Sword and Verse (2 page)

First came Gyotia, many-limbed and all-seeing, born from the mountains of hidden fire into the darkness. Keeping only two arms and two legs, he molded the land from his other limbs and guarded it jealously as his own flesh.

“All is mine,” he said into the wide silence.

I NEVER KNEW
Tyasha ke Demit, but her execution started everything.

On the day the king sentenced her to die, I was with the other palace slave children, cleaning the high friezes in the Library of the Gods. Naka and Linti wouldn't stop talking about the execution—in low voices, of course, so the guards far below would not hear and shake our precarious platforms. The Qilarite guards never liked being assigned to the Library on cleaning days, and strictly enforced the rule of silence.

“How long before she dies?” whispered Linti anxiously, brushing her white-blond hair out of her face.

Naka shrugged and looked over at me. “How many times will they burn her, Raisa?”

My stomach turned. “Hush,” I told them, too loudly, earning myself a shake from the guards below. I was lying on my back cleaning the ceiling, and so only had to grab the platform's side
to maintain my balance. Arnath child slaves did not stay alive as long as I had unless they learned how to stay atop the platforms. Many children had fallen to their deaths on the stone Library floor—the thick rugs were always removed before the cleaning. No one wanted to sully the carpets trod by the gods with the blood of Arnath slaves.

I couldn't fault the younger children for their grim fascination; Naka was eight and Linti only six, and it wasn't every day that a prince's Tutor was executed for treason. I'd heard the rumblings about it all day in the palace. The king had ordered that the whole city attend, even—or perhaps especially—the slaves. For, though the Tutors held a privileged place in Qilara, they were still Arnath, like us. They wore the green clothing of slaves too, even if they also wore white. Tyasha would die, and another Arnath girl would be chosen to take her place as Tutor-in-training.

I slid along the platform, leveraging my weight against the edge so that I could push my rag into the molding above the statue of Gyotia, king of the gods. Though I was still small, my body had finally seemed to realize that I was almost fifteen, and had begun to soften and develop that year. No doubt the guards would soon complain about my weight on the platforms, and I would be sent to serve in one of the temples; the only Arnathim permitted to live in the palace were the Tutors and the children who cleaned the high places.

When I dropped my rag to signal to the guards, they turned the crank and lowered the platform. I dangled my legs over the side as it descended, watching the white friezes give way to the honeycomb of openings full of letters to the gods written by
all the kings of Qilara. The letters, I had been told, were written in the higher order script known only to the king and his heir—and, I thought with a jealous pang, their Tutors. Tyasha ke Demit, Arnath though she was, would have been able to read the letters—if she had ever been allowed in the Library.

The higher order symbols were forbidden even to the nobles, who proudly called themselves the Scholar class because they alone could read and write. But the Scholars were only permitted to know the lower order writing. Qilarites of the merchant and peasant classes, like the guards, couldn't even learn that.

For a common slave like me, writing even one symbol would mean death.

Still, the Library of the Gods fascinated me. The walls were rounded, save for the straight one at the northern end. There stood an enormous statue of Gyotia, built into the wall itself, one face staring out over the Library, the other looking out to sea on the outside wall of the palace. Statues of the other gods ringed the Library.

My eyes were drawn against my will to the statue by the door: Gyotia's son Aqil, god of sacred learning, triumphantly holding a branding rod to the cheek of his mother, bound and gagged at his feet. Sotia, goddess of wisdom, whose crime had been wanting to give the gift of writing to all people. Statues all over the city repeated the image; some were even painted to contrast Sotia's pale skin with the olive skin of the other gods. And Sotia always had a small nose and close-set eyes, with hair that waved like mine. The Qilarites always showed her as Arnath.

No matter that it was forbidden—I recognized the symbol
Aqil was branding onto Sotia's cheek.
Rai.
The first part of my name, as my father had taught me to write it so long ago.

