The Breathing Sea II - Drowning

by E. P. Clark

  “Pristanograd is honored by your presence, and I am delighted to welcome a kinswoman to my kremlin,” she said. “And all your”—she frowned at Aunty Olga and Dmitry Marusyevich and Vladya and Susanna and Svetochka and Birgit and Vladya’s soldiers—“companions.”

  “Yes,” said Dasha’s mother. “While of course my ward and kinswoman should be housed with us in the kremlin, I think it would be best if their…escort were quartered with our own guards.”

  Princess Pristanogradskaya’s face smoothed over in relief. “Of course,” she said, with another bow. “I shall see it done.”

  “And,” continued Dasha’s mother, making Princess Pristanogradskaya freeze in apprehension, “we should hold a council meeting tomorrow morning. Word has it that emissaries from the South are only two days away, no more, and now we have gathered here not only myself and you and Princess Belova, but the Tsarinovna and two members of the Severnolesnaya family too.” She smiled faintly. “I have sat on meetings of the Princess Council that were less well attended. And it appears we have a representative from Rutsi as well?” She looked questioningly at Birgit.

  “I should explain,” Dasha said. “When we have more time.”

  “Of course, of course. Let us meet tonight for supper in my chambers, and we can take council of each other and you can tell me everything. I’m afraid there won’t be time for a proper steam beforehand, but perhaps Princess Pristanogradskaya can have the bathhouse heated, and it will be ready afterwards, for I’m sure you would like to refresh yourselves after the road. Come, Dasha, you can have the chamber next to mine.” She swept Dasha off into the kremlin, the others scrambling to keep up.

  ***

  Dasha had thought that Pristanograd would be barbaric and backwards like Lesnograd, but the kremlin chambers she saw were all large and freshly whitewashed, with plenty of torches and sconces, and little windows to let in what light they could. Her chamber and her mother’s looked out onto the sea, and once she was changed into the freshest clothes she had, which were not very fresh, Dasha stood on her tiptoes and looked out the window onto the sunset reflecting on the waters.

  “Ah, there you are,” her mother said, coming into the chamber. “You’re tall enough to look out the window on your own, I see.” She smiled. “I may have pulled up a bench and climbed onto it to do the same. But,” she looked around conspiratorially and dropped her voice to a whisper, “don’t tell anyone. I’m sure they’d fuss at me about breaking my neck if they knew.”

  “I thought Pristanograd would be poor and backwards,” Dasha said, still looking out the window.

  “Since our family abandoned it for Krasnograd, you mean?” her mother said. “You might think so. But the Pristanogradskiye have been able stewards over the years, and it is situated most fortunately for trade.”

  “With the West,” said Dasha.

  “The West has money and trade goods as well,” said her mother. “Not like the East, of course, but more than you might think. We call them barbarians, and they are, but they are not so different than us in the end, and all of us from the world of women hanker for riches and comfort and beautiful things.”

  “Do you really think we can be allied with them?” Dasha asked.

  “I think we don’t have a choice,” her mother told her. “I think we are already allied with our neighbors, whether we will it or no. The question is just a matter of the terms of the alliance.”

  “So you really mean to make an alliance with the Southerners against Tansko and Rutsi?” Dasha asked. “They are…what they’ve done to Rutsi…I don’t see how we can be allies with people like that.”

  Even with her back to her and her face to the window, Dasha could feel her mother’s gaze on her back. “And you think the Rutsi are better?” she asked, her voice soft and curious.

  “No…yes! They’re the ones raiding us, it’s true, but they’re the ones being driven from their lands! If they weren’t being invaded themselves…I’ve spent time with them, I’ve gotten to know some of them, and, and…they may not be good people, but they’re—they don’t deserve what’s being done to them! And even if they did—we don’t give people what they deserve, do we? We give them what they need?”

  “That is true,” said her mother gently. “And what do you think is needed here?”

