The Hidden Icon (3 page)

“They haven’t,” I said at last, wondering how much time I had left with my family, what I could say or do before we were parted. The thought of telling them about my bargain with the Ambarians made me wish I
had
lost my tongue.

I sat down, many beginnings wetting my lips but none of them the right one for telling something so big. My family stood around me, quiet now, anticipating terrible things in the silence that began to pound between our bodies, strong as a pulse.

“I have to go. They’ve asked me to go with them.”

“Demanded, you mean,” said Jurnus hotly, but the others agreed with him. I didn’t need their nods of assent to see it. “You won’t go.”

“Of course she won’t,” said my father, more calmly than his son but with no less fervor. “We heard the guards talking; we know that a member of the royal family is here. There must be something else that they want.”

They can’t possibly want just you.
It was a thought without malice, but it stung all the same.

“There isn’t,” I insisted, raising my voice to rival Jurnus’ as he opened his mouth to interrupt me. “But if I go, they’ll spare your lives. They didn’t tell me why but I believe them and I have to go.”

It sounded even more absurd coming from me than it had from Morainn, and as I looked from one sibling’s face to the next, from my mother to my father again, I knew they were thinking the same thing.

“I have to go,” I repeated. I could hear their protests even before they voiced them, and I could feel, too, the hurry of bodies making ready throughout the palace. I would be gone soon. “And I don’t want to spend my last moments with you arguing about why I shouldn’t.”

It was my mother who sat down first, unclasping her hands to take both of mine into her lap. Father moved to stand behind her, laying a hand upon her shoulder.

“They didn’t say why,” she observed quietly. “But did they say for how long? Did they say if you’ll be coming back?”

I shook my head, confidence slipping as I realized how little I had to offer my family, how little Morainn had offered me. Jurnus sat down at my other side, my sisters on the floor before me. My father was the only one who remained standing, and when he laid his hand upon my head, just for a moment combing dark hair back from my brow, I couldn’t regret what I’d done. He was worried for me and confused, too, but a thread of confidence shone in the tangles of his concern. Under my father’s hand I knew I’d done the right thing, I’d done the only thing. Still my eyes grew hot and damp, because we’d always been afraid that war would part us, and now the ending of it had.

“Well, since you haven’t got any answers, why don’t you tell us a story, Eiren,” my mother continued, not unkindly. I would much rather have had a story from her, but talking gave me something to do besides crying, and she knew it.

“Tell us the story of the sandal maker’s daughters, Ren.” My eldest sister’s voice trembled like a bell, but still somehow managed to sound composed. She would have made a fine queen someday, I thought bitterly. At least she’d live to see another day.

“Each of the sandal maker’s daughters was more beautiful than the last, though he refused them everything they asked for and demanded that they sit every day in the broad window of his shop, their shapely feet displaying his finest creations. The first daughter, who was as slender and dark as a smudge of oil smoke, kept her legs tightly crossed because she was convinced the patrons of her father’s shop came to peep at her and not to buy. The second daughter covered her olive smooth face with her hair, closing her eyes beneath a curtain of curls and sleeping. She snored occasionally, and it was the duty of the youngest to prod the middle sister awake if she should become too noisome, and to warn the eldest of traffic on the road. The youngest sister sat nearest the window’s edge, when she sat at all. Her name was A’isah, and she had a heart and a head larger than even an entire street of shop windows could contain.”

Despite their lack of physical similarity, for myself and my sisters all had the same milk-tea complexion, the same dark hair, the sisters of this story had always reminded me of my own, and did now so keenly I almost could not continue. I persisted, however, thinking that if I didn’t have the strength to bid them goodbye, I had no strength at all.

“One afternoon, a curtained litter approached the sandal maker’s shop, supported on the shoulders of several men. As it drew near A’isah could see that there was room enough in the litter for two, but when the curtain was drawn aside there was only one occupant. The man inside was dressed richly, but neither his face nor his body bore the physical marks of labor that might’ve earned such splendor.

