Thorne’s smile and her lovely sense of accomplishment burn off like morning mist in the sunshine when she returns to the suite.
“Oh, not those again!” she cries at the sight of four items laid out on the otherwise bare tea table. She glares at them: the shapeless brown worker’s cap, the child’s school-slate, the Vendani belt dagger and the worn black shoe. “We tried this! I don’t think I can read the auras of objects. All that happened before was that I got a terrific head-ache.”
“Well, it was probably a mistake to ask you to try this exercise three days before the Sword Trials,” Ennis acknowledges. “But I felt urgent about it, and it is certainly true that I have not been managing this urgency as well as I might. For that I apologize. But you are well rested now, and your concentration is excellent tonight, shall we not try once more?”
“Hmph!” Thorne grumbles and seats herself at the table. “Well, what am I supposed to see, staring at somebody’s old shoe?”
“Ah,” he replies immediately, as if she has cleared up a mystery. “But you are not to stare at the old shoe, my dear. You are to stare at the owner of the shoe.”
Thorne looks around the chamber, half expecting the girl who owns the shoe to leap out from behind a piece of furniture.
“A shoe, of course, does not really have an aura of its own,” Ennis instructs, his eyes intense. “Rather, it absorbs the aura of the one who wears it. Look past the shoe, or perhaps through it, if you will, to the aura to which it was exposed for many years.”
“Why didn’t you tell me that the first time?” Thorne complains in affront.
“I believe that I did,” he defends himself mildly. “You have been rather inattentive of late, my dear.” Then he smiles, picks up the object of their discussion and extends it to her. “Will you try again?”
Without answering him, Thorne moves the other three items, the slate, the hat and the dagger, right off the table and then places the shoe in the middle of the open surface. It is made of black leather and is very well-worn. A girl or young woman’s shoe, judging from its size: long and narrow. A tallish girl? And well-to-do, for the buttons and stitching speak of careful cobbling. And it is high-topped, which almost certainly means an Izschadian.
|Rationality will only get you so far| the voice prompts quietly, as if he is reluctant to interrupt her train of thought. |Let your Bani wisdom flow|
|I have Bani wisdom?| Thorne asks, effectively distracted.
|You do have Bani blood, so I can only assume that the wisdom is there as well| he replies dryly. |I apologize for distracting you. Pray, continue; you’re doing just fine|
“Think less; feel more,” Ennis murmurs more helpfully after a moment.
You have no right!” Relna is screaming. “You are not my guardian, Em’Perran! How dare you forbid me!”
’Perran’s hand flashes out to slap his fourteen-year-old sister-in-law, a single head-rattling blow. He does not even seem to be very angry, only determined to solve, once and for all, the problem of this badly-behaved young relative. Relna gasps and flinches away from him, and her own hand flies up to cradle her flaming cheek.
“Do not think for one minute that I will permit you to go the way of Isbrynamyr, young lady,” ’Perran warns sternly. “Your father is newly dead – Appelia hold him close – and all your brothers as well. Lord Issofeln may be your appointed guardian, but right now he has much more important concerns than a foolish niece. I would be derelict in my duty if I did not take responsibility for you, little girl.”
“But Lady Myryn has encouraged me,” Relna argues. “And all my brothers are not dead. If I am a Healer, I can take care of Meryn.”
’Perran snorts. “Do you believe that the encouragement of a woman would persuade me to let you pursue an improper shameful course?” he asks acerbically. “You are not some common Appelian, to go tramping about the City, unchaperoned, encountering who-knows-what-kind of people. You are a lady, Ismorelna, although it is hard to credit that at the moment. And I am here to tell you that you are going to behave like a lady.”
“But Papa let Brynie do what she wanted!” Relna protests, even though she is certain it will be utterly futile. “He would have let me go for a Healer; I know it!”
“Do you?” asks ’Perran coldly. “What I know is that it is heretical to claim to speak with the dead. I’ll have no such talk in my house.”
He grabs her wrist and begins to drag her along the hallway to the Thinking Room.
“No!” Relna protests and struggles, vainly, to free her wrist. “I have to go today and tell them that I accept. Otherwise they will give my place to someone else!”
He hauls her into the Room, slaps her face twice more when she tries to run back out and then slams the door, leaving her quite alone.
When the argument broke out, Relna had had one shoe on and the other in her hand: she was preparing to go down to the Infirmers’ to accept the coveted offer of an apprenticeship.
Relna flings the shoe at the closed door. “It’s not your house!” she yells. And then sits down and weeps.
Relna hates the Thinking Room. Not that any child, no matter how devout, actually likes it. But the day that the Izokeln attacked the house a year ago, she had been sitting in the Room, marched there earlier in the day by her honour-father Issobrylan for speaking without leave – not for the first time! – at the breakfast table. She had listened, sobbing silently, her own hand held firmly over her mouth to prevent the escape of any sound, as so many of the family had died horribly. Her own heart-mother and one of her lady mothers. The little boys and girls. The servants. She had waited, terrified, half-mad with fear, for the soul-less Izokeln to break down the door of the Thinking Room and to devour her as well.
Perhaps an hour later – after the screams in the house were long finished, after the ravening beasts had ceased growling and snarling as they had fought over their prey, after Relna had utterly given up and simply lay whimpering on the floor – at long last the door had indeed been banged opened. It was her honour-papa Brylan, who had carried her all the way out of the house into the sunshine and sworn that he would never again send her to the Room.
Now, a year later, papa and Brylan and all but one of Relna’s older brothers are dead. Meryn, her one surviving big brother, lies broken in the Infirmers’, never to walk again.
