What From the Water Rises #16

In which an island native goes about a perfectly normal day.

Chrysanthe’s day began as yet another in a long, near-unbroken string of normal days. She liked it that way—appreciated the consistency, the pattern. Gone were the days of youth when, with a sharp and dogged focus, she had to track down something new and exciting between each sunrise; now, that focus was properly directed toward the purpose of steering a ship made of land. Perhaps not a metaphor she had a right to, but it worked. 

Like every normal morning, she woke before dawn, took tea on the porch, and held council with ghosts.

As one concerned with legacies, the dead and the absent constantly shadowed her thoughts. Some were dead she had never known—long-deceased historians and journal keepers whose accounts of the past she treasured as guides for the future, manuals to helm by—but many were people she had met. Some were people she had loved. 

On this morning, she took counsel from her most cherished dead. While her tea was steeping, she retrieved the old wooden box from its spot high on her considerably sized bookshelf and fingered through the soft envelopes within. The one she selected bore a cracked, brittle seal; oily residue had seeped from the wax and left a faint pink stain in the parchment. Back on the porch, she rubbed gently at this stain as she read. 

Much of the counsel she took from ghosts demonstrated to her not what to do, but what not to do. These letters were different. She worked through each worn page slowly, savoring the wisdom she had long incorporated into herself. Adhamhei, her parent, had been a scribe on the initial expedition to Ezu, and they had made sure to leave her with a written record of all the things they wished to impart to her—they and all the other first-generation islanders who held a common vision. Anvashe had given them the opportunity to accomplish something, and they intended to take full advantage of it.

Chrysanthe limited herself to one letter each day. She didn’t often take census of them; the paper was deteriorating, as all paper did, though her efforts had slowed their decay, and she was not in a hurry to transcribe them. Typically, she saved them for the times when she’d been thrown off routine and needed a bit of course correction. When she’d taken the box down again a few weeks past, she’d been greeted by a fine layer of dust on the lid. 

Remember: hoard every grain of knowledge that you can. Hold them silent in your mouth. With careful observation and with time, each grain will accrete meaning until it becomes a pearl—one you can spend, when the moment is right, or sacrifice in offering to our god for all our gain. 

Chrysanthe found it both amusing and illuminating that Adhamhei often wrote in the language of currency when the decree of Anvashe’s that they most adamantly defended was that the island have none.

She folded up the letter before the sun crept up the porch to lay its treacherous hand on her paper. Back inside, she returned it to its box, dressed, and packed her bag with a set of extra supplies before setting out to work on what she knew would be another normal day.

* * *

The first anomaly was minor and occurred shortly after she arrived at the council chambers. 

She had set up in the workroom anticipating a few solid hours of uninterrupted work making copies of the minutes from the past several council meetings when a young man arrived to visit the archive. He was small and pretty and soft, as well as an awful liar. It was obvious before he spoke that he was a newly arrived ex-noble, some fancy landed son fleeing responsibility or worse, and it was obvious afterward that he was hiding something. She offered him the use of her library, which he politely declined, but he couldn’t hide the spark of hunger that lit in his eyes. He would find her eventually. And until then, she would add discovering whatever he was so desperate to conceal to her list of minor tasks. Perhaps some use would come from knowing it.

That little taste of mystery bore her through the rest of the morning and into the afternoon, when someone rather less interesting and more familiar arrived.

A swaggering bulk of a man waltzed through the workroom door and stopped at the sight of her. “Will a day ever come when I won’t risk finding you lurking in the chambers?” he asked, moving over to the table where she sat.

“Likely not,” Chrysanthe said, not bothering to look up from her work, “given I’ve lurked in these chambers since long before you were elected and will lurk long after your term is concluded.”

Councilor Razilos lifted the neat sheaf of paper drying beside her elbow and leafed through it, careful enough not to smear the fresh ink. “I wouldn’t count on that. You can’t be the only aberrant fixity Anvashe allows to haunt the council.”

