The genasi frowned, a fluctuation of his hairless brows. Egg whites and cold water and maize sirop. Beat it for seven minutes. It whips up so delightfully, like little waves. The burnt sugar is the light at sunset over the surface of the water.
What was the spicing of the batter?
I don t remember.
Behind him in the doorway, Lukas heard a little gasp. He turned his head and saw Lady Amaranth standing there.
The wolf-woman pulled away the blanket from the bottom of the bed, revealing one of the genasi s shining legs.
They grow so fast, said Amaranth. One year, two, and they are fully grown. Ten years most of them and they are old. Many have died since I first came here. Not from violence they turn gray, sleep all the time, curl up on their mats, indistinguishable from beasts. Is it possible that I could live here for another hundred years? For them, how many generations will have passed?
She was talking about the lycanthropes. I have tried to leave, she said, but they won t let me. I spoke to a fisherman in the Northlander settlements. But at night the rats attacked his boat and sunk it at the dock. So then I built a boat myself I had it built. I wouldn t step in it myself they wouldn t let me. I sent my friend the pig, the cleverest of all of them. They are very rare, the pigs, special and rare. My friend I d given her a name. I sent her with a message to my sister, begging her. But I wonder if her crew mutinied, or else she forgot they are forgetful. I haven t heard.
I have waited, continued Lady Amaranth. But time has no meaning here. I have so much, and they have so little.
Chapter Eight — Suka's Escape
But in Caer Corwell, time was of the essence. At least Suka thought so; she was eager to be gone. The others were obviously more patient. Suka had discovered after many recitations of Oh, Father Dear that Marabaldia had been imprisoned close to ten years. She had made line after line of little scratches in the sallow bricks, in time-honored fashion, as if counting the days indicated some sort of action or commitment. Suka was amazed. After a tenday she was ready to jump out of her skin. She hung from the bars, performed mental puzzles, logical and arithmetical, made endless circuits of her cell, invented conversations with imaginary people, rehearsed variations of what she d do to Lukas when she saw him again (The cold shoulder? The swift kick in the crotch?). The pig- woman lay motionless, a sow in a sty, wallowing in the filth of her despair (and in actual filth, too), gnawing on the discarded carrots and radishes of regret, scratching the fleas of self-indulgence Suka could draw out these metaphors forever, in her frantic and myriad attempts to keep her mind alive.
Poke was the sow s name, bestowed on her by the ginger slut of Moray, as Suka privately referred to Lady Amaranth, most unfairly, as she herself would have conceded. Like the ritual inking of the tattoos, Suka imagined, these naming ceremonies were a solemn occasion, perhaps some absurd version of a knight s investiture: rows of lycanthropes in their white shifts, all holding candles, and the ginger slut intoning variations of Arise now, Poke, and bear your name with honor. Arise now, Prod, and you, Bat-shit.
Poke didn t move, didn t turn her head, only followed Suka s endless gyrations from the corners of her eyes. Only at night in the darkness did she come alive, during story time, as the gnome referred to it, or the hundred and one tales of Lady Amaranth, her virtue and her beauty. Fine, thought Suka. Whatever eladrin were wicked hot. Cold and hot. It was a well-known fact, part of what made them so creepy and grotesque and horrible and bad. They were slutty and sterile at the same time. Everybody wanted to have sex with them and nobody could.
Poke had built a boat to please her, to carry a message to her sister, and the boat had sunk immediately, burned by the nagas, while Poke had drifted in the water, cold and miserable, hour after hour
Wait, said Suka. Hold your horses. That s not what you said before.
Poke, who never liked to be interrupted in these orgies of self-punishment, opened her eyes. Suka could see them glittering in the darkness. I mean, she said, the other night, the first night you told us this whole damn same exact sad story, you said you had come here with a letter for the Claw. Captain Rurik. From Lady Amaranth.
That s right, said Marabaldia in her soft, sweet voice. I remember that too.
Lady Amaranth has no deviousness, amended Poke.
She knows nothing of any rebellion. She trusts her sister from the time she was a little girl. It is I, since I have been here, who have changed the direction of her mission, now I know the truth
Poke s speech, absurdly formal and yet punctuated with little grunts, always made the gnome smile. And she was interested in this: The pig-woman had showed more gumption than she would have guessed. Although if the ginger slut of Moray was really on the level, whether in her dealings with Lady Ordalf or on any other subject, then she was different from any other eladrin in the history of Faer n, because the rest of them were unequivocally as bent as corkscrews.
Tell me, said Poke, do you believe in Captain Rurik? Do you believe that such a man exists? Or is he?
Suka reassured her, though to tell the truth she didn t particularly believe in him. But (who was she kidding?) it wasn t as if she wasn t brimming with fey blood, and hadn t her own store of deviousness. So sue me, she thought, while at the same time she imagined she could use this part of the conversation to reveal her plan, how when the Ffolk wardens removed the last bar that separated the gnome from the fomorian, then they could use Marabaldia s evil eye to freeze them in their tracks or something. Suka didn t know enough about the eye to have got much farther in her thinking, although she had some questions: Could you turn it off, or was it always on? If it was always on, did fomorians get involved in idiotic situations where they froze or disabled each other without wanting to, a husband and wife, say, over the dinner table or in bed, or else children playing in a nursery? Over the past days Suka had amused herself by inventing various scenarios, none of which were useful now. She didn t mention them to Marabaldia, especially since the fomorian seemed suddenly shy around the subject, which was obviously a private thing.
Of course we can control it, she d protested.
It s a weapon you carry all the time, Suka said now, her curiosity overcoming, for the moment, any sense of diplomacy. I mean, even a swordmage, she said, thinking of the Savage, puts the damn thing down when he goes to the privy an unfortunate image, and Suka suddenly regretted it. Marabaldia was nothing if not modest, and had a good deal of trouble with the waste buckets and water buckets the Ffolk left for them, always waiting until darkness, when Suka, from the other side of the cell, could hear her nervously slopping around. Not wanting to embarrass her, the gnome always feigned sleep. One night Marabaldia had even washed her clothes.
It s not a weapon, she protested.
Besides, I can t get free. Suka, close to the bars along her side, reached in her hand as if to comfort her, but instead at the last moment ran her little fingers along the back of the fomorian s bulbous head, under her hair, releasing the catch. Then she drew back her hand as quickly as she could in case she had violated some long- established cultural taboo, which had to be punished, say, by biting or dismemberment. She hoped the effect, to Marabaldia, was that the iron and leather half mask over her eye, which had been her constant bane for many years, had fallen away as if by magic, or else in answer to her own prayers to Sel ne, the goddess of maidenhood and the moon. She burst into tears, and when she raised her head, Suka could see in the almost-total darkness, for a moment, some vestige or version of the beauty she had boasted of.
Do you think he will still love me? the fomorian asked softly, after all these years?
Suka knew what she meant, and she found herself affected, especially since Marabaldia could not possibly be so stupid that she did not guess or know or understand that the bridegroom she remembered was now probably long dead.
Then she turned her head. Her eye shone softly in the darkness, and Suka found herself unable to look somewhere else. What her father had described as something evil and disgusting and destructive did not seem that way. She stared into it, and she was caught.
Which didn t mean she couldn t move, but that she didn t want to. It s not a weapon, Marabaldia had said, which Suka now believed. Doubtless you could use it that way. But anything could be a weapon. You could kill somebody with a feather, not that she d tried.
