Samiha's Song

by Mary Victoria

  ‘They say all the orah in existence was mined by the Old Ones, from the heart of the Tree,’ she observed. ‘I for one don’t believe it. Do you know what I think?’

  ‘What?’ His answer was distracted. He itched to hide the bright rod away.

  ‘I don’t think it comes from our world at all.’ She glanced sidelong at him. ‘I think it comes from another.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked, taken aback. It sounded as if she were spouting the same nonsense as Galliano, despite her mockery.

  She shrugged, the pale locks of her hair sliding down her arms. ‘Because it isn’t like anything here. Think about it. Everything in our world is related. Birds, plants, animals, the Tree itself — you can see they belong to the same family. They’re natural. None of them have strange powers. Nothing behaves like this.’ She jiggled the pendant again, rather disrespectfully in Tymon’s opinion. ‘This is a cold as ice, or as hot as fire. It shines like hardened Treesap but doesn’t break or melt. It helps a Grafter focus his ability. What else does that? I think the Old One brought the orah from another place, a magic place. And I think something we Grafters do makes it remember its old home.’

  ‘Now you’re the one talking about other worlds, like Lacuna,’ he pointed wryly.

  She shook her head. ‘Lacuna is a legend of what lies below the Storm. That’s still our world. I’m talking about a place outside our universe altogether. A magical, mystical place.’

  ‘We could ask the Oracle, if we ever find her,’ he remarked. ‘She’d know about that sort of thing.’

  That was enough, he thought: Jedda had had her look, and now she must let him put the pendant away. He held his hand out for it, peremptory. But the girl did not immediately give it to him.

  ‘We could ask her right now,’ she whispered. ‘With the help of the orah, we’d be strong enough, both of us. We could contact the Oracle.’

  ‘Not with this piece. It’s been tainted.’ He shook his head with finality. ‘It doesn’t work properly, Jedda. The Oracle needs to fix it.’

  She shrugged once more and deposited the gleaming rod into his palm.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ she said. ‘Well, let’s hope she does manage to fix it. We need all the help we can get.’

  Tymon slid the cord wordlessly over his head. It was a relief to tuck it under his collar, out of sight. Jedda sat back down on the creaking cot. She seemed lost in thought, but after a moment looked up at him again, smiling through the shadows.

  ‘I have to tell you something. I was unkind to you today, at the temple,’ she murmured. ‘I was upset and took it out on you. I’m sorry. You were amazing with that fool of an innkeeper. We couldn’t have done it without you.’

  ‘Oh, that was nothing,’ said Tymon hurriedly. Somehow, he was more awkward with her when she was kind to him that when she treated him with disdain. He wondered what had brought about this rapid turnaround. ‘I just had to remember my time at the seminary,’ he added. ‘You know. All that “eddication”.’

  ‘The seminary.’ Jedda lay down on the cot with an explosive sigh, causing the spindly legs to sway and creak. ‘At least I never have to worry about them. They wouldn’t bother with a mere woman. I suppose I ought to consider myself lucky.’

  ‘You are,’ replied Tymon with feeling.

  Silence descended on the room, broken only by Laska’s steady breathing. A question pricked at the back of Tymon’s mind. He decided to test Jedda’s goodwill further, to see if it was genuine.

  ‘Why did you say earlier that your people might be cursed?’ he whispered.

  Her answer rose out of the darkness at the back of the room, unexpectedly candid. ‘I was being nasty,’ she said. ‘The slave pens. They make me angry. I hate the way we Nurians just lie down and take what’s coming. We used to be a great empire. Now we’re shipped off to Argos and shipped off to Lantria. Our leaders can’t defend us. You have to wonder. Did we really offend the Tree?’

  ‘I don’t believe in all that offending nonsense,’ snorted Tymon. ‘You should have seen the Freeholders fight. They defended themselves alright, and the Kion was out on the front lines. But we were lucky in Sheb. Some people aren’t so lucky.’

  Her reply was muffled in gloom, as if she were talking into her blanket. ‘Grafters don’t believe there’s any such thing as luck. They do what the Sap tells them to do. If something bad happens then the Sap willed it.’

