Singer from the Sea (42 page)

“Oh,” she murmured, “sorry.”

The body didn’t move. She leaned over, tapped it. It shivered.

“For heaven’s sake, get up,” she said in her labored Mahahmbi. It wasn’t enough unlike Haven talk to be a different language, but it was pronounced differently and had a lot of words for local things that had no counterpart on Haven. Though she could understand almost all of it she heard, she had had minimal experience using the language.

“Please,” the body whimpered.

Abruptly, she realized what she must have done. “Oh, I am sorry. I’ll bet you’re malghaste, aren’t you? I’m not supposed to be here.”

The body moved, squirmed away from her, not looking at her. An old woman.

“I won’t tell,” said Genevieve. “Honestly, I won’t tell. Nobody will ever know. Please, talk to me.”

She saw actual amusement in the flash of the woman’s eyes. “They’ll kill me if you do, if I do, if you do, lady.”

This stopped her only for a moment. “They’ll kill you if I ask you to talk? That is, if you talk? And if I tell?”

A nod. The figure turned to face her, legs crossed, somber cloth wrappings half hiding her face. “You’ve had baby, lady. We’ve heard him crying.”

Genevieve rubbed her flat stomach thoughtfully. “No one’s supposed to know that I’m even here, much less that my baby is. He’s a week old now.”

“Week?”

“Ah. Sorry. Let’s see. It’s an old, old human division of days, seven days. The only time we use it is in figuring the age of infants. Two weeks, six, eight, then we start on months. The only time we say months is when we’re talking
about babies or pregnancy. It’s a survival, I guess. You probably use a seasonal count. Most planets do.”

“Twelve days to period. Times six equals season. Times four plus new year holy day equals year. We work here season by season, we malghaste. Season on. Season off.”

“Did you know I was here?”

“Oh, yes. We overhear your people talking. You are one handsome one calls Jenny.”

“That’s short for Genevieve. What’s your name?”

“Awhero,” she said,
Ah-fhair-oh.
“Old name in ancient earthian language of our people. In our tongue it means Hope.”

“Awhero.”

“Why did you come here?” the old woman asked.

She thought about this a moment, seeking a simple reason. “My husband was required to come, by the Prince. The Prince also required me to come. Also, this was my first child, and I wanted to be near my husband.”

“No, no. Why did you come down here?” The old woman patted the stones at her feet.

“I was wakeful. Thirsty. And lonely. I heard your voice. I didn’t think. Who were you talking to? Why are you even here at this time of night?”

“When I am assigned here, it is easiest just to stay. Someone must wash out privies. Someone must scrub floors and walls and burn sulfur when you are gone, to get rid of your unclean spirits. Or bury some of you, if you die.”

Genevieve blinked at this. “And you’re it?”

“Me. Yes. Also, I listen for the persons of Shah. I am spy.” The old woman grinned, toothily. “All malghaste in houses of arghaste are spies.”

“Arghaste?”

“Foreigners, unclean ones. Like you.”

Genevieve drew a deep breath. “Have you told anyone I’m here?”

The old woman laughed. “Not yet. I did not even tell one-who-asks-me how you got water. I said I did not see how you did it.” Her shoulders shook with laughter. “Always they ask us, and always we He to them. They think we are impenetrably stupid, but they still ask us.”

She was just Awhero, no other name. She had two daughters and a son. They, too, were malghaste. If parents were malghaste, then the children were also malghaste. But, in a way, Awhero said, it was better for women than being born to the other Mahahmbi castes, the religious, the royal family, the merchants.

“Why is that?” Genevieve asked.

“I like to Uve. I have almost seventy years. If I had been born woman in another caste, I would not live so long.”

Genevieve was curious about that, started to ask about that, but she heard her husband’s voice from upstairs and knew the interlude was over.

“I’ll come back,” she said. “May I?”

“I may die if you do, if I do, if you do,” she replied.

Genevieve figured that out on her way upstairs. If Genevieve came back, and if Awhero had stayed, and if then Genevieve said anything about it, Awhero might die. So. She would say nothing about it.

