by Kate Elliott
“I am going to cut your bonds, Spider.” Neartos’s tone is conversational, not hostile, as he returns to me. “You will put the corpse into the barrel, wash yourself and your clothing thoroughly, and dress in the clean clothing provided.”
The rope loosens, and all at once my hands are free.
With a grimace, I ease my shoulders forward. My numb hands turn hot, and I grit my teeth through the spasm of release. The captain cuts through the rope wrapping my legs and at last I am free. Except of course I am not free at all.
With a grunt, I push up to all fours, then clamber to my feet and attempt a stretch. Dizziness sweeps me, and the next thing I know I’ve fallen in a heap on the floor.
Neartos offers me a cup of mint-infused water. “Rinse out your mouth.”
The slosh of liquid in my mouth makes me want to vomit all over again. But after I have rinsed and spit four times, the urge subsides and I can drink without tasting bile.
“Very good. Now, the body.”
I have handled dead people before. When people died in our household Mother herself washed them so they could enter the next life clean in both flesh and souls. But this washing is unclean because they have murdered him and he will have no proper resting place, no family feast to grace his passing, no final songs. Yet what choice do I have?
It’s hard to bend him; he’s stiffening, as corpses do. The only dignity I can offer is to whisper prayers as I wrestle him into the barrel, hating myself for the violence of the act.
Neartos hammers the lid into place.
“I will give you privacy to bathe. Knock at the door when you are finished.”
He goes out.
Every movement hurts as I undress. My clothing stinks of urine, my face is caked with dried vomit, and my hair is matted and filthy. Yet I am grateful as I sit in the basin and pour a bucket of water over my head. I stop only when I’ve scrubbed my skin almost raw with the pumice. Three buckets of seawater later I don’t reek quite as much. The last of the mint-and-chamomile brew provides a sweeter-smelling freshwater rinse. I can touch my hair without touching flecks and slime.
On the table sits a worn but clean keldi and vest. The vest is loose at my waist and tight in my chest, but it covers me well enough. I wash Kal’s riding clothes in the filthy water.
For a while I toy with the idea of sitting in silent protest and not letting them know I’ve finished, but the act strikes me as futile. I rap at the door.
Neartos enters first, Lord Gargaron after, waving a kerchief, its lavender scent so strong my eyes water. Gargaron thoughtfully brandishes the knife my mother gave me. His smile intimidates me so much I would almost rather crawl back in a barrel.
Almost.
I’m not that brave.
“Let me explain the situation to you, Jessamy. If you disobey, you will be put back in a barrel. Obey with courtesy, and you will be allowed the privilege of the deck.”
“The deck?” Finally I understand what I’ve not had the wit or energy to grasp before this. “We’re at sea.”
He nods in acknowledgment.
His air of triumph goads me to say more. “If you’d wanted me dead, Captain Helias or Captain Neartos would have killed me already. So you want me for something else, some scheme, or simply the pleasure of a slow revenge for rescuing my mother and sisters from the tomb. Right out from under your nose.”
“Is this arrogant speech meant to soothe my natural instinct to flog a recalcitrant mule?” He enjoys the way I don’t back down, as long as he has the upper hand.
“No, my lord. I am simply telling the truth.”
Gargaron presses the knife’s tip against my lower lip. “The truth is that you belong to Garon Palace, not to yourself. Do you understand me, Jessamy?”
Hatred eats my voice.
He twists the knife’s tip against my tender lip until it draws blood.
“Yes, my lord.”
He turns away. “Neartos, bring her up on deck.”
That my queasiness arises from the noxious reek of the hold and the terrible presence of an innocent man stuffed into a barrel becomes clear as soon as I am on deck. The air and sun clear my aching head. Wind rumbles in the sails. We’re on a merchant ship with capacious holds.
Sailors stare as I make my way to the railing, testing my balance as the deck rolls and pitches. The coast of Efea lies to the ship’s right-hand side, the starboard, which means we are sailing west. The land is broken by small river channels cutting through to the sea and by long stretches of beach. We tack close enough to shore that I spot people at work amid fields and orchards. Fishing boats are drawn up on the sand. I need only wait for nightfall. I can swim to shore.
