Troubled Waters (37 page)

Of course, he had existed without her for twelve long years. It had been hard to tell, because so many other factors might have broken his spirit during his decade of exile, but Zoe had always believed that her mother’s death had struck her father to the core. He still laughed at the slightest provocation, talked whether or not anyone was listening, ate heartily, read voraciously, argued enthusiastically, and entertained lovers with little attempt at discretion. But some of that
sweela
fire had gone out of him. He was not entirely whole once his
coru
wife was gone.

Zoe lay on the white bed, practically buried in its dense lushness, and stared at the smooth, featureless ivory ceiling.

It was clear to her now exactly why her grandmother had worked to have Navarr Ardelay banished from the royal court. Sarone had described Christara’s fury at learning about one of Navarr’s past infidelities. At the time, Zoe had wondered how Christara could have discovered such a thing and why she would have cared once Alieta was dead. But now she understood. At some point, Christara must have touched Josetta’s hand or brushed her fingers across the princess’s face. Like Zoe, Christara would have automatically assessed and identified the components of Josetta’s blood. Like Zoe, Christara would have instantly realized what that blood betrayed.

How long had Seterre been her father’s lover?

That was probably not the right question, Zoe realized. More important to know was: Had Alieta still been alive when Navarr took the queen to his bed? Zoe closed her eyes and tried to work out the math. If Josetta was fourteen, going on fifteen, and Alieta had died twelve years ago—no, almost thirteen years by now—

Zoe opened her eyes again. Yes. Her mother had been alive when Josetta was conceived.

And yet, she might not have known the princess was her husband’s child. She might not even have known about the affair. Christara, at least, seemed not to have learned of it for nearly three years, though it was possible Alieta wouldn’t have confided in her mother anyway, guessing how angry Christara would become. But whether or not Alieta had discovered the affair didn’t change the fact that Navarr had betrayed her.

Who else knew the truth?

Seterre, of course, unless she had taken more than one lover during that period of time. Zoe supposed that Seterre might think it just as likely that the king had sired Josetta.

Unless she had not had conjugal relations with her husband at the right time to conceive the child. Unless the king was impotent, and Seterre knew it.

Zoe’s mind went back to that first sweet, almost rueful conversation she had had with the king shortly after she arrived at the palace. They had talked, toward the end, about Navarr Ardelay, and Vernon had made that odd comment.
I always wish I’d been able to tell him that I forgave him. I always wanted to know if he’d forgiven me.
It seemed obvious he hoped Navarr had forgiven him for the banishment, but for what act had Vernon forgiven Narvarr? Taking his wife as a lover and getting her with child?

“Vernon knows,” Zoe whispered.

It would be awfully hard for a king to forgive the man who had made him a cuckold—unless the king desperately wanted an heir and could not sire one himself.

Zoe turned on her side and sank into the thick, pillowy folds of the comforter. She stuffed the material under her cheek and strained to think this through. If the king needed another man to impregnate his queen, he might have explicitly invited Navarr into Seterre’s bedroom. But if that was the case, why had he allowed himself to be turned against Navarr, who had, by a certain kind of reasoning, done the king a tremendous favor?

If the king was impotent, who had Alys and Romelle taken as lovers to produce Corene and Natalie?

And who else knew?

“Darien Serlast,” Zoe said aloud.

She considered that for a moment. Darien had claimed he had no idea what the king meant by his obscure talk about forgiveness, but Darien was as likely to speak a falsehood as the truth, so Zoe brushed that aside. Darien was constantly at the king’s side; he provided counsel on matters as unimportant as which buckle the king should choose for his boots. Darien almost certainly was aware of the king’s problems in the bedroom—perhaps he even helped orchestrate the queens’ visitors in the middle of the night. It could not be an entirely easy thing to slip men into and out of the women’s wing—or arrange for the queens to make nocturnal visits to other bedrooms.

