Tanith Lee - Claidi Journals 01 (3 page)

Outside, smoke still billowed over the Garden. Some of‘ the Guards were marching up the Cedar Walk, and there was someone, not a Guard, having to march in the middle of them.

“Is that—the
invader? ”
whispered Daisy, letting go of more ants down the wall.

“Must be.”

We tried to lean over and see more, but JL was screaming again even louder.

Daisy and I helped shake out JL’s petticoat. Jade Leaf thrust us off, managing to poke Daisy in the eye.

“Oh you
filthyword
little sluts!” squawked JL.

Outside, they’d be marching right under the window now.

I leapt away, dashed back to the window, and looked down, calling as I did so, “Oh, madam, the Guards have a prisoner.”

“Of course they have, you
extrafilthyword
little pest. Leave that and come here. I’m covered in these
filthyword-Claidi-doesn’t-even-know
things!”

Under the window, the ghastly Guards swaggered, and this man sort of swaggered too. He wore a longish, grey, quite-military-looking coat, and the sun was gold, pure utter gold, all over his long, rough-cut hair. It didn’t look possible, this hair. Powdered, perhaps? Didn’t seem to be. It looked…

real
, in a way reality seldom manages.

Just then JL threw something at me—it was a paperweight, I saw later—and it caught me sharp and cold with pain in my back. My breath went in a silly
oof
Below, the prisoner—the invader—turned up his head to see, in the midst of capture, what creature it was that made such idiotic noises.

“Come here, you filthy
filthyword
!” screeched dear Lady J.

I don’t know what happened. I cant explain. Perhaps you can. Perhaps it, or something similar, may have happened to you sometime.

Spinning around, I pelted straight at Jade Leaf. And as I reached her, I slapped her a huge, stinging slap across half her disgusting, pointy pink face.

Although the House was bursting with noise, this one room became completely silent. As if we had all been turned to stone.

I gazed at Jade Leaf and had the thrilling joy of seeing the place I’d slapped turn from pink to boiling magenta.

Her mouth was wide open.

 

“You… hit me.”

“Lady,” I cried, very concerned, “I had to. There was this awful insect on your cheek—you hadn’t noticed. It might have stung you.”

But Jade Leaf only plumped down on the rug abruptly, like a child, and said, “Hit me.”

“Yes,” said Pattoo, surprising me by her invention, “look, madam.” And Pattoo showed JL a piece of squished fruit she must have gotten hold of just that moment to help me. “Its horrible.”

“A good thing,” said Dengwi, “Claidi acted so quickly.”

Jade Leaf’s mouth opened more, and she screwed up her eyes. “Mummy!” she warbled. “I want Mummy!”

Magically on this cue, through the open doors stepped Princess Shimra in a cloud of attendants.

“Get up, Jade Leaf. What are you thinking of? The enemy balloonist has been taken to the Debating Hall.

Change your clothes at once. Everyone will be there. Even Princess Jizania Tiger,” added Shimra, with wondering scorn.

==========

To go to the Debating Hall everyone has to wear blue. I don’t know why. It’s yet another rule of the House.

Changing that hurriedly wasn’t easy, although JL was abnormally docile.

We powdered her hair on top of the green, and it looked fairly awful. Pattoo powdered the red slap-side of JL’s face with white. Shimra hadn’t even noticed.

We didn’t have time for our own hair, so we had to tie it in hasty, untidy blue turbans.

My hands were shaking anyway.

==========

The Debating Hall is huge—a high ceiling decorated with silver medallions, upheld by marble pillars, and below, a slippery polished floor. I know about the floor, because when I was nine or ten, I used to be one of the kids who polished it once every five days. And it took all day to do.

The ladies and princesses sat on their blue plush seats on the raised area, and the maids and servants and slaves gathered around to fan them and offer little tobacco pipes and calming drinks.

On the other side were the lords and princes, who, almost alone, make a decision at the end of every debate. However, at the head of the room was a long draped table and, behind that, seven gilded chairs under a canopy. These are for the Old Ladies, the most ancient princesses. They too have an important vote.

Only three of the OL chairs were filled. There sat Princess Corris, who’s eighty, and Princess Armingat, who’s eighty-five. They attend every debate and argue wildly at the end, always disagreeing with each other.

Today a third chair had been filled.

