Authors: Caitlin Sweet
I tried to picture it, as he told me the rest.
“Neluja is a strong
ispa
, a credit to our blood.”
“And your other sister? Zemiya?”
“A proud woman, though she has no reason to be.”
“But she too is of your blood—royal blood—surely she is revered as the rest of you are?”
“She shows me little honour.”
“But the people—”
“They love her. It is difficult for me to do the same.”
“I will ask the others here to leave us now,
moabu
. You and I must talk alone.”
Teldaru was holding my shoulders—the bare skin beneath my sleeping shift. “It is as I have seen. This is the Pattern that will shape my triumph. Our triumph.” He smiled and dug his fingers in. “And it has been so
simple
! Will it always be so simple?”
Please
, I thought as I crossed the courtyard with him,
let him be wrong. Let this Path twist all of us away from him. Let him be wrong.
We stood outside Haldrin’s study with Derris and the other lords. No one spoke. The only voices came from behind the closed door: a rising and falling, words blurred, impossible to understand. Then, after a time, silence.
The people in the corridor stood straighter as the door opened. King Haldrin stepped out, and
Moabu
Bantayo behind him. Now, so close, I saw that Bantayo was even shorter than I had thought he was, and that his eyes (which lit on me briefly) were very beautiful—several shades of brown shot through with green—and very cold.
Both men were smiling.
“You, my trusted advisers, shall know first.” There were purplish shadows under Haldrin’s eyes, and a smattering of golden-brown stubble on his cheeks and chin, and his tunic was rumpled. He was like a boy who had just risen from a too-short rest—hungrily, wildly awake.
“The
moabu
and I have reached an agreement that will unite our lands forever.”
I saw Teldaru’s hands clench and thought,
He was right
.
“
Moabe
Zemiya of Belakao will be queen of Sarsenay.”
No
, I thought as the others moved to clasp Haldrin’s hands and bow to Bantayo. Teldaru did not step forward with them. He was still beside me; I felt his gaze and turned toward it because I knew I must, eventually.
“So simple, love,” he said. “You see?”
“No,” I whispered, over and over, so that I would not have to hear the voice within me that said “yes.”
“Tollic!” Grasni cried. “Dren! Stop immediately before you fall in!”
We were outside—all of us, nine younger students and Selera and Grasni and I and even Mistress Ket, who was sitting on a bench beneath the shadiest tree. It had been too hot indoors; the students had been sodden and querulous and impossible to teach. So we had all come out to the courtyard, where there was the hint of a hint of a breeze, and Tollic and Dren had discovered enough energy with which to wrestle each other.
We were not doing much to stop them. Grasni was laughing as she shouted, and some of the other children were cheering. Tollic and Dren were now the oldest boys among the group—eleven and ten—and they were clumsy and graceful, a delight to watch. Selera was the only one protesting; she was waving her arms, trying to stand between the wrestlers and her own small, excited charges.
Dren, who was shorter than Tollic but also broader, lunged at the other boy, and with a scrabbling, desperate flurry of limbs they both fell into the pool.
Everyone was silent, very suddenly. The pool was sacred; it had been in this place before the castle had, and Sarsenay’s very first Otherseer had used it for her visions. Also, it was full of those tiny fish that glowed green in darkness. You might dabble a hand in it, on a hot day like this, but nothing more.
Grasni and I knelt and reached for the boys. They were thrashing, stirring the clear water to murkiness. It was not deep, but they were panicking, choking, slipping away before we could get a grip on them.
“Nola!” Selera’s voice was shrill.
“Selera,” I said loudly, “I’m busy—just wait—”
“Nola,” said a new voice, and I froze. “Move aside, now.” Teldaru leaned out over the pool and hoisted Tollic and Dren up. He deposited them onto the yellow-brown grass, where they hunched, sputtering and coughing, and not looking at any of us.
I sat back on my heels. Teldaru was standing, brushing dirt from his knees. He was smiling.
He should be angry
, I thought, and,
What now . . .?
