Troubled Waters (11 page)

“There are no wrong blessings,” Zoe said tranquilly, when the father looked at her with a quirk of nervousness. “Every random blessing is the right one for that child at that moment.”

She nodded at the father, who said, “Please pick first for Anna.”

The redhead drove his thin arm deep into the barrel and pulled out a slightly battered coin. “Wealth,” he said, handing it over. The relief in his voice was palpable. He must realize everyone welcomed this particular coin.

“Wealth! Wonderful! My aunt has money, and she has not decided on an heir—of course, Anna is just a baby—and, anyway, I mean, Elle should certainly have as much as Anna, not that I expect them to be identical—”

“And for your other daughter?” Zoe prodded gently.

“Yes! Of course! Will you pick for Elle?”

A little more confidently this time, the boy plucked a second coin from the barrel. His face was drawn into a slight frown as he showed the glyph to Zoe. “I don’t recognize that one,” he said, slightly uneasy.

“Time,” she whispered, as the father took the coin reverently into his hand. It was one of the three extraordinary blessings that belonged to no category and were rarely bestowed. “A marvelous gift for such a young girl.”

“Then I did it right?” the boy asked, bouncing eagerly.

Zoe couldn’t resist reaching out to tousle his already untidy red hair. “You did exceptionally well.”

The father was fumbling in his pockets, searching for more prosaic coins. “Do I—I’m sorry, I can’t recall—should you be paid for your services?” He swiveled around to look with some dismay at the door where the matronly woman had already disappeared. “Except—oh, dear—but I didn’t think of it in time—or is it an insult?”

“You may offer small thanks, but you are not compelled to do so,” Zoe told him. Her father had explained this to her once, fortunately, or she would not have known how to answer. “And those who have bestowed their blessings may accept your thanks, but they do not dishonor you if they refuse. Though some choose then to toss those coins in the tithing box,” she added.

She was not surprised when the hungry-looking boy happily accepted the quint-silver pressed into his hand and then went skipping out the door. But she shook her head when the new father tried to give her the same wages.

“I have been paid,” she said, smiling. “I have been touched with all their blessings, and your happiness, too.”

“Is it—I have heard it was customary—should I pull a blessing for myself as well?” he asked.

Zoe laughed. “I would think you need a blessing now more than you ever did,” she said. And she laughed even harder, trying to muffle the sound against her palm, when the coin he chose was stamped with the symbol for patience.

“No doubt that is something you will have very great need of with baby twins in the house,” she said merrily.

His grin was lopsided but genuine. “Perhaps you should pull a blessing for yourself,” he suggested.

“Perhaps I will,” she replied, and picked up the first coin her fingers encountered. “Clarity,” she said, and smiled a little. It had been the blessing her father coveted most, though she remembered it coming into his hands only once or twice during their ten years of exile. “I do believe my mind is starting to clear.”

The young father looked faintly intrigued by that, and Zoe had the sense he might have followed up with questions on any other day when the tasks awaiting him at home were not so urgent. “I can’t—you have been—thank you,” he said in his disordered way.

She smiled. “And you have been as well,” she said. “May all blessings fall on you and yours for the remainder of your days.”

Z
oe had fallen into the habit of joining Calvin and Annova for dinner three or four times every nineday, usually when she had bought herself a treat and was embarrassed to think she might eat the whole thing on her own. On her way home that night, she purchased a shockingly expensive bag of chocolate drops imported from a country she couldn’t even pronounce. Annova almost gasped when Zoe handed it over.

“I know how much these cost, and if you can afford them, you shouldn’t be sleeping down here at the river,” she said. That didn’t stop her from scooping up a candy and sliding it instantly in her mouth. Her eyes closed and she made a small sound of satisfaction.

Zoe laughed. “I had to celebrate,” she said. “I was approached in the streets and asked to bestow random blessings on a set of twin girls. After such an event, you cannot live an ordinary life. You must be extravagant.”

This explanation seemed perfectly reasonable to Annova. “What did you draw for them?”

“Grace and serenity.”

