It had happened at such speed, Leonora thought. A certain life was yours, it was unfolding, and then it wasn’t and would never be again. How did men and women deal with that much fragility? Your existence under Jad could be knit tightly (if not perfectly), you could be sailing a springtime sea, and then . . .
Her grief was unfeigned, but they would not understand it. They would think her a woman wildly mourning the husband lying before her. It was that, yes, but in a way no one here could know.
Dubrava would send her back.
Of course they would. Why would she want to stay, in their minds? And in Seressa? What good was she to the council now? What worth did she have? Would they want to arrange a false marriage to a second doctor? Do it all again? They couldn’t do that—she’d been on a Dubravae ship!
Perhaps they’d propose she become a state-employed courtesan, an elegant whore bedding merchants and ambassadors, wheedling what she could from them in candlelit pillow talk after offering subtle pleasures, or violent ones. And unless she agreed? Back behind the walls of the Daughters of Jad on the mainland, where her father had wanted her locked away. Leonora could almost hear the iron gate closing, the loneliness of the bell.
She wouldn’t be a prostitute, she hadn’t been born for that. It was not a path. But nor would she ever go back behind those high and holy walls. (They weren’t guarding holiness. They were not!) Which left little in the way of choice, Leonora thought. Left nothing, really.
They were at sea. The waters would be deep here, cold this early in the year. Final. Silent. There were worse ways to die. The man she’d loved had been tortured by her brothers, castrated, his body left unburied in wilderness. And this other man, who’d seemed to care for her, astonishingly, was dead on the deck among strangers, his life ripped apart, ended by a sword.
You lay down to sleep at night, woke to noises in the morning . . .
A footfall. The Senjani woman who had killed her own companion walked up. She bent over the raider, gripped the arrow in his chest and twisted it out. Through tears, Leonora looked up at her. The other woman was tall, young, expressionless. Her fair hair was also down along her back.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said in a brusque voice. “He shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake.”
“A mistake?” Leonora managed. She wiped at her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “That is the word?”
“One of them,” the other woman said.
Leonora became aware of a hunting dog pushing his head against her shoulder.
“Tico, gentle,” the woman said. She added, “He won’t hurt you. I think he feels your sorrow.”
“The dog does? I see. What about the beasts who just killed my husband?”
“Said I was sorry. Kukar Miho doesn’t represent Senjan.”
“No? Just the ones among you who raid and kill?”
“Not those either,” the woman said. “I’ll leave you.”
She turned and walked away towards where Marin Djivo was now speaking intensely with the Senjani leader. There was a different mood on the deck. Men had died.
“My lady, do you wish to go below?”
Leonora looked up again. It was the artist, Villani, his face so pale it was startling. “I will help you back down, signora.”
“Am I even permitted? Aren’t they planning to take me for ransom?”
“I, ah . . . I believe it is being negotiated. To be paid by Dubrava now, or by the Djivos.”
“They are bargaining for me while my husband lies dead?”
It was beyond belief. Except that if the pirates did take her, there would be no ransom paid by her family. Seressa might offer something, out of shame, to preserve appearances. She had been presented to the world as a Seressini doctor’s wife. It wouldn’t help them to risk having that exposed.
“I believe they are. Negotiating. Yes,” Pero Villani said awkwardly. “Let me take you down?”
It would be quieter there. She could be alone. She looked away, at the sea in sunlight.
“No,” said Leonora Valeri, addressing herself as much as the man beside her. “No. That is not what happens now.”
She stood up, ignoring the quick hand he extended to help. She wiped at her tears again. Blood had soaked her robe from the knees down. It was chilly in the spring air, but that didn’t matter, not now. She took a breath and, head high, walked across the deck towards the railing and the rising sun, away from the men, a tight cluster of them, who were presuming to define her worth in silver and gold in the morning’s light.
—
HE HAD BEEN READY to kill the ugly Senjani bastard who’d gutted the doctor. He’d been striding that way, knowing it might doom the ship, all his mariners, turn this morning into something other than it had been meant to be, make it an encounter defined by death.
Raids had a rhythm, a protocol (like trading). There was a process. Insurance and shared understanding guided them. Violence would normally be avoided. If there were no Asharite or Kindath goods or merchants on board when Senjan’s raiders came you could limit the damage in terms of what they seized.
Even so, even knowing this, sometimes a man might deem himself to be less than he wanted to be if he didn’t act, consequences be cursed to darkness. This, Marin Djivo had thought, seeing the doctor die, was such a moment for him.
He had been moving, drawing his sword. They might—many or all of them—have been sent to the afterworld, to darkness or light as Jad decreed, if an arrow had not killed the raider before he got there.
In the taut silence that follows, he looks at the woman who’d loosed that arrow. The one who had offered to fight him with knives. Her gaze meets his. She nocks another arrow without looking at the bow.
Marin lets his sword slide back into its sheath.
And seeing that, she nods, as if he is being granted approval. By a female Senjani! Marin Djivo has enough wryness, and he does apply it to himself, to imagine that later he might find this moment amusing. Maybe.
