‘Ah,’ he said, his unfocused gaze coming to rest on her and gradually clearing to reveal the girl perched there before him, dark smooth skin gleaming like the surface of the River. Her hair fell in a heavy fringe all the way to her knees, twisty strands of fifty or so hairs, each of which hung together, never tangling, like lengths of shiny black twine beneath a beaded headband, all gold and blue in the evening light. The scales of her fishskin vest gleamed also, laced tight over the long, full-sleeved shirt she wore tucked into pamet trousers died blue with mulluk shell. Her dark hand rested upon the rail, inches from his own, and he took it, turned it over to examine the pink brown of her palm, scarred and calloused from the whip. Her eyes were dark, and her pink lips parted in complaint.
‘Come now, owner. I must go.’
‘Go, Babji. I didn’t mean to keep you. It’s just – I had not really seen you until now.’
She ran down the plank and along the shore, wondering at the expression on his face. A kindly, surprised alertness, like a child finding something interesting and unexpected. Well. What to make of that? Nothing. Nothing at all.
Still, she was not sorry to hear him calling after her.
‘Return again, Babji. Talk has done me good. Perhaps your people would like a ride to the next towns west?’
When the
Gift of Potipur
left the Chantry docks, Babji’s troop of Melancholies was aboard, paying nothing for the transport and living on their own provisions. Thrasne had come to trust them, and, wisely, had seen their presence as a kind of camouflage. The
Gift
put on sail and headed out into the River, cutting across the tidal current toward the west end of Strinder’s Isle, hidden in the southern mists.
Two days later, decks crowded with the curious Noor, Thrasne lowered a boat with two men to row ashore at the west end of the island, shot them a line, and tied fast to a great tree that leaned above the flood. It was twenty-two days after Conjunction.
Pamra had camped on the tiny beach for most of that time. She came aboard with Lila, hardly noticing the dark faces of the crowded passengers, not seeing at all the concern on Thrasne’s face. Her eyes were deep set in a haggard face, and her hair was tangled as though she had not combed it in days. She was no less beautiful than ever, but it was a terrible, anguished beauty.
‘Are you all right?’ he begged, appalled. ‘You look as though you’ve been ill.’
‘I should have seen there were no older males,’ she told him earnestly. ‘I should have seen how worn away he was.’
‘Pamra?’
‘I was so sure it was cruel. So sure. Sometimes things are cruel and can be changed. Sometimes we only make them worse. Sentimentalizing. Pretending. So tied up in my own ideas. I couldn’t see what was in front of me.’
‘Pamra! Who are you talking about?’
She shook her head, handed Lila to him, made her way on board to her old refuge in the owner-house, glancing over her shoulder as she went, scarcely noticing the curious group of Melancholics at the rail, the young girl who was pressing close to her with open curiosity on her face. Passengers. Well, sometimes the Riverboats did carry deck passengers.
She did not really need to look behind her to know that Neff still followed her, as he had since the night after the fires. The smoke had risen in the village, and he had come. Stodder hadn’t seen him. Pamra had. He had been with her since, face alight with curiosity and wonder, flowers in his hand, a recusant ghost.
And he was not alone. The pillar of golden dust beside him was her mother. And the accusative formless shadow was Delia. Three.
‘Pamra, love. Are you all right?’ Thrasne asked, following her into the house.
She let him hold her, even held him in return, aware at some subconscious level of the need in him, perceiving feeling in him she had never recognized, not even in herself until it was over, depending upon his kindness not to bother her with whatever it was.
‘I’ll be all right, Thrasne. I’ll be all right.’ She stepped away from him, shutting him out. She had to be all right. There was something Neff wanted to do, something she owed him. Him and her mother, and Delia.
When she was very quiet, she could hear their voices.
The Ascertainers maintained a domiciliary compound with dining hall, exercise yard, and dormitory, some above the ground, some below for winter occupancy. All was gray, splintery, very old. They kept it neat but could not keep it clean. The dust was too ancient, too deep in the cracks. When Ilze was given a broom to sweep it away, he knew he swept only the top layer of something that had been there for longer than he could imagine. Lifetimes. Some of the boards in the walls were newer than others. Some of the beams a lighter color. He saw it being replaced, piece by piece, over the centuries, never changing, always renewed. Why had they needed a place like this that long ago? Why did they need it now?
