Lhind the Spy

by Sherwood Smith

  “That butterfly robe is exquisite. I will wear it tomorrow,” I said.

  Everybody bowed.

  “We will finish restoring it for the Imperial Princess,” Tay said.

  “It looks perfect to me.”

  With extreme circumlocution and many more bows they gave me to know that the finishing was not perfect, and this robe must be perfect. We all retired, I to look for the first time at the workmanship on these silken clothes that, beautiful as they were, symbolized everything wrong in my life. No hem visible. Inner and outer layers had been joined and turned inward by some kind of tiny stitching I had no name for. Every detail was exact, right down to the weave.

  I doused the light and so commenced another restless night of music-laced dreams underscored by an urgency that translated into my chasing butterflies that receded as fast as I ran.

  o0o

  I woke with the little boy Mor on my mind. No, it was his father, and the way he had apologized right and left to his neighbors.

  After I got ready for the day I said to Kal, “Are there thieves here?”

  He was so startled that for a moment he forgot all the bowing. “Thieves, Your Imperial Serenity?” he repeated with a glance at the walls as if he expected thieves to leap from the windows or crawl out from behind the porcelain stove.

  “In the town,” I said. “People carried their coins in the open.”

  “Such a tendency to take what does not belong to one must be corrected early, Your Imperial Serenity,” Kal said earnestly.

  Back to the fais again.

  “What kind of magic is in fais?” I asked. “I know you can communicate with yours, and you mentioned some being able to correct children. What else are they used for?”

  “If the Imperial Princess will forgive me, I would point out that imperial fais can do those things and much more.” His hand gestured briefly toward my throat.

  “I have an imperial fais?” I stared in blank surprise. My assumption had been that Dhes-Andis had Geric Lendan slap a punitive one on me, with that transfer spell loaded on it.

  “The imperial fais is the most difficult to make, Your Imperial Serenity. From the birth of an imperial child the mages begin adding the necessary magic in advance of the child gaining responsibility.”

  “You mean someone was busy making this thing since I was born?”

  “The Imperial Princess is correct.”

  “But mine doesn’t tor . . . uh, correct, does it? Does it do anything?” Besides ward me from escape?

  Another flicker of surprise, then with the usual long circumlocution required by imperial etiquette I learned that the fais spells were so shaped that first a child would touch fingers to it—one, two, three, four—or tap, or brush, for certain specific responses to specific people. Once they learned it, they only had to think the taps or brushes for it to respond. In a limited way it was a bit like how I was learning to shape my magic.

  Kal taught me various signs and signals, including correction. When I experimented with a tap and his fais sign, he blinked. He had no reaction—for him this was apparently life as usual—but I was astonished that my fais hadn’t been warded in that regard, the way it warded me from transforming.

  As soon as Kal was done, I withdrew to my bedroom and experimented on myself. I found within two tries (one briefly excruciating) that yes, I had the power of correction. Since I did not believe anything Dhes-Andis did was accidental, the import seemed sinister in the extreme.

  I remembered him encouraging me to blast Prince Geric and his minions with fire, when first he taught me that spell as I stood on the rooftops at Fara Bay trying to find a way to rescue Hlanan. I was certain that I was warded against actually attacking Dhes-Andis (witness his response to my desperate attempt to use voice cast against him), though apparently he was quite willing to permit me to experiment with “correction” on others.

  This thought I found so disturbing I reacted in my usual way: I ran.

  Humans have two ways of dealing with threat, danger, disturbances—fight or flight. My way has always been flight, for preference. Even when I have to fight, I use what I can to interfere with the attacker so that I can escape.

  I had to get away now. Fill my mind with something else. I had a free day ahead of me (unless I got the Call of Doom) before that dance so I decided to visit the town again and see if I could discern ordinary people using fais for something besides correction.

  But when I reached the parade court, I found a cluster of beautifully dressed Chosen waiting as lizardrake carts were brought.

