Questions with No Answers
So then in that great battle matchless Nushash at last pulled the sun itself
down from the sky and hurled it full into the face of Zhafaris, the old
Emperor Twilight, whose beard caught fire. He was burned into ashes, and
that, my children, was the end of his evil rule.
Nushash and his brother Xosh scattered the ashes in the desert of Night.
Then, in his generosity, Nushash invited his three half brothers to join him
in building a new city of the gods on Mount Xandos. Argal the Thunderer
and the others thanked him and swore fealty, but already they were
planning to betray him and take the throne of the gods for themselves.
— from The Revelations of Nushash, Book One
ALTHOUGH SHE COULD NOT HAVE SAID exactly why,
Pelaya found herself spending more time in the garden than had been her habit, even on days like today when the weather was less than ideal, with heavy gray skies and a biting wind from the sea. It was partly because her father Count Perivos had been so busy lately, busier than she'd ever seen him, with no time at all to give to his children. Sometimes he stayed so late examining the city's defenses that he even slept in the Documents Chamber and only came home to change his clothes. But much of her interest in the garden was simply her interest in the prisoner Olin-King Olin, however he might mockingly disclaim his title. On the occasions that he and Pelaya met each other she always enjoyed talking to
him, although it was never quite as strange and exciting'as-it had been the first time, when he had been a complete stranger and her companions had watched with horror as she introduced herself to him, as though she had decided to leap off the city walls and swim to Xand.
Still, she enjoyed the grown-up way their conversations made her feel, and he seemed to enjoy them too, although he was always disappointed by how little news she could give him about his homeland. She knew that one of his sons had died, and his daughter and other son were missing, and that his country was in some kind of war. Sometimes when Olin spoke about his children he seemed to be hiding feelings so strong that it seemed he would burst into tears, but then only moments later he would be so coldly composed she wondered if she had imagined it. He was a strange man even for a king, very changeable, unfailingly polite but sometimes a little fright¬ening to a girl like Pelaya, whose own father was, for all his intelligence, a simpler sort of man. She sometimes thought Olin Eddon's true feelings were as painfully imprisoned as he was himself.
He was not allowed into the garden very often, only a few days in every tennight. Pelaya thought that unkind of the Lord Protector. She wondered if she dared speak to her father about it-he was steward of the entire stronghold, after all-but although there was nothing illicit in the friend¬ship with the northern king, she didn't want to draw attention to it. Count Perivos was a serious man; he didn't think much of things that had no pur¬pose and she doubted he'd ever understand the harmless attraction Olin's company held for her. Her father had doubtless heard something about the odd friendship, but so far he hadn't said anything to her about it, perhaps reassured by Teloni, who had decided the whole thing was a boring lark of Pelaya's and had stopped fussing at her about it. It was probably best to leave things that way, Pelaya decided, and not tempt the gods.
She was pleased to find that King Olin was out in the garden today, looking across the walls from atop a jutting ornamental stone not far from the bench, the one place a person could climb high enough see between the towers of the stronghold over all the Kulloan Strait. He sat cross-legged on the stone with his chin propped on his hands, more like a boy than a grown man, let alone a monarch. She stood by the base of the stone wait¬ing for him to realize she was there.
"Ah, good Mistress Akuanis," he said with a smile. "You honor me with your company again. I was just sitting here wondering if a man could fashion wings like a gull's out of wood ami leathers, perhaps, although I sus pec t each feather would have to be tied in place separately, which would make lor a great deal of work-and so fly like a bird."
She frowned. "Why would someone want to do that?"
"Why?" He smiled. "I suppose the freedom of a gull on the wind has more meaning to me just now than to you." He clambered down, landing lightly. "I muse, only-I see the birds fly and my mind begins to wander. I beg you not to tell your father of my interest in flight. I might lose the gift of this time in the garden."
"I wouldn't do that," she said earnestly.
"Ah. You are kind." He nodded, the subject concluded. "And how are you today, Mistress? Have the gods treated you well since I saw you last?"
"Well enough, I suppose. My tutor sets me the dreariest lessons you can imagine, and I will never, never be a seamstress, no matter how many years I try. Mother says my needlework looks like the web of a drunken spider."
He chuckled. "Your mother sounds like a clever woman. That is not the first thing she has said that made me laugh. Perhaps that is where you come by your own wit and curiosity."