This wasn’t the first time Razilos had intimated his intent to work on the council past his legal term, an accomplishment only Chrysanthe had managed in its short history. That was not a potential future she looked forward to; he was rather crass, and the few Sehmeri prejudices he still held to frankly disgusted her. But compared to the island’s ex-noble faction in aggregate, she found Razilos quite tolerable. He pushed Anvashe and the council’s boundaries wherever he could, which she respected in principle, if not in practice. He was eminently practical, a deft hand at managing the other noble’s expectations, and a surprisingly gracious loser. Many of his ideas were tired or backwards, but it was clear to anyone watching that he wanted what was best for Isle Ezu as a whole.

That didn’t change the fact that she would do whatever was necessary—to a point—to keep him from becoming a permanent installation in the chambers, however. His were not the sort of hands she was willing to share her wheel with. Not to mention that he hated her, and would likely try and throw her from the helm at any opportunity.

“Did you need something, Councilor?”

Razilos tossed his shoulder-length hair and flipped to a new page. “Looking for a spare quill, if you have one—and to get some work done, but now I’ll have to do so elsewhere.” 

He squinted down at the paper in his hands and gave a sudden barking laugh. “Only just now making your little copies of these, eh? Did I tell you”—he looked up at her with a somewhat feral smile—“that I finally figured out why you let these damn pirates swindle us on every contract?”

Chrysanthe sighed, dipped her nib in fresh ink, and kept writing. “To answer your first question, no, I don’t have a spare. There’s one in the archive, as usual, but a member of the public is in there now, and I’d like it to remain for his use. As for the second, no. Please enlighten me.”

Razilos slapped the sheet of parchment down on the table and jabbed at a particular line. “This lady captain is your secret lover!”

Chrysanthe gave a cursory glance at the page.

Cpt. Goltang: The fleet’s intention is to renew on the same terms. If the council or Anvashe deems it necessary to request changes, we’ll have to discuss those as a company. Trade would likely pause for longer than the usual interim while we meet on— 

Her captain was so upright and stoic in public; reading about her now left a sweet bruise above her breastbone, one she acknowledged and put aside, turning back to her work. “As is often the case, Razilos, your assessment is both late and inaccurate,” she said. “Everyone on the council is already aware of my relationship with Hisili. It’s the whole reason I recuse myself during talks with the fleet.”

She could practically smell his smile spoiling above her, and expected him to leave with a disappointed, if un-huffy complaint, or to start prodding at her with another subject entirely. Instead, after a beat, he leaned down and placed a hand on the back of her chair. “But do they know you’ve been on bad terms since she left negotiations?”

Chrysanthe paused, her lips very slightly pursed, then laid down her quill. She sat back and looked evenly at Razilos, who hung over her, his eyes sparkling, neat beard bristling around bared teeth. The only way he could know that was if someone had noted Hisili’s failure to visit her, the way she always did, when her ship docked unexpectedly a few weeks ago. The only way someone would note that and then convey it to Razilos was if he’d set them to tailing her or Hisili or both. 

Mentally, she adjusted her limit on what she would be willing to do to keep him from retaining even the smallest mote of power once his term was up.

“I doubt that,” she replied, voice a chilled breeze, “since I don’t make it a habit to share details of my personal life with our colleagues.”

Razilos drew himself up, laying a hand on his rooster-like chest. “Well, if you don’t want me to make a habit of sharing details of your personal life with my colleagues—mine, Chrysanthe, not yours, you haven’t held a bona-fide position on this body since your newest mouthpiece started teething—then the next time your sun-leathered girlfriend shows up, you’ll tell her we’re reopening negotiations, and this time with a contract that favors Ezu.”

“You know as well as I that we can’t do that without full vote of the council and Anvashe’s blessing—”

“Between the two of us, I think we can convince the others to call a new session. And I have a hard time believing the Lord of the Waves will disagree when it’s of obvious benefit to his island.”

“Anvashe is not stupid,” Chrysanthe snapped, finally losing her patience, “and neither am I.” She rose from her chair, gratified as always to find her eye level a few fingerspans above his. “I have grave doubts about you, on the other hand. If you’ve been watching me, then you know I have nothing to hide—and if you’ve paid any attention to me at all, then you’d understand that you do not intimidate me in the least. What are you going to do? Reveal to the council how I take my tea?”

