The Very Best of Kate Elliott

by Kate Elliott

  But I am too weak to answer. My voice will break, if I even have a voice left.

  “Do you even know it has been seven years?” he says. “Your brother the traitor is married now and they say he has a girlchild whom he named Mary, but his wife will be a widow soon and the child fatherless. And you brotherless. I am going to hunt him down whether it takes a month or a year or five years. And you shall hang there, my dear niece. You will never know the outcome. That is what I have decreed, that you wait and always wonder. That will be your reward for your treason toward me.”

  He turns, triumphant, still laughing, and rides away. His army follows him and the clouds of dust that mark their passing are visible long into the day. My voice has vanished. It has fled, along with my reason. Oh, God. Oh, God.

  Seven years.

  Why fight any more? How can I go on?

  How did it get to be night so soon? For it is night, or night coming on. It is twilight, the quarter moon hanging low in the sky, soon to set.

  The gates are closing and the last traffic of the day quickens to gain entry before night falls. I sit slumped on the bench, staring. Just staring. Why fight any more? How can I go on? How can my brother defeat such an army? How can he defeat a king who is so rich and so cunning? Why bother to go on? I am so weary. I am mad and lost and a hundred years old. I stare at the stars above, but I see no patterns in their spray of light; I only see the campfires of my uncle’s army.

  Shadows stir and fragment and coalesce along the roadway. A man— or is it a woman?—emerges briefly from the shadows onto the road and, unable to pass up a last chance on this awful day to insult me, throws a big stone. It bangs against the slats and falls inside to land with a thunk on one of the splintering planks.

  But it is no stone. Suddenly I sway forward and grab the thing lying there. My hand touches a small rectangular package of cloth, concealing something hard. I open it, surprised. By the dim light of the quarter moon I see what lies inside: a pack of painted cards.

  I look up, but there is no trace on the roadway of that person, half glimpsed, who threw these up here. I see only shadows as twilight fades to full night.

  I handle the cards for a long, long time that night, though it is too dark to see them. I feel them, I trace the film of paint on each card and I remember what each one is, for the twilight mage, in his month at my brother’s hall, taught me the meaning of each card. I only learned this knowledge then to pass the time while I waited for Duncan to return. I never dreamed I would be glad, someday, to remember it all.

  Near dawn, I bind them up again and tuck them into my filthy bodice. Should anyone suspect I had them, they would be taken from me.

  I hoard them for seven nights as the moon waxes. I hoard them until there is light enough to see for eyes trained in darkness, as mine are now. The mobs come every day while I wait, but I think only of the cards. I do not hear their voices.

  I wait until the watchmen meet and turn on the parapet below and head away from my cage before I shuffle the cards and set them down. I have already picked a Significator: The Knight of Swords.

  I lay it down and ask my question: “Where will my brother be next year?” It is the only question I know how to ask.

  Placed atop it, the current situation. I turn the next card over. Seven of Swords. It is hard to remember, but here in my cage, memory is all I have. Thievery. Something stolen. I turn another card and lay it athwart the first two. Crossed by—I turn another card—the Wheel. Fate. His situation is going to change.

  I pick up another card and set it down below the first three. At the base of matters, Strength. The woman holding the lion. Tears sting me and I brush them back impatiently. Have I not always been strong? Will it still, and always, be demanded of me? Next, what is passing away. The card I turn over now shows a heart pierced by three swords. Three of Swords. Sorrow.

  For the first time in many years—years whose count I have lost track of—I feel hope stirring in my heart. Hope is so painful.

  The watchmen return on their round, and I must wait in stillness while they pause, stare at the sky, hiss a joke one to the other and laugh boisterously, then at last spin and head back each on their separate slow walk of the parapet.

  But I am used to waiting.

  What crowns the matter. When I think of crowns, I can only think of my uncle in his crown-embroidered houppelande, condemning me to this cage; I can only think of my father’s crown resting on the usurper’s head. I can only think of his victory and our defeat, our escape as children into the summer’s night that led me at the last to this cage.

