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ОглавлениеCHAPTER II
Arrival. Week 3.
Meditations. Alkhes-Assandar
This cannot go on.
Three days it took to get up here. Three—whole—gods-forgotten days. When the accursed quarry is no more than a spur and a foothill and a last one-in-five gradient from the actual plains. When we have a bare thirty wagons, and a bunch of push-barrows, and ten or twelve mule-carts. And two hundred—count them, two hundred able-bodied women, give or take a pregnancy or two—incapable of rousing their brains.
I’ve never written, except for reports. But however awkward the scratches and pot-hooks on this excuse for paper, with my clumsy left hand, I have to write now or burst. The things with Sarth, to begin with. But now, because I deserve commemorating. Because in these last three days I have not said a word. I have not thought a word. I have sat on the roadside. Or at the bridge-ends. Or with the children. Or wherever Sarth went. And I don’t know how my teeth aren’t ground to stumps.
The village is well enough. I remember it now, laid across the hill along a single street. Under the crest, facing north, to dodge wind and snow. Houses above the road, stock-barns, transient-quarters below. Timber and shingles, two-storey houses with high-canted, gargoyle-pointed roofs, weathered blue or scarlet paint. At one end, the curl around the ridge of this carthorse track. At the other, the gnawed prow of rock that marks the quarry gate.
I remember that too. Silvery grass, pale clouds, silver-gray mountain helliens. Bark of gray and steel. Silver and blue-shadowed snow. Silver, cream, mottled and veined and buried amid cross-cuts and dirtheaps, the jagged stairsteps of the quarry face, the marble itself.
I don’t remember the—Ruand. Village-head. Almost, I thought, Ruler. I could have made it, Queen.
She met us at the street-head. Most of the village with her, I should think. A shield-wall of women, dour sun-dark mountain faces, tricked out in their best. Silver-thread leggings, embroidered coats. Picks, surveyor’s levels, ox-goads, skis, hafts beribboned, edges polished like swords. Men somewhere behind them. And Darthis, the—Ruand—in the midst.
She looks big. I keep thinking, massive, and then, seeing her, am shocked. Old, yes. Old enough for jowls and grayed hair, and a sag under her heavy upper arms. It must be inside. The stillness, the weight, the sheer—resistance—of compacted stone. A boulder. A great, sentient rock.
She spoke a ritual welcome, ushered the Telluir entourage down the street. To the safe-come sacrifice. Being only a man, I missed that. Incense, Sarth says, burnt on the village altar, lit by Tellurith’s own cutter. The qherrique’s, the Goddess’s holy fire.
The altar is—alarming. I don’t recall that, either. A bulge in the street, the market-place, I do recall, and the tavern either side. The spring at the hill-face falls into a culvert, we had to help clear it once.
Good stone work around the head, where the village men bring their jars. And out in the middle, this other great—rock. Smooth as silk, though unshaped. Probably, Dhasdein’s earth-scholars would say, a glacier boulder. Fawnish cream, but not sandstone. With a dark, stained, polished hollow at its heart.
They burn the incense there. And pour wine, no doubt. And it has gone on for centuries. I never felt this place’s age before. Or that disturbing kinship. The Ruand and her altar. Both of them ancient. Immoveable. Heavy—and menacing—as stones.
Stupid thing for a soldier to think. Silly, superstitious, womanish thing, they would say, in Cataract. In Dhasdein. Not in Amberlight. There it would have been a message, from the city’s, the House’s core. Given to the Head, as answer, direction, warning. By the qherrique.
Ineffable, unanswerable surety. Not to judge, to guess, to wonder. To ask, and to know.
As I—I myself felt it. Once. Just once.
* * *
Not a stupid thing to be still boiling over, gods help and succor me, about this!
* * *
Arrival. Week 3.
Tellurith’s Diary
I should have known better. After asking Alkhes to deny his nature these interminable ten days, while the House’s struggle to re-assemble itself has maddened me as well; then, with broken bones still paining him, to dress in Azo’s good trousers and Zuri’s best black coat, with the emerald ear-stud Iatha found in the Cataract mercenary’s kist . . . Then put him with Sarth, looking like the Mother’s choice in a Dhasdein officer’s mulberry velvet overtunic, and take them both, with my steward and shop-Heads and their own husbands, may She pardon my imbecility, to supper. With Darthis.
Not an official banquet; Iskarda is too small. A good householder’s courtesy, to save us the meal’s work. In her own house, all dark panels, old, heavy furniture, polished, fragrant with years of beeswax and unrelenting use. Decorous as only a provincial upland house can be. Supper laid in the dining chamber, by men who were back on the men’s side, invisible, before we approached the house.
So we pulled the heavy bronze chime at the defense gate, and trooped up the step, and Darthis’ own daughter opened to us, acme of courtesy. And I led the men inside.
A Head’s daughter, dark, stocky Eria is prenticed in protocol. But I should have known from the way she stuttered, before she got us into the dining chamber, and passed the introductions to Darthis.
Who had waited at the table’s top, beside the big carven family-head’s seat. Already I could understand Eria’s consternation, and foresee an almighty counterclash.
