“I am honoured that you do, Matriarch,” he replied. “May I come in?”
She nodded. The guide had stopped by an open doorway. Tyen thanked the man, earning a startled but pleased smile and bow, and passed through a corridor into a courtyard. One of the city’s enormous trees grew in the centre, its limbs heavy with large green fruits. A servant met him, handing over a bowl and cloth. Tyen suppressed a sigh and followed the man up two flights of stairs to where Mirandra waited. Emerging onto the balcony, he knelt before her and washed her bare feet. As an extra gesture of goodwill and servitude, he drew magic to still the air around them, reducing its temperature.
“What news of the worlds?” she asked.
He smiled. Most women of Yira’s world would never ask a man such questions, assuming he did not pay attention to such matters.
“They are in upheaval, since the return of the Raen,” he told her, though he read from her mind that she already knew.
“Have you met anyone who has seen him?”
“No.”
She sighed in disappointment. “So strange, to think one man could be so powerful.”
“It is,” he said, in heartfelt agreement. “I could not believe it at first. Within just a few hours of the news arriving, Liftre was abandoned.”
She frowned and looked away. “At least Yira completed her training. Little good it will do us now she has gone away.” She shook her head, then looked down at him. “She left a message for you. You’ll find it in her rooms. Tal will take you there. Tal!” The man reappeared, dropping to one knee before her. “Take Tyen Ironsmelter to Yira’s house.”
She bent and offered him a hand. Though he could have got to his feet easily without her help, it would have been impolite to refuse.
“Thank you,” he said, bowing. “May your tree grow well; may your tree grow large.”
She nodded approvingly. “You may go.”
Yira’s room was not far away on the same floor. As the matriarch’s protector, she was supposed to stay close. The main door was open. As Tal entered he spoke, and another man replied. Three children sat playing on the floor, two who looked so alike they must be twins. Yira’s children. The other man was one of her husbands. His eyes narrowed as he saw Tyen. “Another one,” he thought, and he waved a hand towards one of the walls.
As Tyen looked where the man indicated, he had to swallow a laugh.
White banners hung from the walls around it. Elegant writing covered each. So she isn’t as dismissive of Tarren’s artistic practice as she pretends to be. He moved from one to the next. Each was a rhyming poem. One for each of her friends? He examined them all with equal interest and time in case singling one out would reveal to an onlooker which clue was his, and somehow ruin her efforts at secrecy. Only then could he be sure his initial guess at which was for him was correct.
All but one made no sense to him.
“I named our twelve children. One black, one red, ten white. Where you watered the tree, bring my words to light.”
He pushed out of the world.
The children had to be the moons of a world they had visited when they first became lovers. She’d given them all names. The sun there had been small and dim, only the heat of the ground keeping it from freezing. She had given him her water bottle and instructions to pour it on the ground. A tiny tree had sprouted from the sand, growing rapidly in the hours they’d spent there. Flowers blossomed, glowing with an inner light, before shrivelling and falling. By the time they’d left, the tree’s life cycle had ended and it had collapsed onto the ground, scattering seeds.
Had the rebels gathered there? He doubted it. The world was too inhospitable to live in for long. People had attempted it before, but the lack of light and unpredictable rain meant crops did not grow well. Mineral resources had been mined from time to time, with food supplies brought in, but once the source was depleted the world was abandoned again.
It was also in a less-frequented cluster of worlds, so the journey was convoluted and took many hours. Though he was in no danger from the Raen now, he could not help watching for shadows in the place between as he travelled. His thoughts returned again and again to his encounter with the ruler of worlds, lingering on the man’s instruction not to seek him out. How would the Raen know where and when to meet Tyen? Was he going to be watching Tyen constantly, or did he have other spies for that?