If Em’Perran knows what Relna endured the day that the Izokeln attacked the home of the High Priest, he does not care. He often finds reason to put her in the Room, sometimes for whole days at a time.
Em’Perran’s own family home lies in ruins, and Em’Perran and Isalaine are living with Isalaine’s family. It is utterly against tradition: Isalaine’s family said farewell to Isalaine when she was given to Em’Perran, and that should have been the end of it. They might have seen Lainie at festivals or at the temple or other places where the nobility gather, but she was not really a member of the family any more.
Before the War, Em’Perran would certainly not have had any authority over his young in-laws. But now he thinks he does: he often corrects both Relna and nine-year-old Beryn, and he makes decisions for Lady Myryn as well. This, in spite of the fact that Relna’s uncle Feln, who is the head of the family until Beryn comes of age, has made it clear on numerous occasions that, in his absence, Lady Myryn is his agent, absolutely empowered to make decisions regarding the children, the servants and the household overall.
As if summoned by Relna’s thoughts – and to Relna’s everlasting surprise – Lady Myryn opens the door of the Thinking Room. In fourteen years, Relna has never before known any mother to do such a thing.
“Ismorelna,” her lady mother says. “Come along, my girl.”
“Mother?” Relna asks, stunned, remaining seated on the floor.
Lady Myryn picks up Relna’s flung shoe and hands it to her. “Put on your shoe and come with me, dear. I am going down to the Infirmers’ to visit my heart-son, and you must accompany me.” She smiles, something she does not do much any more, not since all the deaths. It is a small, satisfied smile. “You know that a real lady cannot go tramping about alone in this City, unchaperoned, encountering who-knows-what-kind of people.”
Belatedly understanding what Lady Myryn is proposing to do, Relna crams her foot into the shoe, ties up the laces quickly and scrambles after her lady mother.
“Where is Em’Perran?” Relna whispers as they leave the house and walk down the front path.
“He went on duty and will not return until this evening,” the lady reports imperturbably. “I would not have left you in that Room all day, dear. Not even if you did not need to report today to Healer Izimcyn in order to give him an affirmative response to his kind invitation. Which, my girl, you certainly do need to do. Em’Perran is a good man, but he does not understand. It would be difficult for us all, I suppose, if Em’Perran were not living with us, difficult to make do without a grown man. But sometimes he presumes too much.”
The lady waits while Relna unlatches the front gate and holds it open for her.
“Lord Banet’s coronation marked the winds of change, Ismorelna, winds that blow where they will in this City and make many things different. In our own family, Isalaine and her husband have come back to live with us, which you know would have been considered most shameful before the War. My Brynie goes for a soldier. And Izschad commands you, dear, to become a Healer. For myself, I do not understand how a lady could want to be either a soldier or a healer. But what would Lady Shelena say to me, when we meet again in Appelia’s realm, if I did not assist her heart-daughter to obey Izschad’s will for her life, when my heart-daughter is permitted to do so?” Then she laughs at Relna’s amazement. “Now, do not look so surprised, daughter! I have a spine! How do you think Brynie got to be so feisty, anyway?”
Two months later, when Lainie goes into premature labour with her twins, Em’Perran does not seem to mind so much that his young sister-in-law has begun studying the healing arts. He would doubtless have been more grateful if twin boys had been drawn living from his wife’s womb, but he can hardly fault Relna for that.
Thorne gives the shoe back to Ennis. She has been holding it in her hand while experiencing, as if it were personally happening to her, the story that Relna’s aura had to tell.
“I could go on that way,” Thorne says, aware that she was speaking aloud all the time she was reading the aura. “I could tell you everything that Relna lived through from the moment the cobbler first put that shoe on her foot until the day it was relegated to the back of her closet because it had gotten shabby. Everything she felt and said and thought. Even events which occurred when Relna wasn’t wearing the shoe, I think, if they were important enough to her. But it feels like a huge invasion of Relna’s privacy.”
“Ismorelna gave her permission,” Ennis says gently and offers Thorne a cup of blackberry tea. “I told her what I was trying to teach you, of what I was hoping that you were capable, and I asked if I might have some personal article of hers. I made her aware that all of her life might be laid open to you, but she did not hesitate. She said that you were her beloved cousin, and she was glad to assist you to follow Izschad’s will for your life.”
Thorne shakes her head. “She called me her beloved cousin? I don’t think I will ever get used to the importance that the Izschadians place on the honour-relationship. Relna and all the others have completely accepted me as a member of the family, just because of my silly whim that one night, to ask Lord Feln to be my honour-father.”
Ennis pats her hand. “Perhaps not a silly whim, my dear,” he suggests, his eyes bright.
“Shall I go on now to one of the other items?” Thorne asks.
But her old mentor shakes his head. “No, dear, Banesthion will be here any moment to take you along to the evening sword training. Drink up your tea; it is a good restorative.”
It really is nearly time to go, Thorne realizes: she was absorbed in Relna’s life, not for the ten or so minutes that it felt like, but for nearly an hour.
“Are you alright?” Banet asks a little later as they walk down to the House together. “You’re pretty quiet.”
“Yes, sir, I’m fine. Ennis is teaching me to read auras, and it’s making me think.”
Banet frowns. “If he’s pushing you too hard, I’ll tell him to back off, till you’re feeling stronger.”
Panic. Sickening gut-wrenching panic.
“No, sir, please, it’s not necessary.”
Content © Gale Macaulay-Newcombe. All rights reserved.