The Ordinary (29 page)

“I knew who you meant the first time,” Erinthal said, lowering the last of the lashing ropes and reaching for his ring of keys. He managed to move with a wounded air at her lack of faith. “I may be younger than you, but I know a good many things.”

“Yes, Erinthal, I know you do, and I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. And of course I'd expect you to take all this to heart since your chief charm as a companion is your remarkable self-centeredness. Be a dear and bring me the box, please.”

“Want to drum your fingers on it a bit, do you?” He pretended to hide a smirk as he lifted the polished, carved wood out of the depths of the trunk.

She laughed. As soon as she held the weight in her lap, her feeling of anxiety eased a bit and she drummed her fingertips along the polished top, on the carvings of the Signs of the House of Imhonyy, which was the King's House. The box showed no hint of its age, the carvings crisp, its edges sharp, no metalwork other than the simple hinges, and those as bright as brand-new. He had liked to carve, to work wood with his hands; why did Malin remember that? Could the King have carved the box himself?

She listened, as she often had, for signs of the magic that kept the box sealed shut, and heard, as ever, nothing. Some of the Malei runes she recognized, but others were shifted out of shape and she had no idea what they spelled. The box was safe from her this afternoon, as always. She had been serious about that much of the banter with Erinthal; she would read the book when she could open the box on her own. She sat with it, staring at the fire that would soon need tending, listening to the voice of her uncle in the airs around the Winter House, as Erinthal puttered from trunk to wardrobe, careful and meticulous in his unpacking. He was singing “Nine Names” under his breath; she could feel the shifting patterns of the song in the background of her own thought.

Still she could feel the tickle of the veiled Tervan in her head. The presence made her restless, and she set down the box on her worktable. “I'm going for a walk,” she said.

Erinthal was still humming and nodded absently, and she let herself out the door.

She thought about veiling herself, then simply pulled the hood of her cloak over her head and made do with that. She walked along the western wall looking over the countryside as it shimmered in sunset colors, the last light draining away. She had never decided which of the suns it was; and anyway, the fashion these days was to speculate about Gaeblen's theory that there were actually seven different suns, or perhaps more, and not the four of myth. Gaeblen had built something he called a telescope, a design he unearthed in a lot of old research in the Montajhena libraries that agreed with his observations; Malin knew the man and had spoken with him about that much; it was clear he was convinced of his facts.

What difference does it make, four suns or seven suns or twelve or however many they come up with? There are however many God puts in the sky. Useless as a new star, she thought, looking up at the night sky.

“Do you have any friends who are star-readers?” a voice asked, familiar at once, silken and musical.

“No,” she answered, turning to her uncle. He was standing a body's length away at the edge of the wall, a thin shadow, now shorter than her. “I've never been able to take any of them seriously long enough to make friends.”

“It's an odd profession.”

“Is there anything to it?” she asked.

“Not that I know of. There's no magic in it. The charts they use are really old, but that's about as much recommendation as I can give them.”

“That they're old?”

He laughed, showing hardly a line on his face, and she joined him. His eyes were dark brown today, the color he kept them most often. He said, “It's good to see you.”

“And you. So you have plans?” She swept her hand across the sky. “For all this?”

He frowned, slightly. “Yes.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I've been quarreling with people about my plans,” he said. “That's all. So I don't want a quarrel with you.”

“All day?”

“For months. It feels like years. It probably has been. My sense of time is worse and worse.”

She said, after a moment, “I don't mean to quarrel. But it isn't a small thing you're doing. People will have questions.”

He waved a hand at her, a gesture that she accepted. After a moment, he looked her in the eye again.

She felt, for a moment, such a bewildering array of intuitions; he was watching her but only with a single point of himself, unguardedly so; around him on all sides wheeled other points of him that she could glimpse, for a moment, because he willed it. He wished her to see him in something like his true shape. She shivered at the coldness of his aspect, she turned away.

“I'm almost prepared to show you what I mean when I say the sky as we see it now isn't real,” Uncle Jessex said. “I'm almost ready to show you what's really on the other side of the ocean.”

Her heart was pounding. “You went.”

“Yes.”

“So it's really there.”

“Yes.” His eyes were glistening. “And so much more.”

“Tell me.”

He shook his head. “I can't tell you much. Not yet. Except the oddest part. The world's as round as an egg, Malin. Rounder, I guess, since an egg's not a sphere.”

“Really?”

“Kirith Kirin told me so, but I never believed it.” He shook his head, stretched his arms upward. His voice changed just enough to tell. “But now I've seen for myself. You'd have known about this, if you'd read what's written in the King's Book.”

She faced the wind over the wall, the sheer drop to the treetops far below, the last rag of light. “I can't even open the box. I don't really want to, I guess.”

“I can show you the charm.”

