long-fought grief. And jealousy. And hate.
“Four daughters. The only ones he ever sired. After my first two—the others—” a sharp breath, “avoided him. And I—”
Had been House-head. Daughterless. Unable to acknowledge his. Unable to forget them, unable to share them. Small wonder she had hated. I would have cut Khira’s throat.
“Ah, caissyl . . .”
My muscles too had translated things. She buried her face in my hair.
“And now . . . all the rest are dead.”
The rest of Khira’s brood. The daughters she had envied, and hungered for, and feared she had wished, if not sent, to their deaths.
Of a surety a god gave me the rest. I gathered her face up, and kissed her, more than carefully, on the lips.
“But she’s here,” I said. “Alive. And he’s out of the tower. He can live in the same house with her. Talk to her. Be with her. Whatever else you did, you’ve given them that.”
When you can convince her—can save her from herself—Tellurith has the loveliest smile.
* * *
So as soon as we were in bed, she destroyed my night’s rest.
There is no way Antastes will sit still for a lost army, a wrecked fleet, an absconding general. The mere cost would cripple him. The loss of face, the threat to the empire from emboldened enemies, is worse.
“Um,” said Tellurith. “The River has other news.”
The word on Verrain and Cataract did make me breathe easier. Plenty there to distract Antastes. We lay as we had in her House-head’s quarters: discussing the River, discussing policy, her head on my arm, her hair across my shoulder, the qherrique a whisper of light on the marbled walls. Trust, safety, warmth. Communion. Two minds matched, shared.
As here, amid the bleakness beyond the dying brazier, the furs, Sarth’s breathing, the waxing moonshine on unpolished planks.
A third excluded, because politics was beyond him.
Or so I thought. Until Tellurith took a handful of that hair, as she so often does when he considers it groomed enough, and said, “Sarth, what do you think?”
I thought the quiet was shock. Surely, she had never sought advice in the tower?
But in a minute or two he said, “There is a very good road from here.”
“And we’re north of Marbleport.”
The pair of them were thirty strides ahead. He meant the leveled, surveyed, double-wagon width by which the marble goes straight to the Riverside. A good road for messengers. She meant, advance warning from downRiver of incursion by land or water, possibly a spy-ring’s base for news earlier still. It was out on my own thought. “A marble factor would be perfect cover. Could you spare a light gun or so for signaling?”
Quite clearly I felt Tellurith gasp. The little startled laugh. Before the tousle of my hair that was a caress, which other times have taught me was compliment. To the speed of my own wits.
She said, “We need a marble factor anyhow, and well before winter’s end. We can’t spare light guns. But perhaps signal fires.”
“Signal posts?” Sarth sounded dubious.
“Once the houses are done, some convalescents might winter down there. Must see Iatha . . .”
The rest came on a mighty yawn. She turned on her side, sleep-time’s signal. And, as she did scrupulously, laid her head on one or other of our shoulders. This time, the turn was Sarth’s.
I still wonder what she would have done if it were not.
* * *
Settling. Week 8.
Journal kept by Sarth
Blessings on Tellurith, that after the unseaming awkwardness of that supper, she talked politics in bed, and did not try to ease or clarify other things for either of us. Not in front of Alkhes.
So there was a night to absorb it: a daughter, again, still, after all. A presence to learn and share, flesh and blood.
And exhumed ghosts.
Better, perhaps, that Alkhes was there. All those years between us, and the words never spoken. Four daughters. But what could I have said? Tellurith, I would cut my heart out if it gave you a girl?
While she, the Mother knows what she suffered, not to avenge herself on Khira, who had her heart’s desire. And now, to welcome Khira’s child. What was I to tell her now?
Tellurith, forgive me. I need—I want—you both?
Bless the Mother for mundanity that turned us all out before daylight, and had me emptying bedpans before breakfast, with the length of a shift until we met again. Or so I thought, until the hands across Pheroka’s clean sheet grew an owner. Tez.
“I learnt quite a bit,” she said, “in the hospital.”
As a prisoner-of-war. Mother bless, that there were sheets to pick up, a face to wash, hair to brush.
“I can do that.”
In the last resort, a door.
And with it, a message: I don’t want you. Go away.
I waited with the sheets. Walked with her. We kept stealing glances, silly as a pair of brats. With Alkhes I would have said, Do this, Can you fetch that? But she was a woman, as well as my daughter. The clash disabled me.
“Father?”
Sorting laundry. More deftly, that morning, than I. The last pile went down, the eyes rose. “I can go away.”
Sharp-boned, controlled, her mother’s mirror, down to those masked bronze eyes. The face that had left me, in the Tower.
But we were not in the Tower.
I had time to bless Tellurith, and feel the smile blossom even as I thanked Sethar and his antecedent generations who taught me to read and tender a woman, and shape fitting words round my own joy.
“Tez, you’re a Navy officer; a woman grown. And you must go where your duty is. I would bless the Mother to have you here. To know you. But whatever you do, you are my daughter. And I know—I’ve known this long time—you will make me—I am—so proud.”
One would not say such a thing to a woman, in the Tower. Nor had I ever touched a woman outside marriage. But I mustered the nerve to kiss her cheek. And to accept—the Mother knows, how well I’ve learnt acceptance—her embrace.
She was smiling when she looked up. Wet-eyed, radiant. It was “duty” did it. I have not husbanded a Navy captain for nothing. She patted me like a child with a new toy.
“The Ruand wants a factor down at Marbleport. And somebody to run an information net. Iatha said troublecrew, but they don’t know ships, and we can’t afford to get cheated over freight. And on Wasp I gathered the intelligence-reports.”
Here, and gone. “Duty” cuts both ways.
“But I wondered. I was worried—”
About her father. Her mother’s relict. Her responsibility. She feared Tellurith might have borne a grudge. After the way I treated her, who would be surprised?
She laughed out loud. “But it’s all right. It’s better than I ever thought. I can come back and see you. And you’re doing all this, you’re just as good as a woman—”
The eyes flickered, a glint that once had tweaked my heart.
“Except,” it became a wicked grin, “so much prettier.”
Then she patted my rump and grabbed a water jar on her way to the outer door.
* * *
Settling.