Dangerous Gifts

by Gaie Sebold

  “Oh, what a moiling,” Mokraine said. “What self-pity, what resentment! Even now she feels no guilt. See how everyone has sinned against her! And a spark, a little spark, of genuine affection for someone... the child... but even that, how thickly twined with what she wanted for herself. Oh, what a dark carnival you are, my dear.” He patted Selinecree, almost affectionately, on the head. “But nothing useful, I’m afraid,” Mokraine said. “She barely sees anyone who isn’t herself. Most people are nothing but shadows or mirrors to her.”

  Selinecree’s face went utterly slack, as free of any personality or thought as a mound of dough.

  “Mmmm! MMMMM!” Filchis was writhing, his jaw still locked.

  “Oh,” Laney said, and snapped her fingers again.

  “I’ll tell you,” Filchis said, staring at Selinecree. “Only don’t let him do that to me. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you.”

  “Who sent you?” Fain said.

  Filchis, sweating, said, “I don’t know his name, but he has offices on Little Copper Lane. I can show you. I followed him, after our meeting.”

  “So, you didn’t trust him, either. Interesting,” Fain said.

  “And the woman?” I said.

  “What woman?”

  “The blonde woman. The one you think he favours. Her name?”

  Filchis sneered. “He always called her opio. My little opio.”

  “Opio.” Scalentine pidgin for key. Well, that was little or no help.

  “That will do,” Fain said. “At least for now. Tie him up. I’ll take him back to Scalentine with me. And the woman... Exile?”

  “Exile,” Enthemmerlee said.

  “No,” Selinecree said. “You can’t.”

  Filchis gaped at her. “But you... but she...”

  “Oh, were you under the impression the effect was permanent?” Mokraine said. “Really, what sort of creature do you think I am?”

  Selinecree said, “Where will I go?”

  “Anywhere but Scalentine,” Fain said. “I regret to say that you would not be welcome.”

  “There are plenty of people who would welcome me! I met a number of perfectly charming people, even if they were barbarians. It seems they’d treat me better than my own family!”

  “Really? Who were these people?” Fain said, studying his nails with a weary air.

  “Oh, a merchant, he was quite charming, really, for a barbarian, and some sort of soldier fellow, I think, and well, it was weeksago, but I’m certain they’d offer me hospitality in a moment once they heard what I’ve been put through!”

  “I don’t suppose you remember any names?” Fain said.

  “Names? Oh, no, I can’t pronounce barbarian names,” Selinecree said. “Besides, they all knew mine.”

  A small silence followed this.

  “Are you sure you don’t want her dead?” Laney said. “Because I’ve only known her a day, and I do.”

  “Even if I did, it is unlikely that the Ten Families will condone the execution of one of their own,” Enthemmerlee said.

  “Will you ask for it?” Malleay said.

  “Ask? No,” Enthemmerlee said. “Has there not been enough death?”

  Fain looked at her. “She is, of course, family,” he said. “But do you really think she still deserves your kindness?”

  “Kindness?” Selinecree shrieked, half-rising from her chair. The guards either side of her, as one, put their hands on her shoulders. “How can you call it kind, to drive me from my home, from everyone... You can’t take me from Chitherlee, you can’t!”

  “Alone? No, I can’t. But the Ten Families will.”

  “They won’t! They’ll never accept it, never! They’ll never accept you! You... you monster!”

  “Selinecree,” Enthemmerlee said, “there is only one monster here.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE DAY OF the Patinarai ceremony. I’d heard the noise as I was getting ready; the low sea-murmur of a great many people.

  As we came out of the door, Enthemmerlee gasped.

  Not only the area outside the Entaire grounds, but the entire top of the hill was covered in people. Thousands of them. Gudain and Ikinchli, nobles and shopkeepers. The crowd in the Ancestor Caves had been contained; this was not. The slope behind the Palace, where the actual ceremony would take place, was seething with them. The path we would walk up the slope and the area around the little temple were separated from the crowd only by massed ranks of Palace guard and Fenac. I wondered what had happened about the prison break. Laney had put a deglamour on me, so that the eye and mind would slide over me as someone of no importance, since being rearrested would be damned inconvenient.

