Troubled Waters (5 page)

Darien lifted his head, sifting for some meaning she had not intended. “Would you like to step outside as well?” he asked. “This town is too small to have a Plaza, but I saw a row of shops, and one or two places to eat. You might enjoy a stroll around.”
You might regain some of your energy,
she was sure he was thinking.

Zoe didn’t move. “It’s raining,” she said.

He smiled at that, and the laughing look made his stern, narrow face much more likable. “A
coru
woman should not be bothered by a little rain. Anyway, it’s mostly stopped. Right now it’s more like mist.”

It seemed like an immense effort to pull up out of the chair, but Zoe managed it. “Let me get my shoes,” she said.

She put on her sturdiest pair of walkers, wrapped herself in the jingling shawl, and allowed Darien to help her down the steps. The damp air was chilly and clingy but not as cold as Zoe had expected. Well, of course, it was Quinncoru now; soon enough, the warm weather would arrive again.

They had stepped out into the muddy yard of some kind of industrial housing—the place where the gas was stored or obtained, Zoe guessed. Darien left instructions with the drivers, and then hurried to her side. “I told them we will be back in two hours and I expect us to leave immediately,” he said.

“Then I hope the recalcitrant machinery behaves,” she said.

He gestured to his right and they started forward, stepping carefully until they reached the relative security of a paved walkway. “That’s the first time you’ve made a joke,” he observed. “That’s the first time you’ve shown . . . anything—at all.”

His pronouncement was so startling to her that she lapsed back into silence.

She had the sense that Darien Serlast was the kind of man who always strode through life; but here he allowed her to set the pace, and she was capable of no more than an amble. There was little to recommend the small town until they made their way past the industrial buildings and a few grim blocks of workingmen’s houses. Next came the larger houses, the places where the wealthier people lived, and then in the very center of town, one short street of commerce. There were perhaps fifteen or sixteen individual storefronts—a cobbler, a jeweler, a moneychanger, a bookseller, a dressmaker, an apothecary, a toolmaker.

A row of lampposts marched down the center of the street, flickering into light against the grayness of the day. They looked utterly new, and Zoe guessed that these were the first gas-powered lighting fixtures to be installed in this town, courtesy of that useful Dochenza fuel. Her father had told her that gaslights could be found all over Chialto by now, though smaller towns were only slowly adopting the new invention.

“Let’s eat something,” Darien said, making his way toward the storefront of a retail kitchen. “It will make a nice change from the sad meals I have put together every day.”

Zoe followed him into the warm, aromatic building, where customers were already lining up at a glass counter near the back and filling the dozen or so tables set up front. Her mouth was tugging itself into a semblance of a smile. Darien was not much of a cook; he had clearly been at a loss when she had showed no disposition to make meals, either for herself or for him. She wondered what he had eaten during the long journey to find her. Had he subsisted on bread and dried meat, assuming that he would be well-fed on the return journey with the king’s intended bride preparing elaborate meals? Her father would have relished such
hunti
arrogance. Imagining him laughing was almost enough to make Zoe laugh.

Almost.

Behind the glass counter was an excellent assortment of baked goods, fresh vegetables, and cooked meats, and Zoe was surprised to feel the stir of hunger. She ordered everything that looked appetizing, which caused Darien to give her a sideways glance full of amusement. He ordered almost as much, and then asked for a basket to carry any uneaten portions back to the wagon. They would have decent meals for the next few days, at least.

They found a table near the window and watched the townsfolk hurry past, heads bowed against the rain that had started up again. Zoe saw a circle of children splashing enthusiastically through a particularly big puddle, and several adults who paused and turned their faces up to let the water sluice down their cheeks.

“It’s good to see children playing in the rain,” Darien said, gesturing toward the streets. “The Marisi River is lower than it has ever been, though snowmelt still comes down from the mountains. A few of the smaller towns have been hit very hard, since the farms that feed them have essentially shut down. This is the first time they’ve seen rain here in a quintile.” His mouth twisted into a sardonic smile and he added, “I could wish its timing was better, since it has slowed our journey to an intolerable pace, but I am glad to see it.”

Zoe swallowed a mouthful of a deliciously flavored meat-and-rice dish. “You must welcome bounty whenever it comes,
hunti
man. It is often inconvenient. But if you insist on accepting it only when it suits your schedule, you will find yourself very poor.”

He laughed and then crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, watching her. “I knew Navarr Ardelay a little, and that sounds like something he would say.”

She nodded. “All the time.”

“So are you like him?” Darien pursued. “You have been so quiet that I have not been able to form a sense of your personality. Your mother was a woman of blood, your father a man of fire. Which personality do you favor, or have you developed an entirely different one on your own?”

“I am
coru
,” she offered.

“And when did you decide that?” he asked.

In Welce, it was believed that all children came into the world receptive to one of the elements. Most often a child would take after a parent, or perhaps a grandparent, who exhibited a certain set of traits. But, really, there were no sureties. All children were encouraged to discover their own internal sympathies. A girl born to two
sweela
parents might find herself drawn to air; a boy with primarily
hunti
relations might be entirely
torz
. It was assumed that, at some point in his ancestry, there would be a
torz
forebear, and the affinity had merely skipped generations. It was just a matter of discovering what kind of longing was in the blood, what kind of certainty was stamped into the bone.

“Very young,” she said. “I cannot remember a time I did not consider myself
coru
.”

“So you are a woman of blood and water,” he said. “But what else is there to know about you? Is there curiosity in you? Kindness? Greed? I cannot tell.”

Zoe took another bite before answering. “I’m not sure I can answer that.”

He leaned forward. “Why not? Was your father such a strong personality that you had no room left to form your own?”

