Raven's Ladder (23 page)

“Don’t worry!” Cal-raven heard the boy shout. “I’ll get us out of this!”

Then, with jarring abruptness, Henryk steered Cal-raven through a crevasse in the wall so narrow that they had to turn sideways to slip through. “Keep moving,” Henryk whispered.

Stepping through a curtain, they entered a zigzagging corridor.

“Your room is at the end.”

Twenty corners later, having passed many sealed doors, Cal-raven stumbled into a small chamber with a stone bench, a barred window, and nothing more. When Henryk let go, he found he could not stand on his own, and he landed like laundry below the window.

“Wait here. As long as it takes. If you leave, I can’t protect you anymore.”

“Leave?”

“Don’t toy with me, ey, boyo? I know what you can do.” He lifted the statue and gave Cal-raven a nod of assurance. “My memory may be feeble, but I have this to remind me of my task. Just stay put and enjoy the view. I’m off to speak with the heir.”

“Heir?” Cal-raven shouted, confused. “No! It’s for the heiress!”

But the heavy stone gate was already sliding shut.

He would not walk through it again for days.

T
his is my favorite part.”

Bauris did not see the spoon that Emeriene held up to his chin. The sunbeams breaking through the convergence of midmorning storms seemed to please him; he blinked into the light like a satisfied house cat. He did not know that he had fragments of seaweed porridge clinging to his extravagant mustache.

“This is the part where she comes back.”

Sisterly Emeriene drew the spoon back, stunned out of the half sleep of routine, and set it on the tray. She rose, stepped behind him, and rested her chin affectionately on his shoulder so she could share his view. “You spoke,” she whispered, placing her hand on his bald pate.

Bauris wept joyously into any bright light these days. But he had not spoken a word since they brought him back to House Bel Amica. The old soldier had vanished from the Tilianpurth outpost the same day that the missing heiress had returned from her vanishment in the forest. A search had turned up nothing. Several days later a servant girl had found him crumpled at the bottom of an ancient, overgrown well in the woods and laughing. Laughing.

The old man, beloved like a favorite uncle of both Emeriene and the royal daughter she served, had treated them like amusing strangers since his ordeal. Emeriene had questioned him, provoking only a slight tremor of distress in his expression, never any kind of answer. Some of the healers decided that his fall into the forest well had knocked out his capacity for speech.

Bauris had been in Queen Thesera’s service for many years and in his fractured state was treated with favor and tenderness. But he seemed to dwell somewhere else, where everything was bright and surprising. He often laughed out loud, even after they’d blown out the evening candles and left him to his dreams.

“Have you come back to us, Bauris? Do you remember?”

He nodded.

She returned to her chair beside him, lifted another spoonful. “What happened down there in the well? How did you stay alive so long?”

“It must have cost me. I…I’ve forgotten things.”

“Your memories? You lost them in the well?”

“But she came back anyway,” he whispered. He jabbed at Emeriene with his knobby elbow. Porridge dripped down his chin onto the napkin spread between the tray and his collar. “She’s here.”

“No, Cyndere’s not here, Bauris. Archery practice this morning. And she had to go down to the shipyards. Those sailors thought they could buy the Abascars for slave labor. Fools, the lot of them.”

He glanced at her directly. “This is my favorite part.”

Emeriene dabbed his moustache and chin with the napkin. “The wind’s dusted you again. That’s what makes your eyes red, you know. There’s more of the Mawrn in the air all the time.” She sighed, gazing at the grit on her fingertips. “If only it really made wishes come true.”

Bauris’s tray rattled. A distant rumble grew louder.

“Look, Bauris. The train.” The sisterly pointed down at a promontory that jutted out from Bel Amica’s foundation and into the fog like the prow of a ship. The rust red arc of a train rail crossed that stony point, and the mist swirled as the engine arrived—a black swan gliding on a swift current, twin sails spread out behind like wings. A parade of wooden carts rattled along after the engine, containers piled high with newly harvested oilpods from the sea, purple and gleaming. They reminded Emeriene of the fish eggs King Helpryn had loved to slurp from a spoon or spread on cheese bread.

