Neveryona

by Delany, Samuel R.

  Pryn stopped sawing. ‘Do you want me to leave you here?’

  With her fingers on the bench edge, Bruka dragged herself up. ‘No … !’

  Pryn grasped the rope and sawed at it some more.

  ‘But you’re mad – !’

  ‘Me and Queen Olin,’ Pryn said. ‘Since I got you into this mess with that useless astrolabe – it’s gone now, by the way, so don’t worry – this seems the least I can do.’ On least the rope parted. ‘Let me see your arms.’

  Bruka thrust them forward.

  Pryn pulled at the rope, but it was knotted at both ends of the lashing. Bruka’s fingers and hands were puffy.

  ‘Here …’ Pryn moved around beside her, so that she could get the bound arms under one of hers to steady them. ‘Hold still, or I might cut you …’ It was hard sawing; and Pryn still didn’t feel all that well. In the middle of picking and cutting at the knot, her forehead broke out in beaded water, and her sawing arm began to slip against her side. ‘What are you going to do when you get free?’ She cut more.

  ‘Oh, they think I don’t know, because I’m an old woman. But I do! There are ways for a slave to get north to Kolhari and not once step on the main road. There’re the little trails and paths the smugglers use. There’re the little roads. I know …’

  ‘You’re going to Kolhari?’ Pryn glanced back at her. ‘Me too. Perhaps I’ll see you there.’ She went back to her cutting.

  ‘They don’t have slaves in Kolhari,’ Bruka said. ‘Only free men and women.’

  ‘Mmm,’ Pryn said. She pushed away the image of an old woman alone in those crowded streets.

  ‘There’s a Court of Eagles,’ Bruka said. ‘Where everything is decided fairly. With real eagles, too. I talked to a man who went to Kolhari once, and he said he saw no eagles. But I said there must a real eagle there, someplace. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, there is,’ Pryn said, ‘It’s huge. Its wingspan would block the sunlight away from this whole brewery. Its feathers are gold and iron. Its beak and claws are clotted with gems. And it guards the city and keeps its markets and businesses running quite smoothly, thank you. But they keep it hidden. You’ll be in Kolhari quite a while before you ever get a look at its glittering face. They’re vicious birds, you know – eagles. Mountain birds; and I come from the mountains. Dirty, too. Really, they’re just a kind of vulture –’

  ‘You’re mad,’ Bruka said.

  The rope came free. ‘There …’

  Pryn put the knife up on the stone and unwrapped Bruka’s bound arms. The grain of the vine had printed itself on the yellow flesh – and of course there was another place, Pryn saw as she unwrapped more lashing, where the rope was again knotted about her forearm. But that only took a half-minute to untie.

  ‘It happened to my father, too,’ Bruka said. ‘The same way. I wish I’d known him, at least long enough for him to tell me – but it wouldn’t have done any good. They always said I was a headstrong girl.’ The last of the rope came away, and Bruka suddenly grinned. ‘Like you, eh?’

  Pryn waited for the old woman to flex her swollen hands. But she only stretched her arms out; sitting up tall, she looked over the bench tops.

  Pryn looked too.

  There was still no one.

  ‘You’re sure you can get north to Kolhari … ?’ Pryn asked.

  The swollen hands on the marked and raddled forearms came back to Bruka’s neck. The old slave grimaced, slipping two fingers of each hand under the iron collar at each side. She pulled.

  The lock separated, and the collar came open on its hinge. Pryn had an impression of incredible strength, a strength that, if it could tear open such a collar, could easily have broken the ropes!

  Bruka looked at her, then frowned at what was certainly an odd expression on Pryn’s face. ‘But I never wear it locked,’ she explained. ‘In the day it’s all right, I guess. But at night it chokes me … someone got a key here, years ago. Old Rorkar never knew. But I think the lock’s broken by now, anyway. The hinge is tight, so it holds …’ She took the collar from her neck and put it on the bench. Once more she frowned at Pryn. ‘I’m not too old, you know. I’ve always wanted to go. I can. I know how. I’ve always known. Thank you for freeing me.’ Bruka reached forward, touched Pryn’s knee. ‘Thank you, my Lady …’ Then she scrambled awkwardly to her wide feet, pulled her dress up over her dark-aureoled breasts, stuck her yellow arms through the ragged holes, turned and hurried toward the trees. Bent nearly double, she was among them; was within them; was gone.

