The Singers of Nevya (82 page)

“O Spirit, it’s good to be away from that room!” Sook exclaimed.

The itinerant sat on the bench with her legs crossed, her arms folded. Sook looked out at the vast, empty ironwood tub as she drew off her boots and tunic and trousers, and she sighed. “I don’t see why I can’t have company, at least to bathe.”

“It’s your own fault,” Bree said sullenly. “You think I like being your serving woman?”

“My fault?” Sook asked. She gave the binding of her hair a sharp tug, and her scalp stung. “Am I locking my own door then? Turning away everyone who wants to talk to me?”

“You’re a troublemaker, just like he says! Believe me, I’d be just as happy to see you go back to the kitchens where you belong.”

Sook piled her soiled linens on the bench that encircled the room. Fresh ones, cleaned and folded, were waiting, laid out for her by Mura. Naked, she stood facing Bree with her hands on her hips, her hair falling in a black curtain to her waist. “I have an idea, Singer,” she said. “Why don’t you and all those other itinerants go back to your own business, get out and earn a living? Then he won’t have any power over me, or anyone else!”

Bree shifted her weight, and turned her eyes away. “Cho wants what’s best for all of us.”

“Does he indeed! Living as prisoners in a House that gets colder every day? We have no visitors and no metal. We’re running out of paper and cloth. There’s hardly a speck of fruit or vegetables from the nursery gardens because they’re too cold to grow. It won’t be long before we’re down to nothing but meat on the table!”

“Cho will see to all of that,” Bree said.

“When the Glacier melts!” Sook retorted, and turned her back.

“Get on with your bath,” Bree answered. “I want to get back upstairs.”

“So you can stand around outside his door waiting for something to do?”

“It’s better than this,” Bree muttered.

Sook ignored that, and stepped down into the big tub. The water was tepid and looked greasy in the dim light of the tattered
quiru
. She gritted her teeth and immersed herself anyway. It took more than just warming the water every day to have a fresh tub to bathe in! How would these lazy Singers feel if the kitchens cooked their food in filthy water?

She was reaching for a bar of soap when the door to the
ubanyix
swung open, slowly and cautiously. Mura and Eun looked around it, then stepped inside, bringing Bree swiftly to her feet. She stood in front of them, barring their way.

“Not now,” she said. “No one comes in here now.”

Sook bit her lip, but Mura winked at her. Eun held a napkin-covered cup out to Bree.

“What’s this?” the Singer demanded.

“Just a bit of a treat,” Mura murmured. Her sweet tone made Sook want to giggle. Eun pulled aside the cloth, and Bree sniffed the brimming cup, not letting it touch her lips.

Bree eyed Mura suspiciously. “You told Cho we had no more wine. I heard you!”

“We certainly don’t have enough to go around,” Mura told her. “I thought you might enjoy this last bit of it. If you don’t want it . . . “

Bree hesitated, her eyes sliding to Sook. Sook held her breath and looked down at the dark water.

“Don’t worry,” Eun put in timorously. “We won’t tell anyone! We’d be in more trouble than you would. Just let us bathe with Sook this once. She’s had no company for weeks!”

Bree gave them a sour smile. “She’s got Cho for company,” she said. Mura snorted derisively, and Bree chuckled a bit herself. She reached for the winecup. “All right,” she said, “just this once. But if Cho finds out, we’ll all be sorry!”

Mura and Eun hurried to shed their clothes and step down into the tub. Mura gave a grunt of disgust when the lukewarm water lapped her thighs.

“Singer Bree!” she called. “Couldn’t you do something about this bath? It’s as cold as glacier water in summer!”

Bree set the cup down carefully, and came to the edge of the tub, stooping to dip her fingers into the water. She snickered. “It’s refreshing, don’t you think, Cook?”

“Ship and Stars! I don’t know what good it is having Singers underfoot everywhere when we can’t at least have a hot bath!” Mura snapped, sounding much more like herself. Sook smiled behind her hand. Mura’s temper was perhaps the one thing in the House that hadn’t cooled.

Bree pulled a battered
filla
out of her tunic, and held it up. “Suppose I heat the water for you,” she said, “what will you do for me?”

Eun was indignant. “We already do for all of you!” she protested. “It’s not easy making meals with nothing but meat and ancient dried fruit and no grain to speak of! What else would you have us do?”

