Our Lady of the Islands (57 page)
Read Our Lady of the Islands Online
Authors: Shannon Page,Jay Lake
“For obvious reasons,” Arian all but laughed. “The Census Taker must be someone the houses can work with, at least. And he must bring something of more value to the post than mere charisma.”
“But I think he does,” Sian pressed. “Despite decades of angry resentment among Alizar’s workforce, the violence we’ve all just endured was inflicted by the country’s rulers in the end, not by its people. I believe this young man had a lot to do with that. I once heard him speak to a great crowd of his god’s followers, during which he very skillfully discouraged them from violent rebellion even as he encouraged them to abandon their employers. I have little doubt that he could lead them back to work as readily as anyone else can now, and without betraying them in any way. Surely that capacity alone would be of value to both the nation and its leading families.”
To Sian’s relief, Reikos finally broke the polite silence everyone had maintained through this awkward exchange. “My Lady Factora, I too heard the young man speak that night, and must admit to having found his insights both surprisingly wise and inspiring. And I know many of the common folk were heeding him … even when others were seeking violence. If I may be allowed to say so, I am in agreement with Sian’s assertions.”
Arian took a deep breath, and crossed her arms. “Does he have the slightest idea what the job entails? The Census Taker isn’t some religious leader; he’s a bureaucrat. The most important bureaucrat in Alizar.”
“I suspect he knows a great deal more about the post — and about Escotte Alkattha — than one might expect,” said Sian.
“Really.” Arian’s eyes narrowed. “And why might that be?”
“I … am not free to tell you,” Sian conceded. “He has entrusted me with certain confidences which I have promised to protect.”
“So you have reasons for this … surprising suggestion which you aren’t telling me. I thought as much.” Arian turned to Ennias. “Would you go find this priest for me, please, and ask if he would come to speak with us?”
“Of course, my lady.” Ennias turned and headed for the door.
“We’ll look for him too,” said Maronne, tugging at Lucia’s sleeve. “Three will find him faster than one.” They hastened after the commander.
“Then five will do better than that.” Reikos turned to Konrad. “Shall we help them hunt, young man?”
“Oh yes!” Konrad broke into a rare grin and quickly followed Reikos from the tent. Since regaining his health, he had latched on to the sea captain almost hungrily, demanding to know everything about all the foreign places he had never expected to live to see.
When everyone was gone, Arian turned to Sian. “I know you are no fool. But now that we are alone, can you truly offer me no clue of what these confidences are?”
She shook her head. “But I’m hoping he’ll agree to tell you.”
“Very well. Shall we have some tea then, while we await him?”
“Yes, please.”
They sat. Arian poured. They sipped. After a minute, Arian said, “Has your captain proposed marriage yet?”
Sian glanced over at her sharply, searching for the light of humor in her friend’s eyes. But Arian appeared quite serious. “Ah, it seems a bit … soon for that, I think.” Then she smiled. “I am still becoming accustomed to having him so much around.” She looked away. “And the divorce papers have only just been sent off to the Justiciary, of course.”
“Well, yes. I guess a proposal might seem rather hasty, then.” She smiled. “He is a good man. I am happy for you.”
“Thank you. Indeed he is.” Sian gazed down into her tea a minute. “I think we are all doing a great deal of rebuilding. It may take some time to understand the full shape of things, in this new world we’ve inherited.”
“Yes.” Now it was Arian’s turn to study her teacup. “I always imagined that I ran this country before, behind the scenes. And that I worked twice as hard to do so, having to hide behind paint and courtesies and subtle influence and intrigue.” She gave a quiet snort of laughter. “But now … Now that it’s just me, it’s … no easier at all.”
“I understand,” Sian said, and she did. Monde & Kattë was a textile firm, not a nation; but without Arouf here to manage the daily operations, Sian was discovering all manner of unsuspected gaps in her own knowledge. “But you’ll do fine,” she told Arian. “You’re strong, you’re wise — and you’re honest. Alizar trusts you.”
Arian smiled at her; Sian could see the sadness in her eyes. “I hope their trust is well placed.”
Sian reached over and patted her hand. “You might not always know the way through the tunnels, but you’re willing to admit when you make a mistake. I can’t think of a better quality in a leader.”
“We’ve learned a lot about ourselves, haven’t we. And what will you do now? You can’t just go back now either, can you?”
The doorway curtain rustled; Ennias poked his head in. “My Lady Factora? We’ve found him.”
“Good — send him in.”
Sian was happy not to have to answer such a question, as the young priest stepped inside the tent.
“Thank you very much for coming,” Arian said.
