Poisoned Blade
He rises in greeting. Of course he does not speak first. No properly raised Efean man would ever address a woman before she spoke to him.
I’m so irritated by his air of superior restraint that I try to rattle him. “Blessings of the day, Honored Cousin. What does the phrase mean, Efea will rise?”
“Blessings of the day to you too, sullen schemer. If you don’t know and can’t guess, then I’m not about to enlighten you.”
I can’t keep irritation from my face as he calls me the mocking name his sister Coriander called me behind my back when she worked for our household. He smirks, delighted by my annoyance. Since I can see he means to needle me, I change the subject to one I am sure he can’t resist. “Is this where you write your plays?”
“It is. Here in the Heart Tavern, where at the new moon the dames meet at council and with their wisdom and experience wrestle with the questions that plague us Efeans as we struggle to survive in our conquered land.”
“Do you always spout this kind of poetic nonsense?”
“Why do you call it nonsense? Do you think Efeans have always been a conquered people?”
“Before the Saroese came, Efea was ruled by corrupt priests and selfish kings. Everyone knows that! However it happened, it was for the best.”
“That Efeans had to be conquered for our own good is the story we’ve been told to convince us it is better to bow beneath the Patron lash. Of course it is the story you’ve been raised to believe. How could I forget that you count yourself a Patron even though no Patron will ever recognize you as one of them?”
I let the barb fly past and hold my ground. “Insult me all you wish. I’m here because you owe me a debt that I mean to collect.”
“How do you mean to collect it? Will you accept a kiss?” A smile flashes, his face alive with the derision that makes me want to kick him.
“Do you think this is a joke?” I demand. “People’s lives are at stake!”
“So they are. Excuse my poor manners. I’ve not greeted you with food in the proper tradition. Would you like a mug of beer?” Without waiting for my answer he signals to a passing man, then indicates I should sit.
Instead of sitting I tap my foot. “What does the phrase mean, Efea will rise?”
“Your relentlessness is impressive, Spider. The Heart Tavern is difficult for the censors to find since no Commoner will tell any Patron how to find it, or even that it exists. Despite your perfect Patron diction, Saroese manners, and honorable father I suppose you are not so very Patron after all, having made your way here like a good Commoner girl, however much you hate to admit it.”
“I’m not ashamed of my mother!”
“Oh, but you are.” His expression turns stony. With a wave of his hand he directs my gaze to the mural painted as a backdrop for the small stage below us.
In the painting a procession of tiny figures approaches a mountain from either side. On this mountain sits a gigantic woman with a dark face, hair in a hundred braids like the streaming channels of a delta, and arms extended with palms up in a gesture of bounty. Out of her arms flow fruits and date palms and golden pinpricks that might be bees or sparks. She is seated on a throne shaped like a caldera, which floats atop a lake of red fire.
“The land is the Mother of All, who gave birth to all that lives here,” he says, echoing my mother’s words at the inn. “Her heart dwells within the mountain of fire. But you have turned your back on Her, haven’t you? Instead you worship the foreign gods brought to this land by the people who conquered us.”
I sit down and answer in a low voice only the two of us can hear. “I’m surprised the authorities haven’t arrested the owners of this tavern for allowing such an image in their establishment.”
“I’m sure they would, if they ever saw it.” He aims a dazzling smile at me, even bats his eyelashes. “Are you going to tell them? Or is there something I can do to convince you to spare us now that you know the ugly truth?”
“You love to be provocative, don’t you? I’m sure it impresses all your sweethearts.” I make a show of looking around as if to identify a gaggle of waiting girlfriends, only to realize how many people are watching us with expressions of delighted interest. How humiliating! Ro chuckles in a way that makes me so furious that I have to count my breaths in and out to calm myself.
Footsteps pad up beside us as the waiter returns and hands me a bowl of the local brew, as thick and nutritious as gruel.
As I fumble in my pouch for a coin to pay him, Ro says, “We don’t use Saroese coin here.”
