Falli was talking to me. Falli was the gate guard to the silk rooms. She sat in the western court with her spinning, a heavy, slow-spoken woman who had long ago been one of the Father’s gift-girls. She made a reverence whenever she spoke of the Father or the Mother or any of the Family or any other wellborn family. She worshipped them as gods. People used to laugh at her for it—“Falli thinks they’re already Ancestors,” Iemmer said. Falli was a foolish woman. What foolish thing had she just said, bobbing her head when she said “Torm-di'—that Torm had taken Ris and my sister to the Hot Wells?
The Hot Wells belonged to Corric Runda, son of the Senator Granoc Runda, the wealthiest and most powerful man in the government of Etra. Corric had wanted to marry our Astano, and failed, but seemingly he held no grudge; lately he’d become Torm’s friend or patron. Torm was always with him and his circle of young, rich men. Young, rich men could live the high life, now that Etra was free and prosperous again—endless feasts, women, drinking parties that ended up as riots in the city streets…A strange friendship for Torm, it seemed to some of us, with his stiff grim ways and his warrior’s training, but Corric had taken a fancy to him, insisted on having him; and the Father approved of the friendship, encouraging it as a good thing for the Family, for the Arca interest with the House of Runda. Young men would be young men, there would be women and drinking and so on, there was no harm in it, nothing would go really wrong.
Tib, a prentice cook now, followed Hoby about like a dog when Ho-by was at Arcamand. And Tib told us the stories Hoby told him. Corric and his friends liked to get Torm drunk because he went crazy when he was drunk and would do anything they dared him to do—fence with three men at once, fight a bear, tear off his clothes and dance naked on the Senate steps till he fell down in a foaming fit. They thought Torm was wonderful, Hoby said, they all admired him. To some of us it sounded as if they used him as a clown, for entertainment, like the dwarfs Corric kept as wrestlers, or his half-witted, one-eyed, giant bodyguard Hum. But it wasn’t like that at all, according to Hoby as related by Tib. Hoby said that Corric Runda took lessons in swordfighting from Torm, treating him as a master of the art. He said all Corric’s friends respected Torm, They feared his great strength. They liked him to run wild because then everybody feared him and them.
“Torm-di is young,” Everra said. “Let him have his fling while he’s young. He’ll be the wiser for it when he’s older. The Father knows that. He had his wild days too.”
The Runda estate called the Hot Wells was a mile or so from Etra in the rich grainlands west of the city. The Senator built a grand new house there and gave it to his son Corric. Hoby told Tib all about it and Tib told us: the luxurious chambers, the silk rooms full of women, the courts full of flowers, and the wonderful bathing pool in a back court—the water came up from a hot spring and was always the temperature of blood, but it was transparent blue-green, and peacocks spread their plumage beside it on pavements of green and purple marble… Hoby had been there many times as Torm’s bodyguard. All these young noblemen had bodyguards, it was the fashion; Corric had three besides the giant, Torm had bought a second one recently. The bodyguards were invited to share the women in the silk rooms at the Hot Wells, to take their pick of the food and the women, after their masters, of course. Hoby had swum in the warm pool. He told Tib all about the pool, about the women, about the food—minced livers of capon, the tongues of unborn lambs.
So when Falli said to me that Torm had taken Ris and Sallo to the Hot Wells, though my mind seemed blank as if I’d run into a stone wall and been stunned, I went after a little while to the kitchens and looked for Tib. I thought he might know something from Hoby. I don’t know what I thought he might know. He knew nothing. When I told him what Falli had said, he looked taken aback for a moment, dismayed. Then he said, “There are a lot of women there, the Rundas keep dozens of slave women there. Torm just took the girls there to have a good time.”
I don’t know what I answered, but it made Tib go sullen and defensive. “Look, Gav, maybe you’re teacher’s pet and all, but remember, after all, Sal and Ris are gift-girls.”
