Singer From the Sea

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Genevieve took up her comb and applied it to the tangle, working the snarls out. “I must get word to my husband …”

  The woman shook her head, slowly. “There’s no way we can do that. Our runners tell us that the ship left the city three days ago. He knows you’re alive, and that is enough for now.”

  “There was fighting!” she cried, suddenly remembering.

  The woman made a shushing motion with one hand. “The Colonel was not injured in the fighting. In fact, all the Havenites survived except three….”

  “Who?” she cried. “Who was killed?”

  “The two guards who were with your father and a man of religion who was killed after the ship left, despite his being, I am told, a member of the nobility. Your father and the Prince are now the guests of the Shah, and they are unharmed. Our messengers tell us that everyone who survived the initial encounter, Havenite or Mahahmbi, is irritated beyond measure, for many died by the guns of the ship, and those deaths, at least, were not supposed to have happened.”

  Genevieve gritted her teeth at this cool analysis. “What was supposed to have happened?”

  The woman grimaced. “Judging by prior and similar events, you and your family were to have been taken for an … exemplary use. After which your father was to have seen where his interest lay and the Prince was to have moderated his demands. Since your husband made himself unavailable for sacrifice, however, the religious gentleman took his place. Much, one supposes, to his dismay.”

  Genevieve could not control her annoyance. “Whoever you are, you seem very cool about all this. Does any of it matter to you?”

  A curious expression fled across the woman’s face, a mere flicker, leaving it as impassive as before. “My name is Melanie, Marchioness, and you do not yet know me or mine well enough to ask that question, much less to judge us. What you confront here, we have confronted for many lifetimes.”

  Genevieve gritted her teeth. “I’ll try to get to know you better, but I beg you, don’t call me Marchioness. I did nothing to earn the title save be born to it. I would as soon never have had it since it brought me to the notice of the Prince. I did everything I could to escape the Prince while remaining true to a vow I made my mother, long ago.”

  The woman’s voice softened. “So it seems.”

  “Then you know a great deal more than you did last night!”

  “Ah, well, we made detailed inquiries during the night. All the bloodshed took place three days ago, but Mahahm-qum returned to peace promptly. The thrice yearly Time-of-Renewal was upon them, four days of ritual and mystery, and when that time comes, calm must prevail. On the third day, today, the Shah himself goes out into the desert, and he could not do so if there were unrest. If he did not go, the hopes and dreams of those close to him would wither, resulting in a loss of support, which would dismay as nothing else does.” Her mouth twisted, as though she wanted to spit. “Even as we speak, the Shah is welcoming the aspirants whom he will lead into the desert with the candidates. While he does so, the city holds its breath, waiting.”

  “I’m missing all the fun?” said Genevieve, watching her informant through narrowed eyes.

  “Ha,” the woman barked. “Fun of the Shah’s sort? Yes. And be everlastingly grateful for that.”

  “Are you going to tell me what all this is about?”

  “You don’t know what it’s about?”

  “How could I?”

  “I have no way of knowing what you know or don’t know, not yet. In any case, we can do better than tell you. Today, you will see for yourself.”

  “We’re going back to the city?” she asked, dismayed despite herself. Her body still ached from the struggle to gain this refuge.

  “Not to the city, no, and you won’t have to walk.” The woman stood and came to peer into Genevieve’s face. “You’re still weak; your face is burned, your lips are raw. Walking on deep sand is difficult and exhausting. You probably ache.”

  “I do, yes.”

  “Well, take comfort. Today will require little physical strain.” She returned to the bundle and took it up, delivering it into Genevieve’s hands. “I’m returning your soft robe. The stuff you spilled down your front wouldn’t have killed you, but if you’d drunk it, you wouldn’t have had the wits to escape. We know that drug; the soporific effect lasts for days. Now, put it on. There’s a new pair of sandals inside. We’re expected at breakfast.”

  “My hair.” Genevieve tugged at a recalcitrant snarl with fruitless tenacity. “I was too sleepy to braid it.”

