“You're probably not related to her, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I don't know who my mother was. She was a wizard, and probably not from Setuaznu or Niluri or anywhere in between, but my father never talks about her.”

---

Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes

by Trismegistus Shandy

Part 11 of 22

---

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Feel free to repost or mirror it on any noncommercial site or list. You can also create derivative works, including adaptations to other media, or new stories using the same setting, characters and so forth, as long as you mention and point to the original story.

An earlier version of this novel was serialized on the tg_fiction mailing list from December 2010 to March 2011. Thanks to the people who posted comments on that draft.

---

By the time Launuru awoke, all the other women had gone downstairs for breakfast. She rose and began getting dressed — and was immediately reminded of what had happened during the night, when she saw a long strand of grey hair tied around her wrist.

“Terasina?” she asked in a whisper. “Are you still here?”

“You don't need to speak aloud,” came Terasina's voice.

“Can you hear me like this?” Launuru thought.

“Yes.”

“What are we going to do? You said you could protect me from — from your husband — ”

“No longer; death ends marriage. I can protect you from Psavian's magic.”

“But what about this geas?” Now that she thought about it, she could see what Terasina had meant — her continual postponement of telling Tsavila or Verentsu who she was must be due to a spell; she wouldn't act that way normally, but she knew she still couldn't tell them, even knowing the real reason for her previous diffidence.

“I will break it when the time comes. To break it too soon would alert Psavian to my presence. Best, perhaps, if I make him think that removing it was his idea.”

“Oh... should I tell anyone about you?”

“No. Go down to breakfast, speak as much with Verentsu as you can and as much as politeness dictates with others. We may not be able to speak like this once you leave this room; the strand of my hair might help or might not.”

She did as she was bid, hoping the ghost knew what she was doing. She had heard a few stories about people ridden by ghosts; many of them ended badly, but by no means all.

Before getting dressed, she had to figure out what to do with the strand of Terasina's hair; she couldn't leave it on her wrist. After some experimentation, she figured out a secure way to tie it around her bandeau, in the narrow space between her breasts. There it would be covered by her dress and, if she'd knotted it securely enough, unlikely to get lost.

She couldn't help acting a little nervous, though, with Psavian there at the table, knowing that he knew who she was and had put another geas on her. In the course of chatting with Verentsu about the arrangements for their trip to Tialem, she noticed him suddenly frown slightly, but couldn't figure out what he was upset about. Something she'd inadvertently reminded him of? He changed the subject, asking her more about her family; she recounted as much as she could remember of the cover story Kazmina had taught her, but some of his questions touched on points where she couldn't remember if Kazmina had said anything, and she had to make something up. This didn't do anything for her peace of mind.

After a while — long after he had finished eating, and some little while after she had finished as well — he rose and left the dining hall, saying he had to see to the remainder of the packing. Launuru went upstairs to the bedroom she'd slept in, and found Tsavila, with one of the maidservants, packing a few more clothes in another bag.

“My cousin and I have just a few things here,” she said. “Shall I take them down to the carriage...?”

“Oh, no,” Tsavila said. “Here, Kurevila, let's put Shalasan and Kazmina's things in this bag, there's plenty of room for them. There. Kurevila will put them in whichever carriage you're riding in — ”

“Verentsu said that Kazmina and I would be in a carriage with him and one of the servants, I think.”

“Good. I'll be teleporting with Father and Itsulanu and his parents and sister, in a few minutes — I ran up here to pack a few more things I just thought of I might need. They can only teleport one person with them, and going back and forth twice in one day will tire them out a bit, so everyone else and all our luggage has to go in the carriages — I hope you don't mind.”

“Oh, no. We've traveled under much rougher conditions recently.”

“Good. I'll see you tonight...” With that, Tsavila rushed out, followed by Kurevila. Launuru followed, more slowly, but lost them before she got to the bottom of the stairs. She walked through the house among among the bustle of people rushing here and there with bags and boxes, and found Kazmina, who was in the parlor talking with Lentsina.

“Verentsu said we'd ride with him,” she said in Tuaznu. “Did I tell you that already?”

“No,” Kazmina said. “How did he get away with that...?”

“There'll be a servant in the carriage too, he said — I suppose one of the older ones Psavian trusts to chaperon us.”

