by Emerson, Ru
Zepiko was there, just coming through the door with Frisa right behind him. She held up a hand to get his attention and cast the manservant a telling glance; she’d already warned him not to say anything to Aletto if—when—he regained consciousness. Not until she’d had a chance to tell him herself. Zepiko primmed his lips; he hadn’t been happy about being cut out, Robyn thought, but he’d survive it—and more important, he’d do what she said. Aletto was smiling as the man came to the end of the bed.
“I’m glad to see you. I need the—mmm—the necessary, and I feel too weak to walk it myself.” Despite herself, Robyn smiled. That silly euphemism Lizelle and his nurses had used—Aletto still used it, and blushed whenever Robyn spoke in more forthright, earthy terms.
Frisa came around Zepiko and whispered something into Amarni’s ear. The boy listened, finally nodded, and let himself be plucked from the bed. Iana scrambled down and went after her brother, but after two steps, she turned and gravely blew her father a kiss, using her whole arm to send it. Aletto blew one back, more restrained and fairly shaky, but he smiled as he puffed it toward her. Iana turned away and ran over to join her nurse and her brother; Aletto bit his lip and closed his eyes as Zepiko got an arm around him and hauled him to his feet.
Robyn watched anxiously as they went into the washing and the servant pulled the door closed; Aletto was scarcely able to move his legs. He hasn’t used them in days; don’t fret something until you have to, she reminded herself flatly. She turned away to pull the bed back together; Aletto would be hellishly embarrassed if he came out to find her staring at that door.
So would Zepiko, who was at least as prudish as his master.
The weather had finally turned cool in Sikkre—cool and crisp enough that when Jennifer had gone out to run early, she’d felt like an extra lap around the inside walls of the palace. At the time, it had felt great. Now, after several hours sitting in her office, her left knee was complaining sharply, and her ankles ached, something she’d have to keep totally to herself. “One word,” she mumbled under her breath, “and Dahven, Siohan, and the midwife will pull my poor old cross trainers and make me put my feet up. Right.” The left knee had always given her trouble, anything over four miles, and the ankles—well, there was the small matter of all that extra weight. “Thank God it ain’t all me.”
She sipped a little water, turned one contract over and reached for another. Some of them, the cloth deal and the like, had been signed locally by Mer Khani—Alliance—representatives. Auden Henry’s scrawl seemed to be everywhere. “Forgot he was in on the paper deal.” Big, complex matters, like the telegraph, had been carried back to the east slope, and signed personally by the parties involved. Telegraph—the metal pulleys and the gears for the paper mill—the woolen mill down on the Bez coastline, with its mechanized looms, all those complicated bits of wire and levers, the sawmills in Zelhani—every one of those contracts had been signed in New Holland by Geoffrey Bellingham, countersigned by John Perry. Maybe Chris really was onto something, this time.
A note from Robyn, clipped to the sawmill contract, written in Robyn’s neat, looping Palmer: “Thanks for new healer; think things will be OK. Had one of the bean counters go through the contracts, this was all he could find, hope it helps. Sorry I snarled at you, R.” Jennifer grinned, set the note aside; maybe she’d even find time to write a proper letter in reply. Maybe poor Birdy would even have time to read one: between running the fort, taking care of Aletto, and trying to make life normal for those two poor traumatized kids, she must be about half-nuts. “Get Chris to find us a Xerox machine, she and I can both run copies of ourselves, give them all the hard work.”
She took another sip of water, sighed, and drew the third pile of contracts over. This and one more to go—maybe she’d have some real answers by the time she was done.
“Ah—ah, Madam?”
Lizelle caught her breath in a ragged little cry; one of the newer kitchen girls stood in the open doorway, pleating her apron between nervous hands.
Nothing. Nothing to fret. “Yes?” She couldn’t remember the child’s name; not that it mattered.
“Duchess Robyn sent me to tell you, His Grace is awake, she said, if the par-Duchess wishes to come greet her son—”
Lizelle waved an impatient hand. “Yes, yes, thank you. All right!” she added sharply, as the girl dithered in the doorway; she twisted the apron and fled. Lizelle turned away and drove her hands through her hair. Control, she reminded herself. Merrida taught you how to control your emotions; you did so, all those years with Jadek.