As I’m contemplating this delightful prospect, Gargaron opens a door to the leftmost cabin on the afterdeck.
“Jessamy!” he calls, summoning me.
How it galls me to have to obey. Teeth gritted, I follow Captain Neartos inside.
The cabin is painted in lively colors, its walls fitted with cupboards, a built-in desk, an inset bed, and a table with four chairs fixed to the floor. A man sits at the desk with his back to me, shoulders tense. If I didn’t know better, I would say the clerk has Polodos’s ears.
Then I see a young woman standing to one side.
“Maraya!”
Gargaron watches my horrified reaction with the thin smile that means he is gloating. “I imagine you have questions for me, Jessamy.”
Maraya gives a slight shake of the head, advising silence, but I know Gargaron better than she does. If I don’t respond, he’ll get angry. But I can deny him the satisfaction he craves by not betraying in tone or word the dismay that’s flooding through me.
“Am I allowed to ask questions, my lord? Or will that be counted as disobedience?”
“Say what you wish. I am curious to know which questions you will ask and which you will avoid.”
“I thought Captain Helias was loyal to my father.”
“Helias is a highborn man with extensive palace connections. Like many officers, he both admired and resented General Esladas’s success. And despised him for his… shall we say… base predilections in the matter of his family.”
I had no idea Captain Helias despised me, but I’m not about to let Gargaron know I mistook his politeness for approval.
“Nikonos almost killed you,” I say instead. “Why risk returning to Saryenia when it was still under his control?”
“I did not enter the city until I’d received word that Nikonos had left to pursue your father.”
“So you didn’t come to Saryenia to get me?”
“You? Of course not. Getting hold of you, and your sister, was serendipitous chance. As for Nikonos, battle is not the only way to secure a victory.”
“Yes, secret alliances also work well. The one you have with the High Priest, for instance.” By the surprised flare of Gargaron’s eyelids, I see that Kal and I guessed correctly. “That’s how you forced him to entomb my mother, by threatening to reveal what is really going on behind the closed gates of the Inkos temple—”
I break off as he grabs the whip.
Maraya throws her arms around me, like she means to take the blow herself.
Polodos jumps up. “My lord, it would be indecent to flog a pregnant woman!”
“Sit down!” commands Gargaron.
With breathtaking defiance, Polodos crosses to stand beside us. If this is the end, then at least we will go down together.
Neartos glances at Gargaron, but the lord shakes his head. Silence follows, and I realize Gargaron is waiting for me to speak. It takes all the courage I have to ask the next question.
“Does His Gracious Majesty know you were in the city?”
Gargaron still holds the whip aloft, but my question seems to distract him. “Of course he knows. He and I had already agreed on the strategy of sending Menoë and Princess Berenise ahead to Maldine while I secretly returned to Saryenia to negotiate with the High Priest. A good strategist keeps a plan in re
serve.”
“Oh, I see. If Kalliarkos and my father had failed to retake the city, then the High Priest would have found a way to kill Nikonos at your order.”
“You must refer to him as Prince General Nikonos. But, yes, poisoned him. There is more than one path to the victory tower, as you certainly know, Spider.”
“Did His Gracious Majesty take Queen Serenissima to Eternity Temple at your order?” I grasp at this excuse, hoping to acquit Kal of responsibility, and yet I’m ashamed of myself even as I speak the words. “He thought it would be safe to hold her there. He didn’t know the truth about what the priests do to the women.” I desperately hope that Kal’s innocence in this, at least, is true.
He inclines his head in mocking agreement. “I kept him ignorant of such matters. As for Serenissima, I am sure she is already dead. As you would be, if I had not rescued you.”
Rescued me!
