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Episode 11: the contraction of a truth
Diary of Kaidan Žambey
Episode 11
22 reli 3422 (scúreden)
Suolan, morning
I write in some kind of paternal womb, or prison, namely the guesthouse of hipcont Borodino’s town estate at Suolan, in which with enormous absurdity and to my inexpressible frustration the entire crew and passenger body of the Sešue Sariley are sumptuously detained, apparently at my father’s expense. He must have given Sfica a large payoff to bypass Ulian when he arranged my passage. It is a marvellous ecunî move.
I had no idea Father could field such an extravagance. He beetles his brow above the accounts with such alkalinity and perpetual alarm, and so performs the Empire’s premier miser, that I had assumed the Žambey clan close to ruin for years. Instead, it seems, to prevent me from falling further into dalliance, the purse is inexhaustible; Kutro and I survive on servants’ food for a decade, yet my perversions are sufficiently horrific as to inspire a veritable festival in honour of their avoidance. Bravo, Father!
What is more, on arrival I was assigned a chamber with Mëfa as if we were betrothed, a sick joke of the captain’s, I guess. I balked and went to argue with the long-lashed steward, but Mëfa did a curious thing: laid her hand on my arm as if we were indeed together, and gently squeezed it. The look in her eyes was entirely without pleasure. I realised that she trusted me, and that she had no assurance of what kind of safety she might sleep in if it were not in my company.
“That will suffice,” she told the steward, and slipped her arm through mine. I felt Zevy’s aura bristle up like a hedgehog; I could practically hear his blood begin to pound like a drum in a laitonora.
I shot him a conciliatory glance – a ‘friend, I think you know me’ look, and retreated to the second set of marital chambers which I have shared with a woman whom I barely know.
While the coals of fury burned noxiously within my heart, I resigned myself to the solace of relative comfort. My body, at least, knew its requirements, and I ate fruit and drank water and lay on soft things. Mëfa and I were quiet then, and kept to our zones within the lofty room.
Across the courtyard from our chamber is a wide audnáe which has been adapted for half of the crew to sleep in. Zevy and two other passengers are in a loft accessed via balcony. The captain and first mate are in the chamber next to ours, which contains a couple of fine beds.
Our chamber is undeniably lovely. A pair of recliners frames the double doors opening onto the courtyard garden, inset with pretty stained-glass lozenges, and bright lozenge windows with sash shutters bring the light in and dash it across the polished marble floor. The bed lies back against the outer wall, and lying in it produces a view of twin fruit trees in blossom.
This early morning pleasure I have left to Mëfa, while I draw a blanket round myself on a recliner. The sounds are like home: closer to, birdsong, pans clattering and the soft sloshing of the pool in the garden, periodically housing a body or three in a hushed rhythm of washing and swimming. Further away ‒ through a veil of gardens ‒ hooves and cart-wheels on cobbles, the shouting of bargemen, and a sëte tattle in the street announce the pretty waterside market-square of Suolan coming to life with the sun.
I can hear the river, to which we are bound to return by noon, the distance on to Vyat being less than a regular day’s sail. The crew are taking full advantage of the luxury and spending a morning at leisure, having slogged far past dusk to bring our ragged craft safely into the dock. Between two of the hipcont’s fine vessels, ours slotted in like a damp shadow, a colep in a pool of golden craďî.
After a little exhausted interval last night there were smokes and drinks and games in the kitchen, gambling and cards, and music – to which Zevy contributed, alongside some other guests lodged upstairs. But I didn’t have the spirit. I was still badly drunk-sick and crushed quiet that Father had bought such a display of hatred for me, which all about me were enjoying.
I showed my face for quarter of an hour, mainly because the toilets lay through the kitchen, and sat in awkwardness and stupour while others moved and talked and laughed around me. Mëfa sat with me some of the time, grateful, I think, for the pretense of our union. When I rose to leave she followed. Someone threw a remark at us and raised a room-wide guffaw. Politely Mëfa bowed her way out and led me by the hand back through the lovely courtyard to our green-glowing door. There were frogs audible in the wet beds by the pool.
