The Silences of Home (46 page)

“I will not need to, for there will be none.”

He laughed again, giddy with scorn and the sight of her blood on his knife. “You fool. You poor little girl. How do you intend to create this perfect place?”

She did not blink as she looked at him. Her face was so close to his that her lashes might have brushed his cheeks. “With you,” she said.

The knife moved in his hand, though he did not feel himself doing this. Another dark trickle of blood appeared on her skin. “Me,” he said, attempting to keep his voice flat and his muscles still.

“Yes,” Lanara said. “You, as my consort-scribe.”

Baldhron took a step back. The knife dipped, stayed down. Leish thought,
She’s taken him by surprise, and now she can strike
—but she did not stir. Long moments passed and she only gazed at Baldhron, her arms and back flat against the cliff side.

“A feeble attempt, Lanara.” The wind warped Baldhron’s words, but Leish saw them on his lips and understood. “Though I now appreciate the extent of your desperation. To even pretend to propose such a thing must be intolerable to you.”

“Worse than intolerable, since I pretend nothing. You will be my consort-scribe. You will be party to every decision I make and every action I take.” She pressed her lips together. Leish licked his own; he tasted salt.
Dive
, he thought again.

“You will inform your network of scribes of your new role. You will tell them that I will make appropriate reparations for whatever losses they can prove to have suffered because of a queen. You will tell them I will meet with them and employ them, should this be of benefit to my realm. You will tell them to give me all the illicit documents they may have regarding the Queensrealm.”

She struggled for breath after she had spoken; Leish saw the heaving of her chest before he looked back at Baldhron. “An impressive speech,” he said. “Truly. I must force myself to remember that you despise me, and that you are
Queen
Lanara. If I was fool enough to accept your terms, how long would it be before you had me killed? Would you wait until we reached the foot of the path?”

“I’ve told you,” Lanara said clearly, despite the wind and her own ragged breathing, “that I intend to act with honour, unlike those who went before me. You mistake this desire for deception because deception is all you’ve ever known, or practiced. It may be that nothing will sway you. But I swear on the soul of my dearest friend that I am not deceiving you now. My offer is a true one.”

Leish took a step toward them. He waited for them to turn, but they did not. Another step: Baldhron’s words sounded much more distinct than they had before.

“Well. Well, well. Consort-scribe Baldhron and Queen Lanara, hmm?” He smiled and slid his knife back into his belt. “Not as delectable as Queen Ladhra would have been, but you’ll do.”

Leish ran.

Baldhron’s eyes went dark. He gasped and his lungs burned; he tore at cloth and flesh he could not see. “Lying bitch!” he tried to scream, and he heaved his body up against the one that pinned him. A Queensguard, maybe several—he would pull them all down with him when he died. Them and Lanara, who was crying out words he could not understand. His assailant raked his cheek with nails, tugged his hair back until the darkness in his eyes was washed with tears. His voice returned, and he bellowed. He blinked and saw the man above him just as Lanara’s words hardened in his ears.

“Leish! Leish, no! Let him go!”

The water-man’s face remained above Baldhron’s, and his webbed fingers dug deeper bruises into his neck. Lanara appeared over Leish’s right shoulder. “Step back,” she said. “Now.” The fingers lifted, and the face, and Baldhron twisted so that his head no longer hung into the space above the sea.

“Let me kill him.” The water-man’s voice shook, as it had so many times in the tunnels beneath Luhr. “Or let me watch you do it. Lanara!”—a shout, which sounded more like a sound his brother Mallesh would have made. Baldhron rubbed at his bruises steadily, as if he thought he would live to see them shade purple, then yellow-brown.

“No.” Her eyes were very bright—with tears, perhaps, though Baldhron could not be sure since her face was bent toward Leish. “He will serve me. He must. Only his presence will force me to be the queen Ladhra would have wanted to be.”

