The table was so smooth. Ladhra tried to see a line or nick in its wood and could not. “So I’ve failed some sort of test,” she said after a moment. “Because I didn’t even know it was a test.”
Galha rose and closed the drawer. Its latch caught with a tiny, final sound. She remained standing, though Ladhra, still staring at the table, only saw this peripherally. “You must not be sullen,” Galha said. “You must never show an excess of sensitivity, for people will—”
“This is us,” Ladhra said. She lifted her head, anticipating anger and needing to see it. “Us alone. Surely I can be permitted an honest emotion in the privacy of our own chambers?”
Galha’s lips were pressed thin and pale, and her voice, when it came, was higher than it usually was. “Privacy? Not here, Ladhra. Not in your life, though it may have seemed like something you had when you were a child, running around the palace like a wild thing.” A tremor ran through these last words. She paused and swallowed and looked briefly at Malhan. When she continued, her voice was steady again. “When you were a child, you believed you were alone. Now that you are a woman, you must entertain no such illusions.” She took four long strides around the table and stopped with her back to her daughter. “I fear for you. You have apparently not learned the many lessons I have tried to teach you, and yet you may be called upon to rule sooner than either of us expect. And what if you should prove to be the one blessed with Sarhenna the First’s mindpowers, as no queen since her has? What then? I fear for this realm.”
Ladhra’s chair scraped as she pushed herself away from the table. She felt a fluttering in her throat. She wondered whether Galha would see it, and was furious with herself for wondering. “I am sorry that I disappoint you,” she said over the fluttering. “But how am I supposed to take responsibility if you give me none? How can I truly learn these lessons you want to teach me if you never let me try things?” Her own voice was perilously close to cracking, but she did not stop speaking. “You keep me beside you nearly every moment of every day, and you say this will help me learn—but all it does is bore me. Let me learn how to be a worthy queen, even if I’m not destined to be the one with mindpowers. Let me go into the city and meet my people, or travel on my own to another Queensfolk city to see how it’s governed, or accept trade goods here at the palace in your place—anything, as long as I’m doing something!”
The Queen glanced at Malhan and they smiled at each other. “My dear,” she said, turning back to Ladhra, “I am pleased that you at least have some of my spirit.” She took a step forward, her hand raised to touch Ladhra’s cheek, but Ladhra walked past her, past Malhan. She pulled the door open.
“And I’m pleased that I amuse you,” she said. She wanted to say more, but she was already in the corridor and would not look back at them. She walked quickly; she heard Galha call “Let her—” but that was all; she was beyond the voice, following the staircase that would take her away.
Ladhra meant to go to the Queenswood; she wanted shadow and silence and the illusion of solitude. But when she stepped into the corridor that led to the western doors, someone called her name. Run, she thought. Just run. She slowed. The call came again, closer, and she stood still.
“Thank you, Princess.” Ladhra frowned at the fishperson’s watery voice and gesturing hands, which were covered with scales. She had seen the fishfolk in the marketplace motioning to each other. She knew that they spoke in hand signals when they were in the deep waters of their homes, but surely they could use their voices when they were together in the air? This one continued, “I am W—” (completely unintelligible names). “I translate for”—its white eyes darted around the empty hallway—“the prisoner.”
“Yes?” Ladhra said, looking past it at the sunlight that swam on the flagstones by the door. The rains had passed, but the earth beneath the trees would still smell damp. “What do you want?”
It glanced again around the corridor. “I am sorry to seek you out in this way,” it said quietly, “but your mother would not listen to my words, and I fear she will suffer for this. And so I come to you.”
Ladhra said, “And? What were these words that the Queen did not listen to?” She felt the silence suddenly, and the stillness of the bright stone. I’m alone now, she thought, and leaned closer to the fishperson.
