Cybele's Secret (19 page)

“They’re my sisters,” Tati said simply. “I love them. I miss them. I want to see them so much it hurts. Such things are important to human folk, Your Majesty. Isn’t there some way I can earn the right? Or if I can’t go across, couldn’t I win them the privilege of coming back here, just for a little?”

Ileana gave a slow smile. On the trees around her throne, the leaves shivered. “You do not know what you ask, Tatiana,” she said softly.

“With respect, Your Majesty, I do know,” Tati said. “I’ve talked to Sorrow about it, and he agrees. I am prepared to undertake a quest.”

“I see. And if you had to choose just one of your sisters to see, which would it be? Jena, to whom you owe so much? Little Stela, who lost the most by being forbidden the Other Kingdom, since she was only a child when the portal was closed? Clever Paula, whom our scholars miss so badly, or Iulia, who danced like moonlight?”

Tati’s eyes had widened. “Only one of them?” she whispered. “How could I possibly choose?”

“How indeed?” Ileana looked amused. My heart was pounding fast as I wondered what Tati would do, what cruel choice she would make. “As it is,” the forest queen went on, “you need not decide that part of it until your quest is complete. It will link very neatly with a mission we have for your sister Paula, who happens to be right where we need her. Drçžgu
a has been asked for assistance—an old, old friend in another part of the world requires human intervention to set matters right. This can become a threefold mission: We can assist Drçžgu
a’s friend, give you your chance, and, at the same time, help no fewer than three human folk to learn and grow. Tell me, how brave is your sister?”

Then, before I could hear more, the scene dissolved around me, Tati, Ileana, the scholars of the Other Kingdom fading away as if they had never been, and I was lying in my bed at the han, with darkness outside and only my tears for company.

Poor Tati! In all those years of missing her, I had not imagined she, too, might be unhappy. She had been so sure of her love for Sorrow, so certain in her choice to leave us. If only I had been able to hold the dream a little longer. I had so wanted to walk forward, to put my arms around her and tell her we loved her and missed her, as she did us. As for being brave, I hoped very much that I could be as brave as I needed to be.

Now I had to go to the privy. Stoyan was asleep, lying across the outer doorway, through which I must pass to make my way along the gallery. I fumbled for my cloak, then tiptoed out of my closet and across the larger chamber in my bare feet. Stoyan was lying on his back with one arm flung over his eyes and the other relaxed by his side, the blanket loose around him. His pose was that of a small boy exhausted by a day’s activity. For all my confusion, it made me smile. I put one hand against the door frame and stepped across him.

A powerful hand seized my ankle. I teetered, then sprawled at full length onto the hard floor of the gallery. “Ahh!” I exclaimed as a spear of pain stabbed through my ankle.

The hand released its viselike grip. “Paula!” He was on his knees, lifting me with an arm around my shoulders, his voice rough with comprehension come a moment too late. “I hurt you! Why were you out of bed? What is wrong—”

“Nothing,” I said, grimacing as I gingerly felt my ankle. “I got up to go to the privy, that’s all. I didn’t want to wake you. I’m fine, really.” But my ankle still hurt, and as soon as I tried to rise to my feet, it was obvious. I hobbled to one of the chairs by the little gallery table and lowered myself carefully onto it. “I’ve just wrenched it,” I said.

Stoyan looked devastated at what he had done. “You are crying.” He crouched by me, reaching a hand to brush my cheek. “You are badly hurt. I should wake Master Teodor—”

“Don’t. I will be all right soon, Stoyan. They’re not tears of pain. I had another dream. I really didn’t want to disturb you again. I’m sorry. And now I’m going to have to hobble to the privy. You might need to help me. So much for lessons in self-defense.”

Leaning on him, I got there and back well enough. Then I was wide awake, the image of Tati clear in my mind and the mission teasing at my thoughts. “I won’t be able to sleep for a while,” I said. “You don’t need to stay up with me. I’ll just sit here and think.”

“I will put a strapping on your ankle.” He was already looking in his bundle of belongings, stowed on a shelf just inside the main doorway of our quarters. “If you permit. It will swell before morning; this will make it more comfortable.”

The ankle hurt too much for me to worry about propriety. “Thank you,” I said. “Stoyan, I need to go back to the library in the morning. I dreamed about Tati again; she’s here because she’s earning the right to visit us—her sisters, I mean. That’s the reward for her quest. And it’s tied up with mine. Stoyan, if we go to Irene’s, I might see Tati again and be given my last clues so I can work out what it is we have to do. Will you have time to take me there before you escort Father to the blue house?”

The end to this evening had been interesting. Father hadn’t said a single word about Cybele’s Gift until we had parted ways with Irene and Murat and returned to the han. Then he had calmly reminded me that our own buyer was a scholarly collector of advanced years with a passionate devotion to religious antiquities. This man, unwed and something of a recluse, would care little about the supposed capacity of Cybele’s Gift to bestow a future of good fortune and prosperity on its owner. Chances were he would not be troubled by the availability of only half the piece; he would still want it for its historical interest. Indeed, Father had said, our buyer should be delighted to obtain the item at a reduced price. Slightly reduced. Father had no intention of letting anyone else outbid him now that success was within his grasp. Before we had left the blue house, he had told Barsam he would be back in the morning with a revised bid, one that was likely to be acceptable. He had asked the Armenian to hold Cybele’s Gift until the midday call to prayer.

