Misery's Child (The Cadian Chronicles) (12 page)

Even if he had not
been the heir to the Jeptallan Seat,
Scearce would have been
sought after by every unmarried female in the province
. Women saw his
fair, gentle face with those liquid, long-lashed eyes and melted. But so far,
he’d spared hardly a look for any of them.

It wasn’t that he
was uninterested.
Quite the contrary.
Their sidelong
looks and pink lips made him shiver with nervousness. He never knew what to say
to them; his experience with the opposite sex had been mostly limited to his
mother, elderly servants and to another whom he hadn’t seen in a fistful of
summers. Even that friendship was cut from the cloth of childhood, like a
favorite toy discarded but still recalled with much affection.

And he could
hardly lump Lilli with the village girls who giggled and winked as he passed
by. His feelings toward her had been of an entirely different sort: brotherly,
protective and tender. The local wenches who eyed him so blatantly elicited
another response, so strong and coarse that he was afraid of dishonoring his
house. He knew other young men in less enviable positions took pleasure
wherever they liked; but he also knew the ruined girls and bastard children
they left in their wake. No, it was better he wait until his father found a
bride for him. So it was with an equal mix of excitement and anxiety that he
overheard the conversation between his father and Lord General Bastrop.

“Your uncle has
come to propose a bride for you. His niece,
Toyva
.”

“Fie, Uncle!
Sounds like incest to me.”

Bastrop laughed.
Scearce had called him “uncle” since he was old enough to talk; it was an
honorary title of affection, much as men who’d served together in the ranks
called each other “brother” where no blood was shared.

Tullus handed his
son the portrait of
Toyva
. The young man shifted from
foot to foot as he gazed down into a soft, round little face with a nubby chin
and fat cheeks.

“I was telling your father the portrait does her
little justice,” Bastrop said when Scearce did not speak. “She’s a sprite of a
thing, talks too much and giggles. But she’s a good girl, from a fine family,
if I do say so myself.”

“She’ll think me
old,” Scearce said, returning the small oval to Bastrop. “She looks like a
baby.”

“She’s fifteen,
the right age.” Bastrop snorted. “Take a girl any older for a bride and you’ll
find they have already acquired the most annoying habits. And she’ll find you
much younger than the other prospects her mother would consider. Sweet Mother,
before I left she’d received a call from Vidor
Renegor
.”

“
Renegor
of Mannishulo?
That scrounging
old fool
?” Tullus laughed, some of his good humor restored. “He must be
nearly ninety, the randy old goat. He should be ashamed of himself.”

“Ah, does not the
Book of Belah say a man should sow his seed for as long as the soil is
fertile?” Bastrop grinned at the flush in Scearce’s cheeks. “Don’t you see?
She’ll think you Belah reborn, come to save her from a life in Mannishulo with
eight stepchildren older than her own father and mother!”

Scearce laughed in
spite of himself. Bastrop had always been so kind to him, better than his three
blood uncles had ever been.
Alron
and
Ramertah
, contented in their own small estates in the Outer
Kingdom, were mere names to Scearce, not family. He’d met them at his mother’s
burial rites last summer for the first time since his naming ceremony as an
infant.

Merton, the eldest
after Tullus, was a different matter. His estate, a fertile and large holding
just outside the Third Wall, was near enough that he visited often, usually to
borrow coin or complain, or perhaps just to measure Scearce’s health and
progress with
slitted
eyes. Tullus’ only son was all
that stood between Merton’s own offspring—three short, brawny
boys—and the Seat of Jeptalla. Scearce did not think himself at all
paranoid to distrust the man.

“So, you’ll think
about it?” Bastrop squeezed his shoulder and winked.

“But I can’t
bespeak myself to anyone I haven’t even met.” He knew nothing of this girl.
Suppose she was stupid or ugly, igniting none of the passions he had waited so
long to indulge? “Suppose we have nothing to talk about?”

“Bah! It’s
dangerous for a man to talk to his wife,” Bastrop laughed, only half-joking.
Imagine a boy worrying about being able to converse with his wife!

“I can’t at least
meet her first?” Scearce glanced anxiously at his father. “Mother....”

“What is it, boy?”
Tullus’ voice thickened. Even after all these moon risings, the
merest
reference to his dead wife was painful. He had not
dreamed he could miss someone with an ache so deep and steady. “Speak up.”

“When Mother and I
spoke of marriage, she made me promise I would choose wisely, with heart and
head equally balanced. She said that the only happy marriages were ones where
both were considered.”

He saw no point in
mentioning that particular conversation with his mother had begun the day she
told him he must stop writing to Lilli.

“She said that,
did she?”

“Yes, father.”
Scearce’s gray eyes met those of his sire. “She said she knew the moment she
saw you that you were the man she would marry.”

“Well, then,”
Tullus said softly, “we will give your bride the same opportunity.”

“Thank you,
father.”

“And what should I
tell my niece?” Bastrop couldn’t repress a faint scowl. He had hoped to have
the business settled. Instead, he would return home to face his nagging sister,
who thought of nothing but her daughter’s marriage night and day. “That you
will not consider her until you’ve looked her over in the flesh? Checked her
teeth mayhaps, like a barnyard nag?”

“Oh, uncle!”
Scearce laughed. He was relieved beyond measure that his father had spared him
a bride sight-unseen. “Please give
Toyva
this token
of my sincerest interest—” he tugged a small ring from his finger and
pressed it into Bastrop’s palm— “and tell her that I hope to prove myself
a worthy candidate for her consideration when we meet at the Festival of the
Single Moon—”

“The festival! But
that’s a whole summer hence!”

