The Red Queen (12 page)

I woke quite suddenly, to find Dragon sitting in the chair beside my bed watching me anxiously. ‘You were dreaming,’ she said.

‘Of Herder Isle,’ I croaked, wondering if it had been a true dream, and if the pert urchin who had led me to Stonehill really had stowed away on the Land ship, for surely that was the ship that had foundered in the storm. I wanted to ask if any of the others had dreamed of the foundered ship, or knew if it had been repaired, but the thought of Rushton lying ill was too unbearable, and what if they had seen something worse befall the castaways? Besides, I was supposed not to talk of the past. I mumbled something about it being mere dream gibberish. Dragon went to get me water and belatedly I realised I could see her lifting the jug because there was a dim lantern sitting on the table beside her. Obviously someone had decided my eyes would not be harmed by a little light.

After she helped me to sit and drink a mouthful of water, I asked what time of day it was.

‘Dusk,’ Dragon said. ‘At least it was when I came in. It will be night now. It gets dark quite suddenly in Habitat, because of the wall, Tasha says.’

‘You sleep in the same hut as Tasha,’ I said, having noted the warmth in her voice when she spoke of the Speci girl. Dragon had never had a friend her own age and Tasha seemed sweet natured and kind; she was a Misfit, whether she knew it or not. Yet the thought of them becoming friends troubled me, for Dragon must leave when we did.

There was a clattering outside and Dragon crossed to draw aside the curtain. Ana entered carrying a basket and some bundles. Beyond her, all was darkness.

‘I thought you were working in the kitchens,’ Dragon said, helping her put her things down.

‘I have been excused from my duties to help you prepare Elspeth for the Committee,’ she said, sounding slightly breathless. ‘They are coming to see her later tonight. We must begin at once because I can’t stay long. Go get some water.’

Dragon slipped out obediently and Ana began rummaging in her basket.

‘You’d better tell me more about the Covenant if I am to recite it,’ I said, and Ana jumped.

‘Ye gods, Elspeth,’ she gasped, clutching at her chest. ‘You near made my heart leap out of my mouth! I thought you were still sleeping.’ She brought an armful of the same drab layers she and Dragon and Tasha wore. ‘Don’t worry about the Covenant now. The Committee won’t expect you to know it in detail until next darkmoon when you will pledge. The main thing they will want to hear is that you will strive not to disrupt harmony in any way.’

I was startled by her flippant tone, but when she bade me choose some clothes, I did so meekly, noting that all of the garments were well worn and carefully patched. Perhaps cloth was difficult to make in Habitat and so valued all the more for it. But why did not the Speci simply request new bolts of cloth? Perhaps the Committee or the Covenant imposed limits on what one could request, or maybe not all wish-prayers were answered. I was trying to think of the most innocuous way to put this question when Analivia gave me an interrogating look as she bundled up the rejected clothes. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Better,’ I said.

‘You look tired.’

‘No amount of sleep seems to change that,’ I said. ‘Last night I dreamed . . .’ I stopped abruptly, inspired by the thought that I could speak of forbidden things by framing them as dreams. Divining my intention, Ana said rather sourly that dreaming was frowned upon in Habitat.

She gave me a sympathetic look when I sighed, and refilled the mug with water and helped me to drink from it. Then she began unplaiting and combing out my hair. ‘You need to drink a lot and sleep a lot and when you are stronger, to move around. That is the quickest way to get your strength back.’

I nodded. ‘As to that, will I be allowed to go around by myself when I am fit for it?’ I asked.

Ana gave me a warning look. ‘You must not overdo it again. As to your freedom here, that will depend upon how the Committee feels after they speak with you. Hopefully they will find you harmless, and then there will be no need to keep an eye on you as they do on Swallow.’ She gave me a pointed look.

‘It will be good to meet them,’ I said, not caring if I sounded fatuous. I would be and do whatever would most soothe their ruffled feathers. It was a pity I did not dare use my Talents on them when they visited me, because then I would know exactly what they wanted to hear. For the time being I would have to rely on my charm; unfortunately no one had ever admired me for that, I thought wryly. If only I had Dameon’s charisma or Rushton’s silver tongue. The best strategy might be to pretend to be rather stupid. As long as the Committee believed me a fool, they would not worry that I was like to do something wilfully disharmonious. And stupidity could answer for a whole host of mistakes and oddities that might otherwise be hard to explain away. I would be cheerful and willing but utterly dim-witted and somewhat naive. That might even serve to stop people being careful about what they said around me. And when it came time to act, it might be useful if the Speci were inclined to underestimate me.