“I figured it wouldn't be that easy. We'll have to find a chance for you to talk with him or Tsavila tonight, or sometime tomorrow.”

Lentsina spoke up in Ksiluri: “Have you seen Tsavila?”

“She was upstairs packing some things — last I saw her she was heading down here to look for you, I thought. Or, probably, to stow some more luggage and then find you...”

“No hurry, I suppose.”

Lentsina and Kazmina resumed their Rekhim conversation, and Launuru wandered out of the parlor, looking for someone else to talk to or ask how she could help with the preparations. She found Nuasila emerging from the garderobe.

“You could go out in the back garden,” she suggested in reply to Launuru's question; “help me keep an eye on the children while their parents finish packing and loading.” Thus she passed an agreeable half hour with Nuasila and her little nieces and nephew until Verentsu came to summon them to the carriages. In all that time she was too busy to think of the ghost, or the geas, or anything.

---

Not long after Psavian left them, Kazmina lost track of her father as well. She spent some time looking for him, asking various passersby where he was, and finally found Launuru.

“There you are,” she said. “Have you seen my father?”

“No,” Launuru said.

“Come on, I need to change you back into a man before it's too late — ”

“But I don't want to change back into a man.”

“Oh. Do you want to marry Verentsu, then? I don't think his father will let you — ”

“Oh, no. I'm going to be Psavian's concubine.”

“What? You can't want that... you must be under another geas...!”

“Yes, we're both under the same geas now; isn't it fun?”

One nightmare followed another, it seemed, until she woke up while it was still almost entirely dark. She sat up and looked around; it looked like Tsavila, Launuru and Tsaikuno were all asleep, and she didn't hear any talking or commotion in the rest of the house, so after using the chamberpot, she lay down again and tried to go back to sleep. But sleep wouldn't come, so when she started hearing distant voices and footsteps, she got up, dressed, and went downstairs.

None of the other wizards were awake yet, only Verentsu and the servants. Remembering that he knew a little Tuaznu, she tried asking him if she could get something to eat. He conveyed her request to the cook, and soon she was sitting down to a copious breakfast. Under pressure, he proved himself more competent with Tuaznu than she'd thought, though far from fluent — she'd have to be careful, if she wanted to have a private conversation with Launuru, to make sure he wasn't in earshot.

When the others came downstairs, she didn't have any time to talk privately with Tsavila or Launuru; Itsulanu and his parents came down scarcely later than Tsavila, and Launuru, of course, was busy talking with Verentsu during most of breakfast. When Psavian came down, he asked her if she could clearly remember the meeting with her father.

“I think so,” she said. “The other dreams before and after that have faded, but I remember meeting my father, and what we talked about.” She didn't want to say more than that in front of the other wizards.

“Good,” he said, blinking blearily. “I haven't linked three people's dreams at once very often, and some people react to it differently than others. How did you perceive our meeting places?”

“We met at an inn,” she said, thinking; “then we were in a garden by the edge of a lake, and then we were up on a mountain, and something was burning nearby, but you and Daddy didn't seem scared, so I wasn't.”

“Good, very consistent,” he said. “I've been working on that.”

But mostly, during breakfast and for some while afterward, she talked with Lentsina, who wanted to talk about her family. Lentsina's paternal grandmother had been from northern Setuaznu, and she wanted to figure out if they were related. They discussed Kazmina's paternal ancestry during breakfast, then, after they moved to the parlor — Kazmina had wanted to talk to Launuru or Tsavila, but they'd disappeared when she wasn't looking — Lentsina, having failed to find a connection that way, asked her about her mother.

“I don't know,” she replied, annoyed. “You're probably not related to her, either.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I don't know who my mother was. She was a wizard, and probably not from Setuaznu or Niluri or anywhere in between, but my father never talks about her.”

“Really... But there aren't that many wizards; we all know each other, directly or indirectly. If no one knows who she was, why do you think she was a wizard?”

“Because my father told me she was. He's never said much else, but he insisted on that. And... My father did a lot of traveling, before I was born and when I was a baby. Not just around Setuaznu and the civilized countries where the wizards are organized and have regular meetings, but in the Islands and east of Mezinakh and south of Maresh. He came home to Vmanashi with me seventeen years ago. He told people I was his daughter, but never said who my mother was, and he said — ”

Just then Launuru came in.

