Beyond the Wall of Time (42 page)

“I… ah, perhaps I would defer to one who actually lived in those days,” she said, proving she was not only knowledgeable and
brave, but wise.

“No matter her tactic, we all know her ultimate goal. With Lenares’ cleverness and our strength we have rid the world of Keppia,
but he was the less intelligent of the siblings. I fear we have a far greater task ahead of us.”

Lenares agreed with the Undying Man’s assessment. Umu was very clever. She had tricked Lenares into letting her go just when
she might have done the most good. She was much sneakier and less direct than her brother had been. And she was bent on revenge
against Lenares for having ensnared her.

Lenares had been thinking about Umu on that first night in Mensaya when someone approached her.

“Sister, might we not speak?”

Fear prickled anxiously in her stomach as she swept her lank hair aside, looked up and met Cylene’s troubled gaze. “I don’t
really want to,” she said.

“I know you don’t,” Cylene said, nodding slightly. “No one understands that while everyone else has gained something today,
you have lost.”

“Do you see this?” Lenares said, on the verge of tears.
Don’t cry. You must never cry in front of others. They will tease you and call you names.

“Of course I see it. But I haven’t come to offer you counsel. Sister, we have both lost mothers today. I have only just learned
the fate of my…
our
family. I know she deserved it, but… ”

The tears came, and soon neither girl could tell where one’s sorrow ended and the other’s began.

“I don’t like you,” said Lenares, sniffing. “They kept you and got rid of me. What made you so special?”

“You were the special one, Merla,” Cylene said, seemingly unoffended. “You stood up to what Daddy did to us. You were always
getting beaten. It hurt us to see it, and made us frightened to disobey him in case we were treated like you.”

“I’m Lenares, not Merla. Merla is dead. She fell from a cliff nearly ten years ago. I don’t want to hear her name any more.”

“And you don’t remember… ?”

“I remember nothing.”

“It’s as though you lost something essential in your mind and you became a new person.”

Lenares scowled. “Or maybe I gained something extra that no one else has,” she countered.

Cylene nodded. “I’m sorry, Lenares. Forgive me for my rudeness. I, too, have gained something, thanks to you. I now have a
small capacity for magic.”

“Can you hear Mahudia? Does she speak to you?”

Cylene shook her head sorrowfully. “No, sister. Our mothers are gone. You and I will have to do for each other.”

Lenares grunted an ungracious reply, but had not really expected to drive her sister away. Nor wanted to when it came to it.
Cylene was her sister, after all.

Sister.
She wished to deny it, but the word brought a warm glow to her chest. Though her sorrow at the loss of Mahudia was almost
unbearable, she knew she could not have resisted her foster mother’s last request. Some people might feel they were betraying
the newly departed by talking to the one responsible for that loss, but Lenares prided herself on always seeing the truth.
This wasn’t Cylene’s fault.

“What’s it like to be dead?” she asked her sister.

Cylene’s face fell. “Noetos asked me that and I couldn’t give him a satisfactory answer,” she said.

“Is he your… is he special to you?”
He’s so old. As old as our father would have been.
The thought made Lenares uneasy.

“Noetos and I are very good friends,” Cylene said, smiling. “We don’t yet know what we might become.”

“Do you love him?”

“He asked me that too. I’m not sure I gave him a satisfactory answer to that question either.”

“Do you remember Keppia?”

Cylene sighed. “I wish I could forget. I’m not sure where I went after the ship crashed down on me, but it was a place of
wide-open spaces and twinkling lights, filled with countless voices, some laughing, others weeping, arguing or speaking quietly.
I was drawn back into my body, and he was there, filling it up. I can’t describe to you what it feels like to be inside your
body but not filling it. To me it seemed as though my whole body was a blister I needed to slough off, or perhaps an unnecessary
layer of clothing.

“Then he started to hurt me. It was horrible.” The colour faded from her face. “Lenares, do you mind if I don’t talk about
it?”

