Troubled Waters (22 page)

Zoe laughed aloud. “So I suppose I have the
potential
for love and power as well?”

Keeli grinned at her. “That’s right. You’d better get to work on those, too.”

W
hen they weren’t choosing a wardrobe for Zoe—and the occasional new piece for Keeli—they were making the rounds of nearby estates so Zoe could meet the Lalindar relations she had not seen in ten years or more. She was nervous on those occasions, having no reason to think these aunts and uncles and cousins would welcome her reappearance. Indeed, none of them was as warm as Keeli. More than one eyed her with disfavor; she was sure she read resentment in their faces when they were forced to acknowledge her as the new Lalindar prime.

“Why didn’t one of them move into the house while I was gone?” she asked Hoden one day as she fretfully waited for Keeli to arrive and take her to another awkward social engagement. “Why didn’t one of them claim the title and the power? Christara was dead—who would gainsay them?”

He answered in his careful, unalarming way, making impossible things seem wholly reasonable. “No one ever attempts to usurp the power of the prime,” he said gravely. “It is said a man who masquerades as the Lalindar prime will drown the minute he attempts to step into the Marisi. A man who pretends to head the Ardelays will be quickly consumed by fire. There is a tale of a Frothen imposter who was killed by a falling boulder. It is not so easy to assume an unmerited rank.”

That explained why the house was still hers, she supposed, but it made her just a little leery of sticking so much as a fingertip in the river, in case, after all, she did not deserve the title she had assumed.

She couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or relieved to learn that her ability to hear someone else’s heartbeat faded almost completely once she stepped outside of the fountain that encircled the estate. Oh, if someone in the room was excited about a piece of news, Zoe could often catch a faint eager thrumming, and when her uncle Broy took her hand, she was instantly aware of the race of blood through his body. Not only that, she could tell, as if she were a scientist relying on impossibly sophisticated analytical tools, that the composition of his blood was in some way the same as hers. He did not look especially happy to meet her and his face was pulled into what might have been a sneer, yet she could tell that they were related. Bound together, whether he liked it or not.

“You don’t look nearly as wild as my sister,” he said. “Are you?”

“I might have been, had I lived a different sort of life,” she said coolly. “But a wild heart would not have served me very well.”

“It didn’t serve Alieta well, either, but that wasn’t enough to make her change her ways,” Broy retorted. “I am glad to hear you are a little wiser.”

She hesitated when, a few days later, Broy invited her out on a boating expedition. “I think he’d like to push me over the side and see if the Marisi takes me,” she confided to Keeli, but her cousin laughed.

“Oh, Broy’s all spite and sourness, but he wouldn’t actually hurt you,” Keeli said. “Anyway, no prime has ever drowned in the history of the Lalindars. I think you’re safe.”

If I’m really prime,
Zoe wanted to say. But she supposed she would have to go out on the water eventually, or the question would always linger at the back of her mind.

Accordingly, she joined Broy—and, as it turned out, his wife, his two daughters, and Keeli—for an afternoon on the river. The Marisi showed no disposition to upend the boat and dash Zoe’s head to pieces against the banks. Even Broy seemed a little mellower once they were out on the water.

The sun was directly overhead, fat and yellow and contented; the breeze off the water was playful and curious. Below the hull, Zoe could sense the endless lazy rocking of the current. She found she was not at all afraid for her life.

“Can you take the Marisi all the way down to Chialto?” Zoe asked Broy.

He shook his head. “There are three impassable places—one a dam fifty miles downriver, one a natural rock hazard that would shred any boat that tried to go through. And then there are the falls that drop into the city behind the royal palace. There are portages by the first two, but nothing crosses the mountain pass but water.”

“Have you ever taken a boat out on the ocean?”

“Not this one, but yes, I have a schooner built to cross the sea. Someday I’m going to sail to the other edge of the world just to feel the water beneath me the whole time I’m traveling.”

