14. Chapter 14
Chapter 14
A thelstan read quickly through the letter containing the latest news on the doings of the Fishmongers’ Guild. It seemed that his wife’s scheme had been better than it initially seemed, for there were a few cases of the merchants of the Guild buying from the widowed fisherwomen.
Privately, Athelstan Waite was rather relieved he would not have to force the guildsmen’s collective hand on the matter. The coming defense would definitely need outside help besides the now-meager sea-levies, and that would likely mean asking for help from the major Guild members. Most of that mercantile folk possessed large ships to catch the schools of herring off the coast on hitherto-unknown scale. The ships that, if needs be, could be used for fiercer purposes.
Those who didn’t have shares in those giants had great enough private treasuries to finance the hiring of mercenaries.
He was jotting some numbers down when the door to his study opened, and revealed Julia his wife standing on the threshold. In her arms, she had a great heap of paper sheets.
Athelstan was at her side without thinking, relieving her of her burden, noticing how color flooded back into her whitened hands as he did so.
“What is this?” he asked, depositing the mass upon the desk and glancing at it. The sheets were covered with tight, elegant lines. The hand of a professional scribe - not even his Father Telmen wrote so well.
“Something that might help us,” she replied breathlessly, and Athelstan could not help but see the pallor of her cheeks and the fatigued look in her eyes.
“You are exhausted beyond belief.”
“Not really, no.” Julia beamed, though her looks proved the veracity of his observation. “I imagine you’ve asked yourself why was it that I spent the last week visiting the convent so assiduously...”
“I did, at first. But then I supposed you were trying to mend the bridges between myself and their Elder Sister.” He hesitated, wondering - an unfamiliar sensation - whether or not to tell her that the efforts were futile, that his piety had died in the bloodbath of Redstone Pass, and that he had little inclination to pretend otherwise. An even more unfamiliar thing was his decision not to, for the reluctance of telling her she had spent a whole week carrying water in a hole-ridden bucket.
“A little bit, I suppose. But that was not my whole aim, my true aim. I’ve spent most of that time hidden in their library, going over certain tomes with a very helpful Sister.”
“What sort of tomes?” Perhaps, Athelstan should have first asked what sort of Sister . He knew what snake-pits some of those godly abodes sometimes were. He knew that helpful assistance rendered out of nothing but sweetness was as rare a thing to encounter there as it was in any castle bristling with weapons.
“Tomes of the ancients, and people close to the ancients. Their observations of maritime craft.”
That explained the exhaustion.
“You have done a magnificent work, if so,” Athelstan commented, taking her hand. It felt warm between his fingers - a fair and fine hand, but one already developing a small callus from the holding of the sword. A new one over the old one, the long-healed one.
In response, Julia blushed with pleasure like a damsel at a compliment to her complexion, and smiled.
Seeing her thus was almost physically hurtful, like looking straight at the sun.
He coughed and turned to the heap of pages.
“How much is this going to cost us?”
“A support in the eventual election for the post of Elder Sister.”
“I suspected something like that. Dear Triad, but ecclesiastical politics is something I wanted to steer clear from until my dying breath.”
“You are a great lord,” Julia pointed out. “That would have been rather impossible.”
“Perhaps, but allow a man his futile dreams.”
Athelstan had another stool brought in, and a profusion of candles. They were both tired - Julia more than himself - and it would not have been good sense to strain one’s eyes more than necessary.
Of course, a thing of truly good sense would have been to wait until next morning, when the natural light would be abundant and no expense of wax would be necessary. But Athelstan had to confess to himself that he was very impatient to see what his wife had unearthed - especially given what was at stake.
An hour passed. He had to turn the pages slowly, for Julia insisted on reading - re-reading, really, since she had seen them before - the thing slowly, making sure she mined every line for meaning. As though she were descending a great and slippery staircase, and holding on to rails for her dear life.
