by Sharon Shinn
“Two quint-golds,” he said.
“Two quint-golds!” she repeated, her voice as shocked as if he’d named a price twenty times that high.
“Usually,” he added. “But we’re offering a special price for Quinnasweela. One quint-gold. That includes the bowl and everything.”
She spared a moment to wonder how they could possibly sell the fish without the bowls and another moment to think she was a complete idiot. And then she firmly shut down her brain so she wouldn’t think at all. “I’ll take it,” she said. “This one.”
• • •
It would have made sense to go directly from the vendor’s booth back to her lodgings, carrying the reifarjin by the handles of the sturdy woven bag that was also part of her purchase price. But as Leah tried to avoid the worst of the changeday crowds, she ended up passing the center of the Plaza and the raised dais where the blind sisters sat. By the light of their own ring of torches, she could see that one of the three seers was not, at the moment, entertaining a visitor. So she climbed right up the wooden steps, sank to her knees before the other woman, and carefully set her new acquisition down on the planks beside her.
“Blessed changeday to you,” Leah said. “I have some questions to ask.”
The blind seer tilted her head to one side, as if planning to listen closely to all the things Leah would and would not say. This woman and her sisters had operated in this very same spot for as long as Leah could remember—for decades, probably. There was some speculation that they were not the same women who had first commandeered the dais here in the heart of the Plaza, that they were the nieces or daughters or granddaughters of the first sisters who had unrolled their mats and began trading in information. But they knew everything about everyone in the city—perhaps in all of Welce. You could buy their knowledge with coins or pay for it with information of your own. Never, as far as Leah knew, had their information been false. And never had anyone been able to tell them apart. They were three big-boned, soft-skinned, blank-eyed women who harvested secrets and shared the rich bounty.
“Ask, then,” the woman replied.
“How much do I owe you?” Unlike the fish vendor, the seer wouldn’t haggle. She would name a price and Leah would pay it or go somewhere else to try to discover what she wanted to know.
“I can’t answer that until I know the questions.”
“I want to learn about . . . about . . . the decoy princess.”
The seer didn’t seem surprised or skeptical. She didn’t ask why that would be a topic of interest to anyone. She merely nodded. “The little girl. Mally.”
“That’s her name. What do I need to pay you?”
“Two silvers,” said the other woman.
A low price. Clearly none of the information about Mally was particularly sensitive. Leah handed over the coins and then said, “Tell me about her. Everything.”
The woman fingered the coins. “Your accent makes you a native Welchin. And yet you know nothing about the child?”
“I’ve been living abroad. There is much about the current political situation that I don’t know.”
The sister nodded. “Well, then,” she said. “This is her story. Odelia is the daughter of King Vernon and his fourth wife, Romelle, and she had been named as heir to the throne. Darien Serlast—you do know who Darien Serlast is?”
Leah was tempted to answer, I know him very well, in fact. I was in Malinqua at his request, spying on a foreign nation. But, of course, she never told anyone that. “He’s the regent.”
“When Odelia was born, he was still just an advisor to the old king. But Darien Serlast is the one who thought it would be a good idea to find another child who could stand in for Odelia to keep the true princess safe in case danger ever threatened. Taro Frothen—the torz prime—is the one who discovered Mally. The resemblance between the two girls is said to be remarkable, although it is not clear if they are actually related.”
They were, Leah knew, in the way that all the members of the Five Families were related after years of intermarriage, but the connection was distant. Romelle was Taro’s fifth or sixth cousin; Leah could never remember exactly. Torz, anyway, with a faint thread of Frothen blood in her veins. And Mally was Taro’s great-niece, though only a handful of people were aware of that fact.
“No one knows who Mally’s parents are?” Leah asked.
The seer shook her head. “I imagine Taro Frothen knows, but they say that even Romelle is in the dark.”
“So once Taro produced this girl, how was she used over the past five years?”
“Odelia had been certified as King Vernon’s heir, but he died not long after she was born. Romelle and her baby and her older daughter went to live on Taro’s estates because she said she wanted to raise her children away from the scheming at court. But, of course, they had to come into Chialto on many formal occasions. On those visits, sometimes Romelle brought Odelia and sometimes she brought Mally. No one ever knew if it was the real princess or the fake one, and this is one of the reasons, or so everyone believes, that there was never any attempt on Odelia’s life.”
“And no one could ever tell them apart?”
The seer smiled slightly. “Well, the primes could,” she replied, “but they had every reason to keep up the fiction.”
The primes. Of course. Each prime had a deep connection with one of the five elements, and this translated into an almost mystical ability to decipher truths about the people around them. Taro Frothen was a man of earth and flesh—he could touch a stranger’s hand and instantly identify him, recite his genealogy and probably describe the state of his health as well. Nelson Ardelay, the sweela prime, could sift through anyone’s thoughts and pick the truth from the lie. Leah had heard that the coru prime could read a person’s blood; she didn’t know how the hunti and elay primes decoded people and arranged them into family groupings, but she was sure they could do it.