Because there were eight guests, already. And the table was set for seven.
Thank the Mother, Eria remembered the women’s names. When she stumbled, I beckoned the others forward, and said, “May I present Roskeran, Iatha’s mate. And Huis, Hayras’ mate. And these are my husbands. Sarth. Alkhes.”
Tall, stooping, gentle Roskeran, self-effacing Huis had no idea where to look. Alkhes produced an officer’s salute. Making himself troublecrew, on duty for the night. Sarth is acquiring my brazenness; he tendered a tower courtesy: to an unrelated woman entering. Eria . . .
Darthis, at least, did not swell. She simply seemed to solidify, without moving a muscle. Turning that lined, jowled, old-bronze face to adamant, thrusting at us the full force of a House-head’s puissance. Overpowering refusal. Solid obloquy. Silent disgust.
“We have opened the tower,” I said.
Had Zhee ever given me such a look, in the days when she mentored an un-mothered twenty-four year old, just catapulted into Head-ship, I would have died.
“It was a bad, cruel, unnatural way to live. It has cost too much hurt. Too many innocent . . . children’s lives.”
Her eyes went past me. Up and down. Sarth is tower-trained, I only felt him catch his breath. Alkhes . . .
Alkhes bristled like a Heartland tigercat, head back, jaw outthrust. “Some problem, madam?”
Bad enough he looked her in the eye, let be with such insolence. To address her outright, making the title an obscenity, in that voice . . .
Mother bless, how that woman snubbed me! In retrospect, it was magnificent. She never bothered to retort. Just turned to Eria, and commanded, curt, majestic, “Call more plates.”
To her bones she is traditionalist. Iskarda is a Telluir client village, she is my vassal. She kept her oath immaculate. She fed me at her table. She conversed. She never said a word against my policy, my unutterable perversion. And she kept her other trust. She ignored the men utterly. With armor-clad, earth-moving willpower, she made them not be there.
* * *
By kicking him under the table, I managed to gag Alkhes while we ate. A pincer grip above his good elbow smothered the after-blast, but on our own threshold it burst.
“Gods damn it, Tel!”
A passage splits Iskan houses into men’s and women’s sides; we were hard by the main dining chamber, filled by Zuri, Azo, Verrith, my personal troublecrew and their kin. Shia, her sister, Hanni and two nieces were next down, Iatha’s family among the looms in the men’s work-room opposite. I hissed at him like a viper.
“Shut up!”
I knew it was wrong before it came out. The silence hit like a slap in the face. His face.
“Caissyl . . .”
He tore his hand away.
“Oh, how dare I talk? A bird-brain man. What would I know? Of all the fool stupid thoughtless—Tel, you idiot!”
“Then what would you have done? Backed off before we began?” I was too furious for explanation, let alone control. “Do you want to be back in the men’s rooms, hauling water and peeling onions for the rest of your life?”
“I wouldn’t insult my local command and outrage the whole village the first night! Gods, a drunken pentarch could do better—!”
“I could have done better! If you’d shut your stupid mouth—!”
“My mouth!” Suddenly it was quiet as I could ask. “You hear me, Tel. If she treats me like that again I’ll ram her dinner down her throat!”
“Stop!”
We could not have been struck dumber by a lightning strike. He towered over us, in the fat-lamp’s flutter looking ten feet tall.
“Tellurith?”
As ever, he was quiet. At his cruelest, tower manners never eluded Sarth. When we quarreled it had been by omission, in frigid malice. A glacier’s ice.
“Oh, sweet Work-mother . . .”
I could not go on. It had been exhaustion in his voice. Distress. When all I wanted was to throw off my good clothes and forget the day’s cloven dilemmas and the procession tomorrow would have waiting, and fall into bed.
But how are they to understand, if I never spell out what I think?
“Coming here, I thought about all this. And I made up my mind. We’re going to change things, and not just leaving Amberlight. Or settling here. We’ll bring men out of the towers, for good. We’ll have a—a different life.”
Silence. Fulminating, absorbing? Stubbornly resistant, in the dark?
“And this—now—may outrage the village, and upset the Ruand, but it’s the strategy I chose. I thought it out before we went. And I decided—for your sakes—” it was hard to keep my voice steady, “that I would begin as I mean to go on. No compromise. And no backing down.”
It was suddenly so quiet I could hear them breathe.
“There are other men here. If you want to renege—you can. But even for you—I can’t.”
Silence. Mother, I thought, and my soul ached. They don’t see it. And if they don’t . . .
“Tel . . .”
Alkhes’ voice. Husky. Suspiciously soft. Head down, guilty as a beaten dog. Not daring to grope for my hand.
I caught at it, pulling him round. Catching Sarth, as in turn I heard the breath that spoke clearer than words, deciphered through years’ experience. Equal shame. Equal guilt.
“Don’t blame yourselves. And don’t make any more of it. Can we just,” suddenly I was more than bone weary, “go to bed?”
* * *
Settling. Week 5.
Journal kept by Sarth
So much that Tellurith does I miss, or misunderstand. That supper. What she has already done, here in the House. Not just settling the women into new precedences, new trades, no longer shaper and power-worker, but surveyor, timber-cutter, carpenter. Stone-mason, builder, child-carer, cook.
