And nobody cared.
It was not a new idea to her. She had known her work was thankless. But at least she’d had the Order. How dare they? How dare they? She stoked her anger. She needed it now. She needed it badly. What would she have without it?
She reached up and unwrapped her wimple, tugging down her veil with it. Next, she unpinned her braids and let them fall in front of her shoulders, so colorless that you could see the dark of her clothes through the strands. Even as a child in Talanael, she had covered her hair, self-conscious of what it meant. The first time she had put on the wimple of the Voiceless, it had felt comforting and familiar.
With a pull at the door ring, she swung it inward. The early stars of evening shone in the fading daylight. With her head held erect, she stepped through. Noreen was there, and Gyon the Vien ambassador with two other vien and two of the regency officials who had attended before. They all turned and stared at her. The ambassador kept his expression flat, but Vien said much with their eyes. She saw the slightest wrinkle form at the corner’s of his eyelid and knew that her statement was received.
“Here she is,” said one of the Noshian men. “Now, I think we can consider this business finished.”
“We can,” Gyon replied. He was a head taller than any of the Noshians present. He had jet black hair and eyes to match, his skin like the color of chestnut, his angled jaw firm.
“Now that the armada is departed, and we have returned your countrywoman to you, is there anything else we may assist with, ambassador?”
“No, in everything you have been quite obliging,” Gyon replied without making eye contact with the Noshian. “We will return to the embassy for tonight.”
Jareen couldn’t tell if the Noshians were more pleased that they had fulfilled the Vien requests or pleased that the Vien were leaving the Manse.
Gyon kept his eyes on Jareen.
“Lovniele, come with us.” He spoke in Vien. There was no use in arguing. The ambassador turned with his aides and Jareen started to follow. Passing Noreen, she paused. The Arch Sister was staring at Jareen’s face as if startled. Jareen forced herself to speak.
“What?” she asked. The weight of that word, spoken in plain hearing, felt like a slap to the face of the world and a punch in her gut all at once. The Arch Sister could speak in front of those outside the Order, but not a Voiceless Sister.
Noreen shook her head.
“It’s nothing. . . you look. . . so like you did when I first met you.”
Jareen could see the subtle changes that belied in her own age in those rare instances when she gazed in a mirror, but Noreen had not seen her face uncovered in many, many years. The Sisters could go unveiled in their dormitory, but the Arch Sister lived in private rooms.
Gyon had halted, allowing the exchange, but not knowing what else to say, and still burdened by the long habit of silence, Jareen stepped past Noreen and the other Noshians. Gyon led the Vien on and out of the Manse.
No one spoke as they walked the half-mile to the embassy while evening deepened into a moonless night. The embassy building stood in a respectable neighborhood partway between the Manse and the harbor, where doormen kept watch through the night and the streets were mostly deserted at sundown. It was a blocky three-story house constructed of red brick. Rows of glass windows looked out across the front. Whitewashed wooden frames divided the windows into many small square panes. There were even flowers and grass growing in narrow strips on each side of the building behind low brick walls. It was a typical structure for this part of the city, a type of home Jareen had seen many times. For that matter, she had seen this building before, though she tried to avoid it when visiting Departing in this neighborhood. It still surprised her by how un-Vien it was. They had done nothing to make it look any different from the surrounding human abodes.
They entered through the front door. It opened onto a stairway landing, with doors to either side leading into separate apartments.
Gyon turned to one of his aides.
“Take her to her chamber.”
“Why have you done this?” Jareen asked.
“You will find out soon, but not tonight. I have much to attend to.”
She considered arguing, but she knew the ways of her people, even though she had not lived among them for long. A single night was hardly a matter of note to them, and they would despise her for acting like a Noshian and demanding an immediate explanation. A part of her would have welcomed their ill feeling, and another part was tired. It was not a fatigue of the body; her world had fallen apart in a day.
She followed the aide up the stairs to the second landing, and then up the next flight to the third story. This was the story traditionally inhabited by servants. The aid led her to an inner room without so much as a window, but it was comfortably enough furnished with a narrow bed looking stale but made, a chair, and a little table with a basket of candles. It was not unlike the chamber in the quarantine apartment except for the missing window. Sadly, the window was the most important part to Jareen.
Spread out on the bed were two dresses, a pair of high-laced thong sandals, and leg wraps for cold weather—all in Vien silk and style. The aide nodded toward the garments.
“It is the ambassador’s will that all vien or vienu in Nosh dress in our own fashion.”
