The Gantean (Tales of Blood & Light Book 1) (16 page)

I nodded.

“They hated her, and she hated them back. They used her hard in her youth. Those were desperate times for Gante and for the Hinge, not easy for any of us. She had a child, out of wedlock, fathered by an unknown Lethemian man. She wanted to keep it as her own. This happens to many mothers, especially with the first child.”

“No one ever spoke of her in my clan,” I said. “I didn’t know she had a child.”

“She was so heartbroken when they took her baby away. I understand, you see? I understand why you have kept your babies strung to you. I will not judge it. I questioned the traditions, too. Do you know I left Gante at the Elders’ command, originally? I left to search for her.”

“For the Cedna?”

“After she left. After they took the baby from her. They sent me out to bring her back.”

“You never found her?”

He sighed heavily. “I did not search well, truth be told. The Cedna—she did not want to be found, and I—I discovered I didn’t wish to go back to Gante.” He paused. “The sayantaq
world seduced me. I chose it. That makes all the difference.”

We had always been discouraged from leaving Gante by the Elders, because who wouldn’t choose the ease of southern life? They kept us bound to the island because they feared we would leave when presented with an alternative. So often we proved them right.

“Are you ashamed?” Atanurat asked into the silence. “Of choosing to keep them bound to you?”

I had no answer. The silence in Atanurat’s cabin stretched as Atanurat waited, his question palpable in the air.

“I have no choice,” I managed to whisper. “They need me.” It was easier to believe I had no option.

“You always have choices. If nothing else, coming south gives us choices. Thousands upon thousands of choices, so many it overwhelms.” He rose. “You are still young. You’ll understand soon enough.” He smoothed escaped hairs down into my braids, his touch an absolution.

N
orthern
Wind
docked
in the city of Orioneport, in Province Amar, to take on cargo. Later we all walked on the bluffs above the harbor where austringing men flew their birds over the water, reminding me of Tiercel in Entila. I recalled that he came from Amar, and I missed him. I returned early to the ship. The babies tired easily, and so did I.

Merkuur and the others had yet to return from the city even at darkfall. Only Atanurat had been left to man the
Northern Wind
.

I nested the twins together in their hanging bed. I had only once tried to make them sleep apart, and I had lost a full night’s sleep from their cries. Atanurat came into the cramped cabin as I picked up a needle to work on the twins’ new tunics. He said nothing, so I bent over my work.

I couldn’t concentrate with him in the room. This surprised me. Normally, I barely noticed when he came and went, so quiet were his movements, so still his presence. I attributed this to his shaman’s training, for such men learn early to move in the world leaving few traces.

Twice Atanurat bumped into me as he attempted to restring his hanging bed so that it would be closer to the tiny one I had put up for the twins.

“Would you like some help?” I asked.

He nodded. I took one end of the hammock to the eyebolt on the far wall of the cabin. With a few loops of the cord, I made it fast, drawing the end taut.

“Have you made young?” I asked. Most Gantean men enjoyed their fathering role, but Atanurat had grown unusually attached to the twins. Perhaps he pined for his own, if men did such a thing? I tried to imagine Costas pining for the twins and failed.

Atanurat gave me a pained look. “Not that I am aware of.”

Now that I had my own babies, I could not fathom the stoicism of Gantean mothers, who never held their own child in their arms, who might never nurse the life they had tended so carefully in their bodies. If my children were taken from me, I would go
mad
with rage and despair. I could not understand having children and not knowing of their existence, either. I bit my lip, thinking of Costas again. He might not pine, but he could certainly rage.

“If you did have children, would you want to know they were yours?” I asked to see what Atanurat thought of the Gantean tiguat, which denied all parents from knowing the children of their bodies.

He pushed the twins in their hammock. “It makes no difference to me whose blood your children carry.” He ran his fingers through the straggly mess of his braids, accidentally bumping the twins with his arm. “Sorry!”

I drew him to a seat on the floor beside me. “You’re a mess,” I said. “Your braids are unraveling.”

He patted at the braids. “They get messed when the winds are up.”

“My braids won’t.” I had already begun to loosen the twine from his hair. He wore a simple style most men favored for ease. I’d give him something much more intricate. His gleaming hair, when unbound, fell past his waist.

I had to stand up to start the braids fresh, weaving from the crown of his head in a braid of nine. I wound it tight and gathered the next section of hair to start the next piece.

“Were you damaged by the man, making the twins?” he asked.

“Damaged?” I said. “Do you mean my body? The birth was difficult, but the midwife said I might still be able to bear more children.” He did not ask his question about the birth, but I chose to answer as if he had.

