Misery's Child (The Cadian Chronicles) (2 page)

She had only
recently realized that Yanna meant for her to commit the entire thing to
memory—all five hundred and forty pages! Was it even possible for any human
being to accomplish such a feat?

There were other
books in the library, of course. Yanna carefully selected the ones for
Lillitha’s study: the collected writings of Shallanoma Brighid, various volumes
of histories by long-dead shallans and cadia,
Meditations for a Daughter
by Vidor Asalon. Shallanoma Brighid was
her favorite; the Favored Mother had a plain way of speaking that quieted some
of her fears.

None of the other
books were as ornate as this one. The others were bound in plain leather, some
even in wood, bereft of gold and glittering stones. The Book of Belah was the
most the precious thing her family still possessed. The volume was a relic from
the days when House Kirrisian was strong and bright and filled with fine
things, before her grandfather Baedon had gambled away everything but his name
and this crumbling house at
the
gaming tables in Rica.
No matter how carefully her mother might rearrange the library shelves to
camouflage their dwindling numbers, the empty spots were mute reminders of other
volumes sold to pay for seed, cloth or winter fuel.

The Book of Belah
belonged to her now. Even her father had to ask her permission to read it.
Sometimes she blinked tears from her eyes as he rapped cautiously on the door
to her chamber and waited for her to bid him enter. She missed the blustery,
raucous father who used to bounce on her bed and tell her the gory
calla-mundies
he remembered from his own
childhood, just to hear her squeal with delight and feigned horror. But he
rarely came to visit her tower anymore. And no one but her maidservant, her
sister Marta or her mother was allowed into Lillitha’s company without
Yannamarie hovering in the background.

She gazed out the
window, resting her forehead against the cool, heavy stone of the casement. She
loved the view from this window, so high above the rest of the house that she
could see all the way to the main road. On a particularly bright and clear day
like today, she could even make out the blue-green ribbon of the Far Sea on the
horizon. And if she closed her eyes and imagined hard enough, she could see the
tall masts of the ships in the harbor, ships that used to belong to her family.

Now those same
ships sailed under the flag of the Danaus, a lowborn family whose patriarch had
been a better gamer than Rowle the Second.

It was no use to
dwell on such things, however. Things were as they were, as Yannamarie was fond
of saying. Most of the time, Lillitha saw the sense of that attitude; oh, but
sometimes it was difficult to keep her imagination from wandering down paths
best left unexplored.

A ramrod-straight
figure strode across the courtyard below, her back to the window. Lillitha
smiled; she would have recognized that figure even without the billowing black
robes. Not even her father was as tall as Yannamarie, and not even her brother
Jonil could have mustered one iota of the regal bearing of her cadia-techa. And
Jonil had been proud, even arrogant. But it was not fitting to think ill of the
dead. She prayed, almost at reflex.

Leah, mother of Belah, please
have
mercy on my brother and guide his soul to the shores of Oman’s Great Isle.

Before Yannamarie
arrived, Lillitha would have prayed directly to Oman. But the Book of the
Shallan which Yanna brought with her said a woman should pray to the mother of
Oman’s most favored prophet, since it was through motherhood that a woman could
hope to contribute to the greater glory of Oman.

“Wouldn’t it be
more expedient,” Lillitha had once asked timidly, “to pray straight away to
Oman Himself? Won’t He hear me just as well?”

She’d expected to
be reprimanded for such a question, but couldn’t help herself. Being told she
could only talk to Mother Leah made her feel somehow rebuked, as if she’d been
forward at the dinner table in front of guests. Obedience, even subservience,
came naturally to Lillitha, but she had always thought Oman heard everything,
even her small voice.

But Yanna did not
rebuke her. For a long moment, the cadia said nothing. Her thin line of a mouth
tightened until Lillitha was afraid she’d offended the woman beyond even
speech. Then Yanna sighed and frowned.

“The Shallan is
the spiritual teacher of all Omani,” she’d said finally. “He is a wise man who
speaks for Oman, but he is still a man.”

Lillitha waited
for further explanation, but none came. Yanna did not pontificate. Her wisdom
was short and to the point. She expected Lillitha to figure it out on her own.

The sight of Yanna
crossing the courtyard was the sign she’d been waiting for. She closed the Book
of Belah and laid it aside gently,
then
groped under
the cushion of the window seat for the volume she’d hidden there last night.

She’d barely
progressed two pages before the door opened and startled her so badly that she
dropped the book.

Edlin jumped as
well, startled by her mistress’ reaction. Both girls burst into giggles, Edlin
covering her mouth with both hands as if to hold the sound inside her.

They were the same
age, both just beginning to blossom in their fifteen summer, though it was
clear that Edlin’s pert prettiness—the clear complexion, warm gray-green
eyes and ready smile—was a gift of fleeting youth, the kind that faded
with time. Edlin’s features, under the flush of innocence that now graced her
firm cheeks, were coarse, a testament to her common lineage just as surely as
Lillitha’s bespoke a noble birth. Having grown up together, inseparable since
either could remember, the two girls were oblivious to the differences in their
clothing and station, a fact that Ersala chided them about often enough.

Edlin stooped and
picked the book up from the floor, her laughter suddenly caught in a shocked
intake of breath.

“Ooh! Lucky for
you I’m not Yannamarie! She’ll skin you alive if she catches you with this!
Where ever did you get a volume of Gideon’s love poems?”

Lillitha giggled. Edlin
scooted into the window seat with her mistress and together they turned the
pages, their shoulders pressed together.

“I found it in the
library—”

“And Yanna let you
take it?”

“Of course not,
silly goose! I hid it in my skirts while she was looking for something else.”

