A memory of war and sola.., p.22
A Memory of War and Solace, page 22
“You will not lecture me, woman! He is my son and he will learn to be a man or he will die trying! Either is acceptable.”
Mother pleaded, her voice more filled with tears than with words.
“Speak no more! Keep your mouth shut, or I will shut it.”
“But Tammen,” she pleaded, “he is only nine. He is ill-suited to the sword! Why must you push him so?”
There was a crack like the sound of a whip, and Mother was whimpering. I cringed at it.
“You have done your job. You birthed him; you swaddled and weaned him. He is my son now—no longer a child. How I push him and how I punish his failings are no longer any of your concern. He will learn the sword and he will be blooded or he will fall. There is no middle ground, and I will hear no more of this womanly nonsense.”
Father strode from the room now, and I flinched back, though I was deep in shadow. He rounded the gallery and reached the top of the stairs directly across from my door. I sighed in relief: He was not coming for me.
Mother followed him from the room, the right side of her face was aflame from the slap. It was a sharp contrast against the pale cream of her skin; against the deep purple bruise she carried from last time. Her lip was already puffing on that side. She was sobbing and her speech was thick with it.
“Tammen, please. Let him be. Let him become what he chooses. He is so clever, he can carry the family forward without a sword in his hand.”
She reached him and tugged at his sleeve, trying to circle around to face him. He flung her off his arm, lashing out again and catching her backhanded on the left cheek. The force of the blow spun her, and she tripped over her skirts.
I watched in silent horror as she tumbled down the grand staircase to slide in a crumpled heap of pink and lavender silk upon the marble floor. Her face was turned towards me, and for a moment I thought she wore a smile for me. But she didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.
I bit down on my hand, looking to my father, waiting for his cry of despair.
He looked down on her pale body and sighed, shaking his head.
He called out then. “Demen! Demen!”
Father’s man came from the servants’ entry below, striding quickly. He froze in shock, seeing Mother on the floor.
“My lady!” He ran to her.
Father descended the stairs calmly to stand above them. “She fell, Demen.” He looked at her for a moment, dissatisfied. “Please see to arrangements.”
He walked out of view.
…why must you push him…
“No!” Father roared. “Higher!” He grabbed the blade and pulled my arm up into place. When he released it, it fell a few inches again. The sword was too heavy.
Nonetheless, he reset his stance and moved against me, striking with his training blade. I tried to shift my feet and bring my sword into position but I was too slow. Father’s dulled blade battered mine aside and struck my shoulder, knocking me to the ground.
My blade hit the dirt and I clutched at my bruised arm. I bit down on my tongue, trying to fight the pain.
“You need more strength, boy. This will never work if you can’t lift the blade. Again!”
I gritted my teeth and picked up the sword, pushing myself to my feet and setting my stance.
Pain flashed and my ears rang as Father’s hand struck me. I kept my feet and I held back the tears. That was the important part.
“Not that way, boy! Left foot further back! Gods above.”
That was most important, that I not fall down and that I not cry.
If I could stay standing, then he could see me as a man. If I could keep my eyes dry, I could still pretend.
He wouldn’t know how I’d failed him.
I fixed my stance and raised my sword into position as best I could. My arm still hurt. My sword still wavered. But I stayed standing.
…further back, there’s…
“Don’t let him see you cry, dear one. You mustn’t. Always hold back the tears, the fear, the pain. Pain is nothing to you, you hear me? It doesn’t exist.” She stroked my hair and held me close. “Don’t ever let him know you hurt.”
“Why doesn’t Father like crying?” I asked through tears.
“He doesn’t care about crying in most people. But you…” She pulled me close and squeezed me for the length of a breath. “You, Tamar, are his son.”
I flinched.
“That means everything to him. He will burn down the world for his son.” She seemed inordinately sad when she said it.
