The Pattern Scars (45 page)

Neluja left Sarsenay two weeks later. “Haldrin’s just told me,” Teldaru said
as he pulled me behind him to the stairs that led up to the castle wall. “She spoke to no one but him—and Zemiya, of course. She wanted to walk out alone—to walk! Imagine! But Haldrin sent her with a guard; we may still be able to see. . . .”

The sun was bright and directly above us. The air felt cool and pure, as it always seemed to up here, away from stables and midden heaps and kitchen chimneys. I looked even further up, at the gatehouse tower. Haldrin and Zemiya were there. He was behind her with his arms wrapped around her shoulders. She was standing very straight. Her hands were clutching the battlement stones.

“There!” Teldaru said. “That must be them—just beyond the city gate—a carriage and two soldiers ahead and behind.”

I did not look. I could not move my gaze from the king and queen. She was so stiff—her arms and neck, her jaw. I wished I could see her eyes. Haldrin bent his head; I thought that his lips must be against her neck. Perhaps he said something; perhaps he kissed her. She tilted her head toward his. His hands slipped down over her belly and stayed there, fingertips touching. She took her own hands away from the stone and placed them over his.

Beside me, Teldaru sucked in his breath. “Ah,” he said. I did not glace at him, but I knew he was seeing what I was. “So it is true—an heir, already. Hal told me on Ranior’s Pathday; he said she was almost certain. Nola, Nola—do you see the Pattern branching? All the Paths—and they come from us. Look at them, love. . . .”

The Flamebird’s bones glinted as Zemiya tightened her grip on Haldrin’s hands. “Yes,” I whispered, “I see.”

It is full winter, now. I keep my shutters open while I write, since I seem to need the clouds more than I do the heat of my poor, guttering fire. Sometimes the quill falls from my fingers because they are so cold, and only then do I notice that their ends (outside my gloves’ wool) are purple.

There’s still so much more to write—but how much? A winter’s worth? A spring’s? Will the lycus trees be blooming again by the time I’ve finished?

Teldaru told me I had to steal the bracelet myself. He told me he didn’t want to know how I planned on doing it, or when.

“Bring it to me,” he said. “That is all. And do not try to trick me. You wouldn’t do that, would you, Nola? You’re a changed girl. A woman.”

It took me ten days: three to think of a plan and seven more to set it in motion. On the fourth day Teldaru found me outside the school (for I had finally begun teaching again) and said, “Now that your lessons are done, where will you go? I won’t come with you, of course—I was simply curious.”

I shrugged and smiled at him, that time. Two days later, when he fell into step with me in the lower courtyard and said, “Where to now, Mistress?” I mock-scowled at him and replied, “I am secretive because you told me to be. Now off with you; I cannot have you underfoot for what I must do next.”

I laughed when he scowled back at me, but I was also pressing my fingernails into my palms. For my plan was nearly ready, by then, and I was giddy with terror and anticipation.

Queen Zemiya had two serving girls: one Belakaoan and one Sarsenayan. The Belakaoan waited on her during the day and the Sarsenayan during the night. They both helped her with her baths—one at dawn and one at dusk. The Sarsenayan servants said they had never seen anyone bathe so often; the Belakaoans informed them that if Zemiya had been at home, she would have spent half the day in the sea or in a hot pool or spring. I had a serving girl now too, named Leylen, and she told me these things. She also told me that when the queen’s girls were not attending to her, they lived in two of the tiny rooms that lay below the kitchen. Leylen had a room there as well. “Take me to it,” I told her one day, “so that I will know where to find you if I need you.”

Leylen was thirteen. Teldaru had had the king give her to me when I was recovering from my injuries. She was the only castle servant I had yet met who was not afraid of Borl. I liked her for this, and for her chatter and her wild tangle of red hair, but there were times, when I asked her questions and she answered—so willingly—that I wished Teldaru had never brought her to me.

She took me to the servants’ rooms. They were barely large enough for the straw-stuffed pallets that lay on the floors, and they had cloth doors, not wooden ones. The Belakaoan girl’s had a crooked shelf with a spiral-ended shell on it. The Sarsenayan girl’s did not have a shelf, but it did have a hook with an embroidered bag hanging from it. The drawstring was a ribbon—faded blue, with frayed ends that had been tied into knots.

Leylen’s room had a hook too, though all that hung from it was a plain brown dress just like the one she was wearing. “I have nothing pretty,” she said as we watched Borl nose at her pallet. “Nothing like the queen’s girls, anyway. My mother told me not to bring anything or it’d be stolen. The queen’s girls are different, though. No one would steal from them.”

“What are their names?” I asked a few minutes later, as we climbed the steps to the keep. I breathed deeply; the warren of rooms had smelled of onions and meat. “The queen’s girls.”

Leylen said, “Jamenda’s the Belakaoan one. Selvey’s the Sarsenayan.”

Selvey
, I thought.
It must be you.

Why are you doing this, Nola-girl?

My knuckles were resting on the door. I heard muffled noises behind it: words, a ringing of metal, quick, high laughter.

Why?

The planning had consumed me, these past ten days. Only now, standing still and ready, did the question come. But there was no time. Nothing would move forward if I did not do this. Nothing would end if it did not begin. I smiled when I thought this, because it sounded like Yigranzi.

I knocked, loudly. The door opened right away. Jamenda was there. She was wearing a Sarsenayan dress, which looked bright against her dark skin. I wondered, as she bowed her head to me, why she was wearing this.

