Beneath Ceaseless Skies #183

by Richard Parks

  I close my eyes, but there’s no hiding from the light.

  * * *

  My plan is to return to Little Hold as unnoticed as I left it, with more than enough time before the dawn to sneak back into the bed. It is impossible. The master’s rooms are brightly lit.

  Did he miss me? I have not even left a note... How angry will he be? I haven’t slept, and exhaustion and guilt wash over me.

  I should have left a note. Something.

  Servants tell me to find him in the paneled dark-blue sitting room, the one in which he receives trusted visitors. He is there. He sits, his legs spread wide, in one of the carved blue basine chairs. A dozen people sit around him in similar chairs and at his feet. They are all Coastal—retainers, allies, and advisors.

  He wears an open, jet-beaded black robe of rough spidersilk over a pair of dark trousers. His chest is bare. He wears no adornment. His hair is pulled into a tight knot at the nape of his neck.

  I take a step forward, and my mouth goes dry with desire and pure, undiluted panic. What happened? Are the children—

  He looks up at me, and his face is stricken with an all-encompassing rage, but he keeps himself in check; his body is stiff, immovable. His voice is cold. “Explain yourself.”

  I kneel. “Master. I visited a difficult patient...”

  He looks at me for a while, then snarls and makes a motion with his hand, to wave it all away. “I found out how they found out that Anda-Aggriu is lost in Laina.” He grabs a rolled-up scroll out of the hands of one of the people closest to him, waves it in the air. I half-expect him to throw it at me, but he does not. “Apparently she wrote me a letter. Two months ago! Gezála’s people stole it.”

  “Intercepted,” says a woman, a noble I’ve met once but whom I do not really know.

  “The plot is to declare me traitor. To say that I have collaborated with the crown of Araigen, and with Anda-Aggriu in particular.”

  “My lord, I do not think so,” says Merudar, who is seated cross-legged at his feet. “If they wanted to implicate you, they’d have copied the letter and let the original fall into your hands.”

  The woman—I suddenly remember her name, Talasín of house Goshed—speaks up again. “I agree. They cannot accuse you of what you did not know.”

  “They can accuse me of Anda-Aggriu asking for my help.” And to me, “You do not want to know?”

  I bow my head to escape his gaze. I am still kneeling, too close to Merudar and not close enough to my lord, but I cannot bear this scrutiny. My body shakes. He takes me by the shoulders, lifts me up to stand, and his eyes latch on mine.

  I feel the tension in him, tighter and tighter as a wound string. I do not care what happened to Anda. I want to embrace him, to draw the rage out of his bones, beg him to bleed the power off into the ground.

  People. We are surrounded by people.

  His face twists with the desire to destroy, to do something, anything other than this inaction.

  Talasín speaks. “Anda did not ask for anything.”

  He looks back at her, hands still firm on my shoulders. “She did. She asked exactly for what I am doing now.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  He snarls back, “Nothing. I am doing nothing.”

  I feel him take a deep breath, and he says, “All right.” His hands leave my shoulders. He turns back to the people, inclines his head, and clasps his hands in front of his forehead. A lord to friends. “I give gratitude for your counsel and your presence.”

  As one, they press their clasped hands to their foreheads. “We thank you for your leadership. We thank you for your life.”

  “I will see you, those who would come, in the morning before the session. We will breakfast and journey together to assembly. I do not wish to be alone.”

  They file out, some bidding him a restful night, some saying nothing.

  He embraces me while they are still leaving. Speaks into my shoulder. “I do not blame you for wanting to run.”

  “Master, please...” I did not run from him. Did I run? “This patient. I cannot explain it. She is young and needs me very much...” The pronoun I have used for Dedéi in my thoughts feels utterly wrong now, with him. Dedéi did not want to be a girl. I have been echoing Brentann. “Forgive me. Zha. They. They are ichidi, but in Katra nobody understands, and I can—”

  Does Dedéi really need me? We did not even talk about their desire not to be a girl; and I have certainly not performed a healing. “I am not even sure how much I can help...”

