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Talisa Maegyr is twelve years old when her little brother drowns in the river. The worst moment of her life, she will think later, was the moment she turned from her friends to check on him and did not see him. He took something of her with him when he went under, all the warmth in her chest maybe, and sitting on the riverbank she wonders if she would ever have gotten it back.
Later she will wonder how no one noticed; later she will wonder how she found him. The river is crowded with naked bodies of the same brown color, with the same black hair, and they are splashing and playing and dancing and the little boy with the same curly hair as hers should have been invisible. There should have been someone near him, someone who saw him go under. They should have found him first.
Instead, Talisa turns with a laugh on her lips and sees only space where Palaello should be. Her laughter dies and her chest grows cold, and she is pushing through the crowd to where she saw him last. It was only a moment, she thinks. I only took my eyes off him for a moment.
She sees him, she thinks; a small dark shape under the water, unmoving. Every person in the river is between her and that shape; she pushes and shouts and cries at the bodies that block her, crowd her, but still they do not move fast enough. She is closer to her brother, and still so far away. He is likely dead already.
She reaches him, grabs him by the arm and pulls him above the surface. When she sets him down on the riverbank, he is not breathing. He is—he is entirely still, unmoving. How long was he underwater? Was I too slow? How did I not notice? He is not breathing and neither is she; she holds him by the collar and whimpers.
Later she will not remember the hands that shove her aside. She will not remember why she does not fight them, why she stays back while a strange man tackles her brother and breathes into his mouth; but she will be grateful for it. The man presses on Palaello’s chest, one-two-one-two, and pushes the river out of it. Her brother gags, vomits riverwater. Her little brother, who was not breathing, who was dead, is now alive and coughing and breathing in wet gasps. The man brings him to sit, and Talisa rushes at him, weeping. She wraps her arms around her brother and squeezes him tight to her chest, as if she can keep him there forever. He wrestles his little arms out of her grasp to cling to her in turn.
She turns to his rescuer, already blubbering her thanks in teary whimpers and offering any gift in return, anything at all. She stops when she sees the tattoo on his cheek. A fish; the mark of slaves put to work on fishing boats. The mark bends when he smiles, a sad, grieving thing. He had pushed her, to save Palaello; he had laid hands on a noble lady. She holds her brother tighter and sniffles out, "Do you have any family? I could give them a message for you."
He reaches a hand out and gently pats the top of her head. "No, little lady, there is no one to mourn me and nothing to tell them. Do not weep over it; I will not." Pat, pat, heavy and warm and wet with riverwater, like an anointment.
He removes his hand when her older brother and sister arrive and stands back as her mother examines Palaello with frantic hands. Talisa cannot tear her eyes away from him even to tell her father what happened, and so she sees the grim look on his face when someone tells her father what the man has done. This man saved my brother, she wants to cry; what does it matter that he touched a noble lady? He did it to save a noble son. But even as she thinks it she knows it will do no good. He is a slave, and he has broken the law; he can be given no other fate but death.
Later, she will remember his face and the mark upon it in vivid clarity. She will remember his dark, sad eyes, and the slump to his shoulders when his sentence is passed. For the rest of her life, Talisa will remember the weight of his hand on the top of her head and his voice saying, “Do not weep over it; I will not.”
For months, Talisa lurches awake every night and runs to Palaello’s room to check that he is still breathing. When they go outside she clutches his hand so she will not lose him. Once, he grows tired of her and slips away; she weeps for hours, and after that he holds to her side like a burr. She does not speak to her father, for every time she looks at him she remembers the dead slave and his sorrowful eyes. Her mother offers her warm hugs and hot tea in comfort, and it helps, but still she remembers the man and the look in his eyes.
Her older siblings’ attempts at comfort are more endearing than successful. Obaqua interrogates her over a game of cyvasse once a week, likely to keep Mother informed; Palaello experiences the same treatment, though he is rather worse at cyvasse. Malach buys copious amounts of sweets every time he goes to the market and amuses himself by giving more to whichever of his younger siblings is his favorite that day.
Talisa goes about her days as she usually does, which is the worst part about it. Her entire worldview has been knocked askew, but the world is just the same. She is suddenly aware that the law is unfair, that all across the city slaves are being put to death for no reason at all. It has been proven to her that slaves can be the kind of people who give their lives for others, that they can be kind and intelligent and friendly when all her life she has been told that they are little more than animals. That never made sense to her—how could any man be the same as an animal?—but now she knows for certain that it is wrong. And yet, the law remains in place and slaves continue being slaves. It makes her itch.
She goes to the red temple for nightfires and lets the call and response of prayer drown out her thoughts. In the dark of night, surrounded by singing and chanting and warmth, she can almost imagine the firelight as R’hllor’s embrace. The red priests with their fiery tattoos have begun to welcome her by name when she finally works up the courage to speak to one.
The red priests are slaves, but they are allowed to walk among noblefolk and preach to them, and they are respected as the chosen of R’hllor. Many of them have travelled far and wide to spread the faith and study all its forms; they speak in tongues and tell stories of far off lands. The sick and the wounded are usually taken to the red temple for healing. If anyone would know how that man saved her brother, a red priest knows it.
