The Silences of Home

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

  The Queenshouse shone. Every window was open, blazing with candles set in holders of gem-studded gold and silver. Banners of green and blue silk had been hung from the upper windows and fluttered gently against the stone. Queensguards lounged in the doorway, and many stood above as well, on the central balcony. Aldron lifted his head to look at them—but not at them, Alea realized as she too looked up.

  Queen Galha was sitting at the balcony’s railing. Her chair was high-backed and wooden. Its sides, where her hands rested, were carved and painted, though Alea could not see their shapes or colours. The Queen glittered as her candles did, as the fires below her did, built high to honour her.

  “Let’s go,” Alea said quietly, even though the noise around them would have masked a shout. “Quickly, Aldron.” He did not move his eyes from Galha. He followed her hands, raised to sketch an accompaniment to her words; he followed her angling head and her smile. Alea sought out hatred in his face, or even fear—but instead she saw something far and cold. “Love,” she said, touching his cheek despite her own fear, “what did she say to you? What did she promise you, if you did her bidding?”

  He wrenched his gaze back from where it had been. He turned to Alea, recognized her. “Nothing,” he whispered.

  She wanted to laugh, or snap, “Why should you lie to me?”—something easy and angry that would remind them both of the way they had been. She did not. She cupped one hand beneath the curve of Alnissa’s body and drew Aldron away with the other. Away from the Queen and her docks and her ships; away from the fires, though these extended upriver for a time, until the houses crowded in against the banks; up beneath the lit windows of these houses to where there was darkness at last, and the river widening free under stars and wind-bent trees. Away from the river then too—the three of them, alone.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Nellyn remembered waking with joy, hearing it in Lanara’s humming or the strokes of her writing stick. He remembered it in voices in the kitchen and in the scent of rising bread and burned-down candles. It had been in silence as well. But now he woke in silence that was heavy, and he heard no joy, and felt none. It was late summer, and he lay bathed in sweat beneath his light sheet—yet he was chilled, had been since Alea and Aldron had left. Lanara had disappeared then. It was as if she had gone somewhere without her body, which stayed near Nellyn, breathing and sometimes eating, but empty. He did not disturb the quiet of this body; he waited, as he always did when he was unsure or unready—but this time the waiting was difficult to bear. He was hollow with loneliness. When she had left the shonyn village, he had felt this loneliness. Now, though, he could see her, and feel her stillness as she pretended to be asleep.

  One day he woke to a sound. He lay and listened. When the sound did not come again he rose and dressed and went downstairs, his bare feet light on the wood. He intended to go to the kitchen to make Lanara a meal (she would not have eaten yet, although it was well past noon), but he stopped at Aldron and Alea’s sleeping floor. Lanara was there, sitting cross-legged on the pallet. Her mouth was clamped over the knuckles of one hand. Her sobs were muffled, but he saw her shake with them, and he heard one, broken and dry.

  There were two knives in front of her on the pallet. He saw when he drew closer that one was plain and the other inlaid with strands of gold and green stones. He knelt before her and said her name.

  “They’re Aldron’s,” she said, from behind her hand. “Galha gave him this simple one at the Queenshouse before we left for the Raiders’ Land. Aldron killed a fishperson with it.”

  “Why?” Nellyn asked. It was not a word he often used—but he needed her to talk, to be Lanara.

  “I. . . .” she shook her head, “I don’t remember. I think it was trying to escape. Aldron seemed upset, afterward, that he had killed it.”

  “And the other dagger?” Nellyn felt slow and clumsy, trying to lead her speaking—but she did not seem to notice.

  “She gave it to him in her cabin, after he killed the fishperson. As a reward, I think. She valued him, you see—his skill, his willingness to follow her, even though he was not a Queensman.” She raised her eyes to Nellyn’s. He returned her gaze, though he wanted to look away—at the window, perhaps, or at one of Alea’s glass vases: somewhere clear and calm. I have never wanted to avoid her eyes before, he thought. Slow, clumsy, and now afraid as well.

