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"You must be sweet to him," Coralyn said.
"Sweet!" Unys said scathingly. "Sweet, as I have been these last sevendays? Shall I seem a drugged aspi in a rigged race, or a cornered sether-mouse that cowers only to bite?"
Her stepmother's face was calm. With restraint, Unys knew, not sympathy; Coralyn would spare Unys the edge of her tongue only if Unys recognized this warning. She had been given a chance to vent her frustration, and now, having childishly vented it, she was being given a chance to back down.
"Sweet as birrish powder, until it cloys, perhaps," she continued more meekly. Coralyn's beautiful lips twitched with amused approval. Birrish was, of course, addictive, and more: it destroyed the tongue's ability to sense sweetness in other things.
"You are young and unformed," Coralyn said. "You are passionate, and with his calm love and honour, this Vespian has won you, and may tame you in time."
"So it shall seem," Unys said.
Coralyn studied her. "And how do matters seem to you?"
Unys wished she could prevent her eyes from narrowing and her neck from stiffening, so that the rayed headdress she had put on for this audience with Coralyn did not quiver, its reflection flashing conspicuously in the polished panels adorning Coralyn's walls. She would go along with the official story; must Coralyn ask, then, what she really felt?
"Kerd has a different kind of cloying sweetness," she drawled. "His attentiveness flattered me, and we are of rank appropriate for one another. But when I learned that he is equally gentle to all who draw his attention, I soured. He has yet to prove that he feels more for me than the merest servitor – as I deserve, if he loves me as he says." All true, and the bitterness was true.
"That is the wrong approach," said Coralyn, and Unys felt smug; she had hidden her true feelings by presenting them as a balladeer’s conceit. "Once you are plighted-" Unys made a face at that word - "you must be humble. You must appear to feel the gravity of your situation. Love must be as a new unknown to you. You must appeal to Kerd to teach you Vespian ways. Though, yes," she conceded, "a little reticence, a little defiance, may prove useful. Especially now that rumour has proven true, and Fulig of Vespi has set the condition of a year-end bond. Kerd shall have no reason to take you for granted."
"He slights me thus," Unys said. She had waited quite a long time in Tarsin’s gardens, before all the assembled nobles of Ramidan, only to hear that slight. It would have been a charming hall - if she’d only known. She could have gossiped and pretended that Kerd had nothing to do with anything.
"Yes," said Coralyn. "And I do not say you are wrong to note the slight. But take care that with that offense you do not offend yourself. Truly, do you relish the idea of a life bond with Kerd of Vespi?"
This time, Unys did not flinch. "As you say,” she said, “I shall mold and guide him. What, then, could I regret about this match?"
"Very good," Coralyn said softly. "Sometimes I think you are more Iridomi even than I am, Unys. Or perhaps it is that the lessons I learned so harshly are better studied with detachment."
"Some say that this match is the brighter echo of your own first courtship," Unys said, hoping that Coralyn might be drawn out further.
"Symmetry has a popular appeal," Coralyn agreed smoothly. "I have made it known that I see your betrothal as a way to heal the old rift. It is a useful angle on this affair."
Disappointed, Unys nodded.
"I am satisfied with your bearing, I think," Coralyn said. "But it will be a different matter when the day is near. Unys, you must tell me of any doubts, or I cannot help you."
"All is well," Unys said wearily. As if there were any other acceptable answer.
"And when the night is near?" Coralyn pressed.
Unys allowed her gaze to drift to the citadel view, and her mouth to take up a pout. She disliked this line of questioning too, and Coralyn had hinted at it before.
But there was an edge of sympathy in her stepmother's tone that had not been there when Coralyn had talked of manners. Perhaps there was some leverage to be gained from the complaint that she recoiled at physically joining with Kerd of Vespi. And the moment had now gone on too long for a confident rejoinder. Doubt and unwillingness would be more plausible.
"I will do my part," she said, not looking in Coralyn's eyes.
Coralyn sighed. "I have set you a chore, where you have been trained to expect pleasure, I know," she said. She reached behind her low seat to bring up a jar of a glittering brown powder. "This may right that balance."
"What is it?" Unys asked. She took the jar, uncapped it, and cautiously sniffed. A soporific, she guessed, to mislead and scatter the senses before leading the body to sleep. She could not pin down the drug's purpose, and she knew that most on Ramidan would only have smelled a slight, salt acridity, perhaps like burning kelp.
"It produces a drift of the mind, an enhancement of sensual pleasures, and lust. A pleasant, indulgent lassitude," Coralyn enumerated. "The effect of repeating doses in short succession is unpredictable. The body quickly builds up a tolerance. Take it with care."
"For the betrothal night?" Unys asked. Her eyes narrowed. Were its effects really so pleasant that Coralyn could present it like this, as a gift? Her stepmother's actions were many-layered - efficient, Coralyn would say. It sounded like a drug designed for compliance, its glitter a thin paint over its purpose.
"At your discretion," Coralyn said. The words were firm enough to be a dismissal. Unys got up to go.
"Unys," Coralyn called, "I only agree with you: all that is sweet need not be natural."
Unys let her headdress nod for her with the clenching of her jaw.
She turned out into the gardens, thinking to stroll towards her next appointment; this raiment was worn to be seen.
Kalinda hung low and bright in the afternoon sky, and she stood a moment to let her eyes adjust. On Iridom, except after a storming, a haze hung gently on the air; on drier, harsher Ramidan, her eyes were always narrowed. "They say you sneer at everything, but now I know that is not true," Kerd had told her tenderly. "I shall tell all I know that you are not so swift to criticise."
Except that Kerd counted everyone his acquaintance - from the leader of Tarsin's gatekeepers to the servitor who freshened his apartment. "Who judges so, that their opinion should matter to me?" Unys had retorted tartly, imagining him leaning out from his balcony, eyes soulful, calling out to a gardener: "Yesterday, I heard you gossiping about what a little pricklebush Unys is, but today, I must tell you you are wrong."
Kerd had blinked. "You are right, of course," he said - and how she had come to wince at those words - "I do them, and you, wrong by thinking I must defend you. Surely they will come to know you through your deeds."
He was impossible.
Since then, she had not tried very hard to lose the habit of squinting.
She turned away from Kalinda and walked along the north terrace. She had promised to dally with Kerd today. Broken promises were so effective, she had discovered, at making him rueful and hurt, that she now reserved them for especial punishments when he annoyed her. Proposing a mere year-end bond to her was worthy of punishment, but she had been nasty enough about it these last two days; perhaps it was time to make up again.
She held to this virtuous plan for perhaps a single division of time in his company.
They sat in the shade, skipping spheres together. It was an Iridomi pastime, which Kerd had been pleased to learn from her. At first she had thought that by acquiring just so much skill and no more, he was being gracious, deferring to she who should play it best. Now she just thought he was talentless. She flicked one of her favourite glass spheres, a silvery-blue one, in between two of the black spheres that anchored the pattern. It struck against the green sphere she’d been aiming for and rolled left.
“Very nice,” Kerd said admiringly, picking up one of his spheres to cast.
“No, it’s still my round,” she said.
He yielded with a smile.
Like many other Iridomi hobbies, sphere-skipping was designed to allow for the flow of conversation. Watching her assess the scattered balls, Kerd took up his earlier topics. Unys listened with half her attention; he had met with Vespian merchants earlier that day, and had new problems to turn over in his mind. Or outside his mind, to Unys’s bane. He reminded her of a peer, Thabel, who would take each item out of her box of gemellings every time she wished to adorn herself with a single gem. Never did she keep the contents neatly enough that she could simply reach in and find her object. Like Thabel, Kerd must unpack his mind in order to pack it again.
And yet Thabel was one of the few Iridomi she knew here, and Kerd was her intended bondmate, and she must keep company with both.
At the moment he was talking about the veswood plantations - groves of the all-important timber of which ships were fashioned. For reasons Unys couldn’t remember, some of the plantations were held by the chieftain, and some by his nobles. At present, Tillek of Vespi was selling wood from his plantation at two-thirds of the going rate. Hallam, son of another estate owner, had asked Kerd to ask Fulig to investigate the affair.
“Why does it matter?” Unys said, feeling her patience ebb with the day.
“Hallam’s father claims that Tillek is attempting to force him into bankruptcy.”
“If Hallam’s father has to sell his estate, why is that Fulig’s problem?”
Kerd frowned. “Because Tillek will buy it.”
