Misery's Child (The Cadian Chronicles) Page 9

  Shallana Anthely’s pale face glistened, her chestnut hair plastered flat with sweat across her forehead. Her still-thickened figure curled, knees to her chest, as another contraction rocked her.

  Osane groped through the sheets for the shallana’s hand. “Dearest, I spoke without thinking,” she said, lifting the white hand to her lips tenderly, “I did not mean to cause you pain.”

  She gestured and one of the women brought a basin of water. The cadia-dedre moistened a towel and sponged the perspiration from the writhing woman’s face, all the while murmuring soft and low. “Ssh, ssh, sister, I know. Ssh....”

  “I don’t...know what happened,” Anthely whispered through her tears. “I was so careful this time. I was careful....” The weeping woman writhed against the bedclothes, burying her face in the pillows.

  “Ssh. I know. I know. Breathe deeply, dearest. Ssh.”

  Osane sighed as she handed the cloth back and bade them fetch cooler water. She was sick of this scene. How many young faces, contorted by pain and shame, had looked up at her from this same bed? Wide, wounded eyes that begged for any explanation at all.

  Soccia caught her eyes across the bed. As the official healer to the Shallana for more than twenty summers, Soccia had witnessed even more of these scenes than Osane.

  Osane gave directions, wondering why they needed her to tell them to get Anthely out of the bloody sheets. Couldn’t they think of anything on their own?

  “Did you give her something?” Osane asked as Soccia closed the door behind them.

  “A sedative, to help her sleep and ease the cramps,” Soccia said, falling into an unhurried step beside her superior. “She’ll rest now.”

  Osane felt much older than her forty-five summers. She spared an idle glance at her reflection in the mirrors as they passed and was surprised to see the same serene face that had greeted her each morning, virtually unchanged for the past two dozen summers. Sometimes it frightened her that she could hide her emotions so completely, that all she had seen and felt left so little mark on her physical being. It was a deceptively soft, unremarkable face, with the bright eyes of a child, round-apple cheekbones and a tiny pale mouth. Her kerchief hid her hair—thick and curling, but already completely gray as if it alone had absorbed the age which the rest of her body refused.

  Soccia, walking beside her, did not look her age, either. The apotheca could pass for forty instead of sixty, in spite of the faint limp that plagued her. People had always whispered that the cadia knew how to trick time, but even Osane, now cadia-dedre and the supreme keeper of secrets, still had no idea why the sisters held the bloom of youth long past their prime.

  Osane had been anointed seven summers past. It was the final rung in an ascension of blazing ambition, not for power, but perfection as a sister of the order. Born to bastardy and poverty in the province of Sealles, she’d been abandoned on the doorstep of the local school where her memories began. The cadia-techas had taken her in, fed her, clothed her, taught her, and loved her. She had never wanted any life other than this.

  They had accepted her as a novice at twelve. By sixteen, she had completed her assiduarte—two summers of total silence and service at a cloister in Bethosa. At eighteen, she put on the gray burlang of a fully-trained cadia and entered the ranks of the cadia-chatels, a servant in the school where she’d grown up, working along side those who had raised her. She had not resented the ceaseless toil, for service was the purpose of life. Osane’s great yearning was for perfection in all things, whether it be the tapestry on which the sisters worked every evening or the floors she scrubbed until her hands cracked and bled.

  When she was twenty-four, the order sent her to the Isle of Omana Teret for training as an historica, one of the many divisions of cadia-techa. She no longer milked cows or washed laundry; instead she learned languages and studied ancient texts, arguing theology and history with the aesthicas and philosophes. Osane wondered if she had died and gone to Oman’s Great Isle beyond. She turned that single-minded determination for perfection to her studies and essays; the cadialana watched her and waited.

  At twenty-eight, she was sent as cadia-techa to a noble family in Modan. It had been the hardest time for her, attempting to teach a dull and vapid young girl who could not seem to master even the simplest of languages, her own.

