The Silences of Home (45 page)

“Oh?” A small, jagged word.

She nearly smiled. “There’s something I have to do in the shonyn village.”

“Oh, Lanara”—a kind tone now, thickened with regret—“you’re not still pining for the shonyn man?”

“Nellyn. And yes, I am. I intend to ask him to come back to Luhr with me.”

Malhan strode over to the desk. “Impossible. Now is the time for choosing a consort-scribe, not dallying with men who are not even of Queensfolk stock. Surely you can’t imagine that the shonyn man could be your consort-scribe? Lanara!”

“I’ll change the law of Queensmarriage. I’ll say Galha recommended it—we’ve changed so many things already.”

Malhan laid his fingers on her bare forearm. “I’ve told you we must be prudent. If we alter too many of the traditions that have bound our people for so long, they will become unsettled. The law of Queensmarriage will remain. We will return to Luhr and seek out an appropriate consort-scribe for you.”

“We!” she cried. “We, we, we! You manipulated Galha’s life and death. You won’t do the same to mine.”

He called her name once as she ran to the end of the corridor. Two Queensguards scrambled after her and she cried, “Do not accompany me! Fall back!” She swept through the courtyard and out into the street beyond. Too bright, too crowded. She veered into a darker laneway, glad now of the plain linen tunic she had worn today despite Malhan’s protestations.

She heard footsteps when she paused in the shadows of another deserted alley. Hard leather soles on cobblestones; not even the river’s muted roar or the rasp of her own breath hid the sound. She slipped around a building and watched the street behind her until two men jogged into view. She saw the ribbons that fluttered from their sleeve-ends, knew that these ribbons would be blue and green.
Malhan’s men
, she thought,
sent to spy
—and she ran faster, into twisting streets and through empty tunnels. If she was lost, then so were they—and it would serve them right. She turned onto a path that sloped downward and waited for a glimpse of the harbour.

The wharf was slippery beneath her sandals; she had to lean against a house to regain her balance. It was the house at the end of the wharf, beyond the lanterns and the docks. She looked back the way she had come and saw no one, heard no pursuing footsteps. Even so, she ran again, along the last few feet of wharf and up onto the smooth round stones of the cliff path.

She slowed after she rounded the first bend. Fane and its glow were invisible, but the moon was rising, and the path before her glittered. She followed it, more slowly now that she was sure of her solitude. By the time the path became earth, her steps were dragging. She climbed up, up, her head as light as her feet were heavy.

The signal tower was dark below, ablaze at its top. Lanara stared at the blur of candle fire and metal until her eyes ached. She imagined knocking at the door, striding into the kitchen. “I am your Queen. I am here to scrape tallow from the lightroom floor.” She imagined the log entry that would follow, and the wobbling of Drelha’s second chin as the wrote it:
Visit from the new queen. Poor woman, not quite right in her mind. Previous queen much more queenly
. Lanara ground her palms into her closed eyes as she laughed.

When she returned to the path, the wind was higher than it had been. She pressed herself against the rock and thought of Nellyn’s fear, which had always made her forget her own. She would walk behind him again, with her hands on his shoulders. She would kiss the back of his neck when he faltered. . . .

The wind tore at her tunic. She felt the flesh on her arms and legs pucker and rise, and wondered at how quickly the night had turned cold. She clung to a rock spur as she eased herself around a bend. She took one sideways step, and another. Pebbles slithered down the slope above and ahead of her. She watched some fall down into empty air and others land on the path, and reached out her right foot to step over them. She heard a harsh scrabbling, very close. A shadow detached itself from the cliff above her. She saw it for one long moment, hanging against the darker sky—and then it was arms and a face and the flash of teeth, and a knife.

“My Queen,” said Baldhron.

Leish could not sleep. He lay on his back, his side, his belly; he squeezed his eyelids shut and opened them, hoping they would drift closed on their own. By the time he finally acknowledged that he was tired but not the least bit sleepy, the moon was beginning to rise. He sat up. He listened to the singing of the water that would greet him, and he breathed with it, let his muscles loosen and lengthen as they would in that water. When he opened his eyes again, the moon was high and bright.

