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Authors: Steven Savile

BOOK: Elemental
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Mari had died six nights later. I did not attend the funeral services; Samuel did not ask me to. He did not ask me how long I planned to stay in Salla City. He never asked me to intercede for the life or health of any other citizen, and I was relatively certain that he knew of others, over the years, who could have used my help. He did ask me, the day after Mari died, what my name was.
Aesara,
I said. If he recognized it, he gave no sign.
 
 
Samuel himself brought two steaming plates of food to the table about an hour later. Groyce's pretty wife followed with a bottle of wine and two glasses. She smiled at me shyly but said nothing, and fled as soon as she had set the pieces upon the table. Samuel decanted and poured.
“She's afraid of me,” I observed.
He looked after his daughter-in-law. “Who, Lina? She thinks you're a crazy old woman. Everyone does.”
“I'm not that old,” I said.
“But crazy?”
I shrugged. “Who isn't?”
The food was delicious, as always. After Lina had cleared our dishes away, Sam leaned back and stretched his arms. Out of habit, I pulled out my zafo cards again and began shuffling. Sam and I never talked much
during meals or after them, but our silences were filled with a wordless companionship.
Now he spoke, surprising me. “Do you ever look at them?” he said.
I glanced up. “What?”
He gestured to the cards that I had laid out again, absent-mindedly, in the standard grid. “Your cards. You always place them on the table this way, but you never turn them over and look at them.”
I made a wry face. “Sometimes I do. I don't like the pictures I see.”
“What pictures do you see?”
“What pictures does one ever see in a zafo deck?”
“I don't know. I've never seen one.”
Now I was amused. “You've never had your fortune told? Not even once, just for fun?”
“No, never. I have too much respect for the powers of the halani to approach one lightly.”
“Now you do, perhaps,” I scoffed. “Since you have such high respect for me.”
He grinned. “So do you want to read my fortune?”
I shook my head. “I never read for anyone but myself.”
He motioned at the cards again. “Then read one for yourself. I would like to see the pictures.”
I hesitated a moment. He caught my reluctance. “Then don't,” he said swiftly.
I shrugged and smiled. “Why not? They can't tell me anything I don't know already. But if you have never seen this done, I will have to explain everything.”
I turned over the top card, alone in the upper row. “This is called the primary significator,” I told him. “It represents me as I am or as I was.”
No surprise, the top card was the black queen. I was dark-eyed and dark-haired, but the card meant more than that; it spoke of a somber personality weighted with heavy cares. The brooding queen invariably turned up in my fortune, either as my present or my future.
“Now, most halani read the cards in the order in which they are laid
out, but I like to skip around,” I told him, reaching for the last card, the single one in the fourth row. “This card will tell us who I will become.”
The image revealed was not one I was expecting. It was the hooded figure, a dark, faceless form with its hands outstretched.
“It looks somewhat threatening,” Samuel observed.
“Indeed. This card means many things, most of them ominous. It stands for the shadowed future, the as-yet-to-be-revealed. Sometimes it is an intimation of death. At other times, it is a warning of a change to come.” I gave Sam a twisted smile. “I told you I do not much care for the readings I do.”
“You do not have to go on, then,” he said seriously.
“No, now I am curious.”
I indicated the four cards in the second row. “Fortune, home, heart, career,” I recited. “The pictures of my past.”
I turned over the cards in order. Fortune: the open box, everything the soul could desire. Home: the lord's castle, with its white stone walls and graceful gables. Heart … but here my own heart nearly stopped beating. The black king, reversed.
“What does it mean when a card is upside down?” Sam wanted to know.
“It means the opposite of whatever the card usually means,” I said through a constricted throat. “Or that something has gone wrong with—that person or that thing—”
The last card in this row was scarcely any more comfort. Career: the spilled wine. Promise gone awry …
“None of this makes any sense to me,” Sam said.
Perhaps it would not seem so terrible said aloud. “The cards say that at one time I lived a grand life, in a grand house, and my every wish was indulged,” I said. “I cared for a dark-haired man but he—something happened to him. And my career from that point on became something of a waste.”
He lifted his eyes to my face, his eyebrows raised, but he did not ask me if any of this was true. “And what about your future?”
I was more cautious this time, and turned the cards over one at a time. “Fortune,” I murmured. “The double-edged sword. What I have is equally likely to be used for good or for evil. Home.” I smiled. “The roadside tavern. Any place of well-being or cheer.”
Sam was pleased. “My bar is in your cards?”
“It looks that way.” I turned over the third card: the battling twins. “Interesting.”
“What? What does that mean?”
“My heart is in conflict. My dreads and my desires pull me in two.”
He was watching me again, as if trying to assess the truth of that. “I suppose you know whether or not any of this has any relevance to you,” he remarked.
I laughed shortly. “I suppose I do.” I turned over the last card. “Career,” I named it. “The white queen. It seems a fair-haired woman, or a very good woman, is going to become my patron.”
Now Sam was smiling. “That does not seem too likely, at least,” he said.
“No,” I replied.
Just then the front door opened, and a phalanx of uniformed guards strode in, their feet making a rhythmic tattoo on the wooden floor. It was late spring, and cold, and they wore fur-edged cloaks over their blue-and-gold livery. Behind them, her silk-white hair haloed by the low afternoon sun, entered a small blond woman with an unmistakably noble face. Everyone in the bar stared at her during the few minutes it took her eyes to adjust to the dimness inside. After my first quick look, I turned my eyes back to the table and pushed all my cards together. I knew even before I heard her hesitant footsteps crossing the floor that she had come to Salla City looking for me.
 