His Superior was in the compound, as well as some dozens of others, all with the same dazed look of incomprehension that Ilze knew he wore. There was no prohibition against talking together, but they seemed reluctant to do it, as though someone might be listening. As though anything said by anyone might lead to more questions. Even conjecture seemed dangerous. Only with his own Superior did he whisper his questions, await her answers.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, gritting his teeth, trying to reach her with his voice as he had been unable to reach the fliers. ‘I thought if we got to the Chancery, we were safe! I haven’t seen any humans at all except the guards and someone in a veil and some half-wit carrying buckets. Why were those foul poultry allowed to misuse me so? I don’t understand any of this. Help me understand it.’
‘Shh, shh. Ilze. Be thankful you are alive. I am thankful I am alive. You were not the only one mistreated, so hush. Think. You will need to think.’
‘Think of what? I’ve done nothing but think since I’ve been here, and I’ve been here forever. I need some answers.’
‘I meant for you to think strategically. Listen to me. We came here, to the Chancery. We demanded to see the Protector. Instead, we were sent to the Accusatory and sometime later were there questioned by the Servants of Abricor. But there were human Accusers watching, Ilze. Behind the veil you may be sure was a human Accuser.’ Her mouth twisted bitterly at these words, as though she needed to spit. ‘And the Servants of Abricor didn’t take us away. We stayed here.’
Her hand on his arm stopped his quick, angry words.
‘We stayed here, Ilze. And we’re alive.’
He was forced to consider the implications of this. ‘You think … you think it was some kind of agreement?’
‘I listen to my mind, Ilze, for hints of conspiracy or ignorance or trouble. What words were said here? I can imagine what the Talker said, the one who came for us, the one you forced to bring us here. He demanded that you and I be bound securely and given to them. And then Lees Obol, the Protector of Man, would have said, “No, no, my friends, my treaty mates, but these are humans. Humans are not sent to the Talons. Humans must be examined here. By us.” And then the Talkers would have blustered and demanded. What would they have said?’
Ilze thought about this, frowning, realizing he knew quite well what the Talkers would have said. ‘They would have said they did not trust the humans. They must question us, they would have said, because they did not trust the humans. Perhaps that is not what they said, but that is what they meant.’
‘Such was my own thought. A certain lack of trust. So, the Protector, for some reason – which I will learn if Potipur grants me time – allows us to be questioned by the
Talkers. But not taken away. And not seriously injured. I will not even have scars.’ Think about that, she urged him silently, wanting him to realize that both of them had been equally mistreated. Both of us, Ilze. When you leave here, you must remember they tortured both of us.
Ilze, who believed he carried scars he would never lose, did not reply to this. ‘And now?’
‘And now something else. Some further part of the game. These fliers … oh, but they are concerned with Rivermen. Endlessly they asked me about the Rivermen. They asked you as well, I suppose. Always about the Rivermen.’ About which we know nothing, she urged him silently. Nothing at all. Either of us.
‘They did. But I know nothing about the Rivermen! I’m not one!’
‘But they must find out, Ilze. If they cannot find one who knows, then they must ask those who do not. They must find out.’
He ignored the illogic of this, still trying to comprehend. ‘I didn’t know the Servants could talk. I didn’t know they had … had a society of their own.’
She became very dignified, almost prim. ‘Just as there are secrets seniors do not share with juniors or novices, so there are secrets Superiors do not share with seniors. You would have learned all about the Talkers in time, if you had earned advancement. As you would have done.’ Oh yes, she told herself. He would have done. And pity the Tower he would have headed in his time.
‘These others, the Talkers …?’
‘There are not many of them. They come from the flier caste, from the Servants of Abricor. They do not seem to run in particular lines of descent, so I am told. They are hatched infrequently, once in a thousand hatchings. It is what our scholars call a sex-linked characteristic. All Talkers are males. When the ordinary flier males breed, they die. The Talkers are identified while still young; they are fed a special diet to prevent both breeding and death.’
‘A special diet?’ He thought about this before answering.
