The unbalancing, p.3
The Unbalancing, page 3
My stomach knotted. Any time now, somebody would want to talk to me. This was a mistake. I should get out of here. Semberí wanted me to take a look at the new starkeeper, ostensibly to make me feel bad that it wasn’t me, but oh Bird, how could Semberí think I could rule anything? At thirty-five, I was perfectly content with a life of a recluse whose only social outings were poetry readings. At those, I just had to climb on some dais or a chair and read, then try to slip away before anybody could express their opinions to me directly. I couldn’t imagine throwing even a much smaller party, let alone the rest of the people-wrangling that being a starkeeper would require. This had been enough of a look.
I was about to turn back toward the gate when I spotted a group of ichidar by a small fountain. They all had their hair done five ways, and the oldest, a large and proud person in their sixties, had brass tokens strung into their five long, thin gray braids. This person’s face was round and pleasant, their olive islander skin tanned with weather and wind. They waved at me, and then, unexpectedly, yelled my name. “Erígra Lilún!”
I startled, but surprisingly did not bolt. This person exuded a kind of gravity, a warm centeredness—and without much thought I came closer. One of the younger ichidar thrust a glass goblet into my hands, and many people welcomed me at once.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be sorry,” said the person with the brass tokens. “I’m an admirer of your poetry—I’m Dorod Laagar, shipwright—and this is my crew . . .” As Dorod introduced their fellows, I became again distracted by the tokens in Dorod’s braids. The tokens told a story of their life and their journeys through at least three different ichidi variations. First was the deer for ichar—I leap sideways—to signal that one was neither a man or a woman, but traveling sideways on one’s own path. It was the first ichidi variation, one many ichidar chose for themselves. But it wasn’t Dorod’s current variation. The deer token they wore was small, followed by a fish for arír, and finally, prominently displayed, a bear for rugár. Animal tokens were out of fashion at the moment, I was given to understand, but I loved looking at these.
“You can have one of mine, if you’d like,” Dorod said, amused.
I shook my head. “I don’t know my ichidi variation. Sometimes I think I am ichar, but I am never sure. And anyway, I should be going. No offense meant—I wanted to see the new Keeper, but I have no idea how to find them.” I cursed my bluntness. “I’m sorry. I’m not used to being in the crowds.” I put the goblet down on the striated stone rim of the fountain. I had not drunk anything, but the colors of the courtyard were blending in my eyes.
Dorod nodded sagely, and soon I found myself being escorted somewhere by one of their fellows whose name I entirely missed. We left the courtyard and entered one of the outer rooms of Keeper’s House, a dim and spacious chamber with floors of white and black marble and pillars of malachite chiseled to resemble trees. Here was a heavy table strewn with charts, and around it a small gathering of people in animated conversation. I had no time to take it all in, to process, no time to feel anything except for some dark wave, a longing, apprehension, as if I was dreaming about the star, but I was awake. There was a person in her thirties—I knew her to be a woman by her single braid in the custom of those who were not ichidar. She wasn’t overly tall, but sturdily built. She was, I suddenly thought, the center of all this—the room, and the conversations.
“Starkeeper.” My guide spoke up, next to me, and I felt that movement as air rearranging itself around us. Every tiny sensation was either sharp, or blurred into nothingness. “I bring a guest.”
The commanding woman whirled around to face me. Her face went through a series of expressions—a startled joy, disappointment, surprise. Finally, her face smoothed out. She couldn’t be called pretty, but she had a striking, commanding presence, and a kind of roar filled my mind. She walked over toward us.
My guide continued, “Esteemed Dorod Laagar asked me to introduce this ichidi to you. The poet, Erígra Lilún.”
