9
Breakfast and Burial
ENKI DUZEN’S CHAIR was empty at breakfast, and we just ate.
“Could you pass the preserves, Sala?” Fhilt asked.
Morning sunlight flooded through the window of the breakfast room, gaily splashing across the table, across plates and pots piled high with rashers of bacon and mounds of steaming boiled oats. Sala picked up a fundleberry crock for a moment and balanced it on the palm of her hand before shaking her head and simply setting it down gently in front of Evrem.
My father looked at me, and I looked at him, the two of us wordless. I had always thought of gray as a lively color, because it was the color of Gray Khuzud, and there wasn’t anybody with more life and kazuh in him than Gray Khuzud. Not this morning. This morning, gray was a dull, dead color.
His eyes were red, his lined face sallow, not merely with sadness, it seemed, but with an infinite weariness. I doubted that he had slept any more than I had.
One of the Eresthais quietly elbowed his brother and whispered; the other—no, Eno; Enki Duzen had always remembered them by name—Eno pulled the bread over and carved off a slice.
Fhilt took a hard-boiled egg from a serving bowl and made a quick flourish with it, then sighed and set it down on the table, rolling it under the palm of his hand to crack the shell, peeling it with no grace at all.
“You aren’t eating, Evrem,” Gray Khuzud said. “We have much to do today; and you must eat.”
“But—” Evrem started to say, gesturing to the half-eaten slice of bread and jam on the plate in front of him, and to my empty plate. He started to rise.
“No,” Gray Khuzud said. “Don’t leave.”
Large Egda gripped Evrem’s arm, and while he is not the most dextrous of men, when Large Egda grips something, it stays gripped.
“No,” Gray Khuzud went on, as though he was talking to Evrem, “you must eat. It’s important that we all eat, that we go on.”
I gestured to Large Egda to let Evrem go. The big man thought about it for a moment, then opened his hand. Evrem shrugged and sat.
“We all must eat,” Gray Khuzud said. “The show goes on tomorrow, and we must rehearse today. I’ve been thinking about how to change the act, now that Enki Duzun is ... is no longer with us, and we will have to practice, and make it smooth.”
Evrem didn’t answer; he just rubbed at his arm and glared at Large Egda.
We all must eat.
I cut myself a piece of bread and took a bite. It tasted like an old tunic.
Sala spooned some boiled oats onto her own plate, then dropped a spoonful of butter on them.
Egda picked up the spreading knife and held it in the palm of his hand, staring at it as though ... as though, I don’t know, maybe as though he wanted it to get up and dance around, maybe as though he expected it, needed it, to get up and dance around.
But it didn’t. Nothing moves itself. The rings, wands, traps, and all the rest of the equipment are without spirit; we lend them ours.
Or not. Fhilt just quietly ate his egg.
Large Egda bounced the spreading knife on his palm, once, then took it by the blade and flipped it up into the air, holding his palm out, as though he expected the knife to smack right into it.
It didn’t; the knife clattered on the table, sending other cutlery flying.
“No,” Large Egda said. “Not right.” He picked it up, and tried again. Again it clattered on the table.
“No. Not right.” He slammed his hand down on his thigh with a meaty thunk, then picked up the knife. “I have to do it right, not just do it.”
My father raised his eyes. “Egda,” he said, wearily, shaking his head. “Shh. No. Leave it be, for once.”
“Oh, yes,” Large Egda said. “Oh, very much yes,” he said, with a quiet conviction that brooked no argument. “We will not leave it be today,” he said, reporting not an opinion, but a law of nature, a fact about the world.
“No, not today, not of all days.” Sala’s eyes were almost glowing.
Fhilt’s jaw was as tight as mine.
Large Egda bounced the knife again. This time, it would have knocked the saltwell over, except that Fhilt’s hand was already there, and by the Powers the knife slapped firmly into his palm.
He lifted the breadknife up and let us all see it.
There are brothers and sisters of flesh, and of spirit, they say.
While we never much liked each other, at that moment my brother of the spirit Fhilt gripped the knife tightly, his hand shaking, his knuckles white, then his grip loosened, and with a quick “Don’t move, Egda,” he tossed the knife high into the air, so perfectly high, so beautifully high that it almost touched the beam overhead before, falling and spinning, it slapped into Large Egda’s palm.
The big man gripped the spreading knife eagerly, his grin broad. “Sala. Preserves.”