“Of course, My Lady Factora,” he replied cautiously.
“I have a rather odd question to ask you, I’m afraid,” Arian told the priest.
“I am not entirely unaccustomed to strange questions,” he replied, smiling slightly.
“Hm.” She smiled back. “How would you describe the Census Taker’s job, young man?”
“The … Census Taker’s job? … I am not certain I understand the question, my lady.”
“I’m just asking you to describe the Census Taker’s job to me — as you understand it.”
“In general?” he asked, clearly nonplussed, for all his wry assurances. “Or as it was done specifically by the previous Census Taker?”
“In general, please.”
“Well … In theory, I suppose, the Census Taker exists to manage both the nation’s wealth and much of its electoral process.”
Arian’s brows climbed slightly. “Elaborate, please?”
The priest’s brows climbed a bit as well. “The Census Taker is a national power broker, my lady. His office, as I understand it, is responsible for collecting and reporting all manner of census data, on which countless decisions are based in regard to the implementation and regulation of public elections and referendums, and the allocation of national funds, public or private, in response to identified needs. Not that our most recent Census Taker ever did these jobs very well or honestly, from what I have observed. Is that … sufficient?”
“I told you,” Sian murmured.
The priest glanced at Sian, then back at Arian. “At the risk of seeming forward, My Lady Factora, may I ask why I am being given this exam?”
“Well,” said Arian, “I wished to learn whether you knew anything about the job before bothering to decide whether or not I should consider offering it to you.”
The priest’s brows climbed a few more notches. “To …
me?
”
“I have made no such decision yet,” she added, “but I confess to wondering how a largely self-made religious leader has come to understand such a subject so … concisely.”
The priest shrugged, looking more and more confused. “To be perhaps foolishly candid, my lady, and with all due respect to you and your late husband, of course, neither I nor the god I served were … all that happy about how the nation was being run. It is difficult to be so focused on the results of such poor governance without paying considerable attention to … how the nation is being run. Does that seem so strange?”
“Only its unvarnished frankness,” Arian replied. “Of which I approve. My cousin tells me there’s a tale which I ought to hear, but which she is not free to tell me. Might I persuade you to trust me with it?”
“What tale is that?” The young man directed a bruised look at Sian.
“I have told her nothing,” Sian assured him. “But I wish you would. Please?”
“Young man,” said Arian, “I am in desperate need of a new Census Taker, one nothing like the last one. My cousin seems to think you may be that man, but I have just watched my life, and the life of this whole nation, disastrously undone by layers of deception. I cannot even think of considering you for such a post while knowing there are things of significance being hidden from me.”
“My lady …” He shook his head, seeming dazed. “While I am … honored, I suppose, by your consideration, the very idea … seems … I’m sorry, but this is absurd! I’d sooner be a temple priest than Alizar’s top bureaucrat.”
“A man I trusted told me once that it costs us everything to make the world new,” Sian replied defiantly. “You could make the Census Taker’s office new. You could change the politics of Alizar forever. You just praised Pino for being unafraid.”
He looked at her as if she’d stabbed him.
“I can think of few things I would like more than to see the Census Taker’s job done as it should be, rather than as it has been,” Arian said quietly. “But you have still not answered my question, sir. Why does the thought of telling me your tale frighten you so badly?”
“Because the telling drags me back through all the pain I’ve ever known,” he told her raggedly. “And because … because it makes all I’ve been … all I’ve done … seem just another tale of revenge. Though it was not. I swear it. It was not.”
“Oh,” Sian whispered, seeing it at last. “Your whole life has been shaped by someone else’s lies,” she told him. “All those people who turned you and your family away. You kept telling them the truth, all those years, and yet, the lies prevailed. You still don’t trust anyone to believe you, do you. Not even me. Not even now.”
He stared at her like a cornered mouse.
“Revenge against whom?” Arian asked him gently.
“The Census Taker.” His whole body sagged. Broken, once again. “And his family, my lady.” He looked up at the Factora, seeming more sad than frightened now. “Yes. You can be certain, I have followed Escotte Alkattha’s career quite carefully. I know better than most what his job was, and how he betrayed his mandate at every turn. I despised him. And hatred sharpens focus. But the god … finally took that hatred from me. Brutally and effectively, my lady. I did not choose Sian Kattë that night because of her connection to House Alkattha. The god did.” He turned back to Sian. “Nor was anything I did in service of the god meant to bring down the Alkattha family. Not by me, at least. I wished only to serve the vision shown me. To see Alizar awakened. And healed — your family included.”
“As it has been,” Sian told him. “Do you still think I cannot see that?”
