by Liz Williams
It was so easy to project your own wishes onto them, Shu thought. These people seemed to embody the unknown: inviting desires, needs, unfulfillments to impose themselves on the tabula rasa of the beautiful and the strange. Objectivity was impossible, but the subjective had to be appropriate, otherwise the subject was apprehended through a filter of personal irrelevance. During her doctoral years and her studies of ancient Earth, Shu Gho had examined Second Elizabethan conceptions of objectivity, one of the central myths of the postindustrial era. The realm of fact, the reification of conceptual strata, had fascinated her: such a strange idea, as alien as Renaissance notions of the Divine. The earliest anthropologists had cleaved to this mythical conception of fact, with only a few pioneers promoting the now compulsory projection of the self into the other. It still struck Shu as extraordinary that the idea of an interpretation of culture independent of the observer's own filters had been seriously entertained. Well, that sort of colonial arro-gance was no longer there. But what had really taken its place?
Shu walked quickly through the settlement, heading west to where she thought the harbor lay. Occasionally she glanced at the life sign scanner; Sylvian had programmed in an analog of Mevennen's DNA and the scanner should register her brother's presence within a limited radius, if it was working properly. Shu did not entirely trust much of the technology on which she was dependent. She passed crowds and clusters of people, and none of them so much as glanced in her direction. Her invisibility reassured Shu, but it also made her feel small and isolated, as though excluded from a conversation to which she could contribute nothing. It was clouding over now, and she could smell the metallic edge of approaching rain in the air. The scanner hummed, registering a familiar presence. Heartened by this, Shu hurried through the town, suddenly eager in her quest for the one person with whom she might conceivably be able to hold a conversation.
Eventually, she came out onto the harbor. A boat, shaped rather like an ancient junk, was riding in on the heaving tide, crawling slowly up the harbor mouth, and a crowd had gathered on the wharf to watch it dock. Shu found that her hands were clenched tightly in the pockets of her jacket. The boat nudged in against the wharfside and its tall, square sails crumpled like a moth folding its wings. A gangway was let down and passengers began to stream onto the shore. Shu saw a bewildering collection of people who all managed to look somewhat the same. Had the scanner been correct? And if Mevennen's brother was even here, would she know him again? And then she did see him, standing patiently at the top of the gangway to let others off first. A girl was with him. Shu saw her turn and speak, and give a curiously bitter smile. An older man followed, carrying a small and ominous box. And then they were stepping ashore. Eleres glanced up, and Shu experienced the sudden shock of being seen. Recognition crossed his face, followed swiftly by doubt. He turned sharply away and addressed the older man. Together with the girl, they began to walk up into the town, ahead of the drift of rain. Unsure of what else to do, Shu followed.
4. Eleres
It was mid-afternoon when we pulled into port. Damoth sailed between the racing clouds, but the rain held off. A tall row of houses occupied the cliffs above the harbor. Feeling eyes upon me, I saw a woman standing on a balcony above the boat. From this distance she was no bigger than a bird. The balcony was carved in the form of a serpent, many spined and with a thick feathery crest of gills behind the gaping mouth.This, I knew, was the etheset which is not uncommon in these seas. Presumably the carved serpent above me was the symbol of the house. From below, the woman seemed to be standing on its back, and I remembered another story, of the outcast Selen who went mad five hundred years ago and burned her family's fort to the ground, then cast herself into the sea only to be befriended by a serpent and carried out into the ocean. Ships in storms sometimes tell of seeing her, fire-eyed on the plunging beast's back, and she is, not surprisingly, an omen of disaster. I related all this to Hessan when he joined me at the rail, and he smiled rather thinly and replied that she is said to have come from a place which has been gone for generations.
“But who knows?” he said. “There are ruins, and sometimes voices cry out in the night. When I was young, not long back from the world, I spent the evening there.”
“And what did you see?” I'd always liked ghost stories. Hessan's dark face broke into a rare smile.
“I saw …” He paused for dramatic effect. “Nothing at all.” The ship bumped against the wharf, as if for emphasis.