  Laney and I took the coach with Enthemmerlee and Malleay. I’d put Stikinisk on the roof.

  The discovery of Selinecree’s treachery had had one salutary effect, at least: the household guard were starting to look something like a unit, tight, contained, and wary as deer at a waterhole.

  “You have done a remarkable job with the guard, Babylon,” Enthemmerlee said. “I would like to thank you.”

  “It wasn’t all my doing,” I said, and suppressed a shudder. I didn’t want anyone knowing quite how true that might be. “No one likes realising that someone will throw their lives away without a thought.”

  “Indeed,” Enthemmerlee said. “Now they have a common enemy.”

  She was so pale she was almost transparent. Malleay hesitantly put his arm around her shoulder and hugged her, as though she might snap, and she smiled at him gratefully. He smiled back. “You’ll do splendidly, Em.”

  “Thank you, Malleay. I just wish...”

  “Yes,” he said. “Me too. But we’re doing this for him, too, remember.”

  “Yes.”

  She was dressed in a pearl-coloured gown that was still of the Gudain style, but somehow hung in elegant folds and moved with her as she walked. The sleeves, instead of being absurd, gigantic puffs, were soft falls of cloth like folded wings.

  I leaned over to Laney and muttered, “The gown?”

  “Oh, I had to do something. I mean, you saw what she was wearing before.”

  We passed the mud pool; Laney stared, fascinated, but wrinkled her nose. A few flecks of rain pocked its surface as it glooped and belched and sent out jets of smelly steam.

  THE CARRIAGE DREW to a halt, and the Palace guard thumped down their spears. We got out.

  The rest of the Patineshi, with their families, arrived one by one. I eyed the crowd, eyed the guard, felt my nerves buzz and sing. There were the usual shifts and shufflings of any crowd waiting for something to happen; nothing untoward that I could see... yet.

  Eventually everyone important had arrived. With the efficiency of long practice, we were manoeuvred around the Palace, in order, and up the slope.

  The officiant was waiting for us at the temple. Like Enthemmerlee’s family priest, he wore a four-cornered ruff beneath his elaborately embroidered gown; in front of him was a small altar covered with a scarlet and gold embroidered cloth. At least they weren’t burning incense. He held up a bronze bowl and struck it with a small rod. “Let the first of the Patineshi come forth.”

  A young Gudain was prodded to the front. He looked nervous to the point of nausea.

  “Who claims their role among the Advisors to the Crown?”

  The boy watched him with anxious concentration, and after slight hesitation, replied, “I, Pranthrow en Laslain Degarth.” His voice was odd, uninflected and somewhat high pitched.

  “Do you take on the burden of government in truth and fairness, turning always towards the honest path, considering at all times what is best for Incandress in Reputation, in Commerce, in Faith, and in Art?”

  Pause, consider. “This I do undertake.” That same flat voice. I realised the boy was nearly, or totally, deaf.

  “I ask now, do you understand the gravity of what you undertake?”

  “This I understand.”

  “Do you have anything you wis
h to say before you become Patinate?”

  “I will undertake my duties to the best of my ability, considering always what is best for Incandress.”

  The officiant touched the boy on each shoulder with the rod, and he bowed, and moved back, his face streaming with sweat.

  “Let the second of the Patineshi come forth.”

  I felt Enthemmerlee breathe in, and then she moved.

  The crowd had been merely watching, until now. When Enthemmerlee stepped out, they leaned forward, all together, like corn under the wind. The murmuring deepened.

  “Who claims their role among the Advisors to the Crown?”

  “I, Enthemmerlee Defarlane Lathrit en Scona Entaire the Itnunnacklish.”

  The noise increased. “You’re not her! You’ve no right!” a woman shrieked.

  “Shut up, bitch.”

  “How dare you, you scaly bastard!”

  The Palace guard stepped up, planting their spears. The Fenac put their hands to their maces.

  “Please settle yourselves,” the officiant said. “We will continue.”

