Our Lady of the Islands (15 page)
Read Our Lady of the Islands Online
Authors: Shannon Page,Jay Lake
Het regarded Motuque sadly. “There could be little harm in offering her that bit of crust you’ve left there, surely,” he said at last. “I’ll do it. On my way out. Who will ever know?” Motuque opened his mouth, but Het rushed on before he could object. “If they do find out somehow, I’ll just tell them I said it was for myself, then decided to offer it to her on a whim as I was leaving. I have not been given any order to starve her, and you won’t have knowingly disobeyed the order you were given. Come, Motuque. For the sake of both our souls. It’s just a crust of bread — and stale, yes? You said so yourself.”
Sian’s heart had climbed back into her mouth. Was Het mad? What if the man was persuaded to go down right now and give it to her himself?
But Motuque just shook his head, gazing up at Het. “You really are … How have you remained such an innocent all these years? You set a terrible example for this boy, you know.” He looked past Het at Sian again. “Imitate nothing that you see this old fool do, lad,” he told her. “His life is just an endless cautionary tale.”
She had no idea how to respond, except to cringe even further into her heavy robe.
“There, Motuque,” Het said. “He is terrified of both of us. He’ll do very well here, yes?”
The guard’s smile soured. “Fine.” He took the crust off of his plate and held it up to Het. “
You
take the risk then, Father Het. For both our souls.”
“You see, Pavri?” Het asked Sian over his shoulder as he took the bread. “Motuque is almost as reckless as I. And a better man than he pretends.” Het shoved the crust into his pocket and bowed to the guard in thanks. “May I borrow your key?”
“If a whisper of this ever surfaces, Het, I will contrive whatever lies are needed to protect myself — and make life hell for
both
of you,” said the guard, wrestling the key to Sian’s cell off of his ring. “Just so there’s no misunderstanding, friend.”
“I loathe misunderstandings,” Het agreed. “I’ll return this in a moment, and we’ll all forget this ever happened.” He turned to Sian. “Come, Pavri. Let’s dig you even further into trouble, yes?” As Het ushered Sian back out of the guardroom ahead of him, he turned back to Motuque, smiling. “And you should eat that soup before it gets even colder, friend. If not for its fine taste, then from respect for your starving prisoner.”
“Don’t test my patience further,
Father Better Than Most
,” Motuque retorted. But as Het closed the door behind them, Sian heard the scrape of his spoon against the wooden bowl.
A moment later, they were back outside the door to her cell, where, to her astonishment, Het used the key he’d borrowed from Motuque to open up the door and usher her back inside it.
“What now?” Sian whispered in frustration when he had followed her inside and closed the door behind them. “You said we were leaving!”
“Why, we must feed Domina Kattë her crust of bread.”
Sian suppressed an urge to pull her hair and scream. “What are you talking about? I don’t want his crust. I want to leave!”
“Patience, Pavri,” Het said quietly, listening at the closed door. “Our timing here is somewhat delicate. We must not return with Motuque’s key too quickly.”
“Why return to him at all?” she hissed as softly as her mounting panic would allow. “With all respect, Father Het, if you have really come to help me escape, should we not actually try fleeing at some point?”
Het took his ear from the door, then reached beneath his robes again, this time pulling out a burlap sack which he held out to Sian. “Eat this as quickly as you can, Domina. We must not wait here too long either.”
Sure he must be mad, she took the sack and opened it to find a large chunk of pale cheese, three slices of parrot fruit wrapped in cotton, and a handful of fatty candlenuts.
“Just to keep your strength up,” Het said, returning to listen at the door. “There will be more food later.”
She still had no idea what Het was up to, but her hunger now eclipsed all else. She sat down on her mattress in the all-but-darkness and started tearing chunks off of the cheese, which she stuffed into her mouth and swallowed almost whole. The parrot fruit and candlenuts followed quickly after.
“How did you get in here before?” She licked traces of the fruit juice from her fingers when everything was gone.
“What?” he asked, still focused on whatever he was listening for.
“You borrowed Motuque’s key just now to open my cell door, but you’d just been in here to get me without it.”
“I have acquired copies of most of his keys,” said Het. “Not that he can ever be allowed to know that, of course. I’ve collected quite an assortment of keys from all around the temple, in fact. They prove very useful on occasion, as you see.” He took his ear from the door again, and turned to her. “I think sufficient time has passed. Bring the sack, and follow me, but remain as silent as before — no matter what may happen, yes?”