  “Don’t you have any other questions for me, Nellyn?” she said, her eyes so bright, so expectant.

  “No. What questions should I have?”

  She laughed. It started as a tremor that could have been sobbing but was not; when it rose from her belly to her throat, he knew this. “What should . . . why not try ‘why do you weep so for this other man?’ or ‘what have you done?’”

  He took a very long, slow breath. “Do you want me to ask these questions?”

  Her laughter was changing. It was sobbing, as he had thought it had been before—or perhaps it was all the same. “I didn’t think so—but all these weeks have passed, and I can’t bear it, I can’t have this secret, it’s hurting me. . . .”

  “Tell me, then.” His voice sounded very steady. It was strange, that his voice and thoughts could feel different from one another. “Tell me,” he said again, and waited.

  Lanara watched Nellyn. She had been watching him for two days as he walked, pacing around the back of the signal tower even during the hottest part of the day. He had only come inside to perform his duties in the lightroom and on the writing floor, and when she had climbed up to relieve him, he was already gone. Outside again, probably, sitting on the back balcony, staring at the cliff. When he wasn’t pacing he was doing this. He was doing it now, his hands placed lightly on his knees, his head held straight and motionless. His entire body was motionless. She watched him and felt her own limbs twitching. Even her skin was restless, it seemed, prickling and itchy.

  She had nearly gone out to him several times. “Please,” she had imagined saying, “speak to me. Stay with me.” Her fear kept her away. What did I say? she thought, reaching back two short days and finding nothing but blur, and more fear. What did he say?

  She had told him that she and Aldron had been lovers. She had told him that she loved Aldron—but that could not be; it was not true. Or maybe it was. Even if it was, it did not matter: she loved Nellyn. She had told him that too—she must have. She would. As soon as he came inside she would go to him and tell him and he would hold her, calm her as he always did.

  She walked down to the kitchen, sat before a platter of cheese and bread. Her stomach and head felt thick with sickness, as if she had been drunk for two days instead of sleepless and afraid.

  “Lanara.”

  She looked up so quickly that he swam in her eyes for a moment. Her throat was dry—no voice, now that he was here with her. But she did not need it: he was talking, talking, too many words for a shonyn.

  “The shonyn say the river is within each of us and must be sought out when body or mind are not calm. I have not been able to find it—not really since the day I left my people. I thought this was a loss, like the others, that I could bear and even understand. But now I feel it is not. I cannot find the river in me—only confusion and noise.”

  “This is just change.” She did not know how these words had come so swiftly out of her silence. “Remember when you first understood time? You felt mad. You told me, when you found me in Luhr: you felt overwhelmed with change. This is the same. It’s overwhelming, but it will pass.”

  “No.” He swallowed, opened and closed his hands. “Or yes. Perhaps I fear either way. I do not know my mind—that is why I must return to my people. Perhaps I will find my river there, and know again how to be.”

  “No.” Her turn to say it, and she repeated it, repeated it, even when he went back up the stairs. She forced herself to stand when he came back down again. “If you discover, once you’ve been there for a time, that you can’t live with your people after al
l, will you come back?”

  He was gathering fruit, nuts, bread, placing them all carefully in the centre of a cloth he had brought with him. He tied the four corners together and held the makeshift bag at his side. The bag trembled, even with so much within; she felt a surge of hope, seeing this.

  “I do not know,” he said—and she was crying again, though she had thought herself too far away for tears. “Lanara,” he said, and took a step toward her, “do not—please . . . I understand time now, as you say. I understand ‘future.’ So how could I give you any other answer that would be true?”

  He was in front of her; she could have touched him. He lingered for a moment—but no hope now, she had been a fool to think there was—and then he was past her, and she heard the door open and close.

