Sword and Verse (3 page)

I must have done something right, though, because at the end of it, Laiyonea ke Tirit, the prince's Tutor, tied a green sash around my waist and announced that the oracle of the gods had chosen me to be the new Tutor-in-training.

From earth and stone Gyotia made Lanea, goddess of the home, to be his wife. He lay with her, and Qora was born. Gyotia, pleased, named his son god of the fields.

But the fire of the mountains had not died after Gyotia's emergence. His keen eyes spied a figure springing from it: Sotia, goddess of wisdom.

BRIGHT SUN REFLECTED
off the paving stones in the Adytum, the sacred courtyard where we worked, but the canopies kept the glare off our pages. I inked my quill and carefully set it to the paper.

It had been exactly one year since I had become Tutor-in-training, and had entered this place in my Tutor's dress of white and green, terrified and exhilarated at the idea of learning to write. I'd spent each day with hundreds of symbols swimming before my eyes, but whenever Laiyonea had made me go through my work and name the word that went with each symbol, Prince Mati had always mouthed the ones I forgot across the table.

I had learned much, mastering the four thousand and eighty-seven lower order symbols. A more effusive teacher might even say that I had done extraordinarily well in such a short time.

“Sloppy,” snapped Laiyonea, leaning across the table to
examine my tenth attempt at the symbol
gift
. “Do it again.”

It had also been exactly one year since Tyasha ke Demit and her accomplices lay dying on a stage outside the Temple of Aqil, their hands removed and harsh symbols branded all over their bodies. No one spoke of it, but the knowledge of this sober anniversary hung over the Adytum like the heat of the midday sun. Laiyonea had been harder to please than usual, and Prince Mati, normally full of jokes and good humor, had kept his head bent quietly over his paper for the better part of an hour.

I held in a sigh and dipped my quill again.
Gift
was my least favorite of all the many symbols I had learned so far, not just because it took me a Shining and a Veiling—a full cycle of the night sky—to get it right even once. The last line always wanted to curve up instead of down.

Os
, came my father's voice in my memory. That was what he had called a similar symbol, on the island. At first I fought the sound in my mind; I did not understand why the symbols each stood for a word here, instead of a sound as my father's writing had. Why would the writing mean different things? The Arnathim and Qilarites spoke the same tongue—our ancestors, as the Qilarites liked to remind us, had been banished from Qilara long ago for the crime of believing that the writing of the gods should be available to everyone.

But then, the Qilarite lower order and higher order scripts also represented the same spoken language; it was just the writing systems, the gods' gifts, that were different, with the more powerful higher order writing serving the king in his role as High Priest of Gyotia. The higher order symbols were used only to
communicate with the gods.

So where did my father's writing system fit in?

I pushed those thoughts away; they wouldn't help me get this symbol right. Carefully I placed the first line, then exhaled as I wrote the next, and the next. The last line curved down just as it should. I lifted my quill, unable to hide my smile.

Laiyonea nodded her approval. “Now fifty times more to make it stick.”

Beside me, Prince Mati snickered sympathetically.
He'd
never had to write anything fifty times to make it stick—his writing always flowed off the quill, quick and polished and lovely. But then, he'd been studying here in the Adytum since the age of four.

Prince Mati also didn't have the rather unfair disadvantage of having to study next to himself. Realizing how close we sat on the bench, I scooted away from him and swung my hair forward to hide my blush. He'd always been kind to me, I told myself, that was all it was. It wouldn't do to forget my place. I was a Tutor now, but no less a slave.

Laiyonea tapped the prince's hand with her quill. “A little more effort from you wouldn't hurt, Mati,” she said. “Raisa's showing you up.”

I peeked through my curtain of hair at the prince. He only bent back over his paper. No one outside the Adytum would believe that an Arnath slave spoke to the prince like that, but Laiyonea was the prince's Tutor, so he had to listen to her.

Would I speak that way, when I became Tutor to the next prince?
You'll never find out if you don't master all the symbols
, I admonished myself. I tapped my quill nervously against the inkpot.