“I don’t know what I mean.” Atanurat sighed. “I have seen enough of what has happened to the Gantean women forced into slavery here. My Gantean shaman master always said if the women of a clan were mistreated, it bespoke illness in the land itself, an unmet hunger of the Hinge. Gantean women have not been treated well in Lethemia. I wonder what it means for magic. What it means for the Cedna.”

I shivered. Now was the time for me to tell the task Nautien had given me, but I could not form the words. Not when I had lost the precious anbuaq.

“She still feeds the Hinge,” I said. “Because magic still works, mostly.” Yet I there had been no tormaqs for the twins, and I wondered if the Hinge was beginning to falter with no other Ganteans caring for it. Was one woman’s blood—however powerful—enough?

“Ganteans always thought we occupied such a special position in the world,” Atanurat mused, almost to himself. “We were the caretakers of a precious power, but sometimes—sometimes I have wondered how important our rituals really were? Look around you, here, in the sayantaq world? These mages pay no blood for their power, and yet they seem to have so much more power than we did.”

“The Elders said that was why we had to pay,” I reminded him. “Because they did not.”

He held my gaze. “I left Gante in anger. I felt used by the Elders. Used for the magic I had, used for my blood, just as the Cedna did. The Elders mistreated the Cedna, no matter what they said about her reasons for leaving. I saw, you understand. I saw that divide as it happened. At some point, there could be no reconciliation. They thought I would bring her home again, after she left. They thought our friendship could coerce her, which shows how little they knew. She never considered me a friend. I knew, setting out, that even if I found her, she would not return with me. I gave up before I even began. I got lost in the Lethemian world. Everything was so big, so bright, so different. I lay with many women. I indulged in all the southern pleasures. I let my tormaquine be stolen one night, too drunk to notice the thieves who cut it from my throat. I am so sayantaq I can never go back.

“I wasn’t forced away or enslaved. But how easy it has been to forget. I didn’t know how to resist this.” He waved. “I didn’t want to be reminded of what I had left. Through the years, I saw signs: Gantean women tied at throat and wrist, sold like cattle. Beaten, branded, and broken. I saw Gantean eyes looking out from Lethemian faces. I tried not to think about the matings that had made such children. I saw few of our men, and those I did were so defeated they could not meet my eyes. Before, they would have called me sayantaq; they would have been the ones judging me. Now I could see they were far more cooked than I. They had lost everything, even their pride. I still had that, because I chose what I became.”

I gripped his arm and tried to comfort him with a firm squeeze, a small support against his heavy words. My heart hammered against my ribs. He so closely echoed my own feelings—I had abandoned the Gantean duty I had been given. I closed my eyes. How could I get that anbuaq back? How could I find the Cedna? I did not know the first place to begin. I felt as lost as jetsam on a thrashing sea.

“I thought Gante was gone entirely,” Atanurat went on, “Crushed. But look at you, Leila, with your beautiful Gantean children who need a father for their tiguat. I wish I were more suitable for the job.” He fell silent, staring at his hands.

An urge to reassure him—and myself—filled me. “You have done more than you ever needed. Don’t let us trouble you. We can sleep elsewhere.” I faltered, feeling guilty for having brought this all upon him. We must have been like a bad breeze, sweeping into his cabin stinking of new milk and obligation, unearthing a past better left buried.

“No!” He sat up. “That’s not what I meant. Stay. I just want—I want to be right for you, for these children, but I’m not sure how.”

My hands loosened on his hair. I grasped his hints. He would never say it outright; no Gantean would. He thought he was too old and too broken. I saw what he wanted; he sought a way to recapture a purer past by forming a new beginning.

But I could not feel for Atanurat that way, not because he did not deserve my affection, and not because I did not believe him worthy. An ung-aneraq—a bond of blood and breath—already bound me. I was tangled up with Costas Galatien whether I liked it or not. At the moment, the cord between us felt like a shackle.

I hated the disappointment in Atanurat’s silence.

“Let me finish your hair,” I said, ignoring the fraught emotions in favor of busyness.

But his strong fingers prevented me. Gently but firmly Atanurat pulled me towards him, so that he nearly held me on his lap. He let one hand continue up over the curve of my shoulder, down across the ridge of my collarbone, and into the hollow of my throat. As if he had studied where my tormaquin
e
should have rested, had I still possessed it. He understood all I had lost. He had lost more.

He took my chilled fingertips into his rough hands to warm them. I put my cheek against his chest. We sat like that for a long time; he did nothing but stroke my hair, yet his touch was an act of worship: soft and quiet and devoted. He kissed me only once, on the top of my head, as softly as solace.

O
n our eighth
day at sea after leaving Orioneport, the winds whipped into a full storm in a matter of moments. A huge
thwap
rocked the ship as though we’d hit something.