  ‘Yes. Well. I have a few issues with the Grafting,’ said Tymon. ‘Lots of people tell me what they think Grafters can and can’t do. But they aren’t Grafters. I’m going to make my own decisions.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ She must have turned toward him again, for the words were clear now and she sounded reassured. ‘We feel the same way. There’s no point in blindly following tradition. When Oren first told me about you, I thought you were going to be the most dreadful bore. “Deeply aligned with the Sap” was what he said about you, if I recall. I took that to mean you wouldn’t think for yourself. I’m glad to be proven wrong.’

  Tymon was surprised to hear that Oren had said anything complimentary about him at all; that was not the impression he had received from the young Grafter’s last message. ‘Everyone talked about you too, when you came to the Freehold,’ he said, making a confession in his turn. ‘I jumped to all sorts of conclusions about you. Glad I was wrong too.’

  ‘So, we were both mistaken about each other. Shall we start again, Argosi?’

  The epithet Samiha had used so often made him smile. ‘Yes.’ he said. ‘Let’s start again.’

  They did not speak more after that, and Tymon returned to scrutinising the alley below the window. He wondered how Samiha would react when he reappeared on the Freehold without having started his training. The thought of seeing her so soon was a palliative to his disappointment. After a hiatus, he looked up again and found for some reason that the shutters were hanging open, perhaps blown wide by the breeze, though the night air was still and calm. The moon was low in the sky now, too, shining through the south opening of the city fissure and full into the room. He wondered with a twinge of guilt whether he had fallen asleep on his feet, leaning against the wall. He glanced over his shoulder; his two companions slumbered peacefully, their blanketed forms bathed in light.

  There was something in the street outside the inn.

  How he became aware of it he did not know. He pressed himself against the side of the window, his pulse hammering. His gaze swept the alley, combed each wrinkle and cranny of the bark paving. At first he could see nothing. Then the shape appeared. It slipped around a corner much like the hooded figure earlier that day — but it was not human. Tymon stared as a blot on four legs padded into the alleyway, its inky darkness untouched by moonlight. It was akin to the monstrous form of the Envoy. Unlike the beast-that-was-Lace, however, this brute possessed a snuffling head. It nosed about the doorsteps as if blindly searching for something. Tymon felt the cold conviction that it was looking for him.

  He wanted to shake his friends awake, to warn them, but his limbs were strangely heavy and he could not move from his post at the window. He shrank further behind the curtain, clutching the wall in horror as a second shape trotted around the corner. The two creatures circled backwards and forwards across the street, noses to the bark. He could almost hear the snuffling breath through the open window and the click of claws. There was a method to their search, he realised. Their circles grew gradually tighter, bringing them at last to the door of the inn where they loped restlessly to and fro. His heart quailed. He would be found. There was no escape.

  ‘Tymon.’

  The voice came from behind, from within the room. His dread ebbed away and he found that he could turn around. He was not in the inn, after all: he was in the apartment on Kion street. There were the Focals, just as he remembered them, gathered in the little alcove off the main room. It was Ash who had spoken, smiling and beckoning to him. The others shifted their circle as he knelt down beside them on the weave
-mat. A sense of relief washed over him. If the Focals were there, no harm could come to him.

  But the Focals were dead. The insight hit him, as it always did, with fresh force. They were dead and he was dreaming of them, as he had so many times before.

  ‘This isn’t real, is it?’ he said to Ash.

  The Focal’s green eyes twinkled with amusement. ‘That depends on what you call Real,’ he answered.

  ‘What about the Beasts?’ Tymon asked, just to be sure. ‘Are they a dream, too?’

  ‘They are the shadow of a dream,’ replied Ash. ‘They are true Loss. Now, pay attention. We wish to show you our work.’

  The young man noticed for the first time that the Focals were absorbed in tending to a plant set before them in a pot of loam. It was a miniature Tree, cunningly fashioned to be a replica of the world complete with all Four Canopies — a work of incredible craftsmanship, a piece of living art, exact down to the last curling shoot. With great care the Focals shaped a twig here, pruned a branch there. Tymon could almost see it growing beneath his eyes. And then he understood that the plant was not merely a replica. It was the living, growing world itself. He stared at it in awe.

