Given to the Earth

by Mindy McGinnis

  “Were you not alarmed?”

  “Bah.” Madda waves her hand at the air as if the earth moving beneath her feet is of no consequence. “I have seen much, and all of it the same as I grow older. To feel something new is a gift.”

  I watch her move awkwardly this morning, her joints popping as she stretches old bones. “You don’t seem afraid,” I say.

  “What does a Seer have to hide from?” she asks. “I’ve watched many shy from the fate I find in their palms, but you can’t outrun your own skin.”

  “No,” I agree.

  My mother picks up a flagon of water, peers through a small slit of a window, the morning sun drawing more lines on her face. “I do not fear the earth moving, for it’s not the earth that shall have me.”

  “How does the young king fare?” I ask, taking the pitcher from her hands to pour us both a drink.

  “He is young and in love,” Madda says, joining me at the table. “And fortunate enough to call his love his wife as well.”

  I have moved through halls and listened well, in the times that my mother slept in her tower. That the Given should become the queen was a surprise to me, but one that settled in and grew roots, a truth that once accepted made a kind of sense. That a girl of Feneen blood should sit on the throne of Stille was not something I could have anticipated, yet it galls. For all my cunning, I did not see this possibility and have allied my people against the country that shelters my own mother and a royal who may have taken pity upon us.

  “Too much to hope that love for his wife would cloud his vision and addle his battle acumen?” I ask.

  “Too much,” Madda agrees. “The queen can hardly cloud his vision when she is not in sight. As for battle, I think you’ll find my Vincent would sooner shelter his people than send them into harm.”

  “Would he?” I ask, and Madda only raises her brows.

  The words that move between us are often wearing cloaks that they may pass as something other than what they are. My mother settles into her chair, elbows on the table before her, chin resting in her palm as she eyes me. I lean back, watching her as well, aware we have entered the stage of my visit where little is said, but much is shared.

  “I will not allow him to be harmed,” I say.

  “Perhaps he will not be around for any to harm him,” she counters.

  I cock my head, listening to the oderbirds that nest in a crevice outside her window. The sconcelighters are as full of talk as they, and one good hiding place has brought me an earful.

  “Hygoden is not so far that the Pietra cannot reach,” I tell her, but Madda only smiles.

  “Can the Pietra march to the horizon? Do their boots float upon water?”

  “Nothing floats upon water, old woman,” I tell her. “Even Pietran boats are made to sink.”

  “Ah yes.” Madda nods as if she has only just remembered something. “Boats are for the dead.” She takes a sip of water and twines a loop of gray tresses through her fingers, braiding skin with hair.

  “Or so they say,” she adds.

  Outside, the oderbird nestlings have ceased their squawking, as if listening as well. I watch my mother, her eyes heavily hooded with the skin of age, but still shining bright. Life burns there, an enjoyment of days that I’ve also seen in the face of the young Stillean king. If he loves his queen, and treasures any life they would have together, he would not risk meeting the Pietra and Feneen in open battle. As a man, he may value his life, but as a king he would lead his men in battle, endangering it for their sake.

  “It is a difficult thing, to be both a good man and a good king,” I say.

  “On this earth, anyway,” Madda agrees, her tone leading me to follow.

  I have the response on my lips—there is nothing else—but I bite down on it as Madda’s eyes rest on mine, knowing where my thoughts would go. My mother speaks to me of boats and the horizon, a king who would take risks for love of his wife, and a battle that will not be fought.

  Filthy fathoms.

  I readjust my position, knees creaking along with my chair. “I would have liked to see the Indiri again,” I say.

  “Pity,” is all my mother offers me.

  I grunt, well aware from the sconcelighter’s talk that the male has gone with the queen and an advisor to Hygoden, although for what purpose I do not know. Of the female I have heard no whispers and seen no sign, and this does not rest well with me.

  “She is a fierce thing, and I would know her true nature,” I tell Mother.

