rmation

  Our Donors

  Make No Promises

  By Rachel Halpern

  Issue #153, August 7, 2014

  My sister Lydie and I often walk in the hills when our morning lessons are over. We take our lessons separately—I am the younger by three years, so the history lessons that give me such trouble my sister has already mastered. Fencing is even worse, where besides my lack of training, I have also my shorter reach and my weak left eye to contend with.

  She will always be the better swordswoman.

  Today was mathematics, my favorite subject. Numbers are logical, trustworthy, unchanging. I can set variables into a system of equations and find clear and certain answers—better yet, I can know why. I know what the people around me will do, but their motivations baffle me.

  When I finish with my tutor, my sister is just getting out of her own lesson, and we meet in the fortress library as we leave.

  “It’s too fine a day for chess,” I tell her before she can speak. We’ve just learned the game from our mother, and now Lydie only wants to play chess, while I would rather enjoy the cool weather.

  “We can at least bring it along,” she says, quickly enough that I know she anticipated my protest. “The rocks in our usual clearing are flat enough for a game or two.” I hesitate, and she widens her eyes at me pleadingly. “I’ll even let you win a game if you like.”

  That startles a laugh out of me. “You will absolutely not. I believe you to be fundamentally incapable of losing at anything.”

  Lydie gives me a tragic look. It’s mostly theatrical, but I can see her real disappointment, and I relent. “Then you have to carry everything,” I say. “And pack up all the pieces when we’re done, and go pack the case up now while I change into better shoes for walking.”

  She’s laughing now. “I will, I will, I promise you. I won’t even complain about how heavy the pieces are on our way up. And I might let you win, you know, just one time.”

  “Make no promises,” I say.

  I put my books away and change clothes, throwing a scarf over my head to keep the sun off; putting on thick-soled sandals to bear the sun-heated stones. When I am finished, I sit by the window and wait for my sister’s return. There are two flights of stairs between our rooms—it will take her some time to pack away the chess pieces and come to fetch me.

  My rooms look out on the back courtyard, so if I turn my head I can see everyone passing through. Just now, it’s the stable boy my sister has been pining after. Looking at him, I see our futures etched in the air between us, the courtyard filling with echoes of what will come. My sister will wait for him to approach her, careful of the power difference between them, but they will court for a time.

  I will be fond of him for my sister’s sake, and for his kindness, and he will be almost like family for a time, though too in awe of our mother as god-prince of our small city to ever truly join us. I understand—my mother has ruled our people as god-prince since long before I was born. She controls the storms, bringing bitter hot wind and sand to burn our enemies, and sometimes draws down rain when even the summer brings too little water—killer and life-giver in one. And she is centuries old, and half the myths and legends we tell in our city are about her or people she knew. It is intimidating enough to be her daughter; I can barely imagine how frightening she must be to an ordinary servant of the fortress.

  They will separate a few months after that, and within a year or two, while my sister is away at school, they will both have moved on entirely. He will fall in love again and get married, to a tall farmer’s daughter who sells vegetables in the town below.

  I visited her stall yesterday, just to meet her; this girl my friend will someday marry. I wore a scarf over my hair and half-covering my face, so she would not recognize me as Prince Rienna’s daughter. Before I returned home, I left three gold coins hidden under the long mesquite pods. She has not found them yet, but she will soon, with no obvious connection to me.

  She and the stable boy will be happy together, I think. Past the point when my sister leaves for university, they fade from our family’s lives, and so from my awareness. I could press the point, but I have no need. I am not known for my sense of humor, but the farm girl made even me laugh, and the stable boy has always been—will always be—kind to me. They should suit each other well.

  “Mandeva,” my sister says behind me, and I turn, startled.

  She took less time than I expected—my vision is clear, but the depth of my perception is poor, in my sight of the future as in my daily life.

  My left eye has always been weak, where I will lose it fighting to defend the fortress, and my mother, against my sister’s return. My sister has always been the better fencer—she will be faster than I, sure and swift, her blade striking before I can even unsheathe my own sword. She will fall short, though, misjudge the distance, and though I will lose the eye, I will not die as she intended.

  Lydie smiles, apologetic, at my surprise. “I did knock,” she tells me. “Not loud enough, I guess. Thinking dark thoughts?”

  “Nothing important,” I tell her. And it is true. She never falls truly in love with the stable boy; it will not hurt her badly when he leaves. Away at school she will find someone new, a young man from across the ocean.

