The Silences of Home (8 page)

I am scribe Drenhan
, he had read, peering close to the first scroll he had unrolled very gently,
and I betray my Queen as I write—but write I must, for there are lies in this city and this land, and someone must tell truth
.

Baldhron had set the scroll down on the ledge. It had been so limp with damp and age that, once laid flat, its ends barely curled.
No
, he had thought even as he rose to walk to the second-furthest sack, d
on’t do this. Leave now. This is a place of lies, and it is treason even to read them. . . .

He saw the piece of parchment as soon as he opened the sack. One corner torn, some of the red writing-stick markings smudged; the note had told him it would look like this. He had felt nothing but dread, as he plucked it free.

Yednanya, silvershell-diver of Xelnars, has been poisoned. I was approached with this news by a servant in the Queenshouse here. The servant had overheard a conversation and then glimpsed a written order from Luhr. Queen Galha commanded Yednanya’s murder, for the woman had been attempting to convince the other divers (all desperately poor) to revolt against the city’s Queensfolk council of trade. It was one of these divers who warned the Queensfolk. The diver was rewarded with silver—and Yednanya was poisoned, as Galha instructed, with watered wine given as a gift to her son. The divers have since been quiet and agreeable to the Queensfolk who exploit them. As for the son: his name is Borwold, and he is to be brought to Luhr by Senlhan, the same Queensman who delivered the poison to him. Another grateful, pliant child to do the Queen’s “good work.” Watch him closely.

Baldhron had read this letter innumerable times since that first one, and the sickness never failed to return to his gut and heart—bile of rage and hurt and fear that had very soon been rage only. He had scrambled back to the well shaft and up; he had run through the marketplace, looking for the old woman who had given him the note. He never saw her again. The next note had been delivered by a half-giant who did not understand the Queenstongue, the third by a boy younger than him who had torn himself from Baldhron’s grip and disappeared into the crowd.
My fellow renegade-scribes have dwindled away
, this third note said,
murdered or afraid or simply old, as I am. But I am not the last of the truth-keepers. You will take our truth and make it yours
.

Thirty-seven sacks lined the Scribesrealm library’s walls now. They stretched along the left-hand walkway nearly to the opposite tunnel entrance. Fresh parchment and writing sticks were stored on a recessed ledge by the bridge that spanned the widest part of the pool. Baldhron’s people used them, people whose names he had found in the sacks, and others—student scribes—whom he had watched and then spoken to, testing them before he revealed his realm to them. Some of them completed their lessons and were made full scribes and dispatched elsewhere in the Queensrealm; they sent messages back, which were labelled and placed in the appropriate bags. (One of these messages read:
Queensman Senlhan was stabbed to death at the Queenshouse in Xelnars by a “thief” who will never be found
. . . .) None of Baldhron’s people had ever betrayed him. He liked to think that this was simply because of the strength of his knowledge, and his charisma, but it was also thanks to the care he had taken in selecting them. When he had discovered people in Luhr whose families were mentioned in the sacks of the Scribesrealm, he watched them, spoke to them frequently, casually, before he revealed his purpose. Some of these people proved unworthy of the Scribesrealm, or unready for it. Some, like Ladhra’s friend Lanara.

A palace serving girl has confirmed that Salanne, Galha’s dearest friend, has met several times with consort-scribe Malhan, late at night when the Queen has been sleeping. It will not be long before Galha discovers this deception.

Galha had discovered it, of course, and Salanne had been sent away and dispatched. The details were here, curled within a bag. Baldhron had imagined drawing Lanara slowly, carefully into his realm, away from Ladhra, but he never had. She was too close to the Queen’s family, too devoted. She would run to Galha with the information he gave her, whether or not she believed it. So he watched her with Ladhra, and he contented himself with the certainty that someday he would ruin them both.

“We will change history,” he had said once before a gathering of fifty. “Our numbers and our knowledge will soon be too great to contain. For now, we will simply record history as it should be recorded, and wait.” They had cheered until the walls and water seemed to quiver.

“No need to accompany me,” he said to Pentaran now. The man fell back and lowered his eyes.

Baldhron walked past him to the recess in the wall that held the parchment and writing sticks. He parted the cloth curtain and opened the wooden box behind it. He lifted its lid, which did not close tightly any more; the air here had warped it and corroded the metal that had once been a latch. He drew out a clean, nearly flat page and laid it on a slanted board he had had fixed to the wall. He twirled the writing stick between his thumb and forefinger.

My darling Ladhra
, he wrote at last,
I feel that I am going mad. . . .