"Me?" All she could think of were the lessons that Brother Lysas taught, reading at length from The Book of the Trigon, "… Beloved of the gods are the daughters and wives who make themselves humble, who seek only to serve Heaven…" "I'm not curious, am I?"
He smiled again. "Child, you are a fountain of questions. It is often all I can do not to unpack the entirety of my life and let you rifle through it like a trunk of clothes."
"You must think I'm annoying, then. A child who cannot be still." She hung her head.
"Not at all. Curiosity is a virtue. So is discretion, but that is usually learned at a later age. In fact, take your shawl-it is a bit cool-while I ask you something about that very subject." He handed her the delicate Syan-nese cloth, but did not immediately let go. She was surprised, and started to say something. "Take it but do not unfold it," he said quietly. "I have put a letter in it. Do not fear! It is nothing criminal. In fact, it is a letter for your own father. Give it to him, please?"
She took the shawl from him and felt the small, angular shape of the let¬ter. "What… what is it?"
"As I said, nothing to fear. Some thoughts of mine about the danger of this threatened siege by the Autarch of Xis-yes, I have heard the rumors.
I would have to be deaf not to. In any case, he may do as he wishes with my suggestions."
"But why?" She put the folded shawl in her lap. "Why would you help us when we're holding you prisoner?"
Olin smiled as if through something painful. "First, I am at risk also, of course. Second, we are all natural allies against the autarch, whatever Drakava may think, and I believe your father would recognize that. Last- well, it would not hurt to have a man like your father think well of me."
Pelaya felt quite out of breath. A secret letter! Like something from one of the old tales of Silas or Lander Elfbane. "I will do it, if you promise there is no dishonor."
He bowed his head. "I promise, good mistress."
They talked a little while longer about less consequential things like her younger brother's wretched temper or the dragging negotiations for Teloni's marriage to a young nobleman from the country north of the city. This pained Pelaya because her father had said he would not find a husband for his younger daughter until the oldest was married, and she was anxious to be a grown woman, with a household of her own.
"Do not be in too much of a hurry," Olin said kindly. "The married state is a holy one for a woman, but it can be full of woe and danger, too." He looked down. "I lost my first wife in childbirth."
"The gods must have needed her to be with them," Pelaya said, then was irritated with herself for parroting the pious phrase her mother always used. "I'm sorry."
"I sometimes think it has been harder on my children than on me," he said quietly, then did not speak for a long moment. His eyes were roving somewhere beyond Pelaya's shoulder, so that she thought he was watching the gulls again, dreaming of the walls of Hierosol dropping into the distance behind him.
"You were saying, King Olin?"
"What?" He forced himself to look at her. "Ah, I beg your pardon. I was… distracted. Look, please, and tell me-who is that girl?"
Feeling a prickle of something that she would only realize later was jeal¬ousy, Pelaya turned and looked across the garden but saw no one. "Who? My sister and the others have gone in."
"There. There are two of them, carrying linens." He pointed. "One slen¬der, one less so. The thin one-there, see, the one whose hair has come loose from her scarf."
"Do you mean… those washing women?"
"Yes, that is who I mean." For a moment, and for the first time Pelaya could remember, he sounded angry with her. "Do they not exist because they are servants? They are the only girls in the yard beside yourself."
She was hurt, but tried not to show it. "Who is she? How should I know? A washing woman-a girl, as you said, a servant. Why? Do you think she is pretty?" She looked closely at the slender young woman for the first time, saw that the girl was only a little older than herself. Her arms where they emerged from her billowing sleeves were brown, and her hair, which had spilled free from beneath her scarf as Olin had pointed out, was black except for a small, strange streak the color of fire. The girl's features were attractive enough, but Pelaya could see little about the thin young girl that should have attracted the prisoner-king's attention. "She looks like a Xandian to me. From the north, I'd say-they are darker below the desert. Lots of Xandian girls work here in the kitchens and the laundry."
Olin watched the young woman and her stockier companion until they had vanished into the darkness of the covered passage. "She reminds me… she reminded me of someone."
Now Pelaya definitely felt a pang. "You said that /reminded you of your daughter."
He turned, as though seeing her for the first time since the servant girl had appeared. "You do, Mistress. As I said, there is a quality in you that truly reminds me of her, and your curiosity is part of it. No, that servant girl re¬minds me of someone else." He frowned and shook his head. "A member of my family, long dead."
"One of your relatives?" It seemed unlikely. Pelaya thought the captive king was ashamed to have been caught ogling a serving girl.
