A Thousand Nights (11 page)

I walked to where the carver stood. Lo-Melkhiin’s mother did not try to stop me, nor did she follow me. More than anything, I wanted to see the desert, to imagine that if I looked in the
right direction, I would see the fires that burned around our father’s tents. To imagine that I would see a way back to my sister. Firh Stonetouched stood there instead, and I saw that his
hands were shaking before he wrapped his fingers around the crenellations that decorated the top of the wall, and gripped so hard I thought for a moment they might crumble.

“Do you miss the tents of your father, lady-bless?” he asked me.

“I do,” I said to him. I had not expected to be gone long enough to miss them. I had thought to die and return to the place where the bones of our father’s father’s
father lay in peace.

“I miss mine as well,” he said to me. “I miss them especially on nights like this.”

“The Skeptic said that there have been no nights like this while you or I have been living,” I reminded him gently.

“No,” he said to me. “I meant nights when we come together as a court. When...”

His voice trailed away, but I heard the rest of his thought as if he had spoken the words clearly in my ear. He did not like the nights when Lo-Melkhiin came to him and laid his hands upon his
shoulder.

“Will you have to carve now?” I asked him.

“I think so,” he said to me. “I can’t tell what yet, but I know that I will carve something.”

I laid my own hands on top of his where they still gripped the top of the wall. For a heartbeat, they were lit with copper fire, but he did not see it.

“I will tell the serving girls to bring you water,” I said to him.

He pulled his hands out from under mine, glancing nervously to see if anyone had seen us, but no one had.

“I will not stop to drink it, lady-bless,” he said to me.

“Then I will tell a footman to make you drink,” I said to him. “As long as he does not hurt you too much.”

Firh Stonetouched laughed. It was not a happy sound. I knew that he would hurt whether he drank or not.

“I am sorry,” I said to him. “It is the only way I can think of that I can help.”

“I understand, lady-bless,” he said to me. He bowed formally, and I returned to stand by Lo-Melkhiin’s mother until we were all finally dismissed to find our beds.

In the morning, the carving madness came upon Firh Stonetouched, and he would not be stopped from his work. All day, he stood in the hot sun and set his tools to the stone. Yet whenever a
serving girl came into the courtyard with a jug at her waist, he would go to her and drink. Beneath his hands, the statue took shape. The watching guards and footmen were certain that it would be a
lion, but the henna mistress said that the shape of the face was wrong. She was correct: by the time the sun had set, a lioness stood proudly in the courtyard.

When Lo-Melkhiin came to me that night, before he went back out to watch the second night of falling stars, he looked at me for a long time before he took my hands. This time, it was not the way
a lion stalks a gazelle, but rather the way a ram surveys the ewes.

“I ordered them to move the statue,” he said to me, once the fire had faded from our fingers. He did not release my hands. “I will not destroy something that took such work,
but it is not like the others.”

“Oh?” I said to him. I did not pretend interest; it was genuine.

“Yes,” he said to me. “There was something wrong with its eyes.”

Then he left me to dream of sand.

THE SEVEN NIGHTS OF FALLING STARS had ended, and I was still alive. I had been almost three weeks in Lo-Melkhiin’s qasr. There were few now who would not meet my eyes
when I called upon them, though they always looked away from my gaze. It befit my status as their queen, so I did not let it trouble me. I missed my sister every day, because she was my sister, and
because although I could talk to the women in the spinning room or any of the gardeners, none of them were my friend. I had not seen Firh Stonetouched again since the night of the starfall party.
The girl who brought my tea told me that he had been sent out on patrol. I did not find the lioness he had carved, either. Wherever Lo-Melkhiin had hidden it, it was hidden well.

On the morning of the eighteenth day since I was taken from my sister and from our father’s tents, I went looking for Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered. I had not sought him out during the
starfall. He had been every night upon the walls, watching the skies with the other Skeptics and the Priests, and debating with them. Lo-Melkhiin had told me this for no reason that I could
determine, but I was never bade to join them. I liked Lo-Melkhiin little enough in my chamber, with the lamps to show me his face. I did not like him at all in the dark.

Instead, I used the days of the falling stars to find all of the qasr gardens that I could. When I was upon the wall with Lo-Melkhiin’s mother, I had seen that the part of the qasr I lived
in was in fact very small, and rather isolated from the rest. I was not sure how much longer I would live in this place, but I was determined to learn my way about it. Also, I was very bored.

No one ever tried to halt my wanderings, and so on the morning I went to find Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered, I did not expect to be stopped. I met the same serving girls and footmen as always. They
bowed their heads when I passed, and moved to the side of the corridors to let me by if we were in close quarters when we met. I tried to avoid this: it made me uncomfortable to watch them get out
of my way, particularly if they labored with some heavy burden, but I knew they would not stop if I asked them to. They looked at me now, because they thought I might just live. And accordingly,
they treated me as their queen. If my brief discomfort was the price I paid for living, then I would pay it. The loneliness was less easy to bear, but I was bearing it as best I could.

I walked through the water garden, where the statue of Lo-Melkhiin’s mother stood astride the lions. I passed into a little hall, used by the women who brought lamp oil up from the
storerooms beneath the qasr. I had learned quite a bit from following them discreetly, and from listening to their talk. They were the ones who went into the most rooms and gardens of the qasr,
filling lamps and trimming wicks every day, so that when night time came again the lamps would be ready to hold back the darkness. It was not unlike following our goats, when my sister and I had
watched them; we could not always tell where the grazing would be, but the goats knew, and would lead us to it—along with the sheep, who were much less wise.