She shook her head. “Let it be a test for me. I'll read it when I can open the box. I've said that to myself for a couple of decades now, and it sounds right. Enigmatic enough, like a Jisraegen promise.” The phrase, a northern expression, required the use of the old form of the name.

He leaned beside her on the wall, the wind touching his hair as she watched. He was a real object in the wind, at least at the moment. This was really his body, and he was in it, or mostly. He said, “We've been kept in our little cocoon for a very long time.”

“You're talking about the sky?”

“Yes, essentially.” He laughed. He was shaking his head, the smile on his face a bit unpleasant, stretched. “I have no doubt she made us, I just don't know why, or who she is.”

“Who?” she asked, chilled.

He merely looked at her again, and then away.

“What's it like?” Malin asked. “Tell me what you can.”

“It's impossible to describe. It's a world full of metal and machines. People of all kinds, some that seem actually monstrous. Billions and billions of people, enough to engulf all of us here. And the sky runs like a clock, just the way we tell it in our oldest stories.”

“How long did you stay?”

“Not long enough to learn enough. I need to make the gate once and for all so I can go back and forth as often as I like. It's a side effect of the gate that the sky beyond it becomes our sky. That's why I have to prepare people for this change.”

Malin was looking at the stars as they began to appear, none of them familiar, though in her case her interest in stars was so little, their running across the sky in parade formation would likely have made no difference. She was feeling the fact of the change that he was announcing, this man, whom she called Uncle, who would make a construct that would reshape the world.

“When can I come with you?” she asked.

“Not for a long time,” he said, “not until the Tervan part of the gate is well underway. Between now and then, I'll only be able to make the journey myself. I'll be able to show you parts of the world sooner than that, but even that will have to wait.” He gave her another lingering look, and she read bits of a thousand thoughts in the way he considered her. “There are other changes, too, that I need to tell you about. A bit at a time.”

He gestured and they began to walk side by side along the top of the western wall, headed toward the watchtower, where Malin had climbed up for her walk. “You have a guest,” Malin said. “Someone from Smith Country.”

“Yes. She likes to veil herself, not very well, I'm afraid.”

“I doubt there are a lot of people who could see more than I could, and I couldn't see much.”

“I can't tell whether her lack of skill is real or whether it's want of will,” Uncle Jessex said. “She's more tired than I remember her, and yet, old as she is, you wouldn't expect any discernable change in my lifetime.”

“I suspected it had to be one of the immortals.”

He stopped Malin, held her hands and looked at her. “It's Zhae'Van herself. You'll meet her, so you may as well know now. We're to keep the visit quiet.”

“Zhae'Van.” She was stunned. “How long has she been awake?”

“A few years, very quietly. She's been helping me. I couldn't very well change the sky without consulting her. And the Svyssn Wife, too, of course, but that's another story and she's not here.”

“When was the last time the Empress left Jhunombrae?”

“I think the answer would be, never, officially, though I suspect Zhae'Van could tell us stories, if she was of a mind.” He patted Malin's hands and let them go. They were drawing near the watchtower now, and he managed a net of silence around them without any detectable gesture or sound, no more than a slight shift of his gaze, as if, for a moment, he were seeing something else. “You'll meet the people with her tomorrow night; she's asleep right now herself, and I don't expect her to wake up for a few more days. We're having a state dinner for some of her courtiers, though she's here officially under a false title. One of her cousins is with her, one of the living ones, I mean, from the current family.” He smiled. “I have another guest here, too. You'll meet her tomorrow as well.”

“Her?”

“No one I've ever mentioned to you. A very nice woman, a linguist. Her name is Jedda.”

Malin looked at him quizzically. “You're up to something.”

“Not really. She's a friend. And it's important you meet her, though you would have, sooner or later, anyway.”

They passed through the guard tower giving signs that their presence was to go unacknowledged. On the pavement by the Falkri Road, which ran parallel to the wall, they stood in the portico waiting for Uncle's carriage. He had pulled up his hood to a passing shower of rain. “We're in for hard weather,” Uncle said.

“You are definitely not telling me everything. I can't even feel what you're doing.”

“I should hope not.”

“Are you too busy for dinner tonight? It sounds as if we have a lot of catching up to do.”

He shook his head. “I have to dine with my guest tonight. In fact I'm with her now. I'm only expecting her to stay a very short time.”

She blinked. He smiled. She said, “It's not very friendly to trick me with a phantom.”

“It's not a phantom if you can't tell. Be a good sport. I did tell you, after all.” He patted her on the head, the sensation tangible, and she still saw nothing of how he fractioned himself in this way. He wanted to laugh a bit but refrained, for which she was grateful.

“Well I don't see why you can't keep this up through dinner, in that case,” Malin said.

“I could. But I think it would be rude. To both of you.” He smiled. “All right. I'll see you tomorrow, of course.”

