Читать книгу The Diminished - Kaitlyn Patterson Sage - Страница 14

CHAPTER FIVE

VI

The tide was low and the fishing boats not yet in the water as I walked, shivering, into the sea. Though the weight of the whole ocean pushed me back toward the shore, I slogged through the icy water as fast as my legs would propel me. The wind whipped black curls loose from my braid and into my eyes, but I kept my focus on the red marker bobbing in the water and the salty musk of the ocean. Five more strides before I could dive.

I checked my knives, my nets, my ballasts. I tried to breathe deeply, to get ready. Focus, Vi, I thought. This cold summer morning would be the last time I dove for the temple, and glad as I was, I wanted the ocean to myself to say goodbye. I knew the memory of this last dive would stick to me like a barnacle I’d carry with me forever.

I wondered what Anchorite Lugine would say when I left. She’d be glad, more than likely. I certainly wouldn’t get the tearful goodbye that Sawny and Lily had been given.

Four more steps.

My feet slicked around smooth rocks and sank into the sand. The seawater was as gray as the clouds. Gray as my eyes. Scummy foam laced the tops of the tiny waves and lapped at my shoulders. The chill would cling beneath the waves for months yet, turning lips and fingertips blue after a few minutes. But not mine. Not anymore. Not after today.

Three more steps.

Something sleek and scaled slipped past my calf in the cold water, breaking my reverie. I shuddered. It didn’t matter that I’d spent most of my nearly sixteen years in this same harbor—until I got underwater, the unseen creatures that swam past my legs still set my teeth on edge. My oil-slicked body had grown almost used to the cold.

Two more steps.

One last time, I checked that my tools were securely tied to my belt. As I pulled my goggles into place, I started taking deep breaths. Today’s dive would be easier than usual, with the water low and the tide nearly imperceptible.

One more step.

I took a last, long breath and sank beneath the waves.

The sea was never silent. The hushing crush of the water, the clicks and squeals of the few hardy sea creatures and the soft thud of my heart finally drowned out my racing thoughts. My goggles were older than me, issued by the temple when I first began to dive. The leather was cracked, and tiny bubbles in the glass left my vision hazy at best, but they kept the seawater from stinging my eyes and made it a little easier to see below the surface. I found the red rope net that surrounded the underwater bed of oysters the temple’s divers were harvesting this month and swam toward it. I had to focus.

When I reached the marker, I swam back to the surface and treaded water for a few minutes, breathing in the pattern I’d learned many years ago. A deep breath in followed by many little gulps of air.

Good luck would go a long way today, Pru. See if you can’t manage a bit for me? I thought.

Finally, on the third breath, I dove toward the ocean floor. I couldn’t hold my breath for as long as some of the older divers—only about seven minutes—but I was faster than most and a strong swimmer. I dug my fingers into the sea floor and yanked the rough shells of startled oysters from their sandy beds, my mind settling into the rhythm of the work. By the time my chest began to burn, my net bag was half-full. I ascended slowly, like I’d been taught, and as I caught my breath, I pulled my ballasts back up by the long lines that attached them to my belt.

I went down three more times, and when both my bags were full, I swam back toward the wharf, where I’d hidden my clothes. I had one last thing to do before I steeled myself to get out of the water. I tied the net bags, heavy with oysters, to a rusted iron ring that had long ago been sunk into the wood of one of the pilings halfway between the end of the dock and the shore. I swam back out toward the bay, keeping myself hidden under the dock.

I turned sixteen the next day, and I could finally bid farewell to the city, the temple and the anchorites. It was time to harvest the last of the pearls I’d been so carefully cultivating beneath the docks all these years. Since I wouldn’t be returning to the harbor again, I cut the ropes, after pulling the oysters from my lines, and watched them drift to the ocean floor.

When I got back to shore, I set my bag of oysters apart from the others before I dried off and dressed with numbed fingers gone blue and wrinkly in the cold water. The cool air was a shock after having gotten used to the water’s chill. Even in the summer, Alskad was never hot, especially early in the morning before the sun had baked away the mist and fog.

