Exile of the Seas

by Jeffe Kennedy

  Following the directions Kaja had given me, I walked uphill. Any street would do, she’d said, so I went where my eye led me—another thrilling and unexpected freedom—going up winding roads past shops selling more things than I’d imagined the world held. I wanted to stop, look through the lovely fabrics, sniff the bouquets of exotic blossoms, taste the enticing-smelling food being offered, but I heeded Kaja’s advice and kept going. I had no coin to exchange, but I would soon. She’d promised.

  At one place, a lovely patio sported small tables. Flowering plants made a boundary, and servants brought out wine and plates of food for the people sitting there. A group of brightly dressed ladies ahead of me—three of them, with no male escort in sight, and carrying various packages from shops—stopped there and a servant led them to a table. I supposed anyone with coin could do the same.

  The sight gave me a pang, as I imagined how Helva, Inga, and I, had we been born here instead, might have done this very thing. Laughing gaily and having a meal together in a pretty place in the open air, with no one to listen in on what we might say to each other. The servant who’d led them to their table said something to me in Common Tongue, about lunch, I thought. Shaking my head, I turned my feet back up the hill. Kaja would likely have kicked me for pausing.

  Elcinea was one of the Twelve Kingdoms, only recently united under the High King, Kaja had explained. Years of war had ended with a meticulously enforced peace. Kaja wouldn’t say more than that, but I could tell she had unspoken opinions. I should be able to walk unmolested. Still, it didn’t pay to take chances, as trouble still lurked here and there.

  Besides, if the Dasnarians did track me to the Valeria, it would be best if no one in Ehas remembered seeing me.

  So I did not allow myself to stop and gawk again, no matter how fascinating the sights. After a while, the small shops and places to eat became less frequent, the road grew wider, and gardens bordered it instead of buildings. Inside the gardens, different buildings sprawled, full of windows, balconies, and doors opening onto open terraces. I glimpsed people in them, sometimes older ones in the sun, sometimes children running around the gardens playing games. These reminded me of the seraglio, only turned inside out. As if my apartments inside it had been put freestanding next to a lagoon, and all the ladies, young and old, and all the children lived with me.

  Men, too. Older men sat with the older women, all talking, or strolling together. A group of young men and women played some sort of game on a terrace, chasing something they rolled on the ground and knocked with sticks, laughing uproariously.

  Extraordinary. And marvelous.

  As I reached the top of the hill, I looked for Danu’s temple. Kaja had said it would be the only building there, and she’d spoken truly. It was also the only building I’d seen made of more than the white stone. Gleaming black also formed its walls, steps, and pillars. Black and white, Kaja had said, because Danu sees clearly, leaving the night to Moranu and the gray interstices between to Glorianna.

  Soldiers, wearing leathers much like Kaja’s, stood at the base of the steps. They wore their blades sheathed, but I had no doubt they could draw as fast as she, should I give them trouble.

  “What is your business?” asked one, and I had to fight the impulse to duck my head, to beg the pardon of this strange man.

  “I seek asylum in the Temple of Danu,” I replied in Common Tongue, as Kaja and I had practiced. I managed to keep it free of my phlegm-hacking accent, as she called it, though my voice wavered with uncertainty. A difficult balance to find, to neither grovel nor command.

  Don’t be a beggar. Don’t be a princess. Be a warrior.

  “Danu welcomes the just and the honest,” the guard replied. “Put back your cowl that we might see your face.”

  Kaja had warned me of this, too, and that by saying I sought asylum, they’d keep my secrets. Still, if my pursuers tracked me to the Valeria and the ship to Ehas, then asked for a woman matching my description, these guards would be able to answer. Thus my hands shook as I pulled the hood off my head, letting it drape down my back. Part of me expected them to exclaim in shock and for Dasnarian soldiers—perhaps Kral again—to emerge from nowhere and swarm me.

  That part of me might expect that for the rest of my life.

