Perhaps I grew accustomed to not knowing what the next day would bring or how I would handle it. As I rubbed my tingling fingers together, the prospect of an unknown tomorrow didn’t bother me much at all.
~ 17 ~
We sat to eat shortly after. With a crescendo of the work song, the tune and words became a summoning even I recognized. Miraculously, a line of platters appeared on a long surface of one low wall, order crystallizing out of seeming chaos. Everyone gathered, but stood back, and Ochieng led me to the front.
Guest of honor, I supposed. Trying to accept the role with grace, I took the ceramic plate he handed me. Unlike the disposable clay pots we’d broken to eat from in Bandari, this had a slick and shiny glaze on it, gleaming in the light of the many torches ringing the terrace—kept carefully distant from the fluttering curtains that made the “walls” of the tiered house.
Ochieng served me from the various platters, scooping small portions of each onto my plate, explaining what each consisted of and saying that I could try them and come back for more of what I liked. He kept checking for my refusal, but I knew so few of the ingredients that I simply waved him on. It took a great deal of will to keep my chin up, to not duck my face and avert my gaze in my deep discomfort at having a man serve me food, but no one seemed to think anything of it and I wouldn’t shame Ochieng before his family.
My plate full and my cup brimming with, to my surprised delight, bia like we’d had at Bandari, I sat cross-legged on the warm stones of the terrace. As they filled their plates, the D’tiembo clan did likewise, sitting on the ground in clusters, talking happily among themselves. A few of the older ones joined the gentleman by the fire, sitting on the fireplace ledge, their plates on their laps. He had been dozing while the others greeted me, one of the few who hadn’t.
We ate with our fingers, sometimes tipping back our heads to catch the food in our mouths, using smaller pieces of the curtain cloth to wipe our hands. Ochieng regaled the group that sat with us with the tale of our journey. He spoke in their tongue, after apologizing to me, which I shrugged off. Apparently very few of them understood Common Tongue, and why should they? The conversation ran over and around me like the great river beyond, restful and comforting. It reminded me of the seraglio, with a thousand conversations occurring at once, that one might dip into or not.
Except that here the open sky arched above, pierced with the bright stars where Moranu’s moon didn’t chase them into hiding. I could look all I pleased. More, I could get up and go down the steps and keep walking. Forever, if I wished.
And because I could, I was content to stay where I was.
I licked my plate clean, as I saw others do, taking a childish pleasure in knowing how horrified my mother would be to see it. Imagine! An imperial princess, sitting on unpolished stones worn smooth only by the passage of feet, wearing men’s clothes, in an unladylike position, eating with her hands and licking her plate.
A softly ridged pattern in the plate caught my attention as my tongue passed over it, and I held the plate up to the light to see better. Like the clay pot in Bandari, this plate had an animal image worked into it. Not a fish, but an elephant. One that seemed to be dancing, up on hind legs, trunk waving in the air like I might hold a pearl aloft in the ducerse.
It shouldn’t surprise me, but it did. Perhaps I’d been dense. The elephants didn’t just live near and with the D’tiembo family. The family claimed the elephant as their emblem. My feet had led straight to Ochieng and this.
Ochieng tapped the rim of the plate as I stared at it in the fluster of my late-dawning realization. “D’tiembo,” he explained, unnecessarily now. “My ancestor took the name from his people, where ‘tembo’ is the word for elephant. D’tiembo means ‘of the elephants.’ He came here with a small tribe, saving them from cruel masters. An exile from his people.” Ochieng gave me a long look as he said that, making me wonder just how much he saw into me. “He built this place to make something new. Safe for all of us. A place to grow in peace and to flourish.”
I nodded, feeling that I finally understood.
* * * *
Zalaika herself took on the task of settling me in. With her not speaking Common Tongue and me not speaking at all, she handled it primarily by showing me three different rooms that could be mine. It took me a moment to get the hang of the spiraling staircases as we climbed to the highest room. The steps on those narrowed toward the center, so I needed to keep to the outside to maintain my footing. And I heeded Ochieng’s advice, keeping my eyes where I wanted to go, not on the receding levels of tiered rooms below me.
The stairs spiraled up sometimes through rooms—which seemed to be common gathering areas, judging by the work in various stages strewn about—and other times outside the curtained areas. Most every room, however, had the curtains tied back to the poles with broad swaths of contrasting scarves, allowing the pleasant evening breeze to flow through.
Zalaika first showed me a room at the very top, at the end of the series of stairs. The woven mat platform gleamed immaculate and a sleeping pad sat rolled up next to a neat stack of cloths of various weights. Kept exclusively for guests, I supposed. She held up her lantern to show the room, then gestured to the view, which must be commanding. But the height and subtle sway of the house beneath gave me a dizzying feeling as if I might fall at any moment.
Saving me the need to convey as much, Zalaika held up a single finger, then gestured me to follow her. We descended again, and now some people had begun to return to the common areas, turning up the shielded lanterns and taking up various tasks. One of Ochieng’s sisters waited for us to pass, casually hugging Ayela and a slightly older boy against her. She nodded to me and exchanged a brief spate of conversation with her mother. Then she herded the children up the steps and into a branching set of rooms, presumably to bed.