I stuffed my braid under my wool cap, kneeled on one of my folded sweaters and set to work. I needed to move fast. The others would be making their way to the shoreline soon, and they’d have questions if they saw me shucking oysters on the beach rather than under Anchorite Lugine’s watchful eyes. I could already hear the news hawkers on the docks, calling headlines about the declaration of the heir and rebel groups disrupting trade in Ilor. I thought of Sawny, hoping that he and Lily had arrived and settled safely as I slipped my knife into an oyster shell and twisted, popping it open.

After I pulled the pearl from each of my oysters, I tossed its meat to the seagulls gathered around me. My stomach was talking at me, but even that wasn’t enough to make me eat the pearl oysters. Unlike the oysters we gathered to sell to the nobility for pricey appetizers, pearl oysters were tough and tasted of seaweed and slime. I wished I’d had the foresight to steal a couple of scallops from their seabeds.

I worked fast, leaving a heap of shells in the sand next to me. By the time I finished, I’d harvested sixty-three pearls, my biggest haul yet—and of them, twenty were some of the biggest I’d ever seen, oysters I’d left undisturbed since I put them on the lines nearly ten years before. I dug a quick hole in the wet sand and buried the shells that had housed my small fortune. By the time the ocean pulled them back up, I’d be long gone.

Pearls tucked safe in a pouch beneath my shirt and sweater, I hauled the bags of the anchorites’ oysters up and over my shoulder. If I could get back to the temple before the end of the morning’s adulations, I might be able to sneak a sugar-dotted cloud bun from the anchorites’ tray before it went up to their buffet. I didn’t just miss Sawny for the treats he’d pocketed for me, but I would’ve been lying if I said I didn’t wake up thinking about cloud buns and sweet, milky tea on mornings like this.

I picked my way across the gray puddles that littered Penby’s streets. The merchants and street vendors had just started stirring as I stepped into the market square. Bene’s bakery windows were misted over with the fragrant steam of rising dough. My mouth watered at the thought of her spiced pigeon pies, which I’d tasted a few times but could rarely afford to buy on my own. Shopkeepers leaned against doors just opened and sipped their tea as their assistants chalked specials and sales onto display boards. Early risers bustled down the streets, shopping baskets hooked over their arms. A farmer set bowls heaped with the first salmonberries of the season onto his cart next to jars of bright pickled onions and the cabbages and potatoes we’d seen through the winter. I nodded to Jemima Twillerson as she flipped the sign to open her apothecary shop, but her eyes—no great shock—slid away from mine.

No one wanted to be seen associating with a dimmy. Worse still, a dimmy like me—penniless and a temple ward. In all my life, Sawny’d been the only twin willing to call me friend. Others, like Jemima, might do me a kindness from time to time, but not where they might be seen—and worse yet, judged—.

I pushed away the familiar sting and adjusted the sack of oysters balanced on my shoulder. A bright slash of red caught my eye, and I turned on a heel to see a girl I recognized streaking through the market square. She clutched a long, curving Samirian knife in each white-knuckled hand, and her feet were bare on the stone road.

Her name was Skalla. I’d only met her the once. She was some Denorian merchant’s daughter, and he had enough drott to dress his girls in imported silks and brocades. Her twin sister had died a couple weeks back, and when the girl didn’t seem to be succumbing to death herself, Anchorite Lugine dragged me on a visit.

“Vi,” Anchorite Lugine had said, “it’s important that she sees the glorious contentment that your faith has sustained, even after all these years of being diminished.”

The implication—that the grief would inevitably catch up with me—had lingered in the air unsaid all through the painfully silent visit with Skalla and her family. What could I say to her? That I was sorry for her; for what she’d become? What we’d both become?

I hated those visits. They were such a lie. I had no faith, and I certainly hadn’t kept myself from violence all these years through prayer and piety. I was a fluke: I would eventually lose the tight hold that kept my anger from turning to violence. Just because I’d lasted this long didn’t mean I would be able to avoid the grief forever.