  Suddenly Melanie smiled, like a sunrise. “Sit quiet. I used to do it for my own daughters; let me do it for you.”

  She was a generation older than Genevieve, as old as Genevieve’s mother might have been. Her hands were gentle as she worked out the tangles, humming to herself as she did so. It was this familiar sound that made Genevieve realize why the woman seemed familiar to her.

  “You sound like my mother,” she cried, aware all at once of what had escaped her until that moment. “You almost have my nose! The family nose, my mother’s! And Lyndafal’s!”

  “When you come to breakfast you will see that many of us have Stephanie’s nose, and Tenopia’s, though most of ours are not as impressive as yours. We, too, are descended from that line.”

  “Are there many of Tenopia’s descendants here?”

  “Some, but most of her descendants are in Haven.”

  “Queen Stephanie was descended from Tenopia?”

  “She was a direct descendant. She and some of the other daughters and granddaughters were appointed by Tenopia to go into Haven.”

  “Do your people all have visions, too?”

  “Almost none of us have them, no, and we don’t call them visions. We call them extrapolations, connections, implications, likelihoods.” She began to braid Genevieve’s hair, humming once more, fingers moving swiftly. “There is nothing supernatural about them, vivid though they are, and some of our visionaries have them to a greater or lesser degree. I take it you see things clearly?”

  “Sometimes. I knew of my journey to Mahahm long before it took place. I saw this place, long before I came here. What is it, really?”

  “Didn’t the song of Tenopia tell you?”

  “It was called a marae morehu. Awhero said that meant a house of refuge. Is it only that?”

  “No thing, no person, no place is only one thing. For me, marae morehu is a home when I am away from Galul.”

  “There really is a Galul!”

  “Oh, indeed there is a Galul. Our visionaries are there. Galul is where Tenopia first came from her island home. Our government, such as it is, has its seat in Galul.”

  “Aufors and I … we thought perhaps it was legendary, like Eden, a kind of Utopia. Aufors told me the original surveys show only ice at the southern end of the continent. And there’s nothing in the archives more recent than that.”

  “There were glaciers over much of Galul when the survey was made, and also it was winter, with even the unglaciated areas covered in snow. Settlers are usually not very interested in areas covered with snow and ice, for which we were thankful. In the centuries between then and now the glaciers shrank and the winters became shorter. Indeed, Galul was warm and lovely long before these Mahahmbi came wandering in, unwelcome visitors to the north end of a landmass we had considered ours. Well, they settled in the desert, an area we had no use for, so we left them alone while we remained high in the southern mountains, drinking from pure streams that flow from ancient ice, our fields catching the rain that makes them green. Galul is our land. It was ours before the Havenites came.”

  “Before!”

  “Weren’t you told how Haven was discovered in the first place?” Melanie took a few long hairs from the comb, twisted them into a strand and fastened the finished braid with it, standing back to admire her work.

  Genevieve fumbled to rearrange her thoughts. “I read Stephanie’s book. A ship … an ark ship went down, and the book seems to say Stephani
e’s forebears were on it, though I was taught that all the crew were rescued.”

  “Oh, yes, the ship’s crew was rescued. But the people who cared for the cargo were not. Nor was the cargo itself. The Captain of the ship simply abandoned the creatures he had sworn to carry away to safety, and us along with them.”

  “I was taught that many birds survived …”

  “Actually, everything alive on that ship survived, including our ancestors, though we had our charges to thank for that! Once we got them free …”

  “Your people were struggling in the water,” cried Genevieve. “Trying to open a great door!”

  “Exactly. You see? At some level, you knew about this. You were told something, likely by your mother, and you knew about this though your conscious mind had not made the connection. Our people got the seadoors open, and once we did, our charges came out and saved us in turn, carrying us to an island where we could live, bringing us food until we were able to find it or grow it for ourselves.”

  “How many?” Genevieve asked, her eyes wide with wonder. “How many of you?”