“I need to see the
moabe
,” I said.

“She is in her bath.” Jamenda’s voice was soft and low. I did not know if she had come from Belakao, or if she had been born here. I would ask Leylen.

“It is an important matter.”

Selvey walked up behind Jamenda, who opened the door a little wider. I did not want to look at Selvey but I did, steadily, taking in her golden hair and her freckles, which reminded me of Grasni’s. Her eyes were light, though I could not tell what colour they were because of the shadows and the lantern glow.

“Mistress Nola,” Selvey said. She was only a few years younger than I was. Perhaps she was the age I’d been when Orlo had taken me from the brothel.

“The Pattern has brought me a vision,” I said. “I must see the queen.”

Jamenda and Selvey glanced at each other. “I will tell her,” Jamenda said, and slipped off into the room.

“I am sorry to make you wait.” Selvey was very solemn. I wished she were not so pretty. Yes, if she only had snaggleteeth and pockmarked skin and a goiter on her neck . . .
Stop
, I thought.
Concentrate.

“
Ispa
Nola,” Zemiya, called from a farther-off room. “Come in.”

I had never been in the queen’s rooms—just the king’s, when he had asked me to help him choose the gift for her. I saw that gift now: the statue of Haldrin’s great-grandmother, standing on a shelf above the narrow day bed in the first chamber. The bracelet was lying at the statue’s feet. I told myself to keep walking, to look away from it, but this was so hard. It was close. It was not on her arm or coiled on the floor by the bathing tub. It was away from her, as I had hoped it would be.

This room was nearly bare, except for the bed and the shelf and the thick carpet that covered the floor. I wondered, as I followed Selvey across it, where all the Belakaoan things were—and then we walked into the bathing room.

The tub was in the middle. It was the biggest one I had ever seen; it was like Teldaru’s mirror, glinting and vast, its facets catching lantern light. Water reflections rippled over the walls and ceiling. Things hung from the ceiling, too: crab shells, and shells of other creatures whose names I did not know. Some were tiny and others were huge; they were strung together with black, brittle stuff that might also have come from the ocean. I saw fish skeletons, stitched up whole somehow, their mouths gaping and lined with tiny teeth. A spear too, its bronze tip angled toward one of the skeletons. Everything seemed to be moving. Waves of light and air, and Zemiya lying looking up, imagining it was all sea.

“A vision,” she said. Her arms were lying on the tub’s sides. Her legs must have been extended all the way, because they were invisible, even her knees. The rest of her was hidden too, except for her neck and head. There were no shells or gems in her braided hair but it shone anyway, beaded with water.

“Yes.” I had to look at her when I spoke, but this was not as difficult as I had feared it might be; when I looked anywhere else the undulating light made me dizzy.

“Another as grand as the one you spoke of on that hill, by the stone? Another battle between Firebird and War Hound, with your lover the master of both? It must have been grand like that for you to come here to me now.”

She rolled her head toward me. I saw the scorn in her gaze and on her full, moist lips, and I wanted to say,
Zemiya, we could be friends, if you knew the truth
—but I felt the other words rising and wanted to say them, too.

“I saw your child.”

She did not move. The bath water that covered her was as smooth as a sheet made of silk. My lips felt terribly dry but I did not lick them; I could not move until she did.

“What child?”

“The one you carry now, my Queen.”

She was still for a moment more. Then she shrugged, and the water parted around her shoulders and breasts. I could see her scar; wet, it was a brighter shade of pink. Both smoother and more puckered. “Haldrin told your lover and he told you and you dreamed of it—maybe that is all.”

“No.” My voice was rough with urgency. “It was a true vision. He—Teldaru—asked me to Othersee for him after my vision at Ranior’s Hill. I saw many things, but the child—your child—was the clearest.”

“But you did not come to me until now.”

“I did not know how . . . my Queen, I am accustomed to telling people of pain and darkness, but this was you. I did not know how to do it.”

I felt sick, all of a sudden.
Why?
I thought again.
Why this reason, this story?
I swallowed over the sourness in my throat.
Because it had to be a believable reason for me to come to her here. Because it will hurt no one, in the end.

“Haldrin esteems you,” Zemiya said. I blinked at her. “He believes what you say.”

“And you do not?”

“My sister does not. Me, I simply do not like you. But know that Haldrin listens to your seeings and trusts in them. And remember that this is his child.”

There was sweat all along my brow. I could feel tendrils of hair clinging to my neck.

“So tell me,” the queen said. “Say what you want me to believe about this child.”

I swallowed as I had before: convulsively, in a way that nearly choked me.
Remember
, I thought.
You prepared these words
.

At first they came out right. “I saw a baby lying on a bed lined with bright red feathers.” Obvious—too obvious—don’t look at her now, or you’ll falter. “A boy baby, plump and brown, with thick loose curls. Beneath the curls were the folded velvet ears of a dog.” How had I thought that this would sound convincing? Too late.

“He is laughing. He is beautiful. The sun is shining on his face. But then the feathers turn into flames, and the dog ears on his head are wounds opening.”

This last part was wrong.
His chin lengthens into a muzzle
, I had intended to say,
and his whiskers tangle together, and the flames singe them black. The baby is crying
. But I said none of these things. The words flowed from my mouth as if I were speaking of a true vision, and yet they were lies; was it curse or Pattern or just my own wayward mind that had made them?