The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [5]
“In fact,” continued the chatelaine, “I want her on the staff at Jesthe. Make sure she gets employment in my palace.” This was an incredible statement, thought the chatelaine of Nowy Solum. This was bold, brave. The world was changing and she, the chatelaine, would drive these changes. Just a few nights ago, they said, there had been reports of a heavenly body over the city. A god, some said. The chamberlain had almost smiled. Yes, the world was changing. She filled her lungs. She felt very alive. She had not felt this alive in a long time.
“Employ— But, marm,” complained the servants, “we need no more, not like her.”
Without humour, the chatelaine laughed. “I want this girl working up on my level. I want to see her in the Main Hall. I want to see her in the Dining Room. I want to see that pretty, tattooed face in my bedchambers.”
Silence again.
“I won’t put up with this, you know. Approach her!”
“But,” said another servant, very quietly, “she doesn’t really, uh, exist.”
“Nonsense.” The chatelaine wheeled. “Of course she exists. We can all see her. She’s right there!”
By this point, of course, the pair of kholics had taken note of the chatelaine and her entourage and had stopped doing what they’d been doing. They stood, filthy, knee-deep in garbage, eyes lowered, no doubt as uncomfortable as the chatelaine’s servants.
Under their masks, the girl and the boy had identical features, and must have been twins, though neither the chatelaine, nor certainly her women, had the capacity to notice such detail.
A jolt passed down the length of the fecund.
“Who’s there? Huh? I remember the cold vacuum of space, and a murdered body, floating face down in the river. Was the chatelaine heading out for a walk? Was I dreaming?” Her eyes flicked open. “These threads all drill into my head at the same time. What I’m trying to say is that there’s more to a story than events taking place in one location, to one person. You need to look at everything, at the same time, in the entire universe. Look at every person, every creature. Turn over every rock.
“See? In one glistening instant, plucked from the stream of time as it passes by: countless episodes, from a myriad of human lives, all vital, all entangled in a shared moment.
“So many threads . . .”
A few heartbeats of quiet, then a sigh.
“But we can’t follow them all, I suppose. You’re right. Too many lives. And there is more than just one universe. At times I get so overloaded. Here, in Nowy Solum, in your city, there are masons, derelicts, housewives. Human, cobali. Dog-faced cognosci.”
The fecund’s eyes had begun to nictitate again. Her skinny tongue flickered twice. Breathing slowed. Both eyes closed. If the fecund had not previously been asleep, she sure was now.
Grumbling servants fetched the girl—the nasty kholic—and led her into Jesthe through the side entrance. From there, up the East Stairs. This chore was accomplished at dusk, on the chatelaine’s order, when neither chamberlain Erricus or any of his palatinate were around, for their protests in the daily assemblies would have been most relentless and insufferably dull. As it was, in the days since the sighting of the celestial apparition, the smug attitudes and righteousness of the palatinate had been dreadful. But they were not welcome anywhere above ground level in the palace, and had not been welcome there since the chatelaine first inherited the city from her father; once the kholic girl was safely up in the living areas, with the chatelaine’s staff, she was pretty much in the clear.
Would the chatelaine tell her father about bringing the girl inside? What would be the point? He had retreated long ago, in more ways than one, up the towers, to the dungeon. He had his own problems. He would never see the girl either.
Given a pallet to sleep on and a rough shift to wear, the kholic was (much to her surprise) more or less left alone. In fact, given menial tasks, like any other servant, she was soundly shunned and ignored. Only a few times over her first