Just now, nothing is. He breaks that exchange of gazes and crosses to the Senjani raid leader. This needs to be dealt with swiftly, properly. No one else should lose their life on his ship.
The leader seems to agree. The process resumes. They will take twenty bales of the fabric below, the Senjani says briskly. Marin knows the raiders cannot even carry that much. He offers ten, lets anger infuse his voice. In negotiating you use what you have—and his fury is real. He sees that the Senjani are unhappy, there is tension among them. One of them—a woman—has killed another. That will make for a pleasant journey home, Marin thinks. They’ll also be aware that killing a Seressini physician contracted to Dubrava might rally two republics that dislike each other against Senjan.
It is never good when your enemies are allied.
Murdering Jacopo Miucci might even weaken the emperor’s support for Senjan. Small things can affect larger ones.
Marin has a thought. He looks back at the woman with the bow. She isn’t far away, standing with feet spread for an archer’s balance, arrow to string, hair unbound.
Marin Djivo is a man who makes connections, draws conclusions. It is possible, it is even likely, he thinks, that this woman is the same one who . . .
Not a time to ponder that. And it hardly signifies right now.
The raid leader says they will accept fourteen bales. And six hundred serales for the doctor’s wife. Otherwise she goes with them.
Marin lets his anger overflow. It is real and satisfying. A decent man, a necessary man, lies dead on his ship.
He snaps, “You will take your goods, fourteen bales, that is accepted, and leave us. You killed her husband! The goods are all you get.”
“No, gospodar. Respectfully, they are not. You are not able to stop us from doing whatever we want, and you know it. I am extending a courtesy. Receive it as such. I have no idea what that woman
’s family will pay to have her back, but it is surely more than six hundred. It will be on your head, what follows, if you do not—”
“I had not taken you for a fool. You seize a high-born lady from Mylasia after murdering her husband and you believe the Holy Patriarch and the emperor will protect Senjan from the fury of the Jaddite world? Do you?”
He says it loudly. A tactic. He knows his words will register—and disturb the raiders, however well they hide it.
He pushes harder. “You killed your own man. Because you know what he did was a Jad-cursed wrong. Your task is to ensure that the world sees you are aware of it! Not to make it worse by abducting a grieving woman. Think, man! How much hatred can the heroes of Senjan survive?”
He lets mockery show in the way he says heroes.
You didn’t become a raid leader by being easily outfaced. The other man remains calm, shakes his head. “That one, the doctor, was from Seressa. For what they did to us this spring we will be forgiven our own anger, I think. We will address the hatred of the world for a man slain by ill chance if we must. But six hundred serales for the woman, gospodar, or she comes with us.”
Marin looks away, to where two men lie dead. And so he actually sees the moment when the woman stands up, small, golden-haired. The blood soaking the lower part of her robe disturbs him. It is so wrong.
He has duties. To her, to his ship, to those with cargo being carried. You are not permitted very often to give voice to what you feel.
He says, “Four hundred serales, fourteen bales. Go. I undertake to report that the man who killed the physician was immediately slain by one of your own, and that you expressed regret. You have my word on it.”
A hesitation. Four hundred is much less than they might get if her family is truly wealthy, but it will take months, ships and messengers, and Senjan needs money and goods to sell for food right now.
“No!” Marin hears. The word is shouted. “No! Do not!”
It is the Senjani woman’s voice, the one with the bow. He looks quickly over, sees what she sees.
And, “No!” he also cries.
—
LEONORA WILL NEVER understand why she stopped, one foot actually on the ship’s rail, the green sea below her. It will come to her in dreams, that moment.
It had nothing to do with the voices crying out in horror. Of course they would be horrified to see her at the railing near the prow, preparing to step up—and go down to her release.
It had nothing to do with them. No, it was as if she suddenly felt resistance, pressure, a force of denial. It was as if she was being told she could not leap, that the sea was not—yet?—her home, her rest, an ending.
Something was pulling her back, a dragging weight, or perhaps it was more like a barrier, a wall—she could never shape a proper image, afterwards.
Confused, frightened, she stood at the rail, breathing hard. She hadn’t been afraid. She had been so sure . . .
She saw the small Senjani boats below, saw sunlight on the sea. She looked up. A fair morning sky, thin high clouds, light breeze in the sails, seabirds around the ship. Brightness. The god’s sun in the east, over water, over land she could not see. She had walked towards that light.
And had been stopped, somehow, from going over the side and down into the deep.
It was the captain, the burly, bearded, gruff man named Drago, who reached her first, running.
“My lady!” he cried. He extended a hand but stopped, not touching her.
Leonora felt strange. She probably looked it, she thought.
She said, clearing her throat around a difficulty, “I . . . am not doing it. I thought I would. But I find I can’t.” He wouldn’t know what she meant by can’t. He would misunderstand.
“Jad be thanked, signora. Please. They are not taking you. The pirates. You are staying with us.”