“Excellent virtues.”

Zoe smiled. “Ones that I sometimes wish had been bestowed upon me.”

They had long ago compared their own blessings. Annova’s were all
torz
and
coru
, which Zoe would have been able to guess; she was a nurturing sort of woman.

“Your own blessings will serve you well,” Annova said.

“Beauty and power?” Zoe said a little derisively. “They do not seem to have hovered over me so far.”

Annova reached up to fool with the untidy locks of hair falling into Zoe’s face. “You are not a conventional beauty, it is true. But neither am I, and I very much like the way I look,” she replied. “I’m sure your father was a fine man, but it usually takes a woman to help a girl learn how to enhance her looks.”

“And my mother died when I was eleven,” Zoe said.

“Let me cut your hair and show you how to wear cosmetics,” Annova said. “Different ones from the kinds I use. Your skin is much fairer.”

Zoe widened her eyes. “That’s kind but—” She gestured at the whole expanse of the river flats, filling up with their nightly quota of transients. “Who is there to impress with my new beauty?”

“You will not spend all your life camping here,” Annova said with conviction.

“Even if I don’t, why is it that suddenly
today
you think I need to improve myself?”

Annova’s voice was gentle. “Because suddenly
today
you are laughing, and I see what a pretty girl you could be.”

Zoe was so surprised that she simply sank to the ground, reviewing the state of her heart. Yes—she had felt deep amusement once or twice as she consulted with the seer, and she had felt actual delight as she participated in the blessing ritual. She would not have gone so far as to say she was feeling joyous, but she felt looser somehow, limber, as if the joints of her soul had warmed up after seasons spent locked immobile. She was beginning to remember what it felt like to be herself.

Clarity.

The coin she had pulled from the barrel was, like every blessing, proving itself to be true.

A
middle-aged woman named Sima helped Annova cut and style Zoe’s hair, though Zoe had not been so certain about the cutting part. “Nonsense, you’re as ragged as an alley cat,” Sima had said so matter-of-factly that Zoe couldn’t bother to be offended. And apparently there was no cutting without washing, and if you were going to wash your hair, you might as well scrub your whole body. So the day of Zoe’s transformation began with the three of them flinging themselves into the chilly Marisi during the morning hours reserved for the women to bathe.

It was the first time Zoe had wholly immersed herself since arriving at the river flats. A few of the more enterprising residents set up bathing tents along the banks every day, and a couple of times every nineday she had paid her five coppers for a tub of clean water and a modicum of privacy. But Sima and Annova had no inhibitions about completely disrobing and stepping into the water, staying close enough to the bank that they were never more than waist deep. Dozens of other women were already bobbing in the current, some of them holding babies and toddlers, others swimming out with long, sure strokes into the deeper, faster waters.

Annova’s body was long and sleek; Sima’s was full and pendulous, the pale stomach showing stretch marks and scars from numerous child-births. It didn’t bother them that anyone could stare at them, note their imperfections—and their attractions—judge their weight, their health.

“Come on,
coru
girl!” Annova shouted when Zoe lingered too long on the bank. “You cannot be afraid of the river.”

Zoe took a deep breath, then dropped all her clothes on the ground and stepped into the Marisi.

She had expected it to be icy from its plunge down the mountains, but apparently its long, somnolent pause in the pool beside the palace allowed it time to heat up under a strengthening sun. Not that it was actually
warm
. Zoe felt her skin prickle with goose bumps as she held her breath and ducked her head under the unquiet surface.

For a long moment, it was as if she had suspended the need to breathe.

The water swirled around her, almost as if gathering her in an embrace. She felt as though silken hands brushed along her bare arms, stroked down the length of her thigh. Muffled voices murmured at her ears, speaking words just outside of her ability to comprehend. She felt buoyant, liberated, energized, and at peace. She felt, for a brief, glorious stretch of time, as if she belonged.

Then her lungs burned with protest and her mind clamored with alarm. She shot to the surface, taking in great gasps of air, and beating her arms against the water to warm up her skin.