I felt cold suddenly, despite the warmth of her embrace. Could she know? She couldn’t see my guilt, though I was sure it was written on my face. I said nothing. I held it inside as she taught me. The tears wouldn’t come and the fear wouldn’t show and the pain wouldn’t hurt.
I could live with the pain inside, I thought. I could live with the uncertainty and the fear. As long as I had Mother to hold me. As long as Mother was there to console me and give me the comfort that Father never would. That I couldn’t give myself without—
That I couldn’t give myself.
I held her and hoped that she would never discover my secret. That I could hide my guilt forever.
…something there, something…
“Kindi! Wait!” I chased her down, dodging the halfhearted swats that the women doled out as we passed, weaving in and out of the trunks of the pear orchard.
An army of apron-clad women dressed in black house livery worked up and down in the lanes between the trees, each bearing a pair of baskets front and back on a leather yoke. Fruit by fruit, they filled the baskets with the pear harvest. Father’s men would press the pears to make cider and wine, and his distillery master in Sind would pick the choicest casks for the secretive and magical process that produced brandy.
I was five and already knew the principle sources of income of my house, the house names of our vassals, and was learning the towns and villages that owed us allegiance. Child as I was, even I knew I had little enough time left of chasing my friends through the grounds. Mother had told me so.
Soon enough, Father would have me step up and learn the workings of the house.
A wet jolt burst upon my back and I felt the soft, sticky slime of overripe pear on my neck. I spun and saw Kindi and her friend June sprinting away in a joyful panic. I pursued, calling out again.
“Not fair!” I wailed. All I heard in response was frantic giggles.
I kept on their heels through the last rank of pear trees and out into the meadow beyond. They were running towards the blackberry thicket that overgrew the stone fence along our eastern fields.
Kindi was a year older than me and June a year older than her, and their legs had the advantage of those years. They pulled ahead of me, gamine limbs flashing through the grass as they ran. They rounded the thicket and disappeared.
I wiped the smear of sticky pear off my neck and out of my hair as best I could and smiled to myself.
I guessed they were both just around the edge of the thicket, ready to spring upon me as I rounded behind them. I turned my path further south, where a stone coping over a wellhead crouched below the line of the fence.
I pushed myself into a sprint, leaping to the top of the wellhead and then onto the wall, landing atop the narrow edge on all fours. My hands were pricked and scratched by the bramble, but I stuck the landing and trotted along the wall as quietly as I could.
They were just ahead of me, crouched down and facing the end of the fence, watching for me to emerge. I smiled to myself. As I crept closer, I plucked ripe blackberries, stuffing the first few in my mouth.
I perched above them now. With a warbling war-cry, I pounced upon them, landing with enough force to smash a handful of blackberries into each girl’s hair. They wailed in satisfying fury as my weight carried them both down into the grass.
“That’s taught you to throw—” I began to say, but Kindi launched herself at me with all the rage of a mortally offended six-year-old. We tumbled to the ground and there was a fierce struggle for position, for control, for dignity. We rolled over and over more than once and came finally to a stop with me straddling her midriff. She lay pinned supine beneath me, our hands each struggling to control the other.
“Do you yield?” I asked, victorious.
Kindi only smiled. I felt a blow of another body slamming into me and I was thrown sideways off of Kindi. June stood over me and helped her friend up.
“You can’t wrestle girls like that. You’re a boy!” she cried, her voice full of scandal and affront.
I looked up at them, confused and ashamed. My head felt suddenly light and my stomach leaden.
“Why do I have to be a boy?” I asked quietly.
They both looked at me, confused. Kindi’s expression showed concern and worry. June only looked amused.
“Because you a…” June’s voice trailed off into a buzz. The memory faded into a haze of discomfort and a roiling of my gut. A gray blur skewed the world and then I was standing, watching the two of them running off again, giggling.
…important, something… crucial…
I stood still, trying to find that moment, trying to understand the pain and confusion and unease that I felt.