Kiti, his brown curls gray with dust, was already cleaning Aqil's statue, so I plied my rag to the statue of Suna, goddess of memory. At eleven, Kiti was next oldest of the children. He and I were the only ones left from the long-ago raid on our island. He'd been a toddler when the raiders came, so he didn't remember the Nath Tarin, the northern islands where the Learned Ones secretly passed on ancient teachings between Qilarite raids.

Being in the Library, however, only brought more back for me. My strongest memories were of papermaking days, when the whole village would abandon crops and help lay and press reeds. We'd share a feast while the paper lay drying in the sun, spread across tables, rocks, and branches, like thousands of clouds fallen to earth. When the paper had dried, the children would gather it up. I'd loved the soft heft of it under my fingers, like mist turned solid.

As I polished the statue, my eyes strayed over the letters to the gods in the slots covering the walls from the bottoms of the friezes down to the floor. The edges of the letters were yellowed, crinkled in places. I wondered if they were as soft as the paper we'd made on the islands. As soft as the page that held my heart-verse, given to me by my father on my sixth birthday as a symbol of who I was, who I was born to be. It was to have been the first thing I would learn to write.

The raiders had come two days later.

My fingers tingling with the memory of the soft island paper, I glanced at the guards; most were busy watching the children on
the platforms. Keeping my eyes on the nearest guard, I reached out my left hand, angling my body to hide my arm. My fingers connected with the edge of a scroll. I looked down at it. It felt brittle, like paper that had been left out too long in the sun and had begun to shrivel. Useless for writing, my father would have said.

“What are you doing?”

I froze.

“What are you doing?” the guard's voice barked again. Before I could move, he grabbed my shoulder and threw me to the ground. The scroll I'd been touching slid from its slot and fell to the floor, unrolling and revealing lines of symbols.

The guard stared at the letter. Two others, who'd run over at his shouts, skidded to a halt beside him and gaped at me.

My heart thudded. I swallowed hard and tried to explain that it had been an accident, but all that came out was a squeak that resounded in the silent Library. The other children watched with round eyes, their cleaning forgotten.

The guards exploded into shouts that rang from the bare floors and stone walls. I only made out a few words, but I understood immediately that, edgy as they were in the wake of Tyasha ke Demit's treason, frightened as they were of being accused of breaking the law themselves, they would never believe that what I'd done was accidental.

Two guards hauled me to my feet. Another, who seemed to be in charge, barked orders and led the two gripping my arms out of the Library. I caught a glimpse of Linti on her stomach, gripping the edges of her platform as the guard below gave it a sharp shake.

Out in the hallway, the only sound was the strike of the guards' boots against the tiles as they dragged me to the left—toward the dungeons, I realized with a wave of dizziness. Of course we were going that way—Tyasha ke Demit and her accomplices were there, awaiting their execution the following day. Would they condemn me too, burn me beside her?

I swayed on my feet at the thought, but the guards just pulled me along as though I were a very light, very dangerous sack of grain. Black spots clouded my vision.

Someone was walking toward us from the direction of the dungeons; it wasn't until the guards knelt, pushing me to my knees, that the blurry shape resolved into a handsome young man with straight black hair and olive skin. Prince Mati. Fear swallowed me whole.

“What's this?” said the prince. I peeked up at him. Though he was not much older than I was, he seemed impossibly tall. Whenever I had seen Prince Mati before, he'd been smiling as though amused by some private joke. But he wasn't smiling now.

The lead guard cleared his throat. “This slave has committed an act of treason, Your Highness. We are taking her to Captain Dimmin.” I cringed.

Prince Mati's brow furrowed. “What has she done?”

“She removed a letter from its place in the Library of the Gods, Your Highness.”

“How do you know this?” said the prince sharply.

The guard to my left spoke up. “I saw it, Your Highness. She took the letter as she was cleaning the statue of Suna.”

A small noise of indignation escaped my throat. The prince
turned to me at once, cold interest in his eyes. My face flooded with heat. “Is this true?” he asked.

I shook my head. My voice was barely a whisper. “It . . . it was an accident. I brushed against the letter and it fell out.” Of course, this was not exactly true, but I couldn't very well tell them that I'd been distracted thinking of papermaking on the Nath Tarin.