  “I…I…I don’t know! I just sense that the Rutsi, for all the trouble they’re causing us, for all their barbarism, are not so different than us, just as you said, and something terrible is being done to them. I wouldn’t want to be the one to do more terrible things to them, just because we can. They…I think we can be allies with them, if things work out properly. And they almost did, only…only…” She choked and fell silent.

  Her mother walked over and sat down on the bed. “Come here, my dove,” she said. “Tell me about what you have learned about these neighbors of ours.”

  “Well…well…we found Birgit, you see…” The story of Birgit came tumbling out, followed by the tale of the raid on the raiders, her two days as their honored captive, the plans Bjorn had hatched for her, the futures she had seen, and the final result of them.

  “I see,” said her mother when she had finished. Her mother had listened to the whole sad story without speaking, without hardly reacting at all, which made it easier for her to pour it all out, along with the tears that had come with it.

  “It’s not that they were good people,” Dasha tried to explain. “They weren’t. They’re not. But what’s being done to them isn’t good either. And I think…I think I was led to them for a reason.”

  “By the gods?” her mother asked.

  Dasha shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe. The gods certainly wanted the proposed marriage. Except they agreed that it might also lead to harm, it might make things worse. I don’t think they arranged things, exactly. I don’t think that’s what they do. I just think that…that it was for the best. That it was good that I met them, that I needed to. It was a gift. Because I made it a gift.”

  “Yes,” said her mother. “That is often how gifts work.” She smiled slightly. “It was good that I wasn’t there,” she added. “I don’t think I could have stood to let you go like that. When I think of what Vladya did, what Gray Wolf did, to put you in danger…” She shuddered. “It was good that I wasn’t there,” she repeated. “Now I must just find it in myself to forgive them.”

  “They thought they were acting for the best,” said Dasha.

  “I know. That is very small comfort, even though I love them more than life itself. But you—for me, you are life itself.” Her mother shook off her thoughts, leaving Dasha to wonder if her mother had said she loved Vladya more, or herself. She even opened her mouth to ask, and then thought better of it.

  “I love you differently,” her mother said, guessing her thoughts anyway. “But I expect more of you. I expect you to be able to do what needs to be done for reasons other than winning my favor. Do you understand?”

  Dasha nodded.

  “I thought you would.” Her mother smiled again, but sadly. “You are the only thing in the world that is wholly mine,” she said. “But you’re not mine at all, are you? You’re not even yours.”

  “Neither are you,” said Dasha.

  “True enough. Well, enough of that. I am glad you were able to find out so much about our unwelcome guests, and even more glad that I didn’t know about how you went about finding that information until after you were safe and sound again. I will think on everything you told me, and see if some brilliant flash of inspiration strikes me.” She frowned. “Allying ourselves with the Southerners is the right thing to do,” she said. “Or so it would seem, and so many of my princesses would tell me. They may be barbarians, but in many ways they are more like us than our closer neighbors, and they are not the ones invading our lands. And there are many other advantages to an alliance with them.”

  “We may be conquerors like them, but we are not Southerners,” Dasha said. “We are Northerners.”

  �
��Yes, but…we are both.”

  “In the end, only one really matters,” said Dasha.

  “Yes, but which one?” said her mother. She held up a hand to forestall Dasha’s answer. “I know what you would say, and you may be right,” she said. “But I must think on this nonetheless. This is not something we can just jump into on a hunch.”

  “In the end, that’s how we do everything,” Dasha said.

  Her mother smiled. “True enough,” she agreed. “But…the decision is not yet ripe, not for me. Sometimes decisions, like fruit and unborn children, must be allowed to mature before they are brought into the world. What looks like jumping recklessly is something that has often been building and growing for days or even seasons. Birth happens violently, all in one day, but the moon waxes and wanes nine times in preparation for the event.” She sighed. “Morning is wiser than evening. I will sleep on it, and see if anything comes to me in the night. Perhaps this indecision I feel is the first pangs of birth, as the decision struggles to come into the world.”