She raised her eyebrows, her expression sardonic. “Would that please you if it were so?” she asked. “Wouldn’t that be the right personality for the fifth wife of a king?”

He settled back against the chair again, his gray eyes even more intent. He was clearly finding her more of a puzzle than he had expected, Zoe thought. It would have been amusing if she had been trying to confuse him, but she hadn’t even made that much effort.

“It might make life simpler for
you
,” he said slowly. “The king’s second and third wives have strong personalities—very—and there is much subtle feuding between them. A new wife who was scheming and ambitious might find herself with two seasoned enemies.”

Zoe knew the prospect should be alarming. She knew she should feel dread and uncertainty about her new position; she should ask this court insider for advice on how to navigate the treacherous palace waters. But she merely shrugged. “I am not at all ambitious,” she said. “I don’t think they will find me much of a threat.”

“Alys sees everyone as a threat,” he replied. “And Seterre is not much better.”

“I don’t think anyone has ever hated me before,” she said. “It will be an instructive experience.”

He watched her for a long time in silence. “I believe I am seeing glimmerings of it,” he said at last.

“Glimmerings of what?”

“Your true personality. There is humor in you, is there not? A deep appreciation of the ridiculousness of the human condition. And a certain tolerance for the vagaries of human nature.”

It was hard to know if his assessment was accurate or not. She had never spent much time on self-analysis—not even back when she had time and energy to think about herself. “My
sweela
father used to say that he had passed on to me the gift of clarity. From my
coru
mother, I inherited a certain amount of resilience. I think this means that, no matter what my situation, I can look about me, I can appreciate what it offers, and I can adapt.”

He listened closely. “Then this—this docility that you show is your true self, not some mask that has descended over you as a manifestation of your grief.”

She blinked at him.
Your grief.
Such a casual way to describe such devastation. “I suppose that in general I am not a contrary sort of person,” she said, her voice muffled.

His eyes were narrowed; he was making no attempt to disguise the fact that he really wanted to peer inside her soul. “And yet you are the daughter of a
sweela
man,” he murmured. “You cannot be as tame as you appear. There must be passion in you that can be roused by
something
. There must be something you would fight for, or against.”

“I am a woman of water,” she replied. “I am more likely to slip away in stealth than to blaze up in wrath.”

He looked dissatisfied. “All men and women have a little wood and bone in them. Somewhere, from some ancestor. Something that will not back down. Something that will not give way.”

She turned her right hand palm up and studied the faint lines. “There must be bone in me somewhere, or I could not hold my shape,” she said. “But these days all I can feel is blood.”

T
hey passed the rest of the meal in silence, which suited Zoe just fine. The rain had slimmed down to a faint gray drizzle by the time they left, and the gaslights had been put out.

“There’s a temple around the corner,” Darien said. “Would you like to stop in for a blessing?”

It was a practice city dwellers honored more often than country folk. Zoe knew that after they had moved to the village, her father had missed having constant access to the blessing barrels. He was delighted whenever they visited a town large enough to hold a temple, so he could pull out a blessing for the day. She had always thought it was the ritual that appealed to Navarr, or perhaps the folly; how could a man really expect to receive guidance from a message presented to him entirely by happenstance? But he had taken advantage of every opportunity that came his way.

“Yes,” she said, and they turned their steps toward the temple.

It was a small and pleasant round stone building filled with incense and lamplight, heated and dry on this chilly and wet day. The five benches lining the perimeter were painted in traditional colors—white for
elay
, blue for
coru
, black for
hunti
, green for
torz
, red for
sweela
. The space was so small, and the benches were so close together, that their edges almost touched, turning the interior into a pentagon. Darien tossed a tithe into the box at the door, and then he and Zoe went straight for the blessing barrel that was set squarely in the center of the floor.

“You first,” he said.

Zoe plunged her hand deep into the pile of coins, enjoying the cool, sliding sensation of the metallic disks against her wrist and forearm. She wanted to close her fingers over a whole pile of blessings, shower herself with gifts of strength and endurance, but she resisted. Instead she pinched a single coin between her thumb and forefinger, and brought it slowly up.

They looked at it together. Its utter unsuitability would have made Zoe laugh, if she were capable of laughing. “The blessing of surprise,” Darien said. He inspected her. “It might have been the very last one I would have bestowed upon you at this moment.”

“Perhaps that is why I need it,” she said. She slipped it into her pocket. Some people tossed blessings back into the barrel, particularly if they didn’t like what they’d been given, but Darien had paid the tithe, and a handsome one at that. It would more than cover the cost of minting new blessings to make up for any they walked out with today. “Now you.”

He grinned, a surprisingly boyish expression. “I will, but I can tell you already what coin I will draw,” he said. “It will be resolve or power—perhaps loyalty—but it will be a
hunti
trait. It always is.”

That actually roused her interest. “Always? Even at your birth?”

His grin widened and he nodded. “My father went to the nearest temple and found three strangers to draw blessings for me,” he said. “All three pulled out the symbol for determination.”

She tilted her head to study him. “If I had been your parents,” she said, “that might have made me a little uneasy.”

Now he laughed. “You think such blessings would portend a stubborn and difficult child?”

“Yes.”

“You would be right,” he said. “But they were both
hunti
themselves, so they didn’t have much right to complain.”

She gestured toward the barrel. “Show me. Very quickly, so you don’t have time to finger the embossing and pull out the one you want.”

He gave her a derisive look that was easy to read—
as if I would stoop to anything so petty
—and dipped a hand into the barrel. Smiling, he offered her the token. Determination. “I told you.”

She felt her face relaxing into a faint smile. “Again. Deeper this time.”

He obliged, and retrieved a second coin from what very well might have been the bottom layer. Determination.

“That’s remarkable,” she said. “A third time?”