“Verentsu said we'd ride with him,” she said in Tuaznu. “Did I tell you that already?”

“No,” Kazmina said. “How did he get away with that...?”

“There'll be a servant in the carriage too, he said — I suppose one of the older ones Psavian trusts to chaperon us.”

“I figured it wouldn't be that easy. We'll have to find a chance for you to talk with him or Tsavila tonight, or sometime tomorrow.” But what to do about the geas? Until they could break it, she'd actually have to try to keep Launuru from being alone with Verentsu or Tsavila too much — the fewer opportunities she had to talk with them, the less likely the geas was to strain her mind with more and more contrived rationalizations for why she shouldn't tell them who she was just yet...

Lentsina said something in Ksiluri then, and Launuru replied; a few moments later she left the room.

“Where were we?” Kazmina asked.

“You were telling me about your father's return from his voyaging in foreign countries,” Lentsina suggested.

“Oh, right. Well, he came home with me, a baby just learning to walk, and he didn't tell anyone who my mother was, but he said there were wizards out there in the barbarian lands too, and though they didn't speak proper Rekhim, they knew a few things we didn't. And it was a couple of years later that he discovered the new transformation spells that he's famous for. He never said exactly, but I think he probably learned things from the barbarian wizards — maybe from my mother or her family — that led to him making those discoveries.”

“Oh,” Lentsina said. “I'd heard some of that, but not nearly all. I knew he wasn't at the conclave before last, but not everyone comes to every conclave, for various reasons...”

“A lot of us won't be at the next one,” Kazmina said. “I'll be surprised if the war is over by then, and most of the wizards in Setuaznu are serving one of the armies in one way or another.”

“Hmm,” Lentsina said. “It seems as though we ought to be able to do something about that; we shouldn't let mundane politics interfere with wizardly business, certainly not with a conclave.”

“What would you do to prevent it?” Kazmina asked, incredulous.

“We could make the first order of business of the conclave deciding what to do about the war in your country. If the conclave picks a monarch, and says that no wizard may help his enemies, then adjourns for a month or two while all the wizards help whichever one we select, the war would be over soon and all the wizards from Setuaznu could attend the remainder of the conclave.”

Kazmina was furious, but tried to stay calm. “I think you'll find it's not that simple. If a bunch of foreign wizards try to interfere, probably several of our factions — maybe all of them — will unite against you. An open war among wizards would be a lot worse than a civil war where wizards are helping different armies in specific ways allowed by the Compact.”

Lentsina was silent for a few moments, then changed the subject, saying “What interesting things have you seen since you've been in our country? Did you come straight to Psavian's house on arriving here in Nilepsan?”

So Kazmina told her about the things Launuru had shown her the day after they arrived, and Lentsina suggested some other interesting things they could go see after the wedding. They heard intermittent voices from the rest of the house, but nothing loud or near enough to distinguish. A couple of times one of the servants looked into the room and quickly went out again. A quarter of an hour later Psavian entered the parlor with Tsavila. “We're ready,” he said; “Omutsanu will be here in a moment, I think.”

“Good,” said Lentsina. “Where are Itsulanu and Tsaikuno?”

“With their father.” Indeed, the other wizards entered the room soon afterward.

Omutsanu was saying something to his children in Ksiluri, and got brief replies. Tsavila looked at Kazmina as though she wanted badly to say something to her, but couldn't say it in front of others.

“We're about to go,” Lentsina said to Kazmina, rising. “Omutsanu and I will teleport Psavian and Tsavila to the other house, then we'll come back as soon as we can for our children. That will be as much teleporting as we can easily manage in one day, I'm afraid — I think they've made provision for you to ride in one of the carriages?”

“Yes,” said Kazmina, “Verentsu has arranged it.”

“We'll see you tonight, then.” She took Tsavila's hand in hers, and Omutsanu took Psavian's; a few moments later, with no more chanting or gesturing than Kazmina or her father needed when transforming someone, they vanished.

“Tsaikuno and I will wait here for Mother and Father to return,” Itsulanu said. “You needn't wait with us — they may not return until after the rest of you leave.”

