Khosa drops her eyes, as she always does whenever Dara is mentioned.
“I will search my memories, but it may take time,” he warns. “I’ve never come across a ship in them.”
“You’ve not looked,” Khosa says, shading her eyes against the sun as it sets. “Dara did not see many things until I asked her to find them. Your memories run deep and long, and are like a library where books sit unused until someone takes them up.”
“Some of my memories are less like a library and more like a pleasure house,” Donil says, and Khosa smiles to see his lighter side return.
“Perhaps, as in a library, the hand returns to the ones it likes best?” she teases, and Donil has the grace to blush at her implication.
“No,” he says, “the best memories I have are my own.” His eyes hold hers, and the waves come and go twice while they take each other in, his body as unreachable as the land Khosa feels pulling at her from across the sea.
“The histories . . .” Khosa’s voice fails her as she tries to break the silence, so heavy with want that words fall short. She clears her throat and tries again. “I believe we may find assistance in the histories.”
“How so?” Donil allows himself the luxury of taking her hand as they turn from the beach in the dying light, still hidden from view by trees brave enough to grow seaside.
“When I was a girl in Hyllen, my Keepers tried to occupy me indoors, so that I would not stray toward the sea. They had a book that told tales of a Stillean who wandered far, never wanting to tend sheep or bend metal to a sword. All he wished for was discovery, and his steps covered all the land, from the Stone Shore to Dunkai and the outposts of Sawhen.
“I believed he was only a myth until I came here, but then I used many of his maps while I studied the tide. The man saw much and drew well. Once he knew all the land like a Seer knows a familiar palm, he became restless. His only trade was in mapmaking, and he’d inked every known place. So, legend says, he took to the sea.”
“Don’t tell me.” Donil holds up his free hand to stop her. “Never to return?”
She raises an eyebrow and matches his dramatic tone. “Never to return.”
“Poor bastard,” Donil says, easing a stray hair behind her ear.
Khosa presses her face against his palm for a moment, then separates from him, reclaiming her hand as well when they clear the trees and approach the castle. “I will search the histories,” she goes on. “For him to take to the sea, he would have had to build a boat. There may be plans for it somewhere. Even a single line may give us what we need.”
“And teach you to sail?” Donil asks. “An impressive line.”
Khosa sighs again, but is too weary to feel anger and too happy in Donil’s company to darken their time together. “I know well enough that it may be useless. But what can one do in the face of futility?”
Donil falls behind as Khosa takes a side entrance, both of them knowing better than to return together. But she hears his response as the sand beneath her feet gives way to cobbled stone.
“What indeed?”
CHAPTER 13
Vincent
Vincent climbs the winding stairs to Madda’s tower, the stones to either side growing darker with accumulated years of incense as he goes. He can’t smell nilflower without thinking of his Seer; every fine silver strand of hair and each fold of her clothing exudes the fragrance of the seaside plant. He enters her chamber to see fresh bunches hanging from the ceiling to dry, their petals falling to be crushed underfoot or trapped in her wild mane.
Madda’s back is to him, but he’d wager his sword she knows he’s there. Stille may be his kingdom, but in this room, he is only a boy and she the ruler. Madda was born here, the Sight passing to her from her mother, along with the role of reading the royal palms of Stille, a task of fading importance in a world where all lived long lives and peace went unquestioned.
Donil and Dara mocked Vincent often as a child, their own lives with deep roots in a past they could view clearly at whim, while he peered through a haze of nilflower smoke for a glimpse of his future. Still he sought out Madda, this woman who was like a second mother, always hoping his palms had changed and that he would not find himself on the throne one day. Now he visits as the king, knowing that all Stillean lives are measured and war is on his heels.
“Whose step do I hear?” Madda calls over her shoulder from a chair by the fire. “It falls heavy as royalty, yet sounds like a boy I once knew.”
“Madda,” he says, preparing himself for whatever teasing she has in store.
She turns, feigning surprise at the sight of him. “So it is both I see, the boy become a king. You should wear the crown, child; it adds height.”
He sits at her table, and she raises an eyebrow. “Quick to the task, is it? You’ll not even bring an old woman news of the world outside before she bows her head over your hand?”
“The old woman knows more than I do of what goes on outside this room, even if she never leaves it,” he tells her. Though his mother shares with him a never-ending stream of talk from her trusted servants, it is Madda who tells him how the people of Stille fare. Her position may keep her confined in the tower, but other feet than his climb her steps, and often. For the price of news and a bit of choice gossip, Madda gives them a touch of the royal treatment: a glance at their palms and a breath of the future that she sees there. Though of late she has told him of unlined skin and children born without hope of living long.
“Have there been more babes born without lifelines?” he asks, and Madda plops into the chair across from him, its legs protesting years of such abuse.
“Ask me a different question, young king,” Madda says. “One with a kind answer.”
“Bring it ill or good, I must know,” Vincent says. “That is the way for a ruler.”
She sighs, resigned to the fact that he will not spar with her today. “I can tell you only of things I have seen, not of those which I have not. My room is windowless, and that list long.”