Unys shrugged. “But why shouldn’t Tillek try to buy more land? Isn’t it just a way to get more profit?” A thought occurred to her. “Surely there’s no law against expanding a successful business.” Even on Vespi, they could not be so stifling.
“Laupis believes that Tillek has plans to own the most wood on Vespi, after Fulig. He believes he’s only the first that Tillek’s trying to force out of business.”
“So.” Unys dismissed this with a wave of one hand, casting a sphere with the other. “Laupis must be biased. Ask others. Or,” she smiled wickedly, “let Tillek buy up Laupis’s land, and see what he does next.”
“Laupis is a friend of my father’s,” Kerd said uncertainly.
“There is a saying on Iridom,” Unys said. “One’s friend and one’s business partner are not the same man.”
“It is not so said on Vespi,” Kerd said stiffly.
Unys rolled her eyes. “Laupis’s friendship is so valuable to Fulig? Then have Fulig order an inspection of Tillek’s plantations and lumber yards, to see if the low price represents some carelessness in Tillek’s stewardship, or low quality in the ship-timber he sells.”
“No one would cheat the shipmakers!” Kerd said hotly. “On their art depends the safety of all Keltor on the open water.”
“Then surely they would know they were being cheated,” Unys dissembled. “I speak not of gross negligence but of minor defects.”
“Oh,” Kerd said. He frowned. “But perhaps it’s as you say, and Tillek is merely better at his business. An inspection might not find anything wrong.”
Unys was not so ill bred as to gape at him, but the temptation was very strong. Had he no imagination? An official investigation could find whatever it needed to. She cast a sphere with more force than she meant to. It struck a black sphere, which meant she must remove her sphere from play.
“Your round,” she said.
Kerd looked askance at her sour tone. Rather than taking up the play, he took her hand and kissed it, touching on the knuckle where the bond-spike would sit, days from now. “I have put you out of sorts,” he said.
Unys forced a smile. “I shall set myself to rights by playing as I ought,” she said, withdrawing her hand to wave it at the array of spheres.
“It is but a game,” Kerd said gently.
Rigid with irritation, she said nothing, watching him throw his spheres.
Kalinda-blessed silence, then - “I suppose, if Fulig orders Tillek’s processes inspected, and finds no fault, there’s good in that too,” he mused. “Perhaps he will discover that Tillek has learned a new way of keeping insects away from the wood, or has even bred a faster-grown strain of veswood.”
“Perhaps,” Unys said. “Then if Tillek does anything to displease Fulig, Fulig could make his trade advantage known to all.”
Kerd blinked at her. “I meant, perhaps what Tillek has discovered could benefit all,” he said slowly. “It’s all of Vespi’s benefit I’m thinking of now, not just Laupis’s.”
Ugh. Pointless abstraction. “And what does your father say of the principle of public good?” she enquired. Sweetly.
Kerd blushed. “He says for any action I take, I should imagine the consequences as they are felt by individuals, not groups…” he began.
“Your round,” Unys reminded him abruptly.
He looked down at the game-pattern and cast obligingly, but badly, being distracted. He sat back to let her play, and began again. "He says I should seek to understand other men's thoughts, and it is true I have been fortunate in meeting all manner of people since coming to Ramidan," he mused.
"Oh look, I've won," Unys said swiftly. "Shall we play again?"
For the rest of the conversation, she amused herself by interrupting Kerd’s pontifications as often as possible by abruptly reminding him of this or that change of play. With practice, she thought, she might scatter the little grains of thought he’d gathered as easily as she scattered spheres.
Kalinda slid past the palace roof, and when a game concluded in Unys’s favour, Kerd bent over to help her sort the spheres away. “You seem distracted,” he said kindly. “I had thought to lay out the weave of Vespian concerns for you, even up to the unfinished ends, so that when we travel to my home after the betrothal, you will know the subjects of the day.”
His prattle this afternoon had actually been meant as a favour to her! Unexpectedly, Unys felt guilty.
He misinterpreted her dismay. “Surely I do not speak out of turn,” he said. “Within a sevenday we will be aboard ship.”
This time Unys was able to grimace honestly. “Truly, it had not occurred to me,” she said. Only Vespians were easy on the open water.
He laughed, enfolding her in his arms. “My thoughts also tended elsewhere than the voyage,” he murmured above her ear, as confident as if they actually were two lovers in harmony. Idiot - but why should he not think so? She had fed Kerd as much syrup as Coralyn could wish. She felt pleased, and sick, and desperately lonely.
“I am tired,” she said. “I am going to go in.”
“Of course,” Kerd said. “You will wish to change for the balladeers’ hall.”
“The balladeers’ hall?”
He released her, meeting her eyes with surprise. “You have forgotten?”
Had she managed to so mangle her day as to see Kerd twice? I shall have to avoid doing that when we are bonded, she thought sardonically.
“You have not reminded me,” she retorted.
Kerd looked awkward. She was terribly tempted to refuse - hadn’t she been amiable enough, and for long enough? But if she left on that note, her forbearance would be all spoiled.
All at once, a way of salvaging the evening occurred to her: Coralyn’s gift of the brown powder. The betrothal was in three days: a cautious dose now would surely not affect her then. Further, she did not like the idea of trying a drug for the first time at such a difficult moment. This would allow her to make a safer trial of it.
“Only let me rest now,” she said. “I will join you for the hall.”
“Thank you, Unys,” Kerd said, his heart in his eyes.
In her chambers, she filled a dose-spoon with the brown powder, then shook perhaps a third of it back into the jar. She rang for a flask of let milk to mix with the powder, and then, when it was brought, ordered the servitor to summon a masseuse. If the drug's effect was sensual, let her test that as well, if she might do that with discretion.
The masseuse arrived immediately, the servitor who escorted her obviously expecting a reward, or at least praise, for her diligence. Unys was ruefully surprised. From the very beginning of her stay on Ramidan, she had made her displeasure clear if the servitors were slack in anything they did. Even so, she had not come to rely on their obedience. Ramidan was not Iridom.
Her enforcement of discipline cursed her here; the drug would not yet have taken effect. She scowled at the servitor, whose face fell into dismay; some perversity made Unys hold the woman’s eyes until the servitor smoothed her face back into an acceptable, neutral mask. “Thank you,” Unys said coolly, and the woman hurried away.
Perhaps she should have thanked the servitor for performing, as she had thought, well. But it was so inconvenient!
The masseuse had ignored the byplay, as was proper. Now she stepped forward. “I am Emyan, lady,” she said, and she began to recite a list of nobles who might speak well of her. Unys nodded, and led the woman within, disrobed, and settled herself on a soft rug, laying herself down under Emyan’s hands.
The woman began with a cool lotion she spread in waves across Unys’s back. Unys tensed, sniffing discreetly to try to pick up any particular properties of the formula that might interfere with Coralyn’s - then she remembered that it was not the custom on Ramidan to spread unguents on the flesh that had medicinal or psychoactive properties. This would soften and moisturise her flesh, no more.
“Do you wish conversation, lady?” Emyan asked.
“Yes,” Unys said, on a whim. She could always ask the woman to desist.
The woman was Myrmidori. Unys was not much interested in the white cloaks or the myrmidon academy; luckily, Emyan spoke of the natural landscape, of the bushes and flyts and lizards.
The colours of the rug on which Unys lay caught her attention as she rested with her head slightly to one side. Purple, blue, and red: and the purple and red ran back and forth between each other, and the blue shaded into green. Emyan’s hands tugged at the muscles of Unys’s neck, tense from her headdress’s weight, and the shapes on the rug blurred with her ministrations. “Tell me of the colours,” Unys said abruptly, “of these creatures and plants that Myrmidor boasts.”
The masseuse completed a stroke below Unys’s shoulder blade, and obeyed. As she spoke, the shapes woven just beyond Unys’s nose seemed to flicker, taking on the shades that Emyan described, and suddenly seeming deep or shallow. It would have alarmed her, except that if she blinked, or concentrated, they took on their ordinary appearance again - it was only when she let her mind drift with the words that the world’s appearance changed, as though her mind’s eye merged with the true.
She wondered if this was what Darkfall’s recluses saw, and the thought almost jolted her out of her waking dream, but the dark emotions that came with such a thought - spite, distrust, fear, helplessness - subsided almost as quickly as they came, and she let them, trustingly, go.