  She ran up to the writing floor. It was dusk. Sea and sky were dark, and so was the path, but she saw him anyway, a small, slow shape moving away. When she could no longer see him, she looked down at the parchment on the desk. His writing was slanted and uneven, as it had been ever since she had met him. Sundown, she read. Very hot and still. Wind gentle from—and that was all, a sentence unfinished and the writing stick lying across the page, where he had dropped it. She stared at the words, and where they ended. She closed her eyes and imagined him coming up behind her, winding his arms around her waist, murmuring, “I’ll finish that later. . . .”—imagined it in every detail, for she deserved this pain.

  Leaves skittered over the cobbles. Crimson leaves, golden ones, others brown and brittle; the courtyard was full of them. A red one blew up against the sackcloth target, and Lanara nocked an arrow, loosed it so quickly that the leaf was pierced and pinned before the wind could find it again. There were low whistles from the Queensfighters who stood behind her, and some scattered clapping. She smiled and shrugged, and stepped aside so that the next person could take his turn.

  The Queensfighters had been friendly to her since her arrival at the Queenshouse two months ago. Friendly at the meals they took together in the long thin dining hall, and here in the courtyard, practicing archery and swordplay—but she saw that they always held themselves a little back from her. They had all seen her with the Queen, in this building, on the great ship that had led the fleet—perhaps even in the Raiders’ Land. There were two Luhrans among them who had seen her with Ladhra. One of them had told her this, haltingly, her eyes cast down, on the day Lanara had come to live with them. Part of her felt strengthened by this distance and the reason for it; another part of her longed to be truly, effortlessly one of them. She was, however, entirely relieved to be in this house, among her own people, surrounded by their voices and their blue-and-green-clad bodies. Only at night was she alone, in her tiny room overlooking the courtyard. They had given her this room as a sign of respect, assuming she would not want to share one as all the other Queensfighters did. She had accepted it, flattered, muddled by her sleepless nights in the signal tower. But soon she feared nights here as well—for despite the distraction of her days, the waking dreams still found her when she was alone. In the silence she still heard hissing rock and smelled blood and burning and fresh earth beneath her fingernails. When she closed her eyes, she saw snatches of colour that were not so fleeting that she did not recognize them: a Raider boy lying on flower-speckled moss, trails of dirt on her skin and Aldron’s. She would sit up in her bed, reeling as if she had been in a cabin that tipped and tossed upon waves. In the signal tower she had been too afraid to walk the empty floors and stairs; here, at least she could go out into corridors and rooms and find people who were awake, whom she would watch and listen to even if she did not join them.

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” Drelha had declared, when Lanara had sought her out at her house in Fane. “Tower life’s hard and lonely, not for everyone.” Lanara had nodded, too tired to explain anything. Three days later, Drelha had returned to the tower with a train of donkeys bearing chests, and her burly, silent husband. “Father died in the winter,” she said as she stomped up the stairs, peering at each floor. “Right after the icemounts burned—what a sight. He wished he’d still been up here, the foolish old thing. Now what,” she’d continued, picking something up from Alea’s low table, “am I to do with the likes of this?”

  Lanara had looked from the copper armring in Drelha’s hand to the rows of glazed pots with their jewels to the glass vases that stood where Aldron had placed them. “I don’t know,” she replied.

  “Well,” Drelha had sighed, “I suppose I’ll sell some things back to the markets—these stones maybe, and this rug—it’s far too bright. As for the walls. . . .”

  When she had set her feet upon the path, Lanara had intended to journey back to Luhr. But by the time she had reached the Queenshouse, she knew that she could not go further—not yet, not as tired as she was. And after she had been in the house for one week, then two and three, she had decided that the rest was doing her good. She reminded herself of this during the day. At night she had different reasons for not wanting to continue on to Luhr: the Queen’s strangeness on the ship, the palace corridors that would still echo with Ladhra’s voice and footsteps, the river journey that would take Lanara past the shonyn village. But I’m resting, she insisted to herself as the days grew shorter and the leaves began to fall.

  “Queenswoman Lanara.”

