The Winged Histories (26 page)

Someone is laughing loudly: it is the darwad, already drunk. His pigtail bobs behind him, thick with grease like the tail of a shambus. The orchestra plays as if they will never stop, thrashing their feet to ring the clusters of bells about their booted ankles. There are no bouquets. Only Mun Miraleth wears some lank lilies in the powdered confection of her hair, touching them every few minutes. She has coaxed them to stay alive in her conservatory, warmed by pots of hot coals.

Instead of flowers, Siski wears a great diamond and ruby brooch pinned to her shoulder. Tadi ogles it. “Are those imperial jewels?”

“Yes, it was my grandmother’
s brooch.
”

“My heart, they’re as big as cherries.” His hand, slick with perspiration, tightens on hers.

Suddenly tired and sad, she looks for Dasya and sees him dancing with Mun Miraleth. He too looks unhappy. His coat is loose about his thin flanks, his hair pulled back, and his face in the lamplight looks so drawn and strange that she is afraid.

Earlier in the evening they set lights to float on the Oun; they had to break the ice. “Are you quite well?” says Tadi anxiously. “You seem a little—”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she laughs, but still the young man takes her arm and leads her to the table. She wants to drink wine but her mother is watching and so she has tea instead. “Mm,” she says, nodding at her partner. Hairs rise on her skin: her father is near. She sees him take a glass of wine, holding it loosely near the base. Despite the noise she hears him say to her mother as he passes her: “Humiliating. You look like a schoolteacher’s wife.” He turns away abruptly, welcoming someone in loud, genial tones. Her mother’s hand taps jerkily on her knee.

The air of the avla is murky and golden, obscured by a haze near the ceiling, where the windows are beaded with moisture like chilled tears. It is a place of bitterness, inconsolable. The orchestra shatters one’s thoughts with the clamor of its unending lamentations. A crowd has gathered about her father, who dances now with Mun Miraleth, his small beard pointing, one broad arm flung out. His face glistens with heat, its expression set. He dances flamboyantly, with such fierce energy that she is afraid he will fall. Every few moments, an outburst of applause. She looks for Dasya and sees him standing near the entryway with Tav. “Dance with me.” He gazes over her shoulder, never into her eyes, as they turn together, far away from the group that surrounds her father.

Here the floor seems empty, as if the ball is already over.

“Why do you want to break my heart?” she says.

He does not answer. His hand on the small of her back. She hides her face against his shoulder. “Why, why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

The music races ahead of them; they are not moving in time. When the dance is over she dries her eyes on her handkerchief. “I must look a fright.”

“No,” he says in a harsh and alien voice that leaves her stunned. He turns his back on her and walks away.

Em Makov appears with his officer’s moustache and cranberry-colored hair. “Oh no,” she laughs, “it’s only the smoke from the lamps.” They dance, she laughs at a story about his vineyard, afterward she asks him to bring her a glass of Karsavi from the table. She drinks it sitting on a bench by the wall and later she drinks another glass at the table, careful not to look in her mother’s direction. She hears her own bright laughter. Tadi tells a humorous story and then Em Makov is there again with his wry and mournful horse’
s profile. Mun Vidara admires Siski
’s dress and Siski straightens her shoulders, her brooch catching the light. Someone beside her says: “A real Kestenyi beauty.” The lamps are dim, the musicians are cooling their fingers on lumps of snow. In the silence a succession of terrible echoes.

“A thousand blessings.” “Good night.” “Good night.” The guests go out to the hall to collect their furs. She takes a candle and walks along a narrow passage, finding her way to the stairs, touching the wall unsteadily with one hand. Suddenly Dasya steps from a darkened room.

He steps out straight in front of her, his hand on her wrist to keep her from dropping the candle. “Come with me to the hills tomorrow. Come alone. We’ll meet at the north door, without Tav.”

“Why?” She tries to pull out of his grip and wax drips on his knuckles.

He does not flinch, but stares as if fascinated at the hardening drops. Then his eyes, raised slowly, dark, searching, unfathomable.

“Please,” he says.

“You’re hurting me,” she hisses, and he releases her wrist. Footsteps and voices are coming down the hall.

“All right, I’
ll come,
” she whispers hurriedly. He steps away from her, backward into the chasm of the doorway. Upstairs in the piercing cold of her room, trying to warm her hands at the lamp, she falls asleep with her head on the writing table.

4. The Clearing

A calm descends. Dai Fanlei is quiet. The world is waking up, the snow dissolving, but Dai Fanlei is going to sleep.