 
She wanted to speak to me privately, but I insisted that Sam stay to hear our conference. “Whatever you tell me, I will repeat to him,” I said listlessly. “He may as well hear everything as you say it.”
So Sam moved to my side of the table, and the stranger seated herself across from us, and her five guards arranged themselves as a screen between us and the rest of the tavern. Groyce brought a fresh bottle and a third glass, and Sam poured for us all.
She just touched her lips to the amber liquid and laid the glass aside. “I know who you are,” she said.
I felt Sam physically restrain himself from looking at me. He thought I would ask him to leave now, but why should I? He had not betrayed me in the five years he had known me. No matter what was revealed now, it seemed unlikely he would repeat it to anyone.
“How did you find me?” I wanted to know.
She was not ready to drop the discussion of my identity. “Aesara Vega,” she said, as if it was a challenge. “Halana rex.”
The king's halana. I closed my eyes briefly. “Former halana rex,” I corrected, looking at her again. She was very beautiful. She had pale skin over delicate bones; her eyes were a flawless blue. On every finger of her left hand she wore a ring that looked impossibly expensive. On her right hand she wore only two rings, but neither of them looked cheap, either. “How did you find me?” I asked again.
“Someone who had been in Verallis passed through here several months ago,” the woman said. “She recognized you.”
It had been eleven years since I had lived at the king's palace in Verallis, and I had changed since then. Whoever had recognized me must have had very sharp eyesight. “I can only suppose,” I said quite dryly, “that you have come to me because you need a favor.”
“It is a terrible favor to ask,” she said. Her voice was low and sweet, and she pitched it most persuasively. The blue eyes looked dense with sadness. I braced myself for what she was going to say, because I knew what it would be, and I was right.
“I want you to kill a man,” she said.
I heard Sam inhale sharply. I glanced over at him and smiled. He was trying hard to keep his face under control, but her words had undoubtedly
shocked him. “She asks me this,” I explained kindly, “because it is believed that I once killed a man in Verallis.”
“The king,” she said.
 
 
Her name, she told us, was Leonora Kessington. Her husband was Sir Errol Kessington, son of Sir Havan of Kessing, a wealthy territory not far from Salla City.
“Six months ago, Sir Havan was in a terrible hunting accident,” she said. She could scarcely look at us while she told the story; instead, her eyes were fixed on her interlaced fingers. “Something frightened his horse, and the animal bolted. Sir Havan was thrown from the saddle, but his—his foot caught in the stirrup, and he was dragged along the ground …” When she resumed speaking her voice was even softer than before. “When they found him, his leg was broken, and his collar was broken, and his neck—was broken—”
Samuel gave her one of the linen napkins. She pressed it to her eyes and it came away damp. She still did not look at us.
“They did not think he would live,” she continued. “But he did. His leg healed and all the cuts and bruises healed—but something else had broken, something in his neck. He cannot feel anything anywhere in his body—or, at least, they do not think he can. He does not react when his body is touched. But he cannot speak and tell us what he feels and what he does not feel—”
“He can't speak?” Samuel asked her. “Can he hear you? Can he think and see?”
“His eyes are open, and sometimes he moves them to follow activity. He can grunt and make noises, but they cannot be understood. We can't ever be sure he understands us, but Bella believes he can.”
“Bella?”
“His wife. My husband's mother. She tends him night and day, she dribbles food down his throat and cleans him—” Leonora shuddered
delicately. I took that to mean that caring for the invalid was no easy task. “She is devoted to him,” she whispered.
“Who is looking after the affairs of Kessing?” Samuel wanted to know. It was a fair question. Kessing was a good-sized territory and its lord was absolute law for several thousand souls.
“Lady Bella and my husband divide much of the work between them,” Leonora said. Once she had finished the harrowing tale of Sir Havan's accident, Leonora felt capable of facing us again. She lifted her drowned blue eyes and fixed them on Samuel. I wondered what sort of effect their limpid sweetness would have on him. “But at Kessing, we maintain the fiction that Sir Havan still rules.”
“How is that done?” I asked.
She looked at me. “Sir Havan has always held a public audience twice a month at which any vassal or tenant could air a grievance or sue for a favor,” she said. “He still holds these open meetings—we carry him out and set him upon a chair, and people recite their petitions. Bella and Errol actually decide the cases, but if they make a ruling with which he disagrees, he grunts and moans and twists in his chair. So they call back the petitioner and revise their original judgment.”
“So he is able to communicate,” Sam said thoughtfully.
“In a way.”
“And he is able to understand what goes on around him.”
“He seems to be.”
“And yet his condition has not improved for six months?”
“It has not improved, it has not deteriorated. It has not changed at all.”
“And what do your halani say? I assume you have consulted one or two.”
A smile touched her sad lips. “Dozens. They have fed him no end of potions and chanted hundreds of spells over his head. Nothing has availed. His body remains broken and his spirit remains trapped.”
“And so you want me to kill him,” I said evenly.

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