  She turned to the Queensguard who had come up beside her. It was almost her turn to shoot again; she paused with her bow slid halfway down her arm. “Yes?” she said. Her fellow archers had fallen back from her. She stood alone with the guard as silence rang in her ears.

  “There is a letter for you,” he said, looking steadily at a spot on her forehead. “From our Queen.”

  But it was not from Galha—Lanara saw this as soon as she read the first line, in the same room in which she had read another letter from Luhr, so many months ago.

  My dear Lanara, our Queen is unwell. She has been weak since her victory in the Raiders’ Land, and her weakness is increasing, though I had hoped that being home would soothe and strengthen her. She spends much of the day in bed, though she still insists on receiving the families of those lost in the battle, or the Queensfighters themselves, who desire to meet with her. She does this every two days, by Sarhenna’s pool—but this saps her energy, and I am trying to convince her to cease the practice until she is well again.

  She is asking for you. Although she has not contacted you since her return to Luhr, she has been speaking of you every day, with growing urgency. I am certain your presence would comfort her as nothing else has yet been able to. I fear for her and for this realm. We miss you, Lanara, and we need you. Come back to Luhr.

  BOOK FOUR

  FORTY

  Leish’s chain stretched almost to the water. He had walked until it was taut, but only once, and only because the Queen had prodded him with the end of her bow. She had laughed as he stood two paces away from the pool. “There,” she had said in the sharp voice she that had been hers back then, “your comfort and death lie there, close enough to taste—but only with your eyes, hmm?”

  And with my ears, he had thought, but this is one thing you do not know. He heard the water, above and beneath, as he had heard it the first time he had come to this shining chamber. And the second time, when he had swum; he remembered the water against his skin and beneath it, and Ladhra’s mouth on his. These memories—and the water that was so near him, every moment of the day and night—did not hurt him. Nothing had hurt him in a very long time. Even the chain around his left ankle did not pain him, though it was too tight and he could see that the flesh beneath it was bloody. He was apart, away from this place and its Queen. At first this had enraged her, and she had beaten him and dribbled water down his chest and back. When these punishments provoked no response, she had stopped paying attention to him at all. She came every few days to sit on the throne to which he was shackled, but she rarely looked at him. And although he hardly noticed his own numbness, any more, he did notic
e hers.

  “Let them in, one by one.” Malhan’s voice. Leish had become accustomed to it these past few months, though last time he had been in the palace it had shocked him to hear Malhan speak. He spoke now because Galha did not. He stood beside her throne and murmured to the people who came to see their Queen, as the Queen herself nodded vaguely at them, and smiled, and maybe raised her hands to make the arrow-sign. At night, palace servants came with nets and bags to sweep dead things out of the pool and its channels, and Leish sometimes heard their words. They said Galha’s mind was still burdened by its own strength; they said she was growing frail and stooped. I am also thin and bent, Leish had thought, staring down at his body in the starlit dimness. But still, they will need a very big net to remove me from this place. He had no desire to laugh or cry at the thought, and was very nearly curious about this.

  “All of you, now: form a semicircle here, and approach the Queen one at a time, from this end. . . .”

  Leish occasionally watched and listened to the Queensfolk who came. “My Queen, I journeyed with you to the Raiders’ Land and fought bravely, but now I cannot sleep and my head aches so that I can hardly see. . . .” “My Queen, I have only two children, and my elder, a boy, was a guard of yours—he died in the battle in our city, and now there is just my daughter and me, both of us untrained in any trade. . . .” “I am blind, my Queen. If you would touch me on the eyes, perhaps your mindpowers would restore. . . .” Young, old, mad, clear-eyed—the Queen nodded and Malhan murmured and they shuffled past and out again. Some of them spat at Leish; one struck him in the stomach and he doubled over, his body reacting to a pain he did not feel. Once, a child picked up his chain and tugged on it—but she was just a child, and she smiled at him after, as her father carried her away.