Wedding Read online

  Aranyi needed little from the rest of the world. What we could not grow, gather or manufacture—silk, sea salt, iron ore, bladed weapons, and glass—could be obtained for trade from traveling peddlers or at the seasonal fairs, where the specialties of lowland or maritime realms were offered, or commissioned from artisans in Eclipsia City. Glassmaking and ironwork were the only industries, as they did not require modern technology, and each had its own community of skilled workers.

  It was a kind of socialism, although not equality. Dominic was the master, and he and his household ate well and lived well, but every Aranyi resident had a stake in the collective resources. Once the emergency stockpile at Aranyi was full, and enough had been kept back for trade, the remainder was allocated to the workers. As I had sensed earlier, in the workplaces and with Magali, all these people together made up Aranyi. They were industrious because they were working for themselves, sharing out the results of their labor. By working and producing, whether providing a service, growing a crop or making finished goods from raw materials, they earned the right to a portion of all the other things they needed.

  If Terrans had more choices, receiving credits which they could spend as they pleased, here there was less of a divide between rich and poor. In a good year people enjoyed the abundance; in a bad year everyone endured the straitened circumstances. In times of famine, of poor harvests or other adversity, all who needed it received help from the common reserves at Aranyi. No one was left to starve while others ate. Children did not go begging if their parents were sick, or died, or could not work. The Aranyi household enjoyed its high standard of living, but it would not squander the wealth through unrestrained consumption while impoverishing the people who worked to create it.

  No wonder Dominic was so proud, born to administer all this; nor was he merely hereditary overlord, benefiting from others’ labor while contributing nothing in return. Dominic protected and governed his dependents. He patrolled our borders, ensuring that bandits, a perennial problem in the no-man’s land of the high mountain passes, posed no threat to travelers or the remote inhabitants. In time of war or during a siege, families with their provisions and animals were brought into the fortress, given shelter within the outer wall. Dominic also acted as magistrate at a regional court that met twice a year, judging the difficult cases that his tenants and villagers had not been able to resolve among themselves.

  We, I heard my thoughts. Our land. I had begun imagining that I was ’Gravina Aranyi, a part of this establishment. Just for a while, I comforted myself, it will do no harm to learn a little bookkeeping.

  When it was time for dinner I stood up and stretched. What I had seen so far was mind-boggling. Without currency beyond iron coins, most transactions an exchange of goods and services, everyone’s contribution was registered and valued appropriately, each holding’s requirements balanced against its yield. And one young man maintained a record of all this production and distribution. Berend, like his predecessors, kept track of it all by hand, ink on paper, week by week, season after season, year after year. The walls of the room were lined with shelves, filled with books like the ledger Berend and I were studying, the accounts of generations of Aranyi economy.

  It was true that the villages and the larger holdings had their own stewards who did the same kind of accounting, but at harvest time they all assembled at Aranyi and Berend kept the master account. “How do you manage this all by yourself?” I asked.

  “I was apprentice, then assistant, to my father, who was Master Steward,” he said. “But he died last autumn.”

  I apologized for reminding him. “Can’t we hire a helper for you?” There, I had done it again. We.

  Berend focused on something else. “Hire? But I am Master Steward now.” He was defensive, as if I had suggested replacing him.

  “Yes, of course you are,” I said, assuming the role of ’Gravina Aranyi, confirming him in his post. “But couldn’t we find you an apprentice, to learn from you, as you did from your father?”

  Berend shook his head. “My son will be my apprentice.”

  Eclipsians married early, I knew, but Berend looked barely out of his teens. “How old is your son?” I inquired hopefully.

  “He’ll be a year old at Midsummer,” the proud father replied, “and he’s smart as a whip. He can talk already, calls me ‘Papa’.”

  I smiled. “Nevertheless,” I said, “he’ll have to learn to add and subtract, and even smart children take a few years to learn that.” Berend flushed at my mild humor, and I hurried to smooth things over. “In the meantime, perhaps I could help.”

