Our Lady of the Islands (17 page)
Read Our Lady of the Islands Online
Authors: Shannon Page,Jay Lake
Pino raised his hands to silence her. “You were right. As always, Domina. I was afraid, but it will be better this way. Living without secrets. I … I thank you, my lady. You always know the right way of things.”
Sian reached out to pat his hand. “I most certainly do not. Not these days anyway — if I ever did.”
They heard Reikos at the door again, and turned to see him enter with a lovely dress of dusky rose silk, piped in brilliant orange, draped across his arm. Sian managed not to blush — or glance at Pino. She knew every detail of its low cut and feather-light construction before he held it up and shook it out with a dramatic flourish for them both to see.
“Will this do?” he asked Sian, knowing that it would as well as she knew when she’d left it there. “It is a sample from one of the latest Hanchu lines, which I was hoping to show before I was … er,
fired
. I think that it may fit you reasonably well.”
Like a glove
, she thought, careful not to roll her eyes.
What are you
thinking
, to drag this out before the boy?
She risked a sidelong glance at Pino, wondering suddenly just how much he knew. Enough to have come seeking Reikos when she’d disappeared. But had he learned somehow that they’d been more than close friends and important business partners? “It is lovely, but hardly seems inconspicuous.”
“It will be quite perfectly inconspicuous, I think, to men searching for a woman dressed in rags.”
“It is beautiful, my lady,” Pino agreed. “I think … You will look very nice in it.”
She could decipher nothing in his guarded expression.
‘Fellow feeling
,
’ indeed
, she thought. How much had Reikos been fool enough to tell the boy?
“We may still need to walk some of the way, though,” Pino added. “Especially on Three Cats, where …” He blushed, and looked down again self-consciously. “Where the roads may become clogged with marchers. We should leave by mid-afternoon, I think.”
“That will give me enough time to wash up, and change clothes,” Sian agreed.
“I will leave you to that, my lady.” Pino stood, looking sullen now, for some reason, and went to the door of the small cabin, where he fumbled with the latch before leaving them conveniently alone.
“How much does he know?” she asked Reikos. “Did you brag about us when he came to you?”
“Do I seem
that much
a fool to you now?”
“Then why did he come to you? How did he even know of you?”
“He said he’d heard you speak of me with
trust
. You did once trust me, I believe.”
She gazed at him across the tiny cabin, feeling oddly confused. “I trust you still,” she said. “Within reason. I owe you a great deal just since this morning.”
“You owe me nothing, Sian. Whatever I may do for you is freely given. Always.”
“And I am very grateful.” She sighed. “I’d best get cleaned up and into that dress now.” She glanced at the door. “If you wouldn’t mind, Captain? We don’t want to give the boy ideas, do we?”
“Indeed not, my lady.” He went to the door as well. “I’ll bring some water, then leave you in peace.”
Reikos returned a minute later with a large basin of warm water, hibiscus-scented soap, and three clean towels — all far nicer than she’d expected from a bachelor on a ship full of sailors. “I thank you.”
“We’ll await you at your leisure,” he said without turning as he left.
Domni Arouf Monde had dismissed Bela for the day, yet again. He could make his own dinner and see to his own washing-up: he was perfectly capable.
Truth be told, he could hardly bear the sight of the old woman. Every normal, unimpaired step she took was a reminder of Sian. Of her terrible new powers. And of what had passed between them just before she’d disappeared.
Yes, he had been angry. But who would not have been? Sian had come to him demonstrating a strange and frightening power, out of nowhere. Where could such power come from but a demon? Yet she’d denied any agency in having acquired it — or responsibility to see it fixed! What should he have said to her — that’s very nice, dear? Have some wine, and let us talk about what we should do to live now that we’re ruined? For this would certainly destroy their business. It had clearly already destroyed their marriage. Why else would she have stopped responding to him?
It had been days and days now since Sian had done that wicked magic and then stormed off of the island in an unfamiliar boat. Well, two days, but he’d had not a single word from her since then, though he had sent several notes off to their townhouse. Notes of increasing … urgency. He had assumed that she would settle back to normal, that he would hear from her in a day or two. She had always been so level-headed. He had relied on her entirely. It was like missing his right leg, having her gone.
He had half a mind to go down there himself … yet he was afraid of what he might find.
Their marriage, their partnership, had begun with hot passion and intense love, and had mellowed into the clever, comfortable business and child-rearing arrangement of later years, just as any marriage should. Or so he had thought … They’d had their moments of disagreement, of course, but this … This was different. This … was not just about … themselves. He was quite sure of that now.