"Yes. My…" He trailed off, looking again at the place where the ser¬vant had disappeared. "That is very strange-and here, so far away…" He paused again, then said, "Could you bring her to me?"
"What?"
"Bring her to me. Here, in the garden." His laugh was short and harsh. "I certainly cannot go to her. But I need to see her up close." He looked at her and his eyes softened. "Please, good Mistress Akuanis. I swear I ask you a favor for no unworthy reason. Could you do that for me?"
"That makes two favors in one day." She tired to make her voice stern. "I… I suppose I could. Perhaps." She did not understand her own feelings and was not certain that she wanted to understand them. "I will try."
"Thank you." He stood up and bowed, his face suddenly distant, Now I must go. I have much to think about and I have stolen enough of your time today." He walked toward the archway leading back to his tower rooms-comfortable enough, he had told her, if you did not mind a door that had a barred window in it and was locked from the outside-without looking back.
Pelaya sat, feeling oddly as though she wanted to cry. For the first time since they had met each other Olin had left the garden first. The prisoner had gone back to his cell to be alone rather than share her company any longer.
She remained on the bench, trying to understand what had happened to her, until the first drops of rain forced her inside.
"Who could ever live in such a place?" Yazi asked, wide-eyed. "You would tire yourself to fits just walking to the kitchen."
"People who live in such places don't walk to the kitchen," said Qinni¬tan. "They have people like you and me bring their food to them." She frowned, trying to remember which way they had turned on the inbound trip. Monarchs had been adding rooms and corridors and whole wings onto the citadel of Hierosol for so many centuries that the place was like the sea coral from one of her favorite poems by Baz'u Jev. Qinnitan enter¬tained a brief fantasy that one day she would be able to take the boy Pigeon for a walk on the seashore without worrying she might be recognized, to see some of the mysteries that had so charmed the poet, the spiraling shells daintier than jewels, the stones polished smooth as statues. She had work to do, though, and even if she hadn't, she couldn't afford to loiter in the open that way.
"But look at us!" Yazi was from the Ellamish border country so she spoke fairly good Xixian, a good-hearted girl but a little slow and prone to mistakes. "We are lost already. Surely no one can find their way in such a big place. This must be the biggest house on earth!"
Qinnitan was tempted to say that she herself had once lived in the biggest house on earth, just to see Yazi's expression, but even though she had already told Soryaza the laundry-mistress she had been an acolyte of the Hive, there was no sense in telling everyone else, especially someone as innocently loose-lipped as Yazi. The fact that Qinnitan had once lived in
the Royal Seclusion, where she had been one of the fortunate lew who had their food brought to them by hurrying, silent servants, was certainly not going to be mentioned either, although the irony of the present conversa¬tion was not lost on her.
"I know it's back this way," she said instead. "Remember, we came down a long hall full of pictures just after we went through that garden?"
"What garden?"
"You didn't…? Where you could see the ocean and everything?" She sighed. "Never mind."Yazi was like a dog that way-the girl had been talk¬ing about something, a dream she had, or a dream she wanted to have, and hadn't even noticed the garden, the one time today they had been out from under the castle roof. Qinnitan had noticed, of course. She had spent too much time kept like a nightingale in a wicker cage to ignore the glorious moments when she was free beneath the gods' great sky. "Never mind," she said again. "Just follow me."
"Breasts of Surigali, where have you two been?" Soryaza stood with her hands on her hips, looking as though she might pick up one of the massive washing tubs and dump its scalding contents all over the truants. "You were just supposed to take those up to the upstairs ewery and come straight back."
"We did come straight back," Qinnitan said in Xixian. She could under¬stand Hierosoline well enough now-the tongues were similar in many ways-or at least make out the sense of most things said to her, but she still did not feel comfortable with her own clumsy speech. "We got lost."
"It's so big!" Yazi said. "We didn't do anything wrong, Mistress. On the Mother, we didn't'."
Soryaza snorted her disbelief, then spat on the wet floor. "Well, get back to work. And speak Hierosoline, both of you. You aren't in the south anymore!"
As the laundry-mistress stalked away several of the other women sidled over to find out what had happened. Qinnitan knew most of their names already, although two were new enough she had only seen them and not spoken to them.
"Is she always angry?" asked one of these new workers, an anxious, scrawny young thing with pink-tinged eyes and twitching nose-the oth¬ers had already named her Rabbit.
"Always," Yazi said. "Her feet hurt. And her back hurts too."
