Xulai sighed deeply, aware that a dreadful oppression had risen from her heart. She had not been guilty of keeping the princess in pain, nor had her cowardice undone the princess’s will to go on living. “She knew she was cursed.”
“She knew before I did. It was a day or so before we were to be wed. She came in from walking in the woods and told me it had happened. I remember it as though it happened this morning. She was carrying a trowel and her hands were muddy. She had been mucking about, she said, among the forest plants. They fascinated her, and she had been exploring. She was near that old temple—you may have seen it—when the knowledge came to her. She had that Tingawan way of seeing things, knowing things. I should not have been surprised, earlier, at the questions you asked, for it is a talent your people share, that knowing without being told.”
“My people?”
“Her people and yours. The Tingawan people of the Thousand Isles.”
That night, Xulai took Abasio up to the bird lofts, introduced him to the duke, and left them there. After an awkward few moments, they decided they liked each other, and Abasio, reading the signs of grief, said some things that surprised the duke, who returned with some knowledge that much surprised Abasio.
“You’ve actually seen the waters?” the duke asked.
“I have. And I’ve heard more than I’ve seen.”
“When my wife’s father was here with us, he told me it was going to be . . . very bad.”
“For those of us who breathe air, that’s what they say.”
“Your acquaintances in the Edges? I’m told that wise men believe it’s happened before and it wasn’t that great a catastrophe.”
“It has happened before, but not like this. Before it was just melting ice from the poles. These are far greater waters rising. But there’s still some time. A lifetime or two.”
“A lifetime. Of a mouse? Or a man?”
Abasio smiled. “I was told there were enough lifetimes for a plan to work itself out, if everything goes as it should.”
The duke stared at him in frank astonishment. “Who under heaven told you . . .”
“A man I met. Not a Norlander, I think. He came to find me, he said. He didn’t say who sent him or how, he just pointed me in this direction. I think he sent me to Xulai—though . . .”
“Though?”
“He did not tell me to expect a child.”
Justinian stared over his head blankly. “Child or not, you’ll go with her?”
“Oh, yes. I’ll go with her.” He would, though the idea was very unsettling and he could not find the reason.
When Xulai left Abasio in the tower and was alone in her room, she surrendered to all the emotion she had so far refused to feel and let herself weep for a loss so enveloping that there was room for nothing else. She would miss the Duke of Wold and the princess, yes, but the one was as he had always been; the other had gone past grieving; so what she grieved for now was the loss of her world, her home, every accustomed corner of it, gardens, animals, trees, the entirety of the place that had been hers.
There were places in the forest and along the river she went into as though they were well-loved rooms, full of pleasure and peace; mornings with Horsemaster, watching the colts in the paddock; countless afternoons in the haylofts above the stable among the mother cats and their kittens; evenings in a certain tree copse near the swamp where the bell-like call of a blue-plumed bird and the shush of wings over her head were daily benedictions. These places had become as much a part of her life as were her hands, her feet, her eyes! Losing them felt as though she was being stripped of her skin, of her heart, of her mind, of her senses.
Since babyhood she had relished the noise and bustle of the castle, very much like a town with its various trades and the coming and going of crops and supplies. Though she had not had friends among the children, there were others she knew well. She knew the shoemaker, his wife, the farrier and his brother, the hostler and his mother, the armorers, the maids and footmen, the stewards of the various large estates within Wold. She knew the farmers, their fields, their woods, their animals. She had spent untold hours with Horsemaster, first learning to ride, then learning everything else he would teach her. Wold’s Horsemaster was known as far away as Wellsport, and though he did not share his secrets with many, he had shared them with Xulai. Her roots ran deep among all the Woldsgard people, and now those roots were to be ripped out and burned, the ashes whipped away by the wind. So she gave herself to grief and wept, her hand in her pocket curled protectively around its tiny inhabitant.
From nowhere came black and white Bothercat to leap upon the bed and curl up by her stomach. Spotted Vexcat crept across her to find his place at the back of her neck. They purred, two cats but only one loud purr, rhythmic as breathing, a constant hum, like the hum of bees in the summer meadow, the hum of the wind in the young copses, the hum, perhaps, of the stars where they spun through the night. She fell into the hum, the purr, while her tears dried and she slept.
In the morning, when she awoke, the cats had departed and the chipmunk was sitting on her