“Well,” Sereth said, ambiguously. “Here we are.” I turned, glancing idly through the crowd, and froze. There was a ghost watching me. It was the same spirit that I had met in the orchard, the one who had asked my name. She was looking directly at me, but then I realized that Sereth had come to stand at my shoulder. I moved, so that I was standing between her and the ghost. I saw the ghost glance at the box containing the body of the child. So this was why the ghost had come, to make sure that reparation was made, perhaps to ensure too that the honor charge that Mevennen had laid upon me was carried out. I did not like the taste of fear in my mouth, and I turned away so that I would not have to look at the ghost any longer. Then the first heavy drops began to fall and we made haste to follow Hessan to Temmarec. Evidently a number of families in Tetherau had already departed for their summering, for as we were walking up through the narrow maze of the town we touched on the edges of the House defenses: the characteristic scent of metal in the mouth and prickling of skin and scalp. The usual guidemarks showed the ways between, in case the unwary came up into the edges of the defenses and were harmed. There was a great deal of water underneath Tetherau, I noted, and I felt my senses pulled in a number of directions, becoming both mildly elated and slightly nauseous. There was a spring far beneath my feet, channeled through the stone to a nearby well … With an effort, I reined my senses in. You couldn't live here comfortably for long if you were oversensitive to water.
I thought of Mevennen and my heart sank. My discomfort did not cease until we were high above the harbor, and stood before the heavy main gate to Temmarec, which I now saw was close to the house with the sea-serpent balcony. Temmarec's own faäade faced the harbor, directly above the waves. I glanced back. The ghost had gone. I began to breathe more easily.
Below, the town fell away in a series of stages, and we gazed over the rooftops to the sea, now gray with rain. The farther coast was invisible, lost in cloud and sea spray. On the horizon, Pemna had disappeared and I could see the beacon light of a ship, tossing in a wilder sea than the one we had just crossed. We were led indoors by Hessan and shown to our rooms. He extended us the courtesy of not being introduced to anyone until we had composed ourselves after the journey. Those we met politely averted their eyes. Sereth and I were placed in chambers next door to one another, each low-eaved and with a shuttered window opening out to a view of the town.
Once I had washed and changed my sea-stained, sleep-disordered clothes, I sat on the bed and waited for Hessan to return. But when a light knock came upon the door, I found that it was not Hessan but someone else. The person who came to me now was a man of my own age. I saw a handsome oval face, a thin and gentle mouth, and night-blue eyes which for a moment reminded me of Morrac. But this person's expression was vague and remote, very far from my lover's sardonic gaze. His hair was tied back in a single dark braid. One arm was tattooed with birds. He smiled and said in a comfortably informal tense, “My name's Jheru. And you are Eleres ai Mordha.”
“OfEluide.”
“I know Eluide a little. We have relatives that way, and Ulleet is a port on the voyage. It's a beautiful place, so high on its cliffs.”
I laughed. “It gets all the winds that blow.”
“Well, Tetherau isn't spared, either, as you can see at the moment.” He gestured to the windowsill, where raindrops stained the dark wood. “I came to invite you downstairs. There's a meal ready, and obviously you'd prefer to relax before we settle—well, anything that needs to be settled.”
To my mind t
his was protracting our discomfort, but this was clearly not the intention and I had little option but to accept. Under the circumstances it was not the most comfortable meal I've ever had. Jheru took pains to be charming, and Hessan, if somewhat taciturn, was at least familiar and communicative. The rest of the family were evidently appalled by the thought that we might feel ill at ease and were anxiously oversolicitous.The exception was an elderly woman whose relationship to the dead child I could not discern, though I think she must have been either the great-aunt or the grandmother. She was a gaunt woman with the marks of a long-held sorrow evident in her face. When younger, she must have had the same beautiful countenance as Jheru, but age and disenheartenment had withered it into a collapsed mass of wrinkles. When she saw us enter, her body stiffened and she compressed her lips together. I saw her go through the disciplines of ettouara, the Art of Concealment, and I thought, She has had experience as a warrior. My heart sank. Well, there was bound to be someone here to whom this whole sorry circumstance meant more than it should.
