Chapter 6 #2
“Created a bloody mess at Bria’s naming ceremony,” Selly interrupted, “and effectively declared open war against House Elal and their allies.”
Jadren only paused a moment. “Not if Alise became Lady Elal,” he countered, a bit sulkily. “She wouldn’t declare war. She likes me.”
“You call her Baby Elal.”
“Which she likes,” he countered and Selly had to suppress a smile.
“What about their brother Nander, who might indeed be the heir, as nobody seems to know?”
“By all accounts he’s a mewling numbskull.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous. Maybe even more so because idiots with power think only of themselves and not how their actions affect the people they’re meant to rule,” Selly said. “Plus, Elal’s allies are formidable, as we’ve already covered.”
“Yes, but at least it would be open war and not this increasingly cold détente where we’re all just standing around with our thumbs up our asses, waiting for something to happen and why is this hallway so cursed long all of a sudden?”
“The house has been extending it while you ranted,” Selly answered.
“I never rant.”
“Oh honey, you rant with the best of them and that was an excellent one.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “Truly one of your best rants.”
“I should never have taught you sarcasm.”
She restrained a laugh. “Jadren, my point is that this is all water under the bridge. You can’t rewrite the past. The moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on.”
“I know I didn’t teach you to pile on annoying metaphors, crazy girl.”
“If you want to talk about what steps you want to take now,” she told him, very reasonably, she thought, “then I am on board. That’s totally my wheelhouse, some might say—”
“I’m begging you to stop.”
Now she did laugh. “Rant successfully derailed,” she couldn’t help announcing, but then she quickly added, “Look, we’re here.”
“Wherever here is.”
“Where the house wanted us to be.”
“Yes, yes,” he grumbled ungraciously, then threw up his hands to the sky. “Very pretty courtyard, thanks. Duly admired. Can I go on with my life now?”
For the destination had turned out to be a courtyard, indeed, and one open to the sky, though with very high stone walls.
A statue stood in the center, no greenery around it, of a woman.
She stood with head bowed and face turned to one side, the exquisitely rendered carving of her hair obscuring all but a hint of her profile.
A stone cloak flowed in ripples around her, the unused hood draping down her back, her long-fingered hand on the head of a slim hound sitting by her side, muzzle lifted to the caress.
They both seemed remarkably lifelike for all that they were made of polished gray stone.
Bricks of the same color paved the floor of the courtyard, patterns of intersecting straight lines out to the four walls, forming a precise square.
Along each wall, trees had been ruthlessly espaliered.
Peach trees, it turned out, as Selly drifted closer to one, seeing the restrained branches bore heavy fruit.
Because the limbs had been trained into patterns and fastened to the stone walls, they didn’t bend with the weight of the fruit, as would be the case in the orchards at House Phel.
To Selly’s mind, the trees seemed to keen with pain at the rigid structures they’d been forced into, bearing the fruit almost against their will.
It made the hairs on the back of her neck prickle.
The whole place was eerie for no good reason.
She had no idea why the house had wanted them to see it.
She turned back to Jadren, to get his insights, and found him standing with arms straight by his sides, face pale behind his auburn beard, so his few freckles stood out in stark relief. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he swallowed hard and repeatedly, as if mastering the urge to vomit.
“Jadren?” she asked, hesitantly approaching him. He looked as if he’d shatter if she touched him. His wild black gaze went to hers, clenched jaw flexing, but he didn’t otherwise move, as if he, too, had been espaliered into place. “Are you all right?”
Which was a dumb question, because he was obviously very much not all right, but she wasn’t sure what else to say or do.
She most of all wanted to get him out of there, but she wasn’t at all sure if she could move him or if the house would let them leave.
Hard on that thought, she realized what she’d already observed: four walls, making a perfect square.
No exit. They were stuck here until the house let them go—and that would only happen once they confronted or learned whatever the house was shoving down their throats.
Probably just Jadren’s throat. And he hadn’t answered her.
“Can you speak?” she asked gently.
He nodded, jerkily, but didn’t say anything. The sweat glistening on his skin made him look as if he, too, was carved of white marble, with his red hair and beard splashes of lurid color like blood on snow. The hands at his sides had curled into fists, also whiter than the marble statue.