Dragon returned, labouring under the considerable weight of two heavy buckets of steaming water suspended on either end of a pole balanced across her shoulder. Ana helped her set them down, then poured some water into a flat pan she had pulled from under the bed, bidding me kneel over it so she could wash my hair. It was difficult to manage but at length my clean wet hair was wrapped in a towel.

‘I can do the rest,’ Dragon told Ana, who sat to put her sandals on again.

‘They are very strict about attending the right meal sittings and I am due at the next one,’ Ana explained to me. ‘But they will allow me to get my food and bring it back here with something for you two.’

‘What about the Committee?’ I asked.

‘They will come late because of the pulpul harvest. Another crop came ripe tonight. That is –’

‘Tasha told me,’ I said.

Ana nodded and left, and Dragon helped me undress and stand in the flat basin, saying it was easier to do the hair separate from the body. Once I was soaped, she dippered water over me while I held onto the back of the chair to steady myself. I might have felt embarrassed, but I found myself remembering how terrified Dragon had been when she had first seen me bathe, for she had thought I was drowning. I had not known then that she had a mortal fear of water. Thinking of this reminded me that I had not yet been able to question her about what she remembered of her past.

‘You are very skinny,’ Dragon said disapprovingly.

For some reason, that made me smile, but when I glanced down at my body, my smile faded. I had not looked at myself properly before this moment, and I was aghast to see my pale stick-thin limbs gleaming wetly in the dim lantern light, my hipbones jutting out either side of a sunken belly. No wonder I felt so weak and tired, I thought. Dragon bade me sit and I obeyed, thinking that at least no Speci would lust after me. She sluiced the last of the water over me and helped me to stand and towel myself. Even this small amount of exertion exhausted me, and by the time I was dressed, I was trembling.

‘You look awful,’ Dragon said, making me sit down.

‘I’m fine,’ I said, trying to smile. From the look on Dragon’s face, it was not a success. ‘Were all of you like this when you woke?’ I asked.

‘I was terribly tired and a bit dizzy, but not so skinny,’ she said. Then she looked anxious and I guessed she was remembering that we had to be careful what we said. She began to braid my hair and I struggled to keep my eyes open.

‘At least you smell better now,’ Dragon observed cheerfully, and I winced, remembering how rank I had smelled when I had woken in darkness from the cryopod. She suggested I lie down for a bit and rest until Ana returned, and I did so, fearing I would fall off the chair if I remained sitting up. But once I was lying down I only drowsed. Coming back to wakefulness, I set about preparing myself mentally to face the Committee, and by the time Ana returned with food, I had become too anxious to have any appetite. Remembering my awful thinness, I resolved to eat as much as I could manage. Dragon had dippered the used water in the bath back into the buckets, and Ana told her to empty them on Swallow’s bush, for the poor thing was half dead. ‘He is not permitted to use fresh-drawn water on it, only wash water,’ she told me, as she laid out the fare.

‘I didn’t think water was scarce in Habitat.’

‘It isn’t, though it never rains, more’s the pity.’ She sighed and then caught herself and continued with forced heartiness. ‘There are three main wells and two smaller ones. Fortunately for us there is a hot one not far from here. Of course all water has to be drawn by hand, which is a very tedious business, but we take turns at it, save for those who are ill or too old to heave up a full bucket.’

There was something in her voice that made me look at her as she went on. ‘You might wonder why no one has asked God for a device that will draw water up, since a few pipes and a simple pump mechanism would make the whole business a good deal easier and more efficient. In fact I asked the Committee if I might request it of God. I was told that God prefers that people work hard because idle hands are more likely to be disharmonious hands.’ Her voice was even and unemotional, but there was frustration in her eyes.

She went to the wall and unfolded two stools and brought them and the chair to the table so we could sit down together. Watching her, it struck me that she had raised the subject for a reason, and so I said, ‘Surely there is other, more complex and important work that needs doing than getting water from a well?’

‘Humble, hard, simple work keeps us from the perilous path taken by the clever, inventive Beforetimers, who wove their own doom in trying to find quicker, easier ways to do things,’ Ana said. Her voice and words were mild, but her expression was full of impatient scorn.