She works without pause, slowly. Just motion, arms going up and down. A small smile hangs a finger’s breadth in front of her face. She hears them talk, Dai Norla, Dai Kouranu, and Dai Gersina. They say “in the Valley.” They say “the Duke of Bain.” In this way Dai Fanlei learns that Veda of Bain, called “
Uncle Veda
” in another life, is to be Telkan of Olondria. And the old Telkan, once called “
Telkan Uncle,
” is dead. His body, first interred in a park, has been exhumed and placed in the graveyard of the kings.

Dai Fanlei’s smile hovers. It never fades.

The streets are clearer now. The temples have opened their doors to the refugees. Charities have sprung up: you can see country noblemen, even the darwad and his daughters, serving soup and distributing bales of cloth. They are so happy to have escaped the chaos with their possessions intact that they give with both hands, laughing, full of love. A holiday air reigns in the town square where a wealthy old landowner, famous as a cruel taskmaster, dispenses orange cake from the back of his horse.

Nothing has changed, except that Kestenya is lawless now, broken off from the empire. All the good families there have fled into the Valley. Dai Fanlei does not ask about Lord Irilas, Duke of Tevlas, and Lady Firheia of Ashenlo. She will not.

Wet earth everywhere blackening. She walks through mud now, mud instead of snow. Sometimes storms come, streaking swiftly over the hills, soaking her clothes, chilling her as she walks, until her skin reaches the exact temperature of the rain.

In the abandoned temple, a small red light.

She has had to move his couch away from the fire. He suffers from the light and warmth. He suffers. He no longer eats. He can hardly open his mouth. He winces when she dribbles water over his lips.

His voice, crushed. He grunts and groans. He forms her name: a sound like branches breaking. He says it again, again, again. She thinks he is trying to warn her, perhaps, to urge her to desperate action. She thinks that he is trying to tell her:
Now
.

She shakes her head. She wants to hold him, to comfort him, but it would give him too much pain.

Deep night again, and she opens the book. She reads:
Their beauty, designed to inspire pity in their victims
. She reads:
In seven days it will be too late
.

At that time of year the world was breathless, immaculate, immobile, the standing trees decked with garlands of snow. The sky dark gray above the hills, drifting into twilight. A crow flying across it: the center of movement and life. The crow draws away, diminishes and is lost. She sees Dasya walking from the orchard, his hands in the pockets of his coat. He has been out, perhaps for hours. His face is pale to the lips. He meets her under the dripping eaves. “Let’s go.”

She walks. She follows him to the back gate and out onto the snowy horse-track. Stolid crunch of footsteps breaking the frost. Her head lowered, she watches her boots and in front of her, his boots. She moves with some difficulty, avoiding his footprints.

They go on walking. The track leads upward. They pass the shepherds’ hut, its roof caved in, charred marks on the earth around the door. A preternatural silence haunts the wood. She hears her breath, so loud. The snow creates a radiance under the trees.

After an hour she begins to lag behind. “
Wait,
” she says.

He turns to her with a face transformed beneath the darkness of his hood, a face so thin, so haggard, so much older that she cannot speak. She stands with her mouth open.

“What is it?” he says.

“I—I’m getting tired.”

He looks away, then looks at her again. “Let’s go a little farther. To the clearing.”

When she does not answer, he says: “I can’t breathe here.”

She nods and follows him again, cold, stumbling in the snow.

A brightness through the trees. As if a blue lamp shines among them. The branches are growing thin. It is the clearing. She pauses, panting, clinging to a sapling with one hand. The darkening sky is visible now, the peaks. Everything lit as if from behind by a somber, wintry glow. She looks at Dasya, her cousin, her beloved. He stands almost in the center of the clearing and raises his eyes to meet her gaze. She says: “Are you going to tell me?”

“Yes.”

He says it, he says, “Yes.” He almost smiles. A look so pitiful she cries out in spite of herself: “Oh, what is it?”

He looks away. The smile grows rigid on his lips, unnatural. “Siski—do you think a person can be cursed?”

“Cursed?” she says. “Well. I suppose so. Some people ought to be, certainly.”

“Don’t laugh.” His fists are clenched, the knuckles blue.

“
I don
’t mean to laugh, but you’re not making sense. What do you mean, cursed? Is it Tuik? Because that was an accident, that was—”

“No.”

He stands. His face so still. He’s smiling again, but the smile is otherworldly, distant. His lips move. “I’m so tired.”

He sinks to his knees. When she sits beside him he lies down with his head in her lap. The snow falls thickly. Darkness over the trees.

