Voices aotws-2 Page 3

  That was the year we took the street girl Bomi into the household, and the Waylord gave her the name Galva in the old ceremony at the house altars. She moved into the room down the hall from Sosta’s. She worked hard and well, satisfying even Ista most of the time, and was good company too. She was about thirteen; she had no idea when she was born or who her mother was. She was hanging around our street as a beggar for a while, and old Gudit began coaxing her in, luring her like a stray cat. When he’d got her to sleep in the shed in the courtyard, he started making her earn her food by helping him clean the stables, which were full of burned lumber and wrecked furniture and trash. Gudit was determined that the Waylord was going to have horses again. “It stands to reason,” he’d say. “How can a waylord travel his ways without a horse to carry him? Would you have him walk on foot? Clear to Essangan or Dom? Bad as his legs are? Like some common peddler, with no dignity? It won’t do. He needs horses. It stands to reason.”

  There never was much to do with Gudit but agree with him. He was crazy, old, hunchbacked, and worked very hard, if not always at the most useful job. He had a foul mouth but a clear heart. When Ista hired Bomi to take my place housecleaning, he was furious, not at Ista but at Bomi for “deserting” him and his precious stable. Every time he saw her for months he cursed her by the shadows of her ancestors, which didn’t bother Bomi much, since she didn’t know any of her ancestors or where their shadows were. Then he got over it, and she went back to helping him after her housework with that terrible job of cleaning out the stable and rebuilding the stalls, because she had a clear heart too. She took in cats, just as Gudit took her in. The stableyard swarmed with kittens that summer. Ista said that Bomi ate like ten girls, but I thought she ate like one girl and twenty cats. Anyhow, the stable was finally clean, which turned out to be fortunate, even if it didn’t exactly stand to reason. And we had no mice.

  Ista took a long time to accept the fact that the Waylord had taken me under his particular charge and that I was being “educated,” a word she always spoke very carefully, as if it were in another language. And indeed it was a word to be spoken carefully under the dominion of the Alds, who thought reading a deliberate act of evil. Because of that danger, and because she herself had forgotten, as she said, whatever hen-scratching she was taught as a girl (“And what earthly use would all that be to a cook, I ask you? You just show me how to make a sauce with a pen and ink, will you!”)—Ista wasn’t entirely comfortable with my becoming educated. But it would never have occurred to her to hold it against me, or to question the Waylord’s judgment or his will. Maybe I loved loyalty so dearly because I knew this house was blessed with it.

  Anyhow, I still helped Ista with the rough work of the kitchen, and went to the market, with Bomi if she was free to go, alone if not. I stayed short and bony, and by wearing old cut-down men’s clothes I could still look fairly much like a child, or at least an unattractive boy. Street-gang boys sometimes saw I was a girl and threw stones at me—boys of my race, of Ansul, acting like filthy Alds. I hated to pass them and kept away from the places they gathered. And I hated the swaggering Ald guards posted around all the marketplaces to “keep order,” which meant to bully citizens and take whatever they liked from the vendors’ stalls without paying. I tried not to cringe when I passed them. I tried to walk slowly, ignoring them. They stood there puffed up in their blue cloaks and leather cuirasses, with their swords and clubs. They seldom looked as low as me.

  Now I have come to the important morning.

  It was late spring, four days after my seventeenth birthday. Sosta was to be married in summer and Bomi was helping her sew for her wedding—the green gown and headdress and the groom’s coat and headdress too. It was all Ista and Sosta had talked about for weeks, wedding wedding wedding, sewing sewing sewing. Even Bomi blithered about it. I’d never even tried to learn to sew, or to fall in love and want to marry, either. Some, day. Someday I’d be ready to find out about that kind of love, but it wasn’t time yet. I had to find out who I was, first. I had a promise to keep, and my dear lord to love, and a lot to learn. So I left them chattering, and went out to market alone that morning.

