The Broken Tower--A Novel, page 17
“It’s pretty,” she said. “I wish I could understand it.”
With a flash of inspiration, he said, “That is what kagirh is. Imagine that in an instant, you understood. Not only my language, but everything. The trees, the birds—”
Her eyes widened with shock. “You understand what the birds are saying?”
“No. But I understand them. All the living things. Because we are all alive, you and me and the birds and the grass. Kagirha, the herb, opens the door to kagirh, where we are all the same. And you can join with others there, and if the joining is true it will stay when the kagirha fades. You will still be yourself, but you will not be alone anymore.”
“So I take this drug, and then I can understand the grass, and also I can see in your head,” she said. “And then the drug wears off, and I can still see in your head?”
“More than that, we would understand each other.” He shook his head. “Still. I won’t let any of you take it until I’m sure that it’s safe and I’m sure you’re willing.”
Was this deceitful, what he was doing? This careful choice of words. I will not let any of you take it, as if it were a great privilege. He was telling the truth. He would not force any of the thirteen-fourteens to take the drug. But he was also not telling the truth, because the more he came to know them, the more he was afraid of what would become of them if the Seneschal decided his plan wasn’t working. And the more time he spent in that awful empty half a kagirh-space the more he missed his own kagirh. Life without them was terrible and lonely. Alone, he felt like a fifth of a person. He did not fully trust himself not to encourage the thirteen-fourteens to take the drug, to try and heal that terrible wound.
“Say more in that other language,” Ida said, coming near with bright, greedy eyes. “I’ve never heard another language before.”
So he said in Nali, “If I leave this place alive I will take all of you with me,” and the girls laughed, and kept him sitting with them, saying any phrase they could think of, until food came.
* * *
The next day, after breakfast, Anna came to him again, her crutches tapping softly on the floor. “You know,” she said, which was how all of the thirteen-fourteens said good morning, and hello, and how are you, “I used to be able to walk.”
Korsa, who was exhausted and depressed from another long night moving in and out of the horrid empty kagirh-space and had been staring blankly out the window at a fallow field, turned to look at her. “Did you?”
She nodded. “I got a fever. When it went away, my legs wouldn’t hold me up anymore.”
“How old were you?”
“Four. Five. But I remember walking. Sometimes I dream about it.” She hesitated. “If I took this drug you’re talking about—”
“It wouldn’t help you walk,” he said.
“But I could feel you walking,” she said. “What would it feel like? Not walking. The herb. And I want to know what it would really feel like, not all that loosy-goosy stuff you were saying before.”
He chose his words carefully. “If it worked correctly—which it doesn’t, yet—you would feel strange. Not unpleasant. It goes away.”
“Like being drunk?”
“Much like that. But while you are in that space, while your mind is untethered, I will connect us. Or try to.”
“I’ve been drunk. I’ve even had drops. Can it be undone?”
“Yes. It would be very difficult, and very sad, but it’s possible.”
“All right, then,” she said, decisively. “I’ll try your kagirha, Chief.”
“Anna,” he said, alarmed by the twisted bloom of hope within him, “are you sure?”
“The worst that can happen is that it won’t work, right?” she said. “And I’ll be no worse off than I am right now. Sure, I’m sure.”
“All right,” he said. “When it’s ready,” and she said, “When it’s ready.”
* * *
Soon after that—the days all blurred together, an endless flow of meals and games and walks and finally, when the thirteen-fourteens had exhausted all of the things they could usefully do, sleep for them and experiments for Korsa, along with headaches and nausea and loneliness and misery—the Seneschal came to the workshop for a progress report, and as they always did, he and Korsa walked up the corridor, where the thirteen-fourteens couldn’t hear. He asked Korsa how he was faring with the drops, and Korsa hesitated. The moment he did, he knew it was the wrong thing. Charming Faolaru, who knew the workings of human minds better than anyone Korsa had ever met, would have groaned and torn at his lovely hair.
