The Silences of Home

by The Silences of Home (v5. 0) (epub)

  As Pentaran attempted to calm himself, selkesh and scribes began to gather in the library. Mallesh swam to the bridge and held himself very tall in the water.

  “Where is my brother?” he said in a long, low hiss. Pentaran did not look at him.

  It’s a good thing I was here at this hour, Baldhron thought as he laid a steadying hand on Pentaran’s shoulder. The water-man might have killed him for his lack of coherence.

  “Tell us,” Baldhron said, patient because Mallesh was not—and Pentaran straightened and took a breath and told them.

  He spoke quickly, in the Queenstongue. Baldhron repeated the words in Mallesh’s language, letting this activity blunt the edge of his own sudden fear. When he had finished translating, he looked down at Mallesh. “What we must do,” he began, but the water-man slipped silently beneath the pool, and Baldhron’s voice trailed away. Queensrot, he thought savagely—but before he could turn to any of the others who were waiting, Mallesh launched himself bellowing onto the ledge.

  “Mallesh!” Baldhron shouted as the big man ran toward them, but Mallesh’s roar was the only sound in the chamber. He came to a quivering halt in front of Baldhron.

  “This time,” Mallesh said, “I want him.”

  Pentaran whimpered. Baldhron wondered what Mallesh would do if he cried, “Yes, please take him! Eat him for all I care!” He said instead, “No. Mallesh, be still now. Listen. Queensguards didn’t see Pentaran; they only noticed selkesh men—Dashran for killing, Leish because he was with Dashran. The same as him. Pentaran was right to run away. He had to tell us.”

  Mallesh was panting; Baldhron could feel the hair on top of his head stirring. “He could have fought for Leish,” Mallesh said.

  Baldhron shook his head in a way he hoped would suggest patience and solemnity rather than incredulity. “No. A Queensman cannot fight a Queensman—or four. Four! Pentaran would die. Or the Queensfolk would take him too, scribe and selkesh together—very, very bad for all of us.” Mallesh finally met Baldhron’s eyes. “Of course you are angry and upset. But we must all be slow and careful now.”

  “Yllosh!” Mallesh spat. His people cried out the name as well, like a curse. “It is their fault! They provoked Dashran as they tried to provoke me on the ocean. They mocked me there, and now they have—”

  “Wait,” Baldhron said. The fear was cold now, and he shivered as if he had just emerged from the water. “You met ocean fishfolk? You spoke to them?”

  “Yes,” Mallesh said, his answer a grudging question.

  “Then the ocean fishfolk will tell their lake kin, and they will tell Luhran fishfolk, and they will tell the Queen. The Queen will look at Leish and Dashran, and she will know there are many more. She will. . . .” He could not think of the word in their horrid, slithery language. He stood, numb and open-mouthed until Mallesh said, “She will suspect.”

  “Yes,” Baldhron said, forcing thoughts out of his numbness. Thoughts, words, certainties.

  “So we must attack now,” Mallesh cried. Selkesh and scribes called out together, their two languages made one by their many voices.

  Baldhron held up his hand and the noise abated. “No,” he said, and he smiled as he began to tell them what they would do instead.

  The messenger found them on Queen Galha’s private balcony. She and Ladhra were leaning over a game of arrowmark, talking quietly. Malhan was sitting by the door, sharpening writing sticks and dropping them into a tray at his feet. Ladhra heard this rattling, and she heard ivy hissing in the wind that still breathed last night’s rain. She smiled at these steady, comforting sounds—and then frowned as she heard rapid footsteps and a shout from the Queensguard posted inside the door.

  “My Queen,” the messenger gasped when she had stepped onto the balcony, “a Queensguard is dead and a stranger has done it.”

  There are no strangers here, Ladhra thought as, only moments later, she followed her mother down the tower steps. We know every race and creature of the realm, and some from beyond it. She tried to keep up with Galha when they reached the corridor that led to the Throne Chamber, but she could not.

  “Malhan,” the Queen snapped over her shoulder, “stand in front of your throne—don’t sit. Ladhra, hold my bow and quiver and be ready to hand them to me.”