  In Modan, Osane had taken a lover, as much out of duty as boredom. She did not dislike men, but intellectually they seemed so much less interesting than women. She’d have been content to remain a virgin all her life, but cadia were encouraged to take part in the sacred ritual of procreation at least once, as an offering of their innocence to the spirit of Oman that moved in His sons on earth.

  Oman must have been pleased with her offering. She bore a child, a son whom she brought back to the palace in her thirty-first summer. She resumed her studies in the palace college, teaching younger students and visiting little Sidren in the Revered Mother’s Home, where all the children of the Isle resided. Now she wore the scarlet burlang of motherhood.

  As a lower secretary of the cadialana, Osane gained a reputation for getting things done. She was said to be a woman of little talk and much action; this was no small praise coming from the cadia, who prized silence and service above all things.

  The cadialana, the gold-buttoned council of the order, consisted of twelve representatives, one from each province. When Cadia Borchetta of Sealles, ninety-eight summers old, suffered a stroke, Osane was unanimously voted to take her seat at the table.

  Anointed at thirty-eight, she was the youngest cadia-dedre in history. She suspected this was part of the reason Shallan Varden took an instant dislike to her. He was accustomed, he often complained, to dealing with a more mature woman. He never hesitated to invoke the late cadia-dedre’s name with a sigh of pained regret. The thought of Varden brought her mind abruptly back to the present.

  “She began having contractions around dawn,” Soccia said finally as they stepped into the bright sunlight. The sisters often carried their most delicate conversations to the herb gardens where eavesdropping was impossible. “We had hoped to stop them with pohyrin, but then the bleeding started. Same as before.”

  Pohyrin, a derivative of wild flowers that grew only in the No-Lands of Modan far to the north, had proved helpful in the past. Mostly, the cadia used it to lower fevers, but the drug also seemed effective in relaxing muscle spasms.

  “Does Shallan Varden know yet?”

  Soccia shook her head.

  Of course not, Osane cursed. Another distasteful duty that fell to her as cadia-dedre. She did not relish breaking this news to him. Assuming, of course, that Paglia’s spies had not already told him.

  “Her womb cannot seem to hold the seed,” said the healer, rubbing her eyes wearily. “Not since the last...”

  Soccia shrugged and her voice trailed off delicately. Osane knew she was referring to the last pregnancy that had been carried full term, only to be stillborn. Since then, nothing but early miscarriages.

  “Last time, it was six moonrises into her pregnancy, this time it was barely two. It’s getting worse. It’s just same as with Mofred and Anya and Dalyra...”

  The names chilled Osane’s soul. So many young and apparently healthy women. All of them had survived, Oman be praised; some had even stayed after their time as breda had passed, as cadia-techas. Some had gone back to their families in honorable retirement, carrying the secret shame of failure, some with more peace than others. All except Anya.

  Osane tried and failed to keep Anya’s enormous eyes from surfacing in her mind’s eye. Sweet, frail Anya, who’d thrown herself off the roof of the palace after the fifth miscarriage. Anya had been a mistake, too unstable to withstand the stress to mind, body and heart. After the girl’s death, her mother had confessed to mental unbalance in the family genealogy. Osane remembered Varden’s rage at the news and shuddered. She’d been unable to determine whether his anger had been directed at Anya or Oman.

  It was kept a secret, of cou
rse; not the death, but the manner of it. The cadia excelled at keeping secrets, while Varden’s priests excelled at weaving the lies to cover the silence.

  The last child born to the shallan—a girl—had survived only four days. Since then, nothing but miscarriages, all early into term, except for two stillborn sons. So many summers without even a hope.

  “It’s not Anthely, then, is it?”

  Soccia glanced at her guardedly. What she was suggesting was blasphemy. But it could be nothing else. Two of the former shallanas, Dalyra and Ovidde, had gone on to marry in their own lands. Both had quickened with child almost immediately. Dalyra now had two sons; Ovidde had two daughters and three sons.

  “It’s almost as if Oman were taunting us.”

  “No,” the healer finally responded, whispering. “I don’t believe the problem lies with the shallana. Oman has turned His face from Varden.”

  “Perhaps He has turned His face from all of us.”

