The Ghost Sister (23 page)

The house was filled with a tense anticipation. I received punctilious morning courtesies from those I met on the way to the stoveroom, but nothing more until I encountered Jheru. This morning, he was dressed in overlapping blue robes which lent bulk without disguising his sinuous grace of movement. His aquamarine eyes were deep as well water, and guileless. He appeared genuinely pleased to see me, I saw with a lift of the spirits, which sobered only when I reminded myself why we were here. Sounds came from the open door of the stoveroom.

“There is only tea, and water,” Jheru informed me apologetically. “You understand that a fast is imposed until … ?”

Until the matter was settled.

I gestured assent.

“I'd like some more tea, if I may,” I said, and he took my cup and went with it into the stoveroom to refill it. As I waited, Pera Cathra emerged from some errand in the stoveroom. She peered at me and then, very much to my surprise, gave me a chilly formal bow, which I returned. When I raised my eyes, she moved on into the labyrinth of rooms behind the main hall.Jheru reappeared. “Hessan has asked me to explain the order of the day to you. He himself has gone to speak to
sereth.The claim hearing meets shortly, she knows all about this. Then, we'll all go up to the funeral ground. The child's birth took place at a particular configuration of the moons; she must be sent into the fire accordingly. Time is a little short, and the
satahrach
deemed it inadvisable to wait.”

“We'll do whatever has to be done.”

The claim hearing was held in a small room close to the main gate. Sereth and myself, led by Hessan and Jheru, were met at the door by a man in the mask of Temethai: the sign of the First Gate of the gap between the worlds. The left half of the mask was blue, to denote sorrow, the right half was green, to indicate inevitability. The
esedrada
, the ritual speech of passage, was begun and we responded appropriately, but it was left unfinished, since this was not the true passage of death but only reparation. The
satahrachin
say that the recitation of the
esedrada
brings one's own death closer, turns the implacable attention of the Gate upon oneself and reminds the world of its own powers. I used not to believe that this was so.

Once ritual and response were given, a hand brought the mask down and turned it deftly inside out. Now, it was a smooth face, the color of stone, the Second Gate. The ritualist stepped aside and we went through. The hearing was composed of the five principal family members, the Hand of the House, here in Temmarec, three women and two men, one of them Hessan. They sat behind a heavy table before the semicircular rows of benches. On either side of the front row was a raised seat and the witness chairs. We were shown to our proper places by Jheru and waited. A light scatter of rain drummed against the taut skin of the window. Family members filed in until the chamber was full, and then the hearing began.

It proceeded much as I expected, at least at first. Sereth recounted the events which had led to the child's death. She took pains to make clear that our descent into the bloodmind was inspired by the natural urge to protect a
member of the family. There were gestures of assent and sympathy at this point in her narrative. She did not conceal her own responsibility for the death of Hessan's niece. When my own turn came, I acknowledged my part in the hunt. Wishing to be candid, and to confirm that Sereth had acted from the depths of the bloodmind, I told them that I had nearly savaged Mevennen. This was accepted for the truth it was, but it still stuck in my throat. There was a time when I would have taken such a thing for granted.

Once we had done, the Hand of the House debated amongst itself and repeated Hessan's statement of the blood claim: that Sereth would attend the funeral, that she would permit the ritual scoring of cuts on the forearm, one for each year of the girl's age, and that if she ever came to bear another child, she would foster it at Temmarec so that it was imprinted with Temmarec's defense patterns before it went into the wild. This would mean, of course, that she would have to come to Temmarec to bear the child. We agreed to everything. A woman seated at the table rang the single note of a bell, and it was in the long moment as it died away that objections could be raised. After the events of the previous evening, I was not entirely surprised when the still song of the bell was broken abruptly by the sharp ritual knock upon the door, and Pera Cathra was admitted by the masked man. She entered straight backed and her eyes glittered. She looked as though she had come fresh from an argument. The old
satahrach
Rami, who sat beside me at the table, spoke. He did not appear greatly surprised, either. He said, very formally in the Remote Indicative, “Pera emet Cathra ai Temmarec. Blood claim is set upon Sereth emet Saila ai Dath, for the
elustren
death of the daughter of Moidra emet Mhadrya ai Temmarec, on the ninth day of Gennetra in summer. What have you to say of the blood-price?”