“I grieve my husband’s death, young man,” said Arian. “But neither have you or your god done anything to bring down House Alkattha. Instead, it has been cleansed. Escotte is disgraced and gone, and whatever role you played in … transforming Sian led to the healing of my son. He’s the future of House Alkatthas. My future. Where is there revenge in this? I see only proof, not negation, of all you’ve been, and done, in service of the god who healed me as well one night, through Sian’s hands.” She gazed at him, and shook her head. “There is only one thing I am still unsure of. Do you believe your own story, young man? … Can you?” She smiled at him, almost maternally. “I must know your answer, before I’ll dare ask you to consider such a demanding new calling.”
He gazed back at her, and drew a long, shuddering breath. “May I sit down?”
“Of course.” Arian waved him toward the canvas chair beside her own.
He came to lower himself into it, rubbing at his face, and staring at something only he could see. “How much do you wish to know, my lady?”
“Everything,” she said. “As much as you trust me to hear.”
He nodded. “Very well, then. My name was … is Kalesh Salmian.” He gave Sian a sad and weary smile. “My father once served Escotte Alkattha, very well, and was ruined by him for it …”
Sian awoke to moonlight, streaming through the open shutters and the gauzy curtains around her bed, across the smooth back of her lover, not gone back to his ship. Never to go back there now.
Arouf now lived in Monde & Kattë’s townhouse on Viel; he’d surrendered Little Loom Eyot, and this home, with no real struggle. He’d misplayed his cards quite badly. Even he could see that now. Sian had not turned out to be the social disgrace or the threat to their business he had once imagined. But what was done, was done. They had agreed to continue their business partnership. That was what he really cared about, and, in all fairness, what he had worked at hard enough for all these years to have some right to still. Sian would need a business partner anyway, more badly than before, in fact, with so many new distractions to be managing. With his new shipping fleet to run, Reikos had no more need of, or interest in, Monde & Kattë than Arouf did of or in their onetime marriage. It would be good for him, Sian suspected, to be forced out of his kitchen-puttering and back into the world. To do some real business once again. It might even be empowering.
So Arouf was gone, and Little Loom Eyot belonged to herself and Reikos now — who had told her just that evening of his grand plans for their
garden
. The world was new.
As they’d sat together quietly, after the delicious dinner that Bela had cooked for them, she had told Konstantin about what Pino had tried to do for him the night he’d died, and been dismayed when Reikos had responded by telling Sian about the true extent of Pino’s own affection for her. These men and their strange courtesies to one another. Such news had only further salted her grief, but, deep down, she understood. It could be hard to carry such secrets alone. Justice to the dead. Acknowledgement, however belated. Yes. She understood.
She lay now, thinking, listening to the soft music of night sounds outside the house, and to Reikos’s quiet snoring at her side. It had been a long time since she had regularly shared a bed with a man. She watched the moonlight shift across their covers onto the floor, and finally rose, as stealthily as possible, to don her silk nightgown and go find a glass of something warm to help her back to sleep.
In the kitchen, moonlight poured as thick as cream through all the windows, and Sian went to stare out at the gilded sea. It felt as if the light were calling her.
A thirst. A vision not quite clear enough to name.
She found herself outside a moment later, in pursuit of … something.
Twenty minutes later, she sat on the newly planted lawn atop her island’s highest hill, beside Pino’s burial shrine. To the west, Little Loom Eyot stretched out before her, moon-burnished in the fragrant, luminescent darkness. To the east, the hilltop plunged severely down into the quicksilver sea, whispering and sighing up at her.
A call. A thirst. A vision not quite clear enough to name
…
much less to satisfy
…
“Are you at peace?” she whispered over her shoulder to Pino. “Have you finally caught up with the light you chased?”
She listened to the crickets and cicadas humming their night-songs in the forest far below her. To the wind. The distant water. The air smelled of dew, and soil, of night-blooming flowers and moist tree bark. Was Pino’s answer somewhere in this quiet chorus?
She recalled his sunlit smile, his eager attention rowing or sailing her to and from the central island cluster. How had she been so blind? But what could she have said to him, even if she hadn’t been? Had he sacrificed himself that night to prove his love somehow, or in despair of its futility?
He’s really a very good man, Domina, and loves you even more than you may guess
… How much had that cost him?
