Buried Heart

  “Spider!” Ro pulls my attention away from Kenwis. “I would say you ran well, except I can’t because you made the wrong choice.”

  “I don’t think you’re talking about the trial,” I jab back. “But if you know so much about the Fives, why did you tell me that it isn’t an Efean game, that the Saroese brought it to Efea?”

  “Because that’s the truth.”

  “But my father never heard of the Fives until he came to Efea. The game doesn’t exist in old Saro. And if it’s not Efean at all, then why is there a Fives court in the middle of every Efean village I’ve ever been in? Why does this village run the Fives with a slightly different set of rules and traditions, ones that make sense for Efeans but not for Saroese?”

  “When did you start caring so much about Efean customs, schemer?”

  “I’m half-Efean, you know, not just half-Saroese. Anyway, I intend to figure it out to prove you wrong.”

  He laughs, but when I glance past him to see if Kal has appeared yet, he draws Precious into conversation as if he wants me to notice him paying attention to another girl.

  Mis comes up, accompanied by several girls our age who are eager to congratulate me. “If we hurry, there will be time to bathe before supper. With me, I mean, not the one you wish you could wash with.”

  I laugh. “I’m so filthy and sweaty I’ll bathe even with you. But shouldn’t we get on our way after that? With a few lanterns and the moon, we can ride at least part of the night. We have to get to my father as quickly as possible.”

  Mis looks at me with something like disappointment on her face. “We can’t leave before Ro gives the dames the poetry we’ve promised. You know that. Now come on.”

  The bathing pool lies on the outskirts of the village, a walled compound that also encloses an herb and flower garden.

  Our new friends peer at me excitedly. “The honored poet is so charming and handsome. Are you in love with him?”

  “He’s got the cry of a peacock, that’s for certain. Loud enough that all the peahens are sure to hear him.”

  Of course they want to hear more about him as we wash in tubs and rinse with a swim in the outdoor pool. Yet I don’t mind the gossipy chatter, even if I have to detail every least thing I know about Ro-emnu. Washing amid a flock of friendly girls reminds me of how much I miss my sisters. It makes me think of Bettany and how she left us, a grief as harsh now as the day she betrayed me and Amaya. Despite everything, I hope she is safe because I know that is what Mother would want for her, even if I can’t forgive her.

  I put up my hair, and when I pull my sheath gown back on I look like the other girls except that I, of course, will never look entirely Efean with my Saroese eyes.

  Afterward we troop back to the central square. The open space in front of the guest porch has filled up with villagers seated on mats. Lamps burn around us like stars fallen to earth. Father told me once that when he first came to Saryenia, Efea dazzled him because of its light. Where he had grown up, night meant you were trapped inside as darkness stalked the streets. Only the wealthy could afford lamp oil and candles. But in Efea every village and household presses its own lamp oil from sesame seeds and castor beans. Markets, festivals, and entertainments thrive in the cool of night after a hot day.

  A table laden with food awaits us. We fold flatbread around a spicy mash of gingered fish and leeks, and tear off chunks of bread to spoon up delicious bites of a lentil-tamarind-and-date stew, finishing off this repast with sweet slices of melon. I almost feel it’s wrong to savor it, knowing Nikonos is surely already on the road, getting closer and closer to Father while I linger over a meal.

  And yet it tastes so good.

  Kal is seated behind Khamu on the porch. He has bathed and is wearing a clean keldi and laced-up linen jacket like all the village men. “Kallos” is invisible in a way Kalliarkos can never be, except for his lighter coloring and short, straight black hair. For that matter, I’ve not been called a mule even once in this village. For the first time in our lives, we are just two young people in a crowd.

  I stay standing until Kal sees me amid the other girls.

  Our gazes lock.

  “Spider!” Ro lifts a mug of palm wine in my direction as a salute. He wears his jacket gaping open to show off his manly chest. “Now that you’re here, Adversary, I can begin.”

