Neveryona (53 page)

From Tritty: ‘Dear, don’t stay out with her
too
long. Of course, I don’t mean that I object …’

The baby didn’t fall; but Pryn was there to take the warm, wheezing thing as though she might.

From the steps came an adolescent grunt.

Cuddling the snoring baby in its loose swaddling, Pryn glanced at Ardra.

He sat with a fist on each knee. ‘You know,
I
usually take Petal for her evening walk around the grounds!’

‘Oh, darling … !’ his mother said from her couch.

‘I only let you do that last night because you asked,’ Lavik said, it isn’t a ritual. Besides, when you play with her, you always pretend she’s going to grow up to be a little general. I don’t know whether I like that.’

‘Well, it’s only fair that I get a chance to play with her before she grows and becomes a
girl
– don’t you think?’ Ardra stood. ‘I’m going for a walk around the near garden anyway. Just as though we didn’t
have
a guest.’ He strode across the room, in stiff-legged mocking of a military strut.

‘If he really wants to – ’ began Pryn, while the earl and Tritty and Jenta all thrust out consoling hands and uttered stabilizing protests. The last voice over all was Tritty’s: ‘… to learn that he can’t always have his own way!’

But Ardra was out the door.

‘Come on,’ Lavik said, ‘I think it’s important that lots of people hold her, so that she gets a sense of the range of society. Don’t you think?’

The sleeping Petal probably had little sense of anything right now. Shoulder to shoulder with Lavik, Pryn carried the baby between the dining couches. Behind them Tritty clapped her hands; the room filled about them with white-collared men and women, some younger than Pryn, others quite old, some of whom Pryn had already seen serving, many of whom she hadn’t. Lavik led her through a smaller arch, if you get tired, just let me know.’

Pryn had expected to pass through at least as many corridors and halls as she had on her journey in with Tritty. But they walked through a low, stone passage with blackness at its end, and stepped out into it … Pryn thought they’d entered some cavernous hall, a roofless one with dozens of lamps set at unfathomable distances, making myriad small lights …

But they were outdoors.

What she’d thought lamps were flares about an expanse of garden that, it was clear, even in the dark, would have dwarfed Madame Keyne’s walled enclosure. Pryn remembered the plural that had always accompanied their references to the grounds.
One
of the gardens? They walked along a path, paved – they passed a flare and Pryn glanced down – with brick. Yellow? Red? Some other color? She couldn’t tell. In the distance, holding aloft more brands, each with its raddled smoke ribboning up into the darkness over its own pale halo, moving along other paths, pausing here and there to light another pathside flare, moved innumerable slaves!

Some dozen steps ahead walked resolute Ardra – though Pryn only realized who it was when he passed one of the brands.

Lavik said: ‘He thinks he’s protecting us.’

Pryn glanced at her. ‘From what?’

‘Was
your
home ever occupied by soldiers?’

Pryn shook her head.

‘Ours was, once. Right after dad and Tritty first married. I was ten. Ardra was only three, so you wouldn’t think he’d remember. But
he
became the occupying soldiers’ mascot. Tritty’d been through things like that before – so had dad, I suppose. But for me and Inige – and Jenta too, I guess – it was awful.’ She sighed. ‘Ardra, however, hasn’t thought about anything but growing up to be a soldier ever since. I
say
he’s protecting us. Sometimes, though, I think he dreams of slaughtering us all in our beds. The soldiers who
were here – when I was ten – did some of
that
too! Jenta is dad’s oldest
living
son. But we used to have two more half-sisters and a half-brother, by his first wife – only she was related to all the wrong people; they wouldn’t let her – so we heard later –
or
her children live.’ Lavik hunched her shoulders, ‘It wasn’t pleasant. Believe me, that’s the only reason dad tolerates my running off to have babies with jungle savages or Jenta’s going off to live like a hermit with a girl goatherd, nice as she is, from the next town over. I mean it’s a way of survival, of putting us outside the normal political considerations of bloodlines and alliances and the like – the sort of things that get you clapped into dungeons or murdered, when you’re really interested in other things entirely. What real power can buy, of course, is anonymity, and dad
doesn’t
have enough for that. So we use other means. Now with Ardra, of course, it’s different.’ Lavik nodded ahead at the would-be captain, stalking the garden night. Thanks to the people
he’s
related to, both through Tritty and his real father, he doesn’t have our options. Oh, he’s safer here than he would be in the north – and don’t think Tritty isn’t grateful to father, either. The odd thing is, though, he’s turning out exactly the way he should. Inige and I have spent
hours
discussing it! Oh, I don’t mean the way dad would want him to be, or even his mother. But he’s exactly the sort they’re going to want to do all the jobs that are waiting for him as soon as he comes of age. You’d think there was some sort of power guiding it all.’ She took a large breath and gave a small sigh. ‘Really, it’s uncanny. I wish there were something I could do to make him a little … I don’t know – looser, I suppose. But maybe it’s just as well. I’m glad you’re here,’ she said suddenly, ‘I mean it’s nice to have ordinary visitors who aren’t always plotting to do someone in – especially when it’s you. Honestly, we
all
think so!’

