Waterborn

'I'm sorry if that upset you,' Yen told her, his voice husky. 'I know we cannot court. But I wanted to kiss you once, at least.'

'Once?'

He nodded. 'Soon I will have no more excuses to come back to the library, at least not for many months; I will be supervising the construction. When I next see you, you will probably be married.' He smiled thinly.

'Well,' she gasped. 'You should not have done it. If anyone saw…'

'But you promised no one would see.'

She colored further. 'I did not ask you up here for that,' she insisted, turning her eyes back out to the cityscape, her heart doing hummingbird pirouettes in her breast. 'But you may do it again, if you wish. Just once more.'

From the corner of her eye, she saw him lean in again and, closing her eyes, turned to meet him.

 

 

She thought about that kiss for the rest of the day, the hours in the library seeming in turns frozen in time and rushing by. She was still considering it as she made her way back to her apartments. It was an odd feeling, the memory of that sweet, forbidden thing, another gift to go with the statue, another bit of madness in her life. The broad corridors of the palace seemed like the narrowest parapet of the Great Hall, a thin, tiny path that she could easily sway off of, out into the deep, the unknown. It seemed to her that Yen was right, though he had not been speaking of her, that her possibilities were virtually unlimited. She wanted to dream on and on of what might be, bathe in promise, yet at the same time, she knew she had to sober herself, become calmer for the adventure awaiting her.

No matter how often she told herself that, her feet still felt light.

Turning into the corridor where her rooms were, the stink of incense assailed her nostrils. The priests had just swept here, and the smoke still hung thick in the air. Certainly they had just been sweeping, as they did now and then. But Hezhi's eyes widened. The door to her rooms stood ajar a crack. Smoke drifted out, pungent gray coils of it. She could just see the fringe of Qey's skirt, silhouetted against the light from the doorway. She stood, staring, pulse hammering. All of her gauzy dreams were torn, just like that, and she realized exactly how fragile hope was. Trembling, she reached into her pocket, stroked the statuette, but it felt only like metal, unfeeling metal. The horse-woman was cold, her promise dissipated in that first sharp scent of incense.

She stood rooted until Qey turned, her face revealed in the doorway. Hezhi had that one glimpse of it as Qey recognized her, a sad, tortured look, pleading. A terrible flash of insight caught her, as if Qey's face were a light more blinding than the sun, and she understood she would never see the woman who had raised her again after this one last glimpse. The flash became an ache, a wish to be gathered up in Qey's arms once more, to eat breakfast just one more time, to tell her that she loved her.

This was the last she would see of Qey, and she would never see Tsem again at all.

Horse-woman clutched in her hand, she turned and fled, ran as she had never run before, just as a shout went up behind her, the high, boyish voice of a priest.

The halls echoed hollowly beneath her slapping feet, as if she were inside of a skull or the tombs beneath the temples one read about. It was as when she was a younger girl, with D'en, dashing through the empty places of the great palace, footsteps their only company. Now, however, the halls were crowded with footfalls.

D'en, she thought miserably. I will certainly never see you again.

Up a flight of stairs, and the next. She had no idea how close the priests were to catching her; the thundering of blood in her ears and the sound of her own flight obscured any clamor of pursuit. It didn't matter really, if she could just reach the rooftops before they did.

She burst into the afternoon light, gasping, tears just beginning to trickle. Frantically she clambered up the side of the upper court, where she and Yen had so recently kissed. Wind whispered through the cottonwood as if to welcome her back.

This may not be high enough, she thought, and so continued her ascent onto the red slate shingles that slanted down to the garden from higher regions of the palace.

She had nearly reached the ridge of the roof when a voice shouted behind her again. She turned, briefly, to see first one and then a second priest emerge from the stairs. Ignoring them, she finished climbing to the ridgebeam and began to run along it.

Here was her straight, narrow trail, illusion become real. It ran all along the top of the empty wing, a vertiginous path that led nowhere but to the roof of the Great Hall. There she would climb once more, put the distance of six ceilings and five floors between herself and the pavement. That would be high enough.

The shingles plunged steeply away from her left and right hands to join the flat roofs of lower floors. As she ran, she glimpsed little flashes of life in the courtyards below—a woman hanging laundry, a gardener watering potted plants, a man and a woman kissing. Such little things, and yet suddenly infinitely precious. As precious and precarious as her shattered hope. The only recognizable fragment of that hope was her chance to escape the priests—and D'en's fate. As she understood this her tears transformed from sorrowful to bitter.

Clambering up onto the roof of the Great Hall, she glanced back again. The priests were far behind her; they had not spent uncounted hours here, in the bright air above the palace. She would succeed, she had time.

She slipped a few times, ascending the steep, vaulted roof, but she knew where the handholds were, knew to go up the crease where a mighty strut supported the roof. A moment she had then, to think of Tsem, of how sad he would be, of how glad she was that he was in the city when the priests came. He would have killed them, and then he would have died, too. Now that wouldn't happen, nor would Ghan risk his life and freedom unnecessarily. She would solve her own problems, bear the weight of her birth on her own small soles.

Shuddering for breath, she completed the climb, and there took another moment to rest. The top of the dome was open, a great unwinking eye staring out from the Leng Court. Looking down, she could see its iris, the fountain, far below, the beckoning stones.

I mustn't fall in the fountain, she thought. I mustn't give the River my blood while I yet live; I won't do that.

She was still crying, but the tears now had the melancholy solace of happy tears, of the sort of crying that feels good. The priests were still pursuing, sluggishly. Gazing about her, she cherished the glorious view—the dusty desert reaches, the filmy green fields, the vast bustle of humanity that was Nhol. The sun resting in the River, half sunken, a floating tangerine.

Stepping up to the edge, she admired her little statue once more. The fierce grin seemed like laughter, like a secret joy they shared. Another wind whipped around her, and she felt her heart washed clean by it, filled with light and high, endless sky.

She spread wide her arms like wings, the long streak of her shadow fleeing eastward in the steeply slanting light.

IX

The Quickening of Dream

Morning brought the city that Perkar remembered from his dreams, a forest of buildings flaming white in the sun. Yet already his pristine vision was faded, replaced by the reality of rude, incomprehensible people, dirty rooms, and the smell of the docks, a stench for which he had no name. Morning also brought with it a sense of immense inadequacy, for he had not the faintest idea what to do, how—or even what—to negotiate in this alien place. Until now, the River had provided him with direction and thus purpose. Now he lacked that. He wondered what would have happened had he stayed in the boat. Would it have sailed straight to where he was being called, to the task at hand? Or would he be in this same place, sitting at a thick, stained, knife-scarred table wondering what to do?

Midmorning actually provided him with part of an answer. He had been splitting his time between the table and its promise of employment and stepping outside, watching and wondering still at the immensity of Nhol. A few others in the Crab Woman seemed to be seeking work; a group of three rough-looking men, dark and scarred,