  But memory is a strange thing, like a fish in the shallows, darting suddenly into view when before it was invisible to the eye. All at once I remember what the magician said, that what crowns the matter is how the situation appears now, what seems to be coming in the near future but which may not be true. I turn the card to see a man standing with his hoe, eyeing a verdant bush now blooming with seven pentangles: reaping the rewards of hard work. Is it for naught? Will my brother’s rebellion, now more than seven years old, be fruitless?

  Once begun, a reading must be ended.

  I turn the next card. What is coming into being. The Hanged Man.

  Almost I weep with frustration. But the magician told me that the Hanged Man represents waiting, not defeat.“Bide your time,” I whisper to myself, and that voice—my voice—gives me the strength to go on.

  Now I draw the last four cards.

  First, I turn the card which represents my brother, his inner being. A man battles with a staff, six more below him. Seven of Staves: success against the odds.

  What influences him. I gasp, for now, appearing in the pale light of the waxing moon on the warped plank floor before me stands the Magician.

  His wishes and fears. An angel blows the horn as the dead arise: Judgment. Is judgment not all my brother ever wished for?

  But I hesitate before I turn the last card, because it signifies the outcome. I wait so long, trembling, that the watchmen return on their round. One spits over the parapet as the other gossips, and then they turn about and each goes on his way before I gather enough courage to turn that card.

  Only the gullible believe in fortunetellers and magicians. But I have nothing left, nothing but this. I close my eyes and turn over the card, fingering the patterns in the paint. At last I look.

  The World. Utter success.

  My breath comes in bursts and I feel dizzy.

  God help me. Let me not fall into madness.

  I slide the cards roughly together and shuffle them again, violently. I will read the cards again. I cannot trust myself, my eyes in this moonlight, my terrible hope. I saw the king my uncle ride out with his great army, and I know that as seven years passed without my knowledge, it could take another seven for this struggle to end.

  I search through the pack and take out the Knight of Swords, but then I remember what the twilight magician said, that the same question must not be asked a second time on the same day. I am shaking now so hard I drop the card and almost lose it between the warping planks. A cloud covers the moon and I weep in silence—I must never let the watchmen know I weep. It is so hard. Hope is not enough to live on.

  But I can ask another question. I can ask a different question.

  The moon emerges at last from the clouds. The watchmen meet and move away again. I root through the cards and draw him out, the king my uncle, King of Swords—the little emperor. I place the card firmly in the center place, the Significator.

  “Where will my uncle be next year?” I ask.

  “Covered by.” I flip a card. “The Five of Staves. Conflict.” Crossing it, I set down . . .“The Knight of Swords.” The whispered words are like a second voice in my ear. Surely this is no coincidence, though I shuffled the cards very very well, too well, too violently in my anger and terror and pain, bending some, chipping off a few flecks of paint on others, before this second reading.

  At the base of matters, the Devil. Ma
levolence. What is passing away, the Emperor.

  I glance at the road, visible in the moonlight, but although there are shadows nothing lurks there. No person waits, watching me read. Yet I feel his—her—gaze on me. I feel her—his—presence beside me, even though I know it is impossible. I am alone, as the king my uncle decreed.

  What crowns the matter, Eight of Staves. Quick success.

  What is coming into being, Seven of Cups. Illusory success.

  Yet I saw him march out on that road with a huge army. I heard him, in his confidence, abuse me and promise victory for himself and death for my brother.

  There are four cards left to turn. The watchmen come, and gossip, and leave. The moon rides higher in the sky, which is bleached almost gray by its light.

  I turn the next card.

  His inner being. A man sits with each foot on a pentangle, a pentangle resting on his head, and a fourth gripped in his arms: Four of Pentangles. The hoarder. The usurper.

  What influences him. Here, now, floats a hand in the air, cupping a Pentangle, the Ace. Material wealth and success.

