The Ordinary by Jim Grimsley
When she opened her eyes, the putter had reached a bit of traffic, a congestion close to a bridge that led across the river. A settlement had taken over this side of the river, an extension of the walled city across the bridge, toward which the putter was apparently heading. Many of the houses nearest the road looked like normal Anin roundhouses, a style of dwelling that became more prevalent as one left the more populous southern lands. Farther from the road were other structures with a look of the Hormling about them, maybe factories or small power plants. She got a better look at them as the putter glided onto the bridge, and decided that at least one of them was a power plant, another likely a depot for river shipping. Were the Hormling gone from all these places? She could see people, but not well enough to know what kind. What city was this that had outgrown its ancient walls, stone-built houses and structures climbing the gradual incline of land on the opposite shore, almost to the horizon?
“Are we going to the Little House?” asked the companion.
“Yes,” Karsa answered.
“What a delight.”
“The Little House?” Jedda asked, stirring and smiling.
“Welcome back to the day.” Karsa inclined her head. “The Little House is a place we use for lodging when we’re in Telyar. This city is Telyar. We’ll rest here tonight. The house is very, very old, and was designed by the most famous of architects of the old days, Ithambotl.”
“You say you use the house. Who owns it?”
“Irion,” Karsa said, very simply.
Jedda herself betrayed no surprise. The mention of the name no longer struck her as odd. A few days ago she had been debating his existence with Himmer and Vitter, and now she was staying at his house in Telyar. A thrill of anticipation filled her though she kept her face as still as a card sharp.
“Have you traveled here before?” Kethen asked, his voice pleasant, with an edge of music to every tone, his words accented in a way that Jedda was beginning to hear.
“To Telyar? Once. For the spring weaving festival. We came upriver by boat.”
“I’ve never been to the festival.”
“There are excellent weavers here,” Jedda said, “even as far south as this. Winter is for weaving.” This was supposedly a saying in the northern country, where the winter was harsh.
“You sold our cloth as a trade?” Kethen asked.
“Yes. And dabbled in other things.”
“I’ve heard your world considers our fabrics to be very luxurious. This always strikes me as odd.”
“Your fabrics come from natural products, from plants and insect casings and furs. Ours are derived mostly from artificial sources. There’s a certain snobbery in owning a fabric that is completely organic. Or having a nice wool rug for one’s home. Especially when a person can point to it and brag about its uniqueness.”
Karsa was paying close attention; her companion had cleared the side window for sightseeing, as the putter drifted across the bridge, past the river docks, and through the gatehouses.
“Given that there are so many of you,” Kethen continued, “I often wonder that even more of you didn’t come through the gate when it was open.”
“You are being humorous?” Jedda asked. “Your people requested very tight restrictions on our access, and we agreed.”
“But where there is money to be made,” Kethen said, “one expects more greedy hands, I suppose.”
“Many, many of my own people choose to live on the minimum, or to take whatever post the ministries offer, or the Factions, or to live in other ways.”
“The minimum?”
“Any Hormling is entitled to food and shelter under certain conditions,” Jedda said. “One earns money for the luxuries. Like a home of one’s own, out of the public crèches.”
“Here, a person must work,” Kethen said.
“So you think, I suppose. But I’ve seen many a bum on the streets of Charnos, and in the backstreets of New Evess.” She glanced out the window at the narrow street, the facades of stone buildings pressing close, people, Anin and Erejhen, squeezing past and glaring at the putter, which moved slowly forward. “How long has New Evess been new, anyway?”
The question startled him, so that Jedda wondered whether she had phrased it properly. He glanced at Karsa. “History was never my subject.”
“A few thousand years,” Karsa’s companion answered, sleepily, having dimmed the window and reclined again. “Most of them under the Old Sky.”
“We should be coming to the turn, I think,” said Karsa, craning her neck to look out through Kethen’s side. “Old King’s Road runs up the rise, and the Little House is near the end.”
“You’ve been here before?” Kethen asked.
Karsa answered complacently, “Several times, with the Lady.” So Jedda concluded from this that Karsa was older in Malin’s service, Kethen younger, perhaps less trusted.
In the back, as if a timer had gone off, Arvith sat abruptly awake and looked around. He appeared to recognize the road at once.
The city took over Jedda’s interest, while Kethen and Karsa discussed plans for the morning. The streets nearer the gate-house had a commercial look, perhaps a district where the professionals kept their offices, including jurists, law clerks, the better class of merchants and importers, offices of the provincial and national government. She read signs for Ivin son of Daegerle, Jurist at large, and another for Bothe daughter of Mag, Agent of the Charnos Guild, a neat, square stone building with gardens on the three sides that Jedda could see. Farther down the slope, toward the river, she saw a gash in the outer wall, wide enough that she could see the grime of the docks beyond, rows of flat barges tied to a stone quay. The gash in the wall had turned into a kind of garden, the rubble and piled stones since filled with earth and decayed matter; she saw types of the elgerath vine and a stone path leading across to the docks through the breach. Karsa said, “That’s from the Long War. In the days when we were apt to fight each other.”