“She’s that adversary Spider, isn’t she?” says the waiter to Ro, an indirect way of speaking to me.
“I am Spider.”
Given permission by my words, he grins at me with a sweet smile as genuine as Ro’s are false. “A well-run trial, Spider. The beer is my gift, in appreciation.”
Warmth creeps up my cheeks. “My thanks, Honored Sir.”
He nods in acknowledgment and seems about to reply but has to hurry away as someone across the courtyard calls for him.
A grin untouched by mockery transforms Ro’s face. “Was that a blush? You’re not so untouchable and callous as you try to appear, are you?”
“Are you ever going to stop mocking me?”
“I don’t mock at all. I believe you carry within yourself a power you don’t comprehend.” My back stiffens as he leans even closer. “Are you Patron or Commoner?”
“Why should I have to choose loyalty to one parent over the other? I love them both. I won’t let anyone take that love and respect away from me!”
His lips part and he murmurs in a seductive voice that slides along my skin like silk. “Exactly. Don’t you see the power you have, sullen schemer? You are both, and neither. Someone like you can fight for Efea in ways no Patron will ever see until it is too late.”
I think of Gargaron, my interest piqued. “How? The Patron lords are unassailable. On the court of intrigue and politics they are the Illustrious with all the skill and training and the weight of power on their side while I am a mere fledgling with frail wings.”
“Is that what you think you are? You’ve never watched yourself on the court, Spider. No one can look away from you. Not even me, and I don’t even like you.” He’s laughing at me, and yet not only laughing as he teases words into new shapes with his tone. His eyes are like wells of precious midnight and all its secret pleasures waiting to be plumbed.
I flinch back from this sudden glimpse of the attractive man Amaya saw fit to flirt with in the tomb because she saw a different person from the obnoxious poet I see.
“Don’t flirt with me. I’m not interested.”
He lets go of the intensity and relaxes, taking a swig of beer from his half-empty bowl. “How is your pretty sister?” he says as if he can read my thoughts. “She wasn’t too proud to admire a Commoner like me, was she? Yet why would you be interested in me when all your life you’ve been taught only Patron men matter? That only their looks are to be admired?”
“That’s not what I meant! It’s not because you’re a Commoner that I’m not interested.” Father would never have let a Commoner court one of his daughters, but I don’t have to tell him that! I cough pointedly. “I’m not interested because you are rude and unpleasant.”
He laughs. “That’s a relief, for I admit I’m a bit vain of my looks.”
Of course the words make me study him, as he intended: broad shoulders, a strong chin, and a dimple that flashes as he grins. Irritated that I fell for his cheap rhetorical trick, I push back. “Yes, you’re not bad-looking, but you’re not handsome like Lord Kalliarkos.”
“How polite of you to say so.” He sets chin on clasped hands in a casual way no Patron lord would ever be caught dead mimicking, yet his gaze drills into me with extraordinary force.
I glare back, not giving a single blink. “Speaking of Kalliarkos, he got you out of prison at great risk to his own honor and reputation. You owe him.”
“I owe him, it’s true, an
d my debt to him will be paid when he calls it in. As for you and me, schemer, your help getting me away from the theater last night cancels out the debt you owe me for my aid in getting your family out of the tomb.”
“You still owe us for abandoning us in the ruins afterward. Also, you stole the oracle when you left us in the ruins with no light.”
“The oracle never belonged to you. She was an accidental gift.”
It’s a fair point so I don’t argue it. But I am curious. “What did you do with her?”
“The oracle is safe and well fed, and has a garden to wander in as the desire takes her, although that’s not often, for the poor old woman is afraid of the open sky.”
“Who is she really? Usually oracles are young, and they’re never old women who have already had a husband and given birth to a child, however long ago that happened, as she said.”