Lanara walked alone through the marketplace. She had asked Ladhra to come with her, but the Princess had said, “The marketplace?” and wrinkled her nose. “No, thank you. My mother’s been telling me for years that there are exotic diseases there, and I’m starting to believe her.” As soon as she had spoken, she put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, Nara—I’m so sorry. What a terrible thing to say to you!”

Lanara had smiled, though it had felt like a shadow on her face. Her exhaustion was so great that she thought she could sometimes hear it, like another heartbeat beneath her own. “Don’t worry,” she had said. “Never worry about what you say to me.”

She remembered coming here as a child, hanging onto Creont’s hand, straining to see everything at once. She even remembered the three of them there: her father’s hand and her mother’s, and her in between, swinging her legs off the ground with every other step.
“Concentrate, Lanara,”
he had said sternly
. “We must look only for what we need or we will never leave.”

It was still difficult to concentrate, even now that she was so much older—but she found the fruit vendor’s stall quite quickly, between an acrobats’ stage and a mound of iben stones. The stage was empty, though Lanara could hear voices in a tent behind it, raised in an argument. An iben woman crouched on the rock, her cloven hoofs hidden beneath the russet folds of her dress. Her taloned fingers and the long horns on her head caught the sunlight. Her eyes were narrow and slanted, heavily lidded against mountain wind and snow and sunlight that was very bright, above the clouds. Lanara’s teachers had told her of the iben and their mountains. And there was a story: the iben had come to the First Queen when she was young and very ill, drained by the mindpowers with which she had created the Queenspool. They had spoken to her of the greatness of the city she had founded, and of her own legacy. They told her that she would be the only queen for countless generations to possess such mindpowers—but they added that another queen would be born of her line someday who would also use great powers for the benefit of the realm. They had sung her to sleep then, soothed and reassured. All these generations later, young people brought them silver just before their weddings, and old ones gave them coins to hear the manner of their death, though often they did not understand what they were told.

“You would hear words of future?” the iben woman said as Lanara hesitated below her.

“No,” Lanara said after a long silence. “Thank you, but no.”

“You are certain?”

Lanara thought of the dark house she had left and the fever-damp skin of her father. She thought of Nellyn, knee-deep in the river, silent and still.
“If I come back.”

“Yes,” she said, “I’m certain.”

The fruit vendor nodded at her when she turned to him. “A wise choice,” he said in a low voice, glancing at the iben woman. “Half of what they say is nonsense. A waste of good coins and better time, is my opinion.” When Lanara did not respond, he cleared his throat. “Now then, what’ll you have? Some bitter mang? Speckled sourfruit from the hidden groves of Fane? Some sunfruit, perhaps? All these are perfectly ripe now.”

The piles of fruit glistened. Flies clustered above, scattering when a boy waved at them with a long spoon, then gathering again. She looked for blue among the reds and oranges and unripe greens.

“I need some lynanyn,” she said.

The vendor shook his head. “The only fruit I cannot sell you today. The ones I have are past their time. I’m expecting a new batch in a few weeks, after the next Queensship reaches my supplyman. In the meantime, though, why not try some silverbells? Succulently sweet.”

“Show me the lynanyn you have, even though you won’t sell them to me.”

He frowned. “Very well. I can’t imagine why you . . . but here.”

She held out her hand for the lynanyn he drew out from under the counter. It was not blue, not round: brownish-black instead, sunken and small in her palm. It was so light that she knew there would be no juice within. Perhaps even the seeds would be withered.

“So why?” he asked after a moment. “Why are you interested?”

She curled her fingers around the lynanyn. “Someone told me once that lynanyn had healing properties. And its juice is so sweet—I wanted to give it to someone, just to try, once. He always said it was too expensive.” She bit her lip and passed the fruit back to the man.
I could have brought back a bagful
, she thought.
Or an entire
tree
. Too hasty
.

The iben woman stood up as Lanara walked past. She quickened her pace until she was almost running, but she still felt the narrow eyes on her, steady and knowing beneath the horns.

When she reached her home, she pulled open the door and stepped without flinching into the darkness and the stench.

“Lanara?” Creont’s voice was still his. In the darkness it was almost possible to see him again as he had been, except that it had never been dark here before, with the door open to sun and starlight.

“Lanara?” said another voice, and she answered, “Yes, Dornent, it’s me. You can go.”

The doctor stood with her for a moment, holding a bag of vials and pipes and herbs to his chest. “A little worse,” he whispered. “Send for me tonight, if you need to.”

“‘A little worse,’” her father growled as she sat down beside his bed. “The man says the same thing every day. Promise me. . . .” He paused, and she heard the breath whistling deep in his throat. “Promise me you will
not
send for him, this night or any other.”

