“Fifteen years ago,” said Precious Wind. “You were almost four then, you are almost twenty now. In Tingawa, eighteen to twenty is the age of puberty. Until today, you looked about . . . seven. It was only an appearance, a glamour. Tingawan women mature more slowly than the women of Norland, so it was not greatly remarked upon . . .”
“Oh, it was remarked upon,” grated Xulai. “Dame Cullen said I was a dwarf. Even the duke never called me daughter!”
Precious Wind did not let herself sympathize, though she felt the sadness. She said imperiously, “Think, Xulai! The appearance of babyhood helped keep you safe, as the princess and her father intended. If the duke had called you daughter, you and he would both be dead by now. Only his pretense kept you alive.”
“Didn’t they know that I had to grow up sometime?” she cried angrily. “What would have happened then?”
“You were supposed to be in Tingawa long before that happened,” snapped Precious Wind. “As was I! No one lied about your being the soul carrier; you really are the soul carrier. Bear and I were to remain with the princess as long as she was alive, and then we were to return with you to Tingawa. The princess lived longer than anyone thought she could. Somehow, she learned or foresaw that you could not get to Tingawa safely, perhaps for a very long time. She told me this years ago, and she also told me she would provide for you another way.”
“What way?” demanded Xulai.
Precious Wind shook her head. “We don’t know. She looked into the future, she said. She didn’t tell us how or why, or, unfortunately, how long it might take. Lately, Oldwife and I, we have supposed she gave you something of herself.”
Still angry, Xulai said, “I honestly do not know what you’re talking about!”
Precious Wind murmured, “On the way here, when you provided that the horses would not run away, when the duchess made a point of seeing you and all she saw was a baby. When you told the horses they were deer, the tree that it hid wildcats . . .”
“You think she did that?”
“No, we think you did that. We think she somehow endowed you with some of her own abilities. Don’t ask me how, because I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. Perhaps she couldn’t. It may be simply that you inherited an ability she had that she herself didn’t understand. She did say, however, that it would be safer if no one knew who you really were but Oldwife Gancer and me.”
“Don’t be angry at us,” Oldwife begged.
“I’m not angry at you,” Xulai cried, wiping at the wetness on her face. “I’m just angry! I don’t know who or what I am. I don’t know how much of me is me and how much is someone else. I don’t know if these parts of me will last or vanish overnight. I know everyone was just trying to protect me, but . . . I never called her Mother. Shouldn’t I have at least called her Mother?” Furious tears streamed down her cheeks and dripped from her jaw.
“Did she ever ask you to do anything you didn’t do?” Oldwife asked.
“Yes! No!” Xulai beat at the wall next to her with both fists. “The last thing was hard, I couldn’t do it for a while, but I finally did. I did it the way a seven-year-old child really would have done it, with fear, and delay, and even avoidance. If I’d known how old I really was . . .”
Oldwife cried, “You couldn’t know because you couldn’t act the part! You had to think you were a child! You had to believe it! Oh, they stuffed your brain with all kinds of things, numbers and languages and history, but nothing about . . . being a woman, because you had to think you were a child. So long as you looked very young, people wouldn’t talk about things when they were around you, man-woman kind of things.”
“Oldwife, I heard about all that from the loft in the stables.”
The old woman bit her lip. “Well, she . . . your mother tried! She wanted to keep you safe! If you did everything she asked, then she knew you loved her, and you’ve got to know she loved you! She died to protect you, Xulai. She suffered for years to protect you. And you’ve got to know the duke loved you, because he helped her do it! Not only them, Xulai. Precious Wind has given all those years to protecting you, and so have I. Anything that urgent, anything that terrible and painful, there’s a reason for it. The princess had a reason, be sure of that. If, like they say, she saw the future, she wouldn’t have sacrificed her life, loving Justinian the way she did, if there hadn’t been a reason.”
“But what reason? If I was part of it, shouldn’t she have told me?”