  As soon as they saw me they bowed, their pretty chiming voices uttering words of welcome. Ingras and Pelan being among them, I suspected how much truth lay behind that welcome and was going to pass on by when they clamored for me to join them.

  They could call another cart—they would be honored—I must see Venar’s home on Seaforth Mountain, for it was even older than Icecrest. It was the prospect of getting away as well as seeing something new that changed my mind.

  I didn’t perceive how they decided who would get into which of the two carts, partly because of the usual bowing and stylized hand gesturing, but also because I was intrigued by my first close view of a lizardrake. The closest pair gazed past us as if they did not really see us. It was not at all like meeting the eyes of the great gryphs, but it disturbed me in a different way.

  I was glad to find myself in the first cart with Venar, who close up seemed about forty, her eyes lined at the corners. Naisan, the one male of the group, appeared to be a young cousin or nephew not much older than Nill back in Alezand. Naisan sat backward with Venar so that I could face forward. They might not have felt any more friendly toward me than Ingras, but at least I hadn’t heard them say anything nasty, and so we whiled the ride in nothing-talk (prettily done, of course) as the cart progressed onto the windswept ridge above the town.

  The road was made of close-fit stone. Midway between the mountains the ridge had broken centuries before and had been spanned with a spectacular bridge that afforded a view down into a tumbled chasm that was now full of icicles on both sides. I wondered what it would look like when the waters melted; the thought of still being a prisoner in spring and summer chilled me more thoroughly than the frigid air.

  When we’d crossed the bridge, the road led up in switchbacks to a round building of pale stone with the familiar lancet windows, their edges blurred by hundreds of years of wind.

  Except for those familiar windows and the pale stone (juts of which could be seen scattered here and there on rocky cliffs and ridges) this building was altogether different than the palace, profoundly simpler, sturdy as if bracing against the eternal icy winds. Built by the Sveranji, Seaforth had been known as Kribinsi, as Skyreach had once been Vesjin. “But that was the old language, before we became civilized.”

  Venar took me around the walls, which gave a full circle view of the island: Icecrest towering skyward at the north end, dominating land, sea, and sky, and in the south, the great conical mountain brooding hazily in the distance down the spine of the long peninsula. Below to the west, the town I’d begun to explore, and on the east side, a harbor, with a fleet of warships riding bare-poled in the bay. On the slopes above the bay, more terracing for farming.

  Inside, my attention caught on the trees. These were not trained into exact symmetry as were those in the palace, but permitted to grow as they would, reaching up to touch their leaves against the high glass dome above.

  This semblance of forest caused me to ask, “Where are the roots?”

  Venar’s smile and lifted hands answered before she said, “An ancient mystery. These inside gardens were popular long before the island united into the present empire.”

  Shortly thereafter it became apparent that a sizable storm was on its way, so we climbed back into the carts and headed back over the ridge as the winds began to rise, moaning warningly over the escarpments.

  Brief, dramatic rays of golden sunlight lanced across the sea ligh
ting the tops of the waves in gray-green and striking the eastern side of the palace so that it glowed like an ice carving. It was breathtakingly beautiful, and evanescent: by the time we reached the parade ground, the oncoming storm had doused what was left of the light and even I shivered, wishing I’d thought to get a cloak.

  Scarcely had I stepped inside when a servant said that His Imperial Serenity awaited me.

  Fear made me fast. I reached the Garden Lair to find him surrounded by cats. He appeared to be in a benign mood; he said he was pleased to see me consorting with my relations, encouraged me to enjoy the dance in my honor, then said, “We will explore the fire spell further, but let us essay a different direction, equally useful. You know how to infuse an object such as a Fire Stick with heat. I want you to attempt to remove the heat from water.”

  If it had been anyone else, I would have said, “Just put it outside!”

  But the mere thought of joking with him made my nerves flare with alarm. I knew I would never trust him, and as he indicated a waiting pail of steaming water, it occurred to me that he did not trust me either. Once again I wondered how long I would be a prisoner—how long I would last as me.

