Powers (15 page)

Many of the bodies we carried were those of city guards. They had paid a high cost for their brave foray.

All that night there was a kind of feeble riot, as both citizens and slaves poured out the open gates to plunder the food stores of the Casicaran army, and the Etran soldiers posted to guard them gave way before the pleas and the press of starving people, many of whom they knew. Some soldiers even brought up supply wagons to bring grain into the city. People fought over the supplies, mobbing the grain carts. Order was established only when daylight came, and then only by the use of violence—whips, cudgels, swords. In the morning light I saw the horror on the soldiers’ faces as they looked at their people, the men and women of their city, swarming over a rack of sheep carcasses like maggots on a dead rat.

Slaves were ordered to their owner’s house by noon, on pain of death. So I left the Shrine of the Forefathers with only time to thank old Reba and to accept from Mimen his little handwritten copy of Caspro’s poem.

“Don’t let Everra see it,” he said with his wry smile, and not knowing how to thank him I only stammered, “No, no, I won’t . . .”

It was the first book I’d ever owned. It was the first thing I’d ever owned. I called what I wore my clothes, the desk I used in the schoolroom I called my desk, but in fact they were not mine, they were the property of the House of Arca, as I was. But this book, this was mine.

W
HEN
Y
AVEN CAME HOME
he greeted the Father and Mother with suitable affection and decorum and headed straight for the silk rooms. It was wonderful to see how Sallo bloomed and shone, now that he was back. Yaven wasn’t as thin as most city people were, but he’d been through hard times too, and was weathered and toughened and tired. He told us about the campaign, me and Sallo and Sotur and Astano and Oco, all back in the schoolroom with Everra, like the old days. . . . The forces of Morva had been reinforced by an army from Gallec, the Votusans and Oscans had joined them; Etra’s army had been hard put to withstand attackers on so many fronts. There had been, Yaven thought, some mistakes, some confusion in command, but no betrayal. The Etrans could not come to the relief of their city till they defeated the enemies who would have followed them right to the walls. Then they came as fast as they could. They crossed the Morr at night, making a boat bridge, so as to take the besieging army by surprise from the east, the unexpected direction.

“But we had no real idea how hard it was for you here,” he said. “I still can’t imagine what it was like . . .” Astano showed him a piece of “famine bread” she had kept: a brownish wafer like a chip of wood, made from a little barley or wheat meal, sawdust, earth, and salt. “We had plenty of salt,” she said. “All we needed was something to put it on.”

Yaven smiled, but the grim lines were set in his face. “We’ll make Casicar pay for this,” he said.

“Oh,” said Sotur, “pay . . . Are we merchants, then?”

“No, little cousin. We’re soldiers.”

“And the wives of soldiers, and the lovers and mothers and sisters and cousins of soldiers . . . And what is it Casicar will pay us?”

“It’s how it is,” Yaven said gently. His hand was on Sallo’s hand, as they sat side by side on the schoolroom bench.

Everra spoke of the honor of the city, the insult to the power of the Ancestors, the vengeance due. Yaven listened to him with us, but said nothing more of such matters. Presently he asked me about my time at the Shrine, and the ancient documents that we had been rescuing. As I was telling him, I saw in his absorbed face the face of the boy who loved the epics and the ballads, who had led us to build Sentas on those summer afternoons. It came into my head to wonder what Yaven would make of the “new poets.” Maybe someday, when he was Father of Arcamand and I was the teacher in this classroom, I would give him
The Transformations
to read and he would discover that new world . . . but I couldn’t quite imagine it. Still, the thought moved me to tell him how we’d recited
The Bridge on the Nisas
in the barrack, early in the siege, how all the men had roared it out together—“Beneath the walls of Etra”—We ended up, all of us in the schoolroom, reciting the ballads, with Yaven the lead voice; and some of my skinny little pupils crept in to listen, round-eyed and wondering at the tall soldier laughing as he declaimed, “Then fled the Morvan soldiers, the men of Morva ran . . .”

“Again and again,” Sotur whispered. “And back and forth.” She was not saying the poems with us. She looked wretched and bewildered. She saw me gazing at her with concern, and turned her head sharply away.

Those autumn weeks after the siege we enjoyed what may be the sweetest of all pleasures: relief from incessant, intense strain and fear. That relief, that release, is freedom made manifest. It lets the heart soar. A mood of lenience and kindness filled Arcamand. People were grateful to one another that they had survived together. They could laugh together, and they did.