“Pass him the preserves, Gray Khuzud,” Sala said. “Sometimes unexpected troubles solve other problems.”
Gray Khuzud looked at her woodenly.
She tossed her head, then reached over and stood as she picked up the stone pot.
“Very well,” she said, her voice high and shrill. “If you won’t, then I will.” She dropped it, catching it deftly on the side of her naked foot, then foot-tossed it into a high arc that took it forward and over her shoulder, and then—“Quickly, Kami Khuzud, quickly”—caught it on the instep of the same foot.
The foot fell, and rose, and I stood quickly to snatch the pot out of the air, leaning back as I rolled it across my chest to my other hand, flipped it high and caught it on my own heel, and then tossed it to Fhilt.
He couldn’t have seen it through his tears, but he caught it anyway, snatched the spreading knife from Large Egda’s loose grip, and slowly, tauntingly dipped it into the pot while Evrem and Sala each sawed away at an end of the breadloaf.
I picked up the two slices and slapped them around the gobbet of preserves, catching it but a fingersbreadth in front of my father’s face.
Yes. We mourn you, Enki Duzun, but we won’t stop celebrating your life, not for a moment.
I set it down on his plate. “Eat, Gray Khuzud.”
For a moment, it all hung in the balance, and I knew it could go either way ...
... but then he picked up the bread and preserves, and then he just ate.
Sunwise, the sky was clear and cloudless. Too clear; too cloudless. It would have more in keeping with our mood for there to be a storm holding off just long enough for us to bury my sister at the edge of a cornfield.
There had been a storm yesterday, and it had felt like it would last forever, but it had fled.
If Narantir had been a Great Wizard, I would have wondered if it had been his doing; he had seemed to like Enki Duzun. But he was a simple sorcerer, a minor magician, and the storm had run away of its own doing.
Peasants are always buried in fields. From dirt and straw and dung were we created; to dirt and straw and dung we return.
So-be-it.
Large Egda dug the hole all by himself, and made it so deep that he couldn’t even climb out of it; Gray Khuzud, Fhilt, Evrem and I had to haul him out on the end of a rope. I’m not sure why he dug so deeply; even if there were foxes and wolves in the area, they couldn’t have dug down very far.
Or maybe I do know, at that. Maybe when you can’t do anything that addresses the heart of the matter, you have to do what you can, and if the only thing you can do is to dig a hole in the ground, then you dig that hole with all the will and strength and dedication at your command.
He came out of the hole half-naked and dirty, as were the rest of us: a typical D’Shaian peasant funeral party.
Except for two. Felkoi was up on the road, and while he didn’t rush out and lend a hand with either the rope or the body, I had the feeling that he wanted to. I understood, or at least thought I did. Shame is something subtle, and if his brother had done what Felkoi perhaps thought he had done, it was shameful for their whole family, were anybody to find out.
They would find out.
Everybody would know, if I had anything to do with it.
If.
If that were Lord Toshtai’s decision, which I doubted. If he decided that Refle was guilty of a covertry, it was much more likely he would order old Dun Lidjun to take offense at something Refle said than shame the whole family by exposing him.
“That which is not seen is not,” and all. All he would have to do is turn his face from it, and handle the matter in the manner of D’Shai.
Not good enough, not good enough by half. Our beloved ruling class erects monuments of steel and stone for their fallen; I’d erect one of shame for my sister.
But how?
Fhilt and I lowered Enki Duzun’s body into the hole. It seemed lighter than it should have been, as though the old stories about how the soul flees the body the morning after death are true, as they may even be. I don’t know; I don’t know much.
The other person up on the road was NaRee, sitting on a rented white pony, it whitewashed from ears to hooves, she immaculate in her finest funeral whites, as though this was a bourgeois burial.
That earned her an occasional glare from Sala, who didn’t understand—it was NaRee’s way. NaRee wasn’t flourishing her status; she was trying to honor my sister.
But none of us was on balance that day. When NaRee gestured to me, the hesitant quirk of her fingers almost eloquent in its awkwardness, all I could do was shake my head.
I needed her, but I couldn’t be with her. Not today.
We D’Shai lie to ourselves too easily, if incompletely; the troupe began practice in the corral as though it was just another day.
Almost... Nobody wanted to walk on the low wire. It waited in the bright sun, the cable burnished to an almost mirror brightness, a balancing pole leaning up against the platform on either side, one of the Eresthai brothers waiting at each platform.
