“If only you knew the price I paid.”
Beyond a few generalities, Alf had never told Jon about his experience among the Brotherhood. He hadn’t been sent to the mines—that meant something. Yet had he been one of the ones they used for sex? That was hard to imagine. Still, it might explain why Alf now seemed emptied of physical desire.
“But I’m not telling this story to complain,” Alf continued, once more addressing the Emperor. “I’m telling it to help you understand the Brotherhood. For some boys, the training works, but for others it doesn’t. That means you can find decent men among the Brotherhood—but, to survive, they’ve learned to hide their better selves.”
He looked back to Jon.
“They are our fathers, Jon. Can all our fathers be monsters?”
Argala, one of Mothers at the meeting, stood up.
“What he speaks is not totally false. Some of the Brotherhood are decent, but if you’re telling us we should trust that handful, we reject your counsel. They may have good intentions, but, when the choice comes, they follow their leaders’ orders. We have never known any member of the Brotherhood to behave otherwise, and we’ve watched them for years.”
“As for those recruits you mentioned—men who join the Brotherhood by choice—surely they’re not to be trusted. They must be the worst of them,” another Mother observed.
“Is that what you’re asking us to do, Alf?” the Emperor asked. “To trust some of the Brotherhood but not others?”
“I’m not sure. Trust may be the wrong word. I was only pointing out that there are differences between them. Even the men who trek south to join the Brotherhood don’t always turn out its most loyal members. Some recognize their mistake in a few weeks—I saw that happen—and the smart ones find ways to escape. But escape is difficult, so most resign themselves to living with a bad choice. If the contingent on the River Road has as many men as people say, it must contain some with no love of violence—men there because they had no other choice. If we could get word to them that the Emperor is here, it might be of service to us.”
“But how?” Zoë asked. “Would they desert and go home?”
“No, they wouldn’t do that—not go home, at least. It would be certain death. But if they could go somewhere else . . . ”
“But they’re only a fraction of the enemy’s forces,” Jon pointed out. “Would losing a handful of the Brotherhood make a difference?”
“If they thought their allies were deserting to join the Emperor, it might force the Chosen to face the possibility that the Emperor has a real army here. If nothing more, it might bring confusion and that would be to our advantage. The Emperor talked about delaying them. This could be one means to accomplish that.”
“But who’ll be able to carry out this plan?” the Emperor asked. “If we expect the Chosen to believe I’m here, someone will have to enter the enemy camp and spread the tale.”
“I’ll do it,” Alf announced. “It was my idea to contact the Brotherhood, wasn’t it? And I know some of the men. They’d listen to me, I think.”
“Yes, you might be the best person, Alf,” the Emperor said.
But did the Emperor realize the danger Alf would be putting himself in? Jon wondered.
“And I’ll go with him,” Klei announced.
The Emperor looked skeptically at Klei; several people coughed, but no one seemed willing to respond to Klei’s offer. Klei’s face reddened from anger and embarrassment. Jon couldn’t let him endure this.
“I think I’m the one who should go with Alf, not Klei,” Jon blurted out. “Like Alf, I’ve had experience with the Brotherhood. Not months, but at least days. While Klei’s had the good fortune to escape them altogether.”
Having made the offer, his first thought was Why the fuck did I do that? But there was no going back. The Emperor didn’t lose a second in closing that option.
“Yes, I think you and Alf are the ones for this mission,” he said. “I’d hoped you would volunteer.”
Why was the man so pleased that Jon would be risking his life this way? Did he want to get rid of him? And couldn’t he at least have thanked Klei for volunteering? And the annoying thing was that Zoë considered the Emperor’s judgment appropriate. Jon was a Forester; Klei wasn’t. He’d always brought out Zoë’s maternal instincts, but that didn’t mean she appreciated his inner strength. She’d never thought of him as a real man. And, for Zoë, this was a job for a real man, and that meant a Forester. Didn’t she realize that Foresters, while they may have been skilled at hiding themselves, were not particularly good at deception?
Klei turned away, but he couldn’t hide his feelings from Jon. The tritargon made that impossible. Moreover, as Klei saw it, Jon had seconded the Emperor’s assessment that Klei wasn’t man enough for the task. Jon had only wanted to end an awkward situation, but Klei hadn’t understood his motives. And no one else had noticed a thing. Klei and his offer had been forgotten in an instant—Zoë had already changed the subject.
“But you spoke of another task—a task I claim for myself,” she said, addressing the Emperor but turning to her mother. “You want someone to travel north—along the route I took a year ago with Jon and my brother—and Alf, too. (Had she, too, forgotten Klei?) Only this time, we’ll have a message—we’ll tell the men and women who remain loyal to you that their hope lies at Bent Lake.”
“Yes, Zoë. But that isn’t all,” said the Emperor.
“I know the rest. I’ll lead them here, even though the road is controlled by the Chosen.”
“By the Chosen or the Brotherhood.”
“I don’t fear the Brotherhood.”
“Do you fear the Chosen?”
Zoë hesitated.
“Yes, I do. It would be foolhardy not to fear them.”
