Riversend: An Amberlight Novel. Sylvia Kelso

all . . . most of all, they have to do it from the bottom. You can’t tell them, even if it’s a better way. They have to do it for themselves.”

      The coals spat. A palpably more bitter wind skirled round the tent. Elsewhere in camp people talked, cattle bawled, a baby cried.

      “So your way of organizing—is to let them organize.”

      He read my relaxation. His fingers flicked my plait, a tactile smile. “With a few gentle prods, and arrangements when they’re asked for. And godforsaken—endless—waits.”

      Never have his wits failed me. And never have they failed to reach beyond my aim.

      “But, Tel—if they—we—put it all back together, the old way—what will change?”

      I could not help the little laughing gasp. “What!” Nor the yank on his hair. “Just why do you suppose, dangle, that you’re here at all?”

      “Ouch! Tyrant . . . you mean it’ll shift, just having men out of the tower?”

      “Hasn’t it?”

      This time the silence was arrested. To break on a jerk half upright, a grunt. “The cursed—slime!”

      “Eh?”

      “Tel, this is—past crude. But who asked who, last night?”

      My own muscles set. Then I said, “The woman comes first?”

      His back transmitted the little, shaky sigh. “You are so quick . . .”

      “Did you,” yet more indecent, but it had to be said, “did you two—argue?”

      “I never got a chance.” A sharp little snort. “ I was ready to kill him, and he put five words between my ribs.” A more difficult breath. “And then he told me—his way—what you’ve been saying tonight.”

      “You think he lied?”

      “I didn’t think —I thought—the way he explained, it all made sense.” Now there was bitterness. The taste of betrayal. “And all the time—”

      “No.” It was clear now as the ground-plan of Telluir House. “Not by intent. He knew I was upset. Worried. It was the one way he could help. To him, asking me . . .”

      When I stopped, he finished for me. “Men never ask.”

      However they are needed. I had been astonished, I recalled. And thought again, and shook my head.

      “He’s changing too. He just hasn’t realized; hasn’t admitted it, yet.”

      Silence, longer this time. Easier. Then a shift of position. A hand slid down my back; a silent, impudent, envisagable smile.

      “If he can ask—so can I.”

      * * *

      The Diaspora. Week 2.

      Journal kept by Sarth

      Lucky, as outlanders do not say, that there are more ways of making love than one, and that Amberlight women know—expect—to use them all. So I daresay she made him happy, whatever he did for her. I do know I gave them time for it, fool that I am, trying to look busy, and easy, and dodge Azo’s eye, cowering over the deadened embers. Trying to guess, without prying indecency, when it would be safe to go inside.

      Trying, harder than I have ever tried, not to let jealousy eat my heart in coals hotter than eternal fire.

      I thought I could handle it, he said. So did I. I thought I was used to sharing. So I am. But not of my wives.

      No doubt Outlanders would consider it barbaric, barbaric as the female harems they keep in Cataract. In fact, three of my five were dead: Sfina, head-Shaper, Wyen, second in the power shops, Khira, Captain on the Navy vessel Wasp. Lost in the River battles, killed defending the House. And Phatha, head of a Telluir sub-clan, chose to stay in Amberlight. And yes, now I can admit it, that though they shared my bed and my marriage, and I—worked—as hard to cushion and tend and pleasure each of them—

      Even so, even when she left me, there was only one who mattered. Only one whose step I knew a stair away, only one I was ever waiting for.

      At first it was the honor. Fourteen years old, fresh from flute and dancing school, crammed with the economics and politics of the River as of Amberlight, all the knowledge a man must carry, to understand, to sustain the woman’s talk, and never, never flourish for yourself—and Sethar walked in, that bright, sharp spring morning, with grandmother Zhee in person, upright and keen-edged as a blade in her plain leggings, the eccentric silver-worked black coat. The eyes, keener than any stiletto point, running over me as I stand, just dismounted from the vaulting horse, heart plunging, ribs heaving, but instinctively, reflexively, struggling for the perfect pose. Her slow, yet far sharper drawl. “You think he’ll do us grace.”

      To me, as ever, unreadable. But for all his skill, Sethar cannot hide from me. My heart too leaps into my throat.

      “Ma’am.” So calm, so deferent, so perfectly disciplined, the model of my life. “This is our best.”

      She prickles me with that stare again. Then puts up the stiletto points, and frightens all excitement out of me. “We have a marriage offer,” she says. “From Telluir House.”

      Not merely from Telluir House, ally, neighbor, glamorous, notorious, the Thirteen’s scandal and cynosure. From the Head of Telluir House.

      How many nights was it that Sethar had, like a homesick baby, to sing me to sleep? How many mornings, like a woman pregnant, did I spend throwing up? Mother, when they brought me in the great House doors, double-swathed in the silk trousers, the gem-embroidered coat and shirts and face-veil and the great diaphanous outer cloak that took the summer breeze like a huge saffron flame—how did I keep my legs straight, and my heart unburst, and breath in my throat? When we reached the courtyard. And there at the Tower foot, she took my hand. And smiled at me. Tellurith. Brilliant as a star in gold-worked ivory, in the heirloom jewels of the House. My dream. My terror. My wife.

      Of course, as Sethar had drummed into me, I did not have to finish the ordeal by fire that night. At fourteen, barely two years younger than she, I was not expected to play the man for another year or two. Time to learn my place, my House, my Tower. To be confident and calm. So the night she did come, I could offer my Ruand her husband’s suite, and a light supper, and music, and some intelligent comments, and even, fore-warned by the Steward at mid-afternoon, manage to look my best.

      And later, to do my best. And best of all, to meet, to match—to be her heart’s desire.

      The good times—no, I cannot think of them. I will not think of the bad times. I will not remember how it felt, when they told me about him. Mother preserve me, do you know how it is to hold your face still, while dogs eat out your bowels? While every fiber of you cries, Oh, Mother, only let me die?

      But I will write this down, as I never could, never would have dared before. Men’s trivial records, men’s paltry thoughts. Huddled here by the coals with an old slate and Hanni’s chalk-end, where no-one would look for such a thing. I will set it down, to cement the vow.

      I survived all that. I can—I will—survive this.

      * * *

      CHAPTER II

      Arrival. Week 3.

      Meditations. Alkhes-Assandar

      This cannot go on.

      Three days it took to get up here. Three—whole—gods-forgotten days. When the accursed quarry is no more than a spur and a foothill and a last one-in-five gradient from the actual plains. When we have a bare thirty wagons, and a bunch of push-barrows, and ten or twelve mule-carts. And two hundred—count them, two hundred able-bodied women, give or take a pregnancy or two—incapable of rousing their brains.

      I’ve never written, except for reports. But however awkward the scratches and pot-hooks on this excuse for paper, with my clumsy left hand, I have to