The Silences of Home

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

  “Lanara,” Malhan said, “thank the First you have come.”

  She bent her head. Her chest was heaving and there was sweat at her hairline. It would drip into her eyes, in a moment.

  “I came through the walkway so I wouldn’t be seen. No one must see me now, either. You’ll have to go by yourself. . . .”

  Lanara looked up. He was alone, standing by the desk, tapping his fingernails against the wood, shifting his feet on the floor. “Malhan,” she said hoarsely, “what has happened?”

  He laughed—a high, giddy sound that soon broke and became something else. He took three steps and spoke. She heard his words even though they were muffled and she was far away from him and this room and everything else she knew.

  “The Queen is gone.”

  FORTY-THREE

  The Queensstudy was empty. Lanara knew that it would be; the guard outside had asked her how the Queen was and expressed concern that she had not been seen in so many days. But Lanara went in anyway and stood alone among the closed drawers. The candles in the candelabra on the table were lit, as were the lanterns that hung from spaces between the drawer rows. A box of writing sticks lay open on the table beside a stack of parchment.

  The wood of the drawers felt warm. Lanara drew her finger along a row, over the dates—down, down, until Malhan’s writing became someone else’s. So many dates and queens and consort-scribes; so many words, within. All shadows, she thought, though the script would be fine and legible. She almost opened one of the drawers, but the expectant light and silence drove her back to the door.

  “She is so weak,” Malhan said when Lanara returned to Ladhra’s chamber. “I thought perhaps her study, since it’s not far from her tower, but. . . .” He dragged the fingers of his left hand through his hair. “How could I have slept so deeply?” he cried. “I knew she was unwell, and yet I slept—and in the afternoon!”

  “I know,” Lanara said, and laid a hand lightly on his shoulder. “You’ve told me—no need to say it again. And of course you’re tired; you’ve been tending her for so long. . . .” She squeezed his shoulder and frowned: his tunic was damp. She lifted her fingers away and rubbed them together. He looked up at her and she smiled as reassuringly as she could. “Come, let’s go together to the Throne Chamber. You can leave through the Queenstower. Just tell the guard she’s sleeping and you absolutely must get her a document of some kind, something only you’d be allowed to get. We’ll use the door behind the thrones so no one will see us.”

  “Yes,” he said, “the Throne Chamber”—vague and weak, until he rose to the tapestry and said, “Thank you, Lanara. I wouldn’t know what to do if you weren’t here.”

  She shook her head but said only, “Go now. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

  She sat down on the bed after he had gone. She looked at her dagger, her heavy cloak, her travelling blanket, the leather bag Ladhra had given her, which had gleamed once. I could be at the edge of the jungle by moonrise, Lanara thought, or at the mouth of the Sarhenna River in a week. She imagined Nellyn’s eyes glimpsing her, recognizing her. She would stride past the old shonyn on their flat stones and run the rest of the way, to wherever he was standing.

  Ladhra’s bed was firm. Lanara shifted on it, reached over to straighten the pillows. One for her head, one for Ladhra’s—though of course these weren’t the same ones as before. These were new, clean, never blood-spattered or flattened by thrashing bodies. Lanara rose, sucking in her breath, crossing her arms over her chest.

  The Throne Chamber was very dark. It was too early for the moon, and Lanara saw, when she looked up at the glass tower, that the sky was still murky, as if the wind had pinned it with layers of sand. She pulled the door slowly toward her as Malhan waited behind. The glass tower, the fountain spray, the shadows of the thrones. She took a step forward into the doorway, and saw Leish lying on the ground facing the pool. Another step; her eyes were adjusting, and the lantern she was holding was shedding light, as was Malhan’s. She saw the water at the far side of the pool. There was some sort of creature floating there, just beyond the spray. She walked past the thrones, past Leish, whose eyes were half-lidded and motionless.

  “No.” She turned to Malhan as he whispered the word again, turned once more, to follow the direction of his pointing, wavering arm.

