Shadowplay

  “Well enough, I suppose. My tutor sets me the dreariest lessons you can imagine, and I will never, never be a seamstress, no matter how many years I try. Mother says my needlework looks like the web of a drunken spider.”

  He chuckled. “Your mother sounds like a clever woman. That is not the first thing she has said that made me laugh. Perhaps that is where you come by your own wit and curiosity.”

  “Me?” All she could think of were the lessons that Brother Lysas taught, reading at length from The Book of the Trigon, “... Beloved of the gods are the daughters and wives who make themselves humble, who seek only to serve Heaven ...”

  “I’m not curious, am I?”

  He smiled again. “Child, you are a fountain of questions. It is often all I can do not to unpack the entirety of my life and let you rifle through it like a trunk of clothes.”

  “You must think I’m annoying, then. A child who cannot be still.” She hung her head.

  “Not at all. Curiosity is a virtue. So is discretion, but that is usually learned at a later age. In fact, take your shawl—it is a bit cool—while I ask you something about that very subject.” He handed her the delicate Syan-nese cloth, but did not immediately let go. She was surprised, and started to say something. “Take it but do not unfold it,” he said quietly. “I have put a letter in it. Do not fear! It is nothing criminal. In fact, it is a letter for your own father. Give it to him, please?”

  She took the shawl from him and felt the small, angular shape of the letter. “What . .. what is it?”

  “As I said, nothing to fear. Some thoughts of mine about the danger of this threatened siege by the Autarch of Xis—yes, I have heard the rumors.

  I would have to be deaf not to. In any case, he may do as he wishes with my suggestions.”

  “But why?” She put the folded shawl in her lap. “Why would you help us when we’re holding you prisoner?”

  Olin smiled as if through something painful. “First, I am at risk also, of course. Second, we are all natural allies against the autarch, whatever Drakava may think, and I believe your father would recognize that. Last—well, it would not hurt to have a man like your father think well of me.”

  Pelaya felt quite out of breath. A secret letter! Like something from one of the old tales of Silas or Lander Elfbane. “I will do it, if you promise there is no dishonor.”

  He bowed his head. “I promise, good mistress.”

  They talked a little while longer about less consequential things like her younger brother’s wretched temper or the dragging negotiations for Teloni’s marriage to a young nobleman from the country north of the city. This pained Pelaya because her father had said he would not find a husband for his younger daughter until the oldest was married, and she was anxious to be a grown woman, with a household of her own.

  “Do not be in too much of a hurry,” Olin said kindly. “The married state is a holy one for a woman, but it can be full of woe and danger, too.” He looked down. “I lost my first wife in childbirth.”

  “The gods must have needed her to be with them,” Pelaya said, then was irritated with herself for parroting the pious phrase her mother always used. “I’m sorry.”

  “I sometimes think it has been harder on my children than on me,” he said quietly, then did not speak for a long moment. His eyes were roving somewhere beyond Pelaya’s shoulder, so that she thought he was watching the gulls again, dreaming of the walls of Hierosol dropping into the distance behind him.

  “You were saying, King Olin?”

  “What?” He forced himself to look at her. “Ah, I beg your pardon. I was . .. distracted. Look, please, and tell me—who is that girl?”

  Feeling a prickle of something that she would only realize later was jealousy, Pelaya turned and looked across the garden but saw no one. “Who? My sister and the others have gone in.”

  “There. There are two of them, carrying linens.” He pointed. “One slender, one less so. The thin one—there, see, the one whose hair has come loose from her scarf.”

  “Do you mean . . . those washing women?”

  “Yes, that is who I mean.” For a moment, and for the first time Pelaya could remember, he sounded angry with her. “Do they not exist because they are servants? They are the only girls in the yard beside yourself.”

  She was hurt, but tried not to show it. “Who is she? How should I know? A washing woman—a girl, as you said, a servant. Why? Do you think she is pretty?” She looked closely at the slender young woman for the first time, saw that the girl was only a little older than herself. Her arms where they emerged from her billowing sleeves were brown, and her hair, which had spilled free from beneath her scarf as Olin had pointed out, was black except for a small, strange streak the color of fire. The girl’s features were attractive enough, but Pelaya could see little about the thin young girl that should have attracted the prisoner-king’s attention. “She looks like a Xandian to me. From the north, I’d say—they are darker below the desert. Lots of Xandian girls work here in the kitchens and the laundry.”

  Olin watched the young woman and her stockier companion until they had vanished into the darkness of the covered passage. “She reminds me ... she reminded me of someone.”

  Now Pelaya definitely felt a pang. “You said that /reminded you of your daughter.”

  He turned, as though seeing her for the first time since the servant girl had appeared. “You do, Mistress. As I said, there is a quality in you that truly reminds me of her, and your curiosity is part of it. No, that servant girl reminds me of someone else.” He frowned and shook his head. “A member of my family, long dead.”

  “One of your relatives?” It seemed unlikely. Pelaya thought the captive king was ashamed to have been caught ogling a serving girl.