Brow furrowed, eyes squinted, Oldwife considered this.
Precious Wind said carefully, slowly, “I think she felt you would be safer if you didn’t know. Either she knew you would discover it when the time was right, when you really needed to know, or you would be informed in some way. There is something in your future that makes you terribly important.”
It was too much. The tears went on streaming and she wept in Oldwife’s arms as the old woman murmured, “You really did the things we saw you do, Xulai. You talked the horses into thinking they were another kind of animal. You talked a tree into hiding wildcats. You figured out something about the duchess that nobody else knew. So, maybe while you were inside your mama, she put a little bit of herself into you. Or maybe it was already there, just because she was your mama. A different part of your brain, maybe. You haven’t taken hold of it yet, but it’s there.”
“Is it there always? Or will it leave me, too?”
“You know I can’t answer that, Xulai.”
They had reached an impasse. After a few moments’ silence, Precious Wind said, “One thing I think we’d better agree on. We don’t mention this to anyone here at the abbey. No one saw anything of what happened in the forest except we two. No one saw what happened on the road except we two. We should not talk about it even among ourselves in case someone is listening.”
Oldwife Gancer said, “Whyn’t you go to breakfast, Precious Wind? Maybe you can bring Xulai’n me a bite. They don’t count people at breakfast, and this child needs a little time to settle without being angry at the whole world.”
“Precious Wind,” said Xulai, half choking on the words. “Could you bring me half a dozen eggs, please? Boiled eggs? Or meat of some kind?”
Wordlessly, eyebrows almost at her hairline in puzzlement, Precious Wind left them. Oldwife fetched a towel and mopped first Xulai’s face, then the spilled tea before pouring another mugful and putting it carefully into Xulai’s shaking hands.
“So how old am I?” Xulai muttered.
Oldwife patted her shoulder. “As we said, somethin’ like twenty in Tingawan growth years, whatever that means.”
“I don’t understand this,” Xulai cried. “What do I do next? I don’t know what to do! I don’t know how young women that age act!”
“There, there, child, now, well, you just go on being what you are. Precious Wind and I, we’ll school you about the body business. Tingawan women don’t get to that until they’re about your age, and you already know about it. You’re a Xakixa, you came here to be schooled, so you’ll be schooled. Between the duke and those Tingawans, you’ve been well taught already. You speak their language and ours. You read, you write, you know all manner of things. As for not knowing how to act, you act more grown-up than most adults at least half the time! You’ve always been that way. Maybe now you need to learn things that people wouldn’t normally teach a child.”
“What do we tell Bear?”
“He knew you had some kind of protection woven around you. We’ll tell him it was time for it to wear off, that’s what we’ll say.”
“The prior saw me. The sister saw me. I was in the dining room.”
“Last night I told Precious Wind what you said, about people at the abbey not looking directly at you, you know. We think they didn’t see the child at all. She said they were seeing another you. We weren’t, because we were used to seeing Xulai the child and Precious Wind says that’s the image we were accustomed to. When you walked into this room this morning, though, there was no more child. Not a
bit. Whatever it was, it was set to wear off when you didn’t need it anymore.”
On the outer windowsill, next to the outer door, Bothercat walked back and forth, tail lashing. Xulai went to let him and his brother in, trying to think of something, anything else. “What are we going to feed the cats? They can’t go to the dining hall.”
Oldwife went into her bedroom and brought out a package. “They’ll have to settle for Woldsgard dried camp stew, just the way they did on the way here. I’ll just break it up and put a little boiling water on it. Nettie will find something else in the kitchens if we run out.”
Cats winding around her ankles, Oldwife prepared their food, holding the bowl aloft while the mixture cooled. When she resumed her seat, she asked, “Are you over being upset with everyone?”
“No,” Xulai replied. “I am upset with everyone and everything, including myself. I don’t know who this new person is. Is she pretty or plain?”
“You look a young lady, certainly. If there’s any more changing to happen, it won’t be much. As for talking and acting, I’d ask Precious Wind about that.”
