She never wondered, then, if the other things were enough without Japhesh. That question came later.
"What did you hope to find, coming here?"
Evriel stirred from her thoughts, summoned a smile as Sayla sat down nearby. “Just ghosts, I suppose. Memories."
"I'd forgotten that old song—my daughter told me."
Evriel shrugged. “It might not have anything to do with me. It seems improper, somehow, to have one's past sung in a ballad by utter strangers. Unseemly."
"But it's true, isn't it? You coming here, marrying a village boy?” There was nothing in Sayla's face or her voice.
"Yes. It was my first assignment—a trial, more or less. There were ten of us. We were gathering data. None of us had the experience to analyze very much of what we collected. All they really wanted us to do was get used to talking to people, observing. Being the long arm of the regent. And they wanted to shake loose the more starry-eyed among us—better to lose us here, on a colony of the Commonwealth, than to some rival's planet."
Evriel took Sayla's steady gaze for encouragement. “I was here in the highlands taking histories, life stories, teaching children's circles about the regent's planet and the White-Spired City. Japhesh was my guide. He took me all over the backlands, to the most remote villages. I wonder if they're still there. We ... grew fond of one another.” Hadn't she just been thinking how the old grief had faded? Then why were her eyes burning?
"And the summer fevers took him, didn't they?"
"Yes.” Slowly, agonizingly. She'd had to give Lakmi to Japhesh's parents while she'd stayed at his side, watching the life seep from him in beads of sweat.
"I knew it was that,” Sayla was saying. “It doesn't say in the song, but I knew it must have been."
Something in her voice reminded Evriel of nearly the first thing Sayla had said, that first day. She saw how Sayla's eyes gleamed wet in the firelight. She hesitated, and finally she shifted from her pile of cushions and squeezed Sayla's hand.
After a moment, Sayla pulled the hand away. “At least you had somewhere to go, when he was dead."
"You mean, the house—?"
"The world. You didn't have to stay in this village with these folk pitying you for living with him and then pitying you when he died, and you having no place in the world—in all the worlds—but the travelers’ rest, just next door to the house he nearly kicked you out of, time and time again.” Her voice was empty, colorless. “It's no wonder my girl wants to go see other worlds—this one's done nothing for her."
Evriel nodded and looked away, into the fire.
"You got back in that shiny egg and flew away again, nothing holding you back."
"My daughter,” Evriel said. She felt the surprise flashing in Sayla's eyes. “The song doesn't mention that either, does it? Lakmi was too young for a star voyage and there wouldn't be another ship in my lifetime, probably. You hate your memories, your village so much that you'd take your daughter and never look back? I abandoned my daughter here rather than stay."
Evriel searched Sayla's face, her eyes, for the revulsion she knew would be there. Finally, someone would see the coward behind the polished veneer, and turn away.
But Sayla didn't turn away. She said, “The archivist knows. Asha will take you to him tomorrow—he's in a settlement up on Starshore Ridge. He'll tell you about your daughter.” Then she rose and left the room, her face still blank and empty.
* * * *
Asha wouldn't let Evriel take the personal carrier to the archivist's settlement. “It would make too much noise,” she said. Then, “It would disturb the animals.” Finally, unyieldingly, “It wouldn't be right to visit the archivist in a machine.” So Evriel strapped on skis and tentatively slid up and down the street. She'd known skiing once, briefly. She followed Asha in long, shallow sweeps up the hillsides, stopping every so often to catch her breath again and thank the most high regent for the nanos that let her do this when the natural body would already have broken down.
They skimmed up onto Starshore Ridge just before midday. Standing at its edge was like standing on a map of the world: off to the left were the hills they'd just come up, yes, and farther off the dark peaks of the village roofs. Far below ran the black-thread Serra. But beyond that stood Ranglo, City of Ebon Stone—a proper city, with a carrier-port and a laserline to Sable, and Sorrel, and all the way around the planet to Colonth. Away off to the right were shadowy peaks, and but for the clouds tethered to their sides, Evriel knew, she could have seen over them to the gray expanse that was the Simolian Sea.
