Empire of Grass

by Tad Williams

  Miriamele frowned. “First of all, those can’t be kilpa, not this far north and not so many. Secondly, even if those were kilpa, they do not climb onto large ships, so we would not be in danger.” But a black trace of memory suddenly came to her, a nightmarish vision of hooting, gape-mouthed phantoms.

  That was more than thirty years ago, she told herself. And the Storm King’s return had made the dreadful sea-creatures restless and dangerous in those days. Still, she stared at what Shulamit was pointing at, low bumps dragging white ripples. They might be sea otters, which often moved in large family groups. Kilpa did not. So those couldn’t be kilpa. Simple. But she did not feel as comfortable in that certainty as she would have liked.

  “Come, Majesty,” said Shulamit. “Denah must have put out something to break our fast by now. You must be hungry.”

  Her two other ladies-in-waiting agreed that, yes, Miriamele must be hungry.

  “But I’m not. Not yet. I think I will walk on the deck a little longer. It’s a bright, clear day and I’m enjoying the view, but the rest of you look cold. You go ahead and I’ll join you soon. And don’t worry.” She smiled at Shulamit, although it was a little forced—Miri hated to be mothered. “I promise I won’t lean over the railing, in case the kilpa have learned to leap like dolphins.”

  When she had at last persuaded her ladies to leave her, Miriamele walked back to the starboard rail and stared out across the coastal breakers to the darker green of the ocean. Within an hour or two they would be out in the open sea, and then the deck would be colder and the motion of the ship a great deal rougher. She was not going to be hurried away from a calm morning.

  As she stood watching the blue of the sky deepen, she felt rather than saw or heard someone standing beside her. One of the ship’s boys was waiting for her attention, a youth of perhaps ten years, his eyes wide and his mouth clenched tightly shut as if to protect himself from accidentally saying something treasonous or heretical in front of the queen. The thought amused her.

  “Y’r Majesty,” he said when he saw her looking, and then made a strange half-bow, as though he wasn’t quite sure whether he should try it at all. “Begging pardon. A message, that is. I mean, that’s what I have. For you.”

  “A message?”

  “Yes’m.”

  She looked at him. He stared back, hair wild from the wind’s handling, eyes still wide as wide could be. “And the message is . . . ?” she asked at last.

  “He wants you to come see him. Said to tell you . . . secret-like.” Only now did he think to look around, although Hylissa’s sailors were far too busy making ready for the open sea to pay attention even to their monarch.

  “And who is ‘he’? The captain?” She had a thought. “Escritor Auxis, perhaps?”

  The boy looked alarmed, as though he might have been tasked with messages from those worthies as well and had somehow completely forgotten them. “No’m. Don’t think so, no. From the Niskie-fella. He’s in the hole. Wants to talk to you, if Y’r Majesty finds it confident.” He frowned, then brightened. “Convenient. I mean.”

  “The hole? Ah, do you mean the Niskie Hole? Tell me where it is, and I’ll go directly.” But she was not as blithe as she made out. Memories of the hooting kilpa clambering onto her ship, of flames in the sails, and above all, of a keening, desperate song, were now besieging her in earnest. “I did not know we even had a Niskie on the ship.”

  “Came on at Meremund, he did. We take ’em on much farther north nowadays.” He was proud of having a seaman’s knowledge beyond his years, but there was something else beneath his words, something fearful. “I’ll show you where. Thank you, ma’am. Your Majesty, ma’am.”

  “Very well. And what’s your name, young sir?”

  Again the eyes widened. He clearly did not know why she was asking, and for a moment she thought he was considering giving her a false name, but at last fear or training won out. “Ham, Majesty. Like the back of y’r leg.” He colored, suddenly and brightly. “Not your leg, ’course. Not Y’r Majesty’s. But someone’s.” He started to turn around to point at the back of his leg, then thought better of it, and stood looking completely dumbfounded. It was all Miri could do not to smile.