He got to his feet and began pacing the large room, stepping around overstuffed chairs and delicate side tables without even seeing them.
The boy Pino was still missing, too. That was the problem.
The boy who always eagerly volunteered to row Sian to Alizar Main and back; who carried her bags, though Sian was perfectly capable of doing so. Arouf had noticed his puppy-crush, of course; a man would have to be blind to miss it. But he had given it no great concern. Boys would always be boys. These things happened. Sian was more than old enough to be the boy’s mother, so why should he have worried?
And yet … they had both run off at the same moment? What was he to make of that?
He did not know what to believe any more.
Arouf shook his head, pausing at the darkened window to stare out at the empty water below. Stars hung in the sky, and danced on the waves. Farther out, at the horizon, it was hard to be quite certain where one ended and the other began. The tiny surf pushed glowing, pale lines toward the shore of Little Loom Eyot.
She was cheating on him. Probably for some time now. It had to be faced. She had been discreet, at least. The main partnership had remained unchallenged. That was what had really mattered. But now, Sian had violated every boundary of discretion.
It would be one thing for her to pass the occasional quiet night with a fellow trader or a responsible, married man. Sometimes that was business — here in Alizar, as in all other places, he assumed. People strayed from the marriage path. Arouf was no fool, not to understand this. But to run off with a boy half her age? That was quite beyond the pale. That was no discreet arrangement. That was full-blown scandal! An abomination — like these powers she had
contracted
somewhere.
He had heard of women becoming … restless … when they approached their change-of-life. He had never, however, heard of them developing bizarre healing powers in the process.
“Which is not the point!” Arouf growled at his reflection in the darkened window.
The point was that she should come home,
now
. She should relinquish this strange power and resume her rightful place beside her husband’s — and
business partner’s
— side. This had gone on far too long already. If their clients and trading partners were not talking of it now, they would be soon enough. And then everything Monde & Kattë had worked for all these years would be lost.
No, there were times when a husband must stop sending weak entreaties to the townhouse of his faithless wife, and be more forceful. It had been cowardly of him to wait even this long. It was time for the next step. He must bring in the authorities.
Resolved, Arouf went to his writing-desk to begin drawing up a formal complaint.
After a quiet afternoon together aboard
Fair Passage
, and a small early evening meal, Pino went out to hire a two-man runner-cart. When he returned, Sian raised her embroidered hood and fastened its silk veil across her face, then followed her protectors up onto the deck. As Pino led her down the ship’s gangway, she was quite conscious of Reikos’s strong presence behind her. He did not touch her, but she could feel his nearness as if they were entwined in the most intimate of embraces.
She still had no clear idea what exactly he expected of her now that she’d returned. Nor, for that matter, what she might
want
him to expect. Having Pino underfoot just made things that much harder to navigate.
The two lean runners harnessed to their rented cart gave Sian an appreciative looking-over as she climbed aboard between Reikos and Pino. But after asking where the party wished to go, they spared no further attention for their cargo as they strained to set the vehicle in motion, then jogged off toward the bridge to Yon.
The long ride across several islands and bridges was uneventful. Even pleasant. Pino had chosen their able runners well. They pulled the cart along too quickly for anyone in the streets to catch more than a glimpse of its three passengers, much less cause them any trouble. For the first time in days, Sian felt completely safe: invisible, despite her finery, just as Reikos had predicted. She was no one now. The decorative lady of some foreign man, traveling to who-knew-where with a young servant. What could any of that have to do with the ragged fugitive, Sian Kattë?
Their runners were so fast, they arrived on Three Cats rather earlier than anticipated.
“Maybe we should walk from here,” said Pino, when the runners stopped for one of their short breaks to drink and take a bite or two of the food they carried with them. “We’re kind of fancy to blend in with the priest’s folk.” He glanced sheepishly at Sian. “We’ll attract even more attention in a runner-cart. I’m sorry, my lady. I should have thought of that.”
She shrugged. “I should have known as well. I too have traveled with the prayer lines.”
“Then walk we will,” said Reikos, going to pay their runners. When they had tucked their meal away with grateful bows and trotted off the way they’d come, Reikos returned, slipping his purse back into some inner pocket of his vest. “Where to now, Pino?”
“Across the island, to the waterfront facing Malençon.”
“That far?” asked Reikos. “I wish you’d told me so before I sent our cart away.” He turned to Sian. “That dress is hardly made for such a trek.”