Bauris’s eyes followed the blue line of Emeriene’s sleeve to her hand and then finally turned toward the train. As it disappeared again into the fog on its circuitous, spiraling journey, he nodded like a schoolboy feigning interest
in his studies, then raised his eyes to the skies again. He put his hand on the pile of parchment scraps on which he had sketched image after image of simple boats crowded with vague figures.

“The current,” he insisted. “It draws them upstream.”

Emeriene tapped her fingers on the edge of the tray. “Currents can’t run upstream, Bauris.”

He laughed with a warm fondness and tried to stand. “She’s here,” he announced.

“Cyndere? No, I told you. She’s going down to the shipyards.” She scooped up another spoonful of the porridge. “What’s set you to talking?”

“Her father tried to talk her out of it.” Bauris looked down. “But she wouldn’t listen.”

“You’re dreaming, aren’t you?” She rested her small hand on his scarred forearm. “I have to go down to the kitchens to prepare Cyndere’s meal. But if you’re going to keep talking, I should send someone who will listen.”

His expression seemed to mirror her own pity. “They’re not going to miss Cal-raven’s big surprise. They’re all going to be there.”

She stood up. “Cal-raven! Didn’t I tell you? Ryllion’s messenger said that Cal-raven left those poor people of Abascar many days ago. Rode out on some kind of mission and never came back. Vanished. Just like his mother the queen.”

Bauris pressed his lips tight together as if trying to hold on to a secret.

A knock drew her to the door. She walked unevenly, her left leg in its permanent toughweed cast, and paused before a mirror just inside the door to brush her dark hair back over her shoulders. Her hair had grown so long that she once again looked as she had before she’d married Cesylle and borne two boys. It felt good to remember life before Cesylle, before the loneliness of being forgotten.

When he returned, Cesylle wouldn’t notice the length of her hair. He never noticed anything. She hadn’t seen him in a long time, and he had committed their young sons to training down at the shipyards to become pilots of their own ships someday. The boys still had their baby teeth, but Cesylle had already trained them to strive for that dream and beg the moon-spirits to grant their wishes.

As she reached to answer the door, she saw that Cyndere had chalked a small bird on the lintel.

It opened, and a massive, muscular viscorcat burst into the room and padded right past her, whiskers sprung straight out from his face. “Black-paw!” Emeriene exclaimed. “Come to see your best friend?” The cat trotted right to the window, ears sharp and high. As the soldier embraced the cat, Blackpaw’s purr rumbled like the rail train passing.

“Wouldn’t Deuneroi be glad to see that?” Cyndere stepped through the door and set her bow and quiver of arrows against the wall.

“My lady! I wasn’t expecting you.” Emeriene turned and gestured to the window. “You’ll never believe it. Bauris spoke!” She took Cyndere’s cape and hung it on a hook beside the mirror.

Cyndere looked down at Bauris. He did not look up.

Emeriene repeated the ramblings, and Cyndere shook her head. “Strange that he’d mention Cal-raven.”

“Maybe he heard some gossip. Maybe he dreams about leading a search party.”

The cat had set about bathing Bauris’s face, and Emeriene remembered her duties. She took a dustbrush to the room’s sparse furniture, sweeping white powder into a pan. “Are people still shouting at you?”

“They’re afraid. Afraid we’ll all suffer if we share some wealth with those poor survivors. But Mother is on my side. She remembers losing a husband. She wants to go to sea just to feel closer to my father. So she understands that it is my love for Deuneroi and his vision that drives me to serve House Abascar. She remembers that he died while trying to help them.”

“But Ryllion… Isn’t he trying to ship them off?”

“Ryllion’s king of Bel Amica in his own mind. He thinks he should be able to do what he wants with Abascar’s survivors. Have you heard him lately?”

“He speaks of nothing but the beastmen he’s slaughtered. I heard he’s showing buckets of teeth as trophies.”

“I don’t want to know how he managed to kill so many in such a short time. Part of me doesn’t believe he could. Part of me is sick just to think it might be true. He’s up to something.” Cyndere leaned out the window as if to catch an eavesdropper. The fog teased her short, golden hair until she drew
the curtain closed. “Thank you for dusting. We can’t let the Seers hear us speaking of this.”

Emeriene emptied the pan into a cloth bag and tightened the drawstring.