  “No! No, I cannot believe that. We have been true to our faith and our god.”

  “Yet we have allowed things to come to this,” Osane whispered bitterly.

  “The will of Oman is a mystery—”

  “Oh, come, sister! We’ve known each other too long to waste breath with mindless dogma. Leave that to the bene. Or better yet the council, if they have time between raids on the temple coffers and wine cellars.”

  “I don’t understand why he allows it. Surely he knows—”

  “Of course he knows! He has spies even among his spies. He simply no longer cares. Even ten summers ago, Varden would have cut off Paglia’s hands himself, but now?” Osane issued a brittle laugh. “Now I can hardly rouse him to attend to the smallest of matters. He does nothing but brood, night and day. An heir is all he can think of.”

  “You speak of despair, then?”

  “Worse than despair, Soccia. Year after year, he grows colder and more desperate. Oman has never allowed a shallan to go on this long. Who knows the cost to Varden’s heart and soul?”

  Soccia bowed her head and slowed her step.

  “Cadia Terred has asked to be sent to cloister for her assiduarte.”

  “Cadia Terred?” Osane frowned and tugged her larat, the long scarf that draped her shoulders. Terred was a novice from a poor family, barely a year into her training. She was a quiet, withdrawn young woman who tried so hard to please and as yet showed no aptitude for anything except drawing the attentions of the shallan. “She’s far too young. There will be gossip if we allow her to go.”

  “Would you prefer the gossip that’s likely if she stays?”

  “And you wonder why my faith staggers of late?” Osane’s eyes cut bitterly toward her friend, who winced at her sarcasm. She lifted the heavy beaded prayer chain and the tiny book attached to it. “When I accepted this as dedre, no one told me that my first priority would be to keep the shallan’s robes closed—”

  “Osane, please....”

  “Oh, Sweet Mother! Why should I tiptoe around his lechery when even the minstrels in Tor sing of it? In rhymed verse no less! Worse, I suspect that lust for Terred’s body is the furthest thing from his mind. It’s his lust for a child, however he can get it, that prods him to such blasphemy.”

  “That’s for you and the cadialana to sort out. As an apotheca my concerns are limited to the physical realm—”

  Both women turned as a child scurried along the path towards them. The girl fell to her knees before Osane.

  “My Lady Dedre, Chancellor Paglia sent me to fetch you to the Shallan,” she said, breathing heavily with one hand pressed to her bodice as if to still a thudding heart. “Right away, my lady.”

  “Get up, child,” Osane said, forcing gentleness she scarcely felt into her tone. From the panic in the child’s eyes and the hurry of her approach, Paglia had probably scared the poor thing half to death, snatching her from the middle of some necessary duty to run his errands. “No need for such drama. I’ll to the Shallan at once. Go and splash some water on your face, calla, and tell the cook I said for you to have some hot tea before returning to your duties. It’s all right.”

  She was rewarded with a tremulous smile as the girl spun away. She turned to Soccia and sighed.

  “Well, he’s heard.”

  “It would seem so.”

  “Wish me courage, sister,” Osane called back over her shoulder. And the fortitude to hold my weary, bitter tongue.

  ***

  Chancellor Paglia y’Artrema, the chief minister of Varden’s council, looked down from the third story window of his master’s sanctuary and smiled. The jolly grin dimpled his cheeks and made strangers think he was much kinder than he was. He wore no beard, unlike nearly every man in the realm, because he liked the open, vulnerable appearance of his bare skin. It frequently caused others to underestimate him, a failure that worked in his favor on innumerable occasions.

  “Something amuses you?” Shallan Varden lay prone on a couch, exhausted, still furious, his mind raging, but his body spent. He was past his one hundredth summer and the rages that once sent him pacing through his palace like a caged lion now left him struggling for breath. His own helplessness only infuriated him more.

  “Nay, my lord shallan,” Paglia said, turning and willing his features into a suitably somber countenance. “What could I possibly find amusing in the face of your grief?”

  “Do you think I’m a fool, Paglia?” His master’s voice was weary. “Save your simpering sympathies for Anthely. Weak, imperfect vessel that she is, she’ll lap them up. Where is Osane?”