  “Several dozens. Most of us young, luckily. So, we lived upon our island, and we begot children—huge numbers of them in that first generation, though we have become more sensible since. When our population grew too large for our island, our friends brought one group of us to Galul, the ones least suited to the sun and the sea, and took others of us to other islands. During those years, we and they have resurrected their ancient culture, the suitable parts of it at least, though now the language is used mostly for ritual.”

  “Awhero speaks it.”

  “Awhero, as I’ve said, plays her part to the hilt. She’s an oral historian, and she lives the role.”

  “How did you keep the Mahahmbi out?”

  “The seas around this island are full of our friends, the mountains are difficult to traverse. When the Mahahmbi first came, they tried to explore, but whenever they got close, we frustrated their expeditions in one way or another. More recently, since they’ve become devoted to the Shah’s benefices, they’ve had no energy for exploration, no energy for anything but the lengthening of their own lives.”

  A hundred questions trembled on Genevieve’s lips, but Melanie laid a finger upon them. “Come, now. We will be late for breakfast.”

  She waited while Genevieve stepped into her sandals and put on the soft robe, belting it around her. They went out into a long, cool hallway that led toward the murmur of voices, an occasional muffled clatter of crockery, the smell of food. At the end of the corridor a dozen or so people occupied a low, long room, lit only by wide, shallow arches that gave upon a shaded atrium. The trees there were wider than they were tall, their branches filtering the sun through wine-red leaves to spread a rose-silver shade upon the paving stones. Those in the room glanced at Melanie and Genevieve, then returned to their food with studied uninterest. Two, however, a man and a woman, rose from their table and approached them.

  “This is Joncaster,” Melanie said. “And his sister, Enid. Enid and I were the two who … welcomed you last night. Go with them and eat a good breakfast. Do it quickly, for you have a long day ahead.”

  Joncaster, with light hair and skin freckled by the sun, went off to get her a plate. When he brought it, Genevieve was unsurprised to see more of the fruit she had been served the night before, along with a mug of tea, a wedge of soft cheese, and a small loaf of bread, still warm from the oven.

  “Fuel?” Genevieve murmured. “For the oven?”

  “Solar,” said Joncaster in a crisp, not quite friendly voice. “We’ve been refining the ovens for generations. They are now very efficient.”

  “You will want news of your child,” said Enid, returning to her own meal. “We have none except that he is safely away from the Shah and the Prince.” She gave Genevieve a long looking-over, her face stern. “Is your father of their persuasion? Do we count him as one of them, or as a possible friend?”

  Genevieve knotted her brow at this. “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I don’t know what persuasion you mean, or whether he is part of it. I’ve been at school since my mother died. I saw him seldom. Since leaving school, I seem to have irritated him most of the time …”

  “How old is he?” demanded Joncaster.

  “Sixty years,” she said. “His birthday is not far off, when he will be sixty-one.”

  “He has no wife?”

  “Not since my mother died.”

  “And she died of … ?” His eyebrows were raised, his lips curled in distaste.

  Genevieve murmured, “Complications of childbirth, so the physicians said.”

  His face hardened. “You know that for a fact? You were there?”

  Genevieve felt her face flame at this, half remembered grief, half anger at this continued questioning. “I was there. I was eleven. I saw her the day she died. I saw her in her coffin.”

  Joncaster frowned. “And your father has never been to Mahahm before … ?”

  His sister interrupted. “It makes no never mind, Joncee. Many of the Prince’s allies have never come to Mahahm, which doesn’t prevent their receiving Mahahm’s gift back on Haven. Her father could be one of them without ever having seen Mahahm!”

  “Hush,” said Melanie from behind them. “Whatever he is, Genevieve can’t presume to speak for him. She can only speak for herself, and today we will give her a reason for doing so. For now, let her eat.”

  Irritated past endurance, Genevieve cried, “Do you know where my husband is? Does anyone know?”

  A silence fell, almost as though those in the room had drawn breath together, and Melanie turned into that silence, saying, “Her husband is Aufors Leys. A Colonel in the Lord Paramount’s armies, but a commoner.”

