Banner of the Damned

by Sherwood Smith

  When the hair dresser left, Lasva peered in the mirror at her newly dark hair. “It makes me look… pale.” She tapped her fingers to her lips in distaste, but said nothing more.

  I never heard her say a cruel thing, though all around one heard casual slanging of the moon-pale or slug-faced Chwahir. The word “pale” alone carried enough derogatory associations. “I will need fabrics that bring my skin tones out again.” She shrugged, then whirled away, arms raised. “I’m still stiff. What was that I saw you doing on the private terrace at dawn yesterday? Is that what they call the Altan fan form?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why do you do that? I never heard they taught it to scribes.”

  “It keeps the wrists strong, as well as the body.”

  Lasva clasped her hands. “There is something compelling about it, suggestive of strength. Almost the opposite of dance, which exhorts us to be light and fluid as water. Teach it to me.” And when I began a protest, she waved a hand, “Ah-ye, I know. You are not a proper teacher. I will hire an expert if I take to it. Now, all I want is to experiment.”

  I fetched my long fans from my trunk. Lasva took one to spread and inspect. Neither of us was aware of Kaidas standing on the wickerwork balcony above us, caught by the sound of Lasva’s voice.

  “I read that people actually fought with these fans,” Lasva said. “Did they really, or is it metaphor? I have yet to read of anyone truly treading on someone’s shadow, yet our language is rife with references.”

  “The instructor told us that the first Duke of Altan won his land after a duel with fans. See the points on the blades? These are rounded, and made of the light wood, but I did some research and learned that centuries ago they were thin steel, as sharp as carving tools.”

  “That must have been quite heavy. Even these have heft.” She turned the fan over. “Black on one side, white on the other. Why is this? Caprice?”

  “It’s so the master can see your moves. For certain forms, correct style requires only one side visible at a time.”

  “Low shoulder,” she said, touching the blades below the plain white-sided mount. “Ours have high shoulders.”

  “Gives the fan more strength,” I said. “Court fans merely have to set a breeze going.”

  “I still do not see how one could engage in battle with this.” She poked it into the air. “With a sword, I know you press the point into the opponent. That frightful mural in the old palace made that evident.”

  “I will demonstrate, with your permission. If you will hold the paper thus.”

  I gave her one of my practice scrolls, which I could easily mend.

  She smiled in anticipation as she held the scroll stretched between her hands.

  “Hold it taut,” I said, and she snapped it taut.

  The fan form is done slowly—that is what keeps our muscles supple. The word “form” is meant to imply dance. Some centuries ago any reference to actual warfare was smoothed away, and the arts of war became arts. “No one actually practices at speed, or against others, at least, not in Alsais,” I said as I set my slippers and my cloud blue robe aside and began the first moves. “We are told that the Altans have guards who still practice at speed. It’s because of their proximity to the pass and to the Chwahir. Our teacher is from Altan.”

  As I said the above I moved with gathering speed, the fans closing and opening in my hands, until at last I stepped, whirled, and with a swift cut of the open fan, dashed it across the scroll, which ripped across.

  “Yedi!” Lasva exclaimed, leaping back and dropping the ends of the scroll. “I did not expect that!”

  I finished the form, picked up the scroll ends, and examined the tears. “Oh, I would get a bad mark for the jagged rip. A good strike cuts the paper cleanly straight across.”

  She picked up the fans, then canted her head. “Is this why the challenge fan has points painted on it?”

  “The challenge fan is a descendant of these, we’re told,” I said.

  No one in court carried the intimidating fans with thorns or clawed figures painted on them anymore. Now anger was signified with the snap or angle of an ordinary fan, or an oblique reference to Thorn Gate, which had been the old place of punishment during our very early days. Thorn Gate no longer existed—had not for centuries—but in referring to dire judgments everyone pointed north as if its shadow still lay over that end of the old castle.

