by Jay Lake
I could not say then who was more guilty, Federo for having bought me or my father for having sold me to him. It did not matter. They were but pawns on a larger board. The Duke, and his procuring agent the Factor, had first set the machinery of guilt in motion. I realized my mistake in fleeing the Factor’s house, when all I had to do was stand my ground and keep my spirit inflamed in order to fight back with my beauty as my weapon.
The weapon I had thrown away in a moment of anguished passion before murdering a woman whose only real crime was to serve her masters.
A new thought dawned upon me. “There must be another way,” I said. “Or we would not be speaking now. You have some proposal. One of the ‘other plans’ you mentioned.”
Federo and the Dancing Mistress exchanged a long look. I saw fear in their faces, but I held my tongue.
He nodded slightly and began to speak in a rush, as if he did not quite believe his own words. “Allow yourself to be captured. Tell them of a plot against the Duke. Tell them of us. You will most likely be taken before him for a hearing, both for the sake of the accusation, and even more because you are his lost jewel. He will be jealous of you. Once in his presence, if you can . . .”
“If I can?” Once more laughter at these idiots bubbled up. “If I can what, kill him? I am a girl of twelve. I would be standing before him in his court. If I had been his bedmate, that might be one thing. But surrounded by men and their weapons? You are fools.” In my own language, I added, “I am but a girl.” My laughter slid into a snarl. “I can kick old women to death, but not a man on a throne surrounded by guards. He is beyond my reach.”
The Dancing Mistress shifted her weight. Her eyes locked on mine. They did not swiftly flick away again as anyone else’s would have done. I knew her well enough to see that she was measuring her words, so I kept her gaze and watched in silence.
Finally she spoke. “There is another way.”
“Of course there is.” I kept my voice hard as I could manage. “You taught me to kill.”
“Actually, she taught you how not to die,” Federo said, interrupting. “Listen to me, Green. If you wish to throw us away and walk out into the streets, that is your choice. You are no prisoner here.”
“No?”
“Did you try the trapdoor?” he asked. “It has been unlocked this whole time.”
“Oh.” For a moment I felt foolish.
“You may go as your heart tells you. I beg this, for the sake of whatever goodwill you might have borne me, listen first to the Dancing Mistress. She speaks difficult truths that may not come to pass. But before you choose, know what you are rejecting.”
“This time,” I said bitterly. His message was clear enough. Back at the Pomegranate Court, I had chosen in ignorance. Though I did not want to admit it, I saw the wisdom of his plea now.
“There is a thing about the Duke that is known to very, very few.” The Dancing Mistress’ words came slowly. “His, well, agelessness . . . it is bound by spells wrested from my people. There are other spells that can release those bindings—things that need to be said to him in close confidence to have their power. Not”—she raised her hand to me—“the quiet of the bedchamber. But close nonetheless. They cannot be spoken in this Petraean tongue. The Duke through his magics has bound the very words to himself, lest someone utter them in his presence.”
“Can they be spoken in my tongue?” I asked.
She looked very unhappy. “I do not know if the forces will heed you. This is not my soulpath, to understand spells and how they work. Since the Duke took his throne on the strength of our magics, my people have folded away their own power like an old cloak. I can teach you certain words through the expedient of writing them in the dust here, though neither of us can speak them aloud. If you say them in your tongue . . . who knows what effect they will have? I certainly do not.”
I was incredulous. “In four hundred years, no one has ever tried this?”
“It is not a common wisdom,” Federo said dryly. “Suffice that we have managed to coordinate intentions now. Will you help?”
At that point, my decision was simple enough. Where else would I go? I could not swim the seas to home. If I said no and simply walked out the door, the Factor would buy more children, then Federo and the Dancing Mistress would raise another rebel in the shadows of his house. Some other child would have to make my choices anew someday.
Here I was; here I would stand.
“I will do this thing.” I spoke carefully. “You may teach me the words. Federo will need to help me with my own tongue, for almost certainly I do not have enough of it to make a worthwhile saying from whatever you write before me in the dust.” I turned to him. “Bring a dictionary of my people’s speech, if such a thing can be found here in Copper Downs. Also, before I will try this magic for you, I want seven yards of silk, needles, spools of thread, and five thousand tiny bells like those used for dancing shoes.”
“Five thousand? Where am I—?”
“You know what I want them for,” I said, interrupting him again. “I should not want to walk toward my death without the bells of my life ringing about me. Don’t pretend this is not murder of another kind. For the Duke if I am lucky, and for me almost certainly.”
“No, n-no,” he stammered. “You have the right of it.”
“Then we are agreed.”
The Dancing Mistress nodded slowly, pain written on her patient face. I gave her a small, real smile. She deserved something from me besides my anger and contempt. The girls who would have followed in my place deserved everything from me. Even my very life itself. When this was done, one way or the other, I would be home.
My grandmother would have approved. As would the ox.
______
I have never known the true number of the days of my life. The count had broken when Federo took me away from Papa. I did not understand then, but the bells of my long-lost silk would have remembered for me until I was old enough to tally the days myself. Though I had tried and tried again to return to my silk, the number had always been a guess. The count I had been keeping in my imagination these years since was more of a guess at a guess.
