strange—and here, so far away...” He paused again, then said, “Could you bring her to me?”
“What?”
“Bring her to me. Here, in the garden.” His laugh was short and harsh. “I certainly cannot go to her. But I need to see her up close.” He looked at her and his eyes softened. “Please, good Mistress Akuanis. I swear I ask you a favor for no unworthy reason. Could you do that for me?”
“That makes two favors in one day.” She tired to make her voice stern. “I...I suppose I could. Perhaps.” She did not understand her own feelings and was not certain that she wanted to understand them. “I will try.”
“Thank you.” He stood up and bowed, his face suddenly distant. “Now I must go. I have much to think about and I have stolen enough of your time today.” He walked toward the archway leading back to his tower rooms— comfortable enough, he had told her, if you did not mind a door that had a barred window in it and was locked from the outside— without looking back.
Pelaya sat, feeling oddly as though she wanted to cry. For the first time since they had met each other Olin had left the garden first. The prisoner had gone back to his cell to be alone rather than share her company any longer.
She remained on the bench, trying to understand what had happened to her, until the first drops of rain forced her inside.
“Who could ever live in such a place?” Yazi asked, wideeyed. “You would tire yourself to fits just walking to the kitchen.”
“People who live in such places don’t walk to the kitchen,” said Qinnitan. “They have people like you and me bring their food to them.” She frowned, trying to remember which way they had turned on the inbound trip. Monarchs had been adding rooms and corridors and whole wings onto the citadel of Hierosol for so many centuries that the place was like the sea coral from one of her favorite poems by Baz’u Jev. Qinnitan entertained a brief fantasy that one day she would be able to take the boy Pigeon for a walk on the seashore without worrying she might be recognized, to see some of the mysteries that had so charmed the poet, the spiraling shells daintier than jewels, the stones polished smooth as statues. She had work to do, though, and even if she hadn’t, she couldn’t afford to loiter in the open that way.
“But look at us!” Yazi was from the Ellamish border country so she spoke fairly good Xixian, a good-hearted girl but a little slow and prone to mistakes. “We are lost already. Surely no one can find their way in such a big place. This must be the biggest house on earth!”
Qinnitan was tempted to say that she herself had once lived in the biggest house on earth, just to see Yazi’s expression, but even though she had already told Soryaza the laundrymistress she had been an acolyte of the Hive, there was no sense in telling everyone else, especially someone as innocently loose-lipped as Yazi. The fact that Qinnitan had once lived in the Royal Seclusion, where she had been one of the fortunate few who had their food brought to them by hurrying, silent servants, was certainly not going to be mentioned either, although the irony of the present conversation was not lost on her.
“I know it’s back this way,” she said instead. “Remember, we came down a long hall full of pictures just after we went through that garden?”
“What garden?”
“You didn’t...? Where you could see the ocean and everything?” She sighed. “Never mind.” Yazi was like a dog that way—the girl had been talking about something, a dream she had, or a dream she wanted to have, and hadn’t even noticed the garden, the one time today they had been out from under the castle roof. Qinnitan had noticed, of course. She had spent too much time kept like a nightingale in a wicker cage to ignore the glorious moments when she was free beneath the gods’ great sky. “Never mind,” she said again. “Just follow me.”
“Breasts of Surigali, where have you two been?” Soryaza stood with her hands on her hips, looking as though she might pick up one of the massive washing tubs and dump its scalding contents all over the truants. “You were just supposed to take those up to the upstairs ewery and come straight back.”
Soryaza snorted her disbelief, then spat on the wet floor. “Well, get back to work. And speak Hierosoline, both of you. You aren’t in the south anymore!”
As the laundry-mistress stalked away several of the other women sidled over to find out what had happened. Qinnitan knew most of their names already, although two were new enough she had only seen them and not spoken to them.
“Is she always angry?” asked one of these new workers, an anxious, scrawny young thing with pink-tinged eyes and twitching nose—the others had already named her Rabbit.
“Always,” Yazi said. “Her feet hurt. And her back hurts too.”
“Pah!” said one of the other women. “She’s been saying that for years. Didn’t stop her from picking that boy Gregor up and throwing him out the door when she caught him sleeping in the drying room. Or from kicking over a tub or two when she’s in the mood.”
“Nira, someone said you were a priestess in Xis,” the girl called Rabbit suddenly said to Qinnitan. “Is that true?”
She was always a little slow to recognize her own false name, although she was getting better at it, and speaking Hierosoline slowed her down even more, so it took a moment for the question to sink in. When it did, she felt a chill.
Out loud, she said, “I...was not priestess. Just...” She searched for a word, but her command of the language was still weak. “Just helper.”
“In the Hive?” Rabbit asked. “Someone said it was in the Hive. I’ve heard of that place. Was it like they say —did the priests come in and...you know? With the priestesses?”
“Silence, girl,” said one of the other new workers, an old woman with a burn-scarred face and a mouth where dark holes outnumbered ruined teeth. She glared at Rabbit. “Don’t ask so many question. She does not want to talk, maybe.” Her command of Hierosoline was better than Qinnitan’s, but it was easy to hear that she too was a southerner.
“I only wanted to know...!” Rabbit squeaked.
“Tits of the Great Mother, what are you lazy bitches up to?” Soryaza’s voice thundered through the dank room. Her bulky form loomed up out of the washtub fog and the women scattered. “The next one I catch standing and talking might as well go down to the harbor and find a place to stand on Daneya Street with the other whores, because you won’t work for me another moment!”
“Yazi, why are there so many new people?” Qinnitan asked when they were standing over their washing tub again. New faces made her unhappy, and people asking about her history in Xis made her even more so.
“New?” The round-faced girl laughed. “You’ve only been here a tennight yourself.”
“But so many! Rabbit, and that old toothless woman, and the one with the fat legs...”
“Oh, listen to you! Not everyone’s a skinny little thing like you, Nira. As it happens, Soryaza told me she’s hiring more because of the war.”
“The war?”
“Don’t you listen to anybody? There’s a war coming, everyone says so. The autarch’s going to send ships. They’ll never break this place, of course—no one ever has. But the lord protector has called in troops from Krace and...and...and other places.” She flushed, her tone of authority momentarily compromised. “And so we’re going to be having more work.”
Qinnitan felt a sudden chill—touched by a ghost, her family had always called it. She had heard rumors but had not given them much credence—as the continent’s greatest seaport, Hierosol seemed to breathe rumors like air, to serve them as meat and drink. A new continent discovered in the western oceans, one said. So much gold discovered on an island near Ulos that the overladen boat sank on the way back. Fairy armies marching in the north. The Autarch of Xis preparing to conquer all Eion. Who was to know what was truth and what was fancy?
“The...autarch...?” she said now. Memories of his pale, mad eyes, never more than a moment away from her
