The Silences of Home (17 page)

“A fish, maybe, or a frog,” Pentaran said, but he frowned. He leaned over and said, “If it’s a large fish, it might be slow—we could—” and then his reflection and Baldhron’s shattered as creatures rose from the water.

Pentaran shouted as they surfaced, ranks of them, filling the pool and the southern passageway. He tried to scramble to his feet but Baldhron held him by the wrist and hissed, “No—stay like this; don’t let them think you’re threatening them.” Pentaran stayed, though he made another noise, this one more strangled than the last, and put one shaking hand on the dagger in his belt.

Baldhron thought,
The southern tunnel runs beneath the city wall. It is desert on the other side. Desert pierced by well shafts
. He was pleased by the clarity of these thoughts and by the calm he felt.
I have never seen these creatures—not even in the marketplace. They are strangers
. He looked down at them and smiled, though he did not let it touch his lips.

Their skin was green-brown and deeply lined, like a turtle’s. Their eyes were round and white, and their mouths were round as well, though Baldhron could not tell if this was just from exertion.
But they are like men
, he thought, noting their long wet hair, the cloth that wound around their necks and chests and upper arms. He waited. The upturned head of the one beneath him was nearly touching his right foot. Water dripped from the water-men’s hair and chins—the only sound, and it echoed from the glass-encrusted walls.

At last there was a different sound: the strokes of a body moving with its head and arms held above the water. Baldhron watched the water-man swim to the eastern wall. He pulled himself out of the pool, and Baldhron saw that the cloth strips wrapped his body down to mid-thigh, that he was strikingly tall, and that there were webs between his fingers and toes.

Other water-men, all equally tall, emerged from the water. Soon the ledges on both sides of the pool were lined with them. They all looked at the man who seemed to be their leader—all except for one. This man sat with his back against the wall beneath the thirty-second hanging sack. Baldhron noticed him because he was so motionless and because he seemed different—paler, thinner, the cloth strips loose around his body. He was looking up at the lanterns and the walls; he did not appear to be blinking.

The leader drew a short hooked dagger from the cloth over his chest, not taking his eyes from Baldhron’s. He spoke two bubbling, frothing words. Baldhron watched his lips stop moving, but the words pulsed on.
I know—I understand
, he thought, and he reeled, in memory, through the marketplace and the Scribeslibrary until he remembered.
These sound like fishfolk words
. Not exactly the same, but close enough to the language he had studied to be comprehensible. As the water-men began to pull an assortment of small weapons out of somewhere (scabbard-pouches within the layers of cloth?), Baldhron swallowed and wiped his palms slowly on his tunic.

“Kill,” the leader said again, more loudly, and stepped onto the bridge.

“Stop! Wait!”

Mallesh stopped. He heard the selkesh behind and below him murmur, but he looked only at the slight, pale man on the bridge. The man who had spoken words Mallesh knew. Mallesh waited, curiosity overcoming for a moment the need for a first kill in this new place.

I will see what they say,
he thought
. This cannot hurt us. There are only two of them, both quite small
. Mallesh himself felt swollen with strength. The underground swim had been exhilarating; he had not realized how exhausted he had been since they had left the ocean. This water was very deep, and so cold that his teeth ached after he drank it. He had rolled his body over and over in it, after Leish had led them to the desert well and down (such a narrow, crumbling tunnel—but they had heard the pebbles dislodged by their feet splashing far beneath them and had slithered quickly on into the earth).

“This way!” Leish had cried, and they had followed him into the rippling darkness. They had sliced through the water, drinking it, feeling it cleanse and harden their skin and everything beneath it.

Mallesh had heard the river’s song clearly once he was far below its water. The song was very different from that of his own, far away river—but this one seemed to welcome him and draw him on, and he rejoiced in its strangeness.

Mallesh had worried, when they entered the river, that Leish would never surface. He had hoped for this as well, with a sickening, humming intensity. After he had swum for a time, someone had grasped his hand and pulled him to the surface. He blinked and saw a faint glow up ahead, and Leish beside him. Mallesh tried to smile at him in the flickering light, and they waited together for the other selkesh to join them.

“Quietly,” Leish had whispered when they had all gathered. “We are within the city walls now. The loudest people-singing is above us—but there could be other men down here, too few to hear. Maybe there, where the light is.”

But there were only these two delicate-looking men in the chamber of the shining walls. Mallesh’s pulse had quickened when he brushed the water from his eyes and saw them: only two, surrounded by all the selkesh with their throwing spears and knives. He almost heard the strangers’ blood, singing like the river that had brought them here.

And then one of the men called out, and Mallesh hesitated. As he did, leaning on the ball of one foot, the man spoke again.

“Who?” It was the only word Mallesh understood, though the man spoke others.
Yllosh words
, Mallesh thought, and remembered the ones they had met on the ocean, the ones who had doubted and mocked him.
Who is he to know these words?

