Our Lady of the Islands (16 page)
Read Our Lady of the Islands Online
Authors: Shannon Page,Jay Lake
“If you cheat me,” she pressed in imitation of other desperate and helpless people she had observed, “I tell everybody at the market here, you cannot be trusted. Don’t you doubt I will, boy.”
“I would never cheat you!” the lad protested. “I am the best, most honest messenger in all of Alizar.”
“I hope you are.” Then, more kindly, to encourage him, “I believe you. Find him quick, and I tell everybody that you are the best man to hire.”
He smiled at this, and dashed off with a reassuring wave, reminding her so much of Pino that she just managed not to laugh. Back when Pino had been her eager and adoring employee, anyway. This thought sobered her again.
It took little time to do her shopping. After a bit of shrewd bargaining, Sian left the market, balancing a rope sack of mainland potatoes over one arm as her hands gripped an unruly bunch of nearly wilted mustard greens and the ankles of a newly slaughtered chicken. The bird dangled quiescent now, still warm but finished with its gruesome twitching. Inconvenient as it would likely prove to cook over a fire on the beach, she felt confident that this much food would hold her for a couple days. Long enough to work out some better arrangement with Reikos’s help, if her messenger proved as effective as he’d claimed.
In the meantime, she
would
still try to find that priest.
“What was your be-damned
message
?” she muttered to herself, continuing the one-sided argument she’d been having with the absent priest for days. “For the love of the Seven Unruly Goddesses and their false riders, what would you have me
do
?”
The cooling chicken in her grip gave a subtle but unmistakable twitch.
Flooded with horror, Sian flung the bird against the mud-brown wall of the building next to her. “Don’t you dare!” she shrieked at the bird. “I’ve just had you killed! I’m going to
eat
you now, not raise you from the dead!”
The chicken tumbled limply to the ground, where it lay in an inert heap of feather-covered flesh. Only then did Sian notice that people all along the street had stopped to look at her. Alizar was never a quiet place, but generally speaking, people did not scream at dead poultry.
Sian looked away from the eyes on her and walked over to the bird, studying it for signs of further movement. There were none. She reached down and poked at its body to be sure.
If anything, it was colder than before, just beginning to stiffen, as a dead bird should. She decided that its tiny, puzzled spirit had finally passed on to whatever other shores accepted such creatures.
Sian stooped to pick it up again, very carefully, by the ankles, then rose to her feet, reset her veil, and looked around. She had dropped her bag of potatoes in her panic. She wandered back along the sidepath, gathering strays that had escaped.
A middle-aged woman with an open sore on her narrow face approached her timidly. “Our Lady.” She took a step closer to Sian. “Our Lady of the Islands, heal me, I beg you.”
People were still staring. More of them, in fact.
Sian tried to still her racing heart, keep her breathing slow. “I have no idea what you mean. I’m no priest.”
The woman looked confused. Wounded, even. “I saw …” she said quietly. “We all did. The chicken in your hands. You are —”
“No,” snapped Sian. Did she owe her life — her very safety — to everyone she met? Misery was everywhere; it was endless. She could spend herself night and day, and never put a dent in it — she was miserable herself now, homeless and exhausted and starving, all alone in the world. “Please,” she whispered. “I am no one. I am nothing more than you. Just leave me be!”
“We beneath your effort then?” This from an older man standing in the shadows of the building she’d flung the chicken at. He took a step forward, limp at the leg, his skin an ugly, mottled color, indicative of an advanced case of the spiderpox. “The God’s gift too precious to waste on
lesser people
,
Domina Kattë
?”
“Of course not…” Sian took a step back, no longer caring about her stray potatoes. He knew who she was. Did everyone? Had her story spread so far — already? How long before the Mishrah-Khote heard of her appearance here? All she wanted was to get back to Pembo’s Beach — to the safety of her boat. “I didn’t mean … I never said —”
“Bitch,” the man said softly. “I’ve heard how you run off whenever people ask your help. We’ve all heard. Where you been hiding since the God gave you his treasure, eh?”
Others in the crowd advanced on her now, something harsh and broken in their eyes.