“I have a taste for some bread, but if there’s no grain, I guess that’s out.”

Mura said impatiently, “
Keftet
without grain is not to my taste, either, but that’s all we’ll have to eat before long. Tell that to your Cho!”

Eun sucked in her breath. “Mura, be careful!”

Bree laughed. “Oh, yes, Mura, be careful! Or you’ll end up like Sook here, a prisoner of her own big ideas.”

“Singer Bree,” Sook said quickly. “No one needs to know any of this.”

Bree rolled her eyes, but she brought her
filla
up. She played a
Doryu
melody to the end, then began again at the beginning. Three times she played it through.

Sook had heard Singers and Cantors do their work all her life, but she had never listened critically, never analyzed what they did. Now she was struck by the thought that Bree’s playing was a simple matter of the same melody, with the same rhythm, over and over again. The water began to get warmer, which meant it was fulfilling its purpose. But the melody seemed meaningless. Before she met Singer Zakri, she would not have noticed such a thing.

When Zakri played, the music changed every time. His melodies were living things, growing, developing, building lives of their own. They were more than just patterns of notes. They touched something deep inside a person, even a simple cook like herself. Or perhaps, she thought, it was just because he was Zakri, and nothing he did was ordinary.

Sook doubted the pool of warmer water reached much past her end of the tub. Maybe when all the Singers bathed together . . . she remembered with longing the hot baths that Cantrix Elnor provided, steaming water that made her muscles limp and her cheeks hot, that caused beads of moisture to roll down her face. She was sure Singer Zakri could do the same. How wonderful it would be to be really warm again! Baths these days were more penance than pleasure. Still, the water was nicer than it had been. She said, “We thank you, Singer.”

Bree grunted and went back to her bench and the waiting winecup. Sook began to wash her hair to make the bath last longer. Mura took a cake of soap from the nearest niche and slid closer. Under cover of lathering and scrubbing, she asked softly, “Sook—are you all right then? He hasn’t—”

Sook looked up at her from beneath a cloud of foam. “No,” she whispered back. “He hasn’t. I don’t think that’s what he wants from me. Nori still—well, Nori comes to see him, and she’s willing.” She made a face. “I’m certainly not!”

“What does he want, then? Why does he keep you?”

Sook rinsed her hair, and wrung the water out of it. She wrapped it in a loose thick coil on her shoulders, glancing up to be certain that Bree was enjoying her wine and paying little attention. She kept her voice low. “I think it’s about Zakri—Singer Zakri,” she told them. “Cho knows I caused that ruckus in the carvery just so Zakri and his friend could get away.”

“Right enough,” Mura muttered. “But why keep you locked up?”

Sook rubbed the chilled skin of her shoulders. The water was still not really comfortable, but she was loath to leave it. Life as a prisoner was sometimes frightening, but mostly it was tedious, with nothing to do but stare out the window at the white peaks and forests of the Timberlands, or listen through the closed bedroom door as Cho and his itinerants talked and talked, endlessly, pointlessly.

“I think,” she said slowly, “that Cho is afraid of Singer Zakri. He’s afraid Zakri will come back, and he won’t be able to fight him. And he thinks Zakri cares about me!” She pictured Zakri’s sweet face and slender figure, and she smiled fiercely. “He’s right, too!”

“Oh, Sook, be careful,” Eun said. “Don’t tell him that!”

Sook shook her head. “I don’t tell him anything. But I heard him talking, after that Cantor was here—the one from Lamdon. I heard Zakri’s name. And I know—” She splashed her small fist into the water. “I know Zakri will come back! Then we’ll . . .”

“That’s enough,” Bree called from her bench. “Surely you’re clean by now!”

“Just a bit longer,” Eun begged.

Bree set the emptied winecup on the bench, where it teetered and then clattered to the floor. She grabbed for it. “No, now!” she called. “Cho will wonder where you’ve got to. I don’t need him angry at me.”

“I’m coming,” Sook said.

“Sook!” Mura said. Her round face showed real concern, and there was urgency in her voice. “Listen, I think Singer Zakri—I wouldn’t want you to be disappointed if—”

“Let’s go!” Bree said again, stumbling slightly as she got to her feet.

Sook stood, too, dripping and shivering, but she still smiled at the thought of Zakri. She breathed, “He’s coming back, Mura, I know he is! And I’ll be waiting for him when he does.”

