The Silences of Home

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

  “Let them in.” The Queensguards moved to obey Lanara, who spoke to them more often than Galha did now, and the supplicants entered. All these entrances sounded the same to Leish: there were always shuffling footsteps, brisk ones, measured ones. The mixture of faces was the same as well: old and young, scarred and smooth, some awed, a very few angry. Always the same—and yet they were different people. Every few days, Queensfolk arrived who had not been here before. Leish wondered, without much curiosity, how many more there could be.

  Today there were thirty-two, too many for a semicircle, so they stood in a long, neat line. Leish watched them, blinking to clear a haze from his eyes (thirst, his body told him, hunger—but he ignored it, as ever). The grieving mother, the lame child whose parents’ faces shone with hope—Leish looked past them, to the end of the line. The last person was hunched and swathed in a cloak, despite the heat in the chamber. The cloak’s hood was drawn well forward, and Leish could not see the face beneath it. A disfigurement, perhaps, or an illness of the eyes. He would find out soon enough, for the line was moving quickly forward. Those who had spoken to the Queen stood at the edge of the pool. They would all leave at once, as they had come in. The lame child was looking down into the water and crying, looking down into the water.

  The cloaked person stepped up to the place before the throne. The Queen murmured something, and Lanara bent to listen. “The Queen bids you stand taller and remove your hood,” Lanara said, but the person was doing so already, throwing back cloth and a black tangle of hair.

  “No!” the Queen cried, and Lanara stood up—but Leish noticed these things only dimly, as his numbness fell away before the change that had come at last.

  Alnissa had been crying since they arrived. Her new teeth coming through, perhaps, or all the noise around her; but it was this very noise that covered her wails, and Alea was thankful for it. “Hush,” she whispered, or crooned, or snapped. Once she snatched Alnissa up from the ground, where she was rocking on all fours, and held her very close to her face. “Why are you so easily distressed?” she hissed. “Alilan babies are strong and brave—quiet, Nissa”—but then she held her daughter very close, her anger spreading inward, to where it belonged.

  People were very kind to her—to both of them. Alea had not expected or wanted this; not here, where she had longed only to hate. But the people who gave them water and food and a place for their blankets were not all Queensfolk. Some were lighter-skinned, some darker. Others were not like people at all, with their horns or scales, double-lidded eyes, toeless feet.

  It was someone with horns, in fact, who told her about the Queen’s audiences. Alea was walking from stall to mat to well. It was her fifth day in Luhr’s marketplace, and she was fascinated despite herself, and too weary from all her travelling to allow herself to rest. The man with horns was crouching atop a pile of stones. She looked up at him, swaying so that Alnissa would stop crying.

  “Let me speak to you.” Alea turned, looking for the other person who must be standing beside her—but she was alone here, at the foot of the rock pile. When she looked back at him, the man was slipping down toward her. She saw his talons, his cloven animal feet. The sunlight glancing from his horns made her flinch and blink.

  “I will not ask for payment, to tell you these words of future.” He was so close to her that she could see his eyes. Alnissa had gone quiet, though she was not asleep; she was holding her head up, looking at him.

  “Your return will have no ending.” His voice was strange. She knew that he was not speaking his own language, but the strangeness went deeper than that, to a sound beneath his words. She stood mute and still, and he said, “Why are you here, woman of the fires?”

  She found her own voice, though it was small and cracking. “To see the Queen.”

  He smiled. Suddenly he was just a man. “She receives Queensfolk visitors every two days, in the palace. There is surely no reason she would not receive you as well.”

  “Indeed,” Alea said, raising an eyebrow as if he were an Alilan boy trying to court her, as if his other words were not echoing, waiting for her.

  Two days later she stood before a great wooden door in a long hallway broken by sunlight. “What is your business with the Queen?” the guard before the door said.

  Alea stared at her feet in unfeigned discomfort. The palace was intimidating from the outside—but at least outside there was still sky. Within, it was a world of seamless stone and countless corridors, everything tall and long yet dizzyingly contained. She cleared her throat and glanced back up at the guard, who was smiling at Alnissa.