None of the Queensguards he passed spoke to him. One of them glared at him; another smiled; most stared past him. He looked at their faces because they were the last of their kind that he would see. He swung his arms as if this would help him move more smoothly through the air that pressed against his skin.

He stopped when he came to the main doors. Malhan was standing alone before them, his arms rigidly crossed. Leish waited for a moment, flexing his fingers and webs. The salt water would sting for the first few days beneath; his flesh was nearly as tender as a drylander’s.

“I must pass,” he said when his gaze did not prompt Malhan to stir. Still Malhan stood and did not speak. “Malhan, let me pass.”

Galha’s consort-scribe smiled. “I could have made you a dead symbol, you know, instead of a living one. I very nearly did. It took me many days to decide how best to use you.”

Leish ran his tongue over his lips. They would pain him the most, on the journey home. “So,” he said, each Queenstongue sound forced, “you wish me to thank you for my life? Your Galha knew: there are worse things than death. I have no thanks for you.”

Malhan’s smile thinned. He stepped away from the doors, keeping one hand on the wood. “Go, then, Sea Raider. Go back to what’s left of your land.”

Leish reached his hand past Malhan’s and tugged at one of the door rings. He looked only ahead. Perhaps Malhan stood in the open doorway and watched him, or perhaps the door closed behind him—it did not matter.
Worse things than death
, Leish thought,
and yet the wind is gentle and the water is close, and I am almost happy
. He decided to walk directly to the end of the longest dock and dive from there, since this would likely annoy Malhan if he was watching. But after Leish had taken one pace onto the damp wood, he reconsidered and turned toward the southern cliffs. He and Mallesh and all the other selkesh had arrived in this land without being seen; Leish would leave it the same way. And in any case, a long, deep dive into open ocean would be preferable to a shallow drop into a harbour full of Queensships.

He climbed the cliff path quickly, even when the wind began to buffet him. It moaned, this high up, grasping at edges of rock and sky. He listened to it, and to the singing beneath it. Soon he would reach a place where the cliff side fell sharply away; he had noticed this when Galha had brought him this way. It had been snowing then, and he had been half-numb from cold and weakness, but he remembered the spot.
Soon
, he thought, as the seasong swelled in his ears.

He was nearly running when he heard the voices. They were Queensfolk voices, louder than wind or water. He slowed and heard whose they were.
Dive
, he thought, flattening his back against the cliff.
You’re done with their kind. Dive
now.

“What do you want?” Her voice trembled, and Baldhron dug the knife’s edge a little deeper into the skin of her throat.

“I want you to beg,” he said. She tried to turn away from his spittle, but he forced her head up and straight. “I want you to weep and bleed. But not until after you’ve learned of the treachery of all your queens.”

She smiled, a glinting line above the knife. “Then I’ll have to disappoint you, for I won’t beg or weep, and I already know about this treachery. Galha’s, anyway. Perhaps you’d explain that of her predecessors?”

Not right
. He shook his head, which ached from the pressure of height and wind and the nearness of a queen after his long solitude.
Drenhan, give me strength and wisdom. Help me remember the words that I’ve waited an age to speak. . . .

“I will tell you,” he said. “And there may be some details, even about Galha’s reign, that will surprise you.” He shoved her back against the rock so that she would be within reach of his knife, but not so close that he would feel her breathing or her skin. These things would distract him, kindle a desire for flesh and death before it was time.