The new starkeeper was about my age. She was extraordinarily magically powerful—a three-named strong. Her configuration was not engaged, but I was perceptive well beyond the abilities of my magic. I perceived, in her mind, a single-syllable, another single-syllable, and the last, a two-syllable deepname. I wouldn’t know the exact sounds of her deepnames unless she spoke them to me, and that was not done; but I knew enough. She held the Royal House, the most stable and benevolent configuration known. This exact configuration could be mine if I wanted to take more power, but I’d stopped at two deepnames. She had not.
“Well met,” said the new starkeeper. She bared her teeth at me, not quite a smile. “I am Ranra Kekeri.”
She gestured toward my guide, and such was the force of her will that Dorod’s friend bowed and all but ran out. Ranra’s eyes, deep brown and perceptive, locked on mine. “You came here for a reason, and I would know it.”
“You told your guards to admit all beautiful people with significant deepname power,” I blurted out before I could stop myself. Forgive me. But I did not feel like begging. I stood straighter.
Ranra frowned. “I’m sure that’s not why Dorod bestirred themself to have you introduced. Or was this an attempt to matchmake?”
Did she think that I came here to prank her, or, Bird forbid, to flirt? I did not flirt. I’d had my share of encounters, none particularly enjoyable or memorable, and, by Bird, I had never sought out lovers on purpose. “No,” I said. “Of course not.”
“Very well. But then what brings you here, Erígra? I’m waiting.”
This, this was the reason I hated parties, hated talking to people I did not already know. Why did I come here? I swallowed my unease, my embarrassment, all of it. Breathed. It helped nothing. “I see the Sputtering Star in my dreams.”
Ranra nodded. “Speak on.”
I spoke on. “I hear it screaming sometimes. It’s having nightmares, and I have—I wanted—I am concerned . . .”
“That I would not keep the star properly?” Ranra’s brows knitted together, forming a single long dark brow over her eyes. She wasn’t beautiful in any regular sense, but something about her compelled me. She was, she was poem-like, someone I would write about through words of summer storm and thundercloud when I was alone in my room. She was angry, and I did not want her to be angry. From Ranra’s mind, a cord of lesser, constructed deepnames extended, fascinating me with its hue, an azure so pure it almost sang.
She frowned. “What are you staring at?”
You.
I said instead, “Your deepnames. The bond you formed with the star, the rope of bright blue that spins out from your mind and then out, curling into the depths of the sea.”
Her brows climbed higher, but her mouth untwisted. She stared at me, and I knew all too well what she thought. If you are so perceptive, how come you’re only a two-named strong?
I ventured an explanation. “I was told that I should take more deepnames, but I would rather not.”
Ranra breathed in, deeply, and for her it seemed to work. She seemed less angry, though no less intense, but now I could not guess what she was thinking.
She said, “You are welcome to join my councilors, but I will not discuss the star much longer tonight. This is my party, and I intend to enjoy it.”
I did not respond, but she waited for my reply.
“Yes, of course,” I finally said. “Thank you.” I felt confused, and there wasn’t enough air to breathe.
Ranra Kekeri
Here was my moment, my hour. This room, where I’d served as a councilor, gnashing my teeth as the old Keeper waited, Bird knows for what, year after year; this room was mine now. Chiseled of marble and malachite and reflecting hundreds of magical lights, the room was full of people. And all of them looked at me, as if they waited for me to spring into action. A kind of nervous drive, a feeling of glee, filled me from the pit of my stomach to the heart. I could do—anything. Run somewhere. Do something. And yet, I reminded myself, this was a day of celebration. The gardens overflowed with revelers—my people—across the three islands who were celebrating me tonight. But I was on edge. Impatient. Five years of waiting, Bird peck it. But our islands were prosperous, our gardens overflowed, the people had the freedom of their bodies and their minds and their loves. My people were happy.
This in itself was an issue. Starkeeper Terein had for years refused to do anything, to say anything. There is no point in scaring the people. They would not believe us. Let them be. Most islanders had no idea that here, at the inner council, we worried that the star could be dying. The star had been in the wave for a thousand years. Except for some earthquakes, nothing had changed, after all, from the time Semberí had brought the Sputtering Star here and sank it into the sea. And we’d had earthquakes before, so all would be fine. It was nothing.