Some of the information was intriguing, but ultimately useless. Athelstan would have gladly spent a free afternoon working though the description of a yacht one ancient ruler had built for the pleasure of cruising alone, a vessel graceful and fragile, yet sturdy enough to support marble statues and a pool. He winced at the description of such useless decadence, but could not help admiring the craftsmanship of the unnamed shipwrights.
There was, however, an account that lifted tiredness from his brow, and made him sit up a little straighter.
“That part is surely a fable-like detail. An embellishment,” he judged.
“Which part?” Julia leaned closer to the pages - closer to him. In the great candlelight, her slight dark frame seemed lit by gold.
“Fire burning on water. Anyone can see it for a fishwives’ tale”.
“One would have thought that fishwives would know better than most,” Julia pointed out. “After all, some of them likely lost their husbands to it.”
“I am not claiming Undying Fire, or whatever other grand name people preferred to call it, did not exist. But every weapon has its limits.”
“You’ve heard of it before, then?”
“It had been mentioned in some treatises our tutors set us to read as boys.” So many treatises, so many texts setting out the qualities of the ideal ruler and the ideal lord. Efficiency in war, graciousness in peace, generosity towards his vassals. Mirrors of princes, some books were called - in the years before Orwyn had any notion of sitting on the throne. “But none of them claimed it could burn the very water.”
“Well, perhaps the authors of those treatises were misinformed. Or simply ignorant of some things.”
“I am not a fool enough to claim it never existed, or that it wasn’t an efficient way to burn one’s enemies to cinders on land or sea. I do recall the mention of one emperor assassinated with the Undying Fire in a secret passage under his own palace.”
“No one can fault the ancients for a lack of imagination.” A corner of Julia’s mouth twitched. Whatever one could say about her shortcomings, an excess of delicacy has never been one of them.
“But this man is likely exaggerating its qualities abominably. Which might have well been the point. Some things were written while aimed for distribution beyond the imperial frontiers. A cheaper policy than cowing over-bold barbarians every campaigning season.”
“ We are the descendants of those barbarians, my heart.”
She did not emphasize the last two words, there was nothing dramatic about her delivery. Perhaps, that was why his gaze lingered on her so, and he wished - for a second only - that they could be alone without the vital task pulling at them.
But they were not.
“Even if there is no exaggeration involved,” Athelstan continued with an effort, “the secret of the fire has long been lost. No writing is left that contains it. If there was one, on land or under it, believe me, the efforts of one ruler or another, or one over-ambitious lord or another, would have long since uncovered it.”
“On land or under it, perhaps so.” Julia looked pensive for a moment. “But...”
“Yes?”
“You know, the oldest stones in the walls of the convent have been procured from the pagan cairns that once lined our lands.”
That was quite a change in topic. If it came from one of his men, Athelstan would have reacted rather impatiently. But it was Julia, his wife, so he listened on.
“I was looking at those while waiting to be admitted to the Elder Sister,” Julia continued, “which gave me plenty of time for my thoughts to wander. There are plenty of shards of the past waiting for us under the earth. What if there are also enough of those waiting for us under the sea?”
“Too deep under the sea for a mortal to have a chance to discover anything. Besides, it is not anything that we are after. Imperial warships carrying the Undying Fire did not go down easily.”
“But go down they did,” Julia insisted. “I am not as learned as you are about the naval matters, or martial matters either, but I know there is little chance that over centuries of fighting no warship ever went down below the waves.”
“My point still stands. Even if, by some ungodly stroke of luck, there is a fire-carrying ship at the bottom of the sea around Greyharbor - even if there is any supply left there, sealed in some coffer, enough of it left over centuries to study - we won’t be able to reach it.”
“We won’t. But the sea-silk women would.”
Athelstan twitched at the notion of spreading this budding secret, this small idea, this advantage he might have just carved out from the dish life had served him, among others.
“I’d rather not trust our plans for the defense to their tongues.”
“They would keep silence if their lord would tell them to, surely.”
