Centauriad 1 - Daughter of the Centaurs (22 page)

By way of example, Honus shows her a small sheet that he has covered with his own impossibly small, exquisitely neat handwriting. His letters look to Malora like blades of grass all bowing in the same direction, whereas her own letters crawl around on the page like bugs in a panic to escape. Malora knows just how they feel. She has never sat so still for so long. It makes her shoulders and her eyeballs ache.

Malora stares down at her braid, coiled on the edge of the paper like a red snake, and thinks about what she would be doing right now if she were still in the bush. She would be galloping on Sky, rushing toward the smell of water. Or perhaps the herd would be grazing and Malora would be lying on her back in the high grass, chewing on a stalk, watching the clouds being buffeted by the wind.

Malora fills another sheet with letters. Her shoulders and hands hurt from holding the quill. Her jaw hurts from clenching it. No wonder Zephele takes such a dim view of lessons. Malora hopes the horses are not similarly cramped
and miserable as they learn their lessons from Gift. Honus is a much kinder and more patient teacher than she imagines Gift to be.

“I can’t do this!” she mutters to herself. She feels close to tears … and all because of
letters
! She wants to fling the quill across the room, and then thinks of what a mess that would make, ink spattering across the floor. Instead, she sets down the quill and flexes her sore fingers. Her father’s voice speaks to her: “Tenacity, Malora. It takes tenacity to plant a lesson firmly in a horse’s head. Hundreds of repetitions.”

Mustering her tenacity, Malora takes up the quill and starts in on her letters again, filling a fourth sheet.

Honus returns and hovers.

“I’m no good at this,” she says, her voice tight. She is ashamed of the mess she has made.

“On the contrary, you’ve been most diligent and have accomplished a great deal. Here, now, this is what we will do,” Honus says as he reaches into a pot of quills for a gem-handled knife. It reminds Malora of the little knife she lost, except that it is much more beautiful. She watches as, with practiced efficiency, he takes the blade and scratches out all the letters she worked so hard to make. “There!” he says, when all the sheets are scratched clean. “This way you can return tomorrow and fill them all up again, as you will the day after that and the day after that, until the shapes and sounds of all the letters are imprinted up here.” He taps the side of her head. “That’s enough of letters for today. Tomorrow, I’ll let you do the erasing. I imagine you’re quite good with a blade.”

Honus invites Malora to join Zephele out on the terrace. Malora unwinds the kinks in her neck, then shakes out her
cramped hands and blows on her fingers. She can ride all day and all night and not feel a single aching muscle, and yet sitting and practicing her letters for half a morning has made her feel as if she is in the early stages of tick-bite fever. “Does learning lessons always make you feel so stiff and sore?” she asks Zephele.

Zephele looks up from her book and bursts out laughing. “Look at you! You’re as spotted as one of Neal Featherhoof’s hunting hounds.” Zephele reaches into a small pouch at her waist and pulls out the tiniest mirror Malora has ever seen. It has a jeweled frame, and even in its minute surface, Malora can see that her face is covered in inky splotches. Zephele springs to her feet and trots inside. She returns moments later with a bowl of water and a cloth. She sets to rubbing at Malora’s face until her skin burns.

“Ouch!” Malora says.

“Hold still while I make you presentable.”

Malora feels like a lion cub being scoured by her mother’s rough tongue. Holding Malora’s chin, Zephele turns her face this way and that. “All clean! We can’t have Orion seeing his pet all ink-stained, can we?”

“Does that mean we can go see him now?” Malora asks weakly.

“Not just yet,” Honus calls out to them from the big room. “You have a numbers lesson. You may leave
following
the midday meal.”

Zephele whispers to Malora, “Honus is most persistent.”

“Who taught him to be a teacher?” Malora asks.

Zephele shrugs. “I don’t know. He won’t say. But he or she must have been frightfully wise.”

Honus returns with a rack of colorful wooden beads strung on wires. Numbers, much to Malora’s relief, prove far less challenging than letters. She has always been good at counting. She can count a herd of impalas while they move in a cloud of dust, or the berries on a bush, or the stars in the sky, or the freckles on her arm. Counting things and putting them into smaller groups is something she does naturally, sometimes for practical purposes, such as when she has to divide up rations into equal packets, but mostly just to pass the time. It gives Malora a surge of satisfaction that she can add numbers and divide them into groups in her head, while Zephele has to fuss with the beads and scratch away on a sheet. And even then, Malora comes up with the answers much more quickly and with greater accuracy.

