by Various
And he had, in choosing to sell his passage on the ship, in choosing to travel overland, in spite of the journey’s dangers. He began to understand Adele, and himself. A little.
But Tanja waited for his reply. She would wait patiently, but not forever.
“I never said good-bye,” he said softly. “I meant to, that morning. But you had not slept well for weeks before. I wanted…I wanted to give you the gift of peace.”
Silence. Not even the hush of her breath.
He went on to describe that morning, the preparations Adele and the other soldiers hurried to complete. He, she had meant to return to their quarters, to steal a few moments for a proper farewell; but then came an unexpected summons from the general. They would march at once. No more delay.
“I wrote,” Asa said. “many letters. It was not enough. I meant to return. I could not.”
He stopped and closed his eyes, waiting. The silence stretched between them. So tight, it was as though the air shivered. At last he heard a faint scratching. He turned to see Tanja Duhr bent over her desk, writing.
* * *
He had expected everything to change after that. It did, but not as he had imagined.
Minne waited until midmorning to wake him. She set his breakfast tray on the table and flung the curtains open. The midmorning sun poured through. “She wants you again.”
Asa grunted. He had spent a restless night after leaving Tanja Duhr. There had been dreams, but of an ordinary kind, filled with murky shapes, like waves rolling through a sea of night. He rubbed his eyes with the back of one hand and hoped the tea was strong.
“You have a letter, too.”
That brought him awake and sitting up. “Who sent it?”
Minne ignored his sharp tone, but her shrug was expressive. “It came with one of the merchant caravans. A runner brought it to the house. It’s on your tray.”
He waited until she closed the door to leave his bed. Even then, he found himself moving with the slow caution of an old man. Oh, yes, he knew the sender. It could only be his mother.
Minne had tucked the letter under the small pot of tea. It was a thick envelope of yellow parchment, the wax seal imprinted with the mark of his mother’s house. His name and Duhr’s were written in a strong slanted hand—yes, his mother’s. Other than one or two thumbprints, the paper was unmarred by its long journey. Eyeing it, Asa poured a cup and drank a scalding mouthful to clear his head. It would not do to approach this letter half asleep.
The tea burned his throat. Yvonne the cook had predicted his needs this morning, evidently. He finished off the cup, then warily picked up the letter. Magic ran over the surface, nipping at his fingers. Immediately the outer covering fell open to show two more, smaller sheets inside. Asa took them up and scanned the first.
To my son Asa, I write this knowing you will have reached Duenne. I have no news for you—not of good fortune or bad. I only wished to send you this note of recommendation to House Yasemîn. With it, you may draw money as you need.
The second was just as she described, a formal recommendation of Asa, fifth son of House Dilawer, to those who governed House Yasemîn. Many complicated phrases followed that one declaration, but the sum of their meaning was clear. He would have whatever funds he needed, with no restriction. House Dilawer pledged not only all restitution, but the good will of the house for as long as Benaw and her daughters governed.
An alliance. She offered them an alliance.
It was such a valuable thing that his skin prickled, in spite of the warm autumn day.
She thinks to bribe me to come home.
He nearly crumpled both letters and tossed them out the window. But as his hand closed, he stopped himself with a sour laugh. This…this was undoubtedly a bribe, but a subtle one. And he might need the money.
That thought, which came too easily to him, gave him pause. Nevertheless he set the letters aside and devoured his breakfast with greater appetite. Then he washed his face and dressed in clean shirt and trousers. Tanja Duhr waited for him.
She waited, but not as she had on previous days. She sat under the trellis, with her desk on her lap, writing. Rose petals drifted down from the vines, a soft rainfall of yellow, crimson, and dusky red. There was a faint edge to the breeze that blew from the north.
“You asked for me,” he said at last.