“They would,” Athelstan nodded. “If the lord were Orwyn. It’s damnably difficult to command a peaceful crowd in a still sunshine, Julia. Sometimes I think the war made such matters easier.”
“But you wouldn’t want to go back there, would you?” Julia smiled slightly, as though it were a possibility. “For one thing, that was before we’ve met.”
“That would have been a great loss.” He had never been a man for smooth words, or even for the kind of fleeting touches that delighted ladies. But he squeezed her shoulder, as though she were a comrade on the walls, on the deck, on the battlefield.
Then Julia pressed her forehead against his, shattering this illusion.
He leaned forward, aiming to claim her mouth.
At this, Julia hesitated, then whispered almost against his lips:
“But what if there was someone else who swore the silk-divers to silence? Someone they liked and respected? Someone who boasted their skill herself?”
“Have you made a friend among them on your rides to the convent?” His voice sounded softer to his own ears than on a thousand occasions before. His fingers tangled in Julia’s dark hair.
“In a way. It’s - it’s Roxane”.
His hand stilled.
“What do you mean?”
“I suppose I shouldn’t be saying this. I swore - but if this is the only thing that can help us...”
“You swore - to silence?”
Julia lowered her eyes and nodded:
“She had been diving for some time before my arrival.”
“Great Triad.” She could have hit him with the pommel of her sword, and stunned him less.
It would have hurt less, too.
“She had been abandoned in an empty castle, her governess dead, her family far away. No tutors, no companions, no mother, no -”
“No brothers.” The words were as heavy stones dropped into a black water.
“I didn’t say it was your fault.”
“Of course it was. I should have watched her better.”
Dear Triad, it felt like a nightmare come alive. The world tilting on its axis around him.
“You’ve done everything you could”.
“Not enough. Not enough to see what you two were up to-”
Julia’s cheeks flamed into redness:
“I know you wish I told you, but if I did, you would have forbidden her diving on the spot - “
“Of course I would have,” Athelstan snapped. “She is unwell, for Lady’s sake.”
“That’s the reason. She loves the waters precisely because she can move there. Move swiftly.”
“Sea-silk diving is a trial for grown women with muscled arms and great lungs. She is a child.”
“A gifted child.”
“She has less dangerous gifts, too. If you truly cared for her as much as you claim to, you would have helped her develop those, and steered her away from that madness.” He clasped Julia’s arm. Released it, once he saw the wordless panic in her eyes - panic born of something old, something that must have predated this moment by years upon years.
For a moment, they simply looked at each other, bathed in the light of a multitude of candles. A parody of a ballroom, a parody of sweetness.
A parody of trust.
“Forgive me”, Julia said quietly. The dignity in her voice was almost forced, something to cover up shivers. His first impulse was to grasp her close and promise her vengeance on those who instilled that terror in the marrow of her bones.
But he could not. He simply could not.
Athelstan recalled Roxane’s first appearance after his return, her joyous shriek, her attempt to run to her brother.
Whatever joy there was, it was clearly not enough to tell him the truth. Not in her case, and not in Julia’s.
This stung like a scorpion’s bite at the Redstone Pass. Worse than her first deception, her first revelation, the secrets of her scandal. At least, then he had been a stranger to her. Then, she had a cause to fear (fear him, though, or fear being sent away from an unconsummated marriage? Fear of disgrace?). Now, she swore up and down that he was no enemy and no gaoler, that marriage to him was her protection, not her prison.
All the while quietly lying to his face. Or, at least, concealing the truth.
“I am grateful for your help with these notes, my lady.” The forced dignity of his own tone, to his consternation, did not come out much better than his wife’s. “I think I am going to take the work with them upon myself now. I will likely stay busy with them for the remainder of the night, so it would be better if you did not expect me in your bedchamber.”
***
Triad, if there was a task he knew he would relish less than he would a plague.
He knew where to find Roxane in the mornings - of course she would be in her room, having just taken her breakfast. She was still a child, after all, of course she ate separate from the adult part of the household. It had been so before the civil war, and it was so still now.