"Pah!" said one of the other women. "She's been saying that for years. Didn't stop her from picking that boy Gregor up and throwing him out the door when she caught him sleeping in the drying room. Or from kicking over a tub or two when she's in the mood."
"Nira, someone said you were a priestess in Xis," the girl called Rabbit suddenly said to Qinnitan. "Is that true?"
She was always a little slow to recognize her own false name, although she was getting better at it, and speaking Hierosoline slowed her down even more, so it took a moment for the question to sink in. When it did, she felt a chill. By the Dark Queen, does everyone know already? Curse this nest of busy-bodies, and curse Soryaza-she must have told someone.
Out loud, she said, "I… was not priestess. Just…" She searched for a word, but her command of the language was still weak. "Just helper."
"In the Hive?" Rabbit asked. "Someone said it was in the Hive. I've heard of that place. Was it like they say-did the priests come in and… you know? With the priestesses?"
"Silence, girl," said one of the other new workers, an old woman with a burn-scarred face and a mouth where dark holes outnumbered ruined teeth. She glared at Rabbit. "Don't ask so many question. She does not want to talk, maybe." Her command of Hierosoline was better than Qinnitan's but it was easy to hear that she too was a southerner.
"I only wanted to know…!" Rabbit squeaked.s
"Tits of the Great Mother, what are you lazy bitches up to?" Soryaza's voice thundered through the dank room. Her bulky form loomed up out of the washtub fog and the women scattered. "The next one I catch stand¬ing and talking might as well go down to the harbor and find a place to stand on Daneya Street with the other whores, because you won't work for me another moment!"
"Yazi, why are there so many new people?" Qinnitan asked when they were standing over their washing tub again. New faces made her unhappy, and people asking about her history in Xis made her even more so.
"New?" The round-faced girl laughed. "You've only been here a ten-night yourself."
"But so many! Rabbit, and that old toothless woman, and the one with the fat legs…"
"Oh, listen to you! Not everyone's a skinny little thing like you, Nira. As it happens, Soryaza told me she's hiring more because of the war."
"The war?"
"Don't you listen to anybody? There's a war coining, everyone says so. The autarch's going to send ships. They'll never break this place, of course- no one ever lias. But the lord protector has called in troops from Krace and… and… and other places." She flushed, her tone of authority mo¬mentarily compromised. "And so we're going to be having more work."
Qinnitan felt a sudden chill-touched by a ghost, her family had always called it. She had heard rumors but had not given them much credence- as the continent's greatest seaport, Hierosol seemed to breathe rumors like air, to serve them as meat and drink. A new continent discovered in the western oceans, one said. So much gold discovered on an island near Ulos that the overladen boat sank on the way back. Fairy armies marching in the north. The Autarch of Xis preparing to conquer all Eion. Who was to know what was truth and what was fancy?
"The… autarch…?" she said now. Memories of his pale, mad eyes, never more than a moment away from her thoughts at the best of times, now pushed their way front and center. Is it me? she wondered. Is it to find me, to torture me for running away? It was silly, unbearably self-important, even to consider it, but she couldn't shake off the idea: she had seen enough of Sulepis to know he was a man of incomprehensible whims.
No, she told herself. He and his father and his father's father have wanted to set their heel on Eion for years, especially Hierosol. She had heard it talked of enough in the Seclusion. This is only more of the same, if it's even true. And if he is coming, well, the walls will defeat him. And if they don't…
Then I will be gone. I escaped him once, I will escape him again. Despite her terror, she felt a stubborn little glow inside her, a heat like a burning coal. Or die. But one way or another, he won't have me…
"Nira?" Yazi was pulling at her sleeve. "Pay attention, girl! If Soryaza sees you staring at nothing that way, she'll whip us both."
Qinnitan bent to the washing, but it was hard to keep her thoughts on the sheets and soapy water.
As Qinnitan walked with Yazi at sunset across the wide space of the Echoing Mall, she had a sudden feeling of being observed, troubling as an insect flying too near her head. She looked back and at first saw only the other washerwomen and ordinary working folk of the citadel dispersing to the outer gates or their cramped quarters within the great fortress itself; then a movement at the corner of her eye, where the newly-lit torches lined one of the colonnades, made her turn all the way around. A smear of
sideways movement, at odds with the rest of the crowd, arrested her alien tion. She felt sure someone had stepped back into the colonnade just as she looked. Still, did it mean something, even so?