  His wishes and fears. When I turn over the card, I stare at first, thinking I am only remembering and not actually seeing what lies before me right now. Memory, like a fish, can quickly dart out of view and leave you grasping at shadows. Then I blink. The angel with his trumpet still plays as the dead rise.

  Judgment.

  So, too, in this reading, does Judgment lead to the outcome.

  I turn the last, the final, card to see a dead man pinned to the ground by ten swords.

  “Ten of Swords,” the mage taught me so long ago, seven years ago and more, I now know.“Complete and utter defeat.”

  I look at this card for a long time. Then, quietly, carefully, I gather up the cards, bind them in cloth, and hide them away.

  Now, for the first time in seven years, I weep as loud and long as I wish. I do not care if the watchmen hear me. I do not care if they curse me, or gloat, or report to my jailers that I have, at long last, broken.

  At dawn a messenger rides in at a gallop even before the gates are open. He shouts, jumps off his horse to pound at the gates, and finally they swing open and he hurries inside.

  Later, I hear the sounds of celebration.

  The woman who brings my porridge makes sure to spit in it first before she hands it to me. “There’s come news, hasn’t there?” she says, smirking. “There’s been a battle and the traitor’s folk have retreated up into the hills.”

  But I only smile, take the bowl from her, and eat the food that is spiced with hatred. The cards nestle, hidden, inside my bodice.

  I will be patient. I will wait. I know the usurper is fated to fail and that my brother will triumph in the end. I can endure whatever they throw at me until the day I am freed.

  That is my strength, is it not? That I will never give in. That I will never give up.

  THE MEMORY OF PEACE

  SPRING CAME, AND WITH it, clear skies, clear days, and a clear view of the ruins of Trient falling and rising along the hills in a stark curve. Smoke rose near the central market square from a fresh fire sown by the guns of the Marrazzano mercenaries. Jontano crouched next to the sheltering bulk of a fallen column and watched the smoke drift lazily up and up past the wall of greening forest that ringed the city and farther up still into the endless blue of the heavens.

  When it was quiet, as it was now, he could almost imagine himself as that smoke, dissipating, dissolving into the air.

  “Hsst, Jono, look what I found!”

  He jumped, caught himself, and managed to look unsurprised when Stepha ran, hunched over, through the maze of the fallen temple and flung herself down next to him. She undid the strings of her pack.

  “You’ve never seen things like this!”

  But Stepha always bragged. Jontano wasn’t impressed by the pickings: an empty glass jar, six painted playing cards, a slender book with crisped edges but no writing on its leather cover, a length of fancy silver ribbon, four long red feathers, and ten colored marbles.

  “That won’t buy much flour,” he retorted. “Where’d you find this?”

  “You’re just jealous I went by myself. It all came from the Apothecary’s Shop, the one midway down Murderer’s Row.”

  “You idiot! Not one thing here is worth risking your life for.” Murderer’s Row had once been known as Prince Walafrid Boulevard, but no one called it that now, since the entire boulevard was well within reach of the cannon and, at the farthest end, the muskets of the Marrazzanos.

  “Everyone said Old Aldo was a witch. Maybe these have some power.”

  “Ha! If he was a witch, then why couldn’t he spare his own shop >and his own life?” But the cards were pretty. Jontano picked one up even though he didn’t want Stepha to think he admired her foolhardy courage.

  “No one saw him dead. He could still be alive.” Her expression turned sly, and she lowered her voice for dramatic effect. “I heard a noise, like rats, when I was in the shop. Maybe he was hiding from me. Everything was all turned over and broken, except for that old painting of the forest that hangs behind the counter. It was the strangest thing, with the hole in the roof and all, but it still hung there, as if it hadn’t been disturbed at all. Not even wet.”

  “Here, this isn’t wet either,” he said, showing her the face of the card, “and it has a forest painted on it.”

  “You are jealous! Ha!” But she examined the card with him.

  The colors were as fresh as if they had just been painted onto the card: the pale green buds of spring leaves, the thin parchment bark of birches, the scaly gray skin of tulip trees and the denser brown bark of fir; a few dots of color, violet and gold and a deep purpling blue, marked clumps of forest flowers along the ground.

