Beneath Ceaseless Skies #80

by Lemberg, Rose

  “Yes? The harm is done. We welcomed you because of Myna Penareh, but no outsider men are allowed here. Ever.”

  I bowed to her and left, abandoning my fish. There was nothing left to say. What she said made sense, but not applied to Taem. But she wouldn’t bend her rules, even though I spoke the truth. So much for true allies.

  And for me to send Taem away? Never. He was in my service. I was his liege. He was under my protection.

  I collected Taemin from his room, outfitted him in his original clothing. Veiled my mind. And out we went, dragging the chest and the sea-bag between us. I didn’t care how dangerous it was. I’d find another place to sleep tonight. And tomorrow....

  I did not need the Khana to complete my rite. My mother had told me to avoid the Shahniyaz, but now I had to convince him to trade with me.

  * * *

  I didn’t have any trouble finding a place within walking distance of the Khana quarter. This was an affluent area that teemed with hostels, bathhouses, fancy brothels, and the like, all brightly lit with rows of candlebulbs dangling between iron poles. The guesthouse I chose was opulent, with oiled copper lamps and carpets imported from further south, delicately embroidered with red flowers and birds, name-woven, flat, never-fading.

  I shelled out for a spacious room, a bath, and a breakfast that was delivered in the middle of the night and consisted of quail eggs, candied figs, goat cheese, and the surprisingly potent plum wine—a Niyazi specialty; I told them to take away the fish. I dropped money like birdseed from my fist, not very appropriate for a Penareh trader, but I was angry, so angry, too angry to care.

  Throughout these proceedings Taem did not speak. I doubted it was only fatigue. His eyes shone with an unnatural brightness. I told him to eat, but he didn’t, only smeared figs with goat cheese for me and poured my wine. When the maids filed out finally, he spoke. “It’s all my fault, Vendelin. I’m worse than useless to you. I should have stayed at home, and now I spoiled your venture, and the Khana sent you away, and....”

  “Do I look to you like a person who cares one bit about the Khana’s so-called hospitality? You don’t do that, Taem. You do not send a guest away. Any guest. I don’t care for what reason. You know what it means when you send a guest away?” War, that’s what it means.

  “Now you speak like a Kekeri.” He sighed. “If not for me, you wouldn’t have been forced into the deception. Or this thinking. You would have spoken softly in the manner of the Penareh, you would have eaten with the Khana, traded peacefully here, and gone home to claim your heirship as you planned.”

  Birdseye. But I wasn’t about to tell him that he was right. And I felt awful about Sureh. I hadn’t even had a chance to say good-bye.

  At least I should write Sureh a letter. And say what? I’d promised her that it would be all right....

  Perhaps I could still repair this. Later. After I’d claimed my heirship.

  Taem said, “You should have sent me out alone.”

  “No!” Was he out of his wits? “You are under my protection!”

  “And what did I do under your protection? Spoiled your journey. What a great way to serve! My dad will be so proud!”

  I grabbed him by the hair and pushed his head back to look up at me. His eyes were huge, defiant, full of grief. With every mile away from the house Kekeri he was growing wilder and wilder.

  I asked his father once why he wouldn’t take money from his more affluent patients, the nobles that came to him not at the hospice, but quietly at our Coastal home. With money, I said, he could live comfortably, free of my father’s demands.

  “Be free of my lord?” he said. “Never, not even when Bird comes at last for my soul. When he picked me up I was nothing. Friendless, powerless, poor. I couldn’t afford schooling. Everything I am now, everything I have flows from the lord Kekeri.”

  Yes, so he loved my father, and service to my father filled his life with warmth and meaning, but Taemin had never been starving, never untutored, never alone, always surrounded by people who told him how clever he was, how pretty he was. If they’d wanted him to be more like his dad, they should have left him to his fate in the slums at the capital.

  But now he wasn’t exactly a plebe, and he wasn’t a noble. He grew up with us on the Coast, but our peers all expected him to behave in accordance to his looks and his origins. No wonder Taem was so confused and lost; and my bully of a brother couldn’t care less about him.

  I cleared my throat. “If you want to serve me, brush my hair.”