Pleasant lassitude was a faithful description, she decided. Emyan’s hands worked steadily down her body, varying the pressure according to Unys’s murmurs; she knew her trade well enough that she made most adjustments in the moment just before Unys voiced a response.
Her touch was firm and steady enough to leave no room for suggestion, but Unys’s mind suggested anyway. Long before Emyan reached the top of her legs and began to work back up across the softer flesh, Unys cradled a feeling of heat - and sometimes it felt like sound, and sometimes light - that seemed to run through the core of each limb, and especially through her abdomen, a wanting feeling. She had an urge to wriggle on the rug, sparking nerves off nerves, but restrained herself. “Sssh,” she murmured distractedly, and Emyan ceased her conversation. Unys was entirely caught up in trying to describe the sensation to herself. She recalled, abstractedly, that this was desire. She knew it; she had managed it before.
Emyan’s hands no longer kneaded her, but only moved in light strokes across all of her bared flesh, as though smoothing over the wrinkles in cloth. She added more lotion, saying that she knew how Iridomi skin suffered in dry climates. At last she moved back, and offered Unys water.
Unys sat up slowly. “Good,” she murmured, finding her muscles responsive and her reflexes unimpaired; then she registered Emyan’s smile. Ah well. Let it be taken as praise. She paid the woman without further ceremony, her focus still very deeply within her own body. Without dressing again, she moved to the window-side of her chamber, and gazed out at the citadel. Its dark streets, pricked here and there by homes’ and by travellers’ lights, were like a darklin themselves, drawing her in and eddying her about. And meanwhile she basked in her own desire.
She sat there for perhaps a measure of time before Kerd knocked at her door. She dressed carelessly, choosing an array of colours, and went with him.
She was glad to have a distraction at the balladeers’ hall; Kerd, of course, had failed to mention that his ‘friend’ was a child of twelve, making a recital at the conclusion of a season’s lessons - along with the rest of her class.
It would have been interminable, but, under the powder’s influence, she was engaged. The stories the children told played out vividly in her mind’s eye, and she smiled and frowned as they embellished or lost track of their telling.
A less confident performer stumbled over a story of Belleke, the only Sheannite Holder in Keltor’s history. Despite prompting from his teacher, the boy continued to stammer, and then repeated a part of the tale he’d already told. Unys sat back, released from the sagas’ spell. She considered the effects of Coralyn’s gift so far: entirely pleasant. The tendency for her imaginings to mix with the real scene before her had not increased since the drug first took effect, and was controllable. The mental effect was distracting - but she was so very willing to be distracted, just now. The sense of mild lust was pleasant, and also controllable - although, she thought, it was not as if she were in the company of anyone she were truly attracted to. That thought led, tangentially, to the observation that although Kerd was not handsome, he was at least clean. He was always very lightly scented - an impression that, to her Iridomi nose, went with a general impression of dulness.
Amused at her mind’s own meanderings, she glanced at him, and found him watching her anxiously. Oh yes. The Unys he knew would be scowling at the child now being led from the stage. She raised her eyebrows at him and he flushed. So intent. She could lead him around on a string; if she quivered, he trembled. And if she spoke of him of this metaphor, of hearts linked by a line, he would think it romantic. Oh, Kerd.
Anger spiked up through the pleasant haze and she broke his gaze, looking down at the table. She picked up a morsel of food - a dried fruit stuffed with soft cheese - as a distraction. She was not hungry. Perhaps the powder suppressed appetite. She noticed that her anger had already faded. She could not seem to summon rage. Hm. She thought of Kalide, trying to summon wariness at the madness that lurked beyond his intensity, but she was not afraid. She thought of Parapa, her nurse on Iridom, trying to summon homesickness or grief, but those did not come either: only the vivid images of the memories.
What was a memory without emotion? she wondered, and then the next performance caught her attention.
A candle showed ten whole measures had passed by the time Unys noticed the drug wearing off: at first, she thought the children’s song and speech was out of the step with the accompanying music and puppetry, and then she realised it had been matched up awkwardly all along, her own mind smoothing over their amateur delivery. She covered an unexpected yawn. Kerd winced. (Good.)
A final child - thank Zorik - gave a short recital of an incident that had inspired one of Gia’s last Directives, and the teacher called the whole class back to receive applause.
Kerd left her at the table to congratulate children and parents - did he not notice, she wondered, that parents, servitors, or fosterers made the majority of the audience? - some of whom looked surprised at his congratulations, though most were pleased. Unys remained at the table, watching them all. Few bowed to Kerd as they should to a chieftain’s heir - Unys certainly did not want to go out on the floor, and receive so little recognition. It always annoyed her that his status was greater than hers, yet he diminished himself. By his side, she felt her rank belittled too - and every effort to assert it came off as overdone.
Families departed the chamber one by one, but the teacher remained on the stage and began to tune his harp. As she was one of the few watching him, it was Unys to whom he seemed to speak as he began his ballad:
“I speak of weaving:
soul and vision
fragile threads
and firmer thought;
for is not ever
thought the purer
than the work
that it has wrought?”
He told a story Unys had never heard before, of a time early in the history of Darkfall, when one precocious member of the soulweavers’ guild had seen a vision of the Unykorn, freed at last from the Unmade cage that the soulweavers claimed it was trapped in. However, her vision was not shared by any of her sisters, and indeed, it did not match the sole path that Lanalor had woven. Casting through all that might come to be, Lanalor had seen only one possible future in which the Unykorn was freed from its trap: and so he had established Darkfall, so that all who shared his gifts would work towards that same future. But this soulweaver, Kirvala, had seen a different chance.
Soulweavers dispensed their advice mystically, with half-truths, evasions, and disdain; Unys had always vaguely wondered how they treated each other. Of course, you never saw them in each other’s company in the world at large. Perhaps they were just as chilly to each other as they were to ordinary mortals.
The balladeer now described the arguments that had arisen on Darkfall as the result of Kirvala’s break from tradition. Some soulweavers argued that her vision was a sign of hope - that the work the soulweavers had done had increased the chance that the Unykorn would be freed, meaning that this future might now come about in more than one way. Others warned that the vision must be a temptation from the Chaos spirit, whose domain was variation and false seemings. Others suggested that Kirvala’s vision might well be true - or achievable - but it was not the future Lanalor had planned for, and to follow it might ruin his other, more secret plans.
Lanalor had kept secrets from the soulweavers? Unys wondered. What would be the point? And yet how ironic, if their founder and leader had treated them as they treated the people of Keltor.
At last, Darkfall came to a decision: Kirvala must ignore what she had seen.
The balladeer spoke movingly of Kirvala’s anguish. Unys was not one to feel sympathy for the soulweavers - they held themselves so demonstrably apart from human life and love, while claiming to serve it - but the performer was skilled. And perhaps, she thought wistfully, perhaps things had been different then. The soulweavers were hateful and cult-like now, but perhaps when the guild had been formed, they had been more humble in their ideals. Many ugly things had their beginnings in beauty.
Kirvala accepted her sisters’ judgement - but only so far. She exiled herself from the misty isle and returned to Sheanna, the sept of her birth. For the rest of her life, she was a visionweaver. The balladeer concluded that it was because of Kirvala’s philosophies that the unfinished nature of most visionweavings came to be revered, as a way of celebrating, not perfection, but the endless struggle for perfection where the goal must only ever be imagined.
“Of course,” the balladeer murmured, muting the strings of his harp, “my tale is only a darklin dream. There is no Kirvala named in the scrolls.”
That meant nothing, Unys thought. It was a polished avowal; Kirvala might indeed exist, though the scrolls named her Nasippi or Alnod, and she might be any soulweaving sister who had fallen out in any way with the misty isle. In a crafted tale, the idea that this renegade had also influenced the visionweaving art was perhaps too large a claim, but it was a fascinating connection. More stories could stand to explore the differences between soulweaving and visionweaving.
She applauded briefly, but loudly. Kerd looked stricken. “I do not like it,” he murmured, “that he makes the soulweavers so fallible in this tale. Nor is that how the visionweavers came by their art.”
“That is exactly why I like it,” Unys said contrarily. “You know I do not call the soulweavers hallowed, as you do.” He coloured further; he knew very well she called them hags. “Nor did he say that the visionweavers acquired their skill because of Kirvala. You were not listening. He said that the meaning of their art changed. And why shouldn’t it change through the ages?”
For once, he did not murmur, “You’re right, of course.” She saw he wanted to. He even opened his mouth, ducked his head slightly, as if to begin on that hated phrase. But it stuck in his throat.
