A girl who expected to become salted learned early how to tie the four knots of the sea. Every woman aboard a ship was expected to know them, to be able to tie them without thinking, as easy as breathing. Most girls learned to tie them blind.
For days now, in moments when she thought the other women weren’t looking, Bela had been trying to tie just one—it didn’t matter which—with her one remaining hand.
Not once had she succeeded.
She sat with her back to the warm stone wall, knees up to hide what she was doing, holding the untied line of cord in her lap.
Bela took a deep breath and forced herself to look away from the cord, to think beyond darkness and loss. She looked up at her crew.
It was remarkable how quickly the cave that they’d found had become a home. They’d dug a trench for refuse, running out to the shore. They’d collected two oil barrels full of fresh fuel and pounds of new meat. They’d brought in fist-size rocks to enclose a small burning pit dug into the middle of the chamber. They’d brought in larger stones to serve as chairs surrounding it. Her crew sat around on them now, talking and laughing at old stories and older lies, their faces glowing with the steady, radiating heat of the fire between them.
Bela tried to smile at the sight. She’d led them here. She was still their shipmistress, even if she didn’t have a ship. Even if she didn’t have two hands to helm one if she did. It was her duty. Her honor.
And thinking of it helped keep the darkness at bay, as long as she didn’t dwell upon the faces who hadn’t made it, or her uncertainty of what to do next.
Her gaze crossed the room to Tewrick, who was sitting farther away from the fire—close enough to still have light to read by, but far enough to keep the thick black smoke of the burning fats from staining his books.
Gripping her cord, Bela stood and walked over to sit down beside him. “Are you well, Tew?”
His face seemed to redden beyond the glowing red light of the fire, as if he were blushing. Had he never had a woman ask after his well-being?
“I’m well, shipmistress. And you?”
Bela saw how his eyes glanced to where her shirt sleeve was tied off just below the elbow. She tried to pretend like she didn’t notice. “I’m fine, thank you, reader. Just wanted to come check up on you.”
He looked over to where the women were laughing. “I don’t really fit in,” he said.
One of his books sat beside him on the floor. Bela knew the rules about non-readers handling scripts, so when she picked it up, she did so with careful movements. It was heavier than she expected as she turned and rotated it in her one hand like the foreign thing it was. Finally, she sighed and gingerly set the book down. “I think you’re right,” she said.
Smiling, the reader picked the book back up and flipped it over, opening it up to the middle. “I can teach you, you know.”
The words were matter-of-fact, as if he were talking about the weather or his shoes, but Bela’s eyes winced and darted to the other women, instinctively fearing the idea of being caught thinking about such a thing. But none of the crew was paying any attention to them. And there were no Spire guards around to arrest her anyway. “No,” she said, trying to keep the nervousness out of her voice. “I’m too old. You need to start young.”
Tewrick shrugged. “You don’t need to, but it helps. Most readers do.”
Bela thought for a moment, not quite sure how to ask what she wanted to know. “How long ago did you …?”
Tewrick smiled at her uncertainty. “I struck another boy when I was seven. They cut me shortly after that. Thanks be to the Mother, I was sent to the readers, not the bent-men.”
“The bent-men are important,” Bela said. “We all have a role.” It was an almost involuntary reflex to repeat the dogma she’d learned in her youth. “The tenders help the zambaru plants grow. The bent-men quarry their taproots for the Char. And the Char is necessary for the magick of the tenders.”
“Yes, shipmistress.”
Bela frowned at his sudden deference, realizing he must have thought that she had rebuked him. “But I agree that it’s better to be a reader,” she said. “Safer.”
“That it is.” His body seemed to relax a little. “Anytime I felt tired or uncertain about my work as a scriptor, I would think about those men in the rootfields: bent double, scraping Char, trying not to breathe their death of it. A terrible life, I think.”
“You were really seven?”
“Seven.”
“And you were … cut for striking someone? Isn’t that …?”
“I hit him with a rock. I was angry.”
“Oh.”
“And anyway, things were harsher at Kol Bannok, where I grew up. I just count myself lucky to have survived the cutting. Many don’t. And I’ve done well as a reader, I think. I was lucky there too: Kol Bannok had the biggest scriptorium in the Isles before it burned, and becoming a scriptor is why I wasn’t there when the Windborn came. I was already at the Spire.”
“A reader once told me the biggest scriptorium was in Kol Mithtor.”
Tewrick grinned mischievously. “Then he lied.”
Bela laughed a little at that, for a moment forgetting her own anxieties and hesitancy. “So what are you reading now?”
“This? It’s a book of old stories.”
“Stories of this place? Stories of our ancestors?”
