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Another of the inventions (both in the literary and genetic sense) of Stormqueen was the riyachiyas, human-animal hybrids created by laran, often matrix-spelled for various purposes. The next two stories explore the nature of of freedom and compassion, and the age-old question of what it truly means to be human.
Rachel Manija Brown’s post-apocalyptic YA novel Stranger, co-written with Sherwood Smith, is forthcoming from Viking in late 2014. She is the author of the memoir “All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: an American Misfit in India,” and also writes short stories, graphic novels, poetry, television, and plays. She is currently a graduate student at Antioch University, Los Angeles, in the MA program in clinical psychology, with a specialization in trauma.
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The sun lowered over the hills like a hot coal settling into a bed of ash. I pulled my coat closer around my chest, then slung my bag of rabbit-horns over my shoulder. I had to hurry home before I got caught out in the cold and dark.
I didn’t move. Instead, I closed my eyes and let my other senses spread out like a spider web. Snow brushed feather-light against my cheeks. A few flakes clung and melted, dripping down like icy tears. A drop of mingled snow and sweat slipped salty into my mouth. A chilly breeze caressed my hair and rustled the leafy canopy overhead. I inhaled the faint mineral odor of the stony ground, the rich earthen scent of the crushed moss beneath my feet, and the coppery tang of the rabbit-horns’ blood.
My own scent, the warmth of my body, and the sound of my breathing were part of the intricate world of the forest. I was part of it. The forest was the only place where I ever felt like I belonged. I wished I had been born a chieri, so it could have been my home.
I opened my eyes and forced myself to stride away from the comfort of the trees. I was much too old to waste time longing for impossible things.
As I neared the gates of Riach Great House, a tremendous roar filled the air. I stared upward at the silvery aircar that hurtled across the sky. Only one man in these parts had aircars or laran operators skilled enough to control them: Lord Elhalyn, whom my father had gone to visit a week ago. Lord Elhalyn must have offered his favored vassal the dangerous courtesy of a ride home.
My shoulders tensed. I had not expected my father to be back so soon. And he would be displeased if I was not present to greet him upon his return. I clutched the bag and ran, arriving panting and sweaty in the courtyard. My older brother Amador and a number of servants were already waiting there.
Amador smiled at me. “Good hunting, Val?”
I nodded, holding up my bag. “We’ll have roast rabbit-horn tonight.”
The aircar smoothly touched down. It was enclosed, with clear windows in front, through which I saw the red-haired laranzu controlling the car. But the windows in the back, where I assumed my father sat, were tinted dark. I had no laran to gift me with premonitions, but an eerie sensation went through me at the sight of those black windows. They seemed like bottomless pits into which I might tumble and fall to my death....
Dom Nestor stepped out of the aircar, letting the door swing shut behind him.
He glanced at my bag of rabbit-horns. “I am pleased to see that you are still good for something.”
I gritted my teeth, unwilling to show girlish hurt in front of my father.
Dom Nestor raised a graying eyebrow. “Does a compliment sting so? I have never had any complaints about your hunting. You set a high standard.”
He clapped Amador on the back. “One you don’t live up to. I have not forgotten how we had to send a search party after you when you and that precious hound of yours ran off on a chervine hunt!”
“When I was eight,” Amador muttered.
But though our father might tease Amador, it hardly mattered that his woodcraft was not quite as good as mine. A lord need never hunt for himself to be supplied with fresh meat.
Dom Nestor opened the door of the aircar and beckoned within. “Come on out. We’re home.”
To my surprise, a girl stepped daintily out. I stared. I could not help it. She was clad in nothing but gauzy pink draperies, with golden slippers on her high-arched feet, but she did not seem to feel the cold. Black hair tumbled over her bare shoulders, almost shocking against her milk-white skin. Her eyes were a blue so deep as to be almost violet, and her lips were red as cherries.
She was graceful and lovely, but something about her seemed strange. More than strange: wrong.
I surreptitiously counted her fingers, thinking that she might have six on each hand, but she had only five. It was her proportions that were odd: her legs too long, her waist and hips too slim, her fingers too delicate.
Dom Nestor snapped his fingers at his waiting servants. “Take the luggage to my room.”
They hurried to do his bidding. Once they had gone, Dom Nestor gave a nod to the laranzu. The turbines began to roar, and the aircar took off. Normally I would have watched, fascinated. But there was something much more fascinating standing before me.
Once the noise of the aircar had faded into the distance, the girl turned to Amador and me. “It is my pleasure to serve you, vai dom’yn.”
Her voice was sweet and clear as a glass bell. I glanced at Amador. He, usually so self-possessed, stood dumb, as if entranced.
Dom Nestor put a possessive hand on her shoulder. “Isn’t she enchanting? Lord Elhalyn gave her to me.”
“Gave her to you?” I echoed foolishly.
The girl bowed her head in submission, sending locks of midnight hair tumbling across her heart-shaped face. “I am honored to belong to Dom Nestor and the house of Riach.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “She’s a riyachiya.”
I had never seen one before, but I had heard of them: genetically altered half-human playthings, matrix-spelled to attract and arouse.
My father nodded. “She was made from the seed of Lord Elhalyn and his most skilled leronis, Kiara. Usually they have eyes like animals, but not this pretty thing. She’s one of a kind.”
An experiment, I thought. I felt ill.
Lord Elhalyn had gifted our household with experiments before. Kiara loved to manipulate genes to create clever new creatures. Some of them had been charming, like the chervine with hooves like silver and antlers like gold, or the tree that bore apples in winter, pears in fall, cherries in spring, and peaches in summer.
