Isolde Zhalina studied her daughter a moment. “Yes,” she said slowly. “I can see why Maester Friedeck should come. But let us have Ehren make the suggestion. That will do better.”
She nodded firmly. That, too, was out of character, Therez thought. A sign that all was not well in this household.
It never was.
Be quiet. It can be.
Still arguing with herself, Therez wrote down the name of a prominent musician. She immediately drew a line through the name, unhappy with her choice. Her pen hovered over the paper. When was the last time her mother had laughed or smiled without care? How had she looked, nearly five and twenty years ago, when Petr Zhalina courted her? Had he promised his love and all his heart? Had she, like Lir, laughed with delight? Or was theirs a marriage of gold and politics, even from the beginning?
The scratching of her mother’s pen ceased. She was staring at the guest list and frowning harder than before.
“A problem?” Therez asked.
“No. But I always find it hard to pick the right words. Especially for certain guests.”
Ah, so the list was not the complete list. Somehow this did not surprise Therez. “Who else is coming?” she asked.
Her mother wrote a line, paused. Her glance flicked up and back down to the parchment before her. “Baron Mann, if he accepts,” she said at last. “A few others.”
Therez exhaled softly. Baron Josef Mann had recently come from a season at Duenne’s Court. Her father must have special plans indeed.
“Paschke,” she said. “We must engage Launus Paschke for the evening. With him and his company, we won’t need any other musicians.”
“Paschke would indeed make a favorable impression,” her mother murmured. “I only hope—”
She broke off and frowned again. Therez reminded herself that a failure meant more than disappointment for herself and Ehren. Failure also meant a lecture from Petr Zhalina to his wife, delivered in a soft monotone that would wash all emotion from her mother’s face. And he would not drop the matter after one or two days—or even a week, Therez thought. That anyone could endure. But her father would bring up the subject weeks and years later—small pointed reminders of his wife’s failings. Strange how a whisper could wound so deep.
It would come out right, Therez told herself. They would dazzle their guests, her father would secure his contracts, and she would see her own plans to fruition. But every detail must be perfect.
* * *
BY LATE AFTERNOON, Therez had planned the wines and most of the decorations. She had written to various artists for advice with the finer details; she had also sent a letter to Launus Paschke, asking to meet and discuss hiring his company. In turn her mother had completed the invitations and given them over to Petr Zhalina’s senior runner for delivery.
“We are done for today,” her mother told her. “Go and visit your grandmother. I know you want to.”
Therez did not wait for her mother to repeat the suggestion. She ran to her rooms to store away her notes, then hurried down the corridor to the lavish suite where her grandmother lived alone. Naděžda Zhalina called these rooms her empire, and there she had once ruled with vigor. But in the last year, age and illness had overtaken her—the empire had shrunk to her bedchamber, invaded by nurses and maids and companions. Therez came into the richly ornamented sitting room that formed the outer defenses of that kingdom.
A maid sat there, mending stockings.
“Is she awake, Mina?”
Mina shook her head. “Sleeping, Mistress. Very lightly.”
The sleep of very old people. “What about her appetite? Did she eat today?”
“Three bites, Mistress.”
Therez glanced through the half-open door. The rooms beyond were dark, but a faint light edged the bedroom door. “I’ll just look in, then. I won’t wake her.”
She glided through a second, smaller sitting room, which was given over to dozens of porcelain figures, through the dressing room, to her grandmother’s bedroom door, which she eased open.
Bowls filled with fresh památka cuttings were set about on tables, the pale white blooms like candle flames in the semidarkness. Her grandmother had carried away a handful of seeds from her old home in faraway Duszranjo, in Károví, decades before. After they arrived in Melnek, and her son purchased this house, she had planted beds of them in their formal gardens, over his protests. Now that she was ill, she had the flowers brought to her. Off in one corner stood a thick crude figure of a gnarled bent woman. Lir, as the crone. She had another name in Károví, in the old days, but the goddess was still the same.
Another maid, Lisl, sat in one corner, knitting by the light of a shaded lamp. Therez signaled for her to remain still and tiptoed to her grandmother’s side.
