by E D Ebeling
Savvel was last again. Everyone stood up, Sarid included; she noticed Savvel watching her.
“What’s everyone waiting for?” he said as they sat back down. “Don’t hesitate on my account. I’m sure you’re very excited to discuss my brother.”
“And you, Your Highness,” said Caveira. “We must determine who is the madder.”
The Eianhurt boys laughed. The dame put her hand around the youngest boy’s neck and shook him.
Savvel shrugged. “Who will make the better Ravyir, you mean? Probably Rischa. Or he would’ve had Yelse Hyeda not bewitched him.”
Duke Caveira said, “It seems to me he’s given over to whims. Stripped the Pashes of their land, killed their boy, all without a trial.”
“Under the influence of Yelse Hyeda,” said Savvel. “We have only to do away with her.”
Dame Grete moved forward in her seat. “And have another woman take her place? The firstborn would make the more natural Ravyir.”
Savvel shook his head. “I’m the madder. Arrogant, crabbed, bitter, given to mood swings, and even if my hallucinations are a thing of the past, which they probably aren’t, it would be irresponsible of you to make me Ravyir.”
“Perhaps, then, neither of them will do,” said the Duke. “Perhaps the next closest kin––”
“You are impotent, Olan,” said the dame.
The Duchess made a little gasping sound, and Caveira’s dark face grew florid. His brows turned to fierce knots. “My brother is not.” Sarid noticed he was wearing the broach with the Eliav Suncat again.
The dame laughed. “How are we to determine that?”
“He’s sired a girl on Edloiva Duhn.”
Rokal went as red as his brother and gave him an angry look.
“Her father must be proud to have Eliav blood in the family at last,” said the dame. “We should put your brother on the throne immediately, such exemplary virtue has he.”
“She could’ve taken pennyroyal like they all do,” said Rokal. “She wanted it.”
“Rischa’s not mad or an idiot,” said Leva sharply. “A bit impulsive, maybe. But he never got a child on anyone.”
Caveira said, “But of course she is in love with him.”
Leva said, more to the Duke than anyone, “And Mari should be Ravinya.”
Mari looked at her sister in consternation. “I’d thank you not to remind me of Vanli by suggesting I marry his murderer.”
“Mari’s a fetching girl,” said Savvel, who’d slouched so low in his seat he was almost lying down. “But”––he slapped hands on his stomach––“you and Rischa would make a formidable pair.”
“Formidable how?” said Leva. She wiped her palms on her skirts, leaving damp marks on the silk.
He sat upright. “You compliment each other. He is a soggy clay, and you are all fire.”
“You’re mocking me.”
He smiled. “Perhaps.” He said to everyone else, “And just to make it perfectly clear, I won’t be your figurehead in a war against my brother.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Dame Grete.
“What,” interrupted Cai Eianhurt, “does Yelse Hyeda want?”
There was a silence. Everyone turned slightly toward Sarid, and her stomach gave a flip when she perceived the question was for her.
She decided to cut straight to the bone. “To see you all dead.” Nobody laughed. Caveira wiped sweat off his forehead, and Dame Grete turned to one of her sons and began whispering. “If she marries the Ravyir,” continued Sarid, “she may have the power to give the country over to the saebelen. She’s threatened it, but I don’t know. She hates Lorila, she’s made that clear enough.”
Cai Eianhurt cleared his throat. “And so you see, my lord,” he said to Savvel, “Your brother can’t be Ravyir. It may have to be war.”
“He can be Ravyir,” said Sarid. “But he can’t marry my sister.”
“All right,” said the dame acidly. “Perhaps he doesn’t know. Who wants to tell him?”
Cai said, “Or knock the sense back into him?”
“We don’t have to,” said Leva. “Sarid simply has to kill Yelse.”
Sarid looked into her lap, pictured Yelse. The Yelse with the laughing black eyes, who used to wrap hawthorn around Sarid’s wrists to drive away nightmares.
Sarid opened her mouth to say there was nothing simple about it, but Dame Grete interrupted: “Understand that if neither happens we’ll have to make war, so that Yelse doesn’t become a legitimate Ravinya.” She turned to Savvel. “And you’ll be our Ravyir whether you want it or no.”
Olan Caveira made a small protesting noise, and the dame said, “The west won’t stand under a Caveira, Olan, not while there’s an Eliav around. And neither will the east. We all have our claims to the throne.”
No one said anything, and everyone looked underhandedly at everyone else.
They gave a collective start when Rokal said, “Someone should go to Meliona. To treat with him, find out what he’s doing.”
“It won’t be you,” said the Duke.
“Definitely not,” the Duchess echoed, and Rokal slouched in his seat.
“I’ll go,” said Savvel and Sarid at the same time.
“Yelse will roast you,” said Sarid to Savvel. “And I can turn into a wind.”
“I bet you could turn me into a wind.” He sounded like a petulant little boy.
“Out of the question,” said the dame. “You’re our Suncat.”
Savvel turned his hands in his shirt. “I see. I’m a puppet.”
“Well spotted,” said the dame in what Sarid thought was a rather daring remark, considering they had just put Savvel second in the line of succession.