  It was a bright sweet day. I went down the steps of the house to the Oracle Fountain. The broad, shallow, green basin was dry and littered, and the pipe from which the water had risen stuck up jagged from the broken, defaced central sculpture. The fountain had been dry all my lifetime and long before that, but I said the blessing to the Lord of the Springs and Waters as I stood beside it. And I wondered, not for the first time, why it was called the Oracle Fountain, and then why Galvamand itself was sometimes called the Oracle House. I should ask the Waylord, I thought.

  I looked up from the dead fountain, out over the city, and saw Sul across the straits like a great white rising wave of stone and snow, one banner of mist blown northward from its crest. I thought of Adira and Marra and their ragged soldiers driven up to the icy heights, without food or fire, and how they knelt to praise the god of the mountain and the spirits of the glacier. A crow came flying to them with a spray of leaves in its beak and dropped it before Adira. They thanked the crow, offering it what little bread they had: “In the beak of black iron, the gift of green hope.” My thoughts were always with the heroes.

  I spoke praise to Sul and the Seunes, whose white manes I could see just out past the headland. I went on, speaking to the Sill Stone, and touching the street, god’s niche as I passed the corner and turned left to West Street. I’d decided to go to the Harbor Market, which was farther to carry things home from but a better market than Foothill. I was glad to be outdoors, to see the sunlight strike blue-green down into the canal and the bright shadows of the carvings on the bridges.

  The sunlight and the sea wind were a joy. As I walked I became quite certain that my gods were with me. I was fearless. I went past the Ald soldiers on guard at the marketplace as if they were wooden posts.

  Harbor Market is a broad marble pavement, with the red arcades of the Customs House on the north and east sides and the Tower of the Sea Admirals on the south; to the west it’s open to the harbor and the sea. Long, shallow marble steps with curved, carved banisters go down to the Admiralty boat-houses and the gravel beach. It was all sun and wind and white marble and blue sea that morning, and nearby were the colored awnings and umbrellas of the market stands and all the cheerful racket of the market. I passed by the market god, the round stone that represents the oldest god of the city: Lero, whose name means justice, agreement, doing right. I saluted the god openly, without even thinking of the Ald soldiers.

  I had never in my life done that. When I was ten I saw soldiers beat an elderly man and leave him bloody and unconscious on the street under the empty pedestal of a god he had saluted. No one dared go to him while the soldiers were there. I ran away crying and never knew if he had been killed or not. I had not forgotten that, but it did not matter. This was a day without fear for me. A day of blessing. A holy day.

  I went on across the square, looking at everything, for I loved the stalls and the goods and the coaxing, insulting vendors. I was heading for the fish market, but went a bit out of the way when I saw they were setting up a large tent in front of the Admirals’ Tower. I asked a boy selling dirty rock-sugar what the tent was for.

  “A great storyteller from the Uplands,” he said, “very famous. I can hold a place for you, young master.” Market boys will turn a turd into a penny, as they say.

  “I can hold my own place,” I said, and he, “Oh, it’ll be terrible crowded in no time—he’s to be here all day, a terrible famous man—half a penny to hold you a good place right up close?”

  I laughed at him and went on.

  I was tempted to go over to the tent, though. I felt like doing something foolish, like listening to a storyteller. The Alds are crazy about makers and tellers. Every rich Ald has a storyteller in his retinue, they say, and every company of soldiers too. There hadn’t been many in Ansul, the Waylord told me, before the Alds came, but t
here were more now that books were banned. A few men of my own people told stories for small change on street corners. I had stopped to listen a couple of times, but they mostly told Ald stories to get pennies from the soldiers. I didn’t like the Ald stories, all about their wars and their warriors and their tyrant god, nothing I cared a straw for.

  It was the word “Uplands” that caught me. A man from the Uplands would not be an Ald. The Uplands were far, far to the north. I’d never even heard of them or any of those distant lands until last year, when I read Eronts Great History, with its maps of all the lands of the Western Shore. The market boy repeated the word as he’d heard it spoken, without any meaning for him except somewhere-very-far-away, Even to Eront, the Uplands were mostly hearsay. I didn’t remember anything on that part of his map except a big mountain with a strange name I couldn’t bring to mind, as I made my way on past the potmenders to the fishwives.