…something…
I was running again, chasing them around the perimeter of the house. I lost them both each time they rounded a corner or climbed over a low fence, and each time I spotted them again, they were further away. Soon I was chasing the faint sound of their laughter, unable to see them at all.
I came around the far corner of the house and skidded to a stop, pressing myself behind a rose-laden trellis that decorated the stone. I peeked around to see Mother seated at one of the tables on the paved terrace outside Father’s study.
Her back was to me, and she was bent over her needlework, enjoying the placid autumn afternoon. Beyond her, I could see my quarry chasing each other within the orchard again. I debated my next move. If I followed them out, Mother was sure to see me; to scold me for ignoble behavior. There was even the risk Father might notice, and that would be disastrous.
Indeed, I could see that the study doors were open to the afternoon air, and I could hear voices within. Mother seemed to ignore them, but I couldn’t help but listen. Too many times I had been punished for failing to attend Father’s lectures, so his voice now took my attention immediately.
“And what of the northern territories?”
“Panar’s harvest is on track, mi’lord.” I thought the voice belonged to Father’s seneschal, Anders. “They have had a good year and should be over their quotas. Unfortunately, Sinderan Springs will be well under. They had a nestworm infestation during the summer, and lost a quarter of their harvest.”
“Damned nuisance,” Father said with little heat. “I suppose there’s no one to hold to blame for that, but see that they’re on notice for next year. I won’t accept another shortfall.”
“Yes, mi’lord. Er, my lord, the worst news is out of Jumai’s Grove. There is… unrest… among the tenants, and the harvest has been delayed.”
“Unrest?” Father’s voice was raised, and I flinched back involuntarily. “What by gods do they have to agitate about?”
“My lord, the word I have—and I don’t know for sure yet—but the word I have is that the mayor is under pressure from the council to disown his child, and he has refused. It has caused an uproar in the village.”
“Disown? Why should he?”
“By the accounts I’ve received, mi’lord, the child is a mixie.”
There was a chill silence, and even Mother froze in her needlework. When Father spoke again, his voice was low and strained. Cold and impassioned and frightening.
“Gods-damned mixie filth. A slip or a dunt? No, it doesn’t matter. Fucking filthy mixie witches. Last thing we gods-damned need. Who’s mayor there… Danda? I want a squad of house guard up there by day-after-tomorrow. Either he drives that filth out of the village and gets the harvest underway, or they’re to drive the whole gods-be-damned family out and let the council choose a new mayor. They can flee or drown themselves in the Folnin for all I care, but Danda will not harbor that filth on my lands.”
“At once mi’lord.”
“Fucking filth. I’ll not have it, not in my…” the voice became a drone; a low buzz and a high ringing that pierced my mind like a spike. The memory dissolved into a gray wash of fog as the pain roiled in my gut and head and the muscles of my shoulders. The world twisted and spun, tumbling in a dizzying whirl.
…have to hold… this is the key… can’t let it slip away…
I held on, holding myself up, holding the memory in place, desperate to keep the reality from sliding away into mist.
I felt Father’s words like a knife in my gut. His sheer hatred of… I barely knew the words: mixie, slip, dunt. I had heard them muttered before, thrown about by other children as grave insults of unknown provenance.
The pain I felt at his heat confused me. It churned in my belly and his words landed one after another like punches that doubled me over. The weight of the grief and confusion were upon my shoulders, pressing down, forcing me to my knees.
”But why,” the question echoed plaintively in my memory, “Why do I have to be…”
…Ah…
Eelie always said I was slow to catch on.
The world washed away in a blaze of gray, like ashes smeared across a fine painting, and then I was swallowed in a mist of memory.
I pushed through the fog, sure now of the shape of the path that I walked. It opened before me. I emerged into a wide lawn that spread lush and green over rich earth. A manor house in pale stone and covered in silvered wooden filigree loomed in the distance. Four tall chimneys rose from the slate roof, spilling billows of white smoke high into the bright blue sky.