  Not a water creature, not a fin or a scaled belly. A woman, her tunic rounded with water, her arms limp above her head, as if she had been frozen in a dive. There were beads of water in her hair, full and glittering as the gems around the pool.

  Lanara did not flinch when Malhan jumped into the pool, even though the jump and his flailing, after, soaked her. She stood and watched him grasp an arm and pull. She watched him scrabble in shallower water, wrenching at the arm and at the hips. She did not move until the body turned and Galha’s open eyes stared up at the tower of glass.

  “Here,” Lanara said as she knelt at the side, “let me help you”—and she dug her fingers into the Queen’s skin and pulled as Malhan pushed. She leaned over and set her mouth against Galha’s as she had seen a Queensguard do with a child who had fallen into a marketplace fountain. Lanara forced her own breath into Galha’s mouth, down her throat, paused, breathed again. The child had coughed and spewed out a stream of water and begun to cry. The Queen lay still.

  Malhan covered her eyes with his hand and stroked downward. When he raised his hand, her eyelids were closed. Lanara wished she could imagine that Galha was calm or asleep—but her skin was mottled and swollen, and her clenched fingers would not straighten.

  “There is no glory in this.” Malhan’s voice was as rough as if he had been shouting. His fingers were in her hair, smoothing the moisture away.

  “No. But you’ll be able to remedy that, won’t you? Let me see,” Lanara went on, standing up so that her sudden anger would not feel so stifling, “perhaps I can practice. . . . Yes: she was unable, finally, to bear the loss of her daughter and the toll of her mindpowers. She died today, at dusk, in this very room, where she had ordered us to bring her so that she would be near the pool her foremother crafted for all our sakes. . . .” She turned away from Malhan and the Queen. “How, Malhan?” she said when she could. “Tell me how you’ve been able to write such lies for so long.”

  She expected him to hesitate or deny, but he did not. “I love this realm, and I loved her. There was a time, years ago, when I forgot to serve both—when I transgressed, and jeopardized my post and indeed my life. Since then everything that I have done has been both penance and promise. The Queensrealm will be safe while I am here to serve it. It will be safe. This is the reason for all my words.”

  She looked down at him. His tunic had been damp in Ladhra’s tower. His words might be true, but there was a silence beneath, between and after them that was truer still. Tell me the rest, she thought, and her lips parted to speak. He gazed at her, his hand unmoving on Galha’s hair, and Lanara bit down instead, let out the breath that might have asked for more.

  “She’ll need different clothing,” he said quietly, almost gently. “Something beautiful. Will you help me choose it?”

  Queen Galha opened her eyes as the last of the day’s sun faded from her bedchamber. “My death is upon me,” she said, and there was neither terror nor bitterness in her voice. “Take me from this room, to the place where the joy of all the queens has been.”

  And so it was that her consort-scribe and Lanara, who was Ladhra’s dearest friend, bore the Queen to the Throne Chamber. This was accomplished in secrecy, at the Queen’s request—for she did not wish to worry her faithful guards or any other of her people. She lay on a pallet before her throne and looked once more on the water Queen Sarhenna had called forth from the sand, so long ago. “Let me be remembered as she has been,” Queen Galha said. “Let my people say of me that my body could not compass the great powers of my mind and heart.” She drew her last breath as the first stars shone above, turning the pool to silver and
the Queen’s smooth skin to gold.

  When her servants came to tend to the pool and plants, they discovered the Queen and her companions. The servants wept and bowed themselves down before her, and they carried the news of her passing with them when they went out again. By daybreak the word had spread throughout the palace and into the city. Queensfolk came to the Throne Chamber in a line that stretched into the streets, for they all yearned to look upon her and share their grief together. Many of them were weak with fear for their realm that was so suddenly bereft of the wisdom of its leader. They were reassured by Lanara, daughter of Salanne, who told them that Queen Galha had written several documents before her death, documents that would be studied and acted upon by consort-scribe Malhan. “The Queensrealm,” Lanara declared, “is built upon a foundation so firm that nothing—not even this—shall rock it.” And so the people of the Queen sorrowed, but were not afraid.