Hessan seemed well aware of the woman's enmity. He took care to seat Sereth and myself next to Jheru, and himself took the chair next to Sereth so that we were in the middle. He had positioned us so that we were well down the table from the elderly woman, and on the same side so that we were concealed from her gaze. But I knew that she did not lift her eyes from us. Once, when a neighbor leaned forward to speak, I caught those eyes and they burned despite the film of cataract. Sereth too was conscious of it. She was tense and ate little. Jheru engaged me in conversation, for which I was grateful, and I was in any case genuinely interested in what he had to tell me of Tetherau and its families. I lingered in the hall after the meal and talked to Jheru, rising only when the candles had burned far down. I did not see the elderly woman, whose name was Pera Cathra, depart but I knew as soon as she was no longer there.
Sereth had excused herself early and gone up to bed, but when I entered my own chamber I found her sitting on the window seat in the darkness, looking over the roofs to a sea bright with the image of the stars. The night air was chilled by the passage of the rain, now swept far out to sea, and Sereth had wrapped her long coat around her for warmth. I sat down opposite her and said nothing.
At last, she said, “She hates me, the old lady. Pera Cathra. She blames me.”
“There was bound to be someone,” I said. “The family holds nothing against you except the cost of the blood-price. No one else would blame you for what you couldn't help.” Her argument with her brother seemed to ring between us, unspoken. “You couldn't help it, Sereth.”
“But maybe I can't blame her, either, for feeling as she does.”
“It's still not—natural,” I protested, but my own voice echoed in my head. Just because something's natural doesn't mean you have to like it. “What if it had been your daughter, and Hessan had killed her? You wouldn't hold him accountable. It's understandable that she should grieve for a blood relative, but it isn't reasonable to blame you, Sereth. Children die every day. It's just the way of things. You used to say it yourself: if they come home, well and good. If they don't, no use in grieving.” I mimicked her abrupt tones, trying to make her laugh. She gave me a grudging smile. Then I added, since I wanted to be fair, “But then, I've never fathered a child. Perhaps I don't really understand.”
Sereth made an impatient gesture. “There's not much to understand. You get pregnant at one of the masques because your body tells you it's the right time, and then you give birth and you dote on the little thing for a few months, until it can walk and eat by itself, and then you wake up one morning and all that feeling is gone. You think, well, now is the right time for the baby to go. And once it's gone, you hope that it will do well, you usually know whether it lives or not, you're obviously thrilled when it comes back again, but once that last tie is gone, that's that. You forget, really. It's not like the love you feel for your siblings, or for your friends. I want more than anything for my daughter to come home because that's my gift to our family, the only child I'll ever be able to bear if what Luta tells me is right, but she'll be her own person when she comes back, like any of us. And I'll be so pleased to see her, but eventually it will pass to the back of my mind that I'm her mother.” She paused. “When I was very young, not long back from the world, I was extremely rude and asked old Sarrathar if she was my grandmother. She took it quite well. She laughed instead of smacking me round the ear, and said she couldn't remember. I don't even recall why I wanted to know. Maybe I just wanted to be awkward.”
“Pera Cathra can't be the child's mother. She's too old, surely? It must be some unnatural thing. I don't think she's a satahrach. Yet maybe she does remember who her descendants are, has some peculiar attachment to them.” I looked out over the sea. “That woman who wrote Mevennen's book tells of a conversation with a ghost. It's an old story in their family. She said the children of spirits are raised in their houses and the children are tractable and helpless, and remain connected to their parents for life.” Mentioning ghosts made me uneasy. I glanced into the shadows, but there was nothing there.
“What a peculiar idea. You'd be only half present, not your own person. Not real …” Sereth mused.
I rose and stretched. “I wouldn't worry about it, Ser. Go to bed.” She looked, suddenly, very tired.
“So should you,” she said. On her way out of the room, she turned. “You like Jheru, don't you?”
“I suppose so.”
“You suppose so.” She grinned suddenly. “Fight you for him?”
I laughed. “No, no, no,” I said. I thought no more of it, falling asleep as soon as I laid my head on the pillow.