“You have a high aptitude for numbers,” Honus says, eyeing her keenly.

“I will just study numbers then,” Malora says.

Honus shakes his head.

“Why not?” she asks.

“What good would learning be if we concentrated on what we already knew? It is only by learning those things that come to us with difficulty that we truly gain wisdom.”

Grudgingly, she allows that this makes a certain amount of sense. “You sound like my father.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Honus says. “Now, let’s eat. Nothing makes me hungrier than watching others labor at their studies.”

They go into the big room and sit down to a meal of fruit and nuts and cheeses. All this brain work has made Malora as hungry as if she had been hunting impalas. And would
that she had been hunting! What she wouldn’t give now for a small steak roasted over Honus’s fire.

“I thought we’d stop by Longshanks’s to have her measured for footwear,” Zephele says.

“Give Cylas my regards,” Honus says. “And tell him I’ll come by to place an order for breeches soon.”

“What are breeches?” Malora asks.

Honus gestures to his legs, which are encased in dark red leather. “These,” he says, “are breeches. I first came here in a state of undress and Medon ordered a pair for me, based on the traditional garb of the two-legged Pantherians. I have been quite happily sporting them ever since.”

The men in the Settlement had dressed no differently from the women, in belted tunics or robes. Breeches strike her as the ideal attire for a mounted rider. Although her inner thighs are worn tough from riding, the extra protection would be welcome.

Just then, Sunshine comes through the door, looking her usual overcast self. “The Lady Hylonome says I’m to walk you and the Otherian to the distillery,” she says.

Zephele throws up her hands. “Good sweet Hands! What can Herself possibly be thinking? I walk the streets all the time without an escort!”

“But never before with one of those, I think,” Sunshine says, her wizened little chin jutting toward Malora.

“You make a very good point, Sunshine, thank you,” Honus says kindly. “I would happily accompany all three of you, only I must wait here for Neal Featherhoof. We have an appointment to see the Apex this afternoon.”

Zephele’s face lights up. “Can we wait here with you for Neal?”

Honus’s smile turns wicked. “What an excellent idea, Zephele! And we can pass the time by discussing Aristotle and the nature of consciousness!”

Zephele yelps. “Never mind! I’ll visit with Neal another time. I’m sure Malora wants to see Orion, don’t you, Malora? And I’m equally sure that Orion misses his pet.”

Zephele drags Malora toward the door, but Malora digs in her heels as they pass the small scrivening table with ink flasks and the pot of quills. She points to the small, gem-handled knife sitting among the quills.

“I like this,” Malora says.

“I don’t doubt that you do,” Honus says. “That is a penknife. Highly useful, as you’ve seen, as well as of some sentimental value because it was a gift from the Apex. It is for trimming quills as well as for scratching out errors and ink spills. But it is not for skewering your enemies, of which, may I remind you, you have none here in Mount Kheiron. Besides, I could swear I saw you slide your butter knife into your belt this morning. I’m sure you’ll be able to make do with that until Armageddon descends upon us, at which time you may butter the enemy to death.”

Malora intends to sharpen the blade of the dull butter knife this evening on the stone floor of the terrace. She tells herself that, while she might go without weapons, she cannot go without tools. Since the knife will be a tool, the no-weapons Edict doesn’t really apply, does it?

“Great, sweet, merciful Hands! I thought we’d never escape his clutches,” Zephele says as she leads Malora and Sunshine down the hallway, through the receiving gallery, and down the set of broad, shallow marble steps that lead outside. Two Twani, dressed in blue and white, bow stiffly to them as they pass.

Thus they leave the house behind and step out onto a busy thoroughfare. Twani pushing handcarts loaded with goods throng the streets, along with centaurs of all colors, shapes, and sizes. Without hesitation, Zephele grabs Malora’s hand and enters the stream of traffic. Bucks, elegantly wrapped and bejeweled, striding four abreast, stop and stare at Malora for a long moment before continuing on their way. They are trailed by their Twani and by dogs, long-legged and beautifully groomed, wearing gem-studded collars.