Zoe closed her eyes again. She didn’t want to think about the king’s difficulties in the bedroom and what his closest advisors might do to alleviate them. She didn’t want to picture her father as Seterre’s lover. She didn’t want to know that shy, uneasy, anxious Josetta was her half sister. She didn’t want any of this in her head. She wanted to sleep, and she wanted to wake up with her mind completely empty.

But she didn’t sleep and her mind kept filling and refilling with the images she could not keep away.

Sighing, she finally pushed herself to a sitting position and then struggled to stand, barely able to fight free of the deep mattress. It was a crisp, cold Quinnelay day. She would distract herself with a visit to the Plaza of Women.

Accordingly she dressed in some of her heaviest garments and her sturdiest shoes, wrapping a scarf around her head and draping a wool overrobe around her shoulders. She felt better almost as soon as she stepped outside into the breezy sunshine. The walk to the Plaza of Women was longer from this direction than from the riverfront, but Zoe didn’t mind. It felt good to move her body toward a productive end; living in the palace, she had lost all incentive to exercise. When the wind blew, she drew her scarf more tightly around her face to keep out the chill, and she strode a little faster.

The blind sisters were not particularly busy this morning. Zoe had to wait only a few moments until one of them was free, and then she settled herself in front of the large, serene woman.

“I have a question,” she said and handed over a gold piece.

The seer fingered it to verify its authenticity, and even her composed face showed astonishment. “Something worth this much to you is something I might not know.”

“I realize that,” Zoe said. “But I will pose the question anyway.”

“Go ahead.”

Even so, she hesitated a moment, uncertain of what to ask or how to phrase it. Finally she said, the words halting, “King Vernon has four wives and only three children. Is there some thought—has anyone ever said—might it be possible that those daughters are not his own?”

The blind sister held out her hand and Zoe dropped another gold coin in the palm. A ridiculous sum to pay for a question she could answer for herself, but she was curious to learn if anyone else in the city knew the truth. “Now and then, over the past fifteen years, there have been whispers,” the seer said, speaking so quietly that her own voice might have been a whisper. “Questions. Why aren’t there dozens of royal heirs running through the palace? Is the king unable to sire children? If so, who fathered those three girls?” She shook her head. “Nobody knows for certain.”

Zoe frowned. “Not much information for my two gold pieces.”

The seer leaned forward. “Eleven years ago—almost twelve years by now. A man came to me. He was drunk. He was giddy. He claimed that his daughter had just been born, and that she had been endowed with the blessings of imagination, intelligence, and courage.” The blind sister paused to let this information sink in, but it was not hard to put those pieces together. Those were the blessings claimed by Corene. “He said that the girl’s mother was married to another man—a powerful man—and that he would never be able to claim his daughter as his own.”

“Did he tell you his name?”

“No. But he had the shape and scent of an
elay
man.”

“Was he telling the truth?”

The seer shrugged. “Insofar as I could determine, he was telling me something that he believed. That might not mean that it was true.”

Zoe nodded. “And the king’s other two daughters? Has anyone else claimed to be their fathers?”

“No,” the sister replied. “There have been questions raised about them, but never any answers.”

It was paltry, insufficient, and frustrating information, but Zoe spoke her thanks anyway and rose to her feet. Well, she hardly knew
more
than she had before, but she thought her suspicions had been corroborated. The king probably had not fathered any of his daughters, and a few of his subjects guessed as much, but there was no proof and no absolute knowledge. Therefore, the world went on as it had before. Only Zoe’s world had changed—again.

She wandered around the Plaza for another hour, merely to give her mind something to focus on, trying on shoes and robes and bracelets and deciding none of them suited her. She ate the entire contents of a bag of lemon candy, which unfortunately neither improved her mood nor settled her mind. Neither did the purchase of a bright red scarf or a pair of brown leather gloves. She was out of balance; she needed a calm place where she could think.

Or not think.

