Our Lady of the Islands (23 page)
Read Our Lady of the Islands Online
Authors: Shannon Page,Jay Lake
Reikos blinked awake, staring up at a low ceiling crudely hewn of natural stone. There was a hard, narrow pallet underneath his back.
Ah yes. The Census Taker’s ‘guest quarters’.
Even after so much time, it still took a while sometimes to remember where he was
.
A week now? Two, perhaps? He was no longer sure, though Pino had started scratching marks into their cell wall some days back, each time the guard brought them what passed for dinner here. What must his crew think by now? That he had abandoned them — or died somewhere? Was Kyrios keeping their port fees paid? Was his ship even there still? He sighed, and sat up to rub his eyes, dearly hoping that Sian was doing better than himself, wherever she’d been taken.
“You awake?” Pino asked him from the other corner of their little cavern. The boy held up a wooden trencher and an even cruder wooden spoon. “He brought our meal about half an hour ago, but I figured you’d want the sleep.”
“Did you save me any?” Reikos asked. It was too old a joke by now to wrest even a grin from the lad. Since Sian had healed him, Pino’s already youthful energy had become unnaturally manic, and his appetite seemingly inexhaustible. It must be dreadful, Reikos imagined, to have so much hunger and be forced to settle, day after day, for nothing but stale bread and half an onion every morning, more stale bread and a wooden trencher slopped with thin, cold broth and a few half-rotten vegetables each evening. If evenings they were. Without windows, such distinctions had become purely academic some time back. They had nothing now but the unsteady light of a single torch outside their cell, lit each ‘morning’ and doused at bedtime every ‘night’ — not that the boy seemed to need much sleep now.
Pino came and handed him a stale biscuit. Reikos shook his head and gave it back. His own stomach had shrunken pretty thoroughly by now, not that he didn’t still lie awake at times, suffering fantasies of the bouillabaisse he had so often shared with Sian back on Meander Way.
“Are you sure?” asked Pino, looking at the extra food with naked desire.
“I am fine. If I’m hungry later, I’ll just get up and club a rat.”
The boy gave him a brief, uncertain chuckle. They might both have laughed a little harder if the joke had been less plausible. There was no scarcity of rats here, appearing with greatest frequency just after meals to sniff and gnaw at their empty trencher, no matter how thoroughly licked clean it might already seem. Still, he’d eat rats before he’d eat the giant cockroaches this nation seemed to have in such flagrant numbers.
As Pino ate, Reikos listened to the slow but endless drip of water somewhere in their cell block. This part of the Census Hall was clearly lower than the water table. He wondered yet again if the dungeon was well drained, or whether it had just not rained that hard yet since they’d been locked up. He knew how hard it rained here in the islands sometimes, and hoped they wouldn’t have to add flooding to their list of woes before this whole ordeal was ended … somehow.
Such were the perils of entanglement in foreign politics, he supposed.
Pino sighed and sat down on the floor, his back against Reikos’s pallet. “Do you think they’re ever going to let us out of here?” he asked. “Or just kill us, even? Dying wasn’t all that bad. Compared to this.”
“I know as much as you do, lad,” said Reikos, wondering if the boy’s remark was just another joke, or … “Were you dead then? Truly?”
Pino shrugged. “I can’t remember. But as good as, I suppose.” He tossed his head and shifted his legs restlessly. “Isn’t there supposed to be a trial, or something?”
“I’m not sure this is that kind of prison,” Reikos said, still wondering just how far Sian had reached to bring this boy back into the world. “The Census Taker, from what I’ve gleaned of your land’s politics, is something of a power unto himself.”
A silence fell between them, filled only with the drip, drip, drip of water in the distance.
“Do you miss her?” Pino asked at last, his voice strange and melancholy.
“Miss who?” asked Reikos. “Domina Kattë?” Yes, he did. With surprising intensity. Not that he meant to tell that to the boy.
“I miss her,” Pino said, ignoring his attempt at subterfuge.
The silence stretched again.
“Were you two lovers?” Pino asked, even more quietly.
Reikos stared down at him, mouth open in surprise. “That’s none of … What an impertinent question. Which I will not even dignify by answering.”