  ‘That’s amazing,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.’

  ‘Don’t get too attached,’ warned Ash. ‘This is what I wanted to show you.’

  He indicated an area of the Tree. Tymon saw with dismay that the bark there was white, the leaves spotted with deadly pallor. The Tree was sick, in the grip of a disease that had spread to almost every region. Some branches were entirely white and brittle, ready to break off at any moment. Others were healthy but threatened by sickness at their base, inevitably doomed.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked the Focal anxiously.

  ‘Nothing. The problem is too widespread.’

  ‘But you have to save it!’ Tymon pleaded. What would happen if the world died?

  ‘Not this time,’ Ash sighed. ‘We wanted to tell you. We’re sorry, Tymon. We can’t help. We’re so very, very sorry.’

  On impulse, Tymon leaned forward and took hold of the pot. He had meant to cradle the Tree, to hold it in his arms and comfort it as if it were a person. But at that moment the walls of the apartment shook. He let go of the pot in alarm and glanced at the open door. The sky outside was red, fiery.

  ‘What’s happening?’ he asked Ash.

  The Focal simply looked at him. Again the apartment trembled. From outside came a thundering noise, as if a storm were brewing. Tymon saw with alarm that cracks had appeared on the whitewashed walls of the room. He jumped to his feet as the floor quaked beneath him and noticed in groggy confusion that he was standing by the window once more. The shutters were closed and there was no sign of the Focals.

  ‘Open up, in the name of the law.’

  Someone shouted outside the room; the door shook with repeated blows. The cot jamming the handle buckled, bent, and finally snapped into a hundred pieces, scattering over the floor. The door was flung wide and yellow light streamed into the room at the inn. Tymon staggered forward, shaking off the vapours of his dream. Burly figures made for Laska, pulling the captain roughly from his bed.

  ‘You. Come with us,’ barked one of the intruders. There were four of them, swaggering men dressed in yellow livery. The consciousness that they were soldiers of the Governor’s guard gradually trickled into Tymon’s mind. ‘You’re under arrest for trafficking contraband, Nurry.’

  Two of the men grasped Laska and shoved him toward the door where the innkeeper cowered over his lantern. A third soldier ripped the blanket from Jedda’s bed. She sprang up, wild-eyed and half-awake, and tumbled out of her bed on the opposite side. The last man lunged at Tymon, missing him as he backed away.

  ‘Let the young ones be!’ Laska strained against his captors as they pushed him into the corridor. ‘They’ve done nothing!’

  When his pleas were ignored he craned about, searching and holding Tymon’s gaze. ‘Get word to the judges!’ he cried. ‘The Governor will be lenient with you. Don’t bargain for my life, bargain for yours. The judges must know we’ve been betrayed—’

  One of the guards clapped a hand over his mouth. As he did so the soldier pursuing Tymon made another calculated lunge, this time deftly catching the young man’s arms and twisting them painfully behind his back. Laska disappeared from view, hauled out of the innkeeper’s circle of lamplight. The final soldier cornered Jedda on the far side of the room. She might have had a chance against a smaller man, but this Lantrian was as huge as a Tree-bear. He advanced on her and with a quick pounce caught her up, hoisting her over his shoulder like a meal sack.

  ‘Stop that!’ puffed Tymon, bent almost double. ‘Let her go!’

  He tried to shake off the man who was holding him and groaned when his arms were twisted again. The guard carrying Jedda gave a jaunty grin, slapping her buttocks.

  ‘One for the boys,’ he sniggered, then bellowed out in pain as Jedda kicked downwards as hard as she was able and simultaneously bit his ear.

  ‘Tymon!’ she called, struggling in the enraged soldier’s arms. ‘You know what to do! The pendant! Use it!’

  The orah was already hot, he realised, the short rod burning against the skin of his chest as if in echo of his anger and frustration. The soldier holding Jedda had driven her to her knees. Tymon was thrust toward the door by his own captor.

  ‘Do it!’