“You were once a young lady!”
Oldwife looked down, memories flooding in: Rising at dawn to milk cows. Bent to catch the light of fire at night as she sewed clothing. Her shoulders straining under the weight of full buckets from the well, her hands blistered from the hoe, wielded to keep the garden free of weeds. “Oh, no, child. A very long time ago I was a young woman, and that’s a very different thing. People expect a young woman to be useful and work hard. For young ladies, expectations are much higher in some respects, far lower in others.”
“Sister Tomea will be surprised.”
Oldwife took a deep breath. “Yesterday, the way they spoke to you, I had the feeling they were seeing you differently than you were used to. I think they saw you pretty much the way you are today. It would make sense for everyone here to see you just as you will be while you’re here. And you haven’t seen the abbot yet, though you’re supposed to do so this morning.” She squeezed Xulai’s hand. “Every girl who changes from child into woman feels strange, but the strangeness will pass. It really will.”
Xulai shut herself into her bedroom to think this over. She knew this particular change would not pass. The strangeness was not merely a matter of age. It was greater than that, different from that, stranger than any of her companions had even considered. Sadly, it had come without a directory that might have defined what might happen, how she might behave, even what she might become. Recent experience indicated that when dangerous things happened, when the possibility of being maimed or killed seemed imminent, some protective knowledge would simply happen, without being summoned, even if she didn’t want it. It would come! It would ride over her like a warrior on a warhorse, hooves pounding her own will into the earth, no matter what she wanted! Even if she would rather die, it wouldn’t let her.
Not that she could conceive of really wanting to die.
“Weasel?” she called. “Fisher?”
Ears, a nose, eyes came out of the pocket of her cloak. “You forgot the eggs.”
“Precious Wind will bring them. She’ll be back before long. It’s just . . . did my mother provide you? As a helper maybe? And what are you?”
“I don’t know who provided me. I remember waiting a long time at the temple for someone to come. When you came, I knew you were the one. I’m your helper, guide, rescuer. Just now I suppose I am a fisher. I can move rather fast. I fit through tight spaces. I can’t keep up with a horse, however, so if you’re taken away by someone on horseback, you might expect to meet a bird shape instead of a four-legged one. Hawk, I should think. They’re very swift. If you’re in a dungeon or something of that sort, it might be most anything. I think I might be a whole tribe of gophers, perhaps. Or even a bear.” He sounded rather pleased at the bear idea.
“All different?”
“Different shape, but always one thing. That’s why I said I needed a name for you to call when you need me. No telling what form I might show up in, but always able to communicate. And always needing to eat!”
“You were the thing I swallowed? You couldn’t have been. You came before I swallowed it.”
“I was part of the box, but what you swallowed was something else.” The sinuous creature disappeared into the pocket. Xulai sat on the side of the bed, struggling to think calmly. She felt she might have accepted all this more easily if she had the right to reject whatever thing or being might come shrieking out of her brain or heart or wherever it was hiding. She could have accepted it better if she could command it, tell it to go away.
However, she told herself in a kind of bleak despair, even if she couldn’t command the future, she would like to command her own memory so she could forget that Xu-i-lok, despite her protective knowledge and skill, still had perished at the evil will of the Duchess of Altamont. And of all the people she wanted at this moment, she most wanted Abasio. If no one else could explain herself to herself, he probably could. Or he could help her find out. If he didn’t already know.
Chapter 5
An Awakening
When Precious Wind returned from the dining hall, she brought a basket of hot bread, half a dozen boiled eggs, a ball of soft cheese, and several apples. “I have told Bear and the others,” she said. “It will spare you having to explain or react.”
Xulai took this in the spirit it was meant and thanked Precious Wind for her thoughtfulness. She went to her room to eat by herself, in order to think; actually she and the fisher thought together. Avoiding emotional subjects, they decided he would be called Fisher. This had a certain reference to water, which for some reason pleased the creature, and fishers were not common animals, which was acceptable to Xulai. Having eaten two eggs, Fisher returned to what he referred to as “his” pocket, carrying the uncracked eggs to eat later. Xulai returned to the living room.