  They will be together until she dies, which will be sooner than I ever expect, in the dungeon where I will throw her when I take back our city.

  We walk into the hills together, Lydie keeping to my right so I can see her clearly. In the sun, her clothes are bright against the warm dark brown of her skin, making the walk feel particularly festive, a celebration of the weather turning slowly into the cooler season of the year.

  The paths are familiar, and my feet are sure on the sand and stones for all that my vision has never been whole. Someday I will give up on being prince and go wandering, telling stories and seeing the world. I will always miss this, though—walking with company. When I travel I will travel alone.

  “How was mapmaking?” I ask my sister, and she groans theatrically.

  “If Master Kinan has children, he needs no lullabies to put them to sleep. He drones on at me about how small our city is compared to the vast and beautiful city-states across the sea, and lectures me about the different kinds of farmland and the perils of the unmapped deserts until I never wish to travel again.”

  “So has he persuaded you yet to stay home from university?” I ask. The college where our mother has secured us a place is a week or two away by sea.

  “Not on your life,” she says, and as always I listen for some hidden tone, to know whether she sees, as I do, what is coming. But she sounds so careless, throws my life around so easily in her words, that I think she cannot know.

  “I don’t understand how you bear it here,” she tells me. “The closed walls of the castle, the endless stretches of sand and mountains, the string of tutors who know little more of the world than we do.”

  “I’m certain you’ll meet many fascinating people while you’re away,” I tell her, because I am certain.

  “I hope so,” she tells me. Perhaps three years older means three years better at pretending not to be omniscient, but it seems ever more likely that I alone will bear the burden of her violent return, of our mother’s blood on her hands. Of her blood on mine, as I lock her away to die.

  It isn’t a long walk to our usual clearing. By the time we reach it, my sister is already involved in recounting the most interesting pieces of her lesson, for all that she would claim to have learned nothing of value, and we gaze at the familiar stony land, as if we can see the tropical beaches of another land if we only look hard enough.

  I can, of course, in glimpses, if I follow my sister’s path, but the farther away she is, the less I know. I have seen the beach where she lands on her return but nothing of what changes, what takes us from friends to enemies while I sit at home and wait.

  “And inland there, the ground is rich and easy to farm,” she tells me, as she finishes setting up the pieces. “So much that even where no farmers work, the land looks green with all the plants. And trees twice the height of ironwood trees grow all around!”

  I laugh, because the image is absurd, but I see from her face that she really believes it. “Too much green,” I say, playing along. “I prefer the greys and browns of desert land, and all the shades of stone. And so many trees—how do they see the sky?”

  Lydie waves a dis
missive hand and moves a pawn forward. “Of course no one would want to live there forever.” I shift a pawn of my own, and she moves again immediately, and we settle into the game. “But what a thing to see. And from what I’ve read, the university library is three times the size of our collection. I think I will never want for anything, as long as the other students can play chess.”

  I smile and move my bishop and do not let myself wonder whether all this chess we play means she is already thinking of revolution. She has asked me, once or twice, whether I mind that our mother will be prince for centuries more before we gain any kind of power, and though she has stopped asking, I suspect the resentment continues to fester.

  “I will be along to join you in three years,” I say. It’s a lie: Lydie will return before her fourth year begins, and after that I will be prince and will have no time for traveling. “That means at worst you only have three years to wait for a proper game.”

  “A proper game,” Lydie says, amused, and takes the bishop I had just moved. “I suppose if you spend the intervening years studying hard enough, you may be able to challenge me. At least, if I find no one else to practice against while I’m there.”

  “I doubt you will miss me at all, then,” I say, and though I mean to sound light my voice comes out strained and hard. I move a piece at random to cover my reaction, and I only realize afterward that I have left my king wide open.

  “Mate in three moves,” she says, not unkindly. “And don’t be stupid, Deva, I shall miss you terribly.” I frown, and she says, “I promise faithfully to miss you every day, little sister, until my return. Is that enough, or must I swear to you by the moon and stars?”

  “Make no promises,” I say, as always. I force myself to smile, though, when she looks concerned. “Come, let’s return. I grow weary of losing to you. Besides, Samil will be done with his rounds soon. You would not like to miss passing him by accident in the stable yard.”

  “Mandeva!” she protests. “Often it is an accident, you know, lessons do get out late some days. Oh, don’t give me that look,” she adds, as I watch her with the knowing smile of a younger sister who has found a weak point. “We may as well head back, though, I suppose.”