  Pryn stood.

  She wiped her forehead with her fingers and shook them. Drops darkened the stone. She picked up the knife, lifted the blousing, stuck it in her sash, and let green cloth fall.

  She picked up the collar, holding an iron semi-circle in each fist. The metal loop to attach the neck-chain separated the second and third fingers of her right hand. She brought its double tenon into the groove: a click.

  She pulled.

  Another click – it came open again, though the hinge was indeed firm enough to hold it at whatever position, opened or closed.

  Pryn raised it to her neck.

  The iron was a neutral temperature against her skin. Holding it with both fists, though, she couldn’t close it all the way; so she took it off again and stuck it around her sash, closed there, pulling enough cloth through to cover it.

  Pryn walked back among the benches toward the building corner. She felt as though she’d been here an hour – though, really, it was probably no more than ten minutes. When she came around the hall, they were only just starting the wagon. Horses clomped forward. Then, at the wagon’s edge, Juni hollered at the driver to stop, stop, please, stop, just once more, and everybody groaned or laughed as though this had happened two or three times already.

  ‘Come on, come on!’ Juni waved at Pryn.

  Because the wagon was going north on the road, Pryn went over to it. Juni and someone else helped her climb up over the side. (One of the things they’d apparently had to stop for already was for Juni to take off her apron and bring it back into the hall. She wasn’t wearing it now.) ‘All right, all right!’ Juni called to the driver when Pryn was still half over the rail. ‘We can go!’

  The wagon started.

  Everyone cheered.

  As Pryn settled on the straw, Juni leaned close to her. ‘I hope you’re satisfied! I told you not to go back there – oh, don’t look so sullen and suspicious!’ She slapped Pryn’s knee playfully. ‘Try to remember that it’s a holiday. I want to hear all about what it’s like to dine at his Lordship’s. What did you eat? Was it marvelous … ? I know it was, because I’ve heard rumors among the slaves –’

  ‘Juni,’ Pryn said, ‘why would they do that to that poor woman? She’s all tied up back there. She’s been whipped. She’s just lying there, like she’s half dead. I mean, just because she read my – well, she didn’t read it. She only recognized it.’

  Juni made a disgusted face as though she were not going to discuss it. Then her hands flopped together in her lap and she sat back, ‘It is sad. But slaves are not supposed to drink. Bruka knows that. And from the earl’s own mug … ? It was just spiteful breaking of the rules. Even Rorkar agreed it was the kind of thing that couldn’t just be let pass … And Bruka’s half mad anyway. It’s the kind of thing she’d do!’

  Pryn was frowning again.

  ‘Well, they said you saw it!’ Juni declared. ‘The earl was in the back, talking to you that day. He put his mug down on a bench – you know, the fancy one he carries whenever he comes to visit here? Bruka just picked it up and drained it. He said you were right there.’

  ‘Yes, but –’ Astonishment worked its way through the numbness that had enclosed the morning. ‘But her father had –’

  ‘– drunk out of the same mug?’ Juni closed her eyes and raised her chin. ‘That’s what she was shouting and screaming when they dragged her in the back.’ She looked at Pryn again. ‘Then his little Lordship boomed out – he’
s got quite a voice when he’s riled – yes, her father had put his foul lips to that mug, and he too had been strung up and whipped for it. Then Bruka screamed she didn’t know about that part. Nobody had ever told her that part before – which I have to admit I didn’t believe, because slaves, you know, remember everything. But by then, of course, they’d got her tied up in the back. And Tetya had returned with the whip –’

  ‘Juni –’ Bewilderment joined astonishment – ‘that can’t be the reason … I heard him tell her to –’ But she did not want to draw more of Juni’s thoughts to her real reasons for outrage. ‘I mean, why didn’t his Lordship say something about it yesterday – two days ago, when it happened?’