Early in the winter, Torm came back to the House to live. He had been in the city all through the siege, but not at Arcamand. The Dictator had levied a special troop of cadets, soldiers invalided home, and veterans as an auxiliary to the city guard, doing sentry duty, manning the walls and gates, and serving as firemen and civic police. These men had done good service in defense and fighting fires and had at first been popular heroes, but their increasing role in punishing black marketers, hoarders, and suspected traitors had led people to fear their investigations and accuse them of using their power arbitrarily. They had been disbanded a few days after liberation, when the Dictator resigned, restoring full power to the Senate.

Torm was seventeen now but looked much older, carrying himself and behaving like a grown man, grim, self-contained, and silent.

He brought Hoby back to Arcamand with him. As his own reward for service, he had requested that Hoby be released from the civic workforce to serve as his bodyguard. Like Metter, the Father’s bodyguard, Hoby slept outside his master’s door. Though he still shaved his head, and was a bigger man than Torm, their resemblance was clear to see.

The occasion of Torm’s return was Astano’s betrothal ceremony. The Mother had not approved her marriage with Corric Beltomo Runda, but instead had chosen for her a relative of that House through the female line, Renin Beltomo Tarc. Tarcmand was an ancient though not a wealthy House, and Renin a promising young Senator; he was a good-looking fellow and a pleasant talker, though, according to Sallo, our principal informant, he didn’t know anything—“not even Trudec! Maybe he knows politics.”

Sotur said nothing about the betrothal to us. We saw little of her. It seemed she hadn’t felt the release from fear as we did. She hadn’t regained her weight and looks as we all were doing. She still had the siege face. When I found her in the library at the table with a book, she would greet me kindly but wouldn’t talk much and very soon would slip away. My ache of desire for her was gone, turned to an ache of pity, with a tinge of impatience—why must she go on moping in these good days of freedom?

Everra was to deliver an address at the betrothal ceremony. He spent days getting all his quotations from the classics ready. In the benign mood of that autumn, I felt it mean and dishonorable to hide from my old teacher what I’d learned from Mimen and the others at the Shrine. I told him I’d read Denios and that Mimen had given me his copy of Caspro’s
Cosmologies.
My teacher shook his head gravely, but didn’t go into a tirade. That encouraged me to ask him how Denios’ poems could corrupt a reader, since they were noble in both language and meaning.

“Discontent,” Everra answered. “Noble words to teach you how to be unhappy. Such poets refuse the gifts of the Ancestors. Their work is a bottomless pit. Once you remove the firm foundation of belief on which all our lives are built, there is nothing. Only words! Gorgeous, empty words. You can’t live on words, Gavir. Only belief gives life and peace. All morality is founded upon belief.”

I tried to say what I thought I had glimpsed in Denios, a morality larger than the one we knew, but my ideas were mere gropings, and Everra demolished them with his certainty. “He teaches nothing but rebellion against what must be—refusal of truth. Young men like to play with rebellion, to play at disbelief. I know that. But you’ll tire of that sick folly as you grow older, and come back to belief, the one foundation of the moral law.”

It was a relief to hear the old certainties again. And he hadn’t told me to stop reading Caspro. I did not read often in the
Cosmologies,
for it was difficult and seemed remote and strange to me; but sometimes lines from it or from Denios would come into my mind, unfolding their meaning or their beauty, as a beech leaf unfurls in spring.

I thought of one of those lines when I stood with all the household to watch Astano, wearing robes of white and silver, cross the great atrium to meet and welcome her husband-to-be:
She is a ship on a flowing of bright waters . . .

Everra made his speech, bristling with classical quotations, so that everyone could be impressed by the learning of the House of Arca. The Mother of the House of Arca said the words that gave her daughter to the House of Tarc. The Mother of that House came forward to receive our Astano as the future Mother of Tarcmand. Then my little pupils sang a wedding song Sotur had rehearsed with them for weeks. And so it was done. Lyre players and drummers in the gallery tuned up, and the wellborn went to the great rooms to feast and dance. We house people had a feast too, and our own music and dancing in the back courtyard. It was cold and a little rainy, but we were ready to dance—and always ready to feast again.

