The Braided World (11 page)

The world turned gold and green as the sun infused the stand of trees. Maypong's gown caught the sun, becoming a pale lemon yellow. Her face was clear to him for the first time. And he knew the woman.

She turned and climbed the bank, stopping on the bridge. It had been scrubbed clean of mud, as had all of the king's pavilion, but her feet now left dark blotches on the decking. She turned to see if he was following her.

This was the woman in the plaza, the one with the unflappable demeanor. The one who watched her daughter being cut, who watched her daughter fall and bleed into the
black mud. The woman without a heart. His skin, still wet from the swim, chilled in the breeze.

Maypong turned and walked slowly over the bridge. Her gown turned a garish color as the sun lit her fully.

Anton was acutely aware that he was making a choice. This woman might well be another silken noose devised by Vidori. Had the king deliberately chosen the one woman whom his crew would not accept? But how could Anton explain to Vidori that he deemed an obedient noblewoman unworthy? No, it couldn't be done.

At last, Anton followed her.

He was choosing, yet he had no choice. He thought that Nick would see this as another concession to royalty. But he hoped that Maypong would prove more than that, and indeed, his instinct told him she would. And in the Olagong, he knew, instinct sometimes served better than logic.

Every time she opened her eyes, the dream came back.

The dream that she was in a miserable slave hut, lying in a hammock, her mouth filled with pain.

Gilar resolved not to open her eyes. She would go back to sleep, to sleep in the comfort of her cool room by the river, with its song of water, her sheets like a silken river carrying her to another day. Oh yes, that place was within reach, just beneath this terrible dream. She would hold on to the brocaded corner of her bedclothes, while her body floated in this unreal world. The one that said she was a hoda.

She felt a pressure on her arm. Someone jiggling her, urging her to wake.

No, no. Mustn't open my eyes. There is a woman without a tongue out there.

But the jostling came again. The moment Gilar opened her eyes, the hoda signed to her:

Welcome, Gilar. <

Here was a slave not using her honorific. She would have
this slave disciplined. But the place to do that was on the other side of the sheet, her home by the river.

Through the roof, imperfectly woven, panes of light slashed into the room, hurting her eyes along with her mouth. Something was dreadfully wrong with her mouth.

The hoda was signing again.

Do you need more pain drink?<

Gilar nodded. She wanted a pain drink, even if this was only a dream. She sipped from a cup, then lay back again.

She opened her mouth to ask where she was, but when she did, out came an awful bray. Her throat convulsed, and a trickle down her throat tasted thick and wrong. She tried to speak again, and again came the squawk of a jiga bird. What was in her mouth? Gilar sat up, as hands came to restrain her. She brayed again and again. The pain dug down her throat like a shovel. The hoda held on to her, arms wrapped around Gilar's arms, pinning them to her side, as Gilar fought to stick her hand in her mouth, to take out the knife, to hit the hoda, and to fall through the sheet to a safe world.

Hmmm, hmmm
, came the hoda's voice. The same sound her hoda slave had made when she was a child needing comfort.
Hmmm, hmmm.

Hearing that old nurse's song, Gilar wept. Her face fell against the hoda's shoulder, against the rough cloth of her tunic. But her nurse was dead these three years past. Calming herself, she pulled away, looking at the slave in front of her, a young hoda.

The girl removed her hands from around Gilar, and signed to her: Do not cry in front of Mistress Aramee. Be brave now, and cry with me later. <

Gilar hesitated to use slave language. In the palace she needed only to read what the hoda said, never needed to use hand sign herself. It was vulgar to wave hands. But she did so now, not wishing to bray. Cry? Why am I crying?<

You know why, my sister. <

Gilar reached up and wiped the water from her cheeks.

She knuckled at her eyes, but she kept her mouth firmly closed. No more braying sounds. Where are my real clothes?< Gilar signed. This coarse tunic needed to be replaced at once.

Maypong set them afloat in the Puldar.<

Gilar thought of her beautiful silk tunic, floating on the river like a sea serpent. She imagined Maypong setting the clothes there, after taking the coins from the king's hand, after turning her face. Away.

The sun had moved beyond the peak of the ceiling to slide down the steep roof. The day was aging. The sun moved in the heavens. She was truly and really here, then. In a dark realm.

The truth, when it settled upon her, made her feel as heavy as a stone settling into the river. The river took the bodies of those no one cared about. She didn't want to float long. She wanted, desperately, to find the bottom and have it over with.

Maypong is not my mother,< Gilar signed.

No. Not anymore. <

Outside Gilar heard voices. What compound am I in?< Her fingers were more clumsy than those of this hoda, who had practice waving her fingers at people.

The hoda answered. The Mistress Aramee's households

Gilar nodded.

She was fending off thinking about her mouth. If she thought about how her body had been ruined, it would drive her mad. She thought instead about Aramee, a woman with one of the best islets, right on the River Sodesh. A fine compound, so she had heard in the days before. But Maypong would hardly have known Aramee socially. Maypong was of the palace.

The hut door darkened. Inside stepped a woman of bearing. Her tightly wound hair glinted from sun leaking through the roof.

The hoda stood. Then, furtively, she signed to Gilar. Cry later. <

The Mistress Aramee approached the hammock where Gilar reclined. She kneeled next to her with a pleasant expression on her face. “Open your mouth, Gilar.”

The hoda urged Gilar with her eyes, pleading for her to be obedient. Gilar opened her mouth to let Aramee inspect her wound.

The mistress peered closely, her scent coming strong to Gilar's nostrils. Aramee nodded and gestured to the slave, who placed a cup in Aramee's hand.

“You are well enough to drink your cleansing broth.”