  He loosened Sureh’s tight pleating and brushed it out, even more gently than she did, but there was no warmth. We went to sleep in silence.

  * * *

  I woke early, still full of nervous energy. I had learned from yesterday’s maids that the Shahniyaz traditionally received unscheduled noble visitors during the Breakfasting hour, and I was ready to take the Diwan by storm.

  Taem unpacked my formal dress again. Tailored of a deceptively simple, but very expensive shiny black Lepalese cloth, it hugged my upper body tightly, and flared out majestically at my feet. Hopefully it would make the right impression.

  I veiled my mind, but not my face, and commanded Taem to carry my trading box out to the carriage. Hopefully it would make him feel good to be useful.

  The Diwan was magnificent, even to my eyes—built on terraces, in seven circles colored after the rainbow. The Breakfasting took place in the outermost circle, the red circle, in a vast pavilion wrought of intricately filigreed metal birds, their feathers enameled with liquid fire. Garlands of fresh carnations adorned the pavilion, and red-robed servants circled on quiet feet, offering cherries, kineh, strawberries, and spiced red wines. The men were all named strong, although none felt too powerful to me; the women, empty of inner light but beaded in rubies and bedecked in ivory, smiled vapidly at each other. It occurred to me that I should have worn red, but there was nothing to do now but to strut confidently to the center of the pavilion, where the Shahniyaz was seated on ruby-red cushions in what appeared to be a gigantic bird-cage carved entirely of razu ivory, its double doors wide open.

  The Shahniyaz was a handsome, stout man in his late fifties, brown-skinned and round-faced like his subjects, with a smooth, short, well-oiled beard without a hint of gray. He was clothed in intricate flowing white robes, and his powerful hands were laced at his belly. Behind him, a tall man, dark-skinned and woven entirely into shadow, followed my motions with quiet eyes. The Shahniyaz’s eyes were bright upon me as I strode towards him. At my back Taem huffed discreetly, struggling with the heavy box. I reached the ivory cage-throne and was about to introduce myself, but at that moment the Shahniyaz lifted his left hand and spoke.

  “My, I believe I recognize that swagger.”

  He had three short names, I perceived, the strongest configuration I had seen here yet, as strong as anyone anywhere could become, barring my father and his strange innovations. Presently the Shahniyaz sent his deepnames forth, and they combined and spun into a protective stronghold around his body.

  “And that face,” he said. “Yes, I do believe I recognize.”

  What in Bird’s...? I’d been here before, but my mother hadn’t taken me to the Diwan. No doubt the Shah had met my mother, but we looked nothing alike.

  I smoothed all emotion from my face and stood very straight. I did not break eye contact, even though I could see, from the corner of my eye, the bodyguard turn ever so slightly aside. He engaged his two names, but I’d swear his names were his least dangerous weapons. I knew a Second School assassin when I saw one.

  The Shahniyaz made a small motion, and dozens of white-robed servants appeared as if out of nowhere to usher the guests out of the pavilion, until the court was empty save only for myself and Taem, the Shahniyaz, and the assassin behind him.

  “So tell me,” the Shah said, in a voice as silky smooth as the treacherous plum wine, “How fares the Great Raker?”

  “Excuse me?” I should have bowed to him, and called him lord. I was
growing as wild as Taemin. Well, too late now.

  “You probably call him something else. But see. Is this familiar?”

  His protective stronghold folded down like a fan, and his freed short names flared out. I turned to follow his power towards the pavilion doors. He projected a picture for me out of the air—an image truer than shadows, a memory almost touchable, almost real.

  A man strode towards us. My height, and young, dressed in flowing black shimmering breeches of Lepalese cloth and a kaftan that opened at the chest, where hundreds of diamonds embraced his torso in a fishnet of light. His hair was long, as long as mine, as dark as mine—a trailing train behind him, studded minutely with stars.