With that, the aide left and closed the door behind him, leaving her in the pitch dark. She knew where the candles lay, and there had been a lamp at the upper landing of the stairs that would make lighting them easier. After giving the aide long enough to get away, she went back into the hall and lit a candle. The lamp was burning coconut oil, and she wondered where the store of oil was kept. It had been so long since she had oiled her skin. It was common practice in Findeluvié, so that their skin gleamed and the aroma of coconut followed them. Her skin always felt so dry and dirty in the city. Turning back, she considered the narrow door at the far end of the straight hall. It most likely led to the servant’s stair which would connect to the kitchens on the ground floor and lead out a back entrance.
Back in the room, Jareen stared at the clothing for a time, weighing her whirling feelings as best she could. At length, she decided it could wait for morning, and rather than change, she undressed and prepared for bed.
In Findeluvié, many of the Vien preferred to live and work by the light of the stars. Some said they could hear the stars singing and dancing through the sky. Harvesters enjoyed laboring in the cool and sleeping in the heat of the afternoon. Yet in Nosh, most humans slept by night unless they had particular work, such as the Voiceless Sisters who cared for the Departing by both moon and sun.
She undressed down to her heavy slip. With her shoes and stockings off, she felt the wool carpet beneath her bare feet, wiggling her toes. The candle flickered on a brass stand upon the little table. At least they hadn’t shut her away in the dark entirely. She turned and checked the door. There was no lock, which irritated her. Again, she thought of the back stairs. No doubt the embassy would be guarded at night and the entrances locked. Even if she could slip away, she had nowhere to go and nothing with which to bribe a shipmaster. The world was wide and dangerous, and she was not the maid that had fled to Nosh. She had no idea what she would do if she ran. It was best to find out what her people wanted with her, first.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Laying down on the bed, she took Tirlav’s letter and sat in the light of the candle. She had read it before. It mostly contained answers to Coir’s frequent questions about Vah’tane, but it contained a passage that had often come to mind since her first reading.
[. . .] I think it is the fading of beauty, the inability to grasp it and hold it—truly to become one with it—that after centuries upon centuries drives some to seek Vah’tane. If the stories are true, and the gate leads to the Wellspring of the Current, then I must believe it is there where all melodies exist in their purest form, where we become one with that which we desire, with beauty, with life, the final consummation and slaking of our unquenchable thirst.
I have seen one among my people mourn the death of a beloved eucalyptus for ten years.The Horned-Ones live only forty or fifty years before they succumb to the dust, and so many will barely look upon them for fear of loving them. Many still carry in their hearts and memories the wound left by the love of a short-lived creature. It is best avoided. And yet at the same time, many refuse to marry and be joined in union with a mate in the most sacred covenant of life, for who can fathom the promise of a thousand years? Only those who cannot abide otherwise make such oaths. This I feel in myself.
Jareen’s memories of her earliest years had faded a little, but she could not remember ever hearing a vien speak so freely and openly. Her mother had raised her siblings to the service of Findeluvié, to the cultivation of gardens and groves, and to war. Music told the histories of their people, and great skill in all things was expected—anything less was an embarrassment. Yet Jareen was not taught such things. Why teach great skill to one who would barely live? Did her people speak thus to each other, and simply not to an Insensitive? Had they avoided looking at her like they avoided looking at the Horned-Ones? Was that what her mother had seen?
And yet Tirlav wrote this way to a human. A Noshian foreigner. Why couldn’t anyone have spoken to her like that?
***
Though no daylight entered her room, her body knew when morning approached. She rose in the dark and paused. She knew where she had folded the clothes, but which to wear? The decision she had left until the morning was now upon her. For so many years, she had worn the same thing. The fashions of Drennos had changed. Dresses had gone from cut at the ankle, to the calf, back to the ankle, pleated and then straight, sashes and no sashes, ribbed bodices and stays to simple silhouettes, ruffled necklines to plunging cuts for the wealthy. All the while, the Voiceless Sisters wore the same thing down to the stitching of the seams. Judging by the clothes that the embassy had provided her, Vien fashion had hardly changed at all. In the dark, she felt the fabric.
It was a silk spun from an strange insect long ago imported to Findeluvié, gathered over great lengths of time in flowering groves. The heartwood of Shena was especially renowned for its silk. It was prized highly by the humans; only the wealthiest could afford it. Yet it was so common in Findeluvié that children played in it.
The silk was usually dyed in the deep hues of gleaming viridians, indigos, and ochres so beloved by her people, often woven together in clever gradients of different-hued threads, causing the color to shift in different angles and lights. In cut, the goal of the Vien seamsters was to make the garment look like one continuous piece of flowing cloth, as if it was a natural growth fit to the wearer, and not a work of seams and thread.
Even as she stroked the clothes, she felt her irritation at the embassy. Wearing the garments of the Order would snub them. Yet she was not part of the order, now. The Noshians had snubbed her. In the dark of the little room, she let the tears come.
At last, she knew that her time was running short. A decision must be made. What did she want?