5. Shu Gho
Shu Gho moved through the silent house, feeling like a ghost, indeed. She had followed Eleres and the others up through the town, taking care to keep out of sight. She might be unremarked by many, but she did not think that she had mistaken the look of alarm that had crossed Eleres's features, back there on the dock. She did not want him to feel—well, haunted—but it was hard to see how this might be avoided. Outsider though she was, Shu had noted the air of tension in the household, and she did not want to contribute to it. Earlier in the evening, she had made a thorough search of the house, ending up in the kitchen, but she had not succeeded in finding Eleres. She hovered now in the darkness of a doorway, watching, but no one paid her any attention. A number of people were preparing a meal: a predominance of meat, Shu noticed. Both men and women seemed to be cooking: good, thought Shu, pleased not to find the women slaving away on their own as in so many pretechnological societies. She wondered whether their apparent emancipation had anything to do with their curious method of child-rearing; freed from the burden of children, perhaps the women had taken on other roles. She could not help feeling a little repulsed, however, by the sight of so much flesh in the raw: not the neat, farmed blocks of protein of her own world, but bone and sinew and blood. She was glad when it was finally placed in its iron pots, and the table scrubbed clean.
Dinner appeared to be a stew, and Shu had to admit that it smelled good. When the kitchen was empty, she appropriated a bowl and went out into the courtyard to eat it, feeling guilty. Theft was not an offense that she'd ever com-mitted before, but it was better than her own bland rations. She'd pay them back in some way, she promised herself, and then wondered how the unfamiliar food might affect her digestion.
The air was redolent of rain and green growth, with an undernote of the sea. The vines which laced themselves around the pillars of the veranda dripped water. The meat stew was hot and spiced and for the first time Shu was truly glad that she had left Irie St Syre, on this last adventure of her life. She sat out in the courtyard until twilight fell, and then she went back inside.
It seemed dinner was over, but she could see Eleres still sitting in the dining hall, idly spinning the stem of a wineglass in his hand. Unfortunately, he was not alone, and ghost or no ghost, Shu was wary of approaching him in company. He was talking to a young ma
n in blue. Shu gazed at the stranger, struck by the beauty of the alien, androgynous face. She was again suddenly pleased that the colonists hadn't simply reverted to primitive type; the men all brute warriors, the women confined to kitchen and childbed. She watched Eleres, his gaze fixed on the other's face, and smiled. He was a good listener, Shu thought. But now he was rising and coming across to the doorway, still deep in conversation. They were talking politics. Shu caught references to some northern council, a meeting before winter set in. Mevennen had explained the political structure according to some complex sequence of blood relationships that Shu could not even begin to untangle. Politics, she decided, would have to wait until she got a clearer picture of society as a whole.
She followed Eleres upstairs, and she would have approached him then, but the tall, beautiful girl was waiting for him, curled in a seat by the window, and he shut the door behind him. Shu could hear voices, but it seemed a shameful thing to listen at doors, and she had already turned eavesdropper a little too much for her liking. Frustrated, she walked along the corridor until she found an unoccupied room, some kind of reading place with a couch, and there she slept.
She awoke to the sound of footsteps retreating down the corridor, but when she rolled from the couch in alarm and crossed to open the thin paper window, she saw that it was just before dawn. Shu closed the window again. One advantage of age, she supposed, was that you seemed to need less sleep—just as well, really. She had passed an unsettled night, filled with dreams, and she had no great urge to return to the couch. Still feeling stiff, she wandered back down into the courtyard, seeking fresh air in lieu of tea. The coldness of early morning doused her face. A thin crescent moon hung in the graying sky, and a figure was standing beneath the shadows of the vines. As Shu paused uncertainly in the doorway, the figure turned to look at her and Shu found herself gazing into Eleres ai Mordha's pale face. He started. His hand was on the hilt of his sword so quickly that she did not even see him move. Then he let his hand fall, and stood watching her warily. Over the last day or so, Shu had grown strangely accustomed to remaining unseen and it was unnerving to be looked at like this.