  Most of my life his hair had been closely cropped. I didn’t know he ever went like this. His face was the most startling thing of it all—yes, so much like my own mirrored face, but brighter, full of polished iron and impossible, demented glee. I’d never before seen him grin. His eyes contained a universe that tilted towards no-care, no-law, making real only him, only his will, and to him the whole world bowed breathless, bent in adoration to his golden crown of names. I counted only four, but he seemed mightier to me in this reflected light than in his current, full configuration—as if his fifth name had tamed the violent brightness I now saw before me.

  He made a motion with his hands. Unfolded something. A small carpet, beautifully detailed in vines and flowers, stained dark with congealed blood. I watched him sit down upon it, the twisted grin never leaving his face.

  “You know him,” the Shahniyaz said. It wasn’t a question.

  “My father.”

  He pulled his names back to his head, unraveling the vision. In a moment, his protective stronghold was on again. “Then satisfy my curiosity, girl. Who is he?”

  “You do not know?”

  “I do not,” he said. “The Raker arose from the southern sands, but he was only passing through. He said much in praise of the old King of Burri.” At the word “Burri,” the Shah’s mouth curved down; in anger or disgust, I couldn’t say. “But no, he didn’t give his name.”

  Of course. Travel was the Kekeri rite of passage, a year-long journey without a set destination, the farther away from home the better. One traveled without the trappings of power or money. A true Kekeri needed no crutch. A true Kekeri traveled alone, in disguise, unserved, for a true Kekeri needed no one. I have never seen my father so brilliant, so joyful, so alone.

  I snapped out of my reverie and faced the Shahniyaz again. “If he didn’t give his name, my lord, then neither shall I. It is easily enough discovered. I am not my father’s heir but my mother’s, and I come here bearing her name, to offer you my trade wares and to pass the rite of my house. Trade with me, and I will be confirmed as heir of the house Penareh, and will trade favorably with you ever after.”

  At the word Penareh the Shahniyaz rose slightly from his seat, as if in shock, and then fell back upon the cushions. He barked a laugh, then coughed, and the shadow man placed a full goblet into his hand. The Shahniyaz drank deeply. “Oh, this is rich,” he said at last—not, I presumed, about the wine. “Or do I misunderstand you, girl? The Great Raker married Myna Penareh?”

  “She is my mother,” I said. “I am Vendelin Penareh.” Great to meet you too.

  He frowned. “Are you illegitimate?”

  “No!” Why would he think that? Because I didn’t bear my father’s name. I kept forgetting how different the Niyazi were from us. “My brother inherits...”—Kekeri—”...my father; and I, my mother.” Our parents decided this between them, before we were born. The firstborn would inherit Penareh, because my father used to honor my mother above all people. “My parents are estranged.”

  “Curious,” he said, “how Myna never bothered me with these details. Women, huh.” He handed the goblet back to his man and nodded to me. “Well then, let’s see your wares, Vendelin Penareh.”

  I motioned Taemin forth. He was pale and visibly trembling, but I would worry about him later. At a nod from me he went on one knee, and swung open the lid, which I had unlocked earlier. I extended my power and tipped a finger into the box, and immediately a golden gecko ran up to my elbow. I approached the birdcage throne and swung my arm out. The lizard ran down my arm onto my fingers and over to the Shahniyaz. It settled around his wrist, glittering gold like a tiny-toothed bracelet.

  “Huh,” was all he said.

  “As we at Penareh are both artificers and traders, I come to trade with you in these my own designs,” I explained. “I constructed many of the geckos with my own hands, under my mother’s tutelage. They are singularly effective against the swarming desert locust.”

  “Huh,” he said again, and took my hand. The gecko ran back to me, but the Shah didn’t yet release me. His slightly oily fingers rubbed mine. I didn’t take my hand away. So diplomatic. My mother’s daughter. I felt no anger yet, but it was a close thing, building under the surface of my skin.

  He smiled then, eyes bottomless with slow-maturing hunger. “Effective against locusts. Most useful... for peasants? Yes, very sweet, Vendelin. Oh, but I am sure you can do so much better, especially with your heirship resting upon this, as you say. Make me a locust.”

  I drew my hand back, and he touched his fingers to his lips. I held myself in check, barely. “A locust?”