Shaking her head so that her adornments jangled out whatever else he might have said, she went to congratulate the balladeer. Let Kerd wince the more at this public show of approval.
“You do me honour, Unys of Iridom,” the balladeer said.
Indeed she did.
Kerd escorted her to the Iridomi enclave. “I thank you for your company, my lady,” he said, making a brave effort at the proper feeling.
“Did you enjoy your friend’s performance?” Unys asked innocently.
“I did. Unys…” He hesitated. “I wish we had not quarrelled.”
“Have we quarrelled?” Unys asked, in the same bright tone.
“I do not like such a presentation of the soulweavers…” Kerd began lamely, and stopped, looking entreatingly at her.
Must she fetch the very words out of his mouth into the air for him? But this was not the note on which she wanted the evening to end.
“You saw it as slander,” she said soothingly, “where I saw conjecture and debate.”
He relaxed a little.
“I have read many scrolls that tell of Sheanna and even Darkfall,” he said. “It was not like that, Unys.”
“Not everything is in scrolls,” Unys tried. You could not look into the eyes of the writers of history, and see the hate or adoration or complacence betrayed there. And what of the gaps in the record?
“But why spread other stories when the true stories are there?” Kerd said, looking truly bewildered.
For the typical Vespian, true was true, and false was false - they neither admitted nor admired truths that misled or lies that enlightened. Unys sighed.
Lassitude had become exhaustion; it was only just her normal hour of sleep, but she was likely to sway on her feet if he kept her talking longer. And she did not want to act oddly. “I enjoyed the conjecture, Kerd,” she repeated, letting her eyelids droop just a little.
Now he did say, “Oh… Unys, you are tired,” and she nodded, and he let her go into her apartment and close the door on him.
She woke with a slightly dry mouth, but in all other respects she was hale. Breaking her fast, she reviewed the evening, for later she would report to Coralyn.
It occurred to her that if the brown powder’s effect varied, and must be tempered, with successive doses, the first dose might produce the most uniformly pleasant result- which meant that she had spent the best effects of a wonderful new drug on an evening with Kerd, listening to children tell stories.
What a waste.
On Iridom just now, it was the olfactors’ festival. She missed the parties and the great public revels - she had twice been old enough to attend the public gatherings before Coralyn had begun to sweep her along on journeys like this one to Ramidan. If she had been on Iridom, Coralyn’s gift would just have been a gift, exactly suited to the occasion.
She sent a considered chit to Kerd, suggesting that if he wished to spend any time with her before the betrothal, he must arrange it now, as they would both be very busy. There: sweet, and yet limiting.
The servitor who had brought her breakfast waited on further requirements. “Have they caught Bleyd of Fomhika?” Unys asked him.
“No, my lady.”
“Anything else of note?” Unys prompted.
“The mermod is still ill,” the servitor said.
So much for inviting initiative.
Somewhat to her surprise, Kerd’s chit in return was apologetic. He explained that he had so many friends he wished to say goodbye to that he must neglect her for this short while. An insult? No, only bluntness, she decided. Unys considered the list of those whom she would miss on Ramidan. It was a short list.
Coralyn awaited her beside a work-table of tiaras and feathers, chains and gem-studs.
As she began to assemble the materials for her wedding crown, Unys asked casually, “How long has the mermod been sick, now?”
“A servitor sent his apologies to Tarsin’s evening hall four and a half days ago,” Coralyn answered.
“Perhaps it is the strain of hearing his brother accused,” Unys said, laying out the thin, brittle spars of volcanic stone that would serve as her structure. She would create a tight fan of blades that would work subtly back across her skull.
“Unys,” Coralyn said, “do not enquire into the mermod’s health.”
Unys put the stones down, and looked up at her. Her stepmother was smiling tightly. So this was a plot of Coralyn’s, and Unys was not to know it.
“I only wondered if Tarsin’s white cloak has yet been sent to the boy,” Unys said, “if his illness lingers so.” She was really asking: just how long is this story of illness meant to hold?
“Everyone knows how Anyi idolises Alene,” said Coralyn. “Rumour has it that she has returned to her little hut for the herbs she prepares there. It may be that the mermod will allow no one but the soulweaver to treat him.”
“How tidy,” Unys said. “Many will criticise the mermod for such attachment to the soulweaver - especially, a soulweaver whose first duty is to the man he will replace.”
Coralyn smiled. “The news that the soulweaver travelled for medicines came first from Alene, if you will credit it,” she confided. “Though I suspect her intended patient was Ember visionweaver, not the mermod. No matter.” With that, she closed the topic.
Unys considered what subject to attempt next. There was no gossip that Unys could bring to her stepmother that she was not always already aware of. Coralyn always knew every important thing that happened around her. She had no time for those who ignored the world. When Unys spoke of current events - however they bored her - it was merely to prove that she, too, paid attention. When she spoke carefully enough, Coralyn would reward her with insights; when she was foolish, Coralyn’s usual answer was silence. She would be told anything she wanted to know - if she had earned it by subtlety. Knowledge was power, Coralyn said; Unys must prove that she could wield it well.
Unys began to lay green-gold gems up and down the right side of each volcanic blade, arranging them to judge the effect before attaching them.
“Lovely,” Coralyn said, admiring her handiwork. “And the gold-lace too, I think.” They laid strips of delicate lacquered lace up and down the spars of stone.
“Kerd will think it excessive,” Unys said.
“On any other day, he might,” Coralyn said quietly. “On your betrothal day, he will be dazzled by joy and by you.”
That is the truest example I have ever heard, thought Unys, of love making one blind. She could believe Coralyn: Kerd would be so dazzled by her that he would not see her at all.
“Fulig will think it excessive,” she prompted, wondering what first impression Coralyn wanted her to make on the stern Vespian chieftain.
“Let him,” Coralyn said coolly.
“He already hates me,” Unys said, hearing a whining note creep into her voice.
“Don’t worry about Fulig,” Coralyn said, very harshly. “I have plans for him.”
Unys looked at her, letting her eyebrows rise just a little. Would Coralyn tell her what she meant - as it concerned her - or would Coralyn protect her from the plots she was hatching? Perhaps it made no difference. Unys knew what part she was supposed to play.
“If Fulig hates you, it is because he hates me,” Coralyn said. “Yes, that is wrong, I know, and unfair, and you should not brook it. He may be wiser now. He may be wary, not angry. But if he hates you… let that be his weakness. Distract him with your unsuitability for his son. Be a thorn in his side. If he directs his anger at you, then he takes his eyes away from me; more fool him.”
Waiting before the Lord Holder in full array, Unys knew that she did draw all eyes.
She had taken another dose of the brown powder. Coralyn had visited her just before the ceremony, appraised her condition, kissed her forehead, and attached the veil. “You are not staying?” Unys asked.
“I have preparations of my own,” Coralyn said enigmatically, and swept out.
She supposed she walked stiffly from her apartment, surrounded by body servitors and legionnaires. She felt as though she glided, as though the ground she walked upon were immaterial, and her steps landed either in it, as if it were mud, or above it, as if the air were glass.
She knelt before the Lord Holder. “There is time for you to change your path,” he whispered, his breath wretched. She imagined sweetmeats and, overlaying reality, the scent became much more pleasant.
“I would be betrothed,” she replied. She caught a glimpse of Coralyn as she rose.
Here was Kerd: and he clasped the wealth of a small island on her arm. It was time for her next ritual line; she spoke it. She was already tired. It was gratifying to command the respectful attention of Tarsin’s entire court, and it was lovely to dazzle and shimmer, but she wanted it to be over.
Then Tarsin spoke to lay a condition on the contract, giving any child she conceived this year to Fulig of Vespi to raise as his own.
Was this what Tarsin had meant, reminding her that she could change her path? Had those words been a warning of what he was about to say to her? She had wished that the ceremony was over - now she wished she could freeze time to scream and declaim him. Instead, only she was frozen.
Coralyn protested for her, and then withdrew gracefully. Perhaps her mysterious plans covered this eventuality; perhaps she simply did not choose to fight this battle. Unys had not expected anything more.
Kerd protested for her. Poor, silly Kerd; he sounded dignified and kind, but his words were empty, because he would never defy his father. This was honour, then, putting one’s hand below another’s, subscribing to all of their deeds, however bright or dark. It was a lie.
Unys looked dumbly at Tarsin. His smile was wide and smug. Beyond him, Fulig was watchful, but not surprised. How dare he?