Others had been less so. Ten years ago, when I had been six and Amador had been eight, our father had come home with a hound pup whose fur changed color to blend in with her surroundings. He had given her to Amador, brusquely saying that I needed no assistance on the hunt. I had been jealous, and Amador had been thrilled. He named her Shadow, as she trotted at his heels everywhere he went. But she grew very quickly, reaching adulthood in a matter of weeks. Within six months, she was dead of old age.
An experiment, Dom Nestor had said, shrugging.
The riyachiya’s beauty suddenly seemed overripe, almost repulsive. Wrong. I took a step backward.
My father’s sharp gaze raked over me. “She does not charm you?”
“She’s very beautiful, Father” I said hastily.
Dom Nestor laughed. “I didn’t think she would. She’s only spelled to charm men—and boys, too, of course.”
The riyachiya tilted her head, examining me more closely. “My apologies, vai domna.”
I wished the polished stone of the courtyard would split open and swallow me up. I forced myself to sound unconcerned. “Vai dom was correct. Dom Nestor meant that I am an emmasca.”
“Not a true boy,” my father explained. I wished he would stop talking—even a riyachiya had to know what an emmasca was!—but he went on. “A sterile throwback—we Riachs have some chieri blood in our line. But male. More or less.”
“My apologies, vai dom.” The riyachiya did not seem embarrassed, but spoke as if she was truly pleased to have been corrected.
Amador managed to tear his gaze from her, though it seemed to take an effort. “Lord Elhalyn must be pleased with you, Father. She is a precious gift.”
Dom Nestor gave him a long, measuring look. “She is. A gift for me.”
“Yes, of course.” My brother’s shoulders tensed.
My father beckoned us all inside, where servants took my rabbit-horns and his heavy great coat. None commented, of course, but I caught the men staring at the riyachiya. Dom Nestor noticed that as well, and his hand tightened on her arm, his strong fingers sinking into her flesh. Her skin looked so delicate that I wondered if he would bruise her, but she did not flinch.
“Get the men out,” Dom Nestor commanded. “Women servants only. I’ll have no men casting their lustful gaze over my property!”
In the Great Hall, the female servants brought in wine, but he dismissed them before they could pour it. The riyachiya poured the wine, her exquisite grace making that simple task look like a dance. Then she knelt at my father’s feet.
It had been three years since our mother had died. I had expected Dom Nestor to eventually marry again, or take a barragana consort. I would have known how to behave with a wife or a consort. I wished that I knew what he wanted me to do now: ignore the riyachiya, or praise her beauty, or something else entirely. I wondered if she had a name, and if it would be more awkward if I asked now, or waited for him to reveal it.
Dom Nestor took a sip of wine, leaving one hand free to tangle in his plaything’s hair. “Valerio! I have a task for you.”
“What do you wish of me, Father?” I asked, startled. It was rare for him to set me any special task. Amador was the one he was training to inherit Riach Great House and all the responsibilities that went with it.
“My business with Lord Elhalyn is not finished. I must be off again tomorrow morning. I will be gone for a month or more, and I cannot bring this delicate flower with me. And that is why I need you, Valerio.” He smiled down at the riyachiya, who tipped up her face to gaze at him adoringly. “It is a rare task which an emmasca can perform better than a man. You will guard her and allow no one to touch her. Understand me? No one.”
Amador spoke before I could. “I would never lay hands on any possession of yours.”
“I do not know if you are lying or a fool,” our father snapped. “Do you not recall that she is matrix-spelled to enchant? Whatever your intentions, she is irresistible to any true man. She will be locked in my chambers, and Valerio will guard her. I am confident that he can keep her safe from the likes of you.”
Amador flushed a dull red. It was true that I could defeat Amador at swordplay or barehanded fighting, but I could find no pleasure in my father’s praise when it came at my brother’s expense.
“I will guard her with my life,” I vowed.
Servants came in with roast rabbit-horn, which the riyachiya skillfully carved and served. At Dom Nestor’s command, she took some for herself as well, and knelt at his feet to eat it. I would have been awkward trying to manage a plate and cutlery while kneeling, but the riyachiya made it look both easy and sensual.
As I watched her, a longing swelled within me, strong as pain. I wanted to do something to her. I wanted it desperately.
Could this be the desire I had never before felt—that I had always believed I would never feel?
My mind was in such turmoil, I could not enjoy my food. Should I warn Dom Nestor that the spells laid on the riyachiya might be tempting even me? But what if, by guarding her, I could finally gain my father’s respect?
I felt a wild surge of hope at the idea, then a stab of fear. Once before, I had thought that I would gain a skill that would make my father value me, but it had turned into almost as much of a disappointment as my birth.
I had suffered badly from threshold sickness when I had turned thirteen, not long after my mother had died. Dom Nestor had no laran himself, but he knew much about it, for my mother’s laran had been powerful. He summoned a leronis to tend to me. But despite her best efforts, I became lost in hallucinations and distorted perceptions, uncertain what was reality and what was only in my mind.
Once I woke up with every muscle and bone in my body aching, too weak even to swallow the kirian that the leronis tried to drip into my mouth. I heard her whisper to my father that I’d been having convulsions and was likely to die.
My father sat beside me and took my hand in his. I could not recall him ever being so tender with me.
“Be strong, Valerio,” he murmured. “The worse the sickness, the greater the power. Emmasca or not, you will be a true son of mine—a son I can be proud of. So live.”
He took the cup and tipped the liquor into my mouth. I made an enormous effort and swallowed it.