“The prisoner is dying. At first, as you know, the Queen visited him every day, and each time she brought water to give him. But when he would not answer her questions, she began to come less often—and only she gives him water. I told her of his increasing weakness, but she refuses to allow me or anyone else to aid him. If he dies, she will find out nothing—so I thought that you . . . that you might. . . .”
“Well?” Ladhra demanded, though she felt the shape of the words that were coming, and her heart raced.
“That you, who have such influence, might prevail upon her to help him. You seem wise and strong and not so . . . determined as she is. I wanted to come to you rather than secretly to provide him with water. I wanted you to know my honesty and tell her of it. But most of all I wanted you to impress upon her the prisoner’s fragility, since I cannot.”
Ladhra took two steps past the fishperson. Her palms were slick with sweat; she pressed them against her leggings. “I may do all of these things,” she said slowly so that her thoughts would have time to grow solid before she spoke them. “I may. But first,” she went on, turning back to look at the fishperson, “I will go myself to see him. I will bring water to him.”
The fishperson walked over to her—though it didn’t walk, really, it glided, as if it were swimming through the air. It stood in the sunlight. Ladhra had to close her eyes briefly against the dazzle of its scales.
“I will take us to him by a different path,” she said, “one that is not guarded. Until I have ascertained his condition, I will attempt to avoid involving my mother the Queen.”
“I see,” the fishperson said. Ladhra thought, Do you? I very nearly do not.
“Well, then,” she said. “Good. Come with me”—and she walked quickly away from the doors that would have taken her, alone, into the Queenswood.
Mallesh lay at the bottom of the well and looked up at the sky. The circle of brilliant blue wavered as he breathed. He watched the bubbles dissolve and the water smooth, and then the distant sunlight returned to taunt him. From time to time the hole above darkened and a bucket came clattering down, and he had to kick away from the wall, into the tunnel beyond until it had been pulled up again. Each time, he glided back to his place at the foot of the shaft and watched the bucket’s slow, bouncing upward progress; each time, he imagined grasping it, pulling so hard and so suddenly that the person holding its rope would hurtle down into the water.
He was here because of the sky, and because he was alone. He would have thought it inconceivable, back in his own land, that he would seek out solitude from the army under his command, but this is what he did now, at least once a day. The scribes seemed to sneer at him—at all of the selkesh, but at him in particular. Baldhron treated him with respect, though Mallesh was never sure what the man said when he turned and spoke to his own people. Sometimes he smiled in a way Mallesh distrusted, and then all the Queenspeople smiled a bit; so perhaps even Baldhron was mocking him.
The selkesh were also beginning to show signs of disrespect. They muttered to each other in small tight groups that broke reluctantly apart when Mallesh approached. Several times he had come upon gatherings of them beneath the water; he had watched them direct each other to distant tunnels before he slipped among them and they scattered with false smiles and excuses.
“We were talking of home. That is all.”
“We were going to see the other waterways—these ones are dull to us now.”
They lie, Mallesh thought. They are talking about me. Back in the jungle, or on the earth of Nasranesh, he would have attempted to talk commandingly to them of faith and leadership. Here, snared in rock so far
below the sky, he fled from them.
Mallesh watched the well circle dim for a moment. A cloud. He drew a thin stream of water into his mouth to remind himself that he was thankful for it, and for this place—but he thought again, A cloud, and remembered mist dissolving from the treetops around the gathering pool, and again he cursed himself for the yearning that made him weak.
He swam back to the main selkesh pool very slowly, turning his body around in the water. When he surfaced, he saw some of his men on ledges and rafts, sleeping with their legs in the pool, and he saw others who were awake and waiting. He knew they were waiting: they were still and silent, standing in a line against the wall nearest him.
“What is it?” he asked them as he pulled himself onto one of the sleeping rafts he had ordered them to make, before Baldhron had told them they could no longer go to the jungle for wood and plants.
One of his men lifted his hand, as Mallesh had instructed them to do, if they wished to speak. “We are . . . very hungry,” the man said. “Hungry and weak.”