She shrugged helplessly, pulling her cowl down again as Het opened her cell door and beckoned her outside.
At the guardroom door, Het knocked lightly. When no reply was given, he called softly, “Motuque? We’re back with your key.” Still no reply. Nodding to himself, Het pushed the door open and walked in.
Sian just managed not to gasp aloud as she followed him to find Motuque lying face down beside his overturned soup bowl.
“Excellent,” Het said. “It was truly such poor soup, I feared he might not eat it.”
“What happened to him?” Sian asked, forgetting her vow of silence.
“A healer’s knowledge and skill may be applied in many ways, for many purposes.” Het took the empty sack from her and stuffed it into his pocket. “On this occasion, I applied it to his meal.”
“You
poisoned
him?”
“No, no. Of course not. He is among my closest friends. I’ve just encouraged him to sleep a while. He will be fine in very little time. Physically, at least. We’d best be on our way now.”
“But, why do any of this?” she asked as he led her back into the hallway. “Why did we not just flee? Won’t you be in far more trouble now — for what you’ve done to Motuque?”
“I?” Het said without slowing or turning to face her. “I did not bring Motuque that meal. Pavri did. I but met him on his way here.”
“But … there is no Pavri. Motuque will learn that as soon as he tells anyone what happened.”
“Oh, yes,” Het said. “And I will be as shocked as Motuque to learn that harmless, frightened young Pavri was a wicked imposter.”
Sian shook her head in confusion. “I do not —”
“Might not a heretic with such power, in league with the Butchered God’s cleverly elusive priest, have confederates? It will go far easier for poor Motuque to have been overwhelmed by means of poison than to have allowed your escape while he sat eating his dinner down the hall. My own position and credibility will be strengthened too, if I was not the only one taken in by you and your accomplice. Everyone is better off now, yes?”
Only then did Sian realize how skillfully Het had just arranged his answers to at least half a dozen inevitable questions later on, including what he had been doing in her cell to start with. No fool after all, she thought with chagrin.
“Now,” Het said, turning back to her as they approached a stairwell at the hallway’s end, “it is time that you recall your vow of silence, Pavri, and exert some real discipline. Stay right behind me at all times. Keep your head down, and, please, make no sound of any kind — no matter who or what we should encounter, yes?”
Sian nodded meekly inside her cowl, tucking her chin down against her chest as they began to climb the stairs.
Het’s evident cleverness was still dreadfully little comfort as she followed him through the temple’s crowded hallways with their empty tray. Even less comfort as they pressed together through the refectory’s dinner lines, shoulder to shoulder with other priests. Het bantered with those around them as if there were nothing in the world to worry him, occasionally making dismissive references to the troublesome acolyte with whom he had been saddled for the evening. Not until Het had gathered a tray of food for himself and his ostensible charge, then managed to steer them inconspicuously even farther back into the currently deserted renovation site that Het had mentioned to her earlier, did Sian find herself truly able to breathe again.
“There, you see?” Het uttered brightly after making certain they were finally alone. “The best place to hide things is in plain sight.”
“You’ve taken a lot of horrifying gambles tonight,” she replied, still trembling.
“As any
living
person does.” He took the burlap sack she’d eaten from before out of his pocket and quickly refilled it with the items on his own newly filled dinner tray. “Take this with you. For after your escape.”
“We’re leaving now?” Sian asked.
“
You
are leaving now. I must go get out of this robe, and back into your cell before Motuque awakens.”
Her gaze darted in renewed alarm around the still half-dismantled chamber. “You’re leaving me? Here? I have no idea where we are, or how to —”
“I will show you,” he said. “Do not panic, and you will be fine.” He guided her even further from the refectory, through another doorway into a second chamber, where they walked around behind a tall, precariously stacked pile of lumber, tools and containers to a ragged hole that seemed recently bashed through the plastered wall.
“This is where I acquired my bruise. The falling timbers opened this wall.” He offered her a wry shrug. “Being the excessively inquisitive fellow I am, I have since explored the passages beyond it some. They will lead you safely to an exit well beyond the temple grounds, by a fairly simple route which I’ll explain. From there, Domina, you will have to proceed as best you can alone.”