“Good boy. I knew you had strength in you.” He stroked my hair, and I relaxed at the touch of his strong hands. “I look forward to seeing what form your laran takes. Perhaps you will inherit your mother’s gift and force men to do your bidding with the power of your mind alone.”
But though I recovered, I never developed any laran at all. The leronis insisted that she could sense my power. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not read minds or command others or do any of the tasks the increasingly frustrated woman had set for me. Dom Nestor finally sent her away in disgust.
I threw myself into physical pursuits, using the deceptive strength of my long, fragile-looking limbs to my advantage. But no matter how well I rode or fought or hunted, my father never again looked at me with the pride I’d seen when I’d swallowed a single mouthful of liquor.
A scrape of wood against stone startled me out of my memories. Dom Nestor pushed his chair back and stood up. The riyachiya immediately followed, her gauzy draperies fluttering around her shapely body.
“I wish I had more than one night to enjoy her,” he said. “Well, I’ll have my fill when I return. I depart at dawn, and then she’ll be your charge, Valerio.”
“Yes, Father.”
Dom Nestor and the riyachiya went out. When the door closed behind them, Amador and I looked at each other, and then at our plates of untouched food.
Amador nudged me. “Eat, Valerio. I promise not to attack you to get to the riyachiya.”
“I know that you will not.” My own voice sounded stiff in my ears.
“Though I expect my own bride won’t be half so pretty,” he added wryly.
“What did you feel when you looked at her?” I asked.
My brother took a sip of wine. “Like I was burning up inside. Like I was dying of thirst, and she was a fountain of clear, cool water.”
I drank as well, to cover my confusion. I too had felt something like that.
“Sometimes I envy you,” Amador said, to my surprise.
“What? Why?”
“Desire is very distracting. I imagine that life would feel more peaceful without it.”
“It doesn’t,” I said.
He drank again. “No, I suppose not. How could anyone be at peace when Father is here?”
“He’s only trying to make us stronger,” I said. “It’s for our own good.”
My brother walked out without another word. I sat alone at the great table, a lord of nothing.
~o0o~
Another aircar came for my father at dawn. Before he left, he gave me the key to his chambers, where he had locked the riyachiya inside.
The key was heavy and unfamiliar in my hand. Few other rooms in Riach Great House had locks. I had a servant fetch a breakfast tray, and then I unlocked the door and brought the tray inside.
The riyachiya lounged on the bed, wearing a thin, clinging robe. I could see every curve of her body beneath it. I hastily looked away.
“Good morning, vai dom.” The riyachiya made even such a simple phrase sound like a seduction.
“Here’s your breakfast.” I set it on the bedside table. “I’m to guard you while Father is away.”
I heard a creak as the riyachiya got up from the bed, then the soft padding of her bare feet across the floor. She came closer and closer, until I could feel the heat of her body. Then she knelt before me.
“Touch me,” she whispered.
“What are you doing?” I exclaimed. “Get up! You’re my father’s...” Pet? Consort? Slave? “You belong to Dom Nestor.”
“I belong to the house of Riach,” she murmured. “Command me, vai dom.”
I could see straight down her low-cut robe. A sweet scent rose up from the tangled locks of her black hair. If I moved my right hand by so much as an inch, I would touch it. I could imagine how smooth and soft it would feel.
I stood trembling, trying to force myself to either push her away or back away myself. I could not. I wanted to touch her more than I had wanted anything in my entire life.
So this was lust. Despite all the descriptions I’d heard, I hadn’t realized how overwhelming it was.
What if only a matrix-spelled creature could make me feel this way? What if this was my one chance to experience what a true man felt?
You cannot betray your father, I told myself.
But it was just as Amador had said. I was burning up inside. I was dying of thirst, and she was a clear, cool fountain.
“What do you wish of me?” the riyachiya murmured.
She moistened her cherry-red lips with tiny flick of her pink tongue-tip. I could not help imagining those lips pressed to mine, or that tongue licking my body, so wet and hot....
“I long for anything you would do to me,” she whispered. “Throw me to the floor. Beat me. Force me to—”
The heat burning through my body turned to icy horror—not only at her words, but at the riyachiya herself. Everything about her was wrong. Just being near her made me feel sick and dizzy. I staggered backward until my back banged into the opposite wall.
Her exquisite face tilted up, innocent puzzlement in her deep blue eyes. “Do you wish me to crawl?”
I wanted to tell her no. I wanted to run from the room. But it was as if my feet were nailed to the floor and the floor was tilting.
“I will crawl,” she said, in a voice that was not innocent at all. “I will do anything. I am desperate for your touch.”
The riyachiya got down on her hands and knees and began to crawl toward me.
My vision blurred. Light flashed before my eyes, then coalesced around the riyachiya. She shone and flickered, lit from within. I could see inside her body, but instead of bones and blood, I saw light. A web of glowing sapphire strands was knotted around sparkling currents of clear bright light, damming them, trapping them, chaining them...
I had to be hallucinating. I had seen similar visions when I’d had threshold sickness, but I couldn’t be having another attack now. I’d recovered from it years ago.
The riyachiya laid her head on my feet. The locks of her midnight hair were as soft as I’d imagined. Her sweet voice rang in my ears, but I couldn’t make out the words, only the pleading tone.
The ropes of blue light were tied so tightly around her limbs that they cut off her circulation. Strands wrapped in a garrote around her throat, choking her.
Instinctively, I reached out to help her. There was a light in me, too. I shaped it into a crystal knife with a keener blade than any metal could hold. I knew, though I did not know how I knew, that cutting any of the clear currents would harm her. Carefully, one by one, I began to slice through the blue strands that bound her.
