Troubled Waters

by Sharon Shinn

  “The fleece sounds very good,” the king said uncertainly, glancing at Darien. “My feet are often cold.”

  Darien nodded. “You are unlikely to be wearing boots during the summer, in any case.”

  “So, then, the fleece,” the king said happily.

  “How long will it take before the boots are ready?” Darien asked.

  “If the king needs them in two days, we can have them ready in two days,” Ilene said. “Otherwise, we like a nineday to work with the leather.”

  “I would not like you to rush,” the king said. “One nineday will be perfectly acceptable. I will send someone to pick them up.”

  The transaction appeared to be concluded. The second man who had hovered behind the chair now scurried around to the front, dropped to his knees, and began to ease the king’s feet back into his shoes. This must be the royal valet, Zoe guessed. He treated the king’s footwear and the king’s person with a care that bordered on reverence.

  Eventually the royal party had organized itself to exit the shop, and Melvin and Ilene bowed as the king and his escort filed out. “Thank you so much for your patronage,” Ilene said, bowing again. “These will be the finest boots ever made.”

  When the shop was finally empty, Zoe collapsed on the stool, too nerveless to try to stand. Melvin slipped back through the curtain, his notebook clutched in his hand, and grinned.

  “Kind of knocks your feet out from under you, doesn’t it?” he said. “He’s been here three or four times, and each time I just lose the ability to speak. Good thing Ilene’s so good at talking.”

  “It never occurred to me that he might just walk down the streets like an ordinary man, buying clothes and shoes.”

  “It’s one of the things I like about him,” Melvin said. “He comes out of that palace and lets people see him.”

  Zoe came experimentally to her feet and found that her legs would hold her. “Well, next time I hope I have a little more warning.”

  She stepped through the curtain to the sound of Melvin’s laughter. Ilene was sitting at the sales counter, carefully filling in big block letters on a heavy sheet of pressed paper. Zoe looked over her shoulder and had to hold back a laugh. Ilene had written: THIS IS WHERE THE KING BUYS HIS SHOES.

  As the warm Quinnahunti days edged toward the extreme heat of Quinnatorz, Zoe found herself so relaxed, so at ease with the direction her life had taken, that she was almost always smiling.

  “You look so pretty these days,” Annova commented one evening over a shared dinner. “What’s different? Your hair? Your clothing?”

  Calvin gestured at his own cheekbones. “Her face has filled out,” he said in his raspy voice. “She’s eating the right food.”

  Zoe shrugged and smiled. “Maybe,” she said.

  But she knew what it was: the slow lifting of grief, the gradual budding of contentment, and the lack of any day-to-day worries. No sick father to nurse, no fear about money. Someday—and fairly soon—she knew she would have to take a hard look at what she wanted from her future and then formulate a plan for attaining it, but right now she didn’t even have that responsibility to weigh her down. She simply was, and she was happy.

  “People have started to notice,” Annova said, nodding wisely.

  “Who has noticed what?” she asked.

  “Young men. Have started noticing you.”

  “I thought I saw Derek stop by to try one of those orange candies the other night,” Calvin said.

  “Yes, and Mitchell brought you a loaf of bread two days ago,” Annova added. “Said he’d gotten too much and couldn’t finish it before it got stale, but he bought it to give to you. I’m sure he did.”

  “Really?” Zoe murmured and fought back a grin. “I like them both a great deal.”

  “Mitchell’s the better prospect,” Annova told her. “Has a job four seasons out of five and is careful how he spends his money. Derek’s better-looking, but he’ll always be a squatter. No ambition. He’ll never be able to buy you a house.”

  “Hey,” Calvin said, turning on his wife in mock indignation. “All of a sudden you think a man’s worthless unless he can own a little property?”

  “Living on the river is good enough for me,” Zoe said.

  Annova was shaking her head. “If you’re old, the river’s a place to stay because you love it. But if you’re young, the river’s a place to stay when you’re out of options. You can’t waste your life here, drifting from day to day, building nothing, leaving behind nothing of value.”