“Yes, it would be foolhardy,” the Emperor told her. “And that’s why I’m not asking you to do this alone. It was never my plan to ask anyone else to do this for me. I had intended to make the journey alone. But now I’ll go with you. Together, we’ll raise a force to defend this valley. It’s what I owe my people.”
First it was my Foresters, now it was my people. He made it sound as if they belonged to him, and they ate it up like cherry pie. Yet Jon felt Zoë’s excitement just as he’d felt Klei’s pain. Perhaps the Rand’s gift was more trouble than it was worth. Jon looked around for Klei, but he’d slipped out of the room unnoticed.
After the meeting, a Bent-Laker named Tando took Alf aside.
“Those men you were talking about—the good men among the Brotherhood—you’re right about what you said. You’re not the only one who’s lived with the Brotherhood. I was one of them myself. It’s not a thing I usually tell people, you can understand—especially now.”
As he spoke he pulled up his right shirtsleeve, revealing the tattoo of a snake running down his arm.
“You can bet I keep this hidden from the Women,” he told Alf, quickly dropping the sleeve. “I was a kid when I joined them—a week after my seventeenth birthday. One of those crazy things you do when you’re too young to know better. I’d heard about the Brotherhood—tall tales and whatnot—and their life seemed glamorous. It’s what you dream about when you’re young—at least it was what I dreamed about, living with an aunt and her husband who got servant work out of their orphan nephew while feeding him on scraps like a dog.
“But it didn’t take long to learn the truth about the Brotherhood. Like Alf told the Emperor, there were good men there. But they’d have been good anywhere, and, finding themselves among the Brotherhood, they made the best of their fate. A few ran away, but most stayed, some because they lacked the will to escape and others because they had no idea where to go. That was the case for men from the Valley of Women. They knew they could never go back there, but they had no notion of the world outside the valley—although a few of them had heard of this village, and their talk was why I ended up here myself. I’m not the only one at Bent Lake who once called himself a Brother. Five of us recognize one another, but
we keep it a secret—we don’t even speak of it among ourselves.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Alf said.
“It doesn’t matter. But if you bring any of those good men back with you, I’ll do what I can for them. In the past year, hundreds have come here, but there’s land enough for thousands. How long do you think it will take you to return to Bent Lake?”
Alf thought for a moment.
“At least two days. No more than three. The shorter time we spend there, the safer we’ll be.”
“I’ll be watching for you.”
▲
“Are you sure you want to undertake this ridiculous mission?” Lyla asked Jon.
They were walking by Bent Lake, watching the small waves lap against the gravel shore. A green dragonfly was hovering over the water—darting a few feet in one direction, then pausing in midair before darting off in another.
Jon himself wasn’t sure what he wanted to do, and none of the options were appealing. Once the excitement of their arrival at the two valleys was over, he’d realized that this was not the place he wanted to be. But where else could he go? If it hadn’t been in the hands of the Chosen, he might have tried to find a way back to Kar—even in its decay, what he’d seen of the city had fascinated him—but now that possibility was closed.
“What’s the alternative?” Jon asked.
“The alternative is to stay here with us.” She looked at Jon closely. “Or to leave with us, if it comes to that.”
“‘With us’?”
“With me and your grandfather.”
She’s finally going to tell me, he thought, but she wants me to put it into words.
“With you and Peter?” Jon asked. “He’s my grandfather, isn’t he? And you’re my mother’s mother. That explains everything. You saved me from death because I was of your own blood, and he made a point of treating me like one of Helen’s sons because I’m as much his grandson as they are.”
“It doesn’t explain much, I’m afraid. I can’t be sure about my own motives—and neither can you. Nothing prepared me to take notice of my daughter’s son, and I hope I’d have done the same for any other boy accused unjustly—any other boy like you at least. And, as for your grandfather, he had no idea about your parentage. If he treated you like a Forester, it was because he judged that the right thing to do, not because he suspected your identity. Your knife reminded him of the one I’d bought in Kar, but it didn’t occur to him they were one and the same. After all, it had been years since he’d seen it. And, even if he’d guessed it was mine, that wouldn’t have established a relationship. Remember, he didn’t know I’d had a daughter, much less that she’d born him a grandson. He wasn’t even aware that I was pregnant when I left him. That was why I left—because I didn’t want my child to be born outside the Valley of Women. At the time that seemed terribly important. Now it no longer does.
“Peter says he told you about our journey to Kar and that you asked him my name, but he didn’t give it to you, because he wasn’t sure I’d want anyone to know about us. After all those years, the man was still worried about my reputation! But even if he’d answered your question, all you would have learned was that you shared a common friend. You didn’t know I was your grandmother until I told you a moment ago.”
“What does my mother think?”
For a moment, Lyla seemed at a loss for words.
“Your mother? She knows she is my daughter, but nothing else about any of these matters.”
“You haven’t told her?”
“Jon, did you never notice that your mother and I are not close? You speak of her—that must mean you know who your mother is.”
“I know who she is. And I also know that you’ve never mentioned her name to me.”
“Why should I have mentioned her name? When the Mothers sat in judgment of you, they asked her to tell them all she knew about her son, and she refused. ‘I had no part in his upbringing,’ she told them. ‘If he’s committed a crime, give him the punishment he deserves.’