“I thought so,” Pino hardly more than whispered. He sighed deeply without looking up, and shook his head.
By all the gods
… thought Reikos, stunned not to have seen it earlier. “Are
you
in love with her?”
Pino nodded, still not looking up. “Desperately. … Stupidly.” He shook his head again. “What does it matter now? I’m locked up here, and … she’s married. And what chance did I have anyway, against a man like you?”
“Good Anselm’s anchor,” Reikos exclaimed softly. The boy was more than young enough to be her son. “Did she … Surely she did not return your —”
“
No
,” Pino cut him off petulantly. “Of course not. She doesn’t even know.”
“Well … I’m sorry. Truly. Love unreturned is no laughing matter.”
“You would know?” asked Pino.
“Oh, I’ve been sent packing by more women than you would imagine, lad. That’s just part of the game, I fear. Domina Kattë fired me as well, you know. Have I not told you that?”
“So you
were
lovers then!” Pino slapped the dirt floor with his open hand, scattering a few barely-seen crawly things. “I knew it!”
“But you just said you knew already!” Reikos protested.
“I had hoped you just meant fired,” Pino said gruffly. “As in business partners.”
Well, that was poorly done
, thought Reikos. Sian would surely skin him to the last eyelash now. If she ever got the chance.
“So she was just a
game
to you?” asked Pino, dripping with disgust.
“Well — of course not!” Reikos exclaimed. “What makes you ask such —?”
“You just said that getting fired is ‘part of the game.’” Pino stood and stalked off to the farthest corner of their cell, turning there, his back against the wall, to glare at Reikos. “I suppose you’ve got all kinds of women. One in every port, eh? Do you actually care for
any
of them?”
“Pino, you’re bending this all out of shape.”
“’Cause I do care,” Pino said, his expression fierce. “I think the world of her.”
“As do I,” said Reikos quietly. “I love that woman dearly. More dearly than even I knew. Until very recently.” He hung his head, ashamed to face this boy whose passions, however innocent and doomed, were so much purer than his own. He thought again about Celia, the first girl he had ever loved — until her father had forbidden them to marry. “Oh, lad, you’re right. I’ve been as big a fool as any man alive.” He forced himself to look up, straight into Pino’s eyes. “I think you’d have stood every chance against a man like me.” He dropped his gaze again. “But we’re both run out of luck now, aren’t we.”
They remained that way in silence for a while, until Pino said, “I’m sorry I got us into all this trouble.”
“You?” asked Reikos. “How are you at fault in this?”
“If I hadn’t tried to stab that soldier, maybe neither of us would be locked up in here.”
“If I hadn’t pulled out the damned hand-cannon, well … I don’t think you can blame yourself for
my
presence here, at least. And I’d not have had a single stitch of respect left for you if you hadn’t rushed that bunch of leather-scaled flatfish trying to abduct our Sian.”
“To be honest, nor would I,” said a quiet voice from outside the bars of their cell door.
Reikos and Pino spun about together to find Sergeant Ennias gazing in at them. Reikos had been too absorbed in his conversation with Pino to notice the man’s arrival in the dimly torch-lit passage. “Well,” he said, “the dog returns to its vomit, does it?”
“I’ve never thought of you as vomit, Captain Reikos,” Ennias said levelly. “I just wanted to come see how you’re being treated down here.”
“How do you suppose?” growled Reikos.
“Are they feeding you anything?”
“Do you take pleasure in asking starving men such questions, you sadistic son of a bitch?” Reikos replied.
“I suspected as much.” The sergeant loosened a mid-sized leather satchel hung underneath his cloak, and tossed it to them through the bars.
With an untrusting glance at Ennias, Pino bent down and grabbed the satchel off the floor, then opened it and looked inside. Reikos saw the boy’s nostrils flare. “It’s meat,” he moaned, reaching inside to draw out a link of peppered sausage. “And
cheese
.”
“Your jailer is a friend of mine,” said Ennias. “He knows I’m doing this, but if you value your own hides, much less mine, please do
not
tell Alkattha I was here, should you ever talk with him.”