“I have something to ask you,” she said, “if you are awake enough to be asked.”
We were not yet inside. By a dull moonlight and the many lamps and torches of the guesthouse I could see her face purl into uncertainty. I paused in front of our door and turned to her.
“Since we are betrothed,” I said with a weak smile, “you can ask me whatever you want.”
She had paused too, and seemed to take in the air for a moment through her skin, checking the stillness to see that we were not overlooked, readying herself for something.
“Your business in Ulian. Your… love…” she began, then faltered. I didn’t respond. “Was she… dark, or fair?”
I still said nothing, feeling that this question was not the question; yet my heart quickened. I felt sick thinking of speaking of him.
“Was she… one you could not marry?”
My voice caught in my throat, and I breathed back, “Yes.”
“And… she… was not your betrothed,” Mëfa continued. Her black hair now framed a face full of a careful regime of thought, and she weighted her words such that I could not help but catch their implications. “You could not marry your betrothed, either,” she continued.
I felt the beginning of a release, the edge of a safety, the contraction of a truth in labour.
“No, I could not,” I said.
“And when I enter this room with you, we enter as…”
“Friends,” I said, more clearly now.
She searched my eyes and seemed to find what she was looking for – or the absence of what she hoped she would not see.
“Companions,” she said. “Travellers, who can help one another.” She waited, and so did I. Perhaps embarrassed, perhaps anxious, she added, “And friends. Yes, friends… with a common predicament.”
“I see,” I said. I suddenly could not help myself but smile. She smiled back, a sad smile. She was, I thought, to my surprise, beautiful. Boyish, really. She looked unmasked into a natural fierce intelligence, a passion I had not seen in her face before, one that was nothing to do with me or mine.
I put the key in the lock and turned it, and she turned the handle, and we opened the door together.
“Welcome,” I laughed quietly, “friend.” Inside, she went to the dressing table and began immediately removing her travellers’ clothes. I wasn’t sure I could avoid doing the same, so I copied her. She had come to a necklace hiding in her underdress. Her hair fell around it as Elucöra’s would in the morning. She took the chain over her head and held it out to me. It held a locket.
I looked to her for permission and she waved to dismiss my formality. I opened the locket. Inside was a curl of bright golden hair, and a tiny sketch. It showed a woman’s face.
Pain was strangely enervating me, the pain of recognition, the pain of memory, the pain of longing, a shared pain. The pain was making me smile. My barriers fell away. “It could be his,” I said, touching the lock. I wanted to and did not want to kiss it. I started to cry quietly. She took the locket from me gently, and, without announcement, lifted her hand to wipe a tear from my cheek. I wanted to and did not want to embrace her.
Mëfa moved away and started singing. She had a gravelly, inaccurate voice, and in the quiet of the bedroom, muffled inside the quiet courtyard, muffled inside the quiet of the outer gardens, muffled inside the night, it took on the quality of wormsong or the buzzing of a dragonfly. Nonetheless I knew well what she sang – the hymn for Koleva “Pona Isoncres”. In her mouth it became the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, a song of pure devotion, of one’s life’s best dreaming; a secret psalm of love.
Notes:
detained - Kaidan is, of course, being a bit dramatic: no one is being detained per se, but Kaidan’s father’s money has paid for the crew to work a longer shift to get to the next town on from Ulian, and covered extravagant lodgings there to sweeten the deal.
ecunî - a Verdurian game something like chess (whose rules can be found on the Almea＋400 Patreon)
laitonora - brass band, a staple of Verdurian music since the later Dark Years
audnáe - reception room
sëte - the middle of the five Verdurian singing voices, a high male voice or a low female voice (you can hear this type of singing in this entry’s audio sample)
colep... craďi - types of fish; craďî are colourful fish for ponds
... she... - this conversation is more ambiguous in Verdurian, without obligatory gendered pronouns
Pona Isoncres - a fuller version of this chant is coming. This is just a taster, perhaps about as much as Mëfa would have sung.
Almeomusica
Re: Almeomusica
Not much to say, just that I'm happy that the story continues