  She gave him one last, imploring look before the guard took hold of her hair and drove her head against the floor with a sickening crack. Not content with his work, the brutish Lantrian laid her out on her stomach, dug a knee into her back and bashed her skull on the hard boards once more. She lay still.

  ‘Lively,’ he panted. A trickle of blood ran down his neck from his ear.

  Unbidden, the image of Solis lying dead at the feet of the Argosian soldier flashed before Tymon’s eyes. He would not let that happen again.

  ‘Burn,’ he muttered.

  The heat from the orah spread outwards over his chest and arms, searing. The guard holding him suddenly let him go with a cry of consternation. Tymon turned to find the soldier staring down at his heat-blistered hands, and then up again at him in alarm. The guard backed away and bumped into the innkeeper, still cringing outside the doorway. Both of them gaped at Tymon in superstitious horror. A feeling of dizzy nausea washed over him, as it had when he had witnessed Wick’s misuse of power on the Envoy’s ship. No world of fiery Sap danced about him now, only the surge of heat in his veins. He gritted his teeth against the nausea and stepped toward the soldier who had beaten Jedda.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ he said. He was unsure whether the effect he had on the soldiers was real or illusory, a seeming, but knew he must do this. ‘Leave her or you’ll burn, I swear.’

  The bully glanced up at him, the triumphant sneer still hovering on the corners of his mouth. His expression changed as Tymon approached. He let go of the girl’s hair abruptly, as if it had scorched him, and frowned.

  ‘Burn,’ repeated Tymon.

  His head felt clearer now. His queasiness receded as he gazed at the brute kneeling over Jedda and remembered him crushing her skull into the floor.

  The soldier leapt to his feet with a yelp, skidding away from Jedda’s prone form. He raised trembling hands up to his face. Welts erupted on his cheeks and neck. Angry blisters ran down his fingers. He screamed in agony and rushed for the door, thrusting aside the other two men who were already scrambling along the corridor. The innkeeper’s bright globe of lamplight careened and jittered down the stairwell and the hostel room was plunged in shadow. Tymon sank to his knees on the floor beside Jedda, his whole body shaking. He looked up to see that the gaps in the window shutters showed the faint grey traces of dawn.

  4

  Samiha clawed her way out of a dream, the thunder of the Freehold drums in her ears, and sat up on the open sleeping platform with her nerves jangling. It was sunrise; the sky above the twig-forests was a delicat
e, eggshell pink. Her first instinct was to look beside her on the platform. But Tymon was not there. A stranger lay on the mattress nearby, a woman with an infant at her breast. The mother gave her a sleepy, apologetic smile, as if she were the one responsible for the din of the drums. Tymon had left the day before. The thought cost Samiha a stab of loneliness. She hunched her shoulders under the chilled, dewy blanket and listened.

  One long drum roll, two short ones, then another long. Not an emergency then, but urgent news all the same. The judges would be convening in the arena. She reached an arm out of the cocoon of bedding, retrieving her shift and cloak from the foot of the mattress. Other people on the platform were sitting up slowly and looking about them. Samiha dressed with practised haste beneath the covers, rose and stepped deftly between the rows of sleepers, slipping down the ladder to the branch beneath. The drums rolled to a stop. After a moment of stunned silence, a burst of birdsong echoed from the twig-thickets.

  Samiha, the birds twittered. Samiha. Samiha. They pronounced the name perfectly, in Nurian.

  ‘I know who I am,’ muttered the Kion as she walked. ‘No need to wear the name out.’

  She did not glance up at the insistent birds but kept her eyes firmly fixed on the branch-path, making for the hub of the promontory and the central arena. She caught up with Davil on the north stairs, who nodded to her in greeting, and they hurried down to the level of the stage. Most of the other members of the judges’ quorum — Jemshet, Mahal and Gardan, now Speaker in Laska’s absence — were already seated on the western terrace. One of those present was not a judge and remained standing on the stage. Samiha recognised the tall, gangling youth as Pallas, recently appointed captain of the Young Guard. An older judge named Ako, taken ill during the upheaval of the Argosian attack, had not yet arrived.

  ‘Any idea what all this is about?’ the kion whispered to Davil as they found their places at the end of the row.