Untalented (21 page)

Puzzled, Saroya blurted, “My stature?”

“The royal princess, breaking plague quarantine. Why, if anybody found out …”

“You don’t understand. I’m not the royal princess.”

Veshwa stared at her, aghast. “But I heard the news months ago—you’d been found! I was so happy to discover you weren’t an Untalent after all. Who is the woman in the castle?”

“Her name is Martezha.”

“I thought it must be a name they gave you in Adram Vale. How does she come to be there in your place?” Veshwa gripped the quilted coverlet spread across her legs, wringing and worrying at the fabric.

“The ring with the blue stone. She stole it. Nobody believes me.” Saroya wasn’t interested in rehashing the theft. “I am Untalented. Is that why my mother left me at the Cloister?”

“I left you there, but yes, that is the reason.”

“Was it … was it hard for her, at least?” Saroya could barely get the words out. The answer might sear her heart.

“Oh, child. It was the hardest thing she ever did. Harder even than leaving her first love to marry Urdig.”

“But she couldn’t have known I was Untalented when I was born.”

“She couldn’t risk it. House Roshan kept it quiet—but Padvai herself was an Untalent. Something in the family line produces Untalents—more often than normal.

“So she knew?”

“No. She planned to hide any child she bore until its Talent showed itself. The Adepts at the Cloister were to notify me as soon as that occurred.”

“Why you?”

Veshwa picked the comb out from a fold of the quilt, and turned it over in her hands.

“I had raised her and knew her secret. When she conceived, she arranged to spend time in the countryside and bore her child, you, Saroya, at her father’s estate in Tarash. Then I brought you to the Cloister in Adram Vale, pretending you were mine and that I could not keep you—I was too poor.”

“So if I was Talented I’d be acknowledged?”

“I assume so.”

Saroya absorbed this in silence for a moment.

“Did the king know my mother was Untalented?”

Veshwa’s hand holding the comb stilled. “I’m not sure. He might have suspected. But he loved Padvai. Isolte never forgave Padvai for that.”

“Her sister?”

“Your aunt. Isolte expected to make the better marriage, but their father insisted that Padvai go to Urdig. Even though she loved another. Airic was adamant. Padvai to Urdig, and Isolte to Loric.”

Fascinated, Saroya drank in every word. To have a family, which had a history, painful as it was—even looking in from the outside, was more than Saroya had ever hoped. Her family, her people. They had rejected her, but they couldn’t keep her from her roots.

Veshwa read her expression.

“Your mother loved you. To her, it didn’t matter whether you were Talented or not. But she had a duty to her husband, and the throne.”

“Then this is it? I go through life letting Martezha take my place? Letting my father believe a lie? And what about me, then? What happens to me?” Duty to the throne. Didn’t the throne have a duty to all its subjects? Untalents included? Certainly a girl like Martezha wouldn’t see it that way. Saroya thought of all she could do for people like her if she was in Martezha’s place instead.

Veshwa patted her hand. “That, I cannot answer.” She pointed at a small wooden box sitting on top of a table in the corner. “Fetch that for me, please.”

Saroya retrieved the box and set it on the bed next to Veshwa. The old woman unlatched a small clasp and rummaged inside.

“Here. Go to House Roshan and show this to Dhilain. It will tell him who you are.” Veshwa dropped a delicate loop of gold inset with amethysts in Saroya’s palm.

“Dhilain?”

“Padvai’s brother—now the head of Roshan.”

The metal loop looked like a ring, but twisted in odd places like no ring Saroya had ever seen. “What is it?”

“One piece of a ring that fits together like a puzzle. Ashra gave it to her first daughter, and Padvai split it into pieces at your birth. She told me to give it to you if you ever presented yourself.”

“Dhilain has the other piece?” Saroya turned the ring over and over in her hands. Such a small thing to hinge so much of her life upon.

“I don’t know. He knows the ring—it’s a family heirloom.”

“Why would he acknowledge an Untalent?”

“He might not. But one thing I learned in my years serving Roshan … We all grow up being told what a stigma it is. But House Roshan embraced it, like a badge of honor.”

“Yet they hid their Untalents from the world.”
Hid me.

“True, but behind their own walls, an Untalented child was treated just as any other. Maybe better. Padvai was Airic’s favorite.”

“Then why hide me in Adram Vale, and not closer to the House?” But she knew the answer, though it pained her to admit it. House Roshan was not the same as the king’s House. An Untalent’s welcome would be very different there.

“Isolte made Padvai wary. Isolte doesn’t share the family tolerance for Untalents.”

Veshwa stifled a yawn.

“I’ve tired you!”

“No, child, I just can’t keep awake for as long as I used to. Napping keeps me busy these days.”

Saroya wracked her mind for any other questions. “You know I won’t be able to visit you again.”

“Yes. But I suspect I’ll still be here for you to talk to once the whole thing has blown over.”

“You don’t seem worried.”

“Child, at my age, there isn’t much to worry over anymore. What will come, will come. I stopped fighting long ago. At least Padvai’s gratitude keeps me in a clean place, and well fed.”

Saroya wanted to hug Veshwa. She settled for blowing her a kiss from the door.

