“Your arrival surprised me. I thought it was someone else . . . that I had been found out.”
“Look at you! So terrified!” He sat on the low bed, gestured for her to come into his arms. “And yet again and again you risk your freedom—and mine, I should remind you—for a few superstitious trinkets.”
“I am sorry, my lord,” she said. “I am an ungrateful wretch, it’s true—a fool. But it gives me happiness, to remember my life before coming here.”
“Is your life as my mistress so unhappy, then?”
She pushed her head against the hardness of his narrow chest. He felt more like a slender youth than a grown man, this creature so many times her own age. Sometimes she felt his antiquity as a fatal chasm whose depths might destroy her but could never be known. He was as foreign to her as a horse or a bird, but she did not doubt his kindness. Sometimes she even loved him with the helpless, grateful love of a favored slave, but what else she felt for him she could not say: the emotions were too confusing, too strange. “No, my lord. You—and our child—are the great fortune of my life. If you had not found me I would have died in the pens with the other breeding slaves. How could I be anything but grateful?”
Viyeki leaned back and looked her over carefully. “Grateful is not happy. A pampered slave is still a slave. I hate to see you troubled, my bright gem.”
He was very clever, this immortal who had given her such extraordinary gifts of freedom, had granted her privileges far beyond what any of her kind had ever enjoyed among the Hikeda’ya. Tzoja reminded herself that whatever happened, she must always respect his intelligence. Many of his race were so steeped in the old traditions and hatreds that they could not see her kind as anything except animals, but Viyeki was different. He had thrived in the confusing years while the queen slept, discerning opportunities for useful change where others saw only destruction, failure, the end of everything.
“How can I be troubled now that you have come to see me?” she said, eager to change the subject. “Your company is a cure for all ailments.”
Instead of smiling at such a fanciful notion, as she had hoped he would, Viyeki’s thin mouth pulled into a tight line. “Ah. But I have news for you, and I do not think it will bring you that sort of happiness.”
“What do you mean?” Her heart stuttered. Had she somehow been found out? “You have told me already of the queen’s anger at slaves like me living in the houses of the nobility.”
“I fear this is something different—something new.”
She suddenly felt cold as the winds that swirled around Stormspike. “New?”
“It is not certain. But my cleric heard from his hearth brother, who is a commander of the Echoes, that I am to be given an important task by the Queen herself. A journey.”
Now the cold that had seized her threatened to become something more, a deadly chill that would freeze her where she sat and stop her heart. “How can that be? How can anyone know it if you have not been told yourself?” She had already despaired of being ready to escape the house before Drukhi’s Day. If the high magister was sent out of Nakkiga now, Tzoja knew she would not live to hear nine bells ring in the great temple.
Viyeki reached out and touched her face. “Are you weeping? How can this be? Such a task from the queen will be a great honor. It will bring great credit on my house and my child, too. Our child. You long for Nezeru to achieve honor—how much easier will that be if I bring a triumph back for the Mother of All?”
“I don’t want my daughter to have honor! I want her to be happy, to be safe!” She looked at his uncomprehending face and the gap between them, the chasm, suddenly seemed not just impassable but incomprehensibly vast. “But it is not even Nezeru I fear for, it is for me. And for you!”
“I do not understand you, Tzoja.”
She rubbed the tears from her eyes. She was furious with herself. The Norns, even the most decent among them like Viyeki, did not understand weeping over such things, no matter the depth of the sorrow, the span of the tragedy. To weep was to mark herself even more firmly as other, as little more than an animal. In her misery, she said something she knew she should not. “Are you really so foolish, my lord?”
He drew back, anger visible in the subtle movements of his face. “How dare you say that to me?”
“Because I care for you. As no one else does. And I am afraid.”
He eyed her as though she might do something even more incomprehensible than crying, might sprout wings or begin barking like a hound. “Afraid? Of me?”
“No, Lord, of your enemies. Of my enemies.”
“You fear the queen’s words too much. You do not understand how things are with my people.” The shift in his tone told her that he had decided that the animal was frightened by what it did not understand, that now he would soothe her. “You live in one of the greatest houses in all Nakkiga, and we have many slaves, mortal and Hikeda’ya. I am High Magister of the Builder’s Order!”
“And that is why you have enemies.” Sometimes Tzoja could not understand how Viyeki could be so canny about the treacherous world outside his house, but so oblivious to what passed within his own walls. “My enemies are right here in this great house. Your servants. Your wife.”
“Khimabu?” Again, he was mystified. “She does not like you, it is true, but she would not dare harm you. You are the mother of my only child.”
Tzoja could do nothing to contain her despair. “That is exactly why she would kill me if she had the chance, my lord. Can you really not see that?”
He shook his head, his expression grave. “If I leave, I will make certain that you are protected. You are accredited to our household list. All is in order and my will has been made clear. Nobody will dare to question it, even if I am absent on the queen’s business. I promise you will be safe.”
It was all she could do simply to find strength to answer him. “And who will keep you safe, my lord? If your enemies destroy you, what will your promises mean then? Great Ekimeniso promised to keep his people free—what did his promises mean after he was dead?”
“Do not quote my own race’s history to me, Tzoja, especially in a way that treads close to the heretical. I allow you much liberty, but that is taking a step too far.” Viyeki rearranged his robes and stood. “I wished only to tell you important news—glad news, in fact, at a time when all is uncertain among the nobles and magisters.”
“No, don’t leave,” she said. “I’m sorry for speaking badly, my lord. Please, if you believe nothing else, believe that you, too, are in danger. Your enemies have been waiting for just such a moment.”
“I will not hear such talk, Tzoja. You may not understand it, but you demean the honor of my entire household.”
It was pointless. She bowed her head. “I am sorry, my lord.”
“You will be safe. I promise you. And when I return, if this great task is indeed given to me, you will be as much the victor as I, because our daughter will also benefit.” He moved to the door. “Do not light any more candles. If you are fearful, remember that your own mistakes can be your worst enemies.”
And with that cold comfort, Viyeki slipped from her room. Like all his kind, he moved with the silent grace of a hunting beast.
But I think it is you, my lord, who does not understand. For all the centuries you have lived, you still do not understand that when great changes are afoot, the old certainties are no longer useful.
When she had given her lover enough time to depart the corridor, she set her bench to block the door and took the hide-wrapped bundle from its hiding place, then carefully spilled the contents onto her bed. A knife, some rope, the stubs of several candles, flint and firechalk, all the things she had hidden away so long ago, as well as the gloves she had bought at the last Animal Market. But she still needed more, much more, and instead of the weeks she had hoped for she now knew she had only days of safety left.
Even if her lover did not realize it, Tzoja knew that nothing in Nakkiga would ever be the same. The queen of the Norns had awakened after her long slumber, and her shadow had fallen upon her people again. In fact, shadows were thickening all across the ancient city
She slid the bundle back into its hiding place, and though she did not dare light the candle again, she still prayed one more time to gods old and new.