He shakes his head. “Ah, my darling and sullen schemer, I’m not giving up the secrets I’ve learned to the loyal daughter of General Esladas, a man originally from old Saro who faithfully serves our Saroese masters.” His voice grows more passionate as he goes on. “It is Patron priests who condemn women to a living death in their foul tombs. It was the Saroese who destroyed our temples a hundred years ago and built their tombs on top of ours so no trace remains. It was the Saroese who stole our land from us. Why should I trust any of them, ever? Tell me one reason!”
His anger silences me. Not for the first time I wish Kalliarkos were here with his charm that won even Ro over, or so it seemed. All I can do is scrape roughly along, wondering whether to remind Ro that Patrons do not all think alike any more than all Commoners do. But I give way in favor of not antagonizing him. Someday I’ll wipe the insolence off his face, but right now my family needs security more than I need to win. I remind myself of how Mother negotiated her difficult position all these years with generosity and dignity. She often made allies of women who at first didn’t want to like her by asking them for a favor that made them feel powerful.
“I need your help.” The quietness of my tone takes him aback.
“With what?” he asks in a normal voice, as if he and I are ordinary people having an ordinary conversation.
“I need someone to act as a go-between to deliver money to my family where they’re hiding.”
“Ah! Of course. You can’t chance going yourself lest your master tracks you and discovers they’re not still bricked into the tomb.”
“That’s exactly right. Lord Gargaron is having me followed and has already come close to finding them. You know what will happen if he discovers they are alive.”
His expression softens into the appealing concern of a young man who has a sister of his own. “For the sake of the honored lady your mother and her newborn twins, I’ll do it.”
“Thank you.” I hand a pouch of copper coins to him. “They’re at the Least-Hill Inn.”
He pokes through the coins with a skeptical frown. “Grain prices are going up. This won’t buy much.”
“I can’t bring more than that or the Garon stewards will get suspicious. I daren’t even come here every week lest they begin to see a pattern to my movements. Will you be here on Rest Day in two weeks?”
“I will be here unless a circumstance beyond my control stops me. But you can come anytime, you know, not only on Rest Day. Trust the dame who runs this tavern. Anything you leave with her she will deliver intact to me.”
“Truly? That would make it easier to hide my movements.”
“In this matter, Jessamy, I pledge on my five souls that I will honor our agreement.”
It’s odd to hear my name on his lips. He pronounces it differently than Father and Kalliarkos do, because he has an Efean lilt. He makes the name seem sweet and fragrant, like the jasmine flower I’m named for. Because I don’t like the way the music of my name makes me feel, I drink down my bowl of beer so as not to insult the gift and take my leave as quickly as possible.
Even so, as I depart I pause to examine the mural depicting the Mother of All. The priests say the old Efean beliefs are superstitious nonsense. They say the old Efean goddess was a bloodthirsty monster who ripped the living souls out of Her victims to sate Her hunger. Yet this image reminds me of my own mother, giving generously of her heart and her strength to the people who process up on either side to ask for succor and mercy.
The mural strikes me as odd, though, a strange mix of Patron and Commoner, Saroese and Efean. To the right of the Mother of All stands a person wearing a mask of feathers and bearing a reed pen and a sheaf of papyrus as regalia. The mask and pen are symbols usually associated with Queen Serenissima in her role as chief accountant who oversees the honesty of all transactions. To the goddess’s left stands a person wearing a helmet with wings and a mask with a lion’s face. He—although I’m not entirely sure it is a man—stands in a chariot holding a bow drawn with its arrow ready to be loosed, exactly as King Kliatemnos is pictured on public murals as the chief soldier who protects the land.
The waiter, passing by, pauses. “May I help you, Honored Cousin? Have you something you need?”
“Just a question.” I indicate the mural. “If Commoners hate the Patrons so much, then why has the artist who painted this borrowed the queen’s mask and pen and the king’s chariot and bow to depict two servants meant to be ancient Efeans?”