“You mustn’t mind if they stare at you so,” Zephele whispers in her ear. “They can’t really help themselves, poor
dears. Most of them are just like me. They’ve never left this mountaintop and have little idea of what life’s like in the great wide world.” Then, raising her voice a notch, she continues, “We call this the Mane Way. It is a very important street, in our little world at least, because the ten noble families of Mount Kheiron reside here, and their names all end in
mane
. We’re the Silvermanes. Then there are Ironmanes, Goldmanes, Coppermanes, Fairmanes, Longmanes. Greatmanes, Shortmanes, Whitemanes, and Blackmanes. The Mane Way follows the crest of the summit and is interrupted midway by the temple of Kheiron.”

“Do the Goldmanes all have gold manes?” Malora asks.

“Goodness, no. Centaurs have no manes. And as you can plainly see, Orion and I aren’t even remotely silver. They are just the names of houses going way back.”

They stop before the temple of Kheiron with its golden onion-shaped dome. Incense wafts from within. Malora takes a step inside. A giant golden statue of Kheiron lies smothered in a bank of flowers, among which candles burn by the hundreds. Rows of centaurs in golden wraps stand before the statue and wave things in the air that look like horse tails, except that they are tasseled with gems and richly colored. The centaurs wear long beards that glisten with oil. She hears muted chanting and the sound of bells tolling ominously.

Malora takes a step farther in. One of the centaurs puts a torch to a bowl and it flares up bright purple. An almost noxious odor billows forth. A picture forms in Malora’s mind of People in white coats in white rooms with cages of rats and rabbits and monkeys. The room reeks of the animals’ fear and misery. She backs out of the temple.

“Had quite enough?” Zephele asks with a grin.

“What goes on in there?” Malora asks, blinking the picture away.

“Oh, offerings are made to the spirit of Kheiron. Priests mutter and putter and sputter and oil their beards and hair. Father and Mother used to make me attend regularly, but now they don’t bother, although they, of course, attend, along with the rest of the Manes. They have to. It’s their obligation as the nobility.”

“What makes the Manes noble?” Malora asks.

“Mostly their wealth of nubs,” Zephele says airily.

“What are nubs?” Malora asks.

“Our currency. The nub.” She reaches into the leather pouch at her waist and pulls out a roundish object with a picture of a centaur incised on it.

“A nub?” Malora asks.

“The richer you are, the more nubs you have. The more nubs you have, the more goods and services you can buy.”

“From the Twani?” Malora asks.

“Oh, dear me, no,” Zephele says. “The Twani have no use for nubs. We pay Flatlanders for services, although we don’t pay them nearly as much as they’d like, which is a source of growing disgruntlement, according to my grumble-guts father. We pay other Highlanders handsomely for their services, those who have skilled Hands whose arts or crafts we covet.”

Malora notices the crowd of centaurs that have stopped to stare at her while she was listening to Zephele.

“This is ridiculous!” Zephele says impatiently, barging past the gawking centaurs and hauling Malora with her. They enter a covered walkway beneath mosaic-covered colonnades.

Malora feels suddenly small. It isn’t just all the eyes examining her. It is the grand scale of the city: archways soar, doorways are spacious, walkways are broad, and steps are shallow and wide. Were she on horseback, she could easily mount these steps. Doors are flung open wide to the warm air, and Malora catches glimpses into shady interiors, redolent with scent. She remembers Orion’s words: “Scent sets the tone of society.” What is the tone? Malora rummages in her mind for the word and latches on to it.
Luxury!
But also, she thinks,
mystery
.

They pass a bakery with tiered racks displaying cakes, decorated with designs made of fruit and colored cream. They pass a shop that sells papers fanned out like rainbows and ink in brightly colored flasks. There is a shop that sells buttons and another that sells jewelry and still another that sells little silver and gold statuettes inset with many colored gems, fashioned in the images of birds and animals and insects. Honus has similar ones sitting on the shelves in his room. Malora stops to admire a small green-and-red hummingbird perched on a red-jeweled flower. Zephele turns a key hidden in its jeweled feathers. With a start, Malora watches as the tiny bird flutters to life, its wings fanning rapidly and its sharp little beak dipping into the flower to sip nectar. It looks nearly as real as the living one she saw this morning on Honus’s terrace.