She gazed through the hole into an inky darkness. Before she could protest again, Het rummaged beneath his robe once more, pulling out a small leather purse, from which he drew a blown glass globe of clear liquid. Het shook it vigorously before handing it to her.
“What is this?” she asked, marveling at the dim light it now emitted.
“Have you never seen the surf glow blue and green on warmer nights?”
“Of course. But how —”
“The water on those evenings is filled with tiny creatures — much too small to see — that do the glowing when they are disturbed.”
“Is that so?” She had never known, or even wondered, really. She had just taken the ocean’s occasional glow at night for granted, as she did so many other things about the vast and omnipresent sea.
“This float is filled with them. We make them here to use when we must work or travel in the dark. And to awe our patients with at times,” he added somewhat sheepishly. “Shake it periodically, and it should last you more than long enough. Its light is dim, but your eyes will adjust.” He handed her the leather purse as well. “Sadly, I have no power to retrieve any of the possessions taken from you when you were imprisoned here. But what money I have is in this purse, to see you through at least a day or two if you are frugal. I wish it were more, but I am not a wealthy man, I fear. Even for a priest.”
“I owe you too much already,” Sian said. “I cannot take your money.”
“You must. You will have to eat. And it may be difficult to access your own funds in whatever ways are usual.” He pressed the purse further toward her. “They will be looking for you everywhere, my lady. And having been so careless once, they
will
know where to look this time. You must trust no one, Domina Kattë. Not even those you care about, if you would spare them danger. Please take the purse — and use it sparingly.”
Sian accepted his gift. “You are far too generous, I fear. Will you be safe here now?”
“Having been careful to play the fool here for so long, I am unlikely to be credited with sufficient cleverness to be blamed for anything beyond stupidity in this affair.” He gave her the ghost of a smile. “Now, listen carefully. The route is simple, really. Just a couple of turns. Have you an agile memory, or should I write them down?”
Sian woke with a groan to find morning arrived. The bed of surf-worn stones and pebbles on which she lay made her moldy straw mattress in the temple’s dungeon seem luxurious by comparison. She turned stiffly to peer out from beneath the skiff under which she had taken shelter the night before. Up and down Pembo’s Beach she saw others emerging from abandoned hulls much like her own, or from shelters fashioned out of cast-off cargo containers, or just haphazard piles of flotsam. Here and there morning fires had been lit, and cooking pots set to boil above them. These were the kind of people the Butchered God’s priest seemed to favor. The god’s body had washed up here, after all. If she could gain their trust, perhaps they would help her finally find the priest. He seemed more than ever her only hope now.
Sian had passed this unsightly shantytown — no more, really, than a vast graveyard for abandoned craft and other refuse from Cutter’s nearby commercial port — any number of times while going about her business for Monde & Kattë, or for the occasional shipboard meeting or more private rendezvous with Reikos. Never could she have imagined that she would find herself living here among Alizar’s poorest and most dispossessed. With another groan, she rolled onto her back again to stare at the overturned hull above her.
As Het had promised, her route through the temple’s abandoned service tunnels had been simple, and the little light had lasted long enough to see her to a long-eroded doorway — more a cave mouth now — beneath a rugged cliffside on an abandoned beach somewhere on The Well’s west shore. She had left Het’s coarse robe inside the tunnel mouth for fear the streets might already be filled with temple guards looking for a false monk. Then, rejecting travel by runner-cart as both too expensive and too dangerous, she had begun to make her stealthy way across The Well.
Keeping to the darkest, least populated streets and paths, she had struggled in vain to think of any plan or destination that made sense. The townhouse was out of the question, of course. She had not dared go back to Arouf or Maleen. If Het’s warning were true — and she had no cause to doubt him — the Mishrah-Khote might already be lying in wait for her at either of those places. They had certainly found her the first time quickly enough. And even if they weren’t waiting, and her family could be made to take her fears seriously now, how much might they be endangered by her mere presence? The thought of Arouf, much less her daughter, wasting in a temple prison cell because of her was more than Sian could bear.