  Lasva whisked herself into her room and returned with her two largest fans. These were half the size of my Altans and had lace or painted mounts on only one side of the blades, but they would suffice.

  We pushed the furniture to the edges of the room, then she removed three of her filmy outer robes, until she stood in her cotton-silk body robe of pale peach. I carefully set the queen’s scrollcase on top of my robe for instant retrieval, though Lasva had told me her sister was no letter writer. That would make a communication all the more imperative.

  I showed Lasva the first steps, which I warned her would have to be practiced over and over.

  Without our knowing, Kaidas moved along the balcony until he could see through the wickerwork, down to the top of Lasva’s now dark head.

  That dark hair startled him. He bent down cautiously so that he could see better. He watched Lasva mirror me through the fan form across the balcony, and when we turned, he glanced at me, only to dismiss my scrawny, chipmunk-faced self. (Seeing oneself in others’ eyes can be disconcerting at best. But I will have more to say on that later.)

  The important thing at that moment was this: Lasva caught and held his attention, the living breathing image of her great-mother, the famous Lasthavais Sky Child, who had wandered into Colend and ended up married to a king.

  He bent even lower, looking for flaws, for differences from the centuries-old magical image caught from a few moments of Lasthavais Sky Child’s real life. His father had shown him the gallery his first week at court. This, his father had said, is beauty. Not just her face, or her figure. Listen to her laugh and watch her movements. Such a woman would never cease to set you aflame.

  On our second journey across the balcony, Lasva had learned the basic pattern enough to resume converse. “Can you tell we are nearing Sartor?”

  “Turn your wrist up. That’s right. Yes, I thought the air smelled different. And it seems… bluer, somehow.”

  “I felt the same when we reached this point my first year. It was thundering, then.” She dashed her sleeve over her face.

  From above, Kaidas observed how her hair coiled in ropes of dark silk about her head, glinting with golden highlights, the hairpins in her favorite rose color matched the topmost outer robe spilled like a puddle of gleaming silk on the far table. A fresh glow enhanced her russet complexion. Her voice was low, and husky, as though she was on the verge of a laugh.

  She gripped her fans in the right pose, and we began another set. “You’ll see when we get there,” she said, “the forests are older. Denser. That haze against the mountains is denser, too. Like silvery smoke.”

  I said, “Bent knee. Stay on one level. Like your court walk but lower, for when you strike you will lunge out on one leg.”

  “What a strange posture!”

  “I’m told it is much the same when manipulating a sword.” I paused, straightened her wrists and arms, then took up my fans again, falling into the stance. “I remember when I was eight, we learned that one could find in Sartor evidence of every type of green thing that grew on the world.”

  Lasva laughed, then lifted her lip in a slight grimace. “This uses my arm muscles in a different way. I suspect it will ache.”

  “Would you like to stop?”

  “Not at all. That ache builds to strength, I learned that when I first commenced dance lessons. Let us keep going until I master this first form. So. I used to count types of flowers and trees and birds. I wonder if children always do that, as a way of learning the world?”

  “We did. How high will the mountains get?”

  “I’m tol
d they touch the sky, with peaks always white, but we will not see them. Pirun, our next stop, is where we use magic transfer—or it would take months to reach Sartor.”

  “Magic transfer,” I repeated and hid my aversion.

  She touched her fingers to her lips, smiling in agreement. Though I appreciated the speed with which I could get home for my New Year’s Week visits, the reality of transfer was wrenching, leaving me with nausea and a headache that took a while to fade.

  Kaidas watched and listened, his heartbeat accelerating as Lasva started back again, one arm rising over her head, the other extended, hands turning the fans over, her body graceful in the clinging body robe.

  “… Like the idea of ancient geliaths honeycombing those mountains, older than Colend—far older—some say back to The Fall.” I snapped a fan open. “And the idea that the Morvende might not be human any more—slow. Stay low. Do not bounce up when you step.”

