9. Memories
There is a sickness called the Walking Death. The disease causes tremors, terrible fever, unconsciousness, and in its final stages a peculiar kind of manic behavior. The victim is compelled to rise from the sickbed and walk—walk anywhere, even back and forth in the confines of a room. Walk, while the fever grows so great that the victim’s skin cracks and bleeds; walk while the brain dies. And then walk a little more.
There have been many outbreaks of the Walking Death over the centuries. When the disease first appeared, thousands died because no one understood how it spread. The walking, you see. Unimpeded, the infected always walk to wherever healthy people can be found. They shed their blood and die there, and thus the sickness is passed on. Now we are wise. Now we build a wall around any place the Death has touched, and we close our hearts to the cries of the healthy trapped within. If they are still alive a few weeks later, we let them out. Survival is not unheard of. We are not cruel.
It escapes no one’s notice that the Death afflicts only the laboring classes. Priests, nobles, scholars, wealthy merchants… it is more than that they have guards and the resources to quarantine themselves in their citadels and temples. In the early years there were no quarantines, and they still did not die. Unless they rose recently from the lower classes themselves, the wealthy and powerful are immune.
Of course such a plague is nothing natural.
When the Death came to Darr a little while before I was born, no one expected my father to catch it. We were minor nobility, but still nobility. But my paternal grandfather had been a commoner as Darre reckon it—a handsome hunter who caught my grandmother’s eye. That was enough for the disease, apparently.
Still… my father survived.
I will remember later why this is relevant.
That night as I readied myself for bed, I came out of the bath to find Sieh eating my dinner and reading one of the books I’d brought from Darr. The dinner I did not mind. The book was another matter.
“I like this,” Sieh said, throwing me a vague wave by way of greeting. He never lifted his eyes from the book. “I’ve never read Darre poetry. It’s strange—from talking with you I’d thought all Darre were straightforward. But this: every line is full of misdirection. Whoever wrote this thinks in circles.”
I sat down on the bed to brush my hair. “It’s considered courteous to ask before invading others’ privacy.”
He didn’t put the book down, though he did close it. “I’ve offended you.” There was a contemplative look on his face. “How did I do that?”
“The poet was my father.”
His face registered surprise. “He’s a fine poet. Why does it bother you to have others read his work?”
“Because it’s mine.” He had been dead a decade—a hunting accident, such a typically male way to die—and still it hurt to think of him. I lowered the brush, looking down at the dark curls caught in the bristles. Amn curls, like my Amn eyes. I wondered, sometimes, whether my father had thought me ugly, as so many Darre did. If he had, would it have been because of my Amn features—or because I did not look more Amn, like my mother?
Sieh gazed at me for a long moment. “I meant no offense.” And he got up and replaced the book on my small shelf.
I felt something in me relax, though I resumed brushing to cover it. “I’m surprised you care,” I said. “Mortals die all the time. You must grow tired of dancing around our grief.”
Sieh smiled. “My mother is dead, too.”
The Betrayer, who betrayed no one. I had never thought of her as someone’s mother.
“Besides, you tried to kill Nahadoth for me. That earns you a little extra consideration.” He shifted to sit on my vanity table, his rump shoving aside my few toiletries; the extra consideration apparently did not extend that far. “So what is it you want?”
I started. He grinned.
“You were glad to see me until you saw what I was reading.”
“Oh.”
“Well?”
“I wondered…” Abruptly I felt foolish. How many problems did I have right now? Why was I obsessing over the dead?
Sieh drew up and folded his legs, and waited. I sighed.
“I wondered if you could tell me what you know of… of my mother.”
“Not Dekarta, or Scimina, or Relad? Or even my peculiar family?” He cocked his head, and his pupils doubled in size in the span of a breath. I stared, momentarily distracted by this. “Interesting. What brings this on?”
“I met Relad today.” I groped for words to explain further.
“Quite a pair, aren’t they? Him and Scimina. The stories I could tell you about their little war…”
“I don’t want to know about that.” My voice was too sharp as I said it. I hadn’t meant to let him see how much the meeting with Relad had troubled me. I had expected another Scimina, but the drunken, bitter reality was worse. Would I become another Relad if I did not escape Sky soon?
Sieh fell silent, probably reading every thought on my face. So it did not entirely surprise me when a look of calculation came into his eyes, and he gave me a lazy, wicked smile.
“I’ll tell you what I can,” he said. “But what will you give me in return?”
“What do you want?”
His smile faded, his expression changing to one of utter seriousness. “I said it before. Let me sleep with you.”
I stared at him. He shook his head quickly.
“Not as a man does with a woman.” He actually looked revolted by the notion. “I’m a child, remember?”
“You aren’t a child.”
“As gods go, I am. Nahadoth was born before time even existed; he makes me and all my siblings combined look like infants.” He shifted again, wrapping arms around his knees. He looked terribly young, and terribly vulnerable. Still, I was not a fool.
“Why?”
He uttered a soft sigh. “I just like you, Yeine. Does there have to be a reason for everything?”
“I’m beginning to think so, with you.”
He scowled. “Well, there isn’t. I told you; I do what I like, whatever feels good, as children do. There’s no logic to it. Accept that or not, as you please.” Then he put his chin on one knee and looked away, doing as perfect a sulk as I’d ever seen.
I sighed, and tried to consider whether saying yes to him would somehow make me susceptible to Enefadeh trickery or some Arameri plot. But at last it came to me: none of that mattered.
“I suppose I should be flattered,” I said, and sighed.
Instantly Sieh brightened and bounded over to my bed, pulling back the bedcovers and patting my side of the mattress. “Can I brush your hair?”
I could not help laughing. “You are a very, very strange person.”
“Immortality gets very, very boring. You’d be surprised at how interesting the small mundanities of life can seem after a few millennia.”
I came to the bed and sat down, offering him the brush. He all but purred as he took hold of it, but I held on.
He grinned. “I have a feeling I’m about to have my own bargain thrown back in my face.”
“No. But it only seems wise, when bargaining with a trickster, to demand that he hold up his end of the deal first.”
He laughed, letting go of the brush to slap his leg. “You’re so much fun. I like you better than all the other Arameri.”
I did not like that he considered me Arameri. But…“Better than my mother?” I asked.
He sobered, then settled against me, leaning on my back. “I liked her well enough. She didn’t often command us. Only when she had to; other than that she left us alone. The smart ones tend to do that, exceptions like Scimina notwithstanding. No sense getting to know your weapons on a close personal basis.”