But including men as well.
Perhaps it is that everyone who came was already disposed to, determined on change, but it still astounds me, that Charras trusted me to yoke and drive her bullocks today. That burly taciturn Quetho should pass on the adze when she took a break and just grunt, “Down that end there. Watch the knots.” It still amazes me, that muscles trained in the gymnasium prove effective for anything else.
And I have only just fathomed all those extra delays on the road, negotiating with Korite farmers at what I find, now, were holdings of Telluir House. Source of winter provisions, grain, hay. Timber. And young folk, free after harvest, trickling up for hire.
Paid from our folk’s loot in that chaos when the hill fell, shattering three armies along with Amberlight. Which spoils include, I learn, ten chests of Cataract silver: mercenaries’ pay.
But I understand too why from dawn to dark Tellurith has been out with us, men and women, hire and House-folk alike, using pick and cutter on a foundation; guiding timber over the sawpit; helping unload logs, adding the day-wages with Hanni. Not leading, not obvious, but unrelentingly there.
She is using Iskarda’s ways against them. I recall those sentences clipped in half, those eyes dropped in mid-glower. Traditionalists, to their back-teeth. Obdurate, therefore, against us: the men. Especially us. Alkhes and me. And as obdurate in their loyalty. They are Telluir vassals. It would break their honor, to flout her in person. To throw us out.
Trouble, therefore, has stayed minor. A broken wheel, slipped loads, a worker hurt. Except in our own bed.
The Mother knows, it is big enough. An old four-poster with corners thick as unshaped trees, it could sleep six uncrowded, and possibly it has. There are linen sheets, furs, a brazier, if not the permeating qherrique, that could leave you in shirt-sleeves at mid-winter. And trouble underneath.
For me, to swing an axe for firewood is exhilaration. To peel a turnip, to mind a child, is liberty. Tellurith remains a leader, if not in a House. But Alkhes was—is—a soldier. A general. Bred to that strange world where men rule. The first time Zariah asked him to stir a cook-pot—
By the Mother’s luck she had already turned away. I had time to set chopped onions aside and murmur, “Did you jar that arm?”
His eyes whipped round. Slitted, blazing black. I think he nearly spat. Words, if nothing else.
“I can do it, if it’s too bad.”
He gave me that trademark lightning glare and snatched the spoon in his left hand.
I chopped onions and tried for words to defuse the hush: Your arm is still splinted. You aren’t fit to use a kitchen knife, let alone an axe. Your own trades are lost. Not only is there nobody here to command, there is nobody to kill, and almost nothing to fight. To do this is not ignominy. It’s value, use, respect.
“It’s getting late,” I said. “Zuri will be looking for you.” He can patrol and consult with the troublecrew, if nothing else.
I tried a glance, and earned myself another glare. And then a furiously presented back.
I can bear it for myself. But if he looses that venom on Tellurith . . .
Give the Mother thanks, not yet. Sullen, sour, unkind between the sheets as a thundercloud, but nothing more. She must know, from the way she suffers it. He resents his limits, I expect. I know he resents me. And I think, somewhere he cannot yet look, he resents Tellurith.
Most of all, he resents sharing her.
Am I so different? How long is it since she would lie in my arms, curled in the big Tower window, and pour her heart out half a night? Shared trouble and decision, sweeter than union of the flesh. He and I have both known that. And can no longer be her one ear, her sole confidant.
And with minds’ sharing goes the body’s. Including sex.
* * *
Little chance of that while all of us were dead on our feet. But with half a moon gone, the plots and work-crews are settled, new houses planned, folk beginning to find their place. We took a break at the moon-turn, for hirecrew to visit home. And it left Tellurith with energy too.
So in bed last night, the house quiet, the moon’s great silver blossom in the narrow window, she turned over and began to caress Alkhes.
I gave fresh thanks for Tower discipline, and prepared to re-smother the snakes in my own flesh. We sleep now with Tellurith between us. But when I muttered about fuel for the morning and began to ease out my side, she rolled back and caught my hair.
“Wait, Sarth.”
I froze. He’ll kill me, I thought. At a stroke.
“I said I’d marry you both. I meant what I said.”
Any Tower boy knows before puberty that he may be bedded by more than one wife at once, and many of us, to say it again, have shared with other men. Not, evidently, Alkhes.
He gave one snort and leapt clear out of the furs. “Curse it, Tellurith!”
“Alkhes!”
It stopped him in his tracks. She came upright, furs cascading, all chemise and naked breast, the merest hiss, but the voice of a Head.
“I said we’d change things. I meant this as well.”
He managed three steps before she spoke again.
“Caissyl,” it was so quiet, and it froze my backbone. “If you walk out now, you walk out for good.”
The moon-shadow sketched his pale, quivering shape. Her hand trembled on my hair, my own heart was in my teeth. No, I wanted to cry, do anything but this with him. Don’t push him in a corner. Don’t make his pride the price of your bluff.
“Alkhes?”
Who but a Head could juggle that intonation, a knife-edge between command, plea, threat? Who but a Head would have the timing, at the precise moment before one of them broke?