Razilos’ dark, well-trimmed brows narrowed. He opened his mouth to retort, but Chrysanthe was not yet finished. “Additionally, if our contract with Atena’s fleet was so detrimental to the island, why would Anvashe allow it at all? Surely you don’t believe the pussy is so good I’d risk manipulating a semi-omniscient god?”

The councilor’s face reddened. “I don’t pretend to understand everything Anvashe does,” he sputtered, taking a single step backward. “Nor do I think he pretends to understand every aspect of human affairs. You can’t convince me that a contract that restricts the bulk of our most vital trade to criminals on the run from both empires is somehow good for us!”

“Your prejudice is showing, Councilor. The empires consider us criminals at the same level.”

“Dance around me all you want, Chrysanthe. You insist that everything you do is for Ezu’s benefit, but you have never sufficiently supported the claim that this travesty of a contract is good for us. I know you’re hiding some alternate agenda somewhere.”

Chrysanthe, with a huff of frustration, took one of her pearls and spent it.

She’d kept this one close—too close, she was realizing with annoyance—out of an inappropriate personal fear. One of the things she loved about Hisili was not that she accomplished her goals by being especially cunning or clever, but through grit and brute force. She had no knack for strategy, nor did she care for it, which was the sole reason Atena was queen instead of her. 

But her clarity of purpose, her ability to make a snap decision and follow through on it relentlessly—that was what made her beautiful. It was what had first drawn Chrysanthe to her. She would always remember the moment she watched Hisili finally pick up on her subtle advances, and how it took her less than an instant to move from understanding to leaning close, smile crooked, pads of calloused fingers finding the soft skin behind Crysanthe’s jaw.

Chrysanthe had to trust that if Hisili heard that this had been her plan all along, she would not take it as a betrayal; she would understand that Chrysanthe would have deployed this strategy, and deployed it effectively, whether they were lovers or not. 

“It is precisely because the fleet is arrayed in opposition to the major powers that we set the contract this way, Razilos,” Chrysanthe said through rigid teeth. “We set the terms so favorably that the pirates would be stupid not to agree to them. We renew these terms year after year, until the fleet receives the vast majority of their provisions from Ezu, becoming dependent on us.

“And then, a year or two from now, we alter the terms. We add a tiny addendum. We say, in return for keeping your crews fed and your ships in good repair, you agree to protect us in the event of Anvashe’s incapacitation. It will never happen, we say; Anvashe is our infallible protector, we say. It’s simply a little piece of legal cover to shut up some of our more anti-pirate elements. But I know, and Anvashe knows—and you as a former Sehmeri should know—that gods are fallible. One day, Anvashe may be unable to protect us from the empires. And when that day comes, I want a navy with experience sailing circles around those empires who are fully invested in our defense to come to our aid.

“If you care about Ezu’s prosperity the way you say you do—if you want our society to survive, to thrive, to be and become something powerful and meaningful—then you have to agree. And if you want to become another ‘aberrant fixity’ on this governing body, then I suggest you start considering long-term strategy, Razilos. That is what I’m here to do. That is why Anvashe tolerates my presence. Because it benefits us. And I imagine the moment I stop benefiting us will be the same moment he bars me from this building, or washes me out to sea like the useless bit of detritus I am.”

Razilos had listened to this grudging speech with a narrow-eyed, measuring look. Afterward, he paused, then said, “Hmm. I believe that’s the first time you’ve given me a bit of sincere advice.”

“I strive to be of service,” she replied stiffly.

“And you hid this plot from the council because—?”

“Anvashe may not be infallible, but it doesn’t benefit us to draw attention to that fact. That and, to work, this tactic requires discretion, which is something not all councilors believe in or are capable of.”

“I see—you didn’t want your girlfriend to find out you were using her.”