Her grandmother lay with her head turned toward the window, snoring softly. She looked old, Therez thought. Old and frail. Her ruddy-brown skin was mottled, and her once-black hair lay scattered thinly over the pillow. Under the loose pouches of skin, you could just make out traces of the strong old woman from six months before.
Therez’s grandmother stirred. “Therez,” she whispered. “Hello, my sweet. Come closer.”
Therez touched the old woman’s cheek. “Are you well?”
“Dobrud’n. Good and not good, as they say.” Thirty years in Veraene had not erased her strong accent. “I was hoping you would visit.” She tried to sit up. Her face crumpled and she sank into her pillow again with a muttered curse. “I hate it,” she whispered angrily. “I hate sickness and— Ah, you didn’t come to hear my complaints.”
“I came to visit. If you’d rather complain, then I’ll listen.” Therez gathered her grandmother’s hands in hers and gently kissed them. She could feel how light and fragile the bones had become. The surgeons had warned them to expect her grandmother’s death within the next few months.
Already her grandmother had closed her eyes again, and her breathing turned soft and raspy, a sound like that of paper sliding over paper. Lisl’s knitting needles resumed their regular clicking. Therez gently withdrew her hands, thinking to let her grandmother sleep, when the old woman’s eyes fluttered open. “Tell me about the dinner party,” she whispered.
Therez suppressed a start of surprise. Of course her grandmother had heard. Probably from Lisl and Mina. “If you already know, Grandmama, what can I tell you?”
Her grandmother laughed softly. “Impertinent child. Tell me what these silly girls don’t know. What has your father planned?”
“He’s planned everything,” Therez said drily, which provoked another laugh from her grandmother. “But he’s left a few choices to me and my mother. We shall have Paschke for our music, if he has no other obligation, and I’ve written to Mistress Sobek, the theater artist, for advice on the decorations. I can tell you already that there will be flowers and sweet candles, dancing, and three courses of the finest dishes Mama could decide upon.”
“And the guests? Who are they?”
“Friends. Neighbors. He’s invited nearly all the chief merchants and anyone with a voice in the City Council.” She hesitated. “He’s even invited Baron Mann, if you can believe it.”
“Friends,” her grandmother said. “Those are not friends. Those are allies, rivals, partners. Sometimes I think your father— Well, never mind what I think. It should be an interesting evening. I wish I could watch. Pity. And with you the chief of everything. So big since last year. Soon you will find a husband.”
Not until Duenne, Therez thought, but she only smiled. “I’d rather wait another year, Grandmama. Sixteen or seventeen is old enough.”
A brief spasm passed over her grandmother’s face. “I was seventeen,” she whispered. “Saw your grandfather in his shop in the marketplace. He was young then, quieter, but that day he was laughing. Such a bright smile. Oh, I fell in love so quick, it hurt.”
Therez stroked her hands, not liking the quaver in her grandmother’s voice. “Maybe we should postpone the dinner party. It
’s not right. Not with you so … tired.”
“Bah. Don’t be foolish. I’ll see more dinner parties. I dream of them sometimes. Strong dreams, too, and all of them in the same palace. And always in winter, far to the north. About scrubbing, if you can believe it. Floors and walls. Tin plates. Silver plates. Once a platter of gold that I polished until it gleamed like the sun. I did well, they said, for someone so young. I almost told them I knew the work from lives and lives before, but I didn’t. I knew they wouldn’t like it.”
Therez’s skin prickled at her grandmother’s words. Strong dreams were always life dreams, the scattered memories of previous lives. Even those who dreamed faintly would find their life dreams more vivid as death approached. “Don’t talk like that,” she said fiercely.
Her grandmother made a tch-tch sound. “Ne. Not to worry, sweet. I only meant that I dreamed sometimes.” Another pause while she recovered her breath. “Therez, why is your father holding this dinner party?”
Therez blinked, startled by the question. “Business, my mother said. The autumn contracts.” She didn’t want to mention the part about Ehren’s studies, or her own trip to Duenne. That would only provoke another argument between her grandmother and her father.