  All at once I realize there’s a way to be sure no one will have any possible interest in me for quite a long time. All I have to do is force Ro to change the order of his presentation.

  Since everyone is looking at me, I flash the kiss-off sign in Ofru’s direction.

  “Well run, Adversary,” I call out to cheers. “Not many people can defeat me.”

  To my delight, a few people shout, “Sing us the song of Spider. How she saved the desert frontier from invaders.”

  Ro’s frown flashes. I’m pretty sure he meant to sing my song as the final part of his performance, meaning I would have to sit through his entire recitation of his play in order to be here when he called at the end. However, he shifts stance quickly, and I can’t help but feel flattered by the way he singles me out with his compelling gaze. His robust voice can fill a theater, and when he sings the story of how Spider became a spider scout, his resonant singing penetrates to my bones.

  The general’s valiant daughter will fight for Efea,

  She’ll fight for Efea, and win!

  How clever he is to turn my impulsive dash in service of my Patron father and Patron master into a story that speaks to Efeans and their desire for the freedom they lost so long ago. He’s an instigator, sowing indignation in fertile soil. He’s made me part of the story, a symbol for people to admire.

  When he finishes, the villagers salute me with their cups. I open my arms in the gesture I use on the Fives court, as if I’m throwing my spider threads to the winds. Then I grab a cup of tea off the table and retreat to sit at the very back of the group of girls.

  Mis settles down beside me. “You have a reckless look in your eye. Is that buckwheat tea you’re drinking?”

  I don’t have time to answer because Ro raises his arms in a poet’s welcome. Flames hiss around him, lamps hung to frame him in light, a poet ordained by the Mother of All to speak only truth lest he be struck down for dishonesty and lose his gift. He begins, his golden voice pouring over us like sunlight, although his words burn. It’s impossible not to get wrapped up in the story as he tells it.

  How fortunate was Prince Kliatemnos, who fled Saro to make a new home here!

  Was he not worthy, honest, forthright, brave, and true?

  His audience hisses their displeasure.

  Beloved of the gods, they called him, because he came through that fire,

  The fire that was the war of greed that tore apart his home,

  And safely washed up on the clean and peaceful shores of rich Efea.

  So the story goes. Their priests and poets tell it again and again.

  So the Saroese histories tell us, that Efeans welcomed Kliatemnos as savior,

  Deposed their own ruling council and Custodian and Protector and priests

  In favor of the better, wiser, nobler man—

  “All lies!” the villagers shout, and I find my lips forming the angry refrain with them.

  A man who soon proclaimed himself King Kliatemnos in the foreign way

  And set his wise and noble sister as Serenissima beside him

  To guide his warlike hand in the gentler methods of peace and plenty.

  Saviors both! For our own good—that’s how they speak—for our own good

  Their priests tore down the ancient temples to the Mother

  And built their own atop them as if it were a form of cleansing.

  They buried us stone by stone and lie by lie and heart by heart.

  He’s alight with conviction, blazing with a fierce need to convince every Efean he meets that it is time to act, that Efea will rise. I lean forward, caught up in the emotion.

  Across the gap, K
al’s gaze meets mine. Ro’s fiery criticisms don’t disturb or inflame him because he can’t understand Efean, although he must recognize the names Kliatemnos and Serenissima—his Saroese ancestors. In fact, he seems to have something entirely else on his mind. He lifts an eyebrow as a question.

  There’s no one here looking over our shoulders, no one who can tell us what to do.

  I tip my head to the left, indicating the darkness beyond the well-lit square.

  He dips his chin in agreement and glances over his shoulder, seeking a path off the porch.

  Mis whispers, “Jes, don’t do anything you can’t take back. Remember, he’s a prince—”

  “Not here he isn’t. He’s a mere groom, no higher placed than me.”

  I should be a courteous guest and a prudent young woman. It’s what my father would tell me to do.

  I should sit right here with everyone else and admire the poet’s stirring and rebellious rendition of the horrific crimes of Queen Serenissima the Third, called “the Benevolent.” It’s what my mother would want me to do.