He began with his mother and their cave and the kind Queensman who had praised the boy Borwold and given him watered wine. He had almost gone back there after his escape from Luhr. He had fled north through the desert, thinking only that he would go home, find his contact there, begin again, with the few scrolls he had taken and the many more he would write. But after some days had passed, he had realized the peril of this plan. He would be a hunted man, and the Queen would surely send her first search parties to his old home.
Not yet, then
, he had thought.
I’ll seek out my people in other places
—but very soon this idea too seemed foolish. The Queen would offer a rich reward for his capture. His renegade-scribes were principled men and women, many of whom were also poor. Who knew how easily avarice would triumph over principle? So he had pressed northward alone, expecting to hear hoof beats at his back. He crept into town at night, stole whatever food he could. His hair and beard grew thick, but still he did not show himself, certain that someone, somehow, would recognize Baldhron, the traitor who had killed the Princess.

Lanara frowned as he told her of his mother’s fever and the dive that had twisted her body to its death. A frown of concern—he looked away from it, at the sheen of his blade. Her pity would enrage him as Ladhra’s had.
Speak quickly
, he thought.
Be clear: she must understand the filth of her station before I take her body and then her life
.

His words
were
clear, now that he had been talking for a while. He had practiced them over and over both aloud and in his head. He had ordered and reordered them, like coloured stones that he would fashion into a vast, blazing pattern. It was all he had had to do after he had crossed the northern border of the Queensrealm into the sweep of tundra beyond. He had learned to hunt, learned to sew ragged hides and pile stones against the wind. He had watched distant lines of people and pack animals wending across the waste, and seen their smoke against the stars. The words had accompanied every one of these activities. He was nearly as wild as the tree-horned deer he pursued—except for the words, which returned him to his library, and to the cheers of his followers.

“Leish!” he had cried one morning. His breath had hung white in the air, and frost had cracked beneath his fur-wrapped feet. “Should have killed him too! He’s the one who told the Queen it was me. He’s the one who led her to my library, my realm. . . .” He had fallen to his knees, scrabbled at the lichen-crusted rock beneath him until his fingers bled. Only the words about lying queens, caves, folded notes, underground tunnels kept him from madness.

There had been a purpose to it all. He had not recognized this in those first months, as he struggled to survive, but with the swift, scurrying departure of winter came understanding:
It is not done. I must return to Galha, and she must hear me and die, even if I die with her. I must return to my people, who will write the victory of my end and hers
.

And so, just under a year after he had crossed the Queensrealm’s northern border, he crossed it again. He had discarded his hide clothing before he entered the border town, and shivered in his ragged Queensman clothes, washed and mended for this occasion. He had tied back his hair and combed his beard as best he could, though it was still matted and rank. “I’ve been alone,” he told an old woman sitting in front of a tiny stone hut. “I’ve been suffering from love scorned.”

She had nodded at him and smiled a toothless smile. He glanced around at the other dwellings, some stone, some deerskin stretched over wooden frames. He saw two children jumping on a frozen puddle, and a dog chewing at an end of bone.

“Where,” he had said carefully, “are the Queensfolk who oversee this place?”

The old woman had squinted at him. “Gone, save one. They all answered the Queen’s call to battle, months ago now. None’ve come back. Killed, I expect, in that accursed land past the Eastern Sea.”

“What. . . .” He had had to clench his hands to keep them from shaking. Had cleared his throat to make sure that his words were curious rather than desperately eager. “What battle was this? I’ve been away from the world, you see—utterly alone, deprived of news from this great realm. Please tell me, grandmother.” And she had.

“Queen Galha’s sick now, they say,” she had finished. “Sick in her bed in the palace, and who knows if she’ll recover.”

By the time Baldhron was a week away from Luhr, Galha was dead. He had seen mourning banners draped over a well and heard the details from a traders’ caravan the next day. He had been bold about his inquiries since the border town. He had yet another new name—but no one would know “Baldhron,” in any case; there had been no public hunt. Leish was the murderer, and now Galha was dead and it was Queen Lanara Baldhron would kill, after he had tormented her with truth.