But her grandmother was already muttering. “Business. Always business. Money. Contracts. Deals and trade. Sometimes I think your father forgets the famine was thirty years ago. Not yesterday.”
“It could happen again tomorrow,” said a voice from the doorway. “Or have your forgotten how easily wealth turns into poverty?”
Petr Zhalina stood in the doorway, a tall narrow shadow against the gloom. Only a white band showed where his shirt emerged from his dark gray vest and coat. With a wave of his hand, he dismissed Lisl, who vanished into the outer rooms.
Naděžda Zhalina opened her eyes; her expression turned wary. “Dobrud’n, my son.”
“Good afternoon, my mother.”
Her mouth twitched. “Such a diligent son. Have you come to wish me farewell?”
Petr Zhalina lifted his chin. His lips thinned even more, if that were possible, and the angles in his cheeks grew more pronounced. “I came to see about your health. Therez, please leave us.”
Therez turned toward the door, but stopped when her grandmother lifted a hand. “Come again this evening, sweet.”
“She comes if her duties allow,” said her father. “Therez. Go.”
Therez hurried out the door. She heard a low murmur from her father and a brusque reply from her grandmother. She paused, wondering what the new argument was about, but both voices quickly sank into whispers.
A shiver passed through her—a reminder of death and the coming winter—and she fled to the brightly lit halls below.
CHAPTER TWO
EIGHT DAYS LEFT, then three, finally none. All the guests had accepted their invitations, including Baron Mann. Paschke had rearranged his schedule at Therez’s request. They would bring both plucked and hammer-stringed instruments, he told her, as well as a complement of oblique and transverse flutes, and even a water flute, which only a master could play with any success. In the dining room, the steward had arranged flowers made of perfumed silks and gossamers and faille in the latest fashion from Duenne. Therez’s mother seemed cautiously pleased.
That afternoon, Therez sat by her grandmother’s bedside, watching the old woman’s chest rise and fall as she slept. I’m so tired, Naděžda Zhalina had whispered. So tired, and yet I cannot sleep. Tell me a story, sweet. One about Duszranjo.
And so Therez had, repeating all the old stories and folktales her grandmother had once told her—about ghost soldiers who haunted the mountain passes, about the famine her grandparents and father had survived, about the near-immortal king who ruled that northern land of Károví. The longer she spoke of long ago and faraway, the more easily she could forget the whispers and the tensions of now. How her mother would suddenly fall silent and tremble. How her grandmother and father conducted a silent war of determination. How her brother seemed more distant now than when he first left for university.
Her grandmother stirred restlessly. “Him,” she murmured. “Always him. He never changes.”
She was dreaming again, Therez thought. Were these more life dreams? Or simply the wanderings of an old weary mind?
Outside, muted by thick walls, the bells rang five long peals. Two hours until the dinner party. She ought to go. Gently, she eased her hands from her grandmother’s and rose. She’d dismissed Lisl before, telling her to take a free half hour. The girl ought to be back soon.
Her grandmother gave a breathy moan. Therez hovered anxiously. She laid a hand over her grandmother’s forehead, which felt clammy to her touch. Her grandmother twitched away and started to mumble in Károvín—something about a palace and a king. The king. The only king.
Leos Dzavek. Now she understood. He was the one who never changed, not since he’d stolen Lir’s jewels from the emperor, almost four hundred years ago. Emperors and kings had died since then. The empire itself had broken apart. Only Leos Dzavek remained unchanged, wrapped in magic even long after the jewels themselves had vanished.
“So strange,” her grandmother whispered. Her shivering grew stronger, in spite of layers of woolen blankets and the abundant fire in the fireplace. Therez chafed her grandmother’s hands gently. The soft loose skin felt chilled to her touch.
She deserves better, Therez thought angrily. My father has money enough to hire any mage-surgeon he pleases. If he pleased. Magic might not save her grandmother’s life, but at least a surgeon trained in magic could ease her passage from one life to the next. Her mother had dared, once, to make the suggestion, but her father had dismissed it with an abrupt gesture. Magic, he said, was a useless expense.
