by Sharon Shinn
They were back from the hunt just in time to change for dinner, which, this evening, was far more formal than the night before. Aubrey wore his best clothes and used the barest hint of magic to make them appear finer than they really were. Then he hurried down to the great dining hall to seek his place at one of the long tables.
He found himself between two women. One was old enough to be his mother, but dressed to the highest standards of fashion; her face was made up and her hair was so elaborately coiffed that he imagined she was afraid to turn her head very quickly for fear of dislodging a curl. Nonetheless, she was charming in a gossipy, knowledgeable way. She pointed out to him a few of the notables at the table and filled him in on their latest scandals and accomplishments.
His other dinner partner was young enough to be shy, and pretty enough to be flattering; whoever had made up the tables had obviously thought he deserved to have attractive company. Her name, she told him, was Mirette. She was blond as firelight and her eyes were a guileless brown. When he smiled at her, she blushed and dropped her eyes, but he saw a small answering smile teasing at the corner of her mouth.
“You can’t have been invited here on your own,” he said. “Who have you come with? A husband? A brother? Parents?”
The small smile grew. “Oh—not my husband!” she exclaimed, in a breathless voice. “I’m not—I have no husband.”
“A family, then?”
She nodded. “Yes, my mother and father and my sisters.”
“Sisters!” Aubrey repeated. “There are more of you?”
She laughed softly. “Two more.”
“And are they as beautiful as you?”
She laughed again, somewhat more breathlessly. “How can you ask such a thing! I think you would say they are far more beautiful.”
“Then I had best cover my eyes when I meet them,” Aubrey said solemnly. “Mortal men are not meant to endure such sights.”
This time she giggled, and shot him a quick sideways look from under her fair brows. “Many mortal men have looked at all three of us together and not gone blind,” she said.
“How can that be? I feel my eyesight failing even as we speak.”
It was lighthearted nonsense and she took it as such; she was not quite so unsophisticated as she first appeared, Aubrey decided, but every bit as pretty. Once or twice he caught another young man at the table eyeing him with a certain envy. One of his companions from the hunt actually winked at him when Aubrey glanced his way, then spread both his hands in a brief parody of wingflight. Aubrey knew this masculine signal from days past: “Hunt like the falcon,” it meant, and it was always a sign of approbation.
Of course he could not claim Mirette’s attention for the whole evening; the man on her other side wanted a chance to flirt with her, and Aubrey too had another companion to entertain. It was late into the meal when it occurred to him to look around for his other friends to see if they were faring so well. Glyrenden was not hard to spot: He sat at the head table, only two or three places removed from his host. It took Aubrey some time to locate Lilith.
But once he saw her, his gaze stayed for a long time; he felt momentarily disoriented, out of place. She was wearing the green silk gown that he had liked so much, and she had taken some trouble with her appearance. Her dark hair, braided into its customary smooth coronet, was pinned in place with gold combs. She wore the emerald collar Aubrey had made for her from a strand of pearls, and the jewels glowed against her white skin with a startling vividness. Her face had been delicately painted—a blush smoothed onto the flat cheeks, a deep shadow applied under the high arch of the brows—and even from a distance, Aubrey thought he caught the faintest patchouli scent of her perfume.
And she sat at the brightly lit table with a hundred people, and she watched her plate as she ate almost nothing; and men sat on either side of her and across the table from her, and no one at all looked in her direction. She seemed utterly alone, abandoned, alien and strange. She seemed to sit in a pool of darkness so deep no one was willing to peer into its depths. Whether that darkness sprang from her or was forced on her, Aubrey could not tell, but everyone else at the table, consciously or not, seemed to be aware of it, and to turn away.
Yet it seemed to him, as he watched her from twenty feet away, that she was more dramatic, more glorious, more alive, and more beautiful than any other human being in the room. The angular face, the heavy hair, the thin wrists, the pale skin, were as familiar to him as his own features, his own body, but they struck him now with an unbearable poignancy. He was pierced to the heart by her troubled incandescence. It seemed impossible to him that no one else in the room noticed her, that no one else stared at her with the same arrested fascination. He could not believe that she was not ringed with men begging for a glance from her eyes or the lightest touch of her fingers. He watched her and he felt vertigo surge through him. If he’d been obliged to at that moment, he could not have risen to his feet and crossed the room. She was the shadowed center in a garish and over-bright universe; she drew him in with the power of her darkness, and he could not look away.
“Aubrey,” said a soft voice in his ear, and he started so violently, he almost spilled his wine. The voice laughed, and he managed to turn his head and track down the source. The blond girl beside him spoke his name again.
“Aubrey. Aren’t you going to speak to me again this evening? What have I done to offend you?”
He heard the words but it took him a moment to sort them out and even longer to respond. This girl he had admired just a moment ago suddenly seemed to him shallow and formless, constructed of meaningless bright pastels and breathy laughter. Against Lilith’s darkness, she shone too metallic; against Lilith’s stark beauty, she was as insubstantial as water.
SOMEHOW HE MADE it through the meal. If Mirette’s continued light laughter was any gauge, his sudden conversion was not noticeable, and indeed he struggled to keep up an appearance of gaiety. He wished he had not been so successful, however, when the woman on his left turned to him as the meal ended.