‘When we’re through with the workers, we drop them in the bone pits and the Servants of Abricor eat them. We all know that. No one cares. Who do the Talkers eat?’
‘Our flesh is poisonous to the flier people, Ilze. In time you would have studied our history, how we came to this world to find the Servants already here; how they grew monstrously in number until the world could not feed them, until the herds of thrassil and weehar were gone; how they hunted us, only to find us poisonous. You would have read of Thoulia, one of their Talkers. Thoulia the Marvelous. It was Thoulia who showed them how to soften our flesh with the Tears of Viranel, and it was then the wars began in earnest between our two races. We killed them by the hundreds, Ilze, and they killed us, until there were few of them left and not many more of us. Until the treaty was made at last which allowed them to take our dead …
‘Our dead are what they eat. Do you see why they fear the Rivermen so?’
He did not see. He could not see because of his anger. He did not realize she had not answered his question.
She went on, voice calm, willing him to listen and understand. ‘If the cult of the Rivermen were to prevail, the fliers would die. All the Talkers. All the Servants. They would starve. There would be nothing for them to eat.’
Gradually he perceived the implications of this, implications so enormous he could not face them. All the philosophy, the theology, all his studies – oh, one knew there were evasions, one knew there were euphemisms employed, but still. Basically, one believed. Every senior Awakener knew that all the dead go into the worker pits except the Awakeners themselves. Even knowing this, still, still one believed. One understood the need for a pious mythology to keep the ordinary people quiet, but that did not nullify the essential truth. Senior Awakeners knew that truth. They had been accepted as the elect of Potipur. Common people – common people had to be led, instructed, used, then purified through that final agony. It was not Holy Sorters who put the sainted dead in Potipur’s arms, it was the Servants
of Abricor who carried their souls to Potipur. The common folk could not expect a fleshy resurrection, but that did not affect the spiritual one. But for Awakeners – for Awakeners it was a real immortality. In the body. It was the Servants of Abricor who carried the bodies of dead Awakeners directly to …
The thought stopped, blocked, destroyed by what she had been saying. Obviously this was not true. Obviously.
‘What happens to us, to the Awakeners?’ he snarled at her, his fingers digging deeply into her arm. ‘If the Servants don’t carry our bodies directly to Potipur, what really happens to us?’ He hated himself for asking the question, sure she was laughing at him as he had always laughed at Pamra.
‘If we are not clever and if our colleagues detest us sufficiently to take vengeance, we go into the pits with common folk,’ she said haughtily, ignoring his grasp. ‘With our hair rebraided to make us look like merchants or carpenters. In this way the myth is kept alive that no dead Awakener is ever seen in a worker pit.
‘If we are more clever, or less disliked, we are burned to ashes at one of the crematories of the order. There is one here, at Highstone Lees. And if we are very clever, if we do our jobs well and cause no trouble to the Chancery or the Talkers, we are given the Sacred Payment. We are given what the treaty requires we be given, the elixir. If we receive that gift, we live a long, long time. Hundreds and hundreds of years. So be clever, Ilze. Let go of me.’
He let go of her, let go of her entirely, left her, did not try to speak with her after that. He had seen angry laughter in her face, bitter amusement. It was not unlike the amusement he had hidden so often from Pamra. The lady Kesseret thought him funny. Because he had believed. He burned with savage, humiliated shame at this. Because he had believed!
When the day came, he went before the Ascertainers, a kind of court with several humans sitting on high chairs to hear what was said. These, he was told, were members of the
Court of Appeals of the Towers. Judges, he thought. His Superior, the lady Kesseret, was there. She appeared little worse for her experience, though Ilze knew he looked like shit. Bruised, uncombed. They had not let him put his hair in braids, and it hung about his face like tangled rope. The Talkers were there, both the ones who questioned him and others he had not seen before. Old ones. With silvered feathers.
It was one of these who asked for the Accusation.
‘Ilze, senior of the Tower of Baristown, is accused of heresy; of conspiracy to aid and comfort the Rivermen; of sheltering a Riverman spy in the Tower. He is accused of erroneous beliefs. He was led astray by lust. It may be he is essentially orthodox.’ The humans on the bench accused him. He did not believe it.