Mallesh stared at the man’s fingers. The fans between them looked thin and red-gold in the lantern light. “You know,” he said, standing up carefully, “that I can’t allow anyone to go back to the jungle to gather food. Baldhron has told us that the Queen is sending her guards out of the city to search for us. She knows there are many of us, though Baldhron’s palace contact has assured him that Leish did not give her this information.” He saw their eyes flicker at each other when he spoke his brother’s name. He continued more loudly, “The scribes are bringing us as much food as they can—and we still have cut seavine from home. This will have to suffice until we go above.” His own innards ached with emptiness, but he did not speak of this, or even think much about it.
“As to going above,” the man—Who is he?—said, “we would like to know why you keep us here when Leish is a captive. Why has no attempt been made to free him? If the Queenspeople will not help us with this, we should do it alone.”
His last words came very quickly, and when he had finished, he bent his head. His seven companions were already gazing down at their own feet. Mallesh looked at the row of them and swallowed a shout.
“Leish,” he said, “is alive and safe. The Queen will keep him alive because she needs him—this is what Baldhron has told us, and I believe him. Baldhron has aided us and we will continue to require his aid—do not forget this.” He wanted to spit to clear his mouth of these last words, but he smiled instead, and waited for the men in front of him to smile back, reassured and strengthened by his own certainty.
“What if Baldhron is lying?” another of the men asked, still staring at his feet. “About Leish, about helping us? Why should we believe him? And,” he added, looking up and into Mallesh’s eyes, “what would we have done if we hadn’t met this person whom we now need so much?”
Mallesh imagined himself lunging across the water, grasping these men in his hands—their necks or forearms, twisting and wrenching until they cried out his name. But he stayed still, perfectly still, so that the raft would not tip. He breathed until he was sure his voice would not tremble.
“Nasran has blessed us. She has steered us to people who will aid us—but not because we could not have triumphed on our own. No: because now our triumph will be greater. We will rule this new land, and our scribes will record our greatness with writing implements and words so exact that they will never confuse those who come after us. Think of our carvings at home—the oldest of these are mysteries to us now. But this writing will give our people and our deeds a kind of permanence we selkesh have never before known. This is why we will wait, as Baldhron has urged us to.” They were all looking at him now. He saw their fear and awe, and he almost smiled. “If you do not wish to be part of our victory, go home. Go back to Nasranesh and sit by your hearth pools and try to hear the song of this city that is so beautiful and so great.”
They shook their heads one by one, but before any of them could speak, Mallesh dove. He sliced to the bottom of the pool and out into a tunnel, and there he swam faster, so that the stone walls blurred and the water seemed as thin as air.
He had left the chamber to allow his words to echo among the men—but also because hearing his own lie had shocked him. “This is why we will wait, as Baldhron has urged us to.” Not entirely a lie, he thought as he sped through the water. But mostly. I tell my men to wait a bit and a bit more so that they will remember who it is that leads them. So that they will stop murmuring Leish’s name instead of mine.This thought was believable, nearly forgivable. But as Mallesh swam, he heard other words, buried, half-formed. He cried out in streams of bubbles and hammered at the walls with his fists, as if pain could dissolve these words that grew clearer with every river-breath: He may die he may die he may die. . . .
TWENTY-THREE
Leish hears nothing but singing. He hears so many songs: white stone and spray; ocean swells and blooming coral; even the quiet deep of his own hearth pool, ringed round with the sweetness of selkesh lifeblood. At first the songs of Nasranesh were faint, but they soon surged above the other notes, and he knew he was going home—back to the sunken city, to the river mud and the trailing vines and the leaves that smelled of mist at first light. He thinks he hears his mother and father and Mallesh, and even though he knows that he should not be able to hear their individual strands, he grasps at this singing and sends his own shining through the water toward them. Home, he sings, and he is washed in joy.