“And if at that
time it pleases us both,” Scearce continued, unaware of the astonishment on his
father’s face, “then we will ask the blessing of the Shallan himself.”

Bastrop swore
quietly, yet was unable to resist a smile. He was disappointed not to be
bringing
Toyva
an actual proposal, but he saw the
sense in Scearce’s plan. The two young people would have time to correspond and
get to know one another, and it was an old and honorable tradition to seek the
Shallan’s blessing on the final day of the festival. Many traveled to Shallanie
for just that purpose.
Toyva’s
mother would be
pleased that Scearce had thought of it. Not everyone in the realm felt the
Jeptallans were as dutiful to the Shallan and Omana Teret as they should be.

Besides, the Lord
of Tira thought to himself, perhaps by then
Toyva
would have outgrown those annoying giggles of hers.

Chapter 7: Osane

She heard the
sobbing as it echoed off the polished marble hallway long before she ever
reached the shallana’s chambers. Cadia-dedre Osane took a deep breath and
smoothed the skirts of her scarlet burlang before entering the room. She wished
she did not have to deal with this. But Anthely had called for her and she
could not refuse.

The bedchamber of
the shallana was enormous, spanned by gilded beams and supported by columns of
the same pale pink
chiate
as adorned
the hall outside. The hazy room was virtually empty but for the bed, the silk
canopy embroidered with tiny gold flowers. A gaggle of uneasy women near the
windows looked up as Osane entered.

The thick smell of
burning darma petals closed her throat and stung her eyes. The incense was
supposed to soothe the soul, but it did not bring any peace to the woman who
lay tangled in the bedclothes.

A metallic smell
just beneath the incense hit Osane’s nostrils. Then she saw the blood on the
sheets.

“It’s definite,
then,” she murmured, to no one in particular. “She’s lost another one.”

“Don’t you dare
speak of me as if I were not even in the room!
”
A
tear-streaked face rose from the bed.

Shallana
Anthely’s pale face glistened, her chestnut hair
plastered flat with sweat across her forehead. Her still-thickened figure
curled, knees to her chest, as another contraction rocked her.

Osane groped
through the sheets for the shallana’s hand. “Dearest, I spoke without
thinking,” she said, lifting the white hand to her lips tenderly, “I did not
mean to cause you pain.”

She gestured and
one of the women brought a basin of water. The cadia-dedre moistened a towel
and sponged the perspiration from the writhing woman’s face, all the while
murmuring soft and low. “
Ssh
,
ssh
, sister, I know.
Ssh
....”

“I don’t...know
what happened,” Anthely whispered through her tears. “I was so careful this
time. I was
careful
....” The weeping
woman writhed against the bedclothes, burying her face in the pillows.

“
Ssh
. I know. I know. Breathe deeply, dearest.
Ssh
.”

Osane sighed as
she handed the cloth back and bade them fetch cooler water. She was sick of
this scene. How many young faces, contorted by pain and shame, had looked up at
her from this same bed? Wide, wounded eyes that begged for any explanation at
all.

Soccia caught her
eyes across the bed. As the official healer to the Shallana for more than
twenty summers,
Soccia
had witnessed even more of
these scenes than Osane.

Osane gave
directions, wondering why they needed her to tell them to get Anthely out of
the bloody sheets. Couldn’t they think of anything on their own?

“Did you give her
something?” Osane asked as Soccia closed the door behind them.

“A sedative, to
help her sleep and ease the cramps,” Soccia said, falling into an unhurried
step beside her superior. “She’ll rest now.”

Osane felt much
older than her forty-five summers. She spared an idle glance at her reflection
in the mirrors as they passed and was surprised to see the same serene face
that had greeted her each morning, virtually unchanged for the past two dozen
summers. Sometimes it frightened her that she could hide her emotions so
completely, that all she had seen and felt left so little mark on her physical
being. It was a deceptively soft, unremarkable face, with the bright eyes of a
child, round-apple cheekbones and a tiny pale mouth. Her kerchief hid her
hair—thick and curling, but already completely gray as if it alone had
absorbed the age which the rest of her body refused.

Soccia, walking
beside her, did not look her age, either. The apotheca could pass for forty
instead of sixty, in spite of the faint limp that plagued her. People had
always whispered that the cadia knew how to trick time, but even Osane, now
cadia-dedre
and the supreme keeper of
secrets, still had no idea why the sisters held the bloom of youth long past
their prime.

Osane had been
anointed seven summers past. It was the final rung in an ascension of blazing
ambition, not for power, but perfection as a sister of the order. Born to
bastardy and poverty in the province of Sealles, she’d been abandoned on the
doorstep of the local school where her memories began. The cadia-techas had
taken her in, fed her, clothed her, taught her, and loved her. She had never
wanted any life other than this.

They had accepted
her as a novice at twelve. By sixteen, she had completed her
assiduarte
—two summers of total
silence and service at a cloister in Bethosa. At eighteen, she put on the gray
burlang of a
fully-trained
cadia and entered the ranks
of the
cadia-chatels
, a servant in
the school where she’d grown up, working along side those who had raised her.
She had not resented the ceaseless toil, for service was the purpose of life.
Osane’s great yearning was for perfection in all things, whether it be the
tapestry on which the sisters worked every evening or the floors she scrubbed
until her hands cracked and bled.

When she was
twenty-four, the order sent her to the Isle of Omana Teret for training as
an
historica
, one
of the many divisions of cadia-techa. She no longer milked cows or washed
laundry; instead she learned languages and studied ancient texts, arguing
theology and history with the
aesthicas
and
philosophes
. Osane wondered if
she had died and gone to Oman’s Great Isle beyond. She turned that
single-minded determination for perfection to her studies and essays; the
cadialana watched her and waited.