“As it happened, he found the fabled powerful ones, and they gave us sanctuary. My brother loved the life in the valley. We both did, when I grew old enough to know anything. He was much celebrated there, having come away on his own, a boy so young. And then, too, he was eager to be taught and had a quick and ready mind. So he learned, and moved up in rank, and came each night to tell me stories of his lessons. I doubt you’ve heard those yet, being so young, but they were wondrous. As time passed, I wanted nothing more than to be like him, to learn what he learned, to discover for myself whether the marvels of those stories were true.”
Kate had spent enough nights hearing Nell argue with Susan to begin to understand.
“But they wouldn’t let you.”
The woman shook her head. Her hands had retreated into her lap, and now she glanced out the northern window, where the sun glossed the trees. The birds were making a racket in the branches, and suddenly a cloud of them rose at once, dark pebbles thrown into the sky. They swooped and played and then settled again to blacken the branches.
“It was not the way, for girls. So I sought answers in books. When that wasn’t enough, I began to frequent the scholars’ garden. Things were different in those years. The Guide had just been elevated, and the council was still of two minds.”
Kate blinked, confused. She warned herself against asking. No stupid questions. Nell’s voice rang in her head. But the woman noticed, and paused.
“I mean, they were not as set in their ways as they are now. My doing, I suppose. At that time, there was an old man, a great scholar, who thought that those like me, who sought learning, should have our chance with the mysteries. He was overruled many times, but he went his way and invited me to learn. So I did, coming at night to meet him outside the walls, among the crops. I came, and others, too, for a time.”
Outside, the blackbirds had started their commotion again. Their hectoring voices tumbled from the trees and through the windows and made Kate feel that they were urging the story on to its bad end. She kept thinking of Laysia’s brother, the smart, quick one, the brave one who had saved her. She wondered who had hurt him.
But the woman went on, ignoring the birds.
“How could I know the doings of the great ones? The council is full of intrigue and pride — that’s what my teacher told me — and yet I heard those words as nothing more than the words in a story, to be set aside, to be moved past as if you understood them. I didn’t understand them, didn’t see the danger coming. But then, perhaps, neither did he. He was an old man, as I said, and had weathered so much. Perhaps he thought this, too, was only the bubbling jealousy of young men, which passes, in time. Only it didn’t. Or perhaps it was that he didn’t understand my impatience, my passion. I don’t know.”
Kate sat perfectly still, knowing she and the racket of blackbirds and the late-morning sun gilding the windows were forgotten. She was used to listening in silence to this kind of talk. Even at home, she’d learned that when people talked this way, if she stayed quiet enough, she’d learn the answers to questions she didn’t know to ask.
“So we went on that way, for a while. And the fights of the great ones grew more heated, until to his surprise, I think, Tur Nurayim was turned out of the council and shunned. Exile was not the same then, you see. Still, it hurt him. His students left him, afraid of the taint of it. All but me. He built this place then and taught me in solitude. And perhaps I wasn’t enough, for he died not long after. And then I — broken a little, too, I think — grew impatient. And bold. I thought I would show the elders the wrong they did. I would convince them. I decided to enter the heart, where the books of mystery are kept, and prove that I belonged among them.”
Kate looked up sharply at that, but Laysia, her finger again circling the wood grain of the tabletop, didn’t see.
“A great lock keeps the gate of the inner garden closed,” she said. “It has no key. The legend is that only the worthy can open it, a scholar with the power of a trained mind. I found that to be true. It took me a long time, but I managed it. When I did — and I’d gotten inside — they found me.”
She remembered Kate then, because she looked up with that sad smile of hers. “They saw that I had gotten in, but it meant nothing. Worse, it meant that I had betrayed them — broken their rules. And so they put me out. In exactly the way they put your sister out. I was the first exile.”
Kate waited. She thought she must have lost the thread of the story now, because of the brother. She’d been listening for him. When Laysia failed to go on, she finally asked what happened to him.
The look on the woman’s face at her question made Kate think at first it must be another stupid one, and that she’d failed to hear Laysia tell her about her brother’s accident or sickness. She started to apologize, but the woman held up a hand.
“No, it’s all right. I should have said. I have no knack for stories, do I?” She