We stayed at mid-level, but going away from the river, moving through a series of common rooms where the lanterns remained mostly shuttered for the night. I hadn’t realized how much of the house backed up to a spur of the bluff, but these rooms actually enjoyed at least one wall of stone, which seemed much more normal to me. The one Zalaika showed me looked much like the one at the top—the neatly stowed bedding and careful tidiness a contrast to the colorful sleeping quarters in active use, jumbled with pillows and possessions—but was much darker and enclosed feeling. The curtains divided it from other rooms on two sides, with the curving rock wall forming a long semicircular third. I liked it, but perhaps it was too much what Jenna would want, to hide herself away in. Zalaika let me take a long look, then held up two fingers.
We descended nearly to the terrace level for the final room. This one sat off to the side, on the second tier of the main house, and had two sides that opened to the outside, one connecting to a small common space that seemed mostly unused—I’d begun to associate tidiness with lack of occupation—and the third to a landing platform that served as a resting area between ascending and descending staircases. Set off like that, the room was private, but also would allow me to look out. A place to learn to be Ivariel.
Zalaika barely held up the three fingers when I echoed the gesture, nodding and smiling tentatively. She rewarded me with a broadly radiant grin. Then, to my shock, seized me and hugged me to her generous bosom. It felt like falling into the warmest and softest of beds, but one that smelled of cooking spices and woodsmoke. So unlike my painstakingly groomed and formal mother. I must have gone rigid, because she carefully released me, setting me away from her, then patting me on the cheek.
She showed me everything, then held out hands in a questioning gesture, so I shook my head. For someone who’d once had so much—and had been provided far beyond what I needed by constantly attentive servants—I got by with very little these days. Zalaika bowed to me, which I would have told her not to if I could have, and left, drawing the curtains to the passageway closed behind her.
I set about unpac
king my bag, shaking out the spare clothes and laying them out to air. Perhaps tomorrow I could do some washing. Taking off my weapons, I laid them next to the bedroll, as Kaja would have expected. The sleeping mat had been tied with a scarf, so I picked at the knot, then unrolled it and examined the various bedclothes.
“Ivariel, are you within?” Ochieng called. I got up and pulled back the curtain to the passageway. Ochieng stood there with a tray of food and a pitcher. “Mother sent me with snacks, in case you’re one of those who wakes in the night to eat and spend the small hours in study. I explained that I think you’re not in that habit, as we traveled weeks together on the road, but she tells me I know nothing of such things and so…” He shrugged cheerfully. “May I enter?”
I stepped back, somewhat bemused by the formality. More of their elaborate manners in treating their walls of nothing as something, I supposed. He set the tray on a short table, then surveyed the room with an expression enough like Zalaika’s to make me smile.
“You can leave these curtains open to the breeze or close them, as you wish,” he explained, gesturing to the sides that looked into the night. “The sun will rise about there, so if you don’t wish the light to waken you early, you might close that one.”
I could awaken to the sun falling on my face? I smiled in delight at the prospect. After Ochieng left, I would rearrange my sleeping mat to take maximum advantage of that.
“As you’ve no doubt discerned, no one here will pass through a closed curtain without asking permission, and no one else will ask to enter tonight. Should you need anything, follow these steps down to the main terrace. Someone will be about. Help yourself to anything. What is ours is yours.”
The easy generosity still flummoxed me. I couldn’t imagine why Ochieng and his people had offered so much when I returned so little. Tomorrow that would change. I would make myself useful. For lack of a better way to convey that promise, I folded my hands over my heart and bowed deeply to Ochieng.
He regarded me a moment, eyes shadowed and sharp cheekbones catching the lantern light. “It is good to have you here in my home, Ivariel,” he said. “It feels right that you should be here. It’s your home now, for as long as you wish to stay, or any time you choose to return.”
With that astonishing statement he left again, stirring the curtain no more than the breeze off the river.
~ 18 ~
The first rays of rising sun hit my eyelids, heating them red-gold. I opened my eyes to a sight that I’ll never forget as long as I live. With Glorianna’s sun just spilling Her light over the land, the massive coil of the river gleamed as if running with fire. The sky blazed with pink, the grasslands on the other side of the river going from blue shadow to golden light.
And elephants stood in the river.
More than Violet’s tribe. They stood knee- and belly-deep in the smooth water that mirrored their dark shapes. All of them, from the babies to a hulking male with tusks, lifted their trunks to the dawn, as if doing their honor to Glorianna.
Part of me thought to leap up, to do my own salutations, but my body lay lax and rapt. The breeze blew cool still, not yet heated by the sun, and the blankets wrapped round me cozily. It had been forever, it seemed, since I lay abed feeling perfectly rested and at peace, with no pricking fears or gnawing anxieties to spur me out of it. I’d taken off my leathers and wore only undergarments of Elcinean silk, so light as to be wearing nothing at all. Though my sword lay beside my mat and a dagger close at hand under my pillow, I hadn’t slept so unencumbered since I left the Temple of Danu.