“It is not sufficient.”

“It is the price set for the death of a human-to-be,” Rami said gently, reasonably.

“It is not sufficient.” Pera Cathra's old voice was rising. “She was my daughter's daughter. And my daughter too is dead. I will never see Moidra again in the roads of life, and now her daughter is dead and I will never see the woman she would have been. And the woman from Eluide is responsible for all my sorrow, and what sorrow has she?”

Rami reached out a conciliatory hand and was ignored. The family stirred uneasily behind us. I shifted in my seat and the involuntary movement caught the old woman's attention. She turned on me. Her face was distorted by hate, the eyes hardly visible, her mouth quivering.

“You watched her!” she shouted. “You watched her tear my grandchild apart and you did not stop her! You would have butchered your own sister.”

She was deep in the grip of hysteria. She threw back her head and wailed, and a long thread of saliva trailed down her chin.The house sat dumbstruck. Sereth stared rigidly ahead, one hand gripping the arm of the chair. At the edge of my senses I could feel, radiating from Pera Cathra, the beginnings of the state that brought us to where we were now, the thrust of the blood that pushes us beyond distress and pain and need. If I could feel it, who was no blood relation of hers, then what must it be like for her family? I had a moment of pure panic. Hearings like this, the only legal system we know outside the
medeinen
courts, are by their nature unbalanced. If they turned on Sereth and me, even armed as we were, we would be dead within minutes. There must have been forty people in that chamber.

Pera Cathra looked beyond me and shrieked. The shifting movements behind me increased. Jheru made a sudden convulsive movement at my side. Pera Cathra whirled round with a swiftness belying her age and struck out at me, laying open my face with her nails. She took me completely by surprise. My cheek felt radiantly hot. She struck again, and I grasped her arm and twisted it, forcing her around while trying not to hurt her. A pulse of pain beat against my
face. Jheru, who was nearest, clutched the kicking woman around the waist and we all went down together in a heap on the tiled floor.

Pera Cathra broke my grip with a ferocious twist and reared up. Jheru struck out for her and she bit him in the arm. He cursed, trying to break her grip without hurting her. I forced my fingers into her mouth and jabbed upward behind her teeth. Abruptly, she let go, falling back against me. We were surrounded by people. I blinked up into a sea of appalled faces, my blood sweet-salt in my mouth from my torn cheek, the wailing old woman clasped to my chest, and the beginnings of a considerable social embarrassment ringing roundly in my mind.

An hour later, I sat in the bathhouse with a pad pressed to my still bleeding cheek. My coat was stiff with blood, drying to a crust: my own and Jheru's, I supposed. The latter sat opposite me, stripped to the waist and revealing (I could not help but notice) an appealing curve of shoulder and a flat, tapering abdomen. The tattoos extended over the shoulder and down, one dark nipple encircled by a bird's curling tongue. The effect, even in my demoralized state, was striking. If Jheru found me, harassed and bleeding, equally attractive, it was not apparent. He was in pain, and grim faced.

“I can't apologize enough. I misjudged the situation completely, because I did not want to see. I thought Pera Cathra might raise the blood claim, but I didn't think she'd go so far. Had already gone so far. It's not” —a pause, then with difficulty—” it's never been a very natural thing with her. She remembers, you see. Like a
satahrach
, but she doesn't remember everything. We try to keep it quiet, but … She was desperate not to lose her daughter Moidra to the world, and desperate for her to come back. And when she did, she told her that she was Moidra's mother, made a big thing of it. Moidra didn't want to know, really. She wanted her own life. She went away for a long time, had a
girl in Erichay, and when that ended she became pregnant by her lover in Tetherau. She had the child, sent it off without a second thought, and then in the same year, she died.” An old pain crossed Jheru's features. “A great many people did, that year, from waterfever. So we thought, maybe it's a good thing, after all, that Pera's so … possessive, for when the child is due to come back. Certainly she thought so. Then, this. No one blames Sereth,” Jheru added hastily. “When Pera Cathra bore Moidra, she was very young, and it damaged her. Moidra was the only child she had. Perhaps that had something to do with it.” But his voice was doubtful. Jheru stretched experimentally, and winced. The muscles in the dark-skinned stomach were taut and unscarred. “I have no children.”

