“It seems hard that he and Sosta can’t see each other all this time before the wedding,” Gry said. “Three months!”
“Betrothed couples used to be able to meet at any public occasion,” the Waylord explained. “But now we have no dances or festivals. So the poor things have to catch glances in passing…”
Sosta blushed and smirked. Her betrothed strolled by regularly with his friends every evening, just when Ista and Sosta and Bomi happened to be sitting out in the side court facing Galva Street to take the air.
After dinner the rest of us went to the little north court. We found Desac already there waiting. He came forward and took Orrec’s hands and called blessing on him. “I knew you’d speak for us!” he said. “The fuse is lit.”
“Let’s see what the Gand thinks of my performance,” said Orrec. “I might get a critical commentary.”
“Has he sent for you?” asked Desac, “Tomorrow? What time?”
“Late afternoon—is that right, Memer?”
I nodded.
“Will you go?” the Waylord asked.
“Of course,” said Desac.
“I can scarcely refuse,” Orrec said. “Though I could ask to postpone.” He looked at the Waylord, alert to catch the meaning of his question.
“You must go,” Desac said. “The timing is perfect.” His tone was brusque and military.
I could see Orrec didn’t like being told he must go.
He kept his eyes on the Waylord.
“No profit in postponement, I suppose,” the Waylord said. “But there may be some danger in going.”
“Should I go alone?”
“Yes,” Desac said.
“No,” Gry said in a calm, flat voice.
Orrec looked at me. “Everybody gives orders except us, Memer.”
’’’The gods love poets, for they obey the laws the gods obey,’” the Waylord said.
“Sulter, my friend, there’s danger in any undertaking,” Desac said with a kind of impatient compassion. “You’re walled up here, away from the life of the streets, the doings of the people. You live among shadows of ancient times and share their wisdom. But a time comes when wisdom is in action—when caution becomes destruction.”
“A time comes when the will to act defeats thought,” the Waylord said grimly.
“How long must I wait? There was no answer given!”
“Not to me.” The Waylord glanced very briefly at me.
Desac did not notice that. He was angry now. “Your oracle is not mine. I was not born here. Let books and children tell you what to do. I’ll use my head. If you distrust me as a foreigner you should have told me years ago. The people who are with me trust me. They know I never wanted anything but the freedom of Ansul and the restoration of the bond with Sundraman. Orrec Caspro knows that. He stands with me. I’ll go now. I’llcome back here to Galvamand when the city is free. Surely you’ll trust me then!”
He turned and strode out of the courtyard, not through the house but down the broken steps at the open north end. He turned the corner of the house and was gone. The Waylord stood silent, watching him.
After a long time Orrec asked, “Was I the fool who lit the fire?”
“No,” the Waylord said. “A spark from the flint, maybe. No blame in that.”
“If I go tomorrow I will go alone,” Orrec said, but the Waylord smiled a little and looked at Gry.
“You go, I go,” she said. “You know that.”
After a while Orrec said, “Yes, I do. But,” to the Waylord, “if I went too far today, the Gand may be forced to punish me, to show his power. Is that what you fear?”
The Waylord shook his head. “He’d have sent soldiers here. It’s Desac I fear. He will not wait for Lero.”
Lero is the ancient, sacred soul of the ground where our city stands. Lero is the moment of balance. Lero is a great round stone down in the Harbor Market, so poised that it might move at any time and yet has never moved.
The Waylord soon excused himself from us, saying he was tired. He gave me no sign to follow or come to him later. He went into the house, slow and lame, holding himself upright.
I woke again and again that night seeing the words in the book, Broken mend broken, hearing the voice say them, my mind going over them, over and over them, trying to make them into meaning.
♦ 11 ♦
The next morning I did the house worship very early and then went down to both markets, not only to buy the food we needed but to see what was going on in the city. I thought everything would be changed, everybody would be ready for a great thing to happen, as I was. But nobody seemed ready for anything. Everything was just as always, people in the streets hurrying, not looking at one another, keeping out of trouble; Ald guards in blue cloaks swaggering at the corner of the marketplace; vendors in their stalls, children and old women bargaining and buying and creeping home on the byways. No tension, no excitement, nobody saying anything unusual. Only once I thought I heard somebody crossing the Customs Street bridge whistle a few notes of the tune of “Liberty.”
When Orrec and Chy set off for the Council House late in the afternoon they went on foot. They took Shetar, but not me. There was no reason to have a groom without a horse, and they were concerned that there might be danger. I was relieved. I didn’t want to face Simme, because every time I thought of him my heart sank with shame.
But as soon as they were gone I knew I couldn’t stay at home. I couldn’t bear to sit in the house waiting. I had to be closer to the Council Hill, where they were. I had to be near them.
I dressed in mywomen’s clothes, with myhair done up in a knot instead of worn long like a child or a man, so that I was Memer the girl instead of Mem the groom or Nobody the boy. I wanted to wear myown clothes because I needed to be myself. Perhaps I had to put myself into a little danger, to feel that I was with them.
I walked along Galva Street quickly, not looking up, as women always walked, till I came to Goldsmiths’ Bridge over the Central Canal. The gold of Ansul had mostly gone to enrich Asudar; many of the shops on the bridge had long been closed, but some still sold cheap trinkets and worship-candles and such. I could go into one of the shops, out of the thoroughfare, and keep watch for myfriends.
Even though nothing had been going on in the markets, and there was no sign of any agitation here at the bridge nearest the Council Hill, and the two Ald foot soldiers on guard duty were lounging on the bridge steps playing dice, I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling that something was happening or about to happen—a sense that some great thing overhead was bending and bending, about to break.
I stood in the shadow of a shop doorway. I’d talked a little with the old man who kept the shop, telling him I was waiting to meet a friend; he nodded knowingly and disapprovingly, but let me stay. Now he dozed behind his counter with its trays of wooden beads, glass bangles, and incense sticks. Not many people went byoutside. There was a little god-niche bythe door frame and I touched the sill of it now and then, whispering the blessing.
As if in a dream I saw a lion pace by,lashing its tail. I came out of the shop and fell into step with myfriends, who looked only mildly surprised. “I like your hair that way,” Gry said. She was dressed as Chy, but was no longer playing the role.
“Tell me what happened!”
“When we get home.”
“No, please, now.”
“All right,” Orrec said. We were on the steps at the north end of the bridge. He turned aside at the bottom, where a railed marble pavement projects out over the canal; from it a narrow flight of stairs leads down to a pier for boats and fishermen. We descended those steps to the canal bank, right under the bridge, out of sight of the street. The first thing we did was go down and touch the water, with a word of blessing for Sundis, the river that makes our four canals. Then we all squatted there, watching the brownish-green, half-transparent water run. It seemed to carry urgency away with it. But pretty soon I said, “So?”