She had briefly considered asking Reikos to take her to her younger daughter on the continent. Had he not half begged her to go with him when he sailed? Even if he hadn’t been entirely serious, he would probably not say no … But, she did not really trust him. Not now, not after his … mercenary reaction to her troubles. And recalling Maleen’s reaction to her plight mere days ago, Sian had no sure idea what reception she might get from Rubya either. If Rubya proved unprepared to take her in, Sian would just be left penniless in some foreign land to be … what, exactly? Not a captain’s wife, surely. Reikos was not the marrying kind — even if she could imagine wanting that from him now. In any case, if her new healing powers followed her from Alizar, her troubles would surely follow as well. No. Leaving Alizar made no more sense than staying did.
More ravenous than ever, it had seemed, Sian had finished the last of Het’s bagged meal before she’d even reached the long bridge back to Cutter’s, and could easily have eaten six more like it in a blink. She’d made her way across the island yearning for the bouillabaisse served by the Eighth Sea, though there was no question of showing herself at any such place now, even if she’d possessed the money anymore to pay for such luxuries.
Upon reaching the eastern end of the island at gods knew what hour of the night, exhausted and weak with hunger, she had found herself heading, perhaps by force of habit, toward the docks where Reikos doubtless dreamed peacefully in his narrow shipboard bunk. Looking down from the harbor road at the beachside shantytown she’d passed so many times without concern, she had realized that this, at least, was nowhere the Mishrah-Khote or anyone else would think to look for Sian Kattë. Her pride had been no match by then for her fatigue or her despair. It had not taken long to find an overturned hull under which nobody else already lay. It had taken even less time to fall fast asleep.
Now even sleep had left her, with nothing but the few coins Het had given her and the ragged, badly soiled clothes she wore. In all likelihood, she was the poorest person on this miserable beach. They, at least, had knowledge she lacked of how one navigated such a life.
As so often seemed the case these days, it was hunger that impelled her forward. Het’s largess would be at least sufficient to buy her a chicken at the harbor market. She supposed someone here would lend her a flaming twig with which to light a driftwood fire of her own to cook it on. There. A plan at last.
Gathering her resolve, Sian crawled out from underneath her rotting hull, adjusted her rumpled veil, and stood to stretch her stone-ground muscles in the early light. Her emergence startled a flock of sandpipers, who started
weet
-
weet
ing at her in alarm as they fled down the beach. Several of the shantytown’s human denizens looked up at the disturbance, then glared at her suspiciously. She summoned a small smile and waved at one of them, a gaunt-looking woman half her age with a ragged child of uncertain gender clinging to her knees. The woman turned away as if Sian’s wave had rendered her invisible. But the child continued staring, its dark eyes like two holes burned through a dirty blanket, framed in a raven’s nest of tangled, coal-black hair. Flinching from the accusation in those eyes, Sian wished suddenly to look away, just as the child’s mother had, but found herself unable to disengage.
My mother is a woman too
, the child’s smoldering gaze seemed to say.
Raising a child just like your own. But here, beneath a pile of wreckage. Without hope of ever —
Sian wrenched her gaze away, breathless with the effort it had taken to break whatever power inhabited those dreadful eyes. She turned, unsteadily, to head for the market, feeling the child’s stare still fastened on her back, though she dared not even glance over her shoulder to see, for fear of being recaptured. The power that child’s eyes possessed … had seemed unnatural. Or, she thought with a sudden shiver, had some power possessed the child?
The memory of Het’s voice came unbidden to her mind: …
that such a power could have come from anywhere
except
the gods
…
It wasn’t a new idea, of course. What she could do now with her hands was certainly miraculous. Yet not until this moment had the implications truly reached through her cloud of dismay and confusion. She had just gone on thinking of her new power as something done to her by a crazy, would-be priest — imagining she had the power, or the right, to make him, or the Mishrah-Khote perhaps, take it from her again. But if this power had actually been given by a
god
… to
her
specifically, for some unimaginable reason …
She shook her head in stunned denial as she pushed through the dense scrub palm and thorny vine which lay between the shantytown and the harbor road, reconsidering the child’s disturbing power to immobilize her with its gaze. The accusation in its eyes. Were others on the islands being seized and used by this so-called Butchered God as well? Did it peer out at Alizar from all sorts of little portals, working its will through whatever tools were handy at the moment? Had Sian any power left at all to make
plans
of her own? Or would this god steer her as it wished now, regardless of her own intentions? Might the eyes or tongue of any stray bystander be commandeered to reproach her if she began to drift off whatever course it willed for her? Had it just done so through that strange, unnatural child?