O
NCE AWARE OF
A
WHERO
’
S CELLAR
, G
ENEVIEVE HAUNTED
the place. Whenever Dovidi woke at night, she slipped from the room she shared with Aufors and took the baby down to the kitchens. Three men were on night duty, one near each outer door and one in the communications room, but all three of them were usually dozing, and when this was the case, she did not even stop in the kitchens. It was only a step through the concealed door and down a short flight into Awhero’s cellar. There she sat on a cushion holding the baby, nursing him, playing with him, while Awhero—accompanied by a sister or a few cousins or a clutter of old aunts who, it seemed, never went anywhere without their tambours and flutes—sang ballads and laments or chanted lengthy episodes from the life of Tenopia.

Tenopia was malghaste, so it was claimed by the malghaste themselves, though she had come from the sea. As a young woman she had left Galul and gone into Mahahm, where she had been found by the son of the Shah, sitting beside a well in an oasis. The son of the Shah was so taken with her beauty that he took her into his own household, despite Tenopia’s habits of disobedience. Among other derelictions she had sneaked away from her attendants without a veil; she had danced on the desert; she had sung with the great voices …

“Voices, Awhero?” Genevieve interrupted startled, looking up from the baby. “What voices?”

“Great voices that sing in night, from sea.”

“Here? In Mahahm-qum?”

“Sometimes we can hear them here, in Mahahm-qum. We hear them better when we are in Galul.”

Giving Genevieve no chance to ask more about this, Awhero resumed her chant, the drums their tapping, the little flutes their piping, and Genevieve did not choose to interrupt. She was so caught up in sleeplessness and nursing at all hours, so tuned to the slightest catch in the baby’s breathing, the least murmur—all of this interspersed with worry about Aufors and the Marshal—that she was not thinking clearly. The time spent among the malghaste was more dreamlike than real. Their music was dream music, the joy in their singing faces was sublime, like the presumed bliss of angels. Genevieve told herself that once she caught up on her sleep, she would ask sensible questions and understand all of it much better. Meantime, she let herself relax among the women, who became more numerous with every night that passed.

One morning, while most of the staff were at breakfast, there came a thundering from the in-city house door. Aufors gestured for the guard to stand aside, put on his gloves and the mask that hung ready at the door, and opened the hatch to confront Ybon Saelan, minister of the Shah, who asked to see Prince Delganor.

“The Prince is not seeing anyone,” Aufors said, in the elegant and stylized Mahahmbi he had been practicing for a season. “In any case, we don’t admit anyone by this door. We use the gate outside the walls to avoid defiling ourselves with the uncleanliness of your streets.” He then shut the hatch and reported to the Marshal, who was of the opinion that the minister would go away.

Either duty or curiosity prevailed, however, and a short time later the same man showed up outside the city wall at the other door. The household had long been prepared for the eventual arrival of someone, if not this man, another; if not today, on some other day; and the minister was admitted with instructions to remove his boots, a calculated
rudeness, since all Mahahmbi removed their shoes indoors. Barefoot, he was ushered into the larger courtyard, now colorfully furnished under bright awnings, with water splashing, plants growing, and a pleasant smell of roasting meats. Here he was told to await the Marshal and was very pointedly not asked to sit down.

“Minister Saelan,” said the Marshal when he emerged in his own good time, face and hands hidden. “I am the Lord Paramount’s Marshal. My assistant, Aufors.”

Aufors nodded, a precisely calculated nod which acknowledged the minister’s presence while showing only the least modicum of respect. Genevieve watched all this from a screened window upstairs, somewhat apprehensively. The Prince had long since delegated this first meeting to the Marshal (reserving his own appearance for some later stage of negotiations), and Aufors had choreographed the exchange, but the Marshal was not always biddable, and he sometimes pushed things farther than necessary.

“Will you be seated,” Aufors murmured, as both he and the Marshal sat down under the awning. If the emissary wanted to get into the shade, he would have to sit.

“I prefer not,” said Ybon Saelan grimly.

“As you like,” said Aufors, as the Marshal kept a lofty silence. “Tell me, is the temperature normal for this season? The climate seems much milder than we had expected.”

“It is … as usual,” said the sweating emissary. “I have come to bring greetings from the Shah, Arghad the Effulgent.”

“Ah, well, how nice.” The Marshal nodded, took a glass from the table and sipped it. “May I offer you some ice water with lemon?”

“Ice … It is forbidden.”