  “You already do, to use such words,” Madda says. “She may be Indiri, but there is a heart in that spotted chest, and it burns for the good and ill alike.”

  I nod, having seen the fire in the girl’s eyes. She will love and hate with equal heat, and I feel a streak of pity for the man who is the recipient of either. But the girl does not walk these halls, for wherever she passes there is an energy, one that echoes here no longer.

  “I worry for her,” I admit.

  I expect Mother to scoff, tell me that the Indiri female has little care for my concerns and would end them with a flick of her blade, given half the chance. But Madda’s brow darkens, and her eyes go to the cup her hands curl around.

  “Mother?” I prod. “Fear passed through you just now, fear on the face of a woman who would claim she has aged past such a thing.”

  Madda doesn’t argue, but speaks into her drink. “The girl passed from here, and I fear her pride outstrips her power. The Indiri magic weakens with the land, and for my part, I would not see those people gone from the earth.”

  I rise from my seat, fingers resting for a moment on the Seer’s bowed head. She is smoke and mirrors, as always, even her true nature shrouded in a life spent reading lines that shift and speaking words cloaked in shadow.

  “I will look for her as I go,” I say to my mother, resting my cheek against her hair for a moment.

  “Use your ways to help us all, my son,” Madda says, her words so soft they are nearly lost. “Protect Vincent, for the sake of an old woman who loves him.”

  CHAPTER 43

  Dara

  The Keeper raises my arms, running her hand down my side. I feel each finger slide past bones that have reknit, each rib whole once more. In the light of her lantern, I see her mouth twitch at the sight of my stitches.

  “The Lithos mended you well,” she says.

  “He did,” I answer, leaving it for her to say more if she wishes a conversation to grow of it. More than once, the Hyllenian has tried to draw me with words, laying little paths she wishes me to follow as she speaks of the Given. But I did not grow to womanhood within the walls of Stille for nothing, and while my ancestors’ memories showed me how to guard my body, it was Dissa who taught me to guard my thoughts.

  “He has asked after your welfare,” the Keeper says, resting my arms back at my sides. “And has told Gaul to treat you with respect, as you are a warrior.”

  “And as I am a warrior, I will not be coddled long,” I say to her, pulling what’s left of my cloak around me as I settle in the corner. “The respect the Lithos shows me does not translate into kindness, and the stitches he put in me are to ensure that I live, but not that I do so happily.”

  She steps back from me, arms crossed. “Have you ever been happy, Indiri?”

  It is a question unlooked for, and I have no quick answer. The Keeper makes a noise in her throat and gathers her things, the pitcher of clean water, the comb she had offered me, that I refused.

  “If you do not know, then you have not been,” she says. “And I feel sorry for you, not here in this dungeon, but for all the years you spent before it, building up gall in your gut and spitting harsh words with your mouth.”

  “And how was your life spent, Keeper?” I snap at her. “How much happiness did you reap, raising small Givens for the sea?”

  She stops, facing the doo
r, the double slices of her shoulder blades rising and falling beneath her thin shirt.

  “More than you could guess at,” she says quietly. “I have lived a life. Yours is barely begun, and yet you would toss it away in the name of pride.”

  “Slip me a blade and leave the door open when you go,” I say. “See what I toss away then.”

  She only shakes her head, tendrils of hair swaying across her shoulders as she leaves. I do not know what game the Keeper plays at. Though she has drawn words from me, they were only in concern of Khosa, never the Stillean army or Vincent. If the Lithos sends her thinking I will open my mouth for another woman, he is mistaken. He may as well have stitched my lips together as my arm, for he’ll have nothing from me.

  I run my fingers over the healing skin of my arm, counting the threads that hold me together there. The Lithos knows of my connection to Stille and wants me healthy. This does not bode well, for all the Keeper may go on about his concern for my welfare and respect for my skills. This means only that I have become a pawn in a game, an Indiri to be flouted by the Pietra in order to draw out Vincent and his army.