When I finally cut through the last one, the freed clear light within her blazed up like a thousand stars. I heard a cry, not in my ears but in my mind. It was high and clear as the riyachiya’s voice, but too raw with triumph to be sweet. Then I fell into a darkness like a moonless night.
~o0o~
I awoke sprawled on a cold hard floor. I had a splitting headache, and even the pale dawn light from the window hurt my eyes.
The riyachiya was crouched over me, staring intently into my face. I realized that only a moment or so had passed since...
...since whatever had happened. Since I had hallucinated and then fainted, I supposed.
“I feel different,” she said.
If I had not seen her speaking, I would not have recognized her voice. She looked different, too: still beautiful, but no longer irresistible; still strangely proportioned, but only unusual, not repellent. The sense of wrongness that had clung to her was gone.
Pain twisted my belly. I was ravenously hungry. Maybe if I ate something, I would feel better. But I felt too dizzy to even sit up, let alone make it across the room to the table.
“Could you bring me the breakfast tray?” I asked.
She didn’t move. Instead, a quizzical expression passed over her face. “You gave me an order, but I’m still sitting here. I don’t have to obey you.”
The pain knifing through my head made it difficult to think. “Well—would you please bring it anyway? I’m very hungry, and I don’t think I can stand.”
Immediately, I realized what a fool I was to say that. I was supposed to be guarding her, and I’d just revealed that I couldn’t stop her from simply walking out the door.
To my relief, that idea did not seem to occur to her. She nodded briskly. “Yes, I remember how hungry Kiara became when she laid her spells on me. Lord Elhalyn always had food waiting if she was going to make great use of laran.”
It was bizarre to hear her speaking so straightforwardly, without a hint of seductiveness. It was as if my horse had turned around and advised me that her saddle was cinched too tight. Her tone was so distracting that it took me a moment to take in her words.
“I have no laran,” I said.
“Indeed you do, vai dom,” the riyachiya replied. “You used it to break the spells that Kiara laid on me. And now you are as hungry and tired from breaking them as she was from creating them. More so, for I never saw her faint. But then, it took her many sessions to cast her spells on me. You removed them all at once. That must have taken more of an effort.”
I shook my head, and immediately regretted it. Red-hot nails of pain dug in behind my eyes. “Not only that. It was my first time. I didn’t know I could use laran.”
It was still hard to comprehend, and harder when I felt so ill and shaky. I managed to haul myself up to a sitting position, but even that much exertion made the room swim around me.
A slim arm wrapped around me and pulled me to my feet. I could barely stand, but the riyachiya let me lean on her. She led me to the bed, then pushed me on to it. I sprawled on top of the covers, panting and dizzy, then realized that I could reach the breakfast tray from where I lay. My hunger took precedence over all else. I devoured a bowl of porridge, several rabbit-horn fritters, and a dish of stewed fruit, and drank a cup of tea. I felt better and more clear-headed when I was done, though I could have eaten three times that amount of food.
The riyachiya stood by the bed, eyeing me. “I have still not obeyed your order. You told me to bring the tray to you. I brought you to the tray. And only because I wanted to help you. I was not compelled.”
She sounded half-pleased, half-bewildered.
“Was that what the spells were for?” I asked. “I thought they were to make you alluring.”
She cocked her head, her huge blue eyes narrowing. “That as well. But I was an experiment, from Lord Elhalyn’s own seed. Like his daughter, he said, with more natural will than the other riyachiyas. So Kiara also spelled me so that all I could desire was to obey and to please.”
The riyachiya shivered.
“Are you cold?” I asked. “Father has coats in his closet.”
She shook her head. “I was genetically altered to withstand cold, so I could wear flimsy clothing without getting ugly goose-bumps. I shivered because...”
Her voice trailed off. I too was silent, with too many thoughts flying through my mind to give voice to any one.
I did have laran! It was powerful, too, if I could break spells that Lord Elhalyn’s most skilled leronis had laid. My gift must be specifically to break spells. That would explain why it had never manifested before—I had never previously encountered a person with spells laid on them. Nor had I even heard of that particular gift before. My father would be impressed, even though I had discovered my talent by breaking the spells on his riyachiya.
I snuck a glance at the riyachiya, wondering what would become of her. Would Dom Nestor return her to Lord Elhalyn and Kiara to have the spells re-done? My stomach twisted again, but not from hunger. Now that I had seen what the riyachiya was like without the spells on her, the thought of having them replaced was horrifying. She seemed like a different person without them—a real person, not a toy.
“Do you have a name?” I asked.
“Silla, vai dom.” She frowned down at the tray. “You have eaten all of my breakfast. I was not altered to withstand hunger.”
“I’ll get another tray for you.”
Cautiously, I swung my legs over the bed. I was exhausted and still ravenous, but I could stand. I left the chamber, making sure to lock it behind me, and headed for the kitchen.
I should have been rejoicing over my new-found gift, but my thoughts kept circling back to Silla and her spells. Maybe Dom Nestor would choose to keep her as she was. She was still beautiful. And she would be less trouble if she was no longer irresistible to every man and boy who saw her. Surely he would see that.
In the kitchen, I explained that I had not eaten and was very hungry, and that riyachiyas had surprisingly large appetites. I returned to my father’s chambers with a very lavish breakfast for two.
Silla stood at the window, gazing out at the distant forest. I joined her, chewing on a sweet roll.
“I would like to walk in the forest.” Her blue gaze turned on me, startlingly direct. “I could not have had that thought before. A walk in the forest would please only me.”