“Oh? Too bad. It’s very cooling. However, one cannot help but admire your constancy to your culture. Will you convey my greetings to the Shah? Since we do not use the city streets, I have been unable to send a messenger with greetings, but it was very kind of him to send you. Was there anything more?”

Ybon Saelan bowed, slightly lower than before. “Nothing. No.”

“Very kind, very kind,” said the Marshal vaguely. “Aufors, do see our guest to the gate.”

“What in deepsea was that all about?” Genevieve asked when Aufors came upstairs to take off the paraphernalia.

“The man was sent to ascertain our discomfort and to reply evasively to our complaints of having no water, no furnishings, no cooling. He is probably still trying to figure out how we got the water back and where all the furniture and greenery came from.”

“Now what?”

“Now the Shah knows we’re not uncomfortable, we’re not thirsty, we’re not dying of the heat. He knows we’ve plenty of fresh food. He knows their attempt to confuse and bamboozle us over this uncleanliness issue has backfired to make him and his people just as dirty to us as we are to them.”

“Which means?”

“That the next play, my love, is up to him.”

Ybon Saelan left Prince Delganor’s quarters and went at once to the palace, where, in the toilet off the anteroom of the Shah’s divan, he secretly put on a pair of kneepads under his robes. The ritual crawling and prostrations on the rough red pebbles laid into the rammed-earth floor could be ruinous to one’s legs. On his now-padded knees he progressed from the totem of the Shah down a line of ever rougher and more uncomfortable stones to the foot of the steps to the dais, a mud platform plastered and painted with designs in black and yellow. There he stopped and made an abasement.

“Hail the Voice of Prophecy, the Tongue of the Lord, the Teeth of the Scripture, the Word of God,” intoned the minister, his mouth a finger’s width from the floor.

“He who is recognizes you,” said the Shah, staring across the Saelan’s bent form at the far wall.

“I bask in the light of your gaze, O Divine Master. I prostrate—”

The Shah smiled grimly. “Enough prostration, Saelan. So? Are our guests well? Are they contented?”

The minister took a deep breath and spoke the truth.
“Prince Delganor’s delegation from Haven is seemingly quite contented, Exalted One.”

His Effulgence stopped looking at the wall and stared directly at his minister. “Contented without water?”

“They have water, Exalted One.”

“Water! Where did they get water?”

“I do not know, Shining One. Perhaps they brought it with them.”

One of the Sworn Ones at the side of the throne shook his head slightly. The Sworn Ones had computed the bulk of the grav-sleds, and they would have known if any appreciable amount of water had been brought onto Mahahm.

“They did not bring it with them,” said His Effulgence.

“Then I am at a loss, sire.”

“Find out, find out,” said Arghad to the two Sworn Ones, who slipped silently away from the throne to be replaced by two others, as alike as sand ripples on a dune. The Sworn Ones were all of one family, a lineage that had served the Shah for generations. Its members resembled one another; they thought alike; they balked at nothing, so long as the Shah commanded it.

The Shah beckoned to Saelan, who crept up the seven steps to the throne and knelt on a thin cushion on the top step, the Shah’s indulgence to an aged and loyal servant.

“You’re saying the Prince and his entourage are not uncomfortable enough to go away,” said the Shah.

“They seem prepared to stay for some time, Effulgent One.”

“Do they have women?”

“I saw no women. I saw no signs of women. I did see quite a few men, though no faces. They seem determined to regard us as unclean. I am told they have a religious functionary with them. One Rongor.”

The Shah frowned in a puzzled manner. “A heretic, you mean. The Prince didn’t bring candidates, then?”

“I cannot say, Exalted One.”

“Why did he not take our warning when he arrived? By the devils of the deep, Saelan, we made it clear they were unwelcome. Did he assume we had given him a dry and empty house by accident?”

“It is evident that Prince Delganor did not recognize it as a warning, Exalted One. As an expression of displeasure, no doubt, but not as a warning. So our malghaste spies say.”

“Then he is a fool.”

“As are all who do not look upon the glory of thy face, Master.”

“I know he brought women! He wouldn’t have wasted the trip. He had to bring at least one! And he should have followed our custom. Any women should have been given to us the moment they arrived. Such is our agreement with Haven! Why do we provide P’naki otherwise?”