by Lori Martin
They waited for the king.
Raynii said, “Are you trying to claim that you, of all people, know who the father is?”
“Yes, I am.”
Dalleena felt their eyes all around the room, turning to her. Think, she told herself. Don’t sit here like this frozen to the seat. There must be a way to stop him!
“I have had the relas under observation for some time, and am aware of all her movements –”
“In other words, you have taken it on yourself to spy on the relas, the royal daughter of royal blood and the successor to the Chair?”
“My king, I have done what was necessary to put this document together. It shows all the relas’s meetings with a certain man. It is sworn to by a reliable witness of good character, someone who is a close relative to this man. At first these meetings – though unlawful, an arrogant flouting of the word of the gods – seemed innocent, consisting of walks in the woods or excursions into remote farm areas. Several months ago, however, the relas began meeting this man at night. Aided by a servant –” Sillus stumbled very slightly; Temhas had held something back here. “Aided by someone close to the relas, he was conducted time and again onto royal grounds. He never returned to his own estate until the following morning. Councilors, does it take any great leap of the imagination to name this man as the father of the relas’s child?”
The wine stood untouched. The pipes spluttered and went out, forgotten. The audience stared.
“This man,” and now Sillus was enjoying himself, “is named Rendell, son of the Boessus of the Third Hill. And he is an Armasii!”
“Liar!” Raynii thundered, and lost control of himself. His reaction was all the more violent because of his sudden sickening feeling that Sillus might be right. “Be gone from this room!” They were on their feet; several of the councilors jumped up; others were pounding the table. “You jealous, grasping, greedy liar!” In the absence of the guards the king flung himself toward his brother in an effort to throw him out bodily. Goblets clattered to the floor.
No one dared to touch him; instead three of the larger men grabbed at Sillus, trying to pull him out of the king’s reach. The doors swung open as the guards, hearing the commotion, rushed in with drawn swords and stood caught in indecision, uncertain what was wrong.
Down at the table’s foot, Ayenna stood and said nothing. She turned very slowly, as if she were testing the working of her limbs and joints. Above and between the heads of the shouting councilors her eyes met her daughter’s. She could not hear it over the tumult, but Dalleena’s lips formed the word.
“Yes.”
CHAPTER 15
“Master Nichos, it’s my cousin and her husband in from town – ”
“Master, my apprentice is here from MenDas, he’s nowhere else to go –”
“– only a few more, and the children, Master –”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Nichos said, pushing past the outstretched hands and pleading faces. “All right, all right. Gharei, where are you?”
“Here, sir.” The old man was almost running alongside, trying to stay with him. “We’ll never have enough for all of them.”
“We’ll have to manage.”
“Master –” they clamored.
“Yes, all right, but that’s it! That’s final!”
He shoved his way into the house and slammed the door on their thanks. Gharei slid in behind just in time to avoid being struck.
“It’s madness, that’s what it is,” Gharei said. His status as an overseer of the estate since the time of Nichos’s parents permitted him to say such things. Nichos grunted. He went up the stairs and down the passage to his rooms. Gharei stayed at his heels. On the threshold of his sleeping chambers Nichos collided with a serving girl.
“Oh, master, I’m so sorry!” Thin coverlets and bed sheets rained down on the floor.
“Are you hurt? All right. What is all this?”
“We’re trying to make up beds, sir,” the girl said, stooping for the fallen linen. “So many in yesterday, and there wasn’t enough room last night – we’re stuffing sheets with hay from the stables –”
“You’ll have to stuff more,” Nichos said. “There’re more in today.”
“Oh dear – I mean, yes sir, of course, if you say so –”
“I say so.” He went past her into the bedroom. She heard him order the other serving girl out.
“Get all that up,” Gharei said, and went in after him. He shut the door.
Nichos sprawled out on the bed, his velvet boots, worn even in the summer, up on the counterpane.
“I should have stayed in MenDas,” he said for the twentieth time that week.
“We need you here at home, sir.” Gharei stuck his head out the window; someone was chattering below. “Quiet there! You’re disturbing the master!”
