What From the Water Rises #14

In which a former vicereine meets a distant relative.

There was a certain distinctive quality among the Sehmeri ex-nobles that Valieta had come to recognize.

It wasn’t just the family resemblance, although they were all distantly related and only more inbred by the generation. Something in the way they held themselves, in the way they regarded their surroundings, spoke to their history of obscene privilege. They all stood so straight and proud, looking at everything with an appraising air—like they were entitled to all they could see, even here, where they were entitled to nothing. Not even the distance from Sehmera or the deprivation inherent to life on the island could shatter their illusions of power.

After spending decades on Ezu, orienting dozens of ex-nobles to their mistakes and the new lives they’d saddled themselves with, she could recognize them from afar just from these small indicators. Rarely was she surprised by encountering one; she knew most of them in Zuenos, and could not recall the last time a new one had arrived without sending a letter first to announce his intent.

But here, standing at the edge of the market with his arms crossed, was one she had never seen before.

It was not Valieta’s habit to stop by the market. On Ezu, the elderly received the care of their neighbors; she had a steady supply of food and basic supplies delivered in order to lift the burden of hunting and foraging and trading herself.

As much as it hurt her pride to accept their help—and as irritated as she was by being decreed old when she was still quite capable of caring for herself—they dropped off their packages whether she took them inside or not. There was no point in letting them go to waste, she’d bitterly concluded, so she’d let herself come to rely on them.

This week, though, she caught her skirt on the protruding branch of an overgrown bush outside her neighbor’s house and tore a gash down one side. She could have asked someone to bring her a new one, but the clothing made on Isle Ezu was all so ugly—genderless and shapeless. Instead, she’d decided to make her own and headed into town, where she haggled with a sullen Mesaanoti girl over a roll of cloth.

Satisfied, she turned to leave—and just outside the flow of the market, she found the boy.

From a distance, she recognized what he was; there was that familiar posture, straight-backed, open-shouldered, all confidence and assumption of power. His expression may have registered as open curiosity to anyone else—but she saw the entitlement that lay underneath.

There was no mistaking it; this was once a Sehmeri noble.

When she drew closer, too curious to resist the urge, she caught the aristocratic features on his young face. He was as pale as his relatives, and shared the same wide eyes framed with thick lashes and the same plump lips that gave the permanent impression of pouting. Often the men were a bit feminine-looking, but he was practically doll-like, prettier than any man had the right to be.

Besides that, there was an odd familiarity to his face, something about him that stirred her memory beyond the similarity to her late husband and the growing collection of nobles on the island. She was sure she’d seen him before, but he was so young, with the mannerisms of one born and raised in Sehmera. That meant he must be a newcomer—one who she not only hadn’t met, but whose arrival hadn’t yet reached her. That was unusual.

She stepped between two tables and strode right up to him, though he didn’t look up from surveying the crowd.

“Boy,” she said. At first, she thought he was ignoring her—then she realized that he was likely unaccustomed to being addressed as such. Well, he could expect no reverence on this island. Better that he get used to it. “You!” she snapped, and he glanced over at her, frowning. “Boy. Come here.”

Though she was taller than him, the boy somehow gave the impression of looking down his nose at her when he lifted his chin. “No,” he said lightly, “thank you.”

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?” he shot back.

“I am your elder, boy. Have you forgotten your manners?”

He brushed a lock of wavy hair from his forehead. The tips were blunted and the length was uneven, like he’d just hacked away at it. His hands were pale and soft—the hands of someone who had never worked a day in his life. 

“You’re not in Sehmera anymore.” He dared to take a bored tone with her. “I owe you nothing. Again, who are you?”

Valieta raised her eyebrows. Whose child was this? She’d taken him for a young viceroy, like Darres—but surely he’d never held office when he still behaved like a spoiled child. “Who is your father?”

His voice still sounded disinterested, but his frown deepened. “I’m nobody.”

“Here in some fit of childish rebellion, I assume?” she asked, and clicked her tongue. “Never even held a real title, and you’ve already run from your duty, abandoned your station. Why?”

The look he gave her was impossible to read; beneath his haughtiness was something she couldn’t untangle. Regret? Realization of the choice he’d made? Whatever it was, she wanted to keep pressing on it, to bring it simmering up to the surface so she could bear witness.

She took a step forward, and he a step back. “Do you understand what you’ve done yet?” she asked, lowering her voice. “Have you realized by now all that you’ve given up?”

“I’m well aware,” he said, but the seed of doubt growing in his expression now echoed in his voice, too. “I know the privileges I walked away from. It was my choice.”

Her lips parted, but she wasn’t sure what to say to him. His disrespect rattled her more than she cared to admit; he was treating her not like an esteemed elder, but as a nuisance. How could she make him understand the error of his ways if he didn’t take her seriously?

“Listen—” she started, but she was interrupted before she could decide how to proceed.

Another boy burst from the market, panting, one hand pressed to his chest. The ex-noble looked at him with alarm as the newcomer paused to catch his breath.

At first, she thought the second boy was Mesaanoti; he had that wiry frame, that coppery brown shade of skin, those dark round eyes that brimmed with sadness even when widened with panic as they were now. 

But when he spoke, his accent and dialect were undeniably Sehmeri. “Where did you go?” he asked. The urgency in his manner prompted Valieta to survey him with unguarded curiosity. Who was this to the young noble?

When he noticed her gaze, he straightened and wiped the sweat from his forehead, inhaling deeply to calm himself. “Good morning,” he said with a polite nod, all emotion kept from his tone. There was the respect she’d expected from the first boy—but this was certainly no noble. How odd.

“Good morning,” she responded.

“I didn’t go anywhere,” the brat said, almost cutting her off. “I talked to those wizards for one second, and when I turned around, you’d already run off!”

The other boy looked stricken—Valieta didn’t blame him, given the reference to wizards—but quickly composed himself. “Come,” he murmured. “Let’s go home.” He turned back to Valieta and added, “Excuse us.”

“Oh,” Valieta said under her breath. The two were already heading away; the boy with the sword paid her no mind, but the other glanced back at her with a frown. When the ex-noble turned to face forward again, he lifted his chin to whisper at the taller boy, who tilted his head to offer an ear in what was obviously an unconscious habit.

So that was why he had come. She’d heard rumors of such things, of Sehmeri nobles who fled their posts to indulge in their distasteful little desires. How many of those here had come to the island to gratify their fantasies, sleeping with people far below their station or of the same sex or both, dressing in the other gender’s clothes or adopting their mannerisms?

Of course, she understood why they chose Isle Ezu as the destination to engage in those Mesaanoti obscenities, but she didn’t understand how anyone could crave such depravity desperately enough to abandon everything. Why not set it aside? Or, if they lacked the strength to ignore their urges, why not find a way to do so discreetly?

Maybe Darres was right, after all, about where Sehmera’s culture was heading.

She snorted at the thought and spun around, stalking back towards home. No matter how strange and irritating this new boy was, she had too much self-respect to take anything from Darres’s lips at face value.