The Ordinary Read Online Free

the wagons reached the city, the sun was nearly down. A guide who spoke Anin had been waiting for them at the gate, one of Malin’s people, who informed them that Malin was in the high north country and would not be meeting them tonight or for the next few days. The guide took the delegation to rooms in a stone house in lower Montajhena to wait.
    â€œWhen will Queen Malin return?” Tarma asked, in badly spoken Anin, when the guide was handing the party over to functionaries in the house. She had been seething ever since she learned the guide was taking her to lodgings and not to a reception or a welcome dinner.
    â€œMalin is not a queen,” the fellow answered, and one could see he was offended. His accent was thick and unfamiliar to Jedda. The staff was unloading the baggage from the wagons, taking everything inside. “She’s in the north with Irion and will return as soon as she can.” The guide bowed and withdrew. Tarma looked at the rest of the delegates, and Jedda could tell she was even angrier now. But there were Erejhen all around, so she said nothing.
    Jedda took a room as far from the others as possible, hoping for privacy while she was here. It had come as a surprise to her that there was country farther north; Opit had never mentioned it. When the porter was conducting her to her room, she tried to ask him the question, “What is the name of the place north of this city?” in her best Erejhen. She and the porter had been talking about the city, how cold it was this time of year, and he seemed to follow her speech pretty well.
    But as soon as she asked the question, he looked puzzled. “Whatever there is,” he said, and waved his hand in that direction, opened her door and let her enter.
    Her room was comfortable, the floor covered with carpets, the walls layered with tapestries, some of the beautiful weaves she had begun to collect in her tiny apartment in distant Nadi, the city where she lived. She fingered the fine weavings, threads as supple as anything she had ever seen, all made of vegetable fibers or fibers from the fur of animals, colors rich, often hypnotic. Scenes of forest life, populated with familiar and unfamiliar creatures. But here, in this room, she was struck by the largest of the tapestries along the inner wall, for the scene depicted was one she had seen before.
    A huge canvas of fabric like the one in Evess years ago depicted an old stone fortress built, as the northern people liked to build, high in a mountain crevasse, a thin road leading to the structure across a causeway. On this tapestry, the structure stood on a spurlike rock, surrounded by the sea. This had to be the same fortress, the same scene she had seen on the tapestry in Evess. Over the rock and the waves rose one of the towers, the high places, this one bursting into light and cracking apart, beneath fields of gray clouds, a storm, huddled figures on a road, what looked like soldiers. A script ran along the edge, similar to the Erejhen she knew, but unreadable, unwilling to resolve itself into words.
    A knock on the door proved to be Himmer, stat in hand, telling her Tarma wanted them all to come to her room for a meeting. “And my stat’s not working,” he added, “fine time for that,” shaking the thing.
    Tarma was waiting with her stat on her belt, ready to work, like all the others. Melda was checking her stat, the same expression as Himmer.
    When Vitter entered the room, Tarma pounced on him. “I thought your Ministry told me this was all arranged, this visit was expected.”
    â€œWe are expected,” Vitter said, looking at the rest of us for support. “They’re welcoming us with open arms, I’d say.”
    â€œIf this woman knew we were coming, why did she run off north somewhere? And tell me, Vitter, what is there north of here? Your people in Interior swear there’s nothing beyond these mountains.”
    â€œWe don’t know of