Baldhron’s relief was so great that he could not move, not even when Lanara crouched beside him. “But there are two further conditions,” she said, looking at Baldhron but speaking to Leish. “He will never say Ladhra’s name again, and he will never touch me, either in lust or in anger. If he violates either of these conditions, he will die.”

Baldhron heaved himself up so that he was sitting facing her. “How, then,” he said, each word stronger, louder, “will we get you an heir?”

He was sure now that he saw tears. “Leish,” she said in a voice that belied them, “go now, quickly, before I allow you to kill him after all.”

The water-man stood and stepped off the path, to the crumbling edge of rock beyond it. “I do not understand,” he said, craning back to look at her. “You spoke of honour. There would be honour in this man’s death. The kind you speak of has no meaning to me.”

“I know. And I’m sure I’ll agree with you often, as time passes. But believe me, Leish: Ladhra would approve. If she knew everything I know, she would.”

Leish turned his eyes from Lanara to Baldhron.
He can’t believe her
, Baldhron thought.
He still sees Ladhra’s chamber, and her blood
. He shuddered. He himself remembered only snatches of this—fragments of her voice and flesh tearing, and then the tolling of the Queensbell that had sent him flying away from her. He held the water-man’s gaze, allowed himself a small smile of the sort he would cultivate in the palace. Leish licked his lower lip and bit down, so hard that Baldhron nearly flinched. Then he was gone.

Baldhron had leaned out over the cliff before he realized he wanted to. He watched the water-man’s descent. He thought, with a quickening of envy and fear that made him forget for an instant all that had just transpired,
How does he dive in such a gentle arc, and head-first? Surely he’ll break his neck?
He watched the water close over Leish and froth just briefly. He watched the line his surfacing head made, white and straight in the moonlight. He watched the head vanish beneath and the line fold among waves. Nothing moved, after that, on the surface of the sea.

Lanara did not speak when Baldhron pushed himself away from the edge and rose to stand before her. She did not speak as she went back down the path. He walked very close behind her, each pace carrying him away from the squalid cave of his childhood and from the tunnels where he had hidden as a man. He would soon write a message to be distributed to all of his followers, of power to be wielded from the innermost tower of the palace. The words waited for him. For now he listened only to the ocean and his footsteps sounding with Lanara’s on the stone.

He was still slightly behind her when they came to the Queenshouse doors. Predhanten would be watching, he knew. He straightened his back, smiled as he studied Lanara’s hair and shoulders.

“My Queen?” Malhan’s voice, though it trembled as Baldhron had never heard it do before. He raised his eyes and saw him, standing before the open doors with four Queensguards flanking him.

“I was lost in the city,” Lanara said. “Queensman Baldhron found me.” Malhan gaped, made a low, trailing gesture with his right hand. “I think we will drink that wine now,” she continued, “you and Baldhron and I. Have it uncorked and poured in my study.”

Malhan slid his gaze away from Lanara’s. Baldhron’s smile was gentle, beneficent. He inclined his head a bit, heard the gathering crowd murmur. Then he stepped past them all, into the Queenshouse.

I, Baldhron, son of Yednanya
,
take up this writing stick with a feeling of great humility and greater honour. Even though I have not yet been formally installed as consort-scribe, I am also no longer a student; this is therefore the first entry I have made in the service of the Queensrealm in my new role. I eagerly anticipate the day when former consort-scribe Malhan (who has already set out for Luhr) will present me with the writing implements he himself used, and with the fresh parchment that I shall write upon. This day seems distant yet, for Queen Lanara will linger for another week in Fane, and after that several more weeks will pass before we reach Luhr again. In the meantime, I will record, informally, the events of her days, and ponder the import of the post she has bestowed upon me.