“Oh, you’re our friend now, are you?” Reikos said, salivating as the scent of sausage reached him. “Our secret protector?” Pino shoved the link into his mouth, then tossed the bag to Reikos.
“Your presence here brings me no joy,” said Ennias. “It’s nothing I intended.”
“What’s happened to Domina Kattë?” Pino demanded.
“She is safe and well, living as the Census Taker’s honored guest.”
“And she doesn’t mind that we are here?” asked Reikos. “I do not believe you.”
“She doesn’t know that you are here,” said Ennias. “And I am not allowed to tell her. The Census Taker tells her lies. She seems under the impression that you’ve both been sent on some important mission for him. She’s been asking about you both, though.” He really did sound troubled by what he was telling them.
“What is going on here?” Reikos asked. “How have we offended your employer so?”
“By seeing something he did not want seen, I think.” Ennias glanced upward, as if hearing something through the rock-hewn ceiling. “I will see if there is some way to improve your situation, gentlemen, but right now, I’d best be going.”
“You’ve been too kind,” said Reikos. “By all means, do not let us keep you.”
The officer gave him a grudging nod, as if taking his words seriously, then turned and left as quietly as he had come.
After wolfing down a bit of Ennias’s largess, Reikos returned the bag to Pino. “Finish it,” he told the boy unnecessarily. “Leave any for the rats or roaches, and they’ll just become unmanageable.”
Reikos went back to lie down on his pallet. He stared up at the water-stained ceiling and thought about the free and easy life of a sea captain. Sailing wherever he liked at a moment’s notice. Slave to no one. A woman in every port. Yes, that had been the life for him. Once.
No more, though. Whether he got out of here some day or not. No more.
By the time the
Alkattha Swan
was docked at Home’s commercial port again, Arian’s fury with Duon had been overtaken by apprehension about what she would say to Viktor. That the Mishrah-Khote’s top priest had been stringing them along was something he must know. That she had responded to this discovery with yet another clear, and this time very public, promise of overt war against the Father Superior himself was something she wished he need never know at all. As she and her entourage disembarked, she was so absorbed in wondering how to frame this news that she failed to see her brother waiting on the dock until she’d practically run into him.
“What an
extraordinary
costume, sister,” he said. “Wherever have you been?”
She rolled her eyes, trying to brush past him. “I haven’t time for this right now, Aros.”
“No, Arian. I didn’t mean it that way. Just, please, tell me what is going on.”
She drew breath to rebuff him more sternly, then realized that there was none of the usual mockery on his face, or even in his voice.
“I came up after lunch,” he said, “and was greeted with the news that you’d run off in high dudgeon with half the family fleet, though no one seemed to know where to, exactly. Is … everything all right?”
Still no hint of his usual sarcasm or smug amusement. His worry seemed sincere. How odd. “I appreciate your concern, Aros, but I really must go speak with Viktor right away. I’ve barely time to change out of these horrid clothes first. Might we discuss this later?”
“Yes. Of course.” He sounded genuinely chastened. “But if there’s anything I can do to help, I really do hope you’ll let me.”
Had that been an apologetic tone? From Aros? She studied him more closely. “Is everything all right with you, brother?”
“You mean, besides the fact that it’s been weeks now since you completely cut me off? Arian, I know I’ve been … well, quite an ass, I guess. But I
am
still your brother, and … if you’re in any kind of trouble …”
Would wonders never cease.
Family feeling
from Aros? Better late than never, she supposed, and it was not as if any reduction in the growing bog of conflict she was suddenly entangled in would be unwelcomed. “I appreciate that, Aros. More than you can know. I really must go straight to Viktor now, but let’s talk this evening. Over dinner perhaps, in my chambers, say, an hour after dark. Just the two of us.” Viktor would likely welcome her absence anyway for a while, once he’d heard what she must tell him. “I would like that, if it is acceptable to you.”
“Thank you, sister.” He offered her an almost bashful smile. “I look forward to it.”
“Until tonight, then.”
They exchanged respectful nods, and Arian turned to find most of her party gone on well ahead of her, except for Maronne and Lucia, awaiting their mistress at a respectful distance. “Well, that’s an unexpected mercy,” she told them as they continued toward the curtained litter waiting beyond the dock to return them to the Factorate House.
