The Processional was not a single piece, but a circle of statues. The Sulevia Leoth, the Sulevia Sceadu, and the Sulevia Seolfor, each leading the creatures they, by Sulis' grace, commanded. Every piece brought Rian's mother back so strongly. Her cutting sarcasm when they discovered she'd been given the wrong measurements, and had had to rework her design. A technical discussion over the difficulty of depicting the triskelion. Laughter, warm as honey, at the vanity of a model she'd used for the entourage. One of the rare arguments between her parents, over nothing Rian had been able to guess, and her father's immense contrition when a wild gesture had sent one of the stone hares crashing to the studio floor.
There had been long absences as well, when her mother had been working on the depictions of the Suleviae of the time—Queen Mennia, her sister Princess Nyroe, and Princess Ashwen. Whenever his wife was away, Rian's father would rattle about the studio, starting new projects and then abandoning them half-done, frequently disappearing off to London and leaving Aedric and Rian to the care of neighbours, his latest student, and once even with a confused visitor. Each time her mother's return had been spring after winter.
Griff had made his discovery. "Is this really Father?"
Rian nodded, and gathered together her composure to join the children crowded around the train of the Sulevia Leoth. Three dragons, miniatures of Nimelleth, Dulethar and Athian, each escorted by a child of twelve, one hand resting lightly on neck, or flank, or crested spine. This represented how the Sulevia Leoth could use people as vessels for the dragon's fire, for it was an extreme rarity for the dragons themselves to rise from beneath the land. Aedric had modelled for the third of these pairs, fingers barely brushing Athian's flank. The marble dragon looked back at him, to be met with a smile of solemn reassurance.
That was very much Aedric: serious, steady, and sure. Rian swallowed the cold anger swelling in her chest, mindful of Griff, Eluned and Eleri's loss made newly raw. She had wanted them to see The Processional, but there had been no way to avoid the hurt that would inevitably accompany the sight of this past Aedric.
Catching the fraught atmosphere, Prince Luc looked from face to face, then said: "Were any of the figures modelled by you, Dama Seaforth?"
"Ah, there should be..."
Rian turned to the stone Sulevia Sceadu, Queen Mennia, with a long-limbed and attenuated menagerie in her wake. Among the hounds and hares, the owls and mice, were two larger pieces: the sacred three-tailed mare that led the Night Breezes, and a long-necked stag, both with children on their backs. The mare carried a graceful girl of ten, who gazed with frank interest across at the triskelion. On the back of the stag a child of five sprawled, fast asleep.
"Mother had me pose on an old saddle, every day for what felt like months. Aedric read to me, in hopes of keeping me still. I would always fall asleep—and then be up half the night, racketing around the house and garden."
"It's like you've always belonged," Eluned said.
For one startled moment, Rian thought the girl was referring to the Sulevia Sceadu, to her past self's presence in a train now belonging to Princess Aerinndís. But she caught the direction of the girl's gaze. The stag.
The world revolved, rearranging itself around the idea that the past few weeks had not been a series of unrelated incidents, but instead a predetermined course, a path laid out toward creating an Amon-Re vampire in Cernunnos' service. Producing not an apprentice for Makepeace-Heriath, but a successor.
And one of the steps along that path had been Aedric's death.
Sixteen
A blank page was an invitation, an opportunity waiting to be taken. It should not sit in mute accusation. Eluned gripped her pencil, willing herself to at least start, to put down a single line. Before her was the perfect subject, a tangle of briar roses, all serrated leaves and thorns, shapes she loved to work with, and not touched in any way by withering heat.
One line.
Hopeless. Eluned's fingers tightened, and then she snatched up the sketchbook and hurled it into the tangle in a wild flutter of paper. Chest heaving, she gripped a handful of grass and threw it after the sketchbook, and then flinched as her right arm flailed in response to incautious movement. Instinctively she locked its movement, then let all her breath out in a rush and flopped heavily back onto the grass.
It didn't make sense, none at all. No-one need see the result. It could be as bad as she liked, clumsy, even a stick figure. Scribble. Anything.