These were the days that were mine. I had lost almost everything from the beginning of my life except a few memories.
The attic was close and warm even in the autumn weather. Federo and the Dancing Mistress were gone once more, this time for a while. “We cannot pass in and out without drawing attention to you,” he had said.
“We will return when we have gathered your needs,” she told me.
I sat with salty cheese and stale bread and water that tasted like rooftop and wondered what I might have done differently. What I might do next.
When I grew bored with regrets and should-have-dones, I paid attention to the world beyond this latest prison of mine. I did not clean the window, for fear it would attract attention. The grime covering it kept me from any real sight of the street. I could hear the warehouse below without difficulty, and I discovered that if I sat just beneath the round window, I could hear what passed in the street.
Some sounds were readily understood. Teams of horses passing by, accompanied by shouting or the crack of a drover’s whip. Occasionally they stopped with a squeal of iron-shoed wheels on stone. The beasts would whicker to one another as the busy noise of the warehouse took in the drover and his cargo.
People passed in conversation. No words reached me except for the occasional exclamation of surprise or excitement. I took comfort from the murmur of passing voices nonetheless.
I could hear more from the warehouse beneath me. Loads shifted in, loads shifted out, and some foreman with a high-pitched voice bawled orders I could clearly make out. Most of it was meaningless to me, the chatter of men at work: “The other cannery stack, damn your lazy boots!”
This was like being inside the Factor’s walls and hearing the world outside. Except in this place that world was much, much closer.
In the late afternoon of the second d
ay since I’d once more been left alone, I heard the tramp of men marching in unison. Someone shouted orders in clipped syllables I could not follow. I heard the clatter as a few were told off to my warehouse. I heard the argument that followed. Men would be told to work into the evening. There would be no pay from the city or the Duke. They would rot in hell. They would be happy to send them there. An argument without names or sides, just shouting men and, once, the meaty thump of a hard strike by someone’s fist.
After a while, the boxes began to move. I heard crates shift and clatter. More cursing, of the ordinary, working kind. I lay on the floor with my aching ear pressed against dusty splinters, waiting for death to climb the walls below and find me.
Why had I insisted on my silk before I would follow their plan? I could have gone forth and had some small chance at changing the order of the world. Now I would be taken up without the words to break the Duke’s spell.
If I could have stilled my breathing, I would have. Not to make myself die, but to be as silent as a piece of ceiling lumber. To be quiet is to live. I did not stir for cheese nor bread nor water nor the piss pot all that evening. They continued to move below me. An officer came occasionally, shouting for someone named Mauricio each time.
Eventually the warehousemen were released and the great door rumbled shut. I had never felt such relief as I did when quiet reigned below.
I sat up with my dry mouth and my urgent bladder only to realize that if this Mauricio were canny, he might have left a man behind to lurk silently within the warehouse. What if an ear were pressed to the underside of my floor, waiting for me to move and scrape and sigh?
That new terror kept me in place very late into the night. Finally the need in my bladder became so urgent that I could not put it off for all the fear in my heart. I crept silent as fog to do my business. The splash of the stream sounded like thunder to me, but there was nothing to be done for it except finish, then continue to hide until the danger was gone.
I realized the danger might never be past.
I was startled out of dreams of being hunted across ocean waves in a small boat. Legs kicked as I reached for something with which to defend myself. I was brandishing a small hunk of cheese before I realized that Federo had lifted the trap. A quick glance at the round window showed it was still night outside.
“I do not think that Fencepost Blue is so dangerous,” he said mildly. “But I will see if I can find something a bit less stout the next time I go shopping.”
Giggling, I collapsed. “I thought one of those soldiers might be hiding downstairs to catch me moving up here overnight.”
“Soldiers?” Federo’s face grew alarmed. “A moment, please.” He reached down through the trap and brought up a pair of bulging canvas sacks. After repositioning the flooring, he sat and asked me to explain exactly what it was I had meant.
I told him what I had heard the day before, and mentioned the name Mauricio. Federo looked troubled. “They suspect you to be in one of the warehouse districts. Not that this is surprising. They searched here all evening, then departed?”
“They searched the whole area. The troop I heard marching dropped a small group of men here.”
“Hmm.” He took off his laborer’s flattened leather cap and stroked the back of his head, thinking. “I will see what I can learn. But this is not something I can ask too many questions of. I am under suspicion already, if only for having known you. It will not take long before they realize how much contact the Dancing Mistress had with you.”
“Far more than her other candidate students?” I asked.
“Of course.” He reached for one of the bags. “But here, I bring news and better.”
Out came a bolt of fine silk, tussah weave and forty-two inches across. Unrolled, the silk was seven yards in length. And beautiful, too. I set our hooded lamp on the floor to light the cloth. It showed a rippling sheen like water flowing down the threads. The color appeared green in the lamplight, some medium shade, though I could not say what in that illumination.
“This is most beautiful,” I said quietly.