“I … have not been hiding anywhere,” she stammered, caught between escalating terror and a flash of outrage. “The Mishrah-Khote. They came for me. I have been —”
“Rushed right into their arms, have you?” sneered a woman who stepped boldly into Sian’s path. She had no obvious affliction, beyond the angry gleam in her eyes. Her hair was red and thick, tumbling to her shoulders in exuberant waves, making Sian even more self-conscious of the heavy veil and scarf she wore. “Lady
Special Thing
, rich and fancy. Too good to help us common types when you can join up with the greedy priests and charge more than the lot of them, I’ll bet. The god’s gift is for
us
, my lady princess. Not for the Mishrah-Khote — and not just to fatten fancy silk merchants like you.”
“No…” Sian protested, stepping back further. The woman advanced on her, crushing a tender potato beneath her chunky sandal, sending its juices into the cobblestones. She came another step forward, raising her hands menacingly. In one of them, she held a knife. A poultry knife, of all things. “No, leave me be, please!”
“‘
Please’
!” her assailant mocked, then gave an acidic bark of laughter. The sound rubbed at the back of Sian’s throat like the taste of too-young wine. “We’ve been waiting for you. Everywhere. Ready to adore you,
Lady of the Islands
. But he’s right. You’re just another bitch — no better than the other so-called healers here.” She darted forward, thrusting her blade straight for Sian’s face.
“No!” Sian raised her arms to fend off the attack, but they were full of burdens. Too late, she thought to drop the vegetables and chicken. The knife bit her cheek, drawing an immediate splash of blood and a gasp from the crowd. Sian screamed.
“There! Not so perfect now, are you!” the woman crowed. “Fix that, Lady Precious!”
Sian felt blood flowing down her face, saw it drop to the stones of the street. As if aroused by the sight, the crazed woman thrust her knife again; Sian flung her hands out against the coming blow, and managed to grab the woman’s knife arm just before the blade bit her again. She threw all her strength into the grip and felt something tidal thunder through the contact. Both women gasped as the red-haired woman crumpled suddenly into a heap at Sian’s feet.
For a moment everyone froze in stunned silence. Then from well back in the crowd there came a scream. Someone turned to run off, back toward the market.
“What you done to her?” asked an awestruck boy shying backward into the circle that had gathered around their fight.
“Nothing!” Sian was as shocked as any of them. “Look what she did to
me
!” But she could already feel her cut face healing, as if in denial of her claim to victimhood.
“You’re no bitch. You are a monster,” gasped the older man who’d started all of this, now backing toward the entrance of the building he had come from.
“I did nothing!” Sian cried again, hoping desperately that it was true. Had she done this? Had Father Het’s invention been prophetic? She fell to her knees beside the woman, grasping her arm in both her hands.
“Leave her alone!” shouted a young, dark-haired woman who seemed unsure whether or not she dared rush to the red-haired woman’s aid.
“I can heal her!” Sian cried. Any hope of concealment was clearly gone. The crowd around her now seemed uncertain whether to be outraged or fascinated.
Awaken. Please awaken!
she willed her erstwhile assailant. She had promised herself this would never happen. Had believed it wasn’t possible. Was she allowed to decide
anything
now?
Seconds ticked by. The woman lay inert. Sian could almost smell the crowd becoming uglier as they crowded closer in. She had no hope of escape. What would happen if they attacked her? Could she be killed, or would she just heal and heal as they kept tearing her apart?
“Please! Whatever god has chosen me for this,” she groaned, “help me.”
A ruckus erupted from further back in the crowd. She had run out of time. “Awaken, woman,” she murmured, wondering if this was how the gods rewarded instruments who dared resist them, “or I’ll be joining you in death.”
A man burst through the inner ring of bystanders, pushing everyone aside. “Sian!”
He swept her from the ground into his arms.
Sian’s heart gave a disbelieving jump. “Reikos! Oh, thank all the gods there are!”
Just then, the woman she had felled came to with a great gasp. She blinked up at the crowd around her in confusion.
“Look!” somebody yelled. “She lives!”
“The Lady’s healed her!” shouted someone else.
The news spread like fire through the crowd, prompting cries of astonishment.
“I knew you couldn’t be so wicked,” exclaimed the dark-haired girl who, just moments earlier, had told her not to touch the woman.
The red-haired woman staggered to her feet, clutching at her own torso with an expression of incredulous wonder. “She’s healed me! The Lady’s healed me! Fifteen years of crippling menstrual cramps, and now they’re gone! I have no pain. No pain at all!”
“It is a sign of the God’s mercy!” a man behind her cried. “Our Lady of the Islands healed the woman who attacked her! As the Butchered God will heal Alizar, though we destroyed his body!”
