Children of Earth and Sky (19 page)

She expected her grandfather to urge caution again, but he was silent. She said, “It isn't mine to tell.”

“That she's a spy?”

That surprised her, but not as much as he might have expected. Danica shrugged. “All Seressinis are spies, no?”

“Perhaps. But not—if I am correct—with someone to report to and access to powerful people. She'd have had that access as the doctor's wife.”

“She doesn't have it now.”

“I was going to invite her to stay in our home.”

Danica blinked. “I see,” she said.

“My father and brother both sit on the Rector's Council. Powerful enough to help her. I'm the younger son, everyone ignores me.”

She doubted that. She said, “Is it any kind of concern, if she is in your home?”

“And spies? It is all right.” He grinned. “Even if she reports on the furnishings, I am not unhappy to have Leonora Miucci under my roof.”

“I'm sure,” she said.

He let his smile fade. “But what is it I need to know? You haven't said.”

You needed to trust someone.

“She will refuse to go back to Seressa.”

She'd startled him this time, it showed. “What? Why?”

“I don't know.”

He smiled again, more gently. “You aren't a good liar.”

“Maybe not. Makes me trustworthy, doesn't it?”

He shook his head. “Not if secrets are confided. I may need you to be able to lie.”

“I can learn,” said Danica. “But this isn't my story to tell. That's another kind of trust.”

She saw him look to where the other woman stood watching Dubrava come nearer in the light.

“You think she was going to jump, before?”

That was unexpected. Danica said, “I do.”

“But not now?”

“Not just now, no.”

“And you won't tell me more?”

Danica shook her head. “She does need help, though.”

“And you would help someone from Seressa?”

“She's not. You heard her.”

“Yes,” he said. “They aren't all born there.”

Danica shrugged again. “I am only asking. I can't make you do anything.”

But she wanted him to, she realized. She had more than her own life to try to secure here. She might even have a friend. Lacking family, exiled, that was next best, wasn't it? And you didn't reveal what a friend had confided: that she'd never been married to the man she'd been coming here with.

In the event, before the
Blessed Ingacia
berthed, amid gulls wheeling and questions back and forth, before the ramps slid out and down to the wharf, Marin Djivo had invited the lady Leonora Miucci to stay, during her time in Dubrava, at his family home, as a small, admittedly inadequate gesture of courtesy and regret for the loss of her beloved husband.

She was graciously pleased to accept.

I
t was hardly necessary to explain to anyone how tidings came so swiftly to her at the Daughters of Jad retreat on Sinan Isle in the harbour of Dubrava.

The retreat was celebrated, hundreds of years old. There were mosaics in its sanctuary that attracted visitors (who made donations, of course). The degree of luxury here was her own achievement, however, since becoming Eldest Daughter.

She had spent a long time nurturing power and connections, lines of awareness reaching in many directions from the isle. And one of the things power meant was not having to explain what she chose not to explain.

Seressa valued that in her, and rewarded her for it, generously. Her name was Filipa di Lucaro. Or, rather, that was the name she used.

She had been here almost two decades, but knew from the eyes of men seeing her that she remained arresting and attractive. They also looked afraid, quite often. Another matter, and entirely good. She still had the appetites of the young, enough to be selective concerning the attributes of those men employed, variously, on the isle.

One of the gardeners, her current favourite, was a mute—his tongue had been cut out by corsairs after he was taken on a ship they raided. That enforced silence was among the reasons he was favoured, of course. He'd escaped an Asharite galley, she didn't know how, and she didn't actually care, in any case. He was a lover of considerable stamina and pleasing proportion. She occasionally wished he still had his tongue, but one couldn't have everything one desired (alas!). He had also been of use in other ways, when people needed to be discreetly killed, for instance, which did sometimes happen in this sad and challenging world.

Her own history no one here knew. She was thought to be from near Rhodias, born into a family stretching back centuries, which was what she wanted thought. Her value to Seressa would be lessened if it were known where she'd actually been born and what she'd risen from to be what she was.

She was Eldest Daughter on Sinan, the religious leader here. She was also called, by some of the women, the Snake Goddess. She wasn't supposed to know that but she did, of course. She didn't mind the name. Eliciting apprehension was useful in so many ways.

When the Djivo family's
Blessed Ingacia
appeared on a morning in spring, coming in past the isle, she saw it herself from her terrace.