  Leish could not wake up. He was not truly asleep; he realized this after he had tried and failed several times to open his eyes completely. He was lying on his side, and he could see snatches of shape and colour: brown feet in brown sandals, and bare brown feet dusted with sand, and the hems of tunics and leggings (mostly brown, but some scarlet and others green and blue). Sunlight dancing on the fountain pool. He saw the water and heard it, and remembered that it had been dark when he had last looked on it, when he had fallen into this sluggish, nauseated place that was not quite sleep.

  Maybe the blue fruit he had eaten had been rotten. He had not even wanted to eat it. He had not eaten anything in days, since the Telling that had made him, at last, want to die. Those days had passed in a sickening blur of memory and thirst. Every image he had seen but not felt, every note he had listened to but not heard—they all struck him, and tore him, and he had screamed himself hoarse in the vast, empty room. He had ignored the fruit the kind servant brought him; it lay beside him and turned rank and wrinkled in the heat. For days he did not count, he ignored it—and then one day he had woken from his dreams of hearth pool and violet coral, and he had been angry. It was a blinding, scalding anger, and it forced him to his knees and to his feet. He had barely been able to stand. His dry skin scattered, and blood and pus welled from the sores that covered him. He looked down at himself as he had so many times since his first imprisonment. Before, he had felt shame and rage at his own weakness, and at his desire to live. Now his rage was all for others.

  I will kill her. It was a thought without form or sense that first morning—but very soon it grew clearer. Mallesh would find a way to kill her. He would be clever and convincing. . . . I’ll beg the kind servant to find a key for my chains. I’ll tell him the pain in my ankle is too much to bear. No untruth in this: the skin beneath his shackle had worn away to something pink and white, like the inside of a fish. He could see bone beneath, when he poked at the mess. I’ll have to strike him. I’ll have to remember what Baldhron told us about the palace and the guards. . . . His head ached more than his body did. He would need strength to make these plans, and more to carry them out. So when he woke and found the blue fruit beside him, he had eaten it. I will ask for seavine too, he had thought. And maybe some salted eel.

  But he had not been able to ask for anything. He had felt sick by mid-afternoon and had lain down, determined to rest for just a short time. The sickness in his stomach had crept outward until all his limbs had felt sodden and useless. His eyelids had been the last part of him to grow heavy. He tried to hold them open, but he was slipping away into a place where he was still but everything else moved. The sun, which faded; the door behind him, which he heard opening and closing; feet, which passed by him in a streak of colour and speed he could not follow. The water moved then. He saw it, though not clearly; his lids and lashes hid everything but its sudden roughness. He heard a churning that subsided into lapping. He thought he heard more footsteps, though this time they were much quieter and did not pass in front of him. He strained to turn his head but could not—and the effort sent him further down, into shadow.

  And now it was day again, and there were many feet by his head. He felt a shuddering in the ground beneath him and thought for a moment that the feet must belong to giants—but he heard a sound above the murmuring of songs and people. Baldhron had looked up at this same sound and fled; Ladhra had not heard it. Leish had lain in her blood and sung against her skin. The bell clanged more slowly now than it had then. It did not call out danger—something else, deep and terrible.

  People were weeping. One woman fell to her knees beside Leish and rocked herself back and forth, wailing with her face raised up to the tower of glass. So many people, so many voices, yet he could understand nothing. He whimpered, himself, as he forced his waking muscles to stretch. He arched his back and rolled and stared up at standing bodies and sky. He moved his eyes and saw Lanara, with Malhan slightly behind her. Just them, bowing their heads to each of the Queensfolk who approached. Just the two of them by the thrones, and all these people mourning, and the bell shaking the palace stones. He was too late. She is dead. She died without me.

  As the sky above the glass grew dark, the last of the Queensfolk left and Leish sat up. He coughed, dizzy with motion and the scent of blossoms that he had not noticed, lying down. It was a thick, cloying smell, and he thought it might make him sick again—but he breathed through his mouth a few times, and the nausea passed. The stones were buried beneath cut flowers and lengths of ivy, and shells, rocks, bits of bark and even coral. Galha lay among these gifts—for so Leish assumed they were, gifts of dead things that had once lived. He imagined Nasranesh there as well, its moss and trees piled atop her body, starmoths clustered above her sightless eyes.