He spun on his heel. His breath flew, a sharp white gust. “Gods damn it, Tel!”
* * *
“Caissyl, truly, it’s not difficult.” She had him in her arms, coaxing. I could feel his outrage clean through the bed. “I want you both. Is that so very bad?” A thread of laughter now. “Your imagination’s never failed me before . . .”
“Tel.” He was still shaking, but it had a frail, steely quiet. “I can sleep like this. I can cope with—wanting you and not—with—missing out. I can’t,” it started rising, “make love to you with an audience like a g-goddamn whore!”
Her silence should have been a slap in the face. I did feel him twist.
All three of us breathed. The moon laid its silver path across the boards.
Very softly, she said, “Caissyl—”
“Oh, Tel . . . No . . .”
In a moment they would be severed past recovery. Already it was beyond words. I rolled in behind her, laid my lips against her neck, through the storm of copper-brown hair. Slid my arms around her, and prayed to the Mother as I cupped her breasts.
She curved back against me, memories of that movement waking like a burn. Then she caught his head and pulled him to her, and before she kissed him, whispered, “ . . . just like this.”
Even then, it might have been all right. Had he not, as he calls it, failed.
* * *
When he plunged from the bed she let him go. The door slammed to shake the king-stones, she just sat up. A stir all down the passageway, snap of crossed challenges with troublecrew, the outer door’s diminished Bang! She flung the covers back and for the first time in my life I baulked a woman’s will.
“No.” I caught her wrist at the limits of a snatch. “Let him go.”
Her breath went in and my backbone quailed. After everything, she is a Head.
So at such a moment, she remembers difference. Policy. Change.
“Can you tell me,” level, more dangerous, “why?”
But not abuse, denial, a wrench away. Mother knows, grandmother Zhee would have . . . I could only say, stupidly, “Tellurith—he’s not like us.”
Silence. The words in process. Not like us, Amberlight, men in Amberlight, she and I? Therefore I did not, she did not understand him? So I could give orders, could not give orders? Could, could not explain?
“I can’t—say if it’s right. Why it’s right. I just feel—let it be.”
Still breathing. Weighing all that, my possible truth, my possible interest, the shape of my intuition. Not, after all, an answer from the qherrique.
Then stiffening, disengaging, a quick, “Wait,” as she went to the door. Summons to Desis, the night’s sentry, soft words. An endless pause.
I could not bear it. I was behind her when Desis came back, cat-foot, breathing from the darkness, “They saw him go into the byre.”
Where we keep three bullock teams; and his horse.
I felt her stiffen, the jerk of breath. The long, long hesitation before its release.
“If he comes out . . . Let me know at once.”
She swung around, clutching for my wrist, a shadow in the moonlight, with undone rivers of hair and great shadow pools for eyes. “Oh, Sarth.” Pressed against me, head on my chest, her whole weight in the embrace. Breasts heaving, choking, with the force of smothered sobs.
“If I could just be sure—of what I’m doing!”
I held her with one arm, and smoothed the other hand over her hair. I did not say, How many of us ever had such surety? I did not babble easy comfort, that he would understand, come back, change his mind. Who was I to know that? I drew her close, and held her; and foresaw another night that would end with her comfort, and my body aching, as so often in the Tower. And remembered those were the good times, and did not complain.
* * *
And in the gray first light I said, “Let me go to him.”
She stared at me, gummy-lashed, red-eyed. Weighing it again, like a general. A Head.
Then with a funny jerk of the mouth, reached for the belt-purse hung at the bed-head. Shook out a silver darrin, flipped it in the air and said, “Ship, you go. Face, me.”
Reduced to such unreasoned, such sheer chance decision. She lifted her hand. And the ship-shape badge of Cataract glittered on the fur.
Outside it was weirdly still. With no work for the day, all the teams were home abed, and the stock-tenders had dallied too. In the great curve of hillside Iskarda slept, faded paint, grainy brown timbers pure-etched in the icy mountain dawn. Below me, the fallow-brown patchwork of River plain was just gilded, here and there, with unhindered light. Cocks crowed. Bouncing down the stony path, the feed bucket banged my leg.
He flung back the byre door almost in my face, I grabbed by reflex and he jumped the same way, clear into the wall.
“Get away from me!”
Probably I was lucky not to get killed. He froze there, the broken arm shielded behind the good. He has the rib bandages off now; the crouch was ready to strike. The face was something else.
Inch by inch, I eased the bucket down. Think, I swore at myself, what you’re doing. This is not a boy in a Tower in Amberlight.
I said, “Is your arm all right?”
The eyes focused. Black as space, but no longer lost.
“Did you shick her instead?”
River-word. Meaning, to mate with beasts.
“If you were good for anything else—”
Once in a life, perhaps, the Mother gives such vision, without the qherrique. But I had it, in the second he pushed himself off the wall. Such loathing, such hatred. Such a violence of bitterness. But not aimed at me.
I said, “That happened my first night.”
And despite it all, he was listening too. His mouth came open. His foot landed short.
“With Tellurith. Telluir House Head. My first time with a woman. My first wife.”
