I’m suddenly too tired to keep standing so I sit in the chair the old man vacated.
“Jes!” She grabs my shoulders. Her belly nudges me right in the face.
“You look adorable all fatly pregnant,” I say, and then start coughing.
“You look awful, scarcely like yourself at all. This wound needs treatment.” She brushes fingers over the scar on my brow. When I flinch because it’s still tender and oozing, she frowns, then glances up at the Efeans watching us. She snaps, “Be respectful! And get moving!”
I sit in the chair as a whirlwind of activity spins around me, content just to watch her and know that she is safe. She has so much energy. Eventually Ro-emnu returns with drink and food. I’m thirsty but not hungry, but he and Maraya won’t stop haranguing me until I eat.
“Was she always this stubborn?” Ro asks her in a joking way that I really dislike but am too feeble to protest.
“She’s not the stubborn screamer,” says Maraya as she finishes packing the last box and ties it shut with a satisfied nod. “She’s more of a sullen schemer.”
Ro winks at me in the most annoying fashion.
My chin comes up. “Is that where Ro’s sister Coriander got the phrase? From you, Maraya?”
She doesn’t answer. Now that she’s assured I’m alive, her chief concern is the books.
The soldiers carry the boxes out to waiting wagons, where they are stacked beside expensive furniture and gold vessels. The pavilions are burning. The surviving priests and servants are being forced to carry the corpses of the dead Saroese to wagons, where they pile up like cordwood. Boys stand in ranks, stripped down to loincloths. I scan their frightened faces but I’m not sure if Lord Menos is even among them. When I spot the crow boy, looking forlorn and helpless, I can’t help but pray his birds haven’t been shot dead.
“What will happen to the priests?” I ask Ro as we head back into the heart of the temple. Around us the buildings are being methodically stripped of treasure, and the statues of Lord Judge Inkos dragged off their plinths and sent crashing to the ground.
“We negotiated an agreement with the Shipwrights.”
“The same group who went with Thynos?”
“That’s right. They will be paid a certain portion of all precious items from temples and estates, like gold and ivory. And they will be allowed to sell into slavery all the priests we capture.”
“What about the boys?”
“We are commanded to bring all children to the council, where their fates will be determined.”
“Where are we going right now?”
“Where do you think we are going? This was once our temple. For a hundred years it has been closed to us, to whom it is holy.”
Amid a stream of other people we cross under an arch, into the circular, walled enclosure that lies at the heart of the compound. Djesa in her rags limps forward with an arm supporting Beswe. Menesis carries Anu as other children straggle after them. All the conversations around us cease.
The central area is nothing much to look at: a simple garden with gold chrysanthemums, white jasmine, purple betony, and red anemones set around a circular pond rimmed with stone.
In silence people walk to the edge and kneel. One by one, they dip their cupped right hands in the pool and pour a bit of water over their heads, then step back to make way for others.
Ro drops my hand. I hadn’t realized he was holding it.
He paces forward, feet dragging like they are grown heavy, and falls to both knees. Only then do I realize he is weeping. His lips move but the poet has lost his voice. He scoops up a handful of water and splashes it over his head, then braces himself on both hands as he stares into the mirror of still waters. I step up beside him. For an instant, because of the angle of the sun, I don’t see my face at all, and I’m terrified, because if the person I thought I was has vanished, then surely my five souls will dissolve and I will fade with them until I do not exist at all.
But he smiles at the water, and thus his face in the water smiles at me, and there I am, my reflection swimming in the depths, half in shadow and half in light.
21
Three weeks later, after a blisteringly hot crossing of the Stone Desert, we reach the walled town of Furnace Gate and the blessed waters of the Great River. The Lion Guard remained in Maldine to garrison the harbor now that Princess Berenise, Queen Meno?, and the West Saroese have departed. They have also secured the mines, and many of the freed miners stayed to rebuild the Mother’s temple. It is a much smaller group that disperses in the streets of this northernmost outpost of Efea. I say good-bye to Djesa, who is reunited with her loving aunt.
Ro, Maraya, Polodos, and I embark on a boat to take us downriver while the captured boys and the Tonor clan men follow on a separate vessel. Standing at the rope railing, under the enviable relief of an awning, I gawk at the powerful current that sweeps us along. The waters are dark and deep and the flow inexorable. I will never think of the obstacle called Rivers in the same way again.
“Why did we never travel upriver out of the delta?” I ask my sister. “Could we never afford it? Did Father not want to go?”
Maraya puts an arm around me. On the journey she has been much more affectionate than usual, fussing over me as if I can’t care for myself. “We did travel upriver one time. Father had just gotten his captain’s commission and a large amount of prize money. Mother wanted to celebrate the Festival of Masks in the city of Ibua so we took a family trip.”
Ro stands on my other side. On the whole journey I have come to feel boxed in between them and their solicitude and their endless boring conversations about history and Archives. At least their discussions soothe my ears when I still feel so raw and confused. My head pretends to follow their lively talk but my heart lies buried and mute.
He adds, “To celebrate the Festival of Masks in Ibua is to stand where the last Protector and Custodian once ruled all Efea. People go there to remember that we once ruled ourselves. But the festival was different before the Saroese came.”
“How?” Maraya asks.
“Every elder has a different opinion about that, depending on what part of Efea they come from and which traditions were passed down through their dame council. All records were destroyed by the Saroese priests at the same time as the worship of the Mother of All was banned and Efean priests executed. I personally don’t believe there actually was a Festival of Masks in old Efea. All we know for sure is that Efean officials used to wear masks, so I think the Saroese made up the festival as a way to turn mask-wearing from a symbol of authority into a frivolous holiday.”
“Why would officials wear masks? Isn’t that like hiding their faces?” Maraya never stops probing.