I walked forward in a daze, sure of what I would see. To my left was row upon row of short pear trees in regimented order. A dozen women dressed in rough homespun dresses, dyed black for livery, moved up and down the rows carrying baskets and plucking pears from the branches.
I continued walking towards the house, certain of what I would find. A tension was rising in my shoulders and my stomach was tight.
There was a feeling of time in the sky. What I saw here had happened long ago. Was happening forever.
I neared the manor, and saw that it was wrapped in a low platform of paving stones that formed a kind of floor. Large doors intricately set with panes of glass stood open from the house, looking out onto the paved yard.
I crossed those paving stones, looking down. There was something there, I thought. A stain? But the stones were clean; pale and neat. He would accept nothing less.
Just inside the doors was a rich room, all golden wood and leather and wine-colored wool.
A voice ranted from inside that room.
I hesitated, standing now on the threshold. I couldn’t understand the words, but the tone was fierce and angry. Full of rage and hate and odium. I didn’t want to enter. I didn’t want to understand the words.
I was turning, wanting to walk back the way I had come; to stand under the eaves of the pear orchard. There was peace there. Peace and joy and comfort.
I was facing into the doorway and my foot lifted, crossing that threshold.
I was standing in Father’s study. Father rarely let me in his study. My arm hurt where his fingers had crushed, dragging me in through the doors.
“What did you say?” Father was angry, but he was often angry. This went beyond anger. His voice was cold and emotionless. It sounded like death.
I’m sorry, I thought.
“I—I’m sorry, Father.”
“I don’t care that you’re sorry! I asked you what you said.” The rage was boiling. His face was flushed, his nose and forehead turning red against the white of his skin like a streak of blood on pale stone.
…This feels wrong…
“I feel… I feel wro—” Pain burst upon me like an explosion of fire and sound. A roar of heat washed over my left cheek and the sharp sting hurt all the more for the soft cushion of wool against my right. I opened my eyes and saw his shoes.
“Get up!” Father roared.
…I can feel my shoulders clenching… Can’t find my breath… My stomach hurting…
“Hurts,” I whimpered as I climbed back to my feet.
“Do you know how long this family has stood on this land? Don’t you remember what it means to be a Savat? We made this land! Our name is listed on the rolls of the First Ships! The Savats have held four of the Seven Keys! Our family have held the Scales twice since the Landing, and even—once—the Three Diadems of Torfall! You do not get to discard that legacy!”
“Father, I—”
“Father? Who is ‘Father?’” he screamed, inches from my face. I felt drops of spittle fall on my skin.
…I wanted to wipe tears from my eyes…
He turned his back on me and took three deep breaths. When he spoke again, his voice was measured, calm—
…the calm is pretense… he is still furious…
—but I was not fooled. I knew that coldness.
“Tell it to me again. Say the words you spoke.”
It felt like a dare; like a threat. But not saying them wasn’t enough anymore. Hiding and pretending wasn’t fooling him or anyone else anymore.
…I know what is coming. I feel it as surely as I know my name…
“I… It feels…” I flinched away, expecting another blow. “It feels wrong, when you call me ‘son.’ It feels as wrong as if you named me daughter. It is wrong. I don’t know why, but it is not who I am,” I finished, my voice stronger than I expected.
I waited. Waited for the blow. For the rage. For the anger and the violence and the vitriol.
Father’s shoulders slumped. I watched him take a deep slow breath in and then release it. When he spoke again, his voice was soft and far warmer than I could have imagined.
“The days of this house have been long. They stretch back to royalty across the sea. We hold to the old ways—always have, and ever will we.”
He turned to face me, though I didn’t look up at him. “I’m glad you were finally able to tell me this, son, while you are still only eleven years old. Children are the future of any house… But we are Fall, Tamar. We are Savats. The future of our house is in its sons.” The warmth was entirely gone now from his voice. “It’s a good thing that I am still young enough to find a new wife and to make another.”