  I bargained down a big redspot that would feed us all today; even the cats, and make fishhead soup for tomorrow. I went round the stalls and bought a fresh cheese and some coarse greens that looked good. Then before I set off home I wandered over towards the big tent to see if anything was happening yet. The crowds were thick. I saw riders above the people’s heads, and horse’s heads tossing up and down: two Ald officers. The Alds brought no women from their deserts, but they brought their fine, pretty horses, which they treated so well that it was a street joke to call the horses “soldiers’ wives.”

  People in the crowd now were trying to get out of the horses’ way, but there was some kind of commotion behind them and a good deal of confusion. Then all at once one of the horses reared up squealing and bolted, bucking stiff-legged like a colt. People in front of me pressed back to get out of its way. It came straight at me. There were people crowding from behind and I couldn’t move. The horse came at me—there was no rider on it, and the flailing reins slapped my hand as if thrown at me. I grabbed and pulled. The horse’s head came down right by my shoulder, its eye rolling wildly. That head seemed huge, it filled the world. But the horse had stopped. I shortened my grip on the rein up to the bridle and stood firm, not knowing what else to do. The horse tried to toss its head, which half lifted me off the ground, but I hung tight out of pure terror. The horse gave a great whuff through its nostrils and stood still—even pushing up against me a little as if for protection.

  All around me people were shouting and screaming, and I could only think of how to keep them from panicking the horse again. “Be quiet, be quiet,” I said foolishly to the shouting people. And as if they had heard me they began to back away, leaving a space of marble pavement empty behind the horse. In that white, sunlit space was the Ald officer, who had been thrown hard and was lying stunned, and a woman standing near him, and a lion.

  The woman and the lion stood side by side. When they moved, the clear space of pavement moved with them. The crowd had gone almost silent.

  I saw the top of some kind of carriage behind the woman and the lion. They turned towards it. The pavement appeared as if by magic in front of them as the crowd backed away. It was a little caravan wagon. The two horses hitched to it stood calmly, facing away from us. The woman opened the back door of the wagon, the lion leapt up into it, its tail disappearing in a lovely curve, and the woman latched the door. She came back at once, and the crowd backed away from her again, even without the lion.

  She knelt by the Ald officer, who was sitting up looking dizzy. She spoke to him a little, and then stood up and came to me where I was standing, still holding the horse because I didn’t dare let it go. The crowd drew back with some pushing and shoving, which scared the horse again. It jerked against my grip on the bridle, and the market basket on my arm fell open and the fish and cheese and greens all flew out, which scared the horse worse, and I could not hold it—but the woman was there. She put her hand on the horse’s neck and said something to it. It shook its head, with a kind of grumble in its chest, and stood still.

  She put out her hand and I gave her the reins. “Well done,” she said to me, “well done!” Then she said something else to the horse, close to its ear, softly, and blew a little of her breath into its nostrils. It sighed and drooped its head. I was frantically trying to pick up our food for the next two days before it was trampled on or stolen. Seeing me scrabbling on the pavement, the woman gave the horse a hard pat and bent down to help me. We tumbled the big fish and the greens into the basket, and somebody in the crowd tossed me the cheese.

  “Thank you, good people of Ansul!” the woman said in a clear voice and a foreign accent. “He deserves a reward, this boy!” And to the officer, who was now standing up shakily on the other side of his horse, she said, “This boy caught your mare, Captain. It was my lion frightened her. I ask your pardon for that.”

  “The lion, yes,” the Ald said, still dazed. He stared at her, and stared at me, and after a while dug into his belt pouch and held out something to me—a penny.

  I was fastening the clasp on my basket. I ignored him and his penny.

  “Oh, so generous, so generous,” people in the crowd murmured, and somebody crooned, “A fountain of riches!” The officer glared around at them all. He finally refocused on the woman who stood in front of him holding his horse’s reins.

  “Get your hands off her!” he said. “You—woman—it was you had that animal—a lion—”

  The woman tossed the reins at him, slapped the mare lightly, and slipped into the crowd. This time the people closed round her. In a moment I saw the roof of the wagon moving off.

