Neveryona (23 page)

Pryn looked at her questioningly.

For answer, Madame Keyne nodded toward the broad way the cart was just rolling past. At the end of the shaggy pines was the stone wall with its heavy gate, its leather-helmeted guards, and, behind it, the cracked and indifferently patrolled roof. As they passed, Pryn could
see a rider had just come clattering up, who now bawled out, so they could hear even at this distance: ‘Go inside and tell your master, the Liberator, Gorgik, that the Iron Hawk has come to join his ranks!’

The rider cantered off toward the city. Pryn had not been able to tell from the voice, raucous and high-pitched as it was, if it were a man’s or a woman’s.

Pryn asked, ‘What do you mean, his allies?’

Madame Keyne flicked the reins. ‘I want to know: when he runs out of slaves to liberate, will he choose the men on my side or on the far side of the fence as his next cause? Whatever his political program, the Liberator’s is an image in our city both sincere and seductive. Whichever side he chooses, he may well succeed.’

Ahead, Pryn could see Madame Keyne’s gate. ‘Do you want me to get the answer?’

Madame Keyne raised an eyebrow. ‘How would you get an answer to that question in this city – ‘ the brow lowered – ‘other than by asking?’

‘But you don’t understand,’ Pryn said. Somehow she could no longer repress it. ‘I’ve ridden a dragon! And I – ‘

‘Have you now? So – ‘ Madame Keyne’s smile took on its familiar ambiguity – ‘you, my dragon-riding ambassador, will lay my anxieties at the Liberator’s feet? Under our present Empress, whose reign is clever and calculating, dragons have not been
that
popular.’

‘I can find out for you!’ The cart rolled toward the gate. ‘I can!’

‘I believe,’ Madame Keyne said as the studded planks swung in, and, between tugging fingertips, Samo’s face peered around the edge, ‘that you believe you can. And belief is a powerful force in these basic and barbaric times.’ She chuckled as they rolled up the drive. The
horse halted under the young fruit trees. Madame Keyne climbed down. Pryn climbed after her.

As she stepped from the bottom rung of the carriage’s ladder, Pryn saw Ini coming from the house. She stalked over the grass with the gleeful smile of a child about to surprise a returning parent.

Then Radiant Jade stepped from behind the house’s corner, one hand up as if to lean against it – the same gesture Pryn had noticed at their departure.

Madame Keyne went forward to pat the horse’s head.

Hands behind her back, Ini reached the first tree. Pryn had a memory of a young cousin coming up to see what present she’d been brought –

Then Radiant Jade ran forward!

She ran with fist-pumping urgency. She ran like a contestant in a year-end festival race. She snatched up her shift in one hand, shouting, ‘No … !’ Steps behind Ini, she flung herself at the cream-haired girl.

Half a dozen feet from Pryn and Madame Keyne, Ini hardly had time to look back. Jade collided with her. Ini staggered, grunted, and fell under Jade’s assault.

The two rolled on the grass …

… and Pryn saw the knife Jade struggled to tear from Ini’s fist. (Pryn remembered Ini’s strength with the rearing horse and caught her breath.) Jade gasped and shouted: ‘No! No – you can’t … We
can’t!
I’ve changed my mind! …
No!
… We mustn’t – ‘

The knife, Pryn realized, had been drawn behind Ini’s back all through the smiling approach.

Madame Keyne held the bridle in a shock as impassive as the roan’s calm. Suddenly she flung the horse’s head away – so that the beast stepped twice, three times, taking the cart with her – and strode forward. With one hand she yanked the knife from Ini’s hand. With the other she
began to strike about at the struggling pair. ‘Stop it! Stop it, I say! You are animals! Now stop it … !’

In a kind of oblivious horror, Pryn stepped – nearer, as it turned out, but it could as easily have been away.

Ini finally rolled from Jade, to sit, brushing grass and dirt from her arms. ‘Oh, all
right … !’

On all fours, with head hanging, Jade gasped with the effort of the fight.

Madame Keyne held the knife, awkwardly, above her head. Now that Jade and Ini had stopped, her other hand went to her neck, and her own breathing grew more erratic as Jade’s gasps stilled.

‘Madame Keyne,’ Pryn exclaimed, ‘they were going to kill you … ?’

