Buried Heart

by Kate Elliott

  “Why are you here, my lord?” he asks, clearly not yet aware that Kal is king.

  “You may address me as Your Gracious Majesty,” Kal snaps with uncharacteristic testiness.

  When he gestures for the queen’s litter to be carried into the courtyard, the High Priest steps back with a look of distressed confusion and then genuine fear.

  I’m confused too. What does Kal mean to do with Serenissima here? It’s long been the tradition in Efea for highborn Patron lords to donate an excess daughter’s life to Eternity Temple. Always it is described as a humane way to get rid of a girl they can’t afford to raise and then expensively marry off. Always it is explained as being more merciful than the custom in the old Saro kingdoms where unwanted girls are exposed as infants and left to die.

  Girls chosen to become oracles and their attendants are spoken of as honored, even though it’s such a troubling fate to be bricked up alive in a tomb that people usually feel afraid of oracles. But the rest of the girls and women—perhaps one or two hundred at any given time—live quiet, orderly lives in an inner sanctuary untroubled by the clamor and distress of ordinary life. Their innocence is like incense to the gods, who therefore shower divine favor upon Efea.

  But suddenly I wonder if the truth is a different story, just as Ro warned me.

  The long courtyard terminates in a closed and barred gate. The queen’s litter is set down here.

  Tied curtains flap apart, and the queen stumbles out, staring wildly around.

  “This is not Hayiyin’s temple, where marriages are solemnized.”

  “It is not Hayiyin’s temple,” Kalliarkos agrees.

  She falls to her knees as a supplicant. “You’ve brought me to Eternity Temple. I pray you, Cousin. Do not condemn me to the inner sanctuary. If you mean to kill me, be merciful and cut my throat instead.”

  “I won’t kill you because I refuse to be like you and Nikonos. I do not presume to act in judgment in the place of Lord Seon, the Sun of Justice. You will be safely held here until such time as a trial can be convened. Then I will present my case to the population, to inform them that you and Nikonos invited our enemies to invade Efea.”

  “Do not punish me in this way. Heavenly gods, I pray you, Kalliarkos.”

  She flings herself full length onto the ground at his feet. The distress on her face is not feigned. Dread chokes me because I’m sure something horrible is about to happen.

  Kal’s tone remains set and unyielding. “It is a holy temple, Cousin, where girls and women devote their souls to prayer. A place of strict justice and rigid piety, it’s true, but it isn’t as if a woman who was once queen will be chosen as an oracle, if that’s what you fear.”

  “I will do anything… anything… just don’t lock me up in there, I beg you.” Grabbing Kal’s sandaled feet, Serenissima kisses them repeatedly, a beggar groveling for a scrap of pity. “I beg you, Kalliarkos. Hideous things happen in there.”

  “You will be protected by these walls and holy priests, Cousin. I am being merciful by safeguarding you here in the temple instead of letting you be torn to pieces by an angry mob.”

  But what if you’re mistaken? What does Serenissima know that you don’t? I want to scream the words at him but Father softly taps a knuckle against the wood to remind me to stay still and silent, to not protest, to do nothing about the ugly scene unfolding before us.

  Kal looks like a man contemplating a nest of dead, rotting adders he has to eat for his supper. He gestures toward the gate as if he can’t trust himself to speak.

  After a glance at all the armed men, the High Priest kneels before him. “As you command, Your Gracious Majesty.”

  Thus is Serenissima’s fate sealed.

  Priests lift away a bar and swing open the inner gate. What I see is worse than I expected: a gloomy passageway into windowless darkness, nothing but stone walls and iron doors where girls are raised in night and solitude as if they have committed some atrocious crime, when all they have done is be born to Patron families who don’t cherish them. The very air breathes of despair and misery. It’s so dark.

  “Please, Kalliarkos. Please show mercy to me. Don’t make me go in there. Please.”

  Serenissima shudders with uncontrollable sobs of genuine terror. I hate her, of course I hate her. She callously handed her son over to be slaughtered. Yet even I am appalled. Even this is too much for me. Doesn’t Kal see how wrong it is?