  Ah, so that was to be his mood today, Paglia thought. Some days Varden clasped his hand and called him brother, spoke to him as an equal and laughed at the gossip Paglia brought him for amusement. Other days, like today, Paglia found himself a whipping boy. It was all the same to him, so long as knew which kind of day it was going to be in time to alter his strategies. He much preferred the days—even weeks—that Varden shut himself into his chambers and refused admittance to even the servants. Paglia accomplished much while Varden fasted and prayed.

  “I sent a chatel to fetch her. That trifling girl must have dawdled along the way. Osane knows better than to keep Your Excellency waiting.”

  “Don’t you have anything better to do than hover over me like a carrion-eater? I don’t require your presence.”

  “I thought my duty lay with you, my lord.” The old man was all bluster and bark; Paglia was the only bite he possessed. “You are upset and should not be alone.”

  Nor, he thought, would I miss the coming interview with the cadia-dedre for all the gold placas in the temple coffers.

  There was a knock upon the chamber door. Varden made a weak attempt at sitting up, then fell back against the cushions once more. He spared a glance to his chancellor, who stood impassively and made no motion toward the door, before closing his eyes.

  When the old man did not speak out, it was Paglia who commanded the visitor to enter.

  Osane approached with the small, decorous steps that the chancellor found so contemptible, as if nothing to do with him or the Lord Shallan could ever be worthy of her haste. Indeed, her skirts hardly moved around her ankles. Her tiny hands were clasped against her stomach and her chin tilted impertinently as she regarded them.

  “My lord Shallan Varden.” Her curtsey, bending deeply with all semblance of respect, nonetheless seemed scornful. And that voice, so resonant for such a paltry creature, was far too confident. Osane had trained as a tranquilara or soother, those who honed the power and control of the voice. He had tried, summers past, to obtain just a little of that training for himself, but the cadia had refused his petition. Instead, he’d honed his powers on his own, aided by a natural talent and sheer determination.

  He would like to hear that voice begging for mercy some day.

  “I was informed that you required my presence.”

  “You kept his Excellency waiting.” Paglia’s voice sliced the air. “Did you intend to inform him of his loss befo
re or after the entire court had the news?”

  “While I am sure that your master’s loss has been devastating,” the dedre said, her gentle voice arching pointedly, “I felt it most urgent to tend to the health and well-being of the shallana first, who perhaps finds the loss almost as distressing as you do, Lord Chancellor.”

  Paglia’s face tightened.

  “Such impudence, to speak so to the Shallan –”

  “I regret that you find honesty impudent, Paglia.” Osane’s backbone stiffened. “For I was addressing you, not his Excellency. But indeed, you are right. What is a little feminine hysteria and blood compared to a summons from the Shallan’s chancellor, whose spies have no doubt already told him more than I would ever presume to?”

  “Osane, one day you will push me too far—”

  Varden opened his eyes. “Cease your infernal bickering. Paglia, you forget your station. Osane, tell me what happened.”

  Osane related the mornings’ events without sentimentality. Varden lay motionless on the couch with one arm draped over his face.

  “Paglia....” His voice came at barely a whisper.

  “Yes, my lord shallan?”

  “Get out.”

  “But my lord—”

  “I have no further need of you. Get out! Now!”

  Paglia allowed himself to meet Osane’s expressionless eyes for a brief moment. Any longer and the cadia-dedre would have seen the hatred and shame that burned in his own.

  My time will come, he told himself. And when it does, even Oman will not be able to help either of you.

  ***

  Only when the door shut with a solid thud did the shallan remove his arm from his face. Osane was stunned to see tears on his cheeks.

  She moved toward him but he waved her away, motioning toward the door. She went to the door of the chamber and peered into the hallway.

  “He’s truly gone, my lord.”

  “Good.” He drew a shuddering sigh. “I would not have Paglia see this weakness. It is terrible enough that you must be a witness to it. But you are only a woman, accustomed to the tears of the weak. I demand your oath that nothing said here and now will ever pass outside this room.”