"Nira, stop that," said Yazi. "I'm so tired my feet are on fire. Keep walk¬ing, will you?"
Qinnitan walked forward, but after a dozen paces turned again. A man was walking along the edge of the colonnade, and although he was not looking at her she thought she saw him hesitate for an instant and almost break stride, as though he had just decided it was too late to step back out of sight again.
Qinnitan pointed up at the sky above the high walls of the Echoing Mall, shot red with the last light of the day, and said, "Isn't it pretty, with all those colors!" While performing this bit of show, she examined the man as best she could. He wore shabby, unobtrusive clothes-the kind any of the menial laborers might wear-and had somewhat the look of a northerner, with hair of the lackluster brown shade Qinnitan had learned was almost as common north of Hierosol as black hair was in Xand. He was studiously avoiding her eyes as he walked, and so Qinnitan swung around again.
"What are you talking about, the sunset?" asked Yazi. "If your thoughts wandered any farther, girl, you'd have to put bells on them, like goats."
When Qinnitan looked back the man was gone into the crowd. She didn't know what to think. Even Yazi suddenly seemed capable of having secret depths.
Pigeon came bounding out to greet her when they reached the dor¬mitory hall, excited as a puppy. He threw his arms around her, then grabbed her hand to pull her back to the bed they shared, waving his free arm excitedly. He had taught her some of the hand-language he had spo¬ken with the other mute servants back in the Orchard Palace, but at times like this he didn't bother trying to make his thoughts known in a more subtle way, nor did he need to. Some of the other women looked up as he dragged Qinnitan down the open space between the tiny wooden beds, a few with indulgent smiles, remembering brothers or children of their own, many others with the generalized irritation of someone who had just finished a long, hard day's labor being forced to observe the endless ener¬gies of a child. It was strange, living with so many women again-almost a hundred in this dormitory alone, with several more buildings like it on this side of the citadel. The culture was oddly familiar, the same quick-blooming friendships and rivalries and even hatreds, as though someone
had taken the wives of the autarch's Seclusion, dressed them in dirty smocks and sweat-stained dresses, then dumped them into this vast, de¬pressing hall that had once been the royal stables for some long-dead king of Hicrosol. These women were not so comely, and not so young-many of them were grandmothers-but otherwise there seemed little difference between this and her former home, or even the Hive where she had lived before.
Cages, she thought. Why do men fear us so that they must cage us all together and keep us apart from them? Hierosol was better than Xis, but even here there were strict rules about keeping out men, even for those of the washer¬women who were married. Only Soryaza's intervention with the dormi¬tory mistress had gained a place here for Pigeon, and he was one of but a dozen or so children, most babes in arms who stayed behind during the day to be cared for in an offhand way by a pair of washerwomen now too old to work, two crones who each morning found the sunniest place in the dormitory and sat there like lizards, muttering to each other while the chil¬dren more or less looked after themselves.
"Soryaza says she has work for you again," Qinnitan told Pigeon, sud¬denly reminded. He had been banished to the dormitory for being under¬foot-a crime worse than murder, to hear the laundry-mistress talk. "You'll come in with me tomorrow."
Pigeon seemed less interested in this news than in tugging her the last few steps toward their bed. In the middle of it, nested in a pile of wood chips and shavings like the legendary phoenix, sat a slightly irregular carv¬ing of a bird-a pigeon, she saw after a moment. Pigeon pointed to the sculpture, then dug the small knife he had stolen from Axamis Dorza's house out of the chips and proudly displayed it, too.
"Did you make this bird? It's very fine." But she could not help frown¬ing a little. "I do wish you hadn't done it on the bed. I'll be sleeping in sliv¬ers tonight."
He looked at her with such hurt that she bent and picked up the carv¬ing to examine it. As she turned it over she saw that he had arduously carved her name (or at least his childish approximation of it) on the bot¬tom of it in Xixian letters-"Qinatan." A rush of love for the boy collided with a burst of fear to see her real name written on something, even a child's rough carving. Yazi and Soryaza were not the only women here who could speak the language of Xis, and some of them might read it too. She already had enough problems with people asking questions.
"It's beautiful," she whispered. "But you must remember my name Urn-is Nira, not… not the other. And you are Nonem, remember?"