“The primes,” Leah echoed. “But no one else?”
“No. And so the arrangement continued for the first few years of Odelia’s life. But then, back in Quinnahunti, there began to be questions. It turned out that Mally was the only one who had been seen at court for several quintiles. Odelia never left the Frothen estates. Darien Serlast demanded to know why, and the truth came out about the princess.”
“What truth?” Leah had heard some of the story, but incomplete pieces of it, filtered through travelers who had made the long journey between Welce and Malinqua and who weren’t as fascinated by this tale as she was.
“She has a condition. Her body is healthy, but she seems trapped in her own mind, seeing things and experiencing things in a way that is different from the rest of us. She understands words but rarely speaks them—knows who her family is, but rarely touches them. As soon as the primes understood her situation, they realized she would never be fit to rule.”
“And so they chose Darien Serlast to be the next king,” Leah said impatiently, because she already knew this part of the story and she didn’t care about it much.
The seer offered another one of her faint smiles. “After much debate and disagreement and political maneuvering, they chose Darien Serlast,” the woman amplified. “Deciding against the other three princesses, who might also have been considered candidates for the throne.”
“Yes, but— Didn’t it turn out that those other princesses were not actually Vernon’s daughters? That his various wives had—ah—relied on the services of other men when it looked like Vernon would not be able to sire children of his own?”
The seer looked amused now, though Leah imagined it had been quite a shock the first time she and her sisters had absorbed that particular bit of information. “You are correct. And it was in large part due to the fact that Josetta, Corene, and Natalie were not Vernon’s blood that the primes decided to look elsewhere to bestow the crown.”
Yes, fine, but Leah
didn’t really care how Darien’s story had unfolded. “So. Once Odelia was no longer the heir, what happened to Mally?”
The seer shrugged. “Her life has not changed much, though it is much quieter now. She still lives with the torz prime and his wife on their country estate. Romelle and Odelia and Natalie live there also, as they always have. They just do not come to Chialto nearly as often.”
“And Mally—she is happy there? With Taro and his wife?”
“It is hard to judge the happiness of a five-year-old girl,” the blind sister replied. “But the prime and his wife are kind and loving people, and she has been given every material comfort. Compared to most other orphans, her situation is very good.”
“Orphans?” Leah repeated. “I thought you said you didn’t know anything about her parents.”
The seer shrugged. “It has been more than a quintile since the truth came out about Odelia,” she said. “In all those ninedays, no parents have come forward to claim Mally as their own. If they had turned her over to Taro merely to serve the crown, they have no reason to keep their silence now. But they have not. Which means they are either dead or . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“Or?”
The seer shrugged again. “Or they are careless and irresponsible people who have no business raising a child. If they have not come forward by now, it seems unlikely that they will—and better for Mally if they never do.”
TWO
Leah stayed up too late watching the changeday revelry from the second-story window of her small apartment, so she slept in on firstday. Once she’d dressed and eaten breakfast, she wasted the rest of the morning trying to figure out the best place to set the fishbowl. Too much sunlight was bad for the reifarjin, the vendor had told her, but it couldn’t survive in constant shade. It liked to observe movement. It enjoyed being near colorful things. It needed to be fed every day.
Leah was finding it more and more absurd that she had burdened herself with such a fanciful acquisition. What was I thinking? And yet she still felt a little possessive thrill of happiness every time she glanced at its wide, gorgeous shape.
She ultimately placed it on a small table just inside her door, within the open rectangle that served as the kierten. A kierten never included furniture or any useful items; its very emptiness signaled that the tenants had so much space they could allow some of it to go unused. But a kierten often sported some purely ornamental touches, such as plants or vases or paintings. Leah figured a decorative fish qualified. And, since her lodgings consisted of a single chamber with the tiniest of bathing rooms tucked into one corner, the reifarjin could observe her every movement, even if she thrashed in her sleep.
“So I suppose you’ll be quite happy here,” Leah observed as she bent down to study it through the glass. It fluttered its variegated fins and positioned itself so it could stare back at her from one of its oversize eyes. She wasn’t sure that expression indicated happiness. “Are you hungry?”
She dribbled meat scraps into the water and was amused to see the reifarjin abandon its wary reserve to go chasing after each piece before it settled to the bottom of the bowl. Once it had gobbled up the last morsel, it turned its dark gaze on her again, so she sifted a few more bits into the bowl, and those were quickly devoured as well.
“I wonder if you would eat yourself to death if I just kept feeding you,” she said. “I didn’t think to ask. Maybe Chandran will know. I’m going to write and tell him all about you. Maybe he’s heard of reifarjin before.”
She brushed the last crumbs off her palms and went hunting for writing materials. She’d only been in Welce three days, and she’d already written Chandran twice. But, of course, the journey itself had taken almost two ninedays, and a great deal had happened since she’d seen him last.