  I should. But there’s no chance that I will.

  5

  I slide to the edge of the crowd, ease back to sit on my heels, and carefully rise to my feet. Gently I place my sandals on the dirt one careful step at a time as I move backward into the night.

  So fast I have no warning, dizziness washes over me. Slowly I breathe through the calming cycle Anise taught me as a fledgling. Slowly the night steadies around me.

  A footstep scrapes softly around the back of the guesthouse I’m leaning against.

  “Jes?” My name is a sigh on his lips.

  My breathing stutters again, all erratic, my pulse leaping like a gazelle.

  I have never been so nervous in my life. Every wrong thing that could happen spins through my mind like Rings so off-kilter they crash into each other and shudder to a halt. My deepest fears surface: What if I’m clumsy and make a fool of myself? What if he decides I’m not attractive enough?

  His feet scuff the earth. I still can’t see him around the corner but I feel the heat of him an arm’s length from me. He coughs, chuckles awkwardly, and shifts his feet.

  “Jes, not that I like to admit this to anyone, even to you, but if we don’t go now, I’m going to lose my nerve.”

  My fingers creep around the corner of the house. His hand brushes my knuckles. We both jolt back. I giggle, and I never giggle, not even with my sisters.

  To reach the victory tower you have to jump across the gap that scares you most.

  I step around the corner and grab hold of his arm.

  “I know a place,” I say, so out of breath I can barely speak those four simple words, just as he says at the exact same moment, “The garden by the bathing pool.”

  Holding hands, we walk briskly down the lane that leads to the walled garden and pool. I can’t speak, and Kal doesn’t say a word but I feel his breathing like it is my own. His fingers tangle in mine. The linen of the borrowed jacket he’s wearing brushes repeatedly against my bare arm.

  Efeans love their lamps. The pair hanging on either side of the garden gate are molded of ceramic with slices cut out before the soft clay was fired. Petals of light bloom over us. The gate isn’t quite closed; it’s been left a handbreadth ajar, as if the garden is inviting us in.

  Kal drops his gaze, lashes hiding his eyes. His embarrassment is the most ridiculous thing in the world and yet somehow it makes me see him as a precious shard of heaven that has unexpectedly dropped into my lap.

  I’m biting my lower lip. Who knew this would be so hard?

  He takes in a breath for resolve and squeezes my hand. “Are you sure, Jes?”

  “Of course I’m sure. It’s not like we’re ever really going to be safe. I don’t want to wait for something that may never come. Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. But there’s one thing.…” He shifts his feet, scratches his forehead, and flashes an awkward grin. “I feel like an administrator in the king’s palace, tidying up the books. Eager lovers never say things like this in the plays.”

  “Things like what?”

  He turns serious. “However free we feel right now, my situation means it would be dangerous for you if you got pregnant.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m drinking buckwheat tea. It’s what Efean women do to make sure that doesn’t happen. I have no intention of interrupting my Fives career.”

  “Only someone who doesn’t truly know you would ask you to do that,” he says with a laugh so genuine and sweet that I can’t imagine another boy who would have found that funny.

  His laughter gives me the courage to push the gate open with a foot. We dash inside, and he pulls it shut behind us. In the gloom beyond lie trellises and bowers wreathed in vines and shielded by shrubs.

  Yet now that we are here, we stand motionless, two adversaries at a loss for how to take the next step. I keep thinking there is a better move or a best move but there isn’t. There is him, and there is me, and we get to make our own choice, no matter what the people around us say, no matter if our reasons aren’t perfect. Maybe it’s partly that I’m a rebellion for him, while he’s the highborn boy who should have been out of my reach. We don’t always have the right reasons for what we do and what we want.

  “I can hear you thinking,” he says, laughter still in his voice. “Jes, sometimes you just have to let yourself fall.”

  “All right.” I turn so we stand face-to-face, so our bodies touch all along their length. I lean my cheek against his, and he trembles all over. My lips brush his skin, tasting his eagerness and his yearning. “I’m falling.”