Frown, Korsa, he would have said. Smile. Laugh. Anything. But never let them see you deciding what to tell them.
And, sure enough, the Seneschal’s eyes went keen and incisive. “What has happened?”
“I have made progress,” Korsa admitted. “But it is not there yet.”
“Not there yet?”
“It is wrong.” Korsa used the metaphor that had occurred to him earlier. “It is like riding in a cart with one square wheel. Rough and unpleasant.” Purple, he almost said, but didn’t, because it made no sense.
“A cart with a square wheel still works. Perhaps it moves slowly, and tires out the horses pulling it. But it still works.”
“Yes,” Korsa said, “but we are not dealing with cart wheels and tired horses. We are dealing with human minds.”
“True enough.” The Seneschal rubbed the back of his neck, his hand drifting toward the rippling scar on the side of it. “Chieftain, I must admit. I feel a bit like a tired horse myself. The city is running efficiently, thanks to the factory managers, but the city is only one part of the empire. Trying to pull along that one part without the others is also like trying to pull a cart with a square wheel. Do you know how I plan to solve that problem?”
Korsa said nothing. He didn’t need to.
“I’ll solve it one step at a time. When a material is unavailable, I look at what is available and adapt. The managers grew restless, felt that they were working too much for too little return. So I created the House of Repose, and now they are willing to work a bit more. Perhaps you can take the same approach with your problem. One step at a time.”
“I have done so,” Korsa said. “I am doing so.”
“Then perhaps you are walking in the wrong direction,” the Seneschal said. “You have only tested your kagirha on yourself, I assume? Perhaps you have come to the end of that particular road. Perhaps it is time to begin testing it on others.”
“It is not ready,” Korsa said.
The Seneschal gestured to him. “You’ve taken it. You seem fine.”
“I am Nali. My mind is different from theirs.”
“If we opened your skull, I think we would find otherwise,” the Seneschal said, his voice hard. Then he sighed, and looked tired again. “That was not a threat. Or at least, not a serious one. But I’m afraid our circumstances have changed. I’ve lost access to Gavin, which means that I am now missing two pieces of this puzzle.”
“What do you mean, you’ve lost access?”
“The hall where I was keeping him was raided.” The muscles in the Seneschal’s jaw were tight, and Korsa sensed a deep well of anger in that tightness. “There were no survivors, except presumably Gavin himself. We didn’t find his body, at least.”
Korsa did not mind seeing the Seneschal so discomfited. “You do not know who is responsible?”
“I am investigating,” the Seneschal said impassively. “Meanwhile, your work has become more important than ever. I cannot keep those children here forever. The staff are beginning to talk, and the managers are beginning to ask questions. Difficult questions, some of them.” Now the man’s gray eyes were steady on Korsa. “Perhaps we overestimated the number of children you need. Are there any that you feel will be less useful to you than others? What about the silent girl?”
Florence. Korsa felt as if the man had opened his stomach and pulled out some vital organ. “I will need them all,” he said, through numb lips.
“Then I suggest you put them to work,” the Seneschal said.
He stayed up all night after that, working. The kagirh was not quite there, not quite right, no matter how he changed it. What the Seneschal had said was abhorrent. Talking about opening skulls—Korsa would have relished the chance to open the gray man’s skull, if it came to that, and that was a threat. Or would be, if Korsa ever had the means and opportunity. (And what would happen to the thirteen-fourteens then?) But he had to admit that there was at least a chance that the Seneschal was right. Traveling the wrong road will only bring you farther away, Raghri the pragmatist had said, more than once, and Giorsa, who could make an herbal salve that would numb any pain and prevent any scar, had said the same thing. To the point, in fact, where it had become a kind of slang among them, for the kind of reckless decision that occasionally needed to be made, in life or in battle. I am going to travel the wrong road.