“I tried to make them stop.” Selera was beside him. I wondered yet again how she managed to be simpering and solemn at the same time. “They are incorrigible, all of them.” She glared from Grasni to me, as if we had leapt into the pool ourselves, against her express orders.
“They are,” Teldaru agreed.
“I tried—” Selera began, and he held up a hand.
“Yes, Selera, I’m sure you did. And I’m appreciative of your efforts, as always.”
Her simper wobbled into something less confident. One of her students (a little girl no more than seven) giggled, and Mistress Ket thumped her stick against the ground and cried, “Quiet while Master Teldaru is speaking!” Master Teldaru himself continued to smile.
“I have come to give you good tidings,” he said.
Selera brightened again. “About the wedding?” The students murmured, and another few giggled.
“No,” he said. “About you—about my three lovely, grown girls.”
Grasni glanced at me. I shrugged a bit, not caring if he saw. My belly was crawling with dread.
“Stand with me, Mistress Ket.” She rose slowly; Selera rushed over to her, helped her shuffle across the grass to Teldaru.
“Selera, Grasni and Nola, you are not students any more. You have known this—we all have—for months and months, but it is time to make the knowledge real. It is time for you to take your places as Mistresses of Otherseeing.”
Selera gave a gasp that sounded very loud.
“Nola,” he said. That benevolent smile, those calm black eyes; I swallowed dryness and a taste of bile. “You will stay here.” Hardly a shock—so why did my heart give a great, lurching thump? “Mistress Ket and I need you, for, as you well know, there has not been a full complement of teachers at the castle since Master Parvo and Mistress Mandola left.” They had run away together, Selera told us. “Even if she did look a little like a toad,” she had said, “and he was old, it’s terribly romantic, don’t you think?”
Terribly lucky
, is what I had thought;
they’re free.
“Grasni,” he went on, and looked down at her. She was sitting quite straight among her dress’ riotous folds. “You will go to Narlenel. It is a fine city, and its lord and lady are fine rulers.”
“And it is near my own town,” she said. “Thank you, Master Teldaru.”
He nodded, let his eyes slip from her to Selera. “Selera.”
“Master?” she said brightly. She looked very beautiful just then: soft green dress, gold at her ears and throat, Belakaoan gems and ribbons in her hair. She glowed with certainty.
“You will go to Meriden—another city of vital importance to Sarsenay. It is second only to our own in wealth and influence.”
“But . . .” A dimming of the glow. She twisted her hands in her dress. “Master, I thought . . . I thought you would keep me here?”
Her voice cracked on the last word. I looked away from her, pitying her even as I exulted.
“No, my dear,” he said, “Nola is the only one to stay. And you will be grateful when you see your new home. They have silks there that will—”
“I don’t
want
silks!” she cried. One of the students whimpered. “I want to stay! I need to be here, Master—you know that.”
Grasni’s mouth was hanging open. The whimpering student began to sob. Teldaru frowned—in consternation, not anger—and stepped toward Selera, but before he reached her she lifted her skirts and whirled and ran.
“Do not worry about her,” he said as we watched her go. She stumbled once, where the grass met the path, but she did not fall (and I was surprised to find that I did not want her to). “It is difficult to embrace change right away. She will soon be happy. Especially,” he added, smiling again, “when I tell her about the celebration we will have.”
A feast, as it turned out. I watched the tables being set up in the seers’ courtyard a few days later, even as the lower courtyard was filling with tents and performers’ stages. Zemiya would be arriving in a matter of weeks; the king had called upon Sarsenayan artists to gather at the castle for a celebratory competition. Singers, poets, sculptors, painters, dancers: they flooded onto the castle grounds and into the inns of Sarsenay City, all of them hoping to win fame at the royal wedding. We could hear their clamour from here. Distant music, clapping and laughter and some shouting. Singing. A hum, beneath everything else, of bodies alive and together.
“I’d rather be down there tonight,” said Grasni. I started and turned to her. She was gazing at the tables and the benches, and at the lanterns that had been hung in the branches of the trees. I had gone looking for her earlier, rehearsing what I would say to her and trying to anticipate what she might say to me. I had not found her—but now here she was beside me, and I almost did not want to speak and risk the moment’s end.