  Laughter, soft and calculated, drifted along the aromatic air from behind Kaidas. He recognized one of those voices and forced himself away. His heartbeat thundered in his ears as he ran through the archway to the inside landing and forced himself to a semblance of calm. Several courtiers wandered in.

  The Gaszins formed the group’s center. Kaidas did not wait for questions—for Ananda’s restless, avid glance to take in Kaidas’s surroundings, and her ready ears to hear the princess’s voice below.

  He marched forward, slid his arms in each of theirs, and quoted a passage he’d memorized for such an occasion.

  They were too well-trained to interrupt, and so he bore them through the opposite arch and along an adjacent balcony, boring them in a different manner the entire way.

  “Ah-ye,” he exclaimed at the end of the verse. “Do I have to lay a wager? Who can furnish the next line?”

  “If you want to play games of wit, then give us a poet we’ve heard of,” the Sentis heir complained.

  “Why should I make it easy? If I go to the trouble of enriching my mental archive—and listen to this passage…”

  On they walked, as he uttered more lines in a sonorous moo.

  At the end, Ananda flirted her fan. “I make it a rule never to duel in poetry. Musical roundelays, yes, but the other arts? Ah-ye, not fair to either. And distresses my sensitivities.” Then she turned to her brother, “You know how very sensitive I am to poetry—”

  “—both air and written,” Kaidas inserted smoothly, when she paused for her admirers to add to her self-praise. “Reminding me of the immortal lines…”

  Off he went again, drawing them down yet another hall, until at last Young Gaszin pulled away, laughing. “You’re a wit-wanderer, that’s what it is.”

  “It’s true. I admit it.”

  Rontande drawled, “We’ll have enough poetry, won’t we, when we get to Sartor?”

  “There’s never enough poetry,” Kaidas declared, and because the princess’s voice still whispered in memory, and the image of her charming arms arching with those fans insisted on repeating against his inner eye, he added, “And so I fear I must leave you all. I am too impatient to serve as audience. I’m off to write immortal verse.”

  They were startled into real laughter.

  “… and visit my cousins on the border. They do persist in begging me to help them chase brigands. Maybe the queen will smile on my poetic afflatus if I prove diligent, eh?” He bowed, and they bowed, and he ran down the stairs, laughing when Ananda called to halt him.

  Soon he was galloping toward the east, his hair freshly restored to its natural black, his court clothes sent by wagon to his ramshackle ancestral home.

  How long before the beautiful Lasthavais Sky Child got bored with the great King Mathias? His father had observed as they stood side by side, admiring the centuries-old portrait. We never hear about that. I wonder just how soon she crooked a finger at all those kneeling hummers of such high degree, who waited like beggars for her smiles.

  Admire, son. Always appreciate art of whatever kind. But don’t touch it. Keep your melende and move on.

  NINE

  OF CATS AND GOLDEN CAGES

  M

  y life was not entirely consumed by the pleasure of being the princess’s scribe. When I passed my seventeenth Name Day, I left the calm of childhood behind. How quick is the eye of youth! Once one begins to look, one might see desire or speculation in a stare that is actually someone’s absent gaze, or mistake interest when there is only politeness. But the time came at last when the lingering eye, and the inviting smile, meant what I thought they did whenever I encountered a certain footman with dark curls. How alluring is the tingle and glow when that eye lingers! How subtle is that invisible boundary between the waking of physical desire and the emotional appeal of thinking oneself in love. His interest both intrigued and scared me.

  By the time we are ten years old, we scribes learn how trite some expressions are—for example, the moth to the flame. Even so, that is exactly how I felt.

  I was intrigued by my footman’s interest in me to the point that I thought about him thinking about me, and I found myself seeking excuses to traverse the hall where he would be on duty. I adjusted my schedule so that I would attend staff meals when he did. I felt grown-up and interesting when he singled me out for walks along the canal, or to sit beside at entertainments. Yet when he wanted to be alone with me, I was uneasy. I was only aware that he was too close, that I did not like the clamminess of his palms, or his hot breath on my cheek. When he touched me, I always had some reason to rise, to stretch, to claim hunger, thirst, or a need to return to duty.

