“And I will find out,” she said firmly.
I thought she might indeed, for she seemed a very determined woman. I would have told her what she wanted to know if I could. But could I say, yes, it was my own fault, for sometimes I have doubts, and my sisters in sorrow tell me they, too, have doubts. But, so my sisters say, we are not alone in this! Our mothers, siblings, cousins, our dearest friends, they have doubts. Most of those who emerge unscathed from the House Without a Name, they, too, have doubts. Doubts are not peculiar to those who have been maimed, so why … why we? Was our doubt of a particular kind?
More had been maimed lately, so the sisters said. In our great-grandmothers’ time, almost no one was maimed, but now it is more than half! Why? What was happening? The sisterhood argued over this again and again, finding no answer. What does one say? I was guilty of doubting. I did not doubt more than others, or differently from others, but I was selected for punishment. My punishment was particularly horrid because … because of who did it to me …
Lutha was right. There is no rape on Dinadh, but I can imagine it would be as shaming, as cruel as this. In a way, it was like what the two Fastigats were doing to me, questioning me, searching at me, examining me, bending their Fastigat sense upon me. That, too, was rape. They increased my shame and sorrow for no good reason, for they could not learn something I did not know.
It is better to do as the sisters recommend, to say nothing at all, to admit nothing. Let them seek elsewhere, among others for answers. And if they find answers, let them tell me.
A voice from the door.
“Saluez? Are you awake?”
Lutha.
I sat up, pulling my veil into place. “I was up earlier,” I confessed.
“Leelson and Trompe and I’ve been talking,” she said. “We have an offer we wish to make you, in return for your help.”
I had heard nothing of an offer. What offer?
She said, “It’s possible … your face can be fixed. Restored … ”
“No,” I cried, thrusting away with both hands. “No. Do not say that!”
She looked shocked, horrified. “But surely … ”
“I would have to leave Dinadh,” I cried hysterically. “I would have to go away from my people. They would not let me live here if you healed me.”
“But … but I thought … ”
“It was my fault,” I cried. I who had decided to say nothing! I, who knew it was not my fault! “My face is evidence of my sin. Do you think you can erase my sin by healing me? Do you think my people will let me live among them if I am healed!”
She backed away from me in confusion. Leelson came from the study and put his hand on her shoulder. “What?” he demanded.
She turned and led him into the room, shutting the door firmly behind them. And I sat on the edge of my bed and cried. Oh, if I were healed, Shalumn might be mine again. Oh, if I were healed, I would have to go away. Oh, if I were healed, it would change nothing, it would change everything!
After a time I dried my face, straightened my veil, and went to knock upon the closed door.
“I will help you,” I said when they opened it. “But you must not talk of … what you said earlier. Not at all. Not ever!” I could not bear it. It set all my hard-won peace at nothing.
They stared at me, all three of them. The boy was curled on a bench beneath the window, playing with his fingers. They cared, but he did not.
“Why?” asked Leelson. “Why will you help us?”
“You say there is great danger for everyone, perhaps for Dinadh too. Perhaps the outlander ghost found something to avert this danger, so I will help you search for the outlander ghost or for what it was he knew.”
Leelson ran his hands through his hair. He was a handsome man, Leelson. Tall, bright-haired, with one of those rugged, rocky outlander faces that always seem strange to us Dinadhi, who are round-faced and smoother looking. The boy looked something like him. More like him than Lutha. But he had a big-eyed strangeness to him, something I thought I should recognize.