  Ladhra said, “Yes, Mother,”—but Galha was listening to a Queensguard, nodding, her head and body angled away from her daughter.

  The Throne Chamber was muted today, with no sunlight to strike fire from the gems or rainbows from the water. Ladhra had always hated the end of the rainy season, and Lanara had always scolded her for it. “Why can’t you enjoy this grey?” she had said once. “It’s cool and it’s gentle and it’s different.” Ladhra had scowled at her. “Different, yes, but Nara, it’s grey! It’s dull and ugly. I like my ‘different’ to be pretty.” She remembered Lanara’s laughter and her rolling eyes, and she thought, Why have I been angry at her? I’ll write to her as soon as this is over.

  “Bring them in,” Galha said, and Ladhra wondered again at how the Queen’s voice, even pitched low, filled this vast room. When Ladhra had been a girl she had believed that the water creatures in the channels and fountains here went still when Galha spoke, listening, waiting, admiring as Ladhra had (such a simple, childish admiration; she hardly remembered it now).

  The door to the Throne Chamber opened with a crash that made Ladhra blink. She saw seven figures, but they were blurred by the fountain spray. She squinted and leaned on Galha’s bow as she tried to see them better. They came around the central pool—four Queensguards and one fishperson forming a knot around the two other figures as they walked. Then the Queen called, “Stop there! Show me the strangers!” and the knot drew apart.

  They are like lizards. Dark green tough-looking skin; narrow faces; round eyes. Tall, strong, man-lizards—but their hands and feet look like a frog’s. I must see how Malhan describes them. . . . Ladhra realized she had taken a step back even though the lizard-men were still at least thirty paces away.

  “Ladhra—my bow, one arrow,” Galha said quietly. Ladhra passed her the bow and fumbled in the quiver. The arrows clattered and chimed before she drew one out.

  “Which one killed my Queensguard?” The Queensguards pointed to one of the lizard-men and backed away from him, pulling the other stranger with them. The murderer stood alone. Ladhra saw that his mouth was working (words, skin, bile?). He closed his round white eyes.

  “Look at me!” Queen Galha cried, and his eyes opened as the arrow flew and found his heart.

  Ladhra heard her own gasp over the sound of his body falling to the stone. How did she do that? I didn’t see her nock the arrow or draw back the bowstring—I didn’t hear her . . . Ladhra turned to Galha, who was motionless, even to her fingers on the bow. Ladhra noticed for the first time that her mother’s skin was the very same red-brown as the wood.

  “Bring the other one to me.”

  The remaining lizard-man looked calmer than the other had—but perhaps not; his features were just strange enough to be unreadable, or misread. The Queensguards prodded him over the last two bridges and across the crystal-woven stone until he was standing in front of Galha. She handed her bow back to Ladhra and took two steps forward. She and the lizard-man were of a height; they looked, straight and steady, into each other’s eyes. Ladhra waited for him to glance down, but he did not.

  “He does not understand our language?” the Queen said without looking away from him.

  “No, my Queen,” said one of the Queensmen. “But his own language is close to that of the fishfolk. We have brought one of these fishfolk with us so that you may question the murderer’s companion. This is the same fishperson that spoke with the strangers, before the killing.”

  “Tell me about the killing,” Galha said, and the four Queensguards did, while the fishperson stared at the ground and the lizard-man stared at the Queen. Look away from her, you fool, thought Ladhra, but h
e did not.

  When the explanation had been given, Galha was silent for a long time. “My Queen?” one of the Queenswomen ventured. “Would you like—”

  “Take him away from here,” Galha said in a voice that did not rise this time above the sounds of water and leaping fish. “Lock him in the chamber beneath the north wall and give him nothing—no food, no water—until I come to him. Post no guards. I want no one else to know of him; and you must not call attention to yourselves by altering your own routines. His presence here will remain secret until I have decided how best to proceed.”

  The fishperson lifted its head and opened its mouth, though it did not speak right away. Since her mother did not seem to notice this, Ladhra said, “Yes? What would you say to the Queen?”