  “Perhaps,” said Dasha, trying to sound hopeful, while prickles ran over her scalp, and inside her visions twisted and swirled and screamed. Something would turn up soon, she told herself. Something would. She just had to have faith.

  ***

  Morning may be wiser than evening, but Dasha felt no wiser when she awoke the next day, and wisdom and faith both continued to elude her as she put on the clothes Princess Pristanogradskaya had provided her—her own clothes, or rather, the ones she had been given in Lesnograd, having been taken off by the maids the night before for washing, or maybe burning—and followed her mother down from their chambers to the kremlin’s Great Hall, where the council meeting was being held. By the look on her mother’s face, she had not been struck with any sudden flash of inspiration either. Instead there was an air of desperation about them both, even though neither of them spoke of it, and it was so faint that no one else was likely to notice it.

  The Great Hall was large, with high whitewashed walls and light streaming in from the high narrow windows. There was no dais, just a large table with benches around it. Princess Pristanogradskaya was very apologetic about this, and said, with the air of someone who has made the same apology and the same suggestion many times before, that she could have an arrangement more fitting for the Tsarina made, and Dasha’s mother said, also with the air of someone who was repeating herself yet again, that there was no need and the table would suit their purposes admirably. She took a seat on a short bench at one end of it, and motioned for Dasha to sit down beside her. This left the long sides of the table for everyone else, but instead of taking a seat they bowed and shuffled next to the benches.

  “Sit down,” said Dasha’s mother, her voice full of steel. “We have business to conduct. Just looking at you standing there makes me tired. Sit down.”

  The others sat down awkwardly. There was a strained silence around the table. Dasha could hear the sea lapping against the kremlin, and the crying of sea birds. The sound was comforting.

  “So,” said her mother, her voice drowning out the sea and the sea birds. “This is our situation as I understand it. Please correct me if you understand it differently. Bands of Rutsi are coming into our lands and raiding our villages. They are coming in and raiding because they are being pushed out of their own lands by the Southern empire, which seeks to extend its dominion all the way from the Middle Sea to the Breathing Sea. Neither of these peoples can claim any great affinity to our own. The borders of Zem’ extend as far as they do because they include all those who count themselves Zemnian.”

  Susanna sniffed. Dasha’s mother turned to look at her.

  “I know you may disagree, Susanna Gulisovna,” she said, her voice still full of the steel that she had never shown to Susanna before. “And with reason. But Avkhazovskoye has allied itself with us because the Avkhazovskiye have a great deal more in common with us than with the Southerners. For a start, we do not seek to enslave your people or to use your ports to transport our own slaves.”

  Susanna nodded in reluctant agreement. Dasha thought to herself that they were both probably thinking that that, as her mother would say, was a very low bar. But it was a bar that only they could clear.

  “The Southerners have offered us an alliance,” her mother continued. “They promise not to threaten our borders, and to help protect them from the Rutsi, if we will help them subdue the Rutsi and not stand against their slave-trading. In fact, they want permission to transport their slaves through our lands, to the markets in the East.”

  “That’s not an alliance!” Vladya burst out. “That’s subjugation.”

  Dasha’s mother gave her a cool look. “Yes,” she said. “The question is whether we can…”

  “We don’t need them!” Vladya interrupted hotly. Red spots were blooming on her pale cheeks. “We don’t need their help against the raiders! We can take care of them on our own. My army…”

  “Yes.” Now it was Dasha’s mother’s turn to interrupt. “Which you raised without my knowledge or permission.”

  “I don’t need to ask your permission for every little thing I do!”

  “No,” said Dasha’s mother. “But an army is not a little thing.”

  Vladya flushed even more brightly and looked as if she were about to burst out with something even angrier and more ill-considered.

