Midday in Suzail rushed by as noisily as always. The street sellers crowed over the marketplace crowds, children screamed as they dodged into and out of alley ways, and parents, alchemics, fiends, and pickpockets alike found themselves surprised by the kids' sudden appearances or disappearances. While the solid stone and heavy wood of the Raibeart home kept out most of the noise, the closer one got to the shop, the worse the din became. The shop itself, of course, added noise of its own- ringing metal, the occasional shout or laugh, hissing water, and crackling wood.
Upstairs, at the small kitchen table that served as Suze's command center, the commissioned blacksmith's wife sighed deeply as she handed her youngest brother in law back the bit of paper, now visibly browned and worn by his insistence upon folding it the way it had been folded when it had arrived. Iordyn accepted the note without comment and, once again, put it in a chest pocket that he had stitched into the inside of his cloak while he was still studying in Arabel.
"I can't do it," he chuckled bitterly. "I'd love to, but I can't. If I did, I'd have to take Mi'ishaen with me, owing to being the guarantor of her good behavior to the entire country. And as much as I respect her for at least trying to learn how not to be a criminal, I doubt that I could convince either my master to teach her the ways of Lathander, or the... lady... herself to learn."
As a sudden escalation to a previously tense, but quiet conversation in the sitting room, there was a sharp holler, and a solid thud. Iordyn cast a glance over toward the open archways that gave from the kitchen area to the sitting room, but Suze didn't move a muscle.
"I must confess, I'm less concerned about the practicalities of your returning north than I am about why your mother thinks you should go, and why thinks she can practically order you to do so," Suze said as she sat back in the wooden chair and smoothed her hands over her belly. "You're not a child; you're enlisted, and assigned to one of the capital city's five archery batteries. While you're not directly assigned to a battery that Garimond commands, any transfer papers would likely cross his desk before they were approved, and I think we all know how that would go."
"He'd burn it; I've seen him to it to other men's requests," Iordyn noted. In the room beyond, the conversation's volume began to climb toward that of the previous shout. "Perhaps she was worried about what Iona would do to me, as Papa was?"
"What Iona would do to you?" Suze echoed, incredulous. "Your father has battlefield madness, and everyone knows it. Had you, or that other Dragon, held your peace and allowed his accusation against you to stand on its own, the Pillars would have thrown it out. Ignoring the fact that Iona is every inch as loving and protective of an elder brother as Stephen or Aaron have ever been, as well as the fact that- thanks to a shipful of godless Semmites- he's now little better than blind, no monk of Tyr would hunt the life of Lathander's dedicant. Your mother would have to be mad herself, to think any different. Have you seen the wax stick?"
"It's under the letter from the wood cutter, on your left," Iordyn replied. "Right th- no, the other s- yes, there it is."
"Well, the baby's taken firm hold of the reigns of my mind," Suze lamented as she put the other letters with which she'd been working back into two smaller, neater mounds. "I can't very well seal the writ of payment by putting the wax under the 'monies due' letter.
"Be patient with yourself," Iordyn said comfortingly. "Soon, you'll be-"
Thundering footsteps, both across the rug-covered sitting room and down the wooden stairs toward the shop, froze Iordyn's words into his mouth.
"-sorry all the time!" Sylvester roared, a sharp departure from any sort of normality. "You're not sorry; you never are! You're a meddlesome shrew, and he's a block-headed brute; now, can you leave me alone? You can't, can you?"
"I'm sorry, and I mean it!" Sarai shrieked, not sounding very sorry at all. "How am I supposed to prove it? I'm sorry! We didn't mean-"
Salone walked past the argument to get into the kitchen, dropped a silent curtsey as she entered, then moved with quiet will past both adults there and began moving things around in the larder.
"Well, you did anyhow!" Sylvester continued to holler. "Mama's told you, and Papa, and your music teacher, and my scribing tutor, and all the priests that- look, practically everyone else who ever hears either of you open your mouth to me says the exact same thing, but you know better, right? RIGHT? LEAVE ME ALONE, Sarai; go away and leave me alone! Do you understand that? Should I write it with illustrated calligraphy? Have your tutor compose a song of it? Have Mama chant it at you, or read it to you as a bedtime tale?"
"Oh my," Suze sighed under her breath.