She went to the breakfast tray and pondered over it as if she had a very important decision to make. Finally, she declared, “I want the rabbit-horn hash!”
She scooped up a generous helping and began to happily devour it. I sat down across from her, trying to squelch the guilt welling up within me. It made no sense. I had broken the spells on her, not cast them.
“How old were you when the spells were put on you?” I asked.
Silla shrugged. “I don’t remember ever being able to want things for myself. I suppose Kiara began when I was very young. I heard her saying the process took years to complete.”
I lowered my gaze and stuffed another roll in my mouth, not even tasting it. A small hand laid itself over mine. I jumped, then met Silla’s earnest gaze.
“Thank you, vai dom,” she said. “I’m sorry if I frightened or disturbed you earlier. I sensed that there was something you could do for me, though I did not know what it was. It was the first time I had ever wanted something for myself. I asked for your help in the only way that I could.”
A wad of bread stuck in my throat. I washed it down with a gulp of tea. “I understand. And I’m glad you did it. I always wanted laran, and now I know that I have it. My father will be pleased with me.”
“Will he?”
“Yes, of course. I was a great disappointment to him. Now maybe he can be proud of me.” I nearly bit my tongue, but the words were already out of my mouth. Silla’s bluntness, as if she had never learned hold back what was in her heart, made me feel compelled to match her honesty.
“What was disappointing about you?”
I sighed. “As he told you, I’m an emmasca. That means that I’m sterile.”
“So am I. Kiara altered me so in the womb.”
“But I was supposed to have children, to carry on the family name and genes. You—” I couldn’t say, No one wants to sire children on a half-human sex toy. “You were designed to be the way you are. I’m—I’m a genetic mistake.”
Silla looked concerned. “Will you die soon?”
“What? No! Emmascas live longer than normal people, not shorter.”
“Are you in pain?” Silla bent her head and peered intently at my hands.
“What are you doing?”
“Examining your joints. One of Lord Elhalyn’s sons had a genetic malady. If he cut himself, he never stopped bleeding. His joints swelled, and he was in constant pain. He died when he was twelve.”
“I don’t have a disease,” I said impatiently. “I’m just not what Father wanted. He wanted a true son, who could give him grand-children, not a—a—”
The words caught in my throat.
“I’ll come back with your lunch.” I fled the chamber.
I locked the door, told a servant to come wake me at mid-day, and went to my chamber and slept as if I was some hibernating creature.
I dragged myself out of bed at the servant’s knock and brought another tray to Silla. She was again standing at the window, seemingly deep in thought.
“I don’t like being locked up,” she said. “I want to walk in the forest. Would you take me on a walk, vai dom?”
“I...” I couldn’t find any reason to deny her. My father had said to guard her, not to never let her leave his chambers. “If you wish.”
She bounded to the door, her thin dress fluttering.
“You can’t walk in the snow in slippers.”
Silla looked at me as if I was a fool. “I told you that I was altered to endure cold.”
“Were you altered to be immune to frostbite?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Then wear boots.” I checked the clothing she had placed in his closet, but none of it was suitable for the outdoors. And she could never walk in my father’s shoes. “I’ll loan you some of mine.”
I locked her in again and went to fetch some clothing of my own. By the time I returned with it, she had eaten everything but the sticky pastry, which sat there rejected in the middle of a plate, with a single bite taken from it.
“I didn’t like it, so I chose not to eat it,” she informed me.
“You don’t have to eat it if you don’t want to.” My curiosity got the best of me. “Did the spells force you to eat whatever you were given? Could you even taste it?”
“Do you choose to take each breath? Does one feel better than another?”
“No. And no.”
“It was like that.” She glanced doubtfully at me. “You said you were not a true boy. Are you a true girl?”
I wished she would stop going on about my gender. Maybe if I explained it clearly to her, her curiosity would be satisfied and she’d drop the subject. “I’m neither. Or both. I was raised as a boy because my father wanted a boy, and a sterile girl would have been even more useless than a sterile boy.”
Silla looked hurt. “Am I useless?”
“No. Like I said before, you’re what you’re supposed to be.”
She did not look satisfied with my response, but shrugged and reached for the clothing I’d brought. “If you’re a girl as well as a boy, is it proper for me to undress in front of you?”
“No!” I shoved the clothing into her arms and nearly ran out the door.
I gave her a long time to dress before I opened the door a crack. To my relief, she was fully clothed. With her long legs, she had only had to roll up my breeches a little bit. My shirt fell baggy over her chest and the tunic hung over her hips, concealing her odd proportions. She looked like a pretty girl in boy’s clothes, not like a riyachiya dressed like a human.
I hurried her outside, past the staring servants, out the gates, and into the woods. Once we were alone beneath the trees, I slowed down. Silla touched the rough bark of the trees, she sniffed at the leaves of bushes, she even took off her gloves and rubbed her hands over the snow. She paid such delighted attention to every detail that I felt as if I too was experiencing the forest for the first time.
Her ignorance of ordinary experience, which had been so frustrating in Riach Great House, became a source of easy conversation. I told her the name of every tree, which bushes had toxic leaves, and explained how to track and snare rabbit-horns.
The fifth time she scooped up a handful of snow, I did too.
“Watch this, Silla.” I molded the snow into a ball and threw it to her. “Catch!”
Her delicate hands darted out to catch the ball. When it burst apart in her hands, she gave a cry of surprise, then laughed.
She made a snowball of her own and threw it to me. “Catch, vai dom!”