The pose fixed. Not so much stunned as thunderstruck.
“You were raised a soldier. To give orders. To fight. I was bred to tend, to please a woman. It was my whole life.”
The eyes were glazed, black as midwinter ice. How thick, I did not have time to wonder, was its shell?
“She said, It doesn’t matter. We can try again.”
“So goddamn kind.”
The flick of a whip-cut. He is not one to forgive mistakes.
Nor am I one to avoid them. I glanced from him to the byre door and back and raised my brows.
You could have gone. You had the horse here. You had all night.
He uncoiled off the wall in one long lunge and spat, “You bastard!” and slapped my face.
A year passed in a heartbeat’s amber-drop. Time to feel the blow’s weight and have muscles plunge for recoil and check at impotence’s rage and still find space to think before the sting began. Before the impact recoiled on him.
He had jerked his hand back. Shrunk back, the eyes enormous. All the rage was gone.
My nose stung. My fists dug nails through my flesh. My brain was one white glare that lit his waiting like a qherrique flame.
We both knew I could not fight with hands: that the blow’s real shame was his. And he knew I could strike back, three times harder. With my tongue.
So he was waiting. To make expiation. To be hurt.
To dissolve his guilt.
I shoved the bucket toward him and said, “Feed your horse.”
When Hafas House blew up its mine, the hillside fell like that. Slowly, irretrievably, crumbling, a House, a world collapsing, before my eyes.
Mother pity me, I am far crueler than I ever guessed.
Because I let it go another twenty heartbeats, before I took the bucket in one hand and the man in the other and kicked open the byre door.
Inside it was still dusk. Left-hand, the bulk of bullock-pens, topped by flicking horns, ears, heads; right-hand, the horse’s stall. Slatted dark of rails, liquid eye. He sagged against the stall-side, head bowed in the good arm. A fighter, a soldier wounded mortally.
The bullocks shifted, smelling feed, the horse stretched and slobbered and blew on me. I tipped oats in the manger. Then I touched his shoulder, and said, “Come home, before you freeze.”
I thought he would refuse. But then he gathered himself. Pivoted drunkenly against the rail. It came hoarsely, no more than a whisper.
“Why?”
Why come home? But he knew that. He had not left. It was, by default, surrender. Admission was only a matter of time.
The kindness?
And the cruelty. Both from the same source.
I said, “I learnt in a different school.”
Half-frozen, and shaking, and wracked by hurts and hatred as a crippled scorpion, he kept his wits. I saw him work it out, as I had. A shared skill. A different school. Fighting. With tongue or sword. So what I had said—each thing I said—had not been kindness, but a blow. Deliberate.
He lifted his face, an effort deliberate as mine. He was trembling so hard his very lips shook. But he met my eyes.
* * *
Settling. Week 5.
Meditations. Alkhes-Assandar
I could have borne it, if he’d flayed me. Everything would have cancelled out. But to have him kind . . .
Gods, give thanks I’m married to him. What would he be as an enemy?
I was so cold my gut shook, and the feelings—the first sensation, after a bad wound. The madness. Like a crippled scorpion. But in the end, I understood.
That his school was the harder. No honor, no surrender, no mercy. Even when you win.
I managed to look up at him. At the very worst, I’ve looked losing in the eye.
He’s so beautiful. Curse that word, but it’s the only one. In a dirty stable-coat and his hair tangled everywhere. He deserves her. That perfect face, those honey-gold lion’s eyes. Looking down at me, like some sad, stern, incorruptible hanging judge.
Then he grabbed me by both shoulders and burst out, “Ah, don’t, Alkhes!”
As if I was hurting him.
Somehow, to have him touch me this time didn’t matter. “Don’t what?” I said. Be hung, I think I was almost in tears.
“Don’t . . .” He let go. Pushed his hair back. The light was better. Damn him too. Beautiful. And so tired.
“Alkhes. Could you try to—explain?”
Explain. When everything that made you a man—command, war, unarmed combat—is gone. When the one thing left is a woman. And then you fall apart with her.
“Did I jar your arm?”
He had hold of me again. As if I was an eggshell. Yet his hands felt strong. And I had the weirdest—the maddest—urge to lean on him, to let him hold me . . . As if I was a baby. A mewling woman. Gods . . .
Does he hold her like that?
You can lean, if you’re a woman. And hold, I saw Iatha do it, with Tellurith. Have seen Tellurith do it, with Zariah, when her daughter slipped and the cutter sliced her arm. Why not men?
“It’s understood, in the Tower. That women may want—expect—to share.” He took a little breath. “Just as it’s understood that—there’s more than coupling to sex.”
He was doing it again. Explaining himself to understand me. And perhaps it was in kindness this time, but when you prick a lamed horse, he kicks.
I said, “Like they understood sons?”
How could I have said that? When I knew, I knew about his children. I did do the grabbing that time. “Damn,” I said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, forget that, I’m sorry, Sarth . . .”
I had a handful of coat. He looked down, I let go in a hurry. For a moment he looked . . . I don’t know. I did know what I had to do.
I said, “For men out here—coupling is sex. And sex—” it was like a bone in the throat “—winning—succeeding—doing sex properly is . . . If you fail—you’re not a man.”
