Neveryona (17 page)

Some chairs stood along one wall, a few piled one on another. Was this some kind of balcony storeroom in which she’d been housed? Well, it wasn’t a dungeon. All the dungeons Pryn had ever heard of were in basements, not on balconies.

How to get out? Simply walking through the door again seemed impossible, and the window, from which she could see the garden, was too high to jump.

There was a knock.

Startled, Pryn looked around.

The door pulled slowly open; Radiant Jade, holding a tray, edged in. She stood there for seconds with a very uncertain smile. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last, ‘but almost all the servants except cook, gardener, and a few of the kitchen help have gone. Really, it’s some very nice fruit, though.’ The barbarian accent was so light Pryn kept losing it – and listening the harder for its faint feathering on the
s
’s and
r
’s. ‘Rylla said to stop my nonsense and bring you some fruit … and some honey with it. But myself, I never take honey with my fruit in the morning – still, if you want, I’ll go back …?’

‘Oh, thank you,’ Pryn said. ‘No, I don’t need any,’ and thought how nice it might have been to have had some.

‘You’re not used to servants, are you?’ The secretary crossed the room and put the tray down on the window
ledge. ‘Well, neither was Ini when she first came. But she got used to them fast enough. Just in time for them all to leave, too. So this morning everyone must double as house
and
grounds staff – nor are they happy about it, either. I won’t be surprised if we lose another today. But not cook, though. Not gardener.’ While she’d been speaking, she’d been looking out the window. Here she leaned out further. ‘Gya and gardener are faithful.’

‘Why … have they left?’ Pryn ventured. She was not really being disingenuous but simply felt that in uncertain situations it was better to explore the already familiar. ‘What do
you
think the reason is?’

‘You can’t see it from here as well as you can from my room.’ (Pryn was not sure if that were part of an answer – or even if her questions had been heard.) ‘But it’s there, nevertheless.’

Pryn rose and went to the window. ‘What are you looking at?’

‘There.’ Radiant Jade pointed. ‘The Liberator’s headquarters.’

Leaning over the wide ledge, Pryn could see, across the wall at the end of the garden, somewhere off in the next yard, the cracked balustrade with its ambling soldiers.

‘I despair of having to replace cook. Training a new housekeeper will be bad enough – though heaven knows I’ve done it before. Still, cook is a position you don’t want to keep reestablishing in a house like this. But gardener is faithful – Gya, gardener, and me!’ She pulled her head back in. ‘Isn’t it interesting: it takes much less to liberate servants than it does slaves. For servants, it seems, all you have to do is move in next door.’ Jade turned her back to the sill.

Pryn took up a yellow peach from the blue bowl on the tray and turned too, biting.

‘Do you think he’s going to liberate us here?’ The
secretary folded her arms and stepped away, looking quite on edge, ‘I wonder if he thinks that simply by moving in next door, he can loosen
her
grip on the subjects she rules?’

‘The Empress …?’ Pryn took another bite.

Radiant Jade glanced back with a kind of bafflement that made the girl simply feel stupid. ‘… rules
us
? Here? In
this
house?’

‘… Madame Keyne?’ Pryn offered.

The secretary shook her head with a tragic little grimace. ‘You think
she
is ruler here …?’ Suddenly another thought seized her, and she dropped her arms and straightened her back.

Pryn thought she was about to leave and said: ‘You’re a barbarian, aren’t you?’ She took a third bite of the peach, which, for all its size and color, was completely unripe. The flesh was as hard – and as tasteless – as raw potato.

‘Yes.’ Apparently Jade was not leaving but only waiting to change the subject.

‘Do you speak the barbarian language?’

‘Till I was seven years old, I spoke nothing else.’ She walked around the bed once and then sat on the foot, her hands on the knees of her green skirt.

Half sitting on the sill, Pryn asked, ‘Do you … know what
nivu
means?’

Amusement joined the conflicting emotions already on Jade’s face. ‘Where did you hear a word like that? Did you hear some barbarian call our home here a
chatja nivu
?’

