“We saw you,” blurted the one with brown hair, “before you were queen.”
Her friend frowned and hissed a word—her name, perhaps—and Lanara said, “Really? When was that?”
“Last autumn,” the brown-haired one said, more confidently. “During the archery contest at the Queenshouse. We were in the public balcony. We noticed you because you kept winning.” The other girl groaned and rolled her eyes. “Not just because of that, I mean—also because you were so quiet and . . . different from everyone else.” She chewed at her lip. “We thought you looked like a queen,” she continued at last. “And now you are, and even though this only happened because your friend the Princess died, we’re glad.”
“Madhralla!” the other girl cried.
Lanara put one hand on her shoulder and one on her friend’s. “And I am glad that you are now my subjects, Madhralla and . . . ?”
“Breodhran,” she murmured, shy again.
“Here—take these,” Lanara said, and unwound one blue and one green ribbon from her tunic sleeves. The girls gaped at them, and at her. Lanara stepped back and they made the sign of the arrowhead, hastily, the ribbons tangling in their fingers. Then they turned and ran into the darkness behind them. Lanara did not move until their footsteps and laughter had faded into silence.
“A charming scene,” Baldhron said when they were back in the study. “You and the two awe-struck friends.”
“Yes,” Lanara said evenly. She sat down at the desk and pulled a pile of letters toward her. He won’t be able to distress me now, she thought. Not after that walk, all those people shouting my name and waving. Not after Madhralla and Breodhran. It is they who truly remind me of my purpose. She smiled at Predhanten when she set a cup of steaming herb water near the papers, and Predhanten nodded quickly before she looked away. This too was a reminder.
“My Queen,” the guard outside the door called, “someone else has come to see you.”
“Very well,” Lanara said. She rose and smoothed her tunic as Baldhron took his place behind her and Predhanten sank onto a stool by the door.
“The Queen greets you!” cried the guard as the door opened.
A man walked slowly into the room. He had a beard—a thick curly beard as black as his hair, though both were shot through with strands of white. It was the beard that confused her. The eyes above it she knew—only she didn’t, she couldn’t; she must be addled with the shock and sleeplessness of the past week. “Welcome,” she began, as if speaking would steady her and the world—but it did not.
It was immediately plain to me that the man knew the Queen, and she him. They gazed at each other for long moments before the man spun on his heel and stepped back toward the door that had been closed behind him. “Aldron!” cried Queen Lanara, and he checked. I regarded him with great interest as he turned back to the room. He was as unkempt as some of the wild men I glimpsed last spring, when I was doing secret work beyond the northern border of the realm. His appearance did not surprise me, however, for I now knew him to be the Alilan man who had been driven to madness by the battle in the Raiders’ Land. (Queen Lanara has, of course, told me of Aldron’s lover Alea’s confrontation with Queen Galha. I look forward to reading former consort-scribe Malhan’s account of this incident when I formally assume my new post in Luhr).
The Queen ordered Predhanten to leave us. When she had done so, Queen Lanara turned to Aldron. To our surprise, he spoke first.
“I looked for you at the tower. I saw that woman, Drelha, but she didn’t see me. I left. I knew you weren’t there any more.”
“But you didn’t know I was Queen.” I could see from her clenched hands and rigid back that great emotion roiled beneath the steady surface of her voice.
Aldron lifted a hand to his beard. “I . . . I’ve been away from people. As you can probably see.” Perhaps he smiled; it was impossible to tell, as his beard hid the full length of his lips. “I came back here and saw the banners on the Queenshouse—and I remembered what that meant.”
“Ah,” said the Queen, “and what was it you wanted with Galha?”
The man blinked as if confused, and I moved closer to Queen Lanara. “I . . . I was going to ask her something.”
“And that was all? Just a question?”
His head twitched to one side and I shifted closer still to the Queen. “So you think I should want to kill her too. You and Alea both.” He shook his head then, as a sane man might. “That was never my intention, or even a desire. I have no such desires any more.”