“I wanted to know,” Lenares said, unabashed.

“You’re a very direct person,” Cylene said, a small frown marring her features. “Noetos told me about you. I think I understand
your gift. Sister, can you tell me more about it? What was it like growing up in a foreign land?”

Lenares and Cylene shared stories with each other well into that night. The more they talked, the more intoxicating the talk
became; small intimacies led to larger ones, and long after everyone else had found sleep under the stars, the sisters whispered
the secrets of their hearts to each other. As the fire died down and the stars came out, they became aware of the great gift
Mahudia had given them.

It was one of the best days Lenares could remember.

The next day was not so memorable.

It began with hunger. Despite the many talented hunters among their number, it was impossible to find enough food to keep
the whole party satisfied. Arguments started, and twice that morning angry men left the group, taking dozens of people with
them. Kannwar did not try to prevent their departure, suggesting it was for the best.

“How will they survive?” Mustar wondered aloud.

“The same way we all will—or will not. No village will have food to spare, no grocer will be willing to part with any surplus
he has.”

“Couldn’t you command them?” Stella asked.

“I could,” Kannwar said, “if I thought it would not further inflame those who look for any cause to take issue against me.
Objectively speaking, we are the most important people in the world and our survival is more important than any village we
might raid. But weighed against that is the division such a raid might cause. For better or worse, the Most High has chosen
us. I do not want to lose anyone he thinks should be part of this endeavour.”

Lenares was unconcerned about the lack of food. In Talamaq the cosmographers had learned out of necessity to make do with
very little: the Emperor had systematically reduced their funding, making Mahudia’s position very difficult. It had been whispered
among them that the only reason the cosmographers survived was because Mahudia used her own personal fortune to subsidise
them.

She got up, stretched and made her ablutions in a cool stream some distance from the village. The sight of so much water flowing
freely still confounded her senses, and as she bathed she felt like an emperor herself.

As she reached for her clothes, she realised someone was watching her.

“Torve,” she said, and made no move to cover her breasts. Such ought to have been the behaviour of a proper lady—though a
proper lady would never have bathed naked in a stream—but Lenares cared nothing for such behaviour. She beckoned him closer.

He had obviously never been taught the male equivalent of proper decorum. Why should he have been? Torve was an animal, after
all, according to Amaqi traditions. Such teaching wasn’t wasted on animals. He came closer, edging down the slope to the stream,
and crouched on the bank within touching distance.

Lenares couldn’t help it: her thoughts returned to the moment the Emperor had taken his worm. Her mind told her it changed
everything, but her mind seemed to have very little influence on her heart. The pink feeling began to spread up and down her
body. She wanted him, but she could never have him.

He looked at her with eyes filled with longing.

“Can I touch you?” he said.

Why?
Lenares wanted to ask him.
Kannwar told me you would no longer feel those desires.
But as much as she wanted to know the answer, she was reluctant to ask. She did not want to hurt his feelings.

“Yes,” she said.

He reached out and took her right breast in his gentle fingers. She gasped at his touch, and a delicious heat spread across
her skin. His eyes filled with tears.

“I can’t feel anything,” he said.

“I can,” said Lenares, biting her lip.

“There is no future for us,” Torve said, and the despair in his voice stole her pink feelings away.

After washing and drying her clothes, she dressed. Torve waited patiently for her, then walked with her back to Mensaya. They
talked as they walked, the discussion a pessimistic one.

Once there, Lenares and Torve walked boldly into the town square, where the others had gathered. Various conversations were
proceeding, accompanied by arm-waving and even diagrams drawn in the sand. Lenares wished she could have taken part in them—her
thirst for knowledge seemed to be increasing with every day of this adventure—but she needed their help. How should she do
this? The old Lenares would simply have stood in the centre of the square, held up her arms and called for everyone’s attention.
But Torve was a private person, painfully private. She could not make a public spectacle of him.