  Instead, though both men scrutinized me, the one who’d spoken nodded with respect. “Danu shelters those who seek asylum. Enter and be welcome.”

  ~ 6 ~

  It would be exaggerating to say that I left the temple again a different woman. After all, I was still me inside. Still frightened, foolish Jenna, the girl who jumps at her own shadow and can’t tell pearls from pocket change.

  Indeed, the bulk of the first day I spent changing my outside. When I entered the doors of Danu’s temple, Kaja met me with an array of supplies. She’d left the Valeria early, sold a couple of my smaller jewels, ones she thought the most unremarkable, and went shopping with the money.

  “I hope I chose well for you,” she told me, guiding me to a room the temple provided for priestesses who traveled through. “You should’ve been the one to pick out your own clothing, but perhaps you won’t mind this one time.”

  Bemused by this, as I’d never picked out my own clothing in my entire life, I surveyed what she’d laid out. “I wouldn’t have known how to choose anyway.”

  Kaja, hands on hips as she also studied the collection of stuff, shot me a sharp, sideways look. “Unlike most of what I teach you, there’s nothing to know. You see what you like and wear it.”

  I knew that wasn’t true, but neither was I going to argue. My mother had meticulously instructed me in personal grooming—hair, cosmetics, jewelry, clothing—and all of it mattered in presenting the correct appearance. “I’m sure I will like what you’ve chosen. And it was important for me not to be seen.”

  “Not to be seen as you,” Kaja corrected with that feline grin. She held up a glass bottle with purplish liquid in it. “The new you will be remarkable in her own way.”

  “What is that?”

  “Dye. Soon your hair will be blacker than mine.”

  * * * *

  We went to the baths beneath the temple. The sight of the steaming pools reminded me rather poignantly of home, though these were empty but for us. I’d seen few people at all in the temple, as apparently Danu’s priestesses rarely stayed in residence, preferring to travel. As soon as Kaja applied the dye to my hair to set, I briskly stripped, eager to soak and get clean. Kaja’s sharp intake of breath made me jump, and I spun, gathering my clothes to me.

  “Have I offended? I’m so accustomed to going naked among other women that I—”

  “Not that, no.” Kaja’s eyes glistened with unshed tears, her mouth fixed in something like a snarl. With gentle hands, she turned me, lightly tracing the scars on my back. I’d all but forgotten about them. “Whip marks,” she murmured. “And other things. Small sharp blades. Burns?”

  I nodded, mute, embarrassed and ashamed at the ugliness of my once beautiful body. Shrugging off her touch, I cast my clothes aside and entered the water, refusing to hurry, much as I longed to hide what so revolted my friend. “Mostly from my former husband,” I told her. “He had peculiar sexual tastes.”

  “That’s not sex,” Kaja informed me in no uncertain terms. “Those are the marks of violence and abuse.”

  “There is no such distinction in Dasnaria. The older scars are from whippings my mother ordered to discipline me when I was young.”

  I’d struck the voluble warrior dumb, because she said nothing for a while. I soaked in the delightfully hot water, my head propped on the rim to keep the dye from rinsing out too soon.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she finally asked.

  “No.”

  “At least he’s a former husband,” she muttered.

  “Well…” I rolled my head toward her. “As to that, there is no provision to dissolve
a marriage in Dasnaria. According to our law, I belong to him for the rest of my life. But I’ve decided I don’t. I don’t care what the law says.”

  She regarded me solemnly, her skin a dark contrast to the white stone of the baths. “It would be true by law if he’s dead.”

  I laughed, partly at the delightful and illicit idea of killing the man who’d hurt me so. “Unfortunately, that would require returning to Dasnaria, which I don’t intend to do.”

  “I’ll go,” Kaja replied steadily, with unflinching determination. “Give me his name and I will kill him for you and bring you his cock as a trophy.”

  “I didn’t much care for that on the living man. Not sure I’d want the dead thing,” I said, laughing, then sobered when she didn’t even crack a smile.

