Banner of the Damned

by Sherwood Smith

  “You are caught in a maze,” Hatahra stated, “but Carola is caught in the act. It was that lackwit Ananda Gaszin, just arrived today, who inadvertently exposed her. In the general scramble yesterday, she left a letter in Darva’s coach. I acquit Darva of nosiness. It’s not like her. Says she opened it, thinking it hers, and saw Lasva referred to in an unmistakable manner. And seeing it, she decided it was better to send the letter to me.”

  She pulled from her pocket a little scroll and cast it onto Davaud’s lap. Davaud held the letter up to the lamp-light.

  My dear Ananda, Tatia reports that Carola wishes to know if foreign attack as courtship is to be the latest royal fad? If so, I pity our dressers! Tatia says the duchess made the baronesses helpless with mirth, asking if we all have to employ Chwahir in order to capture lovers. I laughed so hard! Is it true? Let me know at once what they say at court. Luzha.

  Davaud set the letter down and wiped his fingers on his handkerchief.

  “You know,” Hatahra began, “they call Tatia Definian ‘Tittermouse,’ and it’s not just because of that giggle of hers. Whatever they say about that Kivic, he’s no worse than Tatia Tittermouse, who’s worse than the spywells of old tales.” She wiggled her palm back and forth. “Tatia Definian was directed, same as Kivic was by his king. ‘Carola says.’ More like Carola commands!”

  “Impossible, impossible.”

  “But don’t you see how cunning it is? Carola, I will stake my life, has never lowered herself to making a direct accusation. Instead she asks these venomous little questions, sometimes in a droll tone, always soft and sweet, and Tatia is relied on to spread ’em.”

  Davaud sighed. “This makes me feel unclean. Like turning over a leaf on a thriving garden shrub and seeing a worm gnawing away its vitals.”

  The queen whirled around. “Here’s what I learned when I first took the throne. Either one is first because everyone agrees on the fiction of rank, or one is first because one has the power to make everyone else bow down or die.” She kicked that hassock. “Then there’s human nature, which puts the beautiful and charming person first. Lasva is beautiful, and charming because she genuinely takes an interest in others, a quality she will have even when she’s old. Because young Lassiter hurt Lasva so badly, I would very much like to see her get out of court. Out of Alsais. Out of Colend. The sooner the better.”

  “You don’t want Lasva and the duke to meet again.”

  “Exactly. I didn’t take their passion seriously—that is, I doubt he’s capable of it. He’s a Lassiter. But Lasva? I did not know until you described their faces during yesterday’s little affair how wrong I was. I don’t want Lasva hurt, and if the new Duke of Alarcansa actually has a heart, I don’t want it bruised, not if he’s going to be serving the crown. So let’s do everything we can to foster this romance so suddenly sprung up under our noses. As for Carola, I will begin the next season by honoring my duchies with a royal tour.” Hatahra’s fine, even teeth showed. “I will begin my tour with Alarcansa and stay, enjoying her tasteful, spectacular and so very expensive entertainment, until she has to wear dish cloths for clothes.”

  NINE

  OF IMAGES AND EXPECTATION

  T

  he next morning, as the queen shared breakfast with her sister, she talked about palace changes. In the middle of her list she mentioned that she was going to summon the Duke of Alarcansa to commence the new training for such eventualities. Then she outlined the celebrations she had taken great pleasure in planning during a sleepless night; she intended to honor their new allies, the Marlovens. When Lasva returned to her suite, I was horrified by that expression of mute misery I had hoped never to see again. “I have to get away,” she whispered to me. “I have to get away before he comes.” And she told me what the queen had said about summoning Kaidas to his new post.

  It was time to get ready for the Rising, at which the first celebration would take place. It was to be an “impromptu” award ceremony.

  The Grand Seneschal saw to it that the Marloven prince knew where and at what time to appear. The Grand Herald dug up from the treasury underneath the Archive an old beaten-gold shoulder chain that had an impeccable history, dating from the days before Colend’s borders had consolidated; days when enterprising would-be heroes went out looking for trouble to settle (or cause).