  “It is only. . . .” the fishperson began in its voice that sounded like phlegm and bubbles, “that . . . to leave him without water for too long will cause him hurt. Maybe even death.”

  “Ah,” the Queen said, “I see,” and the lizard-man looked away from her at last as she began to smile.

  Mallesh was bending over him, smoothing mud into his skin, dribbling water into his mouth. Leish watched the water tremble before it fell. He opened his mouth wide but felt nothing. Mallesh bent closer. He was whispering, but Leish heard nothing except the dripping of the water he could not taste. “Help,” he tried to say, but his throat was swollen shut. As he struggled to breathe, Mallesh’s fingers came down around Leish’s neck and pressed. This he felt—and he writhed on the damp jungle ground, his own fingers clawing at rotten leaves that were suddenly stone, then coral—

  He opened his eyes and saw Dallia. She was suspended in front of him, her dark hair drifting around her like silken seavine. Her hands and feet were moving in tiny circles that kept her above the coral floor—but not coral, Leish saw: stone. And stone walls behind her that seemed to be dry, though she floated and bubbles came from her mouth when she said his name. She smiled and reached for him as she so often had, among the bones of the Old City near the shore. He reached too, and was nearly touching her when a door in the stone behind her opened.

  Dallia vanished, and the water with her. Leish curled his body up as tightly as a snail’s and tried to swallow something that was not sand. Even his saliva was sand. He would crumble and scatter—

  “Get up.”

  He squeezed smaller.

  “Get up, selkesh.” There were hands on him, shaking and prying and unfolding him. He opened his eyes and saw that he was standing. Two Queensmen were holding him under his arms.

  “Now.” He recognized this yllosh-woman. He stared at her, waited for her and the two Queensmen to disappear as Mallesh and Dallia had. But these people remained—and then, abruptly, there were more.

  The Queen walked into the stone chamber. The Queen and the younger woman who had been with her in the enormous room of water and light. The daughter, Leish thought, struggling to remember the information cruel-mouthed Baldhron had given them. And the man—the Queen’s mate, the one who writes things. The man stayed by the door; the women came so close to Leish that he could see the liquid sheen of their eyes. Brown, he saw, and thought he could almost taste the colour. He watched the Queen’s lips move as he had in that other room, and he heard her voice again, speaking words he did not understand.

  “I know you call yourself selkesh.” Leish moved his head, which felt like a boulder, and looked at the yllosh-woman who had spoken. “The Queen says this. She also says: I know you come from a land called Nasranesh, across the Eastern Sea.”

  It hurt to think. His head ached because his body did; and his thoughts stabbed insistently against this larger ache. So the yllosh-woman by the fountain, he thought slowly, this is she—and she has told the Queen who we are. Nothing is safe any more. He remembered that long ago he had dreamed his land bleeding and dying; that he had woken in Dallia’s arms.

  “I know you and your companion were not alone. I know there are many of you, and that you crossed the Eastern Sea in boats. I know you have never before left your land.”

  He had known. He had dreamed of rivers and plants screaming; he had seen Mallesh’s desire, and the boats growing skeletons and skin by the shore. He had known—but only later. Not that first bright afternoon, when he had heard a song so vivid and distant that it had to be spoken of. He had been a boy—O Nasran, just a boy, proud and afraid.

  “Where is your army now?”

  She was very tall—taller than Baldhron or any of his men. Her daughter was a bit shorter, her skin not quite as brown as her mother’s. Leish wondered whether her long black hair would drift like seavine in water.

  “Speak, selkesh.”

  His head dropped heavily to his chest. The Queensguards jostled him. One of them grasped his chin and tried to force it up. His head was a boulder or the stump of a fallen tree.

  When the water dripped onto the back of his neck, he swung his head up and around, looking for it, knowing it would vanish. But he felt it again—on his arm this time—and saw that the yllosh-woman was holding a waterskin, tipping it over Leish’s cracked, dry flesh. “Drink,” she said—her own word, not the Queen’s—and angled the mouth of the skin against his lips.

  He managed one long swallow before the Queen spoke sharply and the water was taken away. He felt it gush out of his mouth and down his front, and he gave a hoarse cry because he knew that it was already drying.

