Misery's Child (The Cadian Chronicles) Read online

  Teaches mercy to the wind.

  Would that I could gather you into my cushions and

  Teach thee mercy on my flesh—”

  Edlin shrieked. Lillitha collapsed beside her again.

  “The whole thing is one gigantic poem, almost like the Book of Belah,” Lillitha explained in a hurried whisper. “Gideon meets Homa and falls in love with her, but she is already married to someone else—”

  “Who? Is he handsome?”

  Lillitha wrinkled her nose. “Hardly. Her husband’s name is Bogrode. No one named Bogrode could possibly be handsome. Besides, Homa says he smells of ginger lineament and sour cheese—”

  Edlin made a face.

  “And he’s old. Gideon is young and beautiful, at least that’s how Homa describes him in a song she sings to him—”

  “She sings to him?”

  She nodded vigorously, enjoying Edlin’s shock. Women—at least the nice ones—did not sing love songs. Low, common men might sing in the taverns, but even those songs were about Oman or Belah and his warriors. Only the bene priests and the cadia in the Temple of Oman sang and only then for the most sacred of occasions. Song was too sacred for carnal purposes.

  Lillitha turned the book back to the first page, proceeding slowly so that Edlin could read along with her. She’d taught her friend to read in secret, but because Edlin rarely got the chance to put her knowledge to use, she labored over the longer words.

  “I thought I’d find you in here.” Ersala stood in the doorway, scowling to hide her amusement at their stricken expressions. If she scolded the girls too often about remembering their places, it was only because she wanted to spare them both grief later. The real world would intrude into their friendship soon enough.

  Her scowl deepened in real concern, however, as Lillitha scrambled to her feet. Her sharp eyes did not miss the way her daughter thrust something into the folds of her voluminous skirts. Her daughter wore a guilty expression she had not seen since Lillitha was eight summers and caught red-handed pitching barley biscuits out of this same tower window at her brothers.

  “Edlin, child, your mother needs you in the kitchen,” she said.

  She stood silently as Edlin scurried past her, then regarded her daughter solemnly.

  “So tell me, child, what is it so secret that you must hide it from your own muma, eh?”

  Lillitha’s hand shot forward, holding out the forbidden book. The girl looked at the floor, readying herself for the punishment she knew she deserved.

  Her mother surprised her by laughing.

  “Gideon’s Gilded Darma, is it?” Ersala took the volume and her face softened, allowing Lillitha a glimpse of the beauty her mother had once been. Such moments tugged at Lillitha’s heart, burning her with a grief she did not fully understand. “Where on Oman’s blessed earth did you find this?”

  “In the library. It was pushed up in the back behind the Histories.”

  “I wondered where this had gotten to.” Ersala sat down and patted the cushion beside her. Lillitha sat down. “Your father gave this volume to me as a wedding gift.”

  “Father?”

  “Oh, your father was quite the dashing romantic in those days,” Ersala said, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “And I was young once myself.”

  Young and foolish and frightened, Ersala thought. Wed to a man in another province that she had seen only once before the joining ceremony. But she had been so lucky. Rowle was a good man of surprising wisdom and patience, who’d learned enough about women to know that winning his bride’s heart was more important than just taking her body. On their joining night, he’d sat across the room from her and read the love poems aloud until she’d fallen asleep. As he’d intended, the poetry gave the uncertain girl some idea of what was to come, and even hinted that it could be quite enjoyable. After three nights of this, Ersala had been the one to invite him into their marriage bed.

  Ersala studied her daughter’s downcast eyes and the crescent of those long, darkly golden lashes against the perfect blush of her cheeks, the way her hands lay meekly clasped in her lap. Sometimes she didn’t know what frightened her the most: her daughter’s heartbreaking beauty or the gentleness and complete lack of guile with which Lillitha surrendered herself. The older woman put an arm around her shoulders.

  “I am sorry, muma. Truly.”

  “I should be angry with you. But ’tis young you are and I know you meant no harm. Lucky I am that your only vice is a passion for good books. But you know that this volume is not at all suitable for you.”

