“Officials wear masks to represent the authority they wield, because the office is not the person. Once the two become the same thing, people will come to believe the authority they wield is part of their own body and lineage rather than a borrowed responsibility—”
“Yes, yes, I see!” Maraya interrupts him as she would any family member, an intimacy that annoys me.
Ro nods, as easy with her as she is with him. “What do you think, Jessamy? You’re awfully quiet.”
I shrug, thinking of the Patrons who have blighted our lives. “Without a mask, the people who hold power may come to believe they have developed a sixth soul that elevates them above others.”
“Ah. I wish I’d thought of saying it like that.”
“You’re welcome to it. I’m not writing any plays or making any speeches.”
Instead of saying more, Ro lapses into silence.
I concentrate on my hand, squeezing and relaxing my grip on the rope railing as I strengthen the injured wrist. “It’s getting better but what if it never properly heals? What if I can’t compete again? What kind of life would that be?”
“People go their whole lives without competing at the Fives,” says Maraya. “Jes, do you really not remember the trip we took to Ibua?”
“No.”
“You and Bettany were ten, I was eleven, and Amaya was almost nine. You and Bett started squabbling over who got to sit on Father’s shoulders to see the festival barge go past. She pushed you into the water so you grabbed her ankle and dragged her in after you.”
“I don’t remember that.”
Ro snorts. “I can imagine it, though.”
I squeeze, hold, and release, wishing Maraya would stop talking, but of course she goes on.
“Father was so angry and embarrassed at the scene you two caused in public that he swatted you both very hard, right in front of all the people crowded on the bank. I started to cry because he had never hit any of us before, and Amaya started screaming because she wasn’t getting attention, so he slapped us too. Mother quietly took us girls back to the hostel where we were staying. Once we were in private she told Father that no matter how his father had treated him, if he ever hit his children again she would leave him.”
I think of how Father slapped me on Lord Ottonor’s balcony, after Kal first talked to me, of how much his anger stung. But it wasn’t just anger that drove him that day; it was fear too. He defended us as well as he could against Lord Gargaron’s insults. Yet even as a general he couldn’t protect me from Gargaron’s revenge.
Maraya has slipped into her lecturing mode. “As you and Bett got older, you started agreeing with everything Father did and said, as if Mother had no part in the success of the household, while Bett began complaining that Mother just gave in to him and did everything the way he wanted. But actually it’s just that Mother never argues in the Saroese manner, with a winner and loser. She negotiates and finds ways people can share. Ways we can live with dignity and happiness. Because we were happy then, Jes. Mother and Father were genuinely happy. That’s what’s so sad about it all.”
I’m too choked up to answer her, so I just stare at the mesmerizing swirls and eddies of the current. Isn’t this movement, which never ceases and never repeats, the essence of Rivers? Even when you are trying to stand still you are nevertheless in motion. The past clings to us as we hold tight to our regrets and our pain and to the gardens of joy we wish could bloom forever. Yet the current drags us ever forward into the future whose true face we will never see until we take the next step, where every step is a new unmasking.
In the gray twilight just before dawn we sweep around a mighty curve in the river and come into sight of the ancient city of Ibua. Despite what I said to Maraya, I do recognize it from our long-ago visit. Temples to Seon, Inkos, and Hayiyin line the shore, asserting their power. A huge square fronts the riverside, providing a parade ground and gathering place between the temples and a royal palace whose towering fortlike walls are carved with gigantic sea-phoenix figures. Boats are tied up against stone embankments to disgorge merchandise and passengers.
But the royal enclosure and temple compound aren’t what strike a resonant memory in my head. It’s the conical island splitting the river that makes me stare, because I remember asking Father if we could climb to the top and him telling me it was forbidden by order of the holy priests to set foot there at all.
The island’s slope is gentle on all sides, covered with a tangle of overgrown fruit trees and sprawling shrubs. Flowering vines wreath the ruins of a building at the top of the hill. I remember how Bettany and I whispered at night in the hostel when we were meant to be asleep, planning how we would swim to the island when we were grown up and be the first people in all the world to explore its secrets.
I miss her so much, even if she did push me into the river. Even if she did betray me and Amaya at Crags Fort.
But the island is no longer a forbidden landmark, now that Efeans control the city. A pontoon bridge is being built, a walkway floating atop boats and barrels to link the city to the rubble of a stone wharf on the island’s bank. On the island itself, people swing machetes and axes to clear an overgrown staircase.
We tie up against an embankment alongside the square. The triple gates into the temple complex stand wide open. Inside, soldiers drill.
“We’ve turned the Saroese temples into army barracks,” says Ro with a laugh.
“How are we supposed to find Mother in this crowded city?” I demand.
Our ship’s captain commands crewmen to swing the gangplank over but a person comes running, waving an official’s baton.
“You can’t disembark until after the sunrise ceremony,” shouts the man. “We have new orders, proclaimed last month when the Custodian was named.”
“The Custodian?” I ask.
Maraya misunderstands my tone and starts explaining. “Custodian and Protector are the old Efean names for queen and king. They don’t mean quite the same thing, but the principle is the same—”
She’s cut off when horns blow from the palace. People flood into the square. To the beat of drums, rank upon rank of recruits march out of the temple complex. Some are clearly brand-new to soldiering because they have looks of fierce concentration as they strive to stay in step. Only the sergeants and officers at the heads of columns or the ends of lines wear uniforms, clearly taken from dead or captured soldiers because you can tell where Saroese clan badges have been picked out.
All the soldiers are Efean. I have never seen anything like it, a field of Efean faces lifted with pride and the authority of arms, and although it looks strange it also makes my heart pound with an uncanny thrill.