Other Lives (6 page)

There was only the gulls and the splash of the water. The boy opened his mouth weakly, like a fish, words finally pouring out.

“What happened?” he whispered.

Life happened and it turns out it is seldom a fairy tale. Killing men for a living and following a nobleman for some cause you can’t recall, that happened. Scars upon scars and restless nightmares and an empty feeling in your gut. Blood, your own and blood of others, the dead buried or sometimes left to rot in the open. All of this and more and suddenly too much had happened. Forgotten wounds ached and the sword was too heavy to carry and he was old.

This he thought and might have tried to explain to the boy. Only it was too difficult to explain how it is to feel caged and lost and crumbling.

“There are no krakens and no mermaids, and certainly no magic swords, and fisher-boys never become heroes,” muttered Lysander, placing his palm on the hilt of the weapon.

Endric rubbed his hands, eyes fixed on the sea. “There are krakens. My grandfather almost killed one once.”

“So did my father after some drinks,” Lysander snickered. “So did everyone.”

“There are krakens,” repeated Endric defensively. “I don’t know about magic swords or knights, but there are krakens.”

An uncomfortable silence wrapped them. It would be getting dark soon and Lysander wanted to leave. He’d spent enough time in this place. It was clear there was nothing left, whatever magic he’d once imagined erased by the tide.

He unsheathed the sword.

“Are you really throwing it away?” asked Endric.

“I’m giving it back,” he answered. “Giving it all back.”

Lysander flung the weapon as hard he could. The sword shone like a star, catching the light of the sinking sun, then splashed loudly into the water. Endric just stared. The boy was frozen, watching the place where the sword had disappeared.

“I’m sorry about your shoes,” Lysander said.

He produced two more coins and placed them in the boy’s hand, then walked away.

Perhaps beneath the sea a kraken coiled a tentacle around the sword. Perhaps one day the tide would carry the weapon towards a deserving hero. Perhaps there were still mysteries hidden within the waves.

But if the sea had any secrets Lysander did not care for them.

SALT

The edge of the arid salt plain was dotted with shadscale and black sage, but once you stepped into the playa there was nothing but a white, shiny emptiness. They said the salt plain had once been a lake. Squinting against the fierce sun, Leocadia could not imagine all that water.

She wished there was a lake again. Then there wouldn’t be any need for rain-priestesses, and the recrimination in her mother’s eyes would disappear.

Leocadia shook her head, then grabbed her pick and shovel.

There had been no need for this when she cast rain spells. She could stay inside her room and watch as the miners went to harvest the salt.

No matter. There was the lonely business of salt now. The rain spells were but a memory, bitter as the sap of the aloe.

She worked for three hours. By then it was getting very hot, and Leocadia retreated towards the crumbling stone temple where she had left the mule, safely under the shade of its tall roof.

The temple was pretty, but not very practical. Dragging stones across the playa seemed stupid to her.

Leocadia’s own home was made of salt, white bricks neatly piled on top of each other.

Leocadia sat on the back of a stone lion that guarded the temple’s steps, and ate her lunch, humming a tune to herself. Across the desert a solitary figure, waving with the heat, was heading her way. Leocadia ignored it. It was a trick of the light.

The figure kept moving, growing bigger. Leocadia took a better look. Someone was riding across the salt flat.

“What kind of idiot,” she muttered.

It was a man, all in white, on a horse, with a llama behind. He waved from afar. Leocadia jumped down from the lion, and was clutching her knife when he reined his horse.

“I’m heading for Caravaike,” he said, in a thick accent she could not place. His brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail. He had narrow eyes, a slight stubble, and a brilliant smile.

“That’s that way,” she said turning her head slightly in the direction of the town. “But you’re still far.”

“How far?”

“Two days’ ride.”

He dismounted and thrust a piece of paper in her direction. “Can you point out my location?”

Leocadia only clutched her knife tighter and took a step back.

“I’m sorry,” he said shaking his head and extending his hand instead of the map. “What am I thinking? I’m Abelardo.”

Leocadia frowned. “You’re near Comba.”