‘I don’t … remember if that was the phrase,’ Pryn said, quite sure it wasn’t. ‘And I don’t think they were talking about Madame Keyne. What would it mean if I had?’

‘
Chatja nivu
means a house where the women refuse to
cook for men. But
that
doesn’t tell you much, does it!’ Radiant Jade laughed, ‘In many barbarian villages, ones that still have very little contact with Nevèrÿon, there’re lots of customs that more civilized folk are likely to think of as magic. In most tribes, for example, work is very strictly divided between the sexes. Only men can kill certain animals. Only women can kill certain others. Lashing together the thatch for the roof of a new hut is work only men may do. Cooking food – and no one may eat uncooked food in the south – is work only done by women. But sometimes when a husband sufficiently angers his wife, by refusing to do his own work, or by making love to another woman, the wife may refuse to cook for him. Then the man must wander about the village, begging other women to cook. And if no woman will – and they usually won’t if his wife has real reason and simply isn’t sick or busy – he will finally starve to death and die.’

Pryn’s eyes widened; she took another bite of hard peach.

“When a woman refuses to cook for a man, that, in my language,
is nivu.’

‘But I’ve heard the word on the street,’ Pryn said, ‘I mean, here in the city. The barbarian women talk of
nivu
this and
nivu
that.
All
the barbarian women in Kolhari can’t be starving their husbands …?’

Jade laughed again. ‘Customs change when people come to the city – in most barbarian tribes customs have changed well before people leave. Here, today, on the streets of Kolhari,
nivu
may mean any lack of support a woman may show a man. Even the silliest disagreement may be spoken of with the word – in the city, I think there are always such disagreements. But you see, it also has the other meaning that is older and more powerful.’ Jade turned her hands back and forth on her knees, ‘In our
own land, it is one of the most powerful of women’s words – and here in yours, it has become one of the most trivial. Well, it is still a good word for you to know, even if you are not a barbarian – since you have found refuge in a
chatja nivu.’

‘Doesn’t the cook in this house cook food for the gardener?’

‘Yes.’

‘And still this would be called a … a
chatja nivu?’

‘Your accent is very good.’ Radiant Jade moved her head a bit to the side. ‘But as I said,
nivu
does not
have
to refer to cooking.’

Pryn was about to let herself smile, when Radiant Jade said:

‘You know I’m not happy you’re here. I think it was dreadful, dragging you off like that. But Rylla is impulsive.’

‘I might not be alive if she weren’t!’

‘So I’ve heard.’

Despite the fruit’s hardness, Pryn’s teeth, in the next bite, touched pit. ‘I suppose I’m not that happy to be here either. I don’t understand
why
I’m here. I know Madame Keyne likes to influence people and events. But if you’re going to influence people, don’t you think you should do it with their consent?’

The secretary pursed her lips. ‘You’re better off here than you would be running loose in the streets.’

‘Maybe,’ Pryn said. ‘Probably, even. But still, nobody seems to want to tell me
why
I’m here.’

‘Rylla – Madame Keyne – has simply … taken an interest in you.’

‘But her interest is so confusing,’ Pryn persisted. ‘Why me in particular? And why does she keep that frightening creature downstairs in her employ? Why are
you
here …?’

Toying with the scarf at her waist, Radiant Jade suddenly stood and began to pace the room, as though she were the one trapped – the door still stood wide. ‘Me? Why am
I
here? But I
shouldn’t
be!’ As she paced, she twisted the cloth harder, ‘I should be
any
where else! I should be in the forests, spearing hyenas. I should be in the mountains, hurtling onto the backs of winged worms to soar above the peaks. I should be on the sea, in a skiff, reaching to grasp the flying fish in my naked fingers. I should be – ’ She stopped suddenly and looked down – ‘in some little barbarian village, like the one where I was born, ignorant, dirty, illiterate … not in this great, confining city, in this great, confining house.’

Pryn wondered if she should mention her own dragon riding, or the part it had played in bringing her here. What she finally said was: ‘Why don’t you leave?’