What was wrong with her? Why had the thing most central to her become a cliff she could not climb?
A slender, gold-crowned head lifted against the background of blue and leaves. The amasen's warm scales brushed her arm as it rose higher to look down at her.
"Sorry," Eluned said. "Did I startle you?"
A flicker of vivid tongue.
"Is your name really Lila?"
The faint dip of the head could mean anything. Eluned wondered if Lila was a girl's name among amasen, and whether being female was the reason Lila's horns were a short, backward-jutting curve, or if that was because it—she—was young and small, and eventually she'd have the heavy, curling ram horns of the larger amasen.
"I try not to get angry around other people," Eluned said, her gaze returning to the hazy blue above. "I make them nervous."
She remembered being more temperamental, before Jasper. And utterly furious in the first months after. Because she'd failed him, and because of all the things she suddenly couldn't do. She'd given up on long hair, and clothing with difficult buttons, and had had to learn how to draw left-handed, to discover work-arounds for things that were easy with two hands. It had been so frustrating that for a while it had seemed she was always boiling over.
Then she'd noticed how worried it made people. As if having half an arm made tantrums against the rules. And, when she was a little older, with the first, clumsy, mechanical hand, there were times people would even flinch.
"I taught myself not to shout at the world," she told the amasen, or the sky. "I think maybe I need to yell a little more."
She consoled herself by gently stroking Lila's head before collecting her sketchbook and returning to Forest House.
Dawn had come and gone while she'd fought a blank page, but it was still early. There'd be at least an hour before they were due to leave for Tangleways.
Last week, Eluned had been aching with impatience to get to this school and see if Lord Fennington knew anything worth asking. Now she dreaded the trip, because before they'd visited the palace, Eleri had invited Nabah and Melly, and then had...done nothing.
"Oh, Eluned, perfect."
As Eluned wiped her feet on the mat inside the main hall, a mass of pink and white approached from the kitchen, ginger curls visible above a riot of lilliums.
"Be a pet and take these up to your aunt, will you? Let her know breakfast will be ready in twenty."
With enough of a pause to allow Eluned to tuck her sketchbook under her arm, the woman passed over the heavy vase, checked that it wasn't in danger of immediately plummeting, and whisked away.
Dama Seleny had been Aunt Arianne's response to the deputation of the Wise. They'd arrived the morning after the visit to the palace, and had for the most part been ponderously polite while telling Aunt Arianne all the things she should and shouldn't do. Eluned suspected there would have been more not-quite-shouting if not for the foreseeing, and the bite marks the Wise clearly could see, though even Eluned's had healed oddly quickly. Once they'd left, Aunt Arianne had gone to visit Dama Chelwith, and the next day a gangly woman with freckles on her freckles had come to stay.
Dama Seleny's official role was 'Grove Administrator', with a budget for management of the house and the press of visitors wanting to access the grove. Most of the work would be done by day staff, leaving Dama Seleny free to attend classes at Rutherford University, but she took care of early visitors and making breakfast, and was particularly good at stonewalling those with questions about the foreseeing. A simple flower delivery must
make a nice change.
Blinking in the cloud of scent from the lilliums, Eluned spotted an envelope tucked beside a fern frond. An extravagant admirer: the arrangement would be impressive even in a normal year, let alone at the end of a summer of scorching windstorms. Speculating idly, she climbed up one flight of stairs and headed along the short corridor of bedrooms that now belonged to herself, Eleri and Aunt Arianne: chosen because their walls were less faded and carpet newer than the other bedrooms.
Tapping with her foot on the door at the end of the corridor, Eluned waited for the faint response, and managed to hook the handle with her elbow, passing on Dama Seleny's message as she entered. The half-light of the room was a mark of Aunt Arianne's progress toward tolerating the sun. So long as she stayed out of the direct rays, she'd stopped wincing.
"Put it on the sill," Aunt Arianne said, glancing at Eluned's burden in the mirror of the dresser.
There was room beside Aunt Arianne's growing collection of invitation cards, and Eluned gladly lowered the heavy vase, then admired the way the sun picked out veins in the fleshy petals. Greatly daring, she pulled out the envelope, then paused, frowning.