“I love to walk,” she said. “And it has been too long since I could do so without fear. It is a pleasant evening, and with you two to protect me, I can think of nothing more enjoyable.” She offered one arm to Reikos, and the other to Pino.
They started down the street together, at a leisurely pace, enjoying the antics of wild squirrel monkeys frolicking in the mangosteen trees overhead. In the distance, Sian watched fruit bats flapping their great wings above jungle canopy as their evening foraging began. Nestled between the two men, Sian felt as if she’d traveled back in time, to another life, where Sian Kattë had been a relatively wealthy merchant with no greater worries than an overfull schedule and an unwieldy pile or two of paperwork. What happy days those must have been.
And yet, they hadn’t been. Not really. She saw that now as she had not even guessed it then. In fact, she could not recall feeling half as happy then as she did right now.
Half an hour later, Sian’s feet were feeling less content, and she was getting hungry again. Reikos and Pino gave each other a look when she told them so.
“Let’s buy you another supper then,” said Reikos. “That seems a likely tavern over there.” He pointed to a door nearly hidden by a riot of bougainvillea.
“All right,” said Pino. “I’ll wait out here and watch for any signs of trouble.”
“You will not,” Sian insisted, certain the boy was only trying to hide his lack of money. She gave Reikos a solicitous look. “Pino is on my tab. Agreed?”
“Your
tab
?” he asked. “Since when have you a
tab
, my lady?”
“Surely you don’t think I’ll simply let you pay for everything while all this gets resolved. I want a full accounting kept of anything you spend on my behalf, Captain. As soon as I am able to access my usual accounts again, you will be repaid every penny, with interest. I insist.” She did not smile, wanting to be sure he knew she wasn’t joking. She turned back to Pino. “Your meal is on me tonight. There’s no need to stand outside keeping watch. No one will trouble us here, for I am no longer the woman they are looking for. In fact, if all goes well tonight, I hope never to be that woman again.”
The mood over their meal was light and comfortable. Her two companions laughed and teased each other now, as men do, and Sian enjoyed the half-forgotten luxury of relaxing over fine food and good wine with pleasant company. Even if she did eat most of it herself. Was it her imagination, she wondered, or was Reikos exhibiting an almost paternal enjoyment in Pino’s company? She smiled to think of Reikos as a father. The image was both sweet and laughable.
It took them nearly another hour after dinner to reach their destination. They were still quite a distance from the northern shore of Three Cats when they encountered a prayer line heading in the same direction. A few blocks later, a second line appeared, melding with the first. By the time they reached land’s end, many prayer lines had converged to become a street-clogging crowd, as Pino had predicted, all trying to pick their way down a short, steep cliff side between themselves and the rocky beach below.
The close proximity of so many marchers, the muffled roar of their shuffling feet and murmured chanting, were rather too reminiscent of that awful night on Malençon for comfort. She began to sweat inside her pretty dress, to cast anxious glances behind her with increasing frequency, and flinch at every unexpected noise. Finally Reikos noticed, his eyes widening in understanding as he pulled closer to his side and gestured to Pino to come take her other arm. Their protective presence helped, but not enough to make her certain this had not been a great mistake, as they had suggested.
Sian wondered how such a mob could fail to attract the attention of authorities eager to find and arrest the renegade priest they’d come to see — Alizar’s most notorious ‘spiritual fraud,’ according to her temple persecutors. Then again, when and where these days did such prayer lines
not
clog Alizar’s streets? Perhaps the authorities had grown just as weary of following them all as Sian herself had, not so long ago. If the priest showed up at all here, his appearance would doubtless end before the authorities had time to learn that this crowd had signified anything more than the others did. She almost empathized with their frustration.
Almost.
Pino led her down a makeshift path while Reikos came behind her, as if to demonstrate that no one would be sneaking up on her tonight. Scores of other people preceded and followed them, knocking sand and small rocks loose to shower the beach below. An elderly woman stumbled; the man before her caught her arm, so she did not fall.
As everyone descended to the beach, Sian noticed many around her giving them strange looks, just as Pino had also feared. Her fine silk dress may have worked as a disguise while traveling across the islands, but it stood out very oddly here among the Butchered God’s poor and disenfranchised flock. Though she did not think the resentment she sensed was mere imagination, no one gave them any trouble. The priest had many followers, clearly. Who could say that all of them were poor?
The narrow beach was quite crowded by the time they reached it. Sian sought an open place for the three of them to stand, but as more and more folk came, she had to settle for a spot so near the shore that the highest waves sometimes lapped at their toes.