She was out there in morning light after prayers, sitting with their venerable and honoured long-time guest. That guest, as it happened, was the one person she herself feared, but she believed she'd been successful in not letting it be seen by the older woman.

She was wrong about that, in fact. Her guest had her own subtlety and had nurtured it for longer and in more challenging circumstances.

She had inquiries made about the
Blessed Ingacia
in the city later that morning, and so they were, on Sinan, among the first to learn that an artist from Seressa had arrived, and a doctor's wife—but not the doctor, who was dead.

It was also reported by one of the Eldest Daughter's sources that there was a Senjani raider, a woman, on board the ship for some reason. She was rumoured to be the one who had killed Seressinis earlier this spring at Senjan.

This was interesting, all of it, and required thought. Filipa di Lucaro was a quick thinker, and not at all indecisive.

Invitations were conveyed.

She was surprised when the Senjani woman arrived three days later with the others, but sometimes the god was generous to those who served him in his holy places.

Marin knows it can take weeks or even months to be received at the courts of Asharias or Obravic. Rhodias and Seressa are more expeditious in granting audiences, because the High Patriarch in the one feels beleaguered and the Council of Twelve in the other is aware that delay can cost money. He is less certain about other courts and cities. Would like to see them. His dreams sometimes involve being in places where he isn't known.

His own republic feels both beleaguered
and
conscious of commerce and speed and their relationship. He is unsurprised therefore when Danica Gradek is summoned to her audience before the Rector's Council (the full council, both his father and his brother will be sitting) only two days after the
Blessed Ingacia
comes into harbour.

The Senjani are an ongoing source of debate here, invariably angry. It is one thing for Dubrava to have shrewd ways to insure ships and cargoes, dividing risks. It is another to have a doctor they'd just hired be murdered on one of those ships.

Surviving by guile and craft (and bribery and a self-abasing diplomacy in all directions), Dubrava resents and sometimes hates
Seressa, the vastly grander republic in this world of monarchs and emperors and princes and a khalif—but they cannot afford to truly offend.

Seressa is their principal market. It is as simple as that. A truth that carries defining implications for a small city-state depending on trade and the sea. They do well here. But they can be destroyed at any moment if the balancing of the world (the balancing they try to shape in the world) changes.

On the other hand, the Senjani in their town to the north along this island-strewn coastline enjoy the protection and sometimes the praise of the Emperor Rodolfo, and Dubrava also sends bribes and gifts to that court. Not, accordingly, a place to cause offence, either.

There is, as a result, delicacy attached to this matter of the Senjani woman who has arrived here by her own choice, and has requested to be received by the Rector's Council.

It is entirely possible to have her hanged by their executioner, or handed over to Seressa. The Seressinis may have a particular grievance against this woman. She is alleged to have killed a number of them this spring, and the fact that she's a woman adds humiliation to anger.

Humiliation of Seressa isn't something Dubrava will regret, but the world is as it is, and that is not a view that can be voiced in public.

Marin Djivo would prefer to find all of this amusing, to regard it with cultivated detachment. He finds himself, escorting Danica Gradek to the palace, unable to achieve this state of mind.

Formally, she is escorting him. She wears Djivo crimson and blue, a paid guard of the family—his idea for keeping her alive long enough to get her to the council. Because where public execution might be compromised by politics, a quiet bit of murder has often been a solution, for some. Being one of the Djivo retainers is a measure of protection against that.

Danica carries her bow and arrows, as his guard. She'll need to surrender those at the palace. Marin realizes he's forgotten to warn her about that. This isn't someone who will have any experience of palaces.

With them are Drago Ostaja, their captain, to give his account if needed, and also the injured woman in this affair: the family's guest, the distracting Leonora Miucci.

She no longer seems disposed to end her life, at least. She has been quiet, and impeccably courteous, since they docked. She has made it clear to the Djivos (to go no further, as yet) that she will decline to return to Seressa which is what she
should
be doing—or what they should be doing with her. She also declines to explain. She is, therefore, another woman posing a diplomatic problem. And both are in the Djivo house. His mother is unenthused. The Rector's Council is likely to feel the same.

His father, normally not in the least distractible, seems to be smitten by the doctor's widow. Chastely and respectably, of course. His father and brother never do anything that is not respectable. The senior Djivo is genuinely pious; the older son is genuinely too frightened to transgress in any significant manner.

Marin often imagines himself living far away.