  “I don’t see how anyone could paint things so tiny,” said Stepha.

  “They use a brush with a single bristle. Don’t you know anything?”

  Before she could reply, the sky exploded. They both ducked instinctively. Cannon boomed. A nearby house caved in. A wailing rose up into the air, the alarm, and farther away, smoke rose from newly shattered buildings.

  Stepha shoveled her treasures into the bag and scuttled down the hill, dodging this way and that. Jono, still clutching the card, ran after her, not bothering to bend over. Not even the famous Marrazzanos could aim well enough to hit them here, as far away as they were from the lines, but if a ball or shot happened to land close by, then it scarcely mattered whether you were bent in two or running straight up like a man.

  He caught up to Stepha just as a great crash sounded from the ruins behind and a column fell, smashing onto the hollow where they had just sheltered. Shards flew. Stepha grunted in pain, and Jontano felt a spray like a hundred bees stinging along his back.

  As they darted into the safety of an alley, a double round of shot hit what remained of the roof of the old temple. It caved in with a resounding roar. Dust poured up in the sky in a roiling brown cloud. Then they turned a corner, and another, and ran through the back alleys and barricaded streets, strewn with burnt-out buildings, fallen walls, and an endless parade of little refuges, shelters built from bricks and planks salvaged from once beautiful houses. In some of those tiny refuges people lived, but most simply served as a hiding place to any man, woman, or child caught outside when a bombardment began.

  By the time they got back to their house, in the relative safety of the north central quarter of the city, Jontano could feel tickling fingers of blood running down his back. Stepha was limping.

  They burst in through the gate and, panting, walked past the newly planted vegetable garden. Once Mama had grown flowers here, and it had been a lovely place in the spring and summer; she and Papa had entertained guests and laughed and talked and sung to all hours of the night while the children watched from the windows above, faces pressed to the glass. But that had been a long, long time ago. Now most of the windows were covered with boards and the flower garden had been transplanted to veget
ables.

  Great-Uncle Otto was standing guard over the well. He looked them over with disgust. Stepha yelped when he probed her thigh with his fingers, and Jontano saw a gaping red wound where she had been hit with shrapnel.

  “Now your mother will have to sew these clothes up,” he said, looking angry as he examined the back of Jontano’s shirt. Jontano knew it ought to hurt, but he felt as if Otto’s hands probed someone else’s body, not his. “There’s little enough thread to be had,” Otto went on. “Nor do I hold with those who go looting shops. We might as well fall into the hands of the Marrazzanos as become looters ourselves. Look what barbarians this war has made of us and our children!”

  Stepha, brave enough up until now, began to snivel. Otto spared her not one sympathetic word and turned his black gaze on Jontano, who squirmed.

  “You’ll be old enough to go into the militia next year, but I suppose next you’ll be saying you’d rather prey on the dead than honor those who have died before you by behaving as a man ought, taking up arms and fighting nobly.”

  Jontano snorted. “I don’t know what’s so noble about fighting against cannon and musket with wooden staves and butcher’s knives.”

  Otto slapped him. “I won’t say a word against your sainted mother, who has suffered enough, but her mother and her mother’s mother were Marrazzanos, and I can see their dirty blood has tainted you.”

  “What do I care about Trassahar and Marrazzano? I wish I had no blood of either kind! All we do is fight and die. What’s the point of that?” Jontano could not help but shout the words. His throat tightened with the familiar lump. “I’d just like to grow up to be a painter like Papa was.”

  Otto swung his musket around threateningly, but in the next instant he said in a low voice, “Get inside.”

  Stepha bolted in. Jontano followed her, but just as he crossed the threshold he heard a shot fired, then silence. He turned.

  Great-Uncle Otto staggered and dropped the musket, left hand clutching his chest. Jontano ran out to him, shoved him aside to get at the musket, and raised it just in time to stare down the muzzle at a ragged band of men and women, armed with a single musket and several buckets.