“They weren’t given to Torm,” I said. I spoke slowly, because my mind was still blank and slow. “Ris is a virgin. Sallo was given to Ya-ven. Torm can’t take them out of the house. He can’t have taken them there. The Mother would never allow it.”
Tib shrugged. “Maybe Falli got the story mixed up,” he said, and turned away to his work.
I went to Iemmer and told her what Falli said. I repeated what I’d said to Tib—that it could not be: the Mother would not allow it.
Iemmer, who like so many people since the siege now looked much older than she was, said nothing at all for a while. Then only a great “Ah,” and shook her head, again and again.
“Oh, this is—This is not good,” she said. “I hope, I hope Falli is wrong. She must be. How could she let him take off the girls without permission? I’ll speak with her. And with other women in the silk rooms. Oh, Sallo!” She had always loved my sister best of all the girls. “No, it can’t be,” she said with more energy. “Of course you’re right, Mother Falimer-io wouldn’t allow it. Never. Yaven-di’s Sallo! And little Ris! No, no, no. That suet-headed Falli has got something mixed up. I’ll go get this straight right now.”
I was used to trusting Iemmer, who generally did get things straight. I went off to the schoolroom and put my young pupils through their drills and recitations. I kept my mind from thinking until the morning was over. I went to the refectory. People were talking, a group of them, men and women. “No,” Tan was saying, “I put the horses in myself. He took them off in the closed car, with Hoby and that lout he bought from the Rundas in with them, and himself driving the horses.”
“Well, if the Mother let them go, there’s no harm in it,” Ennumer said in her high vague voice.
“Of course the Mother let them go!” said another woman, but Tan, who was second hostler now, shook his head and said, “They were bundled up like a lot of washing in sacks. I didn’t know who they were, even, till Sallo pokes out her head and tries to shout out something. Then Hoby pushes her back into the car like a sack of meal and bang goes the door and off they go at a gallop.”
“A prank, like,” one of the older men said.
“A prank that’ll get Sonny-di and Twinny into some trouble with Daddy-di, maybe!” Tan said savagely. He saw me then. His dark eyes locked on mine. “Gav,” he said. “You know anything about it? Did Sallo talk to you?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t speak.
“Ah, it’ll be all right,” Tan said, after a moment. “A prank, like uncle said. A damn fool stupid joke. They’ll be back this evening.”
I stood there with the others, but it was as if everything and everyone moved away from me and I stood alone in a place where there was nothing and no one. I moved through the halls and courts of Arcamand with an emptiness around me. Voices came to me from a distance.
The emptiness closed in and became dark, a low rough roof of black stone, a cave.
“I know things,” Sallo said to me. “And I know I know them. We Marsh people, we have our powers!” And she laughed. Her bright eyes shone.
I knew she was dead before they sent for me, before Everra told me. They thought it proper that Everra should be the one to tell me.
An accident, last night, in the pool at the Hot Wells. A sad accident, a terrible thing, Everra said, tears in his eyes.
“An accident,” I said.
He said Sallo had been drowned—had drowned, he corrected himself—had drowned, as the young men, who had drunk too much and gone past all decency, were playing with the girls in the pool.
“The pool of warm water,” I said, “where there are peacocks on the marble.”
Yes, my teacher said, looking up at me with tear-wet eyes. He seemed to me to have a sly, cringing expression, as if he was ashamed of himself for doing something he should not have done but would not confess, like a schoolboy.
“Ris is home,” he said, “with the women in the silk rooms. She is in a lamentable state, poor girl. Not injured, but… It was madness, madness. We know that Torm-di has always—has always had this frenzy that comes upon him—but to take the girls out of the house! To take them there, among those men! Madness, madness. Oh the shame, the shame, the pity of it, oh, my poor Gavir,” and my teacher bowed his grey head before me, hiding his wet eyes and cringing face. “And what will Yaven-di say!” he cried.
I went through the halls, past the room of the Ancestors, to the library, and sat there a while alone. The emptiness was around me, the silence. I asked Sallo to come to me, but no one came. “Sister,” I said aloud, but I could not hear my voice.