It had all been so easy once he had discovered she was travelling to Fane. The city was overflowing with discarded market food; he was never hungry as he waited for the right moment. After some consideration he had decided to seek out his Fanean contacts. He had found only one: an orange-haired girl of fifteen whose renegade-scribe father had died (“Of old age, not Queensfolk interference. I’m sure of this.”) the previous summer, and whose mother had died birthing her. “The rest fled,” the girl, Predhanten, told him after he had convinced her of his identity. Her green eyes were wide and terrified as she looked from the Luhran scrolls to his face. “We all thought you dead in the attack on Luhr,” she had whispered, and he had laughed.

“No, child, though it was a near thing. Those weakling water-men cost us the palace and many lives, but not mine.”

“At least,” she had ventured, “the Queen was made to suffer. We can thank one of the water-men for this, anyway.” Baldhron had touched her then, suddenly empty of words. She trembled. He had been gentle with her, despite his need. She would be of no use to him if her fear grew too great for awe.

She told him Lanara had arrived only two days before he had. She told him she had written a letter and left it at the Queenshouse in a basket of eggs. “My father would have done this if he had been alive to see this new queen. And it was good to do something after so many months of uncertainty.” Baldhron had praised her effusively, and her flush had made him almost unbearably restless. He needed more than this one insignificant, mostly unschooled follower—but they would come, later, after he had slain Lanara and begun to rebuild his own realm.

He had watched the Queenshouse for days from a nearby rooftop, hardly sleeping. In the end he had been asleep, had woken to Predhanten’s hand on his back and the tremor of her voice. “She has left the house and evaded her guards. I heard it from a serving girl I know.” He had waited, sitting cross-legged on the shortest dock, had seen Lanara slip out from beside the furthest house. A slender, dark figure, but he knew her immediately.

“Stay here,” he had said to Predhanten. “When it’s done I’ll return to you. We’ll have to leave quickly, with only what we carry now. . . .” Scrolls, in his case, stuffed into his belt. Not the scrolls he would have chosen for this confrontation—the ones about Lanara’s mother, which he had so longed to have ever since he had heard that Lanara was queen. Those scrolls had surely been destroyed with all the others after he had fled. He still could not think of this without a shudder. Beside the pages he had carried with him from Luhr was his knife. He had used it to hack off his beard, and Predhanten had found an old blunt razor for the stubble. He had bled copiously.

Lanara had recognized him as quickly as he had her, even though she had only met him a few times. Her eyes had widened, and he had remembered Ladhra’s eyes when they had opened from sleep and seen Leish, with Baldhron behind, when she had realized that no guards would come to save her.

“You were wronged,” Lanara said when Baldhron had finished with all the words he had prepared. She passed him the scrolls he had forced her to read despite their near-illegibility. The writing stick markings had smudged in the water beneath Luhr, and the paper had torn—but still he had thrust them at her, and she had seemed to read. “You were wronged, and so were countless others, by countless queens.”

He lifted his knife, which had wavered downward a bit as he spoke.
Tell her
, he thought
. Tell her of her own mother’s death
—but he held these words back. They would be all the more powerful the longer he waited to speak them. “You seek to appease me,” he said instead. She was looking at him very steadily, without the fear that might have made her words a plea.

“Appease you?” she repeated, and smiled again. “No—merely stating a truth. A truth like these others: you killed Ladhra on her bed, and then you fled, even as your followers, selkesh and scribe, died. Only a very few people in the Queensrealm are aware of these particular truths. I hope you’ve written them down somewhere, Baldhron, so that future generations will know of your prowess.”

He lunged. He felt her draw in a breath and hold it as blood welled from the hollow of her throat. “And why don’t
you
tell your people about these things, Queen Lanara?” His ears were ringing: his own blood thundering like sea.

“The deceptions that occurred before my reign will not be revealed.” Her voice hummed against his chest. “Events already written will not be changed. But I swear to you that no new fictions will be written while I live and rule.”

He laughed as he had sometimes laughed to himself in the northern wasteland. “I see: you will be the first truth-telling queen in the history of this realm. You will inform your subjects of the murders you commit and the poverty you nurture.”