Kethen smiled at that remark in the most peculiar, almost predatory, way.
The Old King’s Road grew wider as the putter progressed along it, and the houses swelled from modest stone or dried-brick cottages to mansions with extensive ground-holdings, gardens and lawns strung out in front and on either side. Farther along the houses became walled estates, and near the top of the slope the putter turned into gates carved in the likenesses of animals, graceful horned animals with slender, sharp-hoofed legs, curved necks, and handsome, slender heads. Jedda would have guessed deer, one of the mythical animals that was supposed to have come from Earth, which one occasionally saw in civic zoos or wildlife conservatories. The carvings were of a pale blue stone veined with darker purples and lavenders, very beautiful.
“Say the name again,” Jedda asked.
“Shom Shali,” Karsa answered. Her hand had drifted to her companion’s, their fingers lightly laced. For a moment, Jedda imagined she heard singing, soft music, in the cab of the putter. Karsa repeated the name without the slight prefix of sound indicating a name; nearly any Erejhen name, said in such a way, took on some sort of meaning in the language, in this case, “Homely Haven,” or something close to that. The words could also be mixed with other prefixes for other meanings; one of the permutations of the phrase in that case was, “We shall rest easily.”
“The Lady calls it the Little House. She comes here for Chanii. Do you know Chanii?”
“Yes, the holiday at the dead of winter.”
“Telyar is the city closest to Old Genfel. The festival here is very beautiful; the Lady herself often comes to join the remembering.”
The putter proceeded along a lane of tall evergreen shrubs which led to a wide park scattered with old deciduous trees, perhaps oaks, at least some of them. The park had an effect of wilderness, and climbed to a crest of the ridge on which sat a house of pale pink stone, a roof of dark brown terra-cotta half-cylinders, the house broad, unimposing except in detail, hardly anything to get excited about, as far as she could
“It was built to resemble a country house, in the northern style, in the days of King Falamar. But it was always a city house, though there’s a lot of land with it, and you can hardly hear the city at all. I’ve been told it’s a very special place to Lord Irion, that it belonged to a childhood friend.”
“Have you ever met him?”
“Lord Irion? No.” She shook her head. Something in her tone led Jedda to ask no more questions.
The putter parked, everyone got out. Arvith dealt with Jedda’s luggage, so she stretched her legs for a while in the park, watching the others from a distance. After a while another putter pulled up, and Jedda had the feeling it had been following them, or had been close by, through the day. The passengers appeared to be either friends or aides of Kethen, Karsa, and Karsa’s companion. Jedda wandered awhile in the garden, keeping her eye on Arvith, so that when he came to the edge of the park and simply waited there, she guessed he wanted to speak to her.
“I’ve put your smaller trunk in your room. We’ll leave the larger in the putter. Do you want to rest for a while before dinner, or bathe, or would you like me to show you the house?”
“Could you? I’d like to wash my face and then I’d love to get a tour.”
When he bowed his head, the loose skin at his neck flattened and spread out. “I’ll show you where your room is.” She made out that much of what he was saying; the rest she failed to translate, still puzzling at Arvith’s accent, which was different from other Erejhen accents.
In her pleasant room, large and appointed with old, heavy furniture, she splashed water on her face at the basin-table, noticing that the cool liquid brought a feeling of freshness to her, soaking her skin a bit. As before, she was adjusting easily to the habits this world forced onto her, bathing in unpurified liquid, walking in parks. Arvith had packed her hydrator conveniently at the top; did her skin look dry? Had he guessed she would need it? The lotion spread cool, with a bit of tingle after the water.
The room was old; she could feel the weight of the stones on her. Every wall was made of stone perfectly joined without a hint of mortar, the stones left with as much of their natural shape as possible. The furniture was a heavy, dark wood, carved in very spare, clean lines, decorated with simple geometric shapes. She ran her palm along the top of the headboard, the wood lightly oiled. Why did this room feel different? She had read enough about architecture to wonder, was this spare, clean, nearly unadorned feeling a good example of the older houses? Or was it a matter of simple taste?
If this is Irion’s house, then is this Irion’s taste? Is he a person of clean, spare lines?
Like Malin, came the thought, along with a flood of warmth that surprised Jedda, caught her off guard.
Arvith led her through the mansion and she studied the house with this question floating about her head. Arvith was a good guide, with some knowledge of the place, though also with comfortable limits to what he knew; had he proven to be an expert in the history of Shom Shali, Jedda would have become as suspicious of him as she already was of the others. He explained first that the house was based on a typical estate house in a city called Kendrum, the oldest city in Erejhen history, much older than Telyar or any place in the south. Kendrum lay north, in the forest, deserted; but as it was the first city the Erejhen ever settled, it provided the models for much of old architecture, like this house. Shom Shali had a center house and two side houses, a pattern followed on the estates of the Erejhen nobility in Kendrum. The center house was called the living house, the side house on the north was the guesthouse, and the side house on the south was the merry house, a combination kitchen, great hall, and playroom, where most entertaining was carried out. Guests in traditional houses would rarely have entered the living house, being kept in the guesthouse and fed in the merry house.