And what course
did
it will for her, anyway? Why choose her rather than some more significant member of the ruling family? What was this
message
she’d been so roughly conscripted to carry to them? She still had no idea — and this god, if god it was, was taking no pains she could see to help her deliver it. Had she been transformed like this to heal the Factor’s child? Or was there some greater concern at stake here; something that only a god might have sufficient vision to foresee?
None of these were questions she had any wish to ask, much less be used to answer. Yet now that this unnerving child — or whatever had made use of it — had uncorked their bottle, more such questions just kept pouring out inside her.
What could a
dead
god want anyway, of anyone, much less of her? Was all this really being driven by the god whose body had washed up here two years ago, as the priest who had inflicted this
gift
of hers obviously believed? Or might some other god simply have elected to work through the dead one’s shadow? Perhaps its killer? What besides a god could kill another god?
Such maddening questions!
Finding her hands pressed to the sides of her head as she walked up the narrow lane, she quickly let them drop. She must be as invisible as possible now. Just one more of Alizar’s teeming, irrelevant poor.
The possibility that she really might have been chosen for this fate by some deity did nothing at all to make her a more willing vessel. More desperate than ever for some path toward escape, she finally conceded that, after she’d obtained some food, there was no option but to swallow her pride and turn to Reikos. He could help access her money somehow, or convey messages, or run necessary errands for her with at least as much safety as anyone else now. And he could get her off the islands altogether, if it really came to that. Might whatever god had seized her be outdistanced after all? She had heard stories of the continent’s more active gods and godlings all her life, yet, to her knowledge, none of them had ever shown up here in Alizar. Might gods be as regionally bound as people were? Perhaps her unwanted power would vanish too, if she could cross beyond the borders of this new god’s influence. And even if her power remained, she might still find refuge where no
healing priesthood
felt threatened by her. Might she not be able to do some good with such a power, if she were allowed to — even make a living with it?
Ugh! Now I sound just like Reikos.
Her stomach rumbled fiercely, bringing her back to ground. All she needed to be thinking of right now was a chicken. And a messenger, perhaps. Yes. The port market would be full of messengers to hire for just a few of her precious coins, and without attracting any notice at all amidst the usual hubbub there.
She began mentally composing a carefully phrased invitation to Reikos. One that he would understand without leaving anybody else, including her messenger, means to deduce her current whereabouts, or the location of their intended rendezvous. They would have to meet on some other island, of course, so that if her missive fell into the wrong hands it would not lead anyone back to her new home in the harbor shantytown. Fortunately, her long history of clandestine communications with the captain had provided her a well-established code in which to frame such instructions.
As the busy harbor market came into view ahead of her, however, Sian could not help but imagine being waylaid and captured yet again. Recalling Het’s suggestion that her power might be used to harm as well as heal, Sian recoiled again from the idea. She doubted any god who wanted her to heal would have given her power to hurt instead. And she wanted no such power anyway. The idea sickened her. This so-called gift had reduced her to many things, but she had no intention of allowing it to make a thug of her as well. She was alert to the full danger of her situation now. If her best precautions proved insufficient, she would not be passively cooperative again. This time, at the slightest sign of trouble, she would flee for her life.
As the market’s babble and activity engulfed her, Sian felt increasingly safer. Few people took any notice of another spent woman in rags, as Sian wandered through the press of haggling customers, vendors crying out their wares, and palm-thatched, bamboo food carts with their fragrant, smoky fires. The few who seemed to see her at all offered no more than frowns of distaste before looking away again. Once she might have been offended or ashamed, but now, she was simply reassured. It took her very little time to find her messenger; a boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen summers — clearly new at his profession — who looked far too innocent and eager to be in league with anyone. He had the usual writing implements and paper which they all carried to accommodate the unprepared. In keeping with her appearance, she pretended to be illiterate, dictating her message for Reikos as the boy wrote it out for her.
“You won’t forget what I have tell you, or the name of his ship?” she asked, as if untrusting of such magic as writing. “I don’t know when it may sail, maybe, so you hurry, eh? Find him quick for me. It’s important that we speak. Okay?”
“Yes, my lady,” he said earnestly, despite her ragged state. “I go right this minute.”