  “Very well, Sir Ham. You have delivered your message most bravely. Now lead me to the Niskie Hole and I will give you a fithing-piece for your services.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Ham escorted her to a small door at the end of a narrow passageway under the forecastle. After the boy had been generously rewarded and had hurried off, she knocked on the door and was invited inside.

  The cabin was small even for shipboard, and unadorned but for a thin pallet and a sack laid out upon it. A slender person in a gray hooded cloak, who had been bending over the sack, straightened at her entrance. He was smaller than she was, with long, thin fingers showing at the end of his wide sleeves, a deeply tanned face, and huge, dark eyes. Even if his size and shape had not suggested it already, those gold-flecked eyes would have told her this was a Niskie.

  “You do me an honor, Queen Miriamele,” he said, but did not bow or take her hand, almost as though they were equals. “Forgive me not coming to you, but it is never good to court unnecessary talk on a ship. I am Gan Doha.”

  She started. “You have the same name as another of your kind I used to know.”

  He nodded. “Gan Itai. My great-great grandmother.”

  Something too large to express suddenly welled inside Miri’s breast. “She saved my life.”

  “I know,” said Gan Doha. “It is one of our clan’s proudest tales.”

  The powerful tide of memories did not prevent a sudden bite of suspicion. “Gan Itai died with the Eadne Cloud in the middle of the Bay of Firannos. How could even her family know of it?”

  “She did not—not exactly. But sit, please. Even a sea watcher cannot keep a queen standing.” He smiled, but it was an odd, half-hearted thing. He pushed a low stool toward her, a gesture that reminded her so strongly of his ancestor and herself in a tiny cabin much like this, that she struggled against tears. But she still wondered how this Gan Doha could know anything about what had happened on that ill-fated ship all those years ago—a lifetime ago.

  Before she could ask her first question, the Niskie held up a long forefinger. “First let me tell you what I know and why I know it, instead of playing at riddles. When you were young you ran away from your father, pretending to be a commoner. You were taken up by Earl Aspitis, whose ship Eadne Cloud was my great-grandmother’s responsibility—her instrument, as we Tinukeda’ya say. Latterly you found out that Aspitis was an ally of your father and planned to force you to marry him. My foreparent Gan Itai decided—and for more than one single reason—that she could not stand by and see it happen. So instead of singing the monstrous kilpa down, as is our usual task, she called them up instead. She summoned them, and they came to Eadne Cloud in terrible numbers. Does this all have the sound of truth to you, Queen Miriamele?”

  “Yes, yes it does. But how do you know this?”

  “I am reaching that. When the burning and crippled ship at last began to sink, my great-grandmother was determined to sink with it—she had betrayed her trust, after all, and helped to destroy her instrument, however important her reasons. But a wave swept her over the side, and she could not reach the ship again, so gave herself to the sea. But she did not die—not then. Later, in the early hours of light, another ship found her still afloat but dying. Before she breathed her last breath, she told everything to the sea watcher of that vessel, and he brought the tale back to our people in Nabban. When you and your husband the king at last were victorious, we thought of our foreparent’s part in it all and were proud. And you have not disappointed us—although that is not true for all those who have ruled in your name here in the south.”

  Miriamele did not at first know what to say. She had thought for so long that
Gan Itai’s death had at least been swift that she was overcome by learning the truth, and now tears did come to her eyes. “She saved me. She truly saved me!” was all she could say.

  Gan Doha did not try to soothe her or silence her, just waited patiently until she had dabbed her eyes dry. “I did not tell you this to make you sad,” he said at last.

  “I do not mind. I owe Gan Itai more than I can say—more than I could have repaid even if she lived. Is there something I can do for her family? I should have thought of that before—should have tried to find her relatives.” A spate of fresh tears came. She blotted them with the sleeve of her gown. “I have done badly by your family, Gan Doha, and I apologize. The truth of being a monarch is that you are always disappointing someone, cheating someone else, though you never wish to do it.” I sound like my husband, she thought, and a fresh pang of missing him added to her sudden unhappiness.