Prince Mati's eyes narrowed. I forced myself to meet his gaze now, so he might believe me.

At last the prince turned to the ranking guard. “It seems to me,” he said evenly, “that troubling my father with such a trivial matter would only annoy him, given the current situation. Let her go.”

“Your Highness?”

“Unless you'd prefer to irritate the king,” said the prince in an offhand manner, studying his fingernails. I realized, with a jolt of surprise, that he was not nearly as sure of himself as he wanted to appear.

Nevertheless, the three guards shifted uncomfortably, and I knew why—the king had banished the guards assigned to Tyasha after they'd failed to keep her from treasonous activities. He might punish these men for not watching me more closely.

The ranking guard cleared his throat. “No, Your Highness.”

“Good,” said Prince Mati with a smile. “I will apprise Captain Dimmin of the situation personally, so you needn't worry about that. Let her go.”

“Er . . . Your Highness,” said the ranking guard, almost timidly. “The letter that she . . . that is, the letter is still on the floor of the Library.”

Prince Mati nodded and led the way back to the Library. The guards held my arms loosely now, as though the sack of grain had ceased to be dangerous because the prince said it was so.

As Prince Mati stepped into the Library, the children's whispers stopped, and a row of fearful faces peered over the platforms. Kiti hovered behind the great wooden case at the center of the Library, a guard monitoring him so closely that he could hardly move his arm to clean.

The letter lay half unrolled beside Suna's statue, my abandoned rag a few feet away. The guards and children had all moved as far away from the letter as possible, a barrier of fear around it like the ones around victims of the coughing sickness on the city streets.

The prince picked up the letter. Both guards' grips on my arms tightened painfully.

Prince Mati held the paper out to me. “Do you see what it says?” he asked.

I averted my eyes. I could see the symbols, of course, but they meant nothing to me.

The prince turned the letter around and read it silently. The corners of his mouth turned up. Suddenly I wanted to smack him. It was, perhaps, fortunate that the guards still gripped my arms.

Prince Mati let out a low laugh as he rerolled the letter and tucked it back into its slot. He looked around at the children, then at me. “How old are you?”

My voice did not work properly; it was still barely above a whisper. “Fourteen, Your Highness.”

“A little old for Library duty, isn't she?” he said to the ranking guard.

“Mistress Kret is responsible for the children, Your Highness. I would be happy to tell her you said so,” said the guard. He seemed relieved to have someone else to blame.

“I rather think,” said Prince Mati coldly, “that it's Laiyonea ke Tirit you ought to be informing. Or have you forgotten that a new Tutor-in-training is to be selected?”

The guard spluttered apologies, but I watched the prince. Something in his tone had made me suspect that he was as appalled by Tyasha's planned execution as I was. He caught me staring and straightened his tunic.

“Take care of it,” he said, cutting off the guard's babbling with an imperial gesture.

“Yes, Your Highness,” said the guard, but the prince had already left.

Only when the guards let go of me did I realize that it was over, and I wasn't going to the dungeons.

Still, the Qilarite head servant, Emilana Kret, denied me supper and threatened to give me five nights in the Stander, the tiny, cramped closet in the corner of the farthest bathhouse, where even the smallest child could not sit down, only lean against the damp stone walls and kick at the creatures scuttling around in the black darkness. As it turned out, Linti smuggled me some cheese, and I only had to endure one night in the Stander. The next day, after Tyasha's execution, I was summoned to join the girls being tested to take Tyasha's place.

Linti clung to me before I left, but I whispered comforting words and begged her to stop crying so that Emilana would not hit her. Then I kept my head down as the guards led me away to
join the other girls. I couldn't let anyone see how much I wanted to learn to write. I'd long ago learned that wanting things too much was a sure way to have them taken from you.

The foul-smelling potion they made us drink turned everything into a haze, and I fumbled through the testing, scribbling symbols that meant nothing to me, while the faces of the watching council members blurred together.