“The stories are old,” he said, “but not so old as that. They’re after the people came to the Isles, I think. At least some of them are. This one I’ve been reading is called ‘The Weaver and the Dreamthief.’ It’s set in the Isles.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Oni said.
Startled, Bela looked up and saw that her maiden had come over to join them. Behind her, the others were still talking. Oni smiled, and Bela felt suddenly aware of how she hadn’t brought her into her bed since the bear’s attack.
“It’s about the danger of delaying payment,” the reader said.
Oni’s hand found Bela’s leg. A gentle touch. But Bela felt the longing behind it. “Is it a good one?” the maiden asked.
“It is,” Tewrick replied, looking at the book.
Oni slipped into the embrace of Bela’s good arm and settled against her. If she was disgusted by the weakness of what remained of the other—or disgusted at the mere sight of it—she didn’t show it. She cuddled up against Bela, her back to her chest, and Bela wiggled her nose into her hair. Oni pinched her playfully in response. “So, delaying payment,” she said. “Is that like promising to pay for something tomorrow instead of doing it today?”
The reader smiled. “Exactly so,” he said, and he opened his book.
*
There was once a weaver who had a great desire to be initiated in dreamthievery.
Hearing a whisper that a woman in Borhays knew more of this forbidden art than anyone else, the weaver came to Borhays in secret, hoping to learn from her. On the day she harbored, she walked at once toward the house where she’d learned the woman was living. It was raining, but she so feared being recognized that she dared not even raise a weaving to drive the water from her face.
She found the dreamthief sitting in her rooms. The woman greeted her most graciously, asking only that she hang her wet coat before dripping on the rugs. Then she offered her a chair and tea to help her warm up from the rain. At last, the weaver told the woman the true reason for her visit, begging that she be instructed in the art.
The dreamthief worried that the weaver might betray her, so she was reluctant to admit her powers. But the weaver was insistent, and earnest in her desire to learn.
“Very well,” the dreamthief said. “But there is something that you must do for me in return.”
“Name it,” the weaver said. “Name it and I swear it will be done.”
“You are a woman who could come to power through my knowledge,” the dreamthief said. “But I fear that you are also a woman who would forget the one who gave it to you.”
The weaver swore that this could never be, and so the dreamthief assented to teach her of her powers. It was near the evening meal, and the dreamthief called her servant boy and told him to prepare some rich fish for her and her guest, but not to cook them until she gave him the command. The boy agreed and left. Then the dreamthief began to tell the weaver how she practiced dreamthievery.
No sooner had this begun than word came to the house that a sybyl not far away had fallen gravely ill. The letter grieved the weaver greatly, not only for the fact that the sybyl was someone she knew, but also for the fact that leaving to pay her respects would bring her new studies to a halt. In the end, the weaver decided to stay in Borhays with the dreamthief.
A few days later, another letter managed to find the weaver, informing her that the sybyl had died, and that a successor was soon to be chosen. According to the letter, she herself was foremost among those under consideration by the Sybyl Council. The weaver was sad for the loss of her friend, but she took some comfort in her potential advancement.
A week passed, and two finely dressed women arrived in Borhays. The weaver went out to meet them, and they honored her as the new sybyl of Pallennor. The weaver was very happy, and word of this turn of events quickly spread through the town. So it was that the dreamthief came to her, joyed at her great fortune, and asked her if she remembered their agreement.
“I swore that I would not forget,” the weaver said.
“Then I ask that as sybyl, you make my daughter the weaver of Borhays,” said the dreamthief.
“If only you had come sooner with this request,” the weaver said with a sigh. “I have already set aside this position for another. But I’m a woman of my word, and I will find another position for your daughter. We will continue our studies, and my new place as sybyl will reveal an even better post for your daughter.”
The weaver and the dreamthief left Borhays together. The new sybyl was received with much honor at her new home, and she proved a good and able leader. The dreamthief continued to teach the weaver of her forbidden arts, and she daily asked her to provide some appointment for her daughter, but the weaver always found a reason not to do so.
It was not long before messengers came from the High Sybyl. The former weaver had succeeded so well in her role as a mystic that she had been appointed to the Spire. Furthermore, the High Sybyl entrusted her with naming her own successor.
When the dreamthief heard this, she reminded the weaver of her promise, urging that her daughter be named the new sybyl. The former weaver declined to do so, but she assured the dreamthief that there would be an even greater future reward for her services. The dreamthief felt she was unjustly treated, but she agreed to accompany the weaver still further.