Silence rang in the room. The waves against the cliffs sounded louder, closer than they should have, as if the very sea rose to stand in defense of the Queen.
“I made the stones on the path, you know,” he said at last. “That’s how Galha found out about the true extent of my power: she came up the path one day as I was Telling it. It was snowing. I didn’t hear her, or the man.” His eyes leapt to me as he spoke these words. He was obviously referring to former consort-scribe Malhan. “I promised Alea at the tower that I’d never use this power for anyone, and I didn’t. Not until. . . .” He swallowed. “What has happened? Where is she?”
Queen Lanara said, “She died. In Luhr. She never recovered her strength after the battle.”
“And now you are Queen.”
“Yes. And as I am Queen, and you have found me, why not ask me what you intended to ask her?”
He took two paces toward her, though his eyes were on the window. I laid my fingers on my knife hilt as he replied, “I need passage on a ship. I have no way to pay for such a thing—and so when I saw the banners and realized the Queen was here, I thought I’d ask her. I thought she’d hardly be able to refuse me, except maybe to kill me.”
“Passage,” the Queen said slowly. “Where?”
He lifted his arm and pointed toward the water that lay white-gold beneath the sun, which had only just ceased its upward climb. “Back there. Where else?”
Queen Lanara turned to me then. “Leave us,” she said in a low voice. I responded, just as quietly, that I would not leave her alone with a madman; both her reputation and her life might be at stake, as well as my own credibility as her companion and protector. She nodded her understanding. “Come,” she said to Aldron.
“Stand with me by the window.” Her anger at Baldhron gave her voice a strength it had not had
since Aldron had walked into the room. He walked over to her now, stiffly. She wondered when he had last been inside a building.
“No,” she murmured, when they were both facing the wharf. Baldhron had retreated a bit, to the door, as if he wished to allow her a small amount of privacy. She tried to forget him, to imagine that he could not hear them if he could not see their faces. “You can’t go there. Not again.”
“I must.” Her arm was almost touching his, which was bare and brown and ridged with muscle.
“No,” she said again. “Let me help you find a place here in the realm.” Her words were echoes of others she had spoken, and she wanted to tell him, to cry, “Alea confronted Galha! Alea was strong and passionate and she Told the battle—and your daughter was so beautiful. Alea told the truth.”
“Lanara.” She watched his lips, then his eyes. “I did it. I ruined that place, not Galha. She promised me a chance to test the limits of my power—and I did, and I brought doom on a people that had nothing to do with me. Not Perona, not Alilan—no one I had ever known, in a land I saw for only a few hours before I undid its life and changed its course. I’ve tried to forget, to cure myself in a place far from there—but I can’t get away from the sea. It draws me back every time I leave it. I won’t have any rest or peace until I go back.”
It was almost emotion, in his voice that had been so flat and distant, just as it might have been emotion that had sent him back toward the door when he had first glimpsed her. She lifted her hand and touched his arm, just above the crease of his elbow. He was still, n
either rejecting nor welcoming. She thought she could feel the pulse of the blood in her own fingertips. “Since you insist on it,” she said, half turning so that Baldhron would hear and see each word, “I will send you there, though I fear the journey will bring you only harm. I will speak to the captains whose ships are docked. You may meet me on the longest dock in two nights’ time.”
“Thank you,” he said. He stood with her a moment more. She stared at the window latch, which was undone, though the window was closed. She did not look away even when he walked across the room and through the door Baldhron had opened.
“Do you think it was wise to let him go?” Baldhron said. “He’s mad—he may do something you’ll have to lie about.” He was smiling, drawing his left forefinger around and around the pommel of the knife in his belt. Lanara went past him, slowly, so that he would see nothing but indifference. By the time she reached the front doors, Aldron was gone.
The captain would not meet her gaze. “My Queen,” she said in her salt-rough voice, “I have promised to do your bidding. It is just . . . it is the matter of safety that continues to concern me.”