Cleansing broth.
It was the potion that all hoda drank, to make them clean. Gilar's hand shook as she took the cup. She paused. Perhaps she would hurl it in Aramee's face. Perhaps she would spill it in her own lap. The moment stretched.

Misunderstanding Gilar's pause, Aramee said, “It will sting for a moment. Soon over.” Her attempt at kindness made Gilar's stomach sour. That she thought Gilar needed
kindness.

Tipping her head back, she swallowed the potion all at once. She cared little for the medicine's effects. What was left of her tongue burned molten as the liquid passed over it. She gulped hugely, keeping her face calm. The potion could have no effect on her whatsoever. Gilar was not born to bear. Not.

Aramee took the empty cup, looking at it to be sure nothing remained.

At the door the mistress turned around. Gilar raised her chin, waiting for Aramee to give her some due, something to recognize that she now had a slave who had been raised in the palace.

But all she said was “It is a nice, straight cut. I will thank the judipon for you.”

Gilar stared at the doorway for a long while.

Beside her, the hoda signed, My name is Bahn. Where you are now, so it was with me one year ago.<

Gilar hardly registered this information. Take me to the door, Bahn, so I can look out.<

Bahn helped her rise and move to the doorway Gilar moved as though she was underwater. Drugged.

Leaning against the post of the door, Gilar saw the wide mud yard, baked dry the huts with neatly stacked equipment, children running, followed by their bald hoda nursemaids. In the rear, the sprawling hut of Aramee and her female kin.

It is a fine compound, Gilar. Aramee is good, you will see.<

Gilar stared at Bahn. But I am not a hoda.<

Bahn slapped her. Not hard, but the slave actually slapped her. The pain sent a wave of protest to the back of her skull.

Never say that again. <

The blow calmed Gilar. She was now able to look at Bahn with patient hatred. Bahn who dared strike her. Bahn with her smooth skull. Someday, Gilar knew, she would look just like that, when the potion took her hair away. But inside, Gilar would never be a hoda.

She was palace-raised. These people would have to learn that.

In the back of the skiff Nick peered out the gaps in the
reed tent. The uldia hid him there, as eager as he was to keep this trip secret. This trip to Oleel's pavilion.

The view of the River Sodesh was altered from a week ago when he and Zhen had traveled to the shuttle landing site. Today the river flowed in a broad channel, and the land lay uncovered on either side, still swampy in places, but busy with farming activity.

It had been an instant's decision. Nick had been walking through a glade in the palace compound. A boat appeared from under a bridge, and an uldia asked him if now would suit him to interview the chief uldia. A boat was waiting, with a privacy cabin in the stern, and no one around to observe. He found himself in the skiff crouching down to enter the reed enclosure. Perhaps his decision was propelled by the incident with the hoda and the wire cage, when Anton did nothing to prevent the mutilation, or perhaps it was the outbreak on the ship, or Maypong's new presence. He hesitated only a moment. He was convinced now that Anton wasn't competent. He'd hoped for Anton to succeed;
he'd tried to help him. But it was Nick who should have been awarded that post.

The skiff entered a narrow channel, a dark tunnel with overhanging tree branches. The splashes of paddling slowed, and the skiff bumped into what might have been a dock. A hoda removed the forward side of the tent and gestured him out of the craft and onto a ramp.

They were in the deep shade of a small pier—nothing like the grand entrance he'd expected at Oleel's pavilion. But of course they took him to a back entrance. Two uldia escorted him down a narrow corridor that smelled as if it had been underwater recently. At points along the corridor, electric lamps lent a murky glow.

They ascended stairs of white granite, quickly gaining height above the Amalang River. Emerging into a fine hall, Nick saw the first extensive use of stone that he'd observed among the Dassa. Through stone columns and open walls, Nick looked down on the jungle, pressing closer here than at Vidori's palace.

After crossing a roofed bridge and passing through a portico, Nick found himself on a mezzanine overlooking a central courtyard. Sounds of running water filled the place, compounded by those of a small stream set into the stone floor. Here and there water cascaded down the walls and emptied into the floor streams.

Despite the immense size of the pavilion, he saw only three people in it beside himself: his two escorts, and someone waiting for him on the mezzanine. She was a tall woman, dressed all in glittering gray.

“You are Venning,” the woman said. She stood on the other side of the floor stream. And she was indeed a large woman, somewhat taller than himself. The size of her ear pendants were in ratio to her commanding face—the half-circles as usual, but inlaid with a milky white stone.

“Yes,” he said, “Nick Venning.” He didn't like their using the name that Zhen used, with those overtones of contempt. ‘Are you the Lady Oleel?”

“Did you think they lied, saying that we would meet?”

Nick looked at his escorts. “Not at all. My thanks to your people.” He was conscious that the woman likely could smell him. Not just uldia, but all female Dassa had a strongly developed sense of smell—to identify parentage of infants. He took a seat so that Oleel could sit. She chose a riser on his side of the stream.

Behind her was a glass box inside which river plants undulated in the circulating waters. The tank was in fact connected by ceramic pipes to other water features on the mezzanine, so that it was all one system, or appeared to be.

“You were the captain's chancellor. Before Maypong took your place.”

“She is helping us,” he replied, but heat rose in his face, to think that was how people saw it.

“Oh yes, you would think so. I see it… with different eyes.”

He was startled to hear her use a human idiom—an apt one. He realized they must learn to see things as the uldia did, if they wished to understand them, to calm their fears. Nick planned to address those fears—of why they had come, what they must do here, and if they offended, how they could be soon gone once their mission bore fruit. He would have Oleel understand their motives, and give her assurances that they would not linger to trouble her traditional view. This might win her support of their further access to the Olagong. Or at least remove her objections— to which he suspected Vidori catered.