My cut lip stings, but not more than my heart. This is exactly what Kal was trying to prevent when he told me to leave the city immediately. But we walked blindly into that trap, and there’s no way back. I have to take all the memories and the kisses and the soft words, and I must pour them as into a ceramic vessel and seal it with wax. And then I have to figure out a way for my sister and her husband and me to escape.
“What will you do if the enemy overruns the city and kills His Gracious Majesty and my father?”
“The line remains intact through Menoë. It wasn’t my idea for my nephew to stay.” He waves a hand in the air in a parody of an actor’s kingly gesture. “He proclaimed he would share the fate of the people he is responsible for. He even quoted noble lines from a play.”
“He never told me any of these plans.”
“Why would he tell you, Jessamy? It isn’t as if you are going to become queen. Or perhaps Kalliarkos spoke to you about that possibility?”
My face burns. “You must know he did not.”
“Of course he did not. He would no more have made that offer to you than to an actual mule, as in the well-loved and always-popular comedy The Emperor’s Four-Legged Bride. Have you seen the play?”
The insult spikes me straight into a red haze of anger.
Maraya’s hand closes on my wrist.
In her condescending elder-sister voice she says, “Our mother refused to allow us to see it, my lord. She said it was disrespectful to think a mule would lower itself to marry a Saroese nobleman.”
He sets down the whip. “Ah! I was wondering how soon I would provoke you to address me. Maraya, is it not?”
“It is, my lord.”
“A fortunate chance you were still at the Least-Hill Inn. I went there after Captain Helias informed me General Esladas had broken our agreement and gone to see your mother. Unfortunately she had already left by the time I arrived with my soldiers.”
I’m so relieved to hear that Mother, Amaya, and Denya escaped his foul clutches that I sag into Maraya’s arms. She’s shorter than me, and looks frailer, but she’s always been able to hold up us younger girls.
“Your mother isn’t important, not with Esladas married to Queen Menoë,” he adds. “You girls are more valuable to me now. Steward Polodos is negligible but may busy himself as a clerk while he serves as a hostage whose life is dependent on your obedience.”
He cranes his neck, looking past me onto the deck.
Sailors have hoisted the barrel out of the hold and onto the deck. They wrap it with rope, burden it with anchor stones, and roll it over the side. The sea receives it with a splash.
“In old Efea, before we Saroese came,” he remarks, “it’s said that any poet who told a lie was crammed into a weighted barrel and thrown into the sea. A useful custom, don’t you think? Why, anyone might find themselves in a stone-anchored barrel dropped into the unforgiving sea. Anyone. I’m sure you understand me, Jessamy.”
My dream of swimming to shore dies a swift death as I whisper a prayer for the five souls of the poor wagon driver.
“His Gracious Majesty will figure out I’ve gone missing,” I say in my last and weakest burst of defiance.
“That’s unlikely, since he thinks you went with your mother. Even if he did discover the truth, His Gracious Majesty cannot abandon his throne to charge after you as such a character would do in a play. Do not believe the fables told to make us feel better about the harsh reality of the world we live in.”
“My mother—”
“Will believe you chose to stay with your father, or the king. Even if she does wish to find you, how can she possibly succeed? She is a Commoner, an uneducated woman with no connections or wealth. She can do nothing to me. You lost this trial before the start bell rang.”
15
Lord Father, I have come according to your command.” A grave-faced boy about the same age as Prince Temnos enters the cabin. He examines me and Maraya with interest. “Are you sure they are sisters? They don’t look anything alike except for their eyes. The tall girl reminds me a little of the handmaiden Orchid, though.”
Neartos laughs heartily. “I think not!”
“Why do you say so, Menos?” asks Lord Gargaron sharply.
“Their hands look alike.”
Maraya pinches a fold of skin at my waist to keep me quiet, not that I was about to blurt out that Orchid was the name given to Amaya when she was serving in Garon Palace in disguise as Denya’s handmaiden.
Gargaron is amused. “Their hands! An interesting comparison. One set so callused, dark, and rough; the other smooth, light, and soft.”