Bree came to the edge of the tub and threw a towel to Sook, cutting off Mura’s answer. Sook was shuddering at the cold air on her wet skin, and she dried herself quickly. She dressed in fresh clothes, and Eun helped her bind her hair. Bree hurried her out without giving her a chance to say goodbye.

Mura looked grim, staring after her. There was something she had wanted to say, something else she needed to tell her. Sook could only wonder what it might have been.

Cho was leaning into the window casement, his back to the door. Two of his itinerants sat at the long table with their legs stretched out, empty teacups in front of them. When Bree and Sook came in, Cho turned his head just enough to show them a thin smile. “So there you are at last, little Sook.”

Sook took a step toward her room, and Cho’s eyes narrowed, looking past her at Bree.

“Bree?” he said slowly, his smile growing wider. “Have you been up to something?”

“No—no,” Bree stammered. “Just the
ubanyix
.”

Cho straightened, and fixed her with his black-ash eyes. Bree stepped backward until her heels met the door. “Gone a long time, weren’t you?” Cho asked. He pulled the thin plait of his hair through his fingers, over and over, and took a slow, almost languid step toward them.

Sook heard Bree groan, ever so slightly, and she knew Cho was doing it again, that strange and cruel thing he did to the Gifted. Whatever it was, it turned them sick and pale. It had sent more than one of them racing for the chamber pot, to bend over it heaving and gagging. She put herself between Bree and Cho, and lifted her head to meet his eyes.

“I like a long bath, Carver,” she said. “What would you have her do . . . leave me all alone in the
ubanyix
? Where I might actually enjoy myself for a few moments?” She tossed her head, and started past him toward the bedroom which had been her cage for weeks.

Cho seized her arm. He pulled her close and leaned over her to put the point of his long, curved nose against her hair. “Mmm,” he said. “Doesn’t little Sook smell nice?”

She tried to pull away, but his grip was as hard as the ironwood he used to carve. Behind her, the door to the apartment clicked, and she knew Bree had made her escape.

Cho’s thin body pressed against hers. Her cheek chafed against his tunic, and she smelled the scented oil normally reserved to the ruling classes, an upper-level tang that was as alien to her as the Magister’s apartment had been before her imprisonment here. She turned her head as far away as she could.

Cho laughed. He slipped his hand around her waist and held her fast against him. With his other hand he lifted his long braid of hair and tickled her face with it, drawing it back and forth across her eyes, her cheek, her lips. She twisted her head from side to side, but she could not escape it. He squeezed her tighter and put his mouth close to her ear.

“Wouldn’t you like to know me better, Sook?” he whispered.

She shuddered at the feel of his breath against her skin, and she put all her strength into a shove, her fists against his chest, her legs braced. She fell back away from him, staggering against the edge of the table as he suddenly let go.

“Leave me alone!” she cried. Behind her the chairs of the two Singers scraped as they stood up to move uncertainly away.

Cho gave a sharp gesture with his head. The itinerants hurried from the apartment, the door closing sharply behind them. Sook backed around the table, stumbling again as her foot caught on a chair left in her path.

His smile was mocking, a twist of dark, narrow lips. “And where are you off to?” His icy tone chilled her very bones.

She did her best to glare back, to warm herself with fury. “Your tricks don’t work on me, Carver,” she said. “I’m not Gifted in the least!”

“Well, small one,” he said. “You may not be Gifted, but you have your own fine qualities.” He moved around the table. “Those black eyes, for instance . . .” Sook cast a longing glance at the door, but she knew there were only enemies beyond it, Gifted enemies who were vulnerable to Cho, and who would do anything to avoid his attacks.

Cho reached her. She felt the wall at her back and his long arms on either side of her, pinning her. His long-nosed face was too close, descending on hers like a
ferrel
swooping down on a defenseless
caeru
pup.

“So my tricks, as you call them, don’t bother you?” he murmured. His lips hovered over hers, and when she tried to evade him, his arm prevented her.

She thought of Zakri, so fair and clever, and so strong. She prayed for strength. Then she closed her eyes as if in acquiescence.

As Cho bent to her, Sook dropped. She went straight down between his outstretched arms, crouching and then wriggling quickly away. As she went, she snatched the
obis
knife from its scabbard at his belt.