“We’re always in trouble.” He added with a shrug, “It’ll be all right. They’ll believe Gil.”
Tremaine gave him the penetrating stare. It was every bit as daunting as those Giliead was capable of; Ilias grinned at her. “Really.”
“What happens if they decide they don’t like their Chosen Vessel anymore?”
What if they kill him
? she meant. Ilias planted his hands on his hips and looked at the market stalls under the trees. It was a serious question, so he answered it seriously. “That’s only happened once before, many years ago and not here.” It had been in the Vessels’ Histories; thinking about it brought back long-ago memories of those nights sitting by the fire, Ilias curiously looking over the faded scrolls while Giliead learned what his life was likely to hold. How to kill wizards, how the other Vessels had died. “They killed their Chosen Vessel and their god left.” He shook his head. “No one here is willing to risk that.”
Tremaine frowned. “Where did it go?”
Ilias looked at her, his lips quirking. Only she would have asked that question. “Nobody knows. Back where gods come from, I guess.” He nodded toward the others, who were past the trees and had reached the beginning of the harbor road. “You’d better go too.”
She pressed her lips together, not happy, but she went.
Ilias watched until she caught up, then headed up the steps to the lawgiver’s house to walk along the portico to the council house entrance.
The round high-ceilinged room was crowded, all the tiers of benches up to the roof occupied with the male heads of household and the younger sons and daughters. The female heads of the household sat up on the top tier, where the best view was and the little square windows just under the roof let in air. Across the dome itself was Ilias’s favorite of all the murals in the lawgiver’s house, the one that told the story of Elea’s voyage to Thrice Cumae, with the Ocean of Snakes, the Walls of the World and all her other adventures picked out in delicate little tiles.
They were still talking among themselves in soft worried voices, shuffling for room, trying to get comfortable. The heads of household who meant to speak were standing and there was a depressingly large number of them. Giliead, his arms folded, was on his feet in a place on the lowest tier, wearing a stolid expression. Nicanor’s place on the opposite tier was still empty, but he was up at the top, helping Visolela settle herself in her own seat, both exchanging comments with the other women. Despite the breeze the room smelled of sun-warmed dust and too many people.
As Ilias started forward, an older man stepped down from his seat, a preoccupied expression on his face. It was Pella, the lawgiver’s deputy. He glanced up, saw Ilias, and his eyes narrowed. He would have liked to keep Ilias out, but he wouldn’t speak to anyone with a curse mark, even to order him away. Ilias deliberately met his gaze as he shouldered past him.
Ilias crossed the tiled floor and sat down on the step at Giliead’s feet. Ferias, a husky red-faced man with a perpetually angry expression, was one of the speakers already standing, waiting impatiently for Nicanor to sit down. Ferias’s family had been enemies of Andrien so long no one could remember why and it was no surprise that he was leading the opposition.
As Nicanor stepped down the tiers and leisurely took his seat, the hushed conversations began to die down. Impatient to begin, Ferias faced Giliead, saying, “You brought those people into the city. Why?” His loud voice startled everyone into silence. Ilias could hear birdsong from the trees outside.
Giliead gave Ferias a hard stare. “They are travelers, with guest-right. They earned that guest-right defending Agis’s village from the wizards that later destroyed it. We’re taking them back to ... a place they can reach their home from.”
There was a low murmur of comment throughout the room. Ilias hoped nobody asked how exactly that was going to happen. Gerard had tried earnestly to explain it, but the only point Ilias was clear on was that it required curses. Hopefully most here would just assume the
Swift
was taking them somewhere they could meet another ship.
Ferias looked around at his audience. “They are wizards themselves,” he announced, as if everyone hadn’t been talking about it all morning.
“They are at war with the Gardier wizards on the island. The lawgiver has already explained this and I’m not going to repeat his words.” Giliead let his gaze travel around the room too. “They want to be our allies.”
Ferias slammed his fist into his palm. “Bringing those people here is why the wizards attacked in force—”
“The wizards had already attacked,” Nicanor interrupted suddenly. He fixed Ferias with a cold eye. “Unless you think the gleaners’ villages and the missing ships were a coincidence?”