  Much later and much sweatier, I sprawl across a wide bench beneath a bower roof of blooming jasmine. Kal sits cross-legged beside me, a hand resting on my knee. I spider-walk my fingers up his spine.

  “I could come to like that as much as running the Fives,” I say.

  “My thanks for the compliment. I think.”

  It’s strange to feel so purely light I might float up to the stars and eat them, one by one, like sweet hot candy. “We would need to practice more to get really good at it.”

  He leans against me. “We would need to practice a great deal. Many, many trial runs.”

  I start giggling and I can’t stop. Who is this giddy person I have become? I don’t even recognize her and I don’t care.

  “Teach me Efean.”

  “What?” The words jolt me.

  “Teach me Efean. General Inarsis taught me the basic courtesies for addressing people, like Honored Sir and Honored Lady and Honored Dame. I know the numbers and names for food, things like that. But without an interpreter, I can’t talk to Efeans who don’t speak Saroese. I want to be able to ask questions and hear answers without another voice standing between mine and theirs.”

  “Why do you want to talk to Efeans?” I ask cautiously.

  “I would like to be able to understand what Ro is saying without worrying that the people who are translating aren’t telling me everything.”

  This is not the conversation I was hoping to have. I’m not the only one who can’t stop turning Rings in my head.

  “Jes, you and I both know Ro isn’t helping me because he wants me to become king. At best he knows we have to drive Nikonos’s foreign allies out of Efea lest the invaders decide to take the land for themselves.”

  I’m not ready for the world to intrude. In the distance Ro is still declaiming; it’s a really long play. And I have a better idea than I ever did before of how to distract Kal.

  “Very well. I will teach you Efean, although I warn you it is a much more formal and sophisticated language than Saroese, which Efeans consider blunt and crude.”

  “Is that so?” He grins.

  “So, taking pity on you, I’ll start with something easy, like body parts.” I touch each one as I name them in Efean. “Eyes. Nose. Mouth.”

  “I see where this is going.”

  “Chin. Throat. Chest…”

  He touche
s a finger to my lips to silence me.

  The crickets have stopped buzzing.

  Someone is coming.

  I yank my dress on. He fumbles to wrap his keldi and tug on his jacket.

  Thus we are sitting primly side by side an arm’s length apart on the bench when a lamp shines into view and Mis appears, flanked by several local girls. Fortunately the night covers my flaming blush as the girls grin hugely and look Kal over with more interest than they did before, especially now that the jacket is gaping open to display his attractive chest. He tries to discreetly straighten his keldi, which he’s tied on askew. With an extreme effort, I do not lean over to lace up his jacket.

  I await a lecture, courtesy of some bug my mother has put in Mis’s ear, but when she speaks, the words come out almost apologetic.

  “A runner came in from a village west of here. Soldiers showed up there, searching for fugitives. Mules are being saddled as I speak.”

  “Mules?” I ask. “Not horses?”

  Mis sighs with a glance toward Kal, and says in Efean, “The law forbids Efean villagers from owning horses.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know.”

  She switches back to Saroese. “Kal, these girls will take you to your riding gear to change. I brought your extra gear for Jessamy.”

  Kal gives me a secret smile before departing.

  “Any other Patron lord would have me whipped for switching to Efean so he can’t understand me,” Mis adds when the others are out of earshot. She plucks at the fabric draping my shoulder. “By the way, your dress is on backward.”

  I slap a hand over my face, but what can I do? Despite the seriousness of our situation, we both start laughing.

  Yet as I change, more sheepish than I thought I would be at slipping on Kal’s riding trousers, I ask her quietly, “I know why we need an Efean woman to introduce us at every village, but why did you volunteer to help us reach my father? You could be killed if Nikonos gets to us first.”

  A half moon casts the garden into a mass of stark shadows and pale contrasts. She picks up my dress and folds it neatly as she replies.