I read it plain this time. Bewilderment. Absolute disbelief.
“Being a man. The whole of being a man—depends on that?”
Curse that face of his. How do you resent pity from a god?
“But . . .” He gave his head a jerk. “You’re trained troublecrew. You have war-skills and River lore; you had the courage to come here, you can change and learn and—” he turned his face away. I could barely hear.
“And you have wits.”
And he was a bed-toy, good for nothing but sex.
I don’t think I ever saw our blindnesses so clear. Both of us thinking, in our own ways, that what we were, all we were, was sex. Both of us thinking she valued the other for what we weren’t. Both of us—in that case—wrong.
It costs—it hurts—to shuck out of a life. I thought resigning a command was hard. Leaving Amberlight. This will mean rebuilding myself. Tearing up what you build on, without ever having to think what it is.
But I had a place to start.
I took a handful of coat. He twitched.
“You learnt in a different school.” It surprises me that it came out so clear. “But you did learn.”
The first time I had managed his code. There was surprise. And then the grayness lightened in his face.
Not just that I had said, You are a man too. You are as good as me. You think yourself stupid, but you’re not. But also: I’ve heard what you said. I’ll come back. I’ll try.
I got a step away from the stall. My legs were like water. I saw him put a hand out. Pull it back. Then he put the whole arm round me. And said—said . . .
The bastard. I swear he uses witchery.
“In my school,” he said, “men can lean.”
* * *
Settling. Week 5.
Tellurith’s Diary
Mother, do You arrange reality so that no times ever fall convenient? Or is that your special gift to Heads? To have my husbands reappear just when I chew off my last fingernail, and when I rush to anticipate Shia in the kitchen, have Hanni and Desis arrive precisely as I manage to wake the fire? And then hurry me off to the dormitories, because Hayras’ daughter has woken with a fever that Caitha thinks could be strangle-cough. In which case we may be confronting a plague.
Which with no qherrique to consult means quarantine, fret and sweat it out, unholy reshufflings of half the House into new quarters. So when I did get home, Alkhes had gone.
While Sarth, looking wan and transparent as any mother after a hard birthing, would say only, “He wanted to think. No, he ate. He drank. He put warm clothes on. He’s all right.”
So the furor re-closed round me, with no chance to cry, Is he going, is he staying? What did you say, what did he say? Think about what?
Where he went, I found all too soon. Up to the outcrop above the quarry, the area’s lookout post.
For a soldier, natural enough. The place is a magnet for anyone wanting perspective and privacy. Right atop the crest, a bastion of creamy gray rock, a cluster of low-growing, pure white snow-helliens behind its parapet. You can sit in natural hollows or on backside-polished boulders, and gaze through the silver-green hellien foliage across the width of the River-world, sunk in fathoms of empty air, while you let a morning, a day, a sun-cycle roll away.
Where Iskarda’s women have gone from time immemorial, for ceremonies, or meditation, or mere solitude in the Dark. Where my husband, Mother help me, homed in his own necessity. Straight into Darthis.
“Tel, I didn’t see her. I swear, I didn’t know she was there!”
“Caissyl, of course not.” I put my arms around him and got him to sit at last, on the stool beside the hearth. Iatha, Caitha, Zuri, Quetho, Hanni made a silent chorus of catastrophe behind me. And at my shoulder, Sarth.
“You couldn’t have known, nobody could.” Somebody took the filthy, chilly cloak away. Somebody else began, very quietly, to build up the fire. “As the Mother sees me, nobody blames you. Can you just tell me what she said?”
He drew a great breath and straightened, scrubbing at his eyes like a wept-out child. Then he dropped the hand, and there was no child in that stare.
“She wouldn’t let me go.”
My back went stiff as Zuri’s. If she thinks she can take the old ways so far as man-theft, I wanted to squawk, she can think again!
“I knew it was a special place the minute I—she had her back to me. On a rock. I thought she was a rock. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Started to apologize. She said, ‘Stay’. ”
Like, his eyes told me, a Head to an underling. Or a dog.
“She asked where I came from. What I . . . was. How I . . . married you.”
He stuck. An arm came over my shoulder, holding a hot mug of tea. He nursed it, but his eyes never left me. Even when the blood rose in his face.
“She asked—what I was doing out of a tower.”
And, I thought resignedly, you told her to go to—
“I said, ‘Telluir’s Head told you. She has pulled them down’. ”
Mercifully, Iatha kept quiet.
“She said, ‘Why?’ ”
Seeking truth from the mouths of babes. Mother blast her, I thought.
“What did you say?”
He scowled into the cup. The wing of dark hair, drying now, frayed into his eyes. “I—uh—” He set the cup down. That look signaled urgently: Not here. Not now.
“This is a House matter, Alkhes.”
I could not make it clearer without gross insult. The others were also on trial. I had no right to shut them out.
He twisted where he sat. Then he gritted his teeth, and looked past me. With more than apology. With dread.
“I tried to explain. That it was unjust. Cruel. Unnatural.” He braced himself. “And . . . I told her about your sons.”