“Good luck, child. I hope Dhilain treats you well.”

Saroya walked down the hall, but as she reached the head of the stairs, the dizziness overtook her again. This time, instead of passing, it worsened and her vision narrowed to a small point of light. She put out a hand to find the banister but it eluded her. The last thing she heard before she fainted was Madam Abaya’s dismayed shout from the end of the hall.

Eiden Callor joined Urdig on the king’s private balcony. Urdig gazed south at the columns of smoke rising from the Vergal. Funeral pyres. Callor hoped one particularly thick billowing cloud rising from the port area wasn’t the granaries. The city could ill afford losing its grain stocks.

“So the quarantine holds,” Urdig said.

“For now. My new worry is the rumors.” Callor’s fingers drummed against the balustrade.

“Plague and quarantine, hearsay and quacks. They go hand in hand. People will latch onto anything if it gives them hope.”

“These are more persistent than the usual. And not about hope. Even though the first plague ship arrived from Kurtya, some claim the fever is the fault of the Untalents.”

“What, they’re dirty and useless so they must have spawned the plague?”

Callor frowned. “Something like that.”

Urdig’s eyes narrowed, and he leaned forward. “Do you agree with this ‘talk’?”

“I believe in the law of the realm.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Callor held himself very still. “No.”

“Padvai had a soft spot for you. I think she saw you as the son she never had. It was on Dhilain’s recommendation that I took you on, despite your youth. I had my doubts, but you fought well on the last border campaign. Do you remember?”

“Very well, My Lord.”

“Then don’t feed me any hogwash.”

“I don’t like it. It feels like simple bigotry to me.”

“Good.” Urdig handed Callor a leather-bound book.

“What’s this?”

“A history of the Great Plague. Not one you’ll find in any other library. I’ve been hearing rumors as well.”

Callor fingered the pages of the book.

“The guilds and the Adepts incite rallies against Untalents—using the plague as an excuse. It’s no longer enough to simply purge them from the guild ranks, apparently. The Healer’s Guild rounds them all up—expelling them from the city. They say it’s for the good of the plague carriers. There’s not much I can do—the Houses support the effort.”

“And this book?”

“An interesting read. Three hundred years ago, the Order of Adepts and the guilds wielded far less influence. They used the Great Plague as an excuse to secure more power. All on the backs of the Untalented. I wonder if they perpetrated a great injustice in the name of public safety. If history now repeats itself.”

Callor caught his breath. He had heard vague whisperings that such a book existed, but to hold it in his hands … And that Urdig should be the one to give him such a seditious item … Agreeing with the views in this book was tantamount to treason. Callor marveled at his liege’s trust. What had Padvai told him?

A parchment fluttered out of the book. Callor picked it up then realized what it was. Queen Padvai’s certificate of Talent.

“This is yours,” Callor said as he passed it back to Urdig.

Urdig shrugged. “It’s worthless. A forgery.”

Urdig’s acknowledgment shocked Callor. He paused, a thousand questions in his head, but only asked one. “Why did you marry her?”

“At the time of our wedding, I had no reason to doubt its authenticity.”

Callor thought of his own certificate, sitting forgotten in a leather parchment holder in his desk. As guard captain, he’d had no need to show it in years. He hated himself for what he had to say next. “But later, if she told you—surely the fraud was reason enough to put her aside?”

“Callor, should you ever fall in love, you’d know I could do no such thing.” Urdig kept his gaze trained on the Vergal. “Talented or Untalented—all the subjects of Veyle are my responsibility. Padvai taught me that. But if it comes down to a confrontation in the Great Circle of Houses, I’m no longer certain I’d have the support of the majority. Someone has been lobbying hard. My sources tell me Tikla. I have my doubts—he’s never been a creative thinker.”

“I fear Lord Dorn is up to no good,” Callor said.

“I’m not a fool, Callor. I know he wants the throne at any cost.”

“Then why provide you with the key to identifying your heir? Admit it—the coincidence is striking. Isolte points out these students and an heir pops out of the woodwork?”

“Any advantage Loric might have gained is long gone.”

Eiden Callor’s thoughts turned to a red-headed girl in the Vergal. He wondered again if he should tell Urdig about her then shook his head. “I’m not so sure.”

Saroya burned. Burned with fever, with the ache of muscle attempting to escape the parched skin that trapped it. In Saroya’s fevered delirium, Martezha laughed, throwing scalding tea in Saroya’s face over and over again. She slapped away a hand, mistaking the cooling cloth it placed on her forehead for another of Martezha’s tricks. A ring of anonymous faces stared down, pointing, whispering. Were they mocking her? Were they real?

“King’s bane … your fault … tainted …” Accusing voices whispered above her head.

Saroya shivered. Clammy fabric twisted and ensnared her limbs. She thrashed and flailed, but could not escape. Now she yearned for warmth, the kind of warmth her bones had not known for endless frigid days. She drowned in icy waters yet nobody heard her screams.

“… might all get sick … giving up … won’t survive the night …”

The meaningless snatches of conversation receded. Saroya sank beneath waves of freezing cold.