  “Give me his name,” she insisted. “I’ll enjoy killing him.”

  “No.”

  “You protect him?”

  “I protect you,” I returned, also deadly serious. “Those Dasnarians gave you good advice in telling you to stay away. Don’t ever go there. You are mighty, but you are one woman against many who would hate you for who you are.” And would delight in putting her in her place.

  “And who is that?”

  “A woman who thinks and talks like a man. Besides—you said you have an assignment.”

  “True,” she replied mournfully. “But perhaps once that is done…”

  No,” I said. “Besides, I made myself a promise never to speak his name, even in my own head. It is enough for me to savor how angry he is that I escaped and that he can never have me back.”

  Kaja’s smile held a lethal edge of poison. A mirror, I realized, of my own. “Then I shall have to teach you as best as I can in the time we have.”

  * * * *

  My hair did indeed come out blacker than Kaja’s. One of the acolytes had trimmed it for me as well, and it sleeked over my scalp, like lacquered enamel, a wing sweeping over my forehead, and the rest in sharp-feathered points against my skin. The deep tone of the dye made my skin appear even whiter by contrast, and my eyes stood out blue and shimmering deep. She’d even dyed my brows and eyelashes to match the hair.

  To my utter delight and soul-deep satisfaction, for the first time in my life, I no longer saw my mother’s face when I looked in the mirror.

  “You did a good job with the cosmetics.” Kaja sounded somewhat surprised, studying me in the mirror.

  “I did bring some skills from my former life,” I replied.

  She hmphed at that, adjusting the buckles on the black leather vambraces she’d gotten for me. They hugged my forearms, completely covering the scars on my wrists and coming to silver-tipped points over the backs of my hands. “No one will guess what you hide here,” she explained. “And the scars on your upper arms could be from fighting or any kind of hard living.”

  The leathers I wore left my arms bare, though I had a jacket I could put on over the vest that fitted tightly to my body. Same with the matching black leather pants and the perfectly shaped, low-heeled boots like Kaja’s, with silver-pointed toes. Walking in those boots felt almost as natural as dancing barefoot.

  Kaja showed me how to attach the sheaths for the daggers she’d acquired for me, very much like the ones she’d been teaching me with. Then she buckled on a belt with a long sheath.

  “What’s that for? None of my blades are so long.”

  “For your sword.”

  “My sword?” I said it like I didn’t understand the word, though she’d used the Dasnarian one.

  Kaja reached into a bundle she hadn’t opened and pulled out a slim sword, made of a metal so light it looked nearly white. She had an odd expression as she presented it to me. “When I saw it, I thought of you.”

  “You saw a sword and thought of me.” I seemed to be reduced to repeating her.

  “Yes.” She smiled, a hint of wry self-deprecation in it. “Pale, beautiful, delicate, but with a tempered strength and balance. Lethal edges, too.”

  I stared at the thing, impossibly moved. Afraid to touch it.

  “And this is a gift, from me to you. Not bought with your money, but my own. A student should receive her first sword from her teacher.”

  “But… I haven’t earned it. I’ve barely learned anything at all.”

  “You’ve learned more than you know, and there are many ways of earning.”

  “But I won’t be a real priestess, a true warrior. I’m only learning enough for a disguise.”

  Kaja considered me. “When we seek to be a thing, we become it. Danu will know. Hold it like this.” She put it in my unresisting hand and wrapped my fingers around it.

  “Kaja, I…” I didn’t finish the sentence. It felt so strange in my hand, so long and heavy despite its apparent delicacy. My wrist already felt the strain of holding it upright.

  “You’re welcome. No! Don’t drop the tip.”

  “It’s heavy,” I complained.

  “It’s perfectly balanced. Lift the tip. Feel how it settles into your hand? Support its weight with your whole body, not just your arm.”

  “My arm happens to be the part of my body that’s holding it. Ow!” I glared at her for smacking me on the back of the head.

