Jay Lake - Green

Memory or no, I did not have any cutting answers for her. Federo had been too frank with me to awaken any sense of how words duel, and I suppose I was too young for a bladed tongue then. I stood while she circled me again and again. Her breath heaved like the steam kettle deep within the decks of Fortune’s Flight. Sweat sheened on her brow like rain on a millstone.

We had not moved from the spot in the courtyard where Federo had deposited me. No one was about-the possibility of hidden watchers would not occur to me for quite some time, and in the event proved false within the Factor’s cold, towering walls. I only had eyes for the withering pomegranate tree, occluded from moment to moment as she passed round me.

I startled when Mistress Tirelle slipped a gleaming blade from some recess in her wrappings. She was ready for that, and slapped me again. “Soon I shall not be able to leave marks on you, girl, but for today discipline is my own. Even later there will be ways. You. Do. Not. Move.”

The duck woman stopped behind me. I shivered, wondering what she intended with that blade. Surely Federo had not brought me over an ocean just to be cut open like a sacrificial goat. The left shoulder of my shift fell away with a snick. Another snick, and the right was gone, the simple dress with it.

That was my first encounter with scissors, and they startled me. Being bare-skinned in this place with such a shy sun and chilly air was strange to me as well. Much as Federo had done, Mistress Tirelle began to prod my back, my shoulders, my hips. As she pushed and poked at me, she issued terse commands.

“Hold your right arm out straight, and do not drop it again.

“Let me see your teeth. All of them, girl.

“Bend. Now touch the courtyard. With your palms laid flat.”

The examination was not painful, but it was thorough. Finally she was in front of me again. “I don’t suppose that young fop bothered to read your bowels.”

“He di-,” I began, but was stopped with another slap.

“When I want you to answer me, I will address you as Girl, girl.”

Even then I could hear the word becoming a name. My own words spilled out of me. “I have a-”

This time the blow caused my ears to ring. “You will take ten minutes of standing with warm ashes in your mouth every time I hear a single word of that filthy dog’s tongue out of you, Girl.”

I nodded, tears pooling hard and bitter in my eyes.

Words, it all came down to words. Federo had bent my father’s will with words long before that little sack had passed between them to buy me away. These northern people were continuing to remake me with words.

Someday I would own their words.

Mistress Tirelle dragged me to the shaded porch and bade me stand by a post. A moment later she was back with a ladle filled with ashes. I choked spooning them into my mouth, but I resolved not to give her reason to beat me further. She seemed to take much joy in raising her hand against me. In this I would not please her.

So I stood weeping, my chest spasming with coughs I was desperate to swallow. I kept my eyes tight set against her, and my heart closed.

After a time, the duck woman put an empty bucket before me. “Spit,” she said. “And do not trail your peasant slime upon my floor.” Once that was done, to much gagging and heaving, she gave me a little mug of tepid water to wash my mouth out.

I wondered if she had ever been schooled to hold ashes in her mouth and take beatings at the slightest word.

“I believe we understand each other now,” Mistress Tirelle announced. “This is the Pomegranate Court, in the House of the Factor.” Those names were just strange words to me at the time, though I came to understand them soon enough. “You are the sole candidate in residence within this court. This is as it should be. These walls around us are your world. You will see no one that I do not bring you, speak to no one that I do not introduce first. You belong to me and your instructresses, until the Factor says otherwise.” Her face closed in a scowl. “Filthy little foreign chit that you are, I should not think you will ever be so lucky.”

She pointed to the bucket and the mug. “I will show you where to clean these. Then you will learn the rooms of your world. Do you understand me, Girl?”

“Yes, Mistress Tirelle.” My tone gave no ground, but it made no assault on her dignity either.

We went first to the kitchen of the Pomegranate Court.

Much later I came to understand that all the courts in the Factor’s house are named for their tree. In a few cases, the tree-that-was. Whether Pomegranate, Peach, or Northern Maple, each court was substantially the same. I lived in a factory, after all, dedicated to the very slow and delicate process of manufacturing a certain kind of woman, run by ruthless termagants only too willing to find fault and cast a candidate aside like a badly thrown pot.

The ground floor of the building that housed the rooms of my little court was laid out simply enough. A kitchen stood at the eastmost end. Several huts the size of Papa’s could have fit within. It held ovens of three different types, two hearths, and an assortment of smaller fire vessels. Great blocks of cured wood, smooth-sanded stone, and a strangely porous ceramic stood awaiting use. Pans, pots, and cooking tools in a bewildering array of shapes and sizes hung from the high ceilings or along the walls next to bins for grains, roots, and produce. Basins waited for rinsing and washing. There was even a great box half-filled with ice.

The only thing missing was knives. I’d learned aboard ship that no cook is ever without a good blade, but whoever cooked here did their work with unaccustomed bluntness, or took their tools with them.

Though Mistress Tirelle gave me time to fill my eyes, I did not ask questions. She had not spoken to me, after all.

Some lessons are not so hard to learn.

Next to the kitchen was a dining room. A long table polished to the same sheen as Federo’s carriage was surrounded by spindly chairs that did not look strong enough to hold me, let alone adults. Where the kitchen’s walls had been brick and tile against the danger of sparks, here they were covered with a bellied cloth of pale amber shot through with gold thread. This room had been painted by someone with a very delicate hand. Birds were rendered in full detail smaller than the nail of my thumb by the application of two or three strokes. Where their eyes could be seen in their pose, some green stone had been affixed to the cloth in fragments smaller than a sesame seed.

These birds swarmed in a flock of hundreds around a stand of trees that I took to be willows. Each leaf and twig on the willows had been painted as well. A stream wound among them just above the low cabinets that lined the room. Bright fish and reeds and little flowers spun on its current.

I know now that those walls had been a lifetime’s work for some artist bound to the Factor’s will. All I knew then was that they looked so real that I might step within them.

For a moment, I longed to do so. The flight of the painted birds seemed beautiful and free. But I knew even at that first part of my life in Copper Downs that someday I would leave this room. Those birds were trapped forever in their moment of time, rendered immortal but static against the cloth of the walls.

Already Mistress Tirelle pushed me onward. My leaving was not someday, but in that moment.

The central room of the ground floor opened to the courtyard beyond. Hidden folded panels could be fitted in place at need depending on the weather, but otherwise the room’s low seats and padded benches were subject to whatever noise and wind stirred without. A hearth backed this room as well, while the walls were lined with frames and stands representing the tools of various arts. A rack of scrolls and books and bound sheaves of vellum and parchment stood on the west end, a door open in the midst of the shelving.