Keeping the Fire: An Unexplained Illness

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Outside, the water from a melting icicle dripped. It was just past Darknight and the winter would still be getting worse, but there had been a strange little thaw that morning and it had changed the crispness of winter air to a chill damp. Polena did not sit on the balcony on days like this. She was not one to brood, nor was she one to give in to despair. Yet she stayed in her room, with the shutters fast against the damp in forced isolation. Coralm had not even done her the service of a visit. After her argument with the Djaught Mehethe in Court he had sent word that she was to stay in her chamber for a week. “You are ill and in confinement. This is an order, not one to be negotiated, and I do it for your safety.” This last part of the letter galled her now more than anything the Djaught had said. It was one thing to be told you had made a mistake, another to be punished, but it was a crueler blow than any to be talked down to. She obeyed Coralm, she had to. But while she followed the letter of his rules she flaunted their spirit. Every book, poem, and dissertation she could find on Djasho, on the first poet, was sent to her room. She had gone through a pint of ink in making letters showing the inconsistencies, the errors of geography and history, the differences in translation that proved what she had always learned and always known. There was no such person. Yet for all her work she still felt it was short. Academic proofs only work on academics. She needed more but there was no book, at least none in the collections that she had access to, that would aid her.

On the last day of her isolation she answered her door to a feeble knock and found Gambre outside. He was a merchant's slave which filled her with a mix of pity and rage for she could not fight the law of the land. Because she could not help him she had always been kind to him, and he accommodating to her in his slow, beaten-dog affect.

“Don't mean to be delivering when you didn't a' asking for it, but I has something for you”

“It's alright Gambre, what is it today? You are the only one in this entire Fortress who can find tea that isn't black as coal.”

Gambre smiled, a broken tooth, somewhat embarrassed one.

“No, I don't have goods Polena” he always seemed to smirk at the right to call her by her first name “Its my master. She wants to talk to you.”

“Well if we have a debt I can pay it. The Alliance is always good for its debts. If it is something new to sell, then she will have to come back later. I am ill.”

She made to close the door but he stepped up to stop her.

“So I've heard, and so m'lady has heard. Which is why she wanted to talk to you when no one else could. Won't you meet her? She's quite high.”

Polena bit her lip. For Gambre to be so insistent he must feel it was important. But the very idea raised her heckles. It felt dangerous.

“I can't really commit to anything right now Gambre. I certainly can't meet anyone alone I am afraid. Have her send me a letter.”

Gambre looked nervous, more so than she had ever seen him and she backed a little away from the door. He crept back himself as a veiled woman, who had been standing just a few paces beyond Polena's field of vision came casually behind him.

“Enough. I haven't time for this.”

Polena wanted to see no more. She shut the door and threw it's bolt thinking of the crossbow resting on a chest across the room. Thinking of which window of her room was best to shout for help from. Wondering if this was an assassin at her door or just a spy. The woman on the other side gave her no time to muse.

“Luminary Polena you want to talk to me.” She said, her voice raised to be heard through the door, her Eddinite speech firm and perfectly enunciated.

“Why would I? I don't want to talk to anyone today.”

“You want to talk to me because I liked what you did in court this past week and would like to give you the means to prove your statements.”

Polena let her weight fall off the door a bit. There was anger in this voice, but not threat. It was the words of one who is not used to being ignored.

“Why would you want to help me, wait, how could you?”

“The answer to both of those, Luminary, is the same. I am the Duchess of Lete'yat in Flin, and here I am the Minister of the Keepings and hold the keys to the Archives. Every secreted document, every lost book, everything that the King would prefer a foreigner not to see is within. Would that be helpful to you?”

Polena slid down the door to the floor. Thoughts swam in her head, worry at the thought of going against Coralms wishes, fear that this was some trap, hope at the thought of vindication.

“That would do,” she said at last.

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