I swiveled. All the women’s eyes followed mine. Sarth had backed a step across the fireplace, but he was not looking at us.
“I meant it for an example. A defense.” He had not moved, but the tone was urgent as a leap. “I never meant—!”
I got up and took two strides away. Put my hand on Sarth, as if to run off the lightning bolt. He was rigid. Locked in tower discipline, face a mask only lightning would break.
“What did she say?”
Tel, his eyes begged. But it was too late for mercy now.
“She . . . said: Of course, they lifted the curse.”
If Sarth did not know the backwoods, he knew what sort of thing I expected. But I was the one who flinched.
“I didn’t know what she was talking about!” Alkhes came off the stool, half across the fireplace. “I didn’t—”
The feel of Sarth’s side told me why he stopped.
I could have halted it there; could have saved Sarth the worst. I knew there was to be a worst. But to shield him was also to degrade him, to count his courage, his endurance less than a woman’s. Again, to shut him out.
I said, “Go on.”
For an instant that black stare cried, Betrayer! Then he drew himself up.
“I said, ‘What ?’ I didn’t understand. And she . . . said, Three times a misbegetting. A curse. It endangers the House. You must wipe out the—sire.”
His voice wobbled, all the women winced. Only Sarth did not move, and looking up at him I could have cried. Because he had gone away as he had the day Alkhes came, into some fastness, invulnerable, impenetrable, that left us a block of breathing wood.
“Tel, she didn’t mean it, did she? She couldn’t—gods!”
“This is the backwoods, Alkhes.” I shoved a hand under Sarth’s jacket as if I could physically detain him, grasp his flesh, the being’s shell. “You have to expect that sort of—!”
“You think I didn’t? They expose hare-lipped babies in Verrain. But this!”
“What did you say to her?” Warm muscle under my hand, solid, familiar bone. But not Sarth. I had to talk or else break down. “Did you argue? You didn’t try to—”
“I was knocked silly, I just wanted to get away. But, Tel,” he reached out, pure panic. “She said when I was going, I have a duty to the House-head too.”
“Sweet Work-mother!” Iatha’s consternation answered mine. A man disintegrating in front of us, a sick child across hill, a possible plague ahead, and now, the worst of all pending confrontations. Not merely revolution, but blasphemy. Could it have found a better time?
* * *
But it was a House crisis, waking reflexes from other days. I shot Zuri off to arrange lookouts, Quetho to warn Hayras, Iatha to muzzle everyone else. Hanni was already spilling slates across the only writing surface, the kitchen table’s wide scrubbed planks. The others would return to make my court. Shia would manage the hearth—
Shia had taken the day off too, with a niece who wanted to walk the hills.
I turned on Sarth and gave him a quick shove; as if protocol was the only trouble, and nothing—nothing!—else was wrong.
“Put the kettle back on. Get that peppermint tea. See if there’s wine left. The good cups . . .”
It was like pushing a cliff. I snapped, “Sarth?”
“You heard.” The voice came out of that fastness. Remote, alien. “I am more than a provocation. I’m a curse. I’ll contaminate the House.”
My splendid, beloved man, regained, reclaimed. And now reduced to this.
The anger shot up in me like a veritable qherrique blast. “Rot the House!” I bawled. “The House fell with Amberlight! This is blighted archaic nonsense—now find those cups!”
He opened his mouth. Then tower discipline itself cracked, the ice-face disintegrated, and the living man looked out at me, shaken, scandalized, laughing, through those startled topaz eyes.
“Oh . . . Tellurith!” he said quakily.
And went after the cups.
* * *
She made us wait, of course, with malice certainly aforethought, until mid-afternoon, time of work-lulls and courtesy calls. She brought an entourage of elders, predictably. I had time to relish their coming discomposure while I wrestled Sarth in the kitchen doorway, hissing, “Get back in there!”
He gave me one desperate look: Don’t risk it, don’t insult them, I’ll bungle it, don’t lay the House’s honor on me. Alkhes would have raged and raved; when I growled, “Don’t you drop a thing!” Sarth went without a word.
Sure enough, the first bristle among the elders told me his mere presence was less insult than tactical point; they had not thought to damn my blasphemy to its face. When Iatha had settled them, and I said, “Sarth, will you bring tea?” for one delirious moment I thought they would all walk out.
Darthis was of sterner forging. When he set a cup at her very elbow, it never touched her monumental calm. So finally, with Sarth back at the hearth-side, I had to open the dance.
“To what do I owe this honor, Ruand?”
She sipped the tea. Inclined her head, stately, decorous compliment; she would not cede him even that much spite.
“Ruand,” she answered, “I have a duty to Telluir House.”
* * *
Settling. Week 5.
Meditations. Alkhes-Assandar
Living with her, watching her use those maddening passive tactics, you forget that Tellurith’s a strategist first. A political strategist. All I could think, while that woman planted herself like a rock settling was, Here it comes. Disaster. And there’s nothing I can do.
When she spoke, Tellurith just inclined her head and looked polite. Second nature. House-heads did it with everyone from apprentice Crafters to visiting kinglets. Fifty times a day.
“For a vassal, my door is always open. Especially to Iskarda’s Ruand.”