  “I have heard tell of the Queen’s wondrous powers. There is much in me that needs mending, and I thought that I might ask her. . . .” She let her voice trail away when the guard began to nod.

  “All right, then,” he said with a chuckle. Alnissa was pulling at one of the blue ribbons that hung from his sleeve. “In you go—all of you now, one by one, through here.”

  Alea had not expected her own fear, any more than she had expected Queensfolk kindness—but as soon as she stepped through this door, she was terrified. The birds, the reeds, the fountain and pool, the painted sky that looked so real: this was a kind of magic, surely. And the second chamber, with its water creatures and its darkness—she bit her lip to keep from crying out. This is why, she thought as she waited to pass through the last door. It is places like this that make the Queen’s people believe her. Alea felt a different fear then, and for a moment she thought of running back through the tunnel, back through the bird room and the corridors until she reached open air again. But she had come so far alone—and there was rage beneath her fear. When her turn came, Alea stepped into the dazzle of the Throne Chamber without hesitation.

  She saw only snatches of this place, since she had drawn her hood over her head and face. The stones beneath her feet glittered. She smelled blossoms, felt fountain spray on her feet. She peered up just long enough to see when the person before her halted. She stopped too, and stood with her own breath ringing in her ears.

  She was sure that Alnissa would fuss; she had been fussing for a week, after all. But although she was entirely covered by Alea’s cloak, the baby slept. She had been awake in the first two chambers, silent and wide-eyed. As awed as a Queensbaby, Alea thought irritably, trying to shift Alnissa’s weight a bit from shoulder to hip. Irritability, not fear: she clung to it, hoped that it would sustain her until the waiting was over.

  Aldron had been wrong. He had warned her, had said that the Queen’s city would swallow and silence her. She had grasped his tunic and twisted, as if anger might return him to himself. Her tears had not, nor had pleading, nor tenderness.

  “You are Alilan!” she had cried, pummeling, pulling. “We are people of honour, and we fight. Come with me. Take your revenge on this woman who has ruined all of us. Be an Alilan man again.”

  “Alilan,” he had said steadily. He was covering her hands with his own, firmly, without anger. “Man, revenge: these are words now. Just words.”

  They had been in the caves then, high above the ocean he could not seem to leave. Alnissa had just learned to roll herself from back to belly. He had not touched his daughter in all their weeks of wandering.

  “Go back to the Alilan,” he had said as she had let go of his tunic. “They’d take you back, if I was gone and you could assure them that you’d never see me again. Alea, they’d let you come home.”

  “And what if I did go back?” she had demanded. “What would you do then?” She had been afraid, as soon as the words were said, and had yearned to pull them back.

  “There is a thing I must do,” he had replied, staring out beyond their small fire at the water. “Alone. So we must decide whether I’ll leave you or you’ll leave me. That’s our only decision.”

  She had left him a month later. She knew that he had been gone from her long before this—but she cried anyway, as she walked. She would not cry this ti
me. She was no longer afraid, just uncertain, and this would change. She was the strong one now.

  The person in front of her in the line was gone. Alea took two paces forward and steeled herself for more inaction—but the guard who had accompanied them from the last door whispered, “You, now.” She heard a woman’s voice as she prepared to look up. Not Galha’s: another, which Alea knew much better. She heard it, and her uncertainty vanished in fury, and she threw back her head and cloak and began to speak.

  “I am here to tell truth!” the woman from the signal tower cried, and Leish looked at her as all the others in the chamber did. He could not have looked away—not if someone had dragged him backward by his chain or doused him in water.

  “Alea!” Lanara would have sounded composed if it had not been for the loud cheeriness of her voice. “It is a joy to see you again. Come, why don’t we retire alone, to talk of—”

  “No. The things I have come to say must be said before people who will remember them.”