Oh, how large Kander was. Why in her memory was it always so small, even when she stood in the middle of it?
But Asha was talking and pointing towards a much nearer goal: a handful of low-built structures with smoke curling from their roofs, only ten minutes away. Evriel turned reluctantly and followed her.
There were children running down the hill to welcome them. Asha laughed and pushed away their prying fingers. “Inside!” she said. “Take us to the archivist. We've news and documents and a query, and we're hungry!"
Inside the largest sod-roofed house there was a mutton stew and mugs of tea. More than children clustered around them in the meeting room as Asha clutched a mug with one hand and with the other doled out letters from her pack.
"Not many come up this far, this time of year,” said the woman who'd brought the tea. “We're glad enough to see any face we haven't been staring at for months, but we're partial to Asha. She's always up here summertimes, bothering the archivist."
"Yes, the archivist,” Evriel said. “We've come to speak with him."
"He'll be around soon enough,” the woman said, “soon as this crowd gets their fill."
For a moment, spooning hot chunks of mutton and watching Asha drop letters into waiting hands, Evriel could ignore the reason she'd come and just observe, as for so many years she had observed for the far-distant, long-dead regent. This was the village meeting-house, today scattered with the bones of children's games. Two old men, bent and bearded like ancient trees, huddled at a corner table. Was one of them the archivist? Evriel turned the thought away. Not yet.
From an open doorway in the far wall blew heat and savory smells, likely for the dinner meal since it was past the usual lunchtime. The settlement had fewer huts than Asha's village, but Evriel had noticed scarlet daubed on the edges of the highest roof—the archivist's work, perhaps.
"Greetings, Lady Emissary."
Evriel started; she had not even noticed the man sliding onto the opposite bench. He was not so old as she'd expected; his hair was only patchily flecked with gray and though his skin was sun-weathered his eyes were clear and intent. “Greetings, sir,” she said. “Do I address the archivist?"
"You do,” he said. The kitchen maid appeared at his elbow with a bowl of stew, and he smiled thanks to her. To Evriel he said, “How does an emissary of the regent come to our small village?"
"On skis,” she said, gesturing towards her pair leaning against the door. “Shakily."
He smiled again, and she recognized it and smiled back. His was a professional smile, like hers, much-practiced but no less genuine for that, most of the time. Yes, here was an observer who spent his life as she had: listening.
"I'm told you may be able to help me with a personal concern of mine,” she said.
"In return for as much as news of the outer world as I can beg from you?"
"Oh? Sayla wasn't specific, but I'd thought you were a sort of local historian. Do you archive the outer world?"
"I should hope not; I'd do a pretty poor job of it from my room halfway up the Starshores. No, you're right.” He spread his hands, encompassing the room and all the meeting-house. “These are my people, my concerns. I ask after the world beyond out of irrepressible curiosity. Now, what can I tell you?"
She hesitated. Now she would know. The long years of wondering, the insistent discussions convincing the last regent that she should be the one sent to Kander, the mon
th in the ship, the week since she'd landed: an eternity of moments all pressed towards this moment.
"I visited the backlands once before, several hundred years ago,” she said. “I knew a girl—just an infant. Her name was Lakmi, I believe Lakmi Reizi although—” She faltered. “Although I'm not sure about the family name. I would like to learn what became of her, if I could. If you know."
He was looking at her as the others had looked at their letters, eyes shining with discovery. “You're the lady of the scourging fire."
"The lady of—oh. Perhaps. Asha mentioned a ballad, but I don't know that it has anything to do with me."