Gibelin, who spoke for the gleaners and was always a hothead, surged to his feet and angrily demanded, “Or perhaps the dead gleaners weren’t worth your notice, Ferias?”
Ferias just stood there, breathing hard. Ilias looked at the ground to conceal his expression. Ferias had started out with the wrong argument; few here would believe the Gardier wizards would have just let the Syrnai alone. Everyone would know they would have attacked the coast eventually, provoked or not. Then Ferias fixed his eye on Giliead again. He said deliberately, “How can we trust your judgment? After Ixion. You let him into your house, led your own sister to her death.” He turned away to appeal to the whole room. “How can we trust him after that?”
Everyone burst into talk. Some were agreeing, some disagreeing, some objecting on religious principles, and some agreeing but protesting the outright rudeness of Ferias’s declaration. Mouth twisted, Ilias exchanged an annoyed look with Giliead. Ferias couldn’t say anything they hadn’t already said to themselves or each other.
Nicanor contemplated the ceiling mosaic, letting the clamor continue, then said loudly, “Ferias. Do you trust the god?”
An uneasy silence fell. Ilias sensed Giliead tense. Lawgivers couldn’t give orders to Chosen Vessels, but if Nicanor wanted to pursue this argument, he had far more stones to throw than Ferias. Even if Nicanor was on their side, Ilias wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this.
Ferias looked as tense as Giliead. He was speaker enough to know that Nicanor was a canny opponent and that the question was a trap, but how to avoid it eluded him. “Of course I trust the god,” he snapped, adding irrelevantly, “Didn’t it cure my cows of the hoofblight last year?”
Up on the top tier, Ilias saw Ferias’s wife cover her eyes with her shawl.
“Whatever its view of the events of last year, the god has not repudiated Giliead.” Nicanor’s impenetrable gaze went to Giliead. “His judgment is its judgment.”
It was unfair but effective. The other heads of household started to argue among themselves and Ilias saw Ferias’s wife motioning for him to sit down.
T
hey tramped down the road that led to the harbor, Tremaine occupied with her thoughts. She hoped this council turned out to be nothing, but Halian looked worried. Along the way people stared at them from windows, from under the shade trees in the little yards or from groups gathered around the fountains, but nobody seemed to want to stop them.
The road turned at the top of a rise and they suddenly had a view of the harbor. It was sheltered by a high promontory, which boasted a pyramidal stone tower for a lighthouse on one side and a long breakwater of tumbled blocks on the other. Along the waterfront there were stalls with stone walls and wooden roofs, where a number of merchants presided over lots of raw materials like bars of copper and tin and sacks of grain. Short stone piers extended out into the water for the ships to dock at, though many were stored in long wooden sheds along the far bank.
The
Swift
was tied up decorously near the top of one of the stone piers, which was something of a relief; Tremaine had been afraid they would have to push it out into the water again and that seemed a far more difficult process than beaching it. Various crew members were climbing the mast and pulling on the ropes, getting the ship ready.
Gyan, who had gone ahead, waved at them as he came back along the dock, stopping to talk with Halian. Gerard, Ander and Arites gathered around to listen. Tremaine was already starting to feel sore from the ride and went to take a seat on a stone bench near one of the big wooden posts where the ship was tied off. Despite the bright sunlight the breeze coming off the water was pleasantly cool.
Florian and Dyani followed her, Florian plopping down with a sigh suggesting the ride had tired her too.
It was a busy place, with men hauling barrels, casks and big rust-colored pottery jars, traders hawking their wares. Tremaine caught snatches of conversation, most of which concerned the “wizards on the island.” Fortunately no one on the crowded dock seemed to realize there were wizards right here, too.
As she watched, she saw a short, burly man with light graying hair come out of a grain stall and stop and stare at the group around Halian. Tremaine sat up a little. There was something in that stare; it wasn’t just curiosity to know who the strangers were. His eyes moved over the men as if he was looking for someone in particular. He reminded her of an unfriendly dog, looking for someone to bite. Then he turned and moved away down the dock.
Dyani nudged Tremaine with an elbow. “That was Ilias’s brother,” she said softly.
“His brother?” Tremaine repeated stupidly, but Dyani nodded, knowing what she meant.