This time the drug did not subdue all of her emotions, or perhaps she had never felt so angry before. She had barely thought of child-bearing. She supposed she would foster out a babe. But this…
Fulig was supposed to be fair!
She had no further rage to spare when Tarsin quarrelled with Coralyn, turning his attention aside from her, for the sake of that myrmidonish servitor Kerd liked so much. She felt only numb when Kerd broke off from the dance floor in horror, seeing the woman in question battered and bruised.
Thank you, Coralyn, she thought with dreamy irony, for this anaesthetic you provide. On this really rather awful day. A parting gift - and truly, when Fulig had lifted the traditional cup and announced that he drank for both her parents, it had felt like severance.
She waited in the betrothal suite. Julvi, her mother’s servitor, helped her remove the heavy, glittering panels of worked wire, lace, and gems from her dress, leaving only light cloth. She stroked down the skirt, taking an abstracted pleasure from its softness on her fingertips.
“Have you eaten, lady?” Julvi asked. “I will bring you a selection from the feast.” The feasting went on without her. That was tradition, but it derived from family members celebrating together. She wondered what the courtiers celebrated, apart from the availability of dancing and food. She wondered if there were any who hoped for peace between Vespi and Iridom, in the way that Coralyn had spun it out.
With his calm love and honour, this Vespian… may tame you.
But it was Fulig who wanted to tame her, remolding her in his image of her mother, removing Coralyn’s influence from her - and then removing her own influence from a child not born. A two-step cleansing process. She was not angry enough.
She lay down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, her hands sweeping slowly across eddies of cloth. The light faded outside.
It was not Julvi but Coralyn who came with food.
“How much of the sallipsin did you take?” Coralyn asked sharply.
Unys sat up slowly. “Where is Kerd?” she asked. Unwilling to appear completely untethered from the moment, she marshalled herself. “And I took a dose spoon. I am grateful for it…” her tone implying anything but gratitude.
Coralyn studied her. “Much is afoot tonight,” she said.
“Much that you did not predict,” Unys said carelessly.
“Yes,” Coralyn admitted, surprising her. “My plans must adapt.” She helped Unys to rise and sat with her at a small table. She stroked the side of Unys’s face; to Unys’s embarrassment, she found herself leaning in a little to the touch. “I did not farewell you properly before the ceremony,” Coralyn said. “I have this space to farewell you now.”
How motherly of Coralyn. Unys wondered if Fulig’s remarks had stung her towards this display.
“This betrothal is under the auspices of Gard, and this is but a fractured piece,” she said dreamily.
“Poetic,” Coralyn said, her eyebrows raised.
A pause. “You have the other tisanes and preparations, don’t you?” Coralyn asked.
“I do,” Unys said. By preparations, Coralyn meant poisons.
“I will send you word if they are to be used,” Coralyn said, and left.
Kerd found her sitting thus at the table, only one candle holding back the dark.
He looked exhausted. “I am late, I know, but I am here,” he said. “Ill things have happened today, but I could not imagine a better end.”
“Your father,” Unys said, too tired to raise her voice much above a whisper.
Kerd laughed bitterly. “We both knew that he opposed this match,” he said. “I did not think his compromises would take this form. I did not wish to stand in despite of him… And yet we do stand together, Unys. I will be with you.” He kissed her. She kissed him back, yearning towards the touch as she had towards Coralyn’s. Her body was not as numb as her heart.
Reaching as if to untie her draping sleeves, Kerd hesitated, smiling at his own shyness, and began to strip off his own shirt. She watched him. Pulling her garments over her head, shutting out the world even for a moment, felt too lonely.
When Kerd was naked, he assisted her. “Unys,” he said softly. Dazzled still.
“Your father,” Unys managed again. “I cannot join with you tonight, Kerd, and risk a child. Not until I am at ease with what your father has said.”
Kerd exhaled sharply, then met her eyes. “I understand,” he said quietly.
Tears welled up in Unys’s eyes. Almost immediately, she was sobbing. She leaned into Kerd’s shoulder as they stood together, smearing his chest with paints and powders as the tears made a mess of her face. He held her unselfconsciously, stroking her back, making gentle sounds.
She tilted up her head, pleadingly, and he kissed her again, and she wrapped her hands around his back, and pulled him towards the bed. Wanton, maudlin, it did not matter.
He did not lie with her in such a way as might seed her. But they did many other things.
She woke with grit in her eyes and the taste of his sweat on her tongue. When she began to pull away, she realised he was already awake, watching her, although the muscles against which she had nestled were soft and tensionless.
“What Vespian lies abed on the day he meets the waves?” she asked him, as the politest way she could think to cloak the query: Must you still be here?
“A newly plighted one,” he said, smiling slowly, stretching but still holding her. Making sure to move no faster than he did, she rolled away, got up.
“Perhaps I shall set an example, then,” she said brightly.
“Must you?” Kerd did not move.
“We must,” she said, hoping that emphasis on the joint pronoun would charm him. It sufficed.
They were farewelled by songmakers and dancers on the pier. Stepping onto the ship, Unys handed her carry-sacks to a shipson, commanding him to take them and her to her cabin. She saw a glance pass between the shipson and Kerd; the shipson ducked his head. Unys frowned; was he not to obey her in her own right? “What is your name?” she asked, thinking to deal with this herself. But her voice came out raspy with tiredness and it sounded like courtesy, not authority.
“Nerat,” he said. She nodded.
She was still dreamy. She went through the usual motions of laying out bedding - if the ship must rock, let it conspire with the drugs to rock her in her sleep - before she realised that she must abstain from soporific agents for now. They would react with the sallipsin.
Grimacing, she went up to the deck.
Kerd's face lit up at her reappearance, and she felt a kind of pain at his responsiveness. There was the flattery of knowing that a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye would provoke that reaction; there was the deflation of thinking that it was Kerd who was so moved.
"We cast off in a division," he said. "Will you stand with me to bid Ramidan farewell?" Her stepmother had already gone below. She had thought Kalide was to accompany them, but he remained on Ramidan. Just one of the adaptations Coralyn had mentioned, Unys supposed.
"I will," she said. At least Kerd’s feet were sure on the deck; if she reached out to him for support, he would be thrilled.
"You are brave," he said warmly. "I have never heard you had any particular affinity for the waves."
“Indeed, you would not have heard such from me,” Unys said. She forced a smile. She was about to be very miserable. At least let him see her be brave first; it might earn more sympathy later.
Their hands were clasped as the Dawn’s Wake cast off.
Soon, although the ship had a full complement of crew, Kerd was involved with their tasks. Unys watched them at their work, uncomprehendingly, unwillingly; they were easier on the eye than the roiling waters, which her stomach was already beginning to imitate.
She had never had to think about how to occupy herself on a ship before. Although the deck was wide, its span was an illusion: wherever Unys attempted to place herself, she found herself in the way of a shipson or shipdaughter. At last she was forced to ask Nerat for a suggestion of where she might rest. “Belowdecks,” he said. Not unkindly; even so, she caught his eyes and held them, mouth taut in anger. She was as surprised as he was when he gestured more courteously to a barrel on which she might sit. There she perched like an exotic flyt, layers of thin blue and green silks billowing out from her. The shipfolk barely glanced at her. If they had, they would have seen her back was straight.
She lasted through the afternoon.
Picking at the food laid out below, she retreated into her cabin. She slept for a time; when she woke, it was lightless. Dizzy, she managed to find the bucket for the purpose and vomited; the smell in the little room was so unpleasant that she continued to heave, although there was nothing to bring up. She thrust the bucket away and tried to sleep. She was unsuccessful. It was no wonder, she thought morbidly, that Vespians were so superstitious. This must be the nearest thing in the Sung universe to tumbling in the Void.
She got up. She thought to call for a crew member to empty her bucket - but if she left her cabin for a time, perhaps the smell would abate. She fumbled her way along the corridor, following fresher air.
Onyx, low in the sky, stretched long shadows out on the deck. Unys emptied her bucket, wondering how she might wash it out. No; she would leave it and find another. For now, she hunched on the deck, hating the thought of returning below, too tired to pace.
As her eyes adjusted, movement caught her eye. She was on the main deck; there was a kind of bay built into the deck below, like a balcony, except concave in relation to the ship. She had no idea what its purpose might be, but it was in use. Moving along the deck, she found an angle at which she could peer over.
