Dragonfly

by Sylvia Kelso

  He looked rueful. “I never had to say anything. Someone was coming past. I think, maybe, troublecrew. She gave her this, look. And said, ‘Set our guest on his way to the look-out, Duitho’.”

  Somebody seemed to have punched me under the ribs. I

  managed to exhale an, “And—?”

  “And Duitho showed me the hill track, and I tried not to let her see I knew it. And she never said a word.”

  “Oh. Oh.” The earth was wobbling under me. He had been

  intercepted, recognized beyond all doubt, and passed. Sent straight to me. By Iskarda’s Trouble-head, and . . .

  “Who was she, Chaeris?” He had me by both elbows. “The beautiful one. Why did she—how could she—”

  “Because she knows all about it. Because she’s the one who,” I managed a steadying breath. “That was Asaskian.”

  And how was she so opportunely in the street, who hardly ever left the house, and how did Duitho happen to be there as well? Wheels within wheels turned before me, how and what had either of them known or guessed, and who, who, or was it Who, had concatenated all this timing so finely, down to the very hour, the very minute?

  Two answered silently, Not me.

  Therkon’s own jaw had dropped. “That was Asaskian?”

  “They know.” I tried frenziedly not to blush. “She knows who you are.”

  “They know who I am? They—!”

  “If they’d meant to stop you, it would have happened. No. I think. I think they know. They all know. What’s happening up here.” I held onto him as my head spun out of all control. “I think—”

  It was he who said the rest for me. He sounded almost as winded as I felt.

  “You think, they want this?”

  “Asaskian said, think how to make it happen. Iatha said, we just want you to be happy.” I did not need Two. The logic was inescapable. “I think. I think . . . Yes.”

  There was a moment of almost complete quiet. Then he said, hushed to awe, “Merciful Dhe.”

  We must have stood a good half minute, staring, like a pair of moonstruck sheep. But then he physically shook himself, and blinked, and managed a sort of laugh, before he reached for me as if he needed a prop to hold him up.

  “Oh, Chaeris.” He breathed it against my cheek. “If that’s so . . . really so . . .”

  I opened my eyes and rocks came into focus. The qherrique, still glowing brighter than a lamp. Hyacinths, crushed or intact, purple-black in the qherrique’s shade. Time re-assembled too.

  Coherent again, chaining moments together. Back to what his own words had implied before this earthquake intervened.

  Forward into the future I had Seen.

  My breath stopped. I could hardly get out the words.

  “You said. You started thinking, How.”

  It took him only a second to catch up. Then he nodded, watching my face. Now the solemnity lightened, hinting a first glimmer of smile.

  “Coming upRiver, there was time to think. Too much time to think. To wonder if—I was already too late.”

  I nodded. I had known that feeling far too well.

  “And in one of the Quetzistani towns, a storyman, a saga teller, was performing. On the wharf.” The smile had brightened, a little conscious, ever so slightly tentative, but now his whole face lit. “Chaeris, do you know what he sang?”

  I did not even have to think. “Skalr’s Tale.”

  He laughed aloud. “Skalr’s Tale. I was listening to a saga, in a saga-pattern: the tale told before the hidden hero. And I was in the saga myself.”

  I hugged him like a best beloved child. I was so happy to hear that candid, philosopher’s delight.

  “It really is like the sagas. The prince who ran away.”

  “Ah.” He looked down, and cleared his throat. “To be truthful, beloved. Not quite.”

  He looked back to me. Therkon’s bronze-dark eyes, softer, warmer than I had ever seen them. And now all but fearful, lest, at the last, I blight his culminating hope.

  “After the storyman, I was still thinking. About the tale. The Mother, and Tiran. What it means. That everything has to be

  balance. Alternation. And I suddenly thought . . .”

  I could not breathe at all.

  “Neither of us can go only one way. To Iskarda, or to Dhasdein. But we can be together. I don’t care how we do it, we can be married or not, partners or a consort or whatever they have here. But we can be the Seer, and the emperor. We just have to balance. Six months of the year here. And six months in Dhasdein.”

