An Accident of Stars Page 8

  Much to her satisfaction, Saffron’s eyebrows shot up. She started speaking eagerly in the same tongue, but much too quickly for Zech to comprehend. Raising a hand to stop the tirade, she reached out and took the older girl by the hand, letting her magic seep between them.

  “Zuymet,” she said, and this time, she could tell Saffron understood. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on strengthening last night’s connection: a tentative mind-link, poorly built, that had nonetheless fostered trust between them. Matu would be proud of her, she thought, which was the highest praise she could imagine. Though kemeta, he’d once been offered a coveted place with Sahu’s Kin – but then, one had only to look at Matu to realise he would’ve been poorly suited to a life of worship, study and service.

  At that thought, Zech’s concentration wavered. Nearly a month had passed since Matu had left the compound on some unknown errand for Yasha: his departure had come bare days after Gwen’s, and in all that time, Zech had had no word from him. Biting her lip, she steadied her connection with Saffron, then broke it off cleanly.

  “That’s enough,” she said in Kenan. “Do you understand?”

  Saffron blinked, then slowly answered in the same language, “Yes, I do. I… wow. I’m really making sense?”

  Zech beamed at her. “Yes! That’s it. I speak, you speak, the magic moves, and we both understand. It’s tricky, though.”

  “How does it work? What are the, ah, limitations?” This last word in English: evidently, Saffron hadn’t yet received the Kenan equivalent from Zech’s vocabulary.

  Zech frowned, trying to remember how Matu had originally explained it to her. “Learning from other people is harder, though still faster than regular learning. But talking to me is different. The more you talk to me, the quicker you learn. Even without the magic, we’re linked now. Zechalia and Saffron.”

  Saffron gave a small shake of her head, but offset it by smiling. “Saff-ron,” she corrected. “Not Sa-ferrin.”

  Zech tried to copy her, but the syllables sat strangely on her tongue. She called up some of the English words she’d acquired, trying to find others with a similar cadence. Battle. Lecture. Copycat. When she tried again, her attempt was closer, but still not right. She pulled a face.

  “Safi?” she offered – a compromise. Saffron was too long for everyday use, anyway, no matter how you pronounced it.

  The older girl laughed. “Safi,” she agreed.

  Zech grinned. “You say mine now,” she instructed. “See if it sounds right.”

  Safi considered. “Zech,” she said at last. “Zechalia.”

  Gleefully, Zech corrected her. “Soft at the end, not hard.”

  Safi tried again and again. Even knowing that the zuymet extended only to vocabulary, not accent, there was still something delightful in seeing it proven true. After her eighth failed attempt, Safi laughed. “Fine! You win.” Shyly, she gestured to the breakfast tray and asked in English, “What is all this stuff, anyway?”

  With growing happiness, Zech began to tell her.

  * * *

  “She’s awake, then?” Yasha asked.Gwen nodded. “And coping surprisingly well, too – certainly better than I did the first time. Zech’s with her now. As soon as she’s all cleaned up, we can hear about Kadeja’s latest heresy.”

  “And won’t that be exciting?” Pix said sarcastically.

  The three of them were seated around a table in Yasha’s wing of the compound, sipping warm cups of mege, a Vekshi tea brewed from sweet, caffeinated leaves and soup stock. It was a great favourite among traders and travellers alike, but though Gwen was far from being a convert, she’d gone long enough without a cigarette to appreciate its restorative properties. Beside her, Pix fidgeted in her seat like a miscreant schoolchild. The ex-courtier, for all her airs, felt partially responsible for Saffron’s fate, and as Gwen considered this to be a right and proper state of affairs, she was in no hurry to alleviate her guilt. Besides, she had bigger things to worry about. Though the same priest who’d healed Saffron had declared Trishka to be on the mend, she was still confined to bed, her usual chair disquietingly empty. As, indeed, was Matu’s. Though discussion of Kadeja’s crimes could certainly wait until after they’d heard Zech’s testimony, no such restriction applied to Matu’s mysterious absence.

  Turning to Pix, Gwen assumed a blank expression. “Speaking of excitement, it’s not like your brother to miss any. Where is he?”