She heard him writing. She thought she could almost tell which letters he was making from the sounds that came through the wall. She tried to push her bed away from this wall. When she could not manage this alone, she called for Predhanten. The girl helped her, as silent and shrinking as she had been in the days since Baldhron had brought her to the Queenshouse. “Thank you,” Lanara said to this child who had always admired Baldhron and always hated the Queen. Predhanten’s darting eyes stilled for a moment on Lanara’s face, and Lanara smiled at her just a bit. “You may return to your bed now.” Predhanten’s eyes slid away again. She did not make the sign of the arrowhead before she left, and Lanara did not command her to. She wanted to cry instead, “Wait! Let me tell you about how I too was hurt. Let me show you that we are the same”—but of course she did not. It would be too hasty; it would diminish, not strengthen, her in Predhanten’s eyes. So Lanara was silent as she watched the door close.

Lanara lay on her side in bed. She could no longer hear Baldhron writing, but she was dizzy with words.

My Queen, the uprising near Blenniquant City is worsening. Queen Galha had assured us of some sort of intercession, though she was not able to specify, before her untimely death, what this was to be. I entreat you, who have inherited her knowledge and wisdom, to guide us. . . .

Queen Lanara, there is a crisis approaching here, and we, your servants in the far Queensrealm, request your aid. . . .

. . . trade with these people is no longer tenable. I realize that this would affect the wealth of the realm, but I, and my Queensfolk companions here, can see no other way. . . .

She rolled onto her back. The light from the guttering fire in the hearth made shadows on the ceiling. She watched them, and they seemed to twine with the words, the endless rolls of parchment, the sounds that she could still hear, after all, from beyond the wall. Her dry eyes stung with lack of sleep and tears. “Fool,” she whispered, this sound louder than all the others.
Fool, to think that you’ll be able to mend everything with good faith and kindness
. . . .

Malhan would advise her when she returned to Luhr. He would surely be calmer by then. “You’re a headstrong, naïve girl, exactly as your mother was!” he had cried. Lanara had drawn back from him so sharply that the Brallentan wine had trembled in the three goblets that sat behind her on the desk. “She suffered for these qualities, and so will you, and there will be great peril in this for all Queensfolk. You may well undo all that your predecessors have done. I love this realm—I have told you this before. I love this realm, and this the only thing that will keep me here—love and fear. I never expected you to cause me such fear, Lanara. Perhaps I’ve made an irredeemable mistake with you.” He had not mentioned Ladhra or Baldhron. He had not needed to: they had been there in his quavering voice and pinched mouth, and in his eyes, which seemed to have retreated into black-smudged flesh. She had not met his gaze then; she had been shaking with shame and shock, and hatred of the man behind her, who should have died at her hand, with no one to see or know it. But she would meet Malhan’s eyes when she next saw him, when she would be more accustomed to her decision. She would ask him, calmly, to tell her about her mother, and she would ask him for his help, in the wood-lined study that was now hers.

She sat up so quickly that her already aching head began to throb. She would not allow herself to sleep. She knew what would find her if she did: Ladhra’s smile; Leish’s eyes before he dived; Baldhron stepping out from behind a tree in the Queenswood; water like jewels in Galha’s hair . . . These images had woken her before. She could thrust them away in the sunlight, but they were too vivid behind closed eyelids. Even now, awake in the night, they flickered beneath everything else.

I’ll leave. I’ll go to Nellyn
. The relief she felt thinking this was so exquisite that she imagined more (darkness was kind to all imaginings that would wither in the day). She would evade her own guards, disguise herself, take a boat upriver, walk if she had to. She would find him on the bank by the red clay huts. They would not be able to stay: Malhan would look for her there. So they would go north, past Bektha and Gammuz, and she would bear children with blue-tinged skin. . . .

Today the Queen went into the city, accompanied by her serving girl Predhanten, four Queensguards, and myself. Her people cheered her as she passed, and she spoke to many. Her desire is to be a queen who knows her subjects and is known by them; a queen who spends her time among them on their streets rather than above them in her towers. She is already much beloved for this, which gives her great pleasure.