“If you don’t stop bullying everyone, Gharei, I’ll send you off to enlist.”
“Not me, master. I did my duty in the last one. Sir, if I could just say –”
“You will in any case. Well?”
“I hope you meant it, about this being the final lot. We can’t take people in indefinitely. We can’t help the ones we’ve got – everyone’s relatives, cousins, grandmothers, friends. How are we going to feed them?”
“How is anybody going to feed them? That’s the problem, in case you haven’t heard.”
“Yes sir, but we don’t need the whole country’s burden on our doorstep.”
“The whole country’s doing the same. We’re lean, Gharei. We’ve gotten lean. Even the Lindahne ambassador noticed it.”
The Valtah was a cruel river, predictable only in its uncertainty. It ran across two sides of Mendale, irrigating the richest farmland the country possessed. For the second year in a row the river had risen in its bed and flooded out the crops, scattering some of the nearby people Seaward to the unfishable coast; most fled east and south to MenDas. East and south, to friends and relatives. East and south, to Nichos’s home. There was no other direction to go. Crossing the huge raging river was almost impossible, and for the foolhardy who tried it a desolate land lay beyond. Feimenna, the legends called it, meaning “outside understanding,” for the people spoke an incomprehensible language. If any Mendale had survived the journey there and returned (and some must have, for there to be tales of it at all) it had been hundreds of years earlier. In Lindahne, the idea of Feimenna was retained only in the use of its name, which referred to the land walked by dreamers.
“Lindahne!” the old man said contemptuously. “They’ll find out what it is to be hungry.”
“Oh, yes. We’re going to see to that, aren’t we?”
“That’s right, sir, and – look here, sir, you needn’t say it in that tone of voice. It’s only what they deserve. They’re nothing but a pack of king-followers anyway.”
“What they deserve? Our river floods our lands, our crops spoil, our people – already too numerous for us to sustain – migrate and bunch together and fight for food – and therefore the Lindahnes should starve?”
“But it’s their fault,” the old man said excitedly. “You don’t remember – bless you, sir, you weren’t even born – but I remember the last war. The dying, the destruction – and why? What was it for? Because we wanted to expand onto a little strip of land, land the Lindahnes weren’t even using.”
“It’s too close to their Hills and their passage. It scared them.”
“What, honest people who wanted to do a little honest farming, to feed their families? Is that any reason to kill a man? It’s fine for them, with their Hills and their rich soil and their fish. What about us? Our ground’s not nearly as fertile. We can’t fish our coast. We’re always struggling. And the Valtah –”
“I know, Gharei. I know. But it’s still not their fault.”
“Isn’t it, though? No land, they said, no expansion. And after they won, didn’t they come crawling all over us with their king and their queen and their primitive little gods and take whatever they w
anted? Draining us of whatever we had left! That fish we get, once a year if we’re lucky, do you know how they catch it? Do you know what they build their ships from? Lekah, that’s what. It’s lekah lumber, and that tree wasn’t native to their country, it was ours. Thrives there well enough now, I imagine. And trade! Along comes a new king and queen, they say it’ll all be different now. We’re going to open trade lines. Yes, and who gets the best of that, I’d like to know?”
“We both benefit from that. Look at the facts. We started a war, we lost, and we paid for it. And not in such high coinage, either. They didn’t tear down our government, they didn’t stop us from rebuilding, they came and they left. Your grandchildren aren’t bowing their knees in Lindahne temples, are they?
“They could have treated us better.”
“Yes. But they could certainly have treated us worse. Yes, yes, what is it?”
The serving girl had stuck her head back in the door. “Please, sir. His horse just rode into the stable yard. The cook says, what should he serve him?”
“Try to keep your wits about you, Milla. Whose horse?”
“The Third Tribune, sir. Tribune Forlas.”
“Already?” Nichos got to his feet. “I wasn’t expecting him until next week. Tell the cook ...”
“Sir?”