We tossed snowballs back and forth, laughing and playing like a pair of children, until the shadows lengthened into dusk. I glanced at the setting sun, and my heart sank with it. I had to take her back and lock her up, as if she was a hunting hawk that I had to return to its cage.
“Come on, Silla,” I said. “Time to go home.”
She did not move. “I do not have to obey.”
I wished she hadn’t said that.
“Don’t you want to have dinner?” I asked.
“I do. But...” She frowned. “I don’t want to be locked up.”
“It’s for your own protection.”
“Protection from what?”
“From men.”
“I am not protected from men,” she said simply. “I belong to Dom Nestor.”
I felt as if one of the icicles hanging from the trees had pierced me to the heart. Hoping I had misunderstood her, I asked, “Is it so terrible for you, to belong to my father?”
“I don’t like it.” To my relief, she spoke in the same tones she had used to tell me she didn’t like the sticky pastry, rather than as if she was describing some torture.
The icicle twisted in my chest when it occurred to me that if I asked her how she would feel about being tortured, she would probably say, in those same calm, forthright tones, “I don’t think I’d like that.”
I wished I had never broken the spells on her. Before I had, she’d been content to obey. Now she was unhappy, and I was doubly to blame: I’d made her aware of being trapped, and until Father returned, I was personally responsible for keeping her that way.
Guilt and frustration boiled up in me, making my words came out more harshly than I intended. “It doesn’t matter what you want. You can choose what you eat, but you can’t choose not to be what you are.”
“You can choose,” she replied.
“No, I can’t!” I yelled. “Don’t you think I’d choose to be a true man, if I could?”
Silla seemed taken aback. “I meant that you can choose what you do with me. You could let me go.”
What she requested was so impossible that she might as well have told me that I could choose to grow wings and fly. “I can’t.”
“Please,” she begged. “Dom Nestor will send me back to Kiara, to have the spells restored. I won’t be able to choose any more. I won’t be able to want any more. Please let me go!”
“Father might keep you as you are. You could ask him to.”
“But he could choose not to,” she said. “And then it would be too late. Please!”
She dropped to her knees. With her long limbs, wearing my clothes, it was as if I was standing over a younger, smaller, desperate version of myself. As if I were Father, about to speak the words that would doom me.
“I can’t,” I repeated miserably. “I swore a vow to my father. He would never forgive me. Anyway, there’s nowhere for you to go. You couldn’t survive a day alone in the woods.”
“I could!” she insisted. “You taught me what to eat, and how to snare rabbit-horns.”
“Silla, it’s not that easy. You can’t learn how to do something like that just by hearing about it—you have to practice.”
“I could practice!”
I pulled her up. When I let go of her, she stood motionless as a chervine frozen under the shadow of a banshee.
“I’ll ask Father not to send you back,” I offered. “And you can promise to obey him, even without the spells.”
She did not reply. I had to take her elbow and march her back to Riach Great House. She walked stiffly, like a living doll. I brought her a tray of food, but she did not touch it.
“I’ll ask him for you,” I promised her again.
But if a fountain could choose to flow or dry up as it pleased, what good would it be to a thirsty man?
I toyed with the idea of granting her wish. But even if I could bring myself to betray my father, she’d only die in the wilderness. I thought of her delicate fingers blackened with frostbite, and I couldn’t bring myself to let her flee into the cold.
“Eat your dinner,” I said.
“I choose not to,” she replied.
I locked her in and returned to my room. It took me a very long time to fall asleep. I dreamed of cold clear water, and woke up shivering.
When I unlocked the door of Father’s chambers, she was gone.
I couldn’t believe it. There was no way out but the door, to which only I had the key, and the window, which was too small to squeeze through and overlooked a forty-foot drop. But the window was open.
An ordinary girl of Silla’s size would have gotten stuck in the frame. But Silla’s unnaturally slim hips, never meant to bear children, just might have wriggled through. And while I could never have gotten a grip on the tiny cracks in the stone wall, Silla’s fingers and toes had been genetically altered to be slim and delicate...
I bolted out and shook Amador awake. “Silla’s escaped!”
“Who?”
“The riyachiya. She climbed out the window. It’s my fault!”
Amador blinked at me in amazement. “How could she— No, wait, Val. This can’t be your fault. Someone must have stolen her. A riyachiya wouldn’t have run off on her own.”
I had been about to tell him everything. But now I couldn’t bear to explain why it was my fault, and see his sympathetic expression turn to disappointment. “She said she wanted to take a walk in the woods.”
He looked out his own window. Snow was falling. “She must be lost. You’d better hurry and find her. Take as many men as you want.”
I shook my head. “She’s my responsibility. I’ll go alone.”
Amador frowned. “Is that safe, Val? You don’t know how far she might have gotten.”
“I know. I might be gone for a few days. But you know how well I know the woods. Amador, I have to do this myself. I vowed to guard her with my life!”
“Then go, bredu.” My brother clasped my hand. “Whatever Father thinks, I’ll be proud of you.”
I packed quickly but carefully, warmed by Amador’s trust in me, however misplaced it might be. Then I set out into the forest.
I wished I knew exactly when Silla had made her escape. If she had squeezed out the window as soon as I had left her alone, she’d had more than enough time to freeze to death. I consoled myself with the thought that at least she couldn’t have gotten very far; lost people tended to wander around in circles.
The falling snow hid all tracks. But, guessing that she’d have started by going somewhere familiar, I retraced the walk I’d taken her on. When I reached the point where I’d turned around and taken her back home, I found a freshly-snapped twig, suggesting that someone had ventured further. I pressed on, sure I would find her soon.