As dusk descended, the humid air grew heavier. Her airy silks wilted and clung to her, as even the gentlest breezes faded into stillness. Soon, Sian noticed that the crowd had grown still too, turning, without any signal she could detect, toward a large pier just south of where she stood. The tide was low; the pier’s tall pilings rose in deep gloom, encrusted with barnacles and stinking rot; the rocks from which the pilings rose were wet and slippery with seaweed and exposed sea creatures. This was not a spot likely to attract much of anybody normally, she realized. Likely why it had been chosen.
Sian took Reikos’s hand in the fading light; he squeezed hers back as they gazed into the darkness beneath the pier, trying to see what everyone was staring at. Many others had come to stand before her by now, standing knee-deep in the water itself, but she was still able to see the man step out from some even deeper shadows into a small clearing in the gloom.
She had not forgotten his face. She didn’t think she ever would: young and handsome with those smoldering eyes, though he seemed far more serene tonight than he had the last time they had met. She gave Pino a grateful nod for having led her, finally, back to the man who’d beaten her into a different life, then set her adrift — in so many ways — cursed with this terrible ‘gift’. The priest was robed more traditionally this time, almost as if to pass for a brother of the Mishrah-Khote. Was this disguise, she wondered, or pretension? She tried to step forward, but the crowd had grown too thick, and would not part for her.
Pino grabbed her sleeve. “No, my lady — after he speaks.”
She schooled herself to patience, as the crowd around her strained forward too, as eager as she, it seemed, to get closer to this man, if for very different reasons. She tried to listen through the rush of surf, the evening cries of shore birds, the restless humming of the crowd around her, wondering whether she’d be able to hear him when he began to speak — and fearful, suddenly, that he might just slide back into the shadows when he’d finished, before she could reach him. Her throat felt suddenly dry despite the smothering humidity.
When it came at last, his voice was surprisingly full and clear. The crowd gave an appreciative murmur as it carried over them with the soothing cadences and sweet rhythms of a natural-born orator.
“My blessed friends — my spiritual family, welcome.” His face was relaxed, smiling and open. “I know you have wandered long and far to be here, and I thank you. I know too that the path ahead still seems unclear. But look around you: more join our numbers day by day. More wise, blessed souls are remembering the way of light, and turning from the dark, destructive path that Alizar has drifted onto in its rush to take what it then finds so little joy in, to rise by shoving others down, to sell all of its tomorrows in a frenzy to engorge itself today. More of our countrymen will join us tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after that, until Alizar recalls itself at last, and wakens from the dark dream it’s been lost in. That bright day will dawn, not just on our nation’s loftiest towers, but on its lowest valleys too. On that morning, none in Alizar will live in fear or shame or anger any longer, for
all
will have their heart’s desire, and
none
will need what only others have. This I am empowered to promise you, by the very god who called me out of darkness, as he has called each of you. Him they call the
Butchered God
— who nonetheless comes ever nearer, to set the crooked straight, right what is imbalanced, and heal every inch of poor, lost Alizar!”
His words washed over the crowd like a cool, exhilarating wave. Sian felt its power, despite herself. But she knew firsthand how capable this humble, sunny promiser of peace and harmony was of inexplicable violence. She recalled the crazed and bloodshot face he’d worn just a few nights before, and resolved to resist the seductive power of his oration. Surely there was some incitement to riot and revolution underneath his gentle-seeming words. While those around her closed their eyes and turned their faces toward the sky, already reaching for religious ecstasy, she opened her eyes wider, straining to hear the threads of sly deceit that she felt certain would be woven through this pretty speech.
“I know you thirst for justice,” the priest went on. “You desire wages that the humble can feed their families on, not just more wealth for the lucky few who rule you.”
Ah. Here it comes
, Sian thought with grim satisfaction. The hook of resentment. Permission to punish the successful. Did those around her not realize how they were being used? If this man got his way, he might end up their new king, but they would find themselves impoverished still;
his
laborers instead of someone else’s.
“You want more than tents and shacks in which to raise your children. You imagine an end to unpaid apprenticeships to unscrupulous and exploitive manufacturers.”
That is not how Arouf and I have ever run our business
, Sian thought with rising umbrage. This man painted everyone alike, with whatever brush suited his agenda. She had known he would.
“You long to see the end of different rules for different classes, to enjoy the kind of privilege and education that your masters take for granted, to be free at last of those who deny you access to your own potential. I know all of this, and feel the pain and outrage these inequities fill your hearts with every day. Did I not crawl out of the same bleak slums and shantytowns that you are trapped in, day after weary day?”