Near the end of our walk, as the crowd was thinning, we came upon two girls standing at the mouth of a covered walkway. They were silent as the Queen approached, and when she spoke to them, they answered her with wide-eyed eagerness. This meeting seemed to be of particular significance to the Queen.

They were twelve, Lanara thought, or maybe thirteen—tall girls whose limbs were still unaccustomed to their length. She noticed the two immediately, even though they were standing in shadow. Their eyes widened as she stepped toward them, and the black-haired one reached out to clutch the other’s arm.

“Greetings,” Lanara said. She smiled, and they smiled back at her.

“We saw you,” blurted the one with brown hair, “before you were queen.”

Her friend frowned and hissed a word—her name, perhaps—and Lanara said, “Really? When was that?”

“Last autumn,” the brown-haired one said, more confidently. “During the archery contest at the Queenshouse. We were in the public balcony. We noticed you because you kept winning.” The other girl groaned and rolled her eyes. “Not just because of that, I mean—also because you were so quiet and . . . different from everyone else.” She chewed at her lip. “We thought you looked like a queen,” she continued at last. “And now you are, and even though this only happened because your friend the Princess died, we’re glad.”

“Madhralla!” the other girl cried.

Lanara put one hand on her shoulder and one on her friend’s. “And I am glad that you are now my subjects, Madhralla and . . . ?”

“Breodhran,” she murmured, shy again.

“Here—take these,” Lanara said, and unwound one blue and one green ribbon from her tunic sleeves. The girls gaped at them, and at her. Lanara stepped back and they made the sign of the arrowhead, hastily, the ribbons tangling in their fingers. Then they turned and ran into the darkness behind them. Lanara did not move until their footsteps and laughter had faded into silence.

“A charming scene,” Baldhron said when they were back in the study. “You and the two awe-struck friends.”

“Yes,” Lanara said evenly. She sat down at the desk and pulled a pile of letters toward her.
He won’t be able to distress me now
, she thought.
Not after that walk, all those people shouting my name and waving. Not after Madhralla and Breodhran
.
It is they who truly remind me of my purpose.
She smiled at Predhanten when she set a cup of steaming herb water near the papers, and Predhanten nodded quickly before she looked away. This too was a reminder.

“My Queen,” the guard outside the door called, “someone else has come to see you.”

“Very well,” Lanara said. She rose and smoothed her tunic as Baldhron took his place behind her and Predhanten sank onto a stool by the door.

“The Queen greets you!” cried the guard as the door opened.

A man walked slowly into the room. He had a beard—a thick curly beard as black as his hair, though both were shot through with strands of white. It was the beard that confused her. The eyes above it she knew—only she didn’t, she couldn’t; she must be addled with the shock and sleeplessness of the past week. “Welcome,” she began, as if speaking would steady her and the world—but it did not.

It was immediately plain to me that the man knew the Queen, and she him. They gazed at each other for long moments before the man spun on his heel and stepped back toward the door that had been closed behind him. “Aldron!” cried Queen Lanara, and he checked. I regarded him with great interest as he turned back to the room. He was as unkempt as some of the wild men I glimpsed last spring, when I was doing secret work beyond the northern border of the realm. His appearance did not surprise me, however, for I now knew him to be the Alilan man who had been driven to madness by the battle in the Raiders’ Land. (Queen Lanara has, of course, told me of Aldron’s lover Alea’s confrontation with Queen Galha. I look forward to reading former consort-scribe Malhan’s account of this incident when I formally assume my new post in Luhr).

The Queen ordered Predhanten to leave us. When she had done so, Queen Lanara turned to Aldron. To our surprise, he spoke first.

“I looked for you at the tower. I saw that woman, Drelha, but she didn’t see me. I left. I knew you weren’t there any more.”

“But you didn’t know I was Queen.” I could see from her clenched hands and rigid back that great emotion roiled beneath the steady surface of her voice.

