A tip of my head alerts him that someone is about to enter behind me. Then I slide past the curtain that separates the common room from a courtyard in back.
When I was here last, months ago, the hearth had but a single hook and spit for cooking, the flat roof was in shambles, and the two small rooms off the courtyard stank of urine and rubbish. Now a coat of whitewash makes the area gleam. Clothes dry from a line strung up on the roof between the posts of a thatched shelter, a place to sleep during the hottest nights. Beaded curtains adorn the entrances to the two rooms.
The hearth is bustling, expanded with a new brick extension presided over by Cook. Several girls kneel on a mat in a corner of the courtyard, grinding grain into flour. At a table under a cloth awning, two other young women are chopping vegetables, and it takes me a moment to recognize Amaya and Denya working together in contented cooperation. Strapped to a high chair, little Safarenwe is old enough to watch her older sister, clapping her hands and chortling whenever Amaya or Denya pauses to tickle her. How did they get here so quickly?
The back gate to the alley is open, with a young man and a young woman standing as if on guard. I recognize them as friends of Ro. A line of people wait patiently in the alley for their turn to enter. Mother sits in a sling chair, listening to a family pouring out some tale of woe. She makes a few remarks, then doles out coins as the people profusely thank her.
Seated beside Mother, Maraya appears to record the transaction in an accounts book. She then reaches out and rocks a net cradle in which Wenru lies with a remarkably bored expression on a face that should be sweet.
“Jessamy!” Mother’s relieved smile is all the greeting I need, although of course it isn’t all the greeting I get.
“You’re safe!” Amaya runs over, flings her arms around me in a dramatic embrace, then audibly sniffs. “What is that perfume? You smell heavenly, Jes. Not sweaty, as you normally do.”
“I can smell nice!”
She runs a hand down a trouser leg, fingering the high gloss of the fabric. “These are a Patron man’s riding clothes, the very best grade of wool and leather. But cut for a different figure. Whose clothes are you wearing?”
The heat in my cheeks betrays me.
“I knew it,” smirks Amaya.
Maraya says, “Good Goat, Jes. What were you thinking?”
Mother jumps in. “Jessamy, I told you—”
“I don’t need anyone’s advice!”
Behind me, the curtain sweeps up and falls. Father steps into the courtyard. In any other circumstances his trained gaze would first assess the area’s dangers and potentials and the chance of ambush from the alley, but he sees nothing but her.
“Beloved,” he says.
Mother’s face burns with a joy as pure as sunlight. Then memory crashes down, obliterating all radiance in her face.
“Esladas.”
We all hear the choked anger. The terrible disappointment that the man she loved with all her five souls had, in the end, proved so callous.
Everyone stops what they are doing. The sentries tell the people in the alley to come back in the morning, and close the gate. Polodos appears in the doorway and holds the curtain taut so no one can come through from the common room.
“I have no wish to see you,” Mother says, her flat tone a harsh rebuke to the man who claimed to love her more than anything else in the world. “There is nothing you can say.”
“I didn’t know Lord Gargaron would act so drastically. I had it all worked out with Polodos, that he would bring money back to you. I wasn’t abandoning you. I had to act quickly without Gargaron becoming suspicious.”
“Is that what you tell yourself? How you excuse it? Yet you took all your male servants with you—”
“My military household! Of course I took them. But I thought of you every day!”
She presses a hand to her chest. Eases the pain out on a breath. I wish I could take that pain into myself so I wouldn’t have to see the anguish on her face.
“I could have forgiven you for leaving me. We’ve always understood what our pledge was to each other. We always knew how hard it would be to live together. But you abandoned your own daughters, your unborn twins. And not just them. You abandoned all of the vulnerable women and children in the household. They were part of my life, but you never considered them part of yours. That is what makes it so unforgivable.”
“Lord Ottonor’s mismanagement of his finances and my career put us all at risk. I could not say no to Gargaron when Ottonor was dead and we had nothing but his debts.”
“We could have fled Efea by ship, taken humble work, and stayed together. We could have journeyed inland and found a town to live in far from the ugly politics of the palace. But that wouldn’t have been enough for you. How such a mild life would have chafed you!”
“The palace politics you speak of so contemptuously are all that prevent Efea from being conquered by a foreign army.”
“Efea was already conquered by a foreign army, long before you came here. You stand on the backs of generations of people trampled by Saroese soldiers like you.”
I want to break in but I don’t know what to say, and anyway Mother has already gone on in the most scalding tone imaginable.
“Did you ever once think it was wrong, Esladas?”
“Don’t be na?ve, Kiya. War is how the world works. If it hadn’t been the first Kliatemnos and Serenissima, then it would have been another Saroese fleet landing on these shores and overthrowing the corrupt Efean rulers. Our military tactics and discipline are simply superior.”
“‘Our’? I thought you considered yourself Efean now. Why do you call yourself Efean when it comes to living in this land but you don’t give Efeans a share in the laws and administration the Saroese brought when they came here? Why are you always the Patron class and we the Commoners? Do you believe that the Saroese are ordained by the gods to rule over Efeans? That Efeans are somehow less worthy? That I am less worthy? That your daughters are less worthy? And even your mule son?”
Maraya stands with a hand over her mouth. Amaya presses against the table, and Denya has actually crawled underneath it as if fearful that violence will break out. I can’t endure my own silence any longer.
“He just wanted to make sure everyone was healthy and safe,” I cry.
She rounds so fiercely on me that I cringe. “Did you bring your father to me, Jessamy? Thinking perhaps he and I might be reconciled?”
“No. No, I didn’t.” I’m ashamed because of course Mother knows me too well. I have been clutching a fragile hope against my grieving heart that they might see each other and it might all be better. But betrayal can’t be fixed with a kiss and a few coaxing words.
“No?” She’s relentless. “Then how did he know I was here?”