This realization reached, she wandered with a little more purpose, searching for the elegant temple located in this district, though she tried three wrong cross streets before she found it. The instant she stepped into its scented warmth, out of the nasty wind, she felt a tranquility settle across her like a shawl draped over her shoulders. She paid the tithe at the door and then moved as quietly as possible to sit on the blue bench before the
coru
glyph.

About ten other people were inside the temple at this hour, three of them grouped on the white
elay
bench, three of them pulling blessings from the central barrel, and the rest scattered about on the other seats. An acolyte moved soundlessly around the perimeter, extinguishing guttering candles and lighting new ones, radiating an air of contentment and peace.

Gradually Zoe felt her muscles relax, her hurt and confusion start to drain away. In the temple, this was the gift of
coru
; it washed you clean of worries. Your troubles were carried away in the river’s insistent hands.

She passed next to the
elay
bench, now conveniently deserted as the other congregants moved on. This was always the element that spoke to Zoe the least, conveying as it did a sense of spirituality, occasionally even visions; she did not seem prone to such things. But
elay
also equated with hope, a renewed belief that the world could be restructured or at least comprehended, and Zoe let these thoughts rise to the forefront of her mind while she sat perfectly still, inhaling the spiced air. Yes—of course—she was puzzled now, a little lost, but eventually the world would make sense again. She had been lost a time or two before in her life, and she had always found her way.

The
hunti
pew, which she chose next, was painted a handsome ebony and seemed to be so solidly bolted to the floor that no catastrophe could budge it by so much as an inch. Zoe felt herself grow stronger, surer, as she sat before the sigil for wood and bone. Her spine stiffened; she drew herself up taller. She had survived so much already. How could she allow herself to be knocked askew by a piece of old knowledge, a fact that scarcely mattered, and that certainly changed nothing? She would not.

Four other congregants were sitting on the green
torz
bench when Zoe made her way across the temple floor, but they slid aside to give her room. It was always the way when you sat and contemplated the symbol for flesh and earth, her father would say, heartily complaining. You were squashed up against a half dozen other visitors, begging each other’s pardon, trying to hold your arms tightly to your body so you didn’t brush against anyone else. But that was the
torz
gift—connection to humanity, connection to the world. You might apologize for bumping into your neighbor, but then you would smile, you would whisper a comment about the weather. You would feel human again, part of the great, messy pageant of life. You would cease to feel so alone.

Zoe remained for a long time in the
torz
section, trying to muster the resolve to move on to
sweela
.

Where her father would linger, if his spirit were ever to make its way to a temple.

The other congregants shifted and re-formed around her; some left, new ones came in, and yet Zoe stayed where she was, staring at the red pew just a few feet away. She was not startled to feel a touch on her arm—there were, after all, six people currently crowded beside her—but she was a little surprised to find that the woman next to her was smiling in a knowing, encouraging fashion.

“I’ll walk over and sit with you, shall I?” the woman whispered. She might have been in her eighties, a frail, tiny thing bundled in so many scarves and overrobes that her clothing probably outweighed her body. “It will be easier then.”

“It’s not that I’m afraid of fire,” Zoe whispered back. “It’s that someone—my father—”

“My father was
sweela
as well,” the old woman replied. “And I always prefer to take a friend when I go to sit on the red bench.”

The kindness was irresistible. Zoe found herself smiling. She held out her hand, and the tiny old woman took it in a comforting grasp. Zoe felt the thin, shredded journey of blood in her veins, a complex mix of heritage and experience. “Then let us go together to confront our fathers,” she said.

They had the
sweela
seat to themselves; it tended to be a place where only certain people paused for long. Despite her new friend’s reassuring presence, Zoe felt some of her tension return as she sat before the slashing sign for fire.
Sweela
was not a restful element at the best of times. It exhorted you to feel, to care, to think, to love, even to remember. Zoe closed her eyes and unlocked her heart and let her mind flood with images of her father. Laughing. Arguing. Dancing with her mother. Flirting with a strange woman. Reading by candlelight. Listening to music. Meditating. Sleeping.