“Yet even this you ignored!” An-Hadrea said. “It was more important to keep taking stone and spices than to listen, and so when the spirits acted out, people died.”
“The earthquake,” Tain said, frowning as he looked between them. “You mean the earthquake at Sabir Quarry?”
“That is only the most recent. Earthquakes, floods, collapses, rains that never come where they are needed, fields that will no longer grow anything but scatterburr. The Maiso grows fiercer each year, and drier, but no matter how he howls a warning with his breath, he is not heeded. Each year it grows worse. The Families closed their ears. They did not care. They treated our warnings as the foolish squalls of children, for that is how they see us now.”
I avoided eye contact with Tain. An-Hadrea watched me with unblinking scrutiny, waiting for a chance to attack, and I had no wish to appear skeptical of the claims. Whether the cause of the natural disasters was supernatural or not—and the strangeness of my encounter with the Speaker aside, I doubted any such thing existed—it hardly mattered; the land could be abused by overuse either way.
“I know this is a lot to understand, all at once, if you have never heard it before,” Salvea said gently, as if reading my mind. “But tah and honor are the backbone of our very culture. Without respect for our culture, it became harder to live a balanced life. We are told we may not have public shrines, because visiting Credolen see them as rubbish marring the landscape. Some of our most important rituals we are no longer allowed to perform out in the natural world where they belong, because it is said they make people who are not Darfri uncomfortable. We are given no chances to connect to the secondworld. My daughter, who might have been a very strong Speaker in my great-grandmother’s time, has been denied that connection. Do you see? Our children are being denied their very birthright as people of this land.”
“I can see.” Tain crossed his arms over his chest, hands tucked under his armpits and head sagging, like an embarrassed child receiving a deserved lecture. And we did deserve it. Only a few weeks ago we had sailed past lands and raised a lazy hand to people working in the fields. They had looked healthy enough, and had waved back, so nothing had challenged my basic assumption that an oppressed people would look thin and cowed and starving.
“I’ve kno—well, I’ve been told that my uncle was trying to do something about this. That he was meeting with elders and pressuring the other Families.”
She sighed. “It is true. In fact I met the Chancellor, weeks ago, and his sincerity struck me. He did not deflect or defend, but listened. It is why I am here. I had hoped to prevent all this.”
“Was he just too late? After all these years, how did it turn into a rebellion?”
“Ah. Well. There has been quiet talk for years. Many grandmothers whispering tales into headstrong young folks’ ears, about what we lost, and who was to blame. But it is a big country, and we are scattered. I do not think anyone truly imagined all the estates coming together like that. But then there were some things that changed it all. First, the travelers.”
I leaned forward, blood pounding in my ears. We had always been sure the rebellion was aided by someone external. Were we at last to know who? The Doranites? A western allegiance?
“They came in wagons but traveled off the main roads, avoiding the main estates, coming into the villages. They had peddlers, healers, and priests. And they took our hospitality, and returned it with kindness and good trading. They were so charming, you understand. They listened to our stories.”
“Who were they?” Tain asked, a hint of intensity in his voice. “Where were they from?”
“All sorts of places,” Salvea said. Il-Davior, visibly bored, climbed down off her lap and started drawing patterns in the dust and dirt scattered on the tiles. She stroked his curls absently with one hand. “All colors and shapes, they were. Many from other lands, though some claimed to be Sjon who had abandoned a life of excess in the cities, or quit the army.” She shrugged one shoulder eloquently. “They said we were not alone, that they had heard the same tales all over the country. That the hardworking people of this country were being left behind, kept fat and compliant on the slops of the cities like animals. People listened.” She smoothed her hair back from her brow and I was struck by her poise and calm.
“In truth, they merely said aloud what many had been thinking. It gave us kinship with people on the other side of the country, to know the same things happened there. And it gave strength and courage to those who had already whispered romantic fantasies of taking the cities back from the oppressors. Once those ideas were planted, they were easily fertilized.
“And all the while, the damage to the secondworld grew even worse. Some spirits, the stronger ones, were angry, yes, and lashed out. A sudden flood, a blight that destroyed six fields of crops overnight, a cave collapse. These spirits are strong enough to punish us. But the younger spirits and the ones in quieter, lonelier places, they did not have the strength to reach out to us in that way. Without offerings, and without balance, they have…” Salvea broke off, for the first time seemingly too emotional to continue.
“They’re dead,” An-Hadrea supplied, and the comforting hand on her mother’s shoulder quivered with rage. “You are murdering the very spirits of the land. There could be no greater betrayal of the Compact. Ask yourselves why the people should not tear down this shining place you have built on the shoulders of suffering. You spit on the traditions that formed this country, you kill our souls and then eat and laugh and dance and gamble all the way to hell. You—”
“Please calm yourself, Hadrea,” Salvea said. She took her daughter’s shaking hand and squeezed it. “You are upsetting Davi.”
The small boy was in fact staring up at his sister, wide-eyed, though to my eye he looked more interested than upset, channeling a child’s uncanny ability to blissfully ignore adult conversation unless and until you wished them to. Still, An-Hadrea took a breath and smiled down at Il-Davior. “Are you all right, poppet?” she asked him.
“Ye-es,” he said with an indignant huff, then went back to his game. The brief interlude had given Salvea a moment to regain her composure, but it did nothing to improve mine; a dark and hollow feeling inside me had taken root and was spreading through my whole body. If the country people of our land believed our abuse had literally killed their spirits, how could we possibly get them to ever negotiate with us at all? How could we overcome anger that must run to their very hearts and souls? I didn’t have to believe spirits existed to understand how people who did would feel about their apparent demise.
“Even after this, when plans for an uprising were murmured in the shadows, some of us tried to raise our complaints peacefully. Please understand that, Honored Chancellor. We were heartbroken, but we still believed that the right thing to do was to bring a case against the Families. From Losi we sent representatives to Moncasta to bring a case to the determination council there. But they demanded forms and papers that we did not have and could not complete, and they told us our relationship with the Families was outside their business. Private affairs, they said. We paid for a scribe in the city to send a message to the Chancellor but heard nothing back.”
“But my uncle found out eventually,” Tain said.