The Waters Rising (13 page)

“Exactly,” said Bear, turning to grin at Xulai, his eyes crinkled into mere slits, his neck muscles bulging, his eyebrows rising up at the outer ends to lose themselves in his hair. Aside, perhaps, from Abasio, whom Xulai considered very handsome, and Xulai’s young friend Bartelmy, Bear was the handsomest man Xulai had ever seen, except when he laughed. Then he looked like a monster mask, all teeth, eyebrows, and looming muscle. Even at his quietest, there was always something a little uncertain about Bear.

Nonetheless Xulai returned Bear’s smile while receiving a glance from Abasio that said:
They’re not lying, but there’s something weird going on.

Abasio lowered one eyelid. A half wink, one that promised conversation later.

Xulai thought,
What do we call this kind of deceit? Not sleight of hand. Sleight of tongue, perhaps? Tortuosity. Blabification? They’re protecting me, but they don’t say why. They know I won’t question them. They taught me not to. One day, though . . .
One day she and her guardians would tell one another the truth. Not now. Without these two, she would have had no family at all. Better to keep silent about one’s doubts at the moment.
Legami durs kannak e’burs.
Tiny roots break great stones. The two Tingawans were her great stones. She could not eat away at them with even the smallest roots of doubt. Not Precious Wind, slender as a willow, with silken almond skin and long black hair swimming with blue lights; not Great Bear, with his fierce eyes and curling mouth, his body apparently made entirely of blades and stone. Except for Bear’s gambling and Precious Wind’s emphasis upon self-discipline, she could find no fault with either.

In this room, her schoolroom, they had taught her the culture and language of Tingawa; how to play the ondang,
the
stringed instrument of Tingawa; how to sing the native songs and tell the native stories; how to make and read maps, mix medicines, set broken bones, help at childbirth. These subjects were taught to all women, though nothing prevented Tingawan women from studying anything else that interested them. Since Xulai was of the royal blood, though only remotely, she also learned many of the things men were taught: the history of the world—that is, the history of Tingawa, since other parts did not really matter; woodcraft; fighting with weapons and without; the stories of the Before Time when mankind brought doom upon itself by worshipping the Great Seducers, the evil gods, ease machines. She learned of the Big Kill. The ease machines had something to do with the Big Kill, but she had not been told what. They taught her warfare theory and battle strategy. And, of course, the princess had taught her many other things that, possibly, even Bear and Precious Wind did not know she knew, things that Xulai would “understand later.”

None of which had anything to do with the information they had given her just now. The only pertinent thing that had been said recently, by anyone, was that death changed things. Death had come, so it was inevitable that changes would occur very soon.

That night, when the duke, whom she had always called “Cousin,” as she had been told to do, unexpectedly came to wish her good night, he sat beside her on the bed, wiped his eyes with an already sodden handkerchief, and told her he was sending her away from Woldsgard Castle.

“Now that my wife is dead,” he said, clenching his teeth to keep from weeping, “now that my sweet princess is gone, we must make provision for your future, Xulai. Prince Lok-i-xan and I had planned that Great Bear and Precious Wind would take ship from Wellsport and escort you home to your kinsfolk in Tingawa. This continuing war with the Sea People makes that trip very dangerous . . .”

“Do you know the reason for the war, Cousin?”

He shook his head in confusion, his set speech interrupted by this. “Ah. Well, they want men to stop fishing, to stop sailing, to stop swimming in the sea—for all anyone knows, stop playing on the beaches as children. We have few translators, and those we have are uncertain about most of what the Sea People say or mean by what they say.”

“So we don’t know?”

“We really don’t, no.” He pocketed the sodden handkerchief and took up his speech once more. “At any rate, the overland route through the great forested mountains north of Kamfels, followed by sea travel between the islands that scatter the Blue-Ice Straits, is lengthy, arduous, often fatal. The great ice bears that were thought to be extinct have returned, far larger and fiercer than before.