While Gray Khuzud and Fhilt practiced tumbling run after tumbling run, Large Egda went through his usual set of squats, perhaps grunting less than usual. Sala’s stretches flowed into dance, and then into juggling, until she had a full eight of her rings flying into the air, flowing around her in a silver stream.
The low wire stood waiting in the sun.
I balanced easily on the board and roller, whipping a wand, a knife and a small wooden ball first through a simple shower and then into a circular juggle.
Perversely, everything worked well: not only didn’t I drop anything, but the board held every bit as firm and steady beneath my feet as solid ground could have. I almost wished that I couldn’t do as well; I kept looking for Enki Duzun’s smile of approval, and of course it wasn’t there.
Everybody kept deliberately not looking at the low wire, as though that would make it go away. Every once in a while, one of the Eresthais would check a turnbuckle or clamp, as though that would do any good.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I let my gear drop to the sand, and climbed up onto the fence, leaning on a balancing pole for support. I let the balancing pole fall away, stepped out on the wire, my arms out to my side.
And fell to the sand.
One of the Eresthais helped me back up to the platform, holding out a balancing pole in silent offer.
“No,” I said, with a shake of the head, as I stepped out once again onto the cold wire, my arms out to one side. Balance is everything. The long arms of a balancing pole put your point of balance safely beneath the wire; the pole does the work. But when you’re walking the wire by yourself, you have to do it all yourself, to move your arms and more importantly your balance, your center, directly over the wire.
Or fall. I fell again, and tried again.
Gray Khuzud reached out a hand and helped me to my feet. “Enough for one day, Kami Khuzud. Tomorrow.”
The three elder members of the troupe and the two Eresthais had gone to bed, to pretend to sleep; Fhilt, Large Egda and I were the last to bed, as usual. Fhilt, Egda and I sat on the steps of Madame Rupon’s porch, looking out at the town, and at the flickering lights in the castle above the town, and at the stars above.
Our time, for the three of us, sitting out under a star-splattered sky that refused to be dulled by the sadness that should have had the stars weeping.
Three, instead of four. I knew what it felt like to be a wagon with three wheels.
The musicians practiced off in the night, the silverhorns moaning a slow dirge, broken only occasionally by a listless run on the zivver, dragged down by the thrumming of the bassskin. Fhilt toyed with a stick, drawing in the dirt for a few moments, then scratching it out with his foot.
“They’re not good tonight,” he said.
I didn’t say anything to that; I just stepped off the porch and walked a short way onto the path, out of the light.
I’ll always miss you, Enki Duzun.
But missing her wouldn’t bring her back. Proving that Refle had killed her while trying to lay a trap for me wouldn’t bring her back.
Sometimes I have to wonder about what happens after we die. Do we await another turn on the Wheel, the way the Bhorlani claim?
Or do peasants return to the soil in spirit as well as in body, the way we were taught? Does anybody know? Can anybody know? My father used to say something about how if you live your art properly, you can’t die, because the art lives on, but Enki Duzun hadn’t had the chance to live it out, not yet.
“Is it better if we don’t talk about it?” Large Egda asked.
“Stupid question.” The stick snapped in Fhilt’s hands. “ ‘Is it better if we don’t talk about it,’ ” he said, slurring his voice to mimic Large Egda’s awkward mouth. “Yes, it’s better if we don’t talk about it. It’s better if we don’t think about it, it’s better if it never happened.”
“Idiot,” I said, turning around.
“It’s not Large Egda’s fault that the Powers gave him three men’s strength and a hare’s brain.”
“Not him. You,” I said. “You’re the idiot. No, not an idiot. An idiot doesn’t know what he’s doing. You’re worse: you’re a traitor to her memory.”
“Me?”
“Did you ever see Enki Duzun make fun of Egda? Once? In her memory, you’ll treat him like dung? In her memory, you’ll make things worse?”
He squared off across from me. “Don’t say that to me. I loved your sister, Kami Khuzud. She could not have been dearer to me if ... she couldn’t have been.”
I laughed in his face.
And he slapped me, hard, then staggered back, as though I had been the one to slap him.
“No, no.” Fhilt’s eyes were wide and white. “Kami Khuzud, you can’t, I mean—” In all of our mock battles and threatened confrontations, neither of us had ever actually hit the other. Enki Duzun had always stopped things before they got that far, a brake on our misbehavior.
Fhilt called out for me as I turned and walked off into the night.
When I came back, they had both gone to bed.