  He pushes me away from his embrace, but his hands are still on my shoulders. “How can you stand me? I hurt you. From the very beginning, all I do is hurt you. I’m sorry, Parét. I shouldn’t have snapped, and in front of people...”

  But you needed me, and I wasn’t there. I slipped away in the middle of the night without even a note, and you worried, and I put on a weave so you would not be able to trace me.

  “Everybody is broken,” I whisper.

  He draws me close to himself, and I lean into him, too exhausted for anything but the stronghold of his touch.

  He holds on to me as we walk to the bed and lie down. He cradles my head under his arm. He has not undressed, and the rough spidersilk of his robe scratches uncomfortably against my cheek. His chest rises and falls in ragged breaths, and I wonder if he will cry. My own eyes overflow with moisture.

  “Do you want to hear?”

  “Yes,” I say. “Please...”

  “The land’s naming grid is weakening again in Laina. They have not maintained it.”

  “I am sorry...”

  “It is not your fault. We’ve always known that the great healing you wrought would not resolve this, that the people of Laina themselves would need to do the work...”

  “But the revolution forbade deepnames.”

  “The revolution excised all magic.”

  We lie in bed, grasping each other desperately. No great deeds of healing should be performed without the patient’s consent. No great deeds of healing can be maintained without the patient’s continuing work. And if the patient is the land, its people need to do the work.

  “She wrote that she’d go, to butt heads with the leaders of the People’s Republic. To convince them they need to do something.”

  I understand now. She did not ask for anything, except between the lines. I can hear her laughing voice in my mind. “Hold the fort, best enemy, lost friend. Hold the fort.”

  After I sleep I’ll find it in myself to care about Anda-Aggriu’s fate in Laina, and about the land. But now, right now, I cannot stop caring about the future soldiers, who sleep tonight unhurt and unsuspecting in their beds—those who will breathe their last, those who will make it to my healing room, breaking inside, desperate for the slightest breath of relief. They will come again and again.

  I say, “With or without Anda-Aggriu’s quest, this war is an abomination.”

  “There will be no war.” His body is tight with it, his mind vibrates with unreleased power. He carries the war in himself.

  I am not angry anymore. Just sad, bone-weary, and I know he will not sleep—unless I draw on my long names and cast a calming weave over him. He hates with snarling hatred any outside interference with his mind, even mine; but there are only hours left until the dawn.

  “Master,” I say. “May I help you sleep?”

  He consents.

  * * *

  In the morning he makes a formal apology to me in front of the people, then leaves with them. I crawl back into bed exhausted, and sleep until noon.

  Later I go to the healing room. Between seeing patients, I sit, not speaking, fretting about my lord at the assembly and about Dedéi; but Dedéi does not show up.

  When I return home, my lord is already there. Brentann has made no move to accuse him. In fact, Brentann has asked to be excused mid-session due to sickness; he will be taking the next day off to recover at home.

  We are at an impasse. I feel the heaviness of it, a storm tha
t hangs over our heads, dipping ever lower without spilling a drop of rain. I get a splitting headache, and I make no move to heal it.

  The next day is a repeat. My lord leaves for session, somewhat cheered by the expected absence of Brentann; I leave for the healing room and see a few patients there.

  The knock on my door comes in the early afternoon. I recognize the already familiar buzz of Dedéi’s magic even before I open to let them in. Dedéi wears girl’s clothing, a pale yellow dress that sits incongruously on their slightly tilted frame. A large black purse is slung across it.

  “Come in, come in,” I say. “I worried.”

  “I do not want to be remade.” It has become a greeting, a hello and goodbye, and it is now spoken without heaviness.

  “I will not remake you. I will not do anything without your consent.”

  Dedéi smiles and nods.

  But if you do not want my help, why are you here? “What would you like to talk about?”

  “Geography,” they say.

  “Your pardon?”

  “Grandfather says the Coast is an abomination. One does not get to simply choose a gender.”