  “Lady Amalie,” he said, “that would not be right. Margrave Aranyi will not want you straining your eyes over books and bothering your head with arithmetic.”

  “But surely the lady of the household must work as well as the rest?” After all I had seen I was convinced of that much. “I cannot be idle all my life.”

  Still Berend hesitated. He was overworked to the point that the offer I had made was most appealing, but he had one more worry. “Forgive me, my lady, but in your condition—”

  “Even pregnant I can sit and add numbers,” I said, touched by his solicitousness. Obviously Magali had seen no reason to keep the fact of my pregnancy a secret, and judging from this polite young man’s reaction, there was truly no shame in carrying Dominic’s child, in or out of wedlock. “I thought I could simply check your results at first, until I get the hang of it.” I didn’t want to undermine his authority, nor did I care to take on too much responsibility. “And you are Master Steward,” I reiterated. “There should be only one person in charge, to keep the potential for error to a minimum.”

  As we went in to dinner Berend was whistling, relieved to have help, thrilled that ’Gravina Aranyi herself would be his apprentice. I, too, was happy, having found a real occupation, one that was more interesting than planning the dinner menu, or supervising the maids’ work.

  It was another week before it hit me that I had committed myself to Berend, as I had to Katrina and Magali, as I had to everyone at Aranyi. Except to the one person who made it possible. To Dominic. We did not know if we could love each other fully, as husband and wife, or if Eris’s madness had ruined things between us forever. We did not know if ’Graven Assembly would allow us even to call each other husband and wife. Dominic may have thought he had asked me to marry him by giving me the glass comb, but I had never accepted what I had not known was being offered. As far as I knew, I had never been asked.

  When Dominic comes home, I told myself, we will work it out. Each night I thought joyfully, When Dominic comes home.

  PART THREE:

  FESTIVAL

  CHAPTER 5

  Dominic had been gone a month before it happened. The crypta war had ended with Eris’s destruction. As the weapon was shattered I had known the communal relief experienced by every gifted person: the oppressive weight lifted from the consciousness, the sense of menace gone. Through my communion with Dominic I experienced something of the conventional battle of swords and close combat that followed, his exultation at the release of tension and coiled energy that soon soured with the carnage he could not avoid. But he had prevailed easily, had come through it unscathed in body if more withdrawn in spirit.

  Not until all this was over did I feel it: that I held the force of the lightning goddess in my hand, that I wrestled her for control and was overpowered. I woke screaming from the after-dinner nap, my entire left arm in agony. Internal flames shot through me, traveling up the serpentine trails of the nerves from fingers to palm to wrist and beyond, searing the fleshly channels to the brain. Help me! I cried. Oh gods, help me! I sat up, holding my arm out in front of me as the fire consumed it from the inside, the flesh unmarked at first, then slowly charring, pieces of skin detaching and curling at the edges like burning paper.

  My sword hand, I thought. It will be difficult even to kill myself now.

  I had never used a sword. It was Dominic who had the thought, Domin
ic whose hand and arm were destroyed, Dominic whose agony and dark misery had brought me into communion with him. My own hand and arm were intact, although the pain crippled me for weeks until I learned to manage it, hiding it at first by saying I was tired, eventually discovering by experimentation how to turn down the physical communion between Dominic and me, just enough so I could sleep at night and eat.

  My love, I thought to Dominic. Show me where you are and I will come to you.

  No, Lady Amalie, a voice came to me, cool and authoritative. The witch, Naomi. I will go to him. I am the healer for Aranyi.

  But neither one of us was permitted to go to him. Eleonora, and Josh, and Viceroy Zichmni himself sent word to us: Dominic was in no danger; we were not to make more of this than it warranted, were not to call attention to Dominic’s disability. It would only revive the rebels’ cause. To be defeated, yet to have incapacitated their enemies’ greatest warrior, would give them the status of martyrs and holy terrorists.