Now Korsa was so turned around and alone and bereft that he didn’t know what the wrong road was. He heard the thirteen-fourteens rise in the other room, the yawns and giggles and petty squabbles of too many people trying to accomplish the same washing-and-dressing tasks in too small a space. He heard the tap of Anna’s crutches, the louder thunk of Jesse’s cane, somebody—maybe Liam—saying, crossly, “Would you move, already?”
Korsa sighed, and stood up. All the roads were wrong. He supposed there was some consolation in that.
In the eating room, rolls and honey were laid out. The diet in the orphan houses had been sparse—“Gruel, gruel, and more gruel,” Ida had said—and now the thirteen-fourteens ate greedily, licking every sticky drop from their fingers. Even Florence, who sometimes had to have food spooned into her mouth because she couldn’t be bothered, was feeding herself this morning. Korsa took a roll from the plate. They were soft and white and only slightly dry.
“Did you sleep yet, Chief?” Ida said, passing him the pot of tea. “You look exhausted.”
“Not yet.” He put the roll back down.
The room grew quiet. They were staring at him, all of them. Except for Florence. They were perceptive, these thirteen-fourteens. They had grown up in a precarious world, where any stability could be snatched away from them as easily and cruelly as a crutch. Finally, Liam said, “Well, either you figured out the mind-stuff, or we’re all going back to the orphan house. Which is it?”
Neither. He could not lie to them and tell them otherwise. “The kagirha is not quite right. But—”
“It works?” Jesse said.
“Will it make us throw up?” Ida said.
“I want to try it,” Anna said.
A hush fell over the room. Liam leaned forward. “Are you sure, Anna?”
“Sure, I’m sure,” she said, with a tremble of bravado. “Somebody’s got to be first, don’t they? Let’s have it, Chief.”
“Is it that simple?” Ida said. “You just drink the stuff?”
“In my country, there were words said,” Korsa said. “But only for the sake of ritual. In emergencies, a kagirh could be formed without them.”
“What counts as an emergency?” Jesse said.
“War, or disaster.”
Jesse broke into a thin smile. “I don’t know about war, but New Highfall’s pretty much a disaster. Can you do more than one of us at a time?”
“I do not even know it will work for one of you,” Korsa said.
“Back off, Jess. I’m first. Next time, stand up faster,” Anna said, and poked him with her crutch. Then she turned to Korsa. “Can we do it now? I don’t want to wait, and get nervous.”
She seemed nervous already. He certainly was.
Are there any children who will be less useful to you than others?
He was a very long way down the wrong road.
He fetched the small bottle he’d prepared from his workroom back to the eating room, and poured out a careful measure for her and a careful measure for himself. The stuff wasn’t the right color. Kagirha should be the clearest of greens, and the liquid in the two glasses was a murky brown. It smelled strongly of oranges and vinegar. Anna wrinkled her nose. “Yuck,” she said, then picked it up and drank it, all in one go.
Quickly, Korsa did the same. For a moment the room was filled with tension, the taut moment between the lightning’s flash and the break of thunder. Then he felt his mind lift out of his body. Real kagirha would have raised him gently, like an infant from a cradle, but the degraded stuff in his bottle had no gentleness about it, no care. He was spilled upward, somehow. Or out. The room, the table, the bread and honey, the circle of watching thirteen-fourteens dissipated like smoke blown away in the purple wind. But there was no wind. There was nothing.
Kagirh-space was supposed to be pure being, a white sea of potential waiting for whatever the kagirhi chose to create. The place where Korsa found himself now was the break of thunder. It was the maelstrom, nebulous and dark. He had no words there. The simplest of thoughts had to be wrenched from his mind and even then it took everything he had to hold them. He had to find his kagirh. Raghri and Giorsa, Faolaru and Meita—
No. It was Anna he had to find. And as he thought of her, he saw her, through the spinning violet darkness. Her drab dress, a shiny spot of honey below her lip. And under each arm, a wooden crutch, worn smooth where they pressed against her body and where she gripped them with her hands. She seemed startled. He managed to say her name and she looked up at him through the purple storm with wide-eyed delight. She raised her arms. The crutches drifted away like feathers.