‘I’m … glad I’m here too!’ Pryn looked at the young
man walking ahead, whom, she felt now, she’d deprived of the warm, marvelous responsibility she held.

The warmth shifted; the breathing changed.

Pryn looked down. ‘Shell be all right, don’t you think?’

‘Sure,’ Lavik said. ‘She’s been on the mend for two, really three, days now. Though, if you listen to the old slaves upstairs, who, for some reason, everyone thinks
know
about such things – and that’s all Tritty ever listens to – they’ll scare you to death!’ She glanced at Petal over Pryn’s arm to check her own pronouncement of recuperation. ‘She’ll be fine. You know – ’ Lavik’s tone grew thoughtful – ‘I was thinking about something you said -to father, when we were up on the hill. When you travel to Kolhari from the south, the road really goes around the marsh below the city, joins the northern road, and enters over the same hills you come over from the mountains. But you’ve seen it on maps … ?’

‘Yes?’ Pryn said, listening to the dark around them, which sounded the same tone on which Lavik spoke.

‘Do you remember,’ Lavik asked, ‘when I said I’d never seen Kolhari at dawn from the hills?’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, when I went to court, it wasn’t just
my
furniture in the provision wagon. In fact I went with nearly a dozen nobles’ children, boys and girls – more girls than boys, actually. When we reached the hills above the city, they stopped our sleeping carriage – it was dawn. We all woke up, the few of us who’d managed to sleep. The drivers and chaperones called the boys out to see.
Everyone
started out, I remember, but they told the girls that we had to stay inside, because it wasn’t seemly for young ladies to go pell-melling out on the highroad in their night shifts, even if it was dawn and nobody was about. So
we
stayed in, all excited at what the two – yes, there were
only
two – boys might be doing. And you know something? As soon as he came back from court, Jenta
immediately
saw the city in the water – Neveryóna. Just the way you did. But
I
couldn’t! We’d both always heard about it, of course. But it had to be explained to me, and the streets and alleys and buildings had to be pointed out and outlined before, at sunset, I could even be sure it was really there! And it was only because I
had
seen some city maps of Kolhari, finally, that I was able to be sure what the rest were talking about.’ They walked through the dark gardens, whose extent and plan Pryn kept silently trying to assess. ‘Do you
know
what a map is? I mean a real map?’

‘Yes …’ Responding to Lavik’s deep seriousness, Pryn spoke a little lower. ‘Of course. Of course I do.’

‘You’ve seen one?’ Lavik asked, ‘I don’t just mean the silly scratches on the astrolabe this evening that don’t mean anything at all.’

‘Well, I’ve certainly heard of them,’ Pryn said. ‘Heard people speak of them and describe what they do. Sailors use them for navigating coastlines – my aunt explained to me about that. And I’ve seen
one
of them, anyway.’

‘What did it look like?’ Lavik asked.

