Chapter 29. A Sad Story
Non-grishnard panauns such as foxlings and ocelons are in some ways the most powerless group of creatures in Wefrivain. The Resistance does not trust them because they are panauns, and they do not have the monetary and physical clout to force their way into the Resistance by being needed as some sympathetic grishnards do. For better or for worse, non-grishnard panauns like foxlings and ocelons are usually stuck trying to make the best of what grishnards will give them.
—Gwain, The Non-grishnards of Wefrivain
Gerard woke by degrees. Thessalyn and Silveo were talking, and their voices drifted in and out of his dreams.
“My mother,” said Silveo, “loved sweat leaf a good deal more than she loved me. But at least I was pretty, so I wasn’t totally useless.”
Gerard felt Thessalyn shift. “Oh, Silveo—”
“Oh, no. No, ‘Oh, Silveo’s. You asked for the story. Now I’m telling it. Be quiet and listen or I’ll stop.”
Thessalyn was immediately quiet.
“She disappeared when I was eight,” continued Silveo. “The brothel where she’d been selling me promptly claimed me, and for the next five years I was essentially their prisoner. They had a griffin that watched the grounds—mean, mangy thing. We were all terrified of it. The master told us it would kill us if we tried to leave.”
“Did anyone try?” asked Thessalyn.
“No, we weren’t that stupid. There were about a dozen of us kids—mostly ocelons. You would think that being in the same wretched situation, we’d have a lot of sympathy for each other, but they thought they were better than us foxlings. They looked more like grishnards, and when they grew big enough, the master might sell them to a ship, and they’d get out. Foxlings, though, he’d keep indefinitely, because we just don’t get very big. There weren’t many of us, and customers thought we were exotic.
“There was one other white foxling, a girl named Nix. We used to pretend we had the same father. Maybe we did, too—no way of knowing. She and I both had sharp tongues. We used to make up nasty nicknames for the customers. We’d joke about them, about each other, about everything. We made the others laugh, and it kept us all sane.
“The master, though—he didn’t like it, especially since we didn’t exempt him from the sport. One of the ocelons snitched about some of the stuff we said, and he didn’t feed either of us for three days. He didn’t want to kill us or beat us too badly, though, because we were valuable.”
Silveo paused, and this time Thessalyn did not attempt to say anything. “You sure you want to hear this, Thess? It’s not very…nice.”
“Yes,” she said solemnly. “Silveo, I’m not unaware of what goes on in the world beyond the common rooms and courts where I sing. I grew up in poverty, and there were shelts who counseled my father that there was only one way to make use of a pretty, blind daughter. Thank the Firebird he didn’t listen.”
“Yes,” said Silveo thoughtfully, “we could thank him for that, I suppose. Anyway, what I’m trying unsuccessfully to think of a nice way to say is that there are plenty of things an adult grishnard cannot do to a little foxling if he wants to do anything to him tomorrow. The customers had rules they were supposed to follow, and for the most part, they did. However, we’d get one periodically who thought that once the door was closed, the rules didn’t apply to him. If the money was good enough, the master didn’t want to turn those shelts away. However, he also didn’t want to lose valuable merchandise—us.
“He discovered fairly early that I was good at handling these customers. I could talk them down, make them laugh, convince them not to hurt me.”
“So you got the dangerous ones,” said Thessalyn.
“Yes.” Silveo’s voice carried an acid hint of mock pride. “Silvy got to handle the crazies. I was good at it, too, but I did depend on the master to use some measure of common sense. A grishnard came in one day—fellow about Gerard’s size. His idea of a good time was beating one of us senseless. We’d had problems with him before, and he’d killed a kid from a place down the street earlier that year, but he laid down a few speckled cowries, and the master let him in. I’d gotten in trouble earlier that evening for saying something snippy, and the master was angry at me.
“He shoved me into a room with that brute, and nothing I said or did made any difference. He nearly killed me. For anyone else, the master would have stopped it, but not for me. Afterward, when the bastard had fallen into a drunken sleep, Nix crept in and smothered him with a pillow. I told her not to. I told her the worst was over, but she was so angry. She’d listened to me getting knocked around for a quarter watch, and the master doing nothing. She wouldn’t listen.