Skalla’s silks were damp with sweat, and her arms prickled with gooseflesh. Her eyes were blank with rage. She was gone; lost to the grief she felt for her twin.

Before Skalla, it had been at least a month since another dimmy was lost in Penby. There’d been rumors of an incident in Esser Park, but I’d overheard a group of the Shriven saying that it’d been a ruse. Folks did that from time to time. Used dimmys as an excuse, as an explanation for their bad behavior.

I clenched my jaw and sidled toward an alleyway. I didn’t want to see what happened next. Sometimes it seemed like I always managed to find myself nearby when a dimmy lost their grip. When I was younger, I’d tried to stop one of the temple brats, a dimmy, when she attacked Lily in a dark corridor in the middle of the night. I got between them right before the Shriven arrived and threw me off the other girl. That was the first time I’d broken my nose.

Skalla’s bare feet smacked slush from potholes, and, in a moment, she was across the square, dragging the baker from her doorway before the woman had a moment to think. Still frail from a bout with the whispering cough, Bene never stood a chance.

Blood spattered across the bakery’s steam-covered window.

I froze in horror. Skalla smeared Bene’s blood over her porcelain pale face, screaming. The sack of oysters was an anchor, tethering me to the walk outside the apothecary’s shop. No one moved. We sank into the shadows, took shallow breaths, willed ourselves to become invisible. The Shriven’d appear soon, all tattoos and white robes and swift, deadly action. We’d be safe once they arrived. As much as I hated them, they were good for that much, at least.

A high, keening wail poured from deep inside Skalla’s body, and then she screamed. In a language that had to be Denorian, her voice filled the square. She’d be cursing the gods and goddesses. They always did. Even the Denorians, who placed an irreverent amount of value on science over religion, spent their last, raging breaths cursing the gods for condemning us with grief.

The names of the Alskader goddesses spurted from her rant as the Shriven slipped silently into the square. Magritte the Educator. Rayleane the Builder. Dzallie the Warrior. I couldn’t parse all her words, but I knew that feeling of vitriol. It rose in my chest, the anger, and I bit down hard on my cheek. I couldn’t afford to feed the slow burn always smoldering next to my heart.

Not a day went by when I didn’t bite back fury. Every moment was a fight against the close heat of rage when I caught someone’s eyes staring, and I knew from that one look that all they saw was a dimmy. I stopped being a person and was reduced to danger wearing the skin of a teenaged girl in a hand-me-down sweater. But the anchorites’ chorus of voices in my head reminded me that anger loosened my grip, and I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t be like Skalla.

The Shriven descended on her like a shroud. Their long staves whipped through the air, fast and dangerous as eels. I lost sight of her for a moment, then dark crimson spurted over one of the Shriven’s white-clad shoulders. He collapsed in a heap with Skalla on top of him, and I gagged as I caught a glimpse of her face. Blood streamed out of her mouth and down her neck—she’d torn the man’s tattooed throat open with her teeth.

A moment later, it was over. Skalla’s wrists were held behind her back at vicious angles by two of the Shriven, another two stood at her elbows and a fifth had his hand wrapped tight around her throat. She wasn’t but a slip of a thing, but dimmys were unnaturally strong, and it looked like the Shriven were going to be extra careful with Skalla. They didn’t often lose one of their own—they were trained for this work.

As they hauled her away, I tried not to picture the inevitable scene on the wide square between the palace and the temple. I’d seen it so many times—before I was old enough to know to hide, one of the anchorites had always taken it upon themselves to drag me and any of the other dimmys in the temple’s care to the executions. As though it would help. As though anything would help.

They would chant Skalla’s name as the tattooed Shriven led her through the crowd. Skalla. Skalla. Skalla. The Shriven would pull her onto the platform, still writhing and wailing. They used to hang the diminished, but the day before my twelfth birthday, the Suzerain had declared hanging immoral and cruel. So violent dimmys lost their heads these days—as if that bloody death was somehow less cruel.

