by Robin Hobb
Dinner over, my uncle suggested that we might retire to his den for tobacco and brandy. My brief hope of a peacefully masculine retreat was shattered when Epiny protested with, “But Papa! You said I might have them to play Towsers! You know how much I’ve been looking forward to it!”
Uncle Sefert heaved a tolerant sigh. “Oh, very well. Gentlemen, instead of my study, we shall retire to the sitting room, for sweet biscuits, soft wine, and several hundred rousing games of Towsers.” He looked ruefully amused as he announced this, and what could we do save smile good-naturedly and agree? Purissa seemed to share her sister’s delight, for she jumped from her chair and ran to catch hands with her. They led us away from the table and into a pleasant room where a little iron stove enameled with flower-patterned tiles was keeping a teakettle puffing out steam. The floor was layered with bright woven rugs from Sebany. Upholstered cushions in the vibrant colors of that exotic land littered the room. Potbellied oil lamps with painted shades flickered in their alcoves despite literally legions of fat yellow candles of all shapes and sizes on holders of all heights throughout the chamber. There were several low tables, little higher than my knee, and on one of these were several platters of biscuits and a carafe of watered wine. A large wicker cage held half a dozen tiny pink birds that hopped from perch to perch, twittering as we entered. White curtains had been drawn for the evening across the tall windows.
“Oh, I should have showed you our sitting room earlier, while there was still daylight!” Epiny exclaimed in sudden disappointment. “You can’t see our new glass curtains at all properly at night!” Despite this announcement, she went to a corner and drew the white curtains back with a pulley arrangement. Between the night and us a threaded fabric of tiny glass beads hung on thin filaments of wire. “When the sun shines, you can see that there is an entire landscape there worked in beads. Tomorrow perhaps you can see it better,” she announced, and swept the white curtains across once more.
Spink and I were still standing, for the room lacked chairs of any kind. My uncle folded his long legs to sink down on one of the immense cushions that littered the carpeted floor. Purissa was already sprawled on one, and Epiny returned to likewise ensconce herself on one. “Do sit down,” she directed us as she produced a brown wooden game box from a drawer in a low table. “My mother has followed the queen’s example in furnishing our sitting room. Our queen has been quite taken with Sebanese decor of late. After a court dinner, she retires with all her favorites to her own lounging room. Just sit down anywhere around the table and be comfortable.”
Both Spink and I settled uneasily. Our trousers had not been tailored for this sort of sitting, nor did our boots allow much bend to the ankles, but we managed. Epiny was setting out a game with brightly colored cards and ceramic chips and an enameled board. She seemed to delight in the musical clacking of the pieces as she arranged it all.
“I’m afraid I don’t know this game,” Spink said sociably as she assigned a color to each of us.
“Oh, never fear on that account. All too soon you will know it too well,” my uncle predicted with a wry grin.
“It is such fun, and terribly easy to learn,” Epiny assured him earnestly.
Such proved to be the case. For all its shiny and elegant pieces, the game was idiotically simple. It involved matching colors and symbols, and calling out different words if one had a red match or a blue match and so on. Both girls were constantly leaping to their feet and doing little dances of triumph when they secured winning pairs of cards. I rapidly tired of leaping to my feet to declare that I’d scored a point. Epiny insisted it was a rule and that I must comply. For the first time, my uncle interfered with her willfulness, and announced that neither Spink nor I nor he would leap up, but would merely raise a hand. Epiny pouted about this for a time, but the dreary little game proceeded anyway. Is there anything more tedious than a pointless pastime?
My uncle managed to escape with the excuse that little Purissa was not allowed to stay up late. Her nanny had come to the door to find her, and surely he could have sent the child off with her. I think Uncle Sefert insisted on accompanying them simply to escape the dreadful game.