  “I understand why you did it,” Dasha’s mother said, before Vladya could make things worse between them. “And it was a necessary thing, perhaps. After all, I am raising my own army in Krasnograd. But we must all stand together in this. If one of us were to go running off on her own, making her own deals and leaving the rest of us behind, we would end up no better than the Tanskans or the Rutsi. We must guard against that possibility above all other things. There are hard decisions to be made. We cannot remain neutral in this, whether we wish it or no. Either we will be overrun by the Rutsi, or the Southerners, or both. That we must avoid above all else. For if we fall, there will be no one to raise us back up, and no one to be what we are in the world: a force for good, a force that keeps the world of women from falling into chaos, barbarism, and cruelty.”

  “If that is what we are,” muttered Susanna and Vladya together, and then glared at each other.

  Dasha’s mother almost smiled at that. “If that is what we are,” she repeated. “But for sure, there is no one else to fill that role, so we must fill it, again, whether we will it or no. The Rutsi are raiding our lands, even killing our people. And yet the Southerners are hardly any better; perhaps worse.” She turned to Dasha. “My daughter says that her visions tell her that we must ally ourselves with the Rutsi against the Southerners. Her visions tell her that is how we will best stand against the Southerners and protect ourselves. They even suggested she take one of them in a marriage alliance.”

  There were gasps of outrage and disgust at this.

  “It is not so outrageous a thing to suggest,” said Dasha’s mother mildly. “Certainly we all understand the need of a marriage of alliance.”

  “But they’re barbarians,” objected Princess Belova.

  “More barbaric than the men of the Hordes?” asked her mother. “And how many of our women have taken them as husbands? We do what must be done. A woman will always find a way to manage any man she takes as husband, if she must: that is what makes her a woman, not a silly little girl. Even a barbarian can be brought to heel. Even the most vicious dogs can be retrained, if there is enough strength and love in your heart. But this is all conjecture at the moment. The first candidate for such an alliance is gone, my daughter says, and there is currently no one else to take his place. But there might be. We must not discard the idea lightly. And we must not discard the rest of her visions lightly either. Allying ourselves with the Southerners seems like the right thing to do”—“It does not!” cried Susanna—“but that is why I distrust it. So often the right thing to do is the wrong thing. So often our own weakness and cowardice betray us. So I suggest we con
sider our options. I suggest we consider what we will say to the Southern emissaries when they arrive, as they are expected to do, tomorrow or the day after.”

  “We cannot ally ourselves with the Rutsi!” Princess Belova was on her feet, her pale face as flushed as Vladya’s, the bright red spots making her cheekbones stand out even more sharply than normal, so that, for all her stoutness, she looked half a skull instead of a living woman. “That suggestion was only made in ignorance of who they really are! No one who has seen what kind of people they are would ever suggest it!”

  “I have spent time with them,” Dasha said quietly, as her mother and Susanna both said more loudly, “Anyone who has spent time with the Southerners is unlikely to think them any better.”

  “As I stated before,” her mother said, while the others glared at each other, “we are faced with a distasteful decision. There are no good choices here for us, not through any fault of our own, but simply because such is our lot at the moment. So let us consider how we might best turn this to our advantage—more than that, how we might turn this to good.”

  “It isn’t possible,” said Princess Belova tightly. “There is no good here. We must stop these invaders, no matter what the cost!”

  “And if that cost is our agreement to the slave trade?” asked Dasha’s mother.

  “The slave trade will happen whether we will it or no. Better that it happen because of us rather than to us.”

  Dasha’s mother gave her a long look. “There is wisdom in what you say,” she said eventually. “To be the victim helps no one. Sacrifice and submission are worthless if they gain you nothing other than more groveling. But we must not be lured into a false sense of strength by the thought that we will be the ones making others grovel. It is all too easy for the tables to be turned.”

  “You speak in riddles, Tsarina, as usual,” said Princess Belova.

  “It is a riddle only if you fail to understand it. But perhaps my meaning will be clearer if I state it plainly: The Southerners seek to conquer us. They see the whole world as their slave, and we are no different. They have even less love for us than they do for others, and nothing would delight them more than to enslave us and destroy us. We ally ourselves with them at our peril.”