  “Oh—!” I flung both arms round his neck and jumped right off the ground, if it had not been imperative to hold him so tight I would have turned cartwheels like novice troublecrew showing off. “Oh, yes! It works, it works!”

  He staggered and grabbed to hold me up. He had gasped at the impact, but now he hissed in my ear, wickedly, “If you just put those legs round my waist . . .” I squeaked mock-horror, remembering Grinsey for myself.

  Then I set foot to earth again, and he let me stand on my own feet. He was looking more like a peacock than a peddler. Or even a crown prince.

  “I did think,” he remarked complacently, “it was quite a good idea. Dhasdein will raise all sorts of objections, I cannot be away another six months, let alone yearly, there must be a legitimate heir—”

  I cupped his face in both hands and kissed him and said, “Clythx. Caissyl. Heart’s heart. Shut up.”

  “What do you mean, shut—”

  “Just before you came out of those rocks, do you know what we Saw?”

  He stared at me, but my face was signal enough. He raised his brows.

  “The Mother.” Laughter was bubbling up in me, the way joy had outside that Grinsey room. “We Saw the Mother, and Tiran. Balance. Alternation. Half the year for each.”

  For an instant I saw the expression with which he heard me say we had been the vessels of gods. Then he whispered, “Oh, Dhe.”

  I knew what had stunned him: not the solution, but the

  correlation. That we had both seen the selfsame thing. That our connection had worked.

  He grabbed me up again then and spun me round and round with my feet flying out like a child’s. He was laughing. We were both laughing, until we ran out of breath. The sun shone on us, even in the shadow of the rocks.

  “Oh, Chaeris . . . .”

  “We can. We really can.” I was dizzy with joy to the point of insanity. It was not impossible. We could love each other, we could be together, for the rest of our lives.

  “And the children.” Two had suddenly begun projecting too. “Girls come here. If there are boys, they go to Dhasdein.”

  His mouth fell half-open. Sounding abruptly stifled, he said, “Chaeris, you are not—?”

  “Not yet, no. In Grinsey, I was past the moon-time—but you knew that. You asked if it was my courses, next day.” Sudden understanding almost winded me. “You were keeping count!”

  “It isn’t that hard.” He looked embarrassed, but not for any reason that would apply with other men. “It was, was something I could do.”

  Be aware of a woman’s cycle, and try to help with its difficult parts, in any way he could. And if I actually had conceived . . .

  He had tightened his grip again, now sounding almost dour. “If you had conceived, I would have been here before winter. And I would have married you. Then and there. Whatever anyone said.”

  Dhasdein honor. Dhasdein morality. Always, Dhasdein intelligencers.

  “I see.” I tried very hard to sound affronted. “Whatever I said, either?”

  “You’ve had your say.” He was smiling at me, no longer in the exuberance of joy, but from a deep, deep well of tenderness. “The pair of you. Now we just have to decide exactly how—”

  “Wait. Wait.” I held him back, both hands on his chest. Warm, so
lid bone and muscle, reality, no longer impossible, no longer only to be yearned for. But suddenly the full sense of that

  “exactly” loomed, daunting as another five days in Marbleport.

  “Therkon, have you really thought? Do you understand? About the Sight? I have to go on with it. I won’t be able to stop. There are so many people. But it’s so big, so hard to manage, so—”

  He drew me close this time with fierce protectiveness. “We’ll deal with that. Dhasdein has the funds, the people, we can make the space. In Riversend,” his arms tightened, “nobody will ever trouble you more than they need. Ever again.”

  He had come through Marbleport. He had picked up for himself the wake of those five days’ pain and grief, disappointment, deceit, abuse. He would see, with more than altruistic interest, that it was never so bad again.

  I leant my head against him and let myself sigh. No quibbles, no conditions: he would accept my obligations as he had his own. And no more fear of draining Iskarda’s resources. Whatever could be done for me, and for those who needed me, Dhasdein would do.

  But for those who needed more?

  “What is it, beloved?”

  My body had transmitted far too much. But I could not hedge with him, ever. Least of all now.