No sooner had they reached the Spire than the High Sybyl died. The Sybyl Council gathered, and they elected the newly arrived weaver to this greatest position of power. Great celebrations and revelries were held. She was seated as High Sybyl over Land and Sea, and she was pleased at how much she had managed in so short a time. She quickly forgot about the withered old woman from Borhays.
So it was a surprise to the former weaver when the dreamthief, hunched and broken, slowly approached her gilded throne one day. The tapping of the old woman’s simple wooden cane in the great throne room seemed a mockery of the splendid jeweled scepter in the weaver’s hand.
“What are you doing here, old woman?” the new High Sybyl asked.
“I’ve come for my payment,” the dreamthief said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the weaver said. She waved her hand, crafting a weave of air that pushed against the older woman.
The dreamthief took a step backward, but she did not leave. “We made a bargain, and I desire my daughter to take your former position in the Spire.”
“You know that I cannot do this thing for you,” the High Sybyl scoffed.
“But you made a promise,” said the dreamthief.
“Hastily made long ago. I owe you nothing, and I’ve tired of your presence and your constant requests. Perhaps you should leave.”
The dreamthief did not move. “I’ve learned not to have faith in your words.”
“You can have faith in these,” she replied. “You’re a heretic. You’ll leave this place, or I shall call out the guard.”
The old woman’s face sank, and at last she turned to go. But she took only a few hesitant steps toward the door before looking back toward the throne.
“The journey to Borhays is a long one,” she said in a tired voice. “Would you at least provide me with some food for my journey, in return for the services I have rendered?”
“You’ve done nothing for me that I couldn’t do myself,” the High Sybyl said with a scornful laugh. “I’ll give you nothing but death if you remain.”
The dreamthief straightened her back, no longer the withered woman. “In that case,” she said, “I believe I shall have to eat the fish that I ordered for this evening.”
No sooner had she spoken than they were once again in Borhays. She was no longer the High Sybyl. She was still a mere weaver, sitting in a chair by the dreamthief’s fire. Her wet cloak was still hanging from the bronze hook on the wall. What was left of her tea was still warm.
Thus, it is said, the weaver’s promise was proven a lie, and a lesson was left: For the one who repays ungratefully, the more she has, the less she’ll give.
*
“I like that story,” Bela said when the reader finished. “A good lesson.”
Bela was holding Oni tight around the waist, but her maiden craned her neck around to look at her. Her gray eyes were clouds that Bela knew she could lose herself in. “Agreed,” the younger woman said. “Which is a good time to remind you of a promise you made earlier. A reward for finding Ealond.”
The shipmaiden winked, and then she was slipping out of Bela’s arm and moving back to Bela’s bed of sealskins.
Bela, turning back, saw that the reader had been watching her go too. He caught her eye and immediately lowered his gaze to the ground. “This man is sorry,” he stammered. “Your pardon is—”
“Oh, stop that,” Bela said. “She’s a beautiful woman.”
There was a crinkle of a smile on the edge of Tewrick’s face, but he erased it before he looked up. “It is not a man’s place.”
“It’s a man’s place if she says it is.”
“It’s not this man’s place,” he said.
“Because you’re cut?”
Even as she said the words, Bela wondered if she shouldn’t be so direct. But the reader managed a smile. “The cutting takes away much of the desire,” he said, “but I can still perform if called upon. It would simply be fruitless, which is the reason for a man and woman to be as one. There is nothing I can offer a woman that you cannot offer each other—and without the soil of being with a man.”
It was the way of things. A truth taught across the Fair Isles. Being with a man was an act of necessity, the burden of being a matron. Not one of the women here would have ever been with a man. They had each other for such needs. No breeding of children among them. Just the breeding of loyalty, of the connections that made one woman wish to sacrifice for another. For good reason, every shipmistress had her maiden.
Bela knew this. It felt right.
But she also knew that there’d been a time when she’d had other thoughts—the very thoughts that had made her pull away from her friend Alira in the moments before a Windborn bomb had destroyed their ship. Those had felt right too.
“You’re a good man,” she finally said. “You’re worth more than you believe.”
“I’m just a—”
“No,” Bela said. “You saved my life. I’m in your debt.”
He seemed to catch the look of seriousness in her eye, as he didn’t object. “Thank you, shipmistress.”
“Good. Now, I want you to take care of these books of yours.”
Tewrick looked down at the book in his hand. “The journey has indeed been hard on them.”
“Hard on us all.”
“True,” he said.
“And it’ll probably get harder,” Bela said quietly.
The reader’s eyebrows lifted, but he said nothing.
It was now Bela’s turn to grin with a glint in her eyes.
“You didn’t think I’d make it all the way to Ealond just to stop here, did you?”