“I'm taking duty at the welcome table in the morning.”

He cocked a brow. “Really? Why?”

“I thought I'd explore what you've done with Thenduril. Plus I owe duty.”

“Tell me if you think it's morbid, the Hall, I mean,” he said, and disappeared before she could read his expression.

She went there early in the morning, first into Halobar Hall to report to the day rector, then for a quick walk though Thenduril, the second of Inniscaudra's immense halls, where Uncle Jessex had commissioned a memorial to the King, the life-sized carving of a tree, along with a display of items from his long life and reign. She saw a few things she remembered from her childhood, like the King's best bridle, his copy of “Luthmar,” small enough to keep in his pocket, some of the swords with which he fought in various wars, stones from fallen Genfynnel and the story of the Long War. Oil paintings and tapestries rendered the destruction of Aerfax and Senecaur, the moment of fire and unearthly light. She had heard the tale from her mother, the Lady Karsten, who had been there on the road along the narrow strand between mountains and the bay. Father had been there, too. Of all the stories from long ago, she liked that one best, because she knew the people in it, because she could picture herself there among them, watching the side of the mountain blow away, the day Uncle Jessex won a battle and lost a war.

For Malin, the objects carried no more weight than that, however, and nothing about the place struck her as morbid. She only had a little time before the rector fetched her back for duty.

She made tea, talked to pilgrims entering the house to visit the Shrine of Shrines and to people entering on business with Uncle, the groups who made up the bulk of early morning arrivals to the house. Rain started to fall and the hall stayed busy for a while, then emptied, except for a woman who caught Malin's eye.

She had walked in just ahead of the rain. She'd taken a cup of tea and drunk it very quietly, while one of the sixth-level adepts showed her Halobar Hall. This was Uncle's guest; Malin had only to look at her well to know.

She could feel the quickening in herself, and recognized it, and was surprised.

The woman was of a good height and could be described as tall, though not as tall as Malin. She was striking, her hair cropped back from her face, short and thick, a peppery color, black and strands of gray. Her skin was fine and soft. She had eyes like a bird of prey, sharp and fierce, a brown so dark as to be black. She looked at Malin for just as moment as if they should know each other.

She was about to leave, this woman; she and the adept had been talking for a good while, and now she was heading into the rain. Malin lifted a rain cloak from shelves near the welcome table and headed toward her. “You should take a cloak,” Malin said, offering.

“Thank you. Should I bring this back?”

“No,” Malin said, careful of what she allowed into her gaze and voice; “keep it as long as you need.”

Malin could not stop watching. She felt the catch at her breathing; nothing like this had happened to her since she became Prin; the new acuteness of her senses made the physical sensations much more intense and undeniable. The woman must have felt it. She offered her hand. “I'm Jedda,” she said.

“I'm Malin. You're my uncle's guest?”

The woman, Jedda, was agitated. “Yes.”

“I've been quite impatient to meet you,” Malin said.

“Have you?”

“Yes. I have no idea who you are or where you're from, but I haven't seen my uncle so animated in a long time.”

She touched Jedda's hand for a moment. Jedda's skin pulsed and trembled. It seemed unfair to use any special senses to know more about this woman so Malin was careful to do nothing, to extend no effort, to hold back. But their eyes met. Again the feeling Jedda already knew who Malin was. This was not unusual, but there was some quality to Jedda's thought that felt very different. “I'm just a stranger,” Jedda said. “Someone he wanted to talk to. He sent a long way for me. But he's your uncle, after all, he can do that.”

“Yes, he can.”

“Do you always take a turn of duty here?” Jedda asked.

The question was startling, at least a bit. “What?”

“Kirson, your friend here.” She was gesturing to the sixth-level adept who had retreated to the samovar. “He told me all the Prin take shifts in the hall.”

“It's an old tradition,” Malin answered. “I came this morning because I had a feeling. A good one, as it turns out. And I owe duty, too, of course.” She turned to go. “How long will you be staying?”

“A couple of days.”

“You won't tell me where you're from?”

Jedda smiled, a guarded smile, but still altogether pleasant. “No. But you'll find out, one of these days.” She looked away, uncertain. “I'd better get back to my rooms. Your uncle will think I've gotten myself lost.”

“I expect he'll find you,” she said. “He has a way of doing things like that.”

“On my way back, you mean?”

“Probably bringing you a rain cloak.”

Jedda laughed, and Malin caught her scent, subtle flowered oils, along with a deeper, earthier undertone. She shivered, though the cause might as well have been the chilly air at the door. “I'll tell my uncle I like you, at least,” Malin said, to Jedda's back.

“Thanks.” Jedda's voice sounding tentative, uncertain. She disappeared into the rain, though Malin stood watching for a long time.