  “Because I am too young?”

  Ersala sighed. “Because you are too young, and because you are different, Lillitha. A woman’s life is never easy, and the path we have chosen for you will deny you some things. I have never tried to hide that from you, have I?”

  “No, muma.”

  “Many things that common women enjoy may not come to you at all, but in their place will come other things that even I cannot dream of.”

  She told her again of the palace’s splendor, its marble halls that stretched as far as the eye could see, of the gilded columns and the carvings which told the story of their people, the Omani. A place where beauty and knowledge was sacred, where dirt and filth never intruded, where no one ever lay in bed at night unable to sleep for the gnawing hunger in their stomach, where babies never froze to death for lack of heat.

  As she spoke, Ersala clasped her daughter’s hands and gave them a reassuring squeeze.

  Lillitha looked down, unable to ignore the hard, red calluses on her mother’s hands against her own soft and useless flesh.

  But it wasn’t entirely useless, this pretty flesh of hers, was it? It could bring honor back to her impoverished family, provide a ransom in tribute from the shallan and the other provinces that would enable them to survive, perhaps even lift them from the never-ending cycle of debt and deprivation.

  “Do you understand what I’m telling you, child?”

  Lillitha’s enormous eyes turned up to her mother’s face. She recognized the love and worry etched in those hard lines. Lillitha smiled her best and brightest smile.

  “I understand, muma. Truly, I do. I won’t disappoint you or father. I promise.”

  She kissed her mother quickly on one sagging cheek.

  “You’d better keep these in your room.” Ersala fished a small sack from the inner pocket of her long apron and handed it to Lillitha. “Someone’s been in the pantry again. They can’t steal what they can’t find.”

  She saw no need to burden Lillitha with the knowledge that her own sister coveted what did not belong to her. Lillitha had accepted without protest every part of her consecration—the endless studies and prayers, the constant presence of a chaperone, the limited freedom and even the long robes that covered her head to foot on those rare occasions when she left the tower room. But accepting Oman’s Tenth had been uncomfortable for her. She was generous by nature and taking anything off the family table for her personal consumption embarrassed the child.

  Lillitha peered into the sack. “Paggies? Father always loved these.”

  “He’s due back home before supper. I’d better go down and see if I can help in the kitchen—”

  Lillitha’s face lit up. “You must take these and make his favorite tart. No, please. I don’t mind—”

  “But Yannamarie—”

  The girl laughed, a clear tinkling sound like bells. “I’ll remind her that the Book of Belah says that he who gives freely is blessed. She won’t be able to argue with me. Summer is almost over and these are the last paggies we’ll see for a long time. I want everyone to enjoy them. Please.”

  Ersala relented and kissed her daughter gently on the forehead.

  “Tis a good girl, you are, Lillitha. You make me very proud. I’ll take these back down to the kitchen then, though I expect Tesla will grumble about last minute changes to her menu.”

  “Oh, wait!” Lillitha fumbled in the sack, pulling out two of
the biggest and best paggies. “Here, save these two. One for Edlin and one for Marta. You know how much Marta loves these.”

  Ersala stared at her daughter. Too often Lillitha seemed to know what went on in the house without being told. Was it possible that she had a touch of the Sight? Ersala’s grandmother had claimed to be tadomani, for all the good it did her. An icy finger tickled Ersala’s spine.

  But Lillitha merely smiled, an expression without a trace of guile or calculation.

  “I’ll see you at dinner, daughter. Get back to your studies or Yannamarie will be displeased.”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  Chapter 2: Marta

  Marta waited until the copse of fen trees shielded her from view of the house before pulling the stolen fruit from her pocket and biting into it. The juice dribbled down her chin and hand, leaving sticky pink streaks that she wiped hastily on her dress before she remembered that doing so would leave evidence of her crime. Her mother’s eyes were too scriving sharp for her liking.