  ‘Cyka said it to me.’ Juni looked dour. ‘Rorkar said it to his Lordship. It’s what anyone would have thought. But his Lordship said that when it happened he’d thought to let it pass, because, after all, she was just a crazy old slavewoman who had belonged to his father and who still had a malicious streak. But he had forgotten about the Labor Festival. And in his father’s day, this was the holiday when good slaves were rewarded for their obediences and bad slaves punished for their defiances. Precisely because it was the morning of this particular day, he’d felt obliged to come by and say something. After all, rules are rules. And even Old Rorkar said, yes, that was true.’ She blinked at Pryn. The wagon jounced. The workers on the other side had started a song. ‘She didn’t deny it, you know. Still, after two days, and with a crazy old woman …’ Juni shook her head. ‘You know, it’s just like his Lordship to do something like that. Nobody around here trusts him.’ She gave a small humph. ‘Not know it was the Labor Festival, indeed! It happens every year, and always on the same day. Myself, I don’t believe it any more than I believe Bruka.’ She glanced up. ‘I hope it doesn’t rain again.’

  Of course Pryn had not known it was the Labor Festival either. The why was simple. The area’s most important holiday of the summer and held on the longest day of the year, it was an occasion every local knew about and assumed everyone else knew, too. No one had thought to mention it directly to Pryn any more than anyone had thought to mention, ‘There’s sky overhead,’ or, ‘There’s earth underfoot.’ What references she’d overheard were all oblique enough so that, without knowing what they referred to, she’d had no way to interpret them and so hadn’t really heard them at all.

  Pryn tried to reassess the morning in terms of what she’d seen and heard last night, what she’d seen behind the eating hall, what she’d just heard from Juni. No doubt you have put together a more or less coherent explanation for what occurred at the inlet under the moon. Because it was a long time ago, and because the fashions in such explanations change, Pryn had put together a possibly very different one – though no less coherent to her. No matter how different the explanations, however, she had reached some conclusions from it that should be understandable to you and me. Either the greater explanation she was seeking was too complex for what was merely simple and ugly; or that greater explanation which would encompass all these jumbled details was of a complexity beyond any she could presently conceive. In either case, she did not like it here. She was glad she’d freed the old woman, and hoped she got to Kolhari – though to think it was to doubt it.

  She was glad to be leaving herself.

  Which is when the wagon turned from the north highway onto a narrow road. Trees lowered over.

  Pryn seized the wagon’s side.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Juni said. ‘You look like you’re about to jump out!’

  ‘Where are we going – ?’

  ‘To the Labor Festival. Down at the beach … ?’

  ‘Will Rorkar and Tetya be there? And Yrnik?’ But she had seen Yrnik that morning; nothing had happened. ‘Will his Lordship and his family come?’

  ‘Oh, Tetya and Yrnik will wander by about two or three. Rorkar will arrive at four – though I wouldn’t be surprised if Tetya didn’t show up this year. When he left the hall this morning, he didn’t look like a young man ready for a party. I don’t think he has much of a stomach for slave whipping.’

  ‘Tetya did the actual whipping?’ Broken welts, smeared stone, splattered weeds …

  ‘Oh his Lordship was very insistent about that! The younger generation and all.’ Juni put on a pompous voice and a practically death’s-head leer. “If your nephew isn’t up to it, my man, I can always call in my son. Inige is waiting for me in the carriage … ?” She brushed straw from her lap. ‘Drinking. It’s so stupid – for Bruka, I mean. Today she could have drunk herself silly if she’d wanted – on Festival day, everyone’s allowed. Oh, even some of these good people around us now will behave quite disgracefully before the day’s over. That’s why I go home early. I mean when everybody’s sick and falling all over the beach, I can tell you I’m ready to leave! I’ll stay for the first three fights. After that, I’m gone – though I’m always back an hour later!’ She giggled. ‘You asked when the earl will come? His Lordship and his lady will drive by for a bit, just at sunset – to gloat over the remains and watch the torches reflected in the water. That’s pretty, as long as it’s too dark to see what a mess everyone’s made on the sand. The earl’s children may come earlier – they like this sort of thing. Did you meet them last night?’

  Pryn nodded.

  ‘I think Jenta’s as handsome as they make a man – though I hear he’s quite strange.’ Juni raised an eyebrow. ‘The daughter’s supposed to be a bit of a character, too. I heard something about her having a baby … ?’ Sighing, she reached over to pat Pryn’s knee. ‘But don’t worry. It’ll be fine this morning. Oh! Stop the horses!’ And she was half up, waving at the driver. ‘Come on, stop! Stop, up there! Just once more? Please!’ Steadying herself first on this man’s shoulder, then on that woman’s, Juni made her way across to the other side of the wagon.