‘I have come to see my bride fitted for her wedding shoes, and there is no sandal maker finer than the one within to do the job,’ he told A’isah. ‘Will you go and get him?’

‘I cannot leave the window. Not until sunset,’ A’isah explained. Her sisters, awoken by his arrival, nodding a silent chorus. They were not even to speak to customers, and many who came by this way knew better than to try to talk with the girls. But not this one.

‘Then I shall wait here until then, and we may go in together.’

And though it was but ten steps beyond the door to their father’s workshop, the young man sat himself down in the window and tempted even the eldest sister to come and sit near. All three sisters enjoyed a merry reprieve from heat and boredom in his company.”

One of the first times that I could remember my mother telling this story, my next eldest sister, Lista, had asked why it was that A’isah’s father did not come out straightaway at the sounds of their talking and laughter, or why the sisters did not think it strange that the young man would sit and wait with them instead of going inside. My mother had explained that this was the way of stories, and of young men and women in stories. But not, she’d stressed, of scheming princesses who hoped to stay in their parents’ good graces. A shred of a smile crossed my lips at the memory.

“The young man and the three sisters spent hours in the window, teasing stories from the sisters as a thirsty man draws water from a well. Only when the sun had set did they lead him within the shop to speak with their father. He did not dally with the older man as he had with his daughters.

‘I am to marry in three days and my bride must take her first married steps in shoes of the finest make,’ the young man explained. ‘I am told your work is unrivaled, and judging by your daughters, I am sure it must be so.’

His flattery was not lost on their father, nor the sisters either. Whether he spoke of their faces, figures, or shoes, it did not matter to them.”

I paused, chilled by a presence I felt outside the door. This was someone who could hear and feel what passed within just as I could sense what happened without, a man who didn’t need a spear at his back to intrude upon us. Morainn’s brother had joined the ranks of the guard, and though I couldn’t see his face, I knew that he could hear me. But I would not let him intimidate me, so I continued the story.

“A’isah fought to keep her heart from running away with her as the young man spoke of his bride. When her father asked for measurements, it was not lengths and particulars that he gave, but poetry.

‘Her heel is curved as a bud on the vine; the ankle delicate as a reed. Toes like precious gems she has, tucked one against the other like pearls in the mouth of an oyster. Like A’isah’s here.’ The young man bent and brushed his fingers against A’isah’s foot, her toes showcased in a pair of her father’s fine jeweled sandals. She thought then that his bride was a very lucky girl, indeed.

“But he did not stop there, describing the arch of his bride’s foot like an arc of light in water, her bones as fine as feathers, gesturing to the feet of A’isah’s sisters as he spoke. Soon they were all sitting, and A’isah’s father was hard at work measuring and shaping, holding soft leathers of many colors for the young man’s approval.

“The work could not be done all in one night. The young man promised that they would all come to the wedding, and that he would return tomorrow to check on the sandal maker’s progress.

“Because the sandal maker had no template but the feet of his own daughters to compare, he kept them awake all very late and fed them honeyed meats stuffed in pastry, bid them drink spiced wine to keep them still. When A’isah woke the next morning she was sore-headed and stiff, but when she took her place in the window, only her middle sister was there, snoring. Their eldest sister was not abed and their father explained that she had gone.

‘She’s not here,’ he said, the shapely heel of a tawny bridal shoe sparkling with embroidery before him. ‘She has been taken to be fitted for a fine dress for the wedding. She will join their party tonight.’

“Jealous of her sister’s good fortune, A’isah took her place in the window and dreamed of such luck for herself, of an afternoon on the arm of a fine and generous young man.