  Zoe shrugged. “Coru girl.”

  Annova came close enough to put her hand gently on the front of Zoe’s tunic. She said softly, “Sweela heart.”

  Of course Zoe had realized that Mitchell and Derek were flirting with her. She’d liked it. She had been aware of the changes in her face, in her body; it was nice to hear that other people had noticed, and approved. In the past two ninedays, now and then she had attracted attention when she was simply walking down the street. Old men smiled at her; male vendors gave her an extra portion when she bought candy or fruit. Men her own age gave her long, appraising stares and then sometimes turned to whisper something to their companions. Some made excuses to speak to her, if only to ask for directions; one or two asked for her name.

  She smiled back at all of them and allowed herself to bask, just a little, in the brief but potent sunshine of youth and beauty. It was not a chance she’d had very often up till now.

  A few days before the Quinnatorz changeday, she walked home from work instead of trying to catch one of the crowded shuttles along the Cinque. The heat was starting to build in the city; every structure of stone or brick or cinder block retained every degree it had absorbed from the sun all day and slowly released it into the air as night drew on. Within another eighteen or twenty-seven days, the heat would be truly oppressive, but last night’s rain had washed down the whole city and left the temperature relatively bearable. Zoe even thought she caught a hint of a breeze tiptoeing across her face as she left the shop district and made her way toward the crowded residential neighborhoods that lay between her and the river.

  She got caught in a knot of human traffic when she tried to cross an east-west stretch of the Cinque as it followed the southern edge of the city. When she pushed her way to the front of the road, she found her progress blocked by a contingent of the king’s guards. Apparently there had been an accident in the road, and pedestrians and drivers had all gathered to give their vociferous advice on how to mend the broken vehicle.

  Hot and impatient, Zoe stepped off the edge of the boulevard and tried to pick her way around the onlookers. She was fanning her face with one hand and pushing her hair back with the other when a small boy darted by her and neatly twitched her shawl from around her waist. “Hey!” she cried and dashed after him as he dove through the crowd. Panic and very real fear gave her unwonted speed; she was almost able to keep up with him as he flitted past bystanders and ran toward the warren of dank streets that made up the southern ghetto. “Stop that boy!” she cried, but no one lifted a hand to intercede. The thief kept running, and Zoe kept chasing after him.

  With a shocking suddenness, they were in a foreign and frightening corner of Chialto. From tumbledown storefronts spilled young toughs and sullen girls and quarreling children and mounds of odorous debris. Zoe tried to detour around murky puddles in her path—pools of urine or blood or spilled spirits—without losing sight of her assailant. Once, an old woman in a filthy dress grabbed at her as she passed, and once, a middle-aged man with a ravaged face swiped at her arm, but she dodged and twisted away and kept running. The heavy heat made it hard to breathe, or maybe here in the southern neighborhood the air was simply no good. Zoe felt herself panting; she was not sure how much longer she could keep up.

  Then the little thief made a critical error. He turned to look over his shoulder, trying to see if he had eluded her, and he stumbled into one of those potholes filled with foul liquid. He howled as he went down, landing on his
knees in the filthy water, and Zoe jogged up and snatched the shawl from his flailing hands. It was sopping wet, but she didn’t care. She tied the soaked ends around her waist and exclaimed, “You awful boy, this is mine! I need it!”

  “Here, now, are you stealing from a child?” called a voice behind her, and she whirled around to see three teenage boys closing in, intent to cause harm clear on their gaunt faces. Terror shot fresh strength into her exhausted limbs. Zoe didn’t pause to explain or argue, just took off again as fast as she could manage through the hot and hazardous streets.

  She had no idea where she was, no clue where safety might lie. Behind her she heard shouts and pursuing footsteps. Almost blindly, she kept pounding forward, zigzagging around staring onlookers, piles of trash, broken carts upended in the road. Over the yells from behind her and the sobbing sound of her own labored breath, she thought she heard the whispered invitation of running water. Unthinking, she turned in that direction.