  The queen watched the courtiers watch Ivandred. The Grand Seneschal and Grand Herald watched the queen smile. Lasva and the mysterious Prince Ivandred watched one another.

  He looked so striking, so… aware, but our word was not quite right for that alert stillness as he stood there in his black and gold, the chain arcing with metallic grace over his straight shoulders and across his chest. He just moved, and people deferred, yet he was not arrogant.

  At the sumptuous banquet in his honor, he sat between the queen and the princess. He ate very little, which stirred well-bred wonder. A gobbling barbarian was expected, if not hoped for.

  No one heard Ivandred mutter to Lasva, “You have no spoons.”

  Lasva hid a flutter of laughter and slid her fingers over her shaped gold eating implements. Colendi implements are not ubiquitous, so I shall describe what Ivandred saw: a fork with tines close together—long-handled so that one’s arm did not lift clumsily high, dragging one’s sleeves into the food—and the elegant but dull-edged knife against which we balanced a bite, or gently pressed a bite smaller, so that the face never distorts after the food passes behind the lips, and one never makes a noise.

  “Is aught amiss?” Lasva whispered.

  “They eat like butterflies,” he answered after a long pause.

  She realized he did not understand the question, but discussing eating was unforgivably vulgar, so she let it pass. How much they had to learn about one another!

  At the queen’s signal, the company moved into the ballroom, where musicians struck up soft music as a preliminary to the dancing.

  Ananda contrived to drift by Ivandred several times as he sat beside Lasva, watching the dances. She leaned down to ask occasional questions—did you go to the music festival? No. Have you ever traveled to this end of the continent before? No. And, toward the end of the evening, Is it true that Elgar the Fox was one of your ancestors? Yes. The pleasurable shock of such simple denial—she found it immensely daring and attractive.

  Not just Ananda but several court ladies glided near him to hear anything Ivandred might say. They glanced over their fans, close enough to trail their subtle scents; they even smiled their enigmatic smiles at him but gained no smile in return.

  The poets, Lasva reflected as she led her silent guest up the broad sweep of the pink-marble stairway, often likened the faces of a crowd to a great sea. Perhaps the image worked for those who had glimpsed a sea. Lasva never had, and while she acknowledged the beauty of lakes—Lake Skya being the principal lake in her life—she could not reconcile the image of that quiet, sky-reflecting infinitude with a gathering of courtiers.

  In her early childhood, the faces of court were like a vast garden of flowers, all nodding heads, light-reflecting eyes and gemmed and ribboned hair graced with different colors and shapes. And so there were times when she strolled the Rose Walk she fancied the blossoms were a crowd, breeze-tossed petals nodding, their faces turned toward her.

  When she was a girl, courtly gazes had been warmed by smiles of admiration, of friendship. Or so it had seemed until the sexual neutrality of flowers vanished, and she arrived at the age when faces divided into men and women, the scents and melende masking individual emotion and motivation.

  So here she was with their honored guest, in the gallery where once she’d taught that Jurac to waltz. It was one of the few places in the palace she knew they could be private, yet it was neutral space.

  She cleared her throat. “Here is the first king of Colend, Martande Lirendi, though he was actually a herald-scribe in Kei Fael, before the unification.” She listened to the sound of her own voice, dryly recounting history as they stood side by side sta
ring up at the life-sized, gold-framed painting of a handsome man with a smooth beard, gem-studded braids, and a strange outfit made up partly of gold-worked armor and partly of what appeared to be hangings of the long-famous silk that had made Kei Fael the wealthiest province on the whole eastern continent—second only to Sartor.

  Her voice echoed slightly as she talked about the secrets of silk, guarded on pain of death. Her voice sounded high. Alone.

  He said nothing.

  She continued on, dropping her voice to damp the echoes as she moved down to the second portrait. “… grandson of Martande the Great. He finished the castle whose outer foundations you saw north of the juniper garden. They are to be plowed under next year.”

  Ivandred’s profile revealed naught. She could hear his breathing. Awareness of the sound flooded her with warmth. Memory of the strength of his arm around her, the strangely enticing smell of horse and man and some unnamed herb, clean-scented and strange, seized her. But hard on that was the equally strong memory of Kaidas’s last glance, his tight line of a mouth. I must return to my wife.