  I saw the wisdom of invisibility and ducked away into the old-clothes market while the officer was still trying to remount his mare.

  The old-clothes vendor called High Hat had been watching the show, standing on her stool. She clambered down. “Used to horses, are you?” she said to me.

  “No,” I said. “Was that a lion?”

  “Whatever it is, it goes with that storyteller. And his wife. So they say. Stay to hear him. He’s the prime lord of storytellers, they say.”

  “I have to get my fish home.”

  “Ah. Fish don’t wait.” She fixed her fierce, mean little eyes on me. “Here,” she said, and flipped me something, which I caught by reflex. It was a penny. She had already turned away.

  I thanked her. I left the penny in the hollow under Lero, where people leave god-gifts and poorer people find them. I still didn’t care if the guards saw me, because I knew they wouldn’t. I was just starting up West Street away from the market, past the high red arcades of the Customs, when I heard a clip-clop and the clatter of wheels. There along Customs Street came the two horses and the caravan wagon. The lion woman was perched on the driver’s seat.

  “Lift?” she said, while the horses stopped.

  I hesitated. I almost thanked her and said no. It was different, and nothing different ever happened, so I didn’t know how to do it. And I was not easy with strangers. I was not easy with people. But the day was blessed, and to turn away blessing is to do ill. I thanked her and climbed up onto the seat beside her.

  It seemed very high.

  “Where to?”

  I pointed up West Street.

  She seemed to do nothing, not shaking the reins or clucking her tongue as I had seen drivers do, but the horses set right off. The taller horse was a fine redbrown color, almost as red as the cover of Rostan, and the smaller one was bright brown with black legs and mane and tail and a bit of a white star on her forehead. They were bigger than the Ald horses, and more peaceable-looking. Their ears went back and forth, listening constantly; it was pleasant to watch that.

  We went along some blocks without speaking. It was interesting to look down the canals, to see the bridges, the facades and windows of buildings from this height, and people walking along, the way people on horseback see them, looking down on them. I found it made me feel superior.

  “The lion is—back there—in the wagon?” I asked at last.

  “Halflion,” she said.


  “From the Asudar desert!” When she said the word “halflion,” I remembered it and the picture from the Great History.

  “Right,” she said, with a glance at me. “That’s probably why it spooked the mare. She knew what it was.”

  “But you aren’t an Ald,” I said, suddenly fearing she was, even though she was dark-skinned and dark-eyed and couldn’t be.

  “I’m from the Uplands.”

  “In the far north!” I said, and then could have bitten my tongue in half.

  She glanced at me sidelong and I waited for her to accuse me of reading books. But that was not what she had noticed.

  “You aren’t a boy,” she said. “Oh, I am stupid.”

  “No, I dress like a boy, because… “I stopped.

  She nodded, meaning no need to explain.

  “So how did you learn to handle horses?” she asked.

  “I didn’t. I never touched a horse before.”

  She whistled. She had a little, sweet whistle, like a small bird. “Well, then you have the knack, or the luck!”

  Her smile was so pleasant I wanted to tell her that it was the luck, that Lero and Luck himself, the deaf god, were giving me a holy day, but I was afraid of saying too much.

  “I thought you’d be able to take me to a good stable for these two, you see. I thought you were a stableboy. You were as quick and cool as any old hostler I ever saw.”

  “Well, the horse just came at me.”

  “It came to you,” she said.

  We clip-clop-rattled on for another block. “We have a stable,” I said.

  She laughed. “Aha!”

  “I’d have to ask.”

  “Of course.”

  “There aren’t any horses in it. Or feed, or anything. Not since—not for years. It’s clean, though. There’s some straw. For the cats.” Every time I opened my mouth I talked too much. I clenched my teeth.

  “You’re very kind. If it isn’t convenient, never mind. We can find a place. The fact is, the Gand has offered us the use of his stables. But I’d rather not be beholden to the Gand.” And she shot me a glance.