She was good at this, I thought, at saying one thing and implying another; she always had been, because of having to be so careful with her father, but clearly the months in Habitat had honed her skill at prevarication and innuendo, because she had no means of communicating more directly, save by Brydda’s fingerspeech.

I changed the subject. ‘Does the Committee have an official leader?’

‘A spokesman,’ Ana said, ‘that is how you must address him, but his name is Sikoka.’

She urged me to eat then, and I stared at the array of strange foods she had set out, bemused to find I did not recognise a single thing. She ladled me a bowl of soup, which tasted like potato soup mixed with wash water. I forced myself to finish the bowl, wondering if being asleep so long had damaged my sense of taste, for the other two drank their soup without expression. Ana then handed me a round of bread that had been stuffed with some sort of greenish paste. I bit into it and all but gagged. I was about to ask if they were trying to poison me but the warning look on Ana’s face silenced me. I set down the bread and took a pastry she was offering. It had a scent that I did not recognise and an odd rubbery texture. When I bit into it, it was so bland as to be nearly tasteless, yet it left a sharp peculiar flavour in my throat. I set the remainder of it wordlessly aside and Ana merely gestured to a pot of something she said was cacti cheese. This, spread on a bit of grey bread, turned out to have a queer pungent flavour that, while not unpleasant, was far from appetising.

‘Try the fruit,’ Ana said so noncommittally that I realised she knew exactly what I was experiencing. Which meant the food was as bad as it seemed. But why on earth had she chosen such awful things? Or was it some sort of test or punishment aimed at me?

Warily, I took one of the heavy curved yellow fruit streaked with brown that she had indicated, and would have bitten into it if Dragon had not hastily warned me that its outer skin had to be peeled off. She took one of the fruits herself and showed me how to remove the thick, soft yellow skin in long strips. Inside was a long, soft, creamy fruit. I bit into it warily, not trusting the sweet scent, but it was delicious. I ate two of them and then Ana gave me a sticky shrivelled brown object with a nod. It was delicious too, though I near cracked a tooth on the pit.

‘The yellow fruit is called a bana and the brown one is a dried plum called a poona,’ Ana said lightly. Then she smiled. ‘Swallow sometimes calls me Anabana when he is teasing me.’ The tenderness in her voice reminded me that she had begun to show a fledgling interest in Swallow before we left the mountains, and before her brother had appeared. Obviously the time in Habitat and the need for them to pretend a desire to be bonded had enhanced her affections for the gypsy, though she seemed also to be contrarily more irritated with him, too. Perhaps it was because he did not feel as she did. I wondered if he had any idea of how she felt. Given the far-reaching and disastrous consequences of Dragon’s unrequited love for Matthew, I resolved to speak with Dameon about the matter as soon as I had the chance, though, as an empath, he must be aware of what was happening and might even be using empathy to keep things under control.

Ana was frowning at me and I felt embarrassed, even though she could have no idea of my thoughts. Sensing she wanted me to say something innocuous, I made some vague comment about it being just as well the food had been made bland for I did not think I could have eaten anything highly spiced.

‘There is no danger of that sort of food coming out of the kitchen,’ Ana said drily. ‘All that is required is for the food to be nourishing to the body according to God’s recipe book.’

This was such an absurd thing to say that I almost laughed, except that neither Ana nor Dragon was smiling. Then I heard the ringing of a bell. Ana rose at once and swept the food and bowls on the table into her basket, which she set against the wall. Dragon went to the door very slowly and pushed aside the heavy curtain with laborious clumsiness, making me realise that she, too, had developed an instinct for guile in her time in Habitat. Ana gesture to me to stand and I did so, smoothing my clothes and my expression both. Dragon stepped back to one side of the door demurely and Ana went to stand beside her. Both women bowed their heads as a vigorous-looking older man entered, his tight-curled white hair, dark bronze skin and neat form reminding me of the Sadorian tribe leader, Bram. The rest of the Committee were old enough to have some grey hair, save one plump woman whose hair was white, though long and sleek where it hung free of the tight braided cap of hair all of the women affected. They all crowded into the small hut behind the man, and arranged themselves in a semicircle facing the bed. All wore the same loose tunics and trews as I, some very faded and patched. There was nothing to distinguish them as powerful Committee members, not a badge nor cloak nor sigil. Ana and Dragon were dismissed and they went at once without demur or a backwards glance, leaving me alone with the Committee.