Even as he spoke, Verentsu entered the room. He said something in Ksiluri, and Itsulanu translated: “He says it's time to go.”

“Very well,” Kazmina said. “I'll see you tonight.” She followed Verentsu, who cast curious sidelong glances at her as he led her, not toward the front door and the carriage drive as she expected, but to the back door onto the garden.

Launuru was there with Nuasila, playing with Tsavila's nieces and nephew. Verentsu called out something in Ksiluri, and Nuasila and Launuru started rounding up the children. Launuru took Paukuno's hand and led her toward the door.

“We're ready, then?” she asked in Tuaznu.

“So it seems.”

With three small children in tow, they made their way to the front door and out to the carriage drive. The children's mothers called out to them, and the children ran to meet them at the door of the second carriage. Verentsu said something to Launuru, which she translated: “He says we'll be in the front carriage, there.”

Though Verentsu had said they were ready to go, it was another quarter or third of an hour before they actually started moving. Verentsu was in and out of the carriage twice, speaking with the driver, the stable-hands, and the other servants, apologizing to the women for the delay. They were joined after a few minutes by Verentsu's old nurse, a woman about Psavian's age or a little older. She and Launuru exchanged a few words, but Launuru didn't think it important enough to translate, and Kazmina didn't ask. She wondered what Tsavila had wanted to tell her, if she'd read her look correctly. Hopefully it could wait until they arrived at the country estate.

---

After she returned the children to their mothers and Verentsu helped her and Kazmina into the carriage, Launuru finally had a moment to catch her breath. She tried talking silently to Terasina, but couldn't hear any reply. Perhaps the strand of hair wasn't enough, with her being away from the room where she had died? She tried again intermittently until Verentsu helped another woman into the carriage, introducing her as Kansikuno, his old nurse. He then dashed off somewhere to see after some last-minute business with the horses or luggage.

“If you won't think me forward to say so, Miss,” Kansikuno said, “I think the young master is quite taken with you.”

“Oh,” said Launuru. “He's been a very gracious host...”

“It's more than that, if I'm not mistaken. I've been with them since Iantsemu was a babe in arms, and I know the difference between young Verentsu being polite to a young lady, and him being partial to her.”

“Do you think so?” That was gratifying to hear from an independent and knowledgeable witness; she'd begun to hope that he was beginning to love her as she already loved him, but this morning during breakfast he'd seemed to grow a little cooler toward her. “Is he betrothed to anyone, or, um...” He hadn't been when Launuru was sent into exile, but a lot could happen in six months.

“No, certainly not betrothed, and if he's been seeing a girl secretly, he's kept it quiet better than his brothers ever did.”

A few minutes later, after poking his head in twice more to apologize for the delay, Verentsu climbed into the carriage with them and closed the door behind him. “We're finally going,” he said, with an exhausted smile. Indeed, moments later the carriage started moving.

Until they were well out of the city, their motion was slow and intermittent, as their driver competed (fiercely, to judge from the cries they heard) with other drivers and riders for passage through the streets. It was a busy day, Launuru judged, looking out the window. The other traffic was mostly going toward the arena and the river, while they were going against it, southwest toward Tsaumaru's Gate and the road to Tialem.

“Are the streets more crowded today than usual?” she asked Verentsu.

“I think so,” he said. “There's a tsekiva game today — not a holy game, just a match between the Tsantuan traders and the Jewelers' Guild. I'm not sure that accounts for all the extra traffic; possibly a ship with a much sought-after cargo has just come up the river and people are swarming to the Market-on-the-Wharf, but I've been busy preparing for my sister's wedding — I haven't heard about everything going on in the city.”

She occasionally exchanged a few words with Kazmina, but mostly talked with Verentsu. She had worried that Verentsu had cooled toward her, that she'd said something to offend him during breakfast, but now he was all solicitude again, frequently asking whether she was comfortable, or wanted another cushion, whether there was anything he could ask the cook to prepare for her tonight... She wondered at what Terasina had said, that Tsavila already knew who she was and that Verentsu would find out soon, in spite of the geas. Had Kazmina told Tsavila, or had she figured it out for herself? Or been told by her mother's ghost? Surely, if Tsavila knew, she would tell her brother as soon as she could...? And yet neither of them had said anything directly to her about it... of course Tsavila had been unable to speak with her alone, and for Verentsu it would be harder still to speak with her unchaperoned.