She flicked a glance over the crowd and saw her sister. Cylene sat beside Noetos, their hands entwined, flanked by his children.
Lenares had heard murmurs about the age difference between her sister and the fisherman and once again wondered if her sister
knew why she was attracted to the older man.

They are in love. I will start with them.

As Lenares approached, Noetos looked up, shielding his face from the sun. “What has happened?” he asked her. “Is it the Daughter?
Is another disaster on the way? Are we in danger?”

She gazed at these people, strangers to her, yet people she hoped to make her friends. They were here because they trusted
her, because she had saved them, because they saw her as their hope against Umu and the hole in the world. At the least, she
was their warning should Umu attack them. They respected her and would help her.

“I need your advice,” she said.

They waited patiently.

“I am gifted,” she told them, “in many ways. I am the last cosmographer in the world, and the best for many centuries. Perhaps
of all time. I am not like you: I do not lie, and I see many things more clearly than others. But because I am immersed in
my gift, I am not familiar with a number of the things you take for granted.”

A couple of sniggers followed this comment. Others in the square had ceased their discussions and were listening to her. She
sighed. Ignorant people could be found everywhere.

“This is private,” she said loudly. “Mind your own affairs and leave me to mine.”

Their faces turned away.

“Torve and I are considered animals back in our home-land,” Lenares said, more quietly. “He is Omeran, and I was called a
half-wit. Neither of us were instructed in matters of love. We want to know—”

“You wanna know ’bout fuckin’?” someone called out.

They were still listening!

“Is that all there is to love?” Lenares responded angrily.

“All that matters,” called another male voice.

The words were followed by a sharp comment from a woman and a ringing slap, an indignant cry, then hearty laughter from somewhere
to her left.

“You want to talk about love?” Anomer sounded puzzled.

“Such questions should surely wait until we have done what the Most High has called us to do,” Kannwar said.

Lenares almost leapt into the air, so startled was she by his voice. He stood only a few paces behind her.

“You should stop telling us what to do,” she said, turning to point a finger at the Undying Man. “I rescued Cylene yesterday.
I drove Keppia away. If people want to help me in return, you don’t get to stop them.”

“He’s only opposed to it because he has nothing to contribute to the topic.” Robal stood near the edge of the square, arms
folded, a bitter smile on his face.

“Very well,” Kannwar said. “Continue your most important discussion. I, however, have other matters to attend to.”

People poured out of the square like water through a colander. The sight angered Lenares almost to the point of incoherence.
These were the people she had risked everything to save! The people Mahudia—no, she couldn’t think about it. She knew her
anger was irrational; she had told them not to listen to her, so why should she be unhappy if they chose to leave?

Perhaps twenty people remained in the town square when the water finished draining away. At least her sister, the fisherman
and his children had not left. Moralye smiled up at Lenares, and behind the scholar sat Robal, Kilfor and Sauxa, the three
Falthans surprisingly interested in the proceedings.

Stella sat to one side, alone.

The rest were people Lenares had not properly met: interested locals, those perhaps too weary or heartsick to join those who
had left the square. A couple wore trouble on their leering faces.

“You want to know about love, girl?” Sauxa asked, his perpetual scowl fixed on his face.

Lenares liked this man, so she nodded enthusiastically. He wore his frown like a mask, but he was a man who feared nothing
and valued the truth, even though he played strange games with it. She was pleased Sauxa had asked her the question.

“Yes, I do. You all know what happened to Torve,” she said. Torve stood beside her, saying nothing, obviously uncomfortable
with the exposure but willing to trust her. “We want to know if we can still love each other. We want to know what to expect.”

“Alkuon, woman, he’s lost his manhood.” Noetos spoke kindly, but his words still hurt. “You keep asking the question and the
answer remains the same. What you can expect is nothing.”

Cylene frowned at him.

“If by nothing you mean no… ah,” Lenares stumbled over the word, “no fucking, no children, then we understand that. But can’t
we love without it? I was in love with Torve before he… before the Emperor made him a eunuch. We hadn’t made love, but we
loved each other.”