I worked carefully, starting over each time I botched a symbol, grateful for the breeze off the ocean that stirred my hair. At the far end of the courtyard, asotis cooed on their perch. Above us, the enormous stone face of Gyotia, king of the gods, stared out over the Olsunal, the sea-without-memory.

When Laiyonea looked over the prince's finished writing, she pointed out two errors, then said sternly, “I expect that you will not let the pantomime distract you from your work.” The Festival of Aqil was coming up, and the highest born sixteen-year-old boy of the Scholar class traditionally played Aqil in the dramatization of the story of the gods. This year it was Prince Mati's turn. I was looking forward to the festival; I hadn't been out of the palace since becoming Tutor-in-training, but surely everyone in the City of Kings would attend the pantomime if the prince was in it.

The prince mumbled something that I didn't catch.

Laiyonea lowered her voice, though no one could have heard us from the beach far below. “Your father told you?”

The edge in her voice made me look up—and the fierce gaze she sent me made me look right back down.

“Yes,” said the prince, subdued. “I have to find someone else to play Sotia.”

So one of the Qilarite girls had dropped out—not exactly surprising. No Qilarite girl from a noble Scholar family would want to play the displaced goddess of wisdom, the goddess worshipped by the Arnathim. Whichever unlucky girl played Sotia would spend most of the pantomime on the ground, bound and gagged, with Prince Mati as Aqil standing with one foot on her back. Just
like the statues found all over the city.

“Hmm,” said Laiyonea. “The War Minister's granddaughter could do it . . .”

I began a new row of symbols and let her voice fade into the background. Maybe today I would get up the courage to ask Laiyonea when I could start the higher order symbols, the ones known only to the king and prince and Tutors. Then I would be that much closer to knowing—

“Actually,” said Prince Mati, breaking into my thoughts, “I thought Raisa could do it.”

My quill slipped, ruining a whole line. I stared at him, but surely my expression of disbelief was mild compared to Laiyonea's. The prince's face fell. “S'just an idea,” he mumbled, playing with his quill.

Laiyonea cleared her throat. “Raisa is too young.”

“She's almost sixteen!” the prince protested. “The Gamo twins are only thirteen, and they're doing it.”

Laiyonea's nostrils flared. “Your father would never agree, today of all days—”

The prince tensed, but he looked up at Laiyonea from under long black lashes. “He would if you suggested it,” he said. Even I knew he was right—whatever typical anti-Arnath prejudice King Tyno felt, he relied on Laiyonea more than any of his advisers on the Scholars Council. He often called her to attend council meetings; even Tyasha's treason had not changed that. But then, Laiyonea and the king had grown up together, studied side by side in the Adytum themselves. By all accounts, Prince Mati and Tyasha had once been just as close.

Had Tyasha been as protective of Prince Mati as Laiyonea seemed to be of the king? Tyasha had been seven years older than the prince, after all. She'd been selected as a young child, and Laiyonea had presented her as a wedding gift to the king and queen before Mati's birth. The fact that I was younger than the prince whose son I would teach was but one of the peculiarities of my situation.

Laiyonea pursed her lips. “You haven't asked if Raisa
wants
to do the pantomime.”

The prince turned to me quickly. I couldn't avoid the impact of his dark eyes. “Do you?” he asked, so enthusiastically that it was hard to remember why I
didn't
want to. “Come on, it'll be fun. Time away from studying . . .”

I frowned. Time away from studying meant it would be that much longer before Laiyonea felt I was ready for the higher order symbols. I opened my mouth, but, as if sensing my refusal, the prince swiftly said, “Just think about it, all right?” He gave me a pleading look.

I nodded and looked down, willing my pulse to slow. I'd accepted long ago that the impossible feelings he stirred in me were nothing but a distraction, but that didn't stop them rearing up when I least expected them.

Abruptly, Laiyonea gathered our papers and crossed the courtyard to slip them into the firepit. I started to protest—I hadn't finished writing
gift
fifty times, and she hadn't checked my work yet!—but she spoke over me as she returned to the table.

“I need to step away,” she said. “Raisa, write out the last fifty
tensets, twenty times each. Mati, you continue the story of Aqil's quill.”

I sighed and flexed my hand as the gate closed behind her.