“Tonight we have dancing,” she said. “Faren loves to show off his ballroom. You must excuse my forwardness on the grounds that I am so much older than you, and tell me please if you would be willing to lead me out for the first waltz?”
He had wanted to make his way immediately to Lilith’s side, but courtesy forbade him to refuse his dinner partner. “I would be delighted,” he said. “You anticipated my own request.”
Mirette could hear every word; there was no help for it. “And you, most lovely lady,” he said, hoping he disguised the effort it took to speak so lightly. “Would you honor me with the second dance?”
She gave him her pretty sideways smile. “I would. Thank you very much for saving me the trouble of asking.”
In a relaxed, disorderly fashion, the guests rose to their feet and strolled to the ballroom, then stood around gossiping as the orchestra members worked together to find a common pitch. Lilith somehow was on the opposite side of the room, alone, her back resting against the painted marble wall. She stood absolutely motionless, her eyes fixed on some point halfway across the ballroom floor. Her hands were behind her back, as if she crushed them between the wall and her body to keep herself from reaching or gesturing. Her face, tilted slightly downward, showed no expression that Aubrey could read. People brushed by her and did not see her; no one spoke to her at all.
Aubrey almost started across the room to her side, but just then the music began. His promised partner took his arm. “Ah, ‘The Dance of the Naiads,’ ” she said, naming the piece for him. “It is one of my favorites. I feel certain you are an excellent dancer.”
In fact, he had only average skills, but this woman was so good, his own deficiencies were unnoticeable. Mirette, too, proved to be a flawless dancer, one who had moreover perfected the art of flirting with her partner without missing a step. He hoped he did not disappoint her. He answered most of her sallies wholly at random, and paid compliments so pallid as
to be worthless, or so extravagant as to be completely incredible. Nonetheless, when their dance ended, she honored him with a smile and a deep curtsey.
“Perhaps later in the evening—?” she began, and paused delicately.
“I will live for the hour,” Aubrey said, bowing. Her hand was still gently clasping his when three young men elbowed each other out of the way to present themselves to Mirette as possible partners, and Aubrey escaped.
Lilith. Where was Lilith?
When he saw her, he endured his second profound shock of the night. She was dancing with her husband; his arms were twined tightly around her green silk-covered waist, and her hands rested languidly upon his thin shoulders. Her face was turned into his chest, but Glyrenden’s expression was plain to read: exultant, possessive, enamored. Aubrey turned away, sick with an unexpected emotion. He had, how odd, forgotten that Lilith had a husband, and that her husband loved her.
Nevertheless, there was no one else in the crowd of one hundred with whom he cared to speak or dance. Like Lilith before him, he found a convenient, empty stretch of wall and leaned his back against it. Misusing private magic in a public space, he spoke a tiny spell of misdirection and turned all eyes away from him, so that he could watch the rest of the dancers undisturbed.
Although it seemed like an hour, Lilith’s dance with her husband lasted only a few more minutes, but Glyrenden did not return her to anonymity when the music stopped. Greatly to Aubrey’s surprise, they were approached by a tall, dark-haired young man who made a nervous bow to Glyrenden and asked for the favor of a dance with his wife.
Glyrenden seemed amused, though of course Aubrey could not hear what he said. Aubrey vaguely recalled meeting the young man earlier in the day—Royel Stephanis, that was his name. He was the third son of a powerful lord, and considered an embarrassment to the family because he was of a poetic, artistic nature. Royel had not much enjoyed the hunt and had dropped far behind the field as the dogs closed in on their prey. He had straight, fine hair and a flushed, excitable face; he was reed-thin and awkward, but clearly well-bred. And his credentials were good enough for Glyrenden. The wizard carried Lilith’s unresisting hand to his lips, then transferred it to Royel’s outstretched palm.
It was another waltz, even slower than the last. Royel, despite his other social lapses, knew how to dance. He had taken Lilith in a careful and reverent hold, and he drew her with authority through the intricate steps of the waltz. As before, Lilith kept her head down. Her hands on his shoulders seemed barely to touch him. Royel bent his head over hers and spoke in her ear—judging from his face, words of entreaty and cajoling. For the most part, she did not appear to answer, or even to hear, except for one time, when she responded with a quick, negative shake of her head. Royel was not discouraged; he asked again, and this time she made no reply at all.
Aubrey, watching from his self-imposed shadow, was consumed by gradations of fire. He hated Glyrenden and he hated Royel with a bitter, uncontrollable passion; he felt a profound respect for Royel for perceiving and responding to the fey beauty buried in Lilith; he was aghast at himself, furious and frightened, amazed at the depth of feeling and at the obtuseness that had kept it hidden so long. And he was seared by the sight of Lilith herself, so beautiful, so vulnerable, wrapped in another man’s arms.
Royel took two dances, though Lilith murmured a protest the second time, and Glyrenden took the next. Aubrey determined to take the following one. He dispersed the fog he had drawn around himself, and was instantly accosted by the older woman who had sat beside him during dinner.