"Let us find out.” Evriel followed him out of the meeting room and down a dim corridor opening to rooms on both sides. At the end was a door, the only one Evriel had seen since she'd entered the building. The archivist clasped the handle firmly before turning it—a handprint lock, Evriel noted. And then he was leading her into a room any City emissary would have felt at home in. Blocks of solid-state memory were stacked in one corner, an interface screen sitting on the nearest. Along one wall hung all a proper emissary's equipment: vidcam, holocam for stills, an audiotype device, general-use comp unit. And in bookshelves at the other wall were the utterly obsolete artifacts that every observer she'd ever known had a weakness for, the books and scrolls and loose sheets of pressed wood pulp.
Here were the chambers of a historian. Here was home.
He caught her looking at the bookshelves and laughed. “I don't actually need that stuff. Everything's scanned into the archive. Here, I'll find the record for that ballad.” He sat at the comp unit and typed for a minute. “Would you like to hear it sung? The Hill Country Corporate Choir recorded it a few years ago as part of their folk ballad series."
"I'd really rather..."
"Right, the girl. Sorry about that. Spell the name for me?"
She did, and then he padded at the keys for ten minutes, twenty, the screen flicking in and out of database listings and through strings of raw data. She noticed when her trembling stopped, though she hadn't when it started. He was data lord now. He would measure from his vast storehouses the allowance of grain she craved.
"The records are pretty patchy,” he said. “We didn't have a proper archivist then. The genealogies were oral, if you can believe it."
"I remember.” Months after she had arrived, Japhesh, no longer a mere guide but not yet a lover, had taken her donkeyback up to a valley with five mud-brick huts, four in a square and one in the center. In that central hut lived a woman, not quite blind, who looked as old as the stones that reinforced her walls. She'd spoken for hours, tracing the four village families via many roots and offshoots and grafts to grandchildren of Kander's original colonists. Evriel had recorded it all. When Japhesh reported weeks later that the gene-speaker had died, Evriel wondered what it had cost her to give the full history of her village one last time. “What does it say?"
"Married Kailo Reizi at age—well, I don't know, there's no birth record. Fifteen or sixteen, probably—that was the usual age then.” His gaze slid sideways up to Evriel's face, fixing on a cheekbone. “He was bereaved of her three years later. No children. No other record so far—I'll keep trawling."
"I see,” she said. She didn't see. “So little?” She found herself sitting at the edge of a chair mostly piled with oilskin packets. So little. And Lakmi had died as she would—childless. No footprints.
"There's just not much from that time period—except your own records, of course."
She'd forgotten he would have those. He'd been quietly ignoring all he knew she wasn't telling him.
"They're my baseline for the entire period,” he was saying. “Really wonderful work—that's why I keep them, I guess. Sentimental value."
She shook herself. “Keep them?"
"You saw them.” He flicked a thumb behind him to the bookshelves of yellowed parchment.
"You're mistaken; I don't keep paper records. They're not portable."
"No, they're yours. They have all the proper emissary markings. You had other things on your mind at the time, I imagine.” His voice was gentle—sparing her feelings, blight him.
"They're not mine, I tell you.” Why was she snapping at him? “I don't keep paper records. You should have backups for two years of chips, recordings, and memory blocks. That is all I recorded and all I took.” Everything else I left here.
"Two years...?” He pulled a bound volume from the shelf and flipped to the first yellowed page. “Here's an entry, spring of 465, colony reckoning.” Another volume, another page. “Early autumn, 468. Poor harvest—the fevers were bad that year.” He lifted a page of loose-leaf from a bundle in the shelf. “Winter 461. Snows moderate. Lady Emissary, if these aren't yours, whose are they?"
She took the page, thin and crackly as an insect's wing, and traced the first line with her finger. Yes, there were the emissary markings, the number, all written in blocky script nothing like her tight, rarely practiced hand. “I left in 450,” she said. “You have my earlier records, yes? Surely you noticed the gap?"
"It was understood you had lived here for some time. If you put some of that time into your own household, no one would blame you."
"They're not mine,” she said. The immediate, the obvious conjecture was not obvious, she told herself. She could not justify such a leap. “Please—you said these were scanned into the archive? I'd like a chip."