  “Father, can’t you stop this?”

  “Quiet.” Father surveys the battlefield and its grim debris. “He’s showing her more mercy than she showed Menoë or her own son. The court will call him weak for imprisoning her instead of killing her outright, but once he defeats the invaders they’ll acclaim him as just and wise.”

  “You heard what she said. Terrible things happen in there. Can’t you see it? Can’t you feel it? Don’t you understand?”

  “It’s a holy temple.” He can’t see because his whole life he’s been told that the tombs are a sacred place, that the men running them are pious and just, that they would never harm the revered women dedicated to the inner sanctuary. “She’s playacting, anything for a chance to stab Kalliarkos in the back. She’ll be safe here until he has time to put her on trial before the Sun of Justice. Be patient.”

  Kal stands in profile to me. I study the features I’ve come to know so intimately now turned into a cold, merciless mask. This is the lesson he has learned from Gargaron, from Nikonos, and from the dead king. From my own beloved father, the general who kept the Royal Army together to bring him to the royal city as victor. My father, who at this moment is blocking anyone from seeing me while keeping me silent.

  Kal learned these lessons from all of them, and from Serenissima. He told me himself. The king sits atop a mountain of treasure. His army, and his actions, defend not the country but his power, which he’ll do anything—anything—to keep.

  Tears stream down my face. It’s not that I’m weeping but that I am sick to be watching this unfold. He tried to get away, he asked me to escape with him, but I convinced him it was his duty to come here, because I thought this was the only way to save Efea.

  I wanted to believe the people I loved would be better and stronger, that they wouldn’t succumb to the same justifications that allowed a holy priest to brick my mother into a tomb. I wanted to believe that Father wouldn’t be trapped by it. That Kal wouldn’t be forced to act as monstrously as the people who came before him, the ones who built this edifice stone by stone. I wanted to believe that the father I respect and the boy I love could recognize what is staring them in the face.

  Watching Kal’s expression turn from one of distaste to one of self-loathing as he forces himself to witness Serenissima be dragged screaming and struggling into the passage, I finally have to admit I have run this trial utterly wrong. The path I chose doesn’t lead to a victory tower. Or at least, not to a victory I can live with.

  12

  Father and I arrive at the Least-Hill Inn late in the afternoon. He’s arranged for us to change out of palace garb and into our cleaned clothing from the march, and his firebird soldiers have found a less conspicuous carriage in which he can travel into the city. Another man would have waited for the business of unseating one set of rulers and installing a new pair to be completed before taking such a chance, but not Father, not when he hasn’t seen my mother since the day he abandoned her.

  “Let me go in first,” I say, sure he will refuse.

  He doesn’t reply. He is fussing with his hair, as short as it is, and smoothing out the fabric of his clothing so it isn’t mussed. I have never seen him act like a nervous youth going courting, but I take advantage of his hesitation and jump down to the street.

  The door of the humble inn has gotten a paint job. Instead of having flaking, faded brown paint, it glistens with a depiction of a lush sycamore tree hung with goats’ horns like tiny cornucopias. I walk in to find the common room already half full of people off work for the day, a mix of foreign sailors
and local Saryenians, Saroese and Efean, mingling as they laugh and chat. The floor has been set with new tiles. The walls have a fresh coat of whitewash enlivened by flowering trees that have been painted on either side of tripod lamps standing against the walls.

  Polodos is serving a tray of drinks to a group of sailors, while a girl I recognize as Ro’s sister pours ale from a pitcher into the waiting cups of a trio of Efean men. When she worked for my family, her hair was shorn to the scalp to prevent lice but now it is growing out. She actually smiles at the men. She never smiled once that I saw in the year she worked for us, not that I ever bothered looking.

  She sees me. Her smile flattens to a frown. People turn to look as I stride through the room.

  “Doma…” Polodos looks alarmed. “How are you come here?”

  A tip of my head alerts him that someone is about to enter behind me. Then I slide past the curtain that separates the common room from a courtyard in back.