I’d come a long, full circle to being a woman who slept in a cozy bed in a private room again, with no pressure to rise, no miles ahead of me to travel. Except that now I had the great gift of opening my eyes to sun and sky.
A delirious feeling swept through me, of well-being and…perhaps happiness? It could be that happiness felt like this.
The distant trumpeting of the elephants greeting dawn echoed down the river valley, met by answering calls of birds and other animals. In that moment, nothing else existed but sky, sound, and color. It seemed entirely possible to exist that way forever, to let that cold, dark heart of hatred lie untouched at the bottom of my soul, never to stir again. I wanted that to be true.
I listened for a while, giving my gratitude to all three goddesses—but especially to Danu for Her clear-eyed wisdom in guiding my feet to this miraculous place, because in that moment, I believed in Her with wholehearted trust—then rose to dress and meet the new day.
* * * *
Breakfast turned out to be a much less formal affair, with leftover food from the night before set out, along with baskets of fruit and plates of warmed bread. Little Ayela, bright-eyed and bouncing with energetic excitement, showed me the ceramic pots of stewed fruit and how to smear those on the bread. She, along with five other children, sat in a semi-circle around me and watched me eat with barely contained impatience.
A woman I thought to be one of Ochieng’s sisters, and likely mother to some of these, bustled through with a large basket of dried grasses. She paused, gave the children a stern look, and asked me a question. I wasn’t sure what she asked, but the kids all looked so pleading that I surmised it must be an offer to send them packing. I waved a hand at her, hoping it indicated their presence was fine. She nodded dubiously and carried her basket within.
No sign of Ochieng this morning. He might be down with the elephants. And I hadn’t seen Hart since we left him off with the workers the day before, which made me wonder where he’d ended up sleeping. Not with the family, like I had, that seemed certain. Less clear to me were the relative valuations placed on my status compared to his. For all the criticism I could heap upon the rigidity of Dasnarian hierarchy—and I could think of plenty—at least I’d always known where everyone fit.
Something else to learn about this greater world.
As the children were patently ready, I’d feel rude abandoning them in order to find Ochieng and the elephants, much as I longed to do that. No, not rude. I’d hate to disappoint them, to fail in their implicit expectations. I’d agreed to teach them, or at least Ayela, so I would.
It might seem like a simple thing, this realization, but it hit me as something totally new. I had a responsibility, but one I’d taken on out of free will. No one would censure me if I didn’t follow through. Only myself. This then, too, was an aspect of freedom. Not being without attachment, but in choosing what I owed and holding my own self accountable.
Bemused by this realization, I finished my breakfast and surveyed the area. A few of the elderly folks sat in a semicircle near the kitchen, talking among themselves, some working on tasks with their hands. No one had offered me direction, so I led the children to a far area of the terrace where I thought we’d be unlikely to bother anyone. I lined up the six of them, four girls and two boys, none older than eight or nine, to my eye. There’d been older kids around last night, but none to be seen this morning. Perhaps they slept still, or had gone out on other activities.
All stood at attention, shoulders straight, expressions attentive. I’d figured I’d start with them where Kaja had started with me, building from the dance. Which, naturally, meant teaching them the dance steps. Not how a real priestess of Danu would do it, but I wasn’t a real priestess, was I? With the girls, that would be easy. I’d helped Inga and Helva with their dances, and had observed countless concubines and rekjabrel learning the various dances of entertainment and seduction. But the boys… In my world, boys had left the seraglio forever around the age of seven. I hadn’t really spent any time with boys older than that and younger than Harlan’s fourteen.
And the dances I knew were for females. No Dasnarian male would even consider learning, much less dancing them. The image of even gentle Harlan mincing his way through the silken steps made a giggle rise up that I sternly suppressed. These little boys watched me with no less excited expectation than the
girls—and I remembered well the bitter realization that I would not be taught what my brothers would learn, all because I’d been born a girl. I couldn’t crush these boys that same way.
I only hoped no one would be angry about me teaching the boys female things.
Well, I would show them and they could decide from there. I indicated they should sit and they obeyed with alacrity, alert to my smallest gesture. I’d left off my boots, still more comfortable moving barefoot. Drawing my paired daggers, I poised myself to show them the ducerse. There are easier dances, but the ducerse was the one Kaja had fixed on. The deep stances power the blade, and the stealth, grace, and balance it teaches all serve a warrior well, she’d explained. The key to all martial forms, according to Kaja, lay in full integration of the body, so that the blade becomes not an accessory, but an extension of the wielder’s intention.
Kaja’s careful coaching came back to me as I danced for the children. Everything physical I needed to know already lay in the learned patterns of my nerves and muscles. I only needed to extend that to wielding of the blade. It sounded so simple, but as with many things, not so easy to apply.
My ducerse looked nothing like the forms Kaja and Kaedrin had practiced at the temple. Those looked like something real warriors did, not like my dances, and I’d pretended I wasn’t envious as they did them together, watching from the corners of my eyes. Someday, Kaja had said, I might learn them. But with our time together so short, she’d been certain she’d do more harm than good by trying to teach me something altogether new. Better to focus on what I had, she’d assured me with that supreme self-confidence of hers.
Exile of the Seas Page 13