The merry house of Shom Shali had a large library, along with several parlors, a pair fitted out for smoking of some kind, another with a glass jar full of dried leaves. “Himmel?” she asked.
Arvith nodded. “You may help yourself. Anything left out in the merry house is fair game for guests.”
She took a leaf and chewed it with some relish, slowly. He watched her without expression, but said, “A wonderful tree, that one. But the himmel habit can be hard to break, for those of us who are not Prin.”
“Should I be careful?” she asked, euphoria spreading through her again, a slow, delicious wave. “In my world, our stat devices would keep me from having any unwanted addiction.”
“In your world, I suppose, many strange things are possible.”
“But in your world, I think, there are much stranger things than I have ever thought of.”
He gave her a mild, slow blink, and started to turn away.
“Do you know why I’m here?” she asked.
For a moment she was afraid the question would not suffice to stop him, but it did.
“There’s no one for me to translate for,” she said. “Why am I going to Arroth?”
He kept his face partly turned away and considered his answer in that slow way of his. “You’re here because Lady Malin asked that you come here.” But something about the tension in his shoulders, the stiff line of his back, made Jedda suspect he knew more.
“You told me Kethen would be with me. Did you not know that Karsa would come, too?”
“The fact is not surprising,” he said. “I know what I can know.”
“Have you ever met Lord Irion?” She asked on impulse, but when no answer followed immediately, she felt a tingle.
When he finally spoke he was turning toward her. “Yes, I’ve met him. I’ve served both him and the Lady Malin for a very long time.”
“She herself asked you to come with me, to bring me here?”
“Yes.” No hesitation that time, none at all.
The answer pleased Jedda unduly. She refused to think further. “That still doesn’t tell me why I’m wanted here.”
“Maybe no one trusts the others,” Arvith said. “Maybe because she trusts no one.” He could no longer bring himself to meet her eye. “But feels something from you.”
“Has she said this to you?”
Not a change on his face, not a hint of emotion. “I know her well, as I’ve said. Are you ready to see the living house?”
As though he sensed her agitation, he kept a running line of dry tour-guide stuff, pointing out the carved colonnade leading from the merry house to the living house, the stone worked by Ithambotl’s daughter and son; he spoke of the difference between furniture built in the Old Style, the type that Jedda had been admiring, to the fashions of later periods and even one or two examples from the Tervan; he described the layout and function of a living house, the rooms opening onto a central courtyard, in this case three stories of open balconies looking down onto a lush interior garden, ferns and moss and rocks and running water, a stream bubbling up at the top of an outcropping of rock, flowing down to a pool, a fountain built to look like something found in a forest or on a mountain; the whole three floors covered with a sweet-scented vine, currently at the end of bloom, covered with lavender flowers the size of the end of Jedda’s finger. “The flowering vine is weltelwalla, and there are three other vines worked through it, three types of elgerath, which you probably know since it grows everywhere. One or another of the strands is usually in bloom.”
He was standing at the edge of the pool of water, listening to the sound of the stream coming down the rocks. She could tell he was listening by the expression on his face; something about this place had warmed his manner. A willow grew on the far side of the summit, crooked branches bare of leaf. She walked there, and found a pair o
“Her name was Brun,” said Arvith, quietly walking behind her. “Your friend’s namesake, perhaps. She was a hero in the Long War. A friend of the Lord Irion when he was a boy. This is her husband beside her, not Chorval but the commoner she married; I can’t remember his name. But you probably don’t know who Chorval is?” He smiled at himself, shook his head. “We have a story for everything, a name for every place. The point to understand here is that Shom Shali belonged to her, to her family, which was Finru, the line of nobility that included the Anin houses. The Lord Irion bought the estate during the settlement after the war.”
“There are times when you all speak of this war as if it were yesterday.”
He gave her no answer but led her into the library, remarking that he had noticed her face light up at the sight of the books in the merry house. “The older volumes here are Irion’s, the newer Malin’s. Lady Brun had a large library in her day, but most of it was lost during the chaos.”
“Had she no family left herself after the war?”
“She had no children. This is the more common choice among us; most women don’t. Those who do tend to have large families.”
“Interesting.”
“She came from an old Anin family that died out in the war. The old noble families that did survive were still important, but less so as time went on. What matters these days is rank within the Prin.”
Jedda wandered among the books, inhaling the scent of the paper, the bindings. Books existed in her own world, though a person only bought one, and scanned into it whatever he or she wanted to read. A person might buy a bound copy of a book that was precious, but such an extravagance as this, to stand among so many volumes, was unimaginable.
Oh, she thought, to sit here for a month or two, reading.