  “Yes. My . . .” He trailed off, looking again at the place where the servant had disappeared. “That is very strange—and here, so far away . ..” He paused again, then said, “Could you bring her to me?”

  “What?”

  “Bring her to me. Here, in the garden.” His laugh was short and harsh. “I certainly cannot go to her. But I need to see her up close.” He looked at her and his eyes softened. “Please, good Mistress Akuanis. I swear I ask you a favor for no unworthy reason. Could you do that for me?”

  “That makes two favors in one day.” She tired to make her voice stern. “I ... I suppose I could. Perhaps.” She did not understand her own feelings and was not certain that she wanted to understand them. “I will try.”

  “Thank you.” He stood up and bowed, his face suddenly distant, Now I must go. I have much to think about and I have stolen enough of your time today.” He walked toward the archway leading back to his tower rooms—comfortable enough, he had told her, if you did not mind a door that had a barred window in it and was locked from the outside—without looking back.

  Pelaya sat, feeling oddly as though she wanted to cry. For the first time since they had met each other Olin had left the garden first. The prisoner had gone back to his cell to be alone rather than share her company any longer.

  She remained on the bench, trying to understand what had happened to her, until the first drops of rain forced her inside.

  “Who could ever live in such a place?” Yazi asked, wide-eyed. “You would tire yourself to fits just walking to the kitchen.”

  “People who live in such places don’t walk to the kitchen,” said Qinnitan. “They have people like you and me bring their food to them.” She frowned, trying to remember which way they had turned on the inbound trip. Monarchs had been adding rooms and corridors and whole wings onto the citadel of Hierosol for so many centuries that the place was like the sea coral from one of her favorite poems by Baz’u Jev. Qinnitan entertained a brief fantasy that one day she would be able to take the boy Pigeon for a walk on the seashore without worrying she might be recognized, to see some of the mysteries that had so charmed the poet, the spiraling shells daintier than jewels, the stones polished smooth as statues. She had work to
do, though, and even if she hadn’t, she couldn’t afford to loiter in the open that way.

  “But look at us!” Yazi was from the Ellamish border country so she spoke fairly good Xixian, a good-hearted girl but a little slow and prone to mistakes. “We are lost already. Surely no one can find their way in such a big place. This must be the biggest house on earth!”

  Qinnitan was tempted to say that she herself had once lived in the biggest house on earth, just to see Yazi’s expression, but even though she had already told Soryaza the laundry-mistress she had been an acolyte of the Hive, there was no sense in telling everyone else, especially someone as innocently loose-lipped as Yazi. The fact that Qinnitan had once lived in the Royal Seclusion, where she had been one of the fortunate lew who had their food brought to them by hurrying, silent servants, was certainly not going to be mentioned either, although the irony of the present conversation was not lost on her.

  “I know it’s back this way,” she said instead. “Remember, we came down a long hall full of pictures just after we went through that garden?”

  “What garden?”

  “You didn’t .. . ? Where you could see the ocean and everything?” She sighed. “Never mind.”Yazi was like a dog that way—the girl had been talking about something, a dream she had, or a dream she wanted to have, and hadn’t even noticed the garden, the one time today they had been out from under the castle roof. Qinnitan had noticed, of course. She had spent too much time kept like a nightingale in a wicker cage to ignore the glorious moments when she was free beneath the gods’ great sky. “Never mind,” she said again. “Just follow me.”

  “Breasts of Surigali, where have you two been?” Soryaza stood with her hands on her hips, looking as though she might pick up one of the massive washing tubs and dump its scalding contents all over the truants. “You were just supposed to take those up to the upstairs ewery and come straight back.”

  “We did come straight back,” Qinnitan said in Xixian. She could understand Hierosoline well enough now—the tongues were similar in many ways—or at least make out the sense of most things said to her, but she still did not feel comfortable with her own clumsy speech. “We got lost.”

  “It’s so big!” Yazi said. “We didn’t do anything wrong, Mistress. On the Mother, we didn’t’.”

  Soryaza snorted her disbelief, then spat on the wet floor. “Well, get back to work. And speak Hierosoline, both of you. You aren’t in the south anymore!”

  As the laundry-mistress stalked away several of the other women sidled over to find out what had happened. Qinnitan knew most of their names already, although two were new enough she had only seen them and not spoken to them.

  “Is she always angry?” asked one of these new workers, an anxious, scrawny young thing with pink-tinged eyes and twitching nose—the others had already named her Rabbit.

  “Always,” Yazi said. “Her feet hurt. And her back hurts too.”

  “Pah!” said one of the other women. “She’s been saying that for years. Didn’t stop her from picking that boy Gregor up and throwing him out the door when she caught him sleeping in the drying room. Or from kicking over a tub or two when she’s in the mood.”

  “Nira, someone said you were a priestess in Xis,” the girl called Rabbit suddenly said to Qinnitan. “Is that true?”

  She was always a little slow to recognize her own false name, although she was getting better at it, and speaking Hierosoline slowed her down even more, so it took a moment for the question to sink in. When it did, she felt a chill. By the Dark Queen, does everyone know already? Curse this nest of busy-bodies, and curse Soryaza—she must have told someone.