The moving figure had pale hair that caught the moon’s light. She - Unys thought - was tall. Her movement was odd - gradual, careful, jerky. She folded herself in and unfolded out like a pocket blade. Finally, Onyx’s light caught her face, and Unys recognised her. It was Glynn, the servitor who had denied that she was a myrmidon. Let Kerd see his pet now! Unys thought, sure that she had been proven right.
The movement was compelling. Glynn was obviously in pain, testing her body and finding it weaker than she expected. But even as stiffly and awkwardly as Glynn stepped, crouched, rose up, kicked or struck out, there was a clear patterning in what she did, as though she were dancing to a tune that was played just as carefully, and just as personally. There was not just a dance, but music in her motion.
Unys watched the so-called Fomhikan raise one knee higher than Unys ever could and stretch her foot out to the side. The foot dipped and wavered before returning to the intended plane of movement, but the rest of the woman’s body was still. Glynn put her foot down with obvious relief - and that relief somehow turned smoothly back to movement. She pivoted on the ball of her foot.
Unys realised she was breathing more slowly and evenly, as to match the pace of Glynn’s song-in-motion.
Unys imagined confronting Glynn and threatening her with exposure. For this woman, Kerd had neglected her on his betrothal night. Perhaps she had been in need, but surely someone else could have answered that need!
But she sensed Glynn’s mystery ran deeper. Why had Coralyn brought her to Tarsin? When they had encountered her in the gardens, had it been some kind of spy foray?
No, Glynn’s myrmidon tendencies were only a piece of the puzzle. She would not use this discovery for a confrontation - or as a scrap for Coralyn - not yet. Perhaps she would be rewarded by learning at last that her tidbit of information was the one thing no one else knew.
She turned back from the rail. No buckets were apparent; she was forced to bring back to her cabin the one she had soiled earlier. But she was calmer, her head throbbing less. She hoped she might sleep.
She dozed fitfully, emerged, aching, for breakfast, and squinted hatefully at the bright day. Somehow this was worse than yesterday’s overcast sky. The bright sun added a headache to her nausea. It was unbearable.
Fleeing to her cabin, she sorted through potions, powders, and poisons. There must be something. There was not. She had packed this kit before Coralyn had presented her with her gift. Everything she had to induce slumber was far too strong; it would react oddly with the drug still leaving her system.
Perhaps the only solution was the brown powder itself.
She weighed the jar in her hand, and in her mind. This was the third dose. She had observed some increase in the effects between first and second: more variation in her emotions, greater physical cravings, and a dissociation from her senses that threatened to spiral with focus. More severe physical exhaustion. She knew, as any Iridomi ought, that the other drugs would harm her in her present state; she thought this one might not. Well then. It was the last chance for rest on this voyage.
She took a dose, She lay limply for a time, considering self-pleasure but too lethargic to indulge in it, and eventually dozed off.
The surroundings in which she woke were very similar, but they were not the same. There were dark wooden walls, white sheets, and a woolen blanket - but there were great square windows with yellow curtains, rather than small diamond windows with coverings of tough, flexible cloth. The smell of the sea permeated everything, but the smell of her own infirmity was thankfully gone. The room did not toss beneath her.
There was a woman sitting at the side of her bed, staring out through the windows. A soulweaver, by her tattooed forehead. Not Alene - and there were only two soulweavers left who did not abide on Darkfall. This must be Faylian, and Unys must be on Vespi.
The soulweaver swung around to look at Unys as though hearing the thought, though Unys could not tell if her silver-shrouded eyes were truly focused. “How do you fare?” she asked abruptly.
Faylian of Vespi was reputed to have some healing skill. “I imagine you know,” Unys drawled.
The woman snorted. “Is that all the thanks I get?” she asked.
“For what should I thank you?” Unys asked. Faylian looked so much like Alene, down to her stiff way of holding herself. And Alene’s smug opacity brought out the worst in Unys.
Faylian smiled sourly and mimicked her. “I imagine you know,” she said. The soulweaver got up from her chair and went to the window, deliberately turning her back on Unys. “It is a day and a half since the Dawn’s Wake docked at Vespi,” she said. “There was a group of councillors, estate holders, and other dignitaries waiting at the pier to welcome you, but you could not be roused to meet with them.”
“No one told me there was to be a welcome party,” Unys pointed out. She couldn’t have known; and it was absurd to ask voyagers on the open water to be prepared to carry out social courtesies the moment they stepped off deck.
“You are Unys of Iridom,” Faylian said. “How odd that you did not assume you would receive one.”
Unys began to smile, then realised these cool words conveyed no compliments.
“I was not sure when you would wake, so I hastened your body’s expulsion of the sleeping drug,” Faylian said. “For that, you may thank me.”
She paused. “And for not spreading the story of how an Iridomi noblewoman was so foolish as to drug herself so unwisely. That was hardly your first crossing of the open water, was it?”
However harsh the words, there was genuine curiosity behind them. About to cry back, And what concern is that of yours? Unys realised that that was a question worth pondering.
“How good of you,” she said, very neutrally, “to speed my waking.”
Faylian snorted. “I attended you out of curiosity,” she admitted. “But I think you were in more danger than you realise.” Her look was speculative. “Carelessness? An attempt to create a startling entrance? Or do you despise Kerd so much you put yourself at risk - after only one day betrothed?”
She wants to goad me, Unys thought. But why?
Did it matter why? The woman’s manner was so extraordinarily abrasive that Unys almost could not take it seriously; instead, she drew other conclusions. Faylian, the most respected of Fulig’s advisors by dint of representing Darkfall, was taking an interest in her. If the soulweaver hag wanted something from her - although for now that something seemed only to be to make her squirm - it might be possible to get something from her. Something that would make Fulig pay.
“Carelessness,” she agreed for now, all innocence, amused to watch Faylian’s eyes narrow in suspicion. “Is Kerd about? I should like to see him.”
Kerd made much of her. “What a terrible journey you had,” he said, and although his sympathy seemed to be focused on the parts where she had lain insensate, she easily agreed.
That kindness, which she basked in, was a necessary bolster, because while she slept, Coralyn had gone on ahead to Iridom. Her stepmother could not have delivered a simpler or more effective rebuke.
So, for her true first meeting with Fulig, she faced him on her own.
After a light meal that she and Kerd were permitted to take in privacy, she met with the Vespian chieftain in his palace. Like most buildings on Vespi, the palace was of wood; unlike most, it was several storeys high, with a perfect overview of the long piers that were the first and final homes of all the ships of Keltor. No, she thought, this was not a palace: it was a watch tower.
He watched her just as keenly as his ships. They spoke of light topics: Fulig mentioned gifted songmakers and other artists who had performed for him on Vespi, and Unys commented on those who had afterwards travelled her way on Iridom or Ramidan. He spoke just a little of the councils Kerd would attend and Vespian legalities in which he would be re-schooled. She was forced to remember that this homecoming was also an upheaval for her bondmate; although all sept heirs spent time on Ramidan, Kerd’s stay had been longer than most. (Not that that had done anything for his skills in diplomacy.)
After a pause, while they both looked out upon the water, he said abruptly, “There is a saying… Yellow is close to gold.” Yellow was the Vespian colour, and gold the decoration traditionally worn by the Lord Holder of Keltor; Unys flushed, because she had not expected him to refer so directly to Coralyn’s ambitions towards the Lord Holder’s throne, and the part Unys’s betrothal played in those ambitions.
His mouth twisted in response to the emotions passing across her face, and belatedly, she realised that the meaning was quite different for him. He was Vespian… perhaps Vespians took the saying to mean that they - the lords of the waves - provided the most loyal and crucial support to a Lord Holder’s reign.
He wished her a good night soon after, and she had a feeling that she had failed a test.
“You are loyal to your father,” she said to Kerd the next morning, as they ate a late breakfast together. Kerd and Fulig had both insisted that she do nothing onerous for several days, because of her long shipboard sleep; since Kerd’s occupations (sitting in on meetings, mainly) were tedious, she did not mind at all. She was merely astonished that Kerd’s father treated his return to Vespi so seriously, when as newly-plighted bondmates, she and Kerd ought to be travelling only for their own pleasure.
“Of course,” Kerd said, smiling wryly. “As you are loyal to your stepmother.”
That bore consideration. She aspired to be like Coralyn - but if she were loyal to her, it was nothing like Kerd’s loyalty to Fulig, spoken aloud and often referred to, a point of pride for Vespians in general.