‘My dear – ‘ Madame Keyne took another breath in which Pryn could hear the anger – ‘they were going to kill
you
. Ah – !’ She brought the knife down sharply to her side. ‘They
weren’t
going to kill you – they were only going to try and hurt you! But I
said
I wouldn’t let that happen! I said I – They were only trying to
scare
you! That was all they were doing!’ She looked at Jade and Ini. ‘Tell me that was all you were doing! Say it!’

‘That’s all we were doing.’ Ini picked a dead leaf from her elbow. ‘Jade just wanted to scare her.’

That was when Pryn realized the four of them were, now, surrounded by a peering circle of women and men, all of whom seemed, at first, strangers. But one was the heavy-set cook in her red scarf; and one was blinking Samo; and the three new kitchen girls; and over there, the gardener Clyton – among another five or six Pryn hadn’t even seen yet on the grounds.

‘I wouldn’t have done it!’ Radiant Jade gasped. ‘I wouldn’t have … I told
her
to do it! Yes. To scare her. But you see … I wouldn’t have really
let
her! You see, I
stopped
her! I stopped her …’

‘Get up!’ Madame Keyne said. ‘Get up, I say!’

Ini stood, bending to brush grass from her knees.

Jade began to cry. Her head sank even lower. ‘I have nothing! Don’t you see, Rylla, I have nothing. You have everything! You have money, a fine home, servants, respect! I, I have nothing – I
am
nothing! Now you would take even the little I have from me and give it – ’

‘Oh, stop it!’ Madame Keyne declared.

‘You are an empress here; you are a woman of high standing in the city – whereas I am totally at the mercy of your every whim and caprice – ’

‘I – ?’ Madame Keyne declared. In her laugh was anger. ‘I, empress? No, my dear.
You
rule here, despotically and completely! I loved you – and love you still; and I have been tyrannized for it. You order this room decorated thus, object to the decor in that one. And we all know we must comply, or suffer your sulkings and poutings till we are made miserable with them! You come from your room in the morning, and both servants and houseguests fall silent, waiting to see if you are in a mood or a pet over this or that. If you are, any one of us may be snapped at, snubbed, insulted, or – most mercifully – ignored; which allows us, at least, I suppose, to go on with our day. But sometimes I am silly enough to want something more than to be ignored!’

‘Nothing! Nothing at all!’ Radiant Jade cried. ‘Nothing! I hate myself. I loathe myself. You
are
right, Rylla. You are right about everything. You are
always
right! I cannot
live
with your insufferable rightness – ’

‘Oh, put it up, Jade!’

‘But it is terrible to live with! Yes, I treat you, the servants, everyone, horribly! And you would destroy the one bit of self-esteem I have left by depriving me of my position and giving it to this … this awful girl! She doesn’t belong here! Look at her, she should be in the
forests, in the mountains, on the sea – anywhere but here!’ (Pryn frowned at that but was too surprised to question it.) ‘She isn’t worthy of us – of you, Rylla. Oh,
why
did you bring her here? Why!’

Madame Keyne took a deep breath, the knife out from her side. ‘You silly, silly woman!’ She ordered Ini: ‘Help her up!’

‘I will go,’ Jade declared, still on the ground. ‘I won’t be put out – I couldn’t stand that. But I’ll go of my own accord. You needn’t ask me …’

‘I am
not
making Pryn my new secretary,’ Madame Keyne said. ‘Your position here is secure.’

Radiant Jade clutched unsteadily at the Ini’s knees as the pale-haired young woman reached down to help.

‘Of course I’m not!’ Madame Keyne went on. ‘Oh, you
are
silly! I am making Pryn my … my ambassador. She is going to go on a mission – ’

Had it not been for the circle of servants, Pryn might have run off then, somewhere, to hide.

‘A dangerous mission which she has volunteered for and from which she might not return. And if she
does
return, then … we shall reward her and send her on her way!’

‘You’re sending her away?’ On her knees, Jade lay her head against Ini’s hip; Ini still tried to pull her to her feet. ‘You’re not going to replace me – ’

‘Pryn was not brought here with her own consent. I could no more keep her here than …’ Madame Keyne took another breath – ‘… than you could harm her for no reason.’