“Can you father them?” It was an extremely rude question, but I was unthinkingly curious. Jheru did not appear offended. “As far as I know. My lover Edruen didn't live long enough for us to find out.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “That was unforgivably rude of me.”

“Oh, don't worry,” Jheru said, adding wryly, “It's been a difficult morning.”

And the difficulty had not yet left us, as I discovered when I left the bathhouse. After the trouble in the hearing room, Pera Cathra had been taken upstairs and given a sedative tea; forcibly, I gathered. Sereth, however, had gone straight to the Hand of the House and demanded that the blood-price be raised.

“What?” I said blankly, when she broke this to me. We were standing on the stairs, and I recall looking down into her uplifted, determined face. I knew that look. Sereth wanted to make some sort of grand atonement.

“She wants to die,” Sereth said. “She's lost everything that matters to her: her daughter, her daughter's child. She remembers. I know it's not natural, and I can't imagine feeling the same way, but she was so desolate. I wanted to—give her something.” Guilt flickered behind her eyes. I remembered
Morrac's voice, pouring poison into her ear: “
And you? What about you? We
'
re the same, Sereth. I know you. The world at your heels and blood in your mouth; that
'
s what you want, isn
'
t it?
”

“You won't be giving her anything! What did you say you'd do?” I had unpardonable visions of the family bankrupted.

“Nothing of either House. Something of mine.” She held up her hand: the left, her good sword hand, her hunting hand. It took me a moment to realize what she meant.

“You can't allow yourself to be mutilated for this,” I said in dismay. I looked at the huntress's long, elegant fingers, her curving, embossed nails, the mountain lines tattooed like rings around her fingers, the scar across her palm. Her own name, won from the world, inscribed along the length of her thumb. A beautiful hand. I caught it in my own; it was warm in mine.” Sereth,
no.
”

“It'll grow back,” she said in her most reasonable tone.

“Yes, but that will take months. You'll lose too much blood.”

“Not if Rami treats it properly.”

“No. You can't. You're punishing yourself, giving up all your symbols like this, and your name, because she made you feel guilty. And why is that, Sereth? What happened was an accident; it was natural. It happens all the time. It's just the bloodmind; there's no reason to be ashamed.”

I argued on, but my words seemed to fall hollow on the air and Sereth's mouth was set in a mutinous line. “I will do it, Eleres.” She pulled her hand free of mine and marched past me up the stairs.

In the end, of course, Hessan refused to have any such thing done under his roof, but Sereth kept on at him until eventually he lost patience.

“If you want to get rid of your hand so much, you'll have to do it yourself,” he hissed at her. “What do you take me for, a barbarian?
Mehed?
”

She flushed that she had managed to insult him. “I seem to be compounding my errors,” she said bitterly.

“You're certainly embarrassing your family,” I muttered.

She turned on me. “What did you say?”

“Oh, never mind.”

Sereth spun on her heel and stalked back into the hearing room. Hessan looked at me and I looked at him, and then we bolted after her. We were too late. We found her doubled up over her own sword, and for a terrible moment I thought she'd made a bid for suicide. Then she straightened, and I saw that she had cut off her thumb, the one that bore her own inscribed name. Her name, for the death of a child. She was pale with pain, but honor appeared satisfied. She gave me a grim glance and strode past me into the hall. I saw her later, bandaged up, but frankly I was too angry to speak to her. There was still the funeral to get through.

After the events of the claim hearing, the house hummed like a hive. When Shu Gho stepped hastily out of sight of the people pouring from the chamber, she found that she was shaking. Eleres's words echoed in memory:
elustren, the bloodmind, the pack.
She might not be Mondhaith, she might lack whatever strange connection they possessed to their planet and one another, but one does not have to be particularly sensitive to detect ferocity. What Shu now felt in this alien house made her deeply afraid. It was as though she had been strolling across a meadow and had suddenly come within moments of tumbling down a well, or found herself staring into the eyes of a wolf.