  “We want and need nothing from you,” the Niskie said, “—at least, nothing in the way of reward or thanks. But our elders wish an audience with you when you reach Nabban. They say it is important to both your people and mine. That is why they sent me to Meremund to sing for Hylissa, so that I might have this chance to speak with you. I did not think I would be lucky enough to manage it so soon. Will you come to them in Nabban without making much of it? The elders said to tell you that they think secrecy is better than openness, at least until you have heard what they have to say.”

  “Of course,” she told him. “As I said, I owe you and your people far more than that. But how will I know where to come, and when?”

  “That will be made clear when the time is closer,” Gan Doha said. His wide eyes hinted at some amusement she did not understand. “Do not be surprised. We have ways to communicate even within the great Sancellan Mahistrevis itself.”

  * * *

  • • •

  When she left the Niskie and made her way back up to the forecastle, Miriamele was so full of confused new thoughts and old memories that she did not at first hear that someone was calling her. It was Denah, her pretty young maid, and the girl had been searching for Miriamele long and hard enough that her round face was flushed and her curly hair had come loose and spilled from beneath her headdress.

  “Your Majesty, there you are! I’ve been looking everywhere! The captain wants you.”

  Miriamele rolled her eyes. Barely an hour out of port and already she was being batted from place to place like a shuttlecock. “And does the captain expect me to hurry to him, like a tavern maid?”

  “No, Majesty! He’s right there! See, he’s coming!”

  Captain Felisso was indeed bounding up the ladder from the main deck, waving something white in his hand. “Majesty, Majesty, a thousand pardons— no, a hundred thousand, because we could not find you!” Felisso was Perdruinese by birth, and when excited or angry his old accent strengthened, so for a moment she couldn’t understand what he’d said.

  “But I’m here, Captain. I did not fall off the ship and no matter what my ladies might have said, I was in no danger of being snatched by a kilpa.”

  He gave her a surprised look at that, but quickly recovered his aplomb. “Just so, just so. But I am still so very dreadful sorry I could not find you, in case there was a message back. But wait, of course, the messenger is still on board. He came in a little boat of his own. Foolish me. Yes, of course you can send a message back. He said it was very important.”

  “Who said? I confess I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, Captain.”

  “A messenger set out from the port only moments after we were casted off. We saw him and did our best to wait until we could meet him with our own boat. He had a message for you—from the king, he said. From your husband in Erkynland, the king himself!”

  “Yes, my husband is the king, that much is certainly true.” Already she was looking at the folded white sheet of parchment with trepidation. “May I have it, Captain, if it is truly for me?”

  Felisso jumped as if someone had swung an ax at him. “Oh, by the saints, Majesty, of course. Forgive me.” With a sweeping bow, he handed her the letter.

  The seal was Simon’s. The hand was his too, both the legibility and the spelling as usual leaving something to be desired. She read the first line, then the second, then read them both again. A hole seemed to have opened in the middle of her body. She thought she could feel cold air blowing right through her.

  “Majesty?” said Denah, frightened by Miri’s face. “Are you ill?”

  “Please, Majesty, can I give you my arm?” said the captain. “I pray it is not bad news.”

  “Oh, but it is,” she said, then realized she had spoken so quietly that they might not even have heard her. “I fear it is,” she said more loudly. The day seemed to have turned into something unreal, a dream, a mistake, something that should be discarded and started over. “My husband writes to say that Princess Idela, the wife of our son—and the mother of the heir to the High Throne—is dead.”

  She left the captain standing, sputtering out sympathy and protestations of grief. When Denah wanted to walk with her, she waved the girl away. She did not want to speak to anyone.

  Everything. Nothing. She felt everything and nothing. The world she had greeted that morning was not the world she had thought it was, and she was lost and alone on a world of water, agonizingly far from home.