“Selkesh,” he said in slow syllables, drawing his feet together and his shoulders up and back. The man inclined his head in a gesture that was unfamiliar to Mallesh. After a wide-eyed moment the man’s companion did the same.

“Where?” the first man said again, adding other, unintelligible words. He moved carefully into a standing position with his hands held before him. Mallesh noticed the dagger hanging at his belt in a pouch of blue and green.

“Across the sea,” Mallesh said, gesturing to the tunnel as if this would encompass desert, jungle, a rolling, heaving space of salt water, and the swaying trees and vines of the land beyond. The man’s lips formed a sound he did not make.

“Why?” he finally said. Only the one word this time.

Mallesh heard his men murmur again. He tightened his grip on his knife and took another step along the bridge. “We will take this city. Our city.”

“Our,” the man repeated, then, after a pause, “your city. Your. . . .” His face changed. Mallesh had never seen a face like this—but it was enough like his own that he recognized the clenching of shock and fear. The fear, though, was swiftly gone. The man’s eyes narrowed and his lips pressed together and the muscles of his jaw relaxed a bit. Mallesh thought,
A pity—he is obviously a man of valour
. As the murmuring around him swelled, he strode forward with his knife raised.

“No!” the man cried as his companion leapt to his feet. Mallesh was three paces away—so much taller and stronger, deafened by the triumphant song of the city.

“No—wait—” one pace away, the knife reflecting lantern light and glass “—I help you.
Help you
!”

Mallesh looked down at the man. The chamber was quiet except for water that dripped from limbs and weapons. The man craned to meet his eyes. He whispered the words again, again, steady as the sound of the water. When Mallesh turned to look behind him, the words softened into silence.

Leish was standing where the bridge met the ledge, his eyes were steady and bright. His mouth shaped a word that Mallesh understood, though he could not hear it.

Mallesh turned back to the small pale man. “Yes,” he said. “You help.”

Baldhron’s scribes gathered at midnight. They slipped through the rain, cool at this hour, and down well shafts throughout the city. They arrived in the library chamber in twos and threes, all of them silent. Baldhron stood on the bridge and watched them come.

They looked at the water-man—Mallesh, his name was—who was standing beside Baldhron, most of them only briefly. Others stared at him. Baldhron saw some who frowned, some who gnawed at their lips and others whose faces were still and closed. When Baldhron began to speak, they turned to him, but their expressions did not change.

“Thank you, truth-scribes, for answering my urgent summons. What we decide here tonight will change history.” He tried to look at each of them; it was so important to make them feel included, important, vital. “Beside me is Mallesh, a member of a race called the selkesh.” They all turned to Mallesh now. He gazed back at them impassively. “He does not understand these words. He speaks a language related to that of the fishfolk, who were selkesh kin long ago. Many of you were, as I was, instructed in this fishfolk tongue. For this I suppose we must thank our teachers.” A ripple of laughter, nervous and relieved at the same time.

“Mallesh’s men have spread out into various of our chambers. There are many hundreds of these men. There is, in fact, an army of them.”

He had expected a gasp at this point, but none came. He stood a bit taller.

“They have come here because even in their land of Nasranesh, far across the Eastern Sea, they have heard of this great city.”
Don’t mention the singing—if I don’t understand it, neither will my men.
“They were inflamed by tales of Luhr’s majesty and beauty, and Mallesh decided that they must see it. He decided it must be theirs.”
Mallesh and his brother, the sickly looking one who the selkesh seem to esteem more highly—but he’s such an unimpressive figure; mustn’t mention him either.
“The selkesh journeyed across the sea and through the Mersid Jungle. They discovered the desert wells and used them to gain access to the city. They are an intelligent, worthy, courageous people.”
Who planned to take Luhr with fish spears and filleting knives.
“There are many of them, all as large and strong as Mallesh. They will make an attempt on the palace whether we offer them resistance or not. So.” He paused for a moment, tried to look stern as words spun in his head. “This is our moment of choice, come sooner than I had anticipated. The selkesh are here to reshape history. We could warn the Queen—and perhaps be mentioned at the bottom of the last page of
Galha’s Triumph Over the Fearsome Sea Folk
. We could flee so as not to be involved in what transpires. Or we could aid the selkesh. We could act
and
write this history—it could be ours.”

Light leapt from the glass-set walls as people stirred and turned to each other.
They’re frightened. Great Drenhan, let me speak wisely. . . .

“And what if we aid them,” called the woman named Serenhan, “and lose?”

Baldhron held up a hand to quell the muttering that had risen. “We will not lose. We know more about the palace and the city than any Queensguard. There are many of us and more of them, and look!
Look
at him! We will show them how to take the city, and they will do it.”

“And then what?” Serenhan again, with her strident whine of a voice.

Baldhron felt his cheeks grow hot. “And then the selkesh install us as the official scribes of the new realm. And then we tell truth, always, in the light of day and above the ground. We teach them and all of our people to read and write, and everyone will understand and revere and share our power.”