‘Well, it was … made of clay and stuff. It was of a garden. It was covered with something that had the same texture as grass. And little molded trees were set about on it. And a toy house. Water ran through the space where the stream went, down the falls, and over bits of ceramic molded like rocks and statues – ’

Lavik laughed, quietly and shyly.
‘That’s
a garden maquette! We’ve got over a dozen, scattered among the maintenance sheds all over the grounds. They make it easier for the gardeners to keep the plants in order if you’ve really got extensive landscaped property – another one of Belham’s notions. Most gardeners, you know, don’t read – maps or anything else. But
you’ve
never seen a map … !’ In the dark she looked at Pryn. They passed
a flare, and her serious, southern face brightened – flickering – and faded.

Pryn looked away in the dark and saw nothing.

‘You
haven t
seen a map! A map is just marks on a piece of parchment. Oh, you can read distances and directions on it – but not much else.’ Lavik paused. ‘I
knew
you’d never seen one. Somehow, from things you said, I just knew you hadn’t really seen one.
I’ve
never seen a city – I mean a real one, from outside it, all at once! And
you’ve
never seen a map!’

Pryn looked back at Lavik, who now looked away – and who sounded as alone as Pryn had ever felt. Pryn watched her, and felt as close to her as she had ever felt to anyone. After a few moments, Pryn looked away, so that she could not see if Lavik looked back at her.

Petal coughed.

The two plump young women, one a mother and one all but motherless, walked through the dark garden, shoulder brushing shoulder, bare feet now loud and now soft on the leaf-strewn brick, and were alone together.

Ahead, Ardra’s back, in the rough cloth, became visible as he passed another torch.

‘Something in the way you talked about it just made me sure you’d never seen one,’ Lavik repeated. ‘Though I swear, I couldn’t tell you what. I don’t know, but once you have a baby, you feel a lot of things – but you don’t do too much analytical thinking.’

‘I know,’ Pryn said, who, in fabled Ellamon, had babysat for many of her cousins’ children and had been, for days at a time, the sole care of her baker cousin’s two-year-old son. ‘When I take care of one for more than three hours at a stretch,
I
can’t think at all! That’s why I don’t want to have any myself.’ She hugged Petal, sweet and sick as she was, who felt wonderful.

‘Oh, that’s not
true!’
Lavik protested. ‘I mean, well … after a week or so, you begin to think again. A little bit,
at least. You really do. That is,
if
you take care of it all by yourself. Of course once the slaves begin taking over,
then
what you spend all your time thinking about is how to get them to take over
more
. But you really do get back to some … thinking. Eventually – I think.’

‘
I
think,’ Pryn said, ‘that babies are wonderful and beautiful and comforting and rewarding, the solace of the present and the hope – the real hope – of the future.’ She sighed. ‘And I
don’t
want one. At least not now.’

‘
Mmm
,’ Lavik said.

Pryn glanced at the young woman beside her and saw her looking ahead at her step-brother.

‘Well,’ Lavik said, ‘I
feel
the same way; and I
am
glad I have mine. Now. And …’ She looked down at the brick – ‘I’ll die a thousand deaths if she
does
die. But still, I don’t see how anyone who
has
taken care of one couldn’t understand what you say.’ When she looked up in the passing flare, her face bore her family’s absolute smile.

Pryn looked at the stiff-kneed boy marching ahead of them and wished he
would
come and carry little Petal, who, small as she was,
had
begun to seem heavy – for now Pryn also felt that, without the baby between them, she might be able to talk about more with Lavik. At the same time, she resolved not to offer Petal back to her mother until they were again inside the house.

Lavik said: it
is
nice of you to carry her for me. I appreciate it.’

Pryn wondered if her great-aunt had felt the same way when she’d been presented with Pryn’s own, wiggling, wheezing self by Pryn’s mother, fifteen – well, a month shy of sixteen, now – years ago.

‘We’re almost at the door.’ Lavik touched Pryn’s arm. The path had taken them in a circle through the near night.

Ahead, Ardra walked up to a vast, mottled nothingness and disappeared into it: the door.