“There has been only the one, then,” he says, almost to himself, wondering if the child with smooth hands is an aberration, like the three-headed or those with misplaced mouths in their chests among the Feneen.
“You mistake my words,” Madda says.
“Then speak more clearly.”
“I liked you better when you weren’t royal,” she shoots back.
“I did as well.”
“Hmmm . . .” Madda eyes Vincent for a moment, tongue retrieving a wad of salium she has tucked inside her cheek. She watches him as she chews, and he waits.
“I cannot tell you what I haven’t seen in palms not yet formed,” she finally says. “The Stillean women who come to me of late do not show me their hands or the hands of their children. They come with little news and leave with nilflower.”
“Nilflower,” he repeats, thinking of Milda, the girl he released from her duties in his bed, and the nightly tea she drank to avoid growing a bastard in her belly.
“Stillean women are choosing not to bear children?”
“Some.” Madda shrugs. “Word of the child with unlined palms spread, and the wave . . . Well, not all believe that the Redeemed controls the sea now, rather than it her. Much like the sea itself, word of the rising tides has not been contained in these walls, young Vincent. Stilleans talk, and the words they speak are filled with fear. Women don’t wish to have babies only to see them float.”
“The tides rise, yes,” the king says. “But babies born in this lifetime would grow to make their own before the water wets their feet. It is a persistent fear, but a distant one.”
“What of a wave?” Madda asks. “Can you promise mothers that no wall of water will tear babies from their arms?”
“Sallin thinks we should build boats,” Vincent says, avoiding an answer. Madda spares him, too surprised to insist on an answer.
“Boats?” she asks. “What does a Stillean know of boats?”
“Nothing and no more,” he says. “But what do we know of warfare? Shall we face the Pietra and Feneen again, to be slaughtered as we fight for what land there is? Or do we sail in the hope of something else?”
“There is nothing else,” Madda says darkly. “I feel it in the deep parts of me.”
“You feel what you’ve been told, and the years have given it time to grow roots.”
Madda shakes her head, a dried curl of nilflower falling loose as she rises from her chair. “I would not see you do this, young king. Should bodies fall on the earth, they have the chance to be returned to it. A drowned man is only a sea-spine’s meal.”
“Madda.” Vincent lays his hands on her table. “Come and tell me what my palms say.”
The Seer closes her eyes, and the young king remembers too well the last reading she gave him. She takes her seat, thumbs tracing the fine skin of his hands, well known to her since his infancy. Carefully she folds his fingers back into a fist, her aged hands covering his.
“It is as it was before,” she says. “You are given to the sea.”
Vincent sighs heavily, resting his head on his forearms before looking back up to her. “In that case, I’d rather go with a boat beneath me.”
CHAPTER 14
Khosa
Khosa stands in the library and blows away the dust that has settled on the table she had claimed when she was known only as the Given.
“Scribes aren’t much for cleaning,” Merryl, her guard, observes. He too resumes his old place by the door, leaning against the heavy wooden frame.
Khosa sniffs the air and thinks she detects the slightest hint of decay, though she knows Cathon’s body was removed from the hidden passageway soon after the wave that made her queen. She inhales deeply, relishing the smell of his death if it indeed lingers.
“No, they aren’t,” she agrees, eyeing the piles of books that have remained untouched since she last worked here. “But you’ll find that the shelves are in order, if filthy.”
The fact that no one tidied up after her search into the histories for mentions of the high tides means that she won’t have to reread pages already seen. Any tale of the wandering Stillean who left on a boat would stand out in her mind, and she remembers no such story in their histories, only in the legends of her Hyllenian Keepers.
Khosa reaches for the first book on her forgotten pile to find dust resting there as well. Has it really been so long since she toiled over maps and mentions of the sea, prying through Dara’s memories to find some indication of how fast it was rising?
Dara. Khosa closes her eyes against the stab of her own memories and the bright-eyed girl she’d likely never see again. That the Indiri had cared for Vincent was obvious, but Khosa’s wedding to him was hastily announced and quickly performed so that Stille could find something to celebrate after losing so much. Dara had slipped away without a word to anyone save Donil, leaving Khosa with words to say and no one to speak them to.
“Tides,” Khosa says when her crown slides forward as she bends to move the next book. Already a trickle of sweat traces her spine, and her fingers are smeared with dirt. Merryl is quickly by her side and the book in his hands.
“Where would you like it, my queen?” he asks.
“Merryl,” Khosa says as she pushes her crown back into place, leaving a smear on her forehead. “You must call me by my name. I wear this to remind me of my role. I’d have someone to remind me of who I actually am.”
“Khosa, then,” he says. “Where would you like it?”
She straightens, surveying the room. “This pile here, and the one there, both can be moved over by the binding cord. I’ve seen every spot of ink in all of them. They hold nothing I need.”
“A harsh judgment, for books long toiled over,” says a voice from the door.
Khosa turns to find the Curator, his robes brushing against loose pages as he makes his way toward her.
