Read The Go-Between (The Nilaruna Cycles Book 1) Online
Authors: Andrea Ring
The Go-Between (The Nilaruna Cycles Book 1) (2 page)
So Maja is not responsible. If he’s telling me the truth, though I
think he is. I can usually tell when someone’s lying, and he’s not lying. But
then…I tried to kill him!
Nilaruna starts to shake with the
remembrance of her deeds.
“I understand why you thought I
was to blame for Nishta’s death,” I say. “The tales of what I am capable of
have obviously grown over the cycles. Once upon a time, a Go-Between’s death
would not have been attributed to me.”
“There are no tales,” she says.
I cock my head. “What do you mean
by that?”
“Exactly what I said. Think about
it — Dabani’s only link to you is the Go-Betweens. The ritual words claim
that I must pass on my knowledge of you to the next Go-Between, but that hasn’t
been done in almost twenty cycles.”
“Why not?” I demand. “Every
Go-Between has sworn it!”
“But…I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
Nilaruna growls in frustration.
“Twenty-two Go-Betweens in nineteen cycles. Most of them didn’t last a full
cycle. You had to know this.”
“Of course I knew this. I’m not
blind. I know when a new Go-Between arrives. I simply thought…”
I sense her eyes on me again.
“What did you think happened to
all of them?” Nilaruna asks me gently.
I shrug helplessly in the dark. “Marriage…or
family hardship…the only two reasons a Go-Between can end her duties.”
“You forgot the most important
reason,” she whispers in the dark. “Death.”
***
Twenty-two Go-Betweens have died in my service.
Twenty-two young girls have lost
their lives serving me.
It cannot be.
“How do you know this?” I ask.
“It is well-known,” she says.
“High Priest Sanji keeps records. He makes us memorize all he learns.”
“Tell me.”
Nilaruna sits back down on the
cushion and stretches out her legs.
“There isn’t much to tell. We
take the oath not to confide in anyone, so there is very little known about our
interactions with you.”
“Then what did he have you
memorize?” I say.
She grimaces. “Their names. How
they died.”
“Tell me,” I repeat.
Nilaruna leans back on her arms.
“Ruth was the first to be released from service by death.”
“Ruthie,” I whisper. “She loved a
boy. I assumed they married. How?”
She nods. “They were engaged.
Happy, by all accounts. On the eve of her thirtieth visit to you, the two
quarreled. No one knows what it was about. He pushed her down a flight of
stairs and broke her neck.”
“No,” I whisper.
She nods again.
“But the boy…he was a gentle
farmer’s son. Never spoke a harsh word to her. How can that be?”
“My mother says we all have a
dark side,” Nilaruna says. “Padma was next, released from service when her
father slit her throat.”
“What?!”
“He claimed to catch her in the
hay with one of the warrior caste.”
“Never!” I say.
“Arpita was strangled in her
sleep. They never caught who did it. Kalima—”
“Stop.”
“—took a fever, and died
three days later with a strange rash across her chest.”
“Stop!”
Nilaruna freezes in place as my
magic hits her. I release her just as quickly.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Truly. But
no more.”
She ducks her head and takes a
deep breath. “I am the one who should apologize. I’m reciting a list in my
head, of people who meant nothing to me, but you knew them. You knew them all.”
“Yes.”
“It sounds as though you cared
for them.”
“Many of them,” I say. “Most.
All, even. Nishta I knew the least, but I still mourn her. I have missed the
others, but I did not realize I should have been mourning them as well.”
We lapse into a weighted silence.
I want to enter Nilaruna’s mind again, but I fear the images there.
“Can I ask you another question?”
she says.
“Of course.”
“If you could enter their minds,
why did you not know what happened to them?”
“There is a boundary, the far
side of the Swifty. My powers do not cross it.”
“So once I’m across, you will not
know my thoughts?” she asks.
I smile. “No.”
She blows out a breath. “Good.”
We both laugh, and our mood
lightens a bit.
“So what’s next?” she asks.
I un-hunch my shoulders and sit
up straight. “I train you. Beginning with protocol and the courtesies.”
Nilaruna snorts again.
“I think we can dispense with that,”
she says. “I tried to kill you. We’re past all the niceties.”
“Are we truly?” I say.
She ducks her head, and her hair
covers the left side of her face. A practiced gesture.
“I’m sorry for the way I’ve
behaved, Maja. I seem…I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I volunteered for
this position moons before Nishta’s death. It meant something important to me.
And when Nishta died…a murderous seed was planted in my chest, and it grew so
large that my heart withered. I didn’t care about my duty. I didn’t care about
you, or Dabani. I only wanted revenge.”
“She was your friend?” I ask.
Nilaruna nods. “Not my best
friend. She was much younger than I am, and I am not allowed…knowing I would
one day replace her, my father and the high priest allowed a few visits. So,
yes. We became friends.”
“She had a tender spirit,” I say.
“Too tender,” she says. “She
hated the climb up here. She was terrified of the Swifty. And she thought you
hated her.”
“What? Why?”
Nilaruna shrugs. “She wasn’t supposed
to speak of it, of course, but I bullied her. She said that you were stiff and
formal and not good at conversation.”
“Probably true,” I say. “But I
don’t recall us ever trying to have a conversation.”
“She was traditional. Never spoke
to a man unless spoken to first. I don’t think she’d ever been alone with a man
before you.”
I frown at that. Poor Nishta.
“You were obviously not raised
the same way.”