“Bear reminded me that the abbot wanted to talk with us this morning,” said Precious Wind. “Particularly with you, Xulai.”
“Why not?” Xulai answered, managing to keep her voice level and staid, though she still roiled inwardly like a stormy sea. She could not remember ever having been this emotional before. She could not remember, in fact, feeling anything very strongly except affection and fear. She had loved the princess, had respected her Tingawan minders, and had found comfort and affection from Oldwife, who had taken out splinters and removed thorns and bandaged scraped knees. None of those feelings had been desperately ardent; they had required nothing but an obedient passivity. The one time she’d been asked to do something really active, she had almost ruined it. Now she thought it a pity she couldn’t have been angry a lot sooner, for anger demanded something of one! It demanded action! Response! Naturally, now that it was very difficult not to show how she felt, showing any emotion at all would be unwise.
She took a deep breath. “Meeting the abbot can’t be any more difficult than the morning so far.” She stood up and straightened her skirts, attempting a placid smile. It felt stretched, as though her lips wished to snarl and resented being refused the opportunity.
Precious Wind nodded. “Brother Aalon will guide us. He’ll be here shortly.”
Oldwife begged off the meeting, so it was only the two Tingawans and Xulai who followed the brother on a lengthy route that included several locked gates guarded by helmed men and ended at a heavy door with a knocker in the shape of a kraken. Their guide rapped three times. The door opened, apparently of its own accord, and they found the abbot, a small, clean-shaven man, head haloed with a mist of white hair. He was dressed in a simple white robe and seated behind a huge writing desk in a simple chair from which he rose as he beckoned them forward.
“Ah. Here is a partial contingent from the Woldsgard group. Your associates have nothing to share with me?”
Precious Wind bowed gracefully. “They’re trying to get themselves and the animals settled, Eldest Brother, so we’re the delegation.”
“Thank you,
Aalon,” said the abbot. “There are some comfortable chairs in the little room down the corridor, if you don’t mind waiting to take them back. We shouldn’t be long.”
The brother bowed and withdrew as the abbot gestured them toward a group of chairs around a table that bore a dozen little cups and a steaming pot over a candle warmer. “You’ll like this,” the abbot murmured. “Real Jen-tai. Last year’s.” He poured and distributed the cups from a lacquer tray.
Xulai sniffed the steam from the cup. Flowers. And hay. And something like piney woods. She sipped as the others were doing, no one speaking at all. Perhaps it was a Tingawan thing they hadn’t told her of, this silent sipping. More likely it was an abbey thing, for surely over all those forgotten years she had been told everything there was to know about Tingawa!
When his cup was empty, the abbot sighed and turned it upside down on the tray. The others followed his example.
He said, “Now. I need enlightenment. I have received messages from my friend Justinian, but he has never gone into any detail. He has never sent me a messenger or a bird with anything beyond a hint.”
This was not what Justinian had told her! Xulai took a firm grip on her tongue and said, “Details can kill. Messengers can be tortured. Birds can be shot with arrows.”
Both Bear and Precious Wind stared at her in surprise. She returned their stare. She had no idea how to go on except . . . to go on!
The abbot nodded, his face grave. “Well, there is no bowman in this room. I did gather this trouble centered on Altamont. What do we know and what have we heard about Alicia, the Duchess of Altamont?”
He was looking at Precious Wind, but it was Xulai who answered, spontaneously, in the strange, peremptory voice she had used only a few times before.
“I will be happy to tell you what we know about the duchess, if you will tell us what is known about Huold the Fearless.”
The abbot gave her a look of amused surprise, then went to the door, opened it, and called to Brother Aalon. “Call Brother Wordswell, Brother Aalon. It seems we need him.”