But there was a fear gnawing at Athelstan Waite’s bones - what if he would not find her there? What if she had already slid away furtively, warned by her co-conspirator; slid away, dove in, and would now be lost in the underglow of the black water?
The notion was silly, of course. Even if she went to seek refuge in the haunts of the diver women, only so much time could pass until she surfaces - literally and figuratively.
Sure enough, when Athelstan opened the door of his sister’s room, she was there, placidly looking at wax tablets. Remains of her lessons with Julia?
By the Virgin and the Lady and the Fate, Julia .
He shook his head, banishing the painful notion. He had another mission at hand now.
“Roxane.” He stepped into the room, watched her raise her head. What did one even say? “I know your secret.”
The girl jerked back, as though slapped. Color drained from her face.
“You know, this is how it always started,” she said, too young to force herself into steadiness, her voice shivering and rising. “In the nightmares.”
“I don’t know. What nightmares?”
“All of them. It’s always been like this. Your coming in, and saying you know everything. You could have only learned from-”
“Don’t blame your good-sister,” he cautioned. “It was a desperate situation. She could not do what she had to do without confessing this part.”
Roxane nodded mournfully.
“I understand. Well, I suppose no one can be trusted fully.”
The last part was uttered in a tone so like his own that Athelstan was not sure whether to laugh or weep.
“Why did you do this?” Why did you do this to me . “Everything I’ve done, I’ve done to keep you safe. I never thought you would endanger your own life and limb so willingly and foolishly.”
“It wasn’t foolishness!”
“How would you call it, then? The other women dive for sea-silk because they need to feed their families. Greyharbor isn’t so impoverished by the war that you had to follow their example. So, there must be another reason. What is it?” He tried to keep his voice level, but, when he took a step towards Roxane, she shrunk back.
“I’ve already told Julia. I move better when I am in the water.”
“This cannot be the whole reason, not even for a child.”
“I...” She fumbled, swallowed, her pale throat moving at that. “I don’t know what else to do. I thought, once the siege is lifted, once the war is over - it will all be good again, like in the songs. I thought I would be invited to court.”
“I thought so, too.”
“I thought I would have friends and tutors and lessons, and hawking in the royal woods. And it would all be color and light, and -”
And something utterly unlike Greyharbor. The home he, Athelstan, dreamt of escaping in the belly of a cargo ship when he was young.
“I used to dream of similar things. Then I learned that the world almost never gives people what they want. There is only the duty we all have to follow.”
“Sometimes I think,” Roxane whispered, “that my duty is to dissolve is the air and never bother anyone at all”.
“That’s nonsense.”
“Not that much of a nonsense. See what Orwyn had done to me.”
“Our brother is not responsible for your - condition.” He was responsible for something else. Something not much better. But Athelstan did his best to erase that spring day from his memory.
And what would he be, if he encouraged pointless rebellion in his sister, his charge?
Athelstan was not sure which word was the more damning. Rebellion, or pointless.
“He left me here, to rot away.” The bitterness from her lips was new, and adult, and too like his own for any comfort. “He left us both here. I thought - I would’ve thought you, of all people, would understand.”
“I understand well enough”. Athelstan said curtly. “Which does not mean that I condone. Diving for sea-silk is too dangerous for any kin of mine, let alone a young girl. I have indulged you greatly, but I think I might have made a mistake.”
“You aren’t going to take Julia’s lessons away?” Suddenly, Roxane was a child again, dire anxiety written transparently on her face. “Please? I talked her into keeping my secret, it wasn’t her fault...”
“No. I am not going to take your lessons with her away.” He was no fool. He could imagine Julia’s reaction if he tried. His sweet, treacherous wife. His sweet, treacherous wife he was still achingly reluctant to upset. “But you are going to be attended by one of the guards of my retinue from now on. It’s my fault that you got into so much mischief”, he added, turning to the door with greater hurry than the situation merited. “Now I’ll make sure you won’t be doing so anymore”.