  “Tez. Tez said. Blight it, I feel like a dowry-hunter—”

  That brought his full-chested laugh. “Gods, how I’ve missed you, Chaeris! But what about Tez?”

  “I’m pleased to amuse you. But, in Marbleport, there were people who needed more than a Sight. People with a boat sunk, or hurt too badly to work. Debts they couldn’t meet. Maybe they’ll have to sell children.” We both shuddered. “All I could say was, I can give you advice.”

  His hands tightened again. He felt for me, at least. “And Tez?”

  “Tez said, So you don’t charge for Sights. We’ll levy the River instead. We’ll make the lords and rulers help their own people. Pay for them. Pay them back.”

  He went absolutely still. Then he let out a long, long sigh.

  “Chaeris. My lady.” He took both my hands and kissed them, one by one. “Tanekhet called your mother a world-shaper. I see it runs in the blood.”

  I stared up at him, still too nervous to ask aloud.

  “I thought, once, you wanted me to make a revolution to match Verrain’s. I could not do that. But Tez. Tez thinks the same way. And this.” He drew in a long, long breath. “This, we can do.”

  “Truly?” I hardly dared to ask. “We can? You will?”

  “We will.” The warmth in those bronze-dark eyes was dizzying, but the joy reached beyond my relief. He was looking into his own future. His own chance to be a revolutionary.

  “Dhasdein will pay. Dhasdein will make others pay. And we will try not to let it founder between officials and bribery on one side and swindlers and lies on the other. This one time,

  perhaps . . .”

  He might not have seven hundred years’ memory, but he had grown up with Riversend officialdom.

  “I thought,” I hazarded, “we could use the people who come asking for help.” He began to nod. “They’d be willing. And less likely to cheat.”

  “And then there is you.” He took the words out of my mouth. “Perhaps you cannot test them all, but knowing that you might. That could be enough.”

  “Yes. Yes!” I won’t mind Seeing, I thought, if it’s Seeing like this, if it can end in physical help. If I have you beside me, perhaps I can even bear the ones I can’t help at all. “Oh, clythx!” I threw both arms round his neck. “I can do that. Yes! Oh, Mother, yes! Come on, let’s go!”

  I caught his hand to pull him with me and he snatched my wrist. “One moment, damis!” His mouth was smiling but his eyes had gone suddenly serious.

  “What then?” I was dancing to be away.

  “Chaeris.” The smile went altogether. “Chaeris,” he said abruptly. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure?”

  “I’m thirty-five. Twice, more than twice your age. It may not matter now. But when you’re a woman in your prime, and I am—an old man. When you’re left with a husband tied to a sick-room, only fit to swallow possets, and, and hobble round on a stick. Will it matter then?”

  “Oh. Caissyl.” My throat shut in my own turn for fierce protective­ness. A vision flashed before me, Asaskian, warding, watching over Tanekhet. Then Two showed me the other side of the coin.

  “Are you sure?” I said.

  He looked blank.

  “I’m thirteen now, and I look seventeen. The qherrique, I think the qherrique made me grow so fast. But how if it doesn’t stop? We don’t know anything about—people like me. There is no-one else like me. I could keep on growing, living, at this pace. Always. And if I do . . .”

  Then who was to say my lifespan would not be half of his? That I might even die before him?

  He had gone almost white. Now he hauled me to him and clenched both arms round me as if he could stop time and possibility with mere human flesh. “Chaeris. Oh, gods, Chaeris.”

  His grip eased eventually. I leant back far enough to see his face, to meet his eyes.

  “So are you sure, clythx?”

  He swallowed hard. Then he said hoarsely but fiercely, “Yes.”

  He shut his hands to frame my face and said the rest even more fiercely, full into my eyes. “I’ve missed too much already. I’ll have whatever there is to have. As much as there is. Whatever it costs.”

  I looked into his face and saw the new world, our world, beginning. As for a Sight, Two merged it with words out of the past.

  “Ye’ve a road ahead, aye, a fair and clear one, but t’is long and twisty, too, as a skein of wool. And t’will end where you wish, but not where you expect that wish to be.”