After more talk about the tsekiva games, he turned the conversation to her past. Now that Terasina had told her about the geas, she could feel its pressure on her mind as she formulated her answers; she tried to keep the lies to a minimum, focusing on the few points of overlap between her true history and “Shalasan's” fictive history, and she tried to return his throw, asking him about his own past; but she found herself unable to deliberately give him any hints to her identity.

If he knew or suspected her identity, did he also know of his father's geas on her? And why, if he knew, was he spending so much time asking her about a made-up history? No, he couldn't know yet.

After more than two hours, they passed through Tsaumaru's Gate. A mile further south, the road passed through another market like the Market-outside-the-Walls near the academy; Launuru wasn't sure what this one was called. She looked out the window. There was a small crowd of people around a raised platform like the one they had borrowed from the labor agent in the Market-outside-the-Walls; at the center of the platform stood a tall naked man, his hands manacled, and to his left a slightly shorter man in a tunic of bright colors and a feathered hat, haranguing the crowd. Off to the right there were a cluster of other people, some in chains, others bearing swords.

Verentsu drew the curtains. “Let us keep them closed for a while,” he suggested. “The things going on today in the Heatherfield Market are apt to be unpleasant, especially for ladies.”

Launuru had seen a couple of slave auctions before, most recently when Lord Enkavian died with no heirs and the crown sold his slaves and other movable property at the Market-outside-the-Walls two years ago; each slave in turn was stripped before the crowd of bidders, and they were commanded to demonstrate specialized skills or feats of strength, or, failing that, to do something arbitrary and humiliating to demonstrate subservience. The masters of the Academy forbade the students to go anywhere near the Market on the day of the auction, but Launuru and Verentsu had snuck out anyway, and watched it with horrified fascination; she wasn't sure if it was worth the beating and extra chores they got when they were caught sneaking back in.

Kazmina had seen enough before Verentsu drew the curtain to know what was going on. “Even before we abolished slavery,” she said with a supercilious air, “our slave auctions were more conducted in a seemly fashion.”

Launuru was puzzled; she was sure he'd seen slaves in his travels through Setuaznu. Kazmina had said something about her father freeing his slaves recently, but when was slavery abolished there? Probably during this revolution that had apparently been going on around him while he was too geas-obsessed to pay attention. She felt she should defend her country's laws and customs, although she had no personal stake in the matter — her father's father had given the few slaves he owned to his cousin when the edict forbidding them inside the city walls was published, and her mother's family in Netafri had been too poor to own slaves. But she found that she couldn't say what first came to mind — was the geas blocking her? She sat looking foolish with her mouth half open.

But Verentsu had, it seemed, understood. “I apologize of the ugly thing,” he said in Tuaznu, and suddenly Launuru knew why the geas wouldn't let her reply to Kazmina in her own persona. “Whether I may say, of defending, this...” He faltered, hunting for a word, and came up with “...selling is of happening rarely? One keeps slaves in the same family, of the custom...”

Launuru spoke up, having figured out how she could work around the geas. “My father explained it to me when we lived in Nesantsai,” she said in Tuaznu, speaking slowly and clearly. “Here a family of slaves is inherited by a family of masters, one generation after another; slaves are only sold when a family dies out.”

“It's still horrible,” Kazmina insisted.

Launuru said nothing more on the subject; she wasn't sure what aspect of the auction Kazmina objected to, and found that the geas wouldn't let her ask openly, since it was the sort of thing “Shalasan” should already know. After this, there was an awkward silence that lasted until they reached an inn eight or ten miles beyond the Heatherfield Market. Iantsemu and Psilina's carriage had already arrived, and the other two carriages arrived soon afterward.

---

The full novel is already available from Lulu.com. I'm serializing it here in twenty-two parts, at least one chapter per week if I can manage it.

I've recently started working on a new story, in the same setting as "Butterflies are the Gentlest"; I've written 12,600 words of it so far, and I'm guessing it will be a novella or short novel. If it's far enough along, or especially if it's finished, by the time I finish serializing Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes, I may start serializing it immediately afterward.