But it was mid-day before I found another trace of her—a black hair, easy to spot in the snow. And then nothing until I spotted a single thread snagged on a thorny bush. But by then I was a day’s journey from Riach Great House and was forced to camp for the night.
I lay by my flickering camp fire and told myself not to give up. I had vowed to guard Silla with my life. I couldn’t break my vow just because it was difficult, or because I felt sorry for Silla. She had been made to obey and to please, just as Amador had been born male and I, emmasca. None of us got to choose our destinies. But I could at least choose to keep my vow.
The next morning I set out again, working my way deeper and deeper into the wilderness, expecting at any moment to find her starved and frozen body. But by the fourth day, I was forced to admit that however naïve she might seem, she had a knack for survival. She might even pass all the way through the wilderness, and then vanish forever into someone else’s kingdom. Riyachiyas were rare; few people would have ever seen one before. If Silla dressed like an ordinary woman, no one would think her anything but a lanky girl.
I had gotten so used to spotting Silla’s trail by the tiniest of signs that it shocked me when I found the first footprint in the snow. I knew it was her: I recognized the tread of my own boots. Another footprint was within sight as well.
I followed the trail, wondering what had made her so careless. It was a hilly area where she could have easily stepped from stone to stone. But I did not have to wonder for long. The prints made an uneven line, as if she was staggering. Then I came to a churned-up shape in the snow where she had fallen. There were tiny hand-prints in the snow where she had picked herself up and gone on, only to fall again twenty paces later. I looked for blood, but there was none.
She’s freezing to death, I thought. But why would it have taken so long?
I began to run, clutching the straps of my pack so it wouldn’t smack painfully into my spine. I barely spared a glance for the marks where she had fallen again, and again, and again... How could she be so badly affected by the cold, but still manage to keep going? People who froze to death were done for once they fell, unless someone found them quickly. They got up once or twice, at most. Not five...six...seven times!
The trail ended at a small, dark cave. I hastily lit a torch.
“Silla!” I shouted.
There was no reply. Bending so I wouldn’t hit my head, I ducked inside, holding the torch before me.
Silla was curled up in a corner, bundled up in the clothes I had given her and Father’s warmest great coat. I couldn’t see if she was breathing. I jammed the torch into a crack in the wall and turned her over.
She blinked slowly up at me, her eyes unfocused. I had never felt more relieved in my life.
Silla clutched at my arms. Her grip was surprisingly strong. “I’m falling.”
“You’re not falling. You’re just dizzy.”
“I’m falling,” she insisted. Then she moaned in pain.
“Where does it hurt?”
“My head.”
There were no signs of frostbite on her nose or ears, or anywhere on her face. I took off my gloves and touched her cheek. Her skin was warm—even warmer than mine, since I’d been out in the cold.
I lit a fire, then pulled off her gloves and boots. Her fingers and toes were warm too, with no discolored patches. I sat back on my heels, wishing I knew more about medicine. Could she have eaten something poisonous?
“What are you feeling?” I asked.
Her gaze slid past me—through me. She spoke as if she was in a dream. “Everything’s appearing and disappearing. The ground keeps going soft. Anything I touch changes.”
When I’d had threshold sickness, all my sensory perceptions had become distorted, and my head had ached as if it would shatter into fragments. But riyachiyas couldn’t have laran.
“I can see the light in you,” Silla whispered.
She raised a trembling hand and ran a finger along my body. I remembered how I’d felt when I’d broken the spells on her, and looked within myself with that inward eye. She was tracing one of the currents of energy that flowed within me.
Silla had been made from Lord Elhalyn’s seed. She was an experiment, with human eyes and a will of her own. The spells on her that suppressed her ability to think for herself must have been suppressing her laran as well.
“You have threshold sickness,” I said. “Silla, you have laran!”
“Humans have laran,” she replied.
“You’re obviously human enough.”
“Human and not,” she mumbled. “Girl and boy...”
She was drifting into delirium. I tried to remember how my threshold sickness had been treated. The leronis had given me kirian. I didn’t have any of that. She’d also done something to me with laran.
I concentrated until I could see within Silla’s body. My currents of energy flowed freely, but hers were blocked, pooling up and turning back on themselves. I extended my energy into her, gently opening her channels until they began to flow again.
Her eyes opened wide, and she struggled to sit up. “You’re fixing me!”
“I’m trying. Lie still.”
“You’re fixing me so you can take me back!” She tried to pull away from me.
“I have to, Silla. You’re sick. You could die.”
Her eyes focused on me, sharp and bright as stars. “I don’t want to go back, vai dom. Don’t fix me. I choose to die.”
I heard the thoughts beneath the words, like an echo. But deeper than that, I felt her emotions. She truly would rather die than return and be trapped again within a net of sapphire light.
But I had known that already. I had known it when I had seen the marks where she had fallen, and gotten up, and fallen, and gotten up. I had known it when she had told me that she chose not to eat. I had known it when she had said, I am not protected from men. I belong to Dom Nestor.
I, too, belonged to Dom Nestor.
Unless I chose not to.
I opened my mind to her, so she could hear the truth beneath my words. “I won’t bring you back. As soon as you’re better, I’ll let you go.”
Silla relaxed, laying her cheek down on my thigh. “Thank you, vai dom.”
“Val,” I said, stroking her hair. “Thank you, Val.”
~o0o~
I tended to her for days, doing everything that I could remember the leronis doing for me. To my relief, she was not as badly affected as I had been. As soon as I thought it was safe to move her, I carried her to another cave farther into the forest, then went back and covered up all traces of our presence.