  Or what I would be turned into.

  At first I could not concentrate. Again and again he made me send heat into the water, and then pull it out again, until I began again with my thumb and forefinger pin-hole. Clumsy and obvious as it was, it worked.

  I was light-headed from the effort when he finally released me, after praising me for my effort as well as my success. Relief I could live with; the treacherous sense of pleasure I squashed hard as I wobbled back to my lair to a dinner of parched almonds, nut cakes, cheese, and some preserved berries.

  Then it was time to get ready.

  I, who love to dance, had been to only five aristocratic balls in Erev-li-Erval, at which the dancing was done in patterns of circle or line, at so sedate a pace that I’d felt I was walking rather than dancing.

  Much more fun had been a festival dance during my brief stint as a theater illusion mage, before I’d fallen violently in love with a handsome rotter who collected hearts as conveniences. I’d been frightened when one of the stage managers tried to get me to “Do that on stage”—it was then that I learned that not everybody had the light step of a person half-bird. Not that I knew then that I was half-bird.

  More fun than that had been the village and town dances I’d seen—and sometimes slipped into if it was crowded enough—throughout the kingdoms I’d wandered. A month or so before I met Hlanan I’d sneaked into a wild wedding among dock folk in Tu Jhan so that I could raid the refreshments table and perhaps thieve something against future meals. But I’d had so much fun flinging myself into the whirl that I couldn’t bring myself to rob them, and I’d ended up whirling on my toes as people clapped around me, laughing and cheering. I’d laughed and cheered because—even if for barely a sand-glass of time—I belonged.

  I expected that this dance was going to fall under the stiffly boring court category, and so my expectations were low when I slipped on the cool, slithery silk of the midnight blue under-robe, and then the gorgeous butterfly robe. Last, the dancing slippers I’d never worn. Actual diamonds winked and glittered along the tops of the slippers.

  Amney greeted me at the door, even more beautiful than the last time I’d seen her, dressed in palest blue and pure white, with gold embroidery in delicately rendered snowflakes. She conducted me to a dais, where I was seated on the second finest cushion, the emperor’s sitting empty as usual. I was placed at his right. Everything with the outward signs of honor, but she turned away immediately to engage Raifas in conversation.

  The guests arrived in a sedate stream, each crossing the room to bow to me and utter a formal greeting before moving on to talk to each other. Raifas arrived with two fellows whose names I’d forgotten, and right on their heels, Ingras and Pelan.

  Darus arrived and, like the others, approached to greet me first. After the usual formal palaver I had to test that impression from earlier, and led with a question meant to show that I was not completely ignorant. “Darus,” I said. “Are you named for Vandarus Andis?”

  “Obliquely, Your Imperial Serenity.” He bowed and moved away.

  Amney stepped between us and gestured with her fingers in a little circle, her voice sweet. “The old forms were triple-syllables. Everything was done in threes back then. These days those long names are considered pretentious, and more syllables than three vulgar in their ostentation.”

  Like Elenderi?

  “There is elegance in simplicity,” she said in that silver-sweet voice. “The Chosen confine themselves to two, which is enough to differentiate from those who serve, who from long tradition are given personal names of one syllable.” She bowed and smiled as if she hadn’t just called me pretentious, vulgar, and ostentatious, and added winsomely, “We shall begin if you will honor us with your august favor.”

  I bowed. She turned away and joined her friends. Musicians hidden among the complication of vaulting overhead struck up with sweet woodwinds, cymbals, and then strings. Everything appeared to be centered around me, a hollow mockery of an honor because it was very clear that they all knew what to do, and I was left to sit and watch.

  And Amney, with her smiling insults, had arranged it all deliberately.

  Not that I cared what they thought of me. I hated them all, and their emperor the worst of them.