  “Guards!” Galha called, and then Leish heard Malhan and Lanara murmuring, soothing. When the Queen spoke again, a moment later, the terror was gone from her voice. “Very well. I shall entertain the wish of this woman, who is evidently disturbed in her mind. Tell us this truth of yours.” Vaguely amused, indulgent, much as she had been with Leish a year ago. Two Queensguards had come up behind Alea, and they held their bows before them, each with an arrow almost nocked.

  “You mock me—and I expected this. I knew that you would pronounce me a madwoman, and now you have, even though I’ve said nothing at all. So let me say it. Let me tell everyone here that you have never possessed ‘mindpowers’—that the force that won your battle for you was wielded by an Alilan man, Aldron of the Tall Fires caravan.”

  The Queen did not speak until all the gasps and hissed comments had subsided. Alea watched her, one hand clenched at her side, the other holding her sleeping baby against her. “Where is this Alilan man, then?” Galha said. “Why has he not come to me himself?”

  Alea was very still, hardly blinking or even breathing. “Because he is gone. He was sick and weak and nearly mad after he used his Telling power as you bade him to. He left me and his daughter, for he could no longer bear love or companionship.”

  “Where has he gone?” The Queen was leaning forward. Leish saw this and felt her cloak tug at the chain as she moved.

  “Why should you care,” Alea asked with a smile, “If you do not believe me?”

  More murmurs. Galha rose, quite steadily, and held up a hand. “I remember him, of course. I met him in Fane. He came to me there, for he was young and hotheaded and eager for a battle. He fought well, I remember, and took a grievous wound.”

  “From you,” Alea said. “You wounded him. You wanted him dead, so that he would never reveal what he had done for you. But he lived, and goes on living, though he can hardly stand it—while you amaze your people with lies.”

  “He must have envied my mindpowers—he must have been desperate for them. He considered himself quite a warrior, yet he could never possess what I did.”

  Alea took a step forward. The guards behind her raised their bows, which creaked as the strings pulled taut. “Show us, then! Use these mindpowers of yours here, now, and prove that I am as addled as you say I am!”

  Galha shook her head, as if disappointed, or sympathetic—but she swallowed too, convulsively. “My dear, I wish that I could. Sadly, like my ancestor Sarhenna, I have only been able to use my powers once. We must be content to recall their manifestation in the Raiders’ Land—”

  “Their manifestation.”

  “Yes,” Galha said, gesturing another guard forward. “Come, now—show our young friend to the kitchens. We will give her food and wine. . . .”

  The guards reached for Alea. One of them looped his fingers around her wrist. The other Queensfolk were shifting, looking at each other, not at the Alilan woman. Leish drew a shaking breath and turned away from her himself, to look again at the group by the thrones. Lanara was motionless, frowning—but Malhan and the Queen were smiling, as if at something finished, or averted, or merely comical.

  “Tell me, Galha,” Alea cried over her shoulder as the guards urged her around and on, “tell me, anyone who was there: did these mindpowers look something like this?”

  Lanara was on her knees, which ached; she must have fallen hard, though she did not remember doing so. Her body was just a smudge in this place where time writhed and cracked. Where? she screamed, without her voice. When? Trees and water burned around her, atop the jewelled palace stones. The wind beat at her skin and the sun shone down through the glass tower; moss blackened on the bridges around the pool. She saw the open mouths and eyes of the Queensfolk, and Galha crumpled in front of her throne, saw this through billowing smoke and ash. Lanara dragged a hand up to her face, expecting to feel a trail of blisters. There might be earth beneath her fingernails. She tried to close her eyes, to escape or return—but she did not need to, for the flames and wind hissed away and there was only the Throne Chamber again, vast and shining.

  The first thing Lanara heard clearly, after the ringing had gone from her ears, was Leish. His chain was clanking in sharp, steady beats as he rocked; and he was keening, singing, almost, in words and notes that made her shiver. She heard other noises then—whimpering, sniffling, the stirring of feet and cloth on stone. Alea’s baby began to babble into this almost-quiet. She cooed and chuckled and clapped her hands as Alea smiled up at her from where she was lying.

