Chapter 45 Sheuan #2
Her mother stood to the side to let her pass, and Sheuan’s gaze focused on the veins on the back of her mother’s hand, the green protrusions like overflowing rivers, the age spots like sinkholes.
The enforcers moved to follow her, but her mother shut the door firmly in their faces without explanation.
Sheuan couldn’t see whatever expression her mother had shown them, but she knew from being on the receiving end of her ire that her glare could stop a person in their tracks and give them the sudden sinking feeling that they had done, or been about to do, something terribly rude.
“I don’t have tea,” her mother said. “Not the kind you would be used to now, in the castle. But I can serve you mint.”
The cheapest, the easiest to grow. “That’s fine,” Sheuan said. “I like mint.”
Her mother brewed the tea herself and then sat with her at the table in the adjoining room. “Why are you here?” She stirred the tea with a chopstick, replaced the lid, and then sat back on her cushion. The morning light filtered in, hazy, the neighboring building blocking any direct sun.
“There was a riot last night. Can’t I check on my mother?”
She snorted. “That’s what you told the enforcers, girl. Don’t think you can tell me the same thing.”
Sheuan wrapped her hands around her empty cup. “I did worry about you. I do worry about you.”
Her mother shook her head. “I am just one person.”
Gods below, she could be so stubborn. But Sheuan hadn’t come here to start yet another argument. She rose, swinging the shutters on the window quietly shut. The small room darkened. Her mother watched her as she sat back down, her gaze wary.
“I went to the Sovereign’s warehouse. I found something. Something that would get him into trouble with the clans. And with Kluehnn.”
Her mother made a clicking sound with her tongue, grabbed the teapot, and poured into Sheuan’s cup.
The liquid was a thin green; it hadn’t steeped for long enough.
She leaned forward through the curls of steam.
“This is a stupid thing to do, Sheuan. I told you not to go digging before, and still, look” – she waved a hand – “you go digging. Ah, why can’t you listen to your elders?
We’ve been here, alive, for longer than you have.
You think you know everything. You think you know what’s best, and then you stumble into every sinkhole life has to offer while we shout at you to stop for a moment and look at the path ahead. ”
“Then tell me what lies ahead.”
“Your head on a block and the ax above your neck.” She sat back, huffing out a breath. “You think I want to see you executed too? You think I want to see the same thing happen to you as happened to your father? You both went into that big castle with big plans.”
Sheuan’s temper frayed. “And what am I supposed to do? Abide by everything you’ve told me to do? We would have fallen into ruin no matter what you did. It was what the Sovereign wanted.”
“So you think you’re cleverer than me? The Sovereign doesn’t want you as his wife. He sees it as convenient. When you are no longer convenient, you will no longer be his wife. You will be dead.”
Sheuan knew she was right. She’d told herself the same thing, more than once.
So why did it hurt when she heard it from her mother’s mouth?
She didn’t want her mother to spout lies, to tell her the Sovereign saw her as anything more.
So what did she want, exactly? “I know he sees me as a tool, and not as a person. I’ve spent all my life being treated that way, as something to be used for the good of the clan. You think I don’t know the feeling?”
“Oh, Sheuan.” The pity in her mother’s gaze was almost more than she could bear. “I see every individual in the clan that way. No one else has complained. Only you.”
“Did I not matter more?” They weren’t quite the right words, she knew it as soon as she dug them up, but they were close, so close to the truth.
“How selfish would that be of me, if I put my daughter above everyone else?”
“I still wanted you to. I still needed you to!” Instead, she’d had no one who’d loved her in the way she’d needed, someone who would care to dig beneath and know her.
That secret self she’d always had to hide for the good of her family.
And her mother had praised her for it. The only person who’d ever cared to dig beneath had been Rasha – so very, very briefly.
Her mother sipped from her tea, calm as the sea after a storm. “You have always had that roiling beneath the surface, that need to take, take, take. Always such a needy child.”
If this was a fight, Sheuan could feel herself losing.
She scrambled for some semblance of decorum.
This outburst only proved her mother right.
“Did you ever consider that maybe I behaved that way because I never really got what I needed from you? Father was executed and you thrust me into a role I wasn’t prepared for.
There was never any softness to you. Any give.
You owe me. You owe me this. What was my father doing in the days before his execution?
You know something and I have to know it too. ”
For a moment, her mother only pursed her lips as she regarded her.
Then she rose from her cushion, went to a chest in the corner, and lifted some blankets aside.
She pulled out two stone tablets from beneath it, stacked one on top of the other and bound with twine.
“It’s written in an older form of Langzuan, more elaborate than the one we use today, but you should still be able to understand it.
” She passed the tablets to Sheuan. “He was reading these the day before he died.”
She took them. A quick glance highlighted the names of the elder gods. A piece of parchment was folded and placed beneath the twine. With shaking fingers, she pulled it free and opened it.
It bore only two words, in her father’s handwriting, the smudge of ink from his left hand marring the bottom of the page.
The scar.