She laughs long and loud, and
swipes her eyes. “Do not let my father hear you say that. He’d skin me alive.”
“So you have an independent
spirit,” I say. “The best trait for a Go-Between.”
“Truly?” she asks, hope filling
her eyes as she raises them in my direction.
“Truly. So tell me. Why did you
volunteer to become the Go-Between?”
Nilaruna shifts on the cushion,
leaning forward and curling her legs underneath her. “Why does anyone
volunteer? To help the village, of course.”
I narrow my eyes at her, though
she cannot see me. “There is no need to lie to me. I can read your thoughts.”
She stiffens. “Then you already
know.”
“I said I can, but I haven’t
taken your thoughts on this. I’m asking you to share them with me.”
“Not yet,” she whispers.
I enter her mind.
I trust him now, but not with this. I don’t trust anyone with this.
Someday, maybe, but it’s too soon. I can’t…
“Your secrets are safe with me,”
I say. “I have no one to tell them to.”
“But you would know,” she says
simply.
I sigh, but silently. “Enough. We
need not speak of such intimate things as secrets on our first meeting. You
have already given me an immeasurable gift.”
She lifts her head. “I have?”
“Yes. You have treated me as a
human being, not as a god on high. I value that more than I can express.”
“Well, I’ve spoken with a god
before, and I didn’t see much point in deference then, either.”
“That is rare,” I say, scratching
my chest thoughtfully. “Which one?”
“Shiva.”
I gasp. “The destroyer? You don’t
do anything by halves, do you?”
Nilaruna shrugs. “He destroyed, I
yelled, he remade me. Not that exciting.”
Except that the hands she wrings in
her lap tremble violently, belying her words.
“Tell me more about Nishta,” I
say, trying to direct her thoughts elsewhere. “Why did she volunteer for this
position?”
She blows out a loud breath. “Her
father had begun to arrange her marriage to Vrishin, one of the merchant lords.
Nishta panicked and volunteered for Go-Between instead.”
“But service does not prevent
marriage,” I say.
Nilaruna turns her face from me.
“We all knew the pattern, Maja,” she says. “Nishta knew what was coming.”
***
I stand up and pace along the back wall of the cave.
Nishta came here to die. That is
why she didn’t fight for her life.
Nishta thought the end was
inevitable. And preferable.
I am a suicide mission.
How many of the girls knew, or at
least suspected? How long did it take anyone to see this dark pattern? I, who
was closest to it and best equipped to surmise, did not.
Twenty-two girls…sweet girls, shy
girls, strong girls, young girls. And Nilaruna, number twenty-three…
“Did you come here to die?” I ask
woodenly.
Nilaruna’s face is still turned
away. She slowly shakes her head and turns it in my direction.
“Not exactly,” she says
carefully. “I don’t wish to kill myself. But it doesn’t frighten me.” She rubs
her eyes hard with the heels of her hands. “But serving as Go-Between was
preferable to my other choices.”
“What do you mean, preferable?” I
demand.
“I don’t have…the men of Dabani
are not beating down my father’s door. There is no trade that will take me. I
played the flute when I was younger, and I was good, very good, but after the…I
cannot purse my lips properly to make a sound.” Nilaruna lets out a growl of
frustration. “People cross to the other side of the road when I approach! Babes
in their mothers’ arms cringe from me! My own parents won’t look me in the eye!
I have nothing to live for!” She glares in my direction, chest heaving.
“But you were not born this way,”
I say.
“You think that matters? It
doesn’t. Broken is broken.”
I have known this homely creature
for no more than two hours. Yet her pain stirs my own.
“I do not want you to die,” I
say.
“You are the only one.”
“I understand of what you speak.
I am an outsider as well.”
“Yes,” she says with a laugh. “We
have each other, right? The cripple and the old man. We are all that stands
between Dabani and evil.”
“You scoff,” I say, “but it is
the truth.”
“I feel sorry for Dabani for the
first time in a long time.”
“Nilaruna,” I say, and she turns
that green eye on me, and I swear it sees into the heart of me. “Please. Do not
give in. Your life can change for the better in the blink of an eye.”
She frowns but doesn’t say
anything.
“Let me tell you a story.”
***
“But independence always comes
with a price, and one day the king found the mare coupling with a common plow
horse. The king was so enraged that he cut the plow horse’s head off himself,
before the coupling had even finished, and quickly locked the mare up in a pen
of her own. It soon became apparent that she was with child.
“Penned up as she was, the mare
grew frustrated, then angry, then despondent. She refused to eat anything but
the apples she herself could reach from the ground near the fence. Her
once-beautiful body grew thin, even while her belly swelled fat. The king’s
stableman tried to get the king to allow the mare to once again roam the fields
around the castle, but the king refused. He couldn’t bear another taint upon
his prize.
“Finally, a colt was born. Black
as night he was, skinny as a blade of grass and not much more stable in a
strong wind. The king wanted to send him to the fields to work, but the mare
was fiercely protective. No one could come near him, her beloved colt.
“So they drugged the water in her
trough. And when both colt and mare were passed out, the stableman and his
assistants took the colt away and sold him to a nearby village. It took the
mare one week to die of grief.
“The colt understood little of
what had happened to him, except that life took a frightful turn. For two moons
he had sheltered in his mother’s love, and then suddenly he had not a friend in
the world. He was beaten and made to work. He ate rotten apple cores and
mildewing oats. Even the water he was given tasted of piss and mosquito eggs.