“Have you read any
of it yet? Is it as bad as they say?”

“I read it through
once last night after everyone went to bed. But I was so afraid someone would
see the light burning that I mostly skimmed it. But Edlin! It’s so wonderful!
Gideon’s poems are beautiful, they’re not coarse at all, listen—”

Lillitha took the
volume and jumped nimbly to her feet, spinning to face her companion. She
cleared her throat just once as she dimpled in a kittenish smile.

"Oh, my dearest love, your alabaster form

           
Teaches
the darma perfection

As the softness of your sighs against my cheek

           
Teaches
mercy to the wind.

Would that I could gather you into my cushions and

           
Teach
thee mercy on my flesh—”

Edlin shrieked.
Lillitha collapsed beside her again.

“The whole thing
is one gigantic poem, almost like the Book of Belah,” Lillitha explained in a
hurried whisper. “Gideon meets Homa and falls in love with her, but she is
already married to someone else—”

“Who? Is he
handsome?”

Lillitha wrinkled
her nose. “Hardly. Her husband’s name is Bogrode. No one named Bogrode could
possibly be handsome. Besides, Homa says he smells of ginger lineament and sour
cheese—”

Edlin made a face.

“And he’s old.
Gideon is young and beautiful, at least that’s how Homa describes him in a song
she sings to him—”

“She
sings
to him?”

She nodded
vigorously, enjoying Edlin’s shock. Women—at least the nice
ones—did not sing love songs. Low, common men might sing in the taverns,
but even those songs were about Oman or Belah and his warriors. Only the bene
priests and the cadia in the Temple of Oman sang and only then for the most
sacred of occasions. Song was too sacred for carnal purposes.

Lillitha turned
the book back to the first page, proceeding slowly so that Edlin could read
along with her. She’d taught her friend to read in secret, but because Edlin
rarely got the chance to put her knowledge to use, she labored over the longer
words.

“I thought I’d
find you in here.” Ersala stood in the doorway, scowling to hide her amusement
at their stricken expressions. If she scolded the girls too often about
remembering their places, it was only because she wanted to spare them both
grief
later. The real world would intrude into their
friendship soon enough.
 

Her scowl deepened
in real concern, however, as Lillitha scrambled to her feet. Her sharp eyes did
not miss the way her daughter thrust something into the folds of her voluminous
skirts. Her daughter wore a guilty expression she had not seen since Lillitha
was eight summers and caught red-handed pitching barley biscuits out of this
same tower window at her brothers.

“Edlin, child,
your mother needs you in the kitchen,” she said.

She stood silently
as Edlin scurried past her,
then
regarded her daughter
solemnly.

“So tell me,
child, what is it so secret that you must hide it from your own muma, eh?”

Lillitha’s hand
shot forward, holding out the forbidden book. The girl looked at the floor,
readying herself for the punishment she knew she deserved.

Her mother
surprised her by laughing.

“Gideon’s
Gilded Darma
, is it?” Ersala took the
volume and her face softened, allowing Lillitha a glimpse of the beauty her
mother had once been. Such moments tugged at Lillitha’s heart, burning her with
a grief she did not fully understand. “Where on Oman’s blessed earth did you
find this?”

“In the library.
It was pushed up in the back behind the Histories.”

“I wondered where
this had gotten to.” Ersala sat down and patted the cushion beside her.
Lillitha sat down. “Your father gave this volume to me as a wedding gift.”

“Father?”

“Oh, your father
was quite the dashing romantic in those days,” Ersala said, a small smile
playing at the corners of her mouth. “And I was young once myself.”

Young and foolish and frightened,
Ersala thought. Wed to a man in another province
that she had seen only once before the joining ceremony. But she had been so
lucky. Rowle was a good man of surprising wisdom and patience,
who
’d learned enough about women to know that winning his
bride’s heart was more important than just taking her body. On
their
joining night, he’d sat across the room from her and
read the love poems aloud until she’d fallen asleep. As he’d intended, the
poetry gave the uncertain girl some idea of what was to come, and even hinted
that it could be quite enjoyable. After three nights of this, Ersala had been
the one to invite him into their marriage bed.

Ersala studied her
daughter’s downcast eyes and the crescent of those long, darkly golden lashes
against the perfect blush of her cheeks, the way her hands lay meekly clasped
in her lap. Sometimes she didn’t know what frightened her the most: her
daughter’s heartbreaking beauty or the gentleness and complete lack of guile
with which Lillitha surrendered herself. The older woman put an arm around her
shoulders.

“I am sorry, muma.
Truly.”

“I should be angry
with you. But ’tis young you are and I know you meant no harm. Lucky I am that
your
only vice is a passion for good books. But you know
that this volume is not at all suitable for you.”

“Because I am too
young?”

Ersala sighed.
“Because you are too young, and because you are different, Lillitha. A woman’s
life is never easy, and the path we have chosen for you will deny you some
things. I have never tried to hide that from you, have I?”

“No, muma.”

“Many things that
common women enjoy may not come to you at all, but in their place will come
other things that even I cannot dream of.”

She told her again
of the palace’s splendor, its marble halls that stretched as far as the eye
could see, of the gilded columns and the
carvings which
told the story of their people, the Omani. A place where beauty and knowledge
was sacred, where dirt and filth never intruded, where no one ever lay in bed
at night unable to sleep for the gnawing hunger in their stomach, where babies
never froze to death for lack of heat.

As she spoke,
Ersala clasped her daughter’s hands and gave them a reassuring squeeze.

Lillitha looked
down, unable to ignore the hard, red calluses on her mother’s hands against her
own soft and useless flesh.