This time he did not look hurt so much as anguished at his own mis take, and she had to pull him to her and hug him tight. "No, it's beauti¬ful, it is. Let me just take it for a moment. And the knife, please." She kissed him on top of his head, smelling the strange boy-smell of his sweat, then looked around. Several women on either side were watching. She smiled and showed them the bird, then took it with her and headed for the privies on the far side of the dormitory hall. She sat down in one of the small cubicles there, so like an animal's stall that she felt sure they had once been just that, and, when she felt sure no one was looking, took the knife and quickly scraped the boy's childish letters off the bottom of the bird.
On the way back she stopped off to borrow a looking-glass from one of the other serving-women. In return for the loan she gave the woman the round ball of soap she had assembled from discarded slivers in the laundry. The mirror was the size of Qinnitan's hand, in a chipped frame of polished tortoiseshell.
"Mind you bring it back before bedtime," the woman warned.
Qinnitan nodded. "Just… for hair," she said in her fragmented Hier-osoline. "Bring soon."
When she reached her bed again she saw that Pigeon had done his best to clear away the remnants of his day's carvings. She set the carved bird on the empty barrel she shared as a table with the next bed over, and borrowed a comb from the girl whose bed that was, and who luckily did not ask any¬thing in trade.
Qinnitan set the mirror on her knee and stared at the reflection. To her despair, she saw that her unruly hair had escaped the scarf again right where the red streak emerged. As if she had not already left enough of a trail across the citadel! She no longer had access to the cosmetics and dyes the women had used in the Seclusion, so she had done her best to disguise the flame-colored patch with soot from the candles and the laundry fireplaces, but working in that damp, hot room ensured that the soot didn't work for long. She would have to get a bigger scarf, or cut her hair off entirely. Some of the older women here wore their hair very short, especially if they were past childbearing age. Maybe no one would think it too odd if she did the same…
"Nira, isn't it?" a scratchy voice asked.
Startled, Qinnitan looked up, hurriedly tucking her hair back under the scarf. It was the old woman from the laundry, the one with the burned face and missing teeth who had only been working there a few days. "Yes?"
"It's me, Losa. I thought that was you when I saw you across the room. And is this your little brother?"
Pigeon was looking at the old woman with mistrust, his usual expression with strangers. "Yes, his name is Nonem."
"Ah, lovely. I didn't mean to bother you, child, I was just…"
At that moment, just to add to the madcap air of sudden festivity, Yazi approached, followed by a young girl in a very fine dress-the kind of dress the laundrywomen only saw when they were called upon to clean things from the upper apartments of the citadel.
"Nira, I just…" Yazi saw the old woman. "Losa! What are you doing here?"
The woman smiled, then quickly pulled her lips together to hide her ru¬ined teeth. "Oh, I couldn't get out the gate to get home. All kinds of sol¬diers coming in, and such a fuss! Wagons, oxen, people shouting. Someone said they were Sessians hired by the lord protector. I thought I'd ask if I could stay here."
"We'll talk to the dormitory mistress," said Yazi, "but I'm sure she wouldn't mind." At any ordinary time Yazi would have pressed the old woman for details and it would have been the subject of the evening's con¬versation all over the dormitory, but now something even more exciting was clearly pressing on her. "Nira, there's someone here to see you."
Qinnitan was beginning to feel quite overwhelmed. She turned to the very young girl in the beautiful blue dress and velvet petticoat. A crowd of women was beginning to gather as people came to see what had brought such an apparition into the dormitory.
"Yes?"
"I am to take you to my mistress," the girl said. "You are… Nira?"
Qinnitan's confusion quickly turned to panic, but she couldn't very well deny it. She struggled to frame the Hierosoline words. "Who… who is your mistress?"
"She will tell you herself. Come with me, please." Beneath the formal manners, the girl seemed a little anxious herself.
"Oh, that is too bad," old Losa said. "I was looking forward to a chat."
"You'd better go," Yazi told Qinnitan. "Maybe a handsome prince saw you when we were wandering around lost today. Should I come with
you, in case he has trouble making himself understood when he proposes to you?"
"Stop, Yazi." Qinnitan just wanted everyone to go away and forget about this, but it was obviously going to be the talk of the dormitory, perhaps for days.
"She is to come alone," said the girl in the blue dress.
"But what about… my brother?" Qinnitan asked.
"I'll watch him," Yazi said. "We'll have fun, won't we, Nonem?"
Pigeon liked Yazi, but he clearly didn't like the idea of letting Qinnitan go away with some stranger. Still, after a warning look from her, he nod¬ded. Qinnitan rose, leaving the comb and mirror for Yazi to return to their owners, and followed the girl out of the dormitory into the cold, torchlit night.