"What are you doing?"
"Working on making myself look a little older, in the hopes of discouraging propositions from people I consider to be children. I don't think I've been very successful, do you?"
"Well, you definitely look like you're trying to look older," Eluned said diplomatically, handing over the envelope and turning away to tweak at the arrangement of the flowers.
"Have you been in Hurlstone? How's Monsieur Doré?"
"In a different spot, but again there was absolutely no sign of a shift while I was there. Shouldn't we try more to communicate with it?"
"The pattern of movement suggests a desire not to communicate," Aunt Arianne said. "Out of distrust, or perhaps simply a need to adjust to what must be a very odd state of being." She put down her letter and began wiping clean her face. "Will you check if Griff and Eleri are up?"
Eluned hesitated, shifting her weight from one foot to another. Perhaps the day ahead wouldn't be nearly so awkward as she anticipated, and there was no need to speak. But just because she hadn't created the school situation didn't mean she could ignore it, so she made herself say: "We...would it be so bad to pay someone's fees?"
Light brown eyes met hers in the mirror. "It's left to you to follow through on whatever plan Eleri had for Melly Ktai? Does your sister often decide to arrange someone's life for them, and then lose interest halfway through?"
What to say to that? Angry as she was, Eluned couldn't let Aunt Arianne misunderstand.
"Eleri sees things that are broken and she can't help but to fix them. Automatons, crockery, people. Sometimes she barely realises she's doing it. She...she hasn't talked to you about this at all?"
"The only thing your sister has said to me the last few days was to demand to be present when the Suleviae come to Forest House."
Though this was said as calmly as the rest, Eluned's heart sank. Instead of her usual effortless arrangements, Eleri had put Aunt Arianne's back up, and then spent all her time in the attic drawing. Even the visits to automaton workshops had been put on hold, and all because of a princess!
"I'm sorry," she said, and added helplessly: "Eleri's not usually like this. She's taken leave of her senses."
Aunt Arianne began applying light touches of colour to her face. "Don't be too hard on her," she said, to Eluned's surprise. "She's adjusting to a new experience."
"Adjusting? She thinks she's going to marry Princess Celestine!"
"So I gathered. Not technically an impossible goal, since the princess could choose to not offer herself to Sulis when the next succession is on us, and thus would not be subject to the Suleviae's ban on marriage. Though I expect Eleri would be perfectly happy to be Princess Celestine's lover."
Eluned boggled. When Eleri had returned from the palace talking and thinking of nothing but Princess Celestine, it had seemed self-evident that the whole idea was madness.
"The princess didn't even speak to her. I'm not sure she more than glanced at her!"
"Very taken up with her new puppy."
"The whole thing doesn't make sense," Eluned said. "Eleri can't know what Princess Celestine is like, can't really like her properly. Love at first sight is a silly idea."
"Silly is not going to change how your sister is feeling right now. Call it passionate attraction, if that makes it easier to understand." Aunt Arianne picked up her brush and began arranging her hair. "After a few days or weeks she'll have more attention to spare."
Eleri would get over it. Of course. It was obvious, inevitable. "She'll see that princesses don't mix with ordinary people like us."
That won an amused glance. "One thing you three are not is ordinary. Though I imagine Eleri is well aware there's a vast gulf separating her from Princess Celestine. It's difficult to romance someone you have no opportunity to meet."
"She lives in a different world."
"Your grandmother used to say that genius transcends all social boundaries, but then, your grandmother was...transcendent. Still, Eleri is a remarkable girl, and she at least has a possibility of meeting Princess Celestine again, at the Moonfire Feast. It's highly likely that most of the Gwyn Lynns will attend the Treaty's renewal, so she can try to forward the acquaintance then."
"Shouldn't you discourage her? She's going to end up hurt!"
"Probably," Aunt Arianne agreed. "But I expect she will enjoy herself along the way."
When Eluned drew an outraged breath, Aunt Arianne put down her brush and turned to face her, a hint of sternness succeeding in making her look more like an adult.