With two players gone, the game proceeded even more rapidly, for the element of uncertainty as to who held what markers was greatly reduced. We played two more rounds of it, with Spink courteously pretending to enjoy himself before I could stand it no longer. “Enough!” I said, throwing my hands up in mock surrender. I tried to smile as I added, “Your game has exhausted me, Epiny. Shall we take a brief recess?”
“You tire too easily. What sort of a cavalla officer will you be when you cannot stand up to the demands of a simple game?” she asked me tartly. Smiling, she turned to Spink. “You are not weary yet, are you?” she asked him.
He smiled back. “I could play another hand or two.”
“Excellent. Then we shall!”
I had expected Spink to side with me. Deprived of my ally, I conceded, and we played another three hands. Midway through our second hand, my uncle looked in on us. Epiny immediately and enthusiastically welcomed him back to the game, but he firmly declined, saying he had some reading to do. Before he retired to that, he reminded us that the next day was the Sixday, and that we should all get to bed early enough that we could easily rise for the daylight services he always attended.
“We’re just going to do a few more hands,” Epiny assured him to my dismay, for I was very willing to retire from her and her game and seek a good night’s rest. My uncle left and we finished yet another round of the tedious game. Then, as Epiny gathered the markers to set them up afresh she asked us, “Have either of you ever been part of a séance?”
“A science?” Spink was puzzled, and then helpfully offered, “Nevare appears to enjoy geology as a hobby.”
“No. Not a science.” Epiny continued to set up the playing pieces for the game. She was sending us only furtive glances, gauging our reactions from under her eyelashes. “A séance. A summoning of spirits, often through a medium. Like me.”
“A medium what?” I asked her. She laughed aloud.
“I am a medium. Or so I believe, for so the queen’s medium said to me the last time I attended a séance at my mother’s side. I’ve only begun to explore my talent in the last four months. A medium is someone with the power to invite spirits to speak through her body. Sometimes the spirits are the ghosts of those who have died, but who earnestly wish to convey some final bit of information to the living. Sometimes the spirits appear to be elder beings, perhaps even the remnants of the old gods who were worshiped before the good god came to free us from that darkness. And sometimes—”
“Oh. Those. I’ve heard some talk about them. People sitting in a circle in the dark, holding hands and playing at bogey-frights on one another. It sounds unholy, and completely unfit for a girl to be interested in,” I told her sternly. In my heart, I was full of curiosity and longing to hear more, but I did not wish to tempt my own cousin to corruption.
“Indeed?” She gave me a disdainful look. “Perhaps you ought to tell that to my mother, for tonight she assists the queen at her weekly séance session. Or perhaps the queen herself would like to hear your notions of what is ‘unholy and unfit for girls.’ ” She turned to Spink. “The queen says that much of what is judged ‘unfit for women to pursue’ are the very sciences and disciplines that lead to power. What do you think of that?”
Spink glanced at me but I had no help for him. It struck me as an entirely peculiar conversation, not unlike Epiny herself. He took a breath, and the expression on his face was the same one he wore when an instructor called on him in class. “I have not had much time to reflect on that, but on the surface, it would certainly seem true. Women are not encouraged to study the exact sciences or engineering. The complete texts of the Holy Writ are forbidden to them; they only study the writings given specifically for women. The arts and sciences of war are judged unfit…if those be the paths to power, then, yes, perhaps women are denied tho
se paths when they are denied those disciplines.”
“Why should it matter?” I spread my hands. “If there are disciplines that are unfit for girls, then it is only natural that those disciplines would lead to inappropriate ends. Why would any father put his daughter on a path that can only lead her to unhappiness and frustration?”
Epiny swiveled her gaze to me. “Why would a powerful woman be unhappy and frustrated?”
“Because she wouldn’t, well, a powerful woman, would not…have, well, a home and family and children. She wouldn’t have time for all the things that fulfill a woman.”
“Powerful men have those things.”
“Because they have wives,” I pointed out to her.
“Exactly,” she said, as if she had just proven something.
I shook my head at her. “I’m going to bed.”