“The far southern sea route, however, is still open. It requires a long journey east, then an even longer journey southward before one comes to a safe port. From there, one plays a kind of floating hopscotch from little island to little island. The so-called ‘new islands,’ those that have come up from the bottom of the sea since the Before Time, make such journeys shorter, though some are little more than exposed pours of cracked lava. I’m told one can sail across the southern end of the ocean to the western continents without leaving sight of land of one kind or another. We have decided, Precious Wind and I, to attempt that journey but to do it in stages, gradually and carefully. Luckily, there are good places to perch along the way, and you . . . will be safer away from here—”

“Because Prince Rancitor is still after you to marry Alicia, Duchess of Altamont, isn’t he?” interrupted Xulai. “But you don’t want to.”

He glared at her as though he had been suddenly attacked by an unknown and fabulous kind of animal, asking angrily, “Who told you that?”

“Don’t be angry at anyone, Cousin. No one told me, but I overhear people,
duxa devo duxa,
saying this little thing and that little thing. They say the prince is pushing a match between you and the duchess Alicia. I’ve seen her from the orchard, where the wall runs along the road. Sometimes she goes past on the way to the Shrine of the Kraken, or to take a boat across to Kamfels, to visit her brother, though people say he never invites her. Sometimes I think she must be staying somewhere nearby, for she goes by every day. She looks at this castle and I can see the hunger in her eyes. She would like to swallow it all, down to the last hen in the yard. By marrying you she could get whatever it is she hungers for.”

“I am not sure it is she who hungers,” he muttered, running his hand across his face in bewilderment. “It may as well be Prince Rancitor. He’s in his thirties now, and they say he has grown in both greed and girth.”

“Were you indeed close friends with Duke Falyrion?”

The duke took a deep breath. “He was closer to my father’s age than mine, but his son Falredi and I became good friends. Before my mother and father died, Falyrion and his first wife and his son and daughter often visited here. The father and son came for the hunting; Naila and Genieve came to keep my mother company. Falredi was much like his father. He would have been a wiser leader of Kamfels than Hulix has been. Of course, Hulix was only a child of five when Mirami went to Ghastain. I suppose Kamfels lacks the kind of society she enjoys . . .”

“Cousin, did you ever meet her?”

“Who? Mirami?”

“Did you ever meet her?”

“I met her, certainly. My father had died that year, but my mother and I went to their wedding. It was not then so difficult a journey; the fjord was not so wide; we went back and forth a good deal.”

“What was she like?”

His face contorted, a twisted smile. “We were surprised when we saw her, for she was the age of his children, a very young woman. But she was very beautiful, very . . . charming.”

“Your voice has a ‘however’ in it, Cousin
. However,
what?”

He shrugged in discomfort. “However . . . Mother and I didn’t like her very much. Of course, we had very much liked Naila, Falyrion’s first wife, and we had grieved over her untimely death. It seemed very soon for him to remarry, so my mother and I were a bit upset with him and not much moved to love her.”

“But she was charming?”

“All the charm seemed to us to be . . . learned. A surface gloss. She did not seem to speak from the heart as . . . as my darling princess always did. My mother died that year, not unexpectedly. She was in her late forties when I was born, her only child. But all that happened thirty years ago. It’s old history, surely not interesting to you.”

She shifted uncomfortably. Being interested in particular non-child sorts of things was as much a puzzle to her as it was to others. It was like the twinned reflection she saw sometimes in the mirror, herself, but not herself: simultaneously a child and someone older. Now she must say something only an older person would say, because it was important.

“Take great care, Cousin. Something says to me that you should be warned against Alicia.”

“Warned? By you, child?”

She thought about this for a long moment. “Cousin, if a hostile army is seen crossing the river, does it matter who brings the news? Is the army fewer and less well armed if it is seen by a child than if it is seen by the captain of the guard? A warning is a warning. If it is true, does it matter whose mouth it comes from?” Her voice faded and she pleated her skirt between her fingers, considering how strange this all was. She had planned to have Abasio with her when she talked with the duke, for he could explain things to her, but her cousin’s coming at bedtime this way had been unforeseen.

“Children sometimes like to make up stories . . . ,” he offered.