  The courtiers began forming up into triangles of pairs, except for Pelan. I wondered if she was the lowest ranking of the bunch as she scudded my way, looking dutiful rather than pleased when she said, “It would be my honor to explain the Shadow Dance to you, Your Imperial Serenity. It is our oldest, its origin actually lost in time. The Chosen have begun formal dances with it since the empire was first made. . . .”

  As she spoke, the musical prelude gave way to syncopated triplets, counterpoint rhythms marked by little hand drums and clashing cymbals. Pelan might have meant well. At least she’d never been rude, but her painstaking description of the twirls, step-two-threes and robe-flaring hops faded from my notice when I saw the pattern. The dance was a millennia-old galliard only with six steps instead of five. The couples in threes met and parted, tassel-kicked and posed, whirled and leaped, changing partners all around the triangles as they mirrored each other.

  Then they stopped, turned, and when the musicians shifted half a step up minor to major they began again in reverse. That was not at all like the courtly galliard I’d seen in Charas al Kherval.

  The Shadow dance was actually two dances, in mirror. The sixes wove in and out, in and out, exchanging places so that the triangles formed a large triangle that moved to all cardinal points before returning to the place they started, at which time the musicians took the melody up half a chord and began again a little faster. As Pelan counted out the beats that I began to anticipate, the entire dance, turnabout-and-shadow, wove through a third round before it finally ended.

  They bowed and talked, and I was left with this odd sense that something was missing. But none of them seemed to think so.

  Pelan bowed to me, asked if I were satisfied in a way that I suspected she hoped would be answered with a yes. The moment I assented she scudded off to join the next dance, and so sat alone in the place of honor utterly ignored as they danced and flirted and smiled and talked, always in that graceful studied stylish motion and tone.

  As that dance ended and another began, and another, the sick sensation inside me began to kindle into anger. I sat there with a knot of rage behind my ribs as I mentally caressed that fais and imagined striking the supercilious hauteur from Darus with a lightning bolt of pain. Then I imagined the poisonously sweet Amney lying on the floor like a crushed insect after a jolt of white heat to the midsection.

  One by one I thought them all to the floor in smoking, quivering ruin as I stepped past in my beautiful butterfly robe that should be dancing right now to that tantalizing waterfall of triplets.

  I c
ame so very close: If one of them dared come up to insult me in those pretty words and gestures, maybe I’d even do it, ha ha.

  But they ignored me until the music at last came to an end, they all bowed low to me. Oh yes. I had to leave first. Quivering with humiliation I bowed, walked out, and retreated to my solitary existence, surrounded by twelve silent servants.

  And sleep evaded me, as mercilessly and inexorably as ever. I tossed and turned, until my mind slipped into that half-dream state in which that old harp melody played over and over, and as the dream world slowly formed around me, a blue figure emerged, sighing, “Oh, Elenn, my heart’s dear, you are not alone. But the dream realm is chancy, even dangerous. You must go to the harp.”

  “The harp?” I repeated, and the reminder of something real dissolved the dream around me.

  I lost the dream, and the voice, but an image lingered past my waking: that small blue figure, a silver-haired babe on her lap as she sat at the harp carved with birds.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I lay there clammy and trembling, that image so intense it had to be more than mere dream fancy.

  I nearly swung out of my hammock, but fell back, remembering that my least movement alerted the duty servant. Who probably reported to Dhes-Andis. Most of what I did was innocuous enough, but I had a feeling a midnight trip to the music room wouldn’t be seen that way.

  I considered that. My fear had been that the harp’s peculiar effect on me was a sneaky plot by Dhes-Andis. In which case, he would want me to go there and play the music.

  Elenn . . . Eh-LENN, a soft exhalation, almost a sigh, tenderly caressing.

  I knew that sound, somewhere way back in memory, before I could speak. Elenn . . . Lhind.

  For the first time I let myself consider that the Blue Lady was no figment of my imagination, or a contrivance of evil. Then of course my mind swung the other way, questioning my impressions, throwing up horrors of what if?