And for what? So she might survive him, with Merrida’s aid, care for her children—properly weep for her poor Amarni and emerge from the box she’d put herself in the day Amarni died. “Yes. Amarni’s dead. And Jadek. But Merrida is gone, too; Aletto has Robyn, the children, his duties, and his palace; Lialla has—whatever Lialla has that is not me, not here, not any of us. Changeling daughter. And I? After all this time, what does Lizelle have?” Why ask? She knew the answer.
Her head ached dreadfully; so bad the pain, she couldn’t find Thread to deal with it. But she’d never been much good with healing Threads, anyway.
They didn’t need her, down there. Still—Robyn had bothered to send her word. Robyn wasn’t what she’d have chosen for Aletto—if she’d chosen him any woman. I know how badly his body was weakened by marsh sickness—and then to bear the rigors of not only the Ducal seat but a wife, children! Somehow, she’d always seen the future differently: Aletto in his father’s chair, of course, after Jadek stepped aside for him. But Lialla should have wed and born the children who would succeed him—with Lizelle to care for him, advise him, Merrida to aid her. Robyn and the children took all his attention; she pushed him to doing things. Robyn was an outsider, she didn’t know marsh sickness! Couldn’t or wouldn’t listen when Lizelle tried to tell her. If he died young because of Robyn and her bullying…
Her hands were twisting together like things with a life of their own. She gripped the fingers together, hard, and walked from her rooms, through the door that kitchen girl had left open. (Jadek would have known how to deal with such slovenly manners toward a noblewoman, particularly a par-Duchess. He’d be appalled by how slack things have become in Duke’s Fort, without him!)
Robyn hadn’t meant her to respond to the message, of course. If she had, there would have been proper invitation, not just word conveyed by a clumsy, green servant, but the right paper, an invitation Robyn wrote herself, using the proper forms—something Robyn said she couldn’t be bothered to learn. But even simply, “Come down and see him, talk with him.” That would have meant something. Not this formal, snotty “If the par-Duchess wishes to come greet her son…” Talk with him. The last time you talked to Aletto—Lizelle bit her lip, shook her head slightly. It pounded; her vision blurred briefly. No! She wouldn’t think about that night! Maybe Aletto wouldn’t remember what she’d said to him, she could only hope so. She’d never meant for him to know about his father, his blood. Amarni would have been appalled to have the boy learn of his shapeshifter blood, in any fashion, let alone such a clumsy revelation by the boy’s mother.
She put that aside; not as difficult as it would once have been. Amarni—she couldn’t recall much of him, these days; only Jadek. All those years of Jadek—what could Robyn or Aletto know of real pain, compared to her years with Jadek? “Go,” she urged herself. “Surprise them all, surprise Robyn, walk into that apartment you shared with Amarni and then with Jadek and smile at them, go kiss your son.”
She was out the door, halfway down the hall, moving rapidly, long scarves fluttering behind her. But her feet slowed as she neared the Ducal suite. She could hear laughter through the slightly open door—Aletto’s, Robyn’s higher giggle. Iana, shouting something in a delighted, shrill voice that drilled into her nerves, Robyn shushing the child, but not sounding at all stern. For a long moment, Lizelle stood quite still, listening to the giddy, happy babble of conversation in the Ducal suit
e. She spun on her heel, then, and walked back to her rooms, barring the door behind her.
“They don’t need me,” she whispered. Tears blurred her vision; she dashed them angrily away with the back of one hand. “They take my maids, my—my help—everything, and then they—then they laugh!” Little sparks of light just at the edge of her vision threatened nausea, part of an even worse headache to come. “Ah, gods!” she whispered furiously. “One of those, and nothing to counter it, because they took everything from me!” An ailing woman, whose every breath brought pain—and how had her wedded daughter responded? Not with love, understanding, oh, no!