“What of the rest of the Queensrealm?” Serenhan asked, not as shrilly as before. “Luhr is the centre, but it’s not the only place where Queensfolk rule.”

Baldhron nodded, feeling his flush subsiding. “We have allies in all towns and cities where Queensfolk hold sway. I will—would send word to these allies, informing them of the proposed date of attack, advising them to be ready to seize control of their own places. With Luhr captured and the Queen dethroned, all will be chaos. Even with modest numbers, our people will prevail.”

Some were nodding now, though most still frowned. “Baldhron,” one man said, “this is a great risk to our lives, but also to the lives of others. My . . . my brother is a Queensguard. Others here have loved ones who live or work at the palace. If we. . . .” His voice wavered into silence. He was biting his lower lip hard enough to turn it white.

Baldhron thought,
Sentimental sap
. He nodded and pursed his lips. “Of course, all palace folk will be endangered by an attack. And as you have said, some of them will be our friends and family. The many among us who have no families, or who were sent here from distant homes, are now the lucky ones—imagine!” A murmur of assent rose from these orphans and misfits, so many of them, grown to adulthood without ties of blood or place, with only each other, drawn together by Baldhron and the truth he had discovered in this room.

“We will try,” he went on, attempting to address those who did have palace or Luhran ties, “to avoid harming your loved ones. If you know that they will be on guard the night of the attack, I will make sure that you are sent to where they are, to prevent their injury. Only come to me and tell me, and I will try. But,” he continued, his voice rising, “I cannot promise to eradicate the risk. Battle is quick and confusing, and some of you may make mistakes. Remember this. And remember that no glory is achieved without some measure of grief.”

“You are right,” another man called. “But so far we have spoken only of individual lives. What of our
way
of life? Luhr is our city, whether—”

“Galent,” Baldhron snapped, “how dare you speak of the Luhran way of life as if it were something to be prized. All of us know that there is corruption here—lies invented by the Queen and perpetuated by her consort-scribe. Most of us have known someone who has been lost in her service. My mother, who drank Galha’s poisoned wine. Your uncle, Galent! Your uncle, who was crushed in a mine shaft Galha ordered collapsed.” Baldhron had them now; they held themselves rigid, poised, and their eyes never left him. “We all know such stories. We have recorded them—and now, so much sooner than we expected, there is a chance that they may be heard. We can rid this land of its lying Queen. With the selkesh’s help, we
will
do this thing.”

For a moment there was no sound. Then someone shouted his name, and others took up the cheer, and the library dome rang with the thunder of their voices.

The marketplace began to stir just past dawn, only an hour after Leish and his two companions had slid over the lip of the well. He watched the palace towers brighten as the sky cleared; he watched men and women and creatures that seemed neither male nor female emerge from tents, wagons, wooden shacks, other places he could not see. By the time the sun had risen, he could smell food cooking and hear the clatter of wood and the slap of cloth being folded away from stalls.

“Leish.” He turned to look at the Queensman who had accompanied Dashran and himself.
Pentaran
, Leish reminded himself, dividing the name into its rough, awkward syllables.

“We walk. Baldhron say walk, show place,” Pentaran said.

Mallesh had chosen who among the selkesh would first see the city. “It can’t be me,” he had told Leish. “I won’t go up until the attack. You must go and bring me back a thorough description of what you see. Of
everything
.” He had spoken with an urgency that was almost anger, and Leish had shrunk away from him—again.

Even if Mallesh had not sent him, Leish would have had to go. They had been beneath the city for weeks. Baldhron had been explaining the layout of the palace and city with drawings (which Mallesh and Leish now understood) and his increasingly fluent selkesh words. Each day that they had remained in the underground water tunnels had increased Leish’s restlessness. His weakness had begun to ebb as soon as he led the selkesh into the river; but the city’s song was so close that it was a constant, muffled boom, and he knew that only seeing it would help to ease the pressure in his head. But Mallesh had chosen him—so he had climbed into the dark, open air, and he had sat down hard on the sandy ground and listened to a song that was as clear now as water.

“Yes, Pentaran,” Leish said slowly, so that the man would understand. “We will walk.”

There were so many songs in this place. Earth, water, stone, and Queensfolk lifeblood made up the deepest, most resonant one; above it were notes that were played and chanted and called across hot wind. Leish listened to all of these notes together, and he felt nearly whole, nearly at peace for the first time since had had heard the call of this land from his own shore. Only nearly, however, for beneath his feeling of calm was the insistent stab of desire.

Mallesh was right
, Leish thought, blind for a moment to the riot of colour and forms around him.
I do feel his need, for more—for
mine
.
It was this need that made him speak to cruel-eyed Baldhron, and learn from him. It was this need that would drive him into the palace beside Mallesh, seeking blood.
Even though this search will forever twist the song that is in me now,
he thought, and shuddered.