  Kaidas, soon to return to Alsais, was bound by that white ribbon. Lasva had to get away. Was the other side of the continent far enough to diminish the pain?

  Ivandred made a gesture. “Do you not want to show me these things?” he asked.

  Lasva’s lips parted. She’d let the pause stretch to silence, and so his response was natural, but so direct a question seemed curiously difficult to answer. Courtiers were not usually direct, but Kaidas had been. Once, had been.

  She fluttered her fan in Query mode, though by now she knew he did not notice the fans except as distraction. “Do you wish to see my ancestors?” she asked.

  Ivandred glanced across the landing to one of the other great portraits. “I have read a little about your emperor,” he said. “To hear you tell about them, that is interesting.”

  Was that flirtation? Habit caused her fan to sweep into the pretty arc of Possibility as she said, “Were I to visit your capital, would you take me on a similar tour?”

  His eyes narrowed briefly in amusement. “We have not so many portraits,” he said. “It would be a short tour.”

  “Portraiture is not a custom in your kingdom?”

  “It was not for my ancestors. When the throne was seized, the new king usually burned everything belonging to the old family.” His amusement increased for a moment. “Summary endings are our custom, some say.” He stopped, one hand groping, a curious gesture, almost of appeal. He squared himself to her. “I will confess, I know not what to say to you. Not about ancestors. Not in your manner.” His open hand now indicated the portraits around him, of sophisticated kings and queens, intelligent, many of them handsome, surrounded by the symbols they chose to represent their interests, talents, and power.

  He added with a rueful quirk to his mouth, “It appears to be custom, from what I hear, to liken you to the roses.” He indicated the windows. “I haven’t the skill with words to say one thing and mean another.”

  She sifted his words for hidden meaning. There were no gestures, no lifts to brow or alterations of stance, the subtleties that courtiers employed with such grace and style to convey what could not be said—what must not be said.

  “The language of diplomacy,” she said slowly, “is different where you live?”

  “Diplomacy,” he repeated. “Diplomacy.” He gazed at the marble floor, question furrowing his brow. “The word might mean different things to us. I understand ‘diplomacy’ as negotiation of treaties between states.”

  Is that not the very definition of royal courtship? she thought, remembering her sister’s exhortation.

  Heat flushed through her, followed by a sickening chill when she remembered waking to discover herself in the arms of Jurac Sonscarna. Ivandred’s quiet, direct speech freed her from the arts of deflection, and she spoke in a quick, low voice: “So what do you see when you see me?”

  Her intensity sparked fire in him, too long banked. He stared down into her summer-sky eyes, aware of the splendid glow of color in her beautiful face, the quick rise and fall of her bosom under the layers of floating gauze, and he said, his hands out, his tongue dry, “Beauty.”

  She made a gesture of repudiation, turned away, and then turned back. “Let me tell you about my beauty.” Her eyes widened. Her voice was quiet. “I’ve never told anyone this, outside of—” Kaidas. “When I was, oh, about ten, I was full of self-importance as a child is who has discovered what rank means, but who has not yet seen the true motivations behind those smiling words of admiration. I used to come here to touch the magic spell over the portrait that captured moments of my ancestor, Lasva Sky Child. I’d been encouraged to learn to walk like her, you see, and I used to practice over and over.”

  Lasva’s fan swirled upwards to the left, flattening at the angle of False Triumph. He did not know the mode but he suspected the self-mockery from the angle of her face and arm. He glanced from living woman to painted image, and there Ivandred saw Lasva’s face on the most fabulously framed portrait of them all, a secretive smile on the lips, the gown a fantastic working of gold and gems over pure white silk, a golden crown on the curling dark hair—painted in later, because she had refused to be any more than royal consort, though history called her Queen.

  Lasva approached the portrait. She touched the lily-shaped gem worked into the frame, and the magic spell released the captured moments of the living woman.