  Scriving. She said the word aloud, giggling guiltily and enjoying the way it rolled off her tongue as she strode through the tall grasses of the east meadow. She wondered contemptuously if her mother even knew what the word meant. Then she supposed she must, having borne seven children, only five of which survived infancy. It was a dirty, common word, but Marta liked it anyway. Scrive the whole lot of them.

  She stumbled over another of the small rocks that littered her family’s land. She kicked it with her scuffed boot and then winced at her own childishness. Her father was a fool to try farming this land, nothing but loose sandy soil and rocks everywhere. Small wonder they were starving. Even Marta knew that to make money in Kirrisian, you had to have ships. Ships to fish or to bring in things that people wanted from other places along the coast. Silk and lace and Corellian wine, spices from the Ceanese Isles. Tomack’s father had ships, lots of them.

  Tomack had taught her that deliciously dirty word, whispering it in her ear as his hands groped in the front of her loosened bodice. Marta knew that’s what he wanted to do to her, to scrive her in the haystacks of the far meadow. But she wasn’t that foolish, though she let him think that perhaps she was. Tomack was a swaggering fool, but he was handsome and his father was rich. One day Tomack would have his father’s ships.

  And she meant to have Tomack.

  It was difficult to keep him dangling. He was very persistent, used to having his own way and not without a rough charm. He was sixteen, two summers older than she. It was a pity she was so young, she thought; it would be another summer at least before her father would even begin to think of choosing a husband for her, and another summer or two after that spent considering suitors and alliances. That was a great deal of time to simultaneously hold Tomack at bay and yet fan his desire for her. Well, that was all right. Let him spend that time bedding every village slut in the province; when he got ready to marry, he would think of the one he hadn’t been able to bed. His pride wouldn’t be able to stand it.

  Besides, she was the vidor’s daughter. If it weren’t for her family’s poverty, Tomack could never hope to wed so high above his station.

  The village was just over the rise of the next hill, a dreary congregation of stone huts and whitewashed wooden buildings that became more cramped as she moved toward the heart of Jennymeede. She gnawed at the core of the paggie, then threw it aside as she cut through Widow Hargrow’s raggedy garden and made for the lane that led to the docks.

  The old men were gathered outside Griffith Tavern as usual, settled on rough-hewn benches overlooking the common. Above their heads swung the wooden sign emblazoned with a dreadful carving of what was supposed to be a coat of arms. The Griffith was a tame establishment where a man too old for the fields or the docks could bid his time without his wife accusing him of whore mongering. The Griffith was owned by Widow Hargrow, who wasn’t against a game of dice or drawing a flagon of ale, but drew the line at admitting the local trollops. In the Griffith they were also safe from the young pups eager to prove their manhood with their fists. All of that trouble kept to the waterfront, despite all of her father’s efforts to keep the riff-raff away from the merchants’ offices and warehouses.

  Marta waved, flashing a dazzling smile and putting an extra swing in her hips for the old men’s benefit. A corpulent old grunt named Syfert waved back, and she laughed at his invitation, but kept on walking. Old Sy always gave her a sip of his cider ale when she sat on his lap, pretending that she didn’t know she was too old for men’s laps and too young for ale. The rest of them were too afraid of her father to let her try such games, but old Sy wasn’t quite right in the head anymore.

  Today she had no time for such pleasantries if she wanted to be back home in time to change her dress and bind up her hair properly before her father returned. She turned the corner and squinted towards the end of the packed-dirt lane where the land ended and the sea began.

  The afternoon was bright and the sun that glinted off the water was nearly blinding. As she neared the waterfront, the noise of the docks swelled with rough voices barking orders and the cries of the seabirds spiraling overhead.

  “Ya break that case of wine,” a deep voice boomed over the hubbub, “and it’ll be coming out a’ya pay, you scriving arse!”

  People swarmed like ants over the wooden piers. Bare-chested sailors in their funny short pants outnumbered the merchants in their somber-colored coats that flapped about their legs as the wind gusted off the water. Small dirty children ran as if they had some purpose and indeed many were legitimately employed carrying messages and cargo bills from the storefronts to the captains and back again. Still others hung around hoping to pick up a coin or two when the next ship docked. Women with baskets scurried to and fro, bearing produce from their fields down to the markets where they could be sold or traded for mullocks and gantry fish.

