Troubled Waters

by Sharon Shinn

  Mirti Serlast was already there, as was Nelson Ardelay. Zoe was relieved to see her uncle, and immediately crossed the room to stand in the shelter of his shadow. “What’s this about?” she asked him in a low voice.

  Grinning hugely, he gave her a quick hug. “A chance for the five primes to meet in private with the ambassadors,” he said. “It’s a chance for us to ask them about their lands, and form opinions of their honesty, and later be able to advise the king on his relations with them.”

  “I have always had mixed opinions about the people of Soeche-Tas, and my brother unequivocally disliked them,” Mirti said in her gruff voice. “I welcome the notion that Vernon will hear opinions other than mine when it comes to dealing with them.”

  Zoe felt a slight alarm. “I am not used to forming opinions about anyone and then urging them onto someone else. Particularly when it’s this important.”

  Nelson grinned at her. “It’s always important.”

  The door opened and two more men stepped in. They were both strangers to Zoe, but it wasn’t hard to guess their identities. The big man with the weather-beaten face, unremarkable brown hair, and clear disdain for fashion must be Taro Frothen. He looked like a creature made entirely of soil and clay—a little dull, a little slow, but powerful. Patient. The thought came to Zoe that he could wait a decade to destroy his enemies, but when he had the chance, he would crush them under his relentless weight.

  Then he smiled at her, and she saw the other side of the torz personality—not charm, no, but a certain earthy appeal. “You must be Zoe Lalindar,” he said, lumbering over and offering an enormous hand. She liked the methodical, assured way the blood pumped through his body. She liked its potent mix of useful chemicals and dormant beauty. “I had heard you were back in the city. I’m Taro.”

  “I haven’t seen you here before, I think,” she said.

  He shrugged those massive shoulders. He was at least six inches taller than she was and maybe three times her body weight. “I don’t have much interest in court matters,” he said. “I don’t care who is in favor and who is disgraced. In another few seasons, another few cycles, all of them will be nothing but dust anyway. Forgotten, and all their petty strivings forgotten, too.”

  She laughed. “I must confess, that is a philosophy that appeals to me,” she said. “It lightens my heart to think I might do no deep and lasting harm during my brief time in this world.”

  “You could still do some harm,” he said. “But in the end, all the works of men tumble down and fall away.”

  “I believe that,” she said. “But I also believe it is important to bring good into the world while we are here. If we can.”

  “It is always possible,” he said, “if you have the will. If you do not give up the attempt, no matter what the obstacles.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “I like that reasoning,” she said, “though it is not precisely the coru way.”

  “Which is to abandon one plan if it proves untenable, and try another, and then perhaps another, until every course is exhausted.”

  She laughed. “Exactly! We are not much alike, but we understand each other, I think.”

  He smiled again. She thought he was the kind of man who always had a dog at his heels, a grandchild on his knee, a serving girl bringing him an extra portion. The kind of man who liked to surround himself with other people and who won their affection without even seeming to try. “Earth and water have a natural affinity,” he said. “It takes both torz and coru to grow the crops, to dress the world in greenery and color.”

  “To wear down a mountain,” she suggested.

  Now his laugh boomed out, sounding like boulders falling. “Exactly! Working together, torz and coru can accomplish anything.”

  Mirti’s astringent voice spoke behind them. “And working together, sweela and elay and hunti can burn the world to ashes,” she said. “Taro, it is so rare to hear you talking nonsense.”

  They turned to include her in their conversation and found her accompanied by the second stranger. He was tall, thin, and restless, with a crown of white-blond hair and mist-colored eyes blinking rapidly behind thick glasses. His hands nervously picked at his sleeves; he shifted from foot to foot as if he could not, could not, stand still.

  “I never talk nonsense,” Taro replied, wholly unperturbed. “So perhaps you should heed my words.”

  Mirti shook her head slightly and proceeded to ignore him. “Zoe, I don’t believe you’ve met Kayle Dochenza.”