“They don’t look much alike, do they?” Dyani eyed the retreating back of the other man without favor. “That’s how Ilias came to Andrien.”
“What do you mean?” Florian asked, sliding forward on the bench.
Dyani threw a look around to make sure there was no one in earshot, then leaned confidentially toward them. “When he was a boy, barely seven years old, his father decided that he didn’t want him anymore, and he took him out to the hill where people leave babies.”
Florian’s eyes widened in shock. “That’s sick,” she murmured. “That doesn’t happen a lot here, does it?”
Dyani nodded. “Not as much. Ranior, who was Karima’s first husband, made a law against it when he was lawgiver, but that doesn’t stop people like the Finan.”
“That’s Ilias’s family?” Florian asked, who seemed to be having better luck at keeping it all straight than Tremaine.
“It was then. Now he’s Andrien.”
“How did he get to be Andrien?” Tremaine prompted.
“He tried to find his way home. He was going along the road in the dark and Ranior and his men came riding by— this was after Gil was born and Ranior wasn’t lawgiver anymore—and he found Ilias and he took him home to Andrien. They found out who he was and what must have happened, but Ranior hadn’t caught Ilias’s father in the act, so he couldn’t do anything about it.”
“Ranior was Gil’s father?” Tremaine asked, frowning a little as she tried to get everyone sorted out.
“No, the god is Gil’s father,” Dyani explained patiently. “Ranior was Karima’s husband. He died a long time ago, before I was born,” she added.
“So Ilias’s family won’t have anything to do with him because of all this?” Florian asked, disturbed. “That’s really unfair, considering it was all his father’s fault.”
“Well, it’s that and the curse mark.” Dyani grimaced and added, “Of course, that’s not fair either.”
“The curse mark?” Tremaine felt she sounded like a parrot, but there were too many unfamiliar words, too many concepts that didn’t seem to have any equivalent in Rienish.
Dyani touched her own face, just at the cheekbone. “The brand, here. It’s given to anyone who’s had a curse put on them and survived. My father would have one, if he’d lived.”
Tremaine and Florian exchanged a startled look.
Damn
, Tremaine thought. She had taken it for an ornament. Dyani was right, it was unfair. Considering how often Ilias and Giliead had risked their lives fighting wizards, it was a mortal insult.
Dyani shrugged and looked down at the rough boards under their feet. “Gyan says we’re lucky we all don’t have matching sets, considering how Ixion hated everybody.”
“Having a Chosen Vessel in the family isn’t really considered a good thing, is it?” Tremaine said, suddenly putting two and two together. Karima had said people were almost as afraid of the men who had to kill wizards as they were of the wizards themselves. And if she understood what Dyani was telling them, Ranior had left an important and prestigious position as lawgiver after Gil was born. And years later Halian had left a similar position before he married Karima. Tremaine wondered if that was the source of the tension between Nicanor and the others, if he resented his father for risking the family fortunes and prestige merely for love.
The people in the Andrien village hadn’t seemed to care much about it, but then they would have been used to seeing Giliead and Ilias every day, would have watched them grow up or played with them as children. It was probably hard to develop a good full-blown superstitious fear about someone you had known as a grubby two-year-old.
Dyani nodded, looking somber. “I don’t know why. I guess so few people in the city know them and don’t realize they’re just like ordinary people.” She glanced up, smiling a little tentatively. “Like you. You’re around curses all the time, but you’re not strange.”
“I’m strange, she’s not,” Tremaine said, straight-faced.
Dyani’s smile turned into a grin and she nudged Florian with an elbow, as the other girl chuckled. Tremaine was aware of another pang. She had been having them all morning and finally she realized why. She didn’t want to leave.
People accustomed to Giliead’s deadpan sense of humor didn’t find hers obscure at all. People used to being thought odd themselves took her oddness for granted. After they got on the boat she might never see this place again. And she found, after all, that she did want to see it again.
“
Y
ou know, this is one time we could have used some cloud cover and mist.” Ilias studied the faultless blue sky overhead.
Giliead nodded, giving the sky an annoyed look, as if the day had dawned clear solely to harass them. “I hope the waterpeople know something.”