“Not only children, Cousin. You should hear the stories the men in the stables make up when they don’t know I’m listening.” She laughed, a childlike laugh. “To hear them tell it, each of them is the greatest lover of women the world has ever seen.” She laughed again at the distress on his face. “I was not offended, Cousin. Precious Wind told me all about males and females a long time ago, and there are enough stallions in the paddocks and rams, bucks, and bulls in the pastures to make the lesson clear. I know people of any age like to make up stories, but this is not a story I would invent. Remember, I spent hours with the princess, your princess. She talked to me, Cousin. I loved her. She taught me much. Perhaps these are her words I am telling you, but it comes to me as a certainty that if you ever marry Alicia, you will be in great danger. I think the duchess wishes to bring the castle of Woldsgard and all the lands of Wold to her brother the prince.”

For a moment he did not reply. “She cannot,” he whispered at last. “My men of business have seen to that. I hold the lands of Wold in my own right directly down the lineage of Huold! It was no gift from King Gahls that he may dispose of as he likes. It is mine to give as I see fit, and I have forestalled such a move as you foresee by already having given it. The mountains adjacent to the fiefdoms of Orez have been given to those fiefdoms. The arable lands of Wold from the foothills of the Icefang range to the rivers Wold and Wells have already been transferred to Prince Orez, and the prince will defend the gift with his life and his armies. He is half brother to King Gahls, junior but wiser, and he is not fond of Mirami or besotted with Prince Rancitor. He has been closer to the struggle than has his elder brother. The king likes feasts with much eating and drinking, he likes to watch performers and parades of men in gilded armor, he likes jesters and courtesans, but he has no heart for battle. The king knows, and I know, that the armies of his younger brother, Orez, are better armed and better trained than his.

“You may be right as to motives, but thus far, Alicia and Mirami have preferred to gain by seduction and subterfuge. I am her target, yes, but she will find me an elusive target, for it is my intention once you are gone to leave Woldsgard Castle for a time. If no one knows where I have gone, no one may be pressured into giving my location.”

“Not even I, Cousin?”

“Particularly not you, Xulai. You are safer if I am in a place far from you and no one knows where that place may be! I have no son to guard Wold, so I have chosen Orez as my heir. He inherited his own lands as I did mine, from his mother’s lineage, which goes back to the time of Ghastain. He chose an intelligent, energetic woman as a wife, and they have several intelligent, energetic sons and daughters to succeed them. I think he and his family are safe from the witches . . .” He stood up, strode about angrily, pausing to ask, “You have seen my birds, Xulai?”

“Yes, Cousin.” Of course she had seen them, circling the tower top in a winged cloud, bright in the dawn light, like flung rubies at sunset. She had seen them in the lofts, feathery bundles stalking about on pink feet, cooing. She and the duke had been there together.

“We who use them do not talk of it much, but you know they are messenger birds. For many years I have exchanged messenger birds with Prince Orez and with the abbot at Wilderbrook, as well as with the western fiefdoms along the sea and certain other places, such as the safe harbors to the south, Merhaven and its neighbors. Merhaven is where Falredi’s sister Genieve has made her home—when we were younger, she and I thought, perhaps . . . but once I had seen Xu-i-lok, I could no longer think of anyone but her. Various people send me their birds in wicker cages carried by riders; each bird is identified by a bracelet upon a leg. I send them mine in return, each one identified as mine. We exchange information privately by loosing a bird, knowing it will fly home.

“By these means, Hallad, Prince Orez, who was the friend of my father before me, has extended an invitation to you: if anything should happen to me, you may seek refuge with him and under his protection either at Chasmgard or in Etershore itself. You’re not going in that direction, but his writ extends south, as well, into the small southern duchy near Elsmere that I mentioned. Merhaven was the dowry of his mother. I have heard it is a pleasant place and I have given him certain treasures to pay for whatever you might need, as I have also done with the abbot. I do not know the abbot well. He seems well regarded, but he is only human—as is the prince. Either might fail you, but it is unlikely both will do so. I would trust Orez with my life, and with yours. He will know of me wherever I am.