“I count myself as one who toiled,” she says, curtseying in recognition of his status. He waves it away, but she detects the faintest flush of pleasure beneath his skin.
“And your work changed the ways of this world,” he says. “But those days are past. We know the sea rises and will not be stopped. What brings you back among dust and brittle pages?”
“Fear,” Khosa answers honestly.
“It leads many to action,” the Curator says, carefully lowering himself to sit on a tottering pile of books and resting his walking stick across his knees. “What shadows your thoughts?”
“Harta, the mapmaker,” she says, carefully watching the Curator for a reaction.
“Surely you’ve found plenty of his work in your earlier searches?”
“I have,” Khosa says. “But his maps do not interest me. At least, not the ones he made of land.”
The Curator glances at Merryl, but Khosa dismisses his concern. “You can speak freely in front of my guard. I trust him in all things. He knows even that the crown I wear is unearned.”
“Unearned, I think not,” the Curator insists. “Whether you are the Given or the Redeemed.”
“I fear that I am only Khosa, a girl who needs earth to stand on, but finds it is eroding beneath her feet.”
“Harta, too, looked for earth,” the Curator says. “But you’ll not find anything other than his maps here. They are the least dangerous of his thoughts.”
Khosa takes his meaning and crosses to be closer to him, where whispered words can travel discreetly. “And where might I look for truth?”
The Curator runs his hands along the bindings beneath him. “This room holds much, most of it true after a fashion. But there are other truths, ones that should not be left to lay where any curious hand could find them.”
“And they are kept where?” Khosa asks.
The Curator smiles and rises to his feet with a wince, leaning heavily on his cane. “Somewhere it will take time for these feet to reach, and I will need some assistance.” He puts an arm out to Khosa, and she steadies his elbow, the rough fabric of his robes keeping her skin from his, and the contact bearable.
“Merryl.” She calls for her guard, and he takes the Curator’s other arm as they wind through the castle, leaving wide halls for smaller ones and well-lit corridors for places the sconcelighters no longer travel.
“These must be dark truths indeed, to be so well hidden,” Merryl observes, his breath coming somewhat heavily as they begin to climb a spiral staircase, each step the Curator takes requiring more of his assistance.
“You’ll find nothing of great horror here,” the Curator says as they reach a small door cut into the wall. “Only tales that, if heeded, would rewrite much of what Stille considers to be set in stone.”
Khosa’s heart stutters as the Curator reaches into the folds of his robe for a key and opens the door. The room she enters has neither the grandness of the library nor the light. It is small, barely more than two shoulderwidths deep, and without windows. But the walls are lined with shelves holding loose papers, some clearly torn from the ponderous histories; some only scraps, thoughts hastily scribbled. She reaches for a piece at random and sees handwriting that she recognizes from the histories.
Runnar’s child by the Queen has come and gone. Born with no mouth, the Queen pinched its nostrils closed even as it lay smeared in birthblood. The child borne to Runnar’s dairymaid mistress this same night wails with the strength of many and rests now in the Queen’s arms, its mother dead in her chamber with the smell of barbar weed on her breath.
Khosa’s hand shakes, and the paper flutters to the floor, where the Curator traps it with his foot, reading the scrawled lines. “Ah, well . . . there are some horrors here, no doubt.”
“Runnar’s heir was a bastard?” Khosa asks.
“Yes, and raised by a murderess,” the Cura
tor confirms. “Bandwe did not permit her children to live, as all that came from her were better suited to the Feneen. She was a cunning woman, encouraging her husband to take others to his bed as soon as she knew she bore life inside her. In this way, she kept her crown and the myth of her own bloodline intact.”
“She was Feneen?” Khosa’s hand flutters to her chest, aware that no small part of her shares that same dark inheritance.
“Or one of her ancestors was,” the Curator says. “No one ever asked.”
“For no one ever knew,” Merryl adds, eyeing the shelves around them with distrust. “It is good that you tore the page away. If Stilleans knew that the line of a dairymaid had ruled them for generations—”
“They’d not cherish the fact,” the Curator finishes for him. “Yet they were ruled by such as that, and ruled well.”
“What else is here?” Khosa asks, scanning the shelves. “Do you remember anything of Harta?”
“I’m afraid these pages were often written in times of trouble and removed in haste. They were brought here in secret, by Scribes who felt that the truth—however harmful, should at least, continue to be—even if only in the dark, unread.”
“You wouldn’t allow them to be destroyed?” Khosa asks.
“No.” The Curator shakes his head. “Deceiving the people, as you well know, is sometimes in their best interest. But it does chafe the conscience. The Curator before me handled this key, knew this room, and undoubtedly his predecessor did as well. What it holds is sometimes unpleasant, but often it is only the most mundane of tales that would rewrite history.”
“I’ll need light,” Khosa says. “We must move them. These pages have escaped destruction; I’d not bring a flame into the room.”
Merryl begins gathering sheaves. “Shall I bring them to your chamber?”
“Yes.” Khosa nods. “I’d not trust them anywhere else. Unless . . .” Her eyes go to the Curator. “Is there anything here that would be disturbing to my husband?”