“I am telling the truth—I’m telling what it meant. That’s what they need to know, not every little detail.”
“It’s a lie.” She glared at him, Gird with brown hair and breasts, the glare he remembered all too well. “You’re making it into a story . . . a song, like the harpers sing, that everyone knows is just a tale.”
“Raheli, listen! If the harpers change the kind of tree a prince hid behind, because it rhymes—oak, say, instead of cedar—that helps the listener remember. It doesn’t change anything important. The prince still hid behind a tree: that’s what matters. If they say half Gird’s army wore blue, when it was one person less than half, or almost two-thirds, why does that matter? The point is that we won at Greenfields. That’s all I’m doing. I’m making sure people remember what it meant—what his kind of life meant—and they won’t make sense out of the real details. You didn’t yourself.”
Would it work? For a moment he thought it had; her gaze flickered, as she thought about her own reaction. But then the angry glare came back.
“You’re turning him into a lovable old gran’ther, using even his lust for ale—”
Luap shrugged that off. “Most men like ale; it makes him more human—”
“He was human! And his liking for ale cost us lives, you know it did.”
“That’s not the point—”
“It is, and it would have been his point. Was his point, at the last, remember? There’s nothing good about it. . . . I remember after—” A long pause; he wondered which after she was seeing. “After my mother died, a bad stretch then; he came home drunk and sour with it, angry with everyone—”
“He had cause,” Luap offered, sympathy he did not really feel.
“Everyone has cause,” Rahi said. “But some do better. He did, later. And if you make it endearing, you diminish him—what it cost him to stop it, to change.” In her eyes, I never did that, defiance but not quite pride. He knew she didn’t, had sought, without admitting it, evidence that she was as fallible as Gird. As far as he could find out, she made none of Gird’s mistakes; no drinking, no carousing, no wild flares of temper. Frustrating. He had never been able to maneuver Gird while Gird lived, and he could not maneuver Raheli, either.
He shrugged, as close to discourtesy as he allowed himself with her. “I’ll change it back, then. You’re his daughter; it has to please you—” He expected an explosion; instead he got a flat stare, and her nostrils widened as if she’d smelled something dead.
“I’m not . . . you’re trying to make me feel bad about that, and I won’t have it. He said you were slippery, and he was right about that.” If nothing else. She didn’t have to say that; it hung between them, something on which they agreed. She took a deep breath, and tried again. “I’m not asking you to improve the tale to please me; quite the contrary. I want you to tell the truth. Just the plain truth.” If you can. He heard that, as if she’d shouted it.
“Even you don’t believe the plain truth,” he said, accenting “plain” just a little. “You weren’t here; you’re convinced it was something else than what we said.”
She shook her head, the dark hair tossing back in a movement he remembered from his wife. His mouth dried. “You said things I found hard to believe—”
“Then ask the others! I know you did—”
She prowled his study, a thundercloud ready to burst. “What they said made even less sense.”
His temper flared. “Then believe what you like! If I lie, and the others talk nonsense, what will you have in the chronicles, eh? Shall we just forget him, and all he tried to do?”
“You know I don’t mean that.” Again that level gaze. “We can’t just forget him. But—”
He would try sweet reason, though it had never yet swayed her. “You hate having to hear it from me. You don’t trust me; you never have, not even as much as Gird himself did, and you wish you’d been here yourself. Well, so do I. Then you could tell me what to write, and—” He stopped himself from saying and if you lie, it’s your oath forsworn, not mine.
“I would not have said to turn a dark cloud into a dark beast,” she said firmly. “Even if I’d seen such a cloud.”
“I’ll change it,” Luap said. He could always change it back. “I simply have no idea how to write of that cloud so anyone years hence will know what I mean.”
“Do you know what you mean?” That with a shrewd sidelong look that took his breath away, the very look Gird had given him so often.
“I—no. No, I don’t. It seemed—I told you—as if all the wicked thoughts and shameful fears in every heart had taken visible form, a black blight thicker than a dust storm. But what it was . . . I daresay only Gird himself knew. The words he spoke, that scoured it, lifted it, condensed it—those were no human words. I know that, and I’ve asked the elves—”
“And they said?”
“They found I could not recall the shape of the words, could not repeat them—and indeed, it was as if they slipped past my ears—and would say only that Adyan might be pleased with Gird.”
“And then he died, while you stood there doing nothing.” That was unfair; he seized that unfairness and cloaked himself in honest resentment.
“It was the gods’ will; none of us could move. I cried—dammit, Rahi, I told you that, and others must have—”
“Yes.” She had turned away. He waited. Finally she turned back; her eyes were dry. “You cried; I cannot cry yet. Tears are cheap.”
He hated her. He felt he had always hated her; he willed himself to forget the times he had been sure he loved her, when (surely) he had only loved her father, and of her father only that part she herself could not share. “Your tears,” he said formally, in as steady a voice as he could manage, “your tears you can name the worth of. It is your right. The tears of others you have no right to shame.” He felt dark, dire, brooding as a storm-cloud low over the western hills. Great, and in some sense noble, to chide her about that, standing up for the tears (he could almost feel his gathering to fall) of plain, simple men who rarely cried, whose tears tore apart the rock walls of their souls, great floods that ripped mountains asunder. He looked up to find her watching him, that flat peasant stare (how had he ever thought it attractive?), that hard mouth with no sweetness, a dried haw withered on a dead stem.
“You’re too poetic,” she said. “You will make it all pretty, make all the patterns match at the edges, as they do in the rugs we took from the mageborn houses . . . better you should learn from village weavers, who leave one corner open for the pattern’s power to stay free, and able to work.”
“You don’t understand.” She didn’t. She couldn’t. She could but she wouldn’t. He did not know which, but only that she did not understand.
“Nor you.” Her back to him now, a back broader than a woman’s ought to be, shoulders bulking more than his own. He had an excuse, a scholar’s hours, but she had no excuse for looking (to his now critical eye) like a stubborn ox. “I’ll see you in Council,” she said, and left the room without looking back. Luap’s mouth held a dry bitterness; he made himself sit back down at the desk, but could not find words to pen. Council meetings had been going so well, until now; Raheli would ruin all that, he was sure.
Chapter Fourteen
And so she did. He did not know to whom she’d spoken when she left his office, or what she said, but from the way some Marshals looked at her she had spoken her mind. Whether about Gird or about him, Luap did not know. Others, who had heard she was in the city, but had not seen her yet, greeted her almost with reverence.
“Lady,” said one, then actually blushed. “Rahi, I mean. Marshal. We’re sorry we—”