“She just took everything from me—everything! My son, my girls, my—my medication—” She’d helped Aletto and the others remove Jadek from the Fort, though no one remembered that these days—well, she hadn’t thwarted them at the time, though as a Wielder, she could have. “I could have,” she whispered. “I was powerful enough, even then, I know I was. I could have—” But she hadn’t. And they’d attacked Jadek, stood there and watched him fade and die. Lizelle rubbed her temples, swallowed. Jadek had mostly been kind to her; it wasn’t his fault things provoked him to anger so often. She’d learned how to live with his temper, his moods, it hadn’t been all bad….
The future lay before her, nothing good to it: More pain, these rooms, ill-trained servants and even the food wasn’t worth eating these days: Robyn supervised the kitchens.
“The window,” she whispered. A long, quick drop—then nothing. Everything done. She crossed the chamber, had her hands on the latch, the glass parted, and a cool wind raffling her hair.
It was a long drop. Lizelle hesitated on the window seat, her eyes on the courtyard below. It wouldn’t hurt, there’d barely be time for fear. But something that felt like guilt held her back: What if no one discovered me at once, and the first who did were Iana and young Amarni? Or that stupid, raw kitchen girl? She’d thought often of hurling herself to the pavement; never before considered what might follow, except her own end. Aletto—if somehow he was there first, if he saw her shattered body, he’d have nightmares forever. He’d done nothing to deserve such a thing. And—be honest, Lizelle ordered herself as she closed the window and slid onto the seat to stare into the gloom and fog beyond it. Robyn had shown her how to think that way—a sense of others, how one’s actions made ripples to affect others.
“One thing you were good for, wedded daughter. Conscience. That kind of conscience.” She sighed, let her head rest briefly against cold glass. “All right. The—the other way.” A quiet end atop her bed. She moved to her small writing desk, drew the materials toward her and wrote, blotted the paper, and folded it before she could change her mind, then crossed quickly to the hearth, shoved logs aside, and felt for the corner of the brick that would engage the spring beneath it. The brick out, her fingers searched the deep little hole; her heart sank. It couldn’t be gone! But the jug was farther back than she’d realized, under the lip, out of sight or feel of even someone who knew about the cubby; they’d think it empty, they wouldn’t find the jug. Whether anyone had known about the brick, or searched the hole—but the jug was still there, nothing else mattered. Trembling fingers wrapped around the neck, drew it carefully out. Thin clay. If it shattered—disaster. She clutched it close; an emptied and well-rinsed, enameled cosmetic jar, it held all that remained of her share of the birthday liquor—all but a single sip on the Emperor’s birthday, whatever Aletto might have thought—and the rest she hadn’t mentioned to Aletto that night: a separate bottle, meant for Robyn. She glanced warily toward the door; no one there. The bar was in place. She walked steadily across the room, drew the bar aside so no one would need to force the door, or force it too soon, then turned and took the five steady steps necessary to reach her bed.
Inside the pillow that had been the former Duke’s, and then Jadek’s—her fingers found the small opening she had cut in the stitching years ago, edged inside, and drew out a tiny paper packet, much folded, the edges of the paper frayed and darkened with age. A powder: she’d nearly taken it the night her Amarni died. “But there was Aletto. And Lialla. And Merrida, to convince me I must be there for them. Curse you to every black hell there may be, old woman, I wasn’t strong enough to bear Jadek, and you knew it!” She prised the cap off the bottle, poured the powder into it, and drank it down. It tasted dreadful. She licked her lips, closed her eyes, concentrated on breathing. You dare not be ill. Become ill now, and there will be no way out for you, except the window. She lay down on the bed, smoothed her skirts, folded her arms across her breast and closed her eyes.
It would be hours before anyone came with dinner; they would never come, Robyn and Aletto and the children, they were too happy among themselves. She bit her lip. It wasn’t their fault they’d found something that made them happy, even if it excluded her. Stay that happy. Once I thought my life would be so good as yours is. A single tear edged from under her lashes. She blotted it on the back of one hand, then set her jaw, drew a deep breath, and concentrated on a complex red string pattern: twelfth pattern. Even Merrida had been unable to work anything above seventh.
“… and he yelled at me, rude creature, and told me to leave,” Sil finished. She shrugged broadly, let her arms slap against her sides. “And—here I am.” She looked up. Lialla was staring at her, wide-eyed, and even Kepron looked alarmed.