  Marta felt safe knowing her mother had already been to the market that morning and her father was still at least an hour’s ride away. They always warned her it wasn’t safe for a young woman to roam Jennymeede alone, but Marta dismissed their pleas and demands. She’d been coming to the docks alone since she could walk; she knew every nook and cranny, every shadowed alley and sun-lit lane. She knew the dockmas and foremen by name, as well as the merchants and tavern-keepers. She recognized, too, the less reputable character that even now hung out of an upper window of the notorious Blue Darma Tavern, calling to one of the sailors lolling against the pier.

  “Hallo, buckie!” Tanra Jille was nearly forty and quite plump, but Marta couldn’t help admiring any woman who ran her own business as successfully as Tanra Jille did. Unlike the Widow Hargrow, Tanra had not inherited her tavern from a dead husband nor did she have any pretensions about the morality of her establishment. “Yer lookin’ mighty dry and lonely down there, sweetie!”

  The sailor, a lean and tawny fellow with a rag tied about his throat and a beaten copper bracelet straining against one bicep, laughed to show crooked, gray teeth. He elbowed his companion and then made an obscene gesture with his hand. Marta caught his eye and he smiled brazenly.

  “Why should I spend my hard-earned coppers on you, you old whore,” he bellowed, “when such fine fresh companionship is available right down here?”

  Marta tossed her head and kept on walking, knowing the effect of her disheveled hair as it bounced down her shoulders. Her hair was her best feature, just like her sister’s, a glorious mane of red-gold tresses the color of the setting sun, inherited from their mother. Next year she’d be too old to appear in public without binding it up properly, but for now she intended to make the most of it.

  “Don’t be a dolt,” Tanra Jille yelled from her window, her thick lips pursed in annoyance. “That ain’t no village wench, that’s the blinkin’ vidor’s daughter.”

  Marta was a good four jackles away now, careful not to walk too fast or too slow, but his throaty reply followed her on the breeze.

  “Makes a man’s mouth water, so she does. R
owle’s daughter or no.”

  Fifteen or twenty boats sat on the water. Above most of the bigger ones flapped the blue and gold flags of House Danaus. The boats were barrel-shaped constructions of wood, stained with a dark pitch from the fen trees, with massive strips of metal forged around their bellies. Those most recently put to port still had their sails unfurled, a sight that never failed to thrill Marta’s heart, for the sheer beauty of the sails made up for the clumsiness of the hulls. The sails were a riot of color and design as every family tried to outshine the others.

  Danaus’ ships had blue sails more vivid than the sky. Yagret’s ships, the next most numerous, sported brilliant orange sails with a single globe of yellow in the center. Billra had only two ships, but Marta wished him more, simply because his green, white and crimson striped sails were so splendid. Even the poorer fishermen were proud of their patched and sun-bleached sails.

  Only one small boat, an ancient vessel showing signs of rot around the stern, flew the colors of Marta’s house: a red field with three interlocking gold circles. Rowle had two sailors whom he paid not in coin but in a share of the catch.

  Marta sped past her father’s men, glad their heads were bent over a tangled net. She didn’t want to speak to them or she would feel the flush of humiliation creep to the very roots of her hair. They fancied themselves her equal just because her father had no coin with which to pay them. Her father said they were good fellows and honest men. Marta thought him a fool for not seeing the way they snickered behind his back.

  “You’re too proud, calla Marta,” her father would only laugh, “to imagine slights were none are intended. Vidor or no, I grew up with Cal and Ryton. I’m lucky to have good fisherman and they are lucky to have a boat.”

  She heard Tomack’s voice before she saw him. He was standing on the pier scowling over a cargo bill.

  “There are supposed to be five cases of Farcali brandy, not four,” he bellowed. “Next, you’ll be telling me how one of them fell overboard—”