The priestess understands what she speaks of almost immediately. There are many ways to revive the dead, she says, but this is the most common; pressure against the chest, in rhythm, and blowing air into the mouth. These mimic the heartbeat and breathing of a living person, and remind the body how to function. It’s very simple, she says, and teaches Talisa how to bring back the dead.
Talisa comes back the next day and asks to learn more. The woman chuckles and tells her to come to the temple after the dawn fire, and just like that Talisa is a healer in training. She tells her mother she is learning to save lives and goes to the red temple every morning and listens carefully as Elesaen teaches her about wound cleaning and stitching and herbs and poultices and a thousand other things. When Elesaen deems her ready, she lets Talisa help with patients; mostly the sick and one or two with broken bones, but once when she is barely thirteen they receive five men with bleeding wounds and Talisa gets to clean them and stitch them closed and bandage them. It’s sort of like sewing, only much more bloody.
That evening, when she comes home hours late covered in blood, Obaqua finally pins her down and asks her why. They’re in the baths, both of them working together to scrub the blood off of her hands and arms. Obaqua scowls at Talisa’s arm as if it’s offended her, though the cloth in her hands moves with careful softness. She does not say a word, which means that when she finally opens her mouth she will say quite a few of them.
Talisa picks at her nails. “It’s not as if I’ve hurt anyone,” she says, hoping to interrupt the oncoming monologue. “They are all better off than when I found them.”
Obaqua huffs. “They had better be,” she mutters, glaring darkly at her washcloth and saying nothing more.
The blood under Talisa’s nails has dried in chunks. She sighs. “Are you angry with me?”
The cloth stops moving. Talisa keeps her gaze lowered to her nails, at least half because she wants her sister to feel bad. “No, love, I am not angry. Only—” Obaqua huffs and pulls the cloth away, still gripping Talisa’s arm. “I don’t understand. You have never shown interest in anything all your life, yet now you spend half of every day in the temple learning to heal. Is it because of what happened to Palaello? Do you worry it may happen again, and you will be able to do nothing?”
Talisa snorts and takes the cloth from her sister. “If I did, I would not turn to medicine for comfort; perhaps I would learn to swim or watch my brother all his days.”
“Then why?” Obaqua reaches to snatch the cloth back, and for a time they distract themselves with tussling and splashing. When they finally settle, Obaqua looks at her expectantly, even as she is still clearly smug from winning.
“Palaello was not the one who died that day,” Talisa says, dropping her head back against the rim of the bath. Obaqua breathes in deeply, but does not interrupt. “The man who saved him—a slave with the mark of the fish. He pushed me aside to revive Palaello, and Father had him killed for it. For touching me.”
For a while, the only sound is splashing as Obaqua scrubs and thinks. Finally, she says, “It offends you that he was killed.”
Talisa jerks her head up to stare at her sister. “Of course it offends me that the man who saved my brother’s life was killed for touching me! Should it not?”
“It does not offend Father,” Obaqua notes, “nor Mother. I doubt Palaello has given it thought, though likely it would not offend him either.”
“And you?”
Obaqua breathes deeply. “I do not like anything that offends my little sister. But the law is the law, and he knew the consequences for breaking it.”
Talisa clenches her fists, and knows her sister sees it. “But he only did it to save Palaello! Should he not have been pardoned for that at least?”
“If he were to go unpunished,” Obaqua says evenly, “it might appear that the law can be bent, and others might wonder how far. It may seem harsh, but it is necessary to keep them in their place.”
Talisa grabs the cloth and stands with a splash. “And why should they be kept in place?” she retorts, ignoring the way her sister’s eyes widen to step from the tub and begin drying herself off. “Perhaps there should be no places at all, as in Braavos.”
Her sister gasps, standing quickly and reaching to grab Talisa’s arm. “Surely you don’t mean that! Talisa, tell me you do not mean to make us as low as them.”
She yanks her arm out of her sister’s grip. “If anything, I mean to make them as high as us.”
“There is no difference, Talisa! You would have the Old Blood and the blood of slaves mix, and sully us in the doing. Talisa—”
Talisa pulls a dressing gown over her damp skin, ties it with still-bloody hands, and flees from the room. Obaqua sighs behind her, the same sound she made when a young Talisa tried to place her hand in a fire, having been told that it was dangerous and not understanding. It seems so obvious now which of them was right, but Talisa had been so very certain that her sister was being unreasonable, right up until she finally managed to touch the fire.
Obaqua had been angry, then, and frightened. She made Talisa promise to listen to her always, even when her instructions seemed foolish, and Talisa had agreed without hesitation. Obaqua is older and knows better, even when Talisa is certain of her own way.
It is a hard thing to remind herself of when the man who saved her brother’s life is dead for touching her.
In the morning, Talisa goes again to the Red Temple and Elesaen and begs for a way to leave the city. She doesn’t care where, as long as it is not in Slaver’s Bay.