 

Princess Jizania Tiger is said to be one hundred and thirty years old. She
does
look it, but she’s absolutely beautiful. She seems made of the thinnest, finest pale paper. And her large hooded eyes are like pale amber pearls. She’s bald, and today she wore a headdress that was a net of almost colorless silvery beads, set occasionally with a bud of emerald. (She alone hadn’t bothered with blue. Her gown was ash-colored.)

I can’t imagine ever being old, let alone old like this. But if I had to be, she would be my model.

She has a fine voice, too. Soft and smoky—musical. She sounds only about sixty.

As a rule, though, she never bothers with debates. Only the most unavoidable dinners and Rituals.

It must be nice to get out of so many boring and unimportant things.

Now she sat there, leaning her slender old face on her slender, crooked graceful hand, which had one colossal topaz burning on it in a ring.

The big space at the Halls center was fenced on two sides by weapon-bristling Guards, standing three deep.

I’d looked for him—I mean the prisoner, the enemy-invader—the moment we’d arrived. But the Guards are often dramatic. Only now did they march him in.

He seemed quite good-humored and certainly not upset. I wondered if he’d been hurt when the balloon fell, and was bravely hiding it.

The Guards left him alone in the middle of the Hall, and we all now glared down at him, and some of the royalty held up magnifying glasses.

Under the lighted lamps, which are always lit in the hall, his hair looked like golden flames itself. The dark grey coat was swinging loose. He wore white under it, and boots that were a darker white. But mainly, he was young. Older than me (did I say I’m about halfway through sixteen?). Eighteen maybe, nineteen.

In what some of them call my Age-Group.

Despite that, the thing that is making this so hard to describe is that he had a gleam to him, a polish to him. I used to polish this floor, but
life
had polished this man. B
e
in
g
alive.
Living
. And he glowed.

He came from the unknown outside places, the Hell known as the Waste.

And I’d never thought anything that came from there could look any good. Terrifying, yes; revolting, probably. But not glowing and handsome, packed with energy, and this kind of easy pridefulness. With hair like melted sun.

One of the princes—Shawb—had risen and now walked along the raised part of the hall, where the royalty were all sitting, until he came to the area just before the Old Ladies’ chairs. Shawb turned swiftly and nodded to them. (Armingat cackled. Corris looked hungry for trouble. Jizania was unreadable.) Then Shawb stared down long and hard at the prisoner.

“You speak, I understand, the language of the House.”

The prisoner shrugged slightly. “Among others.”

“That doesn’t interest me.”

 

“Nor me, really,” replied the prisoner.

I liked his voice. It was clear and had a faint accent of something or other. I liked his cheek, too.

Shawb didn’t.

“This isn’t a joke. You’re in a bad situation. Didn’t you realize?”

“Well, after your men fired on me and brought my craft down, I had an idea or two about it.” The Guards growled. Shawb scowled.

“Your name?”

The prisoner half turned. He put a hand in a pocket of his coat, and at once a hundred knives and rifles were scraping up at menacing angles. But out of the pocket he took only a clean white handkerchief, very laundered.

“Nemian,” he said. “That’s my name.” And then he walked straight across the space they’d stood him in, right up to the (unguarded) table and chairs of the Old Ladies. He laid the handkerchief in front of Jizania Tiger.

During this, Shawb was shouting and the lined-up Guards broke ranks, and I heard the rifles clicking and clacking, getting ready to fire. I’d dropped the fan I was supposed to wave and put both my fists over my mouth. What a hopeless gesture. But I didn’t know I’d done it until afterward.

It was Jizania Tiger who held up her topazed hand.

“All right. What do you want, young man.?” she asked in her excellent voice.

“To give you this, madam.”

“What is it? The rag you wipe your nose on?”

Nemian laughed. I liked his laugh. So did she. A carved little smile moved her lips.

“Of course it isn’t, madam. It’s a flower from the Waste. You might care for it.” Shawb bawled, “Don’t touch the muck—it may be poisonous.”

But Jizania said, “Not everything in the Waste is bad.”

I’d never heard anyone say
that
before. (It was then I noticed my fists clamped over my mouth and took them down.)

She’d unwrapped the handkerchief and lifted up the flower. It really was one. It was fresh and firm, with big juicy green leaves, and the color of the flower head was crimson.