  Ah. I understand. Of course. “You do not want to be a girl.”

  Dedéi nods, head tilted slightly to the side. That night, hanging from the vines in a shirt and a pair of simple pants, they looked less incongruous than the times I’ve seen them wear frills. “The world is wide. I want to go.”

  “Yes, there are places where what you are will be recognized. The Coast—”

  “Grandfather says the Coast is full of arazéin. I am arazéi.”

  It startles me to hear such a strong word from them. But all the words for ichidar I know in Katran are insults. “Do you want to be a boy instead?”

  “A boy instead,” Dedéi echoes. “Maybe not. Maybe. I do not want to be a girl.”

  “It is all right.”

  On the Coast. It is all right on the Coast. It is all right to be both a woman and a man; it is all right to be neither. It is all right to be ichidi. It is all right to be chidaru. It is all right with any kind of body to be either a woman or a man.

  “The Coast is beautiful, and they like deepnames there. I read that in a book, Lammet Tabagi’s travelogue of the Western shores...” Dedéi launches into a minute description of the book, and I slide back into my thoughts. Yes, on the Coast everything is permitted—as long as the others agree. It is all right to desire men, women, both, neither. It is all right to desire many, or only one.

  It is all right to be like me, to be eladin. It is all right to be eram. There are no words like that in Katra. If a person submits to another, that person is disdained. The desire to inflict pain is considered a perversion. On the Coast, consent is the only measure of what is permitted.

  “And they even put deepnames into the ground, to make the gardens grow...”

  I sigh. “I do not recommend the Coast to you.”

  Dedéi looks at me startled, then hurt. “Because you are wrong.”

  I realize, after a moment, that by ‘you’, Dedéi means themself. Somebody has said this to them, and now they repeat it. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

  They shrug. “You are insane and cripple. Which is why you need to come to Healer Parét’s room.”

  “No. No! You are a talented person. It is just...”

  I stop myself mid-sentence.

  “Dedéi. Who said this? Was it your grandfather?”

  “Grandfather. Yesterday. When I broke the ward and made so much noise.”

  My stomach knots into horrible, twisted shapes. “Dedéi, it is very important. What exactly did he say?”

  Dedéi yells, “Tell me who showed you how to do this!”

  “Did you?” I whisper.

  They nod, miserable. I have not asked them not to tell, and under stress it would be too hard for them to lie.

  “You are insane and cripple and you need to come to Healer Parét’s room because he told you to. I will let you go, but you must go only there.” They bite their lip, but do not cry. “I do not want to be remade. Just to talk.”

  I understand. In a flash, I understand everything. I draw on the three-syllable to give me strength to overcome indecision. There is no time to waste. “Dedéi. Listen... There is something very important I need to tell you. Will you trust me?”

  “Trust me,” they echo. And then, “You do not yell. And you like deepnames. You showed me how to open the weave, but I mangled it. You do not grab. You do not yell.”

  I nod, breath catching in my throat. You trust me. Nobody should trust me. “Dedéi, your grandfather wishes you ill. He sent you here because he wants to hurt you. Hurt you bad.” Trust me, please please trust me.

  They nod.

  “You must run. Run now. Do you have money?” I grab my purse and shove it into their hands, a stack of ilaria from last week’s healing I performed while at the Oligarchy Governance. “The Coast is not a good place—not because of who you are, but because...” I struggle to put it in words—the struggle between my lord and Brentann, between the Coast and Katra; the politics which grudgingly allow a few Coastal nobles to participate in governance; how this fragile balance could so easily be disrupted by Dedéi’s sudden appearance on the Coast. “...because it is too close to your grandfather. The Coast is a part of Katra. It is too small for you to hide. You will be found and brought back.”

  Dedéi nods, and stuffs my smaller purse clumsily into theirs. “Then where?”

  I think quickly. Araigen? No. Laina? Merciful Bird in heaven, no. Which country recognizes ichidar? Which country recognizes ichidar and will not harm Dedéi for being tilted oddly towards the world?