I wondered uneasily how long I dared stay with her. I had warned Amador that I might be gone for days, but eventually he was bound to send out a search party. But I hated to leave her alone. She was still weak, and she was a woman alone, with no family or friends or experience of the world. What would happen to her once I left? She would be easy prey for any man with evil intent.
I was so caught up in worrying about what Father would do when I returned alone, and worrying about getting discovered by searchers, and worrying about what would happen to Silla, that I forgot to wonder about her laran. But Silla did not forget about it. One morning she sat staring intently at me, then suddenly held out her hands, palms up.
“Play the slap game with me,” she said.
By then I was used to her whimsies.
“I’m very fast,” I warned her.
“I know,” she said. “Put out your hands, Val.”
Obediently, I laid my hands over hers. She flipped hers over, trying to slap mine. She was quick, but I was quicker. I jerked them out of the way.
I replaced my hands, then flipped them to slap hers. She yanked her hands away, and I missed.
I never missed when Amador and I used to play. I tried again. And missed again.
Silla laughed. “You look so puzzled, Val. Do you want to know how I’m doing it?”
“You’re faster than me.”
She shook her head. “It’s my laran gift. I can see a few heartbeats into the future. Lord Elhalyn could see what might happen. I can see what will.”
“A few heartbeats away.”
“Yes.” She shrugged. “I suppose it’s not very useful.”
My thoughts raced. If I stayed with her a while longer, I could teach her skills that could protect her for the rest of her life.
“How strong do you feel?” I asked. “I want to teach you how to fight.”
She sprang to her feet. “I want that, too.”
~o0o~
She was a quick study, but it takes time to learn to fight, even if you can see your opponent’s next move. Every day, I told myself that I had stayed as long as I could, and now I had to leave her. And every day, I told myself that one more day of training would make all the difference.
One morning we fought in a snowy glen, Silla dancing and ducking away from my every blow, then darting her knife under my guard.
“Enough!” I held up my hand for a break. “You’ve worn me out.”
She stopped, laughing. “I like to fight. Could I fight for a living, when you go?”
“Women don’t do that,” I began, then remembered something I’d heard Father mention. “Maybe you could. There’s a group called—”
“Val!” Silla cried, pointing at nothing.
A few heartbeats later, Amador stepped into the glen.
I felt as if I was being ripped in two. Then, biting my lip, I moved to stand protectively beside Silla.
“I’m breaking my vow.” The words tasted bitter as poison in my mouth. “I don’t want to fight you, but I won’t let you take her back.”
My brother looked bewildered. “Why would I fight you? I don’t care about the riyachiya. I came for you, bredu. I was afraid that you were hurt.”
“Oh.” Relief and embarrassment washed over me in equal parts. “But how did you find me?”
“I tracked you. I’m not as good at it as you are, but I’m not as bad as Father likes to imply, either.” Amador eyed Silla. “What happened to her? She’s different. She’s not...um...”
“She can speak for herself,” said Silla. “Val has laran and took the spells off me, so I ran away. Val tracked me down and then decided to let me go. I have laran, too. That’s why Val is teaching me to fight.”
After a long silence, Amador began to laugh. “Could I get a little more detail?”
We all sat down, and I told him the whole story. At the end of it, Amador put his hand on my shoulder. “I wish you’d told me earlier. I wouldn’t have blamed you. Val, you have laran! I’m proud of you!”
But with that laran, I sensed the bitter undercurrent beneath his love and pride. “That’s not all you feel.” Then I bit my lip. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry into your mind. Sometimes I read things without meaning to.”
His chuckle had no humor in it. “You don’t need telepathy to know I’m jealous of you.”
“Jealous?” I echoed, baffled. “Why would you be jealous?”
Amador’s eyebrows rose. “Because you’re the son Father wanted! It drives him mad that you can’t inherit or give him an heir, and he’s stuck with me instead. Val, how can you not know that? Why did you think he was always so horrible to us?”
“I thought you were the son he wanted, and I was the disappointment,” I confessed. “But he’ll never be satisfied with either of us, will he? Even if I brought Silla back, it wouldn’t matter.”
“No,” said Amador. “It wouldn’t.”
Silla broke in. “Don’t go back, either of you. You can choose not to. Come with me instead!”
Amador chuckled, this time with more warmth. “I’m not giving up Riach Great House. But Dom Nestor can’t live forever. And I promise you, Val, when I inherit, I will do things differently.”
“I know you will, bredu,” I said. “You’ll do things better.”
I took my brother’s hands in mine. I felt as Silla must when she saw the future: everything suddenly laid our bright and clear, where a few heartbeats before there had only been a vast unknown. “I’m going with Silla. Tell Father you never found us. By the time you get back, we’ll be out of his reach.”
“But where will you go?” His hands clutched mine tight. “What will you do? An emmasca, and a riyachiya— what sort of life can you have?”
“We could join the Sisterhood of the Sword.” I turned to Silla. “They’re the people I was about to tell you about, a group of fighting women.”
“I’d like that,” Silla said immediately.
Amador looked at me as if I was out of my mind. “You’re a man.”
“I’m a woman and a man,” I said. “I’ve already lived as a man. Now I’d like to try living as a woman. Who knows? Maybe I’ll like it better.”
“Maybe you will.” Amador released my hands. “I hope we meet again some day.”
“We will,” I promised. “And that vow, I mean to keep.”
Silla ran to the edge of the glen, then turned and beckoned to me.
“You can go back to your brother later, Val,” she said. “Now, you’re going to come with me. I see it!”
I did.