“Was that a joke?” Savvel stood up and stretched his arms behind his head. “Because it was a rotten one.” He climbed up the terraced seating and left.
“I think,” said the dame, ignoring his departure, “that we should send Lady Hyeda. She will be safe from her sister’s enchantments, and besides”––she spoke to Sarid directly––“you were the boy’s lover.”
“I don’t know if that will make him more or less inclined to listen to me,” said Sarid. “But I’ll go to Meliona.”
The rest of the council concurred.
***
Again the three girls and Savvel ate in private, in the girls’ dining room.
“There’s a hair in my wine,” said Mari. She fished it out with a finger.
“Yours, probably,” said Sarid.
“No. It’s crooked.”
Savvel gagged and put his knife down.
“Too forthright, princess?” said Mari. “It belongs to you, I think. No one else has such curly, lustrous––”
“Would you put him off his food?” said Sarid. “He’s already like a stick.”
“Your tantrum was superb,” said Mari to Savvel. “Put Leva to shame.”
Leva stared at her shellfish and dragged a finger up and down her side in a long line. Along the scar she had got from her horse.
“Aren’t you hungry, Leva?” said Mari.
“I don’t want to be Ravinya.”
“It’s the headdress,” said Savvel. “The weight can kill.”
Leva laughed and then her face went blank. She gazed straight ahead, began crying silently. Up and down went her finger, up and down.
“I’m frightened.” Leva looked at Sarid. “Kill her. You promise you’ll kill her?” She wiped her tears away. “I’m a coward.”
“You’re the bravest girl I’ve ever met,” said Sarid.
***
That night Sarid lay in bed listening to the night birds outside the window. She drowsed, and half-dreamed of Leva lying on a hillside, her hair spread around her in a wheel, blood at her throat. A swing with an iron seat hung from an oak and spun gently. Footprints led away, tracking blood. Sarid followed the prints down the hill, all the way to a pair of shell-white feet. Her eyes slid over the feet, up the legs, and then she woke.
&nbs
p; She put her hands on her heart and breathed it back to a normal pace. She slipped from her bed and went out into the hall. Her nightgown billowed around her, and the tiles were cold under her feet. She walked all the way to Savvel’s room, and silently encouraged the sentry to fall asleep against the wall.
She knocked softly. Savvel opened the door, face guarded, body angled away.
“Oh.” He drew her in.
“I’m too restless to sleep,” she said.
“Me too.” He took her over to his great stone of a bed, and put her in it.
They tried to cure the restlessness in a number of ways, and afterwards pleasure sat in the pit of her stomach and her eyes grew heavy. She was drowsing again when Savvel pinched her.
“Ass.”
“I’m making sure you aren’t a dream.”
“Pinch yourself, then.”
“I don’t trust my judgment.”
“Go to sleep.”
“I want to talk.”
So she rubbed her eyes and told him to get on with it.
He took a breath and looked toward the ceiling. “There are things,” he said. “Thoughts. Different futures, constantly shifting under me––”
“I wouldn’t have thought it possible on such a great bed.”
“Suppose I refuse to do anything––suppose I make one Ravyir and Rischa another, and we go to war. Or, suppose”––he kissed her hand––“you and I run back to the mountains.”
“Do you care for your brother?”
“Yes.”
“Stay with that thought. Least prone to shifting.”
“It will, though. I’ll fall through.”
“To where?”
“The other side.”
“Other side of what?”
“Reality.”
She took her hand away and sighed. “Really, Savvel? There isn’t another side of reality.”
He started smiling. A mad smile. “What if there was?”
“Go to sleep, Savya.”
“You could find the truth.”
Sarid snorted.
“Most people,” he said, “don’t search far enough.”
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t go looking for the other side of reality.”
He kissed the top of her head and went to sleep.
Twenty
“When are you going to Rischa?” he asked over breakfast.
“The sooner I go the less time I’ll have to think about it.” Sarid speared a piece of melon with her knife. “Probably after lunch.”
Savvel tilted his chair back. “If you leave me here I’ll fall in love with Leva.” His chair landed with a thump.
Sarid rolled a linen napkin between her hands. “Best of luck to you both.”
“I mean it.”
“If I took you along, Grete Eianhurt would never trust me again.”
“So what?”
“I can’t turn you into a wind. I don’t have the first clue how.”
“You can do transfigurations. I’ve seen you.”
“I can’t make a wind of you.”
“Something that flies, then,” he said.
“A bird?”
“Or a very big moth.”
She poured water from a pitcher over her sticky hand, and flung the water over the balcony. “Why should you come?”
“If Rischa knows I’m alive and in my right mind, he might be more amenable.”
She looked over the balcony at the spread of green slate roofs. “I suppose you’re right.”
“And you want me to come.”
“I could do without you.”
“You want me to come.”
“You,” said Sarid, “want to make certain I don’t diddle your brother.”
“Take me with you.”
***
She paced the balcony after breakfast, thinking about it. The truth was, she didn’t want to go at all. She didn’t want to face Rischa, didn’t want to surprise him. He’d think she’d come to kill him. She imagined his face, mouth slightly open, throat working, trying to swallow. She shuddered. How could she possibly convince him of anything?