I knew enough to know they were tossing obligations. And that the skirmish had gone to Tellurith.
Darthis drank her tea. “It has come to me,” masterly, I have to admit, you’d get no better sidestep from a courtier, “that Telluir House has suffered an—affliction. Blossoms lost in the bud.”
She must have known I would spring the ambush. She must have trusted I’d tell truth, knowing the thing’s own weight. And I had to feel Sarth go away beside me, the way he had when I told them. Why did I never learn to hold my tongue!
“The Mother waxes.” Tellurith never flinched. “The Mother wanes.”
“The Mother is not wont to have her omens lost.”
“I am the Head of Telluir House. It was I who spoke—and listened—to the qherrique.”
Turn looks like that to sword-blades, you’d drop an army at a slash.
Darthis folded her arms. A rock, poised to roll.
“I am Telluir House’s vassal. I am Iskarda’s Ruand.” Tellurith inclined her head. The jaw’s tension said it was a flanking maneuver. “I ask, What befell Amberlight?”
This code takes unraveling too: as vassal, she had right to query her protector. As Iskarda’s Ruand, she had right to protect her folk. On those credentials, she was challenging: if you can read the qherrique, the voice of the Mother, and three sons were truly not a pestilence—why did your city fall?
“It was the will of the Mother,” Tellurith said.
You’ll get as pretty a bromide out of any River-lord’s priest when a flood takes your cow. Trying not to let my lip curl, I remembered: Darthis is a traditionalist. The one riposte she couldn’t block.
“Assuredly.” Head bent, meek as a temple neophyte. “I am a village Ruand. But one who heard the qherrique can tell us: why was it the Mother’s will?”
All the Iskardan faces said, Get out of that. Sarth nearly disappeared into the hearthstones. And Tellurith, bless her, the lovely bitch didn’t crack a smirk.
“We abused the qherrique. We sold it to those who abused it. who used it for blood-sorcery, for battles, to murder and enslave. So the River rose against us. And the qherrique used them for its own salvation. It destroyed Amberlight.”
How, after her opening gambit, could Darthis retort, You’re a liar?
Give her this, she’s a veteran. Presently, she said, “Will my House-head enlighten me wholly? How—could this be?”
And Tellurith, the damned woman, said, “Alkhes, will you come here?”
Even Iatha thought she’d ruined it. All those five strides across eternity, I was thinking, they’ll get up and go.
They sat. I stood by Tellurith’s shoulder. Man’s place. I had to remember it was a revolution I was there at all.
“The River,” Tellurith said, “sent Alkhes to Amberlight. As agitator, as spy. A River-quarter gang ambushed him. We saved him. Because the qherrique told me, It matters, if he dies.”
No one had to wonder if she was telling the truth.
“He had lost his memory. He had lost his name. When he asked for one, the qherrique told me: Call him, Alkhes.”
All the faces changed. Maybe, it was awe, after the shock.
“But when a Cataract assassin aimed for me at Diaman House-head’s funeral,” sacrilege, all the Iskardans gasped, “he saved my life. And then, I think—the qherrique told him who he was.”
Darthis was not blinking. But her eyes had a certain glaze.
“So he went back to Dhasdein. Having—obligations. And knowing the River was fixed on destroying us—he tried to save what he could of Amberlight.”
Damn, it’s worse than a punishment parade to have your life hung out like washing. I thought of sentry duty in Riversend, out-of-town brats giggling, trying to look up your corselet. I hope I kept my face.
“So we lost the city. And the Houses. Until at the last, the qherrique bade me surrender. And I did as it said.”
Now even Darthis stared. Tellurith looked back at her. A consummate orator, playing her pauses as exquisitely as her audience.
“But when Alkhes asked, Shall I go to the mother-face? Can men cut qherrique? It answered, Yes.”
Darthis was too controlled. It was the second at her elbow who burst out, “Pigwash! Men can’t hear qherrique!”
Tellurith gave them a stare to kneecap an imperial dekarch. “I have seen this man bespeak the qherrique. And it heard.”
They were vassals, peasants, traditionalists. They sat and goggled. Trying to re-frame the world.
Tellurith turned to me. When she put a hand on me I nearly jumped a spearlength myself.
“For its own plan, the qherrique used us both. But at the end . . .”
She stopped.
“At the end—when the hill—it saved him. It told him, Run.” A tiny pause. As if she braced herself. “And at the very end—it spoke to me. It said: Daughter, be blessed.”
And the break in her voice nobody could ever counterfeit.
“That is why,” looking back at Darthis, “I am sure the Mother’s omens were no curse. And that it was the Mother’s will which brought the fall of Amberlight.”
Her hand was still planted firmly on my hip. Clearer than a battle fanfare, her stare said: And it is the Mother’s will I have two husbands, and I flaunt them here before you. Because the one beyond doubt bears Her blessing. And the other, as manifestly, is not cursed.
I swear, only Tellurith could pull a double victory from a losing fight. When Darthis took her cohorts off, they still looked as if they had been hit over their collective heads. But gods defend me: some of the looks I got across those shoulders said more than, Foreigner. God-touched. Freak.
Some were reverent.
* * *