“Oh, yes,” said Jizania. As if she knew these flowers, although I’d swear there are none in the Garden, and so it
must
have come from the Waste. :

And the Waste was hell-on-earth. So everyone had always said.

Nemian turned from Jizania with a bow. He looked around at all of us. He was smiling and unfussed even though I now saw there was a streak of blood across his forehead. His eyes looked tired. I felt sorry about his eyes. I liked their color, but I couldn’t remember what it was—only the shape, and the shadow.

 

He said, “I’m on a search, a quest for something. I might have liked to visit your wonderful gardens, but alternatively I could have just gone elsewhere, if you’d preferred. In the end, I didn’t have much choice, did I? You shot me down. I assume you’re not used to visitors. Shame, really.” Then he
yawned
.

I never saw anyone sit down so elegantly on a floor. Even when he was lying full length, he lay in a stylish way. Presently he seemed asleep.

Maybe you’re getting used to my odd type of thinking. But I thought just then: all those days and months I’d polished the floor and never knew one day he’d stretch out on it and lie there. There was a strange ache in my chest like the pressure of tears.

But the Guards milled forward now and surrounded Nemian so none of us could see him. It seemed they thought that by going to sleep, he’d performed another dangerous and life-threatening trick.

==========

A few minutes after that, the Guards hustled almost all of us out of the Debating Hall. Only the most senior of the princes remained, Shawb among them. Even the Old Ladies were politely and firmly requested to go.

Jizania made no protest. The other two cackled and squeaked and struggled like nasty old children kicked out of a party.

In the outside chambers, the thrown-out royalty stood around chattering to each other. I thought Jade Leaf might be her usual self, but instead she went barging over to her mother, Princess Shimra.

“Mummy-mummy, may I stay with you?”

“I’m going to the library soon,” replied Shimra, “to
read”
looking uncomfortable as JL laid her head on Shimra’s shoulder.

“Let me come too, Mummy. I
want
to, Mummy.”

“But you don’t like reading, dear.”

Jade Leaf is about a head taller than Shimra, and now JL was acting like a little girl, making her voice all gooey. This didn’t happen often, thank goodness, as it makes you sick. Shimra as well, from the look of it.

Soon after that, Jizania Tiger swept by, her two attendants proudly holding up her long brocade train.

When she had passed, Shimra had somehow escaped her daughter, and JL came disconsolately back to us, her maids. Her one-side-reddened face was cooler, but she still seemed to be confused. Had I done that?

But I didn’t concentrate. I kept thinking of
him
.

What would they do to him? I’d only heard tales of punishments delivered to trespassers. Remember the lion, the one they killed?

We couldn’t hang about though, for JL went off upstairs to the Jewelry Chamber, and we all had to go too.

When I was a child I liked this room, which has all the most ancient jewels and ornaments of the House displayed behind glass. Now that room only made me annoyed. I don’t know why.

Today I barely saw it. Daisy seemed to be in the same state, and a couple of the others. But not Dengwi and Pattoo.

I had an embarrassing idea that Daisy and I at least had got a
thing
about Nemian. Yes, I had, I was sure. My face had gone hot simply thinking of his name.

This was dismal, wasn’t it? I’d fallen for an outcast from Hell, who anyway they were going to kill.

Besides which, he would never have glanced my pathetic way.

JL mooned over the bracelets and earrings. But gradually I could see the vagueness leaving her—the little girlie business.

She had that snakelike air again. Not that I’ve anything against snakes—only the human ones.

“Claidi,” she said suddenly, very brisk and clear.

“Yes, lady?” I asked, my heart sinking even further. (Even with Nemian’s arrival to distract me, I hadn’t quite forgotten the professional beating.)

“Thank you so much for viciously slapping my face and destroying that dreadful insect. It was an insect, was it?” I attempted to seem bashful and pleased. “I never knew you were so loyal. I ought to reward you.” She smiled brilliantly. “When I tell Mummy tonight, I’m sure she’ll command her steward’s whip-master to tie an extra-pretty ribbon on the whip. Do you know about the whip, by the way?” She bent closer. It didn’t seem to be really happening. But a glass case pushed at my back and reminded me of where the paperweight she threw had bruised me. “It has spikes on it,” said LJL, triumphant. Ah, the whip had spikes.