“Ah,” I said (because I had to speak, of course), “but only here, tonight, will you see Selera disguised as a serving girl as she attempts to avoid the Path her true love has set before her.”
They were hollow words, echoes of ones that might once have made us laugh.
“It will be hard to leave,” Grasni said. “For Selera and for me.”
Just as I was noting, with some relief, that she had no tears in her eyes this time, I realized that I did. “Grasni,” I said, “I don’t know what I’ll do without you.”
“You’ll teach,” she said, “and you’ll find a friend who knows not to wear purple with red, and who
won’t
know . . .”
“What my Otherself looks like?” I said when her voice faltered and faded. “Someone who won’t be disgusted and afraid, as you are?” I did not know if my own voice was trembling because of sadness or anger—for I felt the latter, all of a sudden, thrusting heat outward from my belly.
“No,” she said, turning to me, her face twisted, “oh, Nola, you
know
how sorry I am—”
She did not flee from me again, as I half-expected her to. I fled from her. I dodged among the trees and the tables and the people laying them with silver plates and goblets, and I dashed into my room and slammed the door. I cried for a long time, with my face pressed against one of the toy horses. I had not cried like this in many years. I felt like a child, gulping and sobbing, consumed by something I could not name. Except that I was not a child, and I could have named it—all the layers of it. I could have dried my eyes and washed my face and gone back out into the courtyard to talk to my friend, who was leaving.
Instead I stayed where I was. I waited, after my tears had stopped—just as I had waited for Chenn, so many years ago, when I had slammed another door and hoped she would come to me anyway. The light in my room turned from gold to bronze to blue-black. I did not touch the lamp on my desk. No: I would sit in darkness, while the courtyard danced with flame and silver. I would be miserable and alone until someone came to fetch me: one of my students, perhaps, or Grasni, or all of them together.
The knock finally came hours after night had fallen. I waited for a long, silent moment before I called, “Come in.”
Selera shone, with all that light behind her and all the dimness in front. She was silhouetted in points of fire: her curves both gentle and sharpened, her hair a glittering mass of gold. I had never seen it down before—not like this, in rippling waves that had no pins or combs or ribbons in them.
“Go away.” I still sounded like that child, sullen and hurt.
She stepped into the room.
“Selera. Please. I want to be alone.” My voice wobbled and leapt.
She took another step, and another. “What do
you
have to cry about?”
She was right in front of me, and I could see her better: her wide eyes and the tears on her cheeks. “I’m the one, Nola. I . . .” She sat down beside me on the bed and I did not think to tell her to get up again.
“You what?” I said. There was something different about her—the unbound hair and something else. As she turned her head to face me I knew what it was: she was not wearing any scent.
“Take my place,” she said. “Go to Meriden.”
I laughed. “And you will stay here and be Mistress Teldaru, is that it? And what would
Master
Teldaru say to this?”
“I’ve already asked him.” She was speaking so softly I could hardly hear her. “He said no. But I thought if I asked you, and if you agreed . . .”
I snorted, rubbed my hands over my eyes and under my nose. “And what else did he say?”
“That he will let me stay until the Princess Zemiya arrives, if I wish.”
“And do you wish?”
She leaned over so that her forehead was almost touching mine. “Of course I
wish
—do not ask me questions you already know the answers to—do not
mock
me.” Her spittle fell on my face but I did not wipe it away. “You . . . you. You and he.” She sagged backward as if I had been holding her and had let her go. “What is there between you? You can tell me, now that it doesn’t matter any more.”
“What do you mean?” Because I wanted to know, suddenly, with a desire that made my flesh throb.
She laughed, this time. “You and he, Nola! Looking at each other all the time and pretending not to! Together all the time, even when you’re not! Ever since that first day, in that tiny smelly horrible room, when you were so filthy and mad—I tried not to see it then but I did, and I still do, and I don’t understand—he loves
me
—
what is there between you
?”
I heard singing, in the silence—two of our girls, whose voices rose above all the other courtyard noise like smoke. Weaving a pattern too lovely and vivid to endure.