"I'm sorry!" Sarai wailed, sounding much closer to actually meaning it than she had just a few seconds before. "I just want to help you!"
Salone, who had miraculously prepared an entire plate full of sliced apples rolled in cinnamon and sugar, paired with crumbly sweet biscuits, walked back past both adults and through the open arch way.
"Can you stop acting as if I can't do anything without your help?" Sylvester demanded. "Just go-"
"It's snack time; please eat your snack," Salone interrupted- quiet, but firm as the cold ground.
For a moment, there was silence between the three children. Only the ambient market noise and the sound of Aleksei and Stephen working together in the shop below rose up to anyone's ears.
"I don't want snack today, Lona," Sylvester said, his voice dropped right back down to his normal mutter.
"I'll save you some," Salone replied. The simplicity of the statement, in Iordyn's mind, carried the weight of the certainty that Sylvester would both need, and take advantage of, the opportunity she'd made him. Reserved food of any kind in a house with multiple children was a luxury most siblings couldn't claim. Iordyn himself never could, when he was young.
And whispered footsteps informed Suze and Iordyn that Salone was heading toward the workshop, likely to make the same request of Saul.
Suze breathed deeply. "She is so like Leena, it's frightening," she began.
Iordyn shook his head, but said nothing, straining to listen to anything the two children left behind might say.
Nothing.
Then, a few moments later, two sets of overlapping footsteps came up the wooden stairs from the shop. When the ascent had been completed, and all four children stood at the foot of the steps that led to the upstairs rooms, looking at each other, Suze crunched her fist to her mouth, forgetting that she had the wax stick in it.
Iordyn watched with alarm as her eyes misted up.
"Lona says Mama and Uncle Iordi are in the kitchen, so... if it's all the same, I... I can't eat in the shop, so..." Saul trailed.
"Are you trying to ask me if you can eat in the sitting room?" Sylvester's tone was something of a cross between surprise and distrust. It wasn't comfortable to listen to, and Iordyn began to look around for something to dab his sister in law's eyes.
A moment's quiet.
"Yes," Saul finally admitted. His tone was sincere and even, but almost at the bottom of his range, so that it seemed as though he were practicing at being his father. "Lona said you were in a spitting rage, and... that... we deserve it."
More quiet.
"Right," came the response, so quiet that it could hardly be heard from the kitchen.
Someone began sniffling.
"Oh, don't- I'm alright. I won't get angry, if you- And I don't mind if- if you-" For whatever reason, Sylvester stopped himself, gave a small noise of discomfort, then tried again. "Saul, can you-? We can just- just all eat here. We can all have it right now, here, and you won't have to save me anything, will you, Lona? Here, Sarai, please don't-"
"We can't dirty your work," Salone said.
"I'll put it away- I'm going right now, to put it away. Alright? Saul, can you-"
"I've no water," Salone added. It was difficult to tell whether she was simply stating a fact that should have been obvious just by looking at the tray, or whether she was apologizing without actually saying "sorry," which seemed, at the moment, to be a fairly inflammatory word between three of the four children gathered.
"I'll get the water," Sarai piped up, her voice definitely made warbly by emotion. "Thank you for making snack- all by yourself-"
"Thank you," Saul and Sylvester chorused accidentally. Their voices, Sylvester's higher key laying atop Saul's, were just slightly easier to listen to than before. Sarai sniffed a few more times.
"You'll be apprenticed away, soon," Salone stated calmly. "So will Sly. I'd better get used to this."
More sniffing. "It's too late to-"
"No," Salone said firmly. The single word fell as firmly as a stone.
"Someone'll take you," Sylvester encouraged.
"Pa'll make 'em take you," Saul added. "No one denies him. Not for long."
A few very short, quiet gasps, and more sniffing. "He can't bully somebody into taking me."
"You'll be apprenticed," Salone repeated. "I know it."
"Let's get ready and eat," Sylvester suggested. "I'll be right back, alright? Alright?"