Aldron lifted a hand to his beard. “I . . . I’ve been away from people. As you can probably see.” Perhaps he smiled; it was impossible to tell, as his beard hid the full length of his lips. “I came back here and saw the banners on the Queenshouse—and I remembered what that meant.”

“
Ah,” said the Queen, “and what was it you wanted with Galha?”

The man blinked as if confused, and I moved closer to Queen Lanara. “I . . . I was going to ask her something.”

“And that was all? Just a question?”

His head twitched to one side and I shifted closer still to the Queen. “So you think I should want to kill her too. You and Alea both.” He shook his head then, as a sane man might. “That was never my intention, or even a desire. I have no such desires any more.”

Silence rang in the room. The waves against the cliffs sounded louder, closer than they should have, as if the very sea rose to stand in defense of the Queen.

“I made the stones on the path, you know,” he said at last. “That’s how Galha found out about the true extent of my power: she came up the path one day as I was Telling it. It was snowing. I didn’t hear her, or the man.” His eyes leapt to me as he spoke these words. He was obviously referring to former consort-scribe Malhan. “I promised Alea at the tower that I’d never use this power for anyone, and I didn’t. Not until. . . .” He swallowed. “What has happened? Where is she?”

Queen Lanara said, “She died. In Luhr. She never recovered her strength after the battle.”

“And now you are Queen.”

“Yes. And as I am Queen, and you have found me, why not ask me what you intended to ask her?”

He took two paces toward her, though his eyes were on the window. I laid my fingers on my knife hilt as he replied
,
“I need passage on a ship. I have no way to pay for such a thing—and so when I saw the banners and realized the Queen was here, I thought I’d ask her. I thought she’d hardly be able to refuse me, except maybe to kill me.”

“Passage,” the Queen said slowly. “Where?”

He lifted his arm and pointed toward the water that lay white-gold beneath the sun, which had only just ceased its upward climb. “Back there. Where else?”

Queen Lanara turned to me then. “Leave us,” she said in a low voice. I responded, just as quietly, that I would not leave her alone with a madman; both her reputation and her life might be at stake, as well as my own credibility as her companion and protector. She nodded her understanding. “Come,” she said to Aldron.

“Stand with me by the window.” Her anger at Baldhron gave her voice a strength it had not had

since Aldron had walked into the room. He walked over to her now, stiffly. She wondered when he had last been inside a building.

“No,” she murmured, when they were both facing the wharf. Baldhron had retreated a bit, to the door, as if he wished to allow her a small amount of privacy. She tried to forget him, to imagine that he could not hear them if he could not see their faces. “You can’t go there. Not again.”

“I must.” Her arm was almost touching his, which was bare and brown and ridged with muscle.

“No,” she said again. “Let me help you find a place here in the realm.” Her words were echoes of others she had spoken, and she wanted to tell him, to cry, “Alea confronted Galha! Alea was strong and passionate and she Told the battle—and your daughter was so beautiful. Alea told the truth.”

“Lanara.” She watched his lips, then his eyes. “I did it. I ruined that place, not Galha. She promised me a chance to test the limits of my power—and I did, and I brought doom on a people that had nothing to do with me. Not Perona, not Alilan—no one I had ever known, in a land I saw for only a few hours before I undid its life and changed its course. I’ve tried to forget, to cure myself in a place far from there—but I can’t get away from the sea. It draws me back every time I leave it. I won’t have any rest or peace until I go back.”

It was almost emotion, in his voice that had been so flat and distant, just as it might have been emotion that had sent him back toward the door when he had first glimpsed her. She lifted her hand and touched his arm, just above the crease of his elbow. He was still, neither rejecting nor welcoming. She thought she could feel the pulse of the blood in her own fingertips. “Since you insist on it,” she said, half turning so that Baldhron would hear and see each word, “I will send you there, though I fear the journey will bring you only harm. I will speak to the captains whose ships are docked. You may meet me on the longest dock in two nights’ time.”