  “Yes,” he hissed, “a locust that obeys commands. A locust that will come among other locusts, and make them swarm, at my command, wherever I desire. Yes? There you’ll have something worthy of the Raker. Or is that beyond you, girl?”

  “No,” I snarled, “It is not beyond me.” My sweet-clawed baby Bird! I couldn’t very well refuse his challenge, and yet, and yet—

  “Then return here in three days.”

  I shook the lizard back into the box, threw shut the lid, and stormed out without as much as a bow. I felt his eyes on my back as I walked, and I knew, I just knew, that he smiled.

  * * *

  On the way back to the hostel, in the carriage, Taem sat shivering opposite me. The iron box crushed his thighs and knees, but he hugged it tightly to his body, although it would be safer and easier to plunk it on the floor. I could hardly see him behind the thing, but his eyes were glazed and his breathing too shallow. It took me a while to come down from my rage, but I managed at last to ask him what was wrong.

  “I asked my father once,” he said, “why he continued to serve the lord Kekeri. Certainly any debt he’s incurred has been repaid hundreds of times over the years?” Taem sniffled and rubbed his nose on my box. Disgusting.

  “He got angry. Said I didn’t understand. That the lord Kekeri was gentle with us. Vendelin, I know for sure your father hurt him, in the beginning. I don’t know how; he always said your father made it right. They had been together for such a long time. But what if he’s staying because....” Taem gulped.

  “My father said that if I’d only see the great lord in his true form, arrayed in his full might, I would understand. Well, I just saw his true form, didn’t I? A man so strong he doesn’t need anyone. A man so mighty people throw themselves at his feet just because he looked their way—and he just tramples them and laughs. I’ve always admired your father, Vendelin. He’s been very kind to me. But it’s all been a lie.”

  “I don’t know, Taem,” I said slowly. “If that was his true self, it is no longer. We’ve known him all our lives. He’s never looked like this. He is annoying, arrogant, a worrier, but I have never, ever seen him alone. He is always with people.”

  Taem sniffled again. I fought for more words. “Look, this... image... only had four names. Only four, but nobody else has even four short names, Taem. At that time, returning home from the sands of Burri, he already had more power than anyone we know. He had no need for more, nothing left to aspire to. He has five names now. Do you know why?”

  In truth, I didn’t know either, except in the roughest of ways, but what I knew was enough. “He had to take it, to protect someone in his service.” There was a good reason why so f
ew had short deepnames, and fewer yet attempted to take more than two. The moment of powertaking was dangerous, as an excess of power could easily burn out a mind; there was no good way to gauge how much more one’s mind could hold. “The fifth name was too much even for him. He almost died.”

  Taem looked at me, and I could feel the glazed hurt giving way, but not enough, not enough.

  “The man we know is not the man we saw. The man we know—my father—his family is the most important thing in the world to him, Taemin.”

  The perfect family that never was, as I was fond of saying. But it wasn’t true. My father’s family wasn’t a negation, wasn’t an absence, I now realized, for I had just witnessed how absence looked on him. His family—imperfect though it’s always been—was here, was now, in us.

  “He loves your father, Taem, with all his crabby heart. He loves my mother still. And he loves you.” He loves you better than his own son, I thought, for while all this affection and praise flowed to Taemin, what did my brother get? Only endless obligations, endless expectations that he could never quite measure up to. Endless reprimands. I wondered suddenly if Laukur’s bullying of Taem had been a desperate ploy for some of that attention all of us assumed he was too strong to need. I shook my head. Whatever his reasons, Laukur was still a damn bully.

  “You think,” Taem whispered, pain a quiet thing again within his chest, “You think that people change.”

  “I do,” I said, and hoped I wasn’t lying.

  * * *

  Back at the hostel rooms, I sent Taem out in search of non-crumbly foodstuffs and watered wine, and hoisted the trade chest upon the desk.

  Watersnake. Lion. Scorpion. Kestrel. Lily flower. Wolfhound. Apple tree. The lock clicked, but I twirled the lid again, and the new puzzle appeared, its tiny pieces enameled yellow and black. With sure fingers I composed the little weaverbird, the sigil of my mother’s house—and beneath it, five words in syllabary, words as ancient as the Coast.