“That evening their father dipped again into their stores of wine, the two sisters drinking perhaps more heavily than the night before to keep from thinking of what revelries their eldest sister might be enjoying. In the morning A’isah thought her skull might split in two, but when she rose to brew tea for herself and her sister both, she was alone. Her father emerged from the shop’s storeroom, holding the beginnings of a second shoe. When A’isah asked after her sister, her father explained that she had gone to have her hair dressed, and would be joining the wedding party that evening. A’isah could not sulk, thinking that if her father finished the shoes tonight, she could join her sisters and the wedding party in the morning.”

I felt my mother’s eyes on me and when I met them, they were shining with tears and not because she knew the ending to this story already. The pressure of the man’s presence outside the door grew more heavy, almost like a stranger were laying a hand upon me. I had the strangest feeling that he, too, knew what awaited A’isah. I did not relish the way this tale turned his heart as his presence in our capitol turned mine. It was not my way for such cruelty, but once begun, a story must be finished.

Perhaps for wars it was the same.

“That night A’isah consumed only a little wine, not wanting to be sick again. Her father worked until she saw the first light of morning on the work bench, at which point he let go his tools and stepped away from her. The young man had appeared behind A’isah but when she turned to see him, she saw instead the mad god Ro’khar, a monster who delighted best in the tortures and troubles that beset young women. The beast smiled the young man’s smile, and in the shadows behind it she saw her sisters, leashed together like animals on the floor. They could not rise, the hems of their dresses bloodied from the wounds on their feet.

‘My bride waits for me,’ Ro’khar said in a cold, terrible voice. ‘And her shoes are not yet finished.’ A’isah howled as his hands and her father’s pushed her back into the chair and her father set the knife upon her feet. Her fine toes, from smallest to largest, were culled like berries into Ro’khar’s waiting palms. When they had finished their grim work, A’isah was tossed to the floor with her sisters.

“The door to their father’s shop grew wide as a greedy maw and the curtained litter passed through. Ro’khar presented the slippers on his knees, and the curtain rustled as though by a breeze. Through bleary eyes A’isah watched as the bridal shoes were lifted, suspended in air as though worn by invisible feet, and saw her own toes wiggle upon them. Ro’khar tossed A’isah’s father’s fee behind him before climbing into the litter, his last words cold, calculated to hurt them more, if he could.

‘Be grateful your faces were not finer, nor your breasts full.’

“They were alone then, the three sisters and their father. If they had been different girls their tale might have ended with his death, but they were not. Neither would they seek revenge, for the sisters heard well the warning in Ro’khar’s last words, and knew better still the meddling of gods in the mortal world.

“A’isah pulled herself to her feet and her sisters, too. The door the litter had forced wide was now only wide enough for three daughters to pass through to the window where they worked. As it had always been. But A’isah did not take them there. One hand each upon the body of the other, they walked stronger together than they had ever managed apart. The dust of the road that wound away from their father’s shop filled their wounds and closed their hearts to the cruelty of men and gods.”

My last word trailed into a breath that I held, not wanting it to hiccup into a sob. I felt the arms and hands of my family upon me like the weave of a burial shroud. What life I’d had with them was over, and it felt the same as dying. I heard the door to the reliquary open, but not the heavy footfall of booted soldiers. Morainn’s brother stood there, and he would not be kept waiting.

I couldn’t say goodbye. Hot tears streamed down my cheeks and when my mother brushed them away her cool thumbs seemed years distant. I was a child again and crying over a skinned knee or the sharp teeth of a comb pulled through tangled hair.

“Eiren, Eiren,” the hushed voice of my mother in my ear, a note of panic like an insect buzzing. Her hands were shackles, but I had to be free. I wouldn’t give this man, or the soldiers at his back, the opportunity to pull me away.

“I have to.” Quiet. So quiet that when I rose my skirts rustling seemed like a shout. “I have to.”

And I was up, I was parting from them, not looking but at one trembling foot placed before the next until I was standing in the corridor beside Morainn’s brother. Someone closed the door behind me. And I followed him with the soldier’s spears clinking at my back and before us, too, threatening anyone who might try to stop what was happening.