“How he must dote on you,” she persisted, putting the matter of Coralyn aside.
“I suppose,” Kerd said hesitantly.
“Kerd, you could talk to him,” Unys said, looking at him with wide and hopeful eyes. “You could persuade him to set aside the condition about our children that he so unfairly made. Couldn’t you?”
He hesitated, reached to stroke her hair. She held in her impatience; physical contact worked well for her in this discussion. She had held to the conditions she had set on their betrothal night.
But, temptations aside, “I do not think so,” he said, after a long pause. “I did raise this matter with him, Unys, while you were indisposed. He sees it as the best way to make peace.”
“By treating me as mere soil for your seed?” Kerd went red, and she was glad to shock him. “He might thus apply your cock to a woman, any woman, and patiently await results. I do not think agreement is achieved by merely mixing enemies’ blood and flesh, Kerd.”
“Unys,” he said, staggered. He rallied. “Unys. You are more to me than that.”
“Then you will talk to him.”
“Unys,” he bleated again. “I have tried my arguments on him.” He gave her a pained smile. “I do not think I can use yours.”
So be it.
Fulig summoned her for another audience that evening. Be sweet, she reminded herself, and as they strolled along the long beach that lay between the port town and the open water, she enquired as to how such a shallow beach had been chosen to support such a quantity of shipping. Although he implied that her knowledge of geography was lacking, Fulig explained pleasantly enough that it was here that access to the forests further up the mountain was easiest, and so here that the first ships were built, in the days before Lanalor’s Charter when they were far more primitive things.
Unys groped about in her mind for a question to follow on. “But they could not have been so primitive,” she said, “if Lanalor could sail through all the septs to conquer them in those days.”
“True,” Fulig said. “His age marked the sublimation of many arts; and wavespeaking and shipbuilding were surely the first of those.”
One intriguing theory Unys had heard was that the Unykorn was a metaphor for the intense scientific advancement in Lanalor’s time: the spark of almost extra-human creativity and passion. But Fulig was unlikely to appreciate a sentiment so at odds with Darkfall’s.
Instead, she sprung a trap she had conceived of after her plea to Kerd. “Chieftain Fulig,” she said, “You said you would tell me tales of my blood mother, since you once knew her, and I did not.”
He gave her a puzzled look. They had reached a rocky outcrop, and turned back. What a dreary stretch, Unys thought.
“I had not thought to speak of her so soon, child,” he said. “I know that although she bore you, you do not think of yourself as Arawen’s daughter.”
“I only wondered,” Unys said: “when I have produced for you a son or a daughter, and you have persuaded Kerd not to bond with me again - what tales will you tell that child of its birth mother? Will you tell it how you hope it will not follow either its mother’s or her stepmother’s wicked ways?”
There. Let him swallow that.
He gave her a long, thoughtful look. She stared back fiercely, almost smiling in her satisfaction. “What tales will I tell of you?” he said mildly. “Lady Unys, child, you have not yet given me any to tell.”
Perhaps that point had no atar. She pressed on. “And of Coralyn?”
Fulig’s jaw tensed, but he spoke patiently to her. “She wronged me,” he said. “She hurt someone I loved. If I do well, I will not speak of her at all to your child. Are there not enough stories of truer deeds and feelings?”
It was not good enough. No, it was worse: “She wrongs others to this day,” he continued inexorably. “I do not believe she rules well. Or that she is an example for any to follow.”
All Unys could do was to lift her chin and stare stonily ahead down the beach.
In two days, she and Kerd would go to Iridom, as the second part of their betrothal travels. There she would speak with Coralyn, and Coralyn would surely advise her. Or would Coralyn keep her distance? She had said she would send word if her poisons were to be used. She had also said she would deal with Fulig of Vespi. Unys could come to no conclusion from all of this.
She and Kerd had been given a set of rooms in the east wing of the buildings that sprawled away from the watchtower. As she entered, her bondmate looked up and winced at the expression in her face. “Unys,” he said quietly, holding out his arms.
Mechanically, she went to him, letting him enfold her, assuming that this gave him, at least, some reassurance. “Unys,” Kerd said, “why must you fight all your battles at once?”
You cannot see that I am beleaguered, Unys thought. But nothing compelled her to answer him.
“We are here two further days,” Kerd said, echoing her earlier thought more hopefully. “You need not settle everything with my father in that time. You will not, in any case. That is not his way. We will have time for that later.”
He pulled away from her to smile into her eyes. “And I think,” he said teasingly, “there may be some good to be had from waiting to try for a child. When a season has passed, you and my father will mellow towards each other; he will soften, and if he hears you out on what you wish for fostering, he may also relent on the matter of a life-long bond. I am my father’s only son, and I hear that parents are indulgent when presented with news of grandchildren…”
Unys tried to smile back. She offered him a blow, and he took it as a gift. She had tried to withhold intimacy as leverage, and he offered her space and agency as the counter to her argument.
He was impossible, she thought, but without force, as the jibes she aimed at him fell without force.
“I have been neglecting you,” Kerd said.
You need not call it neglect, but it is your father’s doing, she thought.
“Tomorrow afternoon, we will walk up in the mountains,” he told her. “We will follow the Vexen River past some of my favourite boyhood places. I’ll leave my father’s council members alone.”
“Very well,” Unys murmured, and louder, “It will be as you say, then.”
In the morning, she explored the streets. Vespi was colder than Ramidan; she needed another cloak. She supposed that when she and Kerd travelled to Iridom, she would leave it here to await her return. She had known their itinerary long before, but the idea of leaving a possession behind made the period of time she would stay on Vespi seem far heavier and more real. Vespi is the beginning and end of all voyages, said Vespians. She shivered.
She saw Faylian near the piers.
She would have instantly turned to walk another way, but the soulweaver raised a hand to summon her, and she was wary of giving direct offense.
Faylian had no such reservations.
“Unys of Iridom, I am glad to see you today,” Faylian said. “Or should that be Unys of Vespi?”
Her manner was still haughty, but without the bite of their earlier interview.
“I doubt Fulig would have the latter name heard,” Unys said stiffly.
“Perhaps not,” said the soulweaver. “Will you walk with me?”
“I don’t know,” Unys said. “Shall I?”
“I’m sure you know you are assigning to me a degree of knowledge I do not possess, Unys,” Faylian said. Unys bridled at the familiarity; Faylian, smiling for the first time that Unys had seen, turned on her heel and walked up a street, so that Unys must lope a moment to catch up.
“There,” Faylian said. “I have answered your question as you might, in the same position.”
“What did you mean, about Unys of Vespi?”
The soulweaver continued up the street she had chosen at a moderate pace.
“It is not inconceivable,” she said, “if you achieve the life-bond for which you have petitioned your partner. It is not inconceivable, if something were to happen to Kerd; or if Coralyn were to solve the problem of her long-held enemy in a more violent fashion. And it is certainly not inconceivable that you might share or hold the chieftainship on Vespi some point far from now, when Fulig is gone in the natural and honorable way of things, and Kerd might seek to bond again with this lost love…”
Unys was silent, outraged. How like a soulweaver to pry; to discuss another’s life and choices and dignity as if they were a work of theatre. For that was all that lives were to soulweavers - conceits they might dip in and out of, abstract and bloodless.
“And then there is the title of Unys of Iridom,” Faylian continued, uninvited. “You were Orrim’s only daughter; he may have confirmed Coralyn in his place, but if you had an urge to challenge your stepmother, some would back you. Nominally, Kalide is her heir, but of course, Coralyn wants Kalide on the Holder’s throne.”
“Of course,” Unys snapped, unable to resist.
“And that would leave you Iridom’s heir again.”
“A masterful piece of figuring,” Unys said. “Are you quite done?”
“Are you quite begun, Lady Unys?” Faylian retorted. “All know that your match with Kerd is for politics, not love. I merely wonder if you know what it is you wish for.” She paused at the corner of a street and chose a left turn. “For example, if that is merely a year-end bond with Kerd. It could be an amicable parting; he might come to the position of chieftain of Vespi in time, and you of Iridom, and the rift that Coralyn and Ranouf caused between them would indeed be healed.”
“I take it you have no preference on the matter,” Unys said icily.
Faylian gave a her small, unkind smile. “No,” she said.
“Truly?” Unys jeered.