  “Well-being indeed,” I snort.

  As for respect, if the Lithos holds that for me, then it will bring him only greater pride to break me when Vincent does not fall for the ploy. The king of Stille made his choice already, and it was not me. He will not endanger his kingdom and his wife for the sake of an Indiri girl. So the Lithos will put me to another use, one that I would almost prefer. For there is greater honor in dying under the knife with no words in my mouth than there would be in returning to Stille to speak only apologies.

  My fingers dig through the soft dirt floor of my cell, tracing the furrow I have been digging in the dark, long after Gaul’s torch has ceased sputtering outside my window and his voice has stopped whispering foul acts in my ear.

  I am no Pietran trophy, and no Stillean’s weakness.

  I am an Indiri. And I have a few ideas of my own.

  * * *

  My ancestors have never been in this place, so I cannot ask them how it came to be that my hands have found a weapon, crude as it is. But I can imagine Pietra long dead, pacing how wide they want the cells to be, placing sticks on the ground, a shadow of the stones that would be laid modeled in Hadundun branches, the skeleton of a prison.

  Probably it was the job of one man to gather these as the walls rose, who passed the duty to another, who asked his friend to see to it. Or maybe the branch was nudged aside by one foot, to be stepped upon by another, driving it into the ground where they worked. It has waited for me here, encased in filth from other prisoners, age hardening it, until my fingers, lazy with the press of unused time, found it as I traced the sides of my cell.

  Ugly things have a habit of rising to my hand; weapons find me as the forest animals find Donil. Though perhaps it is only innocent things that lie in my palm, while my mind finds dark deeds to do with them. This is the most likely, I decide, as I curl my hand around the branch, easing it to and fro as it frees itself from the ground. It is grim work, and the soft skin under my fingernails screams as it is pushed back, far and farther, dirt filling the spaces it leaves behind.

  The branch eases free of the earth, and I learn its shape in the dark, my hands tracing a smooth edge, nearly straight, and each end rounded with age. Torchlight has not reached me in a while; Gaul’s voice has not interrupted my thoughts, either. I stand, ears straining against the silence, to hear nothing.

  I bring my foot down sharply, the snap echoing around me but bringing no one, and reach again in the dark to feel the new end I have made, sharp and angry. I rest my weapon next to me against the wall. It is nearly as long as I am, and I slide into sleep, happy to have it hovering over me.

  I have made a stick into a spear.

  Now to make a jailer into a corpse.

  CHAPTER 44

  Khosa

  Filthy fathoms,” Sallin breathes beside her, the wind off the sea whipping what little hair he has into a storm of its own around his brow. Donil only stares, the sullen quiet that he has adopted since arriving in Hygoden deepening, the set of his brow darker than it was even that morning. For her part, Khosa’s heart leaps in her chest at the sight of Winlan’s ship, nestled in a cove at the point.

  “How many know?” she asks.

  Winlan makes a face as if he were doing a calculation, then shrugs. “That would be everyone, my queen.”

  “Just Khosa, please,” she reminds him. “How does an entire village keep a secret such as this?”

  “A better question would be, how would one keep a secret such as this from an entire village?” Winlan says. “Hygoden is small. When my wife had little Unda, half the people knew it was a girl before I did, and I was right outside the door.”

  Khosa nods. “Hyllen is not much different. If a maiden goes for a walk on the high meadow with a shepherd, word reaches her mother and a binding quilt is nearly finished before she returns home.”

  “Begging your pardon, Khosa,” Winlan says. “Hyllen is altogether a different place than Hygoden. Stille needs your grain and wool; nobles go there for a lark to playact at being shepherds and shepherdesses. The only people Hygoden sees from Stille are the tithe collectors, and it is not a pleasant visit for anyone.”

  “Hygoden is an outpost under Stille’s protection and pays for that service as any Stillean land does,” Sallin says, overhearing the conversation.