  “Oh, surely not!” said a large, double-chinned Gudain man in a truly appalling tube-robe of muddy yellow and red, that made him look like something I’d tell a client to take to the doctor sharpish. “This just shows how impossible it is that the House of Entaire should put forward its candidate. Such an action will only encourage such disruptions.”

  “Enthemmerlee Defarlane Lathrit en Scona Entaire is an acknowledged candidate for Patinarai,” the officiant said. “Objections were filed and dealt with at the proper time. Please respect the ceremony.”

  “That thing is not Enthemmerlee Entaire!” someone in the crowd yelled.

  “That thing is not the Itnunnacklish!”

  Something flew through the air, and I stepped in front of Enthemmerlee. The officiant looked at me, shocked. The missile hit and rolled off the edge of the altar with a flat thud. A shoe. A wooden-soled, ugly, bright blue Gudain shoe.

  “No,” Enthemmerlee said.

  “What?” the officiant said.

  Enthemmerlee moved forward, hitched her gown, put her hand on the officiant’s shoulder and with sudden, utterly Ikinchli-like grace, was standing on the altar.

  I could see the faint blue shimmer of Laney’s ward around her, but it wouldn’t stop a missile. I scrambled after her with considerably less grace, though I was tall enough not to need to use the shocked officiant as a stepladder. I couldn’t hold my shield in front of her if she was three feet above me.

  She held out her arms to the crowd. “Listen to me,” she said. Her voice cut across the crowd; strong and true.

  “There is something I must tell you,” Enthemmerlee said. “A great shame and dishonour, a terrible deception.”

  You could feel the crowd draw in its breath, as though they expected her then and there to remove her mask, to expose herself as a fraud.

  Instead, she told them about Selinecree, and about the Ipash Dok.

  “To take something sacred, and turn it into a means of vengeance and destruction,” she said, “this is a dreadful evil. There are those among you who have sought to do this with the meaning of the Itnunnacklish.”

  A number of Ikinchli in the crowd looked at each other, and dropped their gaze.

  “Yet Selinecree did not act alone. She did not even act knowingly. She was manipulated by one outside Incandress, who cared nothing for our lives; for Gudain, for Ikinchli. Someone willing to destroy us without thought, because to them we do not matter. To them, we are all, equally, worthless. And they knew that they could destroy us all, without once setting foot on the soil of our land. And why did they know that?”

  She clenched her fists, and glared at the crowd. “Why did they believe that we would fall for so stupid and vicious a trick? Because we let them. Because in mutual fear and hatred, we allowed it.” She looked down a moment, and swallowed. “A very good man once said to me, ‘If we see only the scars of our past, the future will slip away while we lick over old wounds.’ We nearly lost our future, all our future.

  “Had we not been divided as we are, had we seen ourselves as one nation, instead of Gudain and Ikinchli, then this threat would never have come upon us.

  “And how many more will there be? We are a small country. Can we look to the Perindi Empire to protect us? No. They can afford us only as much protection as will keep the trade routes open. We are alone, and we must stand alone.

  “We must look to ourselves. And only if we are no longer Gudain and Ikinchli, only if we are one and all Incandrese,can we survive in a world to which, otherwise, we are nothing.

  “By tradition and law I have the right to become Patinate, but without your will, that too means nothing.

  “I tell you only this. If you join with me, if you will give me the chance to prove what I can do, I will strive with every last breath of my body, with every last shred of my spirit, to make Incandress what it can be. For I am not a daughter of the Ten Families, nor am I the Itnunnacklish, but first, and most, I am Incandrese. I ask you now: what are you?”

  There was a moment’s silence, the wind hissing across the hill, the soft taps of rain on cloak and skin and helm.

  “Incandrese!” A high, exultant yell. I couldn’t see who it was, or what species they were.

  It didn’t matter. The cry was taken up, by one after another after another after another, until they rolled together into a great roar.

  “Incandrese! Incandrese! Incandrese!”

  And Enthemmerlee stood holding out her hands, and smiling, and weeping, and Malleay looked at her with his heart in his eyes.