But it wasn’t nothing, and I knew it, and the old Keeper knew it. Earthquakes kept getting more frequent, and stronger. The star was disturbed—I felt it through my newly forged bond, and certainly Keeper Terein would have felt it too, would have woken screaming from the star’s nightmares just as I had for three nights in a row. This was a Bird-plucking mess. To figure out what had caused it, and how to fix it, I would first need to convince people who thought we were doing just fine. We were not doing fine. Things were getting worse, and soon would get much worse. The new person, Erígra, knew this.
I just wished I hadn’t been thinking about my mother when they were announced.
Erígra looked nothing like my mother. But as soon as I heard the word guest, I made assumptions before even looking.
So I looked at Erígra. Again. They were standing by the table with my deepname charts, listening quietly to my advisors Ulár and Somay. Erigra was striking. Their bleached hair was shaved on the sides and braided, contrasting beautifully with the tanned olive of their skin; their eyes, small but vivid in a pleasant face, reflected both intelligence and sadness. I wanted to do things to this ichidi. I wanted to clasp their cheeks and to wind my hands in that hair. I wanted to capture their wrists in my hands, to see that sadness soften into surrender.
Wait. What.
I frowned and focused my magical senses on Erígra Lilún. There was something about them beyond my unexpected but predictable interest, something I needed to understand.
Ah, yes. Erígra was as powerful as me. Perhaps even more powerful than me, although it was hard to say why I thought so, or how that could even be true. My connection to my star, tenuous and fleeting most of the time because the star wasn’t awake, surged forward at that moment with a wavelike suddenness, and I tasted salt under my tongue. In that moment, I saw that Erígra Lilún bore the Royal House, same as me.
No, that wasn’t right. Erígra Lilún’s mind was shaped to hold the Royal House. What they held instead was the Princely Angle, a lesser configuration of two deepnames, one-syllable and two-syllable. I remembered my own powertakings. I had taken all my deepnames rapidly, taking a break at the last, but only for a few days as I fought with the urge to take a different configuration. It seemed that Erígra had stopped at two deepnames and would not proceed.
I turned to my advisors. “Leave me. Please. I would exchange words with this poet.”
They did as I asked, but not too happily. Soli . . . Veruma Soli in particular looked sour. I’d promised them all a party, and we hadn’t even started on the drinks. Well, there was a party outside. They would manage to entertain themselves without me for a Bird-plucking minute.
When Erígra and I were alone, I patted an armchair next to me. “Sit.” I saw them hesitate, because I was still standing, but at last they lowered themself, gingerly, into the chair.
I should’ve sat, too, but I just looked down at them. It was oddly pleasant.
I said, “You see the star in your dreams.”
They nodded, their gaze on their hands.
“Your mind is shaped for the Royal House. It is a very rare configuration. A configuration of power, and stability, and work for the benefit of one’s people. I’ve never once met another, yet you are here, and so am I.”
Erígra looked up, their gaze on my chin. “You know that I do not hold it.”
“You could hold it if you chose to.” I had become starkeeper because I wanted to, and worked for it, and had the power for the job, but I hadn’t dreamt about the star before I bonded with it three days ago. “If you took the Royal House, you could become starkeeper, yes?”
“Yes.” Their eyes met mine finally. There was pain in them, but it didn’t make sense yet, and I wanted things to make sense.
I said, “Instead, I am starkeeper. Yet you are here. Let’s see—you think you could have done it better?” Someone was always convinced they could’ve done it much better than Ranra Crow with her single eyebrow.
Especially my mother, eh.
My stomach clenched in anger, again. This was my day of celebration, the day of my ascension in the eyes of the people. My mother wasn’t here, and I didn’t want to think about how she refused to come to my ascension revels. Instead of my mother, I was getting would-be starkeepers. Well, only Erígra for now, but perhaps more would arrive to criticize me out of jealousy or smugness and without any desire to offer their work.