“Why will that matter?” she asked him, unfairly.
Unfair, because he’d have no answer to give. How could he possibly understand her life? She was a deception on his ship’s deck, and she had nowhere in the world to go.
The sea had seemed a destination.
The artist came hurrying over, still white-faced, more so now, in fact. Another sweet man? There seemed to be some of those. It didn’t matter.
Leonora let him take her down below this time, to her cabin. Hers alone now. She closed the heavy door and sat on her cot, feeling the motion of the ship like a cradle. A child’s cradle. Somewhere in the world there was a child in its cradle, there were many of them . . .
She did not weep. It was too strange for tears.
She thought of the water all around them. It was cold and deep, and would have been an answer.
—
ZADEK, WHAT JUST HAPPENED?
I don’t know. His voice in her head was hesitant.
She was going over the side.
I saw. She changed her mind. It is a fearsome thing to do.
Did she? Change her mind?
She felt him hesitate again. What do you mean?
I don’t know what I mean! But it looked, or, it didn’t look as if . . .
Danica stopped. Her grandfather was silent. There was something different in him now, too, she didn’t know what. She was frightened. It had been clear that the other woman had been ready to leap into the sea rather than be taken hostage or be bought back for coins—or even live without her husband.
Was that it? Could someone love another person so much?
And when she’d stopped, in the act of mounting the rail, it had seemed as if . . .
Danica turned her mind away from thinking about it. There was something difficult here and it disturbed her.
They were concluding the negotiations, Hrant Bunic and the shipowner named Djivo. Danica looked around. She saw that the other raiders seemed even more uneasy now, carrying tension like a bow strung too tightly.
Some had been ordered below to bring up the goods they were taking. Fourteen bales of cloth. It was a large number. If the material was good they would sell it farther up the coast for considerable value. It probably was good. An early ship, the Dubravae would have had their pick in the marketplace.
Then something else fell into place for her—and a new fear came. She became aware that some of the other raiders were eyeing her, looking away when she glanced at them.
She went over to where she’d thrown aside her hat. She picked it up and put it back on, so she’d look more like a man, a boy, an ordinary raider from Senjan.
By the time she’d finished tucking her hair back, aware she was still being looked at by those she’d sailed and rowed beside, Danica had realized that her life was going to have to change. Right now.
She felt the thump of her heart like a drum hit hard.
There was no twisting away from this. She’d just killed Kukar Miho—whose family had been in Senjan since the walls were built, some said. He had five brothers and a powerful father, uncles, many cousins.
She had herself. Their family, three of them—mother and grandfather and her—had come to Senjan only ten years ago, and she was alone.
Sometimes you did certain things and everything altered. She straightened her shoulders. She walked over to Bunic and the merchant. They were standing quietly, the captain with them, negotiations were over, consequences being implemented. Goods and gold for Senjan, within reason, that the world might remain in balance.
They turned as she came up.
Danica said, looking at Marin Djivo, “You swore you would report we killed the man who slew the doctor, that we are sorry for it.”
He had very blue eyes. He said, “I did, and I will. Are you the one who put arrows in the Seressinis in your bay?”
She ignored that, though it was surprising to be asked. She turned to Bunic. A breath. Some things you said, there was no going back, after.
“We’ll need more than him saying it. Someone has to go to Dubrava and express our regret.”
“What? Who would go there to be hanged?”
“No one. But I’ll go, with assurances from this one that I won’t be hanged.”
“Why?” Bunic asked.
But he was clever, a good leader, and she could see that he was working it through, that he already understood, in fact.
“Because I killed Kukar,” she said.
“So you come to us and apologize? So that we will see you are sincere?” the merchant asked. “I suppose that might—”
“No,” Danica said. She was looking at Bunic, at the comprehension in his eyes, and an unexpected sadness. “No. I come to you because I’ll be killed in Senjan by his family. I can’t go home.”
There was a silence. The ship’s captain, the stocky, broad-shouldered one, cleared his throat. “Ever?” he asked.
“Who can speak to ever,” Danica said.
Oh, child, she heard within. She’d been waiting for him.
Hush, zadek, or I will not be able to do this.
Child, he said again, then was silent.
She could feel his pain, though. And her own, heavy, a cannonball, an anchor going down and down into the sea.
Bunic said, “I will speak for you at home, Danica. You stopped a great deal of bloodshed this morning.”
“Mostly theirs,” she said. “Not ours. They will say that in Senjan. And you know the Miho family. Whatever you say, will it stop them?”
She had never seen Hrant Bunic look sorrowful. He did now, at the very edge of finishing a hugely successful first raid of the season.
“They would really kill her?” the merchant asked. He was looking at Bunic.
“I . . . it is likely,” Hrant said finally. “We are a hard people.”
“A hard people,” Marin Djivo repeated without inflection. He turned to Danica. “You wish to come to Dubrava, to speak to the Rector’s Council about Senjani contrition. And then?”
“And then I have no idea,” Danica said.
Children of Earth and Sky Page 12