“Comba?” He untied a little brown bag around his neck and took out a black case, tapping his finger against it. Then he glanced up, in the direction of the shadscale and black sage. “Well, that’s not too bad. I was hoping to pass through Comba. Someone said it was around here, but you never know. The map I have is outdated and poorly made, I…”

“Are you some sort of bandit?” she asked.

“No,” he said with a chuckle. “Why do you ask that?”

“Who else’s is going to be crossing the salt plain except a bandit?”

“I’m not a thief. I chase mountains.”

Leocadia scratched her head, itchy from the scarf she was wearing.

“You’re a lunatic,” she said.

“Cartographer,” he said. “In the service of the Empress. I’m updating some maps.”

“Alone?”

“Aha.”

Maybe he was a spy sent by an enemy king and was trying to trick his way into their midst. She had read about such things when she was in the temple; forbidden storybooks which often included a brave young hero saving a young woman from the bandit-king.

Stupid stuff, illustrated with images of lovers holding hands and speaking passionate vows. Such things, just like the rain, had passed her by.

“Do you come from Comba?” he asked.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I’m heading there. These maps are so old that I might get lost without some guidance.”

“Not my problem.”

“I’ve got money,” he said and showed her a pouch filled with coins.

“Then you shouldn’t flaunt it so stupidly. I could rob you blind and let you rot here,” she said.

“I hope you don’t.”

She shook her head hard and put away the knife.

He tried to talk to her while they rode across the smooth salt plain, noisily telling her answers she did not ask.

She asked him to part ways at the outskirts of the town, and he waved goodbye to her with a wide smile on his face. Leocadia tried not to look at him, fearing someone inside the salt huts was watching.

She dragged her tools back to her house. Her mother was stirring the goat stew, sweat beading her forehead. She could hear a baby crying nearby. Rosaura must be visiting.

“Hello mother,” she said and kissed her mother on the cheek. “Is Rosaura here?”

“For a short while,” her mother muttered.

Leocadia could already picture Rosaura’s purple eye. Bastian beat her, but their mother had little sympathy for Rosaura’s plight. If Rosaura had been a rain-priestess she might have amassed a nice dowry. The priestess, however, had seen little aptitude in Rosaura and did not care for her. So she married Bastian. Leocadia had done even worse. Their mother’s hopes had been dashed by her useless children.

“I’m going to talk to her,” Leocadia said.

Her mother nodded. Her eyes were fixed on the large pot sitting over the fire.

***

That evening they went to walk through the town square, with its squat trees and its precious beds of flowers. Rosaura did not have a purple eye. He had hit her in the back. The sisters walked together, as cheerfully as they had before Rosaura had married, back when the boys flocked to court her. Now Rosaura had a spouse and Leocadia had lost her gift for casting rain, and her reputation. There were no more admiring boys for them.

Leocadia watched a flock of young priestesses in their white dresses stream across the square and into the temple. There was a pang of longing in her, and of loss. She looked away and found herself face to face with the cartographer.

“I’m glad to see you again,” he said, giving her another one of his big smiles. “I couldn’t even thank you earlier. You ran off too quickly.”

“I got work to do,” she muttered.

“Well thank you.”

“He was lost today,” Leocadia explained because she could feel her sister’s eyes on her. “He asked me for directions.”

She tried to pull Rosaura away when she noticed Rolan, her former lover, approaching her, but Abelardo smiled and motioned to him.

“This is the lady I told you about,” Abelardo said. “She wouldn’t even give me her name.”

Rolan looked down at her, white teeth flashing a sharp grin, and oh, how she had loved that smile when she was younger. “I’m not surprised by the lack of manners. Leocadia, this is Abelardo Anma. The imperial envoy in our little province.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Leocadia said coldly.

“Come with me now,” Rolan said. “There’s more interesting people to be met.”

Rolan clasped his shoulder. Abelardo looked back at Leocadia in confusion. Leocadia pulled her black shawl over her head. Night was falling and it was very cold after the sun set.

“You talked to a stranger,” Rosaura said, rubbing her hands nervously.

“He talked to me.”

“What will they say?”