"Yes, Eleri almost certainly will be hurt. Princess Celestine will have power, wealth and beauty, and despite being rather young is no doubt already courted by many who are far better positioned to win her affection. Should Eleri concede defeat? When you meet someone who fills you up until there's no room for anything else, trying to put all those feelings away is harder than even the most hopeless pursuit. Unlikely as her chances are, there's no reason not to support your sister in her feelings. Love requires a certain bravery, but it's one of life's great gifts when it's not making you miserable."
Eluned squeezed her hand into a fist. She had never been angrier at her aunt, and her voice shook when she said: "You think this is funny, don't you?"
Aunt Arianne's eyebrows lifted, then she smiled sympathetically. "I think it ironic. Though I must say, Eleri took your sudden passion in much better part than you are receiving hers."
"Me? I haven't lost my sense over anyone."
"You fell in love with Hurlstone, didn't you? Something that led you to give your allegiance to Cernunnos, a thing likely to have far greater consequences than Eleri's heart-twisting. Cernunnos is both hunter and prey, and his dual nature is something we will both face, for the choice we each made."
"I—" Eluned's hand had stopped constantly itching, but she knew that gods did not bestow their blessings lightly. And it was true: Eleri had made no fuss at all when Eluned had decided she wanted Hurlstone.
"To address your earlier concern," Aunt Arianne continued, "Dem Ktai runs a very successful store, and is perfectly capable of sending his daughter to school. From what I can gather, Melly has made a pragmatic choice not to pursue an education she considers unnecessary to her plans for expanding their business. Possibly she will come to regret that, but there is certainly no drama attached to her joining our trip to Tangleways. We will not be taunting her with a future out of her reach."
"Oh." Relief cut the tightly-wound wires that had troubled Eluned for days. "I'm glad."
With a nod at the sketchbook Eluned still carried under her arm, Aunt Arianne added: "Speaking of futures, it was the Morris Atelier you wanted to enter, yes? With ambition that high, you should be working seriously on your portfolio even though it's a few years away."
This was the last subject Eluned wanted to discuss, so she said
hastily: "Is it that Roman you knew when he was twelve that you consider a child?"
"Felix?" Aunt Arianne glanced at the lilliums crowding the windowsill. "Perhaps, though I suspect he'd have wasted no time dispelling the notion if he'd had the chance. A moot point. Felix's family have a great deal of ambition centred on him, and have hauled on the reins once again. He'll be halfway to Rome by now."
Wondering if Aunt Arianne was disappointed, Eluned recalled that she'd been told to make sure Eleri and Griff were awake, and took the excuse to escape.
Eleri was at least in her bed, and not at a desk. Curled into a ball beneath a light sheet, she looked worn and thin, and though none of them had been at their best since the beginning of summer, there were new shadows beneath her eyes that even sleep hadn't erased.
Biting her lip over the poorly concealed exasperation she'd displayed the past few days, Eluned touched her sister's shoulder, and murmured: "Breakfast's nearly ready," waiting only until she was sure Eleri had woken properly before slipping out.
Griff, after failing to find any hidden bedrooms, had settled on the opposite side of the great hall, in a room with an entire wall of drawers and cupboards. It was meant to be a linen press, and there was barely enough space for him to fit a narrow bed and still open the doors, but Aunt Arianne had shrugged and let him have it. They did, as she said, have other places to put the sheets.
Since Griff was not inclined to be tidy, a tiny room full of shelves still required wading through all his latest projects to get to the bed. Eluned picked up his newest passion—drawing the routes of the train lines over the maps he'd coaxed out of Aunt Arianne—and put them out of the way, then tackled the task of getting him up. He was sleeping in his usual manner, sprawled almost on the floor, and required far more than a touch to shift, but Eluned's spirits were rising, and so she kept at him until he stirred, and then let herself enjoy a fine breakfast, and greeted Melly and Nabah's arrival with an unalloyed cheer that only increased when a long-bodied tiger purred softly up to the curb behind them.
The Pyramids of London Page 17