“There is so little I can ever give back to you. I thought at the least you should have a good quality measure of cloth.”
He showed me the bells, a great mixture of kinds. “I could not buy so many silver bells in any one place,” Federo said by way of apology. “So some are brass, or iron, and some are larger than I might have liked.”
Still, they were bells. Real bells. The bells I could remember from home had been little tin cones on a pin. They tinkled, but they did not ring. Some of these were fit for a choir to sing the hymns of grace to. “I shall have music like a tulpa when I walk in this,” I told him. Their multitude of tiny jingles brought me a sense of peace.
Federo produced a velvet roll with needles stuck into it. “In case some grow dull or bend.” He also had several sticks with spools of thread stacked upon them.
I readied a needle and took up one of the tiniest bells. This one resembled a little silver pomegranate seed, and made a single plaintive tinking noise when I dangled it between my thumbnail and fingernail. With a silent thanks to my grandmother, I sewed the bell to one corner of the silk, which flowed like a green river from my lap.
Federo sat on his heels and watched me sew awhile. After a time, he asked, “May I help you sew, or is this something you must do for yourself?”
I considered that. The answer was not immediately obvious to me. I had always thought of the silk as something a woman made for herself. Clearly, I had not sewn my own bells as an infant, though. Just as clearly, whatever tradition demanded had long been abused and discarded in my case.
The outcome was what mattered most now.
In a sudden rush of thought, the decision was straightforward enough. “I would be pleased to have your help, but at a cost.” I caught his eye in the faint light rising up from the hooded lamp. “Tell me where I came from, as you understand it. I remember the frogs and the plantains and the rice and my father’s ox, but I never have known the name of the place. None of my studies ever showed me maps across the Storm Sea.”
He picked up a needle and struggled awhile to thread it. I did not press him at first for words, for I could see the thoughts forming behind his eyes. Finally Federo got a bell sorted out and bent to his side of the silk. He would not meet my gaze as he began to speak. “Surely you know there was the strictest order never to mention your origins within the Pomegranate Court.”
“Which is foolish. All one need do is look at my face to see I was born nowhere near the Stone Coast.”
“Of course. The beauty we all prized . . . prize . . . in you was founded in part on that very thing. But to mention your birth-country would be to remind you of the past, and goad you into keeping those memories strong.”
“Unlike how you and the Dancing Mistress treated me,” I said dryly.
“Plans within plans, Green.” He finally glanced at me, then looked back down at a fresh bell he was embarked on. “You hail from a country called Selistan. It is found a bit more than six hundred knots west of south, sailing from Copper Downs out across the Storm Sea.”
Selistan!
I finally had a name for my home. Not just a place of frogs and snakes and rice paddies, but a place in the world with a name, that appeared on maps.
“Wh-where in Selistan?”
“I am not sure.” He sounded uncomfortable. “Kalimpura is the great port where much of the trade from across the sea comes. I landed at a fishing town some thirty leagues east of Kalimpura, in a province called Bhopura. The town itself is called Little Bhopura, though I know of no Great Bhopura anywhere.”
“We walked far from my village to Little Bhopura,” I said cautiously.
Federo laughed. If his amusement had not been so obviously genuine, it would have hurt my heart. “We hiked about two leagues across a dry ridgeline separating the river valley where you were living from the coast where I landed.” He smiled at me fondly. “You must recall that as
a vast journey, but think how small you were then. I doubt you’d ever been more than three furlongs from your father’s farm in your life. Today you could cover the distance in a few hours. You would not even notice the effort.”
I recalled the sense of enormous space, walking the entire day, stopping to take a meal. He was not mocking me; he was describing my earliest childhood. Everyone begins small.
Another bell wanted threading. I focused on that a moment to gather my thoughts. Federo’s silence was inviting, not angry or defensive. Below us, the warehousemen pushed their great door open and began their day.
When I spoke again, my voice was low. “Where is my father’s farm?”
“I . . . I do not know. Not anymore.” He sounded ashamed.
Federo was not telling me something. I picked at the thought awhile. I did not wish to push my anger at him. That well was deep and inexhaustible. Right now I was thoughtful, not angry. “Federo. What was my father’s name?”
His face was so close to his sewing, he risked poking himself in the eye. “I do not know.”
“What was my name?”
He would not meet my gaze at all.
My anger raced. “You bought a girl whose name you did not ask from a man whose name you did not know.”
Federo looked up at me, though his face was mostly in shadow. “I have bought many things from many peo—”
“I am not a thing!”
We were both silent, staring at one another as some crate crashed to the floor below us.
“I know you are not a thing,” he hissed after the rumble and mutter of voices below resumed. “I am sorry for how I spoke. But please, Green, you surely take my meaning.”
Bending back to my own sewing, I grumbled that I understood. But how could he not know? How could this man buy me like fruit at a market, strip me away from my family and all my heritage, and recall nothing?
Federo resumed speaking. “I can tell you this much: A man there watches for families with children of . . . potential value.” His voice dropped as he blushed with shame. “F-families where there is trouble. No money, or the death of a parent.”