"She can bake, weave, and sew," Suze whispered, knowing that Iordyn was at a loss, "and she should have been apprenticed last year, but-"
There was no telling who moved first, but a collection of footsteps were heard, and Sarai entered the kitchen with predictably red eyes and a runny nose, which she kept wiping with the bottom of the right side of her apron. Iordyn noted that she must have started quietly crying some time ago, since there was a rather wide wet spot that spread up from that corner to form a cone whose bell reached across nearly a third of her apron. The young girl passed both adults without looking at or addressing them, and ladled water from the bucket that had been filled that morning into the stoneware pitcher that had been taken down from the hanging racks above the spit, which was closer to the wall. Once she'd finished that, she took a wooden tray, put four earthenware cups onto it, then balanced the pitcher on it. Her task done, she passed back out quickly and quietly, hardly dropping a curtsey when Iordyn managed to catch her still-watering eye.
Iordyn watched her leave, then looked at Suze again. She'd dried her eyes on her own apron while he wasn't looking, but her nose and eyes were still just as red as her eldest daughter's.
"Leena wouldn't have stopped the argument," Iordyn muttered. "She would have hidden herself away and waited for everyone to calm down. She hates fighting."
"I mean the way she goes about things," Suze whispered, almost to herself. "It's so- cold. Other children have taken to calling her Saint Stone. Hardly better than 'golem,' if you ask me, but she doesn't seem to care. I've tried so hard-"
"And it shows," Iordyn cut in at once. "We didn't do that when we were younger, trust me. Someone would have thrown a punch instead of just continuing to yell, and Mama would have had to get up and break us up, especially if it were Ronny and Dassy. Is... is there any sort of... special something about Salone?"
Both sat in silence and listened to the stoneware cups moving and clunking about.
"I don't know," Suze admitted, rediscovering the wax stick in her hand and putting it down. "There was a flicker of some sort of influence, but... I... think I discouraged it."
"No, she still has... something," Iordyn said, hearing himself sound more concerned than comforting. "When I read this letter the first time, before I'd said anything about it- remember when Papa's letter came, and you sent her out of the room to tell me about it?"
For a few moments, Suze looked at him quizzically, but the realization broke upon her quickly. "Ah, with the corn. I don't interrupt her anymore; she speaks so rarely. And so little. Unless I give her a message and ask her to tell it to whomever it is for word for word, she'll parse it down to as few words as she can get away with."
"Well, before you'd gotten there, she told me about the contents of this letter as though I'd read it to her, or as though she'd read it herself. And she told me not to go, on behalf of the trees. In Arabel. She said they didn't want me there, and that they'd told the trees here as much."
Suze sighed deeply. "She has done that once before. About four years ago, Sarai grew jealous of my sewing and knitting friends, so she decided to find and participate in a little sewing circle of her own. Once there, she came to know a girl some three or four years her senior- Darla- who began to sit with her constantly. This was unremarkable, since Sarai could make friends with anyone. But suddenly, just before ice breaking- Lona told Sarai that the trees had warned her that Darla was jealous of how well-liked Sarai was, and would soon try to get rid of her. Now, since Darla seemed sweet and friendly, the warning seemed absolutely ridiculous. Sarai suspected that Lona was lonely, or jealous herself, and tried her best to tempt her to join the circle. Lona vehemently refused, and begged her sister to please sit anywhere but next to Darla. When Sarai finally complained to me about it, I told Lona that trees don't speak, and that I wouldn't tolerate slander. Lona dropped the matter, and I thought that was the end of it. But at the height of the growing season, a girl's pendant went missing, and Darla accused Sarai. No one really believed Sarai had stolen it, but when her sewing materials were searched, there it was, and the girls' mothers were forced to expel Sarai from the group, to Darla's visible delight. I apologized to Lona, but it was like speaking with a chapel pillar. I'm at an impasse now- I thought I might give her over to be an acolyte, but she won't speak to anyone at temple. I worry that she may be godless, or turned to witchery, because of me."
Iordyn thought back to the cool and calm of the room in which Salone had given her counsel.
"I doubt she's godless," he finally commented. "When she spoke to me, there was a sort of... I'm not sure... a feeling of serenity. Sounds from elsewhere got somehow quieter, and the fireplace went completely out."
"Now, that's different," Suze mused. "I remember wondering about the fireplace, but thought that I was simply having a doting moment, due to the pregnancy."