“Very well,” Faylian said calmly. “I fear for Keltor, and myself, should Kalide hold power. I believe he would be a monster. Two nights ago I wove of him torturing a blonde woman, tied to a chair. He was demanding information of her, but the only responses he truly demanded of her were her gasps of pain. He broke her ribs and cut into her flesh.”
Glynn, Unys thought. As if it were her own private vision sent through the Void, she recalled the moonlit figure dancing on the deck of the Dawn’s Wake, folding and unfolding herself. She felt sick. She could not disbelieve Faylian’s vision.
“You think I have power over my brothers,” she said.
“I do not know what powers you may have,” Faylian said serenely.
“I wish I had the power to rebuke you,” Unys muttered; and her tone was petty where she wished she could have imbued it with a Turin chill. “You presume.”
“And yet I have only spoken of what you may do, not what you may not do,” Faylian said.
“Enough,” Unys said, disgusted. “I will leave you now.”
“Do you know the way?”
She did not. At some point, perhaps deliberately, Faylian had led her in between ridges that trailed like tree-roots down the port hills; Fulig’s high-topped tower was gone from view.
“I will walk you back,” Faylian said, a smirk playing about her mouth.
At the great, plain door to the watch tower, Fulig stood, and when he caught sight of Faylian, he strode forward, hailing her, a furious look on his face. Faylian stepped forward to meet him, but for just a moment, Unys saw a look of such self-pity on the soulweaver’s face that she was taken aback.
She was still furious herself. Yet, there was something easier to take about Faylian’s petty arrogance than about Alene’s reproval and rigidity.
Kerd gave her the tremendous news that had infuriated Fulig when she went to meet him for their walk, her cloak flung over her arm.
“They say the Unraveller has come,” he said, his voice hushed. “It came by callstone, though it was not an official bulletin - the callstone bureau on Iridom says that it is the aggregate of rumours, especially from Myrmidor. They say that Duran herself escorted the Unraveller by ship to Darkfall.”
Unys’s first wild thought was that this must be Coralyn’s doing. Never before had there been a false sighting. It was a ploy that would only work once - and why? Almost immediately, she answered that question for herself: it would draw out Fulig, to whatever trap Coralyn had planned, and it would make legal an invasion of Darkfall.
“Shall we walk?” she blurted.
Kerd looked at her in amazement, and then his face cleared. “I think we shall,” he said. “I do not quite know what to do with this news.”
“It may be,” Unys said, a little giddily, “that there is nothing to do at all.”
She followed Kerd up the mountain; she had to ask him several times to drop his pace, nervous energy rolling off him so visibly that it was as if the air shimmered. Kerd’s face worked as if he was playing out several sides of an argument; she was still trying to understand why Faylian had chosen to provoke her with hypothetical leaders of Iridom and Vespi and Keltor, as if any of the outcomes Faylian had discussed were ones she, and she alone, might choose.
Occasionally, they clasped hands, and let them fall again.
“How far?” Unys asked eventually, not because she was tiring - she was driven by the same mixture of astonishment, confusion, and intensity as Kerd - but because it occurred to her to wonder.
Kerd paused, reached into a pouch under his tunic, and brought out kalinda fruit for each of them. “Not far,” he said.
“As a boy,” he added ruefully, “sometimes I would come up here in just this way. Hurtling up without thought because of some matter that troubled me.”
The path took a sharp turn left, and then a sharp turn right, and then Unys viewed the bluer shades of grass through the tall, dark trees. The path opened out into a steep meadow; Kerd led her to the top of the slope, and they both turned around to look out.
Unys had expected a view of the port. From Kerd’s meadow, only the southern side of the town was visible, and the three long fingers of the piers stretching out into the harbour. But the piers were bustling with activity; as they watched, eight ships set out into the open waters, three heading northeast, the others straggling out at some angle between south and east. As they watched, another ship came into view on the horizon, speeding in to harbour. No other individual movement was large enough to pick out from this distance, but the piers themselves glittered faintly as people and cargo were shifted along them, like a faceted gem subjected to minute shifts and adjustments.
They stood for a time. Unys supposed that Kerd had come up here for peace in his boyhood; she did not find any. She could imagine only too easily the urgency that had caused ships to depart, first in that wave of eight and now one by one. Kerd, too, seemed not rested, but focused, when he turned to her at last.
“Let’s go back,” she said for him.
When they arrived back at the watch tower, Fulig had already departed for Darkfall.
Kerd gripped Unys’s hand one more time. “I should see which of my father’s nobles and ministers have gone with him, and which are delegated to oversee the tasks of those absent,” he said, and turned to the administrative wing of the complex.
One of those who remained, Unys discovered, was Faylian.
She discovered the soulweaver sitting by a fountain not far from Kerd and Unys’s own apartment, yet Unys did not think the woman had intended specifically to be found. One hand stroked the water. She was evidently deep in thought.
“I am glad I spoke to you earlier,” Faylian said, although Unys had made little sound in approaching. “Perhaps, too, what I said is now clearer in your mind.”
Unys sat down a little space away, her thoughts whirling. Faylian had predicted the callstone news. It was not, therefore, a plot of Coralyn’s; it was something stranger.
“That is why Fulig was angry with you,” Unys said.
Faylian nodded. “I have never pretended to Fulig that I served him above my other purposes,” she said, almost mournfully. “That news should not have come from me, and so it did not.”
“Has the Unraveller come?” Unys asked, scarcely able to believe that she was uttering these words.
Faylian flicked water up into the air and watched it fall. “I cannot say,” she said, with no inflection to betray whether her restriction was knowledge or authority.
“Let us say,” Unys said, “that you believe he has.”
“She,” Faylian corrected, “if the reports are correct, of course.”
“Why might you speak as you did to me today, believing that?” Unys asked. “What does it matter who is chieftain of any sept, or Holder of them all, or what I do to affect these power plays, if the Unraveller sails across the deep and Lanalor’s Charter’s mandate is superseded?”
“Why does it not matter?” Faylian answered, the usual haughtiness returned to her tone. “Now you begin to understand what it is to be a soulweaver. After you have come to terms with the fact that nothing matters as you might wish it to - then you will learn that everything still matters.”
As an afterthought, she added, “Every thing has its song to sing.”
Unys realised that there was a small flask leaning against Faylian’s skirts. She snorted, getting up to go, but the gaze that Faylian turned upon her as she left was only tired.
The next storming of callstone reports, three days later, were just as garbled. They presented some mangled facts; two days later, more sober reports came in. Coralyn, Fulig, and Jurass had sailed on Darkfall. A band of myrmidons, Duran at the fore, patrolled the shores and cliffs of the misty isle; the three chieftains had demanded commentary on the rumours, and then, when the report had been confirmed, had demanded access to Darkfall. It had been refused.
Vespian ships had brought Iridomi legionnaires and Acanthan windwalkers to the steeper sides of the island, and the windwalkers had brought troops ashore. There had been brief but bloody fighting; the attacking party had been driven back. But a pair of windwalkers swore to what they had witnessed on Darkfall: an unlocked chamber whose far wall ended in the Void. To this chamber, the Unraveller had been taken.
Fulig, declaring his curiosity satisfied - for now - withdrew his ships. Other voices howled for him to press the attack. Any day now, the callstones reported, Tarsin would arrive from Ramidan to the Myrmidori port where negotiations were now being held.
Kerd, Unys, Faylian, and Fulig’s ministers gathered every day at the callstone bureau to digest the news together, despite the uproar that had risen when the scrambled news of the fighting first came through. Kerd alternated between a reactive and mild attitude when his father’s senior ministers raised their voices, and occasional flashes of sternness. He did not let Tillek bully him, Unys noticed. Nor Laupis.
“I spoke to you of a vision, many sevendays ago,” Faylian said to Unys. “I saw a blonde woman, beaten and tied. I think you know her.”
So did Kerd; but Unys did not speak.
“I have seen that you should go to Myrmidor,” Faylian said. “She is there. I have seen that she will be in danger, and you may save her.”
“Why now?” Unys said bluntly. It seemed to her that Glynn had been in danger many other times. Perhaps Faylian knew that this occasion was different; perhaps she was not telling her.
Faylian shrugged.
“Humour me,” she said, she of humours bitter and supercilious. “Go to Myrmidor. Go and confer with Coralyn of Iridom, or court and flatter Tarsin. Speak to Fulig. I’m sure he would prefer his son. Do what you wish.”
“It only matters that I go?” Unys said, skeptical.
“I did not say that,” Faylian said.
And those were the auspices under which Unys of Vespi set forth.