Still writing, she nodded. Her hand gripped the pen with assurance, but her skin seemed more transparent than usual, and the lines in her face stood out much clearer. A trick of the sunlight, he told himself; but he noticed signs that the night had taken its price from her, as well. The sharper angle of her wrist bones, the bruises under her eyes, the slight tremor when she set her pen aside.
“Your mother sent a letter,” she said.
He nodded. Minne had told her, obviously.
“She wrote to me as well,” Tanja said. “A precaution, in case yours went astray.”
He snorted. Tanja’s mouth quirked into a smile.
“Beware the enemy,” she said softly. “But first, be certain who your enemy is.”
With that, she dipped her pen into the inkwell. “No dreams, today. Today I would like to hear about your future.”
* * *
Of course Asa could not predict his future. What Tanja wanted, she explained, were those ephemeral glimpses of what might be. The future blooms from the seeds of our desires, she said. A hundred different answers occurred to him, all of them like the trivial dreams he first recited at her command. She wants the hardest truths. She always did.
So, the truth. He met her gaze directly and said, “You asked me what I desire. You. You are what I desire.”
For the first time, she appeared shaken.
So was he. Until today, he had only comprehended the most obvious reasons for coming to Duenne. His dreams. Their love interrupted. The need to bid farewell to the past before he could truly face the present. He had no wish to recall the words, however. They were true. Nor could he utter facile declarations of love. Theirs was an uncommon desire, divided by death and years and the void between lives.
“I desire you,” he repeated. “Not as we are, but as we might be someday, in some life.”
Tanja shook her head. “The gods make no such promises.”
“How could they? We are the ones who make our futures. We make them from all the moments of today.”
Now she smiled. “We have changed our roles, it seems. You speak immortal words, while I stutter about the commonplace.”
“Is that what I did?”
“At first.”
And so the conversation wound through the morning, easy and comfortable, ranging through dreams and memories of past lives. For the first time since he arrived they dined together in the early afternoon, and again that evening. They spoke of lives together, of those long separated, though these were fewer. Asa remembered more of the wartime years. Tanja told him about those in Duenne, after the Empire suffered its defeats, and those she learned from correspondents in Károví and elsewhere. It was like stitching together a cloak from many varied pieces, a thing that could never be whole. And yet was.
The pattern continued throughout the autumn and into winter. As the season changed, Tanja Duhr retired to an airy room just under the rooftop garden. She no longer went barefoot, and the number of robes she wore increased, even though Minne built generous fires in the fireplace, and lit several braziers around the room. Of that time, Asa remembered the flames illuminating Tanja’s lined face, the murmur of her voice, the scent of magic and oil. His dreams lived on as well, more vivid than before. These fed the conversations, which in turn called up new memories of past lives. In between, she wrote, the script flowing onto the paper, while Asa watched in silence.
It was a midwinter day. The snow had been falling since dawn. Minne had closed the shutters. The flakes hissed against the wooden slats, and the room was like a warm glove around them.
“Asa.”
“Yes.”
“I am d
ying.”
She spoke so matter-of-factly it frightened him. Asa reached out, and she clasped his hand within both of hers. Slender hands, once strong, but now he could feel the bones beneath the wasted flesh.
“How do you know?”
“I dreamed it. I dreamed of buds unfolding and a thousand stars. Or you might believe my physician, who tells me to expect death before summer.” She closed her eyes a moment. The pulse at her throat betrayed a much stronger emotion than her voice. “You must go before then, Asa. No, do not argue. Please.”
He had no answer for that. He knelt at her feet, robbed of words for a very long while. Tanja Duhr did not speak either. It was a gift of hers, to make the silence as easy as their conversations. But then she had often told him that a poet must choose the spaces between words as skillfully as they chose the words themselves.
As the bells of Duenne rang the first evening hour, however, she stirred. “We have some more weeks and months together. Think about where you would like to travel next.”
He shook his head. “Do I have a choice? My mother wishes me home.”
“And perhaps you might go home—someday. Think about it, Asa. That is all I suggest.”