All of us in the temple knew the truth. Donations poured in after those executions. Folks were so grateful to be protected from one of the diminished, they’d increase their already steep tributes. There was money in fear, and money in blood, and there was nothing the Suzerain liked better than a fat tribute and a city that remembered who kept them safe.

Waiting for the Shriven to clear the market square before I headed back to the temple, I could imagine Skalla standing on that platform, fighting like a wild thing. They never went quietly. Her fiery red hair would be tangled and matted with blood, her fingers raw from scraping the stone walls of her cell. There would still be blood on her face, dried and flaking.

They’d wait a day. Let the story spread. Drum up the crowds. The Suzerain’d be there at the back of the platform, all calm and beatific in their white robes. The benevolent guardians of everyone in Alskad—except for the people who needed them most.

People like me.

* * *

The yeasty warmth of the day’s bread baking swirled around me when I opened the kitchen door. Perhaps tomorrow, on my birthday, Lugine might slip me a thin slice of ham or a cheese rind with my dinner roll. She’d never hugged me like she had Sawny and Lily, but from time to time, if it was a special occasion, she’d give me a small treat. After all, I’d been with the anchorites longer than any other dimmy but Curlin.

As I turned to close the door, I was startled to see Sula, Lugine and Bethea sitting at the kitchen’s long slab of a table, their faces grim. They shouldn’t have been back in the residential part of the temple yet—adulations were barely over. Moreover, it was more than a little strange for all three of them to be in the same room together like this. What would bring them all here at this hour?

My hands trembled as I dumped the sacks of oysters into the tin trough at the end of the table and shrugged out of my sweaters. I sent up a silent prayer to my twin. Watch my back, will you?

“Before you say anything, I know I should’ve gone to adulations this morning, but I hadn’t yet had any luck this month, and I wanted to find at least one pearl for you before my birthday.” I gave the women my best smile, which none of them returned.

They were each powerful within their orders. Anchorite Sula supervised all that went on in the trade library and made certain that each of the temple’s charges were assigned a craft or else made our way into the Shriven. Anchorite Lugine oversaw my work as a diver in the summer and in the canneries in the winter. Long-suffering Anchorite Bethea, the eldest of the three, was responsible for the spiritual education of us brats the temple took in. They were the closest thing I had to real parents. Though, to be fair, they were collectively about as warm as an ice floe. I’d spent my whole childhood with their eyes on me, watching me with the same wariness they’d use with a rabid dog.

Once, when I was barely seven, a gang of grubby urchins cornered me in a back alley. One of them managed to break my nose before I fought my way free. I ran through the streets, blood and tears streaming down my face, and sought comfort from Lugine in the kitchen. She’d taken one look at me, thrown me a dishrag and set me to scrubbing pots. From then on, when the other brats came after me, I scrambled up onto the roof of the nearest building or into a dank corner to hide.

That was how Sawny and I’d found our spot on the temple roof.

Sula sighed. “We’ve long since given up on forcing you to attend daily adulations, Obedience.”

My jaw clenched. I hated being called by my given name, and she knew it. The name “Obedience” had always seemed like a cruel joke. “I’d prefer you call me Vi, Anchorite.” I fetched a plain ceramic bowl and a spoon from one of the shelves that lined the walls of the cavernous kitchen. “My birthday’s not ’til tomorrow, and before you ask, I already sent my ma a birthing day note. Did you come to tell me you’d miss me when I leave?”

I lifted a ladle from its hook and started toward a pot of rich broth studded with root vegetables and chunks of lamb. Before I got close, a low, disapproving sound from Lugine stopped me. I turned to the half-congealed pot of pea and oat mush on its hook at the edge of the hearth instead and filled my bowl, and settled myself on the rough bench across the table from the anchorites to eat. Diving was hard work, and trouble or not, I was ravenous. I shouldn’t have provoked her with the stew, though. Not when she already looked so angry.

“Tell me, Vi. What are the rules of the pearl trade?” Lugine asked.

I swallowed my spoonful of lumpy mush and recited the rules I’d been taught since I began to train. “All the fruits of the dive must go toward the betterment of the temple and its occupants. The meat to feed the servants of the goddesses and gods, the pearls to glorify the goddesses and gods by making their home and their servants beautiful.”