  Pix made a noise that was half disgust, half anger. “Who knows? I certainly don’t. If Yasha deigns to tell me now, it’ll only be for your sake, never mind that I’ve been out of my skin with worry!”

  “Enough!” In lieu of thumping her staff, which was propped up against the far wall, Yasha settled for banging her mege cup emphatically on the table, though without, of course, spilling so much as a single drop. “Am I allowed no peace in my own house?” She rolled her eyes, invoking her goddess as witness. “As though Ashasa didn’t make men to go wandering! It’s unnatural, the way you Kenan women cling to them. No wonder your palace is in such disarray!”

  Mercifully, Pix didn’t rise to the bait, being long since accustomed to Yasha’s outbursts on the subject. Like Gwen, she merely waited for the matriarch to take another sip of mege, smack her lips and then, finally, continue.

  “As it so happens, he’s running an errand on my behalf.” Pix snorted in triumph. Yasha ignored her. “Just after you left, Gwen, one of my little friends–” this being a favourite euphemism for the matriarch’s spies, “–suggested I take a closer interest in the goings-on at Kena’s northern border. Well, it was vague enough advice that I paid it no mind, even with all that scandal over Kadeja’s expulsion. Still, it hardly seemed useful. Such obvious advice!” She waved a hand. “But once that died down, the friend came back to me. He said that someone on the border wanted to speak with Pixeva ore Pixeva, and was willing to try to reach her through me. So of course, I sent Matu instead. That was a month ago.”

  Pix looked murderous. “Someone on the border wanted to speak with me, and you said nothing? You sent my brother?”

  “And what if it was a trap?” Yasha asked archly. “You’re good with a knife, girl, but Matu is better with many weapons, both sharp and blunt, and unlike you, he has no dependents.”

  “No legal ones, anyway,” Pix muttered. “Honestly, I swear that boy should’ve been born Vekshi. He’s bad as a tomcat.”

  “High praise indeed!” chortled Yasha.

  Pix flushed. “I didn’t mean it as a compliment!”

  “How sad for you, then, that I take it as one.”

  “This friend,” said Gwen, interjecting before Pix could embarrass herself. “Can I meet them?”

  Yasha turned abruptly sombre. “Not unless you can wake the dead. His throat was slit two weeks ago. Whether for what he told me or some other pettiness, I can’t say, but dead is dead, and Ashasa alone shall judge him. But Matu should return any day now – it’s why we sent for you when we did.”

  “Is it?” asked Pix, acidly. “Well! I’m glad to know that someone, at least, is worthy of your confidence.” With that, she pushed back her chair and stood. “If nothing else, surely I can be trusted to see that our guest is given fresh clothing? If Zech’s ever seen the linen cupboard before, I’ll cut my braids.”

  Gwen watched in silence as Pix stormed out. As much as she found Yasha wearying at times, the ex-courtier was no better, always so quick to take offence and quicker still to act, as though she were incapable of remembering that her status had been lost when Leoden took power. But then, Gwen supposed, that was as much her fault as anyone’s, which ought to make her more tolerant. It didn’t, of course – Pix had been just as exhausting as a courtier, if not more so – but at least then she’d gotten her way often enough to be tolerable.

  “Tell me,” she said, when Pix’s footsteps were no longer audible, “did you really send Matu just because he’s a better fighter?”

  Yasha snorted with laughter. “Goddess, no! I needed
him out from underfoot, and fast. It’s one thing him bedding down with Vekshi girls, but Kenan women have no idea how to raise a child without twining themselves round its father and half his friends, and one of the town ladies had started claiming the babe she carried was his. It wasn’t, of course – and who is she, to try and spite the maramet so? – but word got about, and several other persons who’d been hoping to snare him in mahu’kedet began to get a bit, shall we say, tempestuous. All a load of nonsense, of course; Pix might not think it, but Matu’s sensible enough to have Teket’s Kin seal off his fertility until he’s ready to use his cock the way Ashasa intended. He’s all too lamentably Kenan that way. Honestly! It’s enough to drive a sensible woman mad. I’d forgive him, if only he’d give Sashi or Yena a child.”

  “And I suppose it didn’t hurt this plan that Pix was left in the dark?”

