Clarity, I thought. Clarity and music. Her voice was low, expressive, not bell-like but vibrant like the limike, the Olondrian dulcimer. She read me the lyrics of Damios Beshaid and the letters of Skendho the Literate, the Brogyar chieftain who had asked to be buried under the Telkan’s library. She read me the plays of Neavandis the Poet with great animation, altering her voice and features to suit the characters. She was disappointed to see no change in me. After a week I no longer needed to shake my head. She could read my face.
“Don’t give up,” I whispered.
She smiled. Her hand strayed toward my pillow, toyed with a wayward string. Propriety or shyness prevented her from touching my hair. Instead she tugged at the string until it broke. She brushed it against her skirt, where it clung, a strand of white against the black.
“Tell me something,” I said, afraid she would go—afraid she would slip away to the place where she lived the rest of her life, a happy and structured region built of bookshelves, enlivened by colored ink, far from the drab misery of the Houses.
“All right,” she said.
She spoke of Neavandis, the great poet-queen. “One of her legs was shorter than the other. Only slightly, but still, she never walked. Her servants carried her in a special chair—it’s in the treasure vaults here. It’s called the Chrysoprase Seat. The Old Teldaire used to bring it out on the date of Neavandis’s death; I saw it several times as a little girl. It’s covered with bright green gems, the color of sour apples. It’s very lovely.” She paused, pulled the bredis away from the cot, and faced me.
“They say she had a lover,” she went on, thoughtful, her arms about her knees. “A groom from the Fayaleith. He was hanged for laming one of the king’s war-horses. Now, of course, everyone says he was hanged out of jealousy—the king was Athrin the Pallid, famed for his cruelty. But they also say that Neavandis poisoned one of the king’s dancing girls, the one called ‘Feet like the Palm-Leaves.’ So who can say? ‘For there are more things under the Telkan’s cloak,’ as my nurse used to put it, ‘than one could name from now to Tanbrivaud Night.’”
She pushed a tawny curl behind her ear and smoothed it down. Strips of shadow hung about her face. “It was on Tanbrivaud Night,” she said, “that they hanged Neavandis’s lover. He had been granted a last request, according to custom. He asked that he might be executed on Tanbrivaud Night. It was a severe blow to the king, who was superstitious—for those who die on Tanbrivaud Night, they say, can easily pass from the Land of the Dead to this one, and many of them become Angels of Persecution.”
“And did he persecute the king?” My voice was very soft.
“It is not known. It is more likely that he persecuted the queen. For though she wrote several more plays, including The Young Girl with Flowers, and a ninth volume of poems after his death, she began to chew milim leaves—a hereditary vice—and died at the age of fifty, as you know.”
“You don’t believe in what you’ve just said—Angels of Persecution.”
Her eyes held mine, steady and clear. “No, Jevick.”
“Then how can you explain it? And don’t say madness. Don’t.”
A tiny sigh escaped her, slight as a memory of breathing.
I shifted away from her, facing upward toward my plaster sky. But she sat so still, for so long, that at last I turned back again. She was gazing at the foot of my cot, intent. “It would be too easy,” she murmured. “Angels. For the gods do not speak as we speak.”
And how did the gods speak?
In patterns; in writing.
But sometimes it seemed she could not hear them. Her manner was sharp and nervous; she banged the door behind her. She pressed her pen hard above my eye, scowling into my skin, locked in a fruitless effort to prove Ura’s Conclusion. She thought there should have been some change, an increased heat in my bloodstream, an expansion of the brow, however slight.
“Do you listen when I read? Do you, Jevick?”
Once a tear dropped from her eye and landed on one of my cuts. It stung.
The Gray Houses are not cruel. They are kind. Each day begins with an outing for those not too distraught to stand and walk. Down the wide hall, where the lamps are always lit, each in its netting of wire, then out the big double doors into the garden. The garden is rough, a mere slope of grass surrounded by a wall. The sea is invisible but seems to be reflected in the sky. The air lively with iodine, strong. Once, at the bottom of the slope, the woman with bandaged hands found a gull with a broken wing.
Tialon came to see me there one morning. I sat against the wall with a book, and her long shadow darkened the page.
“Jevick,” she said. “How are you?”
I squinted up at her. “As you see.”
She sat beside me and laid her box in the sparkling grass.
“You’re early,” I said.
“It was so lovely outside, I couldn’t stay in.” She was in a blithe, expansive mood, leaning back to look up at the sky. “Everything is starting to smell of autumn, though it’s still warm. It smells like stone, like in the old song. Do you know it?
She gasped with laughter: “At this point the song grows mawkish, really terrible! I only like the first lines, autumn, whispering, smelling of stone… What are you reading?”
I held up my copy of Olondrian Lyrics.
She gazed at it for a moment without speaking. Then she advised me in a taut voice: “That’s a rare copy. Old. You must take good care of it.”
She sat with her back to the wall, suddenly subdued. I was not used to seeing her in such brilliant light. Her eternal dark wool appeared dusted with radiant powder; the chain of her spectacles dazzled me. I could not tell whether her lips were trembling or whether it was a trick of the sun.
All at once she said: “Tell me about your island.”
“My island.” The question was so unexpected, I stammered.
“Yes. What do you eat. What are your houses like.” She counted on her fingers, not looking at me. “Who are your lords. What are the names of your seasons. How do you dance. Anything. Tell me anything.”
“My island is called Tinimavet.”
“Go on.”
“We are farmers and fishermen, for the most part. Some of us grow tea. To be a tea-picker, you must first prove that your hands are as tender as flowers. For this reason it is usually work for young girls…”
I faltered into silence. She had put her face in her hands; her shoulders were shaking.
After a moment she bent to her writing box. She took out a handkerchief, wiped her eyes, then crumpled the handkerchief back among her books and papers.
Still she did not look at me. Her profile looked peeled and wet. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“No—It is—”
She held up a hand, cutting off my words. “Inexcusable,” she said. “It is inexcusable, and I have no excuse. Let me ask—how old are you?”
“Twenty-two.”