Unver did not say a word for long moments. He only looked at Fremur as though he had suddenly sprouted feathers and flown into the air. “A lie,” he said at last, but his voice was hollow.
“It is no lie. I hadn’t seen you for days, and I didn’t know if you’d heard.” He was suddenly frightened, and tried to find words that would change the frighteningly animal look in the man’s eyes. “I didn’t know that she meant so much to you, Unver—that is truth. But you must have known Odrig would never give her to you! You are . . .” He could not think of how to say it, because he was the same way himself. Like a fish in a stream, how could he find a word for the water that was everywhere, that they both breathed and swam in? “You are unworthy. That is what Odrig thinks. Drojan is his friend. Drojan does everything that Odrig says.”
The oilcloth bundle dropped from Unver’s fingers to the ground and his face went pale as dry grass. For a stretching moment, Fremur was certain Unver would pull the knife from his belt and kill him, and he knew there was nothing he could do to prevent it. Expressions flickered across the tall man’s face so swiftly that Fremur could not make sense of any of them. Then Unver found his voice.
“Go!” he roared. “Get away from me! You and your cursed family! What are you but the crow who brings bad tidings, screeching and preening on a tree branch? Your sister is as false as a stone-dweller’s bargain!”
“It’s not her doing . . .”
“Go!” And with this last cry of rage, Unver turned his back on Fremur and strode back toward the wagon he had worked on so long and carefully. He put his hands against the side of it and pushed until the muscles of his neck bulged. The wood creaked and the wagon tottered, but it did not tip: it was too large for any single man to push it over, or so Fremur thought. Then Unver bent his legs beneath him, leaned his entire body into the side of the wagon, and, with a wordless cry of rage, managed to topple it. It fell slowly, as in a dream, and hit the hard ground with a crash like thunder, splintering into pieces.
Fremur turned and ran.
Jesa carefully swaddled Serasina and brought her to her mother, who was sitting near the window with three of her ladies-in-waiting, taking advantage of the afternoon light to work at their sewing.
“Ah, there she is, the little coney, the little fur-rabbit,” said the duchess. She set down her sewing and took the baby from Jesa, who stood by patiently. It was time for little Serasina to nap, and this was how it was done. Jesa did not entirely understand why a woman who loved her daughter as much as Duchess Canthia spent so little time holding her. In the Wran, where Jesa had been born, a child was put in a sling against her mother’s belly as soon as she could hold her head up, and rode that way all day. Drylander children, at least those Jesa had known here in Nabban, were treated more like beautiful jewelry or clothing, to be taken out by their mothers and admired, then soon put back again.
It was puzzling, but Jesa had given up trying to understand. Things were just different here among the drylanders, and Jesa had to believe that She Who Birthed Mankind had made them that way for some good reason. But as she took the baby back from the duchess and set her in her huge, painted cradle, it was hard to imagine what that reason could be.
Despite the tight swaddling, little Serasina fussed and wriggled. To quiet her, Jesa sank into a crouch beside the cradle and began to rock it. Duchess Canthia was a kind woman, and would not have begrudged her a stool to sit on, but Jesa was never entirely comfortable perched on such a thing. Some of the furniture the drylanders used felt to her as untrustworthy as ill-made boats, as if any moment they might tip and throw her down. She had been squatting on her heels since she had been only a few months older than little Serasina, and she was comfortable that way.
The duchess and her ladies talked quietly among themselves, but Jesa could tell from the way they glanced over their shoulders toward the cradle that Serasina’s crying was irritating some of them, so she began to sing one of the songs her own mother had sung to her, long ago in their house on stilts in Red Pig Lagoon.
Come moon, come sweet moon
Come across the marsh, bring an armful of mallows
Come in a pole boat, bring a handful of hyacinths
Come across the stream, bring a comb of honey
Come on a carry-chair, bring milk and curd
Come on walking feet, bring a basket of bilberries
Now listen to me and hold them tight
Keep them here for baby’s delight
As Jesa sang and rocked the cradle, she wondered if she would ever hold a baby of her own. She had not been much more than a child herself when she first came to Nabban, purchased as a companion and servant for the duchess when they were both young girls. Canthia had been fond of her, so when she grew up and began to have children of her own, first her son Blasis and now the new baby, the duchess had kept Jesa on as nurse for the children. Jesa missed her home sometimes, of course, and would never entirely get used to going days at a time without feeling soil or water beneath her feet. But when Jesa thought of her own mother and all that woman’s backbreaking work, gathering and pounding roots all day long, mending nets, and tending children as well, or when she considered the many other Wran-folk she saw here in Nabban whose daily work seemed so hard and dangerous, she thought that even with no child of her own, she must still be one of the luckiest people in the world.
Jesa had just begun a new cradle song when someone knocked at the door. One of the duchess’ ladies-in-waiting rose to open it. It was the duke himself, and when Saluceris made it clear he wanted to talk to his wife in private, the highborn ladies gathered themselves up and went out, chatting happily about visiting the Sancellan’s courtyard garden as though they would have been headed there even had the duchess’s husband not arrived.
Duke Saluceris glanced briefly at Jesa where she crouched beside the cradle, but his gaze slid from her face as though she were made of polished stone. That was one of the strangest things about the drylanders, Jesa had always thought: if they were not speaking to a servant face to face, they pretended that servant did not exist, as if their maids and nurses were only furniture.
As the duke approached, Duchess Canthia smiled and lifted her cheek. Saluceris bent and gave his wife a kiss. “I’m sorry to send your companions away,” he told her, “but Tersian Vullis is pressing me for an answer and I can’t delay it much longer.”
“An answer to what?”
“The betrothal. Surely you remember! I’ve been patient because of your condition, but Vullis has been waiting a long time.”
Canthia frowned very slightly, and Jesa thought it was like a cloud crossing the sun, bringing a moment of shadow to a beautiful day. “You say the betrothal, my husband, but surely I remember you speaking of a betrothal, or at least a suggestion of one by the margrave. Yes, that’s right, I remember you said Vullis wished to wed his daughter to our Blasis. And I also remember saying that we would speak of it after the baby came.” She smiled. “And surely before we speak of it any more, you should go and look at your beautiful daughter, who is sleeping like the angelic gift that she is.”
The duke sighed. “Don’t be difficult. Of course I want to see my daughter.”
Jesa stopped rocking as Saluceris approached the cradle. Since he still did not look at her, only at tiny Serasina in her blanket, Jesa could examine the duke. She seldom saw him from so close, despite her long connection with Duchess Canthia, and it always surprised her to see how very ordinary he was, this man with pale, fishbelly skin and a neat, sandy beard. He was tall and handsome enough in the bony-faced, drylander way, but he was in no way surprising. How could it be that after the High King and High Queen, those far away people who Jesa knew only from stories—mythic figures like They Who Watch And Shape—Duke Saluceris was perhaps the most important person in all the world?
The thought dizzied her a bit, as it often did, and with him standing so close she was terrified at the thought she might suddenly tip and fall out of her squat.