Lanara frowned. “Safety? You will have one passenger, and he is no threat to anyone. Your way will be quick and clear. I have already given you silver to compensate you for lost trading goods and time. I will have more given to you when you return. I have no idea why you are so reluctant.”
The captain stared at the side of the ship next to them, which hid them from the wharf and the houses there. Her short hair was blowing against her cheek: the right wind, hard and warm from the west. “My Queen, it is . . . I am afraid. There is a curse.”
“Yes. But it will not harm you or your crew or ship. I have arranged for one of my personal guards to accompany you”—she gestured to Crelhal, who was standing behind her with Baldhron—“to reassure you and act as my representative.” And to ensure that the mission is carried out correctly and completely—though of course she did not say this.
“Ah,” the captain said, and finally looked at her. “That will be a comfort. Thank you. It must be difficult to spare such a person.”
“Indeed,” said Lanara. She wondered what Malhan would have made of all this, or if she would have even told him. He would likely read of it, when Baldhron and his parchment returned to Luhr.
The captain glanced over Lanara’s shoulder. Her eyes widened just as footsteps sounded on the dock.
“Go, then,” Lanara said without turning around. “Go with the blessings and protection of the First upon you.”
The captain climbed into the rowboat that bobbed on the water below them, and Crelhal followed her. They sat with their heads averted as they waited.
Lanara turned. Aldron was standing a few paces away, gazing past her at the ship that rocked gently at the mouth of the harbour. “That one?” he said. She did not reply. He looked from the ship to her and did not look away as he walked.
When he was beside her, she twisted around again so that Baldhron would see only her back. His motionless silence was almost as difficult to bear as his stare—but none of this mattered. She stepped closer to Aldron, hoping that he would flinch or move away. He did not. He stood nearly touching her, and she found his eyes, despite her fear. “Come back,” she said in a low voice that shook, a bit with the unexpectedness and impossibility of these words. “When you’ve seen it, you’ll change—you’ll feel differently about yourself and me and everything else. Come back then.”
He raised his hands and tilted them so that their backs lay against her cheeks. She felt the roughness of his knuckles as they stroked once, twice. She almost smiled, almost showed him all her impossible hope—but then she saw his own smile, and the pity in it.
As she drew away from him, against the flank of the nearest ship, he slid into the rowboat beside the captain. Lanara had intended to uncoil the mooring rope, but she could not move, and after a moment Crelhal did it, rocking the rowboat as he stood and reached. He and the captain made the sign of the arrowhead and took up their oars; Aldron faced the open sea. Lanara watched them, her back straightening with each oar stroke.
“So,” Baldhron said as the rowboat disappeared into the shadow of the larger vessel, “you’re a woman of complicated and numerous loves. A small blue fruit-gatherer, a mad poet-horseman—I’ll win you yet, my Queen.”
Lanara’s hand lifted and landed so swiftly that she hardly felt it. Baldhron sucked in his breath, raised his own hand to cover his cheek. “We are so alike, you and I,” he said. “You’ll understand this someday, and then you won’t be able to hate me as you do now.”
“Alike?” She attempted to scoff, succeeded only because she was numb from this mad succession of days.
“Indeed. Two young children who lost their mothers. What did they tell you about your mother’s death, my Queen?”
She felt a pressure, like fingers squeezing her throat. She laid her own fingers there and tried to knead the sensation away. He wants to frighten you, she told herself, clinging to the numbness that was threatening to dissipate. He wants to hurt you—don’t listen. Never listen.
She walked past him before he could speak again. She did not see him as she strode back to the Queenshouse, but she heard him behind her all the way there, his footsteps loud and measured. She nodded to her guards and climbed the stairs to her room. A few moments after she had slammed her door, she heard the scratching of Baldhron’s writing stick. She rose and opened her shutters, and then she heard only the sea, quickening before the hard, warm wind from the west.
