The Silences of Home (35 page)

Twin girls
. The window glass was cool against Alea’s forehead, a slight, small relief to her body, which was as broken as if she had fallen from the leaping place ten times, twenty. As if she had leapt onto a horse that had refused, after hours and days of trying, to be tamed. She had propped herself at the window anyway. It was just pain, just skin and blood and muscles. She had to look out at the ledge, had to give herself to this other pain that made her body into air.

“Burn her,” she had told Nellyn when he had come to her and stood by her and the tightly wrapped bundle near her. Her voice had been hoarse from crying out and from the Telling she could hardly remember. “After night comes. It is my people’s custom,” she had added, since it seemed that there ought to be more words, ones that might ease the worry from his face.

It was late spring; the sunlight died very slowly and very late. But finally it was dark, and he came back from lighting the candles and took up the bundle. She had not touched it. She had not moved except to let him peel away her soiled blankets and shift. She only moved when she was sure the wood would be stacked and ready—and it was; it was already blazing. There were two fires. She saw him throw the bloody linens onto one. The other was closer to the cliff edge, burning lower but with more heat. It had been so long since she had watched a fire burn in the open air. She could not see what was within—but she knew. The woven blanket would blacken and merge with flesh, and the flesh would dissolve, and it would take no time at all, not for such a tiny thing.
Alnila take her body, Alneth her body’s ashes. Welcome her, despite my failings.

Alea slid to the floor. She sat against the wall and noticed her other baby, which was lying in front of the fireplace. Arms and legs had thrust free of the cloth. They were waving, pulling in tight, waving again. Alea listened to its crying, watched it squirm and flail—and then Nellyn was there, picking it up.

“Alea. Hold her—please, take her. She needs milk.” He smelled like smoke. His voice was muffled, as if her ears were full of water or wind, but she understood. She saw him pass the baby over, saw it fit into the angle of her own arm. She felt its bumpy, round weight—the same shapes that had been in her this morning. She saw it turn its head into the skin of her breast. She raised her arm, and its mouth found her nipple. One suck, a slide away, another suck, too sharp. Alea waited for it to open its mouth on a wail, then brought its face quickly to her breast again. This time the lips clamped wide and the suck was long and painless, and there was another, and another. The baby swallowed. Of course, this was the right position, the right way to get an uncertain infant to suckle. Alea had learned from her mother. She remembered watching her with newborn Alnanna, remembered asking her wondering, breathless questions until Aldana had laughed and told her she’d find out for herself, someday.

“The Goddesses of the Alilan have punished me.” Her words still hurt her throat, but she had to speak. Nellyn was kneeling in front of her, so tired and sad, and the baby was sucking, and Alea knew these things should be important, that she should say something.

“Why would they do this?” he asked, and she almost felt warm because he had not said, “Don’t be silly—of course they’re not.”

“Because of Aldron’s power,” She told Nellyn, talked in a steady stream that became a torrent. Old Aldira, Aliser, the boy Aldron, the heartflowers on the dusty table, the blue light in the walls, the snuffed fire, flung pebbles, the Perona riding away, screaming. Aldron weak and sick, unrepentant; both of them leaving daggers and horses, and walking from the fires of all the caravans around the oasis. Everything: every forbidden change, every argument. Everything—even a baby sleeping and another drifting in the darkness above the Eastern Sea. She cried as she spoke, and after—for the words and their meaning, and also for the speaking of them.

“I knew the fire in the inn was real,” Nellyn said at last, long after she had finished speaking. “And I saw him make a flower for you in the kitchen, when he gave you the purple vase. I think I have seen him make other things as well.” She sniffled and nodded, and he smiled at her. “But look! Look what you and Aldron have made together.”

Alea looked down at the black hair, the closed eyes, the mouth that still tugged even in sleep. Nellyn cupped one hand around the baby’s head; with the other he drew Alea’s forehead gently against his own. She leaned against him and wished, as she cried again, that it could be so simple.