Betrothed in winter, Astano was married on the day of the spring equinox. A month later Yaven was called back to his regiment.

Etra was mounting an invasion of Casicar. Votus, which had been part of the alliance with Morva against us, had come over to our side, fearing the power of Casicar and seeing a chance to cripple it while it was weakened by defeat. Etrans and Votusans together would invade and take or besiege the city of Casicar—a great city, sometimes our enemy, sometimes our ally.
Again and again, back and forth,
Sotur had said.

I saw Sallo the day Yaven left. She had been allowed to go down to the River Gate to see him and his troops march out to war amid the wild cheering of the people. She was not tearful. She had the same certain hope she had had for him all through the siege. “I think Luck listens to him,” she said, with a smile, but seriously. “In battle, I mean. In war. Not here.”

“Not here? What do you mean, Sal?”

We were in the library alone and could talk freely. Yet she hesitated for a long time. Finally she looked up at me and seeing I really had no idea what she meant, she said, “The Father was glad to see him go.”

I protested.

“No, listen, truly, Gav!” She spoke very low, sitting close to me. “The Father hates Yaven-dí. He does! He’s jealous. Yaven will inherit Altan Arca’s power. His House. His seat in the Senate. And he’s beautiful, and tall, and kind, like his mother—he’s a Galleco, not an Arca. His father can’t bear to look at him, he’s so jealous of him. I’ve seen it! A hundred times!—Why do you think it’s Yaven, the elder son, the heir, who gets sent off again to war? While the younger son, who should be the soldier, who’s had all the fancy training to be a soldier, stays safe at home? With his
bodyguard!
The cowardly, pompous little adder!”

I had never in my life heard my good-natured, tender-hearted sister speak with such hatred. I was appalled, wordless.

“Torm will be groomed for the Senate, you’ll see,” she said. “Altan Arca hopes Yaven will be—will be killed—” Her soft, passionate voice broke on that word, and she gripped my hand hard. “He
hopes
it,” she repeated, in a whisper.

I wanted to refuse and refute everything she said, but still no words came to me.

Sotur came into the library. She stopped, seeing us, as if to withdraw. Sallo looked up at her and said in a plaintive whisper, “Oh, Sotur-ío!”—and Sotur came to her and took her in her arms, a thing I had never seen that reticent, shy, proud girl do with anyone. The two clung to each other as if trying to reassure each other and unable to. I sat in dumb wonder. I tried to believe that they were consoling each other for losing Yaven, but I knew it wasn’t that. It wasn’t grief I saw, or love. It was fear.

And when Sotur’s eyes met mine, over my sister’s head, there was a fierce indignation in her look, which softened gradually. Whatever enemy she had been seeing in me, she saw me again at last.

She said, “Oh, Gavir! If you could get Everra to ask for Sallo to help him teach the little ones—some-thing—anything to get her out of the silk rooms! I know, you can’t, he can’t . . . I know! I asked for her as my maid. I asked the Mother—for my nameday present—just while Yaven is away—may I have Sallo? And she said no, it was not possible. I have never asked for anything. Oh, Sallo, Sallo—you must get sick! You must starve again! Get thin and ugly, like me!”

I didn’t understand.

Sotur couldn’t comprehend my incomprehension. Sallo did. She kissed Sotur’s cheek and turned to me and hugged me, saying, “Don’t worry, Gav. It’ll be all right, you’ll see!”

And she went off, back to the chambers of the wellborn and the silk rooms, and I went back to the slave barrack, puzzled and worried, but always coming back to the belief, the sure belief, that the Father and Mother and Ancestors of our House would not let anything go really wrong.

I am lying in the dark in a strange, strong-smelling bed. Not far above my face is a ceiling, a low vault of raw black rock. Beside me lies something warm, pressing heavily against my leg. It raises its head, a long, grey head, grim black lips, dark eyes that gaze across me: a dog, a wolf? I remembered this many times, remembered waking up with the dog or wolf pressed close beside me, lying among rank-smelling furs in the dark place with a rock ceiling, a cave it must be. I remember it now. I am lying there now. The dog gives a whining groan and gets up, steps over me. Someone speaks to it, then comes and crouches beside me and speaks to me, but I don’t understand what he says. I don’t know who he is, who I am. I can’t lift my head. I can’t lift my hand. I am weak, empty, nothing. I remember nothing.