you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They know you helped your sister escape.” Osane raise her hand to still Marta’s protests. “They won’t care why you did it. This is what they call hysteria. People are afraid and confused and they’re lashing out at whomever they can get their hands on. Some twenty or thirty people besides your father and Tullus are dead, and dozens more are wounded. The hall downstairs is flooded with people seeking refuge and medical attention. Chancellor Paglia has issued an edict in Shallan Varden’s name calling for the immediate capture of your sister and Prince Scearce.”

  “Capture?” Marta’s heart lurched into her throat. “What will the
shallan do to them?”

  Osane shrugged, and in that gesture, Marta realized the woman was weary and sickened in spirit, but doing her best not to show it. “I don’t know. Bring them back here; stage a trial, perhaps. I suspect Scearce will be executed for high treason. I pray to Oman they reach Jeptalla before Varden’s troops catch them.”

  “You want them to get away? Why? Lilli should pay for what she’s done!”

  “And what has she done, child, but follow her heart?” Osane sighed and turned away, seeming to speak to herself and not to Marta at all. “If there is blood on anyone’s hands, it’s Paglia’s. There was no need for this to happen. If only I’d gotten to him first....”

  Marta wiped her eyes with the back of her good hand. The dedre was sponging the dust from her face and hands.

  “Paglia,” Marta murmured. A great weariness settled on her, making her yearn to just close her eyes and drift into sleep where she could forget what she’d seen. “He’s the little beardless man who started the shouting, isn’t he? Why was he so angry?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “He wanted Lillitha himself,” Marta said, surprising herself with this sudden knowledge. But once the thought formed in her head, it seemed so obvious. “That’s why he’s so angry she ran away, isn’t it?”

  Osane shot a quick glance towards her, then sighed.

  “Perhaps. I don’t know. All I do know is that he’s in Varden’s chambers even now inciting him to war with Jeptalla for Scearce’s blasphemy.”

  Osane walked to the door, then turned. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. You’re but a child and I’m sorry for your loss today. Rest here as long as you like, then go and see your mother. She’s been asking for you.”

  “Where are you going? What are you going to do?”

  “I have work to do, child. Someone has to be the voice of reason. I’m afraid the duty falls to me.”

  With a flick of scarlet skirts, the dedre was gone.

  Marta sank to the floor, suddenly too afraid to cry, her anger swept away by complete terror. Her father was dead and the Realm tottered on the brink of war. All because of Lillitha.