The waiter gives me a pitying gaze, like he’s just realized I’m a mule and is sorry for it. “If you think their regalia is copied from the Saroese, you are mistaken. The invaders are the ones who copied the regalia worn by the Efean rulers of old. Those two servants, as you call them, were the dignitaries who ruled us. They went by the titles Custodian and Protector.”
“So Custodian and Protector is what the ancient Efeans called their queen and king,” I say, in an effort to show I’m not as ignorant as the waiter’s speech makes me feel.
“The words do not mean queen and king. It’s the Saroese who thought they must, because the Saroese assumed the person wearing the custodian’s mask must be a woman and the protector’s a man. That’s how Patrons see the world: they believe souls are rigid and singular instead of fluid and multiple. But it’s not how we Efeans see things. You need to start looking with Efean eyes.” When he smiles and turns his head to wink at me, I suddenly see a profile that, were the waiter dressed differently, I might call that of a woman, and now I wonder if I have always seen merely what I expect to see instead of what is really there.
The waiter’s words chase me as I walk back through the late-afternoon heat, sweat slick on my skin. Father hired a tutor to teach us girls the regal history of the old empire of Saro. One hundred years ago, a fearful civil war caused it to break apart into the three kingdoms of West Saro, Saro-Urok, and East Saro. During this war Prince Kliatemnos fled with his sisters and army to the land of Efea, where he found refuge, overthrew the corrupt Efean rulers, and established a dynasty of his own. Everyone knows the king oversees the army and the administration while the queen oversees trade, merchants, and markets. But in old Saro kings rule alone, and their wives preside only over the private household, never over the public treasury.
Only in Efea do queens rule alongside kings. I never thought about why it might be different here. I never thought there might be another way of looking at how things used to be, much less another story for how things got to be the way they are now.
When I reach Garon Stable the grounds are still empty because people won’t return until evening. Talon is seated in the dining shelter with a wax tablet and a child’s copybook, laboriously copying letters onto the wax with the tip of a stylus and then erasing them with the little spatula on the other end. It surprises me to see her slow progress, as if she has just started learning even though she is at least as old as I am.
When Father taught my sisters and me to write he told us that, in old Saro, women rarely learn their letters and numbers. People think it would cause them to give birth to fewer sons. But here in Efea women and men both Patron and Comm
oner all learn writing and arithmetic.
Is that because the Saroese who came here changed, or because Efea changed them?
Sensing me, Talon glances up. Her gaze holds mine with a stare that isn’t hostile but isn’t welcoming either. Is she daring me to speak to her? Challenging me to keep my mouth shut, as if to remind me she is highborn and I am so obviously not? I try to think of something to say but words seem awkward as I realize I pity her.
The gate scrapes open. General Inarsis enters, carrying a leather pouch. I run to intercept him but before I can speak he confronts me, his words a slap to the face.
“I heard what happened at the inn last night. You can’t be trusted to follow orders, Spider. This is not a Fives trial where you hurt only yourself if you fall.”
“I know!”
“No, you don’t know. In these Rings of politics and palace you are running above your skill level and you think you can keep up but you can’t.”
“But—”
“Still not ready! Do you want your honored mother to be discovered and killed?”
Surely my ears and tongue will steam off from the boiling words I want to shout out of sheer frustration and have to hold in. I can’t let him have the last word, so I decide to throw him off his game. “Amaya thinks you are courting our mother with your daily visits and gifts of food. Are you?”
“Ah. An ambush.” He examines me with a lift of an eyebrow, not one bit discomposed. “I think it a little early to discuss any such ventures, don’t you?”
“Mother will never look at another man!”
“That’s for her to decide, not you. But to reassure your sense of propriety, you can repay me for the money I’ve spent at a more appropriate and less dangerous time.”
I consider telling him about the arrangement I’ve made with Ro-emnu, and how I found and lost Bettany, and as quickly decide against it. For all his fine words, Inarsis serves Saroese masters. Maybe Ro-emnu isn’t entirely wrong about whom to trust.