Chief! she said, the word coming to his ears garbled but intact. Chief, look!
I see you, he said, or thought he said, and then Anna’s form blurred, and was gone. Smoke, blown away in the wind.
He cried out her name, even though speech was of no use here, and reached for her, to bring her back. But Anna was not there. Anna was nowhere.
Anna was gone.
* * *
Her body lived only a few minutes once she was no longer in it. “You got it wrong,” Liam said, angry, and Korsa could not speak, could not move, as Ida wailed and Jesse called Anna’s name and Florence stacked her buttons, endlessly, endlessly.
The Seneschal came with the men who took her body away. He pulled Korsa aside. “What happened?” the gray man said. “What went wrong?”
“What went wrong,” Korsa said, tuneless and blank because he was unable to muster any feelings except anger and grief, “is this place. Everything is dead here. The air. The water. Now Anna.”
“I’m sorry,” the Seneschal said, not unsympathetically. “Progress is not always easy or straightforward. Sometimes there are losses. Perhaps she was simply the wrong child for the experiment. Perhaps she lacked—something.”
Anna had lacked nothing, save for good health and a family that could afford to take care of her and a life far, far away. It was on the tip of Korsa’s tongue to say so, but then he saw the Seneschal’s eyes, the chill there at odds with the sympathy in the rest of him, and knew that the Seneschal would have him work through every one of the thirteen-fourteens, and only when they were all dead would Korsa be allowed to die, too.
He did not know what they did with Anna’s body. He did not know how, or if, Highfall honored its dead. The remaining thirteen-fourteens retreated into themselves, grieving and afraid. Ida lay on Anna’s bed, clutching the other girl’s blanket and weeping. Jesse, who had volunteered along with Anna, now would not meet Korsa’s eyes, but Liam would not let them go. His gaze was dark and threatening.
Korsa went into his small antechamber and did not come out. Outside, the sun climbed high in the sky. When it had risen, Anna had been alive.
* * *
There was so much he hadn’t told them.
He had told them of the marvelous parts of kagirh: how wonderful it was never to feel alone, how glorious to see through another’s eyes. To know someone completely. To trust them completely. So that he, Korsa, whose mind worked in maps and diagrams, knew the graceful flight of Meita’s imagination and the clarity of Raghri’s perception. He, who had always felt the right words slip out of his grasp like so many fish, could know what it was to be Faolaru, to play words like music, or to see plants not as markers on a scroll but as their own living entities the way Giorsa did. He had told Anna that through him, she could walk, and he had said so in front of all the others. As if the different ways their bodies worked were wrong, were his to fix. The way Ida moved was beautiful, the way her strong arms worked in concert with the momentum of her body—did she even want to see the world from his height? He hadn’t asked. He had merely assumed, and held the assumption out in front of her like one of the sweets she so loved.
And he had not told them the loneliness of kagirh. The anguish when one of your kagirhi died, and how some, having seen those left behind go mad with grief, chose not to risk entering kagirh at all. He had not told them how as those in kagirh aged, they often made plans to kill themselves together rather than suffer the pain of losing each other one by one. He had not told them of the way that kagirh could separate mothers from children and lovers from each other, because no relationship would ever be as primal, as necessary, as those one had with one’s kagirhi.
Anna. Oh, Anna.
He had given her the liquid. He had let her swallow it. He knew it had not been exactly right—how could it be, here?—but it had never occurred to him that it would kill her. And now that the Seneschal knew the stuff existed, he would force Korsa to give it to them all, one by one. And they all would die like Anna.
So there would be nothing to give. Not until he got it right. The rest of the elixir sat in front of him, in an old wine bottle. He grabbed it and drank it. No careful measurements this time. All of it, every foul drop. Perhaps it would kill him, too, and so what if it did? At least he wouldn’t have to watch the thirteen-fourteens suffer.