  3

  The Hidden

  “Do you know how your father lost his hand, Derra?” her mother had once asked, with the tone of someone about to reveal an important secret. She often said things like that, suddenly and out of nowhere, as though she were answering angry voices only she could hear.

  “In a war,” Derra—as she had then been called—answered. “He said it happened a long time ago, before he met you.”

  “He lost it for a woman,” Vorzheva continued, as if her daughter had not spoken. “A woman he still loves, a woman he keeps in his heart like a treasure.”

  “What a ridiculous thing to tell a child,” her father said, laughing, but his face looked a little angry. “I was fighting to protect my brother’s wife. Our caravan was attacked and she was killed, so it is a sad thing to talk about. Killed by Thrithings-men, as a matter of fact—your mother’s people.”

  Her mother turned on him. “Not my clan! My clan fought on your father’s side!”

  Derra had stopped paying attention, because she had heard it before. She had already begged her father for the story until he’d told her. She couldn’t remember how old she’d been when she first noticed that other men were not like her father, that most of them had two hands, but from that moment on she had burned to know the story. Her brother Deornoth, strangely, had not, and had walked away when her father began to explain.

  But Deornoth had always been that way. He did not like bloodshed, not even in stories. Once when they were smaller he had hit Sagra, a boy who lived near their parents’ inn, and bloodied the child’s nose. Deornoth had run home and hidden under his blanket, refusing to come out even when Sagra himself came by later in the evening to ask him out to play.

  But Derra had always loved stories. She didn’t care that her father had only one hand, or that he had once been a prince but had decided not to be—a story her mother told often, sometimes as evidence of his love for her, sometimes as evidence of the reverse, especially when she was feeling oppressed by what she called “this wretched-smelling, watery place!”—Kwanitupul, their home on the edge of the swampy Wran.

  * * *

  • • •

  It seemed strange to think about those days now, especially when she could not have been further away from them—not in plain distance or years. The lengthy, winding road that had led her to this hiding place in the deep blackness beneath the great mountain Nakkiga was only bits of separated memory now, like beads on a necklace.

  When their father had not returned from his journey,
her mother Vorzheva had despaired. After months of rage and recriminations against her vanished husband, she at last decided to take Derra and Deornoth north—although with what plan she never told them. She had sold the inn called Pelippa’s Bowl and its unexalted reputation for very little—even Derra, despite being only ten years, had known they were being cheated by the fat merchant—then set out with all their remaining goods piled on a single cart. But they were captured on the road by Thrithings-men, who had been mostly interested in Vorzheva’s purse, then heard her muttering under her breath in her original tongue, which was also theirs. Only a few days later the entire family—minus any valuable belongings and the proceeds from selling the inn, of course—had been delivered to Vorzheva’s horrible father, Thane Fikolmij, ruler over much of the High Thrithings. From that point everything in Derra’s life had gone from merely bad to dreadful. Her twin brother Deornoth was sent away to live with another clan—he did not even get to say goodbye. And Derra and her mother became no better than slaves to Fikolmij, laboring from dawn to dusk and beyond with the other women in her grandfather’s camp.

  Derra might have been able to put up with even such a dire change in fortune, but with each day after Deornoth had been taken away, her mother seemed to lose life. Vorzheva’s eyes became dark-circled and her face gaunt—she could barely force herself to eat. She even lost interest in Derra and began to avoid her. Derra’s kindly Aunt Hyara, the only good thing that had happened to her since her father vanished, tried to tell her that Vorzheva was not angry at her, but that each time she looked at her daughter, she saw the absent twin as well, her son, and it broke her heart.

  “She will come back to you,” Hyara had said. “Give her time.”

  But time had been the one thing Derra had not been able to give. Every day felt like being buried alive. She was not even allowed to mix with the other children—her grandfather deemed her too old for play when there was work to be done.