“You’re leaving me alone here with Spink?” she asked. She feigned being scandalized, but the look she shot Spink was almost hopeful. He shook his head at her regretfully.
“No, I’m not. Spink is going to bed, too. You heard your father. We have to waken early for Sixday services at dawn.”
“If the good god is always with us, why must we worship him at such an awful hour?” Epiny demanded.
“Because it is our duty. It’s a small sacrifice he asks of us, to demonstrate our respect for him.”
“That,” she told me archly, “was a rhetorical question. I already know its conventional answer. I just think it’s a good idea for all of us to think about it now and then. For just as the good god makes rather strange requests of how men must show their respect, so do men make peculiar demands of women. And children. Are you truly going up to bed already?”
“I am.”
“You won’t stay and hold a séance with me?”
“I…of course not! It’s unholy. It’s improper!” I throttled a terrible curiosity to know how a séance worked and if anything real ever happened in one.
“Unholy? Why?”
“Well, it is all trickery and lies.”
“Hm. Well, if it is all trickery, then it can scarcely be sinful. Unless, of course…” She paused and looked at me quite seriously, almost as if alarmed. “Do you think those mimes who pester people in the Old Square are sinful? They are always pretending to climb ladders or lean on walls that aren’t there. Are they unholy, too?”
Spink choked back a laugh. I ignored him. “Séances are unholy because of what you are trying to do, or pretending to do, not just because they are all fakery. And they are a most improper activity for young ladies.”
“Why is it improper? Because we hold hands in the dark? The queen does it.”
“Nevare, surely if the queen does it, it cannot be improper.” This, from Spink of all people.
I took a breath, resolved to be calm and logical. I felt a bit affronted that they were united against me. I spoke coolly. “Séances are unholy because you are trying to take a god’s power to yourself. Or at least, pretend to have such. I’ve heard something of séances: foolish people sitting in the dark, holding hands, listening for thumps and knocks and whispers. Why do you think they hold them in the dark, Epiny? Why do you think nothing about them is ever clear or straightforward? All is mumble and mystery. We are of the good god, Epiny, and we should set the superstition and trickery and magic of the old gods behind us. Soon, if we ignore them all, they will fade to nothing, and their magic will be no more. The world will be a better, safer place when the old gods have passed away completely.”
“I see. And is that why you and Spink both do that little finger-wavy charm thing over your cinches each time you go to mount your horses?”
I stared at her, astonished. The “keep fast” charm was something I had learned from Sergeant Duril when I first learned to saddle my own horse. Before then, he or my father had made the charm. It was a cavalla tradition, a tiny bit of the old magic that we had kept for ourselves. I had once asked the sergeant where it had come from, and he had said, in an offhand way, that most likely we had learned it from the conquered Plainsmen. Then he had mentioned that there had used to be other little charms, a string charm to find water, and another to give strength to a flagging horse, but that they did not seem to work as well as they once had. He suspected that all our iron and steel was the cause of the magic fading. And then he added that it was probably not wise for a cavalla man to be using too much of the magic that we had learned from our enemies. A man who did that might end up “going native.” At the time, I had been too young to fully understand what was meant by the phrase, other than that it was very bad. So Epiny talking about that magic to me suddenly made me feel both exposed and ashamed. “That’s private!” I exclaimed indignantly, and glanced at Spink, expecting him to mirror my outrage.
Instead he said thoughtfully, “Perhaps she has a point.”
“She does not!” I retorted. “Answer honestly, Epiny. Don’t you think séances are an affront to the good god?”
“Why? Why should he care?”
I had no ready reply to Epiny’s question. “It just seems wrong to me. That’s all.”
Spink turned to me, his hands palm up. “Go back, Nevare. Let’s talk about the “keep fast” charm. You know it’s a small magic we use. And everyone says it works, when they say anything about it at all. So either we are as ungodly as Epiny is for tampering with such things, or there is no sin in investigating it.”