  He nodded jerkily but didn’t offer a hand. Too bad; she would have liked to compare the makeup of his blood to Corene’s, if she ever got a chance to touch the princess. “Hello,” he said in a reedy voice. “Aren’t you pretty? Or maybe it’s just your youth that makes you seem that way.”

  Nelson was still standing nearby, and now he snorted with laughter. “A compliment or an insult? With a Dochenza, you’re never quite sure.”

  Kayle looked surprised. “I didn’t intend either. Just observing. You look like your father, I think. I suppose he’s dead.”

  “He is,” Zoe said. It seemed impossible that Kayle would be thrown off by any abrupt change of subject, so she said, “I like your smoker cars very much.”

  His lean face took on a blaze of enthusiasm. “Yes—they’re magnificent, aren’t they?” His hands carved invisible shapes from the air. “Speed and function and elegance, all in one.”

  “And expense,” Mirti said dryly. “Don’t forget that.”

  He looked surprised again. “Cost is irrelevant in any endeavor.”

  “You might get an argument on that point,” Nelson said cheerfully. “Cost might not hold you back, but it’s always relevant. What you pay so often determines how much you like what you buy.”

  Mirti ignored the general laughter that followed. “Quickly,” she said. “We only have a moment or two.”

  Zoe glanced at her, bewildered, but the others were nodding. Nelson laced his fingers with Zoe’s right hand; Taro engulfed her left hand with his. The others were quickly clasping hands as well. As soon as Kayle and Mirti completed the circle, Zoe took a swift, hard breath.

  Beneath her feet, the world seemed to do a complete, giddy revolution; the air in her lungs expanded to the point of pain. Her body flushed with heat and her pulse hammered. She could have traced the route of her blood over every inch of bone, under every loop and fold of skin.

  Then everything settled. She was struck with a sense of certainty, of rightness, of completion, more powerful than anything she had ever experienced. Her thoughts cleared; her feet seemed rooted in the heart of the world itself.

  “Everything in balance,” Mirti murmured. “Wood and bone.”

  “Fire and mind,” Nelson said.

  “Air and soul,” Kayle said, his voice barely a whisper.

  “Earth and body,” Taro rumbled.

  “Water and blood,” Zoe finished up.

  For a moment, their fingers locked even tighter; Zoe felt her hand crushed by Taro’s. For a moment, she could not have said where her body ended, where any of theirs began. She was all of them; they were all a part of her, every element poured into her single, individual frame. Yet she saw herself endlessly replicated, in their faces, in their bodies, in the bodies of everyone in the palace, in the city, in the world, all of them made up of the same materials, just mixed in different proportions. She understood, suddenly, what made all of them human, what made all of them the same. There was no difference.

  Then Taro and Nelson released her and she almost pitched over. Laughing, her uncle caught her around the waist and hauled her upright again. “Takes you by surprise, doesn’t it, the first time?” he said. “Kayle actually fainted.”

  “I didn’t,” Kayle said in his breathy voice. “I merely collapsed on the floor to recover my senses.”

  Zoe clung to Nelson’s arm. “I feel the way I do when I first climb out of the water,” she said. “It’s as if I’m too heavy to stand. As if I’ve forgotten what it fee
ls like to just walk around like an ordinary person.”

  “Of course, you’re hardly an ordinary person,” Mirti said. “You’re a prime.”

  “Does it feel that way if any five people do that?” Zoe asked. “I mean, five people with different elemental blessings.”

  Mirti shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried it with anyone else.” She looked as if she might say more, but then she paused, seeming to listen. There were voices down the hall, people on their way to join the five primes. “Try not to act as if you’re drunk,” she said, and positioned herself to be the first one the king’s guests would see when they stepped through the doors.

  Zoe thought the strange bonding experience with the other primes might impair her ability to concentrate for the rest of the evening, but, in fact, just the opposite was true. All of her senses felt particularly acute; details presented themselves to her with astonishing clarity. Completely in harmony with her own countrymen, she was able to form quick opinions of these visitors from Soeche-Tas.

  Fairly soon, she was certain she didn’t like them.