“Do you know what this place is?”
He shook his head, then reluctantly nodded, finally moving more like a human again and not a statue carved from stone. “The trees…”
“Yes. Peach trees. They’ve all been espaliered.
” Selly knew about the practice, though no one at House Phel employed it.
Some orchardists espoused it as best for making trees bear fruit.
The rigid confinement of the tree’s growth and relentless pruning meant that the tree didn’t spend “unnecessary” energy and nutrients on growing new limbs and leaves, instead forcing it all into producing fruit.
They were plants and didn’t suffer the way animals might, but the practice had always struck Selly as cruel.
“My mother…” Jadren said in a voice hoarse from being strained through his convulsing throat. “She was obsessed with… this.”
“Was this her courtyard? Her trees?”
“No. Not peaches. She hated peaches.” His wizard-black eyes fastened on the ripe fruit as if it were an abomination. “But otherwise…”
Selly was suddenly able to put a mental finger on one source of the eeriness of the place.
Besides, you know, being trapped in a sterile courtyard that hadn’t existed before by a sentient house.
Though the peaches hung fully and obviously ripe, the fuzzy skin splitting in places so that juice dripped out, there were no insects.
In a living world, flies and gnats would be drawn to the juices.
Small animals, too, would be climbing the easy ladder of the espaliered trees to gnaw on or harvest the fruit.
Instead she and Jadren seemed to be the only living creatures in the place and the trees produced their forced fruit in statuesque solitude, no evidence that a single peach had been picked—or even fallen naturally to the ground, as should have also occurred.
Letting the shudder of horror run through her to hopefully pass out again, Selly focused on helping Jadren think through this.
The house was capricious and followed her own alien logic, but she wasn’t needlessly cruel.
At least, not to Jadren. Whatever this artificial place represented, she hadn’t trapped them in it simply to torture them.
For Jadren’s pain became Selly’s and the house had to know that.
“Otherwise?” she prompted, edging closer to him, wondering if a physical touch would reassure or break his hold on the thin thread keeping him together.
“She often said…” Jadren swallowed convulsively and looked at her almost pleadingly.
She wished she could tell him he didn’t have to say anything, but that wouldn’t give them the key they needed to unlock this riddle-jail.
“That she wished she could espalier me as easily, to force me to bear the results she wanted.”
“Oh, Jadren.” Selly had no words. Fortunately, now that he’d broken the strange paralysis, Jadren was able to continue without furthering prodding.
“She tried it a couple of times, in the labs, not here.” His gaze roved over the courtyard, indeed very much reminiscent of the glass-walled cages he’d been kept in with their stark and rigid angles.
“She fastened me to the wall and broke my limbs to arrange them in the pattern she wanted, letting me heal that way.”
Selly managed a nod. With Jadren’s ability to heal from anything, his monstrous parent had experimented upon him with ruthless intent—and utter disregard for his suffering.
Indeed, treating him as if he felt no more than these trees.
“Why?” she asked simply, for Katica El-Adrel, sadist and psycho, also regarded herself as a serious scientist. Jadren’s pain was irrelevant to her, but she didn’t seek it out.
It was simply a byproduct of her relentless search for results.
Jadren’s shrugged a little, more of a jerking of his shoulders rather than his usual insouciant attitude.
“What she always and ever wanted, I think. She wanted to create the perfect automaton. She thought if she could break down and control my body enough that it would eventually accept the devices she wanted to implant in me, to make me grow over and incorporate them, as it were.”
He was at least speaking more normally.
“So, why did the house bring us here?”
“I don’t know.” He curled a lip and scowled at the walls. “It’s not funny.”
“Why peaches?”
Jadren gave her a distracted glance. “What?”
“If the espaliered trees are to remind you of what Katica was trying to do, but she hated peaches—why did the house choose that fruit?”
He frowned. “Good question.”
She presumed that’s what she was there for. “The statue—do you know who the woman is?”
Jadren turned to look at it as if he’d forgotten about it, which was entirely possible, given his traumatized reaction to the rest. He shook his head slowly. “No idea.”