There are many people in the Straden as they make their way from the Djivo mansion towards the Rector's Palace by the harbour. Their progression is an entertainment, Marin knows.

It is a bright morning, the best of springtime weather. Summer in Dubrava is hot. People withdraw if they can from the city to the countryside along the coast, or the islands. They visit each other, drink wine cooled in cellars, awaiting the autumn harvest and cooler weather. Marin usually tries to be on board one of their ships going somewhere, anywhere.

Those they walk past stare with frank curiosity at the women—the raider with her bow rather more than the Seressini widow.
Their expressions are not welcoming. Leonora Miucci will not be unusual here, though younger women will be eyeing the cut of her black gown and considering changes to their own. Seressa shapes fashion in Dubrava even more than the courts do.

But the Senjani woman, with her long stride and straight posture, this one is worth staring at. She has killed at least one man, possibly many. She has also refused to change her raider's garb, wears it under the crimson and blue overtunic, though she has allowed the household servants to clean it for her, and has been extremely happy to bathe, twice already. Her hair is pinned up, and covered by a leather hat. Her dog is with her. Marin has come to understand that he always is.

The dog and the woman, he notes, are both alert as they walk. It would not be unheard of for someone to kill an enemy in the street, and Seressa might have made plans for her already. They know there are Seressini agents here, they have guesses as to some of them, but Marin's father has often noted that if they knew all the spies Seressa would be less than it was thought to be.

And it isn't, he always adds.

The Matko women are just ahead, he sees. They are on the street, enduring the sunlight for a better view of them. He looks at Kata, pretty and bright, and wonders, perhaps unfairly, if she is going to hurry off to order a dress made in the style worn by the Seressini woman while she still has the details in mind.

As they pass he nods politely at the three of them, mother and two daughters. He realizes that Kata's eyes are on him, not Leonora Miucci or the Senjani, and her expression is unexpectedly concerned.

Women in Dubrava tend not to do unexpected things, in his experience—once you accepted that some enjoy the company of men in their bedchambers. That this was not, in fact, to be seen as unexpected.

An intense gaze on a morning street is, however. It is likely that
she and her mother have him marked as marriage material, and seeing him walking beside a young, suddenly widowed Seressini woman of undeniable appeal has unsettled her.

He is too much on edge this morning (though he doesn't like admitting that, even to himself) to be as amused as he might normally be. He has no idea what will happen before the council. It is entirely possible that Danica Gradek will be ordered executed. She raided a Dubravae ship, the raiders took goods and a ransom and killed a doctor coming here. You died for such things, or went to the galleys. They wouldn't send a woman to the galleys, they were not barbarians, but they could hang her and no one could ever say it was unjust or even harsh, despite the small redress she had made in killing one of her own.

He's been trying to sort out his own speech for this morning. He isn't uncomfortable speaking in public, but he's aware that these words may have a life suspended at the end of them, as on a rope. He also has no idea what Danica Gradek will say, he doesn't have any understanding of this woman.

Just then, to add to his joy this morning, she stops in the street. She looks back. At the Matko women.

They all come to a halt.

“What are you doing?” Drago mutters to her. “We're exposed here. You're a guard, remember?”

“I remember,” she says. She is still looking back. Then she says, “Stay with Gospodar Djivo, keep your eyes open. Signora Miucci, will you be good enough to walk with me?”

And Leonora does so, unhesitatingly—leaving the men alone in the street.

“Did she just give me an order?” Drago says. His voice—and expression—would be amusing on any other day.

“I believe she did,” Marin says. “Go ahead. Guard me. Wits about you, Captain.”

He is watching the women as they go back the way they've just come. He sees them stop in front of the Matkos, mother and daughters.

He doesn't understand what this is about, at all. That rarely happens to him.

—

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

Hush, please, zadek. Listen. Help me, but hush.

She didn't know cities, crowds like this at all, it was taking some effort not to let apprehension show. But
something
in the look of one of the three they'd just passed—a mother and daughters, she assumed—had sounded a warning for her.

As they walked back, she said to Leonora, “The younger one, we need her alone for a moment. Can you?”

“Easily,” said her new friend. Her only friend.

Leonora smiled charmingly at the three women they approached. She stopped in front of the younger one, who was pretty and soft and had very good eyes. Leonora let her gaze go up and down the girl's dress. Danica had no thoughts regarding the dress. None at all.