  All four guests had a self-satisfied, well-fed air that marked them as individuals of wealth and privilege. Their clothes were layered, colorful, and intricately designed, with a great deal of trim along the sleeves and hemlines. The men each had two sets of earrings dangling from their lobes; the women each sported five or six pairs. All of them wore a profusion of rings and bracelets, exotic perfumes, and lavishly applied makeup.

  They had a tendency to stand too close and touch too often. “I simply love the colors in your robe,” one of the wives exclaimed to Zoe, reaching out to stroke the sleeve. She took a pinch of fabric between her fingers and rubbed it together with sensual satisfaction. “Not just color, but texture. It looks as if it would be cool against the skin, even in a heated room.”

  Her accent drew out the words and burdened them with complicated R’s and ooo’s, but her voice was melodic and rich. Zoe had to concentrate to understand her. “Thank you,” she said. “It was a gift from a cousin.”

  The ambassador’s wife reached up un-self-consciously to brush her fingers along Zoe’s cheek. Zoe tried to check her strong reaction to that, as her body rushed to make an analysis. What she received back was a tangled impression of heat and cruelty and alien chemicals.

  “And this face? So piquant and winsome? Was that a gift as well?” the woman cooed.

  “I suppose so. Bestowed upon me by my father and my mother at my birth.”

  The woman laughed, flattening her hand on the side of Zoe’s head. Her fingers were astonishingly warm. “Ah, in my country, wealth will buy a beautiful face and perfect skin. These are not surgeries you possess on this side of the mountain?”

  “I do not believe so.”

  The Soeche-Tas woman patted Zoe’s cheek again and finally dropped her hand. “Then perhaps that is something we might trade for, your country and mine.”

  Zoe was infinitely relieved that the woman was no longer touching her; now if she would only step another pace away. “And what could we offer in return?”

  “My husband and the viceroy believe your transportation technologies would please them exceptionally well!”

  “And do you agree?”

  “I am not one who loves horses overmuch. If I could travel the land and no longer be dependent on such animals—oh, yes, I believe that would be worth a great deal.”

  “Then Kayle Dochenza is the person you want to talk to. The thin man with the white hair. He’s the inventor of the machine.”

  “But, zhisu, you are the one who interests me,” the lady replied with a laugh. “In this room of old ones, you are so young! I find age so appallingly dull.”

  Zoe forced a light laugh. From the corner of her eye she had seen Vernon and Elidon enter the room, and she assumed the rest of the wives could not be far behind. “Queen Romelle is younger than I am. You might like her.”

  “Oh, yes! The pretty dark-haired one. I sat beside her at dinner and enjoyed her company very much. But she has retired to her room—some unfortunate trouble with her stomach, I think it was? She ate very little during the meal.”

  So whatever illness Romelle had complained of at breakfast had followed her through the day. Zoe briefly felt sorry for her, and briefly jealous. She would be glad of an excuse to leave this uncomfortable conversation right now.

  Rescue came from an unexpected source as Alys rustled up to them in a silken robe of red and gold. “Qeesia, this obsession with youth!” the queen exclaimed in a teasing tone. “It is most unseemly.”

  Qeesia turned willingly to invite the queen into their conversation. “It is true. I am—what might your word be?—something of a parasite, greedily attaching myself to things that seem pure and uncorrupted. And that is much more likely to be youth than age.”

  Alys tossed her thick red hair. It was loose around her shoulders, but woven with bits of gold and chips of gemstones, so that it seemed to sparkle with a more than ordinary luster. “I am not so much older than Romelle or Zoe,” she said.

  “And your face is even more perfect,” Qeesia agreed. “Again, I think, innocent of any surgeries?”

  Zoe was starting to wonder exactly how old Qeesia was. She looked to be somewhere between Seterre and Elidon in age—fortyfive, perhaps—yet if she had undergone one of these surgeries she kept talking about, she might be a decade or two older. Or, who knew? If someone could endure multiple operations, Qeesia might be seventy or eighty. Her hands were smooth and free of blemishes, but Zoe supposed the Soechin operation might rejuvenate the flesh of the entire body.