“You're not even considering saying yes, are you?” said Prince Mati. I steeled myself before I looked into his eyes this time, but I wasn't prepared for the hurt I saw there.

“I never said that.” I couldn't understand why he didn't just order me to do it. Both Laiyonea and the prince acted as if it were my choice. Was that what it meant to be a Tutor, that I could say no?

“I just thought that
you
would understand,” said the prince, turning back to his paper.

“Understand what?”

His quill stabbed the page as he spoke. “You know how my father is. If I can't find someone to take Hailena's place . . .”

My hand actually rose as if to touch his shoulder. I forced it back to my lap. It wasn't fair that Mati worked so hard, and his father never saw it. The king viewed his son's kindness and humor as frivolity, and rarely missed a chance to tell him so. I wondered if things might have been different, had the queen survived the illness that took her when Mati was a toddler.

I cleared my throat. “None of the Scholar girls want to play Sotia?”

“Oh, Hailena wanted to do it. The Trade Minister learned that Hailena's father had been selling weapons to the Resistance. Someone inside the ministry tipped off the family and they escaped yesterday.”

My mouth dropped open. I'd heard whispers about the Arnath
Resistance ever since I had come to the palace as a frightened six-year-old, but the executions of Tyasha and her accomplices last year had supposedly shut it down. So it was shocking enough that there even was a Resistance for the man to sell weapons to, but to find that a Qilarite Scholar was supporting the Arnath rebellion right under the king's nose! That was inconceivable.

“So,” continued the prince, “I thought I'd better have someone I can trust up there with me, someone I like. And . . . you were the first person I thought of. I know you won't say anything stupid to the High Priest of Aqil or irritate the eastern vizier's son. You always think so hard about everything.” He laughed. “See, you're doing it now.” He touched my forehead, which was furrowed as I processed his unexpected compliment. His fingers sent jolts of lightning across my skin. I leaned away in surprise, and he snatched his hand back, his cheeks reddening.

As I stared, too shocked to speak, he picked up his quill and dashed off a few symbols. He forced a laugh and bumped my elbow with his. “And you're not whiney like Soraya Gamo and her sisters. You should have seen them at the first practice. Soraya kept complaining that the air was too wet and her hair was going to curl like a—” He broke off abruptly.

I grabbed my quill and started writing again, pretending not to understand what he'd been about to say. Soraya Gamo had a sheet of straight, black Qilarite hair. Of course she wouldn't want her hair to curl like an Arnath's—like a slave's.

Prince Mati cleared his throat. “I'd really like it if you'd do it,” he said quietly.

My quill slowed. There was no part of me that wanted to
participate in the pantomime—the thought of acting out Sotia's punishment while the whole city looked on made my stomach churn. But a larger part than I cared to admit wanted to please the prince.

“I know you don't want to,” the prince went on, “but what if I did something for you in return? I could get Father to let you go to the First Shining Festival, or sharpen quills for you, or . . . I don't know, what do you want, Raisa?”

No one had ever asked me that before, especially not with that serious expression, like he was actually interested in the answer. Did
I
even know what I wanted?

Freedom.
Not the answer he was expecting, and anyway, not exactly true—if I weren't a slave, I wouldn't be Tutor-in-training, and I wouldn't learn the higher order symbols. . . .

So there it was. But I was afraid to say it—would he mock me? I couldn't stand that, not from Prince Mati.

I realized I was mangling my quill, and my left hand was covered in ink. I grabbed a blotting cloth and spoke down to it as I wiped my fingers. “I want to learn the higher order writing.”

I peeked up at his face; his brows drew together and his head tilted to the side. I cursed myself. If he guessed why I wanted it . . .

“Laiyonea thinks you're not ready,” he said slowly. “Why are you so eager to start on the higher order?”

“Oh,” I said, “I'll just feel . . . safer . . . once I know them all.” It was true enough. The more I knew, the less likely it was that I would be removed, as long as I didn't do anything stupid.

Tyasha ke Demit's name practically blew on the air around us.
Prince Mati grimaced and nodded. “Makes sense,” he mumbled. His quill scratched over his paper. “All right,” he said at last. “If you do the pantomime, I'll . . . teach you myself.”