“No,” Chrysanthe sighed, “I didn’t. But it doesn’t matter now. It’s over.” Though she did not want to, she had to admit that was true. Asking Hisili to give up the sea for her had been completely and utterly foolish—a sad attempt at control in a moment of weakness, made by a lonely woman about to descend into the twilight of her life. It was as absurd a move as Hisili asking her to give up Isle Ezu and take up residence on the Steed.

“Well, given that I don’t make it a point to spend my time in the company of pirates, I don’t see why you couldn’t have shared this plan of yours with me before now. We could have spoken privately.” The set of his shoulders and the slight, catlike crook to his mouth told her that Razilos considered himself the victor of this conversation. It wasn’t by any means true, but it still annoyed her.

“Not only do I have very little desire to do anything in private with you, I trust you not at all.”

Razilos strode to the door, resting a hand against the panel. “And I you, O Unofficial Parasite, but we’re stuck with each other, aren’t we? I think it would behoove us both to figure out a way to work together—at another time.” The unfortunately official councilor gave her a final smug once over and left, his little wave wafting self-satisfaction through the room.

Chrysanthe did not linger. Her work for that day was done. She had decided as much before their conversation ended, and could have left the room for Razilos’ use, but opted not to out of a petty and somewhat tired spite. She packed up her bag and went to check on the young man in the archive, only to find him gone. 

He’d left a record of what he’d borrowed, like she asked—a selection of volumes she would never have chosen to use in teaching a devout Anvashe worshiper to read. He signed the slip of paper not with his name, but with a single, unsuspicious A.

That revived her somewhat. She spent a moment staring out the archive’s single window at the Steed-less harbor, a faint smile on her face. Razilos, for all his bluster and swagger, would not be a problem. It was both amusing and telling how people who originated from a court supposedly plagued with intrigue enjoyed what seemed a universal lack of cunning.

* * *

Chrysanthe had put off her transcriptions for too long, and it affected the rest of her day. She did not have time to make her usual rounds to two or three of the guilds, and when she went to visit Rimestri—Adhamhei’s sole remaining colleague—she was turned away at the door, the dying woman having already retired for the evening.

So she planned to spend some extra time on her personal projects once home and made her way to the private little cove across the city, a scrap of spare paper in her pocket. Sitting in the sand, the calls of gulls the only waveless sound, she folded the scrap into a tiny boat. Wasteful though it might be, she did this every day; an offering was insufficient without a bit of sacrifice. 

Tomorrow, when she met with the artisans about their progress developing paper from some of Ezu’s more bountiful resources, she hoped to hear good news. Soon, that scarcity would be in the past, and she would have to find something new to offer. One day everyone on Ezu would know how to read, and her library would become more than just her house.

Her boat folded, Chrysanthe waded out past the swirling orange breakers sparkling with sunset fire, not bothering to ruck her skirts, and set the tiny vessel bobbing in the waves. She gave it a careful push to get it sailing, then retreated to settle in warm and gentle waters near the edge of the sand.

Sitting there felt powerfully of home, all her ghosts gathered around her—not to counsel, but to listen.

“I pray,” she said aloud—though Anvashe could hear her thoughts from here, she knew, she preferred to speak to him with a deliberateness thinking seldom had— “that progress on Ezu will continue forward, steady as my long, unbroken string of days. I pray that boats will leave and return to the island on course, holds full, hulls watertight. I pray that the council and those upon it will continue to learn and grow; that every islander will continue to learn and grow; that my knowledge will accumulate into a trove of pearls that I can offer you, Anvashe, as a way to help our island prosper.”

To others, that “our” might have read as insolence, but Anvashe had never pushed her on it. She preferred to think that he enjoyed the possessiveness they held in common.

And the ocean did not disagree. It lapped against her, moving and unchanging, god silent as he had been for a year or three.

Until someone that was not her spoke with her voice inside her head.

If you discover anything about the noble boy you met today, the voice said, you will hoard that pearl, Chrysanthe, until the time that I say otherwise.

The voice went silent with the suddenness of a snap, and a less-than-gentle wave slapped up Chrysanthe’s front, wetting her through.

She shot to her feet with a splash, sputtering, sneezing salt water from her nose.