Jade looked up.

‘You say the other servants have gone.’

‘With me –’ the secretary blinked – ‘it’s different. Rylla needs me.’ The scarf-wringing ceased. ‘She can’t get along without me. Sometimes I
want
to leave …’

Pryn felt a kind of sympathy with the distress of this woman whom she had watched earlier work and smile. But she also felt an equal frustration before that distress’s indecipherable motive, a motive that insisted on remaining as hidden as the one behind Pryn’s own presence. ‘How long have you been here?’. Pryn asked.

‘Oh, forever … Many years – three years.’ Jade sighed. ‘But it seems like forever.’

‘Did Madame Keyne … take an interest in you?’

Jade looked surprised, ‘I never thought of it in those terms before. But you might say she did. Yes, you might very well say just that.’

‘Did she take an interest in the Wild Ini too?’ Pryn
asked eagerly, for she thought she detected the beginnings of a pattern.

‘An interest?’ From surprise, the secretary’s face moved to total astonishment, ‘In the little Viper? I think she rather hates her and would like to see her dead!’

‘But hasn’t Madame Keyne hired her?’

Jade narrowed her eyes. ‘Yes.’ She looked down at her lap. ‘At last. Or at any rate, she has promised to – today. But it’s only because you’re here that she’s consented.’ Jade blinked at her hands.

While she was waiting, Pryn put the last of the hard peach back on the tray, picked up a pear and bit it. It was even harder.

Pryn put the pear down, moved the tray of fruit to the window’s side, turned, and sat on the sill. ‘How did you meet Madame Keyne? I mean, how did she first … take an interest?’

At the edge of the secretary’s lowered face, Pryn saw the expression change. When the face came up, it was smiling – which was not what Pryn had expected. ‘How did we meet?’ The fingers left the knees to mesh between them. Radiant Jade had very strong, reassuring hands, for all their current nervousness, ‘It wasn’t very complicated. When I left my little village, way in the south, I thought to come north to the city, because I had heard there was less chance for a lone woman to be taken slave here than in the smaller towns and holds.’

‘Did you ever
see
any slavers when you were traveling?’ Pryn asked, ‘I did. Three times.’

‘Yes – I saw slavers. And I hid by the side of the road till they passed.’

‘Me too!’ Outside, some cloud had pulled from the sun. Pryn felt her back warm; on the floor, both sides of her shadow, tiles reddened. ‘But how did you come here – I mean to this house?’

‘When I came to the city, the first job I took – ‘ the secretary glanced behind her at the door, then looked back to Pryn – ‘was with a desert man who lived in the Spur and who brought in laundry from the rest of the city – and I and a dozen other barbarian women washed it. I hated the job and would take every opportunity to sneak off to the cedar groves – the place the Empress designated a public park two years ago. Once, when I was sitting on one of the benches, a woman – our cook here, Gya – came to talk to me and told me her mistress, who had occasionally seen me there, wished to make my acquaintance. I went with her – and met Madame Keyne. She took me to a tavern, I remember, on the waterfront; and in the curtained alcove for women at the back she bought me many mugs of cider. I thought it all terribly elegant at the time. Then she invited me to dine with her, here at her home, the same evening. When she first learned I was a laundress, she promised to give me all her laundry to do – then she found out I could read and write.’ Radiant Jade sat back and laughed. ‘So she made me her secretary – and for the next six months sent her laundry to the man in the Spur. She said she felt guilty for taking me away, though few of his girls ever worked for him more than two months anyway.’

Pryn laughed too. ‘Madame Keyne sounds like a very kind woman.’

‘Oh, she is!’ exclaimed Jade. ‘She is! Rylla is kindness itself! That’s why I feel so awful, so guilty! It isn’t fair – I tell myself that all the time. And yet there’s nothing to be done. There are some situations in which we are not our own masters. I think she knows that – I know she does. How could she not know it if she brought me here? If she brought you?’

These questions seemed to take things back into the discomfort and confusion from which, a moment ago,