“Oh, hullo there,” she said, smiling with genuine pleasure. “I didn’t see you. Where did you come from?”
“I’ve been right here,” he said, attempting to smile back. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
“Well, the dance I enjoyed most was the one with you,” she said hopefully.
Aubrey forced himself to bow. “Then perhaps we can repeat the pleasant experience now,” he said.
Of course she accepted, and they danced again. As soon as it was politely possible, Aubrey relinquished her to another partner and turned his attention to finding Lilith.
There she was; alone again, once more standing against a wall. Had she had an ounce of magic in her, he would have suspected her of drawing a veil of invisibility around herself, for again she was ignored by the people who stood closest to her. Even Royel, across the hall, obviously searching the room with his eyes, seemed unable to find her. But no such spell blinded Aubrey’s vision, and he pushed his way through the crowd to her side.
“Lilith,” he said, and her eyes came up to his. He had expected to be as flustered as a schoolboy once he finally came face to face with her, but the opposite was true. Sight of those fathomless green eyes steadied him, gave him back a measure of rationality, even gaiety. He found himself smiling down at her, wanting her to smile at him in return.
“You look so lovely,” he continued. “I think this is the finest of your new gowns.”
“Glyrenden says so, too,” she replied.
“And your hair. And your face—you have made up your face, have you not?”
“Glyrenden painted it for me. He set the combs in my hair as well.”
“Then he made you beautiful.”
She did smile then, but sadly. “I believe that was his intention.”
He knew the answer, but he asked anyway. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
“No,” she said.
“That young man. Royel Stephanis. He seemed quite taken with you.”
“Did he?”
“You know he did. He danced with you endlessly and whispered compliments in your ear.”
“How do you know what he said to me?”
“I learned everything I needed to know by the expression on his face.”
She did not reply.
“Did you like him?” Aubrey persisted.
“Not particularly.”
That was good news. “He seems like a fine young man to me,” Aubrey said. “But you should not flirt with him too much if you don’t want to break his heart.”
“He is a poet, and he is drawn to the unusual,” she said. “I cannot help it if I intrigue him.”
“I am not a poet, and you intrigue me,” Aubrey said, the words slipping out before he could stop them.
She gazed up at him. “But then, you are a little uncommon yourself,” she said.
It was the first time she had ever offered him an opinion about himself, and he waited a moment to see if she would say more. She didn’t. So he said, “The wizard Sirrit is no poet, either, and you startled him. Why did he stare at you so oddly last night? Do you know?”
She glanced away; it was hard to tell if anger or shame brushed a faint color into her cheeks. “He thinks I am strange,” she said. “I told you that most people would.”
“And you seemed to be—wary of him,” Aubrey continued. “Why? Have you met him before? Heard something to his discredit?”
She returned her eyes to his face. “I am wary of wizards in general,” she said somewhat dryly.
He smiled again, coaxingly. “You are not afraid of me, I hope,” he said. “Say you do not distrust me.”
Briefly, a smile touched her lips, pleasing him beyond all reason. “You are different,” she said. “I don’t know why that should be so.”
“Living in the same house with a man makes him familiar, perhaps,” Aubrey said casually.
“Does it?” she said, wry again. “And are you familiar with any of us yet? Glyrenden, perhaps? Do you know how his mind is patterned? Arachne, Orion—have you puzzled them out?”
“You?” he continued, softly. “Have I solved that mystery? No. I have to confess I have not.”
“It may take more time than you have,” she said.
“I don’t think so,” he said seriously. “I will not leave until I understand.”
“And once you do,” she said, “you will be gone by nightfall.”
He did no
t know how to answer that, but fortunately he was provided with an easy change of subject when the orchestra began a new number. “I have seen you dance already with two partners,” he said. “Will you dance with me now?”
“If you wish,” she said.
“Very much.”
“Then I will.”
He led her to the dance floor and put his arms around her. She was light as an autumn breeze; she felt as weightless as birchbark stripped from the tree. He could feel the smooth fabric of her gown under his hands but there seemed to be no living form beneath the cool silk. He knew her fingertips rested on his shoulders but he could not feel them there. He tightened his arms and the contours of her body became plainer, the brittle bones prisoned in the soft, defenseless flesh. She murmured a wordless protest, and he loosened his hold, but not as much as he should have. He understood now why Glyrenden always laid his hands on her with too much force; for all the power and strength of her personality, there was nothing to her physically. She seemed to be fashioned from the idea of a woman, and not to be a woman at all.
“Is this how you held the lady Mirette?” she asked him.
He was so surprised that he laughed aloud. He had not thought she had collected the names of his dance partners. “The Mirettes of this world live for dalliance,” he replied. “It’s very possible that I hugged her a little now and then.”
“I’m surprised she could draw a breath to flirt with you.”
“But she could, very easily,” he said. “You, now. You don’t seem to breathe at all.”
“If you would not hold me so close—”
“But I must,” he whispered, and tightened his embrace again. This time she did not remonstrate, and so the dance continued; and Aubrey wished that the waltz would not come to an end at all, but would be played over and over again from the beginning, and that he could hold Lilith in his arms until the whole night fled by.