  Malhan was speaking to a group of green-robed figures, five of them, their faces hidden by veils and hoods. They were all tall but stooped, as if they carried some sort of weight. They nodded, but Leish heard no voices; perhaps they had no mouths beneath the green cloth. They lifted Galha up when Malhan finished speaking. The cloth she lay on was also green. They folded it over so that her face was hidden, carried her behind the thrones and out, and Malhan followed without looking back. And why should he? Leish thought. It’s just me. The Queen’s plaything, which even she has ignored these past few months. The pathetic, weak, silent lizard-man who survived her because no one remembered he was there. “You mewling boy,” he heard his brother say, his scorn and frustration very clear even though his voice was merely an imagining. “You’ve always tried to be invisible, and now you are. Will you moan about this too?”

  Leish waited. A star flickered above him, and another, and there was even a moon, after so many nights of cloud and wind-sprayed sand. The servants would come soon. He would entreat the kind one to kill him, and if he would not, Leish would goad the cruel one until he lashed out. I will be brave enough to die, Leish thought as he waited. It is what Mallesh would do.

  When he heard the voice, he raised his head and looked for its source, though he did not expect to find one. A waking dream; an echo of Dallia or Ladhra, or someone else who was gone. But he saw a dark shape on a bridge beyond the fountain, a sitting, swaying shape with a woman’s voice. It rose as he watched, and came toward him. There were no lanterns or torches, but the moon- and starlight were enough to show him whose shape it was.

  “Leish,” Lanara said as she sat down in front of him. “Please talk to me, quickly, before I can keep talking to myself.”

  Leish’s throat was so swollen with thirst that he could not swallow, and he did not know whether he would be able to speak either. “What,” he said, forcing air up and out, “do you want me to say?”

  She shrugged. Her cheeks looked dusty in the thin white light. Old tears, he thought. Dried salt water.

  “I don’t know. You should say nothing but horrible things to me, though. Angry, horrible things that I deserve to hear.”

  He tried to find the rage that had made him strong, only a few days ago, tried to find it and speak with it—bu
t he had none for this woman who had been Ladhra’s friend. When he said, “You pity yourself,” his words were merely tired.

  “Yes. Though not as much as I pity you or Malhan or Alea or indeed all the people of the Queensrealm.” She gazed at him for a long time. She sees me, he thought, and the shock of this made him dizzy. When she rose and walked away he watched her, willed her to leave forever, was amazed that he wanted her to return. She does not know who I am, and she is an enemy to the selkesh—but she sees me when she looks at me, and why does this matter still?

  She returned. She did not sit, but bent and held out her hand to him. “I’m sure Malhan has plans for you, and he will probably be angry at me for this. But there should be choice. Even if it must be made between impossible things, there must be choice.”

  Leish took the waterskin from her hand. It was an old skin, worn smooth and dark where other fingers had grasped it. He felt the weight of water within, and heard it with his ears and his flesh and his swollen throat. He remembered the selkesh who had died on the Queensship, so quickly and silently, after only a few swallows. He remembered the Queen proclaiming the curse as hers when really it had been the Alilan man’s. Such remembering was faded, though, and powerless; he held the only thing that was real.

  Lanara bent still further as he tipped the skin to feel the water’s shape. He hardly noticed her until pain flared in his ankle and up his left leg. He gasped and turned to her, and he saw the broken ring of his shackle in her hand. She let it fall to the floor and placed the key beside it.

  “The servants will not come tonight,” he heard her say through the pounding in his head. She stood by him a moment longer. He shifted his eyes from the pile of chain to his putrid ankle to the waterskin he was clutching in both hands now. He could not look at her—not even when she moved away from him. He heard the door behind the thrones open and close. He heard the fountain singing, and the river, and the sea, so far away. And beneath it all, as he sank and sank again, he heard his heart.