  Out loud, she said, “I . . . was not priestess. Just . . .” She searched for a word, but her command of the language was still weak. “Just helper.”

  “In the Hive?” Rabbit asked. “Someone said it was in the Hive. I’ve heard of that place. Was it like they say—did the priests come in and . . . you know? With the priestesses?”

  “Silence, girl,” said one of the other new workers, an old woman with a burn-scarred face and a mouth where dark holes outnumbered ruined teeth. She glared at Rabbit. “Don’t ask so many question. She does not want to talk, maybe.” Her command of Hierosoline was better than Qinnitan’s but it was easy to hear that she too was a southerner.

  “I only wanted to know . . . !” Rabbit squeaked.s

  “Tits of the Great Mother, what are you lazy bitches up to?” Soryaza’s voice thundered through the dank room. Her bulky form loomed up out of the washtub fog and the women scattered. “The next one I catch standing and talking might as well go down to the harbor and find a place to stand on Daneya Street with the other whores, because you won’t work for me another moment!”

  “Yazi, why are there so many new people?” Qinnitan asked when they were standing over their washing tub again. New faces made her unhappy, and people asking about her history in Xis made her even more so.

  “New?” The round-faced girl laughed. “You’ve only been here a ten-night yourself.”

  “But so many! Rabbit, and that old toothless woman, and the one with the fat legs ...”

  “Oh, listen to you! Not everyone’s a skinny little thing like you, Nira. As it happens, Soryaza told me she’s hiring more because of the war.”

  “The war?”

  “Don’t you listen to anybody? There’s a war coining, everyone says so. The autarch’s going to send ships. They’ll never break this place, of course—no one ever lias. But the lord protector has called in troops from Krace and . . . and . . . and other places.” She flushed, her tone of authority momentarily compromised. “And so we’re going to be having more work.”

  Qinnitan felt a sudden chill—touched by a ghost, her family had always called it. She had heard rumors but had not given them much credence—as the continent’s greatest seaport, Hierosol seemed to breathe rumors like air, to serve them as meat and drink. A new continent discovered in the western oceans, one said. So much gold discovered on an island near Ulos that the overladen boat sank on the way back. Fairy armies marching in the north. The Autarch of Xis preparing to conquer all Eion. Who was to know what was truth and what was fancy?

  “The . . . autarch . . . ?” she said now. Memories of his pale, mad eyes, never more than a moment away from her thoughts at the best of times, now pushed their way front and center. Is it me? she wondered. Is it to find me, to torture me for running away? It was silly, unbearably self-important, even to consider it, but she couldn’t shake off the idea: she had seen enough of Sulepis to know he was a man of incomprehensible whims.

  No, she told herself. He and his father and his father’s father have wanted to set their heel on Eion for years, especially Hierosol. She had heard it talked of enough in the Seclusion. This is only more of the same, if it’s even true. And if he is coming, well, the walls will defeat him. And if they don’t . . .

  Then I will be gone. I escaped him once, I will escape him again. Despite her terror, she felt a stubborn little glow inside her, a heat like a burning coal. Or die. But one way or another, he won’t have me . . .

  “Nira?” Yazi was pulling at her sleeve. “Pay attention, girl! If Soryaza sees you staring at nothing that way, she’ll whip us both.”

  Qinnitan bent to the washing, but it was hard to keep her thoughts on the sheets and soapy water.

  As Qinnitan walked with Yazi at sunset across the wide space of the Echoing Mall, she had a sudden feeling of being observed, troubling as an insect flying too near her head. She looked back and at first saw only the other washerwomen and ordinary working folk of the citadel dispersing to the outer gates or their cramped quarters within the great fortress itself; then a movement at the corner of her eye, where the newly-lit torches lined one of the colonnades, made her turn all the way around. A smear of sideways movement, at odds with the rest of the crowd, arrested her alien tion. She felt sure someone had stepped back into the colonnade just as she looked. Still, did it mean something, even so?


  “Nira, stop that,” said Yazi. “I’m so tired my feet are on fire. Keep walking, will you?”

  Qinnitan walked forward, but after a dozen paces turned again. A man was walking along the edge of the colonnade, and although he was not looking at her she thought she saw him hesitate for an instant and almost break stride, as though he had just decided it was too late to step back out of sight again.

  Qinnitan pointed up at the sky above the high walls of the Echoing Mall, shot red with the last light of the day, and said, “Isn’t it pretty, with all those colors!” While performing this bit of show, she examined the man as best she could. He wore shabby, unobtrusive clothes—the kind any of the menial laborers might wear—and had somewhat the look of a northerner, with hair of the lackluster brown shade Qinnitan had learned was almost as common north of Hierosol as black hair was in Xand. He was studiously avoiding her eyes as he walked, and so Qinnitan swung around again.

  “What are you talking about, the sunset?” asked Yazi. “If your thoughts wandered any farther, girl, you’d have to put bells on them, like goats.”