  They had chosen a bright day, so her face was lit from the high windows, her blue eyes gleaming as she laughed over her shoulder. According to the records she was forty-two at the time. There were the tiny lines about her mouth and eyes that revealed her age, but her expression was so full of inner light, of fun and joy, her beauty transcended mere physical features. The king had gone to the extreme expense of causing the mages to bespell sound as well as light, so she said in Kifelian with a strong Sartoran accent, her voice higher than Lasva’s, and more sibilant, “What shall I say? This feels odd. I know! I’ll do a little dance, from the village of my birth.”

  She hiked up the costly brocade of her skirt and lightly twirled and stepped, her long curls bouncing as she hummed a tune, for in Sartor, there was no discrimination against wordless voices in music. Then she looked up again at someone she loved because there was so much tenderness in her face, so much shared laughter. Then the image winked out.

  “That smile was for the king,” Lasva said. “It’s attested to by the mage, the artist, and a scribe.”

  Ivandred had heard about this portrait magic, but his forebears either did not know it or the portraits, and the spells, had been destroyed. Most foreign kings and queens make speeches, the Herskalt had told him. They want to be remembered, and no one will tell them, or can tell them, how very boring they sound. The portrait magic seeps away over the years, unused, and unrenewed by indifferent progeny.

  But this famous woman, whose family had intermingled with his own, mother of the most powerful emperor in several generations, had chosen to be remembered dancing about like a village woman.

  “I can still do every step, every move, of that dance.” Lasva’s mouth quirked sardonically, mirroring the enigmatic smile above. “And I practiced what I thought was that smile, secure in my own perfections, for did not everyone tell me constantly how much like her I was?”

  Ivandred made that gesture again, an open hand, as if handing her something. Maybe it was appeal. “So on one particular day, two court women stood talking, right here where we are now. I heard my name, so I hid behind that column over there. I thought I was going to hear praise of myself—I don’t know why I hid, since I’d never been the sort to do that. But I was soon disabused of my vain desire to hear praise.”

  He stepped nearer, listening to the breathless flow of words.

  “With the detachment of people discussing the design of a table, or a wall-hanging, they compared every feature in my face to those in the portrait—which is reputed to be exact—somethin
g my ancestor insisted on. She is said to have inspected each day’s painting and withheld money for anything she deemed flattery.”

  Ivandred looked up at that intelligent, slightly mocking blue gaze, faithfully captured on canvas.

  Lasva uttered a soft, sad breath of a laugh. “So I listened to this catalogue of my flaws: eyebrows too faint, nose too pointed, upper lip this, lower lip that, ears not quite another thing, until they had thoroughly assessed every single feature, then they moved on, leaving me feeling like… like a commodity handled in the market place and dropped back into the basket to be fingered over by the next idle passer-by.”

  She dared a look at him to find his attention wholly on her, so close, so fixed, that again she felt that heat and ice running through her veins and nerves. Her heart hammered against her ribs, and her fingertips tingled.

  “It was not the criticism that upset me. After that long catalogue, even praise would have caused me to feel shop-soiled, though it would have wounded me far less. I was never a person to them, you see, but an object. Do you see it?” She kept her hands at her sides, no art in voice or gesture. “So when I ask, what do you see when you see me, you understand I don’t want flattery?”

  He thought of her smeared with mud, her gown ruined, her hand bleeding as she faced the Chwahir king. “Gallantry,” he said.

  “Oh.” Her eyes stung. “Oh.” A word so long outmoded it gained all the charm of the unexpected.

  He did not understand, though he listened with all his attention. When she held out her hands he sensed appeal, and so he extended his own and closed her thin, cool fingers in his callused grip, once again sustaining the pleasurable shock of her touch.

  He said, and it was many years before she understood the courage it took, “What do you see when you see me?”

  “Safety,” she said.

  A word so alien it carried all the power of redemption. Disarmed and defenseless, he stared down into her eyes, unable to speak. Lasva did not know that he was breathing a scent that reminded him so curiously of home. “Rose” they might call this princess, but she did not drench herself in attar of roses, as did many of her ladies. The scent was clean wild-growing sage with a hint of anise, reminding him of galloping over the rain-swept plains of Hesea, and she looked to him with trust.