  “Oh, Gwen. You do me a disservice.” Yasha dimpled her cheeks like the sweet old grandmother she sometimes pretended to be, and occasionally even was. “Of course I have every faith in her. But sometimes going without does a body good, as well you know. I was only acting in her own best interests.”

  Gwen raised an eyebrow. “Intellectual deprivation as a form of self-betterment? You’re in danger of turning philosopher on us all.”

  “I’ll thank you not to sully my ears with such talk,” said Yasha, taking a dignified sip of mege. “I’m a respectably settled matron.”

  “Not the words I’d have chosen,” said Gwen, “unless, in my absence, respectably, settled and matron have suddenly become synonymous with smuggler, spy and politically devious expatriate.”

  Yasha hmphed, a disapproving sound entirely at odds with her smug expression. “Young people nowadays,” she muttered grandly. “Always prone to exaggeration.”

  Gwen choked on her drink.

  * * *

  A week ago, if anyone had told Saffron she’d one day be elated at the prospect of bathing in a tin tub full of cold water, she would have assumed they were either drunk or speculating about life after the inevitable zombie apocalypse. Or both, the two states being far from self-contradictory, but either way, she wouldn’t have considered it a likely outcome. Now, however, just getting clean felt blissful. Her school clothes were disgusting, streaked with sweat, blood, vomit, dirt and assorted other substances; removing them had felt more like peeling away a full body scab than undressing.

  “Are you all right?” asked Zech, her silhouette hovering on the other side of the modesty screen.

  “Fine!” Saffron dipped a toe, then lowered herself in so quickly that water slopped over the side. It was a tight fit – she had to sit with her knees sticking up like mountains – but even though the water was cold, it was also bracing. Using a cloth and a piece of pleasantly scented soap, she began to tidy herself up, maintaining the conversation with Zech as she did so. Though still uncertain about how the zuymet really worked, it was undeniable that her Kenan vocabulary was rapidly increasing.

  “So,” she asked, “what do you do here, anyway?”

  “You mean, in the compound?”

  “No, I mean generally. Do you, um, go to–” she didn’t know the Kenan word, and so substituted the English, “–school?”

  “School?” Zech echoed. There was a soft thump as she sat down. “Huh. That’s odd.”

  “What is?”

  “The word. School.” She rolled it on her tongue. “There’s nothing quite like that here, but the concept’s still in my head.” A pause. “You mean, where you’re from, everyone spends years in a… a sort of temple thing, only with no magic, and learn lots of things they might not need to know, all so they can go on to university–” another English word, “–and do it all again?”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Saffron said, scrubbing the dirt from her neck. “So what do you do, then?”

  “Well, I learn how to use my staff. Yasha says all self-respecting Vekshi women need to know that much. Observation, memorisation, tactics – spying skills, you know. And I learn the zuymet and writing from Matu – or at least, I did when he was here. You’ll like Matu,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “Everyone else does, though Sashi and Yena sulk sometimes that he won’t give them babies.”

  Saffron, who’d been in the middle of washing her face, actually spluttered. “They what?”

  “Babies,” Zech said in English, misunderstanding the problem. “They want his babies. Or at least Sashi does; Yena just likes teasing him.” Then she paused, as though belatedly assessing Saffron’s tone. “Are babies had differently where you’re from? Do girls not want them? Am I missing something?”

  She sounded so scholarly, Saffron had to fight the urge to laugh. Instead she said, “No, no, we want babies. I mean, we want them eventually – or some of us do, anyway. How old are Sashi and Yena?”

  “How old are you?” came the pert reply.

  “Sixteen.”

  “They’re older, but not by much. Sashi is nineteen, Yena is seventeen.”

  “And they both want babies,” Saffron repeated, just to be sure. “They both want Matu’s babies. What is he, a rock star?”

  “A what?” came the confused reply. “That doesn’t make any sense, Safi. Stars are made of fire, not earth.”

  At that, Saffron really did laugh. “Never mind,” she said. Some concepts, apparently, were beyond translation. “I mean, wouldn’t they want to marry him first? Or… something?”