Spink was taking her side again. “Spink, you should know séances are a lot of nonsense. Otherwise, why would there be all those rules about holding them in the dark, and keeping silent, and not being able to ask questions during them, and all that silliness. It’s to cover up the trickery, that’s all!”
“You seem to know a great deal about them for one who has never taken part in one,” Epiny observed sweetly.
“My sisters went away for a spring week at a friend’s house. When they returned, they spoke of holding a séance there, because a visiting cousin from Old Thares had told them about one. They’d heard a wild tale of floating plates and unseen bells and knocking on tabletops, so they all joined hands and sat in a circle in the dark and waited. Nothing happened, though they scared themselves silly waiting. Nothing happened because there was no charlatan there to make things happen and pretend the spirits were doing it!”
I think my irritation had daunted even Epiny, for she sounded subdued when she said, “There is a lot more to it than floating plates and mysterious knocks, Nevare. I don’t doubt that there could be fakes and charlatans, but the séance I attended was real. Very real and a bit frightening. Things happened to me there…I felt things that no one could explain. And Guide Porilet said that I had the same skill that she did, but was untrained. Why do you think I was left here with Father this time? It was because I interfered with the trained medium and she could not summon the spirits to herself while I was there. They all wanted to come to me. I suppose I cannot blame you for doubting me. I could scarcely believe it myself at first. I found all sorts of ways to deny it and explain it away. But it wouldn’t stay gone.”
This last she said in a very soft, uncertain voice. I capitulated to her feelings. “I’m sorry, Epiny. I’d believe you if I could. But all my logic and reason tell me that these ‘summonings’ are simply not real. I’m sorry.”
“Are you, Nevare? Truly?” She straightened slightly, a flower refreshed by a gentle rain.
I smiled at her. “Truly, Epiny. I’d believe you if I could.”
She grinned in response and jumped to her feet. “Then I’ll make an offer to you. Let’s just turn down the lamp wicks, extinguish all but two candles, and sit around it, holding hands, in a circle. Perhaps you are right and nothing at all will happen. But if things do start to happen, you can tell me ‘stop’ and I’ll stop it. Now what could be the harm in that?”
She had acted as she spoke. By the time she finished, she had darkened the room except for two fat yellow candles burning on what had been our game table. Their wicks were short
and the flames guttered shallowly in the fragrant wax. Epiny sat down in the dimness, folding her legs under her skirt. She extended one hand to Spink. For the first time, I noticed how slender and graceful her fingers were. He took her hand without hesitation. With her free hand, she patted a cushion next to her and extended her hand in invitation to me. I sighed, recognizing both that it was inevitable and that, deep down, my own curiosity was urging me on.
I settled on the cushion beside her. There was a mildly uncomfortable moment as Spink took my hand. Epiny’s waiting hand hovered in the air between us. I reached for it.
Suddenly I again felt that distortion of my senses. The room was closed and suffocating, the scent from the yellow candles so foreign that I could scarcely breathe. And the girl reaching for my hand had eyes deeper than any forest pond and fingers that could sink roots into me before I could draw a breath. Something deep inside me forbade this contact; it was dangerous to touch hands with a spirit seeker, and unclean besides.
“Take my hand, Nevare!” Epiny spoke impatiently, as if from a great distance. In my dream, I reached for her fingers, but it was like pushing my hand through congealed jelly. The very air resisted the motion, and when Epiny reached her eager hand toward mine, I saw her encounter the same barrier.
“It’s like ectoplasm, but invisible!” she exclaimed. Her voice was triumphant with curiosity, not fear. She continued to push her pale white fingers toward me like seeking roots that could burrow into my heart.
“I…I feel something,” Spink said. I heard his embarrassment at admitting it. I knew, as clearly as if he had spoken it aloud, that he had thought this “séance” all a sham, but an excellent excuse to hold Epiny’s hand in his. He had not bargained on whatever it was that was happening. It frightened him but a part of me noticed that he had not released Epiny’s hand.