  Alys was preening a little. “Indeed, yes. This is my face as it has always been.”

  Now Qeesia laid her palm against Alys’s cheek with the same sort of questing hunger. “Yes—feel that softness—almost divine and impossible to replicate. I imagine your skin is flawless all over.”

  If Alys was repulsed by the attention, she didn’t show it. In fact, she wore a triumphant expression, as if pleased that she had been able to steal Qeesia’s interest from the Lalindar prime. At that point, Zoe thought it was safe to slip away.

  The rest of the evening was not much different, except in degree. None of the other three guests were quite so blatant about their preoccupation with youth and their desire for physical contact, but both ambassadors and the other woman managed to brush against Zoe, or take her hand, or stand so close that she could almost catch the rhythm of their hearts. The encroachment didn’t seem to bother anyone else as much as it bothered Zoe. Sweela Nelson unfailingly enjoyed contact, torz Taro was always open to the press of flesh, and elay Kayle was so ethereal he didn’t seem to notice. Even the two hunti women in the room—Mirti and Seterre—seemed unaffected. Zoe thought that was because Seterre was determined to win favor with the visitors, and Mirti didn’t mind saying in her brusque way, “Here. No reason to stand so near.” Only Elidon seemed a bit put off by the closeness that the Soechins seemed to require—and Elidon, as the oldest wife present, was the one who drew the least attention.

  The ambassadors from Soeche-Tas did not crowd too closely to the king. So he stood among them all, offering his hesitant, hopeful smile, shoulder to shoulder with Elidon for most of the evening.

  Zoe was seized by a sudden whimsical notion. If she, coru prime, could read the blood in someone’s veins, could the sweela prime read the thoughts in that person’s head? Could Nelson look at Vernon and know what he was thinking?

  And if he could, what thoughts would he find at the forefront of the king’s mind this very moment?

  TWENTY-SIX

  Vernon never asked Zoe for a formal opinion about the Soeche-Tas guests, so that was one problem she stopped worrying about immediately. The other one—the vandalized wardrobe—was an ongoing source of annoyance, since Zoe was expected to make at least one appearance at some social function for the rest of the nineday. Once again, Keeli came to her rescue, arriving at the palace early the next day with a trunkload of clothing
that belonged to her or Sarone.

  “I only brought things that we have never worn to the palace—or worn at all—but even so, a few of them are out of date,” Keeli said. “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Sorry! You’ve saved my reputation.”

  “You don’t care about your reputation,” Annova said, pulling out first one tunic, then another. “Oh, these are so lovely. Why don’t I have the dressing of you instead of Zoe? You at least care what you look like.”

  “You don’t want to work for her. She’s demanding and ill-tempered,” Zoe said, holding one of the overrobes up to her shoulders. It was so dark that at first it looked black, but just a touch of light revealed it as a haunted blue. “But I have to admit, she has excellent taste in clothing.”

  Keeli had settled in the middle of the bed, her face sunny as always. Anyone less demanding and ill-tempered it was hard to imagine. “So what were the Soechin visitors like?”

  Zoe wrinkled her nose. “Unnerving. One of them—a woman named Qeesia—reminded me of a bat. Some creature that would fasten itself to your throat and suck you dry.”

  Keeli’s blue eyes widened comically. “That sounds very disturbing! Were they all like that?”

  “Yes, but she was the worst. It made me wonder. If the king were really to marry one of the viceroy’s daughters, would she be that way, too? Seems like she would bring no end of havoc to the court.”

  “Well, I don’t care if she’s a jackal feeding on corpses,” Keeli said. “I get to come to the palace for the women’s luncheon tomorrow! So I like her just fine.”

  The luncheon, to Zoe’s mind, was hot, crowded, and overlong. The shopping expedition that followed was marginally more enjoyable, but only because she was able to make some serious inroads into her wardrobe deficit. She also purchased two extravagantly expensive outfits for Keeli to thank her for the timely loan of her own clothes. They were both happy, for different reasons, when the afternoon coasted to an end.