“He has pestered me to let him visit Konrad several times this week,” Maronne said. “But not half so discourteously as he used to. Perhaps he’s finally gotten the message.”
“That would be very welcome news indeed,” said Arian. “Now, if I can just escape this dress before it crushes me, I’ll go see if I can work some miracle with Viktor too.”
When they arrived at Arian’s chambers, however, they found Viktor there already, gazing out a window at the distant harbor. He turned as they came in, responding to their startled silence with a sanguine smile. “Would you ladies kindly permit me and the Factora-Consort a private moment?”
Maronne and Lucia dropped quick curtsies to the Factor and retreated back into the hallway.
“Well, my dear,” he asked, “how much new trouble have you caused us?”
“Some,” she said, dreadfully self-conscious of her bizarre cosmetic mask and overblown attire. “Quite a lot, I suspect.”
He nodded, seeming neither much surprised nor even too upset. “Yes, well, we can talk about it later, I suppose. Right now, I am afraid we have much bigger trouble to attend to. Would you come with me, please?”
She gave him a startled look. “Like this?” Was her punishment to start this quickly? “Has someone already told you?” she asked, trying not to sound as frightened as she was.
“About your visit to Duon?” He shook his head, and started for the doorway. “That doesn’t matter now. Just come.”
She raised a hand to her mouth in alarm as he came abreast of her. “Is it about Konrad?”
“
No
,” he said, beginning, finally, to show some sign of irritation. “Please stop second-guessing me, and just come along now, will you?”
In the hallway, Maronne and Lucia gazed at Arian in obvious concern. Arian glanced questioningly at Viktor, who shook his head. “Go and change,” she told them. “Then await me here.”
They curtsied and re-entered her apartments.
“Viktor,” she said as they began to walk, “won’t you just tell me what is —”
“Not until we are in my apartments.”
“Oh.” It was something that unsafe for discussion then, even though they seemed quite alone here. Her trepidation grew.
As they continued through the house, Viktor turned and took her hand. “I’ve had much time — and much new cause, I fear — to think about the things you said to me this morning. You were right, my dear. I’m sorry. Truly. If there really is some way left to fight, even with our feet, I will try.” He gave her a tender and apologetic smile.
She smiled back, deeply grateful for this reassurance that she might not be in as much trouble as she’d feared — with Viktor, anyway. Then again, he hadn’t heard what she had done yet. “Viktor, there is something you should know.” She saw no reason to reserve this news for greater privacy. It had all been said quite publicly already. “The Mishrah-Khote has been lying to us. There is no healer in seclusion at the temple. It seems clear there never was. Duon has just been —”
He put a finger to his lips, and shook his head again.
Not even this?
she wondered anxiously.
What in all the world can be going on
now
?
The entrance to Viktor’s apartments was flanked by guards who pulled the double doors open as they arrived. After instructing them to allow no one else entry for any reason, Viktor led Arian through his outer chambers to the sitting room outside his bedchamber, where two men stood waiting. The first she recognized immediately: Nishahl Hivat. The other man was a young copper-skinned military officer in Alkattha house guard livery whom she had never seen before. Hivat showed no surprise at her bizarre attire, probably better apprised of her activities since breakfast than even she herself was. The other man was clearly struggling not to stare.
“My Lady Factora-Consort,” said Hivat, giving her a bow, immediately duplicated by the young officer at his side. “Allow me to introduce Prefect-Sergeant Ennias, commander of Escotte Alkattha’s house guard.”
The sergeant bowed again, unnecessarily, though if he was Escotte’s man, Arian supposed he would have learned quite quickly to err on the side of excessive deference.
“This involves the Census Taker?” she asked, wondering just how much more alarming all this could become.
“I fear it does,” said Hivat.
Worse and worse. She glanced around, and went to sink into a chair beside the case of exotic maps and charts that Viktor had collected since his boyhood. Hivat and the young officer pivoted to face her as Viktor came to stand beside her. She thought of trying to explain her clothing to their younger guest, but could think of no way to do so that would not just make her seem even more ridiculous.