“I’d like to make that journey sometime,” Zoe said. “I’d like to see the other side of the world.”

Keeli shook her head. “You can’t go wandering,” she said. “You have to go back to Chialto.”

Z
oe celebrated Quinnasweela changeday with her newfound relatives and then bid them goodbye. Most of them flocked to Chialto once cooler weather made the tall buildings and densely populated streets bearable again.

“When will you be coming to the city?” Keeli asked.

“Soon,” Zoe promised.

But the Lalindars left, and the leaves turned so red it appeared that the whole mountain was on fire, and still Zoe waited. One nineday passed, and then another. It was the middle of the third nineday of Quinnasweela, and she had been in Christara’s house for more than a quintile, when she heard the sound she had been listening for.

First it was as faint as the breath of a sleeping child, and then it was only as loud as far-off rain. By sunset, it sounded like footfalls down the corridor, and Zoe slept all night with that unhurried rhythm tapping steadily in her ear. She rose early and put on her finest new clothes, a top and trousers and overrobe all made of a gold-edged blue. Hoden’s wife helped her with her hair, but Zoe applied her own makeup with a light hand.

All the while, she felt that heartbeat growing louder, coming nearer, until it was finally ascending the hill to Christara’s house. She was in the
kierten
before the carriage horses trotted through the break in the tall fountain. She pressed herself against the bank of windows on the far wall, the ones that showed the mountain face angling up toward the sky, half bare
torz
dirt and half bright
sweela
color.

The door chime rang three times and Hoden answered it, bowing very low. Zoe heard a man’s voice say, “I am here to see Zoe Ardelay Lalindar.”

“She is awaiting you,” Hoden said, making a gesture of welcome.

Darien Serlast stepped across the threshold. He looked straight at Zoe as if he had known, before the door even opened, exactly where she stood.

“Prime,” he said, offering her a very slight bow.

Not until Hoden left the room did she answer him, her face showing no hint of a smile. She said, “I’ve been expecting you.”

FOURTEEN

T
hey stared at each other a good long while. Zoe was not sure if they were reminding themselves of features they’d forgotten or checking for changes they could not have anticipated. The day was sunny, and light fell dramatically through the windows, burnishing the wood floors to a blinding luster. Zoe did not offer to bring Darien Serlast to a friendlier room in the house; she did not ask if he would like refreshments. After that first greeting, she didn’t say a word. She simply watched him, simply waited. He was
hunti
, he could be as stubborn as oak itself, but she was not going to yield. She was not going to be the first to speak.

Finally he nodded, as if conceding something, and took three steps deeper into the room. “So,” he said. “The girl who ran away from me to hide along the river finally finds her way home.”

“Still alongside the river,” she pointed out. “But how did you know that was where I took refuge?”

“Because I looked for you, of course. Every day, until I found you. I went to the houses of your Ardelay and Lalindar cousins, hoping to surprise you in a parlor or a kitchen. I went to the tenements by the southern canal. I checked the infirmaries. I checked the morgues.” He shrugged. “Before the first nineday was out, I thought to seek you on the flats, and there you were. After that, one of my men went by every few days to make sure you were still in place.”

Although she was pleased to find that he had been worried enough to watch out for her, she was deeply irritated to learn that he had known her whereabouts all this time. “You should have dropped by some evening,” she said, “and shared a meal with me.”

His mouth formed a soundless laugh. “If you had stayed on the flats much longer, perhaps I would have. If you had seemed to be in danger, I certainly would have stepped forward and taken you to a more sheltered place.”

“Whether or not I wanted to go.” When he shrugged instead of answering, she went on. “It would be just the sort of high-handed behavior I have come to expect of you.”

His eyes narrowed at that. “I suppose, then, that you have come to consider me some kind of villain.”

She turned away from him and began a slow, measured pacing, coming to a halt when she was along the shorter wall, where the windows faced west toward the sea. Darien took a few steps forward, so he stood almost dead center in the room, and pivoted slowly to follow her progress. It was as if they were engaged in the stateliest of dances, where every step, every gesture, was weighted with significance.