  “Oh, that!” The sound of Zech pulling a face was almost audible, and for an instant Saffron was so reminded of Ruby, who couldn’t be more than a year or two older, that her chest constricted with loss. Don’t, she told herself sharply. Don’t even think about it. Just listen. Vekshi women don’t bind themselves,” Zech, oblivious, was saying. “Ashasa has no husband, Yasha says, and nor should we. Do your people join in mahu’kedet, then?”

  “Not quite. For us, it’s just one person at a time – I mean, not everyone actually does that, but lots of people still think you should, and that it should only ever be boys with girls, never boy-boy or girl-girl. Lots of people don’t agree with that last bit, though, but it’s still illegal in lots of places.” It felt like a ridiculously infantile way of explaining it, but then she was talking to a grinning tween in a foreign language facilitated by magic, which probably counted as extenuating circumstances.

  “You marry like the Kamne?” Zech sounded aghast. “But that’s barbaric!”

  “I guess it is,” said Saffron, not wanting to argue, but just as equally disquieted by the possibility that maybe Zech had a point. Lifting herself onto her knees, she took a deep breath and plunged her head underwater, ridding her stubbled head of soap. “Ah!” she said, coming back up again. “That’s better. I’m all done here.” She looked ruefully at her filthy clothes. “Is there anything clean I can change into? “Oh! I didn’t think of that. There’s a towel there, anyway – I’ll see what I can find!”

  “Thanks,” said Saffron, but before Zech had even crossed the room, the door opened.

  “I see I’m just in time,” a woman said. It took Saffron several startled moments to recognise Pix, and that she was speaking Kenan. As her footsteps came closer, Saffron was suddenly overwhelmed by self-consciousness. Almost tripping over the tub in her haste, she hurried to stand and wrap herself in the towel, barely achieving modesty before the other woman poked her head around the edge of the screen. “Can you understand?” Pix asked, taking care to speak slowly.

  “Yes,” Saffron gulped, feeling abruptly chilly. Pix was beautiful: somehow, she hadn’t quite noticed yesterday. The observation brought a blush to her cheeks and speeded her pulse, but if the other woman noticed, she refrained from comment, instead placing a folded set of clothes by the edge of the screen. “They should fit,” she said. “And there’s a…” Her next words were indecipherable. At Saffron’s blank expression, she sighed and repeated the phrase to Zech, who translated it into English.

  “A bra and underpants,” she said, stepping into vie
w. “I might need to help with the bra. Pix says that Gwen says it’s not like the ones you’re used to. We can wash your old things, though, so it doesn’t have to be forever.”

  “Oh!” If anything, Saffron’s blush deepened. “Thank you.” She directed this last to Pix, who smiled, bowed, gave a final, incomprehensible instruction to Zech, and then walked out again, shutting the door behind her.

  It was strange, Saffron thought, how much she understood while talking to Zech compared to the gaps she’d experienced with Pix. Even so, the rapidity of her comprehension was terrifying. “What else did she say?”

  “That after you’re dressed, I should bring you to Yasha’s quarters,” Zech said. “And also to say that if you have your bleeding while you’re here, you should go to her for some blood moss.”

  Utter embarrassment warred with pragmatism. After a moment, pragmatism won, though it was a near thing not helped by a morbid curiosity as to what bloodmoss actually was. “I’ll do that,” she said, awkwardly.

  But for all she was disconcerted by Pix’s unexpected frankness, she couldn’t fault her consideration. The “bra”, such as it was, turned out to be little more than a piece of fabric sized to wrap around her breasts, more like a binder than anything else, and without Zech’s help, it doubtless would have gone the way of yesterday’s taal. The other clothes, however, fit surprisingly well, and with not too much fuss. The loose trousers, called kettha, turned out to fasten much like a pair of fisherman’s pants, while the tunic-top, called a dou, was fitted and slit at the sides from thigh to hip. Unlike Zech’s outfit, however, Saffron’s had no embroidery: the kettha were a plain dark green, the dou lighter.

  “How do I look?” she asked, when she was finished.

  Zech grinned. “Like a Vekshi woman. It suits you.”

  Does it? Saffron wondered. The room had no mirror, and given what she’d seen of the open windows – none of them had glass – she doubted whether asking for one would help. But then she remembered the tub, which, despite the water’s distortions, could still show a reflection. Taking a deep, anticipatory breath, she looked down.