She felt in the pocket of her smock for Pigeon's carving knife and held it tightly as they walked back across the tiled immensity of the Echoing Mall.
"Who is your… mistress?" she asked the girl again.
"She will tell you what she wishes to tell you," the little girl in the blue dress said, and would say no more.
"I am not happy," said her father. Pelaya knew it was the truth. Count Perivos was not the sort of man who liked surprises, and all this had obvi¬ously come as just that. "Bad enough that a foreign prisoner should bribe my daughter to send messages to me when I already have so much else to worry on-using her as a… a go-between. But to find he also expects her to arrange some sort of assignation for him…!"
"It's not an assignation and he didn't bribe me." Pelaya stroked his sleeve. The cuff needed mending, which made her heart ache a little-he worked so hard! "Please, Babba, don't be difficult. Was there anything bad in his let¬ter to you?"
Her father raised his eyebrow. "Babba? I haven't heard that since the last time you wanted something. No, his thoughts are at least interesting, per¬haps useful, and all he asks in return is any news I can give him about his home or his family. There's nothing wrong with the letter, except that he knows too much. How could a foreign prisoner have so much to say about our castle defenses?"
"He told mo he fought here twenty years ago against the Tuan pirates. That lie wis a guest of the Temple Council."
"I remember those days, but he remembers where every tower stairway is and how many steps it has, I swear! He must have a memory like a man-tisery library." Count Perivos frowned. "Still, some of his warnings and sug¬gestions show wisdom, and I am willing to believe he meant them in good faith. But what is this madness about a serving girl?"
"I don't know, Babba. He said she reminded him of someone." Pelaya spotted her servant coming across the garden with the dark-haired girl walking slowly behind her. "Look-here they come now."
"Madness," her father said, but sighed as if weak protest were all he was allowed.
Seeing the laundry maid up close, Pelaya was both relieved and confused. Relieved, without quite understanding why, to see that this girl was only a year or two older than she was, and that while she was by no means ugly, she was not astoundingly pretty, either. But something else about this laun¬dry servant put her on edge, although Pelaya could not say what it was- something in the quality of the girl's watchfulness, in the cool and measured way she looked around the torchlit garden, was not what the stewards daughter expected from someone who spent every day up to her elbows in the citadel's washing tubs.
Now the girl turned that dark-eyed gaze onto Pelaya and her father, ex¬amining them as carefully as she had the surroundings, which was strange in itself: should she not have been looking first at the nobles who had sum¬moned her? Pelaya found the inspection a little unnerving.
"Your name is Nira, is it not?" she asked the girl. "Someone wants to meet you. Do you understand me?"
The girl nodded. "Yes, Nira. Understand." Either she had not been in Hierosol long or she was far more stupid than she looked, because her ac¬cent was barbarous.
Not for the first time that day, Pelaya wondered what she had stumbled into. A simple friendship had become something larger and much less com¬fortable. She was reassured that her father and his bodyguard were here to ensure that nothing was passed between the prisoner and this servant girl and that no tricks were attempted.
Now Perivos stepped forward. He spent a moment examining the girl Nira as thoroughly as she herself had inspected everything and everyone else. "So this is her?"
"Yes, Father."
"I wish Olin Eddon would hasten himself. I have better things to do…"
"Yes, Father. I know." She took a breath. "Please, be kind to him."
He turned on her with a look of surprise and annoyance. "What does that mean, Pelaya?"
"He is a kind man, Father. Babba. He has always been polite to me, proper in his speech, and always insists that his guards stay-and my maid as well. He says I remind him of his daughter."
Her father gave a little snort of disbelief. "Many young women remind him of his daughter, it seems."
"Father! Be kind. You know his daughter has disappeared and both his sons are dead."
The count shook his head, but she could see him softening. More sub¬tle than her sister, she had learned ways to bend him gently to her will, and sometimes he even seemed to collaborate in his own defeats. "Do not badger me," he said. "I will grant him the respect of some privacy-he is a king, after all-but I do not like it. And if anything untoward occurs…"
"It won't, Father. He's not like that." Pelaya Akuanis was far too ladylike to curse even to herself, and did not know any really useful curse words in any case, but Olin's favor was costing her more than the prisoner could know. She could not besiege her father for favors like this very often: it would be long months before she could expect to get her way in anything important again. / hope it's worth it for him, talking to some laundry trollop. But she knew even in her disgruntled state that wasn't quite fair: there was un¬questionably something more to this girl, this Nira, although Pelaya still could not guess what it might be.