  I could not go to him, but nothing would keep us from empathetic communion. Nothing but Dominic himself. At first I attributed the mental block to the great love he bore me, that wished to shield me from his suffering even at the cost of denying himself comfort. As I tried repeatedly over the next couple of days to resume our mental connection, and found myself baffled by the wall Dominic erected around himself, I was reminded of the barriers I had encountered in him earlier, while I was at La Sapienza. It was as if this wound were something shameful, like his failure to become a seer or his abusive behavior as Commandant of ’Graven Military Academy, and must be locked away from all examination, even his own memory.

  By Terran standards it was nonsensical. One hand damaged. So what? It could be repaired or replaced, if not as good as before, certainly good enough for life on Terra. But we were not on Terra, and Dominic was ’Graven. If crypta marks the man as ’Graven, skill with the sword makes him a man. Not all ’Graven are equally gifted; not all men attain Dominic’s level of swordsmanship. By some combination of both skills, ’Graven men maintain their positions in the ruling class. Sword and prism are used with the same hand. With his left arm useless, Dominic could wield neither effectively, the two tools from which all his status derived.

  Dominic was more than a swordsman, more than just a physical being, I argued to myself, since Dominic would not let me through to him. He was a leader in ’Graven Assembly, a magistrate at Aranyi. He had proved himself years ago, had no need to be constantly on guard against the challenges of lesser men. His crypta was unaffected; only the active use of the prism would have to be curtailed. He could live very well without the use of his sword hand, except that he would have to be a careful, deferential man, who had always been a commander, with a lordly indifference to the opinions of others.

  I hesitated to offer consolation that would be demeaning and humiliating. What could I say? That everything that makes you a man is gone, but you’ll have me. That your life is ruined, but you have a child coming who will live after you. I could hear his deep voice in my mind, answering as I would in his place: Bullshit. Help me to die, and free us both.

  What would I do if he asked me that? If there was no way to restore the full use of his arm and hand, the kindest thing might be to help him end his life. But I didn’t think I was capable of doing that. And then I would have to die, too. I couldn’t live without him—I had learned this much on that first terrible morning in the travelers’ shelter. The child, I thought. I couldn’t, wouldn’t kill myself if it meant killing her. And I wouldn’t kill myself later and leave her motherless and fatherless.

  I was drawn these days to the portrait gallery, a long, airy room hung with more artwork than in all the rest of the castle, which had few decorations, mostly woven wall hangings. Generations of Aranyi were immortalized here in paint on canvas. Now I studied Dominic’s only likeness, an amazing picture of a young man I had never known and yet who seemed as familiar as memory. Dominic at twenty was softer, more diffident looking than his mature self. He wore his new officer’s uniform proudly, his pale eyes gazing somewhere past the viewer’s into a future he wasn’t quite ready to face. That future was here. What would he make of it?

  I had laughed at myself, falling in love with Dominic all over again as I saw the wealth of his realm. Wouldn’t I love him just as much if he were poor, if he had no property and no name? And I had answered myself practically. The man I loved was not Dominic-nobody from nowhere. He was Dominic-Leandro, Margrave Aranyi, and our communion was based on that identity. But if he lost it all, by misfortune or treachery, wouldn’t I still love him? Of course. In this case he had lost, not his land or his title, but himself. What will Dominic do? I wondered. And what was I to do?

  Nothing, the answer came from Eleonora and Josh and even from Naomi. Wait until he is home.

  Not long afterwards, Eleonora returned, escorted by a few Aranyi troops. She was exhausted, worry about Dominic giving her a haggard look, a crack in the icy composure, but with still a trace of the sibyl’s power, and joy in her work. Telepaths from all the ’Graven Realms had worked together to smash the Eris weapon beyond salvage; Eleonora herself had been the nucleus of the large cell they had formed. “This time it’s truly finished,” she told me. Dominic, Josh and the other ’Graven lords with regular troops had finished off the insurrection, mopping up the rebels’ allies, the smiths and miners who had not surrendered.