* * *
And so he considered his future, his desires, in between their conversations. Those intervals grew longer as her strength failed. Some days Minne came to his door, only to report that Tanja Duhr was sleeping, or with the physician. She would see him tomorrow, if tomorrow allowed it. Asa took to helping Minne with her work in keeping the books, paying bills, running errands into the city. But even as he worked he thought about the possibilities and impossibilities of his life.
Where might he go?
Not home. Not directly. Nor could he remain in Duenne.
Briefly he considered Károví, but although Erythandra and its former princedom had signed a truce, the borders remained unsettled.
So he climbed the steps to the roof, and, daring the winds, surveyed the surrounding lands, as if his gaze could penetrate the distance between Duenne and the borders. He could dismiss the north at once. He’d had enough snow. South lay the richest provinces of the Empire, those that traded in silks, coffee, and spices. Winter never touched those shores. No, he thought. The south would be too much like Ysterien. Farther along that southern coast was Fortezzien with its rocky mountains, goats, and houses painted in bright colors. But like Hanídos, the mood in Fortezzien was restless, and there were rumors of uprisings.
Which left east.
“What do you think of Tiralien?” Tanja asked the next time she could receive him.
She sat propped against pillows, several pages covered with writing spread over her lap. Asa suppressed a start at her question. Minne must have told her about his visits to the roof, but how had she guessed the direction of his thoughts so precisely?
Because she knows me, she knows the Empire.
“It’s a pleasant city,” he said. “But I cannot find any reason to choose it over another.”
Silent laughter shook her. “What a demanding young man you are. Pleasant isn’t enough. You want a grand reason. What if I gave you a little reason?”
He shrugged, but she only laughed more.
“Stubborn.”
“It is my best quality.”
“It is.” Her tone, suddenly serious, caught his attention. “That is why I would suggest you visit my dear friend. His name is Linus Delf and he’s a scholar. I knew him from Court. He tired of the city and moved east to study in quiet.”
“And why should I visit him?”
“Because he is an interesting man. He studies ancient philosophy, but takes interest in a number of other subjects, including poetry.”
She went on to explain that Delf required an assistant to organize his books, transcribe his notes into readable documents, and to perform small tasks of research. “It would be a different kind of education than your tutors provided you. It should also give you enough money to live as you pleased. As long as you were moderate in what you pleased.”
And it would allow him time to consider his future.
He nodded. “I would like that.”
“Good.”
With the subject decided, she turned the conversation to a musician the Emperor had summoned to court. The musician, a young woman, had taken a lover almost at once, much to the displeasure of the Emperor, but it seemed that he’d forgiven her because of her astonishing talent. Asa knew little of court, but he listened to Tanja’s account, thinking that she seldom spoke of past lives or dreams these days. It was as though she’d left yesterday behind and held today in both hands.
He thought he understood how she felt. The last six weeks vanished all too quickly. Tanja Duhr wrote to her friend Linus Delf. He replied, saying he would welcome Asa as his assistant. Meanwhile, Asa set aside his pride with his mother and took her letter of recommendation to House Yasemîn. He did not intend to ask for much—enough to buy the horse Tanja recommended and a few sets of clothes—but that little was more than he could buy with his own money.
Narî Yasemîn received him in her formal offices. Servants brought hot, spiced tea and plates of grilled lamb, delicately seasoned bread, and other dishes Asa had not tasted since that last spring morning in Karda. He and the old woman who ruled House Yasemîn spoke of polite inconsequentials as they sipped their tea. Nothing of the Empire or Ysterien. Nothing of trade or money, or alliances between their houses. When they had done, a liveried servant brought Asa a small box. “It is but a first offering,” Narî Yasemîn said. “If it is not sufficient, send word to my people.” Then she escorted him to the door herself and told him he was to consider himself a son of the household for as long as he remained in Duenne.
