I like Soe’s house because it’s quiet.
It’s a different kind of quiet from the insulated glass bubble of Tolukum Palace—it’s an open, breathing kind of quiet. The redwoods tower over the rough A-frame cabin and its little outbuildings, making me feel like a bug crawling around the feet of beings who have better things to do than notice me. The wind sighs through their lofty branches, easy to hear even from this distance because everything around Soe’s house is soft, muffled. Her flock of turkeys drift here and there, pecking the dry walnut meal left over from the oil presses. The yard is carpeted with copper-colored evergreen needles, and the pitched cabin roof is so thick with moss and ferns it melds with the forest floor where the eaves touch. A sapling grows out of the northwest corner of the roof, its spindly branches reaching toward the happenstance light let through by the redwoods.
I’ve made it a point to visit Soe as much as I can in the three years since we shared a room in the Blows, but normally those times were filled with chatter and music. The first time I visited I brought her a beautiful new dulcimer, with opal inlays, as a thank-you gift for the old boxy instrument she gave me when we parted ways—the one I played onstage for Iano’s parents to earn the title of ashoki. She still has that dulcimer, wrapped in flannel in the cedar chest. I let my fingers drift over it this morning, sliding them along the strings. But I don’t dare to pluck them, and that’s because I’m here alone.
It took several hours for Soe and Iano to agree to this, and that was only after Soe showed me how to get into her hidden root cellar where she stores her wines and oils. With a door covered in the same deep duff as the forest floor, it would be nearly indistinguishable to an outsider, but the hole itself is dark and too shallow to stand in—and I have a sudden urgent need to avoid going into places I’m not sure I can get out of. Still, I gave in to Soe insisting I check to see if the space she cleared for me is big enough, and I attempted to smile at Iano as he earnestly arranged a few items inside—a blanket, a canteen, a box of nut biscuits. But inwardly, I imagined sitting or lying under the skin of the earth, listening to people prowl around outside, looking for me, and I held back a shiver. I don’t plan on getting into that hole if I can help it.
And this means being as quiet as I can—no dulcimer or humming or too much moving about. An approaching horse’s hooves would be muffled on the thick redwood carpet, and a single traveler barely noticeable. Even the mule and cart that Soe drove away, with Iano at her side (looking back worriedly every six seconds), was lost to the deep swallowing silence of the forest. But it’s for the best—this way Iano can watch the road into Giantess while Soe collects the salal berries and walnuts she needs for her next round of pressing. Her last market run was two weeks ago, and we’ve unfortunately caught her when her supplies are low.
She lives simply here, with only three sets of clothes, and I’m wearing one of them, a work dress that would have fit me snugly several weeks ago but now hangs off me like a sack. Iano had to change back into his traveling gear—between that, his new stubbly beard, and his hair braided and tucked under a cap, I hope he’ll go unrecognized as the face on the copper coins should someone pass by. I reach for another well-buttered nut biscuit, determined to reclaim some of my curves, and study the parchment balanced on my knees.
I’ve started notes from our conversation last night. Kimela’s connection to the plantations on Ketori, her attention to symbolism and ceremony. Queen Isme’s desire to see some order restored to the rollicking court, and her seal on the bounty sheets.
I’ve added Minister Kobok, but his name spurred half a dozen others who are equally outspoken about preserving Moquoia’s slave-based industry. The only things that make Kobok stand out more are his management of the quarries at the edge of the Ferinno, and his determination to keep the country’s industry safe from banditry—hardly insignificant motivations.
The whos and hows are exhausting, so I’ve moved on to a growing to-do list, the beginnings of something that could be considered a plan.
It feels good to write after so long. I organize things best this way—left in my head, my ideas jumble and hide, but on paper I can lay them out straight, connect them, label them, list them. Two pages now are filled with straggled text studded with arrows, circles, and underlines.
I take it back. It feels good to see my ideas on paper. It does not feel good to write. I rotate my wrist, trying to ignore the hot pain spiking in my joints. Nine hours a day for three solid months spent at a drafting table, recording the vital statistics of slaves passing through the illegal distribution ring—I carry that work as a penance in my right wrist, reminding me that I got off easy. I shake my arm, trying to will away the stiff curl that my fingers want to take. Mami had scribe’s arthritis, too, her fingers so gnarled by the end of her life that they barely flexed at all. But there’s more I want to write, there’s more that needs doing. I swish another sip of Soe’s astringent vinegar tonic around in my mouth—she says it will help my tongue heal—butter another biscuit, and take up the quill again, missing the ink pot on the first dip thanks to the stiffness in my fingers.
I’ve covered nearly every point of interest I can think of regarding our enemy in Tolukum Palace, so I move on to the next urgent matter weighing on my mind.
Veran and Lark:
Whereabouts???
Investigate South Burr for signs of activity
Check Pasul for return west—posthouse, prison, inns
Check Snaketown for journey east
Send letter to Callais; inquire after Eastern Ambassadors & Lark’s camp
If no news???
My quill pauses on the page, the whirl of my brain momentarily blotting out the throbbing in my wrist. If no trace can be found of the Silverwood prince and the Lumeni princess, what then?
Draft letters to Silverwood monarchy and Lumeni queen/Cypri ambassador
Organize search & recovery of bodies
I swallow.
Prepare for collapse in diplomatic rela—
“Ah!” I drop both the quill and the nut biscuit, which lands butter-side down on the top half of my page. I suck in a breath and cradle my wrist to my chest. My fingers are curling in on themselves, my tendons tightening uncontrollably. I sniffle around the pain, carefully set the spoiled parchment at my feet, and lay my wrist on my lap. With my left hand, I uncurl my fingers one by one, biting my lip. Fire races up my arm, into my shoulder, all the way to my back. An hour spent writing, and already my body rebels.
“Kuas,” I say, the curse deadened by my inability to pronounce the s at the end. Clutching my right arm to my stomach, I stoop and lift the biscuit off the parchment. It’s a dual tragedy—butter smears the neat lists on the top half of the page, and the biscuit itself is splotched with black ink. I almost throw the biscuit in anger, but I don’t want to hit any of Soe’s empty glass bottles or buckets of walnut meal. I consider balling up my parchment in frustration, but it feels like such a waste of effort, and anyway, I’d need two hands to do it satisfactorily. I want to shout, but I think again of the faceless enemy prowling around outside Soe’s windows, waiting for a sign to burst in and end me.
I slump forward on the bench, winding my good arm over my head.
No speech.
No song.
No writing.
An image comes to me of a life lived in fragments, single words and short phrases scratched out on a slate. Gestures and points. Yes-or-no questions. Plucking a tune on a dulcimer and singing the lyrics only in my head. I may have learned to live with limited speech if I still had the ability to pour out the contents of my head onto paper. But this—robbed now of the written word . . .
My last weapon is gone.
I’m still in prison.