She really hadn’t expected to miss him so much. She’d known him barely a quintile as she worked beside him in his booth in the Great Market, selling expensive goods to Malinqua’s wealthiest citizens. It had been clear early on that both of them were refugees from other countries, other lives, and that they were not interested in sharing their secrets with anybody. At first this had led them to distrust each other, but gradually it had helped build a sort of bond between them. She didn’t know when she had started to think of Chandran as the one person she would want to confide in. She didn’t know when she’d started to hope he would confide in her. But now that he was more than a nineday’s journey away, she found herself wanting to talk to him all the time, tell him what she was thinking, describe what she was witnessing, get his measured insights on the events of the day.
Now that he was so far away, she wished they had had the chance to get closer.
But that was foolish. He was very well-established in Malinqua, and she was determined to find her place in Welce; neither of them was likely to uproot again. It was pointless to keep writing letters, keep calculating how many days it would take for his first reply to cross the ocean once he knew where to send a letter in return. It was ridiculous to find herself mourning a friendship that had been so brief and had no future.
But she was still going to tell him about the reifarjin.
She had just located a blank piece of paper when there was a knock on the door, brisk and peremptory. Not the landlord’s usual timid rap, but she couldn’t think who else would be calling on her. No one else even knew she was in the city. Except—
She wasn’t surprised, upon opening the door, to see two soldiers standing in the hall. They wore royal livery—severe black uniforms ornamented only with the five-colored Welchin rosette—and polite expressions.
“We’ve come from the regent,” said one in a pleasant voice. “Would now be a good time for you to visit him?”
She was tempted to answer No, just to see what the guard would say next, but there was really no point to it. She had to talk to Darien Serlast sometime; might as well get it over with now.
“Of course,” she said, equally as pleasant. “Let’s go.”
• • •
The trip to the palace was accomplished in a small elaymotive. The two men sat up front, one of them driving, while Leah lounged in the well-padded passenger compartment behind them. She’d only been in a smoker car a few times before she left for Malinqua, but since she’d been gone, the gas-powered vehicles had clearly become more luxurious. They’d also become more common—it seemed like half of the conveyances they passed were also elaymotives, some small like this one, others twice its size. She even saw a couple that she thought might be public transports capable of holding twenty or thirty people.
It wasn’t long before they were on the winding road leading to the palace, which was situated halfway up a low mountain. It was an extensive and pretty building of golden stone—not nearly as big or dramatic as the royal residence in Malinqua, but still impressive. Its most dramatic feature was the great waterfall that gushed beside it, tumbling all the way down from the top of the mountain, pausing to fill a lake beside the courtyard, and then rushing along the eastern edge of the city before making its way out to sea. Malinqua doesn’t have anything to compare to the Marisi River, now does it? Leah thought with a certain satisfaction. Chandran would love the Marisi.
She shook her head to shake the thought away.
Soon enough, she had disembarked in the courtyard and was turned over to a servant who escorted her through the cavernous kierten of the palace. He shepherded her to the stairwell that led to the right section of the palace, the wing that had always been Vernon’s. The stairwell on the left led to the queens’ wing, where Vernon’s four wives had lived in a far from harmonious state. Leah wondered if Darien and his wife similarly kept separate quarters. He was married to Zoe Lalindar, the coru prime, who, by all accounts, was an unpredictable and strong-willed woman. Leah thought that if she were married to Darien Serlast, she’d probably want the width of the palace between them. She liked Darien, but . . .
&n
bsp; The servant led her to a second-floor room with high ceilings, huge windows, and comfortable furnishings. Her immediate impression was that this was a place where someone wouldn’t mind staying for hours at a time. Probably Darien’s office, the place where he did most of the work of governing.
“Leah Frothen,” the servant announced as she stepped through the door.
Sure enough, there was Darien, sitting behind a tidy desk but rising instantly to his feet. “Leah. I’m so pleased you could come right away,” he said, and she could hear the edge of sarcasm in his voice. Clearly he had expected her to visit him the moment she set foot back on Welchin soil, and was not pleased that he had been forced to summon her. “Come sit by the window and we’ll talk for a while.”
The servant closed the door behind him as Leah strolled over to a table already set with tall glasses and a pitcher of fruited water. The windows overlooked the placid lake, which reflected back bright sun and cloudless skies and the honey color of the palace walls.
As they settled into their chairs, she took a moment to study him. The past five years seemed to have left him remarkably unchanged, considering how much he’d been through in that period: He’d seen his king die, had taken on the burdens of regency, gotten married, and sired a second daughter. But whatever turmoil he’d experienced barely showed. His face was still handsome, narrow, and impossible to read; his gray eyes were coolly assessing and gave nothing away. Maybe there were a few strands of silver in his dark hair, a couple of new lines on his face. Otherwise, the intervening years sat lightly upon him.
Not as true for her, apparently. “You look different,” he observed.
“Different how?”
“Thinner. And your hair—”
“Yes, I cut it and colored it while I was in Malinqua,” she said. “Not that I really needed to disguise myself, since no one there knew me, but—” She shrugged.