  “Kill her.” Lanara heard the Queen’s rasped words because she was beside her. Malhan heard them as well, and Leish might have, if he had not been making his own sounds. No one else heard them. The Queensguards were standing up, looking around in confusion and fear; they too had been in the Raiders’ Land. The Queensfolk were drawing close together, turning to the thrones. Lanara saw their terror. She glanced at Alea, who was sitting up, holding her head in her hands; then back at the Queensfolk, and at their Queen, lying pale and wracked before them.

  “We are sorry, Alea of the Alilan.” Lanara took a step forward and began again, trying to speak with a strength she did not feel. “We are sorry for the hardship you have suffered because of Aldron’s part in the battle. We are sorry for your grief.” Her teeth chattered when she paused. “We are awed too, by the greatness of this Alilan power that you possess, as Aldron did—this power that is able to mimic the Queen’s so exactly while lacking its substance.” It was easier, already; smoother, the sentences enfolding her so that she did not have to think about their meaning. “I have long known about the magic of Alilan Tellings, about how they are utterly convincing and all the more enchanted because they are fleeting. Now I have seen one. It was indeed akin to the destruction that was wrought in the Raiders’ Land—yet look! The flames did not burn, and the wind tore no flowers from their stems. This is a subtle, delicate power, one of words, not change. I thank you for showing it to us.”

  Alea was crying, shaking silently. One of her arms was draped around Alnissa, who was still bouncing and chattering. Lanara looked quickly from them to the Queensfolk. They were nodding, and a few were smiling—comforted, convinced.

  “As you can all see,” Lanara continued swiftly—she had waited too long to speak again—“the Queen has been deeply affected by this vivid recreation. We shall attend to her needs now, and to Alea’s—the guards will conduct the rest of you back. . . .”

  They raised their hands in the sign of the arrow. Galha did not see them, nor did Malhan, who was holding her against him with his head bent to hers. It was Lanara who acknowledged them. She longed, suddenly, to rush out behind them, into the knot of the marketplace or another way, to the houses piled against each other and the palace’s flank, like a honeycomb. But she smiled at them as they lifted their hands to her, and she stood very tall as they left her, one by one.

  Alea was crying after all, and so weakened by her Telling that she co
uld not rise from the palace stones, could not even pick Alnissa up to quiet her. She heard Lanara murmuring with the man in the brown tunic. She remembered how he had stood apart from the rest of them in the tower, but she could not remember his name. She did remember the prisoner’s name. Leish. She had thought it sounded like waves, when Nellyn had told it to her. Leish had fallen onto his side. His eyes were open, fixed on the pool behind Alea. His limbs were limp, but she could see them shuddering. Twins, I have hurt him so much, she thought, and for what?

  “. . . outside, if you need them.” Alea looked back at the brown man, who was straightening, drawing the Queen gently up with him. Galha’s eyes were closed and her head lolled against his shoulder. He turned to Alea just before he led the Queen out through a door behind the thrones. Alea gazed back at him; she would show this small measure of defiance.

  “I’m so sorry.” The same words Lanara had spoken before all her lies, but this time they were whispered and she was sitting on the ground, as Alea was.

  “Really,” Alea said, somehow, with her torn throat. “Ah. Well, then.”

  Lanara was silent for a long time. She traced a vein of crystal with her right forefinger, up and down, up and down. Alea hoped she would remain silent. Alea would stand whenever she was able to, and lift Alnissa, and take her far away, and she would never have to listen to another Queensfolk word. She moved one of her legs, then the other, but she was still too exhausted to do more—and Lanara was looking at her again, and speaking.

  “I’ve always seen how much you love and miss your people.” Alnissa squirmed, and Alea realized she was gripping her daughter’s chubby thighs. “You can never forget your home, and if you return to it, you want to protect it, keep it the same as it was when you loved it before.”