She wasn't so easily convinced. "Surely it must be very difficult to live there. I mean, someone from down there couldn't get appointed to the Royal Engineers, the way you did, could they? I have trouble enough imagining life without slaves, servants, soldiers to protect me…"
Yen chuckled shortly. "Why bother to imagine that? That would never be your lot."
The irony of that almost stung, but she could not, of course, reveal her distress. "I try to imagine many things," she stated.
"As do I," Yen replied, and for a moment his eyes flashed in a most peculiar way, a way that tickled her belly with warmth, brought blood to her face.
"More," she demanded, tearing her eyes from the young man and looking back out over the rooftops and streets.
"Well… the docks, there. I used to sit on them when I had nothing else to do, watch the foreigners come in. Some of them were so strange, they couldn't even speak, but only gabble in their own barbaric languages."
"Tell me about them," she requested, resting her chin on the walled edge of the court, watching sunlight flash on the River like a thousand thousand golden eels. A great three-masted ship was just heaving out of the channel, toward, dock, its sails crumpling as it came, all but the lateen sail in back.
"There. What sort of ship is that?"
Yen nodded sagely. "Look at that craft, Lady. It is built for sailing upon the ocean; see how most of the sails are rigged square, but the one aft is triangular? That lets them sail into the wind."
"That seems impossible," she remarked, watching the ship. It wasn't headed straight for the dock, but was instead beginning a peculiar little dance, switching back and forth, approaching the shore as one might a lover one were very shy of meeting.
"See? They're doing it now. Notice the pennant at the top of their mast? That will tell you how the wind is blowing."
It was true. The pennant streamed away from Nhol and the docks, and yet the ship—the large ship—was somehow, if a bit tediously, moving into the breeze, without oars or a hauling rope.
"Very clever," she breathed as she began to understand what was involved. They were using the wind against itself, stealing strength from it rather than confronting it headlong. "Where is that ship from?"
"Well, I'm not quite certain. The south, for sure, but I can't make out the device on their pennant."
Hezhi squinted. "A serpent surrounding a quartered circle," she said.
Yen looked at her with new respect. "You have good eyesight, Lady. Well. That would be Dangun, one of the farthest of the Swamp Kingdoms, which actually borders on the coast. The ship, I think, is actually of Lhe manufacture."
"Lhe? South along the gulf? I've seen that on maps."
"Odd people, civilized in their own way, I suppose. They have skin as black as coal, as black as your hair and eyes. I like to watch them."
He did not look at her as he said this, but she was left wondering if Yen meant he liked to watch the Lhe sailors or her hair and eyes.
"And up-River?"
"The Mang, of course, and across the desert to the east the Dehshe, who resemble the Mang. They cut timber, though, and mine tin, so I suppose they are a bit more civilized than the plainsmen. Their boatmen are usually a quiet lot. Again, unlike the Mang."
"Have you ever met very pale men, with light hair and gray eyes?" she inquired.
"I've never laid eyes on such a man, though I have heard of them," Yen said. "They are said to live in the ice and snow at the very edge of the world, which colors them pale. The Mang speak of them as enemies, I think."
"They live north, then?"
"North and west, I think, from wherever the River rises."
"From the mountain?" Hezhi wondered. "They live at She'leng?"
Yen raised his open palms. "I know little of religious matters. It is a constant source of irritation to the priests." He stepped nearer to her, hesitated, then reached out his ringers and took her chin in his palm. His eyes glowed, dark opals flecked with gold. Breath caught in her throat.
"We should go now," she managed.
"Yes," Yen told her. "In just a moment." He bent down, brushed his lips against hers. He did not press them wetly, as Wezh did, and they did not feel like wet liver. They felt sweet and warm, kind. And something else, something a little hungry…
She felt frozen as Yen drew away from her, unable to think.
"I'm sorry if that upset you," Yen told her, his voice husky. "I know we cannot court. But I wanted to kiss you once, at least."
"Once?"
He nodded. "Soon I will have no more excuses to come back to the library, at least not for many months; I will be supervising the construction. When I next see you, you will probably be married." He smiled thinly.
"Well," she gasped. "You should not have done it. If anyone saw…"
"But you promised no one would see."
She colored further. "I did not ask you up here for that," she insisted, turning her eyes back out to the cityscape, her heart doing hummingbird pirouettes in her breast. "But you may do it again, if you wish. Just once more."
From the corner of her eye, she saw him lean in again and, closing her eyes, turned to meet him.
She thought about that kiss for the rest of the day, the hours in the library seeming in turns frozen in time and rushing by. She was still considering it as she made her way back to her apartments. It was an odd feeling, the memory of that sweet, forbidden thing, another gift to go with the statue, another bit of madness in her life. The broad corridors of the palace seemed like the narrowest parapet of the Great Hall, a thin, tiny path that she could easily sway off of, out into the deep, the unknown. It seemed to her that Yen was right, though he had not been speaking of her, that her possibilities were virtually unlimited. She wanted to dream on and on of what might be, bathe in promise, yet at the same time, she knew she had to sober herself, become calmer for the adventure awaiting her.
No matter how often she told herself that, her feet still felt light.
Turning into the corridor where her rooms were, the stink of incense assailed her nostrils. The priests had just swept here, and the smoke still hung thick in the air. Certainly they had just been sweeping, as they did now and then. But Hezhi's eyes widened. The door to her rooms stood ajar a crack. Smoke drifted out, pungent gray coils of it. She could just see the fringe of Qey's skirt, silhouetted against the light from the doorway. She stood, staring, pulse hammering. All of her gauzy dreams were torn, just like that, and she realized exactly how fragile hope was. Trembling, she reached into her pocket, stroked the statuette, but it felt only like metal, unfeeling metal. The horse-woman was cold, her promise dissipated in that first sharp scent of incense.
She stood rooted until Qey turned, her face revealed in the doorway. Hezhi had that one glimpse of it as Qey recognized her, a sad, tortured look, pleading. A terrible flash of insight caught her, as if Qey's face were a light more blinding than the sun, and she understood she would never see the woman who had raised her again after this one last glimpse. The flash became an ache, a wish to be gathered up in Qey's arms once more, to eat breakfast just one more time, to tell her that she loved her.
This was the last she would see of Qey, and she would never see Tsem again at all.
Horse-woman clutched in her hand, she turned and fled, ran as she had never run before, just as a shout went up behind her, the high, boyish voice of a priest.
The halls echoed hollowly beneath her slapping feet, as if she were inside of a skull or the tombs beneath the temples one read about. It was as when she was a younger girl, with D'en, dashing through the empty places of the great palace, footsteps their only company. Now, however, the halls were crowded with footfalls.