  “Protection from what?” Winlan asks. “The wind and snow? These are what plague us most, and Stille has yet to change the weather on our behalf.”

  Sallin opens his mouth to continue the argument, but Khosa raises a hand to stop him.

  “All of Hygoden feels this way toward Stille?”

  Winlan nods.

  “And so you’ve built a ship and would have put all your people upon it to follow in the path of your ancestor.”

  “If it came to that, yes,” Winlan says. “We know well that should the Pietra take it in their heads to do to Hygoden as they did Hyllen, no help from Stille would arrive in time, should it be sent at all.”

  “Help would come,” Khosa says, but her voice doesn’t carry the conviction she meant for it to. Winlan clearly thinks otherwise but chooses not to contradict the queen.

  “You’ve sailed it?” Donil asks, eyes still on the ship as it rises and falls with the swell.

  “Many times,” Winlan says. “Together with friends, I built it in my youth, and we’ve taken it out, learning first from Harta’s notes but then from our own hands how to move upon the water.”

  “How far have you gone?” Donil asks.

  “Once we had the confidence, we took it around the entire land,” Winlan answers, a hint of pride in his voice. “Far enough out that we could see the shore, but none would spot us.”

  Donil makes a noise in his throat, but holds his peace.

  “How many can sail?” Sallin asks.

  “Any man in Hygoden was taught, and the boys have their duties too,” Winlan says. “Sailing a ship is no small thing, and we’ve lost men to the sea, hulls to rocks, a few hands to a sail that whipped the wrong way of a sudden. But we’ve always known that Hygoden sees to itself, and a lost life or limb was looked upon as a lesson learned, so we’d be that much wiser when the day came to sail and not look back.”

  “That day may be here,” Sallin says.

  “It may,” Winlan agrees. “And what makes you think I’ll allow a single Stillean onboard my ship?”

  * * *

  Evening falls and the voices from inside Winlan’s home continue, sometimes raised, occasionally angry, but always the low hum of many heads together. Khosa can pick out Sallin’s voice as a continuous thread, cajoling and bargaining, but never pleading. The Stillean is an old master at managing men, and he will have what he wants out of Hygoden in the end, undoubtedly with Winlan and the other Hygodeans thinking
they got the better end of the deal.

  Khosa smiles to herself as she braids Unda’s hair, the little girl humming as she builds a ninpop home out of sticks and moss.

  “Is it fun to be a queen?” Unda asks.

  “Fun doesn’t come into it,” Khosa answers her, tying off the last bit of hair. “There is always work to be done and people to please, and it’s a rare thing to find one action that will make everyone happy.”

  “Not like my work, though. Not like bringing the goats down from the mountain or moving stones out of the path,” Unda says, and Khosa looks down at the girl’s hands, blistered and chapped, even at her young age.

  “No,” Khosa admits. “A queen’s work is not like that. But your goats do not hold a grudge against you from one evening to the next, and are easily won over with a handful of grain. People are not so simple.”

  “No, but people don’t knock you on your rear with their horns, either,” Unda argues.

  “Fair enough,” Khosa says, pulling the girl to her feet and hurrying her along with a light push on the backside. “Go and find your mother, so that she is not worrying over you.”

  Unda nods, but glances around. “Should you be left alone?”

  “I am not alone,” Khosa says.

  Donil has never been far from her in Hygoden. Even if others cannot see him, she knows he is near, always ready to intervene should her body make a mad dash for the sea. In truth, the only tremor she has felt of late has been the need for him, and the strength of it overwhelms any call the sea can make.

  She leaves behind the flow of voices from Winlan’s cabin, picking her way down the stony beach to an overhang Pand had shown her the day before. It shelters a small cave that overlooks the inlet where the ship rests, water breaking white against its hull in the moonlight. Khosa settles back against the cave wall and waits for Donil to join her. He’s there in moments, lighter on his feet than she was, not even a pebble trickling down the cliffside to the water below.