“I know,” he murmured sadly. “They told me. As my own mother ended, so did she.”
This gave her pause. You were one of the rescued babies,” she asked wonderingly,
He nodded. “There are a good many of us, reared in Galul, but working either in Haven or among the malghaste in Mahahm-qum. Some of us were looking after you.”
“Looking after me?”
“Um. A footman or two. A coachman. A dressmaker . . .”
She shook her head in wonder. “Enid has Barbara’s child,” she said. “And an old woman named Awhero has my child. And Aufors is gone with the airship.”
“I know, I know.” He thumped her again, between the shoulder blades, making a drumlike sound. “Hear that? You are all hollow in there. You have been crying, and your heart is elsewhere, no? You are worried that Aufors is lost, or even worse? That he may be part of this evil? Yes, I know that feeling of doubt. Well, Aufors has no part of it. I know some of those who are involved. I wish I knew them all, for if I did, we would think of some way to destroy them. Aufors I do know, he is commoner through and through, and he has no wicked aspirations.”
“My father?”
Veswees frowned, shaking his head. “I wish I could tell you he is not, Genevieve. It is true that in Havenor he was so naive that some men joked about it, but since he left Havenor … I don’t know. There was a member of the Tribunal in your group, was there not?”
“Yes. He spent a good deal of time with Father.”
He patted her again. “Then I’m afraid your father was enlightened—if one may call it that. Now. How are you getting along?”
“I don’t know! I’m unsure of everything! While I had Dovidi, I felt quite complete, as though that was all I needed. That must be why some women have babies, over and over. One needn’t worry about being anything else. Being a mother is a marvelous excuse for being nothing else. But with Dovidi gone, I feel like an arrow, shot a long time ago, flying all this time in thin air, carried by my own velocity until now I’ve come down with this great thump, throwing up the dirt, and I have no idea why! I’ve been up here yelling at myself for being so stupid.”
“You yelled very quietly,” he said, pulling her to the opening and pointing away across the desert where the light came closer, larger, breaking into disparate stars. “There is part of the answer. Here come the chieftains of the people of the islands. They come with their warriors and their singers and dancers. Their predecessors were the ones who talked with the depths generations ago. From among them Zenobia, Tenopia, was shot into the air as you were. Perhaps she, too, wondered where her duty lay and what was required of her. Now you may yell at them instead of at yourself. They are coming to hear what you will tell them.”
“About what?” she cried.
“What we are to do,” he replied. “When Zenobia was sent, when Stephanie was sent, the depths told our people that in the fullness of time, Zenobia’s daughters would return and tell us what to do. You are the first of those daughters.”
She simply stared at him. “Veswees, since I was tiny, I have been taken to church and taught to be godly. My earliest lessons told me of my soul and of all I had to do for its sake, the meekness, the submission. I have believed . . . sometimes . . . that I could feel my soul. There were times in my tower when I heard the nightwind, saw the sky, felt the motion of the trees and felt a kind of joy that was . . . huge and marvelous. I told myself I was feeling my soul. Now, now they say that what I felt was no personal me-like thing, but something . . . what?”
“You already know,” he said softly. “You felt something huge and marvelous of which you are part, and in the moments you describe, you forgot yourself for you were one with your world and with the sky above it, and even the stars looking down. There is nothing larger or more wonderful than that. Still, there are those who would prefer self. They will accept any belief, no matter how foolish, if it guarantees them personal immortality. I know people like that. But there are others who know themselves well enough to realize how limiting that is.”