  Suddenly she almost somersaulted over a broken railing embedded into an apron of poured concrete. She slid down an embankment that was half weeds, half cracked stone, hearing the teenagers behind her loose shouts of triumph. Before her was the wide trough of the city canal, filled with calm, silty water moving slowly past a series of frets and filters.

  “She’s trapped!” one of the boys shouted. She could hear him skidding down the embankment. “I’ve got her!”

  Wrapping her arms around her body and closing her eyes, Zoe stepped off the concrete lip of the bank and plunged into the water.

  For a moment, it was as if all thought, all motion, all sound, sheer existence, was suspended. She could not hear or see or think or move or breathe. The water lapped around her in a dozen individual currents, some cool, some warm, some gritty as sandpaper against her skin. A hand seemed to tap against her cheek, each finger as huge as a sausage, as insubstantial as rain. Another palm pressed against her heart. A cool stream of water brushed across her lips, offering a passing kiss.

  Above her were voices, muffled by water and distance.

  Where is she?

  She jumped in!

  I can’t see her! Did she drown?

  How can she stay under so long?

  Maybe she hit her head.

  I think she drowned!

  She heard them, she understood them, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. The water held her in a careful but joyful embrace, as if she were a beloved child unsteady on her feet as she rose from a bed of sickness. It was impossible to worry while being so closely guarded. It was impossible to be afraid.

  I need to get to safety, she thought, but she couldn’t bring herself to swim. I probably need to breathe. But she did not push her head above the water, and her lungs did not burn from lack of air and her blood did not protest.

  Home, she thought, picturing the stone flats, the broad and gently rumbling expanse of the river as it flowed away from the city. It was as if the canal itself could pluck images out of her mind. She felt the water coalesce around her with a little more substance and intent. Still underwater, still making absolutely no effort of her own, Zoe began moving through the canal at a steady pace, against the southerly direction of the current.

  She tried to guess the route the water would take her. The river ran along the eastern border of the city, between the mountain and the flats; the canal made a great C-shaped ring to connect with the river at northern and southern points. But there was a vast network of underground pipes, feeding water to various parts of the city and carrying away waste. She would not particularly like to swim through sewage, and she was fairly certain that at many points in the subterranean system there were grates and locks through which she could not pass.

  But it did not seem to matter. Volition had been taken away from her, or she had discarded it without a protest. She turned her cheek against the water as if it were a pillow covered in satin, and she lay unresisting on a changing, restless bed. She could not tell how fast she was moving, or in what direction. Sometimes she could sense sunlight against her closed eyelids; other times she was in deep shadow, either passing under a bridge or moving through an underground tunnel. Then the light would return, weak but welcome.

  For the longest time, she heard no more voices, at least none that was distinct. Now and then she could catch echoes of laughter or distant conversations; sometimes, unnervingly close at hand, she heard the steady hum of machinery or the bubbling of air being forced through a purifying mechanism. Once, she heard a shout of alarm, and she wondered if some observer had seen her submerged body pass by. It was fairly clear that the street toughs, at least, had been left behind some time ago.

  She could not say how long she had been traveling when she sensed the water shift below her and begin roiling with a wilder current. At the same time, the temperature cooled down; she could almost feel the bottom dramatically deepen as the artificial surface of the canal gave way to the natural bed of the river. Overhead, the light against her eyes grew stronger. She was possessed by a sudden, ungovernable impulse to thrash in the water, kicking her way toward the choppy surface. When her face broke clear, she sucked in deep gusts of air and whipped her head around, trying to orient herself.

  She was just upstream from the river flats, passing between high, unfriendly banks on both sides but heading down toward calmer and more familiar waters. Once she had her bearings, she let the Marisi carry her forward but began a slow, methodical stroke that would bring her into the shallower waters of the western bank. In another ten minutes, she was able to drop her feet to the riverbed and walk the last dozen feet toward shore, splashing heavily. Her soaked clothes weighed her down, particularly her heavy, waterlogged shawl; her skin prickled with chill, even on this warm day. It was almost more effort than she could manage to pull herself out of the water’s possessive grasp and then drop to the baked stone of the flats, where she lay spread-eagled on her back.