Nellyn leaned over the soup pot and drew in a deep, noisy breath. “Ah,” he said as he straightened, “it is definitely your best yet.”

Alea laughed. “You haven’t even tasted it yet! And anyway, summer vegetables are so much more palatable than spring ones.”

“Modesty,” he said, and ladled soup into a deep blue bowl.

“Not too full, remember: you always spill some on the stairs.”

He tried—and failed—to look indignant. Alea was sitting in the window, and baby Alnissa was at her breast, making alarmingly loud, appreciative noises, and the sun was shining on them both. He could feel the wind even from where he stood; it was hot and damp, and it stirred Alea’s hair and the herb bundles that hung from the beams. Soon it would be too hot for a fire.

“Hush, little foal,” Alea said to her daughter, “you’ll get the other side too.” He stood for a moment, watching as Alea sat the baby up, patted her back, moved her smoothly to the other breast. He had had to remind Alea to feed the baby for three weeks after the birth. He had come down from the writing room at night, three or four times, to pick the screaming child up from where she lay, beside Alea. He had urged her with words sometimes, or without them, and she had always complied, so slowly and listlessly that he had feared for mother and daughter both. He had feared for them so intensely that he hardly slept in the morning and often forgot to eat, himself.

One night there had been only silence below him. He had waited, listened, strained for any sound other than the wind—and then he had run down the stairs two at a time. Alea was on her side, the baby was suckling, and both of them were half asleep. And shortly after that night Alea had said, “I’ve named her Alnissa. It’s a fine old name in my caravan.” She had held his hand very tightly and smiled—her first smile since the birth and the sorrow after.

The bowl was burning his palm. He shifted it to his other hand and turned to the stairs. He walked carefully, and was so pleased with himself by the time he reached the writing room that he set the bowl down too quickly. Soup surged against the side and over. He yelped an oath he had learned from Lanara and sucked on his scalded hand. He examined it, saw that it was pink but no more injured than that, then he looked out at the sea.

The waves were high today. It still surprised him, that the water could be so angry when the sun was shining. It had not shone much these past few weeks. He had recorded storm after storm, while the bell clanged fitfully and lightning blotted out the stars. But the sun was dazzling now, as it sank behind the tower. Bronze light, and long shadows of cloud on the far water.

Not cloud
. Nellyn squeezed his eyes shut, looked again: not cloud, but spots, specks that did not waver in the changing sky. He remembered how they had disappeared when he had last watched them. He had written about sails and wind—meaningless, desolate words then, but he remembered them now.

The boats would not reach the harbour by the time darkness fell. He ran up to the lightroom—so much running, not shonyn—and pressed his face against the window briefly before he lowered the candelabra and lit the candles. His hands were shaking, but he did not pause to steady them. His breath was ragged, but he did not pause to steady it. He ran down and down, into the kitchen.

Alea looked up at him. She was sitting at the table, and Alnissa was sleeping on her belly in a basket lined with red cloth. “Nellyn?” Alea said, a spoon halfway to her mouth. He could not speak, but this did not seem to matter. She pushed back her stool so sharply that it fell. The spoon fell too, and Alnissa twitched but did not wake. “Nellyn—
what
?”

“The ships.” She stared at him as if he were speaking the shonyn language. “I have lit the candles,” he went on, “but I am going to make some fires outside, too. It will be very dark by the time they near the cliffs, and there is no moon at all tonight.” She was not seeing him; she was staring through him. He left her there by the table. Only start the fires—then he would go back and stay with her until. Until.

He fumbled with the wood he had stacked so neatly in the shed weeks before. He threw it on the ledge in untidy piles that grew untidier with every armload he added. He was panting, sweating, his hand stuck full of splinters and brushed with lichen-dust—and then her hands were there, taking the wood from him. She rearranged the piles, quickly, smoothly, until they stood tall and steady. She went back into the tower and emerged a few moments later. She handed him one of the torches she had carried out, and kept the other. She touched her torch to the first pile, waited for a flame to catch and grow. She tossed the torch to the top of the stack—and he finally moved, finally walked to the next one and lit it with a hand that did not shake.