  “Tell me where your army is and you will have more.” The Queen turned the skin in lazy circles so that the water within it sloshed. Several drops spattered onto the floor.

  “No.” He had to try several times to say the word. When it finally emerged, it was barely more than a whisper. The Queen was smiling before the yllosh-woman spoke the word.

  “Thank you,” Galha said.

  He hung between the Queensguards and gaped his confusion, and still she smiled. “You may not have told me where your army is, but you have confirmed that there is one. For which I thank you. I will return later with a bit more water, and you will respond with a bit more information, and soon this will be over.”

  She murmured something to her daughter that the yllosh-woman did not translate, and the Princess too smiled. Leish thought, Mallesh will kill you both, and just for a moment his hatred of them was so pure that he believed this. But then they left, and the hatred turned to him in the empty room, and he clawed at his own flesh until blood dried with the water on the floor.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Ladhra ran her fingers slowly down the red wood of the Queensstudy drawers. Her lips moved as she read the dates on each drawer. “Do not murmur as you read,” her mother had said when Ladhra was a child. “And do not let your lips tell others what you are reading. Words are for you alone, unless you choose to share them with others aloud.”

  “Or I could share them with my writing,” Ladhra had said. “I could write to my people and they could read—”

  “No,” Galha had interrupted, “you know you could not. Not with anyone outside the palace—for most of our folk cannot read. You can, and scribes and Queensguards and their children can, as can those who do my work far away. But that is all. I have told you this before, my dear: remember it this time. Remember that words are the Queen’s power—and written ones are the greatest mystery of all, to our people. You must guard this mystery well.”

  Ladhra pressed her lips together, her cheeks as flushed now as they had been every time Galha had scolded her as a child. She’s not even here, Ladhra thought as she pulled open one of the drawers, and yet I still obey her.

  She frowned down at the pages that lay stacked before her. Malhan’s tiny, neat letters flowed across the parchment. She skimmed the close-set lines, bending down to see them better.

  “I’m sorry, Ladhra,” said Galha from behind her, “that in my brief absence you required something. May I help you find it now?”

  Ladhra straightened, flushing again, a child aga
in, and always. Her mother was standing beside the table, the fingers of her right hand resting lightly on the wood.

  “I didn’t hear you come back in,” Ladhra said, even though this was not an answer, and she knew that it would make her mother shake her head, just once, and look away from her as if to gather patience from the air.

  “That is not an answer,” the Queen said, her eyes lifted up to the arrowslit windows that we so high and so useless.

  “No, I’m sorry. I was looking for the record describing the strangers’ arrival. I’m going to write to Lanara and I wanted to see how Malhan. . . .” Her voice trailed away as Galha lifted her hand from the table and waved it in a languid, looping shape.

  “You’ll find no such record. Malhan has not written of this event.”

  Ladhra shook her own head. She glanced at the double doors. They were closed, and Malhan stood with his back against them. He was looking at Galha.

  “But,” Ladhra said, “this happened two weeks ago, and he’s such a quick writer, even though he has to record everything. He writes especially well when he describes momentous things like Queenswrit Eve—so I wanted to see how he’d describe the strangers. The selkesh. I thought I’d look for this while you were gone, so that we could discuss it later. . . .” She looked down at the parchment again, as if the words would be there now, beneath the date, as if her mother had been wrong.

  “Come, child, sit with me here”—and Ladhra did, still staring at the open drawer. “It’s true that Malhan watches and remembers everything, but he does not write everything. At night he sits with me here, and we decide together what should be written. This is a precious time, and a vitally important one. You will value it as I do when it is your turn to rule.”

  “But the selkesh are strangers. You . . . justice was done when one of them died, and the other is now our prisoner—and yet none of this has been written?”

  “You will discover,” the Queen said, “that sometimes you must know how a story ends before you tell it. This discernment is one of the greatest skills a Queen possesses.” A tiny frown puckered the skin between her eyes. “I myself had ascertained the truth of this before I was your age and without direct guidance from my mother. I had hoped that you would display a similarly subtle wit.”