He’s got to have the best, Nichos thought, but he’ll choke on his food if he sees their faces. “Tell the cook to take a few cold slices off the best cut of meat. Bring up some mulled wine and bread with it. And Milla, I want you to bring it up personally. Try not to let anyone see you if you can help it. We’ll eat here in my chambers. Whatever’s left downstairs you and the cook can share.”
“Oh yes, sir. Thank you.”
“Gharei, you’d better see where they’re putting the new arrivals. And get some lunch yourself.”
“I’m all right, Master. Old people like me don’t need food like these youngsters.”
Twenty minutes later they were seated in the small room next to his sleeping quarters, the sparse but sufficient meal before them. The afternoon sun drifted into the room, lighting the old-fashioned furniture of his father’s time and the heavy tapestries chosen by his mother. Less than a year ago these things had been his elder sister’s, the sister he had replaced as herald the day after she was placed in her grave. The man across from him, his dark face looking haggard, was his only living relative.
“Well,” Forlas said, cutting a slice of bread for himself. “I see the hungry waves are washing up on your front door, nephew. Let me assure you I didn’t pass a single estate on the way here that wasn’t in the same condition.”
“I know it. The only thing that astonishes me is the size of my servants’ families. I never dreamed they had so many connections in so many places.”
“It’s the ones with no people to turn to who’re suffering the most. They’re out on the roads now, pitching tents in the sun and drinking out of rain puddles. They’ll be eating their dogs, I suppose. But that’s only the old ones. The young ones are in MenDas.”
The capital was swarming. The normal noise of its busy streets had intensified to ear-piercing levels. Large groups huddled before government buildings, cheering and whistling, their healthy young lungs barely pausing long enough to take in air. The markets were being run by the old, who were hard put to continue their usual routines in the excitement.
“Those eager children,” Forlas said. “They’re signing up for their final training.”
“By the river’s flow.” Nichos put down his fork.
“It’s the river, all right. And our hunger, and the old resentments. And the Assembly’s greed.”
“Couldn’t you stop them?”
“How?” he demanded. “I may be a Tribune, but I’m only one man. I have my friends, or I wouldn’t be where I am, but Nesmin and Tana have more. It was a foregone conclusion. When you’ve spent the better part of a year calling in your trained men and women and turning them into a standing army, you don’t suddenly change your mind at the last minute. Not,” he added dryly, “if your mind is of a political bent, and you can’t see further than that. Nesmin is a master. His last speech to the Assembly was absolutely magnificent. He’s looking to trade in his country’s peace to expand his own power, and by the clouds of rain I think he’ll do it. Tana’s only looking to save her skin. She’s rerouted all the food to the army; did you notice none of the soldiers are skinny? They need it to fight, she says, which is true enough, but what she means is she’ll be out of office if the thing doesn’t work.”
“And you?”
“Me?” Forlas settled back in his seat and reached for his pipe. He lit it and drew a long puff. “I put my money on the wrong throw, Nichos. I’m bound to fall, and probably sooner, not later.”
“But Uncle –”
“It doesn’t matter. I failed.” His dark eyes wandered from his nephew’s face around the room, coming to rest on a portrait of Nichos’s mother, his sister. “I failed.”
Nichos stared down into his wine. The blow would be sudden, a calculated surprise and shock, delivered with all the more force because they would be at a disadvantage geographically: flatlands rising against hills. It had been difficult, keeping the sight and sounds of preparation from Ambassador Boessus, even if everything up to this point had been handled outside the capital. The old man had had sharp eyes, but not sharp enough.
“Nephew,” his uncle said gently. “Did you fall in love with that girl?”
Nichos kept his eyes down, looking miserable. He nodded.
“She’s very young. Very young, in her country or in ours, to marry. Does she love you?”
“I’m sure she never thought of it. I think – I think she was fond of me. Perhaps later –” He broke off. “What use? Do you think she’ll have me, a Mendale, after our army has ravaged her home?” In his agitation he stood up and went to the window, as if he could see across the miles to her. Gharei was right; he did not remember war. But he had heard the vivid stores. He pictured the devastation of war in a kaleidoscope of violent scenes, each more terrible than the last.