  My smile feels more natural now, and I help her pack away the chess pieces with a lighter heart. I let my shoulder bump hers on the way down several times, as if it is my right eye that cannot see, and instead of growing exasperated she throws an arm over my shoulders and pulls me in, and though it is too warm to walk so close, we stay tucked together the rest of the way home, arms around each other with easy affection.

  Her parting with Samil is easy and amicable, and Lydie is already moving on in the weeks before her ship leaves for university.

  “I am going away to school,” she tells me. “Nothing can hold me back.”

  “Samil is already working a trade, and just took on a second apprenticeship to learn another,” I point out, and she grimaces.

  “Yes,” she says. “As would I, if mother thought any work were suitable for the prince’s daughter. She thinks she can keep us living as children forever, but I will not stay home and marry the local stableboy.”

  “He’s going to become a healer,” I tell her, a little defensive of him, for though he is her lover he has also been my friend, one of the few people remotely my age who work at the fortress where we live, one of the few willing to trust me once I promised that no one in my mother’s household would ever find out. She laughs at me.

  “One of your fancies, Deva?” she asks. “Perhaps he will tend to wounded horses, but nothing more. He is as trapped by his birth as we are by ours.”

  “I do not feel trapped,” I say uncertainly. While Lydie is home, I am always content to be the younger sister. I do not look forward to the day I become the prince.

  She waves this off. “You are still a child,” she says easily. “Still taking ordinary tutoring. Not even your first lover, yet.” She speaks as if reading down an imagined list. “You will understand when you are older.”

  Make no promises, I think, but do not say. If growing older is what makes my sister betray us, it is something I do not want to understand.

  A year later, I sit on the rocks jutting out of the shoreline as my sister rows out to the ship that will take her away to school. The weather is cooler here, a full day’s ride from our city, and I shiver in the damp breeze.

  Lydie does not look back until she reaches the ship, and as I wave to her she only lifts a hand in farewell. Then she climbs the ladder they’ve lowered over the side and does not look back. I wave anyway, until the ship begins to recede into the distance and no sign of Lydie is left on deck. Then I let my hand fall wearily back to my side.

  Behind me, my mother stands tall, her horse’s reins held with easy authority in one dark hand.

  “I know you’ll miss her, Mandeva,” she says. “But after all, she will only be gone four years, and you will join in her in only three.” My mother cannot see the future—I have always known this. She has always been kind to both of us, distant but always loving, but I have seen her righteous anger, and if she knew of my sister’s coming rebellion I doubt my sister would have survived her first year. It was why I never wanted to tell her, as a child, and now I suspect it is too late—I have mentioned the future in passing, and even when my predictions come true, she waves it off as luck. I cannot imagine her believing me now.

  “Of course, mother, it is only four years,” I say, and look back at her when she huffs impatiently. “No, truly, I will focus on my studies and try not to pine.”

  She touches my braids, lightly, like she isn’t sure she is allowed, and I let myself lean into the touch and take comfort from it. She laughs, a little, soft and self-conscious, and pulls away. “We should return home,” she says. “The ship is almost out of sight already.”

  I look out to sea. It’s true, the ship looks small and far away, silhouetted against the pale sky. I can feel the future riding with it, my sister’s life unfolding outward, flowing toward that horizon and past it, until it too fades from sight.

  My mother and I speak little on the ride back to the fortress, and I picture our supper in my mind, the four courses we will eat in my sister’s honor. The particulars are blurry—I do not usually bother with such small details—but I can make out roasted oryx and some kind of fish and a goblet of watered honey, crashing to the floor.

  Surely this is a small enough thing to prevent. As we eat, I keep careful watch over my own cup and prepare to catch my mother’s if it should fall. It is strange to eat with her one on one—always my sister has been there, more willing to laugh with me, more willing to challenge my mother’s ideas, more willing to argue. Alone with each other, my mother and I are awkward, stilted.

  I drink my dessert quickly, the sweetness almost choking as I swallow it down. As soon as I finish, I excuse myself, almost lightheaded with relief, both goblets still unspilled. As I rise, a servant enters the room a little clumsily, and the door shuts with a crash just as my mother reaches for her drink. Honey spills like blood. The ringing of the goblet striking the floor sets off echoes of clashing swords that only I can hear.

  It is not the first time I have failed to change the future. Often, in the coming days, I watch our people closely out my window, watch the echoes of their lives unfolding outward.