“You’re utterly mad,” Lialla said finally.
“I thought you were the sensible one,” Ryselle muttered. She looked, if anything, angry; Sil couldn’t decide why.
“I am,” she replied calmly. “We needed to learn what Vuhlem’s up to—”
“Not like that,” Lialla protested. “And you said you were going to gather gossip in the market. I suppose that was only so I wouldn’t have Kepron sit on you?”
“I don’t think Vuhlem’s personal guard is much for gossip,” Sil said. “Not about anything important, and certainly not in the market. Did you really believe I was going after more unfounded rumor? We have enough of that to fill books.” She waited. Lialla cast up her eyes and sighed. “And they don’t let the tradespeople who deliver supplies to the palace out where they can overlook Vehlem’s docks, they keep them on the road, and watch them closely.”
“You might have warned us, at least,” Ryselle growled. She sounded angry, too. “So we’d know where to look for your body.”
Sil laughed. “I’m a caravaner. Vuhlem doesn’t mess about with us, remember? The Emperor—’”
“Would not do much,” Lialla broke in, “if there was a dead body on the sand, neck broken, just below a nasty drop. Even caravaners can have accidents, you know. But you said the guard didn’t realize what you were at first; what if he’d run you through and only then discovered what he had?”
“They’d have taken you out to sea and dumped the body,” Kepron said flatly. “He might have done that anyway, people disappear in Holmaddan all the time, you know. Vuhlem uses that to keep people in line. Friends of my father’s, in his company—I know four, personally, who still have no idea where their women and children went, but they suspect just that: a small boat, and a one-way ride to sea.”
Sil shook her head. “Not caravaners,” she said flatly. “Disappear is something even Shesseran would understand, especially up here—you think he doesn’t know about how Vuhlem keeps order? Even if he doesn’t act on that knowledge. But a caravaner—we’re sacred to Shesseran, thank all the gods at once; Vuhlem knows it and he wouldn’t like the fuss. And if you’d listen, and quit yelling at me, all three of you.” Her voice echoed in the enormous room.
“Who is yelling?” Ryselle demanded flatly. In spite of herself, Sil grinned.
“All right. Yes, I might have warned you, but I know you, Lialla: you’d have never let me go. And I might have gathered gossip like I said I would, but I wouldn’t have gotten what I did; same thing if I’d waited until daylight and gone along the regular footpath from the city, so I could look back the half league or so along the shore
line to Vuhlem’s docks. You can’t see much from out there, the public path is too far from the Duke’s palace, and besides, there’s always a guard or two somewhere around, making certain no one loiters. I thought the chances were better no one would expect a loiterer where I was—and I was mostly right, wasn’t I?”
“Mostly,” Ryselle muttered under her breath.
“I wouldn’t have seen what I did see, and I think it could be important: There was a boy, a pale-haired babe of about four years or so, bundled in blankets. He was being carried from a Lasanachi ship late at night and in very, very quiet circumstances.”
“Purest luck you saw that much,” Kepron mumbled. “And we don’t really know that it’s important.” He looked put out; angry he hadn’t been asked along, or thought of it himself, Sil decided.
“That’s true. Still, I had the luck; now, we need to decide what it means, and who the boy is.”
Lialla fished red string from her pocket and threaded it over and under her fingers. Sil leaned against the fire-warmed stones of the hearth and closed her eyes; Lialla’s fast-moving fingers and the ever-changing string patterns made her dizzy. “Who he is—I have a good idea,” the sin-Duchess said. “I—drat, wait—all right.” She mumbled as she caught the dropped loop, slid it back into place over her index fingers. Sil bit back a sigh. “If what you say about the surreptitious nature of things is so, there’s only one possibility, the Dro Penti heir. Vuhlem has Dro Pent, he takes hostages for good behavior—that’s known. And Wudron’s the only fair Duke in all Rhadaz, his lady’s the palest creature I ever saw, even her lashes are very light gold, almost invisible. I’ve never seen the boy, he was born since I was last in Dro Pent, but Wudron’s daughters all have that same pale skin, that nearly white-gold hair.”
“It needn’t be a noble,” Kepron began, but Lialla was already shaking her head.