FIFTY
Mallesh brought the hammer gently down on the chisel’s end. A cloud of dust rose and hung for a moment, as all dust did in this wind-thick air. He tapped again, and again, and the stone began to breathe. He felt it beneath his hands, and he paused to draw out his welcome. There was always an instant like this, now that his skill was increasing: a flutter that rose from the cave wall and became a pulse. He remembered feeling it first when he had been carving the leaf of a fireblossom tree, there by the entrance where the sallow light was strongest, and when he had shaped the shell beside it—and now, chiselling a long, rippling strand of rivergreen. He sat back on his heels and looked at the lines he had made and those that still lay within the stone. It was so slow, the looking and the carving, and he would never have imagined, in his other life, that he would have the patience for it. When they had been children, Leish had always been the one who could sit before a new row of gathering pool benches and gouge out shapes. Mallesh had always fidgeted and thrown down his tools after his own clumsy attempts yielded nothing but scars in the wood. He did not fidget here, in his cave, and he did not even touch his tools until he knew what he would do with them.
He had found the chisel and hammer—and several fish knives—at the foot of the eastern peaks. The mountain selkesh had lived here, miners and forgers whose clear pools and rivers had lain just below the line of snow. Mallesh had been certain, as he fled the fires of his own home, that they would be there still. He swam upriver as the flames rose above his gathering pool. Others swam beside him. They had not swum for long. The fire had pursued them, reaching through the water and boiling it away so that the selkesh had scrambled onto the banks. They ran then, beside the riverbed that was deep and fissured and mute. They ran as trees toppled and burned to ash. Some of them stopped running and fell among the trees and did not rise again. Mallesh did not fall, even when his coughing bent him double and made him retch bile that burned his scarred throat. He spoke when he could, and motioned to the others to stay with him. He knew they would find the mountain selkesh, who would take them in and wash the ash from them in ice-limned pools. They would make a new home as they mourned their old.
But the silent riverbank had led them to nothing. The mountains, yes: Mallesh had recognized their shadows against the yellow sky. He had looked at them as he crouched, tearing at a tree mouse with his teeth and hands. He had nodded his head at the shadows a
nd the others had looked at them as well. I will lead you true at last, he had thought, so certain, even though he could no longer hear the singing of the peaks or the ones who lived there. He had led them nowhere. The mountains were naked rock, black, brown, grey, layered with shifting dust. There was no green and no snow. The uppermost peaks were like knuckles, the slopes between like withered webs. And at the bottom were the bones of the town: scattered metal and wood, overturned anvil stones. Some of the metal had melted; tools and jewellery had fused together into multi-coloured lumps. Many of the tools were intact. Mallesh had taken some, as his companions searched for the mountain selkesh who had lived there. He had not been certain, even then, why he had done this. There had been some bodies, mostly old people. The rest was emptiness.
“They may have gone over the mountains,” someone had said to Mallesh.
Mallesh had heard her hope. He had seen it in the faces of those around him—hope and grief together. He had looked for blame when they turned their eyes on him, but had found none. What he saw and did not see enraged him.
“What do you hear?” he had rasped, as if he could hear, himself. “What singing is there, over the mountains?”
They had bowed their heads and he had had his answer, and so their hope had infuriated him all the more. “Fools!” he had shouted over the pain that rose with his voice. “The land across the mountains will look and sound like this land does. All our lands are ruined. Why search for any of our kind if we’ll find only this?”
But they had searched nonetheless. They had begun to climb the bald mountainside, where once there had been paths of grass and fallen leaves. They had ignored his thin, torn cries. He had watched them until they were hidden by ash, and then he had retraced his steps, all of them, back to the edge of the sea.
He knew now that his rage had been fear. I only ever led them wrong, he thought once, sitting in the mouth of the cave he had found near what had once been the river. I did not go with them because I could not have borne to be wrong again. And so he was alone, surrounded by the silence where all his songs had been. As the months passed, he grew quieter and quieter within, until his own silence matched that of his world. Only his hammer and chisel were loud; it sometimes surprised him, that he could make this kind of noise.
The Silences of Home Page 49