When Asa returned to his tiny room in Tanja Duhr’s household, he opened the box. And sucked in his breath. For a moment, he could do nothing but stare at the heap of gold coins inside. Slowly, he poured the coins onto the bed and counted them. He needed to count a second time to make certain of the sum.
Five hundred gold denieri. It was enough to buy two ships and all they could hold. Enough to establish himself anywhere, for as long as he liked.
I cannot accept this much.
He had to. To refuse would insult House Yasemîn. He shuddered to think of the consequences. His mother furious. A feud between the two houses, spreading to others through the net of alliances. Ysterien in disarray because of that, and susceptible to Veraene’s overtures, if not outright force.
In the end, he decided to keep the money. He would buy a horse. New clothes. All the supplies he needed for the journey east. Once he reached Tiralien, he could send whatever remained to his mother. If he were careful with his new salary, he could repay the rest.
And I shall repay her. However long it takes.
* * *
It was on a day in early spring when he took his leave. Tanja Duhr sat on the roof, swathed in robes. Asa had carried her there, at her request. The writing desk was not present. She did not have the strength to hold a pen. But she wished to sit in the open air and see the far horizons.
“I will miss you,” he said.
She kissed his hand. “You are a generous young man.”
“Liar.”
“No,” she said softly. “I would have no lies between us.”
His heart stilled, and for a moment he could not speak. Then he leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “Good-bye,” he whispered.
She leaned into his arms. “Good-bye.”
It took a great effort to pull away, to turn and walk toward the stairs. He glanced back just once to see her gazing south over the city, her chin lifted, her mouth pressed into a firm line. He would always remember her thus.
The rest followed quickly. His bags were already packed, his horse saddled. In addition, he had bought a pony to carry his supplies, along with several large leather packs, which Tanja Duhr had given him the previous day.
“Open these when you are with Linus,” she told him, but would not
explain more.
He traveled east beside the Galllenz River. His days were long, but he stopped frequently to rest his horse and pony. At night he stayed at inns, or with the occasional farmer, who offered him a room and dinner for a few copper coins. He found he hated the sight of stars. For all he knew, Tanja had died, and she had joined that river of souls.
Three weeks later he came to Tiralien’s gates. This time the guards did not question him. He passed through, and, following the directions from Delf’s letter, he soon came to a crowded quarter on the north side of the river called the Little University. There, Delf welcomed him to his quarters—five or six rooms that occupied the top floor of an old brick house, once a merchant’s household and now rented to students and scholars. Asa found himself with a comfortable room—much larger than his room in Duenne—that overlooked a noisy courtyard. If he leaned out his window, he could just see a patch of dark blue that could be the ocean.
He sat on his bed and considered his new life. Tanja Duhr had not misled him. Here he would have a true position and the chance to learn scholarship. He could repay his mother. His hands…he could not erase the bloody sheen, but he had come to realize that not everyone could see it. Zayaa had; so had Tanja Duhr. Linus Delf had not, or he had chosen to ignore it.
The gods have marked me. They did so before. I can rail against them, or go forward as I want or must.
Time enough for that later. He bent over the largest bag that contained Tanja Duhr’s last gift. He undid the buckles and unwrapped the leather straps. As he laid the covering flap to one side, a jumble of books met his eye.
Books? She gave me books?
They were all the same size—small thick volumes bound with dark brown leather, the pages sewn tightly to the spine. No titles etched onto the cover. Nothing to indicate what lay inside. He picked up the topmost one, skimmed the first few pages and went still. These were Tanja’s poems, written in her own hand. When had she found the time to record these?
Asa turned back to the first page and found a poem about the Empress Karin Emerita, one Tanja had composed after her arrival at court, nearly fifty years ago. The ink on the page was faded, and she’d crossed out several lines and rewritten them. Leafing through the book, he noted that she’d written and rewritten the poem several times over, with commentary in the margins for the intervening drafts. It was then he realized what kind of gift she had bequeathed him.