“Understand me, I didn’t blame her. She was merely repeating what she’d been taught: Children belong to the community and so everyone in the community has responsibility for them—everyone and therefore no one. You learned that, too, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I learned it.”
“In the eyes of the women of the valley, it’s wrong to rank blood above social bonds, and I think they’re right. Family ties are selfish. They teach you to look out for the people who resemble you, when the important lesson is learning to look out for the ones who’re different. The women who established our laws were right to give priority to the claims of society. And yet blood counts for something.”
“But not between you and my mother,” Jon observed.
“She never wanted a relationship. I always thought it was because she sensed I was different from the other women and that there was something unusual about her birth. And she was right. She wasn’t born at the same time of the year as the other children in her age group. As a small child, she must have realized that she was bigger than her playfellows, and she had the bad luck to end up taller than the other girls as well. Things like that bothered her. She wanted to blend in, and anything that marked her as special was a threat. Of course she hadn’t a clue to who her father was. But none of the children here do, so there was nothing remarkable about her ignorance.
“She wasn’t a young woman when you were born. She’d held herself off—if you understand what I mean. But when she took another course it was because she wanted above all else to have a daughter.”
“But the daughter was born dead,” Jon said, “and she ended up with me instead.”
Lyla did not attempt to conceal her surprise.
“You knew that?”
“Yes. Marge told me the day I first talked with you.”
“Marge! Of all people! She actually told you about how your mother felt when you were born?”
“No—she didn’t say anything about how she felt. The only thing she told me was the fact that I’d had a sister.”
“It was a disappointment to your mother—more than a disappointment—but she gritted her teeth and did her best to show nothing of what she felt. The sad part was that, in the months of her pregnancy, I’d tried to get close to her and felt I was making progress. That’s how I learned she wanted a daughter. But then, when you survived and your sister didn’t, everything went back to the way it had been before. She pretended not to see me when we passed in the village.”
“Did she hate me?”
“Hate you? I don’t know. Certainly, she would have believed it wrong to nurture such a feeling—to nurture any feeling at all about you.”
“Have you talked about me with Peter?”
“Yes—the day after you arrived. I’d recognized him the night before—it didn’t take more than a few words—but I wondered if he’d recognized me.”
“Had he?”
“He said he had. It was strange to see him after so many years—half a century. We had much to talk about—but mostly we talked about you. He told me how quickly you’d learned the ways of the Foresters. None of them had believed it possible. Even so, it never occurred to Peter that you might be his own grandson. And yet now, when his other grandsons are dead, learning of the relationship gave him joy.”
“We don’t know that David was killed.”
“But do you really believe he’s still alive?”
“It’s possible. David wasn’t like his two brothers—he always stayed in the background, and that might prove a survival skill.”
“Peter doesn’t believe he survived. He dreaded bringing the news to Helen.”
“Zoë told her yesterday, when we visited the archers guarding the pass.”
“How did she take it?” Lyla asked, genuinely concerned.
“She said she was happy he’d given his life in the service of the Emperor—which I took to mean she had no hope of his ever returning from the Chosen.”
“And that was all she said?”
“Yes. Helen is not a woman who shows her feelings. She must be like my mother.”
Lyla thought for a moment.
“I see what you mean. She’s like her in a certain way. But she’s not really like her at all. Helen hides her feelings from other people, but she doesn’t hide them from herself. I’ve talked with her about her youngest son—the one you met on the mountain. Oh, yes, I know about that, too. I once tried to get you to tell me what happened that day, but you kept your secret, and I admired you for it. But, as you see, I eventually discovered that you’d met Helen’s son and he’d told you how to leave the valley.
“I wonder how Helen and Ethel will react to the discovery that you are their nephew? Helen may take solace in believing her sons died for good causes, but I suspect she’d agree with me in urging you not to undertake this absurd scheme of the Emperor. You realize how absurd it is, don’t you?”
Jon nodded yes.
“Of course you do. And you must also realize that if something happens to you there’ll be no one left of the Forester family but Zoë, and she too has convinced herself to join the Emperor on another wild enterprise.”
“Who else will do it?”
“There’s always someone else. Let Alf take Klei with him. You said there were no other volunteers, but Klei volunteered to go, didn’t he? Why did the Emperor ignore him?”
“I don’t think he has a high regard for Klei.”
“Why on earth not? But I can guess the answer to that question.”
She shook her head.
“I’d hoped for better from the Emperor, but you can’t expect everything. Klei is tougher than he looks. I saw that the day we questioned him about Piers. The other boys said what they thought we wanted them to say, but Klei told the plain truth. You’re fortunate to have a friend like that.”
Jon couldn’t deny that Klei was his friend.
“I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to Klei.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. In truth, I wouldn’t want either of you to go on this mission. We pretend to know how the Chosen will act on the misinformation you’re supposed to feed them, but in fact none of us understands them. And now the Emperor’s planning to go off himself. Having escaped the clutches of his enemies, he seems intent on scampering back into them.”
The Flight from Kar (The Emperor's Library Page 45