  It was curious, what a relief I felt, yet how hurt I was when he no longer sought the place beside me. Then the day came when I saw him go off alone with Delis, my friend from the kitchen. It was awkward for me when we met in the halls or the staff rooms, though he was never unfriendly. I was glad to go home for New Year’s Week.

  Because I was now a scribe, my parents hired one of the finest rooms in Ranflar’s best pleasure house, where we had a succession of delicacies served while nearby six musicians on winds and strings played for us.

  During this meal my parents praised me for my diligence and dedication, but gradually I became aware of my mother’s preoccupied expression, even though I was describing my recent duties.

  “… and so the princess hired an instructor for the fan form on our return. She often goes out in domino veil to visit the Rose Walk, and because she’s in domino veil, no one bows or speaks to her, so she can walk and walk. But she said she missed running, which she was scolded out of at an even younger age than we scribe students were!”

  My father smiled.

  “She’s begun to lead fashion,” I went on. “You know it was she who got rid of the silver hair, while we were in Sartor. The young courtiers now all wear their own hair color. Lady Isari first, because hers is the true red.”

  “Either that or they are paying for flattering natural colors,” Mother observed.

  “True. Though the older generation still silver their hair. Lasva said that the queen told her that her face would never be more pale than her hair.”

  “An insult aimed at the Chwahir,” my father said. “She’s had that predisposition all my life.” He spread his hands, and we understood the gesture as What can you do? I felt very grown up—he was including me in a mutual recognition of the fact that our all-powerful queen had a shortcoming, but we were left with the comfortable sense that at least it did not concern us.

  “The next fashion the princess introduced, or reintroduced, is the Reading in the Reeds.”

  My mother’s brows went up. In my wish to show off my grown-up knowledge, I interpreted her reaction as question.

  “Stationing readers among the reeds and flowers along a canal,” I explained. “When the boats near, the reader offers a poem. So the guests in the boat slide along from poem to poem. The custom dates at least to the days of Lasthavais the Wanderer.”

  My mother said, “We know what Readers in the Re
eds are.”

  My father’s straight brows furrowed. “Who has your loyalty, Em?”

  “Colend, of course. Need you to ask?”

  Mother touched her porcelain cup. “Who has your loyalty, the queen who houses and pays you, or the princess who employs you?”

  The sense of ease had vanished. I looked from one earnest, worried face to the other. “I believe that my housing and essentials, as they call it, come out of the princess’s budget.”

  “Who, in turn, gets her budget from…” Mother prompted.

  “The queen.” I set aside all eating things. “Please honor me with the reason my loyalty is in question?”

  Mother bent her head, thumb and index finger working slowly over her closed eyelids, back and forth. The skin was so fragile, marked by lines I’d never seen before. Sorrow swooped through me. I do not want my mother to age.

  Mother said, “You understand the… the hidden responsibilities, the cost of being a royal scribe.”

  I made The Peace. “I know I can’t marry, but I don’t have any interest in such things. I also know what being a personal scribe means, as opposed to a public royal scribe. They have been very careful to teach us to understand the responsibilities. Again, why is my loyalty in question?”

  Father’s gaze flicked her way, then back to me. “Emras, we want you to see what we see. We are proud of your promotion, as we’ve always been proud of you and your skills.”

  “When you learned to read so young, we hoped you would reach the higher levels,” Mother said.

  “But… well, if you will pardon advice—”

  I made the gesture of acceptance, keeping my head at the angle of gratitude. Annoyed as I found myself to be told what I knew—to be treated not as an adult, but as a student again—I could also see that something worried my parents.

  “Keep the distinctions in mind.” Father’s voice dropped, and he leaned forward, his body tense. “Only permit yourself to hear that which you can in good conscience keep in confidence.”