“Ah.” I sigh. “And if I was new to your ways, you think I could not be consenting?”
She bites her lips. “I overstepped. I’m sorry.”
I ignore her. “Have I not told you about Old Song, and the stag woman?”
She nods.
I say, “I, too, wanted what Old Song found.”
I wanted to feel her passion. I wanted to learn this word woman, to understand what it had meant for Old Song, what it might mean for me. I wanted to share the body without the thought of producing new bodies. I say, “I wanted to share the body and not let it be for the common good of the Shoal.”
Ulín hesitates. “So you consented . . . as a rebellion.”
“I consented, out of curiosity, and yes, newness, and yes, as a rebellion. You cannot deny me this. I am not a child. I am other than you, but I am, and I choose, and become, and this, too, is mine.” I do not regret it. Ladder shared his body with me to teach me, and it was work in the end, but it wasn’t work for the Shoal.
“I understand,” she says, even though I see that it still troubles her.
I speak on, callously. “He taught me to sink into the world of the body. All the things I need for this work.” He taught me how to sense skin and wind, how to perceive the world with my magic. To look out of my eyes, in a way no siltway does in the isles, with a gaze that enumerates and accounts. The eyes teach the body how to pass unnoticed, how to perceive people by heat and by magic and how to bypass both, readying for the perfect strike.
I say, “He taught me how to take pleasure.”
Ulín looks away. The notebook at her knees lies open, forgotten.
“Did your serpent prince not teach you this? You were new, too, and he wasn’t, and your body was not needed for production.”
She rubs her eyes. “Most people . . .” she says. “Even your siltway people, it seems . . . most people in this world choose passion. I used to think I did, too. Maybe. I no longer know. Back then it was new, and I was new, and I thought—I loved him, you see, and I thought it would feel better with time.”
It’s my turn to look away now. “I made you sad. I did not mean to. If you want, just name your target, be it your lover or your brother, and we will come to a deal, or not. This has been painful enough.”
“There is no end of pain in my story.”Ulín speaks slowly, as if reciting a line from a poem. “The pain is a maze that brought me here, singing with red, calling from under the earth.”
I think I understand. She is a client, but also she isn’t. She came here because of that voice, the song of despair which is Ladder’s to command, but which does not always come from him.
I tell her the story I heard from Old Song and gleaned from inside the Shoal—the story of the siltway Star, of how it fell. “The Headmaster did not catch the star he chose first for himself. His first choice was the Star of the Shoal—but our star denied him. Only I, Stone Orphan from the Stone storyline, came here.” I was severed, and if I remained the same, I too would know only this grief, only pain, an endless and incomprehensible maze. But I translated myself. “Ladder trained me. It was a fair deal. But I am still an orphan. Held in a bonded collective with nobody, just like your people.”
Ulín speaks, each word as slow as a falling stone. “I am not an orphan, but everything ended when my deepnames were destroyed.”
Ulín’s brother was prisoned in his rooms, and she was prisoned in hers just as surely, with bandages and blankets and words of care. Healers came and went. Her head felt like a brazier of coals, sputtering and flickering and burning down her throat and out of her eyes. In and out of consciousness. Healers came—in her moments of clarity, Ulín saw them hovering over her. Heat—she could no longer see magic—but heat from the applications of other people’s deepnames, and after that, pain. Kannar, her father, hovering behind the physickers, his tall frame stooped and his face sick with fear. His eyes sliding off Ulín’s face, never directly looking at her.
She fell back down into darkness.
One time Ulín came to, and her parents were arguing.
She had not seen Sibeli there before, but now they stood at the foot of the bed. Sibeli’s face looked bloodless. Ulín wanted to cough and to speak, she wanted her parent to touch her, but Sibeli stood motionless, their hands clasped behind their back. Their eyes on Kannar. His face was livid. So focused were the two of them upon each other that neither noticed that Ulín was awake.
“Day after day she is here, sedated out of her mind by your healers.” Sibeli.
“The physickers will help. Someone will know something—some remedy—some hope—” Kannar said.
“Let her wake. Let her recover. Let her—”
Ulín slitted her eyes, pretending to sleep.
“Recover?” Her father half-whispered, fighting for quiet and losing. “She cannot recover without her deepnames—she cannot inherit—”
“Nameloss can never be repaired,” Sibeli said, their voice bone-tired. “But she is alive. Let her live.”
“Let her live?” her father roared. “Next you will say . . .”
“Kannar.” Ulín’s parent pointed, and both looked at her, waiting for her to awaken, but she made her breath even. After a while, they resumed in quieter tones.
Kannar whispered, “War is going to break if she is not healed. And even if war is avoided, I have no idea if I’ll ever allow her to go back to these—”
“It will be her decision,” Sibeli said, quietly.
“The whole of the Coast!” Kannar’s whisper came hoarse and furious. “For four hundred years we had peace with the serpents until that son of yours killed three of Laufkariar’s cronies that he was always running around with, and now—”
“He is your child too,” Sibeli said.
“That murderous snake is no child of mine,” spat Ulín’s father. “He can rot in that room. Ulín—I need to heal Ulín, I need to fix her, to teach her, I need—”
“Let her wake,” Sibeli said. “Let her decide if she is to be subjected to more and more of these healers of yours, or recover and live.”