Trembling she strokes his face, his snow-damp hair. She weeps. “What is it?”

“Don’t make me move,” he protests sluggishly. “I want to go to sleep.”

“
You can
’t go to sleep. You’ll freeze.”

“Siski, I’
m happy.
” His eyes are closed. “I’m happy here. Please don’t make me get up. Not yet.”

She lets him lie there, motionless. His legs stretched out in the snow. He sighs, she feels his breath go into the dark. The warmth of his body. She cradles him, rocks him. “I think I’m under a curse,” he says. “Because of my father. Because of his work with the Stone.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I’ve thought about it,” he murmurs. “Perhaps Avalei is cursing him through me. Perhaps I should dedicate myself to her. Or perhaps I should run even farther from her, toward the Stone . . . I have to do something. I’ll only be able to hide it for a few years.”

“To hide? Hide what?”

He reaches for her hand, grips it. His fingers strangely warm. “I’m frightened,” he whispers.

She bows over him, hiding him in her cloak, making a circle heated by their breath. A little tent.

“Don’t be frightened. Let me help you. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Silence. He has begun to shiver.

Then he sits up and slowly gets to his feet. She stands too. A stretch of muddy snow between them. She begs him to tell her, she says she doesn’t care if he’s cursed, she’ll never abandon him. She believes it is the truth.

“Now,” he murmurs.

She nods.

His face is bloodless, drained of color. In that unearthly surface, the dark orbs of his eyes. He lifts his hands, he pushes back his hood. The snow falls on his hair. He unbuttons his coat. He is not trembling now. No, it is in a new tranquility and a poignant solitude that he moves toward this, the dreaded, the longed-for moment. His coat drops on the snow, his leather jerkin. His hands are in the strings of his shirt, its whiteness a lamp against his flesh. Then the shirt, too, falls to the ground. It catches the air for a moment, billows, sinks. He turns, a boy in snow. His body glowing in the blue of the twilight is more beautiful than a statue. It is the end of everything.

He stands with his back to her, his arms spread wide.

His arms, as lovely as two flames.

His back, half-veiled by the glittering sequins of the snow.

She sees. She puts her hand to her lips but cannot stifle her sudden cry.

It is the end of everything that has been.

On his shoulder blades, two ridges: the dark forms of incipient wings.

They look hard, reddish, like scars where infection has set in. He turns and gazes at her over his shoulder, in the pose of one of the monsters in the
Dreved Histories
.

For a moment she stares. Then she starts as if burned. She staggers backward.

“Siski,” he says. His arm outstretched.

The sound, her name, is the last word she hears him say. She turns and runs. She crashes among the trees, sliding on the snowy path, branches tearing her clothes and hair. The moon lights her way on the terrible descent. She reaches Ashenlo with bleeding cheeks, her clothes in disarray. Unable to speak of anything. She pounds at the door of the amadesh and falls on the warm swept floor in front of the fire. Shaking uncontrollably, with a frozen and staring face. She does not understand what people are saying to her. They set her on a stool and rub her hands and feet with teiva. The doctor is sent for; he orders a lukewarm bath. All the time she makes no response to the questions of those around her. Only when she hears them mention her cousin’s name, when they ask her where he is, does a feeble ray shine from her eyes, a spark of terror that makes them hush one another with meaningful glances. This reaction to his name, her stubborn or helpless refusal to tell what has happened, the disordered condition of her clothes and hair, are taken as evidence of guilt, as proof that a premature and shameful union has taken place among the young people in the woods. Dasya is sent away at once: he finds his belongings packed and a coach awaiting him when he comes down from the hills. It is considered too dangerous to wait until the dawn for his removal from the presence of his cousin.

They wash her face, her hair, they bandage her cheeks. They dress her as if she were a child. She remains docile until they lead her into her room. Then, when they try to start a fire in the grate, she becomes violent, swearing that she would rather die than have a fire in her bedroom again. “Take her into my room,” her mother orders hurriedly. They make a bed for her on the big soft couch the color of beeswax. Firelight dances in her eyes. She is warm, safe, beneath a quilted coverlet with white tassels, in the fragrance of her mother.

She closes her eyes. Such warmth, such comfort, and yet she cannot sleep. A memory comes to her, vivid as a dream. She remembers waking in the stable at Sarenha with the dying Tuik, toward morning when all was very dark and still. Only a spark in the failing lantern. “
No, don
’t move,” her cousin said. It was the stinging sensation that had awakened her. Dasya had rolled her trousers up to the thigh and he was washing the misar cuts on her legs with water from a jar.