When each of the fires was burning, Alea led him to where the cliff fell away, down to rocks and spray. He held her hand and breathed smoke and salt. They stood above the sea and waited, as the night came down around them and the flames called out behind.

Aldron did not touch Lanara as they stood at the ship’s rail and watched the land take shape ahead of them. It had always been he who had touched first, these past few weeks—trailing his fingers across the small of her back or her neck, coming up behind her and leaning, slowly, pressing until she twisted around against him. She was certain people had seen them, or at least heard them.
But he always starts it
, she told herself, standing beside him, glancing at his motionless hands on the rail.
Except for that first time, he always has.

For a time many Queensfighters clustered at the side and up along the line of the prow, shouting to each other, gesturing at the shimmering line of land. It was very hard to see, with the sun setting behind it, but Lanara thought she could make out the taller shadows of cliffs flanking the open bronze space that had to be Fane’s harbour.

“You see—I have steered us true.” Lanara started and turned to the Queen, who was one pace behind. The ship rose on a wave and Galha reached for the rail. “Do you not think it astounding that I was able to return us to the precise spot of our departure?”

“Yes,” Lanara said, “of course.”

Aldron was holding the rail so tightly that the skin of his hands was white and stretched. Galha had emerged from her cabin only a few times after her speech, and Lanara and Aldron had not seen her. They had not spoken of her—had hardly spoken at all—and yet Galha had grown larger in their silence. And now she was here, and most of the Queensfighters had dispersed, leaving empty boards and the three of them, staring at the thickening line of the Queensrealm.

“What will you do, Nara? When we return to our land.”

Lanara cleared her throat. “I will . . . I don’t know. Probably stay at the signal tower. You posted me there, after all, and I did enjoy the work.” Galha was not listening to her. Lanara saw her looking past her, saw her bright, seeking eyes on Aldron.

“And you,” the Queen said to him, her words low and sharp at the same time, “would you also do my service somewhere? You have been a great help to me so far.”

He stared at his hands and said nothing for so long that Lanara nearly spoke again, to end the unbearable waiting.

“No,” he said at last. His voice was as rough and breathy as it had been when he first spoke after his wound. Lanara had expected it to change, to assume its old strength, but it had not. “I’ll travel again. With Alea, if she’ll have me. And our child.”

Lanara wanted, for a moment, to cry out or grasp his hands, his face, so that he would have to show her his eyes. She shrank from her need, and her foolishness.

“Ah,” said Galha. “And will you travel your old paths, near Queensfolk places?”

“No,” he said immediately, and raised his gaze to Galha’s. “I’ll go as far away as I can, into new places. I want no part of my old paths, or the Queensrealm.”

“Aldron!” Lanara gasped, and he finally looked at her, his eyes empty of the desire and fear that had shone in them all these months.

“No, Nara, I am not offended. Indeed, I am happy that he will seek out a different life. Perhaps we will all do so, in our own ways. Though I, of course,” Galha went on, almost cheerfully, “will return to Luhr. There will be much to attend to, much to be written—Malhan and I will hardly sleep, I’m sure of it. Perhaps I should try to sleep now, before we land. It will be a few more hours, and after that my people will need me, there will be no end of demands. I wonder whether Luhr will be safe under the regency of my Queensguards. I’m not at all sure. . . .” Galha was walking away, trailing words, her hands waving as if she were still speaking to someone. Lanara saw Malhan step into her path and take both of her hands before they walked on together, back to the main hatch.

“She’s ill,” Lanara said. “Her mindpowers have sapped her somehow—she’s not as she was. Do you think—” but Aldron was not behind her, and the hatch in the prow stood open. Lanara laughed. “Talking to myself again, just as I did in the shonyn village.” She leaned her head on her hands, abruptly dizzy. When she looked up again, the sky was deep blue and glittering with stars in the west—some so bright, so low that they made her blink.