  Seeing a movement near him, I happened to glance at Fain. He looked extremely thoughtful.

  ONCE THE CROWD had calmed, the ceremony was concluded by a somewhat overwhelmed officiant; Enthemmerlee’s acceptance set off another roar. There were only two other Patineshi, and both of them, looking more than a little shaken, gabbled through their responses, and jumped like deer when the crowd, obviously in a generous mood, decided to cheer them too.

  It would have been nice to be caught up on the tide of it. But glad though I was that things were going Enthemmerlee’s way, I knew that a crowd’s love is fickle as the spring weather, and that among those cheering her to the echo today there were those who’d be looking to pull her down tomorrow.

  Still, that part was politics, and not my business. I would be heading home.

  And more than glad to do so. Filchis’ shadowy mentor was looming in the back of my mind, murderous and still unknown; and we had to get home before the news could reach him that his plans had gone awry.

  ENTHEMMERLEE, MALLEAY, RIKKINNET, and Enboryay stood in the hall.

  Enthemmerlee turned to Darask Fain. “Mr Fain. Thank you for your help. I hope we will not need to call on you again.”

  “Madam Enthemmerlee.” They bowed, not taking their eyes off each other. They put me in mind of cats, calculating whose territory ended where.

  Then she turned to me.

  I bowed. They bowed back. Malleay gave me a small, secret smile. Enthemmerlee reached out, still a little hesitant, and took my hand. “Thank you. You have done so much.”

  “I only wish... Well, you know what I wish.”

  “Yes.” For a moment, grief shadowed her face again. “But we must deal with things as they are, not as we would wish them to be.”

  “Indeed. Good luck, my lady.”

  “Thank you. You too. Since we could not persuade Mr Fain that the one responsible should be given over to us... What will you do, when you find him?”

  “Whatever’s necessary,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Ancestors go with you,” Rikkinnet said, rather unexpectedly.

  I wasn’t going to tell her that I bloody hoped not. I didn’t need any more disembodied beings in my life.

  “Luck, Rikkinnet. I hope we see you in Scalentine.”

  “Luck, Babylon.” She tilted her head. “Oh, you will see me.”
/>   “Good.”

  Two carriages were waiting, the disti shifting and snorting with impatience to be off. Fain. Mokraine. Bergast, still somewhat subdued.

  “Where’s Laney?”

  “Talking to someone,” Fain said.

  Captain Tantris stood a little to one side, with the guard. Both he and they looked harder, smarter, and taller than they had.

  “Captain,” I said.

  “Madam Steel. Me and the guard, we... Well.” He held something out to me.

  It was a sling; an Ikinchli sling. Simple, lethal: leather thongs, a cupped cradle. “It’s the real thing,” he said. “Got ancestors on it, and everything.” I could see them, cut into the leather. He handed me a leather bag. I could feel the smooth weight of the stones. “I’m having ’em all trained in it.”

  I cast an eye over the guard. Yes, they all carried a sling on their belts. “Can’t defend against a weapon you can’t use,” Tantris said.

  “Good point.” I noticed a few scabbards among the Ikinchli, too. “Edged weapons?”

  “No law against Ikinchli carrying them on private property,” Tantris said. “I checked. And if it happens that we’re not on private property, well, maybe they were taking ’em for sharpening at my request, something like that, eh?”

  “You’re pretty sharp yourself. Luck, Tantris.”

  “Luck.”

  Stikinisk stood very straight, her new sword gleaming in its polished sheath. “Stikinisk.”

  “Heya.”

  “Drop in on us some time, all right? If you ever decide to go travelling.”

  She smiled, not quite happily. “Okay. I will do that.”

  “I mean it,” I said. “I’d like to see you, jewel-eyes.”

  This time, her smile was a little more genuine.

  At that moment Laney came around the corner, chattering merrily, pointing up at windows and sketching things with her arms – curtains, perhaps.

  Beside her, actually smiling, was the seneschal. As Laney scrambled into the carriage next to me, he gave her a shy little wave.

  “Laney... did you seduce the seneschal?”