She wanted to feel the sensation of a Vien garment again. So in the dark, she chose one of the flowing robe-dresses. With the garments came a silken cord that could be worn in a number of fashions, and in times of activity, used to gather the length of the dress about the hips for ease of movement. Her long arms were bare, but she was thankful the embassy had also provided a delicately woven scarf of the kind Vien women often wore in the cooler season of the northern heartwoods. She draped it over her shoulders, laced the sandals up her calves, and stepped to the door.
In the hall, heavy drapes covered the windows, allowing little of the pale morning to enter at the edges. She heard movement down the stairs. As she approached the landing, one of the Vien aides stepped upon the stairs and headed up. When he saw her, he held out a satchel.
“Pack your other clothes,” he said. “We are going.”
“Where?”
“Speak with the ambassador.” He stretched out the satchel closer.
As soon as Jareen took it, he turned and hurried back downstairs. Jareen went back and packed her few things. She thought about leaving the garb of the Order of the Voiceless behind, but she had so little in life. She packed it as well, and its heavy cloth made the satchel bulge. The letter she carefully rolled and placed inside her folded wimple. The satchel itself was of Noshian make, waxed canvas to keep the contents dry. She slung it over her shoulder and felt the disparity of its rough texture against the silk.
She saw two vien leaving rooms and heading down to the first floor, as she walked down the stairs. She followed them. Like the outside, there was nothing inside the embassy to suggest that it was a Vien habitation. The walls were bare except for a few Noshian reliefs no doubt original to the house. The furniture was sparse and austere. It was odd for Vien to have so little care to act upon their environment. The homes of Findeluvié were decorated down to the smallest details.
She followed the others to a dining room. Inside was a great oaken table—all of Noshian make. Standing—not sitting—around the table were Gyon and four other vien, all with the same canvas satchels. The chairs were pushed to the edges of the room. As she entered, they looked up and fixed their gaze on Jareen. No doubt her hair was disheveled after the night, but she had left all her things in the quarantine apartment, unable to even take her comb with her. She should have snuck it away in her clothes—there was no risk of contamination—but she had been so distracted.
Despite that, she doubted it was the state of her braids that caught their gaze, but rather their utter lack of color.
“It is poor fare today,” Gyon said for her benefit, motioning to the table. They were eating from a platter of dry bread and raw diced vegetables that looked none-so-fresh. A pitcher held wine. She was hungry, and so she took a slice of the bread and a thick white carrot. It was tart, pulled too early before the sweetness had gone to the root.
She chewed and looked over at Gyon. She wanted to ask him many questions, but she would not do so in front of the others.
Was this everyone? Gyon and six other vien?
“How many vien are in Nosh?” she asked.
“Only we. A few already went with the armada.”
She squinted. Gyon took her meaning and explained:
“The armada departed for the Embrace three days ago, thirty-four ships in all, including an escort of Noshian naval carracks. It carries the greatest shipment of arms and metals ever to set sail. And speaking of setting sail—” Gyon glanced at the others. “It is time. I do not wish to miss the morning breeze.”
The Vien men filed out of the room, and Jareen stepped in front of Gyon as he passed around the table.
“What do you mean, miss the breeze?”
“We are leaving Nosh,” he said. “You are coming with us.”
“Why?”
She felt an odd sensation of dread in her stomach, and she remembered Coir’s words: when they tell you they are leaving Drennos, remember me.
“Because the Synod commands it,” Gyon said, stepping around her.
“And the Synod commanded you to bring me?”
Gyon paused and met her gaze.
“We will have time to speak on the passage, but you are coming with us.”
Was Coir telling the truth? Was it crazy that her first instinct was to flee—to not be carried back to Findeluvié even if Coir’s words of doom were true? Was this all just some wild coincidence?
Gyon left the room, and Jareen followed, mostly because she didn’t know what else to do. The others awaited them at the front door of the embassy. Without looking back at the drab house, they stepped out into the grey of morning. The sun had not yet risen above the line of houses on the eastern side of the road.
“Tore, Fennor, make sure she doesn’t run,” Gyon said. Without a word, the two vien moved to either side of her, and the small group of Vien moved down the street to the open stares of the doormen.
The city of Nosh was just rousing. The earliest tradesmen, hawkers, and vendors prepared stalls in the markets on the road to the harbor. Without fail, they all stopped their work to watch the elves move silently past. Jareen’s heart raced, but her thoughts couldn’t keep up with their pace. She had gotten used to the slow walking of the humans. No avenue of escape suggested itself to her, much less a purpose for escape. The archivist. . . had he escaped? Was he all right? Could any of it be real?
No. . . This was merely a coincidence. The archivist’s plot was too absurd. Could the lenoth'ni tea cause such delusions in humans?
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