“There is only one possible problem,” Father had added. “Perhaps one or two of the others might consider coming back to Barsam with revised bids, but I don’t believe anyone was keen enough to act immediately. Except for Duarte Aguiar. He was still there when we left Barsam’s house; I imagine he remains in the race. And they say he’s ruthless. I expect he, too, will be there in the morning, ready with an offer. I’ll go early, but not so early that I disturb Barsam’s household and risk offending him. I can outbid Duarte. The man’s purse cannot be bottomless.”

“He must be quite wealthy,” I’d said. “He couldn’t maintain the
Esperança
without a good source of funds, surely.”

“Perhaps he has a rich family,” Father had said. “Stoyan, I will need you in the morning. Not straight after breakfast, but a little later.”

Now, in the semidarkness of our quarters, Stoyan had found what he was looking for: a strip of linen and a small pot of something pungent. “A salve,” he explained. “It should bring down the swelling. Will you…?”

I hitched the skirt of my nightrobe up toward my knee and put my foot on the other chair. I made myself breathe slowly as I felt Stoyan’s hands on my ankle, gently massaging in the ointment. A confusion of sensations filled me: pain, certainly, but something else as well, something I liked more than was appropriate. I valued our friendship; I knew he did, too. I liked the way he was there when I needed him, strong, quiet, and capable. Anything further between us—the sort of relationship Irene had hinted at—would be all wrong. There were so many arguments against such a development that I would not even entertain the idea of it.

When he was done, Stoyan wrapped my ankle in a neat bandage. “This Aguiar,” he murmured as he bent to fasten the ends of the linen securely, “you like him?”

A startling question. “What do you mean by ‘like him’?” I asked.

“You spoke much to him tonight. As if he were not an acquaintance but a friend. There was a smile in your eyes as you did so. I wonder if you have not heeded my warning. He seeks to exploit you, Paula. I see this in his face.”

Cautiously, I returned my foot to the ground. “It does feel much better with the strapping,” I acknowledged. “Thank you, Stoyan. And don’t worry about Duarte. He loves to flirt. If it hadn’t been with me, it would have been with some other woman. It means nothing.”

“You did not answer my question.” He was rolling up the extra bandage, stowing things away.

I tried to summon an honest answer. “It seems wrong to say I like him if there’s any possibility he was the one who threatened Antonio. But he appeared quite shocked when I suggested that, so maybe I was wrong. Duarte is interesting to talk to, full of surprises. He seems to enjoy the same kinds of things I do, books and ideas in particular. I’m flattered that he wants to talk to me. But I don’t trust him. And maybe you can’t actually like someone unless you have trust in them.” The topic was uncomfortable, especially in the middle of the night. “You should go back to sleep,” I said.

“Why were you crying? What did you see in your dream?”

“I dreamed about Tati.” My voice sounded small and forlorn; I couldn’t help it. “She was in the Other Kingdom, and she was saying how much she missed her family and that she would undertake a quest just to be allowed to see us….”

A sudden wave of homesickness came over me. I covered my face with my hands, unable to stop the tears. Stoyan moved to kneel by my chair and put his arm around my shoulders, muttering something indistinct. I gave myself up to weeping. It was only when the flood began to abate that I realized I was holding on tightly with my face pressed against his shoulder and that he was whispering words of comfort against my hair and doing his own share of holding. So much for heeding my own good advice.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I muttered, pulling back. “How embarrassing for you. I can’t believe I did that. It may be hard for you to believe, but I’m actually not the crying sort of girl. In your company, I seem to have been doing it regularly. Please don’t tell Father I was so upset. He’d be worried.”

“As you wish.” Stoyan had withdrawn to a safe distance. His face was in the shadows, and I had no idea what he thought of my inappropriate behavior or my attempt at an apology. “Master Teodor is not the only one who worries,” he went on. “With your ankle injured, you are still more vulnerable. I cannot teach you what I planned to; not yet. But I can show you a trick that you may use even when not at your full strength. Let me demonstrate….”

So it was that, in the middle of the night, I learned a way of getting out of someone’s grasp by cunning rather than by physical strength. We even practiced it, in a modified form that would not strain my ankle. It kept me so occupied that there was no chance to brood on anything else. When the combat session was over, I felt obliged to deliver a lesson in return. By the light of a candle, I made Stoyan practice the letters of the Greek alphabet. He had a remarkably steady hand; I had observed that with our tree exercise. All the same, his fingers holding the twig trembled as he wrote in the sand tray, as if this task were something of which he was deeply fearful. It seemed to me he expected to fail, and the prospect terrified him. I realized I would have to take it more slowly than I had planned. Would a month be long enough to convince him that he could do this? Could he find the will to continue after I was gone?

“We must try to sleep,” I said when we were done and the implements of the lesson were neatly packed away. “Tomorrow is a big day.”

“Today,” said Stoyan. “Thank you, Paula. I hurt you. You responded with kindness. What can I say?”

I smiled. Didn’t he realize he was a very model of kindness? “You can just say good night and sweet dreams,” I told him. “Or no dreams, that might be better. We’re friends, Stoyan. Friends do this sort of thing for each other; it comes with the job.”

“Good night, Paula.” His voice was almost inaudible. “I am honored to be your friend.”

I was in the library, the real one this time, with a second box of manuscripts beside me and my mind darting from one thing to another. I was on my own. Perhaps my pale face and shadowed eyes had alerted Irene to my need for time alone this morning.