She thought about what she might do. Afterwards, if the Eianhurts and Caveiras never trusted her again––well, Savvel was right. It didn’t matter. She could do what she wanted. She was closest to the problem, knew all its tangles better than anyone, and she was more powerful, besides. But about Savvel––
She could do transfigurations, but not on her own. She considered calling to her father. But she didn’t trust him. She searched through the scraps of memory from her mad time; some names came to her mind––Brindlaeche, Oluindre, the Vorya: saebelen who changed things. She still knew how to summon and bind them.
She went to find Savvel.
He was in his washroom, dropping rose petals through the window, watching them spin to the ground.
“You want to change to a bird?” she said.
He nodded. “A pelican.”
“Why a pelican?”
He shrugged, then looked up and saw she was serious. “You’re letting me come?”
“Yes. But you’re so lazy I’ll probably have to blow you to Meliona.”
He tossed a rosebud out the window. “When?”
“Tonight, when the moon rises. We’ll do it in one of the gardens.”
***
Evening fell, turning the shadows blue and the towers marigold, and Leva looked at Savvel and said, “He looks too content by half.”
“He’s just exhausted,” said Mari. “He and Sarid have been bidding each other farewell all afternoon.”
They were leaning over a bridge, looking into the silvery water. Savvel was on the other side, scaring away a group of grubby boys who’d been spitting on the boats passing beneath.
He walked back over, sliding his hands into his pockets, feeling around. “I’ve been robbed.”
“Don’t put coins in your outside pockets,” said Mari.
He looked back at the boys. “They’ll buy wine instead of bread for their mothers. Pity their sisters weren’t there. Girls are less selfish.”
Sarid doubted it. She looked into the canal and saw the moon. It was waning: a thin, white fingerprint stamped in the water.
As they walked back to the palace, darkness fell, and the lapping sound of the water rose above everything. The lamplighters wove strings of lights above and below them, and bells tolled the city into night.
Mari and Leva went inside; Savvel and Sarid said they would like to walk a bit longer. They wandered around the palace gardens until they found one where the grass was tall and the hedges unkempt, and old cypresses curled over the walls like fingers.
“I’m going to call to Oluindre, who will help us change you,” said Sarid.
“Who?”
“A moon saebel.”
Savvel watched as she chose a place on the lawn where the moonlight was brightest. She found four stones with which to mark the four points of a circle. She knelt and kneaded the stones with her palms until they were hot and the air was thick and dancing above them. She said the words for grounding. She went into the circle and opened it, and voices came from far off. The air smelled like a thunderstorm, a crossroads, a hole in time.
Sarid stood just outside it. She said with her feet, mouth, hands and eyes: Gloraghlla Oluindre caeforgiolaeghl Gloraghlla Oluindre lieaidiollaina. The words for binding.
The moonlight in the circle turned into a light silver snow. The flakes blew together, forming a something solid––a bird with a great, swooping swallowtail. The bird became tall, humanoid.
She had a perfect, porcelain face with only one eye: lidless, big as a sand dollar, with a pupil that dilated like a bird’s. Her wings were wrapped tightly around her, moth green, drops of dew caught in the feathers.
Aleksei’s daughter, what does she want? said Oluindre.
“Speak in Gireldine,” commanded Sarid, “so we can both understand. I know you’re old enough.”
“What does she want?
” said Oluindre. “Courtesy demands she makes up her mind before we are summoned.” She was impatient, so Sarid got right to it:
“I want Savvel to be a bird whenever I say he shall be one. And I want Savvel to be a human whenever I say he shall be one.”
“Dictator,” said Savvel.
“So shall it be,” said Oluindre.
Moonlight shone down Sarid’s throat and into her ears, lighting her like a lamp.
“Be a bird, Savvel,” she commanded.
Moonlight caught at Savvel’s fingertips, dripping off them like milk. His fingers lengthened and thinned; he held them up and watched the pinions come out. Feathers spread down his arms, and he crouched, and went smaller and smaller. A tail curled out of his back. His feet were strong and yellow, and his eyes darkened to an orangey-gold.
He was a little sparhawk, colored all tawny.
“I thought I was to be a pelican,” said the sparhawk.
“His mind has no say in it,” said Oluindre. “His body makes the choice.”
“I’m sorry, Savvel.” Sarid pulled her sleeve over her hand and bent down. He stepped onto her arm. “Your body won’t have you be a clown.” She turned to Oluindre. “What are his limitations?”
“Five days from now,” the saebel said, “it will be the dark of the moon. Our power wanes, then. His shape won’t hold in the starlight.”
“He’ll go back to human form whether I tell him to or not?”
“Only in the starlight, which doesn’t change and doesn’t lie.”
“Do you hear that?” said Sarid to Savvel. “Don’t fly when there’s no moon.”
At this Savvel remembered his wings and wanted to try them. But Sarid said she’d better change him back to a human, to make sure the transformation worked in its completion. “Be a man, Savvel,” she said, and he stood taller than her again. She thanked Oluindre, and banished her.
The saebel faded away, leaving some feathers that melted and became moonlight over the grass. Sarid closed the circle and put the stones back.