“I shouldn’t have let her leave,” he said. “Why did I let her leave?”
They don’t even know how to conduct it, Dalleena thought. A few Hill sessions a year, maybe – someone’s stolen someone’s horse, someone’s using someone’s land. But for a royal? In the Great Hall? Queen whatever her name had been, the one who murdered her husband because she wanted to stay in Chair. It must have been two hundred years ago. They don’t know how to conduct it.
The Hall’s last official use had been for the festival. The tables of feasting and wine-drinking were long gone, leaving no trace, except upon her memory. The balconies where the commoners had watched the procession were empty and dark; there were no candles, and below, the narrow slanting windows slid to the floor between the tapestries and the carved marble chains of relasii. The shafts of bright light formed rivers of sun on the white floor and sent dry heat into the corners. The breath she took into her lungs was hot with it, but it was not yet high-sun.
She shifted in her seat, feeling her mother’s eyes behind her. The Chair waited alone before the great mural of Nialia, empty now as the king stood among a knot of elder councilors; one woman was waving her arms in argument. They don’t know how to conduct it.
Dalleena and the queen sat one behind the other, at right angles to the Chair. On their immediate left the long table had been brought in for half the waiting councilors, in a row on one side. Across the open space of floor were the rest, at a matching table. Opposite the Chair rose tiers of seats, row above row, hammered together in haste by the carpenters the night before. The cushions kept sliding off and the wood was gouged. It was for the nobility who were not on the council, and for the priests and priestesses. The very top level seemed moon-high above the waiting floor, but the hapless workers had had no time to put a backing on it. If anyone leans too far back he’ll tumble off and break his skull, Dalleena thought. Commoners who ha
d managed to squeeze into the Hall were standing jammed together in the places between the tiers and the tables for the councilors. All Lindahnes were entitled to attend a truth-seeking. But the wide area of floor before the Chair remained vacant.
Make up your minds, she thought. Any way will do. A truth-seeking? Let me know if you find it.
Councilor Seani came forward. They seemed to have made a decision. Her gray hair was half up, half down, her lavender robe bunched up at one shoulder. Pinned to it was a bouquet of relasii set at a jaunty angle. It looks as if she’ll conduct the proceedings – so they’ve decided the king can’t, not with a near relative. But he’ll stay in the Chair. Father will have insisted on her, I suppose.
“Come to order! Please come to order!” Seani called. This was not the Council Room, a place of congenial enemies and cheerful politics. No one here would smoke or sip wine or smile at a private joke. Sillus had brought his accusation in an easy atmosphere; let him prove it now, if he could, in a place of strict formality. Seani drew herself up, determined. Two pages dragged over a raised podium for her to stand behind, placing it so that she would face the tiers and most of the crowd. The milling nobles and priests sought out places in the rows.
“Councilors, priests and priestesses, noble families.” Her voice quieted them. “You are called here today for a truth-seeking, a truth-seeking of great import for us all. Our gracious king has appointed me to conduct the proceedings, in the interest of justice, as he is personally involved in the matter we will be discussing.”
In the bottom row of the tiers, front and center, Sillus was sitting. To Dalleena he looked expectant and excited, a hunting dog smelling blood. Beside him a lean figure huddled over on itself, dark hair falling down as he gazed at the floor. Dalleena’s eyes paused, daring him to look up, but he did not.
“Before we begin, I would like to say a few words. The councilors will forgive me, I hope, if I seem to state the obvious,” Seani said. “Most of us have been spectators or participants in truth-seekings before. We have seen the settlements of disputes large and small. But never in our lifetimes have we seen a royal where we see the relas today. She is here because of a grave charge made by another member of the royal family, Councilor Sillus.” She ran her tongue over her lips, as if the name were a bad taste. “We know our country belongs to the Chair. But it belongs also to the gods, under Nialia, Mother of Fate. To every royal we give our honor and obedience, but in the interest of our people, we must give truth to the gods. May they bless us today in all we do, and guide us to the light.