Sima and Annova were splashing over with big, messy footsteps. “How can you stay under so long?” Annova demanded. “I thought maybe you’d been swept away.”

Zoe was still panting, but she felt incredible. As if she had run swiftly down a mountain, as if she had spun herself into dizziness, as if she had drunk glass after glass of wine, suffering no effect except euphoria. She laughed. “
Coru
girl,” she said, because really, there was no other explanation. “Water is my natural element.”

“Well, water is the element that will get you clean,” Sima said practically. The heavyset woman was holding a bar of some rough soap that smelled surprisingly fragrant. “You can use this to wash your skin
and
your hair,” she said.

They all commenced to lather up and rinse off with great efficiency, since the longer they were in the water, the colder it seemed. Two little girls chased each other in and out of the river while their mother called to them sleepily from the bank; other women jumped in, scrambled out, and swam by while the three of them worked. It was a lively, happy scene, and Zoe found herself smiling the whole time.

Once they were out and dried off and back at Annova’s campsite, Sima combed out Zoe’s hair and began to make careful cuts. “I would
like
to trim it short around your face, but Annova says you aren’t ready for drastic changes,” Sima says. “But see how you like it when there is just a little styling.”

The “little” styling also involved heating slim rods over the brazier and wrapping locks of Zoe’s hair around them, a process that Zoe viewed with alarm. “That’s why I keep my own so short,” Annova said, running a hand over her crisp black hair.

While Sima worked, Annova began fussing over Zoe’s face with a motley assortment of cosmetics—cracked and nearly empty pots of rouge, dry end-sticks of kohl, crumbled cakes of eye powder. Zoe was surprised to learn she
wanted
to see what she could become under someone else’s hands. She had always been simply Navarr Ardelay’s daughter. Who else might emerge when that persona was pushed aside?

Annova had insisted Zoe change into a deep red tunic, more tightly fitted than most of the ones she owned. “You don’t wear enough
sweela
colors,” she scolded. “They’re the right ones for your complexion.”

“I like blues and greens. Shades of
coru
.”

“Those are good, too, but they must be the right shades.”

Finally she was dressed to the satisfaction of the older women, her face made up, every strand of hair arranged just so. “There,” Annova said with satisfaction. “
This
is how you are meant to look when you live up to your blessing of beauty.”

Sima had brought a mirror, something Zoe had consulted only rarely during the past ten years. It was about the size of her palm and not really useful for getting a good look at her overall image, but what she saw in bits and pieces looked nothing like the person she remembered.

Her black hair lay perfectly against her face, curling at her chin. Her dark eyes looked huge, the lids shadowed with subtle sweeps of charcoal. Her thin mouth was fuller, redder, and curved in a smile. The gold and scarlet colors of her ensemble reflected deeper color into her sallow skin.

She was not a beauty, but she looked striking. Clear-eyed. Confident. Slightly mysterious.

“A
coru
girl with a
sweela
heart,” Annova said with satisfaction. “And what do you get with that?”

Sima was the one who replied. “Steam.”

SEVEN

T
hree days later, Zoe had a job.

A few more shopping trips to the Plaza of Women, a few investments in the bold colors that Annova approved of, and Zoe found herself exchanging her third gold coin for more reasonable denominations. A quick count of the lumps still left lining her shawl made her think she would race through her inheritance in little more than a year if she continued at this pace. So the next time Calvin and Annova invited her to dinner, she expressed her intention to seek employment.

“Come with me to the shop district tomorrow,” Annova said. “I’ll introduce you to some friends.”

The next day, Zoe and Annova spent a pleasant couple of hours strolling by the storefronts while Annova pointed out the boutiques where she knew the owners. They discussed the advantages of working for a vintner, a bookseller, and a woman who made fashionable women’s clothing, but in the end Annova decided Zoe should offer her services to a cobbler and his wife. “
Torz
, both of them, but she only bore the one son, and he’s proved to be restless,” Annova said. “You can be useful to them, I believe.
Coru
sustains
torz
. Water drenches earth.”