Not stars
. Fires, three of them, and a fainter shimmer above them that was candlelight glancing off mirrors and metal. Lanara stood alone by the rail, and her tears turned the fires into one great blaze, burning up against the rock and the stars, calling the Queensships home again.

Queen Galha’s victorious fleet reached the shores of the Queensrealm at midnight. The Queen looked upon the torches of those of her subjects already gathered on the wharf, and there were tears of joy on her cheeks when she declared that the largest Queensships would wait until first light to enter the harbour. “More of my people will be waiting by then,” she said; “let us return to them in the brightness of day, rather than beneath the cloaking darkness of night.” And so it was that, while the smaller vessels made their way to the docks and the river’s mouth, where the waters were less dangerous to them, the larger Queensships dropped anchor outside the encircling cliffs.

When the golden light of dawn bloomed, two Queensships led the Queen’s own vessel into Fane’s harbour. Queen Galha stood at the prow, as she had when fist she came to Fane in her pursuit of the Sea Raiders. Then her face had been solemn and fierce; now it was radiant with triumph and gratitude. Her people awaited her in reverent silence. They stood on the docks and on the wharf; they clustered at windows and on roofs and along the tops of the bridgetowers. They looked on their Queen and were amazed. Even I, who have been privileged to witness all the days of her reign since she was a young woman, was amazed.

Queensfighters lined the decks of all the ships, and yet no names were called from deck to wharf, no hands raised in joyous welcome. All the Queensfolk, on land and ship alike, waited for Queen Galha’s words.

“People of the Queensrealm,” she cried when her ship had anchored at last, at the end of the longest dock. “Victory is ours!” And now the silence was shattered by voices and hands, all clamouring in relief that banished the fear of many long months.

“The Sea Raiders are defeated,” the Queen continued when the crowd had quieted, “for my army attacked with relentless strength and skill, and afterward there was a further punishment—a punishment so unexpected and so great that words will never compass it.” She lifted her hands above her, forming the sign of the arrowhead. “I am Sarhenna’s true heir, for I have her gift in my blood. I too possess mindpowers, and it was they that cursed my daughter’s murderers and their land. Yes,” she said, this one word ringing above the crowd’s murmuring, “yes: my mindpowers, though as I wielded them I felt the presence of my ancestor, that queen who made us great when we were just a ragged tribe lost in the desert. But I did not destroy the Sea Raiders, though I could have. No—I showed them mercy. They will live on, in their changed land. They will live on, never to cause more grief to any as they did to me. And so,” she continued after another cheer had subsided, “we have returned, and shall mount a celebration worthy of conquering warriors. In two nights’ time, Fane’s wharf and riverside shall ring with merriment. There shall be wine and food, music and dancing. Until then, my Queensfighters will take their ease, for they have endured hardships not to be spoken of or even imagined. Rejoice, then, people of the Queen, and welcome your dear ones home.”

The cheers this time rang with names, and the waiting throng surged toward the docks. Each of the Queensships extended their walkways, and Queensfighters streamed along them, rushing into the arms of parents, children, friends. It was a scene of joy that will forever cast its glow upon this Queen.

Nellyn smelled the ships long before he reached the wharf. Human waste and blood, rotten meat; he gasped and covered his nose and mouth with a hand, even though the motion made him dizzy on the narrow path.
Shift away
, he begged the wind, and after a moment it did, just enough for him to place his hand back on the cliff and resume his descent.

“No,” Alea had said when he had asked her if she would come with him. “Let him come to me. To us.” She was gazing down at Alnissa, who was lying on her back, kicking—not sleeping, as she should have been.

“Then I will stay with you,” Nellyn had said.

Alea had shaken her head. “No. Go to Lanara now. She will want you to be there.” She bit her lower lip and did not look at him, even when he told her he would go and said farewell.
Another change I do not understand
, he had thought as he made his way carefully through the darkness.
There was sadness in Lanara’s leaving, but now there is a different sadness—for Alea, but also for me, and I did not expect it
.