He hears his name. It is very clear, and he angles his head to this sound that is harsh and strange and spoken, not sung. “Leish, Leish”—the voice is not right, and it pulls him out of the water, spluttering and retching until the sea and all the songs are gone.
He opened his eyes and saw that she was with him, her dark hair falling around her face and shoulders. She held a golden horn crusted around its rim with jewels. She tipped it and he opened his mouth and tasted water. “Dallia,” he tried to say after he had drunk, “thank you—” but his voice was gone, and this woman, he now knew, was not Dallia. She was that other dark-haired woman, and he was lying in his own filth on hard dry stones, and he remembered everything, suddenly. He wanted to roll away from her as he had before, but the water kept flowing into his mouth, and he kept swallowing.
Wollshenyllosh,, the yllosh-woman, was kneeling beside him. He knew her name, though he did not remember when she had told it to him. He blinked at her, realized that it was she who held the drinking horn to his lips. The dark-haired woman was standing by the door. He felt dizzy and tried to focus his eyes on both of them in turn, to keep them motionless and solid.
The dark-haired woman spoke. “The Princess Ladhra bids you eat,” Wollshenyllosh said, and Leish saw his own hand reaching for the piece of fruit the yllosh-woman was extending to him. He bit, and his mouth filled with sweetness, and he cursed this pleasure and his heart, which still drummed within him. Now she will ask me questions, he thought, and waited again, sickness churning in his gut where the emptiness had been.
Long minutes later the chamber still rang with silence. He glanced at Ladhra through heavy-lidded eyes and saw that she was still standing beside the door, looking at him. She had not moved when his eyes closed fully. Wait, he thought weakly, already spinning into a sleep that would be dark and dreamless.
Ladhra came to him many times after this, most often alone, though occasionally with her mother and the silent, brown-clad man who always stood by the door. The Queen seldom visited Leish now, and when she did, she did not linger long. He noticed, as he grew stronger, that Ladhra did not look at him when she was with the Queen; she studied the floor or the wall above his head. She never spoke. Only Queen Galha spoke, in short, sharp words that Wollshenyllosh hardly needed to translate for him. Leish would shake his head and press his lips together, and the Queen would turn on her heel and sweep past the guards and her daughter, who still would not look at him.
But then Ladhra would com
e to the stone chamber on her own and stand by the door as Wollshenyllosh gave him water and food. Perhaps she and her mother expect me to break because of the water and the silence, he thought, but he did not believe this. There was no challenge in Ladhra’s eyes and no expectancy in her limbs. She simply stood and watched him as he watched her.
He waited for her. At first this was because of the jewelled horn and the fruit or bread or cheese; soon it was because of the woman who brought them. He sat up against the wall when she entered, even though his stiff skin cracked and bled a bit each time he did so. She looks like the sky, he thought once, or a living tree in a place that has been burned. He waited for her and pulled himself taller when she came and he forgot, while she was with him, that he should hate her.
One day she pointed at him and spoke. Wollshenyllosh said, “The Princess Ladhra wishes to know why your skin bleeds.”
Leish said in his new, splintered voice, “Tell her, then.”
Wollshenyllosh blinked and curled her own webbed hands against her sides before she turned to Ladhra. The yllosh-woman did not look back at Leish, after had finished speaking.
Ladhra left soon after, though she had not been with him very long. He lay down and slept and woke much later in the stone silence he had determined was the palace at night. Ladhra was kneeling beside him with a torch in her hand. He rolled his head on the ground and saw, blurrily at first, then more clearly, that he and Ladhra were alone in the chamber, and that the door was open.
“Come,” she said thickly in the yllosh language. “Leish—come with me.”
She had memorized the night palace as a child, slinking around corners, running so lightly that her bare feet made no sound on the moonlit flagstones. There were fewer guards at night, fewer torches and lanterns—and more shadows and wells of darkness that drowned familiar shapes. Lanara had always been worried that Creont would discover her empty bed; Ladhra had prowled alone.
The Silences of Home Page 20