* * * *
The long smooth coast down to Asha's village was quicker than the journey up, but it wasn't quick enough for Evriel. Even as she'd waited, fruitlessly, for the archivist to tell her of Lakmi, the comfortable abstraction of research and data and analysis had plucked at her attention. Now she had not only data but, even better, a riddle to solve. Now she would sift and pore and ponder, and she would keep damping the stubborn wick of hope that wouldn't be snuffed.
Arrived at Sayla's house, unwrapped and nestled in cushions, Evriel sipped at her broth and clicked through pages of records. The observer traveled little, it seemed, but the record of life in the village so many years before was full and meticulous. Births and deaths were listed, weddings, visitors from other villages. The record remarked on blight and on the wax and wane of the summer fevers. Yet the lists of dialect words were clearly incomplete, for every page or so the observer let slip an unfamiliar word or a phrase likely never spoken off the backlands. Certainly, Evriel had no record of them anywhere else—she checked the collation of data from the other emissaries she'd traveled with, just to be sure.
Sayla came to tell Evriel the sleep room was prepared, and Evriel hum-hummed assent and read on. A while later Asha came and bid her good night.
From these traces Evriel began to form a picture of this faceless gatherer of fact, tradition, and tale. She—or he? But the women were more likely to be literate than the men; surely it was a woman's work she read. Surely. She, this nameless woman, was a native of the backlands. She followed the basic form of an emissary's official reports to the regent, yet she clearly lacked the training. Why had she kept such records?
And why, oh why did she not somewhere identify herself? Even emissaries, who prized objectivity of all things, marked each record with a name. Why, in this one thing, had the observer not followed form?
The scanned words began to blur, and finally Evriel put the portable reader aside. Finally, she drew from her day sack the other thing the archivist had given her: sheets of yellowed paper wrapped in oilcloth.
"You should have originals to study,” the archivist had said. “These are the oldest."
Now she unwrapped the fragile sheets. In an emissary's travels, data was precious but paper was only mass, a costly artifact. Evriel was no collector of artifacts. Yet she gave a moment's notice to the warm brown of age, the faded ink, the thick awkward scrawl of the letters. They were not the letters of a person who practiced them overmuch.
What did she expect to find? She had already read these records, scanned into the electronic record by some
past archivist and rendered in the standard script. She read them again, anyway, searching for some hint of identity, some proof of the woman—girl?—who'd written them. Some assurance that her daughter's life, so long ended, was not wholly lost.
* * * *
The stark light of dawn woke her. She stirred, realized that her arms were bare, and pulled her robes closer around her. They were not enough.
"Tea?” Sayla held out a mug.
"Yes, thank you.” Evriel clasped stiff fingers around the stoneware's heat.
Sayla settled into cushions nearer the window with another mug. “Find what you were looking for?"
Evriel saw the old pages, heaped where they'd fallen from her fingers. “I ... don't think so. I hoped maybe it was my daughter that took up my work after I left—kept the record I would have kept. Even inspired that archivist up the hill to his archiving. Vanity.” She coughed a brittle laugh. “But there's no evidence."
"She made your song."
"What?"
Sayla was watching her carefully, deeply. “The song Asha told you, about you and your man. Your daughter made it."
"How—?” Shakily Evriel set her tea aside. “How do you know? The archivist—"
"I gave him too much credit,” Sayla said. “He knows lots, you can be sure, but he doesn't always remember all of it. He's like his machines—if you don't ask the right question, you get no answer."
"And what would the right question have been?"
"If you asked him who first sang ‘Lady of the White-Spired City,’ he'd say he had no proper record, but hearsay had that the lady's little girl made it. Hearsay, nothing—the Reizis are cousins, remember. We know where that song came from."
"And the records?” But the answer didn't seem to matter so much now.
Sayla's gaze dropped to her mug. “A song's one thing, and a bunch of old papers is another. Could be hers as well as anybody's, I guess."
Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #222 Page 6