  Therkon looked his, What? I said, “That was what Nouip told me. When I asked her to See. About us.”

  As always, he understood. His eyes lit. “That was what you meant, when—”

  “On Seony, yes.” On the stern deck, when I had wondered at his being crestfallen, after I claimed to have asked and had no answer about my road home.

  He leant back a little, as if to see me better, and then he smiled. Not a just description, of that look. “I think she Saw true. Or should I ask again?”

  I opened my mouth, and we did it. We too Saw.

  “Chaeris?”

  A long road, yes, but not one that ended here, or even in

  transforming the River, or with children. Or with being a Seer. Or an emperor.

  “You know about, about my mother and fathers. Don’t you?”

  His face sobered again. He gave a silent nod. DownRiver, how must he have longed to receive, welcomed, dwelt over every

  morsel of his Dhasdein intelligence?

  I twined my fingers in the fastening of his shirt. “And what . . . the letter said?”

  He did not deny it. Just asked softly, “Which part?”

  Two naturally had it pat. “One day, I so hope, you will make another journey. We will look up the track for travelers and find none so welcome, my dearling. You, and whoever you may bring.”

  My voice died away and the rock bay, the hillside, all of the Iskans was suddenly lapped in total hush. Then Therkon lifted his hand and closed it over mine.

  “Chaeris?” I could feel his heart quicken under my knuckles. When he spoke again he sounded almost like a little boy. “You mean me? As well?”

  “Oh, caissyl.” I stood on tiptoe and kissed his mouth. “Would I go anywhere, any more, without you?”

  He drew in a long, almost trembling breath. His eyes glowed, gazing at me, through me, at a vista he must have longed for, dreamed of, and silently, uncomplainingly renounced. Not merely of leaving the Empire, of undoing the shackles of rulership. Or even of seeing as far as, perhaps, beyond the Source.

  I saw the dark beautiful deer lift
its head and stop its turning. And then step, delicately, decisively, through, out, beyond the nets.

  Then he pressed my fingers fiercely to his lips and caught my other hand between us. “Then, if even they say, Yes . . .”

  We were close again, close enough to feel his warmth in the shadow, to smell dust and his own body odor and sweat and dirty clothes. His eyes were locked with mine, holding me tighter than his hands. I felt the air change, purpose informing it, as thunder charges the air before a lightning strike.

  Before I had even started to respond, Two said, “Yes.”

  “Oh—!” I caught up then. “Two, shut up! Shut up!”

  Therkon had looked momentarily startled, but it was already past. I could feel the blush, foolish, uncontrollable, but he ignored that too. He let my hands go, but he did not step back. His face, so close to mine, was utterly serious.

  “Two says, Yes. Iskarda. It seems Iskarda says, Yes. The moon, whichever way it matters, says, Yes. They say, Yes . . .” I knew the slight tremble in that familiar, that beloved voice. “What do you say, Chaeris?”

  I, in myself, for myself, sole and separate. Not Two’s other, or the hope of Iskarda, or the Seer or my parents’ daughter or maybe, someday, the empress of Dhasdein. Not even his beloved. I, as he had seen me, as no-one else had ever seen me, the first time we met. Chaeris, nothing and no-one more.

  The joy swelled up like its own form of thunder, and I knew its reply. I, I wanted him as fiercely, as passionately as I had that night on Grinsey. Mine, my heart said, but no longer just storing memories. Emperor, hero, hatchet man, philosopher, any or all of them, no matter. Mine.

  “Keep Two,” I said, “out of this.” I held out my hands. “This is my answer. And I say, Yes.”

  He took a deep breath, and looked full in my face, and I could read his thoughts. Then he made a little snort through his teeth and pulled me into him and kissed me, full on the mouth.

  I wrapped both arms around him, fiercely tight. Then I pressed up in his grasp and kissed him back, and felt our flesh, our blood, our wills and vision fuse, past, present, future, all in harmony, now and here, at last.

  And for a long time after that, none of us talked at all.