  “A commoner?” said her companions, both together.

  Joncaster turned back to Genevieve with an almost friendly expression, “How did you manage that?”

  “More important, why did you manage that?” demanded Enid, retaining her skeptical air.

  Talking about Aufors was easier than answering their questions, so she talked … no, she spouted about Aufors, between sips of tea and bites of bread and cheese: how they met, why she ran away, why she returned, why she finally consented to marry him. She edited all of it, telling about her oath to her mother, but leaving out any reference to talking fish with or without human-seeming spokesmen; telling about Stephanie’s book, but leaving out the exercises her mother had taught her. When she had finished, Joncaster seemed satisfied, and even Enid’s expression had softened.

  Enid said, “The airship was seen crossing the channel to the next island north. Whether the ship returned to Haven or stopped among the islands, we don’t yet know, though it won’t take long for our friends to find out.”

  Melanie had been talking with others in the room, but now she returned, asking them to hurry. “Will you go with us?” she asked Enid, who turned away from her with an expression of revulsion.

  “I’ve seen enough of it,” said Enid angrily. “She seems all right! Why don’t you just tell her about it? Why put her through …”

  “She has to see it,” said Melanie firmly. “If she is to understand, she must see. I’ll take her, and Joncaster can drive.”

  “Oh, yes, I’ll drive,” said Joncaster. “But Enid has the right of it.”

  Enid shrugged, took Genevieve’s hand and squeezed it almost hurtfully, then abruptly left the table.

  Melanie waited while Genevieve finished the last of the food before her. “Joncaster and Enid are intellectual heirs of the environmental engineers on the ark ship, those responsible for maintenance of the machines that kept our cargo alive.” This had a rehearsed sound to it, as though she had offered the explanation more than once.

  “Oh, I like that,” said Joncaster, with a wry twist of his lips. “Intellectual heirs. She says that just to cheer us. We’re more like persistent fumblers. Trial-and-error tinkerers. Luckily, the machines we have today are practically foolproo
f, or we’d never make them work.”

  “Where do you get them?” asked Genevieve.

  “Well, though we continually expect to be caught at it, we usually steal them from Haven. That’s where we get sand-sleds, one of which we’ll be using today. Come along. Melanie’s right. We should leave before the wind rises. The sleds weren’t designed to work in places as dusty as this, and they need constant fiddling with to keep them running.”

  Genevieve put on the hooded robe that Melanie handed her, the one with Aufors’s smell to it, the one she had worn when she arrived, though the malghaste rags had been removed. They went out through the atrium to the rooms on the far side, a dormitory, a library, and down the hall between them into another wide, low room, this one reeking of oil and chemicals. The sleds rested before an overhead door, their tops only inches off the floor, and Joncaster showed Genevieve how to arrange herself by lying prone on the padded deck that slanted slightly upward to a pillowed chin rest. Her arms went on either side of the rest. Melanie lay on her right and Joncaster on her left, his hands on the controls, which were in a shallow well before him. He moved a lever and the overhead door rose slowly until it was just above their heads.

  Genevieve wriggled uncomfortably, and he waited while she pulled her robe flat beneath her, saying, “For spying purposes, we’ve modified the sled to have a low profile. We removed the superstructure, took off the railings, turned the foot-operated controls into hand controls, padded the floor …”

  His words were lost in a rush of air as they left the shed, slrimming out beneath the door and darting away around a dune, immediately losing any sight of the refuge behind them.

  “I hope you know where you’re going,” muttered Melanie.

  “I have the desert well in mind, madam. I will not lose you in it.”

  Melanie continued unrepentently. “I trust someone found the flags?”

  “Yes, Melanie. Of course, Melanie. I did. Early this morning. We’ll pick them up at the farthest point south from Mahahm-qum. The procession won’t reach it until afternoon.”

  “I walked for days,” cried Genevieve. “And we can cover the distance in a morning?”