"It was lit when she came into the room, but out when she was speaking to me," Iordyn reinforced. "And I physically felt a coolness in the room. I asked if any of the gods or goddesses of nature had spoken to her- Eldath, Chauntea, Meiliki, Sylvanus- she insisted that she was speaking about and to me, and wouldn't answer in any way, except that the elder trees in Arabel told the sapling that I shot, here, that they didn't want me to return to Arabel. I don't even know if she meant forever, or just right now. I asked her to please help me apologize to the sapling I shot, since she said it was annoyed at me, but she hasn't taken me to do so yet."
Suze silently reorganzed the small piles of correspondance with which she was working, then got up.
"What- where are you going?" asked Iordyn, scrambling to his feet himself.
"All this time, to have it be so plain, and still not grasp it," Suze said with deprication, moving resolutely toward the door on the other side of the sitting room. "I apologized to the wrong person."
All four children looked at their mother and their uncle as they hustled toward the door, but only Salone stopped eating. Wordlessly, she got up to follow them.
"Sometimes it seems to me like everything is going mad," Sarai said quietly. "Like everything is changing at once, and it's just going to go on like that. Just everyone going mad. And changing."
Saul shrugged, but Sylvester nodded.
Once outside, Suze marched straight to the youngest tree in the yard and looked up at it. Iordyn caught up to her a few moments later, and Salone trailed behind.
"I apologize," she proclaimed. "I don't know if it's just you that's offended, or if it's all the trees. I don't know how you... communicate. But I am sorry to have insulted you, and I hope you'll forgive me. Sometimes being a mother- I- have fears. Doubts. About my children, about my husband- about myself. Sometimes I even doubt the gods. It goes without saying, then, that I make heart breaking mistakes, and... this... is one of them. Just one of many, I'm sure."
"And I apologize about hurting that young tree," Iordyn chimed in. "That sacrifice enabled my commander and I to know the will of Lathander, and for that, I thank you, but... I've never been struck by an arrow myself. It... must have hurt."
Salone walked between her mother and uncle without looking back at them, and looked up at the one sapling as though she were seeing an entire forest grove. Puckering her lips, she let a single long stream of breath pass between them wthout making any sound, as though she were blowing on a spoonful of hot soup before trying to eat it.
Iordyn noticed that the split arrowhead that he wore under his tunic grew very cool against his skin.
At first, a low murmur replied- some sort of low pulsing tone that neither Iordyn nor Susanna could put any comprehensible name to. It swelled quickly, gaining warm alto tones, shrieking sopranos, and majestic baritones. After a few moments of feeling as though she were being swept away into the force of what was rapidly becoming a symphony of voices, Susanna caught her breath, realizing that no vocal cords were responsible.
Every tree in existance was answering her daughter, and they did not merely speak.
They sang.
Not all of them agreed- some notes were sharp or dischordant. But after a bit of calling and response between some reedy, older howlers and a few slick younger pipers, the spiraling melody circled back to itself, rested in a solid blend, roared up toward a powerful crecendo, then stopped suddenly. Iordyn noticed distantly that Valeria had begun baying, and wondered if she too had heard the music.
When the chorus ended, Salone turned around and gave a sparkling-eyed, joyous smile- one that lit up her face so thoroughly that Suze felt as though she might cry at the rarity of it.
"That was beautiful," Suze managed, forcing herself to regain her powers of speech faster than her stunned brother in law. "I'd never realized this little tree was part of such a concert force."
"It's the same everywhere," Salone explained. "People pretend that we're too different so that they have an excuse not to try. But we're the same."
A single leaf fluttered its way down from the sapling and rested itself on Salone's head. The girl looked up, giggling, and turned to pick the leaf up when it slid off her hair and onto the ground.
"Here, Mama; this is for you," she said happily, once she'd recovered the leaf and brought it over. "Can we press it?"
"Yes, of course," Suze managed, forcing her choked voice to work. "Mama has an old, old prayer book that was given to her when she was sent away to be an acolyte. It's one of her most treasured gifts. We can press this leaf there, and it'll be another."
"Yay!" Salone cried, seeming suddenly so much more like a natural child that the contrast stung. "Thank you for saying sorry, Mama."
Iordyn folded his arms, and laid a single finger on his lips.
'She is so like Leena, it's frightening.' But Leena and Mama didn't speak like this. Actually, they didn't speak at all. I wonder if Stephen knows why that was.
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