speak with her. And with other women in the silk rooms. Oh, Sallo!" She had always loved my sister best of all the girls. "No, it can't be," she said with more energy. "Of course you're right, Mother Falimer-ío wouldn't allow it. Never. Yaven-dí's Sallo! And little Ris! No, no, no. That suet-headed Falli has got something mixed up. I'll go get this straight right now."
I was used to trusting Iemmer, who generally did get things straight. I went off to the schoolroom and put my young pupils through their drills and recitations. I kept my mind from thinking until the morning was over. I went to the refectory. People were talking, a group of them, men and women. "No," Tan was saying, "I put the horses in myself. He took them off in the closed car, with Hoby and that lout he bought from the Rundas in with them, and himself driving the horses."
"Well, if the Mother let them go, there's no harm in it," Ennumer said in her high vague voice.
"Of course the Mother let them go!" said another woman, but Tan, who was second hostler now, shook his head and said, "They were bundled up like a lot of washing in sacks. I didn't know who they were, even, till Sallo pokes out her head and tries to shout out something. Then Hoby pushes her back into the car like a sack of meal and bang goes the door and off they go at a gallop."
"A prank, like," one of the older men said.
"A prank that'll get Sonny-dí and Twinny into some trouble with Daddy-dí, maybe!" Tan said savagely. He saw me then. His dark eyes locked on mine. "Gav," he said. "You know anything about it? Did Sallo talk to you?"
I shook my head. I couldn't speak.
"Ah, it'll be all right," Tan said, after a moment. "A prank, like uncle said. A damn fool stupid joke. They'll be back this evening."
I stood there with the others, but it was as if everything and everyone moved away from me and I stood alone in a place where there was nothing and no one. I moved through the halls and courts of Arcamand with an emptiness around me. Voices came to me from a distance.
The emptiness closed in and became dark, a low rough roof of black stone, a cave.
"I know things," Sallo said to me. "And I know I know them. We Marsh people, we have our powers!" And she laughed. Her bright eyes shone.
I knew she was dead before they sent for me, before Everra told me. They thought it proper that Everra should be the one to tell me.
An accident, last night, in the pool at the Hot Wells. A sad accident, a terrible thing, Everra said, tears in his eyes.
"An accident," I said.
He said Sallo had been drowned—had drowned, he corrected himself—had drowned, as the young men, who had drunk too much and gone past all decency, were playing with the girls in the pool.
"The pool of warm water," I said, "where there are peacocks on the marble."
Yes, my teacher said, looking up at me with tear-wet eyes. He seemed to me to have a sly, cringing expression, as if he was ashamed of himself for doing something he should not have done but would not confess, like a schoolboy.
"Ris is home," he said, "with the women in the silk rooms. She is in a lamentable state, poor girl. Not injured, but ... It was madness, madness. We know that Torm-dí has always—has always had this frenzy that comes upon him—but to take the girls out of the house! To take them there, among those men! Madness, madness. Oh the shame, the shame, the pity of it, oh, my poor Gavir," and my teacher bowed his grey head before me, hiding his wet eyes and cringing face. "And what will Yaven-dí say!" he cried.
I went through the halls, past the room of the Ancestors, to the library, and sat there a while alone. The emptiness was around me, the silence. I asked Sallo to come to me, but no one came. "Sister," I said aloud, but I could not hear my voice.
Then I thought, and it was perfectly clear to me, that if she had been drowned she would be lying on the floor of the pool of green water warm as blood. If she was not there, where was she? She could not be there, so she could not have been drowned.