Radiant Jade finally got her feet under her. One arm around Ini’s shoulder, her head still hung. Her hair had come partially loose. Pryn, who had always kept her own hair fairly short, was surprised there was so much of it. Jade brushed her hand over her forehead. More hair fell.

‘All right!’ Madame Keyne said, ‘I want to go and walk in my garden. I want you three to come with me – where we can talk.’

‘All right!’ Radiant Jade took a breath that seemed a kind of imitation of Madame Keyne’s. The phrase, Pryn realized, was to the servants. ‘To your jobs now! There’s no reason to stand around gawking at the misery of your masters! Go on with you, I say!’

Glancing at each other, the servants broke their ring.

‘Yes,’ Madame Keyne said. ‘Please, go now. Back to your work. Everything is … all right.’

Her arm tightly about Ini’s shoulder so that she moved the young woman, unsteadily, with her, Radiant Jade began to walk – unsteadily – forward.

In a voice devoid of all the edges Pryn associated with it, Ini said, ‘Why do you lean against me so?’ It was a rather caressing voice. Ini’s arm was firmly about Jade’s shoulders as she helped the barbarian along. ‘I do not like the touch of your body, Jade. I generally do not like the touch of women’s bodies. For touching, I think I would prefer the bodies of men.’ With her free hand Ini reached around to push the straggling hair from Jade’s face. ‘I have told you that, and told you again: I do not love women the way that you – and Madame Keyne – do. For that kind of love, yes, just as with killing, I prefer men.’ Ini laid her cheek against the secretary’s, which was now, Pryn saw, tear-wet. ‘I do not love you. I do not even want to love you – not in the way you want to love me. I’ve told you that, you know. Many times.’ She moved her cheek against the secretary’s. ‘I’ve told you.’

Here Madame Keyne took Pryn’s arm firmly. At another moment the gesture would have seemed simple friendship, but now it seemed protective. Caught up in a political massacre and menaced by a street hoodlum, Pryn could not help thinking that whatever danger still waited
for her here was probably intriguingly minuscule. Indeed, it had much the same air about it as the scarred Fox’s straying hand – something that, however unpleasant, could be gotten through, at least with Madame Keyne’s help. Yet once it
were
gotten through, what might lie beyond it seemed just as great a mystery as the one her initial arrival had presented. For better or for worse, she found herself putting aside fear in favor of curiosity.

The red brick path they walked up was the one Pryn had mounted with Madame Keyne that morning. As they reached the sudden and surprising stone hut at the top, Ini finally shrugged away from Jade. It was only then that Pryn pulled her own arm from Madame Keyne’s and called ahead: ‘But
why
did you want to kill me?’

With her calm and questioning smile, Ini turned. ‘I saved your life yesterday.’ Suddenly she sat on the grass, locking her arms about her knees, swaying. Today I thought to throw a life away – yours? But why not.’ Ini frowned at Jade. ‘I
told
you I don’t like to kill women! I told you that. And you wanted me to do it anyway! But I didn’t care.’

Jade’s attention had gone from the Liberator’s headquarters behind to the cityscape before them. Now she looked back at Ini – whose eyes, over the same seconds, had fixed on some deliquescent city in the clouds, its destruction, before high winds undetectable here at the ground, hugely attenuated by size and distance.

‘I must talk to you,’ Madame Keyne repeated. ‘I must talk to you all. And I don’t believe any of you are listening.’ She lowered herself to the stone bench against the hut’s back wall. ‘But I
will
talk. It’s my own garden. That’s the least I should be allowed to do in it – to talk.’

Because she felt nervous, Pryn sat, too, on the grass – somewhat away from Ini.

Jade still stood – there was room for her on the bench.

Madame Keyne looked as if she expected Jade to sit beside her. But Jade swayed, nervously, looking at Ini, looking at the city again.

‘I am sending you away, Pryn.’ Madame Keyne said. ‘You understand, now, I must.’

‘Yes …’ Pryn nodded.

‘This evening,’ Madame Keyne continued. ‘You must go to the Liberator for me and ask him my question. When you bring me an answer, I shall give you a gold piece – or, at any rate, its equal in small moneys. A girl your age shouldn’t be showing gold about, trying to get it changed. Then I shall put you on the road again to continue your travels. Jade, Ini, do you hear? She is my ambassador to the Liberator –
not
my new secretary. And when she completes her mission, she shall go!’