  When I was here last, months ago, the hearth had but a single hook and spit for cooking, the flat roof was in shambles, and the two small rooms off the courtyard stank of urine and rubbish. Now a coat of whitewash makes the area gleam. Clothes dry from a line strung up on the roof between the posts of a thatched shelter, a place to sleep during the hottest nights. Beaded curtains adorn the entrances to the two rooms.

  The hearth is bustling, expanded with a new brick extension presided over by Cook. Several girls kneel on a mat in a corner of the courtyard, grinding grain into flour. At a table under a cloth awning, two other young women are chopping vegetables, and it takes me a moment to recognize Amaya and Denya working together in contented cooperation. Strapped to a high chair, little Safarenwe is old enough to watch her older sister, clapping her hands and chortling whenever Amaya or Denya pauses to tickle her. How did they get here so quickly?

  The back gate to the alley is open, with a young man and a young woman standing as if on guard. I recognize them as friends of Ro. A line of people wait patiently in the alley for their turn to enter. Mother sits in a sling chair, listening to a family pouring out some tale of woe. She makes a few remarks, then doles out coins as the people profusely thank her.

  Seated beside Mother, Maraya appears to record the transaction in an accounts book. She then reaches out and rocks a net cradle in which Wenru lies with a remarkably bored expression on a face that should be sweet.

  “Jessamy!” Mother’s relieved smile is all the greeting I need, although of course it isn’t all the greeting I get.

  “You’re safe!” Amaya runs over, flings her arms around me in a dramatic embrace, then audibly sniffs. “What is that perfume? You smell heavenly, Jes. Not sweaty, as you normally do.”

  “I can smell nice!”

  She runs a hand down a trouser leg, fingering the high gloss of the fabric. “These are a Patron man’s riding clothes, the very best grade of wool and leather. But cut for a different figure. Whose clothes are you wearing?”

  The heat in my cheeks betrays me.

  “I knew it,” smirks Amaya.

  Maraya says, “Good Goat, Jes. What were you thinking?”

  Mother jumps in. “Jessamy, I told you—”

  “I don’t need anyone’s advice!”

  Behind me, the curtain sweeps up and falls. Father steps into the courtyard. In any other circumstances his trained gaze would first assess the area’s dangers and potentials and the chance of ambush from the alley, but he sees nothing but her.

  “Beloved,” he says.

  Mother’s face burns with a joy as pure as sunlight. Then memory crashes down, obliterating all radiance in her face.

  “Esladas.”

  We all hear the choked anger. The terrible disappointment that the man she loved with all her five souls had, in the end, proved so callous.

  Everyone stops what they are doing. The sentries tell the people in the alley to come back in the morning, and close the gate. Polodos appears in the doorway and holds the curtain taut so no one can come through from the common room.

  “I have no wish to see you,” Mother says, her flat tone a harsh rebuke to the man who claimed to love her more than anything else in the world. “There is nothing you can say.”

  “I didn’t know Lord Gargaron would act so drastically. I had it all worked out with Polodos, that he would bring money back to you. I wasn’t abandoning you. I had to act quickly without Gargaron becoming suspicious.”

  “Is that what you tell yourself? How you excuse it? Yet you took all your male servants with you—”

  “My military household! Of course I took them. But I thought of you every day!”

  She presses a hand to her chest. Eases the pain out on a breath. I wish I could take that pain into myself so I wouldn’t have to see the anguish on her face.

  “I could have forgiven you for leaving me. We’ve always understood what our pledge was to each other. We always knew how hard it would be to live together. But you abandoned your own daughters, your unborn twins. And not just them. You abandoned all of the vulnerable women and children in the household. They were part of my life, but you never considered them part of yours. That is what makes it so unforgivable.”

  “Lord Ottonor’s mismanagement of his finances and my career put us all at risk. I could not say no to Gargaron when Ottonor was dead and we had nothing but his debts.”

  “We could have fled Efea by ship, taken humble work, and stayed together. We could have journeyed inland and found a town to live in far from the ugly politics of the palace. But that wouldn’t have been enough for you. How such a mild life would have chafed you!”