Her grandmother muttered again. Therez heard her own name amid a stream of garbled words. She bent over her grandmother. “What is it?” she whispered. “What are you saying?”
“Ei rûf ane gôtter …”
A chill washed over Therez as she recognized those words from history books—I call to the gods—the first words in any invocation of magic, the language of old Erythandra.
I wonder if she heard them from Leos Dzavek himself. I wonder …
“Ei rûf ane gôtter,” she whispered. “What comes next, Grandmama?”
No answer. Just a faint wheezing. Therez repeated the words slowly. She’d read so many history books that talked about magic, and more books about languages, but none of them had contained any true spells. All she could remember was that the old tribes of the northern forests and plains had brought their language with them when they migrated south to Duenne, conquering as they rode. Centuries later, the priests of the empire used the same invocation to call upon Lir and Toc, to summon the magic current for their rites.
“Ei rûf ane gôtter,” she repeated. “Ei rûf …” Now a few more words came back to her. “Ei rûf ane gôtter. Komen uns Lir unde Toc.”
She felt a fluttering in her chest. Was that magic?
She drew a long breath and repeated the words, her thoughts pinned upon each syllable, upon the moment in between.
The air went still and taut. Therez could still hear the fire hissing in its grate, but the noise was muted, as though a veil had dropped between her and the room. She felt a faint breeze against her cheek, smelled the scent of new-mowed grass.
… she knelt on the hard flagstones of the landing, scrubbing the floor with her brush where some fool of a serving girl had dropped a plate of berries. Those stains might never come out of the mortar, never mind the white stones that showed any dirt at all. Her hands ached. Her knees were stiff and sore. And the cold. You would think a grand palace would be warm, but it was never warm in the north, not even in summer …
It was a life dream—she recognized the intensity at once—and she was part of it. Then her thoughts dipped again into her grandmother’s. She saw a vast white staircase curving above and below her, felt the cold hard stones against her knees, and heard …<
br />
She heard footsteps ringing off the stairs. Hurriedly she dragged the bucket into the corner and wiped the stones dry. Just in time for the man—he looked like a starving bird with great black eyes, she thought—to round the corner. A young woman dressed in layers of robes followed him. She wore an emerald set in her cheek, a blood-red ruby in her ear. It was the younger prince of Károví and his betrothed. They never notice us, she thought. Invisible is what we are. She liked that.
The young woman paused. Her gaze dropped to the old woman’s.
And within her grandmother’s thoughts, Therez felt a shock of recognition. I know her.
“Therez!”
Therez jerked her head up. Isolde Zhalina stood in the doorway. Her face was hard to read in the dim light, but her stance was rigid, her voice anxious. Behind her flitted the shadow of a maid—Lisl or Mina. “Therez, what are you doing here?” her mother said. “It’s late.”
Only now did Therez hear the bells ringing—much louder than before. The air in the room had turned chill—the fire had died—and there came to her the scent of cold ashes, overlaid by a stronger, greener scent. An hour had vanished without her knowing it. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot about the time. I—”
“Never mind. Dress and come downstairs as soon as you can. I’ll talk to your father.”
Therez brushed a hand over her grandmother’s forehead. In her mind’s eye, she could still see the berry-stained flagstones, the wash of pale sunlight over the walls, which were as white as a snowdrift. Then she was running to her own rooms, stumbling because her legs were cramped and stiff. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Do not give my father an excuse for anger.
Four maids waited there, along with her mother’s senior maid. As soon as she appeared, Asta called out orders to everyone, including Therez, urging them all through the preparations: The scented bath. The powder applied to Therez’s skin and then dusted off. The layers of clothes, from the stockings and linen undershift to the silken gown that fell in pleats from the high ribboned waist. Therez felt more like a puppet than a girl as she obeyed polite requests to tilt her head this way and that, or to hold perfectly, perfectly still while a maid stitched an errant pearl back onto the lace of Therez’s overgown. Another maid applied perfume and the merest dab of color to her lips. All the while, her veins buzzed with excitement.
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