The wharf also stank, with cooking meat and stale sweat—and even fresh sweat, for the air was already warm and there were many bodies pressed together, waiting. Nellyn breathed through his mouth as he walked toward the docks. At first he tried not to bump or jostle, tried to wait for a space to open before he stepped forward, but he soon realized that he would have to push, if he wished to move at all. He had been in the tower the last time so many people had gathered here. His head swam with the smells, the roiling, murmuring mass of bodies. He attempted to imagine his river and the silence that lay so thickly there, after dawn; or even the tower, with its round spaces and Alnissa’s gurgling cries—but he could not. He was surrounded and small, and his breath came sharp with panic.

“Here, now,” someone said, very close to his ear. “There’s room by me, and see—the biggest boat will surely anchor just ahead. I’ve a grandson aboard—First grant he be unharmed. . . .” Nellyn took a long swallow from the woven seagreen bag the man offered him, and for a moment the stink seemed washed from his mouth. He saw nothing except heads and backs and dark grey sky before him. He knew some smaller boats had already returned to harbor. He had seen them waiting at the bridgetowers, bobbing shadows that had not been there the day before. No one had left these boats. “Why do they wait?” the old man fretted. “Where are the sailors, and why are the largest ships still out in open sea?” Nellyn did not respond. He watched the sky ease from grey to silver to gold-streaked blue; he heard the scream of an anchor and the splash of oars. “Oh, by the Mother of us all,” the man beside him said, many splashes later, and then Nellyn too saw the largest Queensship.

He had seen so many of these ships on his river, all clean and sleek. He had seen this very ship, a shining, graceful thing between the snow-piled banks of Fane. Now it seemed to limp behind the two boats that came before it. Each of them was tattered. Their sails were torn and bleached well beyond blue and green, and their wood was gouged and discoloured. The rowboats that hung above the deck looked black, as if they had been made from lynanyn bark—but that could not be; they must have been seared by some sort of heat or flame. Queensfolk clung to the rails. As the sunlight shone brighter and the boats drew closer, Nellyn saw gaunt cheeks and sunken eyes, bandages stained black. He swallowed over bile—fear, and a stronger waft of stench—and looked for Lanara. So many faces, and the light was in his eyes. He rubbed at them and looked again, and saw the Queen step up to the prow and stretch her arms above her head.

Galha’s voice was shrill, and he did not listen to her words. Some of the people around him gave a feeble cheer during her speech, but it did nothing to lighten the silence that hung over them all. He was nearly blind with the strain of seeking out Lanara’s face—blind, deaf, choked with dread, and still he did not see her, even when Queensfolk began to stream off the ships. The silence shattered. He heard cries of joy and some laughter, and a wail that made him flinch. The old man was gone from beside him. Nellyn stood still as everyone around him spun and shouted. Very soon there were fewer people on the wharf, and he could see the Queensship clearly. The Queensfolk coming down its plank now were leaning on sticks or being carried on litters of cloth and wood. Some were missing limbs; some looked intact in body, but lay staring at the sky as if they had no life in them. Nellyn took two paces toward the dock—and finally, finally saw a face he knew.

“Aldron!” The word was a hiss. Nellyn called again, and Aldron was right in front of him in any case—but the Alilan man went past without glancing at him. Nellyn watched him for the space of three breaths. When he turned back to the ship, Lanara was there on the dock, walking slowly, looking at her feet as she set them down and raised them up again.

He had no voice at all this time. He saw that her hair was thicker and curlier than it had been, that her skin and clothes were mottled with dirt. He watched her take her small, uneasy steps, watched her stop four paces away from him and lift her eyes.

“You came,” she said, her voice rising as if it were a question.

He tried to smile. “Of course. Did you think I might not?”

“I wasn’t sure; the path is so steep. . . .”