“Have you by chance, my lady, heard any of the rumors circulating in the city about a new healer commonly referred to as
Our Lady of the Islands
?” asked Hivat.
“A
healer
?” she asked, wondering how they had veered to such a topic from Escotte Alkattha. “I haven’t. No. But …” She turned to Viktor. “This can’t be the healer Duon has been pretending to offer us, can it?” She looked back to Hivat. “Duon has always said their healer was a man, and I cannot imagine the Mishrah-Khote would tolerate a woman in their midst, regardless of her talent. I’ve just been lectured on the costs of such
contamination
.”
“It does appear they had her, briefly,” Hivat said. “In their dungeons on charges of spiritual fraud.”
“I see,” she replied wearily, only conscious of the latest ghost of hope briefly risen up within her as it faded in the inevitable light. “More empty theater. Not that I’m surprised.”
“That’s what I’ve assumed as well, my lady,” said Hivat. “Until this afternoon, when our young sergeant here very wisely came to see me with some disturbing information.” Hivat turned to Sergeant Ennias. “Would you please tell the Factora-Consort the tale you’ve shared with the Factor and me?”
The sergeant raised his chin a bit, gazing into the air before his face, and began reciting his tale in the dispassionate tones of a military dispatch. “Ten days ago, my lady, my employer, Escotte Alkattha, informed me that a relative of his had been arrested and imprisoned by the Mishrah-Khote on false charges of spiritual fraud.”
“This is the healer?” Arian asked in surprise. “This
Lady of the Islands
is a relative of ours?”
“Sian Kattë, it seems,” Viktor told her. “A very distant cousin. I have never met her.”
Arian shook her head. Stranger and stranger. “Please continue, Sergeant.”
Ennias nodded, still meeting no one’s eyes. “Lord Alkattha also informed me that this woman had escaped the temple somehow, and had last been seen on Cutter’s, involved in some sort of public disturbance there just that morning. He did not explain how he had come by all this information, but ordered me to find her and bring her to him secretly. He was also in possession, somehow, of a marital complaint recently filed by the woman’s husband, which he gave to me with instructions to detain her under the pretense of some related investigative matter. Lord Alkattha said I was to do this so that no one witnessing our exchange would learn of his involvement, or of the woman’s actual destination.”
“But … was that not also false arrest?” Arian interjected, wondering what new trouble Viktor’s cousin had gotten them all into now while trying to cover up some petty family scandal.
Ennias nodded, still looking no one in the eye. “In a sense, my lady. But I assumed the woman herself would approve once she understood the reasons for our deception. She was not actually to be arrested or imprisoned, after all. It was just for show, as I have said.
“We tracked her to Three Cats, and overtook her after dark, in the company of two male companions who, unfortunately, assumed that we were part of some temple ruse to recapture her. They attempted to defend her forcibly. One of my men and the younger of her companions were injured in the resulting skirmish; the young man very gravely. Regrettably, this made it necessary to subdue both of Domina Kattë’s companions and bring them with her to the Census Hall, where all three were delivered into my employer’s keeping.” For the first time in his presentation, Ennias looked directly at Arian. “At that time, my lady, I witnessed what I can only describe as a miraculous event. The lady’s younger companion had suffered a deep pike wound to his side and stomach. By the time we had reached the Census Hall, I’d have wagered his chances of survival low to nonexistant, though I denied this concern to Domina Kattë for fear she might become hysterical.”
As women always do, of course
, Arian thought irritably.
“The injured boy was brought and laid out on the steps, unconscious,” Ennias continued. “Domina Kattë knelt down and laid her hands over his wound. At first, she appeared to suffer greatly, crying out and seeming near the loss of consciousness. Then the boy revived and started speaking. When Domina Kattë was able to sit again, I saw with my own eyes that his stab wound had closed completely. Not just closed, but healed and scarred already.” The sergeant shook his head, clearly still haunted by the wonder of it. “She had healed my injured man as well by then, but his wound had been so minor that I had just suspected trickery of some kind. This second healing, though … My lady, I grew up and served for eight years in Kalimpura before enlisting here. I’ve seen a lot of things I can’t explain, but nothing more impossible than this.”