“Our Lady of the Islands!” someone started chanting, quickly joined by others — their bloodlust transformed suddenly into jubilation as Sian and Reikos looked around, bewildered.
“We have to get out of here,” Sian whispered urgently, “before the temple comes! I will never get away from them a second time.”
“The temple? … Is that where you have been?”
“Yes! I will explain it all to you, but not here!”
Reikos turned, still carrying her in his arms, and elbowed his way back through the chanting, ecstatic crowd as forcefully as he had barged through them to reach her.
“Don’t drop me,” she begged as they were jostled ever more fiercely by admirers reaching out to touch her as they passed.
“Don’t worry,” Reikos said through clenched teeth. “I haven’t finally found you just to lose you to a swarm of lunatics now.”
She wondered abstractly what had happened to her chicken. “We can’t go to my townhouse …”
“My boat is safe.”
“Are you certain? They may know that you and I —”
She felt a hand grasp her arm and cringed, for fear the temple guard had already found them, then gasped as she recognized Pino, of all people. “What…?”
“We’ll explain as well,” said Reikos. He glanced at Pino, who looked both excited and frightened.
Once free of the crowd, Reikos set her down, and the two men hustled her through the streets without looking back. The noise of celebration faded into the normal sounds of any busy island day, and soon the docks came into view. Reikos and Pino flanked Sian protectively as they approached the
Fair Passage
. When they reached the gangway without being set upon by temple guards, Sian unclenched at last with a deep sigh. It was so comforting to be with men she knew, who didn’t seem to mean her any harm, that she half believed things might still turn out all right somehow.
Safely back in Reikos’s cabin, Sian gladly let the two men pamper her. The captain sat her in one of his little fold-down chairs and poured her a stiff, delicious drink, while Pino washed the blood off her healed cheek. In her tidy cage, Matilda chortled and cocked her head at Sian.
“All right,” she said, regathering her wits. “What are you two doing together? And how did you find me? The note I sent you said that we should meet tomorrow — on Meaders.”
“And you thought I would just wait ’til then?” Reikos asked.
“
Pretty lady! Kiss me!
” squawked the cockatiel.
Pino flushed and glanced first at the bird, then at the older man. “We asked your messenger where he had received this note from you, of course. And when he told us he’d just left you at the market —”
“I tipped him generously to keep closed his mouth,” Reikos jumped in, “and we went right away to find you — which I think you must be glad of now. Am I mistaken?”
“No. I am very glad indeed.” She must keep her promise someday, she thought, and tell everyone she knew who Alizar’s best messenger was. “But what are
you
doing here, Pino? You appear in all the strangest places lately.”
Reikos stepped forward, laying a hand on Pino’s shoulder. “He came to me yesterday. Said he’d lost his job with you, and asked if I might take him on as crew.” Reikos gave the boy a wink. “I was moved to hire him by a sense of fellow feeling, I suppose — having just been fired by you too. We have been searching for you ever since.”
Well …
she thought.
Coincidence? Or has this also been arranged somehow by my new employer? If so, to what purpose, I wonder?
There seemed no smallest surface she could simply take for granted anymore.
“Can I get you anything else?” Reikos asked. “I bought that
kiesh
just for you.”
“I thank you. But, in all honesty, I am far hungrier than thirsty. Another drink, before any food, would be unwise, I fear.”
“Of course. Just sit right there.” Reikos left the cabin, closing the door gently behind him.
She gazed at Pino: still the same gangling, eager-to-please boy. Young man, really. She saw that now, though he didn’t look any more the dangerous conspirator than he had before.
Pino shifted in his chair. “I am … glad to see you well, my lady.”
Sian widened her eyes, then laughed, looking down at her ragged, filthy clothes. She hadn’t bathed in days, and had just slept on a rocky beach underneath a rotting boat. Then bled all over herself on a dusty street. All after, of course, spending such a delightful passage in a dungeon prison cell. “Oh, Pino. You dear boy. It’s all right to speak the truth.”
Isn’t it? Can we do that? Now?
“But you do look well!” He pointed to her cheek. “I mean … your cut — already, the mark is gone!”
Sian nodded. Odd, how you could get used to the strangest things. “Yes. That happens now. As I’m sure you know.”
He frowned uncomfortably. “I had heard, of course, of your healing power, but …”
“A gift bestowed by your new priest,” she said, as lightly as she could. “Or by his Butchered God, I guess. You helped arrange my fate that night, did you not?”