  “It’s not a pretty sight, seeing ’Graven soldiers mowing down civilians armed only with hammers and cudgels,” Eleonora said when she was rested and willing to talk. Some of the glow went out of her face. “But once the rebels started this, it was unavoidable.”

  She would not bring up Dominic’s injury, nor did I have any hope of getting information from her that she was unwilling to share. “What happened?” I asked. “How come Dominic was injured after the fighting was over? And if the Eris weapon was destroyed, how was it able to hurt Dominic at all?”

  Eleonora’s third eyelids came down, forming a total blockade of expression and thoughts. “Please, Amalie,” she said. “Dominic must be the one to explain, if he wishes.” She added that Dominic would be busy for a few more weeks, while he and the other lords worked out a political settlement.

  He was active, at least, working, not sunk in despair as I had feared. It occurred to me how ignorant of politics I was, how this whole crisis had developed, threatening everything that mattered to me, and I understood nothing, had made no effort to find out. “Who were those rebels?” I asked Eleonora. “Why would they do something so dangerous?”

  “You should know,” she said with a brittle laugh. “They’re your people. Terrans.”

  I saw I would get no answers from her, and with no holonet news, no computer networks to turn to, I had no choice but to lurk in her mind if I could. I disliked lurking in general: letting my thoughts drift slowly, quietly, in the direction of the other’s mind, waiting for the moment, when sleep is imminent, or while she is reading, that I could penetrate without being discovered and pick up what was near the surface or not shielded. Eleonora’s power was frightening—like Dominic’s, but disciplined by thirty years as a sibyl, and not softened by love—and so I learned little.

  It was a class war, I think, led more by Terran sympathizers than real Terrans, people who wanted to open the Protected World of Eclipsis to trade and settlement. Dominic’s system, the rule of ’Graven, was reviled on Terra as paternalistic and overbearing, keeping the people in poverty and ignorance under a pretense of benevolent despotism. The rebels had assimilated the Terran outlook just far enough to advocate the overthrow of the landowning ’Graven leadership in favor of the theoretical equality of the market economy. In their ignorance of the reality of the consumer society, they welcomed everything that Dominic hated and feared: industry and credit, stocks and investing, all based on selling Terra’s products and services, the new “necessities” to satisfy previously unknown needs that would be invented and publicized through relentless advert
ising.

  They would replace one hierarchy with another, one with no place for the losers in the new competition of supposedly equal opportunity, with no socialism to insure protection for those with bad luck or bad genes. But I am no politician and no historian. I knew only what I had seen of the Terran world by living in it, and what I was seeing now of the ’Graven system.

  I had made my decision months ago in ’Graven Assembly, when I had burned my Terran identification, thrown in my lot with Dominic and his peers. Back then, all I had wanted was not to endanger his world; I had guessed that the ’Graven lord, like any rare species, was threatened most by loss of habitat. These rebels, whether right or wrong in the abstract, were death for Dominic, and my choice, as I had told him in my apartment, could only be personal, not political. My sympathies lay all with Dominic, with his cause and his interests, as they were mine now. I was becoming Lady Amalie, if not ’Gravina Aranyi, and the real communion with Dominic, and the crypta that had created it, made his way of life not an option but a condition of my existence.

  After her resentful comments about the rebels, due more to her concern for Dominic than her dislike of me, Eleonora’s manner changed, becoming friendlier, almost accepting. There were times when I suspected she sensed my sympathetic pain from Dominic’s injury, although she would not embarrass either of us by mentioning it. She noticed, but made no comment on the way everybody referred to me as Lady Amalie, and she merely raised her eyebrows when I excused myself after breakfast to go to my bookkeeping with Berend. She took little interest in the running of the house; my good relationship with Magali had not displaced Eleonora from an intimacy that had never existed. She was as much a guest as I was. Although she had been born here and spent her first years as Lady Eleonora Aranyi, her career as sibyl had lasted twice that long. For thirty years she had been only a visitor—welcome and honored—but her home was in a seminary.