  “Listen, there is one place that is good, but the road is dangerous. It is Burri, the desert. In the south.” My lord traveled there in his youth, and judging from the reports, that’s where the children went.

  “The capital of Burri is Che Mazri,” Dedéi says. “It means Eleven Wells. I read a travelogue...”

  I interrupt. No time left. I can feel the edges of my master’s wards begin to tremble.

  I speak fast. “The ruler of that land is wise and old and an ichidi like you. The sands are old and have seen everything; these changes and choices are not strange in Burri. Tell the Old Royal in Che Mazri that Parét of the house Kekeri sent you.”

  My master’s wards begin to vibrate in earnest. Brentann is almost here.

  “You must go. Go now.” Dedéi hesitates. I say, “Your grandfather is here to kill you. I will protect you, but you must go.”

  Dedéi hesitates.

  I say, “The Old Royal loves deepnames. They know more about deepnames than anybody in the north. And they have books, geometry books that have never been seen in Katra.”

  Dedéi claps their hands. I expect them to say “cheery,” but they reply simply with “All right.”

  “Can I protect you?”

  They nod.

  I construct a hasty weave. It will not last more than a few hours, but there is no time for something elaborate. “Don’t draw on your deepnames for as long as you can, the weave will snap when you do.”

  My master’s wards creak under the pressure of somebody else’s magic. But it will take more than what Brentann has got to break these wards.

  I breathe power to unveil the back exit, the one that leads into the service alleyway and which I never use except in such emergencies. It is not visible from the front of the building.

  The alleyway is narrow and filthy. Two scrawny calico cats miaw at me, demanding scraps.

  I push Dedéi out. “Run. Run and do not look back.”

  I slam the door and pray to the goddess that Dedéi will do what they must to get out, to get to safety. The pressure on the wards mounts, and I hear Brentann shout, “Dedéi! Dedéi! You rascal, Parét, what are you doing to my granddaughter? You criminal, you... Open up! Dedéi! Dedéi!”

  I count until fifty before I call out, “Come in!” I extinguish my candlebulbs and let the war
ds go.

  * * *

  Mezará Brentann bursts in, then latches the door behind him and applies wards, thick and powerful. He looks around in the gloom, the chamber lit only by sluggish afternoon light that streams through the tourmaline glass of my single window. “Where is she? She was here!”

  He releases three candlebulbs, large and angry with his power, to circle around me like wasps. “What have you done with her? What have you done with my granddaughter?”

  He is taller than me, and taller than my lord. He is broad. In his youth, he was powerful in the body, athletic, and it still shows. His magic, too, is powerful. Against this man I am nothing. A ragi. A weakling. A man who submits to another’s advances, a spineless coward who forever cowers behind his master’s back.

  Here is the man who can easily snap me in half.

  “You do not have a granddaughter.” My voice is quiet, but my room is small, so it carries. “You have a grandchild.”

  Brentann takes a step forward.

  I have thought the word “broken” so many times in the last few days, but so few of us are ever truly broken. The mind’s naming grids are resilient. They bend and warp and twist, but only rarely do they break outright. And what’s been bent and warped can be adjusted, can be healed; even in the absence of a healer, what has been bent can adapt, can change and grow. Humans may ail in their minds, but it is very rarely that they do not have a choice in how to act.

  He takes another step forward. Not much now, before he can grab me.

  I do not move. Not moving is easier than moving. I am still.

  “She is insane and malformed. You are a worthless ragi.” He looks around, looking for Dedéi. I know his plan includes us both, but I want to make sure.

  I draw on the five-syllable, subtle, subtle, then on the four-syllable. He does not notice. Mild and weak, my names vibrate around his in an increasingly complicated weave. When I will speak, he’ll see no need to lie.

  “You finally figured out how to get to my lord.”

  Brentann spits, bitter. “A mind cannot hold more than three deepnames. Yet I forever hear rumors that Ranravan has more. What need does he have for more if he refuses to act?”

  “A feeling of helplessness. His family threatened.”