“And why are laymen allowed to partake in the bounty of the sea?” Bethea asked.

“So that they, too, may share in the glory of Hamil’s gifts.”

Sula nodded. “And how do the laymen honor the god’s gifts to them?”

“I don’t plan to stay here and keep diving, Anchorite,” I said. “I’ll look for work in the North, near my ma’s people.”

“Answer the question.”

I sighed. “Laymen must offer their bounty to Rayleane, Hamil’s partner, to thank him for his gift. They can keep what the goddess doesn’t want and be paid for their service besides.”

The anchorites stared at me in silence. I set my spoon on the table, the pouch of pearls burning between my breasts. A wave of cold ran over me, and I tried not to shiver.

Finally, Bethea asked, “What is the penalty if a layman is found to be giving the goddess less than her due?”

“What is this about?” I asked, though the answer weighed heavily on a thong around my neck. They’d found my stash. That was the only explanation for this interrogation.

They waited, unblinking. Lugine’s brow furrowed. Bethea bit the inside of her cheek. Sula’s face was implacable, as always.

“They suffer the same penalty as any thief, time in jail and half of their earnings until their debt is doubly paid.”

“And what is the penalty for a thief who is diminished?” Sula asked.

Lugine stared at her lap, and Bethea cleared her throat. So. This is how it would end. Just shy of sixteen years, and not a day without someone’s terrified glance. I’d long ago accepted that no one would ever hold me, kiss me, love me, but I had hoped that I would at least have one day when no one looked at me with fear in their eyes.

“Death,” I whispered.

“Do you know why we are here?” Sula asked quietly.

I nodded, studying the table, tears hot in my eyes. I wasn’t ready to let go. I’d held on for so long.

“We sent Shriven Curlin to pack your things in preparation for your birthday. She brought us this.” Sula slid the wooden box full of cultured pearls across the table toward me. My pearls. My savings. Of course Curlin had known where to look for my secrets. She’d shared the room with me for years. “You know, if you were to join the Shriven, you would be exempt from any penalty.”

Fury flooded me. Nothing, not even the threat of death, could make me become one of those mindless, soulless murderers. The people of Alskad might think that the Shriven were righteous, holy even, protecting them from the atrocities of the diminished, but I knew better. I’d grown up in the temple. I knew the kinds of poison that ran through their veins.

“Over my rotting corpse,” I snarled.

Lugine drew in a sharp breath, but Sula put a calming hand on her arm.

“We assumed you’d say something of the kind.” Bethea laid a stack of papers on the table.

“What’s that?” I asked warily.

“A choice,” Sula said. “We care for you, as much as you may not believe it. We’ve not brought this matter before the Suzerain. Instead, we’ve decided to let you choose your own path. You may either join the ranks of our holy Shriven, or you will be sent to Ilor, to spread the word of our high holies to the wild colonies by helping to construct temples there. You’ll serve one month for each pearl you stole from the temple through your deceit. Twenty-five years.”

My breath caught in my chest. It wasn’t a choice. Not really. Either way, I would be forced to spend the rest of my life in service to a pantheon of gods and goddesses I didn’t believe in, couldn’t bear to worship.

I would be no better than a prisoner in Ilor, but I knew deep in my bones that I could never join the Shriven. I could never be like Curlin.

And there was a bright spot of hope in a future in Ilor: the only person who’d never been afraid of me. While I knew I would never see freedom if I accepted the temple’s twenty-five-year sentence—the grief would take me long before those years were up—but at least in Ilor, I would be close to Sawny. I would see him again. Missing Sawny was an ache that went all the way to my bones.

I met the eyes of the three anchorites and took a deep breath, rising to my feet. “Ilor. I choose Ilor.”

I stalked out of the room, visions of space, of time to myself, of freedom crumbling in my mind, leaving my bowl of half-congealed mush uneaten on the long-scarred table—and my hard-earned fortune in the hands of the anchorites.