  She had been in danger of her life, but the river had saved her.

  She did not know how to make sense out of such an impossible thing.

  ELEVEN

  Zoe told no one about her misadventure, though both Ilene and Annova commented, during the next two days, on her unusual quietness. “It’s like the old Zoe has come back for a few days,” Annova said.

  “The old Zoe?” she asked.

  “The girl who first came to the river, silent and afraid. I thought she had run away forever.”

  There was no way to explain, so Zoe said, “I’m just tired.”

  “Well, I hope you catch up on your sleep very soon, because I think Mitchell will be joining us for dinner the day after tomorrow, and I want you to feel your best.”

  Ilene did not ask personal questions, but Zoe sensed her concern. She tried to reassure the older woman by smiling a great deal, though it took an effort, and showing tireless goodwill. Even so, she knew it was worry that made Ilene let her go early one day, claiming that business was so slow that Zoe might as well treat herself to a lazy afternoon sleeping by the river.

  Instead, Zoe went straight to the Plaza of Women and waited patiently behind four other petitioners until one of the blind sisters was free to talk. Then she climbed the dais and sat on the low mat.

  “I stood on the banks of the canal the other day and I saw a woman jump into the water,” Zoe said. “Ten minutes went by and she did not raise her head to breathe. Another ten minutes went by and another. When she finally broke the surface of the water, she was laughing and smiling, but she never once took a breath in all that time. How is such a thing possible?”

  “It’s not,” said the seer, “unless the girl is the Lalindar prime.”

  Zoe shook her head. “She isn’t. True, she is a coru woman, and even a Lalindar, but she is not the prime.”

  The seer cocked her head. Even her blank eyes looked interested. “How do you know? Christara Lalindar’s heir has not stepped forward in the two years since the old woman died.”

  “But—then—who is Christara’s
heir? Why hasn’t her son or daughter taken over the title?”

  The seer held out a hand and Zoe dropped a handful of quint-silvers in her palm. Let the woman think Zoe was curiously ignorant for a Welce girl; she had no idea how the laws of inheritance worked.

  “It is not such a simple thing, naming the next prime,” the seer said. “Only the primes themselves understand exactly how the process works. It is said the Dochenza prime whispers a name to the wind, or the wind whispers a name to him, and they speak one name after another until they both agree. The Ardelays swear they see a name written in fire. The Serlasts see it carved in the trunk of some old tree.” The woman shrugged. “But only the prime can say aloud the name of his or her heir.”

  “And then—that’s it? The next prime is suddenly instated?”

  The seer gave a skeptical chuckle. “Oh, they will claim there is more ritual than that. Mirti Serlast says she had to walk through a grove of plum trees on her brother’s estate—a grove she had visited many times during the past twenty years—but once she was named heir to the title, the trees embraced her. She felt their branches lean down to touch her shoulder—she felt the leaves sweep across her face as if memorizing its contours. The Lalindars say that the new primes are not recognized until they are wholly immersed in the Marisi River.” She shrugged again. “Each family has some such ancestral touchstone.”

  Zoe could hardly breathe. She remembered the afternoon that she had gone bathing in the river with Annova and Sima. She remembered how long she had stayed underwater, not needing to breathe, feeling the river run curious fingers over her face, her arms, as if reacquainting itself with someone who had been long missed and was greatly beloved.

  It was the first time she had immersed herself in the Marisi since she and her father had been exiled.

  But did that mean . . . Could it mean . . .

  “Does no one know who Christara wanted to be prime after her?” Zoe managed to choke out.

  The seer nodded, holding out her hand again. Impatiently, Zoe gave her a quint-gold, surely enough to cover any question she might ask for the rest of the session. “Christara’s daughter, Sarone, says her niece, Zoe, was her mother’s choice. But everyone wonders if that is true, since Sarone never said a word about Zoe until Darien Serlast went off to find the girl. Zoe Ardelay was long in exile with her father and no one knew where she was,” the woman explained kindly.