“When our master found the body, he was livid. I told him I’d done it, but I could barely crawl, so he didn’t believe me. He staked her out in the yard and let that griffin at her. He made me watch.” Silveo bit off the last word.
“Silveo,” whispered Thessalyn.
“I said none of that!” he snapped. “You asked me. I told you. The end. If there’s one thing I cannot abide, it’s pity. And quit pretending to be asleep, Gerard. I know perfectly well that you’re not.”
Gerard sat up, feeling a little guilty. Silveo had his knees pulled up to his chin, his tail wrapped tightly around his body. Thessalyn leaned over suddenly and hugged him. Silveo gave a startled hiss like a scolded cat, and Gerard leapt up in alarm. “Thess, he’ll—”
“Lady,” growled Silveo against her shoulder, “it is extremely unwise to seize me unexpectedly.” Gerard saw, though, that his hand had stopped halfway inside his pocket. “Let go of me,” said Silveo.
“Let go of him,” agreed Gerard.
Thessalyn released him with a sigh. “Well, you won’t let me say what I want to say.”
“Maddening, isn’t it? Let’s see if I can tell you some things that will make you feel less like throwing your arms around me. The priestess got me out of that place—turned up when I was twelve and asked me to kill someone for her. I still don’t know whether she picked me at random or whether she knew something about me. She gave me a knife—first good weapon I ever had. I killed a lot of shelts for her over the next few years—mostly political assassinations. You wouldn’t believe how much she likes to meddle. One day, she said, ‘You’re good at surviving, Silveo. How would you like to survive my Sea Watch?’
“I thought she meant as a regular sailor, but she put me in as a lieutenant. I have no idea what she said to Admiral Mornay to make him do it—he certainly didn’t like me—but two years later the Resistance shot him, and she made me admiral.”
“Did you really try to gild the Fang silver?” asked Gerard.
Silveo snorted. “I was nineteen and giddy. I knew I needed a legend, needed to keep everybody guessing. They’d never serve under a foxling unless I stayed so far ahead of them they never knew what I was going to do next.”
Silveo leaned back in the grass. “The Priestess gave me Sern, too. I declared the island a nest of Resistance traitors and went through it like a scythe. Even the king was nervous by the time I was finished. My old master—” He stopped. “You don’t even want to know what I did to him. Or to that griffin. I hunted down every one of our regular patrons, killed the ocelons, too.”
“Even the ones who weren’t cruel to you?” asked Thessalyn.
“Even those,” said Silveo. “It certainly felt therapeutic, but I also knew I couldn’t have shelts running around talking about things that happened back then. It doesn’t do for an admiral of the Sea Watch to have anyone able to say… Well, it just doesn’t do. If there’s anyone left in Wefrivain who knew me back then, they certainly aren’t talking about it.”
There was a moment’s uncomfortable silence. Then Thessalyn said, “Did Nix sing?”
Silveo smiled. “Yes, she sang. Not like you. She hadn’t had the training. She might have been terrible; I don’t know. I was only a kid. She could make me sleep, though. Not much else could make me sleep back then, e
xcept exhaustion.”
He hesitated. “They used to carry us around sometimes by the scruff. It’s difficult for a little foxling to fight when he’s being carried that way. There’s a powerful instinct that tells your body to curl up and submit.”
“But you didn’t,” said Thessalyn.
Silveo gave a little huff. “Oh, some days I did. You can’t fight the system—not if you want to win. You have to find a way to work from inside of it. ”
“Even if the system is wrong?” asked Thessalyn.
Silveo rolled his eyes. “Everyone’s wrong. Everyone cheats. Everyone will sell you for the right price. There are no real choices. That’s the world according to Silveo Lamire. I realize that the world according to Thessalyn Holovar is quite a bit different. You’re a sweet fool.” He got up and dusted himself off. “Story time’s over, little lambs. I need to get back to my ship.”