Leocadia watched Abelardo and Rolan as they disappeared from sight. Four years before, when she had been a great deal more naive, she had taken Rolan as her lover. She knew the loss of her virginity would also mean the loss of her rain spells. Purity was the tinder to a priestess’s magic, and the sisters of her order valued innocence in gold, paying a stipend to the families of the girls who studied in their temple.

Leocadia had been loved and cherished by the sisters, by the town and the important families that lived in it. Rolan’s father, the mayor, placed a garland of flowers upon her head the summer she turned fourteen, when she was able to conjure a light rain which lasted a full fifteen minutes. It had been the season of her glory.

Her mother whispered excitedly about the money from the temple, which she was diligently saving for her dowry. A former priestess could make such a good match.

But fifteen years was a long time to serve for Leocadia, especially after Rolan had smiled at her on her way from the temple, when she went to visit her mother and her sister. He romanced Leocadia, dropping sweet notes in her path and promising he would wed her.

The sisters discovered her transgression and Leocadia was tossed from the temple. The townspeople sneered at her. When Leocadia went to work in the salt plains, the men spoke lewd words. One of them tried to touch her breasts. At first Leocadia took a knife with her, then she simply picked salt alone, far from the others.

“You must not talk to him again,” Rosaura said. “It would be very bad.”

Leocadia looked down, thinking of the droplets of rain against her hair, the pretty water spells she used to cast.

“You hear me? You understand?”

“I do,” Leocadia said, looking ahead. Her mouth felt dry, it tasted of salt and desert winds.

***

She saw Abelardo in the middle of the street two days later. He was standing behind a bronze apparatus, which was set on a three-footed stand. Abelardo squinted and bent down near the apparatus, then opened a large case with tiny drawers. A multitude of dirty children, and a stray dog, observed him. Leocadia, too, stopped to watch, even though the sun was slowly rising and moving across the sky. Abelardo sketched and wrote and mumbled to himself for a good half hour.

Then he closed his case and folded away the apparatus until it was snugly roped against a piece of canvas.

The children wandered away. Leocadia and the dog, now sleeping next to her feet, remained. Leocadia leaned against the salt walls of a house and crossed her arms.

“What’s that thing you got?” she asked.

“That’s a dioptra.”

“What does it to do?”

“It measures angles.”

“That’s the big deal? You’re measuring stuff?”

“Well, you can’t just draw a good map out of thin air.”

“I don’t see why anyone would need to find Comba on a map,” she said.

“It might be useful.”

Leocadia doubted the Empress was going to ride across the desert to buy some salt from them, and that was the only thing Comba had to offer. There were crude signs that said “salt for sale” hanging from the doors, salt piled in backyards and inside homes, and salt caked against boots and clothes when an anaemic rain chanced to slide down the sky.

“Would you mind doing me a favour?”

“What?”

“Can you take me back to that temple where I found you?”

“What for?”

“I’d like to draw it.”

One of the houses across the street had many salt cakes sitting near its door, waiting to be taken to the market. An old man in a rickety cart and two strong, younger fellows arrived to pick the cargo. They stared at Leocadia, and she wiped her hands against her clothes, the salt glistening and clinging to the dark fabric.

“I got to go,” she said.

“I’d really appreciate it,” he insisted.

“What do you want to draw it for?”

“It’s my job. Listen,” he said patting his long, flowing coat. “I can pay you. A gold piece this time.”

“You’re going to take your dioptra with you?” she asked, eyeing the bundle.

“Yes.”

Leocadia thought about it for a moment. Curiosity. It was her greatest fault and the cause of her downfall. Curiosity had driven her to a man’s arms, into a man’s bed. Curiosity had left her dry as the playa, tough as the salt bricks.

She nodded curtly. “Tomorrow. Before the dawn. You meet me here again, alright?”

***

Leocadia touched the shiny metal apparatus while he hummed and scribbled. She did not recognize the melody.

“Why do you even care about drawing this place?” she asked him. “It’s nowhere.”

“Actually it’s somewhere. It’ll serve as a landmark. When people come by they can look for it.”