The door opened, and two sisterlies bustled in, carrying a tray piled with steaming hot towels. “Bauris!” Emeriene exclaimed, accepting the tray and dismissing the servants. “Murfee’s on his way up to bathe you and take you for a walk.”

Bauris’s contented expression did not change.

“No matter how many times I tell them!” Emeriene set the tray on the table and picked up three small bowls of oil. “Don’t they know you’re too old-fashioned to bother with prayer lamps?” She handed the bowls to Cyndere, who drew the curtain open slightly and proceeded to cast the shells, one after the other, out the window. As Bauris laughed, delighted, they could hear the distant clatter of shells shattering on the rocks below.

“I miss the old traditions,” said Cyndere, “the prayerfeathers we held as we thought of our ancestors crowded around, witnessing our lives. It felt good to ask them for their wisdom and to offer up things to them on the Memory Trees, to show them respect. I don’t know if those beliefs were true. But I think they were closer. Closer than this…this obsession with wishing for our own success.”

“You’re not here to complain about the Seers.” Emeriene slumped down in the chair beside the door.

“I need your help again, Em.”

“Of course you do.”

“I can’t explain it all yet.”

“You never do. But I’m your faithful fool. You know that. Did something happen down at the shipyard?”

“Not exactly.”

“Dukas!” announced Bauris, looking intently at the viscorcat. “His name isn’t Blackpaw. It’s Dukas.”

Cyndere looked at Emeriene. The sisterly shrugged. “No idea. Go on.”

“Down at the shipyards,” Cyndere continued, “I explained that nobody’s hauling any Abascars off to the islands. Their future lies with the council. And this morning I got the vote that I wanted.”

“You can govern the Abascars?”

“No, that’s not what I want. I belong to Bel Amica, not Abascar. But the council will recommend that Mother summon volunteers. She’ll choose one volunteer to serve as a principal tasker for the Abascar people.”

“And the Seers can’t interfere?”

“Mother promised. She all but worships the Seers, but she loves me even more. She’ll appoint a principal tasker who will report to me—and only me. This tasker will place the Abascar people in apprenticeships and tasks throughout the house until a decision about their future is made.”

“So now all you need is a good volunteer.” Emeriene clapped her hands. “Good. That should be easy. Everyone wants a position of power, some way to climb the ladder of your mother’s favor. People must be sending up prayers to their moon-spirits already. Whoever prays the hardest.” She laughed.

“We need someone patient and observant. Someone who will take the time to find a good place for each survivor. Someone who knows how to organize and direct a large crowd of people with efficiency and a firm hand.”

“And I can help you find that…” Emeriene stopped. Her smile faded.

Cyndere had that look again—that patient gaze, waiting for Emeriene to understand.

Emeriene stood up. She sat down. She stood up again.

“Emeriene, I want you to volunteer to be House Abascar’s principal tasker.”

“The what? For the…who now?” Emeriene eased herself slowly from the chair to the floor, dizzy with the surprise.

“Em, I trust no one more than you. You manage my life. You direct the staff of sisterlies. You hate the Seers as much as I do. And you have more experience fighting Ryllion than any of us. Volunteer, and the matter will be resolved swiftly and surely.”

Emeriene pressed her hands against her pounding heart.

“I will not let you suffer.”

“My responsibility is to care for and protect you—as it has always been.”

“I’m not dismissing you.”

“Don’t try reading my mind. You’re bad at it.” Emeriene scowled, her fingers
playing with the strap that bound the cast around her left thigh. “I have no ambitions. I want to serve you for the rest of my life.”

Cyndere stood up. “Em, trust me. I’m not letting you go.”

“But you’d have to. You change your plans every few minutes, running here and there. If I don’t chase you, you’ll miss your meals.”

“You
will
be serving me. My mind is divided. I need to continue my endeavors to save the Cent Regus beastmen from their curse. We’re closer now than ever. But I also must ensure that the people of Abascar receive fair treatment. Do this for me if doing it for them is not enough. Do it for my peace of mind.”

A netterbeak landed on the other side of the curtain. Bauris held very still, staring at the bird’s outline. Then he leaned forward and, with excruciating care, drew the curtain aside so he could see the bird more clearly. The netterbeak glanced back at him but held its perch defiantly. It shifted from one webbed orange foot to the other and clucked.