Pino looked down at his knotted hands, blushing nearly the color of Heart’s Blood berries.
“I’ve had time to reflect on things,” she went on. “The prayer lines always in my way that evening. The invitation to meet ‘Hanchu traders’ that do not seem to have existed.
Your
unexpected appearance just in time to usher me into that priest’s waiting embrace. None of this was coincidence, was it?”
She had never seen the boy look so forlorn. “I had no idea what was going to happen,” Pino murmured. “He told me you were favored by the god.” He looked up at last, giving her a nervous smile. “How could that have seemed surprising to me?” His gaze fell again. The smile disappeared. “I thought there was something wonderful in store for you.” His eyes brimmed with remorse. “I have not seen him since, my lady. I will never speak to him again.”
“Oh, but you must! Pino, I have tried and tried to find him, but —”
The sound of footsteps just outside brought a wave of panic to Pino’s face. “I have not told Reikos why I lost my job with you, exactly,” he whispered. “Please, don’t —”
She silenced him with a reassuring gesture as the cabin door opened.
This time, Reikos carried a plate piled with manchego cheese and oat cakes, artfully surrounded by clusters of tiny purple grapes.
“
Cracker! … Damn bird! Cracker!”
the cockatiel cried.
“Oh, thank you!” Well beyond caring about niceties, Sian rose to snatch an oat cake and a great chunk of cheese before Reikos had time to offer them to her, and bit into each with grateful abandon.
Watching Sian with a half-hidden smile, Reikos pinched off a finger full of oat cake, and went to push it through the cage to Matilda. After that, both men picked at the meal as well, marveling circumspectly at Sian’s healthy appetite. She soon felt better than she had in days. She leaned back in her chair, and said to Reikos, “Now I
would
have a touch more of your
kiesh
, if it won’t deplete your stores overmuch.”
“Not in the least, my lady.” Reikos stood to take the bottle from a high shelf, refilling her glass as well as his own and Pino’s, then tucked it back onto its shelf behind a stretchy cord clearly designed to hold it fast even during violent storms. “Habit,” he said, smiling when he saw that she had noticed. “One never knows when the waters might become rough.”
“As they have,” she said.
“I suppose they have, at that.” Reikos took a long sip of his drink, watching Sian.
He looked happy to see her; the alarming glitter of greed in his eyes was gone. Had he repented of his desire to use her curse for financial gain? “The Mishrah-Khote had me locked up,” she said, feeling it was time to get down to business. “I only escaped with my life because of the generous heart of one of their number. He is probably in great trouble now.”
“We are aware that the healing priests seek you,” Reikos admitted. “Indeed, we have heard it put around that if you return, all shall be forgiven. They seem quite anxious to assure all and sundry that no harm will come to you.”
Sian snorted. “That is quite a different tune than they sang while I was there. They broke my fingers and sliced my earlobe in half.”
Pino gaped. Reikos paled as well.
“I healed, of course,” Sian added. “But I have no wish to suffer so again.”
Reikos shook his head. “Then remove yourself from such danger. We can sail tomorrow morning — I’m already overdue for a spice run up the coast to Pepperell and the Isle of the Gods. We can travel anywhere from there. No one need learn of your strange talents.”
Sian sighed. If only that were true. “No, Reikos. To keep that secret, I would never be able to touch another human being.”
Even you
, she added silently. “I am not sure my departure would be allowed anyway, even if I wished to go.”
“I and my crew could easily protect you,” Reikos insisted.
“From a jealous god?” Sian countered. “I doubt this power was thrust upon me just so I could wander off with it unused.”
“Gods,” Reikos muttered, then set his glass down on the small table with a thud. In her cage, Matilda gave a
chirrup
of protest. “If one believes such things …”
Sian’s power did not extend to mind-reading, but she could guess the trail of his thoughts. She’d entertained them herself for quite a while. “I also used to think this could be fixed somehow. But now, I’m far less sure.” She turned to Pino. “I need your help. And to get it, we must all be able to talk freely here. It is time you told my friend the truth.”
Pino closed his eyes, looking wounded and betrayed. It hurt Sian to see it, but, well … Life was harder than any of them had once believed. Had she not felt wounded and betrayed as well — on the night Pino had led
her
into the shark’s maw — unwittingly or not?
Reikos frowned, glancing back and forth between them. “What truth?”