He reached her in three strides. Her hair and skin stank as the ships had—but beneath was her smell, and he remembered Luhr, a waterfall, mountains, an inn, a wagon, all these images vibrant and fierce because he had not held her in so long.

Alea thought at first that she would wait for Aldron in the dark. She would sit at the kitchen table (not in the window; she would
not
watch for him) in her brown linen shift, without candles or lanterns. He would walk in and hesitate until his eyes adjusted to the dimness, and she would rise up, a silent shadow that would make him quail.

When Nellyn saw the boats and she imagined that her waiting was nearly over, she paced up and down the stairs and around each of the floors. Even when she heard the crowd in the town and knew that the boats had docked, she did not glance out the windows overlooking the path. He might be looking up; he might see her and think her eager to see him. She remained far away from the glass.

When the door opened, a little over an hour past dawn on the day of the ships’ return, she was on her sleeping floor. She heard the door shut and leaned against her wall for a moment to steady herself. She traced an edge of painted flame with her forefinger and took a deep, noisy breath against Alnissa’s silken hair. Then she went down the stairs, letting her feet fall heavily enough that the people below would hear her coming.

Nellyn and Lanara looked up at her when she reached the steps leading into the kitchen. Alea stopped, frozen by Lanara’s filth and smell, and by her dull, darting eyes. Alea forced her own eyes away, to the spaces behind or beside Nellyn and Lanara that should have been taken up by someone else.

“Where is he?” Alea said. Lanara bowed her head; for a moment Alea felt the steps dip away beneath her feet, and she had to grip the handrail and Alnissa to keep herself from following. But then she heard Nellyn say, “He is not here? I saw him on the wharf. I thought he would come directly”—and Alea’s rage roared again within her, so high that her head throbbed with heat.

Nellyn and Lanara had disappeared after that. Alea had heard things, dimly: the splash of water in the large copper basin that stood outside now that the days and nights were warm; voices, low and distant, and then silence. As she was feeding Alnissa in the late afternoon, Nellyn came into the kitchen and prepared a tray of food. When he was done, he opened his mouth to speak, but Alea held up her hand and turned her face away from him, and he went back up the stairs.

It was when the sunlight left the room that she thought,
I will not light candles or lanterns. I will sit here in the dark and wait for him
. But as the hours passed, the burning of her fury made her think instead of light. Scores of candles, all the lanterns in this room and hers, perhaps even the fire—though in the end it was candles and lanterns only, since they would make the kitchen hot and bright enough. She made a second lightroom in the tower, so that Aldron would see her immediately, and their baby; so that there would be no shadows to shelter him from them. She sat with her back against the table, very straight, certain that she would not doze—but she was there a long time, and Alnissa was sleeping, and Alea must have dozed after all, because when the door creaked open, her head snapped up.

Aldron was leaning on the door frame, one hand over his eyes to shield them from the unexpected light. The laces of his shirt were undone; she saw a wide piece of cloth wrapped around his chest, and the skin around it, grey with dirt—all his skin smudged and cracked. His hand dropped from his face and he blinked into the room. In the time it took him to focus his gaze, she had seen the rest: his hollow cheeks, his matted beard, his eyes, which were nearly invisible, sunk into bone. She made a sound, quite soft, but he angled his head and blinked twice more and saw her. He took two steps, looked down at his feet, then up—but before his eyes found her again, they found the basket at her feet.

He fell to his knees beside it, so close to Alea that her eyes watered with his stench and she saw the tangles in his hair. He knelt for a long time with his head bent, looking. He lifted a hand and it hovered above the basket but did not lower.

“Touch her,” Alea said, her voice aching in her throat. “Pick her up. She’s yours, she’s your daughter”—but his hand fell back to his side. Alea leaned forward and put her hands in his knotted hair. She drew him gently forward until his head was in her lap. “Hush,” she said, even though he was not crying. She kissed him on his hair and on his skin. “Hush, love.”