The boy sighs with the lovelorn intensity of a twelve-year-old lost to the first stirrings of infatuation. Amaya certainly left a trail of flotsam in her wake.
Then he points quite rudely at Maraya. “What’s wrong with her foot? It’s twisted and ugly.”
“It is a mark of the gods’ displeasure, is it not, Maraya? The Precepts say that infants bearing such deformities must be smothered at birth to keep our lineages strong.”
“In fact, my lord, no Precept says that.”
“Not one? Have you read them all?” Gargaron scoffs, his tone freighted with warning.
“I have thoroughly studied the One Hundred Sages and the Ancillary Scholars. According to the forty-fourth Precept of the third branch of the curriculum, asymmetries of form appear among animals as well as people. So it is more likely people are simply like clay bowls baked in a fire. A few will shatter, while others might develop bulges or borderline cracks but still be perfectly able to hold food.”
“A remarkable analogy that I reject, since I cannot equate people and bowls.”
“What the Precept means is that asymmetries are accidents, not divine action, and not necessarily fatal or enfeebling. The custom of killing infants with conditions like my clubfoot is therefore ordained by humans, not by the gods.”
“Even were that true, I wonder that your father, an obedient Saroese man, did not smother you according to custom.”
“I wondered that too. When I was about the same age as Lord Menos, I asked my parents about it.”
Gargaron laughs in surprise. “Did you not fear the answer?”
“Since I was alive, it meant the matter had been decided in my favor, so I could scarcely be insulted by the result, could I?”
“Go on!” cries the boy, leaning forward in rapt interest.
“I was born when my father was away on military duty. When he returned, my mother made sure to keep my legs wrapped in linen for some days and encouraged him to hold me as much as possible. Once she was sure of his affection for me, she revealed the foot.”
Gargaron shakes his head. “A remarkable ruse!”
“I am grateful to have an Efean mother who followed Efean custom in this matter, that every child is a precious life to be nurtured. Indeed, the eighty-ninth Precept of the fifth branch praises the old Efean kingdom for this trait of generosity.”
“You explain too much,” exclaims Menos with so much excitement I can see he is greatly pleased. “Just like me.”
“‘Just as I do’ is more appropriate diction for a young lord,” corrects Maraya, because she can’t help herself any more than I can help wanting to defeat people in a trial.
A pretty young woman—Denya’s replacement—enters carrying a pitcher of water and two towels folded in a basin. She assists Gargaron and his son to wash their hands as a manservant brings in a tray of food. Polodos, Maraya, and I are forced to stand in attendance, stomachs growling, while Gargaron picks through his food and drills my sister in the Precepts. Every question he asks she can answer, and twice she corrects him, not in a gloating way, of course. Polodos’s willingness to remain silent, without the least attempt to prove that he is as learned as his wife—which he isn’t—impresses me deeply. I have underestimated him.
“Doma Maraya knows more than my tutor,” says the boy. “Can’t she teach me?”
“Women do not teach men or rule men,” says his father as he sips his wine.
“What of the example of Efea’s queens, my lord?” Maraya interposes. “For one hundred years the many Serenissimas have effectively administered the diplomacy, merchants, and markets of Efea. The kingdom is so rich that all three of the old Saroese kingdoms covet its wealth and periodically, as now, invade to try to grab it for themselves. What need of Precepts when we see the truth in the events we are living through?”
He sets down his cup. “I am impressed despite myself by the cleverness of you girls. I never imagined Orchid was your pretty sister all along.”
Maybe Maraya can control her expression. But he savors my shock with considerable gratification. “I confess I did not realize until Captain Helias recognized her when he went to the inn to fetch you, Jessamy. I am only sorry I was too late to gather her and Denya back into my net. Very well, Doma Maraya. You may assist in tutoring my son. I will monitor your progress.”
Doma Maraya! I’m astounded by this courteous address.
“My sister has likely not eaten for some hours, my lord, and you can see she is pregnant.” I attempt a tone of humility for Maraya’s sake.
“You girls can take meals in Lord Menos’s cabin.”