I was content to be a sheep for now, following the lamp-women when they were too busy at their tasks to notice me, and then pretending to be engrossed in some tapestry or vine sculpture if they
did. In this way, I learned the rooms closest to mine, and by hearing their talk, I learned what sort of people were likely to be in which places at certain times every day.

The mornings, so the lamp-women said, were the best time to change the oil in the Skeptics’ workrooms. They went out every day to watch the sun rise and break their fasts, and often did
not return indoors for several hours, particularly if they were arguing about something that they felt was important. They laughed when they said the last part. Skeptics were useful: they had given
us the water clock and the way to make words on paper, but sometimes they wandered into a thicket of their own making, and, like our ram did, tried to push their way out of it instead of just
backing up the way they’d come.

I knew the Skeptics would be on the east wall. It was not the highest, but it was high enough to see the sun rise, and there was a small balcony there. It was not half as grand as the one from
which we had watched the stars, but it was large enough for them to gather to watch the sun, and there was a cover to keep the sun from baking their thoughts out of their ears before they were
finished making them. Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered, did not always join them. He tired of their babble, the lamp-women said, and wished to have his own thoughts in peace before the day began. He went
by himself to the south wall, where the view was not as grand but the silence was better assured.

I climbed the stairs as quietly as I could, not wishing to disturb his thoughts. It was easy to talk to my mother and to my sister’s mother, even when they wore their priestly-whites. I
had not ever had occasion to speak to a Priest, much less a Skeptic, and it felt a bit like when I spoke to our father. I took a deep breath before I stepped out onto the narrow walkway at the top
of the wall, and then stood behind him, breathing as softly as I could while the sun fully cleared the horizon and began its daily trek across the sky.

“Do you know,” Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered said to me after a time, “I think the world is round. And I think we are near the side of it, not at the top.”

I had never thought what shape the world was. For so long, it had been the shape of our father’s tents. The shape of our father’s herds. The shape of my sister.

“Why?” I asked of him. I had not meant to pester him with questions, but it seemed that I was invited.

“I have watched the shadows here for many years,” he said to me. “You see how tall they are?”

I looked at the flagstones by his feet. The shadows were two full stones out from the high part of the wall, but there were scratches in the stone farther away from there, as well as several
that were closer.

“I do,” I said to him.

“They do not move very much,” he said to me, and pointed. “Here on the Longest Day, here on the Longest Night.”

Both marks were placed so that I could have spanned the distance between them with both hands. It did not seem like much distance to travel, especially for something as big as the sun, and I
said as much to him.

“If we were closer to the top of the world, the space would be bigger,” he said to me. “It is possible that at the very top or very bottom, there might be days with no sun at
all.”

I looked at the marks on the floor and thought about making shadow animals on the walls of our father’s tent.

“Could you not find out?” I asked of him. “I mean, revered Skeptic, if you took a ball and a lamp, could you not tell?”

He laughed then, and winked one eye at me.

“I could,” he said to me. “And I have. Never tell the other Skeptics that, for they will think it blasphemous. They would rather argue about it forever.”

“But then how will they know?” I asked.

“They do know,” he said to me, “more or less. But in arguing, they will ask and answer a dozen other questions.”

“I suppose that is worthwhile, then,” I said. No wonder he came up here to avoid the babble. I would rather know than talk.

He turned and bowed then, and I bowed back, forgetting who I was to him in this place.

“My queen,” he said to me. “Do you seek me out for a reason?”

“Yes,” I said to him. “I have questions about the smallgods.”

“Those are questions for the Priests,” he said to me.

“They may be,” I said to him. “But I thought to ask a Skeptic first.”

“I am intrigued by that, at least,” he said to me. “Come, let us get out of the sun.”

We went down the stairs and into the garden there. It was a water garden, like the one by my rooms. The fountain sang quietly in one corner, and vines grew up the sides of the walls. There was a
canopy and two cushions beneath it, along with a tray of oils and flatbread. Whoever it was that followed me whenever I left my chambers had arranged for enough food for both of us to break our
fast, and since my stomach rumbled when I saw the tray, I was grateful.

“I will do my best to answer your questions,” said Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered. “In return, I would like a story from your village.”

“That is fair,” I said to him, and wondered what tale I would tell. “I am not certain we have any great wisdom for you.”

“Wisdom is the currency of young men,” he said to me. “They seek it, thinking it is something they will find. You are young, and a woman besides, and yet still clever enough to
find me here today. That is wisdom few of my own students would have.”

He sat, and took an olive from the bowl. He put it in his mouth as I sat down beside him, and then spat the pit across the garden. I could not help myself, and laughed.

“That was no great distance,” he said. “When I was a young man, I could have cleared the wall.”

I looked up, and knew that he was jesting, but it had been a very long time since anyone had said anything light-hearted to me. I caught myself: it had not been a long time. It had been only the
time since I came to the qasr, and that was still short enough that I could number the days.

I took an olive and removed the pit with my thumbnail as I had been taught. Sokath, His Eyes Uncovered looked almost disappointed, so once I had eaten the olive I put the pit in my mouth and
spat it out as hard as I could. It barely cleared the cushion, and he laughed again.

“You will learn the trick of it if you practice,” he said to me. “Life is too short to pull out olive pits, when spitting them is so much more fun.”

He said it in a friendly way, but I looked at his eyes, and they were sad. He had more years than our father, and I would be lucky to live another day. I took another olive, this time wrapped in
flatbread. It nearly stuck in my throat, but I forced myself to swallow it, and then spat out the pit. It went no farther than the first one, but I felt I understood why; it had to do with where I
put my tongue.