It was an unkind thought. It wasn’t Erígra’s fault that I still, after everything, hoped for Adira—for my mother—to show up. Still, I was upset and impatient. “Why didn’t you take the third deepname? Why didn’t you reach out to the Star of the Tides?”
Erígra swallowed. Looked back at their hands, and their fingers knotted together, then unknotted. “Even if I wanted to—even if I chose to, I could not be certain that the star was consenting.”
Ah. “You are here to criticize me. And here I thought for a moment that it could be different between us.”
Where did that come from? I had found them dashing for a brief moment before this conversation, but I wasn’t desperate—I’d never had any shortage of lovers, and my house and my courtyard were full of people who would swoon at my every word. Then why did I—
“I didn’t come to criticize you.” Erígra made a motion as if to get up. “I’m sorry. I mean you no disrespect. This is not my place. I will leave.”
I breathed deeply through my nostrils, steadying myself, angry at myself. I began again, gentler this time, or at least Bird knows I tried. “Please sit. I’m sorry I’ve been so impatient—if you want to leave, I understand, but I would talk with you.”
They swallowed and looked away, and I just stared at the way their bleached braids brushed the shaved sides of their head, their neck. What would it feel like, to grow up so beautiful? My fingers itched. All those gardens full of people, and I would focus on a reticent stranger with a half-finished configuration. Eh.
I forced myself back to the matter at hand. “During that first star-giving dance, the Star of the Tides fell from Bird’s tail and into Semberí’s hands. That was consent.”
Erígra still wouldn’t look at me. “Either that, or the star fell haphazardly, and Semberí just happened to catch it. Or the star fell, and as it fell, still sleeping, Semberí ran around like a child playing ball, and caught it.”
I shrugged. “It’s not like we could ask them how it’d happened.”
Erígra made a strange noise in their throat.
I continued, defensive. “We know the recorded history. The starkeepers before me did the same thing as I am doing now.”
“It still doesn’t make it—” They stopped themself just before the word right fell from their lips, but I heard it, anyway. No, it wasn’t right that my star only saw nightmares when every other star in the land was awake and conversed with their keepers. It wasn’t right that the Unquiet Sleeper’s nightmares rattled and shook the isles, it wasn’t right that the pattern was intensifying, and it wouldn’t be right if, like Terein, I did nothing about it except twist my fingers into a shape of a ladder.
I wanted to tell all this to Erígra, but what came out of my mouth was, “I will always ask your consent.”
They looked up at me, startled.
Now, where did that come from? The same place as the rest of it, eh.
I pushed on, past my blunder. “This is the reason I became starkeeper in the first place. I will do my best to fix this, once and for all generations. But not today. Today we are celebrating.” My mouth ran ahead of my mind, but not by that much, I admitted to myself. This was my day, after all. I decided to give up on pretense. “So, would you like to be touched?”
Erígra laughed, more in surprise than in mirth. “You move fast! We’ve only just met.”
I didn’t realize there was a rule to limit my speed. Who would try to slow me down, anyway? The healer-keepers?
I bit my lip. “I do not wish to press you.”
“I’m, I’m sorry.” They got up from the chair, and I stepped back to give them room. I’ve made a plucking mess of this, that’s what. A pile of congealed guano.
“I came here because of the star,” Erígra said. “I’m sure you have plenty of people out in the garden who would do just as well.”
“That was uncalled for,” I said harshly. “My offer was in good faith.”
“I’m only allowed here because your guards judged me beautiful. At your command.” Erígra adjusted their hair, and I could have sworn, at that moment, that they weren’t disinterested. “In any case. I cannot move this fast, Ranra.”
“I understand.” I didn’t, but people were different. Still, I wondered if their cheeks would feel hot if I touched them.
I opened my hand, and Erígra walked past me, toward the door. They didn’t look back, but I called after them.