  “Baby. That didn’t hurt.” She grinned at me, looking pleased. “No princess. And don’t argue with your teacher.” Her smile dimmed a little. “I only have a few days to get you started with it before I must leave. You, too.”

  “I can’t learn to use a sword in a few days.”

  “No, but you can learn the basics to practice on the voyage to Chiyajua, where someone else can take up your training.”

  My forearm ached from holding the sword out with the tip up, so I sat on the bed and rested my wrist on my knee. Kaja frowned at me but allowed it. “I’m going to Chiyajua? How interesting that I had no idea about that. Or even where or what it is.”

  She put hands on hips, giving me one of her impatient looks. “You are going to Chiyajua, Princess, because I booked you passage there this morning aboard the Robin. You cannot play the mouse and stay in Ehas and hide in the Temple of Danu all your life.”

  “I wasn’t planning to,” I snapped, sorry that I’d sat, feeling at a disadvantage with her towering over me.

  “Oh, then what is your brilliant plan, Princess?”

  “I could go with you.” I’d only just thought of it, because in truth I still seemed unable to decide on a direction for myself besides evading capture. I sounded plaintive as it came out, like an eager puppy, unexpectedly kicked, and Kaja was already shaking her head, sorrow in her dark eyes.

  “You cannot.”

  “But I’m learning! I could help you with your assignment, whatever it is. I could…” I couldn’t finish, the amused sorrow in her gaze stopping me. She sat heavily on the bed beside me and, finally taking pity, relieved me of the sword and laid it on the coverlet where it caught the sun and refracted it as if it were made of diamonds.

  “You could, what—be my faithful sidekick? My kept lover?”

  I flinched, my stomach curdling, and she grimaced. “I’m sorry for that. We both know you’re not ready for that—if you ever will be again, after what that cur did to you—and even if you were, I think you would not want me.”

  “Kaja,” I got out, finding I’d started weeping. I did that these days, discovering myself in tears before I even knew I felt the emotion spurring them. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

  “I know that.” She put an arm around me, and I leaned against her. “But this is a small honor when I think you haven’t had any friends at all.”

  “That’s just mean,” I growled, and she laughed, stroking my arm.

  “Here is our truth,” she said. “You cannot stay in Ehas, because if you are traced to the Valeria, they will comb the city for you. You cannot come with me, because I go to a very dang
erous situation, to Castle Ordnung, to be in the personal guard of the High Queen of the Twelve Kingdoms.”

  “I need you more than she does,” I muttered.

  “I am bound by several promises to go. And I think you are wrong. She is a foreigner wed to a bully of a man. You will understand this. You are free and she is not. Thus I believe she needs me more. Priestess Kaedrin goes with me, to train the queen’s eldest daughter, who will be High Queen someday. These are important considerations.” She ignored my annoyance over this. “Also, I must stop along the journey and visit my daughter. I’ve not seen her in some time. My people move about in the hill country, so it will take time to find them. When I do, they would not appreciate an outsider knowing their hidden places.”

  I pulled away, astonished. “You have a daughter?”

  “Yes.” She beamed. “A gorgeous, spirited girl. Jesperanda.”

  “Why isn’t she with you—you just left her?”

  Kaja gave me an irritated look. “She is with her grandmother and her aunts, a much better place for her to grow up than with a warrior mother who travels about. Instead she learns to hunt and ride the mountain ponies, which is how a Bryn girl should grow up.”

  “Why can Kaedrin go with you and I can’t?”

  “Because Kaedrin is an experienced priestess and warrior of Danu. She has traveled all over and is trusted. This is something for you to remember, that an itinerant priestess of Danu is both visible and invisible. She may go where others cannot, because she belongs to Danu.”

  “Oh.” I mulled that over, envious of both Kaedrin and little Jesperanda, which was ridiculous. “Will you take your daughter with you to Castle Ordnung? If it’s the seat of the High King, then it must be a safe place.”