“That priest you led me to is going to be the country’s Census Taker now. The Factora you saved has made that possible. Do you know, wherever you are now, how much you changed the world?” The grief welled up again inside her. All at once, from wherever it had been hiding since she’d first heard the news of Pino’s death. “I hope you know,” she said as she began to weep. “You should be here to see it, Pino.” She lay back on the grass and surrendered to the desolation she felt. “If I could change just one thing,” she pled. “If I could choose one power. For just one moment …” She broke down completely then, her grief, her helplessness, too great for words. He had loved her. This sweet, pure, darling boy. And all she’d had to give him in return — all she had to give him now — was death.
Now, my lady! NOW!
The memory of his voice came out of nowhere, like a shout within her mind. Telling her to leave the boat that night.
Yes! Leave the boat!
His voice again — almost audibly, so forceful was the thought.
She sat up, and looked back at the crypt, a darkened silhouette against the moonlight. There was a new sound on the night air. A grumbling. Almost too low to hear, though it began to grow. For a startled instant, Sian thought it was coming from inside of Pino’s shrine, then realized it came from everywhere at once, just as the stones of Pino’s shrine began to grate against each other, and the ground began to sway beneath her.
“Oh!” She tried to scramble to her feet, but could not keep her balance, as if the very island had become a boat at sea. “OH! OH NO!” she gasped more loudly, understanding that it was an earthquake only as the ground began to buck and fracture all around her.
SWIM, MY LADY! WEST!
East of her, a great slab of hilltop vanished suddenly, plunging down into the sea with hardly any sound above the quake’s own mighty rumble. As more ground split open and the collapse surged toward her, Sian scrambled on her hands and knees in abject terror past Pino’s tomb, half running, half crawling toward the moonlight, while more hilltop fell away behind her. Only once did she glance back to find great chunks of ground thrusting up into the air now as others continued tumbling from the hill. She had no thoughts left beyond a deafening, wordless reflex to flee. She flailed across the gelid lawn, the fractured, grinding walks, until there was hardly any hilltop left in front of her to flee toward.
And all the motion ceased. As suddenly as it had begun.
For a moment, she just lay upon her patch of lawn, breathing hard, still gripping the ground itself with hands and feet, waiting for her mind to clear, for thought to reassert itself. For some further reassurance that the quake was truly over.
Finally, she looked behind her. Everything there was gone — including Pino’s shrine and crypt. Hardly any of the hilltop remained except the patch she clung to. But that was not what made her turn and sit to gape in disbelieving terror.
Looming high above her, dark against the night, was a giant, even taller than her island — made of earth and rock, it seemed. It stood, motionless and silent, gazing down at her.
I am dreaming
, she thought.
I am in my bed still. Lying beside Reikos.
She willed herself awake, but nothing happened.
I am dreaming. Or I’m dead?
“
Sian Kattë,
” the monster rumbled softly, its voice composed not just of the earthquake’s rumble, but of the sea, the wind, the nocturnal insects even, all woven into those two words. The monster nodded at her, gravely. “
Not badly done.
”
Despite the voice’s massive scale, its impossible composition, its terrifying source, Sian thought she heard something wry in this second utterance, and a little of her terror slid away. “Who are you?” she hardly more than breathed. “
What
are you?”
“
You know,
” it rumbled. “
Who else can I be?”
“But … he said you’d gone,” she whispered in a daze. “They cut your body up. On Cutter’s.”
“
A god is not His body.
” He turned, ponderously, to gaze across the moonlit ocean, east of Alizar. “
You were told this. Fare well.
” One of his massive earthen legs pulled forward, and Sian heard the water’s distant roar as his first step dragged through the roiled surf into which half of her hill had fallen.
Sian realized that he was leaving. Just like that, without any further explanation. “Wait!” she called. “Why have you done this to my island? What was all this for?” When he just continued walking, out into the ocean, she stood up at last, becoming angry, against all sense. “Look at what you’ve done to Pino’s grave!” she shouted. “It’s completely gone now! Tumbled into the sea! Have you no respect for anything? He was devoted to you!”
The monstrous figure swayed to a halt, and slowly turned his head to look back at her across one enormous shoulder. “
To make the world new, even bodies may be taken up again, if necessary. Was this not what you requested?”
His gaze swung away once more, and he resumed his slow course out to sea.
It was then that Sian’s eyes caught some small movement on the giant’s other shoulder. Something tiny sat there in the darkness. Something she’d not seen when the god’s great new body had still loomed above her. It looked for all the world like a person. Looking back at her, perhaps. The giant was already so far off that it was difficult to be certain, until the little figure raised an arm. Just once. As if to wave goodbye.
Sian’s mouth fell open as she stared after them in silence, watching the god walk ever farther out to sea, until the moon was covered by a bank of fog rising in the west behind her, and she lost sight of them completely.