Olin and his guards arrived even as a quiet rumble of thunder growled through the northern sky. A storm was on the way. Pelaya's father stepped forward and bowed his head to the prisoner.
"King Olin, you are a persuasive man, or else we would not all be standing in this garden with the rains sweeping toward us and my supper waiting. My daughter has risked her father's love to bring you and this young woman here."
Olin smiled. "I think that might be an exaggeration, Count Perivos, from the things your daughter has said about you. I have a headstrong girl child myself, so I appreciate your position and I thank you for indulging me when you did not need to." He lowered his voice so the bodyguard stand¬ing a dozen steps away could not hear. "Did you receive the letter? And is it any help to you?"
Pelaya's father would not be so easily swayed. "Perhaps. We will talk about it at some other time. For now I will leave you to your conversa¬tion… if you will swear to me on your honor that it is nothing against the interests of Hierosol. It goes without saying that it is nothing lewd or im¬moral, either."
"Yes, it goes without saying," said Olin with a touch of asperity. "You have my word, Count Perivos."
Her father bowed and withdrew himself a little way.
"Do not be frightened, child," Olin said to the laundry girl. "Your name is Nira, I am told. Is that correct?"
She nodded, watching the bearded man with a different kind of atten¬tion than she had given to the garden or Pelaya or anything else, almost as if she recognized him-as if they had met before and the girl was trying to remember where and when. For a moment Pelaya felt a kind of chill. Had she done something truly wrong here after all? Was she unwittingly help¬ing an escape plan, something that would cost her father his honor or maybe even his life?
"Yes," the girl said slowly. "Nira."
"All I want to know from you is a little about your family," Olin said gen¬tly. "That red in your hair-I think it is rare in this part of the world, is it not?"
The girl only shrugged. Pelaya felt a need to say something, if only to remind the man that she was still sitting here, part of the gathering. "Not so rare," she told him. "There have been northerners in Xand for years- mercenaries and folk of that sort. My father often talks about the autarch's White Hounds. They are famous traitors to Eion."
Olin nodded. "But still, I think such a shade is uncommon." He smiled and turned to the laundry girl. "Are there mercenaries from Eion in your family, young Nira? Northerners with fair hair?"
The girl hesitated for a moment as she made sense of his question. Her fingers moved up to the place where another little curl of hair escaped her scarf and pushed it back beneath the stained homespun cloth. "No. All… like me."
"I see something in you of a family that I know well, Nira. Be brave- you have done nothing wrong. Can you tell me if your family came from the north? Are there any family stories about such things?"
She looked at him a long time, as though trying to decide whether this entire conversation might be some kind of trick. "No. Always Xis." She shrugged. "Think always Xis. Until me."
"Until you, of course." He nodded. "Someone told me that your p.arents. died. I am very sorry to hear it. If I can do anything not thai I have much favor here, but I have made a couple of kind friends-let me know."
She stared at him again, clearly puzzled by something. At last: she nodded.
"Let her go now," Olin said, straightening. "I am sure she hasn't had her supper yet and I have no doubt she works hard all the day." He stood. "Thank you, Pelaya, and thank you, Count Perivos. My curiosity is satis¬fied. Doubtless it was just a fluke of light and shadow that tricked me into seeing a resemblance that was not there-that could not be there."
Pelaya's little maid took Nira back to the servants' dormitory, and Olin went with his guards back to his chambers. As she walked back across the garden toward their residence, a part of the citadel only a little less sump¬tuous than the lord protector's own quarters, Pelaya took her father's hand.
"Thank you, Babba," she said. "You are the best, kindest father. You truly are.
"But what in the name of the gods was that all about?" he said, scowl¬ing. "Has the man lost his wits? What connection could he be searching for with a laundry girl?"
"I don't know," Pelaya said. "But they both seem sad."
Her father shook his head. "That is what you said about that stray cat, and now I awake every morning to the sound of that creature yowling for fish. Both your King Olin and his laundry girl have places to live. Do not think to bring them home."
"No, Papa." But she too wondered what had brought two such strange, different people together in a Hierosol garden.
The sky thundered again and the first drops of rain began to spatter down. Pelaya, her father, and the bodyguard all hurried to get out of the open air.
.