She smiled as she dipped a cloth into the bowl by his head. She did not need light now to find these things; she knew this room by touch. He winced when she drew the cloth along his forehead, and she held it there, lightly, before she continued down his face. She could feel his fever. “I promise,” she said.

He muttered something she did not understand, and moaned and then was silent except for the whistling breath. She sat and thought of the darkness of the Sarhenna River
. “Ages ago,”
Ladhra had said. Lanara felt the rolling of the flatboat, and she heard the water and the gentle sound of the lynanyn on the wood.
If only
, she thought again, and dipped the cloth back into the bowl.

Lanara opened the windows and the door. She stood in the sunlight, blinking at the table and its clutter, the sandy tracks on the floor from her feet and the doctors’. She swept the sand over the stoop slowly and meticulously. The air from outside was almost unbearably fresh. She took shallow, fearful breaths. When there was nothing left to sweep, she set the broom against the wall and leaned her head beside it. The clay was already warm.

“Nara.” She lifted her head. Queen Galha was standing in the doorway, with no one but Malhan behind her. He remained by the door when the Queen stepped into the room. She was wearing no jewels, only a plain bronze cloak pin. There was a scarlet ribbon in her hair.
Mourning scarlet
, Lanara thought, and began to tremble.

“I came as quickly as I could,” Galha said. “I have told Ladhra that she must wait to see you. The Devotees will be here soon enough, and then you will have no quiet.” She held out her hand and Lanara took it lightly.

“Thank you,” she said in a voice that was not hers. “I know how busy you are, and I am honoured. . . .”

“Lanara.” The Queen’s other hand was beneath her chin, raising it so that Lanara was looking into her face and her golden-brown eyes. “You are like another daughter to me. You
are
my daughter, now that your own parents are gone.” Lanara began to cry, though she made no sound. Galha brushed at the tears with her thumb, very gently. “I have ordered your father to be placed in one of the tombs set aside for palace folk. We will go there together when the Devotees have finished preparing his body. And I will choose his tomb fountain from my own palace stock.” She paused. “I longed to do this for your mother, but it was not possible since we did not have her body. It pleases me that I can offer these things to you now.”

“Thank you,” Lanara tried to say again, and Galha squeezed her hand.

“Take me to him,” she said.

Lanara shook her head. “Please do not feel you must. He is . . . it is not. . . .”

The Queen walked with her to Creont’s bedroom door. Lanara opened it, and they looked together at the man on the bed. Galha said, “Oh, my dear,” and drew Lanara in, to flower-scented silk and warmth and the steady murmur of her heart.

“My darling Ladhra, I feel that I am going mad. You show me no special favour, though I have done nothing but praise and entreat you. Why? Why do you ignore my pleas and my devotion?”

Lanara laughed, her face turned up to the sky, so close atop this highest tower. The stone was warm against her back. Beside her, Ladhra blew out her breath. “You sound like a horse,” Lanara said. “I wonder if Baldhron would still love you if you were a horse?”

“No doubt,” Ladhra said, holding the letter under the spray of a fountain until the writing bled away. “He seems fairly single-minded.
Devoted
, I believe was his word.”

Lanara lay and Ladhra sat, and the ivy whispered into their silence.

“It’s strange,” Lanara said at last, “that I often feel so normal. As I do now. But then I’m so sad, or restless. I thought time would change this, make me feel the same always
—s
teady.”

Ladhra angled her head into Lanara’s vision. “Foolishness. You’ve had a fairly remarkable year. It will probably take several more years to recover. Years which,” she added, “I hope you’ll spend here. Though you say you’re restless, and I fear we’ll lose you again.”

“No, not yet. I’m not ready to go anywhere.”

There were footsteps on the stairs then, and she saw Ladhra look up. “Seront, what is it? Does my mother need me?”

Lanara rolled over and leaned on her elbow. The Queensguard was red-faced and sweating. She thought he might be trying not to lean against the door frame. “No, Princess,” he said. “I have brought someone to see Queenswoman Lanara.”

He was nearly blind with sunlight and exhaustion. Colours blurred as the Queensman led him from a gate into the palace. Colours, shapes that somehow had no form, noises so loud that he could not hear them. Steps, on and on, to a place even brighter than the others. Brighter, but quieter. He raised his head and rubbed his eyes and saw falling water, trailing plants, clouds that he could touch. And her face, lifting to look at him.

“He asked for you at the gate,” he heard the Queensman say. “He claims to know you. I was ordered to bring him here and to escort him away if he lied.”

She rose and said his name like a question. She took two small steps and then she ran, and her arms wound around his ribs and held him.

“My choice,” he said as he dropped to his knees on the stone.