“Reikos,” Sian said, “if you care for me at all, promise not to punish him in any way for what he is about to tell you. I assure you that, however naïve he may have been, I have never had a better, harder working, or more trustworthy employee. He will make you as fine a crewman as you could ever wish for.”
“I must hear this confession now, I think,” Reikos said to Pino. “Then I will decide what I can do for you, young man.” He looked apologetically at Sian. “More than this, I cannot promise. One does not take such risks with one’s choice of crew at sea.”
She had known he would respond this way, but she had felt compelled to try. She offered Pino an apologetic look in turn.
“I have been a disciple of the Butchered God’s priest,” Pino said, meeting no one’s eyes. “I helped lure Domina Kattë to him the night she was … changed.”
Reikos’s mouth hung slightly open. “You did this to her?”
“No,” Sian insisted, well aware of the way anger built to crest before breaking with her onetime lover. “Pino was gone before I was beaten that night. He had been as badly deceived as I was about what the priest intended.” She looked back at Pino, who stared stolidly at his own feet. “I believe so, anyway. With all my heart.”
“As I have already told Domina Kattë,” said Pino, “I left his cult that night. I want never to see that man again. Or any of his followers.” He kept gazing downward. “I trusted him.”
“So this is how you lost your job?” Reikos asked.
Pino nodded mournfully.
“Well … I should think so,” Reikos said with the ghost of a smile, to Sian’s surprise. “We’ve both been fools then, in one way or another. Just as I’ve said all along.” He turned back to Sian. “And what help do you think this mere boy can offer, which I cannot just as well provide?”
“I need to find this priest,” Sian said. “I need desperately to talk with him, but he is like a rumor — always there and gone just hours before I arrive. Can you bring me to him, Pino? Do you know someone who can find him, at least?”
Pino shook his head, still looking at the floor. “He does not stay in one place for long. And I am … hardly in his confidence anymore.”
“But you do know how he operates.” She could read it in his hesitation. “Whatever he intended for me, it couldn’t have been this — my life in shambles, running and hiding from everyone. Show me where to find him. Let me ask him how to fix this.”
Reikos pulled gently at her sleeve. “Sian, do not go to that man.”
“I must,” she said. “No one else can help me. Whatever else he may be, he must understand what’s happened to me — and what his god wants now.” She turned back to Pino. “I cannot just go on wandering from threat to threat like this with no idea what I’m even meant to
do
.”
Reikos got up, his catlike grace clearer than ever in the confines of the tiny cabin. “Do not do this, Domina. Come away with me. My crew and I will take you to the priests at the Isle of the Gods. They will know the answers to your problem. You will find nothing but trouble here.”
Sian shook her head. “It makes no sense to rush off to some far-off priest without even speaking to the one
right here
who did this to me.” She turned back to Pino. “You do know how to find him?”
Still staring at his sandals, the young man said, “I have … heard word of another sermon, at the north beach on Three Cats, this evening.” He looked up at last. “But, my lady, I also beg you not to do this thing. Truly, he is no one to be trusted.”
“I must.” She got to her feet. “We shall go there. Captain Reikos, you are more than welcome to accompany us.”
“Sian, please. Listen to the boy,” Reikos urged. “He is wise beyond his years!”
“The rumor could be false — they often are,” said Pino. “People gather and he doesn’t even come. This could be a waste of time. And a big risk, taking you out across so many islands.”
“But sometimes he does come?” she pressed.
Pino nodded, reluctantly.
“Well, that’s better odds than I’ve enjoyed so far.”
“I shall come with you, then,” Reikos said. “You will need what protection we can give.”
“I thank you.”
“But the boy is right in one thing,” Reikos said. “It will be risky just to take you there, after what you’ve told us — and what happened just now in the market. We must make sure you are well covered. And we’ll take a two-man runner-cart, to ensure you are not waylaid this time. You will sit between us, while we do any talking needed. Agreed?”
“Agreed. Of course.” Once she would have bridled at the mere suggestion of being handled so like baggage, but after all she’d been through on the streets of late, she was only grateful now for such protection.
“And I think it is unsafe to keep you staying in those clothes you wear,” said Reikos, giving her the merest hint of a smile. “These temple men will likely have your description soon, if they do not already. We must find you something better.”
“That may take some doing,” she said. “Do we have the time?”
“No time is needed, I am thinking.” He turned and left them again, with a secretive grin.
Sian turned to Pino as soon as Reikos was gone. “I’m sorry. Truly, Pino. I took no pleasure in exposing you that way. It’s just that —”