  “The palace politics you speak of so contemptuously are all that prevent Efea from being conquered by a foreign army.”

  “Efea was already conquered by a foreign army, long before you came here. You stand on the backs of generations of people trampled by Saroese soldiers like you.”

  I want to break in but I don’t know what to say, and anyway Mother has already gone on in the most scalding tone imaginable.

  “Did you ever once think it was wrong, Esladas?”

  “Don’t be naïve, Kiya. War is how the world works. If it hadn’t been the first Kliatemnos and Serenissima, then it would have been another Saroese fleet landing on these shores and overthrowing the corrupt Efean rulers. Our military tactics and discipline are simply superior.”

  “‘Our’? I thought you considered yourself Efean now. Why do you call yourself Efean when it comes to living in this land but you don’t give Efeans a share in the laws and administration the Saroese brought when they came here? Why are you always the Patron class and we the Commoners? Do you believe that the Saroese are ordained by the gods to rule over Efeans? That Efeans are somehow less worthy? That I am less worthy? That your daughters are less worthy? And even your mule son?”

  Maraya stands with a hand over her mouth. Amaya presses against the table, and Denya has actually crawled underneath it as if fearful that violence will break out. I can’t endure my own silence any longer.

  “He just wanted to make sure everyone was healthy and safe,” I cry.

  She rounds so fiercely on me that I cringe. “Did you bring your father to me, Jessamy? Thinking perhaps he and I might be reconciled?”

  “No. No, I didn’t.” I’m ashamed because of course Mother knows me too well. I have been clutching a fragile hope against my grieving heart that they might see each other and it might all be better. But betrayal can’t be fixed with a kiss and a few coaxing words.

  “No?” She’s relentless. “Then how did he know I was here?”

  I can’t bear for Maraya to find out that Polodos is the one who told Father where they were because I don’t want her to fight with him. “I mean, yes. I know things can never go back to what they were. But Father wanted to see you and I remembered how you always say it is better to face what troubles you most. That’s all.”

  I press fingers over my mouth, afraid that Mother is going to yell at me again.

  Fr
ightened by the tension, Safarenwe begins to fret in the chair. Her movement attracts Father’s eye.

  Hoarsely he says, “Is that one of the twins I’ve heard spoken of?”

  “Take Safarenwe over to him, Amaya. It is no part of Efean culture to refuse to allow a child to know its father. Not even an extra and thus disposable girl.”

  He winces.

  All I can think of is that dark passage in Eternity Temple, the rough agony of its silence and the curdling stink of its secrets. The “extra” daughters inside.

  Wan and cautious, Amaya approaches him.

  “Amaya, how did you get to Saryenia so quickly? The winds were against you.”

  “We were transferred to a warship, a fast galley, Father.” The delighted-kitten charm she used to show him has been clawed right out of her. The baby has caught the tense mood and fusses anxiously.

  Father says sternly, “Let me hold her.”

  Amaya obeys immediately. Safarenwe lets out an indignant squawk, then lifts her dark gaze to the stranger holding her. Her lips tremble with infant concern as she leans her whole body away from his grim face.

  “Safarenwe,” he says, testing the name.

  The baby reaches out to pat his lips. At her touch, the lines of his mouth soften. His eyes crinkle.

  “Safarenwe,” he repeats, seeing how the name’s melody and rhythm wrap around her sweet little face and the distinct uniqueness of her presence in the world, for a name is one of the five souls that fill us. “Here is your papa, Safarenwe, home at last to meet you.”

  She coos and smiles.

  Pressing a hand to her eyes, Mother turns away. Maraya hurries to her and tucks an arm around her waist.

  “Maraya, do you have no greeting for your father?” he says, for he never takes his gaze from Mother for long.

  Maraya does not release her hold on Mother as she addresses Father with her usual calm tone. “I am grateful you are whole and alive, Father. But your explanations are nothing but weak excuses. You would never be as careless with the soldiers under your command as you were with your own family.”