  Pryn turned.

  Trees fell back from the wagon’s far side.

  Grinning over his shoulder and shaking his head, the driver pulled up before a thatched shack.

  In the yard, beside some pots and baskets, an old woman had set up her loom. She pulled back on the tamper, thrust her shuttle through the strings, tamped again, then leaned forward in her threadbare shift and twisted the intricately ridged and ribbed stick that reversed the height of the alternates. The shuttle shot through shaking strings.

  ‘All right, Auntie!’ Juni called. ‘Will you come with us? I told you I’d stop by for you again. Here we are!’

  ‘Go on,’ the old woman said. ‘The Festival’s for young people. Not for me – nobody wants me there. Besides, I have too much to do.’ She bent down to turn over a handful of coarse yarn in one of the pots.

  ‘But it’s a holiday, Auntie,’ Juni said. ‘You’re not supposed to work today.’

  ‘I’ll work if I want to. It’s the Labor Festival. I want to labor. You young people don’t know what work is. Go on, now. You don’t want me around. I don’t know how to have a good time – I hear you say it. And you’re right.’

  ‘Well, you might learn if you’d come!’

  ‘I don’t like jouncing in wagons. My bones are too brittle.’ She tamped, sent the shuttle back, leaned forward, and gave a sharp twist to the separator. ‘You won’t stay past three o’clock yourself – I know you. You’ll be back early; you always are. Who wants to watch a bunch of drunken men, impertinent slaves, and crude forest folk all pretend they like each other till they can’t keep it up any longer and fall to fighting – when they’re not getting sick all over themselves! There’s bound to be an accident. You know, there was a drowning down there three years ago. People get careless at these things, go drown themselves, if not each other.’

  A man leaning on one knee said: ‘I was there three years ago. obody got drowned!’

  ‘It was seven years ago,’ a woman near him whispered. ‘No, eight – nine years now, I think! But she always says three. She doesn’t really remember. She says it every year.’

  There was a drowning
three years ago. I haven’t gone since, and I’m not going now. Thank you for your trouble. Now get on your way!’

  ‘Are you sure. Auntie?’

  ‘I said I wasn’t going.’ She leaned, she twisted. ‘How sure does a woman have to be … ?’

  Juni sighed loudly and sat back from the rail.

  The driver had watched it all. Laughing, he turned to the horses and started the wagon.

  The shuttle shot.

  Juni turned from the rail on her knees. ‘Well, I tried.’ She crawled back between grinning workers across the straw to Pryn’s side. ‘Everybody saw me. She just won’t come.’

  From the yard the old woman called: ‘You can tell me about it when you come back this afternoon!’

  Juni closed her eyes. ‘Yes, Auntie! Goodbye, Auntie!’ She opened them and sat back. ‘Well, I did try. But there’s no changing her.’

  With some assurance that she was not being pursued by omnipotent powers, Pryn let herself smile.

  ‘She’s not really my aunt, you know,’ Juni said. ‘She’s my older cousin – but I didn’t know that till two years ago! She’s really a good sort. You wouldn’t believe it, but she used to have a reputation as the girl who always danced till moondown. But that was a long time ago, and such things change. I hope I don’t – though I suppose I will. It’s bound to be a family thing, don’t you think? But then, she’s only a cousin – even if I didn’t know.’

  Pryn thought: I’ll stay a few hours at the beach, then head back for the north road. Maybe I’ll only stop a day or two at Kolhari, before I make my way further north … ? No, Kolhari deserved at least a week. A few weeks, even; or months … She didn’t want to return to Ellamon. Somehow, though, it was easier now both to be here-and to leave.

  Trees dropped back from Pryn’s side of the wagon. Beyond dense brambles, she saw the thatched roofs of several distant buildings.

  Juni leaned toward her. ‘The dyeing houses …’ She nodded at the far structures, ‘I worked there for a summer, before I came to the brewery. It’s harder work – I suppose you make more money. But Nallet, who owns them, is much more of a stickler than Rorkar. I guess that’s because he’s younger and feels he has to show he won’t take any nonsense. Nallet’s workers will be at the Festival too, of course. But I didn’t really like it there. I’m glad I’ve got the job I have now. Still –’ She held up the hem of her dress for Pryn to see. Sun through the trees played over the night-dark blue. ‘They do nice stuffs, don’t you think?’