Half of the room still lay between them, gleaming with refracted sun.

“I have come to think of you as . . . someone who is prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to bring about an outcome he believes is desirable,” she said, choosing her words with care. “I do not think it matters to you if the outcome is so desirable for everyone else who gets caught up in your machinations.”

“There is some truth to that,” he said. “But my motives are not sinister. Or selfish. I serve the king, which means I serve the kingdom. And everything I do, have done, or will do has had the goal of keeping the king and the country strong.”

“It
sounds
admirable,” she says. “And yet a ruthless champion is still ruthless. The people he tramples still generally feel bruised and resentful.”

He gave a slight laugh. “Well, I did wonder,” he said, half to himself. She was annoyed with herself that she could not resist saying, “Wonder what?”

He gestured at her. “What personality you would show when you emerged from your cocoon of shock and grief.”

“It is a personality that changes,” she said. “Even I have been a little surprised to discover that. But it is not a personality that seems to harbor a great deal of fear. Leading me, perhaps, to do things and say things that other people might not.”

“So you have a little courage, a fine
hunti
trait,” he said.

“And anger, which is not one of the random blessings,” she said.

His eyebrows rose. “Anger at me? In what possible way did I hurt you?”

She began pacing again, in those slow, stately steps. Again, he pivoted to watch her, not attempting to come closer. She rounded the corner and swept majestically by the great southern windows that overlooked the river. “You did not see fit to tell me something I cannot believe you did not know, which was that I was heir to Christara Lalindar’s estate.”

“I had no reason to believe
you
did not know it as well,” he countered. “Every other prime of the Five Families is perfectly well-informed on that point.”

He was right, of course, except she was pretty sure he was lying. “You had every reason,” she said. “You knew I had lived isolated from society for ten years. You knew my father had quarreled with my Lalindar relatives—yes, and you knew no Lalindar prime had stepped forward since Christara died! A quick-witted man would have concluded that I had no idea where my proper destiny lay. A kind man would have shared that information instead of trying to lure me to the city with promises of a marriage he knew I could not possibly consummate. Yes, I think it is entirely appropriate that I feel a little anger for you.”

He seemed to weigh his answer carefully. She wished she was like one of the blind sisters at the Plaza of Women, able to discern from a man’s tone of voice whether or not he was telling the truth. “It is true that when I found you in your father’s village, you were stunned and docile, and I knew you would not have the strength to resist any plan of action I proposed,” he said. “And it is true that I had come there to find you and bring you back, and I would have done so even
had
you resisted. My mission was to bring you to the king. But I do not think,” he said, raising his voice to drown hers out when she attempted to interrupt, “that I thereby injured you in any way. It was clear you were not thinking rationally. It was clear that you could barely care for yourself. I would not have let any harm come to you—I was prepared to care for you as long as it took you to recover some measure of yourself.”

“You wanted to
marry
me to the
king
before I had the sense to think it through!” she exclaimed, balling her hands into fists and taking a hasty step toward him.

He gazed at her gravely. “There would have been no marriage,” he said. “I never expected that transaction to be completed.”

“You acted very certain of it at the time!”

“It was posturing. It was a ruse. In the first place, I knew that as soon as the rest of the Lalindar family learned of your whereabouts, they would be swarming over the palace, snatching the prime out of the royal clutches. In the second place,” he added—and then paused, as if once again he needed to consider how to phrase his words. “I was not particularly interested in promoting any fifth marriage for the king. At the time, he was looking to obtain concessions from his wives. If he seemed intent on acquiring another bride, they would be more willing to make those concessions. You were a threat. And threats,” he added, “are generally not informed of how they are about to be deployed.”

She watched him with narrowed eyes. He might be speaking the truth—or he might be trying to portray himself in a less culpable light. “It is hard to see exactly how
I
would be a threat to the king’s wives,” she said in a calmer voice.