Shouts echoed from the decks, but the words were lost on the wind. I tucked Tiriq into his tiny sealskin cloak and his woolen blanket, did the same for Tianiq, and arranged them both in the carrier I had woven in Anastaia.

The boat veered wildly, flinging me into the wall of my cabin. Another vicious
thwap
rang ominously through the air. It sounded like breaking wood.

“Leila!” Miki’s voice broke through the rising roar of sleet and wind. I staggered towards the cabin door. Another furious heave rocked the boat, launching me into the narrow hall. I fell; only fast reflexes let me clutch my babies with one hand and catch myself with the other. The babies screamed. I had barely made it to my feet when the ship lurched again. I fell and crawled towards the steps that led to the deck.

“Leila!” Miki grabbed my arms to help me through the hatch. “We’re damaged. The hull is leaking. Something hit us, from underwater. As soon as the winds die down, Merkuur wants us to take the escape boats.”

“What if the winds don’t die down?” I screamed back at him.

“Storms like this are unheard of in the Parting Sea. It’s the calmest sea in the world! And it’s nearly summer! It’s a freak storm. It’ll be short.”

I shuddered.

“Stay here,” Miki said, leaving me at the top of the stairs to the deck. “When it starts to die down, come up, and we’ll go.”

I leaned against the steep stairs, listening to the shriek of the wind. Tiriq and Tianiq exhausted themselves with their cries. I stroked their wisps of black hair, trying to soothe them, but their wails only intensified.

Like the ship beneath me, the world lurched. Bright bloodlights
encroached on the edges of my vision. This sudden shift had happened to me once before, in the ballroom in Galantia, when the Cedna’s magic had dissolved the divisions of the Layers almost completely.
What was happening now?

I ran onto the deck. Plunged into Yaqi, I saw the truth of the storm. Birds cast from black bloodlight beat the air into gale winds with their massive wings. Waves roiled and smacked against the hull without rhythm, a chaos of water. Below the surface a vast tentacled creature glistened like blackstone, a white bloodlight diamond in its center. I’d seen that black bloodlight with its diamond heart before, at the Brokering.
The Cedna.
The creature threw out an arm, pushing at
Northern Wind’s
hull as though batting a child’s toy. The huge beast appeared endless in the lashing sea.

The wind howled again.

No, the howl came from the creature, breaching the surface to keen, bandying the ship like forgotten jetsam. The beast opened its wet jaws to sound its gruesome call again. Molten blackstone flowed from its mouth.

I stood frozen in horror. The creature snapped its head in my direction.

I tried to pull back from the ship’s edge, too late. A black tentacle flew at me, snaked down the front of my baby net, and plucked a precious orb. I beat at the tentacle with my hands, but they could not touch the bloodlight; they passed directly through it. A second gleaming tentacle rose above the golden ball of bloodlight snared in the creature’s grip.

I screamed. It had Tianiq, but I couldn’t touch the thing. I could do nothing to stop it! All over again, I felt that wretched powerlessness that had first struck me when the Entilans had cut my hair and branded me. The world spun around me, and nothing I did could slow it or shift its course.

Even so I tried. I groped for the black tentacles, though my hands passed through them as though they were ghosts or just light from a lantern. Next I tried to reach the golden light that I knew was Tianiq, but the creature lifted her too far above me.

A tentacle transformed into a blackstone edge that looked like an ulio. The appendage slashed once, almost gently, severing the bloodlight umbilicus that connected me to Tianiq’s golden orb. A ripple of bright light obscured my vision.

I was
thrown to the far side of the ship, screaming.

“Tianiq!” I cast about wildly, searching for her. Her absence gouged me as though the beast had cut into my flesh. Panic welled, overflowed. Where was she?

A fast, moving blur yanked me back from the gunwale’s ropes and flew past me. Atanurat’s strong body arrowed into the raging waters below. For the first time in my life, I sobbed, heedless of Miki speaking beside me, his voice nearly drowned by my cries and the wailing wind.

“He’s got her!” Miki yelled. “He’s got her.” I kept sobbing as stronger arms than Miki’s brought me to my feet.

“I sent Pamiuq to get them in an escape boat.” Merkuur said. “Atanurat can hold his own in the water. He’s a strong swimmer. He’s got your girl. He’s got Tianiq.”

Rain sheeted down. I couldn’t stop crying. Merkuur pulled me up by the armpits and shook me. “Pull yourself together! We have to leave.
Wind
’s going down. If we don’t leave now, we go down with